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 Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2023 4:46 pm
The Meteor Shower (3) : It wouldn’t be a star festival without a meteor shower! Right on time, a beautiful array of shooting stars graces the night sky. This time of year is unnaturally clear and it’s incredibly easy to see the stars. Most meteor fragments appear to be little white or yellow lights streaming across the sky, but if you watch closely enough you may find that some of them seem to be a whole rainbow of colors. The scientists have reported that it’s just different components burning up as they enter the atmosphere, but there’s something undeniably magical about it. ——————————————————- Nataniel had asked him if it had been a while since he’d left the house. No, it hadn’t been. Standard draining practices took place usually every other night, or every third night, at least, and Tanwyn did have to leave the house for such activities. Wasn’t the implication of the question, he knew. He was sure his friend meant it more as a ‘are you doing anything for yourself?’ Tanwyn went outside for Negaverse work and not much else. Apparently, that wasn’t ‘good’ for him. Dunno who was judging, though. But Ivory went out almost every day, usually as Calaverite, but sometimes just to wander alone. They’d been living together a while, with Tanwyn keeping as close an eye as he could on the younger guy, so that he caused as few problems for Nat as possible, but Tanwyn and Ivory were far from friends. They just happened to live in the same building. As Ivory made to wander off that evening, Tanwyn had decided, “I’ll go with you,” in an attempt to do healthy self care outside activities. Seemed a stretch with klepto Ivory at his side, but they’d figure it out. So it was probably just convenient that there happened to be a show on display that night. They’d taken themselves to a grassy hillside off the beaten path. Still well within city limits, and the area was supposed to be good for viewing, so there were a few food trucks and vendors stationed in the nearest parking lot, available to provide drinks and snacks to anyone who’d come out to watch the shower. “Here,” Tanwyn said as he offered a J-shaped, stuffed honeycomb down to Ivory sitting on the grass. “It’s ice cream. You’ll like it.”
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Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2023 5:07 pm
So, look. Ivory was typically pretty skeptical of people wanting to do things with him in general. It always felt like an extremely thinly veiled attempt to tell him what to do, control him, decide where he was or wasn’t allowed to go, impede his attempts at harvesting because he was making too much of a scene! And because of all that, Ivory was starting to not especially enjoy other people joining him on his adventures. It would be one thing if it was his General- but it almost never was. He was usually stuck with Tanwyn.
And he should like being stuck with Tanwyn, because Cala was stronger than Weissite and had been promoted, and he was supposed to be calling the shots, not this stupid man. But Rakovanite had demanded that because they were teammates, they were to agree mutually on how to proceed with things. If Weissite didn’t think they should do something, Cala was to respect that. That was what his General said he had to do, and Calaverite desperately didn’t want to disappoint Rakovanite, which was really, really unfair because everything would be a lot easier and more fun if he could just not care about what Rakovanite wanted…
But that wasn’t how it was, was it? Stupid feelings.
So when Tanwyn had offered to join him that night, Ivory had been especially unimpressed, and he had for sure let the other man know about it vocally. Unfortunately, it hadn’t been much of a deterrent, and now he was sitting on a grassy hillside with his legs pulled up to his chest, arms folded around his knees, and red eyes glaring aggressively at Tanwyn’s offering.
He hated that his interest was piqued when the offering in question was stated to be ‘ice cream.’ It didn’t look like ice cream, and Tanwyn knew that Ivory was very particular about what he put in his mouth. Most things were not pleasantly edible things, and Ivory was seldom willing to take a risk on what was or wasn’t. But in this case, with a treat being directly offered to him, he extended a hand to accept it, sniffing warily.
There was no reason he could fathom why anyone would give him anything if it was something good, so he jabbed his index finger experimentally into the top of the honeycomb cone, where a mound of very pale yellowy ice cream was piled on top. He licked his finger assessingly, and- it was sweet. Not quite vanilla, but very soft and smooth and cold and… you know, exactly what he expected ice cream to be.
“You didn’t like it?” Ivory demanded. Because why else would he share?
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Posted: Thu Jul 06, 2023 5:19 pm
The grass was cool and soft where Tanwyn settled down on his back next to Ivory’s side. The kid was grumpy, but he often vacillated between unpredictable extremes, and this was on the tamer end of how unhappy he could be, so Tanwyn didn’t much mind the glare or lack of appreciation for the snack or judgmental finger-jabbing into a perfectly fine food.
A roll of his shoulders, a cluck of his tongue. “I do like it. Just thought you might like it too.” But wasn’t gonna get him one of his own, in case he didn’t like it. Ivory was a pro at wasting food, something Tanwyn didn’t fully understand, since the younger boy constantly looked like he was wasting away and could use a good meal. It was a little disturbing how all of his bones seemed to jut out from under his skin, but dunno, maybe that was just some effect his senshi sphere had on him or something. Making him all skeletal-looking.
He rolled onto his side, reached to grab Ivory’s wrist to hold him steady and leaned in to take a bit off the top of the cone. A bold choice, since Ivory could absolutely lose it on him for touching something he thought was his. But Tanwyn tried to mitigate the damage before it happened. “I’ll get another if we finish this one. It’s a good summer treat, right?”
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Posted: Fri Jul 07, 2023 7:59 am
Well, Ivory was still a bit mistrustful. Tanwyn admitting that he liked it just made Ivory wonder all the more why the treat ended up in his hands at all. It was cool and sweet and soft and good and what were they even doing here. He felt like he was being played somehow, but how and why were a little unclear. They weren’t even out here doing anything: just sitting in the grass, looking up at the sky. A very pretty sky, doing… sparkler-type things in all the colors, but it was still just sky, and they were still just sitting under it.
Which was okay. Ivory had spent a lot of time outside on the streets, and he didn’t really mind it very much. It was even nice and temperate right now… Even if he used to be a little intimidated by the dark, he didn’t really have that problem, anymore. And the summer heat had significantly waned when the sun went down. …It was nice. Kind of quiet (besides the screaming bugs coming from everywhere, but they were pretty ignorable)-
And then Tanwyn took a bite out of their ice cream snack and Ivory’s face blazed a hot pink as his eyes narrowed and his face scrunched up, and he might’ve thrown the honeycomb right into Tanwyn’s lap. He hated sharing! If it was for him, it should just be for him- don’t take things that were for him!
Ivory snatched his arm away from the other man’s grasp, glaring as he all but prepared to snap out a comment about how Tanwyn shouldn’t give him something if he was just going to take a big bite of it with his stupid mouth! Then he was told they could get more, and of course they could get more- getting things wasn’t really difficult for people in the Negaverse. If Calaverite wanted, he could just pop into wherever and grab anything he wanted, any time he wanted. They could get more.
He huffed, but otherwise stayed quiet and took another tentative lick of ice cream treat.
“I do like it. It is good.” He relented after a moment. “I’ve never had this weird cone before. Not sure if I like it as much.” The weird J-shaped honeycomb cone. It was thicker than a normal ice cream cone, and textured funny. But it also held a bunch of ice cream, which was really nice. “Did we come out here just to get this?”
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Posted: Sun Jul 09, 2023 8:52 am
“I’m glad you do.” How well that had gone actually emboldened him, and Tanwyn petted a hand down the back of Ivory’s hair. Pretty unruly stuff, usually. Really obvious that Ivory didn’t know or didn’t care to keep it healthy, despite its length. …Maybe Tanwyn should do something about that too. He wasn’t Ivory’s father, no, but it wasn’t like he had anyone else to teach him. No one had taken the time before. “Uh, not just to get the ice cream, no. But I saw it, and it seemed like a good idea. You like ice cream, and you don’t eat very much, so I figured,” He shrugged. “Why not? I mostly thought we could come out here to get out of the house and away from the city noise for a bit. The grass feels good, and it’s not too hot, and there’s not too many people out and about.”
Everything had just lined up real well. “Where else would we go to see the sky like this, huh? Doesn’t really happen every day.” The meteor shower that was supposed to be a summer special, practically the namesake of the Star Festival. Things Tanwyn would have gone out for with his family, but Ivory would have to do for now.
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