let's delay our misery
Yes, folks, it's time for that staple of staples: the hot springs meme! Your character is now joining someone else for a dip in the hot springs (or just passing by, if you're really dead sure they're not going to strap out of their spiky armor).
Is this the Bokaisen in Kugane? The natural springs in icy northern Twinpools? Some hidden, bubbly corner of Gyr Abania, maybe? Or familiar Camp Bronze Lake? You've got a lot of options! It can also just, you know, be nowhere in particular.
Why are they in the springs? Who knows! It's meme logic, my friends.
A note: this meme is intended as a gen meme, though if you'd like to play it as a variant of the matchmaking smut springs meme that's frequently posted on Bakerstreet, you're very welcome to do so!
no subject
Have we not all erred, while gripped by passion?
[He really shouldn't have killed himself... but that is a decision made in hindsight, when he realized how incredibly inconvenient he'd made things. Inconvenient for himself, mostly. But he has paid that inconvenience forward and now... here he sits, soaking in the water and resting but a while. He gives a roll of his shoulders and a soft grunt.]
Have I mocked you, now? Though you'd do well to cease accepting such tasks, I'll not begrudge you a moment of rest, if you are too tired.
[Why mock when you can genuinely criticize, besides? His gaze grows sharper, less half-lidded and lazy.]
You spend your energy on the pathetic and ungrateful, and to what end? Does it bring you joy, I wonder? Is it truly your wish, to walk that path? To try and set this tepid, half-formed world right?
no subject
[She looks so much more tired, then. Something kills the fire in her eyes, the exhaustion settling into her bones as she sighs, her ears flicking back as she flexes her battered hands.]
I have seen what happens, when a world is consumed. By darkness, and by light. The way it twists the peoples and land. What becomes of the worlds. I can feel it, Zenos. The way the land about us screams even now. Once, it would wake me from the deepest of sleeps. I cannot forget the sound of it. I have lived for over a hundred summers, and though I cannot hear the land as I once did, I remember.
[She meets his gaze, then. There are new scars upon her from her travels, both in body and in mind. There is something lost, something missing, that had been there when they'd last battled. Wherever it was that she had gone, it had left a deep wound on her that still wanted for healing.]
I remember every comrade that falls, I remember the screams. I do not think you would understand how much that might weigh upon a soul, in your endless thirst for a greater conflict, or your need for a mightier challenge. I will not make pleas for my case when I do it so that I might find rest from the waking nightmares that follow me.
Aye, I would spare this star the fate of those I have seen. The places I have walked. It is all I can do, though at times it is tiresome. So I suffer their displeasures and their pleas, and take solace in what rare gratitude I am given. If this is the price paid to protect this star from the fates I've seen, it is what must be done.
[Taking a deep breath, she shakes her head as she looks away, her ears flicking and her nose scrunching as her mind worked, silent for a long moment.]
If you think me a fool for this, I will say you would not be the first.
no subject
You are a fool.
[Spoken simply, plainly. Less a judgement than a statement of fact.]
Were you not a fool, you would not be hers, I presume.
[There is the smallest twitch of a smile upon his lips. Ah, he has learned of things that he was certainly not meant to learn. Such interesting things, they were.]
Blessed. Fated, perhaps. I would say 'gifted', but given how you speak of it all... mmn, no.
[A long sigh and he finally looks away, tilting his head back.]
What good is a star with nothing of value on it? What remains for you, when you've silenced the cries and foiled the plans of the wicked? No more than this?
[He closes his eyes. This does not leave him blind and vulnerable, of course. His third eye will let him know if she twitches threateningly. But he feels weary, already, imagining the answers she will give. Friends. Family, possibly. Great principles. Not a thought for wiling away the quiet moments with him.]