driftfleet | Open mingle for the First Breath

At first, Cecil thinks little of Malak's offer to share the very large amounts of meals he regularly cooks. She considers it a kind, polite gesture born of a slight miscalculation and she's grateful for it, telling him as much since she herself still hasn't figured out how to make anything halfway decently good-tasting with their overabundance of protein sticks and gel. The next few times it happens, though, when ready-made dishes and desserts begin to show up everywhere, it occurs to her that Malak is used to cooking for many more people than just himself. Does he have a family? Children, relatives, or does he simply live with friends?

She never asks, but she can't help wondering and her curiosity only peaks when he becomes successful at making protein cubes and strange jelly taste almost like real meals. He's a far better cook than she is, obviously, so when she earns enough currency from her odd jobs here and there on the various moons, she decides to quietly contribute to the great cause of battling delicious food deficiency by purchasing fruit and vegetable ingredients on the vegetarian moon as well as meat on Abeo and Adsum, then secretly depositing them in their tiny kitchen for Malak to find and work his magic on.

Shortly after Jordan arrives, Cecil manages to get a day off from working on the moons and she's decided to try getting some quiet rest aboard the ship where it's emptier. During her meanderings, she decides to track down Malak and see if he'll allow her to watch him make something, whether it's food or metalworks. Her implant is still glitching, but it's hard for her to tell when the issue that they've seen happen before with it is currently happening, given that the crackling feedback from it doesn't always seem to necessarily signify a pheromones problem and she always feels rather normal herself whenever there is a problem.

He can be found in the engine room, crosslegged on the floor, a piece of paper spread out in front of him. This doesn't have a sketch or any kind of art, just what looks like engineering drawings (something he's found, surprisingly, that he knows how to do). He actually went out of his way to acquire loose paper and a notebook down on one of the moons, from the proceeds of one of the sales of the embossed copper.

He's deep in thought. Trying to solve a particular problem of heat conduction.

But he looks up when she steps in, and greets her with a smile.

Once she gets close enough to see them clearly, Cecil recognizes them for what they are. She's no engineer herself, but she grew up in Baron close to the queen's royal engineer and during her training to be the captain of the Red Wings, she spent even more time around Cid. She's seen such drawings before and can vaguely read them if she really sets her mind to it. Part of being an excellent captain was knowing how the airships worked.

"What are you up to?" she asks as she comes around and settles onto her knees on the floor beside him, returning his smile with one of her bright, easy ones. "It looks like you've been extra busy lately."

He brushes his fingers over some of the lines of the drawing. "It's strange," he says. "My mind is unlocking new things every day. I've never felt anything like it. I understand things when I look at them - the systems, the ship's engines." He looks up to her. "Is it like that for you?" The augment, he means.

"Mm, perhaps less intense, as mine so far does not seem to have too much of a creative facet to it," she explains after a brief moment of contemplation, "But, yes, it does seem like I learn and realize new things every day that I never would have were I at home.

"Then again, I might have cheated a little." She laughs a little at the thought, softly, and leans forward, looking down at the drawings again, trying to figure out what they're for. "I was captain of an airship fleet at home and while they were not so advanced as this, I did have access to one such ship at one point. I learned quite a lot aboard the Lunar Whale. These ships are different, not quite as sleek, but they're decent. I've never used firearms or such complicated explosives before here though. The technology hasn't been invented yet where I'm from."

"I've barely even seen a gun before," he says. "They're almost unknown on Spinward."

He turns the plans a little bit, so that she can see them better.

"I've been thinking," he says. "About metalworking. And how the heat of the engines is used on the ship. I think I can build something like a forge that will work right here."

He's bursting with pride just on the very idea, but he's sensitive, too, and a little worried that she might disapprove. He thinks highly of her opinion.

If he really thinks that she'll disapprove or dislike his idea, Malak clearly needs to spend more time around Cecil. It's easy to see how pleased he is with his work and she already knows to some degree the extent of his passion for his craft. She can't be anything but happy for him.

"Ahh..." She shifts so her legs are folded up underneath her and she looks his designs over with her lips curling into a smile. She's glad he's found some way to channel his restlessness and figured out a way to solve his problem of not having easy access to the tools of his trade onboard all in one go. "Clever. You have been busy. When are you starting construction?"

"When I figure out all the problems." All he has is a basic idea at the moment, but there are dozens of little things wrong with it, impossible things that would be blocks in construction. Once he solves those problems, he thinks he'll have a good shot of solving what comes up during construction. "What have you been up to?"

She nods again understandingly, then shrugs her shoulders in reply to his question. "Mostly working on the moons. It seems I'm naturally in violation of vanity prohibition somehow, so one moon I can't really spend a lot of time on unless I cover myself almost entirely. The others though have kept me plenty busy.

"Aside from that, simply trying not to dwell on how much my memory has been tampered with."

"Because you're just beautiful," is what he says.

And then immediately flushes warm, which is luckily not entirely visible on his skin.

"Your memory," he says. "You mean your missing time?"

Cecil reacts in kind to his compliment immediately too, pink blooming across her cheeks as the revelation that Malak finds her attractive suddenly hits her. She's not sure why it affects her so strongly, but it's a little difficult for her to recover right away. She makes a show of tucking hair behind an ear, though she's really just trying to hide her blushing face from him.

"Ah... not just that, but when I first arrived three months ago, I realized parts of my past were missing too," she explains, slowly gathering her composure again. "They took away some of my memories from the foreign universe I was before this one. Things will happen here and I'll react much more strongly than I should— I get the feeling something similar has happened to me, but I can't remember what exactly."

A startled blink. He might have flirted a little more, but it catches his attention: "Another foreign universe?"

She's actually grateful she managed to accidentally distract him. It's been a while since she's been flirted with and, honestly, she was never really much good at proper, genuine flirting. Her skills were sub-par at best.

"Yes," she answers with a nod, the rosy tint in her face fading little by little as the conversation steers away towards far darker matters. "It was a place called Court. I'd been abducted from my home and brainwashed to believe that I had made a vooh tart choice to be there. They also rewired my brain and nervous system so that when I did certain specific acts, I would receive pleasant physical and emotional stimulus. And I would be paid whenever this happened."

She notably does not say what those acts were and she doesn't seem the most comfortable talking about Court.

"Everyone was encouraged to at least pair off with another in a contract of master and servant titles and when we did, our rewards would be multiplied for doing these things with our master or servant."

Edited 2015-02-13 10:50 (UTC)

"Slavery," is what he says, is the conclusion that he reaches. "They enslaved you so they did what you wanted." That's shocking - unheard of in the Spinward islands, though privately, Malak thinks the somewhat radical thought that what's done to men is near enough like it. But all women on the islands are free. No one would ever be forced to do anything, and it turns his stomach to think about it.

"It was under the pretense of Court being a competition," she goes on. "The more we completed our objectives, the more points we earned to progress through the ranks. Again, points would be doubled for completing objectives with a master or servant. Whoever reached the highest rank first, supposedly, would earn what was referred to only as the Queen's Power. It was said to be a power so great it could make the user's will reality, regardless of what that was."

It's possible, obviously, thinks Malak - the gods can have powers like that, terrifying as it is. But he doesn't think there's a way for mortals to become gods.

"Was it true?" he asks.

"I don't know for certain." Cecil shrugs a shoulder uncomfortably. She's suddenly rather upset, agitated thinking about it all— and realizing that there are so many gaps and missing pieces to her memory of Court that it's more disturbing than she originally thought. "I do not believe it was though. No one had ever reached that rank before and no one was even close while I was still there."

Edited 2015-02-17 02:19 (UTC)

He reaches out and touches her, his fingertips to her arm. "I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to upset you." Women who are warriors may not like to admit it, usually, in his experience, but they do have emotions, and they can be upset. Sometimes it just takes a man, more emotional, quicker to anger and lust and more, to show them.

Cecil isn't like most women warriors though. Kain was that sort-- the type who buried everything and was good at it. For her part, she tried to be the same, but she always has felt her emotions far too keenly to ignore them entirely. She doesn't shrug off Malak's touch, but nor does she lean into it exactly. Her shoulders slump and she frowns more sharply, but she doesn't try to hide that she's upset.

"I know," she says softly. "It's fine, Malak. I don't blame you. It's not your fault. You couldn't have known and there's nothing wrong with asking questions." She takes a deep breath and slowly reaches up to wrap her small, white fingers around his hand where it rests on her arm. She squeezes reassuringly. "It's difficult... Sometimes I still have nightmares. I just can't always remember what they are."

He should have known, anyway. His thumb strokes over her fingers, and then he pulls away, not wanting to push the physical contact.

"I'm sorry, anyhow," he says. "We all have our scars."

She forces a smile. "I know," she says, "That's why mine aren't remarkable."

"They're all remarkable," he corrects her. "They all matter."

She laughs a little at his insistence, finding it endearing and recognizing that she is being a little hypocritical here. If their places were reversed, she would be saying the same things to him. "You're right-- I just don't know how to deal with mine, I suppose. There isn't anything I can really do about them and even if I did know, I'm not sure I should want to."

"There's never anything we can do about the past."

Something he has struggled with, himself. He still does, sometimes.

"Only what we do next." His eyes drop, then; he feels keenly his failure to move on from what's happened to him.

Seeing the expression that was just on her face reflected on his is awfully telling. She lifts a hand and comfortingly rests it on his back, rubbing lightly.

"Some things cannot be moved on from so much as they have to be lived through. Everyone heals differently."

Sometime after first moon wanderings

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