abraxaslogs | [ CATCH-ALL ] look at me, look at me

The amount of time Kell spends lost in thought with a deep frown on his face, not because he's particularly annoyed by anything, just concentrating on a problem, itself lends to his reputation as an incurable grump. A reputation he's completely fine with. It means people are less likely to interrupt him whenever he's on lectures or in the library. It even adds to his mysterious aura whenever he is in the teashop. The same mysterious aura that draws some of their most loyal customers.

He's doesn't even know how much his demeanour changes when he is interested in someone for a change. Rhy always said he has different faces for different people, and it couldn't have been more true that it's now. If only indicated by the ease with which he smiles, as compared to practically any other situation whenever he's in a room with a complete stranger.

"Sure we do," he replies with a smile.

Kell ducks in the back for brief moment, coming with a wicker basket lined and covered with a cloth, and a small plate. He picks up a pair of thongs from behind the counter and brings it all with him to set on the table.

"We get all our pastry from the bakery down the street, but not the cookies. Cookies are our own."

He explains while he sets a plate for her, uncovers the basket and places two cookies on it. Well, to be honest those are not his, but Mildred's. She would never have let him near an oven.

Once he's done he moves to the opposite side of the table and pulls out a chair for himself.

"So, about names. I'm Kell."

He brought his own cup with him too. It's not one of Mildred's fancy ones, all in delicate, white porcelain. No, his is sturdy ceramic, dark brown with one red stripe around its edge, tall and narrow. One of his first purchases from Nocwich. The spell weaved around it keeps the beverage inside just the right temperature. He could have used an Abraxan one. The spells for that purpose are common and childishly easy to learn. Even people with little talent know them. But this is his cup, so it is his magic.

( ooc: you can totally ignore it if it's too forever ago, too. )

The acceptance comes as quickly as was expected, and Sabine's smile stays, scrunching her nose a bit as she leans back and sips at more tea. It does have an interesting flavor the longer it settles, and she focuses on it. It's been such a very, very long time since she felt light, truly light, without the nagging weight, the always knowledge, that dream-joy was only that at its root: a dream, sometimes shared, but a dream nonetheless. Better than nothing but built on moonlight and spider-silk, and less than one breath could banish the house of the cards.

(And would, and did, eventually.)

But now it's not. Now she's here, and Jack is here, and K'Ron gone.
And there's this. It's new and surprising, in a good way, too.

"Thank you."

She took one of the cookies, but instead of tasting it, she pointed at him with it mischievously. "You aren't so good at barter tactics and rules, are you? I got my cookie, and I didn't even have to give up what I offered as payment for it first." She pulled the cookie back and went to take a bite but paused just before she actually would have put it in her mouth:

"I'm Sabine."

Kell bites his lower lip as he bows his head acknowledging his defeat, fingers fiddling with his cup, but a smile stays in place. Any other day he'd be bummed for getting bested. Here and now, in this company. He's already got what he wanted. Everything else is just pretext.

"I guess I've never been particularly good with rules."

It's an off-hand comment. The words are not really important. They are having a conversation as people. This what anyone coming in would notice. What they would not, is how at ease and focused Kell is on this small section of space that contains the table and her. Though, it does not really contain anything. The magic in him vibrating with joy for finally being able to put name to the sun.

Sabine

It knows nothing can contain her. Not the space, not the name. But it is useful label. It likes labels. They makes otherwise amorphous pools of feeling more concrete.

"Nice to meet you Sabine."

Kell's tea is a rose one, its scent rising from the cup, feeling so very right, he couldn't have possibly picked any other one for this moment. Seamlessly integrating into swirling magic around him that weaves its strands into images before dissolving them back to the free current again. The warm stone, red glow of a river and blooming of flowers.

He's young and sweet—that much is true—but there's something about him. The makeup of him, his magic, doesn't seem to be that. Too. The longer she can study him (listening to him cobble together an answer while finally trying that cookie that is no longer a pointer), the more she's certain of it. Unlike Jack, Kel is very meant—a universal manifest-made.

This place was such a mystery and a wonder,
and it drew so much to itself.

"It's nice to meet you, too." Sabine took a sip of her tea. "As we've covered names, and that I'm shiny cellophane, brand new basically, how long have you been here?"

Eager and excited are rarely the words to describe him, but Kell doesn't notice the change in his own behavior, and there's no one in here to point it out to him. He shrugs, counting months in his head, finding to his own surprise that more time has passed than he's been aware of and yet it feels like too little when he thinks about everything that happened. How all of it managed to squeeze into mere thirteen months. A year has passed and yet he feels as if he grew older by at least three.

"About a year. Doesn't sound long now that I say it, but a lot happens here. There's not a boring day. Even if sometimes I'd wish for one."

He's not the first to mention having been here a long time, nor the first to seem surprised they'd lost track of the time. Sabine isn't sure she can do the second—not after losing the last six years of her life to an extended nap—but would gladly take whatever this place wants to dish out toward her if it means she gets to be at Jack's side again.

"What kinds of things fall under 'a lot?'"

Especially for someone like him. She's still working out the shape of those edges, the flow of the magic, red and black. The river, the scent of the flowers that seems to linger beyond and before, and much more than just from the tea he's drinking. It's an interesting little facet.

"Assassinations attempts, kidnappings, weird visions sent by the Singularity."

Kell shakes his head.

"Sorry, I'm coming at this wrong." He pauses, thinking where to start. "There's a general assumption that we - and in we I mean all the Summoned - are going to fix this world. That's at least the reason for the ritual. Why and how? My guess is as good as any. We have a unique connection to Singularity, so that's no an unreasonable conclusion. For that, I think, and for the fact that we're a bit of a wild card. Nominally, residing on territory of whatever faction has dragged us here, but we're not part of them. Not subjects, citizens nor whatever they have in Solvunn."

Thorne's crown provides for them, so they naturally expect something in return, but neither Thornean royals nor Free Cities government can say Summoned are their subjects.

"So we get a lot of interest, both good and bad, from all directions."

He shoots her a worried look suddenly aware of the possibility she might be more interested in simple answer and a detailed analysis of political situation of the Summoned. He's been thinking about this a lot.

"Sorry, it's not a more concise answer. I hope I didn't bore you with all the details."

"It's an honest one; that's always better."
Sabine's answer is forthright but calm.

It's not often she can't tell if a baseline human is lying. They aren't as complicated as they think they are, especially to those whose perceptions are made in such a completely different way. Sabine turns over the words.

"It's best to know what I might be facing and what Jack did before I arrived." It's best to know what he needs watching over, how he's been handling it, and what might be needed of her. Especially with his not remembering what she can do, what she is, and whether she wants to keep that going until the proper memory or rewrite all of it here, again.

He'd taken it as well as she'd ever hoped, but he was in the middle of thinking she wasn't quite dead, and the world was ending in only a handful of days. Not at the best time for either of them and still, it'd changed absolutely nothing.

When the world changed, you wanted it to stay changed.

Yet he was earlier, in a place and memories she didn't know until coming here.

"Do you think they're right? That those pulled here might be able to fix this world?" The words are utterly serious. The mathematic tone of a 'girl' who spent the last centuries planning how to save a different world and every being upon its skin had succeeded before coming here.

"Yes."

For someone who almost broke his own world, Kell is very sure of his opinion. Mostly, because he's been of a completely opposite one at the start.

"Either fix it or break it permanently, but given what I've seen until now, I'd say fixing is more probable. At least the people I know really want to help."

He shudders. Now he's going fully into speculation territory, but it's actually something he had time to think a lot about. He knows too little about the Summoning ritual. It's not like Ambrose or any other mages are exactly forthcoming how is works. So he doesn't know how the Summoned are chosen, but most of the people he knows are definitely able to make a difference.

And then there is Wilhelm... ruining his pretty theory. Kell has a hunch Wille just hasn't got his great chance to shine yet. At some point he will, and they all will be surprised.

"Looking at who gets here, most are people capable of inciting change. Even if no one, not even they themselves, can predict what that change would be."

No one predicted Nocwich, and then the werewolves were instrumental in helping the rescued Summoned. Small changes cause bigger ones down the stream.

As much as Sabine doesn't want to think about it—alive and awake, here with Jack—Kell's words do make her have to consider deeper contexts. Have to consider a fact she's not sure she wants to turn over. If she knew the omniversal context of this world, would there be a way she'd suddenly agree with all of it? Understand the choices being made, the scope of the acceptable losses, and the sacrifices needed to pave the path.

Had she and her parents not made deals with similar devils, would they not, upon many counts, be counted as devils, too, both in being and in action? Especially if they were put to the decision of those who'd worked upon the Rift. Except. Except she was the outlier, wasn't she? The 'girl' who broke the rules, the pacts, the plans; who dared to take the one piece of the board that was the least and most sacrificable, but only in that order, and only the second on the last day of the world's last chance against an eternity of agonized subjugation.

It had cost her everything and set off a line of dominoes no one expected.

Sabine realizes she's been silent a little too long—a faint crease in her brow.

"Do you?" It's a piqued acquisitive. "Want to save this world? Its people?"

Kell shrugs. It's a straightforward question, with an unstraightforward answer.

"I guess," he replies, then adds. "I don't like what they did. I don't like that they continue doing it. But they are desperate, and I understand desperation."

He might disagree, or even outright hate how Thorne in particular approaches the issue. He emphatically disagrees with Free Cities government approach to Singularity. But he's here, and if he can help, he doesn't see reason why not to. Not the rulers of Thorne, or rulers of any other faction, but people? Like in Nott? People he can and want to help.

Sabine is pondering the words and the vastly unknown motives when he gets to those last three words, and she considers him over her tea cup. It could be considered impolite and impertinent, but they've started off on the oddest of feet already, far into the more intimate of details people usually cannot see at a first look and is usually only given after so much longer a knowing.

"Do you? Why?"

Kell looks away. Darkness crawls, staining the bright red of his magic. Staining it black, like ink spilled. An accident, but impossible to hide.

"Personal history. A long one. Not exactly flattering."

He's been there. Full of pain and anger. Willing to do anything, and everything, to stop the catastrophe from happening. A consequence of one, grievous mistake. Just because he got played. They both got played. Then there was blood and death at the end of it, and Kell was ready, desperate enough, to try anything to fix it.

He looks back, smiles, bows his head slightly in apology.

"Sorry, I didn't want to drag the conversation down."

[ CATCH-ALL ] look at me, look at me

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But what if I came back to this utter cuteness, now that I'm not heartbroken? <3

I shamelessly hoard all Sabine tags

yes, good, she needs that

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