Caelus + Máire // Going somewhere?
Who: Caelus and Máire
When: Around January 10th.
Where: Máire's Home
Ratings & Warnings: None.
There were advantages and disadvantages to living two floors above a tavern. On the one hand, rent was cheap, which had been Máire's primary concern when she first arrived -- needing somewhere to stay that was inexpensive enough that it could be paid on an Equerry's salary after two horses were fed. On the other, rent had to be paid, which typically meant weaving through the crowd of patrons to the bartender, or, if he wasn't the trustworthy one, shuffling through Tyrol's best drunks to find the tavern's owner. It wasn't exactly the kind of ritual Máire wanted to be performing at a time when she'd been -- mostly -- doing her best not to be seen, not entirely certain whether or not the illusion of glamour was still preserving the false assumption that she was human, just like everyone else.
Fortunately the trustworthy barkeep was in, and after working her way up to a place at the bar, the girl in the green cloak slid him a small purse with one month's wages, trying to ignore the rest of the people lined up at the bar. They were mostly men. And "What have we here, little lady? Does the girly want a drink?" in all its variations had become old the very first time. Alcohol made her sleepy; being surrounded by people whose emotions and inhibitions were blurred by drink had an almost equally soporific effect.
"Hang on, now, don't be all in a rush --" the bartender was saying, pushing away from the bar to go rummage in one of its cabinets, perhaps noticing that she hadn't lowered her hood and wasn't taking the time to exchange the usual inquiries. " -- Missus got you somethin' for New Years, and I've got a bone leftover for that bloody dog of yours ..."
"I've got something for her too." Tyrol's best drunk (possibly, or so he liked to think) butted in. Caelus hadn't really noticed that it was Máire who'd come to the bar at first. With her hood up and her cloak swathing her figure, the young woman was as well disguised as could possibly be, only her slender figure and curved lines giving away her gender at all. A few sips deep into his cups, he'd listened to the good-natured, yet ridiculous invitations hurled out by his night's acquaintances, and been about to join in himself when the woman they were all ribbing had proved indifferent. He'd taken a mouthful of good Stout to back him up, licked his lips, turned his eyes on the girl in question -- and then come to a halt, because the flavour of her mind was entirely too familiar. He was a little too drunk to pick up her exact thoughts from such a small glimpse, but he was also too drunk to accurately defend himself against their insinuation.
While the bartender went to rummage in cupboards, Caelus set his tankard down and crossed his arms on the bartop beside Máire's chosen position. "What's with all the mystery, beautiful? You know it just ups the competition with the guys."
Oh, fabulous. Before she could think to do otherwise, Máire turned her head towards the one voice she knew enough to recognize, facing down perpetually bright sheen that was Caelus Stark -- in this case, the perpetually bright, decidedly drunk spot -- and looked at him properly with a pair of unmasked, tricolored eyes that she could do nothing about, it seemed, now. Maybe he'd be too drunk to notice, really, that the illusion of being human was becoming increasingly difficult to adopt.
Yes, that was a good hope to have.
She settled on it and immediately deflected her gaze back down; lidded eyes examining the woodgrain pattern of the bar. Máire hadn't yet forgotten his other nickname for her; the English word floated through her thoughts for just a moment -- the only piece of English in them -- before being pushed out. "Does it?" She asked, quietly. "Thank you. Now I know."
Barely, just barely, Caelus resisted an eyeroll, although the small pulse of disdain showed brief but clear internally. Women. They spent all their time trying to twist you into doing things that suited their choices, and when called on it, got snippy. When called on that, they got all these hurt emotions and put feelings all up in his face, and Cael usually lost the will to live at that point. They were plain silly, but far be it from him to call her on that and as like get a punch to the jaw as anything else.
The flash of tricolour in her eyes, he nearly missed, too busy rattling his brainbox on the downfalls of the female gender to really be observant. He cocked his head, able, it seemed, to hide his eyeroll from her, but not his confusion. She would likely object to him contacting her telepathically; women were stupid, stupid things with their feelings and their emotions -- but did she know?
He tapped a finger to his temple to warn her, and then went ahead with the question anyway. Did you forget something?
Máire frowned slightly, almost reflexively, at the disdain that crept into view, closing her eyes for a moment to avoid dwelling on it for too long. She'd tried to be polite, hadn't she? Perhaps it was best not to look at him at all. Yes. This was an excellent plan; perhaps 75% effective: there was still a sort of echo, distinct from her own worries, and these feelings belonged to Caelus Stark and every other person in the room. She opened her mouth to speak, and then realized he hadn't.
Forget what?
It was possibly a good thing that Caelus was not an empath. He'd never been particularly good with emotions, and no doubt he'd have drunk himself into the grave long before now if forced to face them full on. He did not continue the mental discussion, but reverted instead to verbal chitchat. It looked a bit weird if a pair of people in a bar stared at each other in silence for too long.
"Beautiful eyes you've got there," he told her, instead. "If I were your papa, I wouldn't let you out for fear someone would steal them." Cheesy, yes, but it said what it needed to say ----- and he was drunk.
... Oh, she thought, glumly, and blinked twice, trying again. Máire tilted her head, trying to peer into her own reflection in the depths of his glass. When it was apparent the trick hadn't work her thoughts suggested a kind of glum acceptance: the sort that came with finding an ongoing problem unchanged. The equerry briefly bit on her lower lip, a nervous gesture, and then pursed them, adjusting the hood of the cloak to keep it up.
"My father's not around," she remembered to say, somehow lightly, casting a glance over at the bartender. He'd been sidetracked from his rummaging by a yelling patron further around the bar. "... and since he kicked me out, he must not've .." Cared? Cared was the end of that sentence and it fit with the story, but Máire couldn't make herself say it. Foreseen this particular problem, she thought, mostly to herself. Of course he could hear that, too.
Both answers flit before his mind's eye, but Caelus was too busy frowning. The expression slipped from his face as soon as he realised it was there, and he picked up his tankard to drain the remains. "Guess I'll just have to look after you then," he declared. "Would you allow me to escort you home, sweetheart? Promise I'll be good to you." Typical Caelus fare, really, but as he slapped the tankard down, he backed it up with a little mental nudge. Let's go somewhere we can talk.
One eyebrow rose as Máire turned her head again to look at Caelus, surprised he wanted to talk to her at all, and not entirely sure why he wanted to. That, however, was a conversation she didn't want to have in a crowded bar, and so she peeked over at the bartender to make sure he was still occupied. "If you insist," murmured the girl in response, upon seeing that it'd be relatively easy to depart without his protests. Upstairs, she thought, and pushed off from the bar to head back out towards a little door that must've normally hidden the steps. It was locked, but she seemed to have the key, along with two others.
They walked up two floors to the third floor landing, and Máire used the second key to unlock one of the doors that opened off of that floor. Ara was there to greet her and her guest, jumping up to scratch at Máire's knees and receiving an idle pat on the way inside. The puppy quickly passed her owner and opted to sniff curiously at Caelus' boots. They'd entered into a small sitting room with two chairs and a table; along the far wall was a small fireplace, fire nearly gone, that seemed to be shared with the next room over. That door yawned open, but Máire didn't proceed, there, gesturing instead to the chairs. The space had the feeling of something recently re-packed; indeed, a closed trunk and several bags sat in the corner.
She sat, pulling the glove off of her right hand, then pushing up her sleeve. Máire extended that hand, palm up, towards the guard, who wouldn't need too close an inspection to know that shining silver knots wound their way in a delicate, incredibly intricate pattern all the way from Máire's fingertips to her elbow. "Talk," she said.
"I was going to say the same to you," Cael replied. He was tickled by the irony, and sprawled comfortably in the first chair he came across. He took a lazy glance about, noting the packed bags, the trunk, the readiness with which Máire had her belongings ready to depart. He didn't comment on it immediately, taking the time to fuss over the puppy who'd presented herself. She'd never be as big as her brothers, but under Máire's eye she'd come on very well. He had a treat, somewhere...
A rummage in his pocket revealed it, and he kept Máire waiting a few minutes longer while he foxed and played with the dog. She 'won' eventually, and the youth was satisfied, sitting back in the chair once again.
"Going somewhere?"
Máire watched him play with Ara in a contemplative, observant silence, and then dropped her arm, waiting until the spaniel'd finished her snack to snap her fingers next to her chair. Ara's opinion of him was as high as the colt's had been. Still, the dog trot over and Máire reached over the edge of the chair to scratch at her ears and below her chin. "I've been packed for a while," she admitted, quietly, glancing aside to a window. "But every time I get it in my mind to leave I feel ... compelled to stay."
If the world had only been made up of dogs and horses, Cael's popularity would have been secured. Nobody whinging at him to pick the right people to associate with, or to pay attention to his responsibilities... it seemed like a dream come true. At least until his mind turned towards the natural problem of no women. Plenty of bitches, though. Unconsciously, his eyes strayed to Máire. She was still miffy with him over that, was she? Well, she'd deserved it.
"Why? Why leave, I mean..." Well, why to both sides, actually. "Why to both." Alcohol was great, it took away any control Caelus had over his mouth and rendered his questions incoherent.
"It doesn't seem safe to say," she said, somewhat glumly: truth be told, the job at the stables was better than plenty of others she could've had; she liked most of the stablehands and even their gruff stablemaster. The rooms she rented were nothing compared what had been hidden in the hills, but Máire didn't have the kinds of material needs that insisted she live in a palace surrounded by finery. She'd taken only a few tokens of those things with her, and most of them were secret, still. "...it's changing me, to stay here, I don't ...." I don't recognize myself. Máire shook that one away, and then looked back at Caelus, trying to decide how she could explain why she'd stayed.
"I'm not sure I can explain it," she said, which wasn't precisely true: she wasn't sure she should.
Caelus' mind sharpened. It wasn't easy through the fog of alcohol pervading his thoughts, but nonetheless, his interest was well and truly caught. "Try," he urged. "Changing you how? You look different, but it's like... well.. I've kind of seen it before. You're not able to hide it, perhaps?" He pulled out another treat to keep the dog distracted, tossing it towards the other side of the room to give them a few moments of peace.
"This is how I'm supposed to look," she replied, inhaling and then exhaling deeply. "I haven't been able to obscure it recently; that's true, but that's not why I thought to leave ..." Although it was certainly what was keeping them packed. Máire fixed her strange, inhuman eyes on Caelus, and studied him. "When I really look at you," she explained, "there's a sheen over you, as though someone threw a sheet over your head; it's transparent, but it has a kind of glow, and this tells me what you're feeling." Probably not so comfortable with such scrutiny. "If I focus on it I can see parts of it that spread out from you, like a web, to people you care about. Your mother, perhaps, your brother, your friends; I can see these things coming into you, too; someone else's cares. And I feel them; separately from whatever I'm feeling." She lifted her hands, lacing her fingers together so that they made a web. "If you die," the brunette said, with a frown, starting to untuck some of the fingers so that there were holes in the patterns, "those things all still reach for you, but there's nothing there."
Pausing, she dropped her hands, and looked towards the fire. It was chilly with the flames so low; Máire stood and went to add a log. " ... people have been drying in droves ever since I got here," she said, quietly. "Sometimes it feels like that's all there is. Mania and fury and grief."
"I realised that." Here, he spoke slowly. If she thought him too dumb to have recognised the image of her as she saw herself in her mind, he'd talk to her like she was dumb, see how she liked it. A second after making that resolution, though, Cael bit his tongue and stayed quiet. Far be it from him to interrupt a woman when she was unloading. Máire had alluded to what she saw with emotions before, and fortunately so, because it was the only reason Cael understood what she was on about when she was explaining. It seemed, though, that they'd had some conversation similar to this before. Caelus remembered it ending in a disagreement, but he couldn't recall why. Dangerous ground to be treading, this.
“Humans live short lives," he said, when she paused. "So we live it quick and fast to make sure we get everything done and we leave stuff behind us for the next lot. That means there's lots of fighting and lots of killing, because competition is what drives nature. The biggest and fastest and strongest survive the longest, and gather the most ..." He paused to search for the word, and failed. "Stuff." There was nothing he could do to help her emotional overload, and he regretted it. He was wired to offer solutions, not sympathy. "I'm sorry you suffer from that."
"Why do you do that?" She said, reflexively, feeling the flare up -- again -- of his annoyance. Máire's tone was even; she didn't seem particularly angry, and even as she asked the question, she walked over and sank back into her chair, leaving Caelus' introduction to humanity 101 to be revisited at another time -- either soon after, or perhaps another time, when the Professor was sober. If anything, perhaps, she was curious, puzzled even.
"... If what I have to say irritates you, why are you talking to me?"
Caelus stared at her, nonplussed. "Everyone irritates me," he said, without thinking. "Why should you be any different?"
Well, that was a revelation. She sat back in her chair, relaxing ever-so-slightly. "... Why is that?"
This brought a grin forward; alcohol only served to heighten everything Caelus was feeling, it seemed. The relaxation of the girl opposite him registered dimly in his psyche, and he leaned forward in his chair to further explain. "I'm an irritable sort of person," he said, jovially. "There's a reason I beat people up for a living."
"Oh?" Máire asked idly, raising one slender brow. "Is that what you do?"
Drunken or not, Caelus knew when silence was an option worth taking, and he grinned at her widely for a time. "Don't overthink things," he said, then, waving a hand in negligent dismissal. "That's the kind of shit that makes humans kill each other."
"Good thing I'm not a human, then," quipped Máire, the corner of one side of her mouth giving a wry uptick in response to his grin. "And you're not feeling exactly murderous," she added, with another glance in his direction, though she didn't take the time to precisely analyze how he was feeling: the alcohol had an effect of its own that she was in no hurry to explore. "Someone has to do the thinking."
"Thinking's overrated," he pooh-poohed, scoffing. He truly believed it; thinking had never got Caelus anywhere but in trouble with himself, a state far worse (in his opinion) than being in trouble with anyone else. "But you've asked before why it happens, why we're like this, and there's your answer. We think too much, we twist what people say until it has the worst possible definition, and well, then we get the swords out." Atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down. Yes, human anger was a plague.
"I don't think that's the only reason," Máire said, with another faint trace of amusement as she regarded Caelus. She tried very hard not to examine that bemusement; he'd know what she was thinking about and that seemed to make him crankier. "Sometimes violence happens on impulse..." Even she had been guilty of that. Perhaps it was a too-human thing. This gave the brunette some pause, and she glanced back over at Ara, who seemed to have settled by the fireplace, where it was warmer.
"This isn't what you wanted to talk to me about, at any rate."
“No,” he shrugged. “It isn’t.” He paused. “You got something to drink? I get the feeling this is going to take a while.”
When: Around January 10th.
Where: Máire's Home
Ratings & Warnings: None.
There were advantages and disadvantages to living two floors above a tavern. On the one hand, rent was cheap, which had been Máire's primary concern when she first arrived -- needing somewhere to stay that was inexpensive enough that it could be paid on an Equerry's salary after two horses were fed. On the other, rent had to be paid, which typically meant weaving through the crowd of patrons to the bartender, or, if he wasn't the trustworthy one, shuffling through Tyrol's best drunks to find the tavern's owner. It wasn't exactly the kind of ritual Máire wanted to be performing at a time when she'd been -- mostly -- doing her best not to be seen, not entirely certain whether or not the illusion of glamour was still preserving the false assumption that she was human, just like everyone else.
Fortunately the trustworthy barkeep was in, and after working her way up to a place at the bar, the girl in the green cloak slid him a small purse with one month's wages, trying to ignore the rest of the people lined up at the bar. They were mostly men. And "What have we here, little lady? Does the girly want a drink?" in all its variations had become old the very first time. Alcohol made her sleepy; being surrounded by people whose emotions and inhibitions were blurred by drink had an almost equally soporific effect.
"Hang on, now, don't be all in a rush --" the bartender was saying, pushing away from the bar to go rummage in one of its cabinets, perhaps noticing that she hadn't lowered her hood and wasn't taking the time to exchange the usual inquiries. " -- Missus got you somethin' for New Years, and I've got a bone leftover for that bloody dog of yours ..."
"I've got something for her too." Tyrol's best drunk (possibly, or so he liked to think) butted in. Caelus hadn't really noticed that it was Máire who'd come to the bar at first. With her hood up and her cloak swathing her figure, the young woman was as well disguised as could possibly be, only her slender figure and curved lines giving away her gender at all. A few sips deep into his cups, he'd listened to the good-natured, yet ridiculous invitations hurled out by his night's acquaintances, and been about to join in himself when the woman they were all ribbing had proved indifferent. He'd taken a mouthful of good Stout to back him up, licked his lips, turned his eyes on the girl in question -- and then come to a halt, because the flavour of her mind was entirely too familiar. He was a little too drunk to pick up her exact thoughts from such a small glimpse, but he was also too drunk to accurately defend himself against their insinuation.
While the bartender went to rummage in cupboards, Caelus set his tankard down and crossed his arms on the bartop beside Máire's chosen position. "What's with all the mystery, beautiful? You know it just ups the competition with the guys."
Oh, fabulous. Before she could think to do otherwise, Máire turned her head towards the one voice she knew enough to recognize, facing down perpetually bright sheen that was Caelus Stark -- in this case, the perpetually bright, decidedly drunk spot -- and looked at him properly with a pair of unmasked, tricolored eyes that she could do nothing about, it seemed, now. Maybe he'd be too drunk to notice, really, that the illusion of being human was becoming increasingly difficult to adopt.
Yes, that was a good hope to have.
She settled on it and immediately deflected her gaze back down; lidded eyes examining the woodgrain pattern of the bar. Máire hadn't yet forgotten his other nickname for her; the English word floated through her thoughts for just a moment -- the only piece of English in them -- before being pushed out. "Does it?" She asked, quietly. "Thank you. Now I know."
Barely, just barely, Caelus resisted an eyeroll, although the small pulse of disdain showed brief but clear internally. Women. They spent all their time trying to twist you into doing things that suited their choices, and when called on it, got snippy. When called on that, they got all these hurt emotions and put feelings all up in his face, and Cael usually lost the will to live at that point. They were plain silly, but far be it from him to call her on that and as like get a punch to the jaw as anything else.
The flash of tricolour in her eyes, he nearly missed, too busy rattling his brainbox on the downfalls of the female gender to really be observant. He cocked his head, able, it seemed, to hide his eyeroll from her, but not his confusion. She would likely object to him contacting her telepathically; women were stupid, stupid things with their feelings and their emotions -- but did she know?
He tapped a finger to his temple to warn her, and then went ahead with the question anyway. Did you forget something?
Máire frowned slightly, almost reflexively, at the disdain that crept into view, closing her eyes for a moment to avoid dwelling on it for too long. She'd tried to be polite, hadn't she? Perhaps it was best not to look at him at all. Yes. This was an excellent plan; perhaps 75% effective: there was still a sort of echo, distinct from her own worries, and these feelings belonged to Caelus Stark and every other person in the room. She opened her mouth to speak, and then realized he hadn't.
Forget what?
It was possibly a good thing that Caelus was not an empath. He'd never been particularly good with emotions, and no doubt he'd have drunk himself into the grave long before now if forced to face them full on. He did not continue the mental discussion, but reverted instead to verbal chitchat. It looked a bit weird if a pair of people in a bar stared at each other in silence for too long.
"Beautiful eyes you've got there," he told her, instead. "If I were your papa, I wouldn't let you out for fear someone would steal them." Cheesy, yes, but it said what it needed to say ----- and he was drunk.
... Oh, she thought, glumly, and blinked twice, trying again. Máire tilted her head, trying to peer into her own reflection in the depths of his glass. When it was apparent the trick hadn't work her thoughts suggested a kind of glum acceptance: the sort that came with finding an ongoing problem unchanged. The equerry briefly bit on her lower lip, a nervous gesture, and then pursed them, adjusting the hood of the cloak to keep it up.
"My father's not around," she remembered to say, somehow lightly, casting a glance over at the bartender. He'd been sidetracked from his rummaging by a yelling patron further around the bar. "... and since he kicked me out, he must not've .." Cared? Cared was the end of that sentence and it fit with the story, but Máire couldn't make herself say it. Foreseen this particular problem, she thought, mostly to herself. Of course he could hear that, too.
Both answers flit before his mind's eye, but Caelus was too busy frowning. The expression slipped from his face as soon as he realised it was there, and he picked up his tankard to drain the remains. "Guess I'll just have to look after you then," he declared. "Would you allow me to escort you home, sweetheart? Promise I'll be good to you." Typical Caelus fare, really, but as he slapped the tankard down, he backed it up with a little mental nudge. Let's go somewhere we can talk.
One eyebrow rose as Máire turned her head again to look at Caelus, surprised he wanted to talk to her at all, and not entirely sure why he wanted to. That, however, was a conversation she didn't want to have in a crowded bar, and so she peeked over at the bartender to make sure he was still occupied. "If you insist," murmured the girl in response, upon seeing that it'd be relatively easy to depart without his protests. Upstairs, she thought, and pushed off from the bar to head back out towards a little door that must've normally hidden the steps. It was locked, but she seemed to have the key, along with two others.
They walked up two floors to the third floor landing, and Máire used the second key to unlock one of the doors that opened off of that floor. Ara was there to greet her and her guest, jumping up to scratch at Máire's knees and receiving an idle pat on the way inside. The puppy quickly passed her owner and opted to sniff curiously at Caelus' boots. They'd entered into a small sitting room with two chairs and a table; along the far wall was a small fireplace, fire nearly gone, that seemed to be shared with the next room over. That door yawned open, but Máire didn't proceed, there, gesturing instead to the chairs. The space had the feeling of something recently re-packed; indeed, a closed trunk and several bags sat in the corner.
She sat, pulling the glove off of her right hand, then pushing up her sleeve. Máire extended that hand, palm up, towards the guard, who wouldn't need too close an inspection to know that shining silver knots wound their way in a delicate, incredibly intricate pattern all the way from Máire's fingertips to her elbow. "Talk," she said.
"I was going to say the same to you," Cael replied. He was tickled by the irony, and sprawled comfortably in the first chair he came across. He took a lazy glance about, noting the packed bags, the trunk, the readiness with which Máire had her belongings ready to depart. He didn't comment on it immediately, taking the time to fuss over the puppy who'd presented herself. She'd never be as big as her brothers, but under Máire's eye she'd come on very well. He had a treat, somewhere...
A rummage in his pocket revealed it, and he kept Máire waiting a few minutes longer while he foxed and played with the dog. She 'won' eventually, and the youth was satisfied, sitting back in the chair once again.
"Going somewhere?"
Máire watched him play with Ara in a contemplative, observant silence, and then dropped her arm, waiting until the spaniel'd finished her snack to snap her fingers next to her chair. Ara's opinion of him was as high as the colt's had been. Still, the dog trot over and Máire reached over the edge of the chair to scratch at her ears and below her chin. "I've been packed for a while," she admitted, quietly, glancing aside to a window. "But every time I get it in my mind to leave I feel ... compelled to stay."
If the world had only been made up of dogs and horses, Cael's popularity would have been secured. Nobody whinging at him to pick the right people to associate with, or to pay attention to his responsibilities... it seemed like a dream come true. At least until his mind turned towards the natural problem of no women. Plenty of bitches, though. Unconsciously, his eyes strayed to Máire. She was still miffy with him over that, was she? Well, she'd deserved it.
"Why? Why leave, I mean..." Well, why to both sides, actually. "Why to both." Alcohol was great, it took away any control Caelus had over his mouth and rendered his questions incoherent.
"It doesn't seem safe to say," she said, somewhat glumly: truth be told, the job at the stables was better than plenty of others she could've had; she liked most of the stablehands and even their gruff stablemaster. The rooms she rented were nothing compared what had been hidden in the hills, but Máire didn't have the kinds of material needs that insisted she live in a palace surrounded by finery. She'd taken only a few tokens of those things with her, and most of them were secret, still. "...it's changing me, to stay here, I don't ...." I don't recognize myself. Máire shook that one away, and then looked back at Caelus, trying to decide how she could explain why she'd stayed.
"I'm not sure I can explain it," she said, which wasn't precisely true: she wasn't sure she should.
Caelus' mind sharpened. It wasn't easy through the fog of alcohol pervading his thoughts, but nonetheless, his interest was well and truly caught. "Try," he urged. "Changing you how? You look different, but it's like... well.. I've kind of seen it before. You're not able to hide it, perhaps?" He pulled out another treat to keep the dog distracted, tossing it towards the other side of the room to give them a few moments of peace.
"This is how I'm supposed to look," she replied, inhaling and then exhaling deeply. "I haven't been able to obscure it recently; that's true, but that's not why I thought to leave ..." Although it was certainly what was keeping them packed. Máire fixed her strange, inhuman eyes on Caelus, and studied him. "When I really look at you," she explained, "there's a sheen over you, as though someone threw a sheet over your head; it's transparent, but it has a kind of glow, and this tells me what you're feeling." Probably not so comfortable with such scrutiny. "If I focus on it I can see parts of it that spread out from you, like a web, to people you care about. Your mother, perhaps, your brother, your friends; I can see these things coming into you, too; someone else's cares. And I feel them; separately from whatever I'm feeling." She lifted her hands, lacing her fingers together so that they made a web. "If you die," the brunette said, with a frown, starting to untuck some of the fingers so that there were holes in the patterns, "those things all still reach for you, but there's nothing there."
Pausing, she dropped her hands, and looked towards the fire. It was chilly with the flames so low; Máire stood and went to add a log. " ... people have been drying in droves ever since I got here," she said, quietly. "Sometimes it feels like that's all there is. Mania and fury and grief."
"I realised that." Here, he spoke slowly. If she thought him too dumb to have recognised the image of her as she saw herself in her mind, he'd talk to her like she was dumb, see how she liked it. A second after making that resolution, though, Cael bit his tongue and stayed quiet. Far be it from him to interrupt a woman when she was unloading. Máire had alluded to what she saw with emotions before, and fortunately so, because it was the only reason Cael understood what she was on about when she was explaining. It seemed, though, that they'd had some conversation similar to this before. Caelus remembered it ending in a disagreement, but he couldn't recall why. Dangerous ground to be treading, this.
“Humans live short lives," he said, when she paused. "So we live it quick and fast to make sure we get everything done and we leave stuff behind us for the next lot. That means there's lots of fighting and lots of killing, because competition is what drives nature. The biggest and fastest and strongest survive the longest, and gather the most ..." He paused to search for the word, and failed. "Stuff." There was nothing he could do to help her emotional overload, and he regretted it. He was wired to offer solutions, not sympathy. "I'm sorry you suffer from that."
"Why do you do that?" She said, reflexively, feeling the flare up -- again -- of his annoyance. Máire's tone was even; she didn't seem particularly angry, and even as she asked the question, she walked over and sank back into her chair, leaving Caelus' introduction to humanity 101 to be revisited at another time -- either soon after, or perhaps another time, when the Professor was sober. If anything, perhaps, she was curious, puzzled even.
"... If what I have to say irritates you, why are you talking to me?"
Caelus stared at her, nonplussed. "Everyone irritates me," he said, without thinking. "Why should you be any different?"
Well, that was a revelation. She sat back in her chair, relaxing ever-so-slightly. "... Why is that?"
This brought a grin forward; alcohol only served to heighten everything Caelus was feeling, it seemed. The relaxation of the girl opposite him registered dimly in his psyche, and he leaned forward in his chair to further explain. "I'm an irritable sort of person," he said, jovially. "There's a reason I beat people up for a living."
"Oh?" Máire asked idly, raising one slender brow. "Is that what you do?"
Drunken or not, Caelus knew when silence was an option worth taking, and he grinned at her widely for a time. "Don't overthink things," he said, then, waving a hand in negligent dismissal. "That's the kind of shit that makes humans kill each other."
"Good thing I'm not a human, then," quipped Máire, the corner of one side of her mouth giving a wry uptick in response to his grin. "And you're not feeling exactly murderous," she added, with another glance in his direction, though she didn't take the time to precisely analyze how he was feeling: the alcohol had an effect of its own that she was in no hurry to explore. "Someone has to do the thinking."
"Thinking's overrated," he pooh-poohed, scoffing. He truly believed it; thinking had never got Caelus anywhere but in trouble with himself, a state far worse (in his opinion) than being in trouble with anyone else. "But you've asked before why it happens, why we're like this, and there's your answer. We think too much, we twist what people say until it has the worst possible definition, and well, then we get the swords out." Atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down. Yes, human anger was a plague.
"I don't think that's the only reason," Máire said, with another faint trace of amusement as she regarded Caelus. She tried very hard not to examine that bemusement; he'd know what she was thinking about and that seemed to make him crankier. "Sometimes violence happens on impulse..." Even she had been guilty of that. Perhaps it was a too-human thing. This gave the brunette some pause, and she glanced back over at Ara, who seemed to have settled by the fireplace, where it was warmer.
"This isn't what you wanted to talk to me about, at any rate."
“No,” he shrugged. “It isn’t.” He paused. “You got something to drink? I get the feeling this is going to take a while.”