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Wherein K'ile sucks at personal problems [story, ooc welcome] - Printable Version

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Wherein K'ile sucks at personal problems [story, ooc welcome] - Twinflame - 12-17-2013

((This coincides with some of the other RP I've been posting in this thread, starting with the departure from Gridania after picking up Tahj))

Night in the Shroud was cold, and K'luha's body upon him was warm, but K'ile Tia just couldn't hold her all night. As soon as he fell asleep, he gently placed her on the bench that ran along one side of the carriage, letting his hands linger on her a moment. She exuded an air of tormented warmth, of metal heated and bent so that it was on the verge of tearing apart. K'ile's skin was warm where she had lain against him, his chest and shoulders, the feeling of her lips on his face.

He watched her sleeping, thought it looked pained, and wondered what kind of person it would take for K'luha to let herself be weak. It certainly was not K'ile Tia, and though he thought he might be able to be Nunh for her, he wondered if it would help her at all. She wanted that, and he did not. Did anyone really need it?

K'ile stood and looked briefly at K'tahjha, who slept on the opposite bench. The girl was the spitting image of her grandmother, K'thajon, K'piru's sister. K'tahjha was K'thalen Nunh's grandchild. His brothers blood had been deluded in her by the patronage of K'yohko Nunh, but K'ile had thought he liked the girl anyway. She was smart and witty, clever, smiled easily, loved K'luha within moments of meeting her. There wasn't very much of K'yohko in the girl, and there were so many beautiful things.

If K'ile were to become Nunh, he would not have a child like that. He would not be so lucky. He would not be a good father.

The Tia walked to the tail end of the carriage and sat with his feet and tail hanging off. The Chocobo that followed the carriage, Rhiki, gave him a blink and clicked its beak at him, so K'ile shared a knowing look and smirk with it. Yeah, the bird had no idea, but that was fine. He reached out and poked its beak, and the thing squawked.

"Quiet, Rhiki," K'ile chided. "Everyone's asleep."

* * *

His dreams were getting disturbing in ways he would never admit to. Rhiki stood on the moon and let out a vengeful yell, and K'ile shouted up through the Shroud's dark boughs, "Rhiki, get down from there! Do you have any idea what Tahj will do if she catches you up there?"

"Oh, let him be," the phantasm said, shining bright white in the center of the road. The specter was a man, blond-haired, with ears and tail perfectly groomed. His eyes were blue, but a softer blue than that which ran in K'ile's family, and his thin lips smiled. "He's an old Chocobo. Let him have his fun."

K'ile pointed at the phantasm, "Stop following me, Fect. I've told you a hundred times: I don't want to be one of your women!" The Tia turned and began to walk down the path away from Gridania. The carriage that K'luha and K'tahjha rode on seemed to be getting further and further away from him.

The glowing phantasm floated alongside him, reclined, stretching to display its perfectly muscled body. "You're such a tease, K'ile. You're just teasing me. You'll give in. A tribe with nothing but Tias and Nunh? Women are irrational. Who wants them?" The glowing man unleashed an animalistic purring sound, "The Purr tribe is your true home."

K'ile was ignoring the phantasm. He was no good at lucid dreaming. Knowing that one was dreaming was supposed to put one in control of it, but K'ile's dream-self was too stupid to take control. Even when he thought of it, he didn't act on it.

The luminescent, floating Nunh gave him a small smile. "When you finally give in and join my tribe, our coupling will be exquisite."

"Ugh," K'ile reached up and lay a hand over his ear. Then after a moment, he cast a glare at the man, "How's a tribe without women supposed to work anyway? How do you have children?"

"Oh, it's great!" The man smiled hysterically, "For Tias that are into it, I ahve a special spell where we cut of your penis and then you grow a va-"

"NOPE!" K'ile broke into a run.

Laughing lightly, the phantasm stopped, floating in place a moment as he called, "Run all you want! It just makes you more beautiful in the eyes of Purr'fect Nunh!"

The Tia came to a stop and reached for his lance, which found his hand almost on its own. "Okay. What if I just do this?" He spun and threw the lance overhead, aim perfect, directly into the phantasm's chest.

K'ile's chest burst open, tatter bits of lungs handing from hsi rib cage. he couldn't scream. He fell to his knees and listened to the gore of muscle, heart, fluid, splattering to the dark earth beneath him. He could feel air rush inside the open cavity, hot air, burning him. His eyes were alight with fire, and when he looked up, he saw the phantasm writhing on the road, the light about him turned red. The man's perfect flesh was turning black and burning.

The forest around him had turned to stone, black and greay. Above him, the moon was on fire, and Rhiki had turned to bones and cinder upon it, yet he still stood and cried silently in fury.

"Small." The road echoed from behind him.

K'ile spun, looking, and saw the carriage that contained K'luha and K'tahjha had caught fire as well. In between them, though, was a dark specter. Something inky and bestial, translucent skin, and he could see the bones inside of its body, the pumping, brown organs. Its great claws tore at the ground, and its maw opened. It hissed at him, "How could you?"

"What did you see?" K'ile heard himself say, his tone grave.

The thing laughed, and then belowed, "K'ILE!" and pounced at him.

* * *

K'ile awakened with his face in the dirt and the unmistakable feeling of a chocobo's beak pulling on his tail. He stirred slowly, looking around, and found himself still in the shroud. In the middle of the road. His tail ached, and he realized that he was moving. K'tahjha's chocobo was dragging him down the road.

"Rhiki," K'ile groaned. "Please stop."

The Chocobo continued.

With a sigh, K'ile lay there and watch the dirt sliding away from his face. He must've dozed off and fallen off the carriage. He wasn't sure which was more humiliating: being dragged down the path by a chocobo, or having nightmares about some supernatural, perfect Nunh that wanted to turn him into a woman.

((More posts coming))


RE: Wherein K'ile sucks at personal problems [story, ooc welcome] - Twinflame - 12-17-2013

((This post makes references to this thread, though it takes place immediately after K'ile abandons K'luha and K'tahjha in Thanalan in the other one.))

Thanalan was a lot closer to home than Girdania, and it felt strange to be thinking that, because he'd gotten so used to thinking that Ul'dah existed in a whole other world. But now that he'd been further, Ul'dah and Thanalan didn't feel so far away. No matter how big or small the world got, though, it was always empty. Bleak.

Night here wasn't as dark as it had been in the shroud, but he supposed he'd fallen off the carriage again anyway. This time he'd done it on purpose, and he'd left K'luha and K'tahjha behind on purpose. The image of the carriage getting away from him a few nights past recalled itself to his mind, and he spat it out into the dirt.

The carriage was invisible to him now, lost in the night. K'luha's shouting had almost stopped him. Almost. He hadn't wanted to leave her like that, sad and in pain, but if she had proven anything it was that he wasn't capable of giving her what she needed. Even if he had become Nunh and let her have what she thought she wanted from him, it wouldn't solve a single problem in her broken person. He didn't know what he'd expected. Problems like that, deep personal fractures, could never be repaired. Only endured.

Somewhere in this desert, the infant body of K'luha's first child was buried. Nothing could change that. In Ul'dah, K'luha's other child absconded herself from the tribe. That could not be taken back, could it?

Damn it all to every hell and back. K'ile stretched his arms over his head and paced in the darkness. He just needed a few hours to figure himself out, and then he would apologize to her. Luha needed someone to be mad at anyway, someone tangible, and he could at least let her be mad at him.

"Can we talk about K'yohko?"

What? K'ile turned to the luminescent, glowing Nunh floating behind him. "Twelve damn this shit!"

The man's glowing lips smiled, "I know he's your nephew but he's-"

"No. Shit. No." K'ile pointed at the Nunh and turned away, fleeing again. "No."

When he stopped running, he was in Gridania, by the waterfall in the back. He'd followed a familiar scent here, muddled by pollen and damp earth. The mask man he'd found, crouching by the water, washing leaves, had been a thick collage of smells that did not make any sense. They were misshapen and impossible, as bizarre as if the man were flickering with strange colors and lights.

"You've got a strange smell to you, you know that?" K'ile had said to the man, staring at the hunch of his mud-colored shoulders and leaf-orange hair.

The man looked up at him. The mask moved, hands gestured, but no voice came. K'ile felt his body and throat move to reply, but didn't hear the words. They didn't matter. He'd made small-talk with the man, while he'd sorted through the scents that clung to the man.

Among them was an ancient smell, one he'd followed all the way to Cartenau and back. It had been so long since he'd felt it so strongly, but even here it was only an echo, and he couldn't remember clearly enough. Was it real, or was he wrong, or was it an illusion from the odd mix of scents? It was so strange and complicated, and he hadn't smelt it in so long.

He heard the mask man say, "You always talk so round about? Maybe that's why you're 'lost'."

Again, K'ile felt himself moving to answer, but didn't here himself.

Screw this. K'ile decided the smell might be what he thought it was, and thought was good enough for him. So what if he assumed he was right? It was the smell of blood, of family, which had once wrapped K'thalen and K'airos, K'airi and K'piru. What did it matter? The masked man hadn't done more than remind him of Thalen, and nobody knew better than K'ile how his brother had died and been burned away. What should he do about it?

Kile turned away from the mask man and walked off. He threw his hands over his head and shouted "Bah!" as he went.

Surprisingly he set foot in Ul'dah. The place was empty of a people, a strange and otherworldly absence. The Quicksand was full of chairs and half-eaten food, but there wasn't a single person there, not a single sound. A millions different scents mingled here, though, and he closed his eyes to sort through them. Lots of them were obviously unimportant: food and animals, potions and perfumes. There was layer upon layer of strangers who stank of dirt, sweat and rust. Beneath those, he found the scent of K'ailia, of K'luha, of K'haali.

Beneath all of them, was the ancient smell of family. It was strong, and once he noticed it, it overwhelmed everything else in his mind and became unmistakable. How had he missed it before? It was so much stronger than memory, than even the strange smell of the masked man that had reminded him of this smell. So dense and vibrant was Ul'dah that he had missed it, but now he was sure, that there was someone in Ul'dah. Someone, though he could only guess who.

K'aijeen. K'airi. K'piru. Someone. Alive. In Ul'dah.


* * *

K'ile forced himself awake, noting the brightening of the sky, the nearing of dawn. His first thought was that he needed to go to Ul'dah immediately. Nothing else mattered. Tahj would take care of K'luha, and she would get them back to the tribe just fine. Assuming K'luha didn't drop everything and go looking for him, which... He would tell the cariage driver that he had gone ahead to Drybone. K'luha wouldn't look for him immediately, and by the time she realized he'd given them the slip, they would have no leads to search for him.

It might be cold, but K'luha just needed to find someone else to be mad at for a little while. K'ile didn't question for a moment that he needed to return to Ul'dah immediately. It was a foregone conclusion, just like the need to conceal it. K'luha did not understand his feelings. She didn't understand how empty the world was, even the tribe was, to him. She would just want to fill that emptiness herself, which was impossible.

By the time dawn struck, K'ile was in full run, miles ahead of the carriage, and he wouldn't stop when he got to Drybone. He needed to get to Ul'dah. He might even rent a chocobo. Or steal one.