K'airos Thalen stood outside the door of her room for a while. She fumbled with her gauntlets, trying to get a good hold of her key. She couldn't, so she quickly took them off and held them under her left arm while her free hand takes the key and opens the door. She stepped in.
D'aijeen Thalen was crying in the corner, facing the wall. She held her hat in front of her face, and when the door opened, she flinched and went silent, burying her face in the hat.
K'airos did not speak at first. She sniffed the air briefly, and then sighed. She closed the door quietly behind her and faced her sister and her corner. "Aijeen? Are you alright?"
In silence, D'aijeen waited as if she thought she might not have been seen. When K'airos spoke, a few short sobs escaped before she collected herself, and then she said, "No! No, I am not. The light and warmth has been stolen from my world. I am cold and frozen. I am ice!"
Ears lowering, K'airos said, "Because of that woman? You shouldn't worry about her! I mean..." She took some steps closer. "You sent her away, right?"
D'aijeen flinched towards the wall, pulling herself up into a ball. "You have hurt me, Airos! I don't care about that other, except that you chose her over me. So simply. Like a beast she sweapt in and stole you, despite every promise you had made to me. I had not thought your promises so frail."
K'airos took the gauntlets that she had clumsily forgotten under her arm. She waved them around as if they could explain things. "Don't be like that! I was just confused by the shock! In fact..." She placed them down over one of the side tables. "I have a surprise for you!"
D'aijeen Thalen held her hat to her chest, wiping tears from her face. "Confusion. One does not say such very precise and hurtful things out of confusion. What is your surprise?"
K'airos Thalen placed down her blade against the wall. She wondered why scimitars didn't come with sheaths, but then she remembered the matter at hand. "I asked the captain and I got a few days off! I was hoping we'd go back to Ul'dah and spent some days together."
Chuckling, D'aijeen hid her face in her hat. She choked out another sob at the end. "That is your consolation for saying that you do not trust me? For saying that I would lie to you? A few days?"
"I'm sorry! I can't get more and pay for our living without using the savings for the house! And...and I trust you! I shouldn't have...I'm sorry!" K'airos looked down to the floor while she continued taking off her armor, making awkward clunkly sounds.
"Such simple apologies for such a cruel words. You demonstrated no sadness when I said I would leave. No hesitation! I had never felt less valued. My collapse was complete, and public, and humiliating. You mean to rebuild me with such simple mortar."
After she managed to get off her pauldrons and most of the belts, K'airos replied, "You said you'd go to visit D'ehl! I mean...D'ahl! You would have been off only for a few days...not indefinitely." Taking a deep breath, she added, "What do you want me to do?"
"I do not know, Airos. Yesterday I believed my happiness was of great importance to you, but today I feel like it is something you find cheap."
K'airos' voice broke a little bit. "That's not true! Your happiness is my only priority!" She took her chainmail off by pulling it up and above her head, bending forward considerably. When she was done with the motion, she dropped the haubergeon right on top of her gauntlets.
Though D'aijeen tried to stay still, her shoulders shook. "Then why do I feel that it is not? We are supposed to take care of eachother! I am to trust you and you are to reciprocate, both of us completely without hesitation. But you did not! And now I suspect you will betray me and return to that woman. You have made me doubt you! I feel ugly."
Sitting on a stool, K'airos started  to work on taking off her boots. "I'm saving money so we can have a house together. I'm not changing that plan. If I was going to run off with some weird, lunatic woman, I would stop saving it and spent it! Probably on that woman. But that's not what I want! I want us, both of us, to live together! In the same house. We'll pick the furniture together and pick the prettiest stools! And two large beds with the biggest pillows we can find...!" she rambled.
D'aijeen Thalen turned suddenly and threw her hat at K'airos, then turned back to her corner and curled up again.
The side of K'airos' body received the hat. "Ow!" she exclaimed, more out of surprise than any real pain. "Are you never going to forgive me? Is that...what you want to tell me?"
Ears shivering, D'aijeen shook her head, and her hair flipped about. "I will forgive you, because you are the only radiant and warm thing which I possess, and so captivating, so precious, that I will alway forgive you. I am eager and desperate to do so. But tonight I think that I am going to be angry at you, and this anger makes me very sad."
K'airos left her boots right next to the scimitar and stood up. "Well" she started, sniffing once and looking slightly above Aijeen. "Would a hug help?"
After a significant pause, D'aijeen whisper, "Only if it lasted for a very long time."
K'airos Thalen smiled and quickly fell behind her sister, dropping her arms around her and tightly hugging her. "I will not let you go until you tell me to." She said quietly.
D'aijeen Thalen sat quitely stoic for a time, letting herself be hugged while she stared at the wall. But in a sudden moment, she broke backwards against her sister and wailed, "Why can't we just be left alone? I already have everything I want!" And began to cry again, sobbing heavily.
K'airos Thalen combed her sister's hair with one hand. "Don't think about that! It will pass. Think about what a great time we'll have in the city! What would you like us to do in the first day?"
D'aijeen turned sideways and lay her head against K'airos, shoulder, gripping the girl's shirt-sleeve while she cried, "I don't care. We can do whatever you want. I don't care."
"We could go visit D'ahl. Wouldn't you like that? And there was that girl you liked a few weeks ago in the tavern...I think she had blue hair. She looked cute, and you were so interested it was even cuter!"
D'aijeen Thalen tried to still her sobbing, forcing herself to speak shakily, "No. I don't want to pay attention to anyone but you. I want to do things you want to do."
K'airos, placing one hand on the side of Aijeen's head, pulled her closer. "But I want to do things you want to do!" She said with a faint giggle. "This is going to be troublesome if we continue...oh! What if we go see the sea?"
D'aijeen smiled through her tears, and wiped her face on K'airos' sleeve. "Yes, let's do that. You and I can go to the sea. We can go right up to the water and then I will not push you into the surf. Although you'd be very cute all wet."
"And I will not pull you with me! And then will surely not fight in the water by splashing it all over each other....and then we can find some shells and try to see if it's true that you can hear the sea with them...! Though I guess we will if we try that right next to it."
Squeezing K'airos' sleeve happily, D'aijen laughed, "That sounds like fun. Your ideas are very silly, Airos." She sighed, lifted her head, and turned her face to look at K'airos. "I am less mad now."
"Good! Though I know something that will make you even less mad."
"Hm? What is it?"
K'airos Thalen pulled herself only a bit away and leaned just enough to look at her sister in the eyes. With a broad smile, she asked, "Have you heard of the ancient art of tickles?" And she did what anyone would have expected her to do: playfully testing her sister's tickling resistance.
D'aijeen prolly should have seen that coming, but for whatever reason didn't. She hadn't rolled very high for tickling resistance, so she curled her body away from K'airos and tried feebly to push her sister's hands away. Of course, the meek girl failed. She pleaded for her sister to stop while making embarassing laughter-like sounds.
K'airos Thalen did stop, sporting the most satisfied grin. "Did it work? Say 'yes'!"
Taking a moment to catch her breath, D'aijeen panted out, "Yes, Airos, it did." She reached out to poke her sister's soft side with a finger.
K'airos giggled, her natural reaction to the poking being to bend to a side. "Don't make me start again!" she threatened, one hand raising with the fingers curled. But she was quickly distracted. "You have a cactuar in your hair!"
D'aijeen Thalen blinks and bounced her ear, looking into the bangs on the right side of her hair, "Yes I do. I can make him dance." She bounced her ear some more, making the cactuar earring swing around.
K'airos laughed. "It looks good on you. I should get something for me...maybe a bomb! No, no...maybe it would set my hair aflame and then people would think I am a real bomb or something."
"I don't think you would have to worry about that for an earring, dear."
K'airos nodded. "Maybe you are right." Then, leaning forward, she added. "Do I keep hugging you here in the corner, or do you want to go to bed?"
D'aijeen smiled playfully at her sister. "You may carry me to be if you wish. I believe my exhaustion is catching up to me, and you know how tired I can get."
K'airos changed to a kneeling position. "Then let's go to sleep!" she said and reacheed to get her sister to literally carry her. However, before actually lifting her up, she frowned. "Do you want to sleep in those clothes?"
In a mischievous tone, D'aijeen teased, "Did you wish to take me out of my clothes?" But pushed on before K'airos answered, "A bath and a change of clothes would be exemplary. I'm sure I smell of corpses. But I really am too weary to care."
K'airos threw her head back at the first part of that, and then returned to normal. "That's true! And I must smell like sand and mole spines!" She stood up without carrying Aijeen, instead opting to scratch the back of her neck. "I should get us a tub and hot water."
"If you choose to. I will be here, waiting for you. I think we should do a displacement test for you while we're at it, so retrieve my clipboard from the dresser and place it near the tub, please."
K'airos Thalen taped her fingers together, smiling with her eyes closed. "I will!" she exclaimed. She spun around and went to the door, opening it and heading outside.
D'aijeen Thalen was crying in the corner, facing the wall. She held her hat in front of her face, and when the door opened, she flinched and went silent, burying her face in the hat.
K'airos did not speak at first. She sniffed the air briefly, and then sighed. She closed the door quietly behind her and faced her sister and her corner. "Aijeen? Are you alright?"
In silence, D'aijeen waited as if she thought she might not have been seen. When K'airos spoke, a few short sobs escaped before she collected herself, and then she said, "No! No, I am not. The light and warmth has been stolen from my world. I am cold and frozen. I am ice!"
Ears lowering, K'airos said, "Because of that woman? You shouldn't worry about her! I mean..." She took some steps closer. "You sent her away, right?"
D'aijeen flinched towards the wall, pulling herself up into a ball. "You have hurt me, Airos! I don't care about that other, except that you chose her over me. So simply. Like a beast she sweapt in and stole you, despite every promise you had made to me. I had not thought your promises so frail."
K'airos took the gauntlets that she had clumsily forgotten under her arm. She waved them around as if they could explain things. "Don't be like that! I was just confused by the shock! In fact..." She placed them down over one of the side tables. "I have a surprise for you!"
D'aijeen Thalen held her hat to her chest, wiping tears from her face. "Confusion. One does not say such very precise and hurtful things out of confusion. What is your surprise?"
K'airos Thalen placed down her blade against the wall. She wondered why scimitars didn't come with sheaths, but then she remembered the matter at hand. "I asked the captain and I got a few days off! I was hoping we'd go back to Ul'dah and spent some days together."
Chuckling, D'aijeen hid her face in her hat. She choked out another sob at the end. "That is your consolation for saying that you do not trust me? For saying that I would lie to you? A few days?"
"I'm sorry! I can't get more and pay for our living without using the savings for the house! And...and I trust you! I shouldn't have...I'm sorry!" K'airos looked down to the floor while she continued taking off her armor, making awkward clunkly sounds.
"Such simple apologies for such a cruel words. You demonstrated no sadness when I said I would leave. No hesitation! I had never felt less valued. My collapse was complete, and public, and humiliating. You mean to rebuild me with such simple mortar."
After she managed to get off her pauldrons and most of the belts, K'airos replied, "You said you'd go to visit D'ehl! I mean...D'ahl! You would have been off only for a few days...not indefinitely." Taking a deep breath, she added, "What do you want me to do?"
"I do not know, Airos. Yesterday I believed my happiness was of great importance to you, but today I feel like it is something you find cheap."
K'airos' voice broke a little bit. "That's not true! Your happiness is my only priority!" She took her chainmail off by pulling it up and above her head, bending forward considerably. When she was done with the motion, she dropped the haubergeon right on top of her gauntlets.
Though D'aijeen tried to stay still, her shoulders shook. "Then why do I feel that it is not? We are supposed to take care of eachother! I am to trust you and you are to reciprocate, both of us completely without hesitation. But you did not! And now I suspect you will betray me and return to that woman. You have made me doubt you! I feel ugly."
Sitting on a stool, K'airos started  to work on taking off her boots. "I'm saving money so we can have a house together. I'm not changing that plan. If I was going to run off with some weird, lunatic woman, I would stop saving it and spent it! Probably on that woman. But that's not what I want! I want us, both of us, to live together! In the same house. We'll pick the furniture together and pick the prettiest stools! And two large beds with the biggest pillows we can find...!" she rambled.
D'aijeen Thalen turned suddenly and threw her hat at K'airos, then turned back to her corner and curled up again.
The side of K'airos' body received the hat. "Ow!" she exclaimed, more out of surprise than any real pain. "Are you never going to forgive me? Is that...what you want to tell me?"
Ears shivering, D'aijeen shook her head, and her hair flipped about. "I will forgive you, because you are the only radiant and warm thing which I possess, and so captivating, so precious, that I will alway forgive you. I am eager and desperate to do so. But tonight I think that I am going to be angry at you, and this anger makes me very sad."
K'airos left her boots right next to the scimitar and stood up. "Well" she started, sniffing once and looking slightly above Aijeen. "Would a hug help?"
After a significant pause, D'aijeen whisper, "Only if it lasted for a very long time."
K'airos Thalen smiled and quickly fell behind her sister, dropping her arms around her and tightly hugging her. "I will not let you go until you tell me to." She said quietly.
D'aijeen Thalen sat quitely stoic for a time, letting herself be hugged while she stared at the wall. But in a sudden moment, she broke backwards against her sister and wailed, "Why can't we just be left alone? I already have everything I want!" And began to cry again, sobbing heavily.
K'airos Thalen combed her sister's hair with one hand. "Don't think about that! It will pass. Think about what a great time we'll have in the city! What would you like us to do in the first day?"
D'aijeen turned sideways and lay her head against K'airos, shoulder, gripping the girl's shirt-sleeve while she cried, "I don't care. We can do whatever you want. I don't care."
"We could go visit D'ahl. Wouldn't you like that? And there was that girl you liked a few weeks ago in the tavern...I think she had blue hair. She looked cute, and you were so interested it was even cuter!"
D'aijeen Thalen tried to still her sobbing, forcing herself to speak shakily, "No. I don't want to pay attention to anyone but you. I want to do things you want to do."
K'airos, placing one hand on the side of Aijeen's head, pulled her closer. "But I want to do things you want to do!" She said with a faint giggle. "This is going to be troublesome if we continue...oh! What if we go see the sea?"
D'aijeen smiled through her tears, and wiped her face on K'airos' sleeve. "Yes, let's do that. You and I can go to the sea. We can go right up to the water and then I will not push you into the surf. Although you'd be very cute all wet."
"And I will not pull you with me! And then will surely not fight in the water by splashing it all over each other....and then we can find some shells and try to see if it's true that you can hear the sea with them...! Though I guess we will if we try that right next to it."
Squeezing K'airos' sleeve happily, D'aijen laughed, "That sounds like fun. Your ideas are very silly, Airos." She sighed, lifted her head, and turned her face to look at K'airos. "I am less mad now."
"Good! Though I know something that will make you even less mad."
"Hm? What is it?"
K'airos Thalen pulled herself only a bit away and leaned just enough to look at her sister in the eyes. With a broad smile, she asked, "Have you heard of the ancient art of tickles?" And she did what anyone would have expected her to do: playfully testing her sister's tickling resistance.
D'aijeen prolly should have seen that coming, but for whatever reason didn't. She hadn't rolled very high for tickling resistance, so she curled her body away from K'airos and tried feebly to push her sister's hands away. Of course, the meek girl failed. She pleaded for her sister to stop while making embarassing laughter-like sounds.
K'airos Thalen did stop, sporting the most satisfied grin. "Did it work? Say 'yes'!"
Taking a moment to catch her breath, D'aijeen panted out, "Yes, Airos, it did." She reached out to poke her sister's soft side with a finger.
K'airos giggled, her natural reaction to the poking being to bend to a side. "Don't make me start again!" she threatened, one hand raising with the fingers curled. But she was quickly distracted. "You have a cactuar in your hair!"
D'aijeen Thalen blinks and bounced her ear, looking into the bangs on the right side of her hair, "Yes I do. I can make him dance." She bounced her ear some more, making the cactuar earring swing around.
K'airos laughed. "It looks good on you. I should get something for me...maybe a bomb! No, no...maybe it would set my hair aflame and then people would think I am a real bomb or something."
"I don't think you would have to worry about that for an earring, dear."
K'airos nodded. "Maybe you are right." Then, leaning forward, she added. "Do I keep hugging you here in the corner, or do you want to go to bed?"
D'aijeen smiled playfully at her sister. "You may carry me to be if you wish. I believe my exhaustion is catching up to me, and you know how tired I can get."
K'airos changed to a kneeling position. "Then let's go to sleep!" she said and reacheed to get her sister to literally carry her. However, before actually lifting her up, she frowned. "Do you want to sleep in those clothes?"
In a mischievous tone, D'aijeen teased, "Did you wish to take me out of my clothes?" But pushed on before K'airos answered, "A bath and a change of clothes would be exemplary. I'm sure I smell of corpses. But I really am too weary to care."
K'airos threw her head back at the first part of that, and then returned to normal. "That's true! And I must smell like sand and mole spines!" She stood up without carrying Aijeen, instead opting to scratch the back of her neck. "I should get us a tub and hot water."
"If you choose to. I will be here, waiting for you. I think we should do a displacement test for you while we're at it, so retrieve my clipboard from the dresser and place it near the tub, please."
K'airos Thalen taped her fingers together, smiling with her eyes closed. "I will!" she exclaimed. She spun around and went to the door, opening it and heading outside.
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