day 365 ● this space to rent

[scattershot]

[So sometimes all you can think of to do about a situation is steal a horse and ride it anywhere.

[There's something not quite right about it, admittedly - the foursquare shape of it, the solid barrel of the body, the close, velvety hide. But Alisaie finds she knows how to saddle it; knows, after a brief period of hang-about-wait-what adjustment how to make it start and move and go; it's something the body doesn't know how to forget, for all her mind is a stubbornly intractable blank on the subject.

[After that it's simply a matter of working out where to go, and since all she wants to do is get lost, that's straightforward enough.

[At least a coastline is a coastline, no matter how strange the land it borders might be.]

Comments

[scattershot]

[Now she throws the stone.]

Exactly--!!

[Splosh. It's a good shot. Alisaie picks another.]

Optimism is one thing. There's nothing wrong with being optimistic. But when all you're doing is deluding yourself... and even that wouldn't have been so bad, if he hadn't dragged everyone else in the garden along for the ride. All those children - the guests--

[Therapy of action. She throws another stone.]

--what were they supposed to think about it? How were they supposed to know he was planning for failure? They had us all picking who we wanted to save!

[inspiteful]

[ Skylark can't help but think it's almost refreshing to see someone express their frustration like this. It's blunt and — relatively speaking — straightforward. It's easy to understand, compared to what they'd just gone through.

(Not that these were good circumstances, and in a more ideal world she wouldn't have had reason to feel this way.) ]

... I would have given him a piece of my mind if the worst had happened. He was basing his conclusions off someone who had a really difficult choice of pictures to give answers with. I don't want to imagine how guilty Tsukasa would have felt if things had gone wrong.

[scattershot]

They didn't even let you pick them? Not - not properly?

[She hadn't known that.

[It's even worse than she had been suspecting. Even something as straightforward as expressing a color - even that had been too much to ask for?]

I should have known they'd have seen that one coming, too.

I think you should have given him a piece of your mind anyway. Mayhap, if he were to hear it from somebody else, he couldn't simply write it off as my not being sufficiently optimistic for his tastes, in the midst of mass slaughter at that.

[inspiteful]

We were given a number of pictures to choose from, and only those.

[ He sighs. ]

Well, there's not much point to me giving him a lashing when things did ... more or less turn out better than it could have. It doesn't really drive the point home.

[scattershot]

That's the most maddening thing about it...! He - I didn't want things to end in carnage! And yet, the mere fact that it didn't - a mind like that could only see it as vindication, when all we achieved we managed through luck alone. If not misery now, there'll be misery later. He's riding for a fall.

[inspiteful]

That's also why I didn't yell at him. It wouldn't actually achieve anything, except make me look like an asshole.

... Well, that's his problem, for whenever it happens. A person like him is only going to get a wake-up call when something or someone that matters to him personally is at stake.

[scattershot]

Would that 'twere not the case.

[She sighs.]

Mayhap I did go too far. I, I simply found myself so frustrated...

[It's easy to reflect on all the things she should have said now.]

And would that I could blame this place for it. I fear it may be more fundamental - that there is something in my nature that always will feel that way.

[inspiteful]

Hm? What makes you think that?

[ He's curious, mostly. ]

[scattershot]

That was merely the first time my frustrations found a target.

[inspiteful]

I see.

... To be fair, I can at least say that your frustrations weren't unfounded. Speaking from my own experience, anyway.

[scattershot]

How do you manage them? I can't lash out at everyone here, every time I feel they've put a foot wrong. Otherwise I'll be doing it all the time, and that won't help me or my unit.

[inspiteful]

Well ... [ He pauses to think on this. ] ... Honestly, most of the time I put a lid on them, especially if trying to voice them to the people won't be met constructively. Afterwards, I vent to someone who's willing to listen and who I can trust won't spread around what I say. It helps keep the frustration manageable.

[scattershot]

Mayhap that is the best way.

[It all sounds extraordinarily trying to Alisaie. She sighs, and retrieves another stone, and wings it into the water.]

I'd like to believe 'twill be easier, when it's just the unit working together. And yet it seems to me that it would simply raise the stakes still further, if I were to disagree with the one group here I'm supposed to be able to trust...

[inspiteful]

[ There's the pause of someone who's trying to not flashback, just a little. Ye gods, first Tsukasa, and then Alisaie bringing up the possibility of it happening in the future...

Man, just when he thinks it's been put away into a box for good. ]

Do you have any reason to think you might disagree with them one day?

[scattershot]

Nothing so concrete. Everyone has been perfectly kind, so far - but I've yet to be seriously tested, and these games we play are designed to cause friction. And, should our values fail to align perfectly? Such clashes will be only inevitable...

Every time things get difficult, everybody disappears.

I did.

[inspiteful]

[ Right, Skylark. Get a hold of yourself and try to maintain perspective. ]

Disappear as in, taken away from the show?

I can't say I know much about the current unit, but does anyone give you the impression they'd be unwilling to try and reach a compromise in the event of a disagreement?

[scattershot]

Nothing so final. Merely leaving. Yet how are we supposed to resolve our difficulties if nobody admits we have them? Zhongli was so concerned I simply wouldn't return I'm out here with a shopping list!

[inspiteful]

[ ... Well, he has some guesses as to who are the culprits, or at least some of them.

Still, he's relieved that Zhongli apparently has tried to deal with that. ]

Let me guess, Hurricane is one of them? The shopping list is a pretty good idea, actually.

[scattershot]

Hurricane?

How did you know?

[inspiteful]

[ ...

Hey Skylark this is what you get for just speaking your mind without thinking further ahead. Fuck. ]

I don't think anyone needs to have masterful powers of observation to notice he can get highly avoidant and guess it's him.

[scattershot]

No... no, you're right. That was something of a foolish question.

I'm hardly surprised he might not wish to talk to me. I'm all but a stranger. And yet, if I am ever to be more to him than that - won't we have to take a chance on one another, sometime?

[inspiteful]

Mmm ... [ ... Even now, he isn't really sure how he would advise this sort of situation. Damn. ] Well, it's tough when at the end of the day, it's about not wishing to burden you or anyone else on the unit, as ridiculous as it is when you think about it. Though, I'm not sure how one is supposed to proceed from there.

[scattershot]

Well, I don't intend on giving up before I've started. Even if we can never become friends, I do at least desire to prove I can be trusted.

[inspiteful]

[ The thing he has to wonder is whether it can work like that with Hurriccane, though he supposes that may just be his own cynicism giving him a dim view. ]

I wish you good luck, then.

[scattershot]

I'm probably going to need it. But thank you, Skylark.

[inspiteful]

Are you feeling a little better, at least?

[scattershot]

I am. Simply talking these things through helps a lot.