wrong baby cedric (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dissolving) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
therookery2024-08-14 12:26 pm
dissolving) wrote in therookery2024-08-14 12:26 pm
Entry tags:
crystals | step one cut a hole in a box
Hey – 's Cedric.
Heard we used to have a box for, uh. Feedback. Set up a new one outside the Mediation office.
If there's aught been bugging you, can put it in there. Won't promise you the moons, but reckon we can at least talk it out. And if there's something gone good, or you seen someone really putting in the work, 's a fine place to say that too. I'll let folks know.
Won't read it for a bit. So if you got a pressing problem, talk to me direct.
Ah. Yeah. That’s all, thanks.
[ muffled: ]
How d'you even say Pizzicagnolo –
no subject
[ rests there a moment, wrestling over how much to offer. he was born in this body, and if it ever sits ill, strange β
cedric can write his letters for either hand, outrun any knight in his squad. knows how high he can jump, how hard he can punch, how long he tends to bleed. he's learned what kind of pain you can push through; that you can make anything that kind, for a little while. if you have to. he knows the smell of his skin burning, and the shiny colour of scar, he knows this shape.
and he knows that no mastery will ever really be enough. one way or another, your body betrays you. theirs, maybe more than some. ]
When my beard started in, I'd do anything t'rip it out. Real hack job. Cut my cheeks seven ways for sixpence. Most kids, y'know, they were excited. Trying these awful wispy mustaches β but I hated it. Couldn't see myself under there. Couldn't see my uncles' faces no more.
no subject
[ there's no dramatic oh of realization, no audibly shocked breath. ness thinks of gwenaΓ«lle, and her mother's portrait in the houseboat. thinks of the child of two worlds, belonging in neither.
that quiet despair and fellow feeling colors her voice. ]
It seems so lonely. [ living with people who have every reason to hold you at arm's length. looking your closest kin in the eyes and realizing you don't really look all that much like them. you might as well have sprung from the earth fully formed, for all you have anything to anchor you to a people, a place, a home.
at least in ness' case, here, it's true. cedric shouldn't have to know what that feels like.
who did he have to teach him to shave his face? ]
In FaerΓ»n, being halfβit never mattered much to me. Vazeiros didn't care about teaching me his culture, and I never knew my mother to learn about hers. Now that I'm here... I'm in mourning, it feels like. For myself. The me I was, or that I didn't have the chance to be.
Do you... know what I mean?
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[ he knows what she means. but alone β something in him bristles for that, that vazeiros didn't care, left her set apart. without connection. he has always had the alienage; even gone, he has always its had its memory.
(hasn't he?) ]
What d'you do for grief, where you're from? You got any traditions for it?
no subject
Prayers and candles, on the deathday. The Feast of the Moon marks the start of winter, but it's for honoring the dead, too. We bless graves and, it varies, a lot of deities have their own rituals, but a lot of us in Candlekeep follow Oghma, our god of knowledge. It's not a formal tradition, but some use the day to record their memories of the dead. It's usually a very solitary practice.
[ ness had a book, in candlekeep, a small journal in which she'd started writing down her memories of imithren and the other people she knew who'd died in the netherese attack. it's nothing she can't start over, but she does feel a pang of loss for it all the sameβwhat if she's forgotten something? what if those memories are lost forever?
should she start recording her memories of faerΓ»n? what do you do when you're the one who died? ]
What about you? I've read about Nevarran burial customs, but there's not much said about mourning rites, or elven traditions.
no subject
[ a pause. that's not mourning, not exactly. what do you do for grief, where you're from? what does anyone do?
gwen and her little hairpiece. herian's flowers. he has what he has, he has the grief. branches to tend. ]
All those people you were gonna be, or β thought y'might be. Maybe 's worth writing them down too. Remembering them.
no subject
[ that cedric is the one who suggests it means ness doesn't discount the idea out of hand for self-indulgence. spend valuable time thinking about what might have been, if vazeiros had ever loved her, if her mother had loved her more, if she had made it to baldur's gate or got waylaid on the way and joined the circus, or something. plenty of things might have happened, but they didn't, and now she's here, and that's all there is to it. no point dwelling. don't get stuck.
don't think about it too hard. no one cares, there's a war on.
but cedric said he wouldn't be asking if he didn't think it mattered, so maybe it does. at least to one person. ]
It's a lot to write down, [ comes slow, wrestling with herself, the warring urge not to say too much and the need for validation. ] But it's not a bad way to... memorialize a life half-lived, I suppose. One-eighth-lived.
[ she'll hit old age here before she'd have been even halfway through her lifespan in faerΓ»nβshe hadn't even thought of that yet. ]
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Work of a lifetime, [ he agrees. ] Always gonna be new paths you pass by. Tells you, maybe, where y'want to go now. What matters in th'going.
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[ where she wants to go, what matters in getting there... hm. ]
It's a weird kind of... nostalgia, almost, isn't it, for those paths unwalked? Not regret, exactly, but a... wistfulness.
What have your missed paths taught you about where you want to go?
no subject
Been at war longer than I done anything else. But,
[ hesitation. it always sounds childish, but he trusts ness with that ]
Being here, y'know. Makes me hope that's not forever, that I can find something after. Just hope whatever I do matters. Been given a lot, [ he says, and means i have taken, ] And don't want that t'be for nothing.
no subject
That whatever you do, you'll do any less than your best, or that your best could be insufficient. You'll find your purpose when this is over.
[ it's her turn to hesitate, chewing a little on her bottom lip over whether she should just leave it there. ]
I hope that you can find that purpose away from a fight, though. I think you deserve to see what kind of person you are without a sword in your hand. I hope that's alright to say.
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[ means it. shouldn't lean into that, hold those words in his head and roll them about for the echo. but there are a lot of things he shouldn't do. this one's β harmless. ]
'S why I joined diplomacy. [ admission: ] Hasn't always looked like this, it don't have to.
[ wasn't everyone on fieldwork, in the old days. plenty knights hadn't killed. stood watch, and ran drills, and taught the kids; had a day in town, maybe a life. she's due one too. community, safety. something that'll last. ]
There's better out there than all this. Reckon coming in here first, 's got to blot out the sun, but there are good places. Good things. Maybe you'll get to see them. Maybe we can try and make 'em better.
no subject
I would like that.
[ the tender longing of that lingers only for a moment before she shakes herself out of it, murmurs a hasty ] Thank you for talking with me, Cedric. Good luck. [ and turns off her crystal.
time to go bury her face in three different books at once. ]