un: karma (video)

[torpour]

[the view is not of nehan as the username attached to this video would imply, but of two different plants preserved in jars on a countertop. no erune on your screens today.]

I have a request-- more specifically, an offer for fair trade. If you have an abundance of unwanted plants in your house, please bring them to me. Or I can visit your dwelling and remove them myself. Name your price. [a pause, then his gloved hand comes from the top of the camera, pointing at the plants from left to right.] In particular, I'm interested in these. Lacrimosa, which only blooms in dark areas where no sources of light reach, reeds from an island from my world for healing.

[no one asked him what the plants do, but he rambled anyway because he's a nerd.]

But any plant you don't want will do. They'll be useful, in one way or another.

Also, Flynn, Richie: this is the best opportunity I can give you when it comes to learning and making your own medicines.

Comments

[torpour]

Something to put the plant in. If you're taking it whole, including roots, you might as well look for paper you wont need, and use it to wrap up the plant. The roots are delicate, but the paper and the soil trapped in it will cushion them.

Perhaps it would be easier if I came by?

[fogsong]

[ She thought she could just rip up a few plants (...delicately rip okay) and stuff them in some sack and bring them over. That's obviously not at all the case and there's a wince to her tone. ]

...Yeah, that'd probably be for the best. I would definitely just end up fucking them up. [ She gives him easy directions to Rose's cottage in Crenshaw. ]

[torpour]

I'll be there soon. [good thing he's learned how to teleport through lamps. finally.

the view changes as he picks up his omni, and turns dark when he tucks it into a pocket. but for a moment, a glimpse of nehan can be seen-- pale skin, grey hair, eyepatch, fluffy ears.]

In the meantime, tell me where these plants are located, so I can get the right tools for them. ... Unless it means I have to break a few floorboards.

[fogsong]

[ Did she just see...? Yeah, those were fluffy ears. ]

Don't worry, no floorboards or drywall. They're mostly outside around the house, in the dirt. The rose bushes might give you some problems, they're not exactly tiny. [ and the thorns. She's pricked her fingers countless times now. ]

[torpour]

Ah, more roses, I see. [why so many roses... he already has a number of them foisted on him and he doesn't know what to do about all of them. giving to loved ones?

what loved ones?]

I might as well be doing a full overhaul of your garden, eh?

[fogsong]

[ Sharon chuckles at that. It is mighty tempting. ]

You could if you wanted to but I like the way the garden looks. [ It's a little full right now, though. ] You're getting all the stray flowers, the ones that decided the garden wasn't good enough for them.

[torpour]

[nehan snorts, though the sound is wholly amused rather than scornful.]

That's nature for you. [spoken like a man who knows exactly what nature does, and it does what it wants.

after some rustling and the clanking of tools, nehan straightens up and gives a sigh.]

I'll be there shortly.

[and by "shortly" he means in thirty minutes, the most travel he does on foot just being getting to the lamp in willful machine, then going to the house from crenshaw's lamp. of course, getting to crenshaw proper takes a bit from the lamp, given how he has to descend from the watchtower's location with a bum leg.

eventually, a short, wolfy man in an oversized cardigan is knocking on the door, laden with bags of tools, and just bags. there's even a bag hanging from his crutch because he expects to have a lot to bring home.]

[fogsong]

[ Sharon's quick to answer the door and when she does, she gives him a look over, her eyes lingering briefly on the ears and then on that crutch of his. The fact he made it in thirty is mildly impressive, especially with all he carries. ]

Is this what you usually do here? [ She asks as she steps out onto the porch. The garden beds around it are filled with a variety of blooms. It's clear there was no planning, bushes, and flowers stamped around with no rhyme or reason aside from there is good.

It's away from the garden beds where things start to look good and truly messy. There isn't such an abundance of flowers so as to be overwhelming but enough to make one pause. Look, she got a little... flower happy. The yard is very lucky she lost interest. ]

[torpour]

Gardening for other people? No.

[a grey wolf with yellow eyes trots in from around the corner, looking around and around, before entering the yard. it may have been a problem if the wolf wasn't wearing a harness. nehan waits until the wolf is right beside him, and straps his crutch to the harness, leaving both hands free. he'll wobble when he walks, but he'll live.

then he pulls out a pack of tools from a bag and unrolls it to take a garden knife.]

I'm a doctor, and I make my own medicine-- most of my ingredients grow out of the ground, so I had to learn how to work with them as well. And, naturally, the sudden overgrowth throughout Trench is useful to me.

[fogsong]

[ The appearance of the wolf is a bit of a surprise but it's clearly well trained. As Nehan walks, Sharon follows after and when he pulls out a garden knife, she speaks up idly. ]

You got a second one of those, doc? [ Like she'd let him do all the work himself. ] Gotta admit, it's pretty impressive you make your own medicine. Not exactly a thing your average doctor does where I come from.

[torpour]

[without hesitating, nehan turns the garden knife around and offers it to her, handle first.]

Take it, I have an trowel I can use.

[fogsong]

[ She takes it and promptly gets to work. She doesn't have much experience with plants, no green thumb, but it's not like it's difficult. Don't just pull it out. Gentle with the roots. Shoo the little bug away. The roots are less delicate than she'd been expecting. ]

Your wolf got a name? [ Conversationally. ]

[torpour]

Zuo. [he pronounces it as tsu-woh, with a t-sound so soft that it could be mistaken as non-existent. though he's not entirely honest about his wolf's name, but he made a decision not to say the whole thing in front of other people if he can help it, when names have power. it's not like "nehan" is the name he was born with, either.]

My Omen, but he acts more like a pet sometimes.

[the aforementioned "pet" tilts his head at nehan, because of course he understands what's being said about him, but nehan doesn't even glance his way, simply tossing his back-up trowel into the soil two inches from a flower he intends to uproot. he did calculate that, and knows how large of a circumference he wants to dig into the soil.]

[fogsong]

Maybe he acts like what you need. [ She ponders thoughtfully with a half shrug as she carefully digs around a plant. Every now and again, she'll watch Nehan work and mimic it. She learns quickly but lacks patience, often resulting in sloppy but adequate work (which is to say: not too much damage to the plants). ]

Though, that makes me question why mine is a judgemental butterfly.

[torpour]

Going by your logic... Do you need a guardian who keeps you out of trouble rather than help you get out of it when you're already knee-deep in it? [nehan looks up from where he's cutting around the roots of a particularly stubborn white flower that he still doesn't know the name of, just to raise his eyebrow at her.

though, what do butterflies have to do with being judgemental? she does look pretty young, maybe even a teenager, and those sorts do get into trouble a lot...]

[fogsong]

[ She blinks, somewhat struck by the accuracy, and then snorts (that's a yes). It's not like she seeks trouble out, it just finds her.

She notices the flower he's working on and pauses her own work. ] I was told stories about that one back home. Supposedly, it only grew in the town I was born in. People there thought it was "holy" [ she rolls her eyes ], that it helped them see God's will. I think they just got high off of it somehow and were too delusional to realize it.

[ No, she does not think highly of the people from her hometown. ]

[torpour]

[her snort is the only answer he needs, because it's nothing he's never encountered before. but since she doesn't want him to dig further into that, he just focuses on the goldmine she's giving him about the plant.]

Hallucinogenic, then. They made drugs out of this, didn't they? [which he's done before, even if he didn't make hallucinogenics often.]

Fanatics often do that, I've found-- best that you weren't raised there.

[because that? he knows how bad fanaticism in the community can be, from firsthand experience.]

[fogsong]

[ The question, whether rhetorical or not, earns a shrug from her. The cult may have made drugs from it once upon a time but after the burning of Alessa, chances were good the hows and whys of it were lost to the fog along with cultists themselves. Back then, to her, they'd just been pretty little flowers. Now, she can see the truth of it. ]

I may have gotten out of that town but I never really got away. I spent almost half of my life on the run from those fanatics. [ Not that she'd known that at the time. Her adoptive father had kept her in the dark in a misguided attempt at protecting her. A pause and then: ] You sound like you've had some experience with people like that.

[torpour]

Not many people in Trench know this, but. [he raises one grubby finger, as if to ask for silence.]

I was born and raised in a village far away from the rest of society because my ancestors decided that doing so was a good idea. And to keep outsiders where they belonged, out, they set traps around the mountains of our valley.

[it's a gross oversimplification of karm and its principles, but still, they did think it was a good idea.]

I'm sure you can imagine what life was like with them. [and as with any good lies, nehan can fill in the blanks of her assumptions with more tidbits of truth. he's not about to divulge that he's been trained as a murderer, after all.]

[fogsong]

I got a small idea, yeah. [ The Order was insular, the town of Silent Hill small and tight-knit, but they'd never sequestered themselves from the rest of the world willingly. ]

What made them decide that in the first place? [ He likely dealt with the indoctrination that comes from such a close, paranoid community. They had traps for outsiders, after all, and she's got a feeling it wasn't for catch and release. ]

[torpour]

There was a war, a few thousand years before my birth. [nehan continues with the flowers, like he's not talking about something that shouldn't actually be told to any outsider. but then again, who will censure him here? they're all dead.] Colonizers against their colonies-- my ancestors were among the latter.

The latter was also the victor, but my ancestors' methods in combat were considered so distasteful that they decided to become akin to hermits.

[he inspects the flower, stroking its white petals, before wrapping it up in brown paper for safekeeping.]

Assassination, brutality, to give some examples. They were willing to do anything to get the job done.

[fogsong]

[ The explanation seems to confuse Sharon and she shakes her head. ]

They hid away because they were too brutal? To the people that invaded their land? [ She scoffs. ] That seems stupid.

[ Unless she's missing something here. ]

[torpour]

I cant assume what the people back then thought. I can only recall what was passed down from word of mouth, and whatever memoirs were written back then.

[though he doesn't feel too bad about making her confused over the state of his family. he has shared the same views for a long time, and he was the only one who did.]

But I agree with you-- it's stupid. Unfortunately it's only obvious when you're well-removed from the situation, as I was growing up.

[fogsong]

[ He agreed it was stupid and she blinks, more curious now. ]

How'd you manage to be removed from it? [ He'd been born there, after all. Alessa would have grown up believing in the Order if she hadn't been the target of their abuse. Even then, it required them to sacrifice her to fully see what they really were. ]

[torpour]

[how to say that the clan made a child snap and kill everyone, and nehan was the only survivor because he ran away? you don't, he decides, because it's a tale that he'd rather not admit to someone he's just met. so he decides to tell only a portion of the truth.]

I ran away as a child. I found their overreliance and strict adherence to tradition too restrictive, especially when the village was heading towards its last legs. A dwindling population and no new blood... I was tired of it. [which is all true, but the erune's next words are mostly false.]

I learned to be independent quickly after that.