Written Wonderland

Ren did not move and did not approach to accept her hand; instead, he tilted his head slightly with an eyebrow raised as though curious.

Perhaps her gesture hadn't been obvious at all. Perhaps it wasn't a good time for touch. Whatever the reason, Jaz withdrew her hand, bringing it back down to her side as she considered the ground. There were sparkles in her vision, red and black behind or just in front of her eyes. Jaz slowly shook her head to clear them, closing her eyes and getting to her feet. She dusted herself off and looked at Ren, though she blinked down quickly.

Why did she feel like she needed to apologize?

There wasn't anything to fix. There was a melancholy in the area and the smell of death, blood. An offering. A sacrifice. An honoring.

The djinn had made them to the plants in smaller ways, and to the waterfall. Gifts, nutrients, care.

The stakes felt higher here. There was more needed and more to lose.

"Thank you," she ultimately said, "for being patient with me. Shall we take these to your friend?"

Jaz withdrew her hand and lowered her gaze to the ground. Ren steeled himself against guilt, but it eased as Jaz pushed herself to her feet and dusted herself off, and his fear that she might have backslid dissipated. She was moving forward, and he was relieved--maybe even proud, if he dared to let himself feel it.

Jaz looked up to him only briefly before blinking back down to the ground, tugging at his curiosity again. Am impulse rose to offer her touch by way of a hand on her hair, wanting to reassure her of something. But he was still feeling too cautious, too uncertain about what all she had gone through these past moments. What all she was going through in this moment. Something felt heavy about it, and he let it pass with reverence.

"Thank you," she ultimately said, "for being patient with me. Shall we take these to your friend?"

Ren nodded, not quite sure what to say. In lieu of speaking, he stepped closer to her, gesturing for her to lead the way, but intending now to follow a bit closer. It would be tricky to get around her here anyhow, and the main path wasn't far.

Ren nodded and gestured back the way they had come, perhaps intending for her to lead. She nodded in return, walking back toward the main path. That much of the way, she knew. She had the impulse to bring her hands to each of her arms to comfort herself--she felt cold and hollow despite the relative warmth of the day and the sunshine--but she didn't want Ren to think she was weak. Instead, she kept her head up, walking forward, and the projected confidence did eventually soften her clenching stomach.

Once she arrived back at the main path, she veered in the opposite direction than the way they had come, figuring she would follow that until Ren told her otherwise. She resisted the urge to look back at him or seek his guidance. As much as he knew about this world, as much as he was her guide in many ways, he couldn't help her with the things he did not know, and this grief--or at least the intensity of it--was among them.

Ren had probably grown up eating these sorts of things--it was normal for him; whereas Jaz... gods, she missed her village terribly. But, she would need to get accustomed to this, and she was heartened that Ren did genuinely care for the chickens. He looked at them and spoke about them similarly to how the guardians of the feradons did back home. She took heart in that, and finally, she looked back to Ren, walking close behind her, and said, "You do a good job with them. They're beautiful."

And then some of the magic Jaz felt watching them eat seeped back into her facial expression, a glint of a smile, a softening of her shell. "Thank you for letting me feed them and for showing them to me."

Jaz continued leading the way on the main path, and Ren let her, getting the sense from her gait that she might not take kindly to being passed right now. The way was fairly obvious for this stretch, so there was no need to intervene. They walked quietly like that for a few moments, until at last Jaz glanced behind her and said,

"You do a good job with them. They're beautiful."

Ren's eyebrows lifted just a little, a mild surprise and perhaps a dash of relief opening up his expression. He softened further as he saw Jaz's own expression shift, a glint of a smile returning to her face.

"Thank you," she continued, "for letting me feed them and for showing them to me."

Ren didn't quite smile, but his expression was light and relaxed now, and he nodded. Several different responses played through his mind--a simple You're welcome, or maybe Is there anything else you need?--but in the end he remained silent, still unsure if words really fit the situation at hand. Perhaps he himself was still feeling the heaviness of it, and he didn't want to weigh her down with what sat in his own chest.

((OOC: I think we're approaching where the way to Baer's starts to enter your purview lol. Ren's currently planning on giving Jaz verbal directions as relevant.))

Ren didn't respond, and Jaz didn't look back. She kept walking down the path, turning away from Ren's cabin when they reached the main trail. The forest became denser as they walked away from the meadow, and trees Jaz had not yet seen grew in impressively tall clusters on the edge of the path in both directions and as far as her eye could see.

She wanted to shake off the persistent melancholy she felt, and her song had done something to that effect, but the encounter still didn't feel wholly closed. She didn't want Ren to feel judged by her confusion, but she wasn't sure how much to allow herself to compromise her own sense of ethics in order to eat and survive here.

The humans she had met so far had been reluctant and infrequent in their touch. Even if Jaz stayed in the temple instead of with Ren, she wasn't certain she could experience enough touch to avoid eating entirely. And though there had been vegetables and berries growing sparsely in the landscape, Jaz wondered if she would find enough. And wasn't she supposed to be learning and acclimating to this new culture, eating what they ate?

Jaz wasn't ungrateful. She wasn't judging Ren; in fact, she was in awe of him. He was deeply in relationship with his food, with the chickens, with their care. The structures were thoughtfully designed, and the chickens used them, maybe even knowing the cost. And if they produced eggs so much more frequently than the feradons...

Still, it was difficult to imagine. Young life was such a rare thing among the djinn and the creatures they lived among. But, that difference between the realms was perhaps something she was here to treasure, to admire--this abundance of life, so much that it could be food.

She couldn't deny she preferred her own culture's practices, but maybe she could learn to appreciate their practices, too. She thought of the eggs she had eaten that morning, maybe one of them fertilized, and imagined that she carried their memory, their information, in her body, seeing with her eyes. She found she enjoyed the imagination. What if Jaz could give new life to what she consumed? Why not?

The thought brought a buoyancy back to her step such that, when she approached a fork in the trail, she looked back at Ren with wide, curious eyes, hair flicking playfully over one shoulder.

"Left," he said, not waiting for her to ask. She lingered in the moment, keeping her eyes fixed on his face so they wouldn't roam his body, a smile quirking at the edges of her lips. It hadn't been a command, but it edged close with enough proximity that a shiver passed up Jaz's spine, part nerves and part excitement. A fantasy of Ren trailing his fingers up her spine, leaving trails of blue along her skin, pulled her attention further toward her desire for touch and its gently scratching claw in her belly.

When Ren was close enough to touch her, she hovered there a moment, looking up into his face, and then finally, she turned and went left, walking slowly down the new path.

"Baer lives farther out from town than you do," Jaz said. It wasn't exactly a question, but she hoped it would prompt more information regardless.

The walk was silent for some time, but it seemed like Jaz's spirits were lifting with each step, and Ren was finding his way to a pleasant serenity in walking through the woods with a companion. It was also a nice indulgence to be walking behind her for a time, able to observe her, to watch the ways her posture and gait subtly changed over time.

When they approached a fork, Ren had prepared to give her directions, but the words caught briefly in his mouth, an accidental command in close proximity along with things he didn't particularly want to tell Jaz about in amends. She came to a stop and turned back toward him, her hair flicking over her shoulder in her newfound buoyancy. It was a heartening sight, though Ren's consternation about his directions perhaps had his expression more terse than he might've liked.

"Left," he said, perhaps hastily, as though he might have to answer a question even if all he did was get hung up on not commanding her. She didn't move, her smile curling at the edges. Ren narrowed his eyes, curiosity and caution pulling against each other in his expression. He couldn't shake the feeling that she knew he'd nearly commanded her on accident; could imagine she might be wondering what she would have asked of him if he had.

Finally, Jaz turned and continued down the path, easing some of the tension between them.

"Baer lives farther out from town than you do," she said.

Ren nodded. Baer was more wild than he was, was the first thought to come to mind. He'd grown up in society, lived among other humans for more of his life; he wasn't altogether sure that Baer had. He hadn't asked her--no sense dredging up either of their pasts, as far as he was concerned. But visiting her did feel different than visiting Monica, for instance, for some reasons that were more obvious than others. With Baer, Ren wasn't entirely sure he was all that different from the other wildlife of the forest. Maybe it was an odd sentiment, but he was glad to have a human companion with whom he felt that way.

He brought his attention back to Jaz with some curiosity, and some discomfort. Would a djinn from another realm be all that different from the other wildlife of the forest? Maybe not, to be honest; and wasn't that why he felt safe bringing Jaz to Baer in the first place? Even so, now that they neared the encounter, some part of Ren lamented some prospect of sharing Baer. But, he reminded himself again that Jaz was his guest, and in that, he was already sharing a great deal with her. His cabin; his hair brush; his food and the creatures who provided it; the meadow outside his window and the creek that sustained him; and, soon, his nearest human companion.

Distantly, he recognized that Jaz would probably appreciate some conversational engagement. Cautiously, Ren asked, "Is there anything you'd like to know before we meet her?"

Behind her, Ren was quiet for a long stretch, and if Jaz hadn't been able to hear the subtle scrape of his footfall against the thin dirt path, she might have thought he had disappeared entirely. Maybe she hadn't given Ren enough to go on. She was about to elaborate on her statement when, finally, Ren said, "Is there anything you'd like to know before we meet her?"

A thousand questions fought for attention in Jaz's mind, but she wasn't sure any of them were especially useful. Instead, she zigzagged her steps on the path, thinking. Ren had put Baer in the same category as Monica--not a parasite--but that wasn't much to go on. Jaz supposed that what she was really getting after was... why? And how? It seemed impossible to Jaz to want to be so far away from contact with one's people.

But, then, as Jaz raised her head and looked at the canopy of trees around her, she wondered if Baer could be content with interaction with the types of life present here, non-human or no.

"Is there anything you're afraid to tell her about me?" Jaz asked.

"Is there anything you're afraid to tell her about me?" Jaz asked after another stretch of silence, her footsteps zigzagging as she walked.

Ren followed along, enjoying watching Jaz's movements but keeping his own pace straightforward and steady.

"I might not lead with Dehaljadrun's name," he said with a shrug after a thoughtful pause. "But overall... no, I don't think so."

Ren mentally checked his work after he spoke, searching for any twinges of discomfort, skepticism, judgement or withdrawal in his memories with Baer. She did not reach out to quite the same degree as Monica did, but she had nonetheless been nothing but welcoming toward him. Granted, he certainly gave her her space, generally speaking; if she had defensive edges, he'd hardly gone looking for them. Still, he felt surprisingly serene going into what was in some ways an absolutely insane conversation. Perhaps he really did have the sense that it might not be all that insane, to Baer. She had lived in these woods far longer than he had, after all.

After a pause, Ren said, "I might not lead with Dehaljadrun's name," and a shiver passed through Jaz, hearing her goddess' name in his voice. "But overall... no, I don't think so," Ren continued.

As Jaz parsed through what that meant, she felt a pang of sadness and turned abruptly to anger. Rather than lash out with it, Jaz sat with the fire burning within her, assessing whether she dared speak her mind.

At last, she spoke, approaching the subject with curiosity. "What do your people have against Dehaljadrun? Why is she not also revered among your goddesses?"

Jaz was quiet--defensive, Ren thought. Understandable, he supposed in abstract, though looking at the concrete--that this woman he was coming to know, whom he'd taken as his guest, who seemed so innocent in certain respects, came from the realm of the Demon Queen--he found it difficult to reckon with. He almost wished he hadn't even mentioned the goddess; thinking about it now cast a shadow over his interactions with Jaz, sifting his experiences with her thus far through a fresh layer of skepticism and doubt. All at once he felt tired, and yearned to retreat into solitude to rest.

"What do your people have against Dehaljadrun?" Jaz asked at last, her voice lighter than Ren might have anticipated. "Why is she not also revered among your goddesses?"

Ren felt his own pang of defensiveness; a visceral sense of affront at the goddesses of the village being likened to-- ... Jaz's goddess. Ren exhaled, willing himself to soften, though it was an effort. This wasn't some intellectual socialite chiding him about superstition; this was someone from another village who revered her own goddess, wondering what made them so different. Ren clenched his jaw, annoyed by the conflicting narratives in his own mind. Maybe the lore about Dehaljadrun had her all wrong; maybe she'd been demonized by whatever political forces had gained from Asphodel's rejection of her; or maybe Jaz was naive about her own goddess' nature; or, maybe Jaz knew full well her goddess' nature, and embodied it, and was just waiting for the right time to take whatever it was that she truly wanted from Ren once his guard was finally let down.

Ren shook his head, trying to clear his mind. He couldn't live in all of those possibilities at once. At minimum, there was no point in talking to Jaz about that final possibility, so at least his reply could narrow in scope. To further narrow, he refocused on her actual question. She hadn't asked what Ren had against Dehaljadrun; she had asked about his people. To which, he couldn't help a small scoff; that in itself was complicated to define. But, there was a particular people Jaz was actually asking about. The people he would currently and most happily call his; the people of Ti'la where he'd made his home.

Finally, Ren sighed, at last charting his course toward a compassionate reply.

"In truth, many people of this land do not revere any gods or goddesses," he said carefully. "There's... an arrogance in humanity. A desire to believe that we are completely in control, can utterly understand all that is." Anger tempted to rise in his voice, and he clutched his fists by his sides instead, releasing them a moment after and trying to let go of what lingered as he continued.

"It is unsettling to look at the possibility of beings who are more than we could ever understand, more than we could possibly control. Ti'la is already an outlier in looking with humility into those unknowns, and the goddesses of Ti'la provide a great deal of wisdom, comfort, and serenity in return. I do not know much of the goddess Dehaljadrun, but what lore I have heard would promise little better than hedonistic pleasure, humility being the least of its cost."