The Crazy Show: Series finale
Who: Zoma and Derek
Where: The alley and the jungle
When: Early morning on day 27, month 7, turn 3 of the 7th Pass.
What: Zoma pays a final visit to Derek. He does her a big favor.
Note: Thaaaaaank you, Derek! Thank you, thank you, thank you for being the awesome that you are. And thank you to everyone who played with Zoma who is so insane and crazy and was a ball to torment people with. <3 every last one of you.
4/13/2007
On the exiles' island, it is 06:18 on day 27, month 7, turn 3 of the 7th Pass.
It is a very, very early morning on a day that would be insignificant were it not so close to a day that will be, for the island people, extremely important. As it is, there is so little sleep left to get and so much work left to do before J'lor will have to loose weyrlings and grown dragons to Nera's hands and helpers to load, before Derek will have his last few words with certain people about expected behaviour and actions once they reach the mainland, before the islands will fade behind a curtain of black between - hopefully forever.
Derek suffers little from lack of sleep. Or suffers the same as he always does. Every night there have been men - and a night or two, a woman - in the Alley, but every morning the cave is empty save its only occcupant of over ten turns, breakfasting as the cool and sideways light of dawn creeps up the beach.
This morning he stands in the cavemouth, eating a fruit from his hand, watching the long shadows shrink on the rocks and sand. The ocean is at middling tide and the wave crests are low; the day is too calm.
Whatever the island's most distant occupant has been up to she's been doing it alone and away from all the hustle and bustle. Zoma's not been around in other words. While she might see someone every now and again they rarely see her at the same time. Since her last visit she hasn't appeared again. Looking for her cards most likely. But this morning there's the sound of someone scrambling up the rocks, singing at the top of her lungs.
For all she looks as ragged as ever, Zoma sounds quite cheerful. She's clean, if more ragged looking than normal. When she pops into view one hand waves wildly. In the other she clutches something and once she's on her feet she hops over towards where the leader stands. "Good morning, fearless leader. I was talking about you."
Singing and hopping: few people approach Derek thus. He probably doesn't have to draw his focus back from the ocean horizon and fix that pale and beady gaze on Zoma to know it's her - but he does so anyway, so that she has his obvious attention when she gets up to him. "I am not quite fearless," he informs her, and steps back a half a pace so there is, in some sense, a little room she could get through if she's intent on going into the Alley past him. "Talking to whom?"
"To not so fearless leader number one. Well, number two? I get the numbers confused. Still, I was talking to J'lor. You know how he is. He didn't understand it at all." Zoma's head tilts to the left and to the right and then back. Hopping past him she heads into the alley with a few final sung lines. "He didn't understand at all. I said that. I have something for you!" She looks over her shoulder and smiles brightly as she says this.
"I doubt he would appreciate either number being applied, really," Derek observes, turning in place as Zoma hops past, watching her. It's like having a pet bird. A parrot. Who learned language from a crazy person. Sort of. He watches her, anyway, the corners of his moustache twitching with whatever strange pleasure her bizarre behaviour brings him. "What was it he didn't understand? And you don't have to bring me things."
Still hopping, Zoma bobs her head up and down. "I know! That is why it is a gift. Because I did not /have/ to. I mean, seriously. It's like you're not paying attention, but I know you are! Anyway, it doesn't matter. I don't have to talk to him again after all." Holding out her hand she waggles what's in it, looks like a card. "And I told him what you needed. I do not trust him to actually take care of it, but he might. So, don't worry. I thought about being sure you are ok after I am gone."
"About what I needed." Only a couple of exchanges in and Derek is reduced - as he so often is, with Zoma - to repeating what she says, or altering the pronouns and feeding it back to her. Whether he does this to express confusion or to fake comprehension is never entirely clear; his expression tends to be nonplussed. It is especially that way now, as he turns the rest of the way inward and, brushing a fruit-juice-enhanced hand across his ragged pants to dry it, comes over to receive the card she's offering.
The card is an ace. The ace of crafts. Zoma giggles as she hands it over. "See? Because you are crafty! It's why I saved that one for you when I gave the other two away to my little brother." His lack of comprehension has never bothered her. If she's even really noticed it. He has always humored her and so she puts up with it all. "Yes. That with me gone there will be no one to make you smile and make you laugh. It's sad. You're so serious all the time and you have so much to worry about. So I told him to keep an eye out for someone who might take my place. It's the least I could do for not coming with you. I feel bad leaving you."
"I'm crafty." Part of the wit of this method is in picking out the best parts of what the parrot's said to parrot back. Derek says it while looking down at the card in his hand, then looks up at Zoma while he tucks it into the only pocket on his person that still holds things put into it, at his hip. "For leaving me," he says, looking at her, then looks down at what's in his other hand - the fruit, half-eaten, its juices draining down over his knuckles. A shake of his dark head and he pads over to the table to put down his breakfast there. "There's a lot to plan for. To think of ahead of time. Where are you going?"
"Well, you are a lot of things I imagine, but I prefer to focus on the positive. I knew where that one was too. The others I still didn't find. Although I stopped looking." Zoma shrugs at this and she watches the card be put away with more attention than she's watched anything else so far. "Planning is not really my thing, you know. I'm not a leader though. I follow. I do it well. I think that may have been part of my problem." At his question her head shakes and she regards him almost sadly. "I'm going nowhere, Derek. I'm staying here. I thought I'd made that clear. Maybe not to you? It all blends in after awhile. I'm staying."
"Then why do you say you're leaving me," Derek asks in a tone that's more rhetorical than questioning, padding away from the table to bend and fish up from a raggedy towel on the floor a tin cup and a gourd, both evidently draining from a fresh washing. "Instead of the other way around. And why did you stop looking?" He straightens and pours water from the gourd into the cup, not looking up even when he starts toward her to hand out the drink, offering.
"Well, you are leaving me I suppose. But it's the same thing. I am not going with you. So, I am leaving you. I can't go, you see? Even though you need me." Zoma smiles at this, if sadly. "So, I am leaving. By not leaving. It was just easier to say this I guess. Sometimes I am confusing I suppose, but you tend to understand. More than I think you let on." Looking at the cup she tips her head over again and then takes it. "Thank you. You understand, right?"
"I understand you're not coming along," Derek replies. "You're going to have to be scarce. We're agreed to leave no one behind." He withdraws his hand once she has the cup, then stands there holding the gourd he poured that cupful from, looking on Zoma with an expression that, for once, might actually read to the average person appropriately for what he's thinking or feeling. Thoughtfully concerned. Consternated. "Are you out of cards?"
Grinning over the cup, Zoma bobs her head up and down. "I'm good at being scarce. I'm always scarce. Well, I can be scarce in the body as well as in the head." Pausing so she might take a drink she shakes her head sadly. "I don't have to be scarce anymore though. It's why I am here." Changing the cup from one hand to the next she sighs quietly. "I need a favor, Derek. I know I never even gave you a real game and that you've done plenty for me already, but I need this. I can't change my mind. I don't want to go back. I trust you."
"You said that before," Derek notes in a sandy whisper, and puts down the dried hand into his dry pocket to lay thick, worn fingers over the surface of a worn, tired card recently tucked away there. "That you trust me." It takes only the slightest widening of his pale eyes to turn his whole countenance subtly from confused to warily, suspiciously knowing - and Derek turns away, moving back to the Alley's mouth at a speed that could feel a little bit like flight, like escaping. But as though dawn drives him back he stops there in the entrance, a shadow defined by light.
"I wouldn't ask if I had any other recourse. You know that, right? I wouldn't do this to you if I had any other way." Zoma sounds tired and she empties the cup before setting it down quietly on the table. "Tell me can't and I will find another way. I wouldn't ask, but I'm so tired now, Derek. I can't go back and I can't stay. I thought maybe I could, but the more I think about it. . .I'm too scared. To stay. To go. To take away both options." Digging her nails into her palms she stares at him as he retreats and then stops. "If you can't I'll do something else. I don't know what. But something. I just don't want. . .I shouldn't have asked. I'm sorry. After all you've done for me." There is, somewhere, still a faint bit of cheer in her tone. It's so quietly there it might be missed, but even now it can't be entirely driven back.
"Why are you scared?" Derek asks the question in a tired, weary tone. Whatever holds him back from the cavemouth deprives him also from the chance to stand right there in the entryway and lean a shoulder against the rock. He folds his arms over his middle, uncharacteristically awkward-seeming, looking out toward sea with an uncommon longing. Out there is escape. "I promised," he notes. "I think."
"I know," Zoma whispers to the last, ignoring the first. She sits down on the ground and pulls her legs up to her chest so she can wrap her arms around them. "I know you did, but I won't make you. It's not what I can do. We cannot. . .force." Well, she cannot force. She won't. So, she just has to wait and see what will be done. "I'm scared for lots of reasons. Of what I might do. Of what I won't do. Of where I'll wind up. I left that life behind. I left the sheep behind. I won't go back and be one of them again. Not knowing what I know. Not having been through what I went through."
"I didn't lie to you." He lies, sometimes, in promises. So the clarification is important. Then Derek is quiet for a long moment, discontented, looking out to sea. When he speaks again, it is not to what he's been told. Not the answers he asked for. It is a request, softly spoken. Gently worded. Asked of the ocean as much as the woman tucked knees-up behind him in the cave. "May we go for a walk?"
While he is quiet, she is quiet. Between his words, Zoma just watches him. She studies him from head to toe. She is not looking him over however. She long stopped playing that game when she couldn't get any fun responses. Instead she found other ways to torment him. In her mind anyway. After a few minutes of quiet she rises to her feet. "A walk. Sure. I like walking. I walk all the time." There's no more concern over being around him than before. If she's aware, and how could she not be, of what she's asked then it doesn't bother her. Of course, she is crazy.
Derek is, to be certain, tormented now. He steps back from the Alley's entrance and puts out a hand toward it: she is meant to precede him, to bodily break the force that keeps -him- from escaping. His brows are crouched but his expression is otherwise bland, faceless. "We can go up into the trees. It's cool there." So close after dawn it's cool everywhere. "Which cards did you give K'tric?"
Zoma skips out of the cave as if she hasn't a care in the world. Unbothered by anything and she pauses to stare out at the ocean. "It's so pretty here, don't you think? You did manage to get one of the best views on the island. An eye for such things." Turning to look at him she smiles brightly. "Aces. Other two aces. Figure, he'll need em both."
"J'lor's the one who picked it, in a way," Derek replies, as he steps across the threshhold out into the rocks and sand. He pauses there to look out at the sea, a vista he's seen thousands of times now, and long ago tired of seeing - now it's just a place to rest his eyes. "And the fourth ace?" He looks from the horizon to Zoma, then up at the path that will lead them up the low end of the cliff to paths that lead alternately to the island's heart or to thick jungle (and far beyond it, a clearing likely full of morning-drowsy weyrlings).
"He picks things. J'lor does. You pick things. We all pick things." Zoma shakes her head and skips along. Under her breath she sings every now and again. "Don't have it. Killed it. Dead. Gave it to the fish. Couldn't figure out what else should be done with it. Saved the best for you. That's what matters, right?" The other people on the island are certainly not being thought of. She might be aware of them. Most likely she's barely aware of the man she walks with.
"We all pick things. You and I can pick some breakfast." Derek has the ace of crafts. His fingers squirm at his pocket to confirm it, then go back to his side; his hands swing a little as he ascends the path just a little behind her and to the right, at her shoulder. Little sandy stones skitter downhill from beneath their feet, his bare and toughened to the trail; then their steps turn silent as the dirt path gives way to one lined with fallen leaves and the indeed-cool crispness of the shade absorbs them. "Which one was it? The one you gave to the fish."
The singing stops, the quiet of the island overpowering any desire Zoma has to make noise. She walks quietly, she's good at walking quiet. "Breakfast. I forgot to eat it. I always do. I used to forget all kinds of things. Sometimes I remember things. Mostly I forget things. It's ok. Sometimes it happens." Skip, hop, hop. It's like a picnic. "The other one. The one I didn't give to you or two Kats. The other one. You know. But the most important one I saved for you. Because you're my friend."
"You don't need enemies," Derek whispers in the high-pitched, faraway voice that sometimes comes out from between moustache and lower lip, inexplicably produced and at odds with his features and seeming. It's not meant, really, for her to reply. Instead he looks off into the trees, then suddenly takes a step off-path into the jungle, blazing trail by means of stomping footsteps in the underbrush. This would be, perhaps, how his feet stay so tough. "This way," he proposes as a command, and does not check to see she follows him. "Which two did you give Kat?"
When he veers she has to notice. He is behind her, after all. But notice Zoma does and when she sees where he goes she hops after him. Hippity hoppity like a rabbit. "No, I don't. No one does, really. Gave him the ace of weyrs and the ace of holds. Cause he needs em. It makes sense. And he does need both. I was going to give you another one, but you really only need the one. It's because you're you." She babbles, yes. But she babbles in such a charming way. Yeees. "It's a beautiful day."
"Does anyone else have any of them that you gave away?" As opposed to any that might have been stolen from her. Derek pauses now and again to tangle with vegetation, parting leaves or bending branches with hands and feet before moving on. A little ways ahead the undergrowth seems clearer, however.
"No. I only gave them to you and to him. No one else. No one else gets any. Just you two. The rest are hidden. Gone. Lost. Eaten. Destroyed." Zoma could find more words, sure, but she stops here to hop over a partially buried rock. "They're special. I've held onto them this long. Forever. Through it all. No matter what was done. I held onto them. They were all I had left. And I kept them. No one took them away."
"Eaten," laughs Derek, bright and smiling for a split-second flash, fast as lightning. He drudges on through the plants until breaking through into a grove of taller trees, their tropical leaves wide overhead, branches strange-shaped. They bear fruit, the stuff he prefers with his fish, and the mild wet season brings those fruits on heavy and sweet. They perfume the air, red and green and golden mottled, hanging overhead. Derek takes a few more steps into the clearer undergrowth and looks up, his hands coming to rest mother-hennish on his hips. The thick canopy all but blocks the sky above.
"You took them away," he notes then, voice still a little warm from the laugh that didn't last. "From yourself."
"I hid them. I was going to hurt them. I was going to kill them." Zoma stops just in the clearing and shakes her head rapidly. "I didn't want to." One hand runs over her eyes like she might have been crying. But she wouldn't be because she doesn't cry. She's not sane enough to do that. "I couldn't do anything but hide them. It was the only choice I had." She steps farther into the clearing and lifts up one foot to stomp on the ground. "This feels funny. Maybe my feet. I don't know. You know why I had to do it, right? You understand."
A great sigh escapes the island leader, and he turns around, drawing his gaze down from the fruit overhead to the one stomping in the clearing. "Zoma. Would it be easier, just to come along? Would it be easier to pack up and leave all the cards behind? You could have a new deck, when we get to Five Mines. You could have - " Derek stops, his mouth abruptly thin, vanishing beneath the unhappy brush of his moustache, and he just looks at her, brows low and pained.
Shuddering all over, Zoma closes her eyes. "Don't make me go. I'm not who I am there. I'm not-" Drawing in a shuddery breath she opens her eyes and looks over at him. "I'm not right. We both know I am not right, Derek. Back there I will fit in even less than I do here. I can't go back. You know I can't go back. If you. . .If you want me to leave here now tell me. I'll go somewhere else. I'll wait til people go and do it then. There's nothing there for me. I never thought I'd ever get back."
There is something in him that finds this agonizing. Inappropriate. Wrong. Something in him that wants to shrink away into a shroud of doom and not know what he's done, what he's done already, how it happened. That is the part of him that listens to her, that looks at her with that aching expression. It is also the part of him that he has to put away. It takes him a moment. The cases and boxes and crates in which he stores himself are not as well-oiled in the hinges as they once were, and Derek creaks literally as he turns from her, jaw grinding audibly with the stretch and turn of his head. He looks up again, into the trees, at the fruit hanging above. He's quiet a long time, too long, but finally his hands slip off of his hips. One goes into the pocket, and comes out with the card. The gesture's easy, the little slip of stiff hide held just so between two fingers. He flicks it upward, bending his elbow, so she can see it over his shoulder. "Do you want it?"
What goes on in his head is not even guessed at by Zoma who has so much going on in her own head. What happens in there is nothing good. One part of her screams to run away and hide and make sure he knows not where she is. Another part of her wants to curl up and cry for everything that she's been through and what she's done. The part of her that is in control right now just stands there. Stands there and stares at them as she shudders from head to toe. Looking at the card her eyes light up with some semblance of sanity. "I need it." Whispered as she watches the card and moves closer towards it. Like it hangs there with no help from him. "He took everything else from me. That's all I kept. I gave everything else away. But that I need. That I held onto no matter what."
"Take it," Derek suggests. But it is just a suggestion, whispered up toward the fruiting trees that block out the sky above. "If this one's mine, it ought to be enough for you. It could get you through the trip. You could start over." The card twitches in a movement of his fingers, subtle, its glossed surface and inked shapes catching light. "Haven't you lost enough?"
"I gave it to you. It's not mine anymore." But that doesn't stop her from drifting closer. The card lures her closer and while she is aware he is there it's only in the way she is aware the trees are there. That the ground exists and the sky is overhead. "I can't start over. I'd be wrong. I'm wrong. That's what they told me. My family and everyone. I'm wrong, Derek. And I'd be a liability. I'd do something wrong and I'd be someone they pointed to as why. . .why we're all wrong." Another step and she pauses, looking at the card. "I can't try. Can I hold it though? Can I say goodbye? Just for a second." Her hand reaches for the card.
"Of course." Derek's hand stills and the flashing lure of the card stops catching light; still he stands quiet, head tilted back, gaze somewhere among the leaves high overhead. She'll have to snatch the card from him, but he's as good as a statue, unbreathing.
Another step forward and Zoma flicks her eyes for a second to him. Just for a second before she has to look back at her card. "I just want to tell it goodbye. I said goodbye to everyone else. I said goodbye to you. I know there's something wrong. But, well-" Nothing else is said because she's got to grab the card.
Derek lets her have the card. When it's out of his fingers his hand drops and he turns around, to witness, in silence.
The card is stared at for a moment. Zoma turns it over in her hands. She peers at the back and the front and she runs her finger around the edge of it. "It's the best one. I knew you would appreciate it." Her voice is sad, but there's still no sign she's going to cry. Clear-eyed she lifts the card up to kiss the back of it and then she holds it out. "Here. It's yours now. I'm sorry, you know. I'm not sure this isn't a mistake, but I'm afraid. And I want you to know that I just- Well. I know you didn't have to be nice to me."
"Thank you," says Derek. Maybe for the card that she holds out, that he reaches out to take from her. He puts it into his pocket again, then holds his arm out another time. It forms an arch, a half a hug, a place to put one's shoulders beside him. "You've been good to me, Zoma. As good as you know how. I'm sorry you won't come along."
"Will miss you. Well, I suppose not." Zoma smiles brightly, head shaking. "Thank you. I tried, you know. For you at least. Was easier than with the others." Cause he's crazy too. She doesn't need to say it as she knows it. Instead she just smiles again and moves into that arm waiting for her, head tilting up to stare overhead through the trees to the sky. "It's a beautiful day."
Derek's arm, brawny still after ten turns of alternating toil and leisure, hangs companionably around Zoma's shoulders, around her neck. He tips up his head and looks into the trees as she does and agrees, "It is."
It requires one motion, or rather a series of motions, exacting and expert, all executed in synchrony. He tightens the bend of his arm so it tucks back toward itself beneath her chin, at the same time bending back his spine. As if he's a harpstring snapping, he jerks straight, the motion going through his arm, downward, to take her head - her neck - along with. Snap.
A morning breeze whispers through the leaves, setting them rustling. A fruit drops off of a branch to the ground, landing with a wet sort of thud, and the trees rustle more, unperturbed.
Where: The alley and the jungle
When: Early morning on day 27, month 7, turn 3 of the 7th Pass.
What: Zoma pays a final visit to Derek. He does her a big favor.
Note: Thaaaaaank you, Derek! Thank you, thank you, thank you for being the awesome that you are. And thank you to everyone who played with Zoma who is so insane and crazy and was a ball to torment people with. <3 every last one of you.
4/13/2007
On the exiles' island, it is 06:18 on day 27, month 7, turn 3 of the 7th Pass.
It is a very, very early morning on a day that would be insignificant were it not so close to a day that will be, for the island people, extremely important. As it is, there is so little sleep left to get and so much work left to do before J'lor will have to loose weyrlings and grown dragons to Nera's hands and helpers to load, before Derek will have his last few words with certain people about expected behaviour and actions once they reach the mainland, before the islands will fade behind a curtain of black between - hopefully forever.
Derek suffers little from lack of sleep. Or suffers the same as he always does. Every night there have been men - and a night or two, a woman - in the Alley, but every morning the cave is empty save its only occcupant of over ten turns, breakfasting as the cool and sideways light of dawn creeps up the beach.
This morning he stands in the cavemouth, eating a fruit from his hand, watching the long shadows shrink on the rocks and sand. The ocean is at middling tide and the wave crests are low; the day is too calm.
Whatever the island's most distant occupant has been up to she's been doing it alone and away from all the hustle and bustle. Zoma's not been around in other words. While she might see someone every now and again they rarely see her at the same time. Since her last visit she hasn't appeared again. Looking for her cards most likely. But this morning there's the sound of someone scrambling up the rocks, singing at the top of her lungs.
For all she looks as ragged as ever, Zoma sounds quite cheerful. She's clean, if more ragged looking than normal. When she pops into view one hand waves wildly. In the other she clutches something and once she's on her feet she hops over towards where the leader stands. "Good morning, fearless leader. I was talking about you."
Singing and hopping: few people approach Derek thus. He probably doesn't have to draw his focus back from the ocean horizon and fix that pale and beady gaze on Zoma to know it's her - but he does so anyway, so that she has his obvious attention when she gets up to him. "I am not quite fearless," he informs her, and steps back a half a pace so there is, in some sense, a little room she could get through if she's intent on going into the Alley past him. "Talking to whom?"
"To not so fearless leader number one. Well, number two? I get the numbers confused. Still, I was talking to J'lor. You know how he is. He didn't understand it at all." Zoma's head tilts to the left and to the right and then back. Hopping past him she heads into the alley with a few final sung lines. "He didn't understand at all. I said that. I have something for you!" She looks over her shoulder and smiles brightly as she says this.
"I doubt he would appreciate either number being applied, really," Derek observes, turning in place as Zoma hops past, watching her. It's like having a pet bird. A parrot. Who learned language from a crazy person. Sort of. He watches her, anyway, the corners of his moustache twitching with whatever strange pleasure her bizarre behaviour brings him. "What was it he didn't understand? And you don't have to bring me things."
Still hopping, Zoma bobs her head up and down. "I know! That is why it is a gift. Because I did not /have/ to. I mean, seriously. It's like you're not paying attention, but I know you are! Anyway, it doesn't matter. I don't have to talk to him again after all." Holding out her hand she waggles what's in it, looks like a card. "And I told him what you needed. I do not trust him to actually take care of it, but he might. So, don't worry. I thought about being sure you are ok after I am gone."
"About what I needed." Only a couple of exchanges in and Derek is reduced - as he so often is, with Zoma - to repeating what she says, or altering the pronouns and feeding it back to her. Whether he does this to express confusion or to fake comprehension is never entirely clear; his expression tends to be nonplussed. It is especially that way now, as he turns the rest of the way inward and, brushing a fruit-juice-enhanced hand across his ragged pants to dry it, comes over to receive the card she's offering.
The card is an ace. The ace of crafts. Zoma giggles as she hands it over. "See? Because you are crafty! It's why I saved that one for you when I gave the other two away to my little brother." His lack of comprehension has never bothered her. If she's even really noticed it. He has always humored her and so she puts up with it all. "Yes. That with me gone there will be no one to make you smile and make you laugh. It's sad. You're so serious all the time and you have so much to worry about. So I told him to keep an eye out for someone who might take my place. It's the least I could do for not coming with you. I feel bad leaving you."
"I'm crafty." Part of the wit of this method is in picking out the best parts of what the parrot's said to parrot back. Derek says it while looking down at the card in his hand, then looks up at Zoma while he tucks it into the only pocket on his person that still holds things put into it, at his hip. "For leaving me," he says, looking at her, then looks down at what's in his other hand - the fruit, half-eaten, its juices draining down over his knuckles. A shake of his dark head and he pads over to the table to put down his breakfast there. "There's a lot to plan for. To think of ahead of time. Where are you going?"
"Well, you are a lot of things I imagine, but I prefer to focus on the positive. I knew where that one was too. The others I still didn't find. Although I stopped looking." Zoma shrugs at this and she watches the card be put away with more attention than she's watched anything else so far. "Planning is not really my thing, you know. I'm not a leader though. I follow. I do it well. I think that may have been part of my problem." At his question her head shakes and she regards him almost sadly. "I'm going nowhere, Derek. I'm staying here. I thought I'd made that clear. Maybe not to you? It all blends in after awhile. I'm staying."
"Then why do you say you're leaving me," Derek asks in a tone that's more rhetorical than questioning, padding away from the table to bend and fish up from a raggedy towel on the floor a tin cup and a gourd, both evidently draining from a fresh washing. "Instead of the other way around. And why did you stop looking?" He straightens and pours water from the gourd into the cup, not looking up even when he starts toward her to hand out the drink, offering.
"Well, you are leaving me I suppose. But it's the same thing. I am not going with you. So, I am leaving you. I can't go, you see? Even though you need me." Zoma smiles at this, if sadly. "So, I am leaving. By not leaving. It was just easier to say this I guess. Sometimes I am confusing I suppose, but you tend to understand. More than I think you let on." Looking at the cup she tips her head over again and then takes it. "Thank you. You understand, right?"
"I understand you're not coming along," Derek replies. "You're going to have to be scarce. We're agreed to leave no one behind." He withdraws his hand once she has the cup, then stands there holding the gourd he poured that cupful from, looking on Zoma with an expression that, for once, might actually read to the average person appropriately for what he's thinking or feeling. Thoughtfully concerned. Consternated. "Are you out of cards?"
Grinning over the cup, Zoma bobs her head up and down. "I'm good at being scarce. I'm always scarce. Well, I can be scarce in the body as well as in the head." Pausing so she might take a drink she shakes her head sadly. "I don't have to be scarce anymore though. It's why I am here." Changing the cup from one hand to the next she sighs quietly. "I need a favor, Derek. I know I never even gave you a real game and that you've done plenty for me already, but I need this. I can't change my mind. I don't want to go back. I trust you."
"You said that before," Derek notes in a sandy whisper, and puts down the dried hand into his dry pocket to lay thick, worn fingers over the surface of a worn, tired card recently tucked away there. "That you trust me." It takes only the slightest widening of his pale eyes to turn his whole countenance subtly from confused to warily, suspiciously knowing - and Derek turns away, moving back to the Alley's mouth at a speed that could feel a little bit like flight, like escaping. But as though dawn drives him back he stops there in the entrance, a shadow defined by light.
"I wouldn't ask if I had any other recourse. You know that, right? I wouldn't do this to you if I had any other way." Zoma sounds tired and she empties the cup before setting it down quietly on the table. "Tell me can't and I will find another way. I wouldn't ask, but I'm so tired now, Derek. I can't go back and I can't stay. I thought maybe I could, but the more I think about it. . .I'm too scared. To stay. To go. To take away both options." Digging her nails into her palms she stares at him as he retreats and then stops. "If you can't I'll do something else. I don't know what. But something. I just don't want. . .I shouldn't have asked. I'm sorry. After all you've done for me." There is, somewhere, still a faint bit of cheer in her tone. It's so quietly there it might be missed, but even now it can't be entirely driven back.
"Why are you scared?" Derek asks the question in a tired, weary tone. Whatever holds him back from the cavemouth deprives him also from the chance to stand right there in the entryway and lean a shoulder against the rock. He folds his arms over his middle, uncharacteristically awkward-seeming, looking out toward sea with an uncommon longing. Out there is escape. "I promised," he notes. "I think."
"I know," Zoma whispers to the last, ignoring the first. She sits down on the ground and pulls her legs up to her chest so she can wrap her arms around them. "I know you did, but I won't make you. It's not what I can do. We cannot. . .force." Well, she cannot force. She won't. So, she just has to wait and see what will be done. "I'm scared for lots of reasons. Of what I might do. Of what I won't do. Of where I'll wind up. I left that life behind. I left the sheep behind. I won't go back and be one of them again. Not knowing what I know. Not having been through what I went through."
"I didn't lie to you." He lies, sometimes, in promises. So the clarification is important. Then Derek is quiet for a long moment, discontented, looking out to sea. When he speaks again, it is not to what he's been told. Not the answers he asked for. It is a request, softly spoken. Gently worded. Asked of the ocean as much as the woman tucked knees-up behind him in the cave. "May we go for a walk?"
While he is quiet, she is quiet. Between his words, Zoma just watches him. She studies him from head to toe. She is not looking him over however. She long stopped playing that game when she couldn't get any fun responses. Instead she found other ways to torment him. In her mind anyway. After a few minutes of quiet she rises to her feet. "A walk. Sure. I like walking. I walk all the time." There's no more concern over being around him than before. If she's aware, and how could she not be, of what she's asked then it doesn't bother her. Of course, she is crazy.
Derek is, to be certain, tormented now. He steps back from the Alley's entrance and puts out a hand toward it: she is meant to precede him, to bodily break the force that keeps -him- from escaping. His brows are crouched but his expression is otherwise bland, faceless. "We can go up into the trees. It's cool there." So close after dawn it's cool everywhere. "Which cards did you give K'tric?"
Zoma skips out of the cave as if she hasn't a care in the world. Unbothered by anything and she pauses to stare out at the ocean. "It's so pretty here, don't you think? You did manage to get one of the best views on the island. An eye for such things." Turning to look at him she smiles brightly. "Aces. Other two aces. Figure, he'll need em both."
"J'lor's the one who picked it, in a way," Derek replies, as he steps across the threshhold out into the rocks and sand. He pauses there to look out at the sea, a vista he's seen thousands of times now, and long ago tired of seeing - now it's just a place to rest his eyes. "And the fourth ace?" He looks from the horizon to Zoma, then up at the path that will lead them up the low end of the cliff to paths that lead alternately to the island's heart or to thick jungle (and far beyond it, a clearing likely full of morning-drowsy weyrlings).
"He picks things. J'lor does. You pick things. We all pick things." Zoma shakes her head and skips along. Under her breath she sings every now and again. "Don't have it. Killed it. Dead. Gave it to the fish. Couldn't figure out what else should be done with it. Saved the best for you. That's what matters, right?" The other people on the island are certainly not being thought of. She might be aware of them. Most likely she's barely aware of the man she walks with.
"We all pick things. You and I can pick some breakfast." Derek has the ace of crafts. His fingers squirm at his pocket to confirm it, then go back to his side; his hands swing a little as he ascends the path just a little behind her and to the right, at her shoulder. Little sandy stones skitter downhill from beneath their feet, his bare and toughened to the trail; then their steps turn silent as the dirt path gives way to one lined with fallen leaves and the indeed-cool crispness of the shade absorbs them. "Which one was it? The one you gave to the fish."
The singing stops, the quiet of the island overpowering any desire Zoma has to make noise. She walks quietly, she's good at walking quiet. "Breakfast. I forgot to eat it. I always do. I used to forget all kinds of things. Sometimes I remember things. Mostly I forget things. It's ok. Sometimes it happens." Skip, hop, hop. It's like a picnic. "The other one. The one I didn't give to you or two Kats. The other one. You know. But the most important one I saved for you. Because you're my friend."
"You don't need enemies," Derek whispers in the high-pitched, faraway voice that sometimes comes out from between moustache and lower lip, inexplicably produced and at odds with his features and seeming. It's not meant, really, for her to reply. Instead he looks off into the trees, then suddenly takes a step off-path into the jungle, blazing trail by means of stomping footsteps in the underbrush. This would be, perhaps, how his feet stay so tough. "This way," he proposes as a command, and does not check to see she follows him. "Which two did you give Kat?"
When he veers she has to notice. He is behind her, after all. But notice Zoma does and when she sees where he goes she hops after him. Hippity hoppity like a rabbit. "No, I don't. No one does, really. Gave him the ace of weyrs and the ace of holds. Cause he needs em. It makes sense. And he does need both. I was going to give you another one, but you really only need the one. It's because you're you." She babbles, yes. But she babbles in such a charming way. Yeees. "It's a beautiful day."
"Does anyone else have any of them that you gave away?" As opposed to any that might have been stolen from her. Derek pauses now and again to tangle with vegetation, parting leaves or bending branches with hands and feet before moving on. A little ways ahead the undergrowth seems clearer, however.
"No. I only gave them to you and to him. No one else. No one else gets any. Just you two. The rest are hidden. Gone. Lost. Eaten. Destroyed." Zoma could find more words, sure, but she stops here to hop over a partially buried rock. "They're special. I've held onto them this long. Forever. Through it all. No matter what was done. I held onto them. They were all I had left. And I kept them. No one took them away."
"Eaten," laughs Derek, bright and smiling for a split-second flash, fast as lightning. He drudges on through the plants until breaking through into a grove of taller trees, their tropical leaves wide overhead, branches strange-shaped. They bear fruit, the stuff he prefers with his fish, and the mild wet season brings those fruits on heavy and sweet. They perfume the air, red and green and golden mottled, hanging overhead. Derek takes a few more steps into the clearer undergrowth and looks up, his hands coming to rest mother-hennish on his hips. The thick canopy all but blocks the sky above.
"You took them away," he notes then, voice still a little warm from the laugh that didn't last. "From yourself."
"I hid them. I was going to hurt them. I was going to kill them." Zoma stops just in the clearing and shakes her head rapidly. "I didn't want to." One hand runs over her eyes like she might have been crying. But she wouldn't be because she doesn't cry. She's not sane enough to do that. "I couldn't do anything but hide them. It was the only choice I had." She steps farther into the clearing and lifts up one foot to stomp on the ground. "This feels funny. Maybe my feet. I don't know. You know why I had to do it, right? You understand."
A great sigh escapes the island leader, and he turns around, drawing his gaze down from the fruit overhead to the one stomping in the clearing. "Zoma. Would it be easier, just to come along? Would it be easier to pack up and leave all the cards behind? You could have a new deck, when we get to Five Mines. You could have - " Derek stops, his mouth abruptly thin, vanishing beneath the unhappy brush of his moustache, and he just looks at her, brows low and pained.
Shuddering all over, Zoma closes her eyes. "Don't make me go. I'm not who I am there. I'm not-" Drawing in a shuddery breath she opens her eyes and looks over at him. "I'm not right. We both know I am not right, Derek. Back there I will fit in even less than I do here. I can't go back. You know I can't go back. If you. . .If you want me to leave here now tell me. I'll go somewhere else. I'll wait til people go and do it then. There's nothing there for me. I never thought I'd ever get back."
There is something in him that finds this agonizing. Inappropriate. Wrong. Something in him that wants to shrink away into a shroud of doom and not know what he's done, what he's done already, how it happened. That is the part of him that listens to her, that looks at her with that aching expression. It is also the part of him that he has to put away. It takes him a moment. The cases and boxes and crates in which he stores himself are not as well-oiled in the hinges as they once were, and Derek creaks literally as he turns from her, jaw grinding audibly with the stretch and turn of his head. He looks up again, into the trees, at the fruit hanging above. He's quiet a long time, too long, but finally his hands slip off of his hips. One goes into the pocket, and comes out with the card. The gesture's easy, the little slip of stiff hide held just so between two fingers. He flicks it upward, bending his elbow, so she can see it over his shoulder. "Do you want it?"
What goes on in his head is not even guessed at by Zoma who has so much going on in her own head. What happens in there is nothing good. One part of her screams to run away and hide and make sure he knows not where she is. Another part of her wants to curl up and cry for everything that she's been through and what she's done. The part of her that is in control right now just stands there. Stands there and stares at them as she shudders from head to toe. Looking at the card her eyes light up with some semblance of sanity. "I need it." Whispered as she watches the card and moves closer towards it. Like it hangs there with no help from him. "He took everything else from me. That's all I kept. I gave everything else away. But that I need. That I held onto no matter what."
"Take it," Derek suggests. But it is just a suggestion, whispered up toward the fruiting trees that block out the sky above. "If this one's mine, it ought to be enough for you. It could get you through the trip. You could start over." The card twitches in a movement of his fingers, subtle, its glossed surface and inked shapes catching light. "Haven't you lost enough?"
"I gave it to you. It's not mine anymore." But that doesn't stop her from drifting closer. The card lures her closer and while she is aware he is there it's only in the way she is aware the trees are there. That the ground exists and the sky is overhead. "I can't start over. I'd be wrong. I'm wrong. That's what they told me. My family and everyone. I'm wrong, Derek. And I'd be a liability. I'd do something wrong and I'd be someone they pointed to as why. . .why we're all wrong." Another step and she pauses, looking at the card. "I can't try. Can I hold it though? Can I say goodbye? Just for a second." Her hand reaches for the card.
"Of course." Derek's hand stills and the flashing lure of the card stops catching light; still he stands quiet, head tilted back, gaze somewhere among the leaves high overhead. She'll have to snatch the card from him, but he's as good as a statue, unbreathing.
Another step forward and Zoma flicks her eyes for a second to him. Just for a second before she has to look back at her card. "I just want to tell it goodbye. I said goodbye to everyone else. I said goodbye to you. I know there's something wrong. But, well-" Nothing else is said because she's got to grab the card.
Derek lets her have the card. When it's out of his fingers his hand drops and he turns around, to witness, in silence.
The card is stared at for a moment. Zoma turns it over in her hands. She peers at the back and the front and she runs her finger around the edge of it. "It's the best one. I knew you would appreciate it." Her voice is sad, but there's still no sign she's going to cry. Clear-eyed she lifts the card up to kiss the back of it and then she holds it out. "Here. It's yours now. I'm sorry, you know. I'm not sure this isn't a mistake, but I'm afraid. And I want you to know that I just- Well. I know you didn't have to be nice to me."
"Thank you," says Derek. Maybe for the card that she holds out, that he reaches out to take from her. He puts it into his pocket again, then holds his arm out another time. It forms an arch, a half a hug, a place to put one's shoulders beside him. "You've been good to me, Zoma. As good as you know how. I'm sorry you won't come along."
"Will miss you. Well, I suppose not." Zoma smiles brightly, head shaking. "Thank you. I tried, you know. For you at least. Was easier than with the others." Cause he's crazy too. She doesn't need to say it as she knows it. Instead she just smiles again and moves into that arm waiting for her, head tilting up to stare overhead through the trees to the sky. "It's a beautiful day."
Derek's arm, brawny still after ten turns of alternating toil and leisure, hangs companionably around Zoma's shoulders, around her neck. He tips up his head and looks into the trees as she does and agrees, "It is."
It requires one motion, or rather a series of motions, exacting and expert, all executed in synchrony. He tightens the bend of his arm so it tucks back toward itself beneath her chin, at the same time bending back his spine. As if he's a harpstring snapping, he jerks straight, the motion going through his arm, downward, to take her head - her neck - along with. Snap.
A morning breeze whispers through the leaves, setting them rustling. A fruit drops off of a branch to the ground, landing with a wet sort of thud, and the trees rustle more, unperturbed.