Gonou hands it over, dismissing the thanks with a little you're-welcome hum. He skirts the edge of Jedao's bed to set the onion next to the garlic pot.
"It's no trouble. I'm just glad you weren't killed," he says, mildly acerbic. People come back on the Barge, but Gonou's in no hurry to see his friend test that.
“I just got a little scraped up around the edges,” he says, with a smile that is about two-thirds quiet joy that Gonou cares, and only one-third smugness over his own pun. “I’ve survived much worse than this, promise.”
"Yes, well, that's very lucky," Gonou says, turning around enough to give Jedao the full one-eyebrow-raised treatment. "I've seen the library. That was a bad fire -- weren't some people killed?"
He sighs, a little performatively. "And here I'd just been asking people to settle for boutique murders instead of making a big mess...."
The smile drops, despite a small attempt at resurgence at the reminder of Gonou’s timely and tragically unheeded request. His shoulders hunch up and he sighs roughly.
“Fuck, I don’t know, probably. I helped pull two people out, and then the wardens with a million powers told me to sit down, they had it handled, so I did that.”
Gonou looks over at him, then ducks his chin, and reaches out to prod Jedao's ankle lightly with a fingertip.
"I don't know that anyone was," he says firmly. "All I've seen is the damage to the library. And that's bad enough that I'm glad you didn't go back in."
"I'd never seen fire before," he says quietly, looking down into his water glass, although he doesn't pull his ankle away. "Not up close like that, not for real. Except meditation candles and stuff, I mean."
"That's right," Gonou says, startled. "You've always lived in space, haven't you?" And that means, among other things, that campfires and hearth fires, much less dangerous conflagrations, certainly wouldn't have been normal for him.
"I've never been in a major fire," he adds. "Although I've seen burning buildings from a distance. They move... very fast."
"Flares, scatters, - waves, maybe. I didn't really think about it. I guess I expected it to move the way bombs propagate in space, radiating out in silence. I didn't expect - the way it stays, hunches over something and devours it, like an animal. I didn't expect it to surge and flicker and then - keep being there, just as much. And the noise."
"It's a runaway reaction, really." It's a lot, for someone who has never seen a fire bigger than a candle before. It's a lot even for someone who knows what a house fire can do, but running into it like that, not knowing--
There's a part of him that's tempted to curl up beside Jedao and hold him protectively. He classifies that part of him as probably the fault of Zhu Bajie, who was the touchy-feely sort, and also probably not that helpful.
"Big wildfires on a planet can even make their own weather," he adds, taking refuge in trivia instead. "They'll spawn vast clouds full of lightning."
Most of the time Jedao would very desperately like to be held, but not quite today, when he feels his inhumanity so keenly, when he has to be careful with his secrets and his pain in the same breath, lest the one reveal the other.
"I saw a hurricane from orbit, once. Hard to get a safer distance than that, and it was - incredible."
"A hurricane..." Gonou murmurs. "I've never seen one of those, either. Although I don't think it's possible to have a safe distance from one on the ground, and still see it.
"That's the sort of thing that the Enclosure would really be good for-- isn't it?"
"Yeah, it is. I showed Kyoko the view from some of the station windows a little while ago. Even without any weird weather, it's....pretty spectacular."
"If you were intruding, I wouldn't have opened the door," Jedao says with a shrug. This might not be entirely true - witness Flint bullying him into opening the door yesterday - but it's true in spirit, and in this particular case.
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Re: (the day after the library fire)
"It's no trouble. I'm just glad you weren't killed," he says, mildly acerbic. People come back on the Barge, but Gonou's in no hurry to see his friend test that.
Re: (the day after the library fire)
Re: (the day after the library fire)
He sighs, a little performatively. "And here I'd just been asking people to settle for boutique murders instead of making a big mess...."
Re: (the day after the library fire)
“Fuck, I don’t know, probably. I helped pull two people out, and then the wardens with a million powers told me to sit down, they had it handled, so I did that.”
Maybe he shouldn’t have, though.
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"I don't know that anyone was," he says firmly. "All I've seen is the damage to the library. And that's bad enough that I'm glad you didn't go back in."
Re: (the day after the library fire)
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"I've never been in a major fire," he adds. "Although I've seen burning buildings from a distance. They move... very fast."
Re: (the day after the library fire)
The way it moved, the way it breathed, reshaping the rooms around itself.
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"What did you expect?"
Re: (the day after the library fire)
He didn't expect that at all.
Re: (the day after the library fire)
There's a part of him that's tempted to curl up beside Jedao and hold him protectively. He classifies that part of him as probably the fault of Zhu Bajie, who was the touchy-feely sort, and also probably not that helpful.
"Big wildfires on a planet can even make their own weather," he adds, taking refuge in trivia instead. "They'll spawn vast clouds full of lightning."
Re: (the day after the library fire)
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"No, I think I'd like to see it myself," he admits. "From a safe distance. I've only ever read about things like that."
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"I saw a hurricane from orbit, once. Hard to get a safer distance than that, and it was - incredible."
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"That's the sort of thing that the Enclosure would really be good for-- isn't it?"
Re: (the day after the library fire)
She'd seemed to calm down a little, at least.
"Give me a few days, and I'll take you?"
Re: (the day after the library fire)
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"Yes, please."
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"Well, then," he says, "should I leave you to rest for now?"
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"Thank you, again."
Re: (the day after the library fire)
"Good! Sleep is the best medicine, after all." And, more seriously, with a little duck of his chin, he adds, "...Thank you for letting me intrude."
Re: (the day after the library fire)
Re: (the day after the library fire)