cigsandbeer | IC INBOX

Gojyo snorts.

"Fucking congrats. What, don't kids go frog-catching where you're from?"

His tone isn't mocking; more amused at the sheer excitement.

He shakes his head, answering in earnest.

"The Citadel only had cats. And before that, on my ship, there weren't any animals at all. I've seen some different kinds in ports now, but...they're so small."

He opens his hands and the frog ribbits tentatively a few times, then hop-flops out of his hands to splash back into the water, an ungainly lurching movement that makes Jedao laugh in delight.

"How the fuck does that work, not even seen like, birds and stuff even on a--"

Nevermind that it'd be bonkers to raise a child from infancy out at sea. ...No, wait. He points a finger up at the sky.

"You like that Abel guy? Living on a space ship?"

Jedao nods. "Yeah. The Citadel is a station, but still in space."

He looks away, although it's pensive more than anything else, not exactly sad. Wistful maybe.

"I was also never really a child. I woke up feeling 17 with almost no memories and got tossed into a war days later. There weren't any children there. I think there are some in the Citadel, if their parents are living and working there, but I wasn't allowed to meet any of them."

"...Shit."

Waking up with no memories, already a teenager... that sounds like someone Gojyo knows.

"Sorry, man. Forget I asked."

No need to talk about it if it's painful.

"If I didn't want to tell you, I wouldn't have," Jedao says with a shrug, glancing back over to him. "I didn't even need to lie, I could've left it at the spaceship thing."

But he wants Gojyo to know him. He is trying to allow Gojyo to know him. He looks back out at the river.

"Anyway. It's been a short, weird life so far. Gotten a lot better since I came here. But it means I really appreciate you sharing things like this place."

He waves at the sheer lazy shining expance of it.

"It's really beautiful."

"Yeah, well. This place isn't anything special: there are places back home with gardeners who--" he makes a little wave with a hand, "cut the trees and brushes in fancy shapes, arrange the flowers so the colours look good together, that kinda stuff.

This is just a random river close to where I used to live. I'd come here as a kid."

"Ah, gardeners. Edwin likes gardening, although I don't know if he's up to anything that fancy yet. And it doesn't need to be special to be lovely."

He tips his face up, regarding the shockingly blue sky, so bright compared to the usual black he knows.

"No, it doesn't have to be."

Gojyo knows that. What's wrong with ordinary? and all that. Lovely is... not the word he'd use, but he does like this place in all its ordinarity. It was soothing. It was somewhere to get away to for a while, when it wasn't safe to be at home.

"He working in the Greenhouse, then?"

"He's got his own pots in his cabin, mostly. I think he's working in the chapel now, for some reason."

It's not like he's religious.

"Well. Guess a place like that can be soothing too. Like, calming a stuff."

Like water is. Like gardening is (so he hears). For all that Gojyo isn't interested in religion, it's hard to not be moved hearing Sanzo recite sutras.

"Yeah? We didn't really...have chapels."

Unless he counts the remembrance hall, which he doesn't, for his own sanity.

[*and]

"You had any religion at all?"

"Not...the way it looks in most places. We had...ceremonies, and symbols, but not...there wasn't anything supernatural in it. Or worship."

"'Kay. So you know how ceremonies are comforting 'cause they like, connect people to each other? People make ceremonies be about gods 'cause life's super uncertain and fragile, and believing there's a higher power that knows what it's doing helps with all that.

So when people sing hymns, or recite prayers, or enter chapels, it's a reminder that other people have had the same fears and hopes, enough to write down prayers or compose music or build entire buildings over it. And that helps through all the shit.

I mean, I obviously don't know what kinda world that kid comes from, but... I figure that kinda stuff is more or less universal."

Jedao did not find any of the Hexarchate's ceremonies comforting, given that they consisted of public torture. In the two years after the Hexarchate's fall, he never quite managed to shake the association when the Compact held less dramatic occasions for meditation.

"Thank you for explaining it," he says softly, sincerely. Edwin's probably got his own complicated reasons - being a piece of a god himself - but Jedao will just have to ask him eventually.

Sorry, Jedao. An attempt at cultural sensitivity was made, it just didn't go all the way.

"Sure. You can probably get a smarter explanation from Hakkai or someone."

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