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🧙 WHO: Kate & Red Wine
⚔️️ WHAT: Second meetings and healing circle therapy
🕒 WHEN: IDK whenever the healing circle is on
🗺️ WHERE: the castle gardens
⚠️ WARNINGS: healing circle so probably trauma, mirror aftereffects, etc. will update if needed!

The bustling chaos of the market is an easy distraction, full of noise and five different stall owners vying for your attention at any one time, but eventually the repeated calls to check out THIS shitty piece of tat instead of the OTHER shitty piece of tat wear on Kate's nerves, and the circle forming to the side becomes more interesting.

It seems like a whole lot of nothing, but that's still an improvement over the salesman a few feet away who is yelling about his all natural haircare solutions. Keeps your curls looking bouncy! (Sure.) Stepping out of the maze of hastily thrown up stalls and onto the grass is a breath of relief — the wash of quiet calms the growing irritation of frayed nerves, a moment's peace which Kate embraced long enough to fold her arms and lean against the trunk of a tree, watching witches and wizards guide confused looking passers by to grab herbs, to join in with their circle.

Sounds ridiculous, but the quiet chatter and shuffling of footsteps, people running through the gardens to try and get the herbs required, is a much less irritating distraction from the words which have lingered in the back of her mind since she stumbled into the hall of mirrors;

Giving up really runs in your veins, doesn't it?

— tch. Grey cat ears twitch and her nails dig into her sleeves as her arms wrap more tightly around herself. She shouldn't keep lingering on it, not when it's just some dumb spell, when there are so many other things she could be doing, but it keeps coming back nevertheless. And, almost as if sensed, a witch perks her head up and calls over to Kate;

"Why not join in? Just get some nice smelling herbs and relax with us, dearie!"

Kate's eyes — currently as feline as her ears, the sharper nails and the tail which twitches as she's addressed — dilate at the suggestion, betraying the surprise that keeps itself out of the rest of her face. "I'm good." She'll just watch.

But that doesn't deter the witch. If anything, she grows more stubborn about it. "Don't be silly. You should!" Hm, just let her look... Ah! "How about partnering with that gentleman, there?" She gestures vaguely, and Kate — despite herself — follows the direction of her arm.

Right to a familiar face.

"...Ah." Welp. "... Hey."

She's good at this.

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Curiosity, of a sort, is really the only reason Red Wine is here at all. He hadn't intended to join in on any of it, content to stand off to the side in the shade with his arms loosely folded and to simply observe, but it doesn't look like he's going to get any peace without simply going home.

'How about partnering with that gentleman?' he hears, and his eyes immediately shift towards the sensation of being watched.

He hasn't been able to avoid the effects of the animal magic curse affecting the town, but with so many people bothered by it he didn't feel too much of a need to hide at home. Rather than his usual pointed ears, a pair of light beige fennec ears sweep back from under his hair. They flatten slightly when the witch turns her attention on him.

"I'm not here to--" But then he sees Kate. His jaw snaps shut, and he lets out a soft sound of irritation. "... Hello."

If it's someone he's already familiar with, well, maybe it's fine.

Wouldn't it be nice if they could at least not look like a neckbeard's wet dream while they did this? Wouldn't it be nice if they didn't have to do this at all. But the Witch is shooing them off, listing out the herbs they need. This that and the other, go on, dearies.

"... Don't think we're getting a choice." She should have continued to take her chances with the salespeople. Anyway!

"What's yarrow look like?" Or any of them, actually.

"Yarrow..." Well, if they're being drawn into this. He isn't feeling particularly pressed to walk away, despite knowing full-well that he could.

"It has white flowers. The leaves are feathered, like a fern."

And he supposes that they will find it somewhere around here, if the witches are so keen to have them look for it themselves. And the others...

"Apple blossoms, cinnamon, and lemon balm..." He clicks his tongue lightly against the back of his teeth. "A small pink, or white flower... growing in bunches on an apple tree. Lemon balm looks like mint, but it smells different if you rub the leaves between your fingers. Cinnamon is, ah... bark. I'll know it when I see it."

Those sound easy enough to grab, and though Kate would rather be watching this from the outside, she's not exactly darting off and out of here. How bad could it be, really?

Given enough steps through this place, she finds a flower that seems to correspond to the description Red Wine gave. White flower. Fern leaves. And she's guessing that smell is another marker that she's on the right path. They're familiar enough, too. Plants that grow back home. Chalk up one more similarity between Earth and this place.

"Guessin' you wanted to watch as well?" she asks while picking a few bunches of the flower, turning her head to look for Red Wine.

"That's right. Getting involved in foreign magical rituals isn't something I make a habit of."

He frowns as he says that, but then crouches down to examine a plant growing close to the ground. A herb, it looks like, but as he disturbs it with his hands and gently breaks a couple of leaves between his fingers it releases a distinct citrus scent.

"Mm." Pleasant. He picks a few sprigs of it and then leaves it be. "Lemon balm."

It should be enough. He's not really sure what to expect of all this, and he supposes they can still refuse if they decide they don't like the idea. In the meantime, gathering a few plants isn't a large imposition.

That's fair and understandable. She can't say she's big on the whole idea either, not when she has no real idea what they're doing other than healing.

Whatever that means. She isn't even injured, so?

If it was essential to the bigger picture of why they're here, she might have agreed sooner. But there's nothing stating that it is. It's just a ritual for the sake of having one, isn't it?

Well, they're stuck now, and after a few more sprigs of herbs are picked, Kate looks at the bundles and tips her head towards the circle.

"C'mon." This is probably enough. They should see what they're in for.

Honestly, Red Wine feels like a lot of things happen here just for the sake of happening... but he can't really say that Tierra is any different. People there love their festivals and will take any opportunity to have one. And why not, he supposes. Even Food Souls are welcome to such things, usually.

Before they're done, he prises out some cinnamon from the trunk of a tree. The smell of it hits as easily as that of the lemon balm did, making him sure he picked up the right thing. It's strange to find all of these plants growing in the same place, but he's not going to think about that too hard.

"Mm, all right." He's still not too keen on this idea, but... nothing is going to stop them leaving at any time, right? "I'm coming."

Maybe it's just one of those human (or... what can you call it when you know there's a million species out there, some distinctly not human) things — the ability to find a way to celebrate and come together even when everything around them is falling apart. To act like nothing's wrong even when it so blatantly is.

She has no idea, and honestly, it's a little galling if she thinks too hard. Here they are, being asked to play house and treat Camelot like their home, while their real homes hang in the balance.

And it's with that thought that she enters the circle, giving a wordless look to Red Wine as they sit down. This is going to be a pain in the ass, but at least it could smell worse than burning herbs, really.

It's the little things.

Put your hands together and focus on the source of your pain — another look, just as sceptical as the first, but this time there's something more behind it. A hesitancy, a softness to the edges and a press of her lips together.

The source, huh? The voice in the mirror that reminded her of all the ways she's useless, the way she so easily went to turn tail and avoid it, so eager and willing to forget the way her brother's life hangs in the balance of this whole Avalonian clusterfuck, a hostage to the threat they're supposed to be fixing.

Those things come to mind.

And Red Wine still isn't sure about it. The look he shoots back at Kate as they sit down could very easily be classified as wary. There's something about this entire thing that he's not keen on being involved in, and yet has managed to be entirely swept up by.

The source of your pain?

Well.

It's a mixture of things for Red Wine. The mirror had hit very little, pushing no buttons that he didn't spend each day pushing all by himself anyway, but there were certainly other things. People he missed terribly. The losses he'd had recently, and some from many years ago that still stung. The way he would hold himself carefully above certain levels of relationships now, because losing people hurt more than being alone.

And how much he hates - hates - being alone.

There's no real source, nothing to actually focus on, so his mind wanders instead. That's probably not how this is supposed to go.

It's a strong, aching loneliness, one that's so familiar that, for a moment, Kate barely registers that the ritual is working. People disappearing time and again, the walls which build up in response to that...

Yeah. That's all a little too familiar, and it brings up something deeper, something more basic and instinctual than the goading at the mirrors:

the not-so-simple question of who are you when you're alone? When the only reason she has to exist is a world away and with every month that passes, the sense of urgency to return home shrivels further?

Who the hell is she here? And does she even deserve to explore that? Why is she so willing to waste time and ignore the bigger picture when she should be protecting her brother from all of this?

That's her purpose. And she's failing at it.

"I can't tell what's coming from you and what's me."

Red Wine breaks the silence to say this with a soft, bitter-sounding laugh. He looks down at his hands, loosely held together, and the fox-like ears poking out of his hair are entirely pinned back in an expression of distress that he has no control over.

He's been pretending he's fine, and for who? Maybe it's just for Century Egg, who needs him to be stable at least most of the time to act as a buffer for his own occasional instability. Maybe it's for everyone else so no one has to deal with what he's like when he's going off the rails.

Heh.

"Sorry. Maybe this was a bad idea."

With the silence broken, the onslaught of emotions seems to subside, fading into the same old background noise they usually are in a way that's so sudden and unnatural that Kate can't suppress the shudder that passes down her spine.

Things should not work that way.

"Don't think it matters," she offers by way of reply to his first comment, because all too much of that mess of feeling was simply that familiar that it's almost laughable. Like attracts like, maybe. Always finding people who are some amount of fucked up.

Or maybe Avalon needs them to be some amount of fucked up to come here in the first place. Who knows.

As for it being a bad idea? Probably. But they kind of knew that going in, didn't they? Otherwise neither of them would have tried to insist that they just wanted to observe.

The herbs keep burning, but she drops the connection, lets her hands sit loosely threaded together in her lap and inhales, trying to push away the odd awareness that the ringing of pain switched off like a light and clear her head.

"You're by yourself, then?"

The question is broached after minutes of silence, her words slow and carefully chosen. alone, perhaps, is a simpler way of putting it, but that word draws up the pangs of the emotional bond forged and gets lost of her tongue, replaced by something softer.

The question slips under his ribs like a knife and lodges there, sharp and uncomfortable without quite being pain. His gaze wavers for just a moment before it drops, and the tips of his ears dip ever so slightly downwards (something he tries to keep from happening in mixed company and is much more difficult with these ridiculous animal ears he's currently sporting).

"You could say that," he replies, his voice deliberately measured to keep the swell of emotion out of it.

"I've had people I was close to, but... I don't have any of them now." Red Wine sighs carefully then rubs the back of his neck. "And as you might imagine... when you're a couple of centuries old, making friends isn't always easy."

The animal features are a bitch. Her tail twitches and her eyes dilate way too easily, letting every little fluctuation in her mood be broadcast to anyone with eyes.

Annoying. But at least she's not the only poor sod dealing with it.

Her gaze travels upwards, head tipping back and away from Red Wine's face for a moment. Whether intentional or not, it allows him a touch of privacy as he speaks. So people have left, huh? It hurt to realise Kaede wasn't around, but not as much as the ache for home she feels every day.

Not because of home being any good, but simply because of who is trapped there. She likes people here, many of them, but none of them are as easy to slip into working with as Ainsworth was. None of them are her brother, that piece of her heart always lodged with him even when they can't talk or when they're at each other's throats for stupid little things that wouldn't matter five minutes after hanging up the phone.

She can't imagine what it's like to be centuries old, would never want to imagine, but making friends is an art that hasn't been easy in years, and only got worse the older and busier she got.

So maybe, if that were to continue, she could imagine it being impossible.

"Easier to put yourself where there's no chance of being hurt." Being alone sucks, and even if only in the most practical of terms, Kate doesn't believe people were made for it. There's a reason humanity came together in tribes and villages, towns and cities. Because no one person has all the skills they need to survive alone, without any contact with the rest of humankind. But losing people, feeling that grief again...

That sucks more. So it's easier to deal with the ache of being alone than to let yourself think you're getting better, that life is getting better, and watch it be snatched away.

He lets out a soft laugh through his nose. There's truth in what she says, but Red Wine has been around for long enough to know that it certainly isn't as easy as that.

"It's easier, but if you know you're not going to die, would you want to be alone forever?"

Despite the words there's a twinge of fondness with it. Outside of this place Red Wine has people to rely on, people he knows will be by his side no matter what and who he can trust to not leave him alone. He misses them too, but in a different way to how he misses Bailey.

"Avoiding getting hurt isn't worth that." He sighs then, forcing his shoulders to relax. "I've lost people before. It's different every time."

That's the fundamental difference, isn't it? Kate knows life is temporary, knows her life is temporary, and wouldn't have it any other way. The thought of filling out endless amounts of time, watching people come and go through centuries?

If she were Red Wine, she'd have already gone mad.

But at least... "Got your answer, then." If he thinks it isn't worth it, and doesn't like being alone, the answer is simply to keep making friends, isn't it?

Some Food Souls do go mad. He knows of some who have crumbled under the weight of their isolation. Some might be able to come back from it, and some others... they turn their minds to things that make them no better than the monsters that Food Souls were first summoned to fight against.

"I suppose so."

Then he sighs, shaking his head with a faint and rueful smile.

"What do you think - shall we get out of here?"

"Before they start round two?" Because she's looking over at those leaders and they do seem to be chatting and preparing.

Yeah. Let's get out of here. She thinks they've seen enough of each other's pain for one lifetime.

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wanna wrap this up?

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