socialcapital | [ JACKSON HEART ]

"This is already cute."

He finds a free space on the paper and goes to sign it - this is an easy, practiced, muscle memory gesture. The O in 'Totality' is designed to look like an eclipsed sun because Of Course It Is.

[Of course it is.

Leaving Totality with the page for a moment, he returns to the pine tree, recovering two more pine cones and opening them as he did the others as he walks back, tapping the pine nuts out.]

He watches curiously. What new pigeon lore is about to be unlocked...

[It's no new pigeon lore -- just more of the same.

He takes the pen from Totality's hand, exchanging it for the small pile of seeds.]

One last thank you for the flock.

[And he takes out a small notepad of his own.]

"Bidding them a fond farewell..."

He spreads some for the pigeons, who all immediately zero in on it.

[Satin, meanwhile, sketches an orb with a beak on the notebook page. Below, he simply writes Coo, coo, and below that, six curious, angular symbols, with the sixth being a copy of the second.

He tucks the drawing into the scales of one of the pine cones, and offers it to Totality.]

They'll be here. Whenever you can sneak away, and whenever you can't -- there will always be a flock like this beyond the walls.

He takes the pine cone and looks at the drawing with a ? at the symbols, then folds it back up and into the pine cone again before putting the whole thing in a pocket.

"Every city does have its silly little birds. All right, brave pathfinder, take me back."

Alciel.

[He nods to the paper, not meeting Totality's eyes. In fact, this is a very good time to fold up his own page, once again tucking it safe away.]

I've given you enough transitory names this evening. That deserved my real one.

The thought that 'real name' could possibly mean 'True Name' doesn't occur to him, because of course as someone who is 100% Estorian with no exposure to other lives at the moment, giving a guy your true name on your first meeting is simply unthinkable.

"Okay, well... it was nice to meet you then, Alciel. I hope we'll meet again."

[Of course it's unthinkable. Even the notion of such a thing is preposterous. So there's surely no particular reason for why he slips his hands into his pockets. And nothing beyond all the other inexplicable faces he's made for why his expression is hopelessly soft.]

I hope so too. May this memory remain clear amid the haze of the rest.

Would you like to return through the back ways, or the front?

"We should go through the back so I don't have to explain myself."

The phantom thief route. Understood.

[He gives one last look at the milling pigeons and starts back, taking them in a wide circle so as not to disturb their foraging.]

He takes Satin's arm again to be cutesy. He did it on the way out, it only makes sense to do it on the way back.

[He can't help that the muscles under Totality's hand are still tense. Though maybe that, too, could be no more than the weight of taking this bird back to his cage.]

Tell me about the songs you'll sing on the way back?

"You wanna know the setlist? Well, sure."

He goes on to describe a lot of songs and specific concert planning details that might as well be a foreign language, given Jackson never really talked about the technical specifics of shows.

[It is absolutely like listening to a foreign language -- or like meeting a colleague at the university from a completely different field. But he's attentive, and has an absurdly good memory. Questions follow here and there when Totality talks about how parts are altered or enhanced by stage effects, or when he dips into favourite or challenging parts.

It's a conversation that only this moment in Umbra's past would have. And he treasures it for that.

The streets blur into the back rooms, the path back becoming just as indistinct as the path out had been. But eventually they come to a square of just slightly out-of-place drywall, and the seeping light from the room beyond.]

And here we are again. Safe and sound, as promised. And still on time.

"Still on time! I'll go start getting ready then. Thanks, this was fun."

He leans in and kisses Satin's cheek as a goodbye before letting go of his arm.

I...

[The dim light helps hide how his cheeks flush warm in the wake of that small gesture.]

I'm glad. That it was.

He smiles, practically sparkling. There is a little something of little Tali's joy and enthusiasm in him still - it doesn't feel like the smile is fake.

"And let me know next time you're gonna drop in! I can put slower songs in the setlist."

[Radiant songbird.

The danger here isn't less at all. If anything, it's worse. But this isn't the time or the place (or the person), and the most he does is take Totality's hand in his, squeezing gently.]

If I'm able to give you that forewarning, I will.

[He lifts his other hand, and the drywall panels shift silently over, leaving an open gap.]

May the rest of this night be all you want it to be.

"I'm sure it will be. Bye~"

He waves and scoots back into the room past the drywall.

[And if "this night" is the night he's set more permanently free... maybe that will be for the best, too.]

Fare well, Totality. Until our paths cross again.

[He waits until Totality is clear, then shifts the panels back into place, hiding that illicit exit from view.]

Satin is now alone in a storage room with autographed song lyrics.

[He sure is. a storage room connected to a half-formed idea of a performance venue connected to adolescent memories.

Surely this will be fine.]

There has to be a way back to the garden here somewhere. Worst to worst, being kicked out will almost certainly put me in the right direction.

[And, in true Sun Sign fashion, he just takes the direction that didn't lead to the pigeons and starts walking.]

The experience is a little bit surreal - there remains a path the whole time, but it's many different memories of many different places that he walks through. None are as strongly anchored as the places he's visited so far, though, so they blend and fade into one another.

Still, in the Estoria memories especially he never ends up anywhere especially dangerous (it's a lot of sidewalks, mostly) and eventually it meanders its way back to the garden, in an all-roads-lead-to-Rome type situation.

[ JACKSON HEART ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]

Re: [ PAVEMENT ]