Cade's Inbox

[onlyhymns]

[For personal threads, memos, things left in his quarters for him to stumble on, confessions of love, injunctions, jars of bees, and so forth.]

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[nadasharillen]

Despite simply having found that she's begun to prefer her silences with his silences in them, Nari did have an ulterior motive; albeit not one that requires any real participation on his part save being willing to listen.

Sifting through the past half-year of their acquaintance-- had it been so long?-- to answer Korrin's question had been illuminating in a way she wasn't entirely sure how she felt about yet. Or at least, hadn't been ready to think about yet. Still isn't. But there was one thing.

"When you said you trusted me," Nari says with no preamble, just loud enough to be heard over the repetitive noise of wave on rock, still looking outwards, "I didn't know what that meant. Not really. I was nervous and only thinking about whether or not I might physically injure you some way you didn't want." Pause for thoughtful consumption of last biscuit piece.

"It was bigger than that, though, and I was too..." She trails off, flicking some crumbs to lower rocks, perhaps for the birds, "caught up in my own head to understand that until just earlier today, and I wanted to..." This time she pauses to search for smaller bits of rocks, tossing them outward. Finally she looks over at him. "You're very brave, Cade Harimann. And I hope to be worthy of it."

Back to watching the sea.

[onlyhymns]

It's fortunate that Cade is still chewing when Nari starts to speak, because that means he can't panic about not having an answer. It's impolite to speak with one's mouth full, so it's better that he doesn't.

He does begin to blush, however, and watches her uncertainly for the several long moments it takes for him to swallow his mouthful. He still doesn't know what to say, but a quiet "thank you" seems a start.
"...I'm..." he begins, and falters, looking out at the sea himself. "...I'm... glad you're not..." Repulsed? Offended? "...afraid."

[nadasharillen]

Having finished her biscuit, Nari doesn't have it as a shield, so instead she just leans back against the cool rock to think, looking at the sky instead.

She thinks about saying 'never', but after all that's happened over the past years she's not sure she believes in absolutes anymore. The very fact of this conversation puts the lie to at least three times she'd said it. That and he might not believe her. She thinks about saying 'I am', which is true, but not of what they're talking about. She thinks about just nodding, but that isn't reaching back the way she wants to. In the end she reaches for another stone, throws it out toward the water, and says "There are things worth being brave for."

[onlyhymns]

This he understands well enough. Templars are meant to be brave by definition, and he would define the goodness and safety of the world as reasons to be brave for that cause.
But he's not part of that cause anymore. Even Simon called him a craven, not so long ago. What little of an ego he has is still bruised seemingly beyond recovery.

Nodding slowly to Nari, Cade sighs out through his nose and pushes a hand through his hair. "There are... things that aren't," he counterpoints. Craven indeed.

[nadasharillen]

"There are," Nari agrees evenly, her head still laid back to watch the gulls circle against the blue. She turns her head so she's looking at him; her thoughtful regard is a bit sideways as a result of the tilt, like a bird's might be. "But you aren't one of them."

[onlyhymns]

Cade meets her gaze only briefly before looking away again, ashamed that this has come up at all; has he gone and ruined a nice conversation by being pathetic? How typical.
"How can you be sure," he asks, his voice suddenly laden with weariness.

[nadasharillen]

With very little hesitation, as if she’d been waiting for just such a question, Nari says “Because after everything you’re still kind. Because you smile at dogs and they smile back.” She continues, evenly, like she was slowly picking pebbles from a pouch to stack them in front of him, “Because in the forest you walk like you don’t want to wake it. Because when you pray in the mornings your face is so open and humble that I almost believe. Because I—”

Nari abruptly snaps her mouth shut, sudden color riding high on her cheeks, and looking for all the world like she’d suddenly flipped the cart she’d just been handling so confidently.

[onlyhymns]

Fully not anticipating any of that, Cade is lifted out of his self-loathing to stare at Nari, a slow blush creeping over his face.

w h a t

[nadasharillen]

She, on the other hand, is looking everywhere else. Quickly.

Sun’s almost at the mark she’d made. Myr will probably miss him soon. The waves are nice. Birds still up there. Sky’s blue. Sea’s a different blue. Might be a cloud on the horizon there. It’s nice in the shade. Here are a few more rocks to throw. Blood sounds interesting in your ears. Are there more biscuits?

Nahariel, you fucking coward it hasn’t been three breaths since you told him he was worth being brave for. Say something, say something.

“I... ah...”

Doing great.

[onlyhymns]

Recognizing what a panicked inability to speak looks like, Cade quickly looks away from her and out at the water, his own heart racing. Oh no, he ruined everything somehow, he knows it--

[nadasharillen]

Her eyes flit by him in their journey, and oh no, she recognizes that look, and wanting to disabuse him of the notion that her fluttering panic is somehow his fault drags at her enough to make her desperately—and near inarticulately—blurt “Because I thought feeling like this was for other people!”

[onlyhymns]

Unexpectedly, Nari's shrill exclamation strikes a cord. Still blushing, now furiously, Cade glances back at her, meeting her eyes momentarily just to seek the validity of what she just said. He can't imagine she would lie.

"...so did I," he admits, to the ground.

[nadasharillen]

Despite having just been fervently praying—perhaps better described as shrieking internally—for something, anything to stop her, the abrupt slam of her careening heart into Cade’s short quiet response is so entirely unexpected that Nari skips surprise entirely and lands at a graceless wide-eyed open-mouthed gawk.

[onlyhymns]

Cade doesn't know what he was expecting, but it wasn't silence. He gradually looks up from the rocks, just long enough to see Nari's expression, then darts his gaze away again, bright red to his ears.

[nadasharillen]

The simple fact that somehow Cade can manage to blush in such an impressive array of overlapping layers is so indescribably endearing that moments after he darts a furtive look at her and then away again Nari’s expression is melting into the same nearly proprietary tenderness it had worn when he’d let her pull his head into her lap to be pet.

She searches briefly for something to say and finds only a sort of quiet contentment that courteously declines words, so she continues her silence. She does, however, get carefully to her feet and move to him, reaching to gently set a wind-blown section of curls to rights then sinking down to sit, arranging herself with a deliberate conscientiousness so that her shoulder is barely brushing his.

[onlyhymns]

The silence that stretches between them is agonizing, which only makes the interruption of it all the sweeter. He looks up when she approaches, unsure of how to react, and thus Nari is able to fix his hair and sit with her shoulder touching Cade's without spooking him.
He smiles faintly, to himself, his heart swelling in that same unfamiliar way he felt once before. To be doted on, something he didn't even know he wanted, is so pleasantly welcome.

[nadasharillen]

The sea seems a little bluer, the horizon a little wider, the sun a little warmer on her legs, and Nari finds herself purposefully avoiding a glance at her charcoal mark as she again sets to wordlessly hoping the space they share will somehow move outside immaterial things like work.

The thought makes her chuckle lowly; it’ll be felt through her shoulder more than heard.

[onlyhymns]

It's another long silence that follows, but this one is more companionable. There's still awkwardness-- nothing Cade does is entirely without it-- but he has relaxed, if only slightly. The day is fine and the company asks little of him, which allows him to slip out of his shell a little further.

"I, um," he begins quietly after a time, still looking out at the water, "thank you." He clears his throat. "For. ...this."

[nadasharillen]

Nari spends a fair amount of time in this place. Early afternoons, sunsets, sometimes deeper in the night to watch the stars in the darkness away from the torches that light the more traversed areas of the island. She’d come when the rocks were iced over and she hadn’t cared whether or not she slipped and fell to sink into the dark water.

In the intervening space between their words, she is trying to overwrite those particular visits with this quiet, the early spring, the room Cade takes up in her perception of the space, the light pressure on her shoulder so that she can come back to visit it when he clears his throat quietly to thank her. She nods an acknowledgement, pauses, then says “...thank you for coming.”