perfectmatch | week two

[ Indeed it does. It grows the way a river, even the shortest of rainfall causing waters to rise against its shores and flood the flattened land around it. The flowers are beautiful, but Odile cannot bring herself to think of them, much less comment outloud.

No, for better or worse, her thoughts are on her companion of the day, and she pauses before a somewhat familiar flower as they move along. Peonies. Odile stares at them, their dark shades light in comparison to the darker leaves which surround each, before her hand shifts to cup a blossom in palm.

When was the last time she'd held something so delicate? While Ka Bue was home to many flora, it was not something she had a vested interest in. But it does bring comfort, this and the others that lie within reach.

... ]

Yi Sang. [ Though normally said with confidence, a kind of caution rests within the syllables instead. ] I...

[ ... ]

Wished to retract my statement from earlier. Yingying is more than she appears, and I am at fault for assuming otherwise.

[Odile stops, and there's a certain irony to their stalled position in a garden of flowers. She cups a peony in her palm, and Yi Sang's eyes follow the motion, noting the care with which she handles the delicate bloom. It's a softness he hadn't seen from her before now.

Her typical confidence and surety wane like the receding tide, exposing something else. When at last it comes, he blinks, bewildered by her words.]

. . . Miss Odile. While it is fortunate to hear you say so, should you not be telling Miss Yingying this?

[Why him?]

Don't fret your head off. I've spoken with her.

[ ... Then, and she will be on their rowboat date too. Her fingers tease apart the petals a moment before they settle again, and Odile drops her hand to another. Just something to do. ]

You, on the other hand, I've yet to. [ ... ] Did my words offend you then?

[Her response puzzles him. She's clearly uneasy, yet he cannot fathom why she would feel such a way around him.]

They did not, because they were the truth.

No matter the apparent verity of them, they... rather, I should not have said them as I did. You worked hard to surface the words you did about her from the murky depths of your heart and mind, did you not?

[ Or so Yingying had seen, where Odile hadn't. Such matters... evade her completely, though it isn't as if she seeks them out herself. ]

I am used to it.

[Odile was at least generous enough to listen first. Most in recent memory didn't even wait before coming to a decision; hence, he's certain that she didn't say those words to harm after his own were found to be lacking.]

Thoughts are meager things; pay them no heed. I have since recalled that naught lasts.

No, it doesn't. But that doesn't make them any less important.

[ As she stated herself: the change is apparent, however small. Even from such ephemeral things.

... How to put it, though. Odile folds her hand back into her sleeve, turning to Yi Sang at last. ]

I too would like to see your words grow, and shared with others. I don't wish to be that which stifles them. Though you may be used to it, that doesn't make it right, nor should you simply accept it. [ Ah, what had Nico said? That she says far too many words-- ] I'm sorry.

[She perplexes him, he thinks as he draws his eyes up her sleeve to a shoulder. Why should he grow his words when there'll be none with whom he can share them in the end? They're already tiresome to put together, and he lacks the ability to do so properly.]

Worry not. I know that your words were not intended to offend; however, if you say that you should not have uttered them as you did . . . given a second chance, how would you say them now?

[ ... For what reason would he hear them? Still, it is a desire, and she has noticed he has a stark lack of those.

It is annoying, however, how he does not meet her eyes. While it did not bother her prior -- he is as close to her gaze as can be, without directly looking at her. Odile's hand reaches out from beneath her sleeve once more and, not unlike how she had cupped the peony before, lifts his chin more fully with her fingertips. Delicate and gentle, as if he were a flower himself. Her voice is even as ever, but there is a quiet softness to the edge that it normally employs. ]

I would not have called your match unlikely. I would have made no mention of it at all, in fact. [ Even if that was the topic of the conversation. ] ... I should have said that you are looking at her from afar, thinking you may not, or cannot, tread the same path as she. If you were my match, then I would have liked our trajectories to lay beside one another -- even if that meant finding one anew. Respite may be as transient as the falling leaves, but the trees they hail from are ever-present. The scent fades, but the imprint of a flower does not. You would do well to remember that, Yi Sang.

[ Her fingers remain a moment more, before finding solace once again in her sleeve. ]

Should you like the way she strides with purpose, then follow her. Yingying, like the wisteria she resembles, requires a gentle hand to part her secret-laden blossoms. Do not stand aside and view her from the road, thinking you are not welcome. Shelter can be found anywhere there is kindness -- this a traveler knows well, and should not view each stop as something to inevitably leave but something to enjoy whilst one lingers.

[Odile's touch is gentle as she beckons him to raise his head. His eyes flits down to linger on what he can make out of her hand, then slowly travels up to trace her arm until his gaze settles on her face, where brilliant jades look clearly back at him. He peers into them for all of a few beats before looking down, his expression taking on a pensive turn at her revised answer.

While he's stopped meeting her eyes, he remains upright in the absence of her fingers. His gloomy mien belies his thoughts, which turn over all that's been and has yet to be said.]

I . . . did not choose Miss Yingying on the basis of her being my match. Rather, I chose her in answer to her hopes while my reason was my own.

[His thoughts on the algorithm are convoluted. At the end of the day, his selection had nothing to do with the matches and everything to do with Yingying, who'd made her mind and heart known, just as Odile has done now. Compared to them, a haze shrouds him, draining all things of color and showing a murky road that stretches on endlessly.]

I merely wished to seep in the fragrance of wisteria . . . to make sense of the meaningless walk before me.

[ Hmmm. Odile returns to walking, inclining her head. There will be a point to this, air clearer even when silence stretches on for a beat. ]

Yi Sang, would you consider this meandering of ours meaningless?

[He follows numbly, as he does.]

A winding course, though riddled with many a twist and turn, eventually comes to a stop. At the very least, it is a journey with an end.

Even journeys without visible end have meaning, exhaustive as they are.

[ Something she understands herself, slowing slightly to keep apace with him. ]

And there is ever an end to them, if only to start another. Anyway, I don't consider it meaningless -- neither this walk of ours nor yours alone. Just because you don't know why you walk, save because you have nothing else, doesn't mean it's in vain.

[ That it's pointless, meaningless, without reason. ]

[Is it a journey without a destination? Isn't it because he knows, even as an abstract idea, that it feels so pointless?]

I am searching for a place. But I . . . do not wish to walk endlessly.

And you won't.

[ ... Which sounds very certain, very convinced. ]

... Do you have an idea of this place, Yi Sang? Speak however you wish; I will understand you.

[ As she's been able to, either on her own or with careful questions to clarify. ]

[She speaks with such confidence, yet her words are true. In all the times they've spoken, she's adjusted to his meandering thoughts and sought clarity where there's been a blur. While the temptation of ease is ever present, he wonders if she might impart some of that lucidity unto him, because she seems so sure.

He turns his head, eyeing the flowers that line his side of the path as he toys with words.]

A place that would allow me to live on . . . even if I were crippled.

That doesn't seem so hard a request to fulfill.

[ It's simply noting, not patronizing, but that must mean that such a space doesn't presently exist -- or is just beyond his fingertips. Odile tilts her head. Somewhere he can live on, crippled as he is... wings broken or clipped, unable to fly as he once did. Yes, that seems easy enough. ]

Would it matter much if it beyond the world in which you walk now? Or would you prefer it within easier reach, even if the space between was wrought with danger?

[His eyes rest on the flowers, yet he hardly sees them through his blurred vision. Her response is a stark contrast to what he's been told before of the bleak and foolish nature of his dream. He wonders if it truly is so easy, and whether such a place really exists.]

It matters not to me. There is nothing left for me in my world.

[His compatriots are missing or estranged. All the warmth he's ever known has gone. But it is his world, and he'll always think of it as such.]

[ ...

Her fondness for strays is going to end poorly, she's certain. Maybe instead of a companion, she'll come away with a bunch of fosters instead. Or maybe she should just ask Siffrin if they'd like to continue traveling together; that'd been her original plan, before seeing this.

A pleasantly surrounded bench before a view of the garden lies just ahead, and she tilts her head towards it. ]

Let's take a seat. I feel we've been on our feet for too long in a garden meant for rest.

[ With its plenty of stops... She'll make space for him beside, drawing her lengthy layers close so he doesn't sit on them by accident. ]

... I felt the same as you once. [ Impossible as it sounds. ] So perhaps that is why I am drawn to you so.

[He slowly makes his way to the bench, then takes his seat at a respectable distance from Odile that isn't too far. He angles his head halfway toward her, putting the views of the garden and the fabric of Odile's layers in his periphery.

The pieces slot into place. Her vast knowledge of travel was grown from experience, and she's never once shied away from saying as much. When matters of sentimentality arise, though, she's more reluctant to bare herself. Perhaps there's a vulnerability there, preceded by the sound of a crack he hadn't been there to hear.]

Were your wings also clipped?

In a way. It left me... aimless, and unsteady, for a time.

[ She closes her eyes, hands folded on her lap. So few years. But it had been inevitable, as all things were. No one, nothing, can last forever. No matter how much one wishes. It is hard, to speak plainly. It is why she chooses not to look, to speak quieter, as if hoping Yi Sang's ears would refuse to catch the words. ]

As I traveled, my father passed away. He was all I had in the world; my mother abandoned us when I was too young to recall anything of her, so I don't feel anything there, but he... was home. Someone I intended to return to, once my query had been satisfied.

[ But that had been dashed. She could have spent the last few years of his life nearby, and in her selfish wants she hadn't. No, she chased the shadow of a culture stolen from her, the silhouette of people she didn't look enough to belong to no more than she did her own homeland's, their thoughts and views estranged from the ones she had grown up with. ]

[It's quiet in the garden. The flowers, bathing in the sun's rays, sway ever so faintly to a muted breeze. In the shade, Odile's voice carries softly through the small space between them. Yi Sang doesn't interject more than is necessary, having no better words of his own to offer.]

An awaiter to whom you could return . . .

[ . . . only for silence to greet her, leaving her isolated. Unlike him, did she see the signs before it happened?]

We wrote one another letters while I was away. I could tell when his hand shook, and when he felt better. I knew, at some point, those letters would stop.

[ The breeze is pleasant, at least. Brings with it the scent of flowers. It reminds her of Yingying, of Mirabelle, of the meadows in Vaugarde...

... Odile exhales softly. ]

It did not make it easier, Yi Sang. I have companions now who-- I might call my own, in that way, [ she does, truthfully, but not in so few words, ] but each have their own paths, and though we may stay in touch it is not quite the same, nor will it ever be. But with his passing did I lose the only thing I could call "mine" in every sense.

[An odd twinge lances through his chest at her admission. It's said that a void can be filled anew; however, what's lost can never be restored. And Odile . . . She saw the impending loss with ample time to brace for it, yet even that wasn't enough.]

Is that why you have come here? To fill the void anew . . .

[ Is it, boiled down? Beyond the pretense of chasing away her absent mother's shade? Apart from the lack of belonging she has, ultimately, where she was born and where she half hails?

... Perhaps it is, but it isn't something she wants to say. Admit. That there is a void needing to be filled, that she'd like it to be a warmth by her side, hand in hers, because it's all so-- vulnerable, and it makes her naked in a way. Odile doesn't answer at first, but when she does it's with a stronger voice. ]

I'd like to distance myself from my absent mother more than anything. To do what she could not and find someone companionable, that I would be... glad, to be with for the better part of what years I have left.

[ Which does make her sound old old, but-- it's true, in any case. Two thirds of it have past. It isn't a bad thing, it's simple fact. ]

Whether it means to travel or settle or whatever else. So long as there is someone to wake up beside.

week two | dates

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