Winter tithe

[shardofwinter]

Although the Nexus is generally well kept, this year its inhabitants are a fraction more careful about keeping the paths clear of snow. As if by pushing the mound of white powder to the side they will stop the Nexus from being buried like last year. But as with all places lacking an organised effort, the clearance is patchy. Where some people have thrown out dirt or salt to clear the paths outside of their homes or houses, an equal number haven't. Ice sits perfectly clear over stone and concrete, or hidden under the thinnest layer of snow. All of it a precarious balance of mortal awareness and a Winter spirit's work.

This is one of the few times Reynard walks freely in his human form through the streets. Occasionally someone will recognise him and hasten to take care of their home or pull gloves onto their hands. Most people don't, however. Such is the nature of the Nexus, in a place filled with so many people they don't seem to be able to point to the person encouraging their troubles, even if he has proclaimed it from the rooftops. Once he's done admiring the hard work of some and punishing the negligence of others, he ends up in the centre of the Nexus.

Leaning against a lamp post, he takes his hat from his head, inspecting it briefly before address those passing by. "What are you leaving in the past this year?"

Comments

[eumenis]

On her own recognizance, Furiosa is known to be reckless. Kami-crazy, as the slang in her world goes. All her risks are calculated, though, even in fractions of a second. Chancing death for a reward--and usually that reward is merely an opportunity to live a little longer, but in the Wasteland that's the best prize of all. For the sake of her settlement and the people that depend on her, though, she's a lot more careful, picking her way through slippery situations the way she's taking her slow steps across the ice.

She flatters herself that Autumn does seem to like her, and she adores the spirit in return, though whether she has a full understanding of her is doubtful.

The staring hasn't registered, but the sound of his breathing starting up clues her in to notice the fact that he wasn't breathing before. Well, that's a little weird, but you don't call people out on these things the instant you notice them.

Thoughtful, she considers the question a moment, then says, "I gamble with my own life now and then. Try not to with my people's lives. Not that I asked to be their leader, but once you get into that kind of position you either give your all or let everyone down. There's no in-between."

"What about you? That's quite a question you asked. Are you getting the answers you're looking for?"

[shardofwinter]

"Not every leader is concerned about other people," he points out. It's an unpopular opinion that anyone here with any sense would fervently deny even if it was true of them, but it's to be pointed out nonetheless. After all, it either means she's wise or generous, depending on whether she speaks honestly or not. Right now he's leaning towards honest, if for no other reason than the lack of bravado in her manner.

It's little surprise that the question is turned back on him. Most times they are. Most times he'd brush it off with enough to satisfy the other, or to steer the conversation towards something interesting. Watching this woman carefully picking out her path, considering his casual question with more care than it's really due... This is one of those few times he thinks this might be worth a more thoughtful answer.

True enough it's quite a question when trying to answer it, even for yourself. In the back of his mind he can see the flitting nominations for what he as a mortal would abandon, but is that fair? To give an answer that doesn't apply to the him in the here and now? The spirit. The Winter.

Furiosa is left in silence as Reynard stares into the distance, at the darkest point in the background. What is this Winter spirit leaving in the past?

"That's... difficult for me to answer. The past is a part of me beyond what others understand." Something flickers beneath his features, a thought of an expression, like a fish beneath a sheet of ice. "But if I were to settle on an answer..." He finally meets her gaze again. "Compassion, perhaps."

[eumenis]

"Pfffff," is her wordless response to that observation about leadership. It's oddly expressive, a drawn-out grimace-and-hiss punctuated with a nod. "In an ideal world, the ones that aren't get put down sooner rather than later," she says, and leaves it there for the moment.

After all, Joe and the rest of the Triumvirate are dead and no longer her problem. The people that depend on her to remain alive, are.

She's in no hurry for his response, settling her stance in the snow, straightening up and rolling her left shoulder as if the prosthesis there leaves her sore. Partly it's just a force of habit; she's not always in pain, but the cold seems to aggravate her old injuries. Things hurt, today, and there's a catch in one lung. But some kind of instinct tells her this is an answer worth waiting for, and listening to.

The shift of expression and the darkness of his eyes nags at her. The hairs on the back of her neck prickle, and when he meets her gaze again, her brow is creased, eyes a little wider and sharper than before. What is this person?

"Compassion," she repeats. "That's a scary-ass answer, you know that?"

Not that she's questioning it. That would be hypocritical. Sometimes even a human has to leave compassion behind in favor of survival. Pick up what you can, and run.

"Can you--will you--tell me why you'd do that?" She should probably be leaving. She's not moving yet, curiosity outweighing, for the moment, her sense of self-preservation.

[shardofwinter]

If he suspected he might like her before, her stance on how to deal with bad leaders seals it. She doesn't seem eager to press that line of the conversation, and he'll take her lead. That won't stop the smirk on his face showing his amusement, if not his agreement.

Amusement that soon turns into a sharp bark of a laugh when she deems his answer scary. It shouldn't make him laugh, but so many people here are determined to be the biggest and the baddest and in his own world he's kept such a low profile, that he has to wonder when he was last described that way. Not that it isn't fair, of course, but the bluntness has to be appreciated.

Again he takes time to think on his answer, though this time with a smile on his lips. "I was going to say 'mercy' except that isn't right. In my experience, mercy stirs in the soul and the world in unexpected places and unexpected times. It can strike suddenly, without warning, and so to commit to leaving it behind would be naive."

"Compassion, on the other hand, must be nurtured." Content with his train of thought, he nods to himself and then looks at Furiosa. "It is not being nurtured. Has not been nurtured. It is dying a slow death, but I judge this Winter is its last."

[eumenis]

Well, she killed a few of her own, would do it again, and she fully expects attempts on her life to occur here and there, back home. The difference is she has far more people who believe in her as who'd like to see her dead. Whether that means she's good or not, time will tell.

In her experience, the people who posture the most are often the least effective. The ones who are observant and wait for their time to come are scarier, especially if compassion is no longer on the table where they are concerned. She hums thoughtfully in acknowledgement at the distinction drawn between mercy and compassion. She's tempted to agree, although it's not a topic she's thought on so much before. More often than not, in the days before the Road War, she had to shut off her sense of mercy, too. Out in the Wasteland, her reputation lingers.

"What about kindness?" she asks. "Sounds like the same thing, but it isn't, quite."

Something about the way he mentions Winter makes that prickly sense of danger tickle the back of her neck again. She turns her gaze out toward the horizon, frowning. "This one's been quieter than the last. Not sure I trust that, but here I am anyway."

[shardofwinter]

Kindness is entirely different, he thinks to himself, but doesn't say. Instead he breaks the frozen steadiness of his jaw and answers, "Not dead, but reserved."

Winter isn't kind. Humanity is kind. Occasionally. Millennia ago there wouldn't have been kindness coming from Reynard. Only games, and curiosity. Kindness was learned in between the icy months, and slowly but surely became embedded in the spirit's actions. Old habits that the spirit forgot to ignore.

The human in him isn't having much luck with kindness. Less and less it's received, less and less it's given. Less and less it's practised. The spirit is getting out of the habit.

"You don't have to trust a thing to live with it," he points out. Then, his eyes falling down to her feet and rising to her prosthetic, he nods to her. "It doesn't look like you're much used to this kind of Winter, either. You've even less reason to trust it, but that makes you all the better that you don't."

[eumenis]

"One of the Sisters told me once Kindness is Never a Waste," she says pensively. "And we carved it into the walls of the Citadel with their other words. But they don't always see things the way I do. It may never be a waste, but it's usually a gamble."

"It's funny, how even within the same world, living can make you harder or softer than you ought to be, and how much work it is to meet in the middle of the two. Even more so in the Nexus."

She gives a casual nod as his assumption. "It doesn't snow where I'm from. Almost never rains. We get cold--it's a desert, so temperatures plunge at night--but it's dry as old bones, except where we can pump water up from the aquifer or collect it from the air."

"Seeing all this, it's a little like a dark fairy tale," she says, gesturing at the snow drifts. "Water everywhere, clean and not radioactive, so pure it's the whitest thing you ever saw--but you can't drink it, and it'll kill you if you let it. I thought I was ready for anything this place could throw at me, but I sure as fuck wasn't ready for this."

Granted, she's doing better with it this year, but there's less of it right now. "It's pretty, but is it a privilege or a curse? That's what I ask myself about the Nexus itself, too."

[shardofwinter]

"She and I must not have been kind to the same kinds of people," he replies with a wry smile. "You're right. It's a risk. Either way you're taught a lesson. I don't think it can make you harder than you ought to be. Surely it only makes you as hard as you need to be."

A desert. He's never lived in a desert before. What must its Winters be like? The thought distracts him briefly as he wonders whether or not to ask Winter, before he falls back to reality as if he'd forgotten he was musing. Daydreaming is no good in a Season like his.

"A 'dark fairy tale'. That's a rather beautiful way of describing it." And it's true. He finds himself flattered for Winter. Pure but deadly are a wondrous combination. The wistfulness is replaced by a casual roll of his shoulder. "But it needn't be a privilege or a curse. It simply is. Like the Nexus. Like people."

His head slowly tilts to one side, weighed down by a curious thought. "Do you ever take snow from the Nexus into your world?"

[eumenis]

Furiosa laughs at his observation, a short bright sound like a fox barking. That sounds like something she'd have said to the Sisters a few years ago, if she'd cared to give them as many of her words as they gave her of theirs. Her perspective has changed since then, but his isn't wrong, either. Demonstrably, harshness allowed her to survive this long.

"I don't now," she says with an almost nostalgic smile. "Sometimes we get into the habit of striking first when we might not have to strike at all. No one ever calls you out on that because they're too dead to, but that doesn't mean it's right. If there even is such a thing as right and wrong."

Furiosa's Wasteland might not be a great example. What passes for a season there is the difference between occasional violent storms and a whole hell of a lot of violent storms. Wind season. A desert on a healthy planet would be different.

"'It simply is'," she repeats thoughtfully. "Maybe I'm getting old. That used to be enough for me."

She raises an eyebrow and shakes her head. "Not on purpose. I've come through with it clinging to my clothes and wrung them out into the cisterns, but I never filled a canteen with snow. Maybe I should. It'd be nice to drink half-melted. Cold."

[shardofwinter]

"Right and wrong can only be decided by each person alone, for that person alone. There is no grand declaration of good and evil. Only what is and what isn't. Survival and death. Happiness and grief."

Of these things he is certain. Outside of recent times in the Nexus, he has seen no sign of angels, nor of gods, or of any proof of good and evil beyond what a man declares as such. In a radioactive desert he guesses it's much the same.

Just as she's careful in her answer, he's thoughtful as he watches her. "Maybe when you get older you'll find it's enough again."

"You should try it and see how it is." Looking around, he nods at a nearby snowdrift and smiles at her. "There's plenty here."

[eumenis]

"Mm. We all draw lines we don't want to cross. I guess the distinction is who you're drawing lines for, and why. I promised a girl 'no unnecessary killing' once, as a compromise. Even now, it gets me to thinking, weighing what is and isn't necessary. What was and wasn't necessary before I made the promise."

"It doesn't weigh on me like it did once, but if I can't live with myself, why should I expect anyone else to? So I keep an eye on it, and try to make up for lives I took that maybe I didn't have to."

She eyes the drift and return his smile with a little shrug. "You're right. Whatever else it is, it's clean water. If no one's going to miss it, I may as well take some."

That, plus cold can be extremely useful for easing minor injuries and preserving food. She finds herself considering whether they could dig an ice-house under the buttes, near the aquifer where the ground is already cool.

"Could be like inviting the Winter home with me," she says with a little frown. "But...I already invited Autumn, I think, taking home the seeds and fruits she offered us. Maybe fair is fair."

[shardofwinter]

Reynard nods along, quietly agreeing with her. Hearing her echo some of his own thoughts is somewhat reassuring. Then again, he never quite rested easy with idealists.

"I think there's something profoundly moving about that. Being able to look at someone and say, 'I'm a good person because I respect you and I want you in my life' is no small thing."

When she smiles back he wonders how often she does that: Smiles.

"There's no Autumn without Spring, and no Spring without Winter, no Winter without Autumn," he's quick to cite off. "... Have you had a snowball fight since you were here? Or ice-skated?"