dejah_thoris | Midnight in the Jeddak's Garden

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Midnight in the Jeddak's Garden

[cont'd from here]

She holds him through the worst of it. Holds him and rocks him gently, her mind racing to come up with some kind of solution, any solution. There isn't one, she knows. She can feel his agony as if it were her own, and in a way, it is now, isn't it? She feels the tears on her cheeks and lets them fall. Grief is the strongest enemy she's ever vanquished.

But she's done it before, and she knows she can do it again.

She doesn't know how long they've been sitting there when she notices a telltale ripple in the air. It's just inches above the wood of her door. It takes a moment to resolve, and before it does, she recognizes the portal and knows where it opens to. She can smell the pimalias and the blessed cool of the moss trees beyond. The night sky above Helium is crystal clear.

Gingerly she urges his gaze up. Her voice is gentle and warm. "Hey. Can you smell that?"

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He feels the change more than sees it, like a shift in the breeze. Despite her smile, it's like her emotions are contracting into herself, no longer as open and inviting as they were in the bar.

If stepping into the garden helped drag him out of his own head a little, this pulls him another inch. He glances to her, rather than following where she points, then loops his arm through hers like she's done to him so many times.

"Yeah. I'd like that."

He takes her arm and she blinks rapidly several times. They're safe here. No one will question his presence here. What happens in this place is hers and hers alone.

She leans in and presses a soft chaste kiss to his cheek.

"Please forgive me, my love." The words convey that it's not his doing. She's trying to contain a powerful surge of emotion: memories, implications, concerns about a hundred facets of his presence here. And a part of her was not ready to cede this place to someone other than John. (It means he's really gone. He's gone and he's never coming back.)

In some fashion, he's not the only one that needed a shove.

"All the irrigation is done beneath the surface, so that evaporation is not a concern. The substrate wicks up moisture from a miniature reservoir that resides beneath the entire surface. It's -- sort of a test piece, for future projects on a much larger scale."

"It's all right," he whispers, pressing his shoulder more firmly against hers. The churn of emotions makes him a little dizzy, especially after his own pain wore him down so much. He pauses in their awkward shuffle-walk through the garden.

"Like bringing water everywhere else, too?"

She pauses with him, taking comfort in the warmth of his presence. Just having him here, just hearing his voice is soothing that tumult of emotion. The currents still run deep, but the surface grows still and calm.

"Well, to other places, yes. Everywhere... That's another problem entirely. Are you all right or do you want to sit?"

An embarrassed beat.

"...Can we sit somewhere?"

He'd like to enjoy the view without worrying that he's about to take off into the sky.

"Yes, of course." She gestures towards the edge of the roof and what looks like a seating area carved into the stone. There are rugs on the ground and several large silk pillows. There's even a low table perfect for serving tea from. "Just a few steps more."

She almost asks him if Edgar warned him about this part, but catches the question just in time.

"Thanks," he mumbles. Curtis sinks onto the bench with a sigh, gingerly stretching out his legs one at a time. Fighting against your body's natural stride: surprisingly exhausting.

There's been a lot of shit lately that's ended up surprisingly exhausting.

Every time he breathes in, though, he catches a fresh whiff of flowers; of green; of life.

Dejah settles next to him, throwing a glance over her shoulder down at the city.

"All right, I want to warn you before you look. We're on top of the palace, which is the highest building in the city. So the view is..."

Possibly too much. She hopes not.

"...oh."

Yeah. Vertical space: that's a thing, too. Shit.

Curtis gnaws his lip, not following Dejah's glance just yet. "Lemme kind of...work up to that?"

Focus on the flowers and the sky for now, not the dizzyingly high building they're perched on.

"Of course. I just wanted to let you know so it didn't take you by surprise."

He might notice the sky is crystal clear. Oh and those strange looking flowers are -- well, they're breathing. Little expansions and contractions that looks nothing so much like actually processing oxygen.

She rests her hand on his and her head tilts to one side as she watches him. "I probably should have thought this through a little better."

Curtis huffs out a soundless breath: nowhere near laughter, but trying to make a go at it. He leans closer so he can rest his head on her shoulder.

Soft, "I'm cool with it if you are. I mean, it's -- " He struggles to put it into words. "I think I kinda needed to get out of the bar for a bit."

Not just downstairs, but the whole bar. Like Edgar's claimed Milliways as his whole territory and Curtis has to cede him the space for now. It's a ridiculous notion, and Curtis isn't even sure if that's what he really believes, but -- he knows he's starting to calm down, sinking into a place that's isn't just the numb stillness you get after a bad shock to the system.

"Good," she says, resting her cheek on his brow. Her hand curls around beneath his chin and strokes his beard.

"This is my escape, here. This place. Well, within the city walls."

"It's a nice one," he whispers, letting his eyes drift shut in response to the touch. "How many plants are up here?"

She speaks slowly, and he can hear the pride and yes, love in her voice. "Three hundred and forty three species of lichens, fungi, and proper plants. Grasses and low scrub and the like. Twelve major species of flowering trees, which are much like Earth's trees, save for the symbiotic nature of their interaction with the interspecies bacteria. Fourteen carnivorous plants. Small ones, easily kept fed and contained, no worries there. And one hydra, which is somewhere between a plant and an animal. We keep it well-fed so it never needs to move on. It seems very happy up here."

Curtis basks in the joy unfurling around them, unable to contain the soft smile that emerges as Dejah's emotions mingle with his own. He can hear a close cousin of the light that illuminated her out in the meadow. Her mind revels in building things, in discovering something new; this is another project brought to careful, beautiful fruition, and he can't help but revel in it, too.

"Is the hydra carnivorous too?"

"Opportunistic, I would say. Omnivorous. It scavenges, though if one is hungry enough, it's been observed to go after living prey. It can defend itself adequately though, so I wouldn't risk handling it without gloves."

She sighs and, after a moment's consideration, wraps an around his shoulders, leaning back against the gentle curve of the bench.

She points up in the sky. "That's Cluros." She points to the larger moon. "And that's Thuria." The smaller one. "They're called the Lovers."

Fitting that their light should bless their first moments together on Barsoom.

"Oh." The quiet wonder returns to his voice. He might be thinking the same thing: fitting, indeed.

(It's just them. It's all right.)

"You, um -- " A tinge of embarrassment creeps in. "You probably already know this. But we've only got the one moon on Earth."

"Luna, yes. The virgin huntress, pursued endlessly across the heavens by her suitors." She grins at the thought. How utterly ridiculous. One moon.

"But you've walked on your moon, so there's that. We have yet to achieve space flight. But someday."

"Someday," he murmurs in agreement. "You could start small. Satellites. Rovers like the ones we sent up here before -- "

Curtis stops, blinking in surprise at the memory's unannounced arrival.

Dejah's eyebrows rise and she blinks a few times.

"You know about the probes?"

"Yeah." He still sounds a bit stunned that he does remember. "There was...one of them landed the year I was born. I remember."

A long beat.

Softer, "My mom told me about it."

She presses an idle kiss to the top of his head, gives him a gentle hug.

"I've been doing my best to keep them -- isolated. Jasoom is not ready to know about us yet. And the Thern... I am not ready to do battle with them again. Not yet, at least."

Curtis manages a faint smile. "I was gonna ask. Think it would've been bigger news if they'd found life up here."

Big enough that even Curtis would remember it, he's sure. Big enough that, maybe, everyone would've turned their eyes toward Barsoom instead of Wilford when Earth began to freeze.

Then the rest of what she's saying clicks.

"...Are the Thern on Earth?"

She sits back a bit, her gaze looking out to the horizon. He can feel her demeanor sharpen, like a sword being unsheathed. She licks her lips and drags a hand through her hair.

"One of them spoke to John. He knew about the war. About Virginia. They are there, I'm sure of it."

Barely a breath: "Shit."

Curtis slips an arm around her shoulders, gently urging her closer.

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