“Oh, Azama! So you're here too. Have you been watching the 'movies'?” Leif asks, meeting with the man in the hallway outside of all the offered techno-magical plays. “I've been watching them too. The more I think on it, the more I think it looks like things they had in Virato. Did they have things like this in Argent too?”
They shared the same setting, but two sides could be entirely different in terms of access to what they had. Leif remains aware that in that world where he was Haven's Golden Boy, he had been put in a position with a silver spoon.
Perhaps his opposition wasn't so fortunate.
“I've been thinking also... none of these stories quite feel like the ones some people would watch in Haven, do they?”
Yet still, he asks this follow-up, as if Azama might know.
“Even when we seem like we're matching up with Virato, the differences still feel so obvious...”
"Oh, Leif. How do you do?" Hands fold into sleeves, and the weary smile he wears is fond - if cautious. For all that Leif had left Azama with a precious gift, the instinct that decries the boy an enemy is… troubling in its persistence. Like a mosquito that simply won't give up, or a nose hair that refuses to meet its maker. The echoes of Virato at times subside…
But seeing anyone Azama had entered the mirror with is oft more than enough for its claws to sink right back into him.
He doesn't fault Leif for this. If anything, his ease for speaking of Virato with such a light heart, full of wonder… it leaves a favourable impression, even if the aftertaste burns of envy.
"I've managed to watch a few," Azama replies with a nod. Curiosity had been his own better, as well. "Argent indeed had some… Though I was less interested in them than some of the other technological advances at hand." Like the vehicles and weaponry, or the funny little spinning carpet Nel had fallen from (and he smiles here at the memory), or even the concept of the rhontites as a whole.
"… Hum. From what I have seen of these movies, you are… correct, though. Perhaps the difference is born of a cultural divide? The pacing, and even the angles shown, the artistic flair and sheer capabilities, technology-wise…"
Silver dreams of gold... The author had lived many lives so different to the rest of them.
And then Harken had deigned snuff her light.
"I think there is yet a ways to go before Virato's likeness ever becomes reality." But Leif's right here, too. Eyes crinkle with something akin to amusement. "Suppose we could have a hand in fashioning such similarities and differences, whether consciously or not. Hm?"