A/N: took a few liberties with today’s prompt. the adventure in this one is mostly in the past, but trying to talk about yourself is an adventure of its own, really. crossposted to ao3. @bastionbabble
There's a chill in the air tonight, but no one is cold. Every so often, if there's enough spare wood, Rucks and the Kid build a campfire near the Monument, and tonight is one of those nights. Whenever they make a fire, there's an unspoken seating arrangement: Zulf, Zia, Kid, Rucks. No specific reasoning for it beyond personal comfort levels and warmth. Zulf doesn't really like being leaned on or boxed in, so he sits on the outside edge. The same goes for Rucks. Zia and the Kid are both warm and affectionate, so they gravitate to the center of the row. It all just makes sense. Any other arrangement would make at least one person cold or uncomfortable (or both).
Nobody's said anything for a while, but not in a bad way; aside from the fire crackling and popping every so often, there's a comfortable silence settled over the area. The Kid finds himself staring at the fire. Rucks or Zia would probably say something about the way the flames dance or how the embers float off into the sky, but he's just glad it's warm. Rucks makes the face he always makes when he has something poignant and meaningful to say, opens his mouth to speak (probably to say something about flames or embers or plumes of smoke), but Zulf talks first. "You know, it's funny. This kind of reminds me of my time in the Wild." This is new information for everyone; Zia is so surprised by it that she jerks upright from her original position of leaning against Zulf's shoulder to stare at him incredulously.
No one says anything right away, and Zulf glances from face to face with a vaguely worried expression. "...What? Did I not mention that before?" Zia smacks his arm lightly. "No! No, you didn't! All these times you've passed on telling stories, too! You've been holding out on us, Zulf!" Â They've all been talking about themselves once in a while for weeks now, and Zulf would always shrug off his turn with an assurance that his life hasn't been very eventful. None of them fully believed that, but it also wasn't their business to pry, so they left it be. Zulf snorts. "I haven't been 'holding out' on you, it just didn't seem relevant. Or very interesting."
Zia groans and smacks his arm again (if she's not careful she might actually hurt him at this rate). "Zulf! How could that not be interesting?" He shrugs, rubbing his arm. "Well, I think it's settled. You need to tell us all about the Wild! Right, Rucks? Kid?" The Kid nods enthusiastically, and Rucks grunts, which is basically his form of nodding enthusiastically. "That settles it for sure, then. Tell us all about the Wild, Zulf." Of all the people who could have casually mentioned themselves and the Wild in the same sentence, Zulf was the last person the Kid would have expected. He can already tell that this is going to be an extremely memorable story.
Zulf groans sarcastically, leaning back to stretch. "Alright, you asked for it. I'm not really sure where to start, though." He pauses, collects his thoughts. "I guess I should probably start with be why I was there in the first place. Shouldn't I?" Â Zia nods patiently, but there's a certain tension to her expression that says his lack of immediate explanation is slowly killing her inside. He seems to notice it to some extent or another. "To cut to the point, when I took up the job as ambassador, I was still at the Terminals. You've got to get from there to Caelondia somehow, don't you? Crossing through the Wild was really the only option."
The fire's died down somewhat. Rucks adds some more wood while Zulf thinks. "It wasn't easy. You've had an easier time of it than I had, I think, Kid." That makes sense. The Kid served on the Walls, he has military training, he's used to this kind of thing. Zulf is... decidedly not so predisposed to surviving nature. "I think the worst part was probably trying to navigate. No one could give me a clear idea of where Caelondia even was, aside from just..." He gestures vaguely westward, then shrugs. "Not the best directions. Plus, keeping track of where you are and where you need to go while the local flora and fauna are trying to kill you is about as difficult as you would expect." The Kid nods. He can relate.
Something about that last part catches Zia's attention. "Wait, hold on, slow down. You weren't in danger, were you?" Zulf blinks. "...Yes? It's the Wild, Zia; everything is pretty much constantly in the process of trying to kill you. Right, Kid?" The Kid nods again, and Zia's face folds up the way it does when the Kid comes back to the Bastion more than a little worse for wear. The fact that she's apparently assigning the same level of concern to this is a bit worrying. "Well, alright, good point. But you were okay, weren't you? I mean, clearly you were okay enough, you're not dead or anything, but—you know what I mean." It's a valid question, and she isn't the only one wondering. The idea of Zulf travelling through the Wild in the first place is odd enough to the Kid without considering the possibility of him getting to Caelondia largely unscathed.
Zulf just shrugs. "I'm not really sure how to answer that. What counts as 'okay', in a place like the Wild? I didn't die, but I also definitely didn't just waltz through the brush with no troubles and show up to Caelondia as trim and fit as when I left the Terminals." He happens to lock eyes with Zia, but something about the way she's looking at him makes him look away. He glances down at his hands, like he doesn't really know where else to look. "I had to deal with the same kinds of things as the Kid has, but with... decidedly less of an advantage. None of us knew what to expect. Â A few people thought the stories people tell of what's out there in the Wild were all just precautionary tales or propaganda. I wasn't expecting it to be as bad as it was."
Rucks hasn't said anything for a while. The Kid glances his way to see how he's reacting to all this, but it looks like he fell asleep at some point. Zulf is too busy telling his tale to have noticed, and Zia is busy watching Zulf. Might as well just leave him be. He'll probably manage to get the information from Zulf later, somehow. He always does. When the Kid turns his attention back to the conversation, the focus of Zulf's dialogue has changed. "There's all kinds of... well, wild things out in the Wild. Most of them, I don't even know the names for. I'm not really sure where to start. Again." The Kid perks up. Maybe he can make himself useful here. "I've probably seen a lot of the same things as you, Zulf. Maybe I'll know the names of some of the stuff you had to deal with. The really nasty critters especially. I think they like me." Zulf laughs in that odd way that only he does, where it's more of a quiet exhale through the nose than an actual laugh. No one else the Kid knows (or knew, rather) did that; maybe it's an Ura thing. But then wouldn't Zia do it too?... He's getting distracted again. He really ought to pay attention to what Zulf is saying so he can try to be helpful.
"Well, one of the things I saw the most often was this... I don't even know how to describe it, really. It was like..." Zulf gestures vaguely, searching for the right words. "Some kind of tall, towering thing, but it was composed of more than one part? It looked like it was made of a stack of these green lumps with little spikes. I don't think I even know the right words in this language to describe the head. All I can think of is words that would be less than polite to say. It kind of looked like a flower, but with spiky parts between the petals."
Now that the hard part is out of the way, Zulf takes a breath. "Does that sound familiar, Kid?" The Kid squints at the fire, rubbing his chin the way Rucks does sometimes. "I think so, yeah. Did it scream real loud and catch your feet with little spiky things that come up from the ground?" Zia glances silently between the two of them while Zulf thinks, and her expression is somewhere between fascinated and horrified. The Kid can only imagine what this all must sound like from her perspective. "I do remember a lot of that happening, yes. So? Do you know what it was, Kid?"
The Kid nods proudly, leaning forward to mimic the pose Rucks always takes on while explaining things. "Well," he drawls, putting on a ridiculously exaggerated imitation of Rucks' voice, "I reckon that would've been a bootlicker, fella." Zia covers her mouth to keep from laughing out loud, and Zulf does that little exhale-laugh thing again. Does he even have a regular laugh? "A bootlicker, hmm? What a name. How did the pioneer Caelondians even come up with something like that?" The Kid shrugs.
"Well, that's definitely not what I would have called it. Maybe it's a cultural difference." Zia bumps against Zulf affectionately (maybe with a bit too much force, judging by how he sways with the impact). "Yeah? What would you have called it, then?" Apparently Zulf wasn't expecting anyone to ask about that. He clears his throat uncomfortably, looks away from them both. The Kid isn't sure what kind of answer to prepare himself for now. Zulf covers his mouth with his hand and mutters a short phrase that the Kid can't understand. Judging by how uneasy he looks all of a sudden, it was probably some sort of Ura profanity or some other less than polite phrase. The Kid wishes he spoke enough of the Ura tongue to understand; it would probably be pretty funny if he did.
Zia looks just as confused as he feels, but she's close enough to swat at Zulf's arm playfully. "What are you hiding for? Did you say something vulgar?" Zulf keeps his mouth covered, but his frown is practically audible. "Come on, Zulf, don't be a grump about it. What did you say? Tell us, tell us! We want to know, right, Kid?" The Kid nods enthusiastically; crude words are the best kinds of words to learn. Zulf just hums angrily from behind his hand, shaking his head. Apparently he's not interested in sharing the less polite aspects of his culture with them. Zia laughs and elbows him in the ribs a few times, earning herself the closest thing to a friendly glare the Kid has ever seen.
He doesn't look like he's going to budge on the topic, though, so Zia eventually gives up and shuffles back to her spot a bit further away. "Fine, have it your way, you grump. We'll just have to find other sources for vulgarities." Zulf groans sarcastically and lowers his hand, rolling his eyes. "Your disappointment is noted. Anyway, back to what we were talking about prior to this little tangent. Apparently the tall, screaming thing was a... what did you call it, Kid? A bootlicker?" The Kid nods. "Right. So, that's one mystery solved. Should we try another? I know you'll know this one."
A light breeze picks up, ruffling Zulf and the Kid's hair. "I only saw one or two of this animal while I was out in the Wild—which was probably for the best, really, given how tough they look. They had..." He grasps for words again. This must be more difficult than he's letting on. "...Kind of like masks, I suppose, made out of some kind of stony material. I doubt you could do any damage to that kind of protective piece. I didn't really get to see anything other than the front, what with the way they were jumping around all the time. I think they were trying to land on me, maybe? It wasn't very clear. If I was a bit slower back then, I'm really not sure what would have happened." Something about his tone makes it sound like he tries not to think about it very much. The Kid can understand why.
Zulf sighs. "That wasn't the best explanation, I know, but I'm almost certain you've dealt with those before, Kid. Did I say enough to be helpful?" Compared to his description of the bootlicker, this is practically nothing to work with, but the Kid knows what he means. "Sounds crystal clear to me. Lunkheads, without a doubt. I hate those things. You probably didn't notice, but you can only hit them in the back, on account of that shell... mask... thing you saw. I think Rucks told me once that that's part of the egg they hatch from, or something like that. He might have been making things up." Rucks stirs for a second, grumbles something about keeping an eye on the fire without actually waking up. He must have heard his name.
Once he's still again, Zulf drags his hands through his hair. "...Lunkhead? Lunkhead. Again, what a name. Who made these decisions, is what I want to know. Probably someone with too much time on their hands. I can just imagine some Caelondian general sitting at a campfire just like this one, trying to choose a name for this horrible masked monster their troops ran into in the Wild that day. The 'head' part is obvious enough, what with the masks, but what's a 'lunk'? Is it just some colloquial term or figure of speech I've never heard before?" The Kid shrugs. "I always thought it had to do with the word lunker." Zulf just stares blankly at him. "...Which means, uh. Like a really big version of an animal. If you saw a pecker the size of a person, that would be a lunker of a pecker."
Zulf keeps staring for a while. He looks like he's trying to come to terms with some secret of the universe. Once he's done dealing with his revelation, he squints at the Kid suspiciously. "...I’ve never heard that word before. Are you sure it's an actual word? You're not just making that up, are you?" The Kid shakes his head, lifts his hands up subconsciously. "It's all true, I swear. If I was gonna make something up, I'd give it a better name than lunker." Zulf still doesn't look convinced. He turns to Zia, who just shrugs. "I've never heard it before either, but it does sound like the kind of thing people would say in Caelondia. Maybe it's a Marshal thing?"
A/N: @bastionbabble‘s bastion week prompts happen to line up pretty well with some stuff I wrote a few months ago and never got around to posting, so I finally got around to cleaning this up. lots of zulf, maybe not much sorrow. also crossposted to ao3.
The Shrine is in dire need of cleaning. It's to be expected; things get dusty from time to time. No one but Zulf really uses the place much—the Kid is too busy most days, Zia devotes most of her time to maintaining the Bastion, and Rucks has his own mess of issues with the gods—so the responsibility of keeping it in working order falls to him by default. The floor needs to be swept, the windows need to be washed, the idols need to be dusted, and so on. It's normally not much of a task; if he tidies up a little before his daily prayers, it's less than half an hour of work every day. But he doesn't always have the energy (physically or mentally) to clean up every single day, and he isn’t entirely sure the place was locked up properly before yesterday’s storm.
Zulf spends the entire walk from his tent to the shrine dreading what kind of mess he might find within. The squirt is trailing just behind him, trilling and bumping into his shoulder excitedly every so often. It's probably just chipper as always, but he'd like to think it's happy to see him. The squirt can’t exactly tell him one way or the other, so he can believe what he likes. He can see the dust in the air as soon as he opens the door to the Shrine. It's almost unrealistically grimy inside; it couldn't have been more than a week or two since he last cleaned in here, could it? Did someone just come in here and throw dirt around while he was out of commission? Maybe the door was open during that storm.
Oh well. Whatever the reason for all this filth, it has to be cleaned up. It just might take a lot longer than he expected. Someone had left a little pile of carefully folded damp rags by the door for him to use—was it Zia? He could have sworn she mentioned something about cleaning supplies earlier. It must have been her. The Kid wouldn't think to do something like that, and Rucks would probably rather be caught dead than voluntarily step foot in the Shrine. Either way, this makes Zulf's job just a little bit easier. He picks up the topmost rag and unfolds it in one swift motion, inspecting its cleanliness. Ironic, given the fact that his goal is to make it filthy. As he contemplates this conundrum, the squirt wanders over to the rag pile and picks one up, unfolding it in a clumsy imitation of Zulf's gesture. It gazes up at him expectantly, like it's waiting for his next move. An idea is beginning to form in Zulf's mind. "Do you want to help, friend? Here, watch me." He walks to the nearest window and rubs the glass with his rag, maintaining eye contact with the squirt the whole time. "This is how you clean the windows. Do you want to give it a try?"
It just stares at him for a while. Just as he's starting to feel more than a bit foolish, the squirt floats up to the window with its own rag and pushes it against the glass. It pauses, watches Zulf for a few more seconds, and starts to slide its rag back and forth across the glass in a slow, delicate manner. Zulf smiles. "There you go, that's it. Good job!" The squirt chirps happily at his praise. "Now you just keep doing that until the either the window is clean or the rag is too dirty. If the rag gets too dirty, you put it over here—" He drops his rag on the floor. "and go get a new one. Does that make sense?" The squirt chirps again, squinting at the windowpane with the closest thing to a glare of determination that it can muster with nothing but eyes at its disposal.
Maybe this won't be as much work as Zulf thought it would. Assuming the squirt can handle the windows (which might be a bit of a stretch, but he can dream), that just leaves the floor and the idols for him to clean himself. He'll have to keep an eye on the squirt's progress, though. It might not know what to do once it's done with that one window. Better not get too invested in anything else just yet. He settles for sorting through the rags while the squirt rubs away at the window, glancing its way every so often. It seems to be doing alright at cleaning that window, if a lot slower than he would do it himself. Oh well. Any help at all is good help.
He's sorted the rags twice by size, once by dampness, and three times by color when the squirt floats over and bumps against his shoulder, eyes squinted with pride. "What is it, friend? Is the window finished?" The squirt chirps happily and grabs Zulf's finger with its own incredibly tiny hands, very gently tugging him towards the window. Looks like it wants to show him its handiwork. Zulf follows its lead, appraising the window's state of affairs. It's not a perfect cleaning job by any means, but the glass is much cleaner than before. That's one less thing he has to do himself.
The squirt looks from him to the window and back expectantly, and he grins. "Excellent work! This is much cleaner than it was before. You've done a very good job, friend. Don't tell anyone, but I think the Kid could learn a thing or two from you." The squirt twirls in place, cooing happily at his praise. "So, do you think you're up to doing some more of the windows? You would be doing me a great service by helping out." It blinks and floats off to the rag pile, making odd little trilling noises as it goes. That settles the issue of window cleaning, then.
Zulf watches the squirt pick up a rag and make its way to another window before fetching the idols from their niches in the far wall of the Shrine. The Kid sure devoted a lot of time and fragments to repairing all of the idols for someone who hardly ever visits them. Pyth was an obvious enough choice from him. Everyone knows—knew—Pyth. Hense and Micia, too. He hadn't expected the Kid to bring them all back, though. A slightly bitter part of him didn't think Caelondians even remembered the whole Pantheon—or at least not the gods that were difficult to market. Who would want a stuffed doll of an old man? Bulls and horses are easier to sell. Zulf huffs quietly and decides to put the topic away for the time being. No need to get riled up about it now.
The idols are cleaner than the windows, to a notable degree. Most of them just need a good dusting. It's probably just because their niches in the wall keep most of the dirt elsewhere, but he'd like to think there's some amount of divinity to it. It's a bit silly, and he wouldn't mention it to anyone, but the thought is nice, at least. It reminds him of the sorts of things the missionary—his father, really—used to say when he was younger. The memory stings a bit, but no more than anything else does lately. There are a lot more memories to sulk over now. He should be fine as long as he doesn't dwell on it.
A small burst of noise echoes through the Shrine from outside. Laughter, and various bird noises. Zia must be playing with the pecker. Everyone else it could be is either away for the day or too old and curmudgeonly to fit the bill. From the sound of things, they're both enjoying themselves. Zulf shakes himself, tries to clear his head. Now isn't the time for all these upsetting trains of thought. It's a beautiful day out, everyone (excluding himself, apparently) is in a good mood, and there's honest work to be done. This apparently inescapable need of his to sit around and wallow in negative emotions can wait, at least for a little while. If he's lucky, getting something done around here might even prevent the whole thing. That would be a nice change of pace. It hasn't happened lately, but he can dream, can't he?
The idols aren't very dusty, but they're deceptively difficult to clean. Too many little nooks and crannies. Yudrig and Hense's idols are especially unwieldy, what with all the intricately detailed carvings. Hense's idol basically has to be wiped down petal by petal—not that Zulf minds. There's something almost relaxing to it, actually. The repetitiveness of the motion is somewhat calming. Yudrig's idol isn't quite as difficult, but the grooves in the mane are surprisingly tough to clean out fully. The Kid's method of dusting—spitting on the offending object and wiping it clean with his shirt—comes to mind, and Zulf silently chastises himself for even thinking of the idea. Aside from the act itself being crass and unsanitary, he would rather traverse the Wild all over again than spit on a religious object. Cleaning these idols isn't that much of an ordeal, anyway.
Just as Zulf is finishing up Hense and Yudrig's idols, a distinctly Zia-shaped figure steps into the Shrine's entryway, casting a vaguely less Zia-shaped shadow over Zulf and his arrangement of idols on the floor. He squints up at her for a moment while she gazes around the room, seemingly taking in the state of things. "Wow. What happened in here? It looks like someone set off a cannon or something." Zulf huffs, just a little. "I'm aware of that, thank you. My theory is that no one bothered to close the door before that storm." He tries to keep the annoyance out of his voice, but judging by the face Zia makes, a bit of it came through regardless. "Yeah... Sorry about that."
Zulf shakes his head, picks up Jevel's idol and props it up in his lap. "Don't worry about it. I didn't ask. Besides, it's in the past, and I'm catching up now." Suddenly, Zia notices the squirt. It chirps a cheerful greeting from its station at one of the windows, then resumes its task of very gently and carefully scrubbing the glass. Zia doesn't say anything for a while. Her expression is difficult to read, so Zulf simply doesn't bother and focuses on wiping down Jevel's idol. This one is much easier to clean, all flat surfaces and smooth curves. "...You got the squirt to clean for you." Zia's voice is almost stunned when she speaks again. "I did. It's a very fast learner. Picks things up by example." The squirt, sensing an opportunity to receive attention, disposes of its rag and zips over to Zia, nudging her towards the windows it already cleaned with a series of excited chirps and coos. "I think it wants to show you its handiwork. It's been doing a very good job, actually." Zia gives in and lets herself be pushed to one of the windows, eyeing the glass critically. "Hmm. I've got to say, I'm impressed, little buddy! You did a great job here! And..." She leans down to the squirt's level and lowers her voice, "Don't tell him I said so, but I think you're better at cleaning than the Kid." Zulf snorts. "I said the same thing earlier. I'm glad to see we're on the same page with this."
Having received its desired amount of attention, the squirt bumps against Zia's cheek affectionately and floats away to the window it was cleaning. Zia turns her attention back to Zulf, who subsequently turns his attention back to the idol in his lap. He's nearly finished with it, just a few more nooks on the top left to wipe down. No one says anything for a little while, and the Shrine is silent aside from the squirt cooing quietly every so often as it moves from window to window. Zia is probably doing something, but Zulf isn't going to risk looking up to see what.
Once he's finished cleaning Jevel's idol, he sets it aside and turns to the remaining idols just in time to see Zia sit down on the floor next to him with a smile. "It wouldn't really be fair of me if I left you to finish all this by yourself, would it?" And just like that, she picks up Acobi's idol and a rag and gets to work, humming a tune as she goes. Zulf reaches for an idol of his own. Maybe things are looking up after all.
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