#attach; yang misol

[velhaeil]

if you had to pick between the two, would you choose the moon or the sun?

“yang misol, do you not color your hair with sunlight? no? moonlight, then? did you pluck our star from its perch in the sky to add some luminosity on your head?”

[velhaeil]

who do you wish you could see right now?

whenever there is a meeting, a parting is sure to follow.

as he’s ruminating loosely over that particular sentence, haeil swirls his coffee around his tin cup for a negligible amount of time, forgetting himself into a lean against the wall that had resulted in his left arm partially smothered against the wood of a bookcase. he takes it black, often with a meager serving of sugar if he has any. but the sugar basin was dutifully making its rounds hand to hand, neighbor to neighbor, by the time he required its contents. so, there’s no sugar in his coffee today. it doesn’t bother him. the bowl comes, and whenever there is a meeting. . .

the chatter crests to new high as more mouths join the circle. a light blue woven basket burdened with bread materializes from the ether; joins the bowl in the circuit, concentric purposes relighting the invisible path—hand to hand, friends to friends. a meeting followed by a departure.

haeil politely tunes in to the chatter for about one fourth of its duration, not really having a choice in the matter, seeing as his charges decide on the course of their day instead of him. he thinks he overhears someone mentioning dinner—but they’re hours early for that particular action.

a parting is sure to follow, even if it’s just a thought, or a sliver attention used like a soundboard to nod along when the timing calls for it. but haeil hadn’t even realized he had stopped listening entirely to the din of exchanges, subsequently losing track of the current topic— until misol startles him out his inertia with the question, coming about like that basket of bread to his right; and as he turns slightly to brace a head-on stare to her coltish eyes, something in his stomach makes a humiliating maneuver that painfully resembles a somersault—only with all the shock and none of the delight. it’s ridiculous. how could he not hear her come this close?

he says her name to replace the greeting, expels the thrum of the unexpected approach, says, “you’re really quiet when you want to be.” and it isn’t the first time he’s pinned that observation, but it is inaugural to remark on it outright.

the basket of goods is at hand, the very smell of it is absolutely delightful. her hands are empty, so he grabs the basket by the handle on its side and offers it to her, “did you know that the mind never forgets a face?” he says by way of an answer, dredging up something nearly rueful, next question, “memory doesn’t like goodbyes, or partings, but it’s a conclusion that’s just as sure as breathing. i’m sure you yourself have someone in mind. why don’t you remit them a loud hello? maybe they’ll hear it, wherever they are.”

sea bears foam; the sky reveals the color of the ocean; wherever, whenever, there is a meeting, a parting is sure to follow; these observable particularities are tantamount to another fact: that the universe’s favorite shape is the spiral, and the golden ratio determines that while the scale of it could grow in size, the center will remain constant. likewise, people have spirals at their fingertips, and at the crown of their head, and in the molecules that make them human.

beginning at the center with a meeting, how do you perceive an absence when the shape of it, even when magnified in certain parts, remains the same? how do you miss something that spins on itself forever, cradled safely within memory?

go on, yang misol, why don't you pass the bread to someone else.

[velhaeil]

do you believe in velgrove's wishing well?

“miss yang. . .” maybe some people really do find solace in the impossible— promoted to improbable, now, on account of the current state of their sky. after an interlude of silence, aiming a rather confused stare to the curls framing her face, haeil approaches her with an extra gas lamp in hand, and he gives it to her without explaining himself; then he uses his newly freed hand to shepherd her towards the library, away from the lakefront.

but it goes like that, yeah? if you don’t look at crisis and assign it a name; if you don’t give a face to calamity, then who’s to say that they’re not all collectively dreaming? what is there beyond the blight in the dark? what is there in the night that can look at them without eyes? what is there at the bottom of barrel, or at the bottom of that strange lake, or at the mouth of that fabled well? a scene on the lid of a sleeper’s eye, that well, haeil thinks and shrugs his shoulders, and insists for her to usher on inside, “you know, i’m tempted to say that i do think it’s out there. when we find it, i think we should ask it to clear the air. now go on before the cold gets you.”

[velhaeil]

something to be said about that lake

in the grove: @vel-misol, lakeside, "i'm sure nobody dies in here", triggers: tba

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for few long years up until his departure from his island more than a year ago, the residents of a quaint town nestled in the eastern sea had trusted myung haeil’s uncanny trick to tell whenever the weather was about upend itself. to everyone’s utter dismay, it hadn’t been about some sort of ancient sorcery, or the rediscovery of some preternatural ability to connect with things that, by all intents and purposes, were so far flung in the evolutionary theory that it might as well have been a brand new branch of science. it was simply that haeil—and apparently everyone else, way back then, at some point—had trusted the liquid cushioning his joints much more than any kind of weathervane. which was kind of stupid in retrospect, considering that there were such things as “weatherpersons”, and “weather reports”, prattling away on the radio waves, but alas…

haeil held hope for them. the weathervanes, that is. not the weather-people. they were nice to watch, spending their lives away twirling within one gust to the next. his favorite were the mass produced ones made of manufactured steel, with the funny little rooster surfing atop the spindle tube. he owns about three of them (in gold, copper, and steel colors), and had sent a fourth copper one back home in a protected parcel with a handwritten letter signed, “kokkiyo!” at the very bottom. his nephew had been nothing short of delighted.

sparing the mostly embarrassing details about that particular interaction & the easy delight of children; and about the barometric pressures dipping or spiking with no one’s permission with impressive suddenness; the high and low of it was that every extreme occurrence in the weather paid a toll to haeil’s right shoulder right before passing. he knew that the sky was concocting its best tears to shed all over velgrove. he knew it in that same visceral way that he knew not to stare at a wolf in the eyes, or to always enjoy a fresh, still-steaming piece of bakery bread smothered in butter like it was the last. and he had categorically decided that whatever the situation had been back home, the probability that it would be the same here, lands apart, was, to him, near zero. there was a quest to be had to the library, then the general store, and phantom pains aren’t enough to derail that train off the rails.

the sky had been incongruously sunny, to boot. egregiously blue, nary a gray cloud in sight. a beautiful idyllic midday.

he spares yang misol the vagrancies of those thoughts, too. at least in mute apology for not letting her know that he had had the sneaking suspicion of approaching rainwater, even if the possibility did sound a little insane in his mind. maybe he should have left her to her own devices. left her on her walk, or errand—or whichever task occupied her time at around noon, on this side of velgrove. perhaps now was an excellent time to ask.

so haeil tries very, very hard not to disparage his existence once they’re caught under the downpour half-sheltered by the hat of some sort of deciduous tree and half-exposed to the Unforeseen Maelstrom of droplets that hit the side of his face each time he thinks that it’s approaching a stop. he was almost nearing the end of resignation, nosediving into acceptance, extending his small umbrella with his left to cover the poor lovely girl from the absolute worst of it, when the first flash of thunderclap brightens up the sky of their worsening afternoon. he pulls up a mental map of the grove and makes a fair estimate of where they’re standing, which is somewhere…north. near the lake? ah, well, they did head for the trees at the start of the shower.

he’ll bank on sincerity now, thank you, while they’re still whole. he turns to misol with a grimace, careful to keep the umbrella steady above her, “miss yang, two things: i don’t think we’ll make it anywhere without high risk of a cold. and i think we should just keep stepping a little deeper into the woods. i’m fairly sure the canopies will protect us better if we’re, well, fully under them,” but he’s really thinking about that little detail in the lake, bathed in perpetual sun, and the veracity of those anecdotes. “or a third one: we head for the lake and hope for the best.”