asgardchrysalis | Come and go with me, it's more fun to share... [CLOSED]

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Come and go with me, it's more fun to share... [CLOSED]

Who: Ariadne and Connor
What: Talking about various humanoids
When: February 2
Where: The medicinal garden (Sigyn's district)
Warnings: None foreseen; will update as necessary

Even if Ariadne had admitted to not being Human, she still much preferred looking Human, when she could. It was like...like what? She tried to think of the best analogy she could come up with. Like Elves. They never wanted to be seen without their clothes. Which was funny, because Ariadne couldn't figure out what they were hiding. But yes. That was the best she could come up with. She felt naked in her own skin. And no amount of truthtelling was going to make that go away easily.

Anyway, she was concerned about Connor. He seemed vulnerable, somehow. Her announcement had unsettled him, and it wasn't because he hated Alastrians. There was more to it. And she didn't need a scent to tell her that. She figured she ought to ease him into the history lesson about her people and about her world.

Human skin was definitely the way to go.

She arrived at her garden early. Her plan had been to put out a few blankets so they could sit and talk, hopefully putting him at ease. But Ariadne could never really sit still and she saw one brush that needed pruning. Followed by another. Followed by another. So before she knew it, she was kneeling in the mud, hard at work tending to her plants, completely unaware of the fact that she'd destroyed yet another dress from the common wardrobe in the cottage.

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As agreed, Connor made his way to the garden with the intent to learn more about the discussion which had started the day prior.

The entire conversation had left him feeling shocked but still somewhat skeptical. Even if proof existed in front of him, he couldn’t help but meticulously think of ways that it could be rationalized and disproven. But there was also part of him—a small part—which was exceedingly curious. It would be an interesting endeavor to converse with another non-human.

In any case, he would treat the possibility like any lead. Investigate them. Gather the specifics. Document accordingly. He had brought along his notebook in order to write down any interesting details of their conversation for future reference.

Connor straightened the collar of his coat as he took the last few steps into the garden. He wore a long gray button-up trenchcoat over his usual dressy attire, which seemed appropriately warm for the chilly weather outside. He glanced up into the trees that overlooked the garden before looking into the garden proper to find Ariadne busily tending to some shrubbery.

She looked...human. It wasn't entirely what he was expecting considering her words the day before.

He offered a slight bow of the head and a polite greeting regardless. "Hello, Ariadne. How are you doing today?"

Ariadne scrambled to her feet, dropping into a curtsy. All of it immediately. All of it fast as possible. It was out of habit, more than anything else. It bothered her that she still couldn't pick up a scent from Connor. Or anyone. There was nothing worse than being Alastrian and being caught off guard.

Well, maybe one or two worse things...

There was a terrible death. That was a worse thing. Or being caught in a room with someone tone deaf who thought they could sing. That wasn't much fun either.

Realizing how ridiculous she looked, Ariadne smiled, absently brushing her hands off against her thighs. "Hello," she said. She eyed him, wondering if he'd recovered from the shock of yesterday's conversation. Of all the people she'd spoken with, he'd been by far the most surprised.

The most...something.

Blame it on his world, she supposed. She could blame plenty of her own quirks on her own.

"I'm fine, thank you. I'm glad to see you."

Though he hadn't intended to startle her, it seemed like that was what he had accomplished judging from her rushed attempt at greeting him. Perhaps she was that absorbed with her plants that she hadn't heard him approach? This was the timeframe he had mentioned arriving, after all.

Connor blinked, canted his head to one side, and responded in kind. "I'm sorry." He held a hand out, palm side up. "I didn't mean to surprise you."

She let out a breathy laugh. Mostly at herself. "I'm just glad you didn't catch me talking to my plants. I'm told that's not a typical social convention."

Neither was naming them. But she'd still gone ahead and done it. The bush she was working on, at the moment, was named Walter.

Smiling slightly, she gestured over to the blankets she'd set out and forgotten. "Let's sit down. It's a little cold, I know. But Sigyn does something to regulate the temperature around here...somehow." The dirt was warm, anyway. Warm enough to maintain plant life, despite the season.

As instructed, Connor took a seat on the blankets. He folded his legs one over the other and sat up with his back straight. As promised, It didn’t seem nearly as cold as he was expecting, which he still needed to investigate at length. One mystery at a time, though.

“Scientifically speaking, certain studies indicate that talking to plants helps them grow. Though the evidence on its effectiveness has been inconclusive.” Connor offered offhandedly as he retrieved the notebook and pen from his pocket.

He opened the small book and began to leaf through it in search of a blank page. There were many pages already full of notes on various subjects about the city, from innocuous observations, to drawings of maps, even the odd one-off about the implications on magic.

Ariadne settled down on the blanket beside him, leaving some comfortable space between them. She tucked her heels under her knees, smoothing down the front of her dress and getting more dust on it. Thank the gods they had such large bathtubs. It made for very easy cleaning. Much easier than back home.

"I've always thought that," she said, craning her neck a little to get a good look at his notebook. Even when not spying, she was still dreadfully curious. "All living things are so alike in so many ways. More than most people realize."

She shook her head. "But I don't think you wanted to talk about plants."

Making friendly conversation was purely habitual. But she was right, he hadn’t come with the intention of talking about plants.

“No. I want to understand your people.” He responded earnestly. Finding someone else who was non-human—and claiming not to be an android—had been shocking, to say the least. Whatever he could learn about a potential new people would be fascinating if it turned out to be true.

Just asking broad questions wouldn’t get anywhere, though. He needed to direct the conversation accordingly, starting with the most obvious detail that was different from their earlier conversation.

Connor gave her an incredulous glance, “You’re an Alastrian. How is it that you look human?”

"Sigyn," she replied. "She gifted me with the ability to shapeshift. At first, I could only hold a form for ten minutes. But now..." She shrugged. Longer. "As long as an hour, if I concentrate on it the right way."

Shifting back was just like...letting go of something. A flower in her hand.

And to demonstrate, she did just that.

There was a sort of shimmer in the air around her, like heat rising off of a concrete surface in the sunlight. Her form seemed to waver and ripple. And her skin went from pinkish to green, her hair from brown to blue. Where her skin had once had red undertones, now they were purple. But her face was the same as always. Lovely, hiding a bit of a smile in the corners of her mouth.

At first, the explanation for her human form sounded as suspect as everything else about magic. If he hadn’t seen it for himself, he would have likely written it down without entirely believing it. However, a clear demonstration...complicated his skepticism.

Connor’s brows raised and his eyes grew wide. Social conventions dictated that it was impolite to stare, but he found himself doing just that: staring out of sheer surprise.

Once he realized he was doing it, he forced his gaze down at the notebook in his hand. "Which means, typically, Alastrian's don't have the capability to look human." He surmised.

A slightly lavender flush rose in her cheeks. Ariadne wasn't used to being stared at. Connor's gaze was very uncomfortable. She couldn't blame him. If their roles had been reversed, she might have done the same. Still, she was more than a little relieved when he looked away.

It gave her an excuse to do likewise.

At least, for a moment, anyway.

"Oh, no," she said, looking up again. "Some of us can. I think they estimated that roughly a third of us could. My mother could. And about nine of us hatchlings could too. It's how I was able to survive in Valeria."

There were several facts to come to terms with that statement. Hatchlings implied that they came from some sort of eggs, which was odd for any human-like creature. More striking than that was that looking human was necessary for survival on some level 'in Valeria', but not all of her people were capable of doing that.

"What happened to those who couldn't look human?" Connor began writing in his notebook as he spoke. Each character he wrote was so neat that it would have looked as though it was printed rather than written by hand.

If the questions were all going to be like that...

Another shimmer in the air and Ariadne returned to looking Human. There was only so much her comfort would allow. Somehow, in her struggle to decide to come clean with her secret, it had never occurred to her that people would ask questions like that.

"Well," she said, "they had to live away from humanoid society, for the most part. Except for those lucky enough to meet open-minded humanoids."

Although that was a mixed blessing too. But she decided not to go into it. She only knew bits and pieces of the story, as it was. Her parents had been reluctant to talk about their lives before Deleo.

"My brothers and sisters and I were born in a rainforest. I lived there with them for the first ten years of my life."

Connor stopped writing when he saw the glimmer of 'magic' out of the corner of his eye, but he coached himself into not glancing up and to continue jotting down notes.

"This rainforest. Was it away from human society as well?" Most humans didn't live in rainforests since the climate with too tumultuous. Perhaps Alastrian's naturally stayed away from humans even if some were capable of imitating their appearance?

He was making it all sound so clinical. Ariadne didn't care for that. It was her past, after all. Her history. Everything that had made her who she was.

Maybe that was an Android's way of being polite?

She supposed she didn't know much about his kind either, still.

"You could say that." She shrugged. "There were Human settlements on the edges, but for the most part, we kept to ourselves and they kept to themselves."

After a few more letters on paper, he finished writing and looked up, folding his hands together loosely on his lap.

Connor tilted his head with genuine curiosity. "How does someone who grew up in the jungle away from human society end up the servant to royalty that presides over Valeria?" When–it sounded like–Valeria was a predominantly human Kingdom?

"I grew up in the jungle," she said. "My aunt grew up in the city. She was the sort who could change her form. Made a name for herself as a translator." And something of a rebel, but that didn't come until much later.

Anyway, it hardly mattered. This was a conversation about Alastrians, not about the siege.

Ariadne wasn't ready to get into that.

"She was the royal translator to Princess Amanda of Valeria. She took me on as her apprentice when I was ten."

Connor nodded sincerely. He wanted to make sure not to pry into her personal history too much if she wasn’t directly offering it, but part of him was just curious about how one event connect to the next. She had such an ...unusual story, he couldn’t help but ask when some details arose.

“Translators sound as though they’re very important people in this Kingdom.” He surmised. To make a name doing a specific task, it had to be important in one way or another. Which meant that some Alastrian’s could make a comfortable living despite others not being as fortunate.

Important.

Aunt Lysia was important. But definitely not for her work as a translator. Not much of a secret, any more. Being the leader of a rebellion. Not when the final battle was glaring at them from the not so-distant-future.

But it wasn't relevant. Not to Alastrians, anyway.

"Alastrians that can pass for Human often find work as translators," she said, instead. "We're very good with languages. And if you're willing to make the sacrifice it requires, there's little chance of being caught."

Caught. That meant there was an inherent risk of some kind in trying to live their lives normally amongst humans. They lived in fear of their identities being discovered.

Connor solemnly glanced down and slowly shut his notebook before calmly setting it down in the grass. He never intended to write about her personal history like some sort of case file—he wanted to write down interesting details about the first potential non-humans he'd encountered—but writing down anything about a people who lived in fear of having their identities exposed was... wrong. Anything he learned here couldn't be written down, and everything he'd written down thus far would have to be destroyed.

"Alastrian's live in fear of being found out by humans. That's why you didn't mention it before." He stated softly.

There was something about him setting aside his notes that put Ariadne at ease. She found herself releasing a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding.

Of course, she'd offered this. Volunteered it. All part of trying to live a more honest life.

How could she know how hard honesty would be?

She nodded slightly. "I made sacrifices to pass for Human back home. I wasn't ready to give it up just yet. Especially when I didn't know what sort of people I'd be dealing with." But her face split into a grin. "But everyone here is just so wonderful."

“Asgard seems much more accepting of those who are different.” Connor agreed. “It’s ...strange.”

It had been jarring as far as how kind the people of Asgard could be to people who were different. Connor was still trying to adjust to being acknowledged by people in a way he hadn’t been before. Instead oh hostility or disregard, he was usually met with fascination or curiosity.

"We may be different," she said, "but we're also all kind of the same, you know? None of us came here by choice. We're all just trying to make the best of the situation." It was unreasonable, she supposed, to think that under such circumstances, people wouldn't have accepted her. But nineteen years of paranoia were a little hard to shrug off.

She could only imagine what her mother would say to all of this.

Ariadne nearly rolled her eyes at the thought.

"Well," she continued, "what else would you like to know about ALastrians?" They'd only just scratched the surface, after all.

Asking such an open-ended question left a lot of room for possibilities. There were many things he'd like to know. However, from a logical standpoint, it made sense to start at the beginning and work their way around from there.

"Could you start at the beginning?" Connor asked with a hunt of enthusiasm. This was the first time he was learning about the history of a new type of people, after all. "Where did Alastrian's come from? What is their history?"

Her father, she decided, would like Connor almost as much as her mother would hate him. There wasn't a day Ariadne didn't miss them. But for a moment, it felt like a sharp pain in her chest. The longing was more intense.

And then it eased off.

"Well," she said. "To begin, you should know that we are an oral culture. No written history, aside from what other people write about us, which is usually wrong. Since the beginning, every Alastrian pack has relied on a storyteller, to maintain our history, and eventually train a successor to carry on the tradition."

She'd been mean to be her father's successor. He'd never said as much out loud, but everyone knew it. A lost opportunity. One she deeply regretted.

"The story, unfortunately, begins at the end. Alastria, the island where it's said our people were born, sank into the sea, scattering our people across the realm and creating the pack system."

A culture with no homelands where their history was passed down through oral tradition. That meant it was likely difficult to get accurate information that hadn't been eroded by time. It was the same for human history, he supposed, in that books were written from perspectives of those who had ultimately authored them without care for technical accuracy.

He nodded slightly, silently urging her to continue.

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