IC INBOX ( KENOS ).

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█ To Commune with Set is to stand barefoot in an endless, scorching desert. The sun illuminates all, scalding the shadows themselves out from underneath whomever enters his dominion; the arch of gentle, distant, waves of sand mask the precarious chasms, towering dunes akin to mountains. The sense of vastness, timelessness, is of particular notice, lending itself to the alien, eldritch quality of his mind. There is a dark storm in the distance, and you know intimately that this divine being is far from benign. You cannot bargain with a force of nature. You can only survive it. COMPATIBLE WITH: Exalt, Iconoclast REPELLED BY: Advocate

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Do you not like it?

[ As he approaches, he rotates slowly. Showing off all angles of his jinba shape without hesitation, red and sleek as he had been that day he'd run until his blind terror was left in the dust. Until he'd heard her laughter and dozed with her on the banks, among the reeds, under the sun; coming to her in this form, in Alenroux, feels right. A little like paying homage to her uniqueness, and her struggles as a woman who was not, in the least, bipedal.

He's never found anything strange about her. A jinba was, to him, as easy to look upon and find nothing foreign about as it was to have been simultaneously born of the night sky, his starry-breasted mother. His predecessors had oft been created in the image of animals, and shifted their form between flesh, world and beast without issue. To find accommodations for her lacking was a mark of mortal nearsightedness and limits, not divine issue.

Maybe it is why he does this, among the fields and growing domiciles of Alenroux. To be like her, and show solidarity - though, maybe like the centaurs of Kenos, he does not fully match her experiences. Her knowledge. Her existence as a jinba. ] That is a jnhm. A pomegranate. We had them in Egypt, so I am familiar with their seeds.

[ Beautiful things, glistening like jewels. He reaches out to the fruit, grasping it in his fingers and examining it for breakage. It'll need to be broken, to access the seeds, which are also the most tender and flavored part of the thing. ]

To grow something from seed requires a little more work, I have been taught. The seeds within must be freed and kept inside your home, until they begin to grow their roots. They respond to warm temperatures and sunlight. Once they begin to reach that stage, they can be planted. We can work step-by-step.

[ What he did not learn from observing his brother, or asking questions of him, he was shoring up on from the workers in the Greenwood Yards. ]

Something like this could easily become the first stages of a garden, you know.

[warmare]

[Does she not like it... Hayame is not able to stop herself from flustering just slightly, even though she is... a little too tired to react as strongly or as flushed as she might have if this was just a visit without another intended purpose.]

You should know fair well that I like it, Set...

[Honestly, she does not think he should have to ask, so surely he must just be out to enjoy her reaction. What that shape had been incidentally first born from... she despised, she loathed it with every fiber of her being that cared for this man. God. But the rest of it... the night he had helped liberate her from some of the chains her life had shackled her with, the first and only taste she has ever had of what it was to be with someone intimately in forms designed by nature to fit together, the splash of water, a rare moment of laughter, the quiet moment on the shores of the lake where they lay in the reeds with damp coats and fingers brushed through crimson and ebon manes, each trying to share the hope they had for the other that just...

... Would they ever come true? Or would they just keep pressing those hopes on each other with intentions that were good... and failing to truly honor what was being asked of them in turn? ... She didn't know. But the shape he has come in makes her... soften, slightly, as she willingly surrenders the pomegranate (jnhm?) to his hands, and hears his verdict. Ah. So it would not work so easily...]

I was introduced to the fruit here, I do not know of them in my world... But I have come to enjoy them greatly.

[Or maybe she enjoyed... how she had come to know the fruit, more. But there was surely no denying they were delicious. They were beautiful.]

... I can learn to do the work.

[As unfortunate as it was to not simply have it happen, with that strange and useful sort of magic, and be done with it... Maybe it was better this way. (Maybe it would be a good excuse, to invite Set's company in a way that felt more purposeful and less needing. Like how she had arranged for Liem Talbott to read from his sacred book to her, so that she might have reason to visit him after returning it to him, fearing that once that was done he would have no more cause to spent time in her company.)

Pivoting, she leaves the pomegranate with Set and goes to pick up the persimmon sapling. It was still a sapling, but it was already large enough to bear some fruit, and she has a hole for it in the yard where it might shade the home as it grows, she just wanted to be sure it would take to the soil and do well. The idea of a proper garden, though... She looks around at the still mostly clear space around the home as she unwraps the burlap to free the sapling's roots, considering. "My garden" felt just as strange as saying "my house" still did, but...]

A garden with trees might keep the night monsters from sniffing about as much, I suppose...