RP post: In Tuscany with Charlie

[ostro_goth]

[[From here.]]

There are a few things here that were not invented in Teja's time, and unknown in his parents' house; but apart from electricity and glass windows, this place is timeless. There is a large kitchen with an old fireplace; there is a fountain outside, and trees lining a drive towards the road.

After Demeter has opened the door for them, and Teja and Charlie have stepped through, Teja starts looking around, and exploring the place she has prepared for them.

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Teja may be familiar with this place, and the style....Charlie is certainly not. He's for the moment following his lover around, merely taking in the place.

It kinda makes him smile, really.

[ostro_goth]

Count hops off Teja's shoulder and starts exploring, only his puffed-up tail betraying any wariness.

Teja takes a poker and stirs the fire; then, he takes off his cloak, and starts looking at the supplies Demeter left them in the pantry.

"It seems," he says, with some hesitation, "we are meant to fend for ourselves; this place would belong to people that are not here, right now, and cater to strangers in their absence."

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Charlie is caught between amusement at Count, and at Teja. "Well I'd hope she wouldn't put us in a house with the occupants still here...that might just be weird."

Anything that might have been on the end of that sentence is obscured by a laugh, as he takes something down off a high shelf. "I wonder if I want to know why this is in the pantry..."

[ostro_goth]

"If she put us in a house that one lives in," Teja says, slightly dismayed, "who would merely rent out their guest room to strangers, the farmer's wife might have made us meals; now, we have to think of something."

Pause, while he picks a round object with the picture of a kitten on off a shelf. This would not, one assumes, contain dead kitten, but kitten food; and hopefully, Charlie will know how to open it.

"Why -- what have you found?"

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He merely raises an eyebrow at the tone, reminding himself not to laugh. "I'm pretty sure one or both of us know how to cook, Teja."

He holds out the small jar for his over to look at it, giving the thing Teja's holding a quizzical look, until he sees the picture on it. "Oh, cat food. Count will be happy."

[ostro_goth]

"I thought it was that," Teja says, putting the tin aside. "One assumes you know how to open it, so one gets through the metal to the food?"

Pause.

"I know not how to cook! I can make tea, or mull and serve wine; I can dress and roast fish, fowl or meat that I have caught; I can stir together moretum for breakfast, or make stick-bread over the open fire; I can improvise some stew or gruel with whatever supplies one might find, or collect and chop some vegetables and herbs for greens to eat with meat and bread, but I cannot cook! It was women's work, in my world; and I would not make you do women's work, either! You are very much a man, and I like that about it."

Pause, while he reads the label on the jar.

"Or maybe, we should live on edible body paint??"

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Charlie leans back against a counter, smiling at Teja, on the cusp of laughing. "You don't live on that, trust me. You can cook, you just don't know it as much. All of the things that you listed, knowing how to mull wine, make bread or roast meat; that's cooking."

He lays a hand on Teja's shoulder lightly. "Things have changed a bit, from only women learning to cook. And you're not making me do anything that I wouldn't ordinarily; if we're hungry, I'll cook something. It's not difficult."

[ostro_goth]

Teja touches his cheek to Charlie's hand. "It is not cooking; cooking would involve pots, and recipes, and long procedure. I merely know how to throw together some food, so a warrior by himself need not starve."

Pause.

"But I think I can make breakfast, or suchlike, so we can share what needs to be done, in the absence of women or rats to do it for us."

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Charlie just rolls his eyes. "It's cooking. It's just not complicated; the vast majority if it actually isn't." He brushed his fingers over Teja's cheek, looking back and pushing himself up to sit on the counter.

"We'll manage, I'm fairly sure."

[ostro_goth]

Teja puts a hand on each of Charlie's knees, and steps closer, to lean in and kiss his beloved.

"If that is what you wish to call it," he says. "Still I would not say that I can cook; a true cook would laugh at me!"

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Charlie smiles at the kiss, and shakes his head, threading his fingers into Teja's air, right at his temples. "Neither of us are, really. We both can, but then we can do a lot of things."

He rests his hands around Teja's waist, since it's convenient, and the right height.

[ostro_goth]

"I like this counter," Teja murmurs, leaning in to kiss Charlie again; it is just the right height for them to comfortably embrace, and see eye to eye. A quiet shuffle of feet, and tilt of hip, brings him even closer.

"She would not have chosen the house, surely, for the height of the counter?"

Pause.

"We both can do many things that are not our first duty, or the trade we live by," he then admits. "You can fight, and throw a man on his back; I can raise a kitten by hand."

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"Mmm, so do I." He touched the ends of their noses together, and tilted his head to kiss Teja. "I don't think she would. But she might."

He leaned back, putting his hands behind him, and almost smiling. "We can both do more than that. Though getting you on your back is fun..." he teased, giving another small and content kiss.

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Charlie trailed his fingers through the water in the fountain as he walked; it was cold, but not iced like it would have been in Milliways, or New York. "Where are we going?"

[ostro_goth]

"Do you see the line of plane trees, over there, where the hills open a little?" Teja says, pointing. "We are going to what is at the end of it. That is the place where long, long ago, the villa rustica stood, on the lands of my father, where I was born."

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"Really? I didn't know we were so close to where you were born." He reached down and took Teja's hand in his, comfortably. "You'll have to tell me how it's changed..."

He'd prefer English. His grasp on Latin is tenuous at best, and on anything older than that....well. They didn't offer Gothic as a foreign language option in school.

[ostro_goth]

Teja, as far as he knows, is speaking Gothic; but the translating magic of Milliways reaches even into other worlds. He says 'haims', and Charlie will hear 'home'; he says 'hultha', and Charlie will hear 'beloved'; he says 'aqizi', and Charlie will hear 'axe'. The villa rustica, though, the country house with holdings, run as a farm, but also a pleasant home for an affluent man, is a Latin loan word that Teja says in Latin, to begin with.-

"That is why this part of Tuscany -- Demeter met me there, millennia ago, when I was still alive and came but once to grieve in the ruins; and she took me back, once already, to see what it is like in these modern times," Teja says.

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Charlie, insofar as he can really tell, is hearing it in English. The magic tends to give him some words in Latin and it's....odd. "She met you while you were alive?"

There's an amount of curiosity there, to know what Teja was like, and why he was grieving, for whom...but he can stifle that for the moment. At least until Teja brings it up first, if he does. "Did the city have a name, when you came here?"

[ostro_goth]

"The town of Vinci was not there yet," Teja says. "Florentia, the City, lay over there, and still does. These lands between Florentia and Luca held many places like this; they were good lands and, indeed, still are."

Pause.

"And indeed, she met me when I was alive; I did not know that it was her, then, naturally, and thought no more of the young woman who had spoken to me in the ruins of my parents' home. There were many that I spoke to, on my travels through these lands. I was never long in one place."

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Charlie listens to that, and is quiet for a minute, before leaning up and giving him a soft kiss on the cheek. "I wonder what you were like, then." He still holds onto Teja's hand, comfortably close enough to brush his hip while they walk.

"I suspect very different than you are now."

[ostro_goth]

"Very dark, and not to be touched," Teja says. "Not to be consoled by anything. I knew only grief, and dire duty."

Pause.

"My parents had been killed when I was ten, our home destroyed, in a conspiracy between the bishop of Florentia, and our envious neighbour, Theodahad of the Amalungs, relative to the king, who wanted my father's lands. I was raised by the same priests that had slain my father, driven my mother to death, until my father's old friend, Hildebrand, weapons-master to the king, found me in Rome and rescued me. When King Witichis, during the wars, elected after Theodahad had been found a traitor, wanted to restore the lands to me, I would have none of it. What for? There was nothing left but ruins and sad memory."

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"That's....hard to live through." Charlie can't say anything about his parents, as they're still alive; he's never lived with anyone else, for any length of time either. "Your life was much harder than mine. But in a sense I'm glad you don't have to worry over it anymore. In another I wonder if you'd be any different, if you were alive now."

He just kept walking, brushing his hair back as a breeze kicked it up. "You never wanted to rebuild anything here?"

[ostro_goth]

"My life held much hardship, pain, and darkness," Teja says. "You have never seen me at my worst; I had already been much lightened-up by those I had met in Milliways, when you came there."

Pause.

"No; I knew that there would be no future to build here, and only a few years of desperate war left until my people were swept off these lands forever; so I rather spent my rare spare time at my harp, or at my anvil."

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"Hearing you speak like that makes me very sad, sometimes. Knowing that you felt that way." He tightened his hand around Teja's, pressing a kiss to his shoulderblade. "I'm glad you're the way you are now. Even though we're very different..."

He sighed quietly, leaning his head against his lover's arm.

[ostro_goth]

Teja half-turns, and pulls him into his arms.

"We love each other, truly, deeply," he says, "and one of the things we have come here for is to learn more of each other. My past, my life, is almost all darkness! Almost -- there are lighter moments to speak of, also, with those that I cared for, in life. But I rarely knew contentment like that I have with the cats in the forge, or with a friend by the fireplace, while I was alive."

Pause.

"I loved a girl, once, briefly: - then she died; I had friends that I loved dearly, in a way, also. But I have never, while I was alive, known the fulfilment of true love-making, or the happiness of true, deep love not overshadowed by dire suffering and fearsome dangers. I am glad I am as I am now, also!"