Planning for the future

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"It's better to think of them as siblings than lovers, but what they do with each other in private is their business." Phalaenopsis replied without looking back at Vanion, missing the hand gesture. He strained to hear the last bit of the argument, and caught Calan's last outburst quite clearly. He watched Rohnan leave, Calan having gotten the last word, but he saw her sour expression clear as day. He pursed his lips at Calan as the latter calmed himself down, but raised an eyebrow at he question.

"I was better before witnessing that, but overall not terrible." he said simply, his face still serious, "But I'll get an explanation later, I'm sure, from one or both of you. As for Jinn, no, I haven't, but he didn't take any of my hawks with him, and it's entirely possible he has no access to a Whispering Wind for fast communication, so I'm still quite squarely in the 'give him time to come back on his own' camp. Everyone is busy doing their own things this Winter, so I'm giving him time to have the vacation he deserves. If he doesn't come back this Summer, I'll set out next Winter and see what I can find out."

He put his Alchemy ingredients back into his pouch, but didn't re-buckle it closed, and his hand didn't leave the flap. "If you need time to cool down some more, my box is in my room; any of the vials in the middle compartment with brown liquid that smells like some kind of fruit should do it. I'm also going to recommend you let Rohnan have her space for a day or two. And maybe not accuse her of not being herself if she's already in a bad mood. I don't know the full details of what's going on, but returning with no memories of us was bound to have some lasting effects, and it may be that this is just one of those things that took some time to come to the surface."
 
Calans face started to contort with annoyance as Phal spoke but faded quickly. A memory filled his mind, memory wasn’t correct there was no visual component. There was just emotion, he could remember the sound of a distraught Phal, was it Phal? He recalled patting the person on the back to console them. Maybe it wasn’t a memory at all. The point was that there was something about Phal that made it impossible to feel anything more than adoration.
“ I meant through the dreamscape, he contacted me through the dreamscape. I’m trying to determine if anyone else has heard from him. He says he’s headed home, and when I asked about the falls he said he’s said his goodbyes there, so I have deduced that he is on his way back here.” Calan began stepping out the area around the house measuring it with his footsteps.
“As for Rohnan, you’re completely right she did come back with no memory of anyone here, anyone but me that is. I was her constant and in an instant of pure bad luck I vanished, I vanished and by all accounts, she didn’t flinch. When I looked for answers alone last summer she lost her mind, this should have been way worse.”

Calan looked up to make eye contact.
“If she freaked out for a week or two and then got better and levelled off I could buy that. But this? Not wondering about jinn? It’s not her, I mean it’s her but she is off. She doesn’t even talk the way she used to, nor does she move the way she used to.”

he paused to look over his shoulder to where she had gone.

“The memories we took on, don't always feel like memories, sometimes they are more like thinking?” His voice rises with uncertainty. He taps his head.
“it’s difficult to articulate but imagine hearing other thoughts, I am wondering if she’s not listening to the advice of someone else, but at the same time there are things she should know the answer to but doesn’t, or at the least, she shouldn’t have responded the way she should.”

Calan gestured with a shrug.

“I’ll stop pressing, but I intend to keep an eye on her. I’d bet a plat that Jinn will notice too. I think it may have been a subtle slow change you all didn’t notice.” Calan worried that the last bit was accusatory.

"as a side note, have you seen Solveig around of late? I have a favour to ask of her."
 
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Phalaenopsis listened intently to Calan, tilting his head back and forth as he processed. "I've tried using the dreamscape to contact someone, and have been contacted a couple of times through it, and it's... strange, but useful in an emergency, although if you forget your dreams easily I'm not sure how much I'd rely on it. I do know that you have to be alive to use it, so if Jinn was dead he couldn't be. That said, he hasn't tried to contact me that I'm aware of, and I've been content to let him be wherever he is without interruption and so haven't tried to contact him through it. I don't really know how it works, so I prefer to use my hawks and messengers. If you say Jinn has contacted you and is on his way back here, then I'll take you at your word, and won't worry about it unless we get some kind of distress message from him. He's capable of handling himself, and smart enough not to put himself in undue danger, so I expect his return trip to be relatively smooth."

He pondered futher over Calan's worry over Rohnan's behaviour, perhaps taking a moment too long before speaking again. "Hmm... If Rohnan is somehow being split up and not herself, I still think antagonizing whoever is at the front is going to cause more problems than it solves, especially if whoever it is gets enjoyment out of making you angry. It's fine to keep an eye on her and worry, but I will say that she's both the same and different from the Rohnan who left, even though I can't say I knew her particularly well before then. She still has her stubborn streak, and she's very much still driven and focused... But her focus seems to have changed, and she is being slightly more moody than usual since her return from Calanhelm. As far as her being non-nonchalant about your disappearance and Jinn's absence..."

He paused, not quite sure how to say what was running through his mind. He bit his lip, took a deep breath, and then, "I think it's possible that even if Rohnan is still herself, she's gotten annoyed at your disappearances, whether or not they're your fault or whether you leave word; at a certain point, the stress of worrying about everyone can become too much to deal with effectively, and numbing yourself to it and acting coldly is an easy out for strong feelings that get overwhelming. It may be doubly hard for her, and you, to manage your feelings going forward if the memories you've acquired don't always feel like memories, and it may take you longer to come back to a place you can deal with them each time. It's also possible that Rohnan has decided that one or more of the memories she's absorbed should be allowed some freedom, and treats it like an alternate version of herself that she occasionally lets out to experience the world. I don't know enough about any of this to really say what exactly is going on in her head, but if you're also experiencing the memory bleed, then I think you should be the most understanding about a shift in personality. You keep your feelings and thoughts pretty close to your chest, but Rohnan isn't really like that, and I don't think she ever really has been; she keeps important things to herself, but she's a pretty open book about how she feels about just about everything, and I think you know that better than anyone, so... Even if you suspect that Rohnan has been somehow taken over or possessed by these memories and want to tread carefully around her, she was likely more susceptible to it than you were, and you should still give her time and space if she asks for it. Emotions are... I will say they are tricky at best, and someone like Rohnan who finds it easy to run on their emotions is easily swayed to action by them, especially if they're in a position where it's not clear who's emotions they are. And that's all I'll say on that, because anything else is just going to set you to worry about it more than you already are."

He put a comforting hand on Calan's shoulder, and looked at him compassionately. "I think, underneath it all, Rohnan understands that you're worrying about her, and that your shared experience is taking it's toll on both of you; give her a few days to process everything, let me talk to her when she comes back, and see if you can't contact Jinn to see how far off he is from 'home'. If you take on too much worry, you're going to be of no help to anyone you're worrying about, and that, I know, is going to drive you crazy."

"If the memories haven't already." He teased with a wink and a smile. "The offer for the vials in my box still stands if you want; brown vials that smell like fruit if you want to take a break from worrying, blue vials that smell like meringue if you just want to get drunk. I still can't get Intoxicates to taste like chocolate, but I did manage a lovely batch of lemon custard flavour the other day, and I still have a few left."
 
Calan takes everything Phal says nodding all the while. When he finishes, Calan gives him a hug, then he turns to face vanion.
“I find myself feeling tired, I think I’m going to lay down for a while. See you around vanion,” he turns to Phal and smiles, “ see you when I wake up.”
he patted his shoulder one more time then made his way up the porch and into the house.
 
Feeling as though he was intruding on something, vanion decides its time to take his leave.
"I am off to warm up by the fire, I bid you a good day for now. Fair well Phalaenopsis."
Vanion turns and walks away.
 
Calan woke feeling refreshed, hopeful even. He carefully paced out the floor of his room to where the loose floorboard was and pried it up. If anyone looked in the room at that moment they would have seen the sylvanborn laying on the floor, shoulder deep-reaching about till he found what it was he was looking for. Without even really looking at it, he carelessly tossed the item into a sack and exited the house. The air was brisk; On the horizon storm clouds were deep grey and heavy. A snow storm would roll in by days end for sure. Just the other day it felt like summer her thought, now this. Not wanting to wast any more time calan casually walked for the better part of the day, and then some. Eventually small river where in spite of the cold he walked into the water until he was about waist deep. He picked up. Arranged a number of rocks in the river so that there was a void. He pulled out the item and gave it one last look before looking at the forget me not's on his hand. Good luck, he spoke aloud before submerging the item in the river and covering it with rocks. Satisfied with his work he started to head back, it wasn't more than 2” minutes of walking back before he stopped to make a small fire to warm up to. His clothing had frozen while he was walking making his journey uncomfortable To say the least. Once he was dry and semi warm he took measures to put out the fire and remove as much evidence that there had even been a fire. He continued to walk back to the house. As soon as the house was in sight, he quickened his pace, what started as a power walk quickly became a full on run. His decision to go for this walk in this weather was a very poor decision, and all he could think about was how warm he was about to be in his bed. He ran up the steps, into the house, down the hall into his room and leaped into bed.
 
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