oh, hello ;; grey

Life seemed to be looking up for Lotus and his new friends. His leg was pretty much healed, though he had to use a cane crafted by his own hands, and he’d probably have to use it for the rest of his life, but he was mobile enough to get a job with Wil at the flower shop. It helped that he was in Adhbhar. He kept the soil fresh and rich for all the plants, and he loved spending time with Wil.

He was off today, and was currently working on repairing the kitchen sink that had recently sprung a leak. When he wasn’t at the flower shop, he spent most of his days working around the small apartment. He even managed to fix the hole in the window where they use to shove a ratty old t-shirt through to keep the cold out. It was the least he could do for his roommates. They took him in, allowed him to stay, and nursed him back to health.

Lotus was almost done patching up the hole in the pipe when he heard the front door open. “Wil?” He called. “Is that you?”

He carefully pushed himself out from underneath the sink, grabbed his cane and used it to push himself up. Grimacing, he hobbled slowly toward the sound of another clio. His leg always hurt the worst after not using it for a while.

“Oh!” He said, when he saw it was Grey. “Hi!”

It was always a little awkward around Grey. Lotus still didn’t know much about him, though he wished he did. With Wil not being around, maybe today would be the day they could get to know each other a little?

“I uh...fixed the leak!” Lotus added awkwardly.

Grey had been out looking for work. Now that he was settled, he thought maybe he could get a job at a factory or something. He hadn't had any luck, though. Settled or not, he was still just a scrawny kid dressed in seldom-washed, ill-fitting clothes. How did Wil get a job so fast? he wondered, both bitter and envious.

It couldn't be that she's a polite, outgoing clio, Loren suggested sarcastically. Her clio was about as charismatic as a brick. Of course he'd have a harder time finding real work.

Lotus wrote:“Oh! Hi!”

Ugh. And even freaking Lotus had a job (that Wil had gotten him, but still). It was unfair.

Grey still didn't particularly like the guy, but he'd at least come to accept that Lotus wasn't dangerous, and he was good to Wil. The cost versus benefit of him living with them about evened out, with him both bringing in money and eating their food, so Grey couldn't complain too much (though he still complained anyways).

Lotus wrote:“I uh...fixed the leak!”

"There was a leak?" Grey asked. He looked past Lotus to where the cabinet under the sink sat open. No one had told him anything was broken. "I could have fixed it you know. With my eilemaiden. In like, a second." He hadn't told Lotus he was settled yet, but he figured Wil probably had.

Grey wrote:“I could have fixed it you know. With my eilemaiden. In like, a second.”

Wil hadn’t told him about Grey settling yet. Lotus didn’t think she had been keeping it from him though, it probably just didn’t come up.

“Yeah well,” he replied, while reaching up to rub the back of his neck. “It’s the least I can do...” He dropped his hand, shrugging. “You guys brought me in, nursed me back to health.”

Lotus offered Grey a smile, “Congratulations on settling, though! What made you choose Dian?” Grey hadn’t said it out loud, but Lotus just assumed he must have chosen Dian. How else would he had been able to repair a metal pipe? “I wish I could remember why I chose Adhbhar,” he added, sounding slightly defeated.

Though he couldn’t remember, Lotus felt as if somebody had influenced him to choose Adhbhar. Somebody important, like somebody he both feared and looked up to at the same time. Lotus still had dreams of a tattooed assailant, but could never make out his face. It brought him no closer to his past and it frustrated him to no end.

Grey shrugged. He didn't want to get into the fact that he had somehow accidentally settled as Dian without meaning to with Lotus. He was already sick of the speculation and confusion and just wanted to move past it. "I wanted something that'd be useful to me and Wil," he said, which wasn't a lie. It was just that that reasoning had applied to Earalas and not Dian.

Lotus wrote:“I wish I could remember why I chose Adhbhar,”

"Hmm," Grey said thoughtfully. Up until now he hadn't put much thought or care into Lotus' mysterious, forgotten background. Not knowing where you came from, or even the first name you were given...well, that was normal to Grey. It was how he'd grown up. But Lotus was different. He had just woken up one day with nothing. Nothing but a smashed up leg and a million questions that had no answer. "Maybe...your family was Adhbhar. Or maybe you lived on the streets like us, and it was to build shelter."

Lotus looked thoughtful for a moment, digesting Grey’s suggestions. Wincing, he slowly lowered himself onto the floor to get the weight off his bum leg. It hurt when he stood on it for too long.

“Something tells me that maybe it was family,” he replied. “But I don’t know who or why...I just get these random feelings, but never any memories.”

Lotus leaned forward and began to rub his leg. There was an awkward silence for a moment as neither boy knew what to say to the other. He looked up at Grey from where he sat and asked, “So how did job hunting go?”

"What kind of 'feelings'?" Grey asked, ignoring Lotus' stupid question about job hunting. Grey just didn't do awkward small talk. If a conversation was over he'd simply lapse into silence. However, he was still interesting in Lotus' damaged mind. He didn't know anything about amnesia or head injuries, but it seemed to him that if Lotus still had "feelings" about his past then the memories could still be somewhere in his brain, buries or hidden or jumbled up.

His eyes traveled down to Lotus' twisted up leg. It had healed all wrong and was now pretty much useless. Worse than useless, even, because it caused Lotus constant pain. Would Lotus ever remember who did that to him? Remember why they did it? Grey wasn't sure if it would be a good thing or a bad thing.

"Just feelings of being scared, or admiration even," Lotus replied thoughtfully. "I keep having the same nightmare over and over again of a faceless man with tattooed arms attacking me." At first Lotus thought that maybe that man was the one who broke his leg, but after thinking more about the dream he came to the conclusion that this wasn't his assailant, someone more familiar maybe.

"At first I thought maybe that was my attacker," he explained further. "But the more I think about it, the more I don't think it's him."

Lotus probably wasn't making any sense, but he was just as confused as Grey was. More confused. He shrugged apologetically, unsure of what to say next. He wished that this would come easier to him, and at the same time wasn't sure if he was ready to find out.

Grey shrugged. "Maybe it's you," he suggested. How many clio covered in tattoos could there be? "Or maybe it's just a dumb dream. Dreams don't have to mean anything." Just the other night Grey had a dream that Wil had brought home a giant pink swan with a unicorn horn (which, let's face it, was totally something she would do if such a thing existed). He was no psychologist but he was pretty sure most dreams were just nonsense.

"Maybe..." Lotus replied, but he didn't sound, or feel, too convinced. He didn't want to press the issue any further though. He felt that Grey really didn't want to talk to him, or at least about his dreams anyway. He leaned his back against the wall after he felt satisfied enough with his leg and sighed. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them he looked back up at Grey.

"So," he said, hoping to change the subject. "What kinds of things do you like to do around here?"

Lotus already knew what Wil liked, but he felt that it would make Wil happy if he got to know Grey as well. And who knows, maybe a friendship could grow between the two of them as well.

"I don't like to do anything," Grey replied bluntly. "I do what I need to do."

Or in this case you don't do what you need to do, because you still don't have a job, Loren teased. Grey ignored her. Job or not, he was still contributing to the household by bringing home food and whatever money he could scrape together. He wasn't just sitting around doing nothing while there were two three clio to feed in this little apartment.

"So, what?" Lotus asked, pressing further. "You just sit around when you have free time?"

He wasn't trying to offend Grey, he just genuinely wanted to get to know him better. There had to be something that Grey liked to do when there wasn't anything important to attend to. "What did you and Wil do together when you weren't trying to survive?" He asked.

Lotus was almost 100% certain that Wil would have never let Grey just sit around doing nothing.

Grey narrowed his eyes. Lotus may not have been trying to offend him, but Grey took his words like an insult. "We were always trying to survive," he said coldly. What the hell did Lotus think they had to do out on the streets? Learn how to ride bikes? Draw pictures? No. They tried to find food, they tried to find shelter, they tried to stay out of trouble. They tried to survive. "I bet you can't even imagine what it was like for us."

Lotus' past was a mystery, but it was obvious from his professionally-done tattoos and well-fed body that he hadn't grown up on the streets. Even as a blank slate who couldn't remember growing up with a bed and a roof and three meals a day, he still probably couldn't conceive of the type of childhood Wil and Grey had had.