castleinthemist | 02-- Things might yet turn around.

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02-- Things might yet turn around.

So he's taken to spending quite a bit at time in the common area of the residential chamber. Usually? Chilling out at the table or finding a nice little niche to settle in. Right then? He'd found a stone bench near a window that looked out onto the courtyard. On the opposite bench, a green-gray crate with numbers on it and a packing label. Someone got a package today. How? Probably a good question.

He'd gotten it the night before at the fountain while he was still restlessly awake. Didn't really take him long to figure out what had happen once he decided to throw a coin in and make a wish but he didn't think for a second that it would work. About two hours later? He asked again. Past midnight.

Now. It was late afternoon and he'd held off from indulging long enough. He settled onto the window seat, propped a leg up on the opposite stone ledge and plucked an apple from the crate of perfectly ripe fruit. Strawberries, mangoes, apricots, grapes, apples and pears. Perfect. He took a bite out of the apple, sighing contently.

So he'd lost his nerve for a spell. So those damn Shadows sapped a bit of his courage away. Didn't bother him so much right now. He'd just have this and enjoy his little birthday eating, drinking and being merry. Like you're supposed to do.

"Bottoms up." He said, drinking the last out of his flask before looking to the bottle to fill it back up.

[OOC: A window seat are common structures in castles. They look like this. Feel free to join Duo and have a drink, eat some good food, he's happy to share and plenty to go around. Also I may prefer prose but you can also respond in comment spam. I really don't care either way.]

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"Nah. Only what happened to my world is a sore subject. That's all." Duo replied, eyeing the scrappy little girl with a smirk. There was no way to express just how sleepy he was getting, but that was from the sugar high crash from the fruit and the alcohol.

"We're advanced. Technologically. We've got machines doing alot of the work, and we even live in outer space. In big vast metal cities floating in orbit around the Earth. Pretty cool, doncha think?"

As he spoke, all she could imagine were what she could "see" when they went to the inhabited Air Temple, or what she "saw" when they were fighting the Fire Nation, and what she could "see" when Sokka was building and designing things. She failed to see how any of those contraptions could do work, but alright. Whatever. Duo's world was different from hers, right?

"Big metal cities?" She imagined something like the Fire Nation's war balloons, but bigger. Toph had no idea how to fathom 'around the earth,' though.

"Sounds weird."

But her place probably sounded weird to him, too.

"You come from a world were people have control over the elements. It's cool, but... Hey. Who am I to judge what's weird or not? I guess here it's about normal." Duo stated, sipping at his liquor.

"It's just natural progression of technology, y'know? The whole point is to make life easier." Even if it ends up being used for the wrong purpose.

Make sense?

"I guess," she frowned before raising her eyebrows. "It just seems weird to me. You live... away from Earth? But how? I've been up in the clouds. If you go much higher, there's not enough air to breathe. How do you LIVE up there?"

She pushed herself up onto an arm before continuing.

"Don't you run into stars sometimes? Isn't it hot that close to the sun? How do you get up there? What's keeping your cities in the air?"

She relaxed back and waved a hand at him. "You don't have to answer all that. I'm just making my point as to how weird that sounds. But, I agree that Bending sounds weird, too, if you don't know about it. Continue."

It was clear that Toph's world was sort of limited on their knowledge of things beyond the clouds. They had their theories and their lore, and a few bits of scientific findings, but nothing substantial; they weren't nearly far along enough to leave the planet, much less live in space.

Duo chuckled softly, bemused at her questions but he wasn't going to mock her. It wasn't her fault she didn't know the numbers.

"Toph, the sun is a million times the size of Earth and a hundred million miles away." He said, snorting his amusement. That was cute. "The Colonies are made of metal, enclosed with the air inside, so that people can live there. Artificial earths floating in space."

If he could only remember all that sciency stuff to tell her. "Heh. Hey. That's fair. I know my world sounds weird, but don't worry about that. So far? Everyone's world sounds weird t'me."

Toph listened to what he said and mulled it around a bit. It didn't make sense. How could something so far away be so hot? How do you get enough air in a metal box for an entire city or more to live? How do you make artificial earth?

Oh well. Clearly this guy was out of it.

"So what happens next, Space Man?" she asked, urging him to continue. Give her stories!

While she listened, she snagged another piece of fruit. This time, two- a mango and a strawberry. She took a bite of each, letting the flavors mix in her mouth. Tasty.

He'll try his best to explain.

"So once upon a time? Humanity went to war with each other again. A whole continent at war over territory and racial purity... The only real benefit is that it pushed technology forward really quickly. It was a horrible war like all wars are. But after that, two nations were in a stand off because they both had weapons nobody wanted to use. And so they just kept working on technology." The cold war. Explain how people got to space.

He mulls over that for a moment and reaches for another apple crunching into it. "The two countries were at war because of ideological differences, and one had a dictator ship. Anyway so some guy got a bright idea to head into space, cause that's unexplored territory. Both sides make it up to space, but keep trying to one up one another. Then their sights went to the moon-- And they made it. Well, the country that I descend from made it first. But that doesn't matter. This whole stupid argument over Who has the right political model paved the way for the colonies to be build. That's the story, anyway." He took another big bite of his apple and turned to look over at Toph to see her reaction.

Toph listened carefully, imagining things from the perspective of the things she'd "seen" in her world. Say, the Fire Nation at war alone with the Earth Kingdom and the Earth Kingdom deciding the only way to win was to head upwards, thus creating plateaus and mesas. She thought perhaps the Fire Nation might super-design their war balloons and head upwards beyond the sky.

It still seemed odd to her, but it seemed to work, she supposed.

"And then what?"

"And then we saw how big the universe was." Duo said, chuckling. He wasn't about to talk about his world specifically. About how technology essentially destroyed the world. Had a feeling she'd just be unhappy about that with him.

"We took a giant telescope and looked out into space. Looking for answers about how we got there and everything."

She thought about what to say. What DOES one say in that sort of conversation? She chewed on her words for a while before finally just responding, "... that's pretty cool."

If she hadn't accepted the idea of other worlds and the possibility that they were bound to be either archaic or super advanced in regards to her own, she would have called him a looney and locked him in stone for his own well being.

Instead, she only listened to his story and ate his food.

She tried to think of something to say.

"... we have koi spirits that control the moon."

"I thought so." Duo smiles widely at her, even her bored looking face was amusing to him just then. How tired he was? That was all he could give.

"Are those the fish? Huh." Controlling the moon. Who knew? He crossed his arms, looking out the window at the pale moon in the afternoon sky.

"It doesn't work that way back home, but it sounds kinda cool."

"The spirits run our world," she said as she snuggled down against her headrest.

She honestly didn't know how else to put it. Her with the Bending and spirits inhabiting fish and chi and this that and the other, and Duo with his science and astronomy and...

She smirked a bit to herself.

"You're kinda smart, aren't you? Space Brain? You and Sokka would get along great!"

Spirits. It just seemed to foreign. He thought about it for a few moments before looking right at Toph.

"Do you have gods too?" He wondered aloud. Maybe if there was a god in her world, there really was a god in his. And if that was the case, it was an unjust god indeed.

"I dunno about smart. What I told you is common knowledge. I just... made it sound smart."

Well, whatever Duo said, he seemed smart to her. She could tell he was more brilliant than he let on, anyway.

"We don't have gods. Not that I know of, anyway."

She took another strawberry mango bite and swallowed it down.

"Just spirits. Fish spirits, moon spirits, painted ladies, spirits of the forests and the swamps... You name it."

She had the right idea. He reached over for the strawberries and started eating it with the Mango he'd started on earlier. He wondered if she knew how fast he was crashing off the fruit sugar high right now. He was tired and now yawning as he took the bite.

"Heh. I dunno anything about spirits. It's a lot of mysticism, you know? It's not even present on my world, but so many people believe it."

She could tell by the hitch in his breathing, the pause in his pulse, the slouch of his posture, and the slur in his voice. However slight all of that would be, she could sense it. She was acutely aware of things like that.

"The spirits just take care of the world. They guard it and protect it from bad spirits, both human and non. That's all."

She was quiet for a few minutes. Maybe he had a good idea. Was it nap time back home, yet?

Didn't help that he was tipsy. He had been drinking as well. He yawned once again, louder this time. Maaaaan. Okay. Body is sending a clear message to his brain.

"Wish there were spirits in my world, then maybe everything coulda been alright." He finished off his fruit then, tossing away whatever was left on the inside. He nestled into the corner of his seat and let his eyes shut a moment, thinking back to the Earth and how torn up it had become.

Her being an Earthbender though? With what she could do? He wasn't gonna tell her about that. Not a chance.

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02-- Things might yet turn around.

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