Societal Solipsism - Chapter 3: In-Laws and Inroads

Western Commons

61 Zephyr, 1330 AE

The grandfather clock ticked out a painfully slow beat, meting out time at its own leisurely pace. For humans, the rhythmic tick-tock every second roughly matched their heart rate, but for a charr the difference was almost painfully pronounced. Liberius struggled to keep his claws from digging into the plush upholstery of the undersized armchair he found himself in. Hisoka's mother, Azumi, had insisted that no guest would sit on the floor in her house, and so he found himself pressed against on all sides by discomfort.

To his left, Hisoka sat in the closest position of a similarly-plush sofa. Before him, a low table filled the space, and beyond that was a doorless passageway into the kitchen. To his right were a wall-consuming series of shelves that had once been bookcases, so stuffed with various pieces from Cantha that one could have been mistaken for believing the Minato family was still in regular contact with the southern continent. In the fahrar, Liberius' primus had taught the cubs that 'an unobservant soldier is a dead soldier' and proceeded to hammer this lesson in with brutal, repetitive, efficiency. In this unfamiliar battlefield, Liberius found his training rushing back to him on instinct, compelling his eyes to take in as much of the cultural hoard as he could.

Books, once the sole occupants of the cases, still dotted the wall. Thick tomes such as The Empire of the Dragon: Its Vassals and Its People sat near thinner editions like Red Bean Cake and When to Serve It. Between these were illustrations of boats that had sailed the Unending Ocean centuries before anyone in the house had been born. What stood out most to Liberius was the presence of so much fishing gear. By itself, the fact would have been mundane: plenty of people fished, and Canthans were hardly exempt from that. What really piqued his interest was the seeming disuse: the wooden rods had been polished to a gleaming sheen, and were hanging high up on the shelves. Liberius had seen Azumi before she made herself busy in the kitchen, and she could not have easily reached them without assistance.

The charr finally ripped his gaze away from the veritable museum upon the wall, and turned to Hisoka. "Do you fish?" he asked, and jerked his thumb over to the equipment.

Hisoka shook his head. "I used to as a kid, but not in the last few years."

"Did anyone in your family? Those look like adult rods."

Before Hisoka could answer, his mother returned from the kitchen. She held a tray with a Canthan tea kettle and three accompanying cups, surrounded by bits of Krytan seafood. She set the tray down in the middle of the central table and sat down next to Hisoka on the sofa. As Hisoka had insisted earlier, Liberius served himself a cup and contemplated how to surreptitiously dispose of the green tea: human cups tended to face complications when encountering the wider, toothier, expanses of charr mouths.

Azumi and her son cut a stark contrast side by side. Where Hisoka tended to wear darker clothing cut in a contemporary Krytan style, accented at most by a single more vibrant colour that rose to the fore, Azumi wore what could only be described as "neo-Canthan". Without cultural contact, styles had evolved independently of fashion trends in the far south, leading to a unique wardrobe amongst the descendants of Canthans living in Kryta. Her skirt and blouse were lined with silver, and the primary fabric was a shimmering cross between blue and purple that seemed to change depending on the angle you looked at it from. Scaled patterns wound their way around both pieces in a serpentine fashion that managed to remain unobtrusive despite the ostentatious display. The only piece that remotely clashed were the deep jade earrings that hung beneath her short-cut, silver-dappled hair. She looked between Hisoka and Liberius, and asked the first question, the obvious question, the question inherent to meeting your partner's parent for the first time: "So how did you two meet?"

Liberius had been told not to answer: "While being found snooping through The Apple and the Arrow's ledger, arms festooned with pilfered goods from various rooms in the inn." It had worked out once, but relaying that story to Hisoka's mother was less likely to receive positive results. Liberius' counter-argument that he had returned all of the legally-obtained items to the rooms they came from had failed to change Hisoka's mind.

"Liberius was staying at The Apple and the Arrow for a few nights, before heading south. This was after Fort Salma of course, and the Priory wanted to enlist someone with knowledge of the High Legions' anti-spectral equipment to survey the area." Liberius listened in as Hisoka spun a sanitized version of the time they had spent together. The whole experience was strange to him, as charr could scarcely have conducted themselves less similarly. When a warband member introduced a hookup or long-term partner, the occasions tended to be casual and informal, laced with stories that exaggerated their exploits together, rather than diminishing them. Those tales were far more carnal, and significantly more raw, than the wholesome one Hisoka was sharing with his mother. He omitted their time in Rata Sum, reduced their presence in Orr to a few discussions with Pact Agents all within the safe walls of Fort Trinity, and that brought them up to speed.

"I've never really understood the problems that Krytans seem to have with charr," Azumi started, after taking in her son's recounting of the last year, "it's like with the Kurzicks and the Luxons. Generations of hatred, rippling down into the children." She closed her eyes and clicked her tongue, making it clear what she thought of both wars.

"With the ceasefire in place for so long, the treaty seems a mostly sure thing." Liberius stated, omitting the fact that no empire had to conquer both other states in order for relative peace to be achieved. He felt like that would earn him a few ears-full from Hisoka later.

She nodded. "It's wonderful to see. And it's lovely to see that you two can be friends. Why, my mother used to read me a bedtime story about a Kurzick and a Luxon who—"

Liberius cut her off with, "Oh, we're actually d—" before being cut off himself.

Hisoka's cup dropped to the floor, pausing conversation. "I'm sorry, how clumsy."

"Is it—"

"Yes mother, it's fine. Besides, this is one of the replicas, anyway."

Azumi sighed and clicked her tongue once more, evidently upset with her son for exposing some social faux pas that Liberius would never have picked up on. "With no ships from Cantha in over a century, we've had to be careful with our pieces. Really though, the big thing is the food. The fish here are close, but my great grandmother said they were never quite the same as those back home."

The three traded bits and pieces of Tyrian politics and Canthan history, while Liberius puzzled over Hisoka's interruption. When the human had bent over to retrieve his cup, he had given Liberius a brief pleading look.

The conversation became more specific, with Azumi digging into the lives of the Canthan families in the Western Commons. Unlike the humans from Elona or Ascalon, there was not enough of a population to establish an entire city district. Ironically, the community had become more insular due to this. Liberius suspected that the nation's ingrained xenophobia had something to do with that, but he managed to hold his tongue.

"I saw Ambrosine's mother the other day. Did you know she's still single? Wonderful girl." Hisoka's jaw clenched, and Azumi turned to Liberius. "She and Hisoka used to pester the theater troupe endlessly, begging them to be allowed to play with their props. You know, Hisoka used to have such a crush on—"

"Mother, please."

"Oh come now Hisoka, it's nothing to be embarassed about. Besides, you're 25, it's long past time you start thinking about these things. She's grown up to be a gorgeous Luxon woman."

"I don't want to marry a woman just because she's Luxon."

"If you would rather a woman from Kaineng, or a Kurzick woman, I'm sure we can do something about that. As for anyone from Shing Jea, that would be rather difficult. Perhaps someone older..."

Hisoka sighed the resigned exhalation of someone who had been through this song and dance far too many times. For Liberius, the pieces clicked. Even if the two biological factors preventing him and Hisoka from having kids disappeared — and given that one would cost quite a lot of gold and the other one was impossible, this was unlikely to say the least — the children would never be Canthan. One of his claws picked at the fabric of his pants, and he tried to keep the rising sense of frustration from seeping into his expression.

"Why don't we save this for later?" Hisoka proposed in an attempt to stave the conversation off indefinitely.

It was Azumi's turn to sigh. "Fine, but you will have to confront this soon. If your father and I had had other children, then perhaps..."

The room was quiet, and both Minatos cast glances towards the fishing gear opposite them. Hisoka cleared his throat. "It's been nice visiting, mother, but we've had a long trek. We should be in Divinity's for a bit, why don't we meet again soon?"

Azumi smiled and stood up, leading the other two to respond in kind. They walked towards the door, and the Minatos hugged. While shaking Azumi's hand, Liberius couldn't help but wonder why Hisoka brought him here. The human seemed interested in advancing their relationship, but if anything this felt like a regression. Liberius watched as they said goodbye, listening to one insist and the other promise that they would meet again soon.

The two stepped outside and closed the door. "So...friends, huh?" Liberius asked after a second.

"She's...stubborn, and I didn't want to make her feel bad. She wants grandkids, that sort of...Canthan community is important to her."

Liberius shook his head. "What was the point of this?"

"I wanted you to meet her."

"As friends."

"Yes! As friends. We can move from there, win her over over time. If you were introducing me to your warband," Liberius pinched the bridge of his nose, "then you would do it all at once, talk up what we've done together, brag about me. But this isn't your warband, it's my mother."

Liberius crossed his arms, and the two started walking through the streets. "But you'll have to confront it eventually, if she wants kids and you can't provide."

"Yeah, well..." Hisoka trailed off, and Liberius huffed at the stall in the conversation. "Besides, I thought you weren't into getting too serious? I had to propose this, after all. What's the problem if she thinks we're friends?"

"We went to the effort of coming all the way out here."

"We were passing through. Besides, this doesn't change anything. We'll still interact the same, and we'll bring her around later."

Liberius nodded, still not sold. "So...this Ambrosine. She cute?"

Hisoka laughed. "Just a childhood friend, you have nothing to worry about."

"I'm lucky then."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. I hooked up with Frazar, Gharaz, Maim, there was that time with Kakei—" Liberius lifted a finger for each of the listed charr, seemingly having to dredge them up from the depths of his memory.

Hisoka put a hand on the charr's bicep. "Okay, okay, I get it. No, you're fine. Look, I'll...work on her."

Liberius nodded, still not sure why he cared this much.