It's hard to find true equilibrium.

[thesilentstorm]

Lindblum was, in Lumi's opinion, a singularly awful city.

Built atop a mountain, or possibly a cliff, it bore the sort of architecture that made it amply clear that it had been added to over time, that it had started off much smaller and had grown, almost organically, outwards and then upwards, like a particularly unpleasant fungus of mismatched brick and tile all contained within the immense castle's fortified walls.

Lumi's nose had wrinkled as they made the approach to the Falcon's Gate via airship. Even from a distance he could see that, without more space for the city to crawl beyond the walls, as most seemed to when they outgrew a castle's ramparts, it had just gotten ... taller. Idly, he had wondered how it would fare in the event of an earthquake.

Once the airship had docked and he and Marluxia had disembarked, he decided that the city was even worse than it had looked from their approach. The winding streets and irregular buildings did little but compound the fact that the city was not purpose-built. Some of the houses leaned like drunkards and some of them had larger, over-hanging upper floors, as though they had been added to at a later date by a less skilled builder. It looked disorganised, ramshackle and untidy.

With any luck, they wouldn't be there long.

They were in the city on a mission, or, at least, a favour. In deference to the alliance he had made with the most recently recruited of his old ... "colleagues", Marluxia had agreed to make a trip to Even's old home to pick up some items that he hadn't thought to bring with him on his would-be temporary relocation to Daguerreo. It wasn't safe for him to go himself, on any front, and Marluxia had the freedom of movement accorded to an established and voluntarily joined member of Clan Khamja.

Lumi stood in the street outside the Air Cab station, a frown on his face at the feel of the uneven cobbled floor under the soles of his shoes. It was a warm day, but it was growing clear that Summer was on its way out in this part of the world. The breeze that blew down the street carried upon it the scent of woodsmoke, hanging baskets and the promise of rain. It was, despite the pleasant day, cool enough to make Lumi stiffen where he stood. He scowled, looking up. The sky was, at least, still blue, though grey clouds were visible in the distance.

He looked to Marluxia for direction. It was he who had the address of Even's old residence.

Comments

[thesilentstorm]

Lumi paused as Marluxia closed the door and proceeded down the short hallway.

For a moment, he didn't move. He wanted to get a feel for the house. Sensing Reiatsu was less use here than it could have been. It was old, easily upwards of a hundred years, and had seen many owners in its lifetime. Despite this, nothing notable had been performed in it recently, if ever, nothing that had sunk in too deep, not beyond the spiritual background noise that one could expect of any building of reasonable age. The fact that the house was one of many in a row, in a large and old city, didn't help matters. The scents were much more telling.

It smelled mildly unpleasant. It wasn't a scent that was outright disgusting, but the air of abandonment that swirled in the air like the dust that their entry had disturbed was, nonetheless, quite pungent. This became all the more apparent when Marluxia pushed the door open wider. Lumi wrinkled his nose as the disturbance in the air brought the scent of old fabrics, papered walls and a multitude of aged books to the fore.

Over the top and intermingled with the odour of neglect he could detect the scent of people, albeit not particularly strongly. He doubted anybody had been there in the past two or three weeks. He recognised Even, a faint smell beneath the layers, but there were others, those fresher, who wove through and sat atop it. One was obviously Saix, though he would not have been able to say which. The other, or others... guests, perhaps.

The smell of nervous sweat was absent, so Lumi felt certain that nobody had entered without permission.

Under the dust he could smell the location of the kitchen to the far end of the house. Nothing had been prepared there for a while, but it still lingered in the background like a light trail left imprinted on the eyes after one had closed them. Some smells faded very quickly, but the smell of food preparation tended not to, not when the same location was used almost daily over many, many years. It lingered like the sour tang of tobacco which, Lumi was sure, had been a vice of one of the house's previous owners, if he was any judge.

"Did they protect it from entry without a key?" Lumi asked, looking around.

His gaze fell upon the banister. There were hand prints in the coating of greyish dust that lay upon the worn wood, something so careless that they probably belonged to one of the owners, more than likely Saix. He had no reason to disguise his entry or movements; it was his house. Nevertheless, those marks had been covered with fresher dust, more evidence that he had not been back in some time.

[gracefuldahlia]

Marluxia walked past the stairs to push open the kitchen door, and the one next to it, which led to a small dining room. This room seemed to have been cleaned more recently than the rest of the house. Most likely Saix, Marluxia thought. Someone had returned during Vexen's extended absence and shown the presence of mind required to dispose of perishable food items and give the kitchen a once over so as not to attract pests.

There was one lone mug on the draining rack by the sink. Everything else had been put away, and the bin had been emptied. The back door had been bolted at the top, and most likely locked.

"No," Marluxia said, in answer to Lumi's question, "except possibly by reputation, or an informal arrangement with neighbours." He glanced into the dining room briefly to see it as abandoned as the living room had been. "The Order claims its base in Rabanastre, so both of them would have been away with some regularity. Their extended absence may not have been noticed by the neighbourhood yet." It depended on how nosy the neighbourhood was.

He glanced, briefly, at Lumi. "Breaking in here may be more trouble than it's worth anyway; neither of them are the type to accumulate valuables."

Unless you counted books, anyway, which Vexen almost certainly did. They had a list of books he wished retrieved from his study, which, it seemed, was located upstairs.

[thesilentstorm]

"Ah," he said.

He followed Marluxia with his eyes as he made his way to the kitchen. With the door open, the smell of cleaning materials became more obvious and he was glad of it. Vacant and neglected as the house obviously was, it would have been so much worse had the buzzing of flies or the squeal of vermin greeted his partner upon that door being opened.

He stayed where he was, watching the dust motes dance in the light that spilled into the hallway from the open kitchen door. He detected a change in the air, a brief whisper of comparative freshness in the currents. There was, evidently, a vent of some kind in the kitchen.

In Lumi's opinion, the house was ... stuffy. It was like nothing else he'd ever seen. The fabrics were abundant and thick, all the better for trapping dust and scents, and the décor was dull and dowdy. It was busier than he would ever be able to appreciate and Lumi knew, somehow, that it would probably be considered somewhat old fashioned. The Palace was bad enough, but the more abundant space and former grandeur made him forgive more from it.

It at least had the excuse of being uninhabited for several hundred years. This house just acted like it had been. He wrinkled his nose as he looked around, taking in the visual details with a look of mild disdain.

"I can see why they both left," he said drily.

[gracefuldahlia]

Marluxia smirked at Lumi's comment. "I can't see why they moved in to begin with," he said, glancing at Lumi out of the corner of his eye. "Decor aside, you've met Vexen."

The house was decorated in a style that was best described as a lack of style. Marluxia doubted that either Saix or Vexen had actually taken the time to go out and choose wallpaper, or carpet, or paint, or the like. The chances were that they had merely moved in their own furniture and possessions.

Add to that the personalities of the two inhabitants, and Marluxia didn't see this as having been a particularly happy home. Certainly not for long. The existence of the sofa suggested it may have been, once, but that time was long since past.

"His study will be upstairs," He said, glancing up them. The bedroom too, and the bathroom. He wondered if he'd find a camp bed in the study, or a spare bedroom that served as a doghouse for Saix. Looking around someone else's home when they weren't there could be quite revealing. "Let's not linger too long." He turned to the stairs and began to make his way up.

[thesilentstorm]

Lumi didn't dispute Marluxia's implications.

He didn't like Even. He didn't much like anybody, but Even, during the brief period in which he had been forced to share his company, had been fussy, tedious and had reminded him of somebody he once knew. Given that Lumi almost loathed that person, it wasn't a particularly fond reminiscence. The notion of somebody electing to live with him seemed an odd one, in light of that.

He moved aside as Marluxia headed for the stairs.

"I'll wait here," he said.

He didn't much like the idea of both of them being on the upper floor in a strange building. There was something about it that he was sure would make him feel cornered.

[gracefuldahlia]

Marluxia nodded at Lumi's statement. Having Lumi watch the doors was better than him needlessly trailing upstairs after himself. Marluxia felt safe enough with Lumi watching his back, as it were.

At the top of the stairs the landing was small, and dark. Marluxia opened doors at random. One of them was a box of a room that, at a guess, was Saix's doghouse room. There was a sad looking single bed, and not much else. For someone that had lived on this world for some time, this room would be the one where all the accumulated nonsense would be stored, kept but never used. The room equivalent of that one drawer in the kitchen.

The bathroom was small, but clean. At a guess, the shower got used more often than the bath. The shared bedroom was more spacious than the other, and someone, Saix presumably, had taken the time to make and turn down the bed. He'd been careful, it seemed, not to give Vexen reason to be angrier with him than he already was.

The last room was Vexen's study. It was easily discerned by the sheer volume of books, a number of which had not been put away, the desk, and the general fact that Saix's cleaning rounds had deliberately spared this room. Marluxia walked in without a care. The only sign Saix had even ventured in here was the envelope on the desk, with Vexen's name written on it.

Marluxia picked it up and flipped it over. It was sealed, and he murmured amusement before slipping it into his pocket. He recognised Saix's handwriting, and no doubt Vexen would too, but the fact he'd bothered to seal it shut despite leaving it in his own house spoke volumes. Saix expected intrusions from someone other than Vexen, from the look of it.

Or he wanted to know if Vexen came home and bothered to read it.

Marluxia began by shuffling the papers on the desk together. Vexen could take the time to put them in order himself later. There was an open journal, too. Marluxia closed it around the papers, and then pulled Vexen's list from his pocket.

[thesilentstorm]

Lumi watched Marluxia ascend the stairs.

He stayed in the hallway, listening. He glanced up at the ceiling as he heard Marluxia walk around upstairs, the creaking floor giving away his position.

He didn't like the house at all. It might have been tolerable if it was newer, or modernised, but he doubted that there would ever be any sort of renovation that could shave enough years off the old brick and plaster to suit him.