Participants:
| Scene Title | Profundity |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Huruma finally makes the trip, and it is a bittersweet reunion for both of them. |
| Date | April 29, 2011 |
Cash's Apartment
It wasn't hard to find the address, after a while; Abigail had told Huruma where to find it, and she can only hope that by the time she can get there, it is not emptied out. Something tells her that it is not, when she finally skulks down the stairwell towards the door, her field of ability pulled inward as to not ruin something by default. Maybe she wants to be surprised. The dark woman patterned against the stone wall is dressed plainly, for her- a light jacket, dark pants, the sliver of an ivory shirt.
She did think about bringing flowers- but that felt more as if she were courting someone all backwards-like. Instead, Huruma just has a small box in her pocket, blocky shape against her hip as she lifts a hand to rap on the door; her eyes dutifully avert themselves towards the ground, still and quiet.
It doesn't take long for the door to be answered— almost as if the person on the other side expected someone to come knocking. When the door opens, the smaller woman looks up at the taller one. Cash had gotten used to being tall for a woman, but such a thing seems to disappear when she looks up at the woman outside her door. Even if she holds back any real surprise, there's some amusement that briefly flashes in blue-gray eyes.
"I guess Abby gave you my present." Her mom. Even if 'my Mom' it's the most apprioriate title for the woman from her lips, she's had months to get used to saying the other. "Come in," she adds, stepping back so she can enter.
She can see it, now that she knows. The same color eyes, the curves of her chin and head, less so in the hair. The baby Huruma left back on Bannerman has less of a dark complexion. But it is there, she can see. Huruma looks down at her with a calm sort of blink, somewhere between observant and her personal consternation.
"Thank you." Whether that is for the present or for letting her in, Huruma doesn't say; she slinks into the apartment, casting her usual precautionary glances around before she allows herself something else, her voice somber enough to make sure its not a joke. "I hope that you will excuse me for feeling strange."
"You are excused," Cash says simply as she steps deeper into the simple apartment. There's not much to the place, from the looks of things, and perhaps even less now than normal. The furnature is simple and with little in the way or decorations. Besides curtains on the high windows for privacy, there's very little on the wall.
The place that has the most attention is a small potted garden against the wall, with a special light overhead that's blocked so that it doesn't fill the whole room, but the plants, mostly flowers, are still visible.
"It had been strange for me as well, honestly. Seeing you before. I was glad to see you, though."
Huruma wasn't expecting to be the victim of butterflies; not in the time sense, but this sense- where she is all of a sudden looming around in Kasha's apartment. She is quiet again, for a few moments, before she remembers to pry the small box from her pocket. Even before she offers it to the younger woman standing there, it is probably easy to guess that it is a gift.
"I don't'ave much, in th'way of keepsakes. Too much travel, too little reasons t'stay in most places, I haven't been home in forever, either." Huruma tries to stay reasonably neutral; a hint of something bittersweet cannot leave her voice, though. "But I have something that I will give you, one day, when you are older. I don'think I was able for you." The dark woman narrows her eyes slightly.
"This is for… this… you." Knowing people from another time is already hard enough, it gets worse when there are two in the same space.
There's a hitch in the next inhale that Cash makes, but she reaches out to take the small box in her hands. "I am not sure that I should take this," she admits, even as she does take the box at least. "You should give it to Kasha in a few years, or give it to Abby to give to Kasha when she is older," she continues.
Despite these words, though, she reaches to open to box. "I will not deny that I wish to see it— before I give it back to you." Give it back to eventually give to the baby that she used to be.
Inside the little box is something actually quite startling, at first- the simplicity of the cotton inside of it offsets the fact that it's an ivory, obviously predatory canine strung on a piece of strong leather cord. "No. It is yours. He had a mouth full of teeth an'sixteen claws." Huruma smiles, abruptly, showing off her own set of human- not male lion- teeth. "I'ave others. And something more poignant for y- her." Give her a moment, she'll get the pronouns right.
"I hate to sound depressing, but-" Huruma seems to be coming into her own here, hands coasting to her hips and head tilting on her neck. "How old were you, when I died?" If Abby told her anything about Huruma before she became the adult standing there with a lion tooth, it was that Huruma was a cat personified- and curiosity sometimes kills them faster than disease.
"Then I guess I have to accept it," Cash says in quiet tones, masking most of the emotion she's feeling quite well in the steady and practiced voice. But it doesn't hide all of it, especially not from an empath. A twinge here, a breath there—
She's grateful and sad, all at the same time, as she takes out the cord and reaches to place it around her neck. A second necklace is already there, the contents hidden under the collar of her shirt, while the tooth hangs on top for the moment.
"I am not exactly sure— I was around tweleve or thirteen."
"He was th'first lion I killed. He wasn't liked, much, but he was very bold and he was very smart. Th'story of my life, I think." Heh. Air leaves her with a puff of a laugh. "Did you know me?" Huruma watches her with a delicate look, more observing of the little things, and in time, yes, her empathy does reach tentatively out to cradle at the girl's emotions. It is a familiar sensation, when she does. There is no doubt that it is the same girl; just obviously older and with more emotions than 'want' or 'do not want'. "Obviously you knew me-" She lifts a hand to rub some fingers at her own forehead, looking rather frustrated at something.
"What I mean to say, was I there for you?" Perhaps she wants to know more about what kind of person she was supposed to turn into- if this path is the one that may end up leading her to something that she wants in the present.
"You were," Cash answers, eyes staying down toward the tooth hanging around her neck for a time. It's not deception that keeps her from making eye contact, but something smaller. It helps her keep her mask, in a way.
"You were as much as you could be." Based on the dream, there were times, even before she left, that she couldn't have been there.
Not really.
"You only had a few years to teach me, but I learned a lot from you," she adds after a moment, looking back up. Her emotions are still very schooled. Perhaps one influence she has to thank the woman in front of her for. "I do wish you could have been there for my wedding."
If she was there as much as she could have been, and Kasha knew her enough for it to affect her so, Huruma can be at least proud of something. Another is probably that she seems to have taught Kasha's emotions a thing or two, even when they face one another and do make eye contact. All those years of toddler noise quelled by an Empath probably helped a bit too. Huruma dips her chin in a slight nod, lips in a smile and a sigh coming through her nose. Her hand lifts up, hovering closer to find a place along the top of Kasha's shoulder. Another one of those things- she knows the young one loves being held, but this is a grown woman- and frankly, Huruma is hesitant to simply gather her up.
"Then I am glad I was there for you, somehow. Even if mostly legacy." Not this time, though. "I'll be there for hers, whenever it is. I'ave long given up what caused me t'die, but seeing it put th'nail in th'coffin, so t'speak." Huruma is not dry enough to not be able to joke about dying, you see.
Hesitation may be present on both sides, but it doesn't take long for Cash to defy her own. With the joke about dying made, she smiles, and then leans forward, past the arm resting on her shoulder to lean in close, eyes closing as she moves in for that hug. One arm wraps around the taller woman.
Around someone so tall, it's hard to not feel like a child again. Though somehow she's not as big as she remembers, either.
Everything always seems smaller with age.
"It is a good legacy," she adds in quiet tones. "But I am glad that you will be there even longer." For a moment, she lets her emotions out more than before, allowing the darker woman to feel just how much she meant to the child that she was, and how much she still means to the woman that she is.
Huruma has a gift for never shrinking, so everyone stays exactly the same. Except if you are a goddaughter from a different future, then it is new, and cause for dissonance between this and the baby girl. Her own arms wrap around the girl that moves in first, grasp familiar in its firmness and for Kasha, the warmth. Something so reserved only from Huruma for those she considers her dearest, or her children. She can feel Huruma's jaw lean up against her hair. The Kasha in this time will surely and forever have Huruma wrapped around her finger.
"Ninakupenda, kidogo moja." Kasha knows most of it- she's probably heard it before, when she was smaller, and Huruma was grayer. I love you, little girl. Simple, and when out of Huruma, profound.