tampered | Log: Ongoing

Log: Ongoing

When; Tuesday evening
Rating; PG
Characters; Kamui

lyra_of_dust
Summary; On Barnabas' suggestion, Kamui asks Lyra out to dinner.
Log; Lyra wasn't sure exactly why Kamui had insisted on picking her up from her flat. Sure, some people in the city were dangerous, and certainly cruel, but none of them had any reason to hurt her. Still, this way she could make sure he didn't get lost.

She tapped her foot nervously. He should be here soon... Pantalaimon was sitting by her side. Technically, she didn't need to take him along, but she decided it would be best if she did. If Kamui was worried about something happening, well, she wouldn't be much use without him nearby. Besides, even though dæmons didn't need to eat, he was curious about Kamui, anyways.

She'd already put her coat on. After that curse day where everyone had switched clothes, she'd started wearing pants, but tonight she was wearing one of her more formal dresses, which by most people's standards looked rather Victorian. Still, Pandora's was the sort of place you dressed up for, so she didn't mind.

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"It seems like it." A nod, Kamui examining it more as they approached. A neat, modern-ish place with a cafe set-up jutting out the side; it looked rather... swanky, all in all. Not exactly someplace Kamui would normally frequent. "Definitely not a McDonalds..." And somehow, knowing how nice it was just made him feel even more uncomfortable. He hoped no one would stare at him for being out of place.

A deep breath later, and he opened the door for Lyra and Pan as his mother had taught him, but he wasn't... paying much attention to them. At the moment, he was too busy scanning the surroundings, looking rather worried. "Nnn..."

Lyra may have been cheerful, but she wasn't oblivious. She reached over with her free hand and gave Kamui's hand a quick squeeze to reassure him.

"It's alright. Pan and I, we en't been to a place like this often, either," she told him as they were shown to a table. Lyra pulled out one of the chairs and sat down, positioning Pantalaimon in her lap, and eagerly picked up the menu and began to scan the choices.

"Kamui, what was your world like?" It was a question she'd asked various people before. It was one that, generally, people tended to answer. Not fully, or course, but the responses were always interesting.

Kamui had blushed the instant his hand was given a reassuring squeeze, not expecting that at all. It was stupid, really: as much as strangers seemed to like to touch him, he should be used to such simple gestures. It wasn't as if he was with a dirty old man who was trying to feel him up.

Still, the little blush had remained; Kamui trying to hide it behind the menu after he too had taken his seat. Not that he had to worry about it for too long, though: that question quite throughly smacked it off his face and replaced it with a look of sorrow. And guilt. "My world..." Not exactly the best thing to talk about, considering how severely he'd screwed things up there. "Dying," was the simple, honest answer. "At least it was when I left. I'm sure by now... it's gone entirely..." That definitely had been what Fuuma'd been hinting at the last he visited the city.

Lyra stared blankly. Hadn't that been stopped, after all the holes cut by the knife, and the vast chasms created by Lord Asriel and that explosion, had been closed? That Dust wasn't draining away into the abyss anymore, that conscious beings wouldn't fade away? She couldn't mention that to Kamui though. He wouldn't understand, he'd think she was mad. She opened her mouth to protest.

"I- maybe it en't. I mean..." Lyra trailed off, an expression of confusion and sorrow on her face. Pantalaimon sat limply in her lap.

"But you haven't been back there, have you? Maybe... things have changed," she tried to reassure him.

"No. It's because I'm not there that I'm sure it's destroyed. Only I could have prevented it. It's my fault." A moment of silence, Kamui trying not to think of his friends who surely must be dead back home. Keiichi, Sorata, Yuzuriha...

Suddenly, he shook his head, setting his menu down and trying to smile for the younger girl. Trying, of course, being the key word there; he rarely smiled anymore. There was no need for it, and when he tried, it only came out as a small, sad curve of his lips. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't... have said this much..." He waved his hand dismissively, looking away. "Ignore me."

"Ah... Yeah." No wonder he seemed so sad. But maybe... Lyra had never used the alethiometer to ask about what was going on in other worlds, not since she'd regained the ability to read it after entering the city.

"But time... Doesn't work the same way here. I was here for about a month, but when I went back to my own world for about a week, it hadn't been any time at all since I left..." Lyra stared glumly down at her menu, and Pantalaimon shifted in her lap.

"Ah, I think I'll have steak," she said quietly.

"My world... It doesn't have as much technology as some of the others- we en't that far behind though," Lyra explained. "The Church... They used to have a lot of power, but they've lost a lot of it recently." Maybe it would be better to talk about her own world, although Kamui's comment about being the only one who could have stopped it did make her curious.

"The church? Like the Christian church?" Religion, obviously, was not his forte, despite his situation with the end of the world. Why did he need to read about such things in a book, when he was experiencing it first hand?

Either way, he was grateful that the focus was off him and his world now; taking this reprieve for all it was worth. "And... do you guys still have stuff like computers? Cell phones?" He had to admit he was curious about other worlds, too.

The waiter came by at just that moment, almost startling Kamui, who just pointed to what he wanted. Some of the food had such strange names, and he'd rather just point than risk botching up the titles horribly. Why couldn't it have been as simple as 'seared tuna'? That's all it was, damn it.

"Yeah... They have that in your world to?" Considering what they'd been up to in her world, Lyra wouldn't have been surprised if what had happened to Kamui's world was the Church's fault, somehow.

"I didn't see a computer until I went into other worlds... What's a cell phone?" Lyra asked.

"We don't have television either, but we've got radios, and atomcraft, and actually, some of the stuff the Scholars study is about on level with the stuff they're learning about in other worlds," Lyra explained, "Like with researching elementary particles, and stuff."

Kamui nodded when she enquired about religion, but decided not to expand too much. He really wouldn't be able to answer many more questions about it. "Yeah, but Christianity isn't as popular in my country. It's mostly a Western culture thing."

Technology, however, he had a handle on. "Cell phone? Oh," he reached into his pocket, pulling out the one he'd bought not long ago, "this is what mine looks like. Just a normal phone, only without any need for a land-based phone line." And Kamui totally didn't use it for communication, either: he just liked his jingly cellphone strap, and the games on the phone too. "This one also has a camera and games on it and stuff." He set it down so she could examine it, if she wished.

"Your world..." he tilted his head a little, thinking. "Sounds kinda like my world in the 40s. Or 50s. Or... something." He failed at decades; besides, it wasn't his fault that he didn't know Western history. Wasn't exactly his focus.

Lyra picked it up, holding it delicately. Pantalaimon peeked his head over the table to look at it.

"It- It's so small," Lyra said as she examined it, "We don't have that many telephones in my world either."

"Ah, your world sounds like Will's world," Lyra explained. She paused, then continued.

"Before I came to the city I- I spent some time in different worlds," she explained, still examining the cell phone.

Kamui actually truly smiled a little bit this time, amused by Lyra's curiousity over the phone. Funny how something so common could be an object of interest for another.

"What... kind of worlds did you go to?" He tilted his head a little, glad to still be focusing on her and not himself. "Was it fun?"

Lyra drew her attention away from the cell phone, and she and her dæmon gave him a shocked look.

"Fun?" It hadn't been fun. Not that it had been awful, and she'd been really happy during some of it, but she couldn't call it fun. So many parts of it were frightening, or painful. "Some parts of it were fun, now that you mention it."

"There was Cittagazze- at first, it seemed like a good place, but it was actually really bad. There was Will's world- it was a lot like yours, except it wasn't dying- and the world of the dead, and some other worlds we just passed through, and the mulefa's world," Lyra explained. She'd mentioned her travels in passing before, but she'd never really discussed them at length. One reason had been because it would have involved talking about the alethiometer- but that wasn't a secret anymore, because of that stupid curse.

The look he'd gotten was enough to make him cower a little; recoiling like a child whose hand had just been smacked for touching something he shouldn't have. Maybe he'd asked too much or assumed too much? Maybe she didn't want to talk about her past anymore than he did? He simply didn't know: he wasn't good at all when it came to reading people.

"A-ah," he replied simply, set to leave things at that and starting to sip on his water distractedly.

Lyra turned her head, and her expression softened. "Still, even if I could go back- make things so that I never left Oxford, I wouldn't," she told him. She hadn't meant to make him cringe like that.

"This world- it's really different from any of the ones I went to before," she didn't mention that the world it reminded her of most was Cittagazze. It was time to turn the conversation in a more positive direction.

"What do you like to do here?" she asked, smiling distractedly as a waiter approached with their meals.

The food arrived, and Lyra surveyed her meal hungrily before beginning to eat.

"Um..." he poked at his own food with his fork curiously, not used to such Western styling. Wasn't set up as pretty as Japanese food, that was for sure, even though it was close to being sashimi. Only difference was it being cooked around the edges, and it was a big chunk instead of bite-sized pieces. "I... I don't do much, really."

Finally, he took a bite, deciding that it wasn't so bad, even though the sauce on it wasn't entirely to his taste. A bit too strong. "I mean, all I do is sleep, watch TV, and take care of my... friend's... puppies." He scraped the sauce off his food. "What about you?"

"Ah, mostly Pan and I walk around the city- I watch people, talk to them sometimes, explore the city. Spend time with my friends, read what people have posted on the network," she smiled as she continued in between mouthfuls.

"One of my friends is teaching Pan and I how to do stuff by thinking together- and, and a lot of us are all getting organized to put on a play!" Lyra told him cheerfully.

"You should get out more- this is a really interesting place!"

"Mn... I don't think..." Getting out more was a suggestion that he'd heard quite a bit, but it wasn't something he was particularly willing to do. He tended to, after all, attract the attention of the most unsavoury of people while he was out and alone. Not something he wanted to deal with.

Of course, he didn't want to have to explain that to someone so young, so he instead focused on her own interests. "What kind of play are you organizing?" He poked at his food some more, having barely eaten a quarter of it, but already having lost the urge to eat anymore.

"If you're shy or something... You could come with me, while I walk around the city. We could take the puppies for a walk," Lyra suggested. She had already finished half her food.

"Ah, it's The Tempest. It's funny, but it turns out there was a bloke named Shakespeare, who wrote the same plays in a lot of different worlds," she informed him, stuffing some more food into her mouth.

"The puppies..." he started, pausing to push his food away slight, indicating he was done. He really didn't eat much; not nearly as much as a boy his age should. "I think they would like that. I normally walk them seperately because Ama-chan is getting to be too hard to handle." Which was normally what happened when a puppy almost doubled in size in only a month and a half. "I probably should start training her..."

He mused for a moment, but was knocked out of it by the mention of Shakespeare. Weird how he seemed to cross dimensional boundries. "Yeah, I'm familar with his works too. We had to cover a few of his things in school when Western lit came up."

"I'll help you with that then- I've never walked dogs before, but I've seen people do it, and it doesn't look so hard," Lyra said, stroking Pantalaimon softly.

Lyra had a tendency to eat quickly, and she'd managed to eat most of the food on her plate by now. She set down her fork, and leaned back, and fixed him with a probing look that would have reminded most people of her father- if they had known the man, which no one in the city did.

"Kamui, why don't you go outside more often? I mean, TV en't that interesting. I know there's some dangerous stuff in the city, but it en't that frightening, really."

She just had to ask, didn't she? "Um, well..." he wracked his brain for a good way to say this; 'oh, well, I tend to get cornered and groped by certain men' obviously not being the way to do it. "I don't have much reason to go out, and going out alone... tends to be dangerous for me."

He fidgetting nervously, hoping she wouldn't ask for elaboration. "Bad people are drawn to me." And that was probably the best she would get out of him.

Lyra didn't think that was a good enough answer. It was too vague, though it did hint at something complicated and interesting.

"But if they're drawn to you, won't they just go to your flat anyway?" she asked, her glare intensifying.

"What kind of bad people anyway? Did enemies from your world come here? What do they want to do to you?" she leaned forward, and Pantalaimon rested his forepaws on the table, scrutinizing the older boy carefully.

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Log: Ongoing

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