tampered | log ; closed

log ; closed

When; August 15th, around 1pm
Rating; Shouldn't go above PG
Characters;

stargathering
Summary; After the "Victory Kisses" curse, Tyr and Rita need to talk a little more.
Log;

Even though it was largely Tyr's own idea, he didn't have a clue how to approach this situation. When it was Katara, he was a different person then, and both Rita and his relationship with her weren't the same, either. He didn't feel like he could just be rough with her, knowing it would just lead to a fight and nothing more.

He guessed he would just play it by ear and see how it went...

As he arrived at the beach house, the usual little lunch bag in hand, he almost knocked on the door before just entering and making his way up to her study. Just like old times. And like older times, his face was blank as he looked for her.

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"And you're saying I am?" Because if he was implying it, she certainly wanted to know! Even if she wasn't really angry or offended--just glad, really, that they were back to bantering.

"That's right." He didn't say it with any ill-will towards her. The little smile on his face was more fond and happy than anything than teasing. "You can be really stubborn."

It almost made her wonder if he was supposed to be complimenting her. But then again...she'd fallen for his jokes before because he seemed like he was being serious. So maybe he really was still teasing her...She just couldn't decide.

Face a little flushed, she tried justifying it. "I-it's not like it's bad to be stubborn about a few things, you know."

"That's my point." So maybe it was meant as a compliment, and he was still smiling the same as before. Of course, he was teasing her, too, though, if those two things were actually compatible. He didn't really mind her that much right now, even the stubborn side of her when they didn't fight one another.

...That was probably one of the main reasons they were close friends now.

"It's better to be stubborn than weak-willed," he explained. "I like that you're stubborn..."

"Oh, uh...Y-yeah...Thanks." When he put it that way, she decided that he really wasn't just teasing her after all. So, he liked that she was stubborn...It made her blush deepen and her heart beat a little faster, and--

Maybe that curse would be harder to forget than she'd convinced herself.

Suddenly at a loss again, she returned to her sandwich. Even if she was the type to offer a compliment in return--and she probably wasn't--how could she put into words what she liked about Tyr? He was a lot of things, and trying to sum it all up by saying she liked him because he was her friend would probably sound silly.

He probably shouldn't have said that, he thought. It wasn't like he usually said those kinds of things, but it seemed right at the time since he really did believe that. If they were both stubborn, they could go back to how things used to be without a problem.

After looking at her curiously for a few seconds just for how she reacted, he started eating his sandwich even though he still lacked an appetite. In the future, he should try to not make her blush so much. For now, the mess of her study was a little more interesting.

And now she felt stupid for making everything awkward again. Idiot. She was probably thinking too hard about what he said, instead of just reacting normally...It wasn't like Tyr meant anything by it, maybe...

Rita didn't say anything for a while, even though the silence really got to her. If she didn't no what to say, then there was no point making things weirder for Tyr, so she just kept nibbling half-heartedly at her sandwich and trying to think of something.

Eventually, she did get an idea. "Hey," she ventured, looking more at his sleeve than his face. "So, uh--the lessons. When do you want to start?"

He glanced back over to her again when she spoke, looking over to her face before going to likewise look at her arm. With her unable to say anything or look him in the eye (though he wasn't much better...), he felt like he did something wrong. And really, with what this was all about, maybe he really shouldn't have complimented her. That would be a form of stringing her along, too, wouldn't it? And in that same way, he should probably lay off touching her, too. That wouldn't be so hard if he hadn't gotten so used to holding her hand without even thinking of it.

There was a short pause as he thought of that and if adding distance would between them make learning from her strange, but he eventually shook his head to clear away the thoughts. "Whenever you want to," he answered softly and plainly, like she was asking him which shirt he preferred. "I'm going to follow you, so..."

His answer was a little discouraging, like he'd lost his enthusiasm. If Tyr ended up keeping his distance, Rita might take that the wrong way, too. She might just end up thinking too hard about everything he said and did, misinterpreting his intent as she had a habit of doing. All she really wanted was for their friendship to go back to normal, as if that curse hadn't made her so acutely aware of emotions she was trying to ignore and deny even existed.

So...she should just keep acting normally, she decided. Then maybe Tyr would resume being excited about their lessons, and they could just keep having fun together like they did before.

Rita tried to sound calm and collected again when she looked straight at him this time. "I haven't really prepared everything," she admitted. But even if she hadn't, she wanted to try at least a little with him today. "We can start with some basics, though...If you want to." She wasn't even really sure why she added the last part.

The last part confuses him, too. It didn't really sound like she as asking if he just wanted to start with the basics, but if he did at all. Setting down his sandwich and resting his hand son his knees, he looked up at her face again, determined. "I do. I want you to teach me still..."

Starting their study together could be the first step in making things normal again, but for how easy that would actually be...he didn't know. It was easier to avoid people altogether than to stop feeling anything towards them. There wasn't anywhere to run, though, as he's proven to himself plenty of times, and even if there was, there wasn't even a real reason to leave anymore. It would just be running away for his own sake than anyone else's.

So he pressed on, stubbornly, in hopes things would turn out well in the end. "If you want to just give it a try without any materials, I'm ready now."

The fact that he was willing to get started--and seemed serious about it--was a bit relieving. Maybe she was afraid he didn't want to, anymore (she was overthinking everything again, wasn't she?). As long as they had something to do, it might be easier for them to go back to normal. Maybe.

Or maybe Rita just really had no idea what she was doing at all, but she was going to make this work out one way or another. So she nodded, made herself a little more comfortable, and tried to decide where to start.

"All right...Before we talk about blastia or magic or anything, you're going to have to learn the basics of science. We'll start there." Mostly chemistry, some physics--that should be all he'd need.

While learning science wasn't the most exciting thing, it was better than sitting awkwardly and discussing feelings they seemed to decide shouldn't exist. He nodded and set his sandwich aside. If she was really prepared to start now, he wasn't going to rise any objections.

"All right. I do know a little about science in general" - Sort of - "but you might as well start from the beginning... Things could be different between how our world work."

"I will," she agreed. "I want to make sure you get the theory behind everything first."

Her own sandwich was set aside as she took a moment. Somehow, she had to try and explain it clearly, without books if possible. She'd been studying these subjects as long as she could remember; there was no way she could recall how she'd started or what she first learned. "Okay, then...Let's start with matter.

"Matter is made of tiny particles you can't see with the naked eye. They're called atoms. When you have one or more atoms bound together, they form a molecule. Interactions between atoms and other particles and exchanges of energy are what's behind just about everything, from how you breathe to how blastia function." She hoped it was a simple enough introduction. How slow should she go? Into how much depth this soon?

He just nodded and remembered why he didn't really care for science. It wasn't that it went over his head - her explanation was perfectly clear - it was that it all seemed like a lot words that he couldn't really back up in his head. After all, atoms couldn't be seen and therefore the reactions shouldn't either, right?

For her sake, though, he chose to just suspend his disbelief and wait for her to go on. Rita wasn't someone he'd think is just full of hot air. If she believed it, then he'd believe it, too.

"All right, got it. So we're going to be studying atoms and things like that first." And he ventured to assume, "Then I can understand how the blastia work."

"Correct. That'll be part of it, anyway." So far so good, she thought. A general overview of everything they'd be looking at seemed like it would be a good start, so she continued. "We won't be dealing only with matter, though. Blastia run on mana, which is closer to matter than aer, but still isn't quite matter. That, and the fact that it's pretty stable, makes it more complicated to work with. Its behaviour can change, depending on the circumstances..."

She paused, thinking this was too vague. Tyr probably wanted a more specific example, something he could see with his own eyes. "Hang on a minute," she told him, and climbed to her feet in order to go through some of her equipment. She turned up a small vial filled with pale, bluish-violet crystals, and returned to show it to him. "This is mana. Like atoms, you can't normally see it, but you can get it to crystallize in the right situation. In this case, it almost acts like matter."

Now she turned her attention to her hands and, using her blastia for a simple demonstration, produced a split-second flash of reddish light. "And that was also mana, but this time it didn't behave like solid matter." She looked at him again and hoped that was all right. "So...Are you getting this so far?"

"Not really," he answered truthfully, staring at her with wide eyes. The matter thing might have messed him up. Some of it he already knew, but the rest flew over his head. He asked the first question that popped into his head: "What makes the two different—what circumstances determine if the mana is solid and or not?"

He had other questions too, like why they were visible and if mana and aer were made out of different things and what exactly they reacted with and how it's connected to matter. But he'd go one question at a time to keep either of them from becoming overwhelmed.

"Uh, yeah..." He was right; that was probably way too much at once. For now, she decided to just focus on answering his question, and then she'd figure out where to go from there.

And she needed to explain it...simply. If she could. "Crystallized mana behaves mostly like matter, while non-solid mana is more like a wave, or..." He might not get that, she realized, and decided to simplify it more. It wouldn't be exactly accurate, but that was what later in-depth studies would be for, right? "Think of non-solid mana as energy, like light or heat."

For Tyr, "a wave" brought up images of lakes and other bodies of water rather than heat or light, though he could think of heat being like a wave, too. (More so than a ray of light, at least.) He thought he understood what she was saying, at least, even though he didn't really understand it fully yet.

"And they can all be contained? Like what you did..."

It seemed like the non-solid mana was in her blastia at least.

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