alittlerampage | (no subject)

Darrow's Home for Children. That's what the strange pamphlet of information says. She's meant to live there, like an orphan. The entire matter is an insult. She isn't a child — that she isn't even an orphan is beside the point. She's been taking care of herself since leaving Sharlayan with Alphinaud! But no matter her arguments or her insistence, she's sent along to Darrow's Home for Children. The problem is that it seems by the law of this place, she's considered exactly that. A child. The number of her years has limited her in privileges compared to Eorzea and Norvrandt both. It's awful.

The kindly woman who greets her only serves to incense Alisaie further. She is not a child, and yet the woman talks to her as though she's a youngling in the midst of a tantrum.

“I don't even have my own sleeping quarters?” she asks a bit disdainfully when the woman's shown her to the bedroom holding four beds. The woman smiles at her as though she's just said the cutest little thing, and Alisaie clenches her hand into a fist.

Behave, Alisaie, she thinks to herself. Losing your temper will get you nowhere productive, and indeed, may only prove her point.

She takes a breath and thanks the woman, waits until she's gone, then growls and throws the packet of information onto the bed. It bounces lightly before settling in place and Alisaie sits beside it with an annoyed huff. Well. At least the bed is comfortable…

She reads through the packet of strange papers and small cards, because for the moment, it’s easier and more actionable than worrying about where her friends are, if they aren’t here as the person she’d met when she’d arrived had suggested. One of the cards, a small, stiff thing, bears her likeness, painted with singular clarity and detail. There’s another card with her name on it and a string of numbers, and some strange papers that seem to be some sort of currency. No gil, it seems. Still, she rolls up the currency and tucks it into a pocket in her coat, then adds the strange cards with her likeness and name on them to the same pocket. It seems important, even if she doesn’t entirely understand it.

By the time she’s finished taking in everything, there’s another voice passing by the corridor on the way up the stairs. Her interest piqued, Alisaie leaves the rest of the papers on the bed and pokes her head out the door, just in time to see a familiar white braid disappear around the corner leading to the next floor up.

Pleased and not a little relieved, Alisaie follows them up the stairs quietly, listening to the very same kindly woman speaking to her brother with the same condescendingly cloying tone she’d used on Alisaie herself not so long ago. Once the woman is gone, Alisaie sidles up to the doorway in her stead.

“Settling in alright, are you?” she asks casually. “It took you long enough to show up.”

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However grating it might be, Alphinaud promises himself he will make an effort in the best of faith to adhere to the culture and custom of this land. It will certainly be inconvenient, he thinks, looking up at the modest building called Darrow's Home for Children, and he dutifully ignores the prickling of his pride.

There are so many reasons to acquiesce right now. One of them is his near certainty that Alisaie is truly in this new world as well, and this-- this may be the quickest way to find her. He's handed off by one officer of the law to a woman clearly prepared to speak to him about his new status.

He lets her prattle on, half-listening, sorting through the speech for any clues as she leads him up to the second floor. When the woman finally dismisses herself, Alphinaud breathes a long sigh of relief.

And then, thank the gods, his sister's voice. He turns, that relief writ all over his face. "Did you arrive so very long ago? Perhaps it was your turn."

He looks at her with visible relief, and Alisaie steps in uninvited to sit on the bed he's standing closest to.

"Actually, I've only been here less than an hour, myself," she admits, tucking her hands under her knees. "I'll admit to worrying I was utterly alone this time," she adds, looking at him. "One moment I was in Amh Araeng, and the next, I was here, with no indication that any of the others had followed or preceded me."

Alphinaud sits beside her, curling his hand around her bicep for a brief, comforting moment-- a moment he suspects may be more of comfort to him. They may have gone even further afield than before, but they're together. They're always better together.

"I stepped out of the Crystal Tower and into the path of a car," he says ruefully, the word still feeling strange in his mouth. "Thankfully there are kind strangers in this place too, for unless you somehow managed to be summoned with a traveling bag, we may be in dire straits. I've only got my grimoire, really. You weren't so lucky as to meet a mysterious figure who knows why we were brought here?"

"No pack for me, I'm afraid," she confirms grimly. She leans into his touch, seeking the comfort he's offering and trying to grant a little in return. "I've my rapier and the clothes on my back and little else. I did meet a young hyur named Anakin, however. He knows little and less of how we're here, only that we are, and much like the First, we cannot leave of our own volition." She stands, hooking her arm with his to pull him up, as well.

"There was a packet of the currency of the land, though," she adds. "Gil seems useless here, but they use something called the dollar. Do you have a similar packet?"

"I realize full well that understanding why and how we have come to be here shall be a long path to discovery," he starts, much gladder than he lets on that Alisaie doesn't mind such physical reassurances. "And still I'm already near-consumed by the question of how this works, with our bodies on the Source and our souls perhaps in the First, and now this."

He nods. "Aye, the money and the identification tags and past that, the reason we find ourselves in an orphanage for children. We're no longer of age."

"Absurd," Alisaie mutters at that. Of course they're 'of age.' And besides which, what gives anyone here the right to determine what constitutes 'of age' for a pair of prodigies from a world so unlike their own?

"I'm more adult than most of those we'd meet here, I'm certain," she says primly, then rolls her eyes at herself and chances a small smile his way. "Well, perhaps I don't sound it when I say something like that."

"Perhaps in time we may find a way around it," Alphinaud supposes. "As evidenced by the situation we now find ourselves in, this land has laws, and laws would suggest a court system that could avail us. The others I've met, the people who have come to this place much as we have, seem reasonable and kind. I daresay neither of us will enjoy being children again, but if we comport ourselves maturely and comply with law and culture... there must be a way to at least get clear of it."

He eyes Alisaie with some caution, as this seems exactly the sort of time when their approaches to problem-solving differ wildly.

"And we will be together for it."

She cannot deny the wisdom in his reasoning, though she feels all the more impatient for it. She sighs and sprawls back across the bed, arms above her head.

"I suppose you're right," she says. "As much as it pains me to admit. Diplomacy may indeed be our best course."

Alphinaud stares at her a moment, surprise and affection hitting him at the same time.

He very nearly teases her-- who are you, and what have you done with my sister? Being proclaimed as correct so easily surprises him, and leaves him tender in a way for which he thinks he ought to have a care.

"For now," he says. "Until we understand what this is, and what is asks of us. At least in the First we had a more immediate grasp. I cannot help but feel that some terrible thing awaits our discovery, some danger beyond our ken." A sigh escapes. "Or perhaps I only hope, wrong as it be to do so, for that we have handled before."

The quiet moment that stretches after she speaks, just long enough to be noticed, makes Alisaie itch a bit. She wants to immediately take it back, deliver a gentle haymaker, and sniff her way back to her accommodations. But even she cannot deny that patience will be their better ally here.

Still, it's a relief when Alphinaud allows the moment to pass unacknowledged. She huffs a laugh.

"I suppose it is awfully rude of us to hope for something familiar in this utterly strange world," she agrees. "Perhaps we can take this as a respite, for now."

"There's certainly going to be enough of the culture here to learn, and that's without even considering the host of other cultures and knowledge brought here by everyone else who has been transported in the same manner we've experienced. While it is an unknown land, it seems far less dangerous than the First."

Safer, he is starting to believe, than Eorzea itself, though undoubtedly with plenty of secrets.

"Not the adventure either of us expected when we first left home, is it?"

"Not by half," she agrees. She looks up at the ceiling for a moment before looking at him instead, tipping her chin down. "But, it seems, we are destined for much more than even you imagined." Alisaie sits up, hands falling back down to her lap, offering him a wry smile. "And I know you've imagined a lot."