seol_plumfall | →SS1, Astro/Seol: Chocolate

The mixing bowls at the Aldor Rise inn were very big and very shiny. Astrolabe marveled at her distorted expression; tilting it this way, her forehead shrank and her mouth widened terrifyingly. She looked quite a bit like Helaah. Laughing, she lifted up the bowl and turned it around, showing Helaah the kitchen; was it the way she remembered?

Astro was sure, at least, that when her mother had been an Aldor priestess there had never been anyone here so pale and pink-skinned as that man; she captured his reflection in the bowl to show Helaah, the blurry figure of a dark-haired elf holding out a hand to her, asking smilingly, "That?"

Astro handed him the bowl as he requested and pursed her lips slightly with disappointment as he cracked an enormously large egg -- everything was big in Northrend, he had explained to her -- on the edge of the bowl, letting the white drop while delicately saving the yolk for a second container. Two eggs; then Seol wiped his fingers on a rag and pushed a brown paper bag and two saucepans, one stacked on top of the other, towards her. She peered into the bag, which was full of chocolate pieces; he gestured to the cooking table and instructed, "Melt."

Astrolabe sighed and kindled the fire, then tipped water from a pitcher into one of the saucepans. Setting that one over the small flame, she began raking chocolate into the other, cracking the pieces that seemed too big. She looked over at Seol; even his presence could not make melting chocolate exciting. At least she preferred her task to his; he was whisking the whites, his hands working swiftly while an absent, sleepy smile sat on his lips. Astro was sure that if she was given that job, her wrists would become noodles in seconds.

She paused and studied his face again. His color was back, though it seemed the dark half-moons under his eyes would never go away. But Astro noticed that his cheeks were fuller; this was not the same thin, hollow-faced boy she had found making himself sick with tears on the edge of the Terrace of Light, looking about ready to collapse under the weight of his own armor. That fragile wanness was being replaced by something warmer, fuller. It was still a gentle face, but perhaps it was beginning to show the slightest glimmerings of vitality.

Astro reached for two sticks of butter instead of one. She was going to make him fat.

"Oh." Seol glanced up from his work; Astrolabe quickly hid the evidence of her mischief. "Books, done," he told her; he was done with the theological tracts she had obtained for him from the Cathedral of Light, so now she could return them. "But not again," he warned her, shaking a finger at her half-jokingly. Surreptitiously 'borrowing' books from the Church was hardly behavior befitting an aspiring paladin, he told her with his facial expression, and then laughed quietly.

Astro's face grew warm in reply, but she could not stop her mouth from forming a smile, either. "Seo was happy," she retorted; he had enjoyed having them to study while he was recovering. He was really just as guilty as she was in heart, she told him, by pressing the tip of her finger against his chest.

He laughed. Seol's laughter was weak, as if his lungs were unused to producing it, but it was a nice sound. Astro smiled fondly.

So. "What?" What did he find in the books, she wondered?

Seol gazed down at the bowl, the egg whites slowly becoming fluffier. "Pleasure?" he murmured, his brow crinkling thoughtfully. Gradually, he raised one hand to tenderly rub his chest. It was a gesture Astrolabe often saw her father perform when he had heartburn. Well, his expression said, I think have an idea...

Astrolabe wanted to hear it.

He nodded to himself, lowering his hand again to hold the bowl steady as he whisked the eggs. Well, his conclusion was... "It is pain," for him. There was "None" that was not.

Astrolabe frowned deeply.

A nervous smile flashed across Seol's face. No, he did not mean that there was no such thing as pleasure, he quickly assured her. But all the things that Astrolabe had called 'pleasure' -- "the naaru, the Light, to help" -- hurt him, as she already knew. They hurt, and that made him feel awake and alive, and he wanted to have more of those feelings; this was pain that made him smile, his expression said. So what he meant was that her pleasure and his pain were the "Same"; they were both feeling the same thing in different ways. It seemed a sensible conclusion, right? he smiled.

She was not appeased. Astrolabe frowned profoundly at him. He was sure, sure he believed in the theory of "One?" He was sure there were not "Three" types of sensation?

Of course he wasn't sure, he said sheepishly, his long ears drooping slightly as he handed her a long wooden spoon to stir the melting chocolate. This was just the most reasonable explanation for him at the time, he shrugged, setting aside the creamy egg whites to snow down a cup of sugar on top of the yolks.

The spoon cut through the chocolate, agitated and unconvinced. "I?" Astrolabe asked, incredulous; after all, it was one thing for gloomy Seol to declare pleasure and pain the same thing, but Astrolabe could tell the difference between scraping her knee and speaking with the naaru. "Same?" she asked, lifting the saucepans off the heat before the chocolate burned.

Seol paused, then slowly set the sugar down on the table. He sighed. He? "...Do not know the difference."

Didn't he know what pleasure felt like?

No, he didn't.

Astrolabe stared at him for a long time in silence.

And then, suddenly, she thrust her little finger into the pot of melted chocolate. Seol gaped; "Hot!" he exclaimed in concern -- and Astrolabe put her finger into his mouth.

"Chocolate," she said.

He swallowed the chocolate. Astro pulled her hand away.

"What Seo feels?" she asked. She smiled at him... though a bit uncertainly as for some reason he was being very confused by her mouth.

Gradually, though, he raised her eyes to hers.

"Pleasure."

Astrolabe 3 ← SS1 → Seol 5