text; @onni (backdated to early november)

[scowlish]

I'm looking for my cousin, he disappeared from our apartment yesterday.

He's very sick and needs looking after.

[He types and erases 'I'm worried' several times before settling on what to say.]

I'm very concerned about his well-being, please let me know if you've seen him.

His name is Lalli. He's got pale eyes and ash blond hair to about his jaw. Very skinny and kind of short. He'll probably fight you if you try to touch him.

Comments

[tenuefarfalla]

No more questions.

[ She repeats it quietly to herself, internalizing the advice. ]

Lalli, when you curl up like that, your body can heat itself more efficiently. That's good when you're cold, but bad when you're already too hot. We still need to cool you down, so it's better if you stretch out. Once your temperature is back to normal, you can curl up and hide as much as you want.

[ Lalli makes a 'mrrrrr' sound in the back of his throat that Onni might recognize, but he complies, and Cho smiles. She leans back on her heels, and begins digging around in her bag. When she speaks again, it's to Onni through the phone. ]

That worked. Thank you. I have venison jerky that he's been eating. And candy. I give him candy whenever I have to touch him to take his pulse or temperature, or when he has to take an anti-inflammatory or an analgesic. His fever is down two degrees. That's very good, but still not in the normal range.

I'm sorry you don't trust me. I don't know what I can do to fix that, short of breaking the promise I made to your cousin, which I won't do. If you have any other questions, I'll answer them to the best of my ability.

[ Cho has found what she wanted in her bag. Her iPod, and spare headphones. She brings up a one hour loop of a rainstorm in the forest, the wind whipping the younger trees and rustling the bracken, raindrops pliping on every broad leaf on their journey to the forest floor. She starts it, and returns to Lalli, holding one earbud near enough that he should be able to hear what's being played through them, giving him the option to take it if he wants it, and the option to ignore it if he doesn't. ]

[lallipop]

[Lalli does unfurl when Cho asks, but he's clearly not relaxed. His hands remain over his ears, and his eyes remain closed, and he still looks like he's trying to shut out the entire world around him.

He doesn't react to hearing Cho's half of the conversation--most of it is muffled anyway. He doesn't react at all, in fact, until he hears something bizarre: the sound of rain and wind through trees, something he hasn't heard in--months, now. Not since he was brought here, to this place with its artificial walls and the endless buzz of electric lighting.

Something in him instantly relaxes. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed it.

Cho is still on the phone, and so she can only interact through pantomime; Lalli doesn't know where the sound comes from or how, but he comes to understand that the strange device is meant to go into his ears. When he complies, the sound of rain is all he can hear, and for a moment--

For a moment, if he closes his eyes, he can truly believe he's back in the forest around Keuruu--or even Saimaa, before disaster struck. The lukewarm water of the bath becomes a pool he found at the base of a river, the rain the same that beat against the walls of his home as a child. It's... incredibly calming.

He doesn't say a word to Cho since, but he slips into unconsciousness in record time.]

[scowlish]

[He listens to her try to calm Lalli down, and Lalli's noise of discomfort and then she starts talking to him about what she's been doing to take care of his cousin and what his temperature is and what he's been eating, and the anger flares again. Anger and something else, a sort of deep, cutting hurt.

Part of him can't quite accept that Lalli would want to run away from him and be taken care of by a complete stranger instead. Every time it registers in that way, it's like being stabbed in the gut. He really has lost Lalli, then, and he's alone now. Completely alone. After having spent the last twelve years of his life doing everything he could to keep them alive and safe, he's reduced to telling a stranger how to take care of his only remaining family member, over the phone, choking back his sobs, while Lalli refuses to see him.

It feels like the last of his soul is being crushed, and he makes a noise in his throat, unintelligible while she says she's sorry he can't trust her and that she'll answer any questions he has. About his own cousin, the only person he has left in this world.]

You have no right. To him or to do any of this. The only reason I told you how to take care of him was for his sake, and someone who needs to be told that shouldn't be the one taking care of him. You have no right to meddle in my family. I have nothing else to say to you.

[And with that he hangs up.]