fandomtownies | Furnado Animal Shelter; Sunday [09/17].

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Furnado Animal Shelter; Sunday [09/17].

Sidon had been absent quite consistently these past few weeks...maybe even these past few months, really...because things were getting worrisomely more intense back home, around the Calamity, around Zora's Domain, around Vah Ruta. And naturally, it was his princely duty to be there for his people, especially if things were finally ramping up to the crisis that had been having over their heads for the past one hundred years. The monsters were relentless, the blood moons more frequent, the evil ichor swirling around the castle more vibrant and spreading than ever. Was it finally time for Calamity Ganon to make his final strike to destroy Hyrule entirely, once and for all?

Needless to say, these distractions had definitely lead him to be neglecting Furnado quite a bit lately. And while he could not feel bad about being where he needed to be, there was a part of him that realized that his duties were swaying him hard in another direction, and he had to give Hyrule the absolutely most of his attention.

Which was why he came back to the island today to get in touch with Prompto and had for him a proposal: the two of them went way back, further than most, when one considered their varying time disparity, but no matter how much time had passed, there would always be a firm place in their hearts for the animal shelter, where so much of their friendships had grown over their time as students here. He knew Prompto himself had a lot on his plate these days, with supporting his family and everything, but he also knew that the animals at Furnado were always a part of that family, too. So he could think of no other person better for the job of keeping an eye on the place while he was gone than him.

And Prompto was also uniquely able to truly understand what it was like to have a complete apocalyptic destruction of your home hanging over your shoulders, as well.

So there was barely any hesitation from Prompto to agree and promise to do Sidon and Zack proud. Granted, he wasn't really sure this was wise, but, well, Noctra was growing more and more her own capable person by the day, and he was sure he could find somewhere to slide the business of the place into his schedule, especially with the help of the vet.

He did have one condition to his acceptance, though: that should Sidon find that he needed help, he wouldn't hesitate to ask for it.

And that was a promise that Sidon was more than happy to make, clapping a hand on Prompto's shoulders (without even knocking him forward too much, even!) with a laugh and an agreement, and then he went to show him all the finer details involved in running the shelter as opposed to just working there.

Furnado is open!

[[ and this will very likely be Sidon's last post for a while, as I finally nudge him toward going through canon, huzzah! ]]

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Hand still cradled in his palm, Prompto shrugged a little. "Guess that depends on how you look at it," he said. "It's been a while, but the big guy and me," he moved his hand finally to better gesture between himself and Sidon, as if the description needed specification on which giant nine-foot-tall person in the room he was referring to, "used to work here together back when we were younger."

He might have said teenagers, but Sidon had been in his seventies back then.

"I'm mostly in the photography business now," he added. "My wife and I run the Photo Hut over on the other side of town, and I do a lot of freelance stuff, too, so if you need a good photographer..."

He hitched a finger gun, complete with sound effect, Liliana's way.

"I'm your guy."

"He does truly remarkable work, too!" Sidon submitted, never one to let a good opportunity to praise his friends pass him by! "Magnificent, really! I've seen him take shots that somehow boggle the very idea of a possibility!"

Not even Prompto really knew how he could manage to take non-selfie pictures with himself actually in them, but somehow...

"It does seem much less intensive than sitting for a portrait," Liliana admitted. "And I don't have one of those little black boxes that people use to take pictures of themselves, either."

Just what Liliana Vess needed: an Instagram.

"Did you go to school here as well?" He'd just mentioned a wife, sure, but he did kinda have a baby face here, even with the beard.

Hey! She actually called it a beard! That was way more than what most people were willing to give it!

"A camera?" asked Prompto, which he would feel said a lot about his maturity these days, that he went to that first instead of what followed. "Oh, or a phone? I mean, I guess most people don't bother with cameras these days, which is good for the freelance business, but a little less so for the store side of things...

"And yeah," he grinned a little proudly at that, "just a couple of years ago if you go by this place's calendar. Class of...2020?" He turned to Sidon to confirm, and he nodded. "2020. So, three years ago, but both of us kind of got wrapped up in one of those time disparity things? Have you heard about those? Where someone'll go home or to a different place and more or less time passes there than it does here, so when you get back, things are a little wonky? I had a ten year jump forward in the matter of a few months, Big Guy over here," he gestured, helpfully again, "had thirty."

"Although," Sidon interjected lightly, "we Zora live significantly longer than most other beings do, so thirty years wasn't quite the significant difference for me as it would have been for, say, a human such as Prompto, so I'd say that makes us about even."

Lili was in the mood to be kind today. You're welcome Prompto. Prompto's beard.

"Ten years?" she repeated. "...You don't happen to be from Eos, do you?" No offense, Sidon, she was sure your thirty year sojourn was very interesting and all, but she had a vested interest in Eos.

Ten years of eternal night and wandering demons. And she'd missed it.

It was fine. Sidon's thirty years was actually remarkably uneventful, especially compared to how other people's time disparities went, and was almost entirely just an attempt to make as much sense out of a nonsensical timeline as one possibly could.

Like you do.

And Prompto knew he would do a terrible job at keeping a broad grin back in response to Liliana's question, so he was not even going to try.

He was, however, apparently going to feign surprise at this question, which he was absolutely not even remotely pulling off. Especially not with that faint snicker.

"I do happen to be from Eos!" he remarked. "Oh, have you heard of it?"

Wherever from, Liliana, pray tell!

Ha! Joke's on you, Prompto. At first, that poor pretense of surprise and that snicker had her narrowing her eyes, but then she put two and two together and realized what was happening. Then she was fighting off her own grin to reply, "I have heard of it, interestingly enough! I met a gentleman from that very same place just a few days ago! Might you know him?"

She batted her lashes at him and added, "His name is Gladio."

Look, she and Ignis had actually done a lot more talking the night she'd stayed over than anything else, but tragic backstories hadn't actually been conducive to the overall mood and had thereby been skipped.

Tragic backstories could be a bit of a mood killer.

"You know, I--" Prompto, who was quite often the perfect placesetting for a joke, it was true, started to respond before his brain caught up with his ears and told him that what he was expecting Liliana to say had not, in fact, been what Liliana had said, and he stopped, blinked, and frowned slightly. His head tilted and he began to try again, but only made it to opening his mouth and taking in a breath for words before he stopped again.

Well, obviously, she'd met Gladio, too, because how else would Gladio have told him about all the (vague) details? But the whole point of all those details had been because she and Ignis...

Prompto's face was doing quite the job of broadcasting all the various threads of thought he was trying to figure out to pull just then, before just deciding to go with a faint snort and a wry, "I don't know if gentleman's the word I'd use," pretty rich, Argentum, coming from a commoner, "but I know Gladio..."

His look turned a little suspicious on Liliana as he ventured, as if sort of testing the water, "And his roommate. Ignis?"

You did this to you, Prompto.

"Oh yes, I've met him, too," she agreed, doing a remarkable job of keeping it together, save for how deep her dimples were getting in an effort to keep her smile off her face.

Yeah. Yeah. He, uh, usually did, so...

But at least Prompto was not so bad at this that he couldn't keep the yeah, I'm sure you have that immediately sprung up in his brain out of his mouth.

Instead, he just gave a little "Uh-huh" that teetered somewhere between confused and curious as he tried to figure out exactly what that expression entailed. "Good. He's a good guy, Ignis. Gladio? He's alright. But we used to work together. I mean, we still do, sometimes, but not, like, in the same way that we used to. It's..." He waved his hand dismissively, almost starting to wish he'd never brought it up, especially when either of them would probably be much better at explaining it to Liliana than he could, "...kind of complicated, but all three of us, we go way back."

"Yes, Gladio did mention all the fighting during the Long Night. He sounded so very brave..."

Honestly, she would have liked to keep winding him up, but she couldn't hold it in anymore. Honestly, this laughter was probably exactly what she needed too, especially after...breaking her favorite teacup. Yes. Just that one thing.

It honestly took her nearly a full minute before she could get her laughter under control, still low and rich, though it's possible Prompto wouldn't appreciate it as much as his friend. "You were fishing, darling. Can't blame me if I decided to tug the line a bit." She leaned back, looking at him with playful violet eyes. "Now are you trying to learn about me? Or talk Ignis up? I'm here for either, darling. Ask away, I'm an open book."

She was a liar was what she was.

Edited 2023-09-17 20:44 (UTC)

Yeah, there were....several things about that reaction that left Prompto in a deeper state of confusion than he was presently, although, it should be noted, not so much Sidon, who seemed to chuckle a little to himself as well and clap his hand on Prompto's shoulder.

"You'll both have to excuse me for a moment!" he announced, throwing a toothy grin and a wink Liliana's way before that hand on Prompto's shoulder patted it reassuringly. "I believe the vet may need my assistance with something in her office. Liliana, as always, it's been a pleasure to see you again, and if I don't get a chance to see you before you're finished here, please know that I hope you have a spectacular day, and may my own trip back home again not take another thirty years before we can catch up again!"

With that, and another hearty laugh, he left to go see about helping the vet and leaving them to not have a giant red sharkman-shaped fly on the wall to their conversation, although, really, he was an NPC, it would have been right in line with his character...

Meanwhile, Prompto's face had gone a bit red through all of that, the color always making the freckles scattered across his face even more prominent, giving Liliana an almost sheepish smile that probably did nothing to help diminish the boyishness of that baby face she'd so kindly noticed. "Yeah, well," he said, "fishing never really was my skill. But, yeah, Gladio was telling me that things seemed to have been going, uhh...well, between you two, after the Three Minute Dates..."

He was so tempted to add a thank gods in there, but, really, he'd already probably done enough damage here already without going and dredging up how desperate he and Gladio were to pull Ignis out of his persistent post-Goose moping.

"So, uh, both, I guess?"

The grin gained maybe a slight bit of confidence again. "Anything I should know to warn him about, maybe?"

While he tried to figure out if it was in his place to maybe warn her about a thing or two about Ignis. If even getting that deep into it was even necessary...

"It was lovely seeing you again as well, Sidon," Liliana said, still wearing the delighted grin at Prompto's expression(s). She held her hands out, willing to take the kitten that was probably now sulking at Sidon's general inedibility. You know, out of desire to be helpful or whatever. "I do hope you return from your venture successfully and am sure you're leaving the shop in excellent hands."

Which left her bringing her glance back to the sheepish Prompto. "Whatever 'things' entail, I suppose they do happen to be going well," she agreed, though with a touch of reserve that could be expected from someone ~~terrified of acknowledging feelings and vulnerabilities~~ ~~with a string of tragic relationships behind her~~ who would be the hard-mode NPC to romance in the video game she deserved to have. "I've already warned him I'm greedy, selfish, and spoiled," she added thoughtfully. "He seemed to appreciate those traits."

Surely he didn't need warnings about the demons who owned her soul, the dragon she was in debt to, the last boyfriend she'd betrayed, the magical artifact on her hip that sometimes whispered to her in the dark of the night, whatever the hell the Raven Man was, her own tragic backstory that was over two hundred years in the making...

"I'm also a necromancer, and while I personally thing that's a benefit, not everyone has my sense of taste." More fools they. "I also loathe angels."

Edited 2023-09-17 21:42 (UTC)

Liliana. Liliana. Sidon smelled like food. He looked like he could be food. And yet, he was not food. It was truly an offense greater than anything else this poor kitten had ever known, and now this indignant kitten was, indeed, being passed over to you before Sidon completely made his exit.

Prompto considered this information with his confused look slipping back, because none of those traits really sounded like things Ignis would appreciate. Spoiled, he figured, Ignis would be at least used to dealing with, and he could see how any other person might be easily charmed by Liliana's beauty, but obviously that wasn't going to exactly going to be high on Ignis' priority list. As for the necromancy?

There was a bit of an uncomfortable shifting, but that was everything to do with Prompto's own general feelings around that sort of thing than any consideration of what Ignis' might have been.

"That's, uh, working with the dead, and things like that, right?" he asked, just in the off chance that he'd gotten the word mixed up. "And what's so wrong with angels?"

She was also very fun. And encouraged him to be greedy, which probably helped a little bit. And just think, Prompto, those were the traits she was willing to cop to!

...Literally everybody else in her canon was rooting for you to tell your boy to run. Hello, Liliana would probably tell him to a few times as well. And would question his mental faculties if he didn't for some reason.

"Oh yes," she said, watching his squirming closely. "I'm a ghoulcaller by trade, but I'm well-versed in almost all the necromantic arts." Her lip curled. "I'm not a Stitcher, I have self-respect."

Their work lacked artistry or craft and was honestly an embarrassment to the good name of necromancy.

Her eyes narrowed at his latter question and she had to look down to the poor, deeply indignant kitten in her lap before she could paste on the proper airy smile and say, "Well, for one thing, they're terribly judgmental, small-minded, and self-righteous for creatures invented by Serra because she had an overfondness for pigeons."

They knew what they did.

"I'm not sure what a Stitcher is," Prompto admitted, trying his very best to not swallow too obviously at that, "but I think I'm okay with that."

And as for the other part? Even Prompto could tell that it was a pretty sore subject for Liliana, so he just sort of smiled apologetically for asking, even though, technically speaking, she's the one who brought it up.

"I don't really know that much about them," he shrugged a little. "I know around here, angels and daemons kind of go hand in hand, and while I know a lot about daemons..." There was a pause there, and swallowing became a little harder again, "...the closest thing we have to what I've heard about angels are probably the Messengers."

Because we were working off the English translation with this one.

"And there's Angelgard, which was the sacred isle said to be the gathering place of the gods, but...." He shook his head a little. "That's more Gladio's thing than it is mine. All that stuff just goes right over my head."

Even when they were actively interacting with and fighting the gods, there was always a part of Prompto that was very much feeling waaaay out of his league.

....to be fair, Prompto felt way out of his league in most things, though.

Edited 2023-09-17 22:22 (UTC)

Liliana was all for fighting gods, though. At least actual gods. Those were rarer than most people thought; most of the beings known as gods were actually just pre-Mending planeswalkers ~~in her corner of the Multiverse anyway~~. Hell, she'd been a goddess on several planes. It had been fun for awhile, but she'd eventually gotten bored and wandered off.

At least she hadn't been in the habit of creating planes just to be worshipped. Looking at you, Nicol Bolas.

She looked at him, noting all those little swallows, and understood far better than she wanted to admit where such things came from. "Demons," she said quietly, "are not the province of necromancers." She was also unclear about the difference between daemons and demons, but she hadn't really gotten a rundown on them. "Demons are evil creatures, cruel and vicious and delighting in their power. Necromancers and demons exist independent of one another."

Sure, Liliana currently had some stuff going on with demons, but that was a her thing, not a necromancer thing.

"My home plane of Dominaria had a problem with demons for a very long time." She shrugged. "Still might, I just haven't been back home to know."

"Well," said Prompto quickly, "not all daemons."

Yeah, yeah, yeah, technically Hellboy was a demon not a daemon, but Prompto, in all his time here, still didn't seem able to make a distinction.

"But Eos was like that for a long time, too," said Prompto, with a little bit of a tired sigh. Even if it had been over a year now since that all ended, you didn't shake off that kind of darkness and oppression and exhaustion that easily, especially not when things kept happening to constantly remind you of it and make it real all over again. "But we....took care of it."

The next pause was a little longer, his brows knitting with a frown.

"I hope. None of us have been able to get back there for a year now, we have no idea how things are going, but...after I left, everything seemed...fine."

"Mmmm," Liliana hummed, not willing to concede #NotAllDemons. Maybe once she was done betraying and murdering the four who owned her soul.

She shifted her chair a bit, much to the further disapproval of the poor kitten who had just been falling asleep, enough that she could reach over to Prompto and offer him a reassuring pat on the arm if he didn't object. "Did you leave anyone you trust behind?" she asked, leaving off the part where trust was generally a fool's game and how people changed, especially when your back was turned.

You're welcome, Prompto.

Yes, okay, fair point, what what if he told you that this daemon liked cats, Liliana?

That had kind of been what ultimately won Prompto over, really.

Also, like Prompto would ever objected to reassuring pats, considering he was pretty much a puppy in weird scientific clone experiment form. He gave her a soft, grateful sort of smile.

"Yeah," he said, "the people we left there are really capable and strong. I mean, you don't survive something like the Long Night without coming out pretty much prepared for anything. So I'm sure they're doing fine. When we all got kind of....sucked back here, I guess, it was staggered; Iggy actually came last, and he said things were starting to head toward restoration pretty solidly. And then there was....well, there's a thing that happens here sometimes, where, like, loved ones come back from the dead?"

So, like, relevant to Liliana's interests, he supposed?

"But, like, only for the weekend. And we got Noct." Surely, they had mentioned Noctis to her, right?? "And he sort of reassured us all that everything was going fine, he's, like, watching from the heavens or something like that. Which, I mean, is good, because it's one thing to save a world and then get booted from it, but it would really suck to sacrifice yourself for the world and then have it not even work."

Mmm. Even stopped clocks were right twice a day. She'd remain wary.

...Though, honestly, she'd meet Hellboy, declare him a red mana demon and dismiss him as a concern. Annoying, probably, but not through-and-through evil. Something more along the lines of what the Rakdos might summon for a weekend block party than, say, a Lord of the Pit. Or a Kothophed.

She blinked at Prompto several times. "The only thing I knew about this was that the Long Night had been a decade without daylight and many wandering monsters and...Noct?...had been sleeping in a crystal. So, I honestly have no idea what happened. Ignis and I haven't talked about your home at all."

And she had no plans of ever discussing hers at all!

"Oh," said Prompto, returning those blinks in a way that someone might think they'd decided to communicate suddenly in morse code. "....really?"

It was hard to tell what he was more surprised about, that Liliana had only gotten those little tidbits or that she hadn't gotten any of them from Ig--

--nope, no, it was definitely the first one, now that he thought about it, and he shook his head a little and sighed and sort of wanted to give Ignis a little shake by the shoulders, except, obviously, he would never.

He might ask Gladio to do it, though.

"Eeesh," he then said, making a face, because he was probably the least equipped to be the one to fill in all those gaps. "Uhh, well, there's....there's definitely a lot more to it than just that. I honestly wouldn't even know where to start. But...Noctis was the Last King of Lucis, and he was destined to save Eos from the Starscourge, that's the stuff that the daemons come from and turned the planet into the Long Night. And me, Iggy, and Gladio, we were his Crownsguard, sworn to serve and protect him..."

Oh, no, Lili, now look what you've done. Prompto was starting to get a little wibbly, though he tried to smile through it. He was trying not to blink, otherwise those tears that were gathering in his eyes might actually start falling, and then what would she think of him? She came in just to get stuff for her cat, and was getting a big sentimental softie Prompto instead....

"...ever at his side..."

Maybe the soft laugh he tried would help bolster him against getting too emotional, too. Probably not, but worth a shot...

"Kinda hard to do, you know, when he's trapped in a crystal, but, eventually, he came back, we stormed the city that had been taken from us, fought the god trying to stop us, and then sent Noct in to face the immortal asshole who started this whole thing, and..."

A shrug.

"That kind of brings us up to a year ago, when we all started showing up back here. I didn't even get to see how the battle finished. All of a sudden, there was just this blinding burst of white light, I covered my eyes, and when I opened them again, I was back here for the first time in ten years, only it had only been a few months that had passed by here. A couple weeks later, Gladio showed up, and then Ignis. I mean, it kind of made sense for me, I've got a really deep history here, and it turns out, my girlfriend was actually pregnant, so I kind of feel like, now that I'd done what we were meant to back on Eos, I was needed here now, but it felt like kind of a bum deal for them, you know?"

Oh no. There was wibbling. Liliana gave him a few more patpatpats in a futile attempt to be comforting, and eyed the cat as a possible weapon in the face of tears. The cat looked back up at her as if it knew what she was thinking, and promptly leapt down from her lap with a disdainful tail swish. It hadn't gotten to eat Sidon, it definitely wasn't about to be sniffled at.

Miserable creature. Liliana was proud of it. This is why cats were the absolute best of all creature types. Not counting zombies, of course.

She took a moment to be quiet and consider her words, which on a scale of Liliana Vess was the emotional equivalent of hugs and kisses. For example, she didn't shrug and say, 'Oaths were made to be broken,' so, like, this was some top-notch compassion right here. "I...understand," she said slowly. "What it is like to lose...everything. To watch your home burn. Become profaned, as laughable as it is for me to use that word. To be flung away and not know what happened to those you left behind."

And she knew what it was like to go back and find only a ruin. But she wasn't going to mention that to him.

"It sounds like you left a world healing. And, as a former healer myself, I can promise you that no healing ever goes smoothly. There will be bumps and pain and days when they backslide. But if you left a good foundation for healing...and someone you trust to guide it...then it will. It will never be what it was, though. And perhaps it is a kindness, that you are here instead. So that you can focus on building your own lives, rather than trying to pick up your old ones in a world that has changed without you."

Not that she knew anything about any of that. Beyond, like, hypothetically.

Edited 2023-09-18 00:03 (UTC)

Funny that Liliana should liken the word profaned to being laughable, because that, in particular, as he looked down at the counter in front of him and listened carefully to her words, seemed to force out a dry laugh of his own.

But that helped so that, when she was finished, he could look over at her with a grateful smile and a nod. "That's pretty much what Noct said, too," he noted, that smile going a little crooked and fond and wistful and sad all in one. "When he was here. A lot of stuff about us having to give her up to save her..."

Then, there was a pause, as he considered Liliana carefully, thoughtfully, blue eyes searching her face as he tried to decided whether to say anything more, but, well, with a response like that, he almost felt he owed it to her now.

"It made sense," he said, "for me. Gladio's started to come around lately, especially after that visit. But Iggy?" He shook his head a little. "Hard to tell with that guy. He definitely likes to keep his cards close to his chest, you know?"

Really, if she didn't know already, it was probably good for her to go in with that warning.

Then, he broke out a real grin, a genuine one, not one of those soft, squishy ones meant to cover up everything else.

"The food makes it worth it, though," he added.

It was good to know!

Liliana liked to have a decoy hand, that she held out for everyone to see and admire while keeping her real cards as hidden as possible. So hidden, hopefully no one would even notice she had them at all!

This was gonna be just blue skies and clear sailing. Zero problems ahead.

"He does make truly excellent food," she said with a laugh - a laugh hopefully bright enough that Prompto would miss the swap between that hidden hand and the obvious one, as she closed down that moment of ~~weakness~~ ~~vulnerability~~ and pretended that it had never been. Or, at least, that it had been less than what it was. "Your King sounds smart and not just because he agrees with me. Also, I refuse to make it a habit to praise royalty, so you know I think so."

"Oh, no," Prompto assured her, and the grin growing a little bit showed that not only did Liliana not have to worry too much about any cards that Prompto may have gotten a glimpse or two at today, but that she didn't have to worry about him getting his cards all soaked with his own squishiness (well, never say never, but they seemed to have cleared this hand, anyway). "He was a total dumbass, more often than not," said, of course, with the utmost love and adoration, even a little bit of a wistful sigh, "but I guess maybe those ten years in that crystal gave him at least a little bit of insight."

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