aterat | [Open] Headache And A Half

Who; Nida, Open
What; A New Voice In His Head and Chocobo Wrangling
Where; Scientia Household, Markets, Near Chocobo Ranch
When; September
Warnings; Discussion and depictions of talking to voices in your head.

I. The Statue | Scientia Home

It arrives at the door of the house, and just looking at the small statue, Nida knows it's for him. No doubt another one of those little finds that Raimon is good at, something on a list of them that Nida had prepared but never gotten around to coming back for. But he knows it's for him, because he recognizes it from home. Not this little piece, smaller than either of their pets specifically, was exactly like the ones he'd seen at home in pictures, but it was still something of home.

"Now if only I could figure out why you're here," Nida says as he picks the thing up and heads to the kitchen for his morning coffee. He puts the statue on the table to consider where it was almost immediately met by Julia leaping up and nuzzling against it.

"No accounting for your taste, Jules," he tells the feline before sipping at his coffee. What could this be? What could it mean? Why did every bit of his magical senses gifted by Siren scream that it was important?

"Why do you seem so familiar?" he asks after a sip of coffee. Then he reaches out for the thing once more and...

The mug breaks on the floor when he falls. Not that Nida, currently passed out on the floor, really notices.

II. The Arguments | Markets

Nida was learning a lot recently. Like how even a simple walk through the markets on his patrol shift was going to be a headache if he didn't know how to make peace in his own mind.

Oh! Grapes! We should have grapes. You like Grapes!

YOU like Grapes. He doesn't like grapes. There should be no grapes. Raisins instead I think.

Raisins are just boring grapes with wrinkles. Oh, that's why you like them. They're wrinkly. Like you.

And you clearly prefer grapes because they are bloated and much better crushed and fermented like-

"Will you shut up? I'm getting apples and that's final," Nida hissed under his breath, hoping no one else heard him. Which, given his luck, seemed pretty unlikely.

III. The Chase | Near Chocobo Ranch

"Kweh."

"I don't think I can argue with that," Nida said in response to the vocalization of the red chocobo underneath him. The chocobo shied one way and then the other, as if distressed, and Nida of course reached forward to pat her neck gently.

"I know," he says, his voice soft. "I know it's scary. You can smell them too. But I promise, we're here to help the other chocobos. And I won't let any wolves get you. I just need you to do me a favor and help get the other chocobos safe, okay?"

If it gets dangerous, I can shield you!

"That's not a helpful observation, Carbuncle, because she doesn't even know you're here," Nida noted as he nudged the chocobo into motion toward a blur of yellow in the distance. "Maybe save your protectiveness for someone who can understand the words when I relay a message."

And from the looks of it, there might be someone up ahead, astride that other chocobo. Nida raises a hand in greeting to the distant form.

"Well met! You helping out here too?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Her talking annoys him too," he says with a laugh. "They're like... Fire and water. They don't go together."

They are opposites. In fact, many GFs in his world seemed to have opposite numbers. Which was what was causing this issue.

"And their personalities... It's like having Ignis together with someone unorganized who doesn't like coffee and talks constantly."

So they both annoyed each other… Even if one was being quiet, they would probably get annoyed with the other one. Was there actually any hope they’d learn to get along and stop giving Nida bad headaches? Mono’s face scrunched a bit with worry. That really didn’t sound like fun to him.

Put in that context, it was pretty easy to imagine how bad that would go! “Oh… Yeah, that would be really for them to work around each other, huh...” So Nida was stuck until Carbuncle calmed down enough to be less chatty and even then they might still bicker? That sucked.

"They will have to learn balance. The only other person here who can handle GFs is Ignis, and I don't wish to make him forget things. So he takes them only rarely."

It is better not to force his husband to take on such an odious task, even though Ignis does volunteer for it.

Mono was quiet for a moment, mulling over the explanation quietly as he tried to decide if he understood it properly before he responded. “So only you can him can do the thing with having them… And you only get a little break from one of them sometimes… That sounds kinda hard.” Mono frowned a little, kind of sad that Nida had it so hard. Nida was one of his favorite people, after all.

“Do ya forget a lot of things with two of them?” Mono asked quietly, tilting his head slightly. He wondered if there was anything more he could do to help, or if it was more of an ‘adult thing’ that he couldn’t. Then again, even if he could, he doubted they wouldn’t like the inside of his head much. People seemed a bit baffled the one time he tried to explain things.

"It is kind of hard," Nida admits with a shrug. "But I was raised to do something like this. To work with these forces to protect people."

And really, was it so bad to do that and enjoy doing that? He didn't think so. It let him help other people beyond just with the strength of his weapon.

"I don't think I do. I think... they eat at the last echoes of the two worlds that took me before here. I forget more of them every day, but I remember home. I think they're trying to let me keep the most important things."

No, Mono didn’t think it was bad to help people and enjoy doing it. It wasn’t something that happened where he was from, after all. “Yeah, it seems important if you can help protect people. I just kinda hope it gets easier, so your head doesn’t hurt all the time.”

And it was good, the boy thought, that the things in Nida’s head seemed to try to not take the important memories if they had to take any at all. Mono wasn’t sure what Nida’s important memories or unimportant ones would be, though. Was he not sad to forget the other places he’d been, or maybe they weren’t good places? Maybe some memories were better to forget. The boy was well aware of wishing you didn’t have some things in your head. “That’s good, I think… It would be kinda sad to forget important stuff.”

"It would," Nida agrees.

He's forgotten important stuff. He knows that. A lot of it he had done willfully. Maybe it was best not to think about it, because the look of emotional pain that flashes over his face is... deep.

"Forgive me, Mono. You know I try not to avoid topics with you. But this one grows painful. Can we... can we move on?"

“Oh, I’m sorry…” The boy mumbled, knowing that he probably wouldn’t want to dwell on some topics for long himself. “But yeah, we can talk about other stuff instead.” He confirmed, trying to think of another topic the man might be interested in.

Or at least something to take his mind off the current one. “Is the coffee okay?” He added, for a start, while he tried to think of something better. Mono was, of course, not always the best at thinking of what to talk about.

(ooc: Should we wrap this one?)

"Wonderful. The coffee is wonderful," he promises. It wasn't great, but Nida wasn't really as married to it as his husband was, not anymore.

"But come. Tell me about your work. I wanna know how it's going for you."

That was enough to make the boy feel better about his attempt at coffee, so he was taking Nida at his word. The request to tell him about work was also a pretty good distraction from the prior line of conversation.

Mono didn’t take much prompting to launch into the interesting people he met while delivering things, or talking about his really cool boss, or about the bigger location they were moving into.

[Open] Headache And A Half

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yeah that sounds about right

Then we shall wrap