2022-07-25: Deer are Dear, dear Yuliana!
- Log: Deer are Dear, dear Yuliana!
- Cast: Lin Xiahe, Yuliana Dispersal
- Where: Hlawga National Park
- Date: 25th July 2022
- Summary: Xiahe pops in on Yuliana during a break in Myanmar.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Myanmar! A delightful little place not too far from Yuliana's home, and a site of... an /impressive/ internal Republic protest, really. Now, this is, of course, all very fine and legal. But they're getting a little rowdy, so Yuliana is here just to make /sure/ everything's in order and everyone's affording the proper amount of respect to the peace.
(She is, of course, an enforcer. She enforces. It's the kind of pressure the police department feels more than anyone on the street, at this stage of the game -- though this sort of stress /does/ inevitably echo out.)
And after a long day of being, just, deeply the worst, there's really only one thing to do with all these globe-trotting assignments: go and see an interesting local feature. In this case, it's the Hlawga National Park, just off of populous Yangon City. Yuliana drapes over a wooden railing, looking out at the waters of Zokanabe Lake, spilling out across the sunset.
No one else has found this spot for the moment, which is deeply convenient for Yuliana, as she puts one of her two phones away.
She had to make a call, you see.
Don't worry about it.
<Pose Tracker> Lin Xiahe has posed.
Lin Xiahe is no stranger to protests, and the entirety of the REA has an incredibly rich and storied /history/ of protests; sometimes she even finds herself in the middle of one, just so that she never really is out of touch with the rawness of people's struggles... no matter the era.
This isn't one of /those/ days, though, promise. Xiahe is here to just see her friend, hooooonest! Gosh, what do you take her for?
As Yuliana puts her phone down, there's a comical sound just so she can't miss it, sounding almost like a slide whistle as /raw space/ unzips slightly in front and to the right of her bench.
Xiahe's upper half spills out of it, leaning out with one arm propping her head up in that draw-me-like-one-of-your-French-girl poses. She's still dressed in her traditional ruqun, with her qilin horns poking out of either side of her head.
She also has a Santa hat on. It's kinda ruining whatever beautiful mystique she might've had!
"Yoo-hoo!" Xiahe calls out, holding a large bottle of arak out. It has a very fancy label on it. "Yulie dear, look what I found! I was thinking about this one arak distillery in Java I haven't visited in ages, and feared it closed down, but...!!"
Somehow, she's steady enough to just prop two little sake-sized cups in front of her. "Drink with me?" she begs.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Tweeeoooooooooot!
This is somehow /not/ the strangest thing that happens around Yuliana these days. ... it's still up there. She laughs, a hand coming up to her forehead as she shakes her head. "/Seriously...?/"
Yuliana gestures to Xiahe's Santa hat, and remarks: "Maybe it wasn't shut down because you went back in time. Tell me, /how/ deep in December were you when you got that bottle?" She delivers this rejoinder remarkably straight-faced, despite the fact that she's invoking sheer science fiction.
If time travel existed, someone would have come back to stop her by now.
She smiles, and leans back on her bench, gesturing with a hand. "Tell you what," she says, pat-patting the backrest beside her, "/you/ drink, and I'll make sure you don't open a portal to the middle of the Atlanic ocean and fall in."
Opening portals, on the other hand, is totally science fact and it obviously exists.
<Pose Tracker> Lin Xiahe has posed.
Xiahe's cheeks puff up real round for a moment, and she protests, "Well /someone/ doesn't enjoy Santa in July," in a most theatrically put-upon voice. She places the bottle on the... seemingly flat surface of her portal, and then huffs in turn and says, "Not gonna drink on the job? If you work too hard, you'll be the one falling into the ocean, Yuli."
She pops the bottle open and pours herself a little snifter, sipping and humming as she plants her hand to her cheek. "Mm! Nothing like the classics." She grins to say, "I'm pleased you chose this place. I haven't checked on their deer in a while. I better find them healthy!"
It's true. There's thaimin and samber deer here. ... what is it with her and deer?
"/Anyway/, let me note that down next time and gift you something other than alcohol," is her way from having Yuliana to answer her non-question.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana laughs -- something about drinking on the job is funny to her. "I'm /driven to achieve results,/" she insists, with cheer.
She manages not to think too hard about how solid-slash-not solid portals are. Yuliana is very happy not thinking with portals, thank you. She'll leave the portal thoughts to Elisa.
"The deer are doing just fine!" She adds, smiling. "One even ate some seed from my hand earlier. They're /real/ cute." Yuliana is not the sort of evil which chases animals away, evidently.
(She's very good at being quiet.)
Yuliana slips a hand into her dark jacket -- under her much more cheerful green-and-yellow scarf -- and pulls out a bottle of pills, shaking it demonstratively. "It's not a matter of taste," she explains, casually. "Once these babies get back from compounding, there's a good four regular meds packed into them. That's leaving /aside/ the morning and evening sets. My chemical regulation is down to a fine science, and that means I can't really add much /else/ to the stack."
She replaces the pill bottle, exclaiming, with no small exasperation: "You know how /long/ it took for me to convince them to put me on a regime which would let me drink any /caffeine?/ Caffeine! Asking a woman to exist without drinking tea and coffee is akin to asking her to /die!/ Now, sure, I have another set of pills for keeping me up if I need to stay focused, but that's hardly the /point!/" She slaps her hand into her opposite palm, in a broad, demonstrative gesture.
Surely Xiahe understands how important these things are!
<Pose Tracker> Lin Xiahe has posed.
Xiahe has a second shot in fairly little time, then drapes herself over to rest on her arms crossed like she's a high school student that's about to use all fifteen minutes of homeroom napping.
"Oh?" she smiles sweetly. "Being nice to deer and feeding them will bring you great luck from me, the goddess of all deerkind." Is she being serious about that?
Yuliana explains her situation, though, and Xiahe squints a little at the bottle in curiosity, humming in turn. "I see. It is not as if I don't understand. You should have seen what cultivation pills and alcohol do if mixed with each other. I think I believed I went through all six realms of Samsara before it wore off...!"
There's a quiet tsk in turn, making a comically distasteful face at the idea of life without caffeine. She ends that with a smirk in the end, though.
"A life without tea! It absolutely isn't even a life. A slow death, that's what that is."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Why wouldn't I be nice to deer? They're dear! It's right in the name!" Yuliana Dispersal, noted ally of authoritarianism... would not kick a puppy for no reason.
(Now, a /bug,/ that's another thing entirely. Damn bug ate her /gun,/ that little --)
Anyway, Yuliana doesn't question Xiahe being a deer goddess to her face. Whether this is because she's humouring her or because she believes her is left as an exercise for the reader.
"Samsara, huh?" Yuliana laughs, gesturing broadly with a hand. "Lucky you. When I figured they were just being stiffs and went out drinking anyway, I just blacked out and ended up waking up in a hospital bed. I don't remember a whit of it, which is half the reason I'm disinclined to repeat the experience, really."
Yuliana, after all, has a great many enemies who would /love/ to intercept her in the pipeline between the greater medical system and her specific laboratory. If that sort of justication is a little more paranoid than her usual, well -- Yuliana's only gotten more responsibilities in the interim years.
(And more jewellery. Her fold crystals, of course, are hidden under her scarf. This is a fresh batch, at least, which might explain why she's speaking the way she does.)
"But... yeah, it sure is," she reflects, looking out over the water. "And sure, you can say some of the teas out of the mainland," out of China, "aren't too caffeinated, but most of them /are,/ you know? Losing all that is just /depressing./ I /would/ like to get married one day, you know. Besides, how am I gonna show up to Gongfu and /decline the tea?/"
What??? Yuliana knows how to conduct herself during tea ceremonies.
<Pose Tracker> Lin Xiahe has posed.
"Deer are dear," Xiahe nods several times, looking just as chuffed with the pun as Yuliana seems to be. Is she a deer goddess, though? Who knows. Those horns on her head don't even seem to be real. They look a bit plastic-y under the light sometimes.
The deer kaiju is a bit more real, one supposes.
"Lucky?! I would not call the endless, wanton wandering lucky. An endless cycle..." Xiahe puffs up again in that way of hers. "But regardless, any landing you can walk away from, I suppose? And without anyone landing papers on your desk to cover it all up?" she chuckles, maybe believing it absolutely didn't go like that.
Does Xiahe want to fell her in such a way?
Nah.
It'd be exceptionally /boring/, for starters. Even if she could, where's the /thrill/ in that? It's why she prefers the battlefield as the medium of communication on many occasions. Just can't have a good, honest heart to heart unless a gun's being pointed at her head.
"I'll treat you to tea sometime. I know a very good place in... well, I /guess/ my part of China is now Khanka," Xiahe remarks with a quiet grumble. A pause. "I might have to check first. It might have been a while since I last checked. But if the distillery survived, which was looking woefully unlikely, then anyone can!"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
Yuliana, noted nice* person**, hasn't called the horns fake /once./
"Uuuugh," Yuliana drags a hand down the unveiled half of her facce, as Xiahe invokes /the worst part of the job./ "Whyyyy is there always so much /paperwork?!/" Because you're a captain, Yuliana. Being a ranking officer involves certain responsibilities /beyond/ shooting people. Just because you enjoy getting your boots on the ground doesn't mean the rest of your job goes away.
(Of course, if Yuliana focused more on her role and delegated more of her activities, she probably wouldn't dread paperwork so much. But where's the fun in that? Is she just supposed to let /Parminder/ have all the fun of seeing them squirm? Nonsense.)
Yuliana proceeds to drape her arm over the back of Xiahe's armest, and drape /herself/ over Xiahe's side. This, as it happens, isn't just a way for her to claim her personal space! It also lets her murmur: "/Do/ be careful in Khanka right now, dear. Now, I can't say much, on account of the active investigation coming right back on my head, but let's just say... someone is hitting that bush with a stick. Now, you /are/ quite the beautiful snake, but it would be a shame, mm..?" If she were to slither out and be caught, presumably.
"Let's keep that between us," she adds, at a more conversational level.
<Pose Tracker> Lin Xiahe has posed.
Yuliana can /certainly/ appreciate something which is so outlandishly fake no one would dare call her out on it, now would she?
The McDaniels crown; the Santa hat; the Pilder hat; the horns. All just whimsy and farce, a great act of comedic nothingness, all designed to elicit a cheap chuckle and a laugh!
Laugh, the circus is in town!
"Yuli dear, you should learn how to magick away paperwork. See here," Xiahe takes out a very boring-looking piece of paper that she definitely had to submit like two weeks ago, then crumples it up into a ball in her hands and then--
"Poof!"
It turns into a little duckling that flutters away two meters, before disappearing into stars.
But Yuliana leans in closer to the portal -- hers drawn with seemingly endless curtains of gossamer silk billowing away in a repetitive pattern into a white nothingness, because the dark void isn't /her/ gimmick.
"My, my oh my," Xiahe plants her fingers to her lip, as if she's just been scandalised. "I should be the one to say! The first time I came down from my residence to the nearest town, I was nearly caught in an open firefight. /With/ Wanzers, I might add."
She smiles just a bit more delightfully and says, "Oh, your secret is safe with me. But thank you for the warning. Do not worry for me; my little home is... a little ways off the marketplace, so people do not visit."
It's a real polite way to say 'my house is an ancient tomb out in the middle of nowhere', that's for sure.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Yes," Yuliana pouts at the duckling which disappears into motes of light after confessing its love for dodging paperwork, "and then the Major asks why 365-J hasn't been submitted, and /then/ we get put under review for not reporting our munitions consumption, and /then/ I have to bribe the quartermaster /again/ so our whole operation doesn't get disrupted..."
Life in the REA is extremely normal and fine don't worry about it.
She drapes in closer to the portal, and -- well, of course her stomach does a bit of a flip to get so close to those gossamer curtains, because desensitised or otherwise, Yuliana is still a much more normal woman who grew up in a /perfectly/ normal way. She who surrounds her may well inform Yuliana's own oddities, but Yuliana is still, basically, human, facing up against a fey portal.
(She's not nearly as bothered as she /should/ be, though. That's just what happens when one starts dating a witch.)
"A little ways off, hmm..?" Yuliana asks, as she straightens up, to pull herself back against that bench with her hand. "Well, good to know. I'm glad I won't have to worry about getting you /caught up/ in anything."
She pauses, and adds: "Not that getting caught up in things isn't fun sometimes, either," Yuliana adds, with a grin. "Wanzers are /delightful/ at firefights, you know!"
<Pose Tracker> Lin Xiahe has posed.
"That does suck," Xiahe says with some feigned surprise. "The last time I was remotely part of an organisation that cared like Karaba and someone demanded I do paperwork, I simply laughed at them and put a round, red nose on them that wouldn't come off for six hours."
Why isn't she wearing the round red nose, given she has the Santa hat?
'Fey' is a pretty good word to describe Xiahe's everything about magic; it isn't the relentless nothingness of the void at all -- hers is a magic full of spirit, life and wonder, turned up to eleven; life that crawls in ways unknowable and horrible, where it feels like capriciousness and whimsy governs the day, only operating on some horridly obscure law that only she knows.
There's a grin in turn from Xiahe. "They /are/, and literally sometimes, too!" Wanzers are terribly fond of flamethrowers, after all. Then, a pause, as if something's calling for her. "Ah, that is my cue. I'll come with gifts more suited next time. I shouldn't keep you out here too long, no doubt you have a nice dinner and shower to get to after your long day."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Dispersal has posed.
"Ha!" Yuliana laughs, with a sharp grin. "I /wish/ I could give the Major one of those. He'd probably just give me this exact expression," Yuliana feigns a complete lack of emotion, which is, being entirely honest, /the hardest emotion for her to feign,/ "and say 'your whimsy is a matter of historical record, Captain, but the paperwork must still be done'." Her flat face breaks into exasperation, as she throws up a hand. "Good /grief!/"
The emptiness, on the other hand, is... /full/ of nothing, and perhaps that's why the sheer spirit of Xiahe's magic doesn't terrify Yuliana as much as it really should. Or perhaps there's another reason why Yuliana so easily accepts magic into her life, without question or hesitation.
Anyway.
"Hoooh?" Yuliana wonders, settling back. "What a shame! But you're quite right, of course -- I've a wonderful evening planned." Is she catching up with Elisa? A lady doesn't kiss and tell. "Do take care, Xiahe...!" She wriggles her fingers, in an affectionate little wave.
Sure -- to hear Yuliana tell it, Xiahe is fake as her horns. But she's an /interesting character,/ and that's still worth something.