They're not going anywhere before dinner, which Mamoru did not make it back for; Zoisite and Nephrite weren't in evidence either, but a certain blond wandered in long enough to harvest both dinner and cookies, and to be taken aside for a remarkably brief conversation with Kunzite. Whatever that conversation was, it was marked with nodding from the blond, and Kunzite left Jadeite alone after that.
And, a little after Naru's finished eating, it really is Kunzite who comes back to her side. Uniform and cape, rather than jeans and rolled-up sleeves. A hint of cooler air accompanying him, more pleasant than the general ambient heat. "Ready to go?" he asks. Wherever it is he has in mind. "Or home instead?"
Naru is perfectly capable of helping to make dinner, even if there's not very many of them about for it. She's settled with her sketchbook as Kunzite returns and she looks up at him, still lingering over a cup of tea.
"Other than feeling underdressed, I don't need anything from my place. Do I?" She confirms with him, as he's the one who knows where they're going. "And provided you don't mind my stuff hanging out randomly in your living room, that too." She stands as she replies, finishing her tea to go and wash the cup and put it away.
They keep even odder schedules than most teenagers, particularly Nephrite. Dinner is usually selected for its ability to be kept warm or reheated.
There's a shake of his head to her question. "Leave things here or take them with you, it doesn't matter. We can pick them up on the way back. And Jadeite's agreed to keep an eye on anything you leave." Just in case anyone who finds them has a permanent marker and a juvenile sense of humor.
Naru laughs easily. "There's not much they can get into, really. I'm bringing my sketchbook with me, but I'll bring my bag." She moves to collect said bag easily settling it on her shoulder. "If I had my gym bag with me, I'd leave it here. Lead on." She provides the appropriate gesture and a grin. "Where are we going?"
Kunzite sets a hand on her shoulder. "Easier to show you than to explain." And shadows swarm up around them, a solid column of darkness that blocks the view of the room, indeed of anything. Streaks of something like lightning fork through it, that incongruous pink that sometimes turns up when he's using his magic. Mostly it stays clear of her. The couple of times it doesn't, it doesn't hurt -- there's a warm sensation instead, and neither she nor anything on her is injured by it.
When it dissipates, they're standing in a corridor of white stone, geometric and not quite barren. A strip of mosaic runs down either wall, a line of stylized creatures in scraps of gold tile against a background of an intense, drowning blue. Kunzite pays attention to none of this, because at one side is a door, and the stonework there varies from its otherwise unrelenting lines -- the shadow of a torii's shape can just be made out, white against white, and the things shown in the mosaic change -- no birds, no flowers, only something that might be stylized lions, or might be komainu, shrine guardians.
He draws the door open, and on the far side of it that shadow of a shape is a torii, is a freestanding open gateway, and past that is a carefully-maintained path leading out into a deeply green forest on a mountainside.
The touch on her shoulder makes Naru start ever so slightly, no matter that the magic, even when it touches her, doesn't. Even pink lightning doesn't seem to phase her much, although she's starting to pay the magic around her more overt attention.
Kunzite might not be paying attention, but Naru can't help but look around. It might not strictly be her first visit, but it's effectively the first where she's aware enough to pay attention.
Naru follows Kunzite, if he moves away from where they've started. She's quiet, watching rather than commenting for the moment.
A little away from where they've started. Out through the gateway -- his hand has already dropped away from her shoulder again -- onto the path. Behind them, once they've crossed through it ... past the gate is only a little ornamental bit of wall, just enough to hold a freestanding doorway upright, and the door is decorated with white sandstone and with steel. Beyond that bit of wall is no building, no corridor. Just forest.
It is quiet here, peaceful and calm. Stillness and cool shade, sunlight filtering through the leaves to make flickering bright patches on mossy ground, and on the hints of other paths barely perceptible through the trees. The breeze is far cleaner than air anywhere near Tokyo ever gets.
"Not a park, exactly," Kunzite comments. "But safer."
Naru is quiet as she follows him, looking around avidly. She's still looking back at a chunk of wall, or a bit of gate when she pauses at Kunzite's voice.
Naru turns to consider the picture as a whole and she takes a slow breath, inhaling deep, meditative, and exhales just as slowly, almost a sigh that echos with relaxation.
"It feels of you." Naru comments as she watches the dapple of sunlight upon the ground, the utter sense of peace. "More a garden, than a park. But better."
"Mistaken identity." It's not a reproof; that particular pacing of the words, and the fractional drop of his eyelids, might serve anyone else for a smile. "This one is Jadeite's." He tilts his head back a little to indicate the door they came through, the one that left nothing on the far side once they were through it. "That one is mine. I'd say he's better at gardens, but then, they all are."
Naru laughs softly. "Really? Perhaps I attribute it to you, because I don't know Jadeite well at all. The calm, the rocks make me think of you. Then again, anything that's not Tokyo would feel calm at the moment." She wanders a bit, leaving him behind if he doesn't wander with her. Which seems likely.
Naru roams out to find the dappled sunlight, and turns her face up to catch the breeze. "I do miss the park." She comments almost absently. "I think that's why I kept going back, even though it sucks. It's got a different feel, the life and sounds and smells, than the beach does."
He does not keep pace beside her, but he's never outside of conversational distance, either. All she has to do is turn her head to catch a glimpse of gray and white gainst the green.
"It's not a place I'd be comfortable with in the long run," he says. "Forests make me uneasy after a while. Shrines after a much shorter while. But he's at home with both." Sometimes she can catch a glimpse of buildings in the distance, of an open space; sometimes there are windchimes hung, as good as the paths in confirming the fundamental order of the place that lies beneath the gentle, living disorder of the undergrowth. Civilization and the wild brought into a quiet harmony.
Much as parks are, in their own way. "No reason you shouldn't go back," he says. "It's not as if any other location has been particularly safer, compared to the amount of time you spend there -- except for the ones that are actively watched over."
"I'm not sure I'd be entirely comfortable with a shrine all the time, but I appreciate the green." Naru comments as she moves over to settle next to a tree, leaning on it and turning towards him as they chat, at a bit of a distance. "The movement of the light is gorgeous as sunshine comes through the leaves. Filtered, not so harsh, with life and energy rather than more direct."
"It took a while after the first set of attacks there to go back, and then it happened again." Naru comments quietly. "I will again, I'm sure, but I'm going to wait until it stops popping up in my dreams as something terrifying before I do."
"Maybe that's what you should be painting, then." He doesn't watch her directly. Even here, even where it's unnecessary, he has his head turned to study the shadows between the trees.
Quiet for a moment. And then he says, "This place is good at coping with harshness. At overwintering and coming back again, undisturbed. I come here to study that sometimes."
"Does it have seasons?" Naru asks as she settles her bag down next to her, crouching to be able to go digging into it. "Because if it does, I am going to ask you to come back in the autumn. The light is just utterly magical at that exact moment of autumn, when the air is still warm, but the breeze promises chill. When the leaves are turning, and the light is rich and full and golden. It sparkles."
Naru looks over to Kunzite a moment, thoughtful. "Which is your favourite season?"
"There are seasons here," Kunzite answers, "but they don't work the way you might think. It's been summer here since February." ... this, apparently, is summer, here. It's a good deal more pleasant than summer in Tokyo usually is. "Tell Jadeite about it that way, though, and he might reshape it for you. Or he might let it fall into rhythm with the normal world for a while. Part of the attraction of autumn is that it's transient, after all."
A statement that's revealed as intellectual knowledge only when she asks that next question, and he glances back at her, and his reaction is only blank. Not the usual control. Just the empty look of someone who doesn't recall ever having been asked the question, or ever givin the answer any thought. "I don't think I have one."
"It's his place, not mine." Naru shakes her head with a soft laugh. "I'll just have to kick my subsconsious into shape by autumn and go back to the park. Autumn and spring both share that transient nature." She digs out her sketchbook. No painting, but she's willing to sketch at the very least.
"Is that because you've not experienced them all as your current self, because you've never considered the differences, or because you actually appreciate each one equally." She considers him. "I can't see you as a spring or an autumn type. Summer or winter."
"I've been in Tokyo nearly a year now; Kazuo lived here for nineteen. It's fair enough to say I've experienced the local seasons. And I've considered the differences, yes. There's a particular hell, somewhere, that punishes its denizens by making them try to organize troop movements in monsoon season." Kunzite's looking out at the woods again, occasionally glancing up as if hoping to catch a glimpse of sky through the shifting green. "But there are only rare occasions in which one can choose the season, or the weather. It seems pointless to develop an attachment to something you can't control."
"You haven't been this you for the entire time I've known you, which is considerably less than a year." Naru points out calmly as she settles upon the moss to put her sketchbook in her lap. "Kazuo, from what I've heard of him, did not have your perspective, and the Kunzite that tried to destroy the world was also trying to kill himself, which isn't exactly a headspace that considers what brings joy, what makes your breath catch at the beauty of it."
Naru shakes her head. "I wouldn't call it an attachment, I have no desire to cling to any one season the whole time. But I do have a favourite. There's one that just makes it easier to look out over the world and pause and enjoy that moment of wonder. It doesn't make the other ones suck.. except when they do, of course."
He makes that same brief, noncommittal sound that he uses when someone is partly right, but also significantly wrong. No words follow it, though, no elaboration of where he might disagree with what she said. Not for a long time.
If it were his own place, when he speaks again, it would be in rhythm with the trees and the wind. As it is -- the dissonance is slight. "I don't often find wonder in things. People are more interesting."
Says the man whose preferred place in any social grouping is outside of it.
Naru seems content to exist in her wrongness, even while she notes that noncommittal sound that indicates a significant amount of disagreement with her opinion coming from the one she's expressing an opinion of.
There's some pencil lines settling on the page, capturing some of the light coming through the leaves, or at least that's probably where she's aiming at least. "I might argue that finding wonder in a season is not precisely a 'thing', per se. It's more of a concept, or a moment. I don't often find wonder in a plate, or a pickle."
Naru smiles as she continues. "People are /fascinating/. For me, that's different. They're a puzzle, not just a moment of contentment."
"That you don't often find wonder in a plate is more a condemnation of current standards than a proper comparison." He's still not looking at her, but his mouth is turned upward at the corner nearer her now. Just enough to be seen where she sits. "There's space there for works of art, too."
He does not attempt to argue for the pickle.
"I don't doubt that you do find these things. But it's not ..." He does not, quite, trail off, but the pause is noticeable. "Not something of mine."
"I'll keep that in mind about the plates." Naru quips back to him with a more open smirk than his barely there expressions. "I can't say as I know very many potters."
"Not something of yours, in that you don't pause and appreciate a perfect moment?" Naru asks thoughtfully as she watches her drawing, rather than stare at Kunzite as she asks it.
"Of course I do. But we have different standards." He falls quiet for a moment again, and his head is still turned, but for a moment he's not looking at the trees or the shadows between them at all. "At that last ball, there was a moment when Usagi and Mamoru were dancing. They were dressed in white and gold; it made them stand out to begin with. And then the girls who were organizing the ball conspired for her birthday, and dimmed the lights, and opened the drapes to let the moonlight shine in on them."
He breathes; shakes his head just a little. "Nephrite laughing and Jupiter smiling, calling down heaven's wrath together in starlight and lightning. Zoisite fallen asleep in his garden, no matter how well he knows he'll be angry over the dirt and grass stains later. Homura Akemi's eyes when she's watching her lady. Kyouko in silhouette, watching over her sister or her own lady from far enough away that neither knows. The gathering after the flowers -- the one you fell asleep at. Venus, once."
Whatever it was about Venus that caught his attention, he doesn't say.
"Of course we have different standards, we're different people." Naru doesn't seem put out by that notion. She glances over to him as he picks out moments that he's marked people and the perfect moments they bring. Her own smile is quiet, gentle as she listens to his litany, so very different from the moments she brought forth out of her memories. Her expression turns thoughtful a moment, silent as she watches him.
Naru turns her attention back down to her sketchbook, her pencil stilling as she considers her drawing too.
It's not even that the moments are any less transient, any less difficult to capture. It's only that she sees beauty in a different way -- or, perhaps closer, that she sees value in aspects of beauty that he might not mark.
His are all people.
And as she turns her attention back down to the page ... he watches her, and if that might be one of those moments, he doesn't speak of it.
Just as transient, just as elusive. Just as magical and just as soul touching. His are all people, moments with others, even if Kunzite is watching from without.
Hers, at least all that were mentioned, are alone.
Naru reaches to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear absently as she returns to drawing, taking a few moments yet before she speaks again. "It's those moments that are gone right now. Those brief flashes where the wonder bubbles up? That's gone. I think it'll come back. Everything else has."
There is silence for a moment more, in answer to that. What he says in the end is, "I'll tell Akemi-san that she may have been correct, then."
Lacking context, the sentence doesn't mean too much.
"What was her theory?" Naru asks, looking over to him, watching the contrast of his white and grey against the green. She lets her drawing pause as she watches, settling to cross-legged as she does.
"Thank you." Naru adds after a moment.
She gets an answer. She almost always does. He's still looking at her; he's shifted slightly, putting his back against one of the trees, careful to step between the smaller plants by its roots rather than crush any of them. "That Wraiths might attack emotions in order to target their victims' capacity for magic."
... as if those brief flashes where the wonder bubbles up, and literal magic that can change the world, were one and the same.
"Then why do they attack mudanes?" Naru asks curiously, the thoughtful tone to her voice still there, as it so often is. "Or are they simply convenient? We still have emotions, even if we dont have capacity.. wait.. no. We /do/ have capacity for magic, just not enough to tip over. So mudanes would be akin to grazing on lettuce. Helps, but not as sustaining."
"Which is the easier way to take out an enemy scout?" Kunzite asks. "In the open field, when she's awake and alert and armed? Or when she's asleep in exhaustion, tangled in blankets, eyes closed and ears unhearing and limbs too heavy to move?"
"To what end? Are they aiming to eradicate magic?" Naru asks as she leans back against the tree. "Simply take over the world? Or just .. random monsters feeding on emotions? Where did they come from?"
"We don't know. They don't communicate in a fashion we can understand. We know one creature's suggestion about what Wraiths might be; but that creature is not particularly trustworthy, and not necessarily correct even when telling the truth." Kunzite shakes his head slightly, and his gaze lifts to the trunk of the tree Naru rests against. "We know they're linked to the Puella system. To despair and grief and destruction. There's some possibility that they're a manifestation of the damage we prevented a particularly large monster from doing six months ago."
"It didn't communicate with me either. I didn't get anything from it, beyond the sense of loss." Naru considers, thinking back to that night. "It didn't take well to being told off, either. It gave me opportunity to flee." She nods slowly and then frowns a little. "Preventing damage manifests later? No good turn, and all that, apparently."
"Sense of loss. Not your own loss." There's an actual expression, all right. Pity that, as usual when Kunzite shows something outright, it's a frown. "Interesting. But still -- as far as I can tell, preventing damage does not cause it to manifest later as a general rule. If it did, Tokyo wouldn't be standing. The Puella are locked into a special case. The details are largely private to them. But the Wraiths are definitely associated with it, and with what appears to be a change in it; they hadn't appeared previously."
"There's something about Puella that makes me not ask a lot of questions." Naru admits with a little nod. "They feel like all sorts of special cases. That's the first that felt.." Naru tries to pinpoint the word she wants. "Irredeemable. Even drain that's knocked me out, it didn't feel like this. I did /not/ want to find out what happened if they drained me dry."
Naru pauses a moment and then adds. "If they get me again, and it's bad? Worse than this time? I'd rather have Endymion poke in my head than have that disconnect."
Considering how much Naru detests people, even trusted people, in her head, this is saying something.