Yes, [ she grumbles, all fond affection beneath that heavy layer of embarrassment. (They're in their twenties! They live together! She has seen him naked! Many, many times!! Why is this where she gets flustered?!) She's still blushing when he pulls back from this kiss.
Not sure what else to do, she shifts on the couch, her knees bumping against his, and she turns the sketchpad so he can see the diagram. It's a series of little caricature faces, most arced in a semi-circle, and one person at the middle. The center face is a tired man with thin features, crows-feet wrinkles at his eyes, with a little crescent moon over his head. From him emerge lines that connect to the other faces on the paper, with thinner lines between some of those secondary characters. As Ruka talks, her pen hovers over the lines, indicating each person in turn. ]
He was someone that came from one of those places that, like, fifty other people come from all at once, but they didn't always come from the same point in time. They had a leeway of a couple decades. That kind of thing is pretty rare, when there's only one history. Anyway. He got here when he was in his thirties, and he wound up getting with someone from a different world.
[ Her pen traces a line to a face on the left side of the page. It's an even-more-serious-looking man, thin eyes behind thinner glasses, mouth a simple straight line. And yet, even for the simplicity of it, it's a face Jaime might recognize from years gone by. One of those people who come through more than once, and never remember. ]
He was only in his twenties, but he acted a lot older. He was a lawyer. Things were always really dangerous back then, a lot more than they've ever been here, so he was always a little on edge. That's why he couldn't stand—
[ The pen moves down to the bottom of the page, where two heads are drawn side-by-side. They're clearly of the same person, years apart: one, a teenage boy, with shaggy dark hair and a sharp-bright smile, a faint dotted outline of dog ears emerging from the top of his head. The head beside it is of that same boy but much older, deep dark circles under his eyes and a much dimmer smile. The dog ears repeat. ]
—him. He was that guy's best friend from high school, but — he [ Dog-ears ] showed up from high school while he [ Moon-head ] was way past that. It seemed like they had a thing while they were in school, or like, almost had a thing, so it was really tense. After a while he ported out and came back older, which sucked for me, because I had a crush on him when he was closer to my age, but that sort of thing happened a lot too.
Anyway... it was during all this that he— [ Glasses ] —exPorted, and lost his heart, and then left for good, so— [ She presses her pen to the paper and with a couple quick strokes blacks out his face. ] —he's gone. A few months after that, these two— [ Moon and Dog ] —started dating, which was really weird for me, but it was also really weird because, back in their own history, the guy got married to this girl—
[ She traces a line from Moon to a face on the right side of the page — a woman with a short, jagged haircut and dark-shaded lips ]
—and they had a kid, too, back in their own world. But she was there at the same time as all this, so it must have really sucked to see her husband get married to someone else, and then rebound with— [ she indicates the line between this woman and dog-ears. ] —her cousin.
But then again, they all— [ she scribbles out the woman's face. ]
Ported— [ the man with the crescent moon. ]
out— [ the man with the dog ears. ]
[ The diagram is now just a series of scribbled black splotches — all except for one spot. Beneath the void where the glasses-wearing lawyer had been is a smaller, simpler drawing than all the others — a girl's face. She has the same horizontal slash for an unsmiling mouth, with two little eyes and two little pigtails sticking up, and out.
no subject
Not sure what else to do, she shifts on the couch, her knees bumping against his, and she turns the sketchpad so he can see the diagram. It's a series of little caricature faces, most arced in a semi-circle, and one person at the middle. The center face is a tired man with thin features, crows-feet wrinkles at his eyes, with a little crescent moon over his head. From him emerge lines that connect to the other faces on the paper, with thinner lines between some of those secondary characters. As Ruka talks, her pen hovers over the lines, indicating each person in turn. ]
He was someone that came from one of those places that, like, fifty other people come from all at once, but they didn't always come from the same point in time. They had a leeway of a couple decades. That kind of thing is pretty rare, when there's only one history. Anyway. He got here when he was in his thirties, and he wound up getting with someone from a different world.
[ Her pen traces a line to a face on the left side of the page. It's an even-more-serious-looking man, thin eyes behind thinner glasses, mouth a simple straight line. And yet, even for the simplicity of it, it's a face Jaime might recognize from years gone by. One of those people who come through more than once, and never remember. ]
He was only in his twenties, but he acted a lot older. He was a lawyer. Things were always really dangerous back then, a lot more than they've ever been here, so he was always a little on edge. That's why he couldn't stand—
[ The pen moves down to the bottom of the page, where two heads are drawn side-by-side. They're clearly of the same person, years apart: one, a teenage boy, with shaggy dark hair and a sharp-bright smile, a faint dotted outline of dog ears emerging from the top of his head. The head beside it is of that same boy but much older, deep dark circles under his eyes and a much dimmer smile. The dog ears repeat. ]
—him. He was that guy's best friend from high school, but — he [ Dog-ears ] showed up from high school while he [ Moon-head ] was way past that. It seemed like they had a thing while they were in school, or like, almost had a thing, so it was really tense. After a while he ported out and came back older, which sucked for me, because I had a crush on him when he was closer to my age, but that sort of thing happened a lot too.
Anyway... it was during all this that he— [ Glasses ] —exPorted, and lost his heart, and then left for good, so— [ She presses her pen to the paper and with a couple quick strokes blacks out his face. ] —he's gone. A few months after that, these two— [ Moon and Dog ] —started dating, which was really weird for me, but it was also really weird because, back in their own history, the guy got married to this girl—
[ She traces a line from Moon to a face on the right side of the page — a woman with a short, jagged haircut and dark-shaded lips ]
—and they had a kid, too, back in their own world. But she was there at the same time as all this, so it must have really sucked to see her husband get married to someone else, and then rebound with— [ she indicates the line between this woman and dog-ears. ] —her cousin.
But then again, they all— [ she scribbles out the woman's face. ]
Ported— [ the man with the crescent moon. ]
out— [ the man with the dog ears. ]
[ The diagram is now just a series of scribbled black splotches — all except for one spot. Beneath the void where the glasses-wearing lawyer had been is a smaller, simpler drawing than all the others — a girl's face. She has the same horizontal slash for an unsmiling mouth, with two little eyes and two little pigtails sticking up, and out.
Like rabbit ears. ]
—so it didn't really matter, anyway.