[ open ] kaveh's permanent catch-all

[fussiest]

WHO: kaveh (fussiest) & y'all!
WHAT: this is a perpetual catch-all for kaveh because i'm too lazy to make a new one every month. this is for closed starters, tag-ins, visits to kaveh's workshop and the like! be wild! be bold! be free!
WHERE: all around the city, and especially at kaveh's workshop, the pairidaeza architectural design studio in district 1
WHEN: everywhere! everywhen! all at once!
WARNINGS: bickering, probably - everything else will be warned for on a thread-by-thread basis

Comments

SEPTEMBER 2023

[fussiest]

(frozen comment) notes.

[fussiest]

where is kaveh this month:
- at the fair, testing out mechanisms, taking apart and putting things back together, and getting nibbled on by a vampire
- with robby, renovating a building for the new diner
- at his workshop, tinkering with a bandsaw
- painting a mural of welt at the end of the month

closed. @yesod

[fussiest]

[ it, as expected, had taken longer than expected. that's the thing with time. it doesn't work for you and you don't work for it. relationship with time isn't meant to be linear, nor bilateral; it merely is. it's a continuum of frustration from early to late that typically is outside of your control unless you're particularly good at budgeting for it. kaveh is, is the thing. you didn't redefine the skyline of port ormos on a flip of a switch, and on a team of engineers, craftsmen, stonemasons, woodworkers and merchant sponsors, the timeline that which traverses through your project is one that begs for the kind of accounting for that has kaveh calculate sumpterbeast shipping routes from liyue far into the burning of the late-night candles. but a good project manager budgets more than what was needed and less than what was asked for. kaveh feels like a fresh kshahrewar again as he looks to the long, wooden columns of his workshop and feels the frustration creeping in of time budgeting beyond his control.

that's the thing, with the bank vaults and the malls and the carnivals. the city is an ever-changing mire that kaveh hadn't thought he'd need to characterise as such until the worst of it had washed over all of them. beyond the architectural marvels is the core of a city that took the sacred and dragged it free of its mooring to be flayed alive beneath the broad reaming light of the sun, and what did that do for its soul, if it had one? kaveh didn't have the answer to that question. but it had been a long time reckoning for the workshop proper, and without the clutter of the cars, it had been smooth going after that.

it's midday when kaveh has looked up from the bandsaw he'd been cobbling together, carefully feeding two equally-sanded iron blocks into their wooden mooring for the quick-release lever, at the sound of the silver bell chiming from the front. it hadn't been midday when he'd started his work, however, and the owlish blinking he takes on suggests as much. time, kaveh thinks. what a funny thing. ]

I'll be right there! [ he calls out, with the absent-minded tone affected by anyone half-way buried in a thought and not quite ready to be unearthed from it just yet.

... anyway, it's a long thought, or rather, a long set of rivets that need to be fixed. and after that, doesn't the lever need testing? a rapid set of clicks follow. yesod, give him a very, very long minute... ]

wow look, a place to plop a starter (kaveh, robby keene, daniel larusso)

[strongroots]

hey. spoke with mr larusso. we can meet outside city hall train station and pick a good place.
there's a building opposite it that could be it? might need to bash a wall or two, looks cramped from the outside if we wanna have people moving in and out. your choice.
btw. if we're gonna try moving kitchen equipment out of a diner to see if we get busted, we can't let mr larusso know. he won't be happy about it.

[ No pressure, right Kaveh?

If Kaveh needs further directions, he can receive them, but the spot is easy to find from the north side of the City Hall train station, the park consuming most of the west side, and leaving a tucked space of buildings dictated by the roads that keep them together. Robby, a young man not yet eighteen, stands with his hands in his pockets with another, very obviously older man with him; and while he's keeping an eye on for their approaching company, he's also interested in this apparent work they have coming, too. It's a good distraction.

He's pointing the corner shop that pokes out directly opposite the station (a mens' boutique), takes his finger along to the next (a clock store). Chatting with Mister LaRusso while they wait. ]

We don't wanna make it cramped--we can take over that building too if we need it.

[ Robby is ready for Kaveh to bash in ALL the walls, you see. ]

closed. @netzach

[fussiest]

[ kaveh ought to have learned. a bank vault and a mall means whatever that the carnival is standing for can't be anything that stands up to building code scrutiny or, simply put, upright to begin with. but alhaitham had immediately decided for himself to take the mystery of the carnival as something to unravel, and in lieu of having enough books in this city to keep him occupied, kaveh had gone, too. that had been two days ago. day four of the carnival is the tiptoe of a man waiting quietly for the other shoe to drop. day four of the carnival is also day four, because sleep eludes you when the spiral of your own thinking takes you on a joyride across towns and countries and maybe even several galaxies to boot. but kaveh is here, wrapped up in a scarf despite the warm weather and deeply entrenched in his light yellow jacket with pockets the size of small breadboxes, looking up at the roller coasters with a complex expression.

on one had, the possibility of the carnival deciding to wake up tonight and inflict another bout of emotional nonsense on everyone is not zero. on the other hand, kaveh has only ever seen structures like these in the veluriyam mirage, and that had been cars on a rail going rather slowly, if safely. it had seemed at the time to kaveh as a marvelous way of entertaining children and getting from one end of a very large city to another in an efficient way, so long as they didn't include so many loops, but these - these were a marvel of engineering and physics rolled into one, and something in kaveh twinged with want, and then with guilt over said want.

in any case, that's where netzach finds kaveh - and where kaveh finds netzach. because when kaveh looks down again, netzach is there rounding a corner, and kaveh - well, it's impossible not to brighten to see him. ]

Oh, there's you. Good evening, Netzach; I didn't know you were here. Have you been here all evening?

OCTOBER 2023

[fussiest]

(frozen comment) notes.

[fussiest]

i died in october

but!!!

- welcome diner renovations
- halloween party part 1
- halloween party part 2

closed. @netzach

[fussiest]

[ kaveh and netzach are in a closet.

how this came to be is a story longer and stranger than what kaveh ever means to tell, and he isn't certain if he is the best to tell it regardless. there had been, however, a chase. there had been a knife in the night. there had been several traps going off in succession, kaveh watching as the support beam that he had carefully compromised coming down on the shadowy head of a ghost, just as he pulled netzach to the right and past the obviously occupied maintenance tunnel. the closet had been one of the few places that kaveh secured in the very beginning. a quick shimmy inside, and kaveh engages the three deadbolts that he had put in earlier in the night. then, kaveh had flicked on the yellowed light switch, and looked.

there are silver linings, he supposes. neither he nor netzach were terribly injured. one could argue that the ripping of dresses and shredded clothing counted as injury to something, but kaveh, having seen the extent of what hell could offer, is merely relieved that it had just been the costumes. clothing can be repaired; bodies take time to heal, and hearts even moreso. but netzach was safe, and hale, and whole, and perhaps the second floor hadn't been the worse it could be.

kaveh hadn't, however, been expecting this. ]

- Netzach, don't move. [ kaveh says, as he reaches over and around him. in the shadows, something comes out from between two bottles of floor cleaner. ] That's... why would there be a book here? Of all places?

closed. @hawks

[fussiest]

[ anyway, the ceiling collapses.

that's a bit of an in media res that begs for some kind of explanation. in all honesty, the buildings in this city don't simply collapse. their designs may be uninspired, but they are built with a clockwork, robotic efficiency in mind, a building stripped of its soul for the sole purpose of bringing to it the kind of seismic stability that will have the buildings outlast war and famine and an entire generation of lost souls. kaveh can admire construction. the city will kill them in other ways, but not this. that doesn't mean the city can't be moved to do so. and kaveh has always thought that with a big enough lever, one can move just about anything.

it hadn't been the whole ceiling anyway. the support beams needed only a little coaxing before the only holding them up was the two planks of wood kaveh had slipped in along the jamb. it had only taken a single slam of kaveh's hammer against the pillar before kaveh's earlier work on chewing through it paid off, setting off a series of noises that sound much in the way of wooden firecrackers going off in tandem. before the swing of his hammer, kaveh had said this: ]

This way! [ and had reached for the other man's wrist to pull him forward, a hand scarred from wresting dreams into a world where dreams go to die curling firm and fierce, even as half the ceiling behind them collapses onto the shimmer of spectral forms. kaveh doesn't look back to see if this stymies them. it had only ever been to buy time. the hallway careens into them as kaveh pulls, stopping only to slam the door shut.

the maid dress flutters around his ankles. kaveh looks. ] Are you alright? Did they harm you?

NOVEMBER 2023

[fussiest]

(frozen comment) notes.

[fussiest]

- prom for ghost
- librarian frat house for netzach!

closed. @chesed

[fussiest]

[ it's like something out of an inazuman light novel, really. if kaveh were to calculate the chances of two people in a city reaching for the exact same bag of coffee down to the last five decimal places, the odds would be terribly unfavourable. in a city where everything is free, the quality of each bag of coffee is more or less set, and the number of people not nearly large enough to fill it, the odds become astronomical. but here kaveh is, reaching, and here it is, a second set of hands reaching back, and the moment their fingers touch, kaveh thinks -

well, he had a thought at some point in time. but day threes tend to be like this: a little sudden, a little abrupt, with the quality of his thoughts downgraded to mere reactions as his mind attempts to catch up to whatever the world means to throw at it. kaveh blinks owlishly at the spoken-for bag of coffee beans, his gaze trailing up the other person's hand until it lands somewhere near the other person's face. ]

Huh.

[ and then, because this is kaveh, out comes the very first thought that comes out of his head: ] Are you also picking this precise bag because it was in the shadows of the others, and therefore kept at a better temperature?

closed. @don

[fussiest]

[ in all honesty, the bookstore isn't kaveh's place. not really. in kaveh's mind, the city is split between places that belong to kaveh's world, and places that belong to alhaitham's. there are the backroads, the hardware stores, the half-gutted stores in the mall deep within its wending corridors that kaveh knows nobody will spend time in, offices missing glass panes and window frames starting from the highest floors down because the welcome diner needed wall-to-wall-windows and nobody in the city is a glassmaker. kaveh's workshop spilling out into the streets where the rainwater gutters have never quite see the use they were meant for. that was kaveh's city. alhaitham's was thus: the level high roads, the city hall and the vault of secrets, a grocery store precisely five minutes away from his apartment that stocked the best coffee of the city, another 3 minutes south that had tahini in little jars that kaveh would empty out and fill with varnish and wax for the bows and the swords that have come out of his workshop in increasing numbers.

the bookstore.

in retrospect, it's odd to attribute the bookstore to being alhaitham's considering that it's a communal resource and that kaveh is familiar now with enough librarians to understand why there is one here in the first place. the store itself is tucked away in district one; it has an exposure that gives it lovely sunlight in the mornings, and the building it's been renovated from has an excellent view of a cozy little strip. if this were any other city, kaveh thinks, there would be little open storefronts with their owners calling out their wares at sun-up, foot traffic of wending, eager tourists or explorers of their own city finding their way here as if drawn. but this is a city where the only life there is is the life that they make of it. kaveh finds himself here, now, a little tote bag the shimmering with the colours of a primordial sea slung over his shoulder and a measuring tape in hand.

the door announces his arrival. kaveh looks in. he brightens. ]

Don. I didn't know it was your shift today.

closed. @midnight

[fussiest]

[ the world seemed very much like a smaller place in the aftermath. the city is practically claustrophobic. every street brimmed with the untenable potential of a crossing of paths that even if kaveh knows alhaitham has been and will be studiously avoiding him at all costs, even the blanket existence of a blinding sky above seemed like judgment. but kaveh has things to do, projects to achieve, sleep to not have.

it's on a day three that kaveh carts the latest buckets of paint that had respawned from the paint store, mixed in painstaking accuracy to the exact shades of colour midnight's current doors have afforded, to midnight's host club. he had been meaning to get some work done while both his hands and mind needed excuses to remain busy; he hadn't expected midnight to be here, so when he descends the stairs with twice the weight of his usual steps, he stops at the base of it to peer out in the dim, smoky light. ]

Oh. There's you. [ kaveh sets the paints by the wall. from his tote, he lays out the new brushes that he'd swung by the hardware store for. with it comes a series of sealed plastic meals, three cans of fruity beer, and a little jar of what looks to be lip palm. it all lines themselves across the finished bar counter as kaveh moves to roll up both his sleeves, then removes a tie from his pocket for his hair.

he frowns. ] Have you been here this whole time? I keep saying that you should have found a place with more natural lighting. It's as dreary as a cave, as usual.

closed. @tighnari, @cyno

[fussiest]

[ coming to dinner, as it turns out, is every bit of the masochistic move that kaveh had expected it all to be, but in truth, kaveh knows that he deserves this. still, he's brought homemade naan and a lamb curry because you don't show up to dinner nights without bringing something, even if your two best friends in this entire city are currently very miffed at you and are wondering about the furthest reaches of your sanity.

kaveh knocks on the apartment door. there is less trepidation in him than he had feared, and more shame than he ought to show. it's with the affect of a giant golden retriever that knows that he's done something wrong that he looks when the door opens, offering a wan smile and a half-hearted wave. ]

And there's the two of you. [ kaveh ducks his head. ] Sorry, I'm late. Um. The two of you haven't finished eating, have you?

closed. @ghost

[fussiest]

[ well, he's here.

also by means of an old conversational callback, he is holding a coat rack. or, to put it precisely, kaveh has the coat rack slung over his shoulder much in the way of a spear of faith. the reason for that becomes apparent when he puts down the tote bag at the foot of the door and the entire container structure within seems to sag with the sheer weight of it.

the tote had bitten into his hand. kaveh flexes it as he considers first the door, and then the surroundings attached to the door proper, and then, deciding on propriety, kaveh puts down the coat rack, which had been carefully and somewhat stubbornly shaped to resemble the silhouette of a tree, and knocks. ]

There's you.

closed. @fearne

[fussiest]

[ it goes a bit like this: a day three, a bar with terrible potlights, and an addiction that kaveh has relied on long enough that the very taste of it sends him under once more. kaveh tosses back another shot. he is aflame with it, flush crawling up the back window of his blouse and up along the sides of his neck, to coil like flame along the high arched bridge of his cheeks.

as if only heat and motion can expel it, he is waving his cup. ]

And this city has no love and adoration for art whatsoever! [ kaveh is saying to fearne. not telling, saying, in the way of means of one-way communication, because sometimes communication is just saying things really loudly and not really needing anyone to do anything but to sit there and behold it, ] All that gray expanse and perfectly viable wall space, and for what? To merely sit there and reflect the dreary rays of a lukewarm sun? Let me add colour to it, let me create something from it. But all it does is take murals and cast them to wherever all the damage goes. It thinks it's damage. The nerve of it, to think a singular act of love ought to be treated the same as a chipped tile.

[ kaveh breathes. he squints. ] Ah, sorry. I've gone off again. Fearne, right?

closed. @vergilius

[fussiest]

[ it's a day two when kaveh is dismantling part of the wire fence leading up to the park proper. midnight's boltcutters are put aside briefly, resting against a forlorn tree, as it observes kaveh wrangling half the fencing out of its mooring. the fence clatters as kaveh pulls it to the ground. kaveh looks up, and winces when the other half of the fence begins to lilt, much in the way of a wilted loaf of bread, as with half of it gone, it unmoors itself and begins a slow, sad sag towards the left.

the sagging fence stops neatly a good three inches away from vergilius' feet. it rests there like a particularly despondent wired cat the length of a small schoolbus. kaveh looks. ]

Oh. [ kaveh says, ] There's you. I don't suppose you've anything to do with your hands right now, do you?

closed. @tsuruno

[fussiest]

[ on a day two, the world is resplendent in colour. kaveh has yet to forget the very feel of cinnabar and goldenglow upon his fingers, and so he's putting them both to good use. the swathes of fabric that tsuruno has decided upon is being now treated for fire-resistance, dipped in a small vat of something that smells distinctly chemical as kaveh tugs at his mask and reaches into the vat with a long, wooden paddle to stir it.

he brightens upon seeing tsuruno. waves at her to grab another mask from where it's hanging off a nail on a post painted with the crawling ivy of something that flowers and blooms profusely purple. ]

There's you. Sorry, I don't want you to breathe this in too much, but I figure I ought to get this cloth treated earlier than not. Have you eaten today?

closed. @daan, forward dated to 11/10

[fussiest]

[ it's on a day three that kaveh shows up once again at daan's door.there is a samsara in the works here, an unending cycle that kaveh has fallen into that he doesn't quite know how to break. if asked, he would say it's a choice - he had, in fact, come back to his apartment in the early hours of the morning to put the stew on boil, and had had a meal of it just before arriving to make sure that the seasoning was just right. there are once again three containers in a burgeoning, still-protesting totebag painted with what looks to be a magpie in flight, generous, sweeping brushstrokes outlining the bird's wings in abstract adoration. kaveh lets the tote rest next to the doorjamb as he knows. kaveh knocks. he is ten minutes late.

as in the same samsara, he brightens upon seeing the doctor in form. ]

There's you. [ the real greeting: the hefting of the tote as kaveh pushes it cheerfully into daan's arms. ] Have you eaten? Don't answer that if I'm not going to like the answer. Did you know that you've driven me to make homemade mortadella?

closed. @midnight & netzach

[fussiest]

[ because i genuinely don't want the front page of citylogs to just be Logs With Kaveh In It:

here kaveh is, here is another day two, and ideally, this would have been a great time to teach netzach how to review a draft so that he can begin simple layout work for some of the upcoming projects. the planetarium needed all of its seats ripped out and then the buffet tables put in. measuring the tables, figure out the layout, checking wire length -all of that needed hands and feet and brains at the level, and kaveh didn't have enough of any of them.

but netzach has his head in his lap, and kaveh is loathe to move him. kaveh isn't certain how his sleep-deprived mind ought to have figured adding midnight into the mix was somehow going to make it better, but in his defense, he had been distracted at the time, and he had some inkling that midnight was able to basic arithmetic. all this concludes in midnight walking in to kaveh plucking another pomegranate seed to slip down and feed netzach, all the while his left hand continues bouncing between three sets of calculations. kaveh looks up, narrows his eyes, and then remembers that yes, midnight was his fault this time, and looked down again. ]

Did you bring the boltcutters? Those are the only boltcutters I've found in the city with fiberglass handles; I'll need him to shear through some electrical wires later.

closed. @midnight, event

[fussiest]

[ this is either a scene from a memory or a dream: kaveh is encrusted from the hip down in blackened, luminous jewels. they sprout from his skin much in the way of stone from fissures. kaveh knows stone. two semesters on exchange in liyue with the master stonemasons, three manuals he wrote setting the kshahrewar standard for stonemasonry for his generation, a lighthouse and a palace on a cliff-face built with the culmination of every technique kaveh had ever known to bend and shape stone to his will - and today, he is immobilised by it. this is not stone that kaveh has known. the only feeling that remains is pain. it is the pain of a sundered continent, it is the pain of two tectonic plates scraping along fault lines as they rush for the cessation of a distant shore, is the pain of stone, and stone, and stone.

kaveh remembers as if from a memory or a dream: kazdelian spires rising beneath the rounded arches of two, twinned moons, a rooftop dalliance and the running of joyous feet, the spread of vestigial wings above the primordial homeland of the sorrow and the grief. the leaving of his mother. the death of his father. using a straightedge because he didn't always need it, but if he didn't always use it, people would ask. oripathy as it defines a life. sarkaz as it relates to a dream. kaveh sits in a non-descript wooden chair. his hands are curled around its arms. they are trembling, but not because he is afraid. they are trembling from the nerve pain. the room is a concrete box. it is meant to be. there are no windows save for the pink of midnight's eyes. the eyes are supposed to be a window - they are supposed to be a window to a soul. kaveh's headfeathers flare as he looks up, and is grieved that he nearly does not see. but that ought to be alright, kaveh thinks. the script is simple: the story will end when midnight leaves the room. ]

Oh. [ kaveh says, suddenly, because it couldn't be that easy after all. of course it isn't. ] I love you.

[ it is said like a revelation. it is said like despair. kaveh feels it, is the thing, the way the story superimposes upon himself. this character loves midnight's character. this character loves midnight more than the gothic, pre-gaul spirals of kazdel's manses, it loves midnight more than the drunk droplets of a still-liquid moonlight. it loves midnight more than what that little secret arched room beneath that crumbling kazdelian castle that they've made their own could say in a language so esoteric and lost that only one still knows its name. it loves midnight enough that it needs midnight to leave this room.

love, what a burdensome thing. what a terrible, burdensome thing, love is. pain, kaveh thinks, hadn't been the only thing remaining after all. ]

DECEMBER 2023

[fussiest]

(frozen comment) notes.

[fussiest]

- clinic, bone saws, scalpels for daan
- frat house with netzach
- host club with midnight
- gifts for SO MANY PEOPLE HELP

JANUARY 2024

[fussiest]

(frozen comment) notes.

[fussiest]

- forge with wanderer
- netzach gets stabbed
- ??? for argalia
- greenhouse???
- stun baton for reno

FEBRUARY 2024

[fussiest]

(frozen comment) notes.

[fussiest]