[ 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

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?

[beanallright]

[ In truth, Chesed hadn't noticed the other person at all. He'd been laser focused on determining which is the ideal bag of roasted coffee beans. Indeed, in a city where everything is free and one bag's contents is identical to the others, one must consider the outside-of-the-box factors.

For example, one must consider that a bag of coffee beans hidden in the shadows of the others means it was kept at a cooler temperature.

He raises a brow as someone's fingers brush against his own. Chesed's other brow joins that one as soon as he hears the stranger's words. ]

Oh. Yes, I find that beans kept in a cooler temperature are generally fresher than the other bags. This, of course, has a great impact on the taste and potential grain of the ground beans.

[ He stops there because nobody else is ever interested in his explanations. The City is filled with tea-drinking heathens. ]

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.

[icanfixer]

[ the easy, routine walk that'd been interrupted for a short time returns as natural as can be, waiting like a dog to be let into the bookstore as early as she could manage in the morning (and, as it was going to become a regular occurrence, dozing off until angela came by with the key and a not-as-gentle foot to wake her) before attending to various duties as others arrived.

ensuring the books are cleaned, well-taken care of, and in their proper places for whatever had been penned down in them, be they poems or medical practices, stories based purely in fiction or the opposite; it's a job don quixote wouldn't have imagined herself enjoying as much as she has been, though if that's the fault of her coworkers or because she likes the structure of work itself is yet to be determined.

illustrating them, too, was on her list of chores, and it by far kept her hands the busiest. it's what she does when she hears the bell, head lifting ready to greet the next guest, and her expression brightens back when she sees who it is. ]

I am trying to take on extra hours, for I have been given a low score on my performance review. If I am going to do a job, I should like to give it my best effort!

[ and thus, the shift. the tote bag catches her eyes next, sparkling just like the pretty thing, and don sets aside the watercolor she'd been practicing for a fairy tale to both greet kaveh properly and get a good look at his pretty thing. would it be rude to ask for one? it's so shimmery. glizzy, even. ]

A-hem! Good day to thee, beloved patron of The Bookstore! If there is any this one may do to assist, simply call her name... but I am more interested in knowing what thee plan to do with that tape of thine.

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.

[unrequite]

I did say that if you're going to be daft enough to leave a cot on the premises, I would be availing myself of its sweet embrace just as much as you will.

[ Midnight drills one more screw into the wall, then sets the power drill on his shoulder and looks over from where he's just installed the second to last wall-mounted mirror on the far wall. ]

There's me. And I did have a point with installing all of the lights, you must agree. When one enters, they agree to a dream of a world of lights. This is not a space where reality intrudes with its idea of what "night" must entail. Natural light must stay outside for the fantasy to stay intact.

[ He is an artist, Kaveh. The Vision Must Be Preserved. Anyway, he hops down, sets his drill down, and walks over, eyes already zoomed in on what Kaveh's brought. Yes, the drinks and the promised painting supplies, but what is that jar...? ]

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?

[cashewlater]

[ cyno, for his part, is less miffed and more morose, sulking about this most recent divorce nearly as much as kaveh and alhaitham themselves, it would seem. it displeases him to see their little unit disrupted. for a long time, cyno had no friends, and then after that, only one friend for quite awhile before his little circle of familiarity grew. now that alhaitham and kaveh are a part of that circle, cyno cares for them deeply, and the unease discomfits him. they'll make up again, won't they? they must.

it's cyno who answers the door, dressed comfortably in shorts and a sleeveless top, despite the crisp weather. clothing is prison!! though cyno's smiles are muted things, he offers one to kaveh nonetheless. ]

No, we haven't. Come in.

[ standing back, he ushers kaveh through the door, then closes and locks it behind him. ]

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.

[badfeyth]

[She gets the place as tidied up as she can, in the admittedly short amount of time she's got to do it. She usually keeps her pack in the main room, equidistant from the couch where she lives and the door to the outside, perfectly situated so that she could pick it up and take it with her on her way from the couch to the door, or drop it off on her way from the door to the couch. She moves her boots from the middle of the floor to the wall, at least. Cleans the remnants of packaged food containers and takeout trays off the coffee table and stuffs them into a nearby garbage can. Takes it from lived-in-messy to just lived-in — but that's not the problem Kaveh is going to have with it, she knows.

She's in stocking feet when she opens the door to the sound of the knock, looking much the same as ever, albeit with a few changes for being clearly at home; she's traded her work pants and jacket for soft sweatpants and a long-sleeved fleece, though her hair is still tied up and there's a pen unthinkingly jammed through it as if for safekeeping.]

Hi. Come on in — what can I carry?

[She holds open the door, keeping her features carefully schooled against a cringe. Because inside —

Inside, but for the very obviously temporary lived-in bits, her bag and her journals and her boots and her refuse, the entire apartment is precisely the way that someone else had left it, before their untimely disappearance from the city. The furniture is all the same. The walls are bare but for someone else's framed photographs. The level surfaces are essentially barren, where they're not covered with notebooks; there are no knickknacks, no picture frames, no interesting lights, no personality. Nothing added to make it anything other than what it was when she found it, save for the bits of herself that could be carried away on a moment's notice. A hermit crab that found an abandoned shell and decided to huddle inside without actually taking it for its own.

She keeps her expression blank. She offers her hands for something to carry.]

Thanks for this. I'll stick it — somewhere.

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?

[fauned]

( honestly, the only reason why she'd think twice about taking his drink from him is if she fears he'll spill it. until then, she's the last person to stop someone if they're looking to artificially induce a coma of some kind. she's eyeing it when he waves the glass around though. )

Have you tried again?

( she saw the video feed some time ago, peeking in now and then to see how far it's come before the slate was wiped clean. honestly, it was kind of a shame. it would be nice to have a splash of color here and there. it doesn't really make sense to her why the city insists on keeping so bleak. )

Mhm! Don't mind me, there are worse things to watch than a guy getting angry over blank walls. ( that, and he has to witness her dumping whiskey into a glass of milk before she finally takes a sip out of it - ) Seems like they opened an art gallery though? Do you think they'd let you put your own stuff up?

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?

[immortalpoet]

[Vergilius' expression is just as despondent as the fence as his feet, as if the world wanted to turn him into its human representation in all its morose splendor. He stares at it. He glances at Kaveh. And then, as he is accustomed to do, he heaves a sigh.]

The title of a Fixer may suggest the ability to do handiwork, but its anything but. [A brief little pause, disgruntled.] What are you even doing?

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?

[fanstheflames]

Yep, I'm okay.

[ sagely, moving to grab a mask. There's a type of careful control to her movements, as though she's cautious of doing anything too grandiose or exuberant. It's a care that's unlike her but outwardly, she doesn't look harmed. ]

I should've known you'd be jumping immediately back to work... maybe I should have timed it better?

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?

[limbical]

[Briefly, Daan glances over his shoulder after the tote bag has been shoved into his arms. It's less hesitating and more musing over the high amount of changes he's gone through in the past week and not-quite-half. Was it all too fast, or has Daan simply waited long enough to finally gently take what he's yearned for into his own hands? Hard to say, he admits. He always fears he's too selfish with love.

But maybe that's just after years of bitterness talking.]

Uh. I had toast with marmalade. [god please don't dunk on his toast making he swears he can use the toaster] I haven't told you to do a damned thing about whatever mortadella is. Sounds Vatican-- Italian? Whatever your world's equivalent is.

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. ]

closed. @midnight & @netzach, event "the choosening"

[fussiest]

[ anyway, netzach has to make a choice.

it begins with an 'anyway' because the details that brought them to this odd, three-way impasse is a little too long to properly explain. in any case, kaveh doesn't think that he has the full story, let alone the wherewithal to explain. to begin with, this isn't their story. of the three of them, perhaps only kaveh would understand this world a little better than the either of them, but the land that kaveh knows best hardly has an inverted sky hanging above them like some kind of omen of impending doom, neither does it have literal cities scraping down from the vast reach of a world above, spires and scrapers pointed down much in the way of a land with teeth. then, kaveh's memory catches up to him, and he thinks - oh, so that's why someone had to die. netzach had to choose, because the person whose shoes netzach's inhabiting has to choose, because if they don't choose, the city will come down, and everyone will die, and then the timeloop will repeat again and again until each of their souls have been ground to dust.

kaveh's character is tired. he is weary. he has withstood the destruction of the world a thousand times and a thousand times more, and he could do so another thousand times so long as he could hold up the sky for those that he cares for. but not everyone is kaveh's character. the world has slipped from its hinges. the widespread effect is one that aches at kaveh's heart - there are children who have grown up for a thousand years sandwiched between the teeth of two lands that have treated this world like grinding gears. each one of these tales is a mere story, but for those who inhabit this story, each retelling of a tale is their entire world.

so kaveh is sitting in the temple. they are here in the temple because if they are not here, cloistered away in the mountains and the dark, then the people that have been ground into a thousand-year dust would have found them and torn netzach from limb to limb. kaveh rests the burnished gold of his wings. he folds them against his back with the awkward motions of a man unused to having wings, let alone knowing what to do with them. he looks.

all this seems fairly straight-forward. kaveh is the first to know so. the one who chooses will kill the one who is chosen, and the world will be a better off place for it. ]

Well?

[ kaveh says, because there's only ever been one starting point from here. ] Here's us.

closed. @heine, event

[fussiest]

[ kaveh opens his eyes. once again, the light of that condemning sun looks down upon him. there ought to be a different starter, kaveh thinks, as he gently brushes hay from his hair, some kind of a difference. maybe a world with two suns, or three moons, maybe a world where the light source isn't a sun but a giant artificial heating lamp. kaveh would take any of those over yet another sun hanging in the sky like the prop of another story meant to twist the truth into fun-sized pieces again.

but hey, at least this time there's a dog. kaveh looks. in the barn he's in, there is a rather handsome-looking pale dog laying there in the hay. it's a skinny dog, tone muscle beneath relatively well-tended fur, a little on the scruffier side and a single notch in its right ear. the red of its eyes reminds kaveh a little of someone that he can't quite place right now. what stands out is the lop-sided crown sitting on the dog's head, perched there much in the way of a statement.

there's a chicken. the chicken is pecking past the dog. it pauses, beady little reptilian eye calculating the distance between it and the dog, and then, because it's a chicken, reaches over to peck the dog on the nose.

the gesture surprises kaveh so much that a laugh bubbles. ]

Oh, dear. [ kaveh laughs. he reaches forward to brush the chicken aside. the chicken pecks his hand. he laughs again. ] Come now, leave him alone. I'm an architect, did you know? My hands are my tools. Shoo, shoo.

closed. @ghost, event PART TWO, THE LITTLE PRINCENING

[fussiest]

[ in the aftermath, they wake up in a field.

the field is gold. the field is gold in the way that gold from memory or from a painting is gold - it's a ravishing colour beneath a sky so cornflower blue that kaveh could only have conjured it from the days he imagined what the sky above fontaine must've looked the day his mother stepped foot upon its shores. the colour is overwhelming. kaveh is overwhelmed. a thousand-thousand years, and kaveh has eyes again to see it. in that golden field, kaveh lifts a hand. he covers his eyes with the back of his hand. kaveh begins to cry.

around him, a hundred rose bushes begin, simultaneously, to bloom. the oversaturated red is a color from another galaxy. kaveh is dyed in it, the colour of it, the scent of it. the rose grow form his skin. they bloom along his hands. he is overwhelmed. he says, with a voice stripped raw: ]

Look. You saved all of us after all.