Camp Gym; Monday Morning.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

It was Monday morning and Cal was no longer on all fours and lacking in opposable thumbs, so it probably wasn't too terribly difficult to figure out where he was. He had nearly a whole week to catch up on, although, as he stretched to get ready for his workout, he wasn't feeling like the lengthly time as a hyena had been detrimental beyond an urge to chuckle a lot more than he would normal.

He tried to ignore it as best he could as he settled into a routine with the dumbbells.


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[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

He'd come here mostly because he didn't want to bother anyone, since the hard floor was what he was more used to. He didn't bring any flour or the plastic tubs; those were stored away in his room. What he did bring was the soccer ball. He wasn't so much looking to play with anyone as practice since it was something to do that wasn't Ino's stances.

He waved to Cal, mostly since it was nice seeing him there and not as a hyena, but he kept his questions to himself. Let it lay for a bit, he figured.

Instead, he started in with the soccer ball, bouncing it back and forth from knee to knee, popping it up with his head, kicking it around the empty space. He tried a few of the tricks from his gooseball days, just to make sure he could still do them, and he started to smile, just a little bit.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

At the greeting, Cal lifted his chin back, with the customary, "Hey" as he worked on his quick and energetic weight reps, but, after a few of them, he couldn't help taking a little bit of notice of Liir's work with the soccer ball. He didn't know anything about soccer except that he imagined the rules were probably fairly similar to field hockey since they could easily use the same field, but it looked like Liir was pretty damn decent at handling the ball.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

When you're too scrawny to get a job but too old to beg, the soldier's field games were a good way to get a bit of food.

But Liir was only human so eventually he dropped the ball, laughed because he always fouled up that turn, and kicked it with the side of his foot into an invisible gooseberry basket. It bounced back and he caught it under his foot, but he stopped for a moment to catch a breath. When he saw Cal he gave another wave.

"Care to play?" he asked. Probably for the first time Cal might have seen, he actually looked somewhat enthusiastic about something outside of the kitchen.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

Cal gave a slight snort of a laugh, shaking his head, although he had to admit that Liir's current good mood was contagious. His workout had been relatively uninterrupted until now, though, leaving him in a peaceful moment of malleability. "No, thanks," he said. "I think our skills would be pretty unevenly matched. If we had more people for a full game, I could do pretty okay at goalie, though."

Soccer balls? Probably not nearly as painful as field hockey balls. He could take it pretty easy.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

His head quirked.

"Goalie?"

They didn't have them. Well, in the game, you usually had one person watching the basket but they could move around. No one was designated.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

Cal blinked. "You know, they stay at the end of the field to guard the goal and prevent the other team from scoring..." The tilt of Liir's head, though, and the mere fact that he'd asked the question anyway clued Cal into the fact that maybe Liir wasn't actually familiar with the game; he just knew how to work a ball. He was from some different world, wasn't he? Maybe they played different sports. It seemed a reasonable deduction.

So he just asked, "Are you actually familiar with soccer, or do you just know those moves from something else?"

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

He shook his head.

"Gooseball. We'd play it at Munchkin Mousehole near the soldier's barracks. They'd give the winners a bit of food or treats."

He grinned and slipped his foot under the ball enough to flick it up and into his hands.

"This was just the closest ball I could find. The other one was too heavy and it didn't kick well at all. I think Johnny called it soccer as well, but I didn't think of it."

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

"Gooseball." Repeating the name, Cal couldn't help grinning at it a little. "Does it have anything to do with actual geese?"

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"Not really," he admitted. "Just that the ball resembles a gooseberry a bit. And that it's very often the same sort of color."

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

"And are the gooseberries anything like geese?" Cal asked. "Or more like related to something like goosebumps?"

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"Nothing like, really. They're green or orange, and look almost like smaller tomatoes, but more round. Perhaps smaller onions then, to be honest. They've got very thin skin and they taste is a little like what wine smells like. Sort of like grapes but with a touch of grapefruit. At least, that's what the soldiers would say. I've never had wine, thank goodness. But they grow on shrubs and they're common as dirt in the south of the Vinkus and near the Emerald City."

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

Cal took a moment to consider all this, to imagine the berries as Liir described them, head tilted. As much as he tried, though, all he could bring to mind were the mulberries that grew outside of Middlesex, the ones he'd stood and tried to calmly munch on in lieu of leaving from New York, after the discovery. His fingers tightened a little around his dumbbell, imagining how they'd stained his skin, his fingertips purple.

"Huh," he replied, noncommittally. "Interesting. Do the juices stain your fingers when you eat to many of them?"

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"Not usually, but mostly because the juice is almost clear. They're terribly sticky if you have too many, though."

There was a kind of tea he liked with a vanilla and gooseberry essence to it. He'd had the fruit himself, mostly while bringing Dorothy to the City since he wasn't much a hunter, what with his fear of bringing down an Animal instead of an animal.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

"We had these mulberries right outside my bedroom window," Cal mused with a slight grin, curling the weight in his hand up. "Couldn't eat more than three of them without getting purple on you, and then it was like it spread like a disease, and you'd be left wondering how you managed to get it on your knee. You know, fingers and hands and mouth, that made sense, but somehow, without fail..."

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"I've never had mulberries," he said thoughtfully. "What do they taste like? They sound sort of like you couldn't eat just one."

He was smiling a little.

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

"You always start out thinking you'll just have a few," Cal grinned back a little, "but it never turns out that way. Doesn't help that they were right out the window. And they taste...well, kind of like blackberries, so they're sweet, but a little bit bitter, you know? And they're a cluster of just little berries, so the seeds get stuck in your teeth, too."

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"That's what lets you have so many, the touch of bitterness," he said with a smile. "If it's too sweet, you have to stop. I suppose I'd like mulberries outside my window. It sounds nice."

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

Cal gave a faint smile, slightly haunted. God, those days seemed ages ago; he was literally an entirely different person back then. "It was. When they were ripe, all you had to do was sit on the windowseat, reach out, and gorge yourself. Funny how you don't realize how much you took things like that for granted until you give it a little retrospect."

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"I suppose. Memory is a strange sort of thing."

He realized then that he'd never really discussed it with Cal. Though he couldn't help it, couldn't help wondering what he'd hear if he ever went to that window, or had a few mulberries growing there.

"How it changes. How it grows, and shifts."

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

Cal gave a soft breath, a thoughtful sort of sound, unrelated entirely to the curls that he continued slowly pursuing as he talked with Liir. Continued despite the fact that this odd little discussion that'd gotten into had his mind drifting away, to mulberry trees and now to stacks of typed paper tied with string and vivid red hair. Changes, grows, and shifts. If he saw the Obscure Object now, would her hair seemed dull, bright only because that's how Cal's memory wanted it to be?

"Yeah, it is," he agreed softly. "Or, well. Maybe it's not so much memory that changes, but ourselves."

He could certainly testify to that.

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"One and the same. As we change, they change. What they are is what we want them to be and sometimes, when we're lucky, what we need them to be."

He shook his head and smiled.

"I'll be on this subject all day if you get me started. I did a project, last semester, dealing with memories."

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

"I've...kind of got a project," so to speak," dealing with them right now, too," Cal admitted, wondering if that was saying too much, but deciding that it should be fine if that was as much as he mentioned about that specific project. "So I definitely can see where you're coming from there."

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"Oh? What was yours, if you don't mind me asking."

He held up a hand before Cal could answer.

"And feel free to tell me to keep out of it. I ask mostly because I don't know much about a lot of things, not to be nosy."

[not-a-mused.livejournal.com]

Cal had just a moment to start feeling apprehensive and tensing up over how exactly to explain it without seeming downright rude by avoiding it when Liir added the disclaimer that let him relax a little, shaking his head. "It's not that," he assured him. "More of just that it was kind of personal, which I guess is why I didn't ask about yours. Wouldn't be very fair of me to ask when I knew I didn't want to talk about mine."

[new-to-liirness.livejournal.com]

"But mine was rather public knowledge as it was something of a problem for a while. Well, memories. Other people's memories would wander into my dreams for a while."

Figuring it might worry Cal, he continued.

"It's stopped. I know how to guard myself from it at night now, so it doesn't happen anymore and it hasn't happened since the middle of the semester before you came. But it was terrible for a while.

"And, as I said, I was doing a project, so everyone in class knew. Professor Ambrose" and his voice caught just a little "was very pleased with my work."