fandomhighdorms | The Roof | Thursday Evening

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The Roof | Thursday Evening

Success!

Nina had managed to work out the finicky little details of her spell-present for Prompto and now it was just time to bring it outside and let it absorb.

Which, like, mostly just had her sitting outside, on a blanket, with her spell book open to the evening sky. Hard work, totally. The intricate runes and lines were glowing a soft, pale blue that was barely noticeable.

To keep herself busy while her book was doing its job, Nina was sewing. Not costumes for Foomy this time, but a costume for the little stuffed toy squirrel she had.

[Open, of course!]

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With all the madness of the last few days, Julius just needed a bit of...time. Space. Something? It was hard to explain what he was feeling right now. There was just a lot of stuff he hadn't properly dealt with - like his mother's threat hanging over him or, right, being sealed - and it had all kind of snuck up on him.

Normally, when he felt like this, he would take off into the sky and fly for a few hours. It was like he left his problems down below when he went up into the air, and he got to watch them grow smaller and smaller as he spiraled up.

He couldn't do that now, obviously, but the sky was still there, wasn't it? Maybe just going out and staring at it would help.

He made his way up to the roof, and crossed over to the edge to watch the sunset, hands shoved in his pockets, wind ruffling his hair. It wasn't the same as the wind pulling at his feathers mid-flight, but when he closed his eyes he could almost pretend--

Eventually, when the sun was almost gone, he finally opened them again, turning back towards the roof proper to explore - was there really a garden up here? - when suddenly he spotted-- "Nina!"

Had it been a little weird to be up here, peacefully sewing (the light of her book growing more evident as the sun faded away), while he meditated or whatever he'd been doing?

Honestly, not really.

She'd found it kind of nice to have company without, like, actually having company.

Nina grinned at him from her blanket. "Hi, Julius!!!!!!!!!!!!"

The fact that she'd surprised him was also a bonus, too, it had to be admitted.

Cat socializing was not to be underrated.

"I didn't, uhh, see you there," he admitted, his grasp on the obvious a sight to behold. "Umm. There long?"

Granted, she had no idea what he'd been doing, other than brooding ~~which somehow felt just and right on this roof~~, but he still felt like he'd been caught doing something draconic.

"A while????????????" she said vaguely. "I haven't really been keeping track of time?????????"

This was a lie. She knew exactly how long she'd been up here but, like, he seemed a bit freaked out so Nina decided to play nice and fudge the details.

"It's a nice evening, isn't it?????????????"

No one must ever know his secret, Nina! His terribly important secret that exactly zero people on the island cared about!

But Nina looked relaxed and incurious - which one day, would probably be a dead giveaway - and hey, there was a book nearby, and Julius felt his shoulders unclenching, even as he heard his mother's voice complaining about what a terrible dragon he was for letting a human sneak up on him. He pushed that away and offered her a smile. "Yeah," he admitted. "I had to come up and look at the sky for a bit. In New Mexico, sometimes it feels like all there is is sky."

There were plus sides to the new people not knowing her very well.

Sabine would never have believed her.

"Is it much like your sky in New Mexico???????????????" she asked, shifting over to make room on her blanket. (There was plenty of room already; it was a big blanket and she wasn't a large girl.) "Did you want to sit for a bit???????????"

"Oh, uh, sure," Julius said, coming to sit with her.

It wasn't the ~~brooding~~ quality thinking time he'd come up here for, but, honestly, just having someone to talk to who was neither fawningly servile or dismissively contemptuous was a new enough sensation that it banished those troubling feelings anyway. Here, he was nice to people and they were nice back!

It was an amazing feeling and not just because it was so new.

"I'm not disturbing you?" he checked, even as he settled down on the blanket.

She shook her head, smiling honestly.

"It's getting too dark to sew," she explained, tying off her latest stitch and sticking the needle in her pincushion. "And I don't want to disrupt my book, so I was going to just watch the sky a bit myself............. so, like, you might say that you've got perfecting timing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Can't really argue with sunset," Julius said, offering her a tentative smile in return for the enthusiastic welcome. "You're sewing and reading at the same time? Wow. I bet that takes skill."

"Oh, I'm not reading," she said, though she frequently multi-tasked. "I've got a spell running on my book, so I'll be here for awhile!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Nina laughed, holding up the tiny shirt she was working on. "Just sewing, tonight!!!!!!!!!!! I'm not very good at, like, complicated things, so I have to concentrate on it!!!!!!!!!!"

Though she was a lot better than she had been a year ago. Making Sir Foomy's costumes took a lot of effort even if she did cheat outrageously with magic.

"What kind of spell?" Julius asked, glancing curiously at the book.

Not that he could tell at a glance anyway. Human magic was impossible to figure out.

"And, ahhh. Is that shirt for a...?" He struggled to figure out what could fit in that size shirt.

"For a toy squirrel," she said, laughing. "It's a friend's graduation this weekend and I'm making him a gift!!!!!!!!!!!!"

He'd be very confused by her silly gift. It'd be great. And Nina knew Noctis would appreciate it more than he'd appreciate something big and extravagant even if he just gaped and rolled his eyes.

"And, like, the spell's a gift for my brother???????????? Though I haven't decided when to give it to him.........."

"What's it supposed to do?" Julius asked, skipping right over the shirt for a toy squirrel thing. That sounded like some kind of inside joke that wouldn't really translate well for anyone who wasn't already in on it.

True enough!

"It's capturing the sky," Nina explained. "Well, like, it's basically video recording it???????????? But only, like, as if we're up there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

That had been the hardest part of the spell. Nina couldn't fly and she'd had to redo the math over and over until she'd gotten the right height.

"So, when he triggers it, it'll be like he's surrounded by stars?????????????" Folding her tiny squirrel shirt, Nina smiled softly. "It's, like, back......... home," she was a bit hesitant calling Insomnia that, but it was her home, too, wasn't it? "there's a lot of daemons that come out at night so it's not safe to be outside??????????? My brother loves the sky here so, like, I thought............"

She laughed, suddenly self-conscious.

"It's really a bit much to say I thought I could give him the sky but, like, I guess that's what I'm doing.........."

"No, no, I get it," Julius had assured her. "That's kinda why I came out here, too. The sky is so peaceful and big - it cam swallow up all the stupid things until there's only peacefulness left. Especially at night, when it's hard to see anything but the stars. I'd go crazy if I couldn't see them anymore."

His mother had damn near taken that away from him, first sealing him away and then sending him to the DFZ, where so much of it was locked away from the sky. His hands balled into fists thinking about it, but he told himself to relax, flexing his hands out.

She considered him quietly.

"Hey," Nina said, her voice soft, "are you okay?"

It wasn’t that Juillenne didn’t know other people sometimes came up to the roof- she listened to radio after all- but every other time she’d made her way up here to check on the little garden, there hadn’t been anyone else.

“Oh! Hello,” she greeted, hopefully not sounding too surprised.

"Huh?"

Julius wasn't playing dumb, or pretending not to know what Nina was talking about.

He was just dumbfounded because literally no one in his life had ever asked him that before.

"Surprised you, huh????????????????" Nina teased, immediately, because how could she not?

"I mean, like, you don't have to say what's wrong or anything!" she said, backpedaling. "It's just, I thought, I mean.........."

Nina hesitated.

"Sometimes you seem like you're really not okay."

“Perhaps a little,” Jules admitted, as Camden padded along beside her. “This is the first time I’ve seen anyone else up here.”

"I needed the sky tonight," she explained. "What are you doing up here????????????????"

~~Aside from Wayne’s party, which the player had totally blanked on~~.

Jules nodded over at the garden. “Just checking on how everything’s growing,” she explained.

"Jules!" Julius jumped to his feet, but paused before rushing over to offer her a hand. She seemed to be moving okay and he figured she'd probably hate having him hover if she was okay.

Considering she'd disliked it when she hadn't been. "You wanna, uh, come sit down with us?"

Nailed it.

~~Shhhhh, details!~~

Nina's interest in gardens basically extended to 'will this kill me if I touch it' and 'it's so pretty!' so she glanced, a little dubiously, in the direction of the garden.

"I didn't realize someone looked after it," she said, surprised.

Or, well. She'd kind of figured Fosse had it under control.

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The Roof | Thursday Evening

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