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As the night finally began its relentless, recurring consumption of the world around them, evening settling on the landscape and bringing silence and the creeping touch of a winter's night chill lapping at crevices, walls and windows. Even from within, Tatenda's home had the character of a glowing beacon - something beckonning, welcoming, alluring. Barafai had curled up in one corner of Tatenda's couch in the living room, deliberately oblivious to the world around it, comfortable in the circumstance. Meanwhile, Salt's pokéball rested on the kitchen table next to the sink like discarded pottery - albeit not out of disrespect, simply out of lack of flattering place to yet store it, and no self-consciousness to drive seeking one just yet, while other distractions were to be had. Salt, after all, couldn't currently see where his pokéball was sitting; and even if he had a metaphysical bond with his digital prison that let him sense his surrounding in abstract, he'd hardly be bothered. He was in there by choice and nothing could happen to him.
Tatenda's focus is with Jagdish. An amicable discussion over supper's been had so far, on various trivialities - a supper that was Tatenda's charity to the gym leader but managed to feel more like a sacrificial offering made to appease a dragon in a human form. Not an evil dragon, though, rather one that inspires hopes and dreams and whispers promises of protection… but a dragon nonetheless.
“If you look back on yourself… on your life so far,” Jagdish comments, softly, the statement a non-sequitur, cutting through the current, non-committal conversation on the world's advancing technologies like a hot knife through butter. “On what we did to you,” he continues. “If you could go back in time armed with a single-strike omnipotence to change a pivotal moment, what would you change? In honesty and confidence.”
Tatenda blinks for a brief moment, looks up from his glass to Jagdish. His hand moves a little to place the glass back on the table again, since he just took a sip and this gives him a little bit more time to think about an answer.
“That's… a difficult-to-answer question,” he then starts in a low, still pondering voice. “There had been times, when I wanted to undo the fact to have become a gym leader, in other times I wanted to still be this gym leader… - sometimes I thought about a life, in which I never had met any of you, but… that's very seldom.” He smiles lightly. “I would miss a lot of experience and memories, which I'd never had made, if all of this hadn't happened. I think, it's… - hm… - it's okay the way it is.”
He snorts lowly as part of a else unheard laughter. “Okay, at the moment I'm thinking about never having invented this energy-crystal technique.” Again he focuses directly at Jagdish's eyes. “Why are you asking? …is there something you'd want to change?”
A slow, comfortable motion touches Jagdish's head, the most gracefully minimalist shake of his head that he can muster. “I just wonder sometimes,” he comments. “There is a very precise image lodged in my head as to how the Council and my actions affect people. And they do flatter me by behaving as expected and confirming it in conversation, but unsurprisingly, that is largely behaviour either where I am or where I am known to look, be it directly or indirectly, and the conversations are always with… me.” Amusement seems to be touching a deliberately monotone tone, plucking it gently from its attempted mediocrity. “That presents a certain dilemma.” A pause, his gaze reaching up to Tatenda's face, that dark humour presenting itself in its inversion as a luminous crescent on his irides. “As does this one, no doubt; it's not very different, of course. But I prey and wait and prowl, looking for indicators that perhaps our retributive approach has overstayed its welcome.” Another pause, mustering Tatenda curiously. “In other words,” he summarises like one bemused by his own bland rhetoric and was about to eagerly deconstruct it, leaning forward against the table slightly, elbow coming to rest atop it, fingers grasping his own jaw lightly, index and middle finger under it, tip of his thumb against the side of it, rather than the other way around. “Do you think your sentence was fair? I won't hold 'no' against you - you've sat through it, you've moved on to serve us well beyond all expectations, you're a model citizen… you're allowed to speak your mind freely, and I am so very curious.”
The golden veins in deep dark brown are glowing from different light reflections, when the black-skinned man's gaze wanders back and forth between Jagdish's eyes as if he tries to read them out, get any further information about the intention of this so very different topic. As always, Tatenda's eyes show respect, but no real fear. He trusts Jagdish - a fact that others might consider reckless.
“My sentence?” he asks, then begins to smile a little, his glance running down again to his own hands, one of them playing with his glass, slowly turning it around its vertical axis. “Fair is so relative. I think it was at least necessary, like it is everytime.” He takes a deep breath. “Hm… unfair… - well, in parts, yes. Because it was the very last thing I'd expected for getting that far and in the end being punished for something that - from the point of view a circuiter has - every single gym leader does. You see? It's like running up a hill just to find a sign on top that says running is forbidden, instead you have to walk slowly and carefully. Afterwards you realise it's because of the grass you walk on that's otherwise damaged, but this realization may take some time.”
✘ IN PROGRESS