brighton | the sun in the trees bleeds marigold and wine { senna }

“...Yeah but it’s because you’re all from the same country. Well okay – yeah I know – more than one, but not like so many different ones… I mean…” He paused, trying to gather up his scattered thoughts. He was so out of it, though; it was a bit of a struggle, and his words came slowly. “But you speak the same language and the cultural differences can’t be nearly as…” he trailed off once more, distracted by one of the many smooth rocks at his feet. “I mean, look, I think in East Asia we have a lot of smaller educational institutions, yeah. You don’t expect all of wizarding China goes to Mahoutokoro, do you?” He gave her an amused look.

The cry of a seagull distracted him, and Kai glanced up at the pier not too far away, where several of them circled overhead. It was starting to get light now; it was just enough to make out the silhouette of the Brighton pier against the sky. He leaned forward where he was sitting and picked up one of the smooth beach pebbles, turning it over in his hand absentmindedly.

“Anyway, I don’t even know what the fuck I was…” He trailed off, blinking a few times to try and bring back his focus. He glanced back at Senna with a half-smile, unsure if she’d even been following along with all of his monologuing. He was having trouble staying on track himself, but he was sure there’d been a point he was making here... “Oh!” he said suddenly. “Right.” Kai ran the back of his hand across his lips a couple times. “I just mean, if you’re with someone for a few months here, then you date someone else the same age... There’s like a decent chance they slept in the same room together for seven years, you know?” He shook his head. “And you all live in London,” he added. Okay, not all, but whatever. The wizarding world in the UK just felt so much… Smaller. “It’s weird.”

It had been strange to learn that Rheya and Anthony had been in the same year together, for example (Tock too, maybe? He was unsure on that one). He was glad they didn’t really know each other – especially since the first time he and Rheya had gotten together had been immediately after he and Tony had broken up. Mentally, he shifted his thoughts away from that topic, but still... Couldn’t help but imagine the two of them at school as friends, or something. The image was unsettling. It was good, then, that they didn’t really seem like each others’ types at all; that he couldn’t imagine them connecting with each other the way that he’d connected with each of them.

A part of him wondered what either of them would think of the other, from the perspective of being his ex. Though… He supposed he knew what Tony would think. Shaking these thoughts away, Kai turned his gaze out to the water, which was slowly starting to reflect the sky as it got lighter. Soon the joggers would be out, and the magic of an all-night conversation, starting at his little apartment, and ending up at the beach, would be lost to the busyness of daylight.

"I met with some Chinese wizards when I traveled around Asia a few years ago," she remarked lightly with no real intent, the whisper of the reason she had had for mentioning that little tidbit floating away along the early morning breeze. Senna didn't put up much of a struggle to get the thought back though. She did find herself smiling back at Kai for no reason at all. Did she think that? That all Chinese students went to one school? She didn't think so but it was at this time of the morning that she started to lose the plot and he was lucky she hadn't fallen into serenading him in the street. As it was she was humming a new song she had been working on under her breath, soft strains of an unfinished melody hanging around her head.

As was her habit, she put whatever she was seeing to the tune, even if it didn't make sense so mumbling like 'Brighton dawns' and 'only pebbles for breakfast' and 'where are the ducks?' were sung quietly along with the melody she couldn't quite get out of her head. Kai's sudden exclamation had her honey eyes, a bit bleary with lack of sleep, sliding back to him as she tried to remember what he had been trying to say. She tilted her head as she listened, focusing on the words and how his mouth rounded around the sounds. It was almost music in itself, she thought. She smiled wider at his 'its weird' and took a moment to gather her scattered thoughts. She rather liked weird things. Oddities. The unusual. But she also knew that it discomforted people. In this case though.. "I quite like it, the idea of it.." she volunteered. "It's.. we're all connected, you know? Our collective story. Like constellations," she told him.

In the moment, the idea seemed stellar to her. Like age-old wisdom she was bestowing on him. Later, she might wonder if she was making sense at all. Good thing it wasn't later though. Senna sat with her knees tucked up to her chest, stacking stones on her black combat boots before watching them tumble down. She glanced up at Kai with a little smile. "Besides," she added, already laughing at the thought. "Maybe you just have a type." She wasn't sure what amused her more. Kai having a type or his type being the entire Hogwarts class of 98.

“Just look at India,” Kai continued over the top of her mumbled singing. He ran a calloused palm across his lips, then gestured as he spoke. “Or Indonesia.” So many people. If he’d been from anywhere else in Asia – east, southeast, south – there might have been options other than Mahoutokoro for him to have attended as a teen. He blinked a couple of times, his eyes feeling suddenly a bit dry. He glanced her way as she started talking about collective stories or something. Cohesive narratives.

“No,” Kai protested. Then he laughed, a bright sound in the dark. Trust Senna to come up with all that hippy bullshit when he was complaining about something. In a different conversation, he could get down with that way of thinking, maybe. He liked to be convinced of the connectedness of everything from time to time, but it was always a process, and the starting point was never him complaining about how all of his exes knew each other. “No it’s bad,” he continued, turning to face her again to make sure she was listening. “You know –  you can’t move on when it ends. Everyone knows everyone, you’re changing all the time but the people that knew you how you were? They just see you like that. Like a snapshot...” He trailed off, then laughed again, shaking his head at himself. He was starting to sound more like her now.

A type? He quirked an eyebrow at that. Now he knew she wasn’t following. He couldn’t blame her; he was barely holding on to the line of thought that strung all of his sentences together himself. It wasn’t about him dating people who were the same age, it was about how small the range in culture, language and even geographical location was for former Hogwarts students. “I’m going to have to move fucking countries again, aren’t I?” he said, amused, glancing back out at the water. He compared his last two proper relationships in his head, trying to find anything other than age that tied his partners together into a “type”.

His laughing made her glance over at him and her smile was softer even though he was disagreeing. She rested her chin on her knees as he tried to convince her it wasn't a good thing and she tried to track it. She did understand to a point, but she didn't agree entirely. And for as many times as she saw herself in him and vice versa, there were just as many times when she thought the two of them couldn't be more different. Maybe now was one of those times.

"People change all the time though and most people aren't good with change.. seeing it in other or in themselves. So why should it matter? If you can't change it, if you can't control how others think of you, why bother to worry about it?" she said, speaking her mind easily, softly in the way she did all the time with him, unafraid of the differing opinions they might have, a thrill of curiosity at the way he might react or refute her ideas only for her to debate it some more. Kai had always been the unknown and the familiar all wrapped in one.

She was waiting for that quirked brow. That reaction. And when she got it, it made her throw her head back a little and laugh, the sound light and clear in the emerging dawn. His hypothetical question had her shaking her head at him though. "Nope, nu uh, not allowed," she told him lightly, purely for selfish reasons. Even if she couldn't really talk about her friendship with Kai to her best friend and his ex, their friendship was one she valued. "If you're going to be broody about your exes, you should do it here with me," she said simply.

Kai shook his head. “No,” he said, disagreeing again. “Every time you meet someone new, they meet you as you are then and there – however you’re acting, however the two of you…” he moved his hands, trying to communicate a word he’d forgotten in English. “How you… Interact? The exchange?” It didn’t quite feel right, but it would do. “Other things don’t matter.” It felt purer in its simplicity to him; the anonymity of it.

Or maybe, he admitted internally – though he wouldn’t concede this to her – it was just a control thing again. It was easier to fall in love with someone who knew nothing about him, had no ties to his past, because then he had more involvement in their growing interpretation of him as they got to know him. Kai wasn’t especially interested in dating his exes exes, either; he liked learning about them from scratch, too.

“Thought I wasn’t allowed to brood about Rheya with you,” he teased, glancing back at her slyly. It was Rheya who’d told Senna she didn’t want him to come to their shows anymore, but he was just teasing anyway. He laughed again. It wouldn’t have been funny in another context, and there had certainly been moments in the past where that whole thing hadn’t been funny at all – but it felt funny here. In the dark. By the sea.

"You don't ever wanna get out of here?" he asked, playing with one of the smooth pebbles again, "Again, I guess," he added. "Just... fucking... up and leave?" It was sunnier in Brighton than London, but it was a little colder, being beside the sea and all. But the world was so much bigger than Britain, bigger than Japan. There were so many other places to start again, and it appealed in a lot of ways.

Kai told her no again and she couldn't help but smile at him. And while they had differing opinions, Senna didn't mind looking at his side of things. She tried to imagine what different snapshots people had of her. Would he even recognize the Senna from her school years when she hadn't had many friends? Her thoughts traveled their own path for a few minutes before she remarked, "I guess it is freeing though.. the idea that some people won't know the past you. Not really anyway."

She ran her gaze over his features and had to wonder why the idea mattered that much to him. There wasn't a clear answer that she could come up with, but it gave her pause to think. And time to catch the smirk that he sent her when he mentioned her best friend. "You can brood all you'd like," she corrected him with a perked brow. "But don't expect me to take your side," she clarified. Her friendship with Kai after their breakup had been tenuous at first and while she was loyal to her dearest friend, she also didn't want to lose the light she saw in Kai. She wondered if that made her selfish.

"All the time, actually," she corrected him and turned her face towards the sea. "But with the band here and the new album.." she trailed off, the tether of something more weighty appearing in her tone, one that she was happy to take on but there was still room for something else to grow in the cracks there. "There are some days when I can't stand to be in the same spot anymore so I get a portkey to Paris or Monaco or this really quiet spot in Amsterdam and that feeling ebbs for a bit," she tells him before her gaze finds him again. There was a time when her music followed her travels, years when she didn't stay in one place for very long and she liked it that way. These days she simultaneously regretted not having that freedom while also loved making space for a place that she could call home. Her plants, for one, were thriving.

“Right,” he said, as if a conflict had just been resolved. Now that he was thinking about it, maybe the fact that he didn’t ever intend a permanent return to Japan had reinforced his already-existing sense of being untethered to his past. His “new starts” had been rather dramatic; he’d dropped out of school while he was still underage, he’d moved to a country that spoke a language he wasn’t quite fluent in. Maybe the discomfort with tying his current identity to his younger self had something to do with all of that. He didn’t feel like it was relevant to him, so why should it be relevant to someone else?

Kai squeezed his eyes shut, then slow-blinked several times. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten here from where he’d been before. Which was talking about… dating? He waved a hand when she told him not to expect to take his side, an amused smile on his face. They both knew it was a lot more complicated than sides. And he didn’t want to get into it now, he had other friends to talk to about Rheya… People that weren’t her best friend (or like, her mostly-platonic life partner or whatever the fuck that was). And besides, he was on the edge of not being able to string his sentences together properly.

“It’s not far enough away, though,” Kai said, “Is it?” He was quiet for a moment, before his thoughts picked up momentum and were then made verbal. “Like it’s not just the distance, it’s knowing that you have to be back here, that you have like… All these ties…” As the years went on, Kai was developing more and more ties of his own. Not just exes, either, but involvement in different projects. Community building stuff. Work. Artistic conections. The parts of his life that were London-based (despite his move south), only got more complex and more dense each year. He still went climbing in London, which was pretty funny because there was something amusing about needing to apparate to his very muggle climbing gym.

He cocked his elbow, then pitched the stone he’d been turning over in his hands as far as he could, in the direction of the sea. It was still too dark to see exactly where it fell, and the sounds of the ocean and the seagulls drowned out any aural confirmation. His thoughts were drifting, drawing distances. He was thinking – “You know we should just move tooooo... America.” Not far enough, though. “Actually, no, New Zealand.” Better. “We can get married and start a sheep farm... And spend our days climbing mountains... or whatever the fuck they do down there.” He looked at her, a bit of a spark in his eye. “And we can just write poetry on mountaintops with all of our sheep all day, and live in a little cabin.”

Senna rubbed at her bleary eye with one hand in the pre-dawn light as she traced his profile, smiling softly, amused, content. Sometimes it felt like she could talk to Kai forever and never get bored, there was just something about him. She was sure there something she wanted to tell him at that moment, but it wisped away before her mind could fully grasp it. Her overtiredness was starting to drag at her, rivaling with the triumphant, slightly rebellious feeling of staying up all night. It was pure freedom mixed with fatigue.

She hummed her agreement. Sometimes nowhere was far enough, she understood what he meant on a cellular level. Naturally, she had questions to his questions instead of answers. "Where would be 'far enough away' though? Antarctica? Saturn?" She sent him a smirk, but there was no judgement there. "They keep me coming back," she said, her thoughts meandering through the different ties she had in the here and now. "Who would I be without them," she wondered. Without the band, without Rheya, without her music. Would she even be the same Senna anymore?

She heard rather than saw the stone disappear into the ocean and almost asked him to toss another just to hear the sound again, but his words distracted her. "America?" She did like LA the last time she had been there. The sunshine seemed to shine brighter there, was that her imagination? "Oh, New Zealand is nice," she piped in before her small smile turned brighter and bigger with each detail he added and soon she was joining in. "Yess and we can start our own vegetable garden and go to local markets and try to copy their New Zealandy accent and name all of our sheep after famous wizrock musicians the locals won't know and you can learn how to cut my hair during a full moon and I'll learn how to cook something without burning it..." she sighed with a dreamy smile then glanced over at him with a knowing look.

"That would last all of what? Two days?" she guessed with a laugh. It wouldn't be long until one of them grew bored and wanted to see something new.

What would I be without them?

While Kai liked this idea abstractly, theoretically… there was still a part of him that felt resistant to the idea of describing himself through other people. It was a self-protective, independent, and admittedly a sometimes selfish part of him. Was it arrogant to think he could just drop everyone and everything and start again? He’d done it before. In quiet moments like this, alone with one of his closest friends on the beach in the moments between night and morning, he found himself critical of its place in his identity.

Kai nodded as she spoke, adding to the picture he’d started painting. The vegetable garden, the markets… It all sounded so distant and idyllic. Of course, he did wonder distantly if he could ever be happy with such a quiet, faraway life. Kai had grown up in Tokyo, then moved to London; he was used to a city backdrop. Even now that he’d moved here, he spent most of his time in London. Worked there. Drank there. Saw his friends, went dancing, went to the gym there. Could he really live up on a mountain somewhere? In some faraway corner of the world?

“I’ll cook,” he interjected firmly, and then he laughed because they’d both tasted Senna’s cooking, and it was… Well, better than starving, he supposed? That was probably the best compliment he could give it. Kai’s fingers closed around another one of the pebbles by his feet, and he pressed his fingertips into the uneven surface, distracted momentarily by the texture. Belatedly, he glanced at her, taking a second to recall what she’d just said. Seagulls squawked overhead, and he no longer had to squint to see her face – even without his glasses. The sun was peeking over the horizon now; everything was more light.

“Probably,” he admitted, half-smiling. She’d echoed the thoughts he’d been having a moment ago, but he was too stubborn to agree with her outright. The call of faraway places was persistent, and the idea of taking scissors to his proverbial ties was only scary sometimes. “Oh, look,” he said, holding the pebble he’d been playing with out to her. “It’s like a star, look.” Kai traced the shape of the indent with his finger, then offered it to his friend. “You should keep it,” he said. “Good energy.” Seemed like the kind of thing she’d like.

“Should we start heading back?” he asked, suddenly unsure of exactly when they’d come down to the beach, and where exactly he’d left his shoes. They didn’t seem to be anywhere around them, and he hoped he’d just left his little apartment without them.

Senna sent him a quick grin at his insistence at cooking. "Oh good," she replied lightly. "We both might survive then." She had a hard time keeping her plants alive and that only involved watering them once a week. Cooking was still way beyond her capabilities somehow. That's why she and Rheya lived mostly on takeout and it had suited them fine so far.

His 'probably' had her glancing down at her hands, looking even paler against the approaching dawn. If he ever outright agreed with her about anything, she would have to double check to make sure he wasn't imperiused or something. He wasn't like most people that way and she liked that about him. Senna twisted the silver rings layered on her index finger as she wondered at their friendship, so intertwined in a hundred different ways, but there was something easy about it too.

At his call, she lifted her head, gazing at him in question before she noticed his outstretched hand. She reached up instinctively, accepting whatever it was he was offering without hesitation. The stone was warmer than she would have thought and she held it up to take in its shape. "Like a fallen star," she said with a soft smile, feeling a good vibe from it. Maybe it was just that Kai had thought to give it to her or maybe it was just a reminder of this night turned morning, but she nodded, giving him a bright smile and wrapping her fingers around it. "I'll add it to my collection," she told him, thinking of the shelf of crystals and odds and ends she kept at her place to ward off bad energy.

"What time is it even," she wondered as she stood up from the rock she had perched on, stretching her legs and then circling her head one way and then the other. At this time of day, there wasn't really an answer for what they should do next. It was past the time for sleeping and it's not like she had a real job to get to at a prescribed time in the morning. "Want me to accio your shoes?" she asked as she picked her way over the rocks, heading back in the direction they came.

"You hungry?"

He smiled a bit when she said she’d add it to her collection. Senna was a lot more into the “vibes” and “auras” and various other hippy shit that Kai didn’t pay much attention to, for the most part, but he didn’t mind. Quite the opposite; he liked that her perspective on the world was quite different to most people. Besides, he didn’t know much at all, really. Not in the context of the world and the universe and consciousness and time all the other shit bigger than himself. Who was he to say her perspective was wrong?

“Hmm…?” Kai looked up at the sky as he brushed off his knees. He wasn’t entirely present, and was finding it easier and easier to drift off in his thoughts. What was it she’d asked about? The time? He looked at her, his eyes tired and a little glassy. “Four…?” he said, not sounding very confident. “Five…?” It was still summer, so sunrise was still fairly early. Kai really had no idea though. he squinted a bit as he looked in the direction of the sun, looking away quickly.

“Starving,” he answered, though he hadn’t been hungry at all until she mentioned it. “And... nah, they’re probably at home…?” In the light of day, his insobriety and tiredness was far more apparent than it had been in the dark. He suddenly felt like he had to work a whole lot harder to stay on track, and stay present. He walked over the rocks slowly, careful where he stepped. “I have stuff at home,” he said, “if we wanna go back and eat.”

"Oh that's all?" she asked, as he guessed at the time, a bit surprised at the estimation. She didn't believe in watches so it's not like she could verify what he said, but she was happy enough to go along with it. She wasn't quite sure if she was expecting it to be earlier than he had said because time had felt like it had paused and they were floating in this nice, hazy inbetween or if she was expecting it to be later because whenever she was with Kai, he had this great ability to escape the constricts of time. Like she could spend an hour or a day with him and they'd never run out of things to talk about and he'd never not say something that made her curious or wonder or question.

"At home?" she repeated, tilting her head and trying to recall if he had really walked here without shoes. She hadn't noticed, but it seemed to fit with his vibe of life so she shrugged it off. His offer of food made her perk up, her eyes straying from the rocks she was picking over, hopping lightly from stone to stone, revived by a sudden new wind of energy. "Oohhh, will you make me pancakes? No waffles!" she said changing her mind just as quickly as she had decided. "No, pancakes. Please?" she asked, sending him a smile as she grasped her hands in front of her.

He shrugged. It was still summer, so the sun was still rising quite early. He couldn’t quite recall what the time had been when they’d left the house, though. If Kai was being honest, he didn’t actually remember leaving the house at all…

He made his way up to the boardwalk, glancing at her as she pleaded for breakfast. “Pan… Waffl… Pancakes it is,” he said, his expression tired even as he smiled a lazy smile her way. Sobriety was creeping up on him now that the sun was rising, and he had to admit he didn’t like it very much at all. Things were always so simple in the dark – more feelings than thoughts, if that made sense? Maybe not. Huh. Maybe sobriety was a little further away than he thought.

Pancakes. It had been a while since he’d made them, but the recipe was simple – and he’d always done a good job. Rheya liked pancakes. “How’s she doing, anyway?” Kai asked as they crossed the road, forgetting for a moment that she probably wasn’t following along with his thoughts. He was only a few streets back from the beach, and the upward slant of the road there was only very slight, but he felt like he was walking a marathon. He felt a sudden need for a cigarette, though that definitely wouldn’t help.

Senna smiled brightly at him and hummed a little note of happiness, her stomach already growling just at the thought. "Do you have blueberries? Can you make blueberry pancakes? Oh or chocolate chips? Then it's like dessert and breakfast in one," she said, piling on requests as if she were ordering at a diner. Maybe it would be better if they went to a diner.. but Kai had volunteered and who was she to turn down such generosity.

It was the same thing that had happened when she had visited a crystal shop in Paris, intending to pick up a new quartz stone but had walked out with a spider leaf plant that she had named Luna because the woman behind the counter had said she and the plant were aligned with similar vibes. Senna hadn't been sure at the time, but after taking Luna home and settling her next to Guadalupe and Anton, she couldn't agree more. Luna was thriving, but she really needed to remember to water her when she got home. She was really finicky when she--

Kai's question interrupted her train of thought and she glanced up at him slowly. "Luna? She's doing great. Still getting acquainted with everyone, but she fits in quite well with Lupe and Anton so I think... wait..." she paused, her brows knitting together in confusion. "You're not talking about Luna, are you?" she asked and then her mind caught up with him. She knew the 'she' that he must be referring to and she glanced away from him as she answered. "She's great, actually. Wonderful, amazing, as usual. She did really great at this gig we just did, didn't even throw up too much before the show," she said, bragging about her friend, her tone half boasting that he was missing out on something great, and half sad for them that they had ended the way they had.

But that didn't answer her curiosity. "Why are you asking..."

“Uh…” Kai frowned, trying to remember if he had any of that stuff. It was a definite no to the chocolate chips, but blueberries? He liked berries. “Strawberries maybe,” he said out loud.  He looked at her as she started talking, wondering who she was talking about. It took him a moment. “Is she?” he asked, amused. Luna was another plant, he assumed. He had a vague recollection of them talking about it earlier in the night, but the details were all lost now.

Senna was still talking about Rheya as they appeared at his apartment building. “Oh, fuck…” He paused at the door, eyes on the handle for a full five seconds before he thought to check his pockets for the keys. They made a jingling sound as he patted his back pocket. “There we go,” he said to himself. He unlocked the front door, then led her into the foyer. He made his way to the lift, and pressed a button. Thank god it wasn’t out of order today; he wasn’t sure he had the energy to walk up four floors right now.

He pressed number four for the top floor, then looked back at his blonde friend. “Just curious,” Kai said. He’d been thinking about her earlier, hadn’t he? Or… More complaining about how all of his British exes probably knew each other, or whatever. “I’m glad she’s happy,” he said, meeting her eye in the reflective surface of the lift’s doors before they opened at his floor. “Haven’t seen her in forever.” He remembered showing up at her show, unannounced. Watching her play, whisking her away at the end. Unfair, kind of – he'd gone because he was feeling lonely. He tried not to think of her too much these days.