July 22 2021 wrote:
They looked outside, where somewhere their friend was wandering, searching, for something they could never name or know.
- I swear, you must have made this prompt specifically to target me or something haha. It's just too perfect--this practically screams 'Bugham thinking about Cirque searching for his charge like the lovesick fools they both are.' Sadly this probably isn't the best, but I've been having issues with writing motivation this past week or so. This is probably the best I can come up with right now.
Bugham didn’t like tea. It tasted strange on his mouth and clotted in the back of his throat, hot and heavy and abrasive, like the plant water was trying to strip away at his throat until there was nothing left for his voice to carry. It wasn’t even the heat of the tea that got him, or the flavor (though sometimes the flavor didn’t help)—it was the struggle to choke that tea down even though every part of his sense of taste disagreed with it.
No, Bugham didn’t like tea. Maybe he could even say he hated it.
Now
coffee, on the other hand—sweet coffee, cold coffee, coffee with so many additives that the bitterness was a fleeting trace and all that remained was the delightful, soothing aftereffects that made him feel a touch more
normal? He liked coffee. Coffee was different.
“Isn’t coffee just another kind of tea, though?”
“Oh, heavens, no,” Bugham scoffed, drinking his iced coffee with reckless abandon. Cirque blinked across from him, his claws pausing over his own mug of steaming hot tea. “Tea is made from the leaves of different sorts of plants. Coffee is made from the
beans of the coffee plant.”
“But the beans are still a part of a plant,” Cirque murmured. The guardian leaned against the table, perched his cheek against the flat of his paw and stared at Bugham’s drink with a mild, intrigued curiosity. “You can make tea out of the roots of some plants, can’t you?”
Bugham scoffed, reaching over and taking a bite of his steam-roasted hellbender. “Well! If you want to get into the semantics of it, then the technical definition of tea is ‘anything made from the leaves of… some sort of science-sounding plant.’ Of course, definitions are very well prone to changing over time—such is the manner of words! Of language!”
The spiral laughed, patting the table as he leaned his long body back against his seat, cocking his head to the side. “Asking if coffee is tea would be like asking if the ocean is a bowl of soup, or if the cockatrice came before the egg!”
Cirque blinked a few times, face twisting into something moreso resembling shock and bafflement, and Bugham’s eyes widened. “
No, Cirque. The ocean isn’t a soup.”
“But it has the
ingredients of a soup,” Cirque commented, gesturing to his own meaty stew. “The water is the base of it, and the meat is the fish, and the vegetables of the soup are the kelp and seaweed and whatnot that are in it.”
“It isn’t a soup!” Bugham exclaimed, paying no mind to the fact that they were in a restaurant. “You would
die if you tried to drink the ocean!”
“Well.” The guardian swirled his soup with his spoon, staring into it bemusedly. The more silence stretched between them, the more Bugham wanted to plant his hands into the table between them and stare even more intently at the thoughtful expression of Cirque’s face. The way his brow set, the way his jaw clenched, the way it’d eventually unclench when his thoughts came into order in that nonsense disorder it often came out in.
“Well—you’d die if you drank too much
soup, too.”
“Unbelievable!” Bugham cried out, leaning back and throwing his paws into the air. “Unbelievable! Cirque, you’re
insane.”
The handsome dragon on the other side of the table picked up his tea and chuckled, shaking his head. “Well. The egg came before the cockatrice.”
“What?”
“Whatever laid the egg wasn’t a cockatrice. The first cockatrice came from the egg.”
It was rare that Cirque ever sounded so quietly smug about something. He sounded
smug, and Bugham was not ashamed to admit to himself that he liked it a lot. Smug over such a useless argument! It was adorable!
“You’re insane! You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
“If it’s any consolation,” Cirque murmured, reaching across the table, and—Bugham hadn’t realized it, but at some point he
must have pressed his paws back into the table, because the guardian’s massive paw patted the back of his own softly. He was warm. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t like most teas very much, either.”
Bugham’s heart fluttered in his chest, and for a moment, he was speechless. Just for a moment.
“…Well, what about the one that you’re drinking right now?” he asked softly, staring up at the guardian.
“It’s one of my own blends.” Cirque moved his paw away, wrapping it around his cup, and Bugham silently cursed himself. “Something that I’ve been working on over my years of travel. It has a little bit of everything in it, I guess. I asked if the waiter could brew it while I waited for you.”
“I’m so sorry for making you wait,” Bugham exclaimed, even though it wasn’t an accusation. “I would’ve been here sooner, I just—”
“No, it’s all right. You’re here now—that’s enough.”
Bugham’s claw tapped against the table, unmoved from where Cirque last touched it, last
held it. The heat was already long-gone, replaced instead by the familiar draft from a slightly-cracked window, brining with it the scent of rain and storm from the not far-off distance. Was it really enough? Was it really enough?
The troupe were leaving soon. This was home, and they’d hardly been here for two or three weeks, and they were already leaving, but all Bugham wanted to do now was
stay. Just a little bit longer, now that he knew that Cirque was here, too. That his search for whatever it was he was looking for ended up bringing him to this charming farmtown just next to Millmeadows made Bugham want to ask what brought him here in the first place.
He couldn’t, though. His heart was already racing from the thrill of the road, the image of the seats of the big top taken up and watching him and his coworkers perform such majestic feats of danger and intrigue just as much as it was racing from the thought of spending a day or two with his dearest friend.
He hated being torn like this. It was awful.
But Bugham was good at acting, so he smiled and lifted his paw to gesture in a non-committal fashion. “And how lucky for you!” he chirped, bright and bold. “We were just packing up to leave—you came at just the right moment! Oh—where is it you’re headed this time? Perhaps I can speak to Papa and you can travel with us for a while!”
The guardian blinked a few times, and his brow furrowed in that way Bugham immediately recognized as concern. Usual, common concern. Stupid, silly guardian, always so
concerned, as if he could see through the spiral’s rousing and believable act! The handsome fool couldn’t even keep his own emotions clear of his own face, but Bugham was an
actor by trade. No, Cirque wouldn’t find anything today.
The guardian was quiet for a time before he hummed, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “I’m sorry, my friend, but no. I plan on staying here a while longer.”
Bugham’s claws twitched. They grazed against the surface of the table until they clenched the edge, digging slightly into the bamboo wood,
tap, tap, tap. “Oh. Well, maybe I can stay a while—show you the sights of Millmeadows, make sure you don’t get blown away by any particularly strong bursts of wind…”
He hoped he didn’t sound too eager about the thought. That it came across as passive and contemplative more than anything as he took another bite of his meal.
Cirque grunted, shook his head. “I appreciate the thought, but you have the troupe. Would it be best for them if their animal tamer was absent? Besides, I don’t want to take you away from any of your performances.”
“Cirque!” Bugham exclaimed. Cirque lifted his head and stared at him, one eyebrow raised. Bugham whined. “You’re
killing me here. This is where I grew up as a young Bugham! I can’t do this place justice if we just have two or three days for me to give you a tour of everything!”
It’s been two years since we’ve last seen each other, Bugham thought.
I missed you, Cirque. I missed you so much, and I wish I could help you find what it is you’re looking for so you don’t have to search anymore. I want to spend more time with you. I love you.
…Is what he wanted to say. But the last thing Bugham wanted to do was make his friend feel obligated to his company. For him to feel so obligated that he stopped searching.
Because guardians were supposed to have a charge, but Cirque had none. And Bugham couldn’t begin to imagine how much it was tearing his friend up inside.
Cirque didn’t say anything, even though Bugham waited. And waited.
Bugham… was not a patient dragon.
“Fine,” he sighed moodily, perching his cheek against his paw. “It’s just been a while since we last saw each other, is all. I missed you.”
“…I missed you, too.”
The words came so softly, so quietly that Bugham wasn’t sure if he actually heard them or not. For a few moments, he thought he imagined it until he lifted his gaze up from the basin of his caffeinated goodness and took in the expression of Cirque’s face.
“…You know what? I don’t like tea, but I sort of want to try yours,” Bugham chirped, straightening up again. “Do you mind if I have a couple bags of it? I want to try it out for myself.”
Sadness blinked away to pleasant, mild surprise before melting away into a warmth that made the back of Bugham’s head hum pleasantly. “I—well, I don’t see why not,” he murmured in his quiet, placid way. “I’ll—let me see if I have some on me right now.”
Bugham smiled. It was something, at least.
The circus performer couldn’t even make it a week without steeping the first bag of tea.
The tea itself was… rather nice to look at, and smelled rather nice under his nose. It was a warm amber red that bled from the tea bag into the water and it swirled like a light, warm whirlpool. He could see why Cirque swirled it so frequently. It smelled sweet.
He made it just how Cirque always did, as he’d always seen the dragon do—leave it to steep for four minutes, sweeten it with a teaspoon of honey, and…
Enjoy.
Even though that sensation at the back of his throat still remained, like it did every time Bugham tried tea in the past, he figured that maybe he could suffer through to enjoy the pleasant flavor and the aroma. Maybe he could’ve felt less alone if he did. Maybe if he suffered through it, smelt this tea, tasted it on his tongue, it’d feel like Cirque was still there with him. Even though by now the troupe were miles deep into the ashfallen wastes, and Cirque was far behind them now.
Bugham curled up in the wagon and settled down, holding the tea cupped in his hands and occasionally sipping on it. The heat beneath its tarp was stifling and dry, but maybe it was for the best to help with maintaining the heat of the drink.
One of the plastic sheets sewn against the side allowed the distant roiling light of lava pools to shine against the coolness of the moon and the stars outside. Bugham stared outside, pondering the journey long ahead of them. And then he pondered Cirque’s.
How Bugham wished with all his heart that he could help him find what he was looking for. Did Cirque already leave Millmeadows, or was he still in one of those homely, rustic inns at the heart of the farmlands? Was he exploring the open-aired plateau in the hopes that he might finally discover the purpose that all guardians had for existing?
Did Cirque already miss him?
Did Cirque already miss him as much as he missed Cirque?
It hadn’t even been a week before Bugham brewed the tea Cirque gifted him, just to hold it in his paws, just to smell it, just to feel a little less alone and hope that by doing so, he could feel like some part of Cirque was there with him. And maybe it worked, to some degree—but there he was, beneath the canvas of a traveling wagon that smelled too much like stale fur and animal-friendly shampoo, curled up like a hatchling and wondering about Cirque.
What if I was your charge all along, Cirque?
The spiral banished that thought quickly. Cirque would have known. Guardians always knew their charge (he assumed—he wasn’t a guardian, had no plans to be a guardian, and with any luck, wouldn’t miraculously wake up
as a guardian any day soon.). Cirque would have known if Bugham were it.
It was selfish to think.
Bugham shook his head, sipped his tea, and stared outside. He looked outside, where somewhere his friend was probably wandering, searching for something he could never name or know. He looked outside, where somewhere his friend was probably staring up into the same sky that he was, wondering if he missed him, too.
Bugham wondered, thought, mused, but no matter how much he did, he would never know, either. So for now, he tried to smell the scent of this pleasantly sweet tea, tried to drink it without feeling like his throat was trying to recoil in on itself, and…
Enjoy.
What if the ocean is
soup? he thought instead. In a fraction of a second, he decided that tomorrow, he’d harass the rest of his troupe members with the question for the entire next day.
Oh, Cirque would laugh so fantastically when Bugham told him the story in a year or two, or whenever they happened to see each other next. Hopefully that day would come sooner rather than later.