Chapter Text
SUMERU CITY MARKETPLACE
Kaveh held the door of the coffeeshop open for Tighnari, his daemon Safiya settled on her usual perch on his shoulder. Tighnari’s daemon Kinza was curled up in the hood of Tighnari’s hoodie. They made their way towards one of the bigger market squares, since Tighnari had a list of items in mind for this iteration of their semi-frequent shopping trips during his visits to Sumeru City.
As they walked down the street, Tighnari asked, “Are you coming to dinner next week? Alhaitham already agreed to attend, and Cyno will be coming as well.”
Kaveh gave Tighnari an incredulous look. "How did you even get him to agree to a social gathering?"
Tighnari raised a brow. "I asked Zabira while Alhaitham was busy reading, she said they were free."
Kaveh gasped. The nerve! "Zabira talks to you guys!?" Alhaitham’s daemon was notorious for refusing to speak, and she hadn’t spoken with Kaveh or Safiya in over a year. Some people’s daemons avoided talking with people they weren’t close to, but almost all daemons conversed with each other. Zabira didn’t speak with anyone, daemon or human.
"I mean, not often, but she usually answers a question directly addressed to her." Tighnari gave him a sidelong look. "Why, does she not talk to either of you?"
"No, she absolutely does not!" Kaveh said. Safiya shifted from foot to foot, flexing her claws against Kaveh's shoulder. "And both Safiya and I have asked her questions directly before! She never deigns to speak to either of us!"
One of Tighnari's ears flicked to the side and then back forwards. "Well," he said, "in any case, Alhaitham will be at the dinner."
Kaveh rolled his eyes. “I’m coming too, obviously,” he said. “Someone needs to be around to temper his ridiculousness.”
Tighnari raised a single eyebrow. “Oh, yes, Alhaitham is always the ridiculous one,” he said dryly.
Kaveh threw up his hands. “I’ve been saying this for years!”
Tighnari didn’t look like he believed Kaveh, so Kaveh used the time it took to walk to their next destination to generously provide examples of exactly what he meant.
BACK AT THE HOUSE
Kaveh woke up to the sound of voices coming from the kitchen. He blinked a few times. That didn't seem right. He wasn't expecting anyone, so did Alhaitham....have a guest?
Perhaps someone from the Akademiya was here to discuss work-related things with Alhaitham. That was much more probable than Alhaitham entertaining a social call, but it still begged the question of why he would be allowing anything work-related at--Kaveh squinted at the clock across the room--an hour past dawn on a weekend.
He slid out of bed, Safiya taking up her perch on his shoulder. The voices weren't distinct enough to make out from his room, so he crept into the sitting room and paused before the doorway. He stopped just behind the winding stems of their overgrown mint plant, which held court just outside their kitchen.
"--just because you think I haven't done a thorough enough contemplation of something that isn't within my purview in the first place," Alhaitham said.
"Relevance fallacy. You can do better," said a low, female voice.
Kaveh paused. That was Zabira's voice. It took him a second to recognize it, because he'd heard her speak very few times in the years he'd known Alhaitham. Alhaitham's daemon was famous for refusing to speak with other daemons, but she also rarely verbally addressed even Alhaitham in the company of others. It was common for Kaveh to go months without hearing her voice. Typically she spent most social gatherings sitting behind Alhaitham, judging everyone silently with her haughty emerald gaze.
"Fine. Then we can return to my previous argument regarding the underlying structure. I don't see the point in wasting my time engaging with an inherently faulty premise. In the absence of sufficient evidence, drawing conclusions based on induction is unwarranted and fallacious. A language universal by necessity must be represented in all languages, of which gathering evidence is logistically prohibitive even when solely inclusive of languages in current use."
"Must you exclude consideration of data collected for a theory with which you disagree?" asked Zabira. "You know that paper had useful insights, irrespective of consequent unsupported conclusions."
"I read the paper in its entirety," Alhaitham said mildly. "I still find myself disinclined to pay heed to conclusions based entirely on the innateness hypothesis. A hypothesis with which you also disagree."
Kaveh pressed the back of his hand against his mouth, trying not to laugh as he realized they were discussing a recent journal article. Safiya was unusually quiet on his shoulder, also trying to eavesdrop on this conversation.
Most people, when alone with their daemons, spoke about personal matters--Kaveh's conversations alone with Safiya certainly were about emotional matters, or private worries one or both of them had. It seemed Alhaitham's most private soul consisted of academic debate. Kaveh didn't know why he was surprised. Of course Alhaitham's soul came complete with citations. But it was one thing to know this unconsciously, and another entirely to overhear it in their kitchen.
He backed away slowly–there was no chance Alhaitham and Zabira would react well to Kaveh and Safiya eavesdropping. He and Safiya exchanged a look, and silently agreed to discuss this later.
AVIDYA FOREST
Kaveh and Alhaitham arrived at Tighnari’s hut in Avidya Forest together, daemons trailing behind them. It seemed Cyno had just arrived moments before–-when they knocked, Cyno opened the door and let them in.
Kinza was on the floor for once, scuttling around while Tighnari finished cooking. Madeeha whuffed quietly in greeting, leaning down to look Kinza in the face. Kinza extended one very small hand and gently patted Madeeha on the muzzle. Madeeha sighed and laid on the floor. Kinza scrambled up Madeeha's shoulder and perched on the ruff of fur just behind the base of her skull. They always looked comical together, with Kinza being just shy of the size of Madeeha's head, but they'd been close for years and knew how to navigate each other's quirks.
The four of them set up dinner together–-they’d all been to Tignari’s house before, and their dinners were semi-regular. Conversation ebbed and flowed as they started eating.
"How is Collei doing?" Kaveh asked.
Tighnari made a face. "Improving as ever in her studies, but..." He pursed his lips.
Cyno tilted his head. "Malik again?"
Kaveh hadn't heard of any issues with Collei's daemon thus far. "What's happened with Malik?"
Tighnari sighed and set his spoon down. "She's getting stressed about Malik not settling."
"She's not an adult yet," Cyno pointed out. "It's not unheard of to have an unsettled daemon at age fourteen."
"But it's uncommon, and she knows that," Tighnari replied. "And she's halfway to fifteen, so it's causing her a lot of anxiety."
"It'll either happen or it won't, and nothing Collei does will change that," Alhaitham said.
Kaveh scowled. "Would it kill you to practice empathy one or twice in your life? It's clearly weighing on her, and she's been through a lot."
"No scientific study has been able to find even a tenuous correlation between human actions and settling of daemons," Alhaitham replied, unrepentant. "She's better off focusing her mental efforts on something productive."
"Not everything has to be confirmed by a scientific study!" Kaveh huffed. "Daemons are the other half of your soul, surely there's something to be said for the experience of it. Who are you to critique someone else's relationship with their soul?"
"Colloquial referents are no replacement for rigorous scientific testing to confirm or deny hypotheses," Alhaitham said, eyes narrowed. "The popular sentiment of referring to a daemon as someone's 'soul' aside, no conclusive evidence has been offered thus far towards the exact nature of the bond between a person and their daemon, and thus no substantiated claims can be made about the influence of a person’s actions on the settling of their daemon. Any declarations to that effect would be based on anecdotal evidence at best.”
“How else would you explain the obvious bond between person and daemon, other than a shared soul?” Safiya snapped. She didn’t always join in arguments between Kaveh and Alhaitham, but Kaveh knew their opinions aligned on this topic, and Safiya felt strongly about it.
“To prove that a person and daemon shared a soul, you would first have to prove that souls exist, which has not happened to date and is unlikely to occur any time soon,” Alhaitham said. “Plenty of studies have proved the consistency of people and their daemons sharing impressions of the world and internal emotional experiences, but any commentary on the exact cause of this bond is conjecture, not fact.”
“In any case,” Tighnari injected, with the barest hint of an edge in his voice, “Collei’s stressed but I’m sure it will resolve itself soon enough. Otherwise she has been excelling in her studies. She’s been thinking about joining Amurta in the future.”
That, at least, was something Kaveh and Alhaitham could agree upon, and they talked over each other trying to explain to Tighnari why Collei should under no circumstances be allowed to join the obviously inferior Darshan of Amurta.
BACK AT THE HOUSE
Safiya was on one of her lower perches in the sitting room, preening her wings while Kaveh sat on the couch with his notebook. Alhaitham was reading on one of the other couches while Zabira padded around the room, inspecting various objects and sniffing at them.
It was more movement than Zabira typically displayed, so Kaveh was already half-watching her out of the corner of his eye when she suddenly crouched low to the ground, tail flicking. Kaveh turned to get a better view; she looked ready to pounce.
"Wh--" he started, but Zabira lept before he could say anything, springing forward to land with deadly accuracy on her target: Safiya's green tail feathers, freshly preened.
Black-footed cats were good at what they did, Zabira being no exception. Both of her front paws caught Safiya's tail feathers, and she pulled Safiya off her post to the floor.
Safiya reacted before Kaveh could, shrieking and buffeting Zabira with a wing. Zabira released the feathers and sat back. She started grooming one paw, looking for all the world like she'd done nothing wrong and Safiya was the one to interrupt her grooming session.
"You--" Safiya squawked. "All my feathers are out of alignment! Look at what you did!" She waddled across the floor towards Kaveh, wings spread for balance and feathers fluffed from annoyance.
Zabira ignored them both, spreading her toes to lick all her fur back into its proper place. Not that she had seemed disheveled at any point. Zabira was always annoyingly glossy, sleek, and beautiful.
Kaveh scooped Safiya up off the floor and placed her on his knee, helping her preen her feathers back into place. She kept ruining it by puffing her feathers back up, agitated.
"What the hell?" Kaveh snapped at Zabira. "What was that about?"
She ignored him completely, moving on from her paw to lick the fur across her chest.
"Don't ignore us!" Safiya screeched. "What's wrong with you!?"
Zabira ignored Safiya as well, and laid down to curl up a in little circle, face resting against her tail. Alhaitham turned a page in his book.
"Seriously?" Kaveh addressed Alhaitham. "Nothing to add?"
Alhaitham glanced up briefly. "I haven't done anything. Ask Zabira if you have a problem with her behavior."
"You--" Kaveh seethed. He knew that Alhaitham knew that wasn't at all a valid rebuttal and was just saying that to piss them off, but...it still pissed them off. "You know full well Zabira won't speak to either of us."
"Maybe you never have anything interesting to say," Zabira said, then closed her eyes and by all appearances went to sleep.
"Zabira!" Kaveh hissed. "Zabira! Are you fucking kidding me?"
She doesn't speak to them for over a year, and now she breaks her silence just to have the last word?
Absolutely untenable. They didn’t have to put up with this ridiculous, unreasonable behavior. He swept Safiya back onto his shoulder and stalked out of the room. If only their sitting room had a door so he could slam it dramatically. As it was, slamming his bedroom door down the hallway didn’t have the same effect.
He placed Safiya onto her favorite perch in his room and flung himself onto the bed.
“How dare they?” he said, half to Safiya and half to the greater universe. “I just–UGH!!!”
Alhaitham was a standoffish person, but they’d been roommates for years, and friends for even longer. It was ridiculous that Zabira refused to speak with them–-most daemons wouldn’t speak to strangers, but Kaveh spoke with all his friend’s daemons frequently–-minus one! If it were anyone else, someone’s daemon refusing to speak with him after ten years of knowing them would have Kaveh assuming that this person hated him.
Well, maybe that was true! Maybe Alhaitham did hate him, and Zabira was just making that clear. If Alhaitham’s inner soul–-oh, excuse the mistake, Alhaitham’s unsubstantiated anecdotally evidenced bond with an external manifestation-–didn’t want to speak to Kaveh, then maybe Kaveh should take the hint.
Safiya took off from her perch, landing on the bed next to Kaveh. She spread her wings and squawked, waddling back and forth with her wings lifted to pace across the bed.
“I know!’ he said. “We shouldn’t have to put up with this!”
Safiya flapped a few times, dislodging a loose feather. Kaveh picked her up so he could remove the feather, then spent a few moments preening her feathers again.
Safiya chirped a few times, still agitated, then said, “There’s not anything we can do, though.”
Kaveh sighed. “No, I know,” he said. “They’ve always been like this. I think it’s just them.”
Safiya asked, “Does it truly bother you that much?”
“Yes. No. Probably. Maybe, I don’t know.” Kaveh flopped back onto the bed, draping an arm over his eyes. “Ask me again tomorrow.”
Safiya clambered up onto him, and then settled down in the center of his chest. She wiggled to get comfortable, and fluffed up her feathers.
Kaveh wouldn’t be falling asleep any time soon, but he let his thoughts wander and dozed to the sound of Safiya gently grinding her beak.