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[steepwithdead]

"Oh, hey."

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[grabaslice]

[That does openly surprise the turtle.] 'my secrets are boring' he says, while admitting to me the pink isn't natural. I've never seen you dye your hair once.

[steepwithdead]

It isn't as if we bathe together on a regular basis.

[Just like, that one time.]

[grabaslice]

Yeah, but, dye is so... complicated for people with hair! It should be everywhere. [He grouses back with no real heat. He's never really dyed hair, but he's aware of the process from jealously looking things up.] The pink suits you perfectly, too.

[steepwithdead]

Thank you. [He thinks so, too, otherwise he wouldn't have been doing it basically all his life.] It's a lot less complicated than you'd think. Though I couldn't do it as much on the road, so until I got here it started to look kind of terrible when I was away from home.

[grabaslice]

Depending on how much bleaching you need to do, it seems complicated to me, but, hey, I'm all scales. You probably have a well oiled machine of a system at this point.

I'm kind of surprised there isn't some kind of spell or something to lengthen dye's life span on hair. [He muses absently in turn as they idly walk together.] Might be a bit silly for a spell though.

[steepwithdead]

Bleaching? I've never done that. My hair is naturally grey, it colours very easily.

[Is bleach even a thing in Exandria?? Likely not for hair. Since his fur is grey, it tracks that he'd have a similar natural hair colour.]

That wouldn't be the strangest use of a spell ever done with magic, I'm sure. I've got that one that lets me change the colour of my eyes, remember?

[grabaslice]

You're just naturally lucky in a lot of ways, huh-? [It is a passing tease at best.] Humans go crazy trying to get that pink and bleach the hell out of their hair to get even a little close.

True, maybe that spell does exist out there somewhere. [He's fortunately for everyone here not a wizard or too magic adjacent.]

I'd say that's still a pretty damn good secret to start with.

[steepwithdead]

Strange to imagine. Human hair's already so colourful.

[One of the reasons his family dyes it so much is they'd otherwise look so drab they'd blend right into their own graveyard. All that stone and a handful of grey firbolgs...]

If my wizard friends ever happen to come back, I'll ask them about it. I'm sure they'd love to debate it for at least three hours.

[grabaslice]

Humans want to go even more colorful, trust me. [He offers back with a brief laugh.] I'll sit back, absorbing as much as I can while being the most laymen of laymen.

Should I pry more secrets from you? Or should I make it even? Hmmm- [He's pretending to mull that one over.]

[steepwithdead]

I really don't know if I could come up with another one.

[Thinking of the first was hard enough!]

[grabaslice]

[It was criminally unfair how cute this man is-] You say that, but I'm sure you'll hit me with something later that'll take me by surprise.

Not as interesting of a secret, but... when I was younger, 10 maybe-? [He can't quite grasp the age anymore. Time and trauma have softened memories into distant shapes and empty spaces.] I used to sneak out of bed, leave home and find a grate to sit under so I could look up at the moon. I could hear the whole city overhead, and watch the moon.

[steepwithdead]

Huh.

[It's difficult to imagine, admittedly- having to go out of the way to find a moon. The mental image is really charming, though.]

Just the one?

[grabaslice]

I had a few grates I'd gravitate towards, so not just one grate, at least. [He assumes the question is regarding the grates.] I tried to not stray too far, but, each neighborhood sounded different. I heard a lot of different languages depending on where I was.

[steepwithdead]

[Huh wha- oh.]

No, no. I meant, only one moon.

[grabaslice]

[That does a fine job of making Leonardo pause, blinking.]

Because there is only one moon? [He pauses before adding.] At least where I'm from, there is only one moon.

[steepwithdead]

...Oh. [He had no idea...] Exandria has two.

[grabaslice]

Huh. [He really should ask more about the world Cad is from. Most of the time, they just talk about anything and everything off the cuff.] Do you have two suns too-?

[steepwithdead]

Oh, no. Just the one. [Two suns, that's silly.] Funny, I'd never considered that sort of thing to be varied between worlds.

[grabaslice]

Honestly, me either. I only ever thought about it when I watched Jupiter Jim films. All the worlds in those movies were different.

[steepwithdead]

Very interesting. [He knows squat about films to comment on that, sorry.] So, what did you like about the moon?

[grabaslice]

[Best Caduceus not ask, or he'll be info dumped at about them-

Leonardo seems briefly self-conscious as he speaks. Thinking about the 'why' felt silly now.] It might sound a little dumb, but... I liked looking at the moon because it made me feel less alone. If I could see the moon from the sewers, so could anyone else looking up at it too.

[steepwithdead]

I don't think it's dumb. It's a poetic way of looking at things, really. There's plenty of seemingly mundane things I'd look at to remember my family, when I was alone.

[grabaslice]

You can always find a little bit of the people you love in the most unexpected places. [He agrees softly, heartened by the passing assurance.]

Even when the invasion got much worse, I'd try to look at the moon where I could. At least before the skies started changing and pollution took over.

[steepwithdead]

Pollution... you reached a point where you could no longer see a moon?

[Forest man not used to even the grey skies of city life, he has no idea.]

[grabaslice]

New York air wasn't clean enough we could see the stars very clearly before the invasion, but- after- [He waggles a hand, trying to give himself a moment to find the words. He internalized it as his normal for so long, its strange to bring back up.] The skies turned red, and you couldn't see the sun or moon. It became hard to tell when it was night or day sometimes.

I heard worse happened in other places. Sunk islands, fires that wouldn't go out, really wasn't great.

I had a whole plan on how to clean things up enough we could live on earth again, but, y'know, never happened.