The train station was crowded, and normally Gaius thrived in places that had people beating and pushing past each other to try and get to their platforms on time. He did his best pickpocketing in places where people could barely keep track of everything they had with them, and the train stations scattered across Ylisse and Ferox were ripe with people who fit that category. A few gold pieces here, a necklace or bracelet there, it didn't matter what Gaius got his hands on as long as it would pay the bills and let him live the comfortable life for another month.
This station, though, had a solemn air to it that he couldn't force himself to look past. People were everywhere, taking up every bit of space that he could see, but they were aware. They were in control of everything they carried. They weren't loudly talking and yelling as they were rushing to their next train. Sometimes that meant there was some huge political problem that had been pushed onto the people, and sometimes that meant that the station was about to be home to the dead body of someone important.
Gaius was savvy, he knew how the world worked, and he knew that with the number of people in that train station wearing black mourning clothes, it was definitely a case of the second option. He could guess who it was, given that the apparent "suicide" of the Ylissean exalt had been rather big news across the globe and she needed to be returned home for proper burial and services, but it was hard to fathom that someone so powerful would be making a stop in such a small-town train station on her final journey.
He sighed, reaching into one of his pockets and pulling out a piece of candy, unwrapping it and popping it straight into his mouth. His coffers weren't exactly overflowing, but he had the money to survive through the end of the month and if that meant one day of staying away from the pickpocketing, then that was just how it would go. "Wonder what all of this is about," he heard a man say to someone as they passed by where Gaius was sitting. "Bet it's the exalt's return trip, but why here?"
"My question exactly," Gaius replied, despite not being in the conversation at all, as he rolled his hard candy around in his mouth. The man didn't seem to hear him, or perhaps thought the comment was made in response to something else, and he sighed again when he realized he wasn't going to be getting any conversation there that day.
After watching more people passing him as he sat, he decided that he'd be best to spend his day somewhere that wasn't so gloomy, and so he got up with the full intention of leaving the station and finding somewhere else to perhaps make a spare piece of gold or two and be able to consider the day less of a bust. When he stood, he was able to see the sheer amount of mourners there in the station, and he pulled his cloak closer to his body, not wanting to make it obvious he wasn't there for a last goodbye to the exalt.
It was steps from the door that he ran into someone—or, rather, someone ran into him, sending them both to the floor to be walked around by everyone there for that very important train. "Watch where you're going, will you?" he asked, eyeing the person who'd just taken him down, only to see a pair of eyes that didn't seem to be processing what he'd said. "Oh, come on, are you even listening?"
As he got to his feet, the other person stayed on the ground, and so he offered them a hand. After looking at it and flinching at first from the offer, they accepted it and rose to their feet as well. Gaius was able to tell that this was a woman he was dealing with, but based on her informal outfit and heavily exposed skin, he could also tell that she wasn't there for the mourning. "Watch where you're going next time, will you?" he said to her, pulling his hand out of her grasp as soon as she didn't need the support.
Her mouth started moving, and there were words and sounds coming out of it, but Gaius couldn't make heads or tails of what it was that she was saying. It was only then that he looked at her for more than just her eyes and chest, and noticed her long, braided hair that wrapped and weaved around her equally-long ears, and the tufts of fur that she had on her arms and elsewhere. She wasn't human, and she wasn't speaking to him in a tongue he could claim to understand. Grimacing as he realized that she, whatever she was, wouldn't be understanding him either, Gaius bowed his head and decided to duck past her, running for the exit of the station without further attempts at breaking through the language barrier.
It wasn't until days later, when he could get on a library computer in a neighboring town to look up what he'd noticed about her, that he'd realized he'd been run straight into by the last taguel of the world, and he hadn't had the courtesy to try apologizing to her for the inconvenience of their interaction.
The timing made sense, as he read about her and what she had been doing in a place like where he'd found her. Even though she was the final member of her species, she was a devout follower of the exalt and had wanted to be a part of the send-off of the woman who had taken pity on her and her near-extinct status. Of course, with there being a language barrier that few would have been able to work through (especially not pickpocketing thieves who wanted to get away from the solemn place), it was hard to tell her what was going on and why she was inappropriately dressed for the occasion.
With every article and newspaper clipping Gaius read about the last taguel and her attempts at living a life that she could be proud of despite everything, he found himself wishing that he had done better about communicating with her. There were few resources online about how to interact appropriately with taguel, and the ones that he could find didn't make much sense. Food offerings, being gentle and polite, giving wide berths, and especially making sure to avoid the ears entirely, all of that seemed reasonable but the reason it would be necessary to keep in mind didn't seem to check out. Why would he have been trying to give her food? He didn't know how to talk to her, let alone try to buy her a meal! Yet he kept pressing on, hoping that he would find something that would allow him to not make the same mistakes a second time, if there was one.
He ultimately ended up discovering someone's personal blog, aptly titled My Life with the Last Taguel, written by a young man who had met her in a similar situation but had worked to find common ground with her. He spoke from his personal experiences, starting at the point of literally being trampled down by her and ending with pictures of them out doing things that only the closest of friends would do. "I won't pretend like I am some expert on taguel," he wrote, "but I do know that I know more about being friendly with one than just about any other human could."
"This dude's got it good," Gaius remarked as he read through post after post written by the young man, almost in awe of how he'd taken a chance meeting and turned it into a wonderful friendship despite a basic language barrier. "If I ever met him, I'd have to ask him how he managed to get anywhere with her. She didn't seem interested in trying to understand me, even a little."
That night, after the library closed, Gaius made his way to that town's train station, knowing it would be empty and that he could slip onto a train rather easily to make his way down into Ylisstol. If he was going to run into the taguel again, the capital of the halidom had to be the best place for it to happen, and he wanted to take what he'd gleaned from that man's blog posts and put it into action.
He slept on the train once he was on board, the guard who came by to check tickets looking at him slumbering and deciding not to disturb him to see his valid boarding pass. That was rather typical on the overnight rides, and Gaius was very much aware that he was lucky to not get kicked off the train at the next stop. Perhaps the guard knew deep down that he didn't have a ticket but never boarded the train to cause chaos while riding, so he was ultimately harmless even while acting illegally.
The ride to Ylisstol took until after sunrise, when the train began to come to stations that were once again swarming with people going about their daily business. Gaius was woken up by the guard after getting into the heart of the city, the man asking him quietly if they were approaching his destination after his night's ride. Although disoriented slightly from having been awoken from his deep sleep, Gaius was aware enough to know that when the guard mentioned being deep in Ylisstol that it meant he did need to get off the train at any given time, and he thanked the man for his service before slipping off at the next station.
Amidst the bustling crowds trying to get onto trains heading out of the city, Gaius kept an eye out for the long ears of the taguel woman, hoping that she would be once again stumbling through a busy train station on her way somewhere. He knew his journey had next to no chance of bearing any fruit, but even just another glimpse of the last taguel would have been enough to satisfy him, if not getting to interact with her a second time. His path took him out of the train station and into the streets of the capital city of the halidom, people unaware they were walking alongside a criminal passing him by as they went on their way.
He ended up outside of a grand cathedral in the downtown area, a blossoming memorial to the fallen exalt standing outside of its gates. While Gaius had no attachment to the exalt himself, he knew that losing her had been a great loss to the overall population of Ylisse, and he knelt down at the memorial to pray before going any further. As he opened his eyes after his quick prayer for forgiveness for his actions and understanding that he was only doing the best he could, something in the middle of the flowers caught his eye.
It was a picture of the last taguel, her arms wrapped around the exalt and them both smiling for the camera, if only barely so. The warmth he felt radiating from that image was enough to heat his face and cause him to look around for anyone spying on him, before he reached out and grabbed the picture, to get a closer look at it. There was something written at the bottom, penned in language he couldn't understand, but the message was clear regardless: she, the last taguel, had lost a friend in the exalt, and she wanted that to be known.
"Must suck, having no one who understands you," Gaius muttered, putting the picture back and standing up, looking at the memorial once more before heading into the cathedral, hoping that he'd find more luck inside. As the doors closed behind him, the very same taguel he was searching for came to the memorial, her arms full of different breeds of flowers as the man she'd befriended walked beside her, speaking out exactly what he saw in words she couldn't comprehend.
Life, after all, was full of chance meetings and missed connections, and when Gaius left the cathedral with no leads on the taguel's whereabouts, she was already gone.
A/N: idk, I have a fond spot for Panne and I have a fonder spot for taguel lore, and Gaius got to be my guinea pig in interacting with that stuff for this fic.