Interlude I Part II: Of Baboons and Religion
The greenhouse's sheer size took him by surprise. The sweeping glass windows encapsulated what felt like a small park. Plants of all varieties lined every wall: some flowering, others budding, some hanging from overhead vines. He would have thought he was outside if it weren't for the curving class ceiling.
A series of picnic benches stood in the middle of the garden, one of which was occupied by a curvaceous Vulpo, who was facing him, with a blue haired Liberi—facing away from him. The two were engaged in what felt like a serious conversation. Regardless, Luke had to admit, both women were incredibly fetching.
Noticing them, the Vulpo waved. "Γειά σας! It's nice to meet you two. My name is Lena, a perfumer, but you may refer to me by my title."
Title? What title? "Lena?" Luke asked hesitantly.
She smiled sweetly. "Perfumer."
He nodded. "Perfumer. Got it." Something in her smile felt incredibly dangerous. Why are all the Vulpos here crazy? He thought, harkening back to his time with Franka.
Content, Perfumer returned to her conversation with the Liberi sitting before her. "That will be all, Astesia, you may leave."
"Astesia" stood from the bench and bowed deeply. "Thank you, Miss Perfumer. I am incredibly grateful for all your help."
Luke stepped aside to make way for the timid woman. She whispered her thanks as she passed through the door.
The place didn't look anything like a psych eval location. Sure, it was an Aromatherapist's clinic, but when he thought about it, should an aromatherapist be conducting such a task?
He pulled at his partner's ears, much to her irritation. "Hey, Grani. Are you sure this—"
"I heard you snuck out again."
Jolting upright, Luke stood stock still. He groaned. There, standing beside him, was the last person he wanted to see—Folinic.
"About that…"
Ignoring him, the feline medic roughly spun him around, leaning in close to sniff at his hospital gown. She pulled back, glaring up at him. "I knew it. You're smoking again. How many times do I have to tell you that smoking is bad for your health?"
"One time too many…" Luke mumbled.
Perfumer giggled, as though expecting the verbal confrontation. "Did you just figure that out, Louisa? My, your senses are awfully dull for someone as young as yourself."
Folinic simply brushed past Luke, taking a seat on the far side of the bench with a sigh, seemingly content to let Perfumer's quip slide. She produced a tablet from a satchel she had slung around her shoulders and began tapping away while Perfumer milled about, crushing petals and mixing oils.
A sudden realization struck Luke. "Wait, how'd you know?" he asked the older medic
"That you're a smoker?"
"Yeah."
Perfumer chuckled. "By scent, of course! I could smell you coming a mile away! No harm intended."
He waved aside her concerns. "None taken."
"Thank you," she said with an amicable smile as she returned to her business. "Please, have a seat."
Not wanting to appear rude, Luke sat opposite of Folinic with Grani sitting beside him.
"As I mentioned previously, my name is Lena, but you may call me Perfumer. I see you're already familiar with Loui—Folinic. I'll let her take the reins."
Folinic nodded gratefully. "Thank you for loaning us your garden, Lena. Luke, I will be administering your psychological evaluation today. Unlike most medical diagnoses, a psychological evaluation lacks a proper quantitative scale. Thus, it can only be as accurate as the patient is honest. It's imperative that you be entirely truthful."
"Guh…" The mere thought of divulging his secrets to Folinic while in front of a total stranger made him feel sick.
"We've decided to administer the evaluation in combination with aromatherapy," Folinic said, gesturing to an incense machine, "in the hope it will ease your mind throughout the process."
That certainly explained the exotically enchanting scents in the air. Luke had to admit, a hint of lavender certainly was very calming.
Folinic then turned to Grani, addressing her with a polite nod. "This is something that must stay between Luke, Lena, and I. Ms. Grani, may I ask you to step outside for a moment?"
Grani's face fell, but she stood nevertheless. However, Luke gently pushed her back into her chair, shaking his head. "No, she can stay. I trust her."
Folinic raised a curious brow. "Is that alright with you, Ms. Grani?"
She nodded enthusiastically. "O-of course!"
Sighing, Folinic shook her head. "Well, let's start off with the basics. Please, tell me about yourself. How was life growing up?"
Growing up… Luke leaned back against the bench, crossing his arms with a sigh. "Growing up, huh…?" he asked, gazing up at the glass roof silently. Words long forgotten wormed their way into his brain, consuming all before him.
"That Lucius boy…" a woman tutted with a shake of her head. "Such an ill mannered child."
Another woman tittered with indignation. "I reckon he believes he'll get off scot free." She looked around furtively before leaning towards her clique, whispering. "He's the Master's son, you know."
A passing man stopped dead in his tracks. "Is he really?" he gasped.
The gossiping women hushed him.
"Quiet!" one of them hissed.
The original speaker motioned her group towards her. "Now this is all hearsay, but I've heard that he's adopted…"
The man rubbed his chin. "He does look rather foreign…"
The second woman scoffed into a laugh. "I can't blame his parents, who would want such a hideous child?"
"Oh please, you're too much!" the other woman said, slapping her friend with a handbag. "Though I can't help but agree…"
"Hush. There he is now."
Gentle shaking roused Luke from his flashback. Blinking several times, he shook his head and noticed Grani's slender hand on his shoulder. She was looking up at him with concern.
"You okay?" she asked.
"Sorry, I was lost in thought," Luke said. "You wanted to discuss my formative years?"
Folinic nodded. "Yes, if possible. How were they?"
"Shit," Luke said without hesitation. "I mean, everything was all sorts of shit."
"Care to explain?"
"Well, you see…"
First off, let me start by informing you that I have, in essence, the prudence of a six year old. You see, I was adopted—well, adopted is a bit of a stretch, as there were no authorities to hand me over, and I didn't have any parents to legally put me up for adoption. It was a huge mess, really. To clarify, it still is a huge mess, because Gramps didn't pick me out from an orphanage like a vegetable from the fuckin produce aisle. He essentially stumbled upon my soggy corpse on some goddamned beach in Yan or something. Or was it Higashi? I'm pretty sure it's—I know Higashi doesn't have any beaches, Folinic. That's why I posed my last sentence as a question rather than a statement.
As I was saying, Gramps found me on that beach and I guess he decided to take me in, because I remember waking up to a completely foreign environment. Well I guess everything was foreign at that point…
Imagine that: waking up in some blasted temple in the middle of fuckin nowhere. Well, it wasn't really nowhere, I suppose. Gramps lived in the mountains of central Higashi—he still does—but it certainly felt like he lived nowhere, because everyone around me was already old and decrepit. So as you can imagine, I got pretty lonely.
It wasn't all that bad, really. Kids my age would come and go with the seasons—religious folk—people like that. And let me tell you, just because a kid was religious, didn't mean they were kind, or even moral. Just because a kid was raised in a religious environment, or community, didn't necessarily mean they were upstanding members of said community. You see, in Higashi, religious values don't necessitate a sense of integrity. On the contrary, my observations seem to contradict that expectation: Religious folk in Higashi were the least genuine folk out there. That's not to say that all religious folk are disingenuous—I'm sure there are many, many people who are both religious and genuine. Maybe I happened upon a bad batch—experimental sample bias, the likes of that.
I digress. Those pilgrimage kids were terrible—extraordinarily bad apples, as they say. They came in groups—cohorts, I liked to call them. Cohorts of baboons. I'm not entirely sure why or for what they came to Gramps's place, but from what I gathered, it was like some sort of summer camp for them—a seasonal camp, I suppose. They came twice a year—the same kids—every year, on end, with some variation. Maybe some kid got sick and died, and some other kid took his place, I don't know. I say this because girls weren't allowed on these camps, far as I could tell. They never brought any girls with them, at least. Not that I saw.
I mean, whatever.
But by god, should you look at those cohorts go! On the first day, the moment they stepped off the bus, these goddamned baboons would stratify into different castes based on size and appearance—a microcosm of society, I suppose. Some fucking Lord of the Flies shit. Anyways, I was always at the bottom of the system because I had a funny face, or something like that. To be honest, I don't really know why Gramps put me in with them. Probably something to do with "getting to know kids my age," or some bullshit like that.
Shower time was a fuckin travesty, I tell'ya—an absolutely travesty. A man could hardly wash himself without getting the whip. Kids in the upper caste would mill about the shower stalls, marauding in the shadows like the fricking bogeyman—luring you into this false sense of security. And every night, just when you'd think that you got away whip free—smack! Those dullards would leap from their hiding places and snap your ass with their wet towels. Boy did it hurt. By the end of the night, your ass would be glowing red from all the whipping and snapping.
It was fascinating, in some aspects. You could tell which caste a boy stood in by the color of their cheeks. Of course, the top dogs' asses were peachy keen—they never got the lickings, but the poor guys below them would get a few, and the guys below them would get more. It essentially progressed similarly, with each caste's asses getting progressively redder. My ass was as red as that blasted reindeer's nose, but I didn't really mind. After a while you kinda get used to it, and it becomes something more akin to a chore than a punishment. Like, just bend over and tell'em to get it over with, you know? I had better shit to do anyways. Besides, kids will be kids. By the way, that's why I call them baboons: A bunch of deranged screaming followed by ripe asses. And that's not even half of it. It was a huge mess—a blazing mess, really.
In retrospect, it was kind of perverse—the stratification of the cohorts, I mean, not the whipping. Though, I suppose that would also constitute a perverse description. I digress, I think that's when I realized how fucked up the world is. Think about it: these kids were segregating themselves along racial lines. Ultimately, I had no idea where I was, who I was, or how I got there. I was in a real bad place, you know? It was a huge conundrum—a behemoth of a conundrum—since neither I nor the baboons knew what I was, racially that is, I surmised that my caste was decided on account of my funny looking face instead of my race. To reiterate, these are kids I'm talking about. This ad hoc caste system is something I would expect from adults, but to think that their dogmatic practices had metastasized to children: That kills me. Kids should be free to socialize as they please, not brainwashed into a dogmatic cult.
It wasn't long before I met the parental baboons, and by god did everything suddenly make sense. You should have seen the way they acted. It's no wonder their kids turned out so poorly. These kids, the adults that is, were so fake they could have been actors for heaven's sake. They would greet each other like old friends who haven't met in a long while: shaking hands, giving out hugs, trading greetings, shit like that. But whenever they met an Ægir mother, or a Sarkaz father, or even worse a mixed kid, everything would change. Sure, they would smile or force a laugh—make small talk that their heart clearly wasn't in—but the moment they saw a fellow, they would spew some bullshit excuse and go converse with them for a fucking hour. It sickened me. It still sickens me. If you want to be kind, then be kind. If you want to be a fucking degenerate, then do it! But don't pretend to be kind if you don't mean it.
Gutless cowards like them really get me going. How stupidly self absorbed do you have to be to not only have horrible preconceptions based purely on a fluke of birth, but to also lack the integrity to admit it simply because you're too obsessed with what others think about you. What a clown show.
It's utterly despicable how these parents decide who's worthy of their time based entirely on race. I'd understand if we were morally corrupt, that's something else entirely, but what'd we do to be ostracized?
Nothing.
That's what—nothing.
It's all based on a fluke of birth. Bullshit. It's all a mess of bullshit. All these fucking parents should be hung in public. Let them be stoned to death, I don't give a shit.
I think the only reason people gave me the time of day was because of Gramps. Gramps was a sight to behold when he was mad! He would suddenly fly off the handle like a madman, beating kids, and me, whenever we acted out. Though I have to admit, I usually deserved it. The lickings became less frequent as I got older. I supposed he figured a young adult was old enough to regret their own decisions, and boy was he right.
One time, I went around the temple smashing all the pots with my head and made a huge mess of the place. Even now, I struggle to recall exactly why I lost it, but I do remember feeling an extreme sense of guilt. I must've done something really despicable and gotten told off for it. Not really surprising, considering it was me after all.
Isn't that funny? How the brain works, that is. You remember the fallout of an event, but not the actual event itself. Anyways. I suppose, to them, the adults I mean, I'm a freaking bedlamite—a psycho. But I'm okay with that. I'd rather die a fool than a dogmatic phony. The fool loves completely, you know? No need to RSVP, you are cordially invited. I Read that from one of my favorite poems. It would have been cool if it was Madame Ling's prose, but it's not.
Anyways, I thought I would never find a person who was unconditionally kind to everyone: Someone who actually cared for those around them, but then I met Grani. You should have seen her when I first arrived on the Landship. Kids flocked around her, practically begging for her attention, and not only did she take the time to address every single one of them, but she was also genuinely interested in their well being. Isn't that amazing? Grani's really one in a million. I really love that part about her, you know? It's really hard to be a kind person, but for Grani, it just comes naturally.
Luke sighed, satisfied with his long exposition.
"Is… that all…?" Folinic asked, hesitant.
He shrugged. "More or less. There's other stuff, but I'd rather not go into details."
"Then, tell me, who are you?"
Luke leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. He glanced to his side, taking a sudden interest in Grani's boots. "I don't know."
Folinic was quiet for a moment, seemingly lost in thought. "Have you heard of dissociative amnesia?" she asked suddenly.
Luke shook his head. "No, I can't say I have."
She nodded to herself, as if confirming a suspicion. "It's a rare form of Amnesia, found in less than 1% of the population. It's typically caused by an extremely traumatic event, especially in victims of sexual assault," she took at deep breath, "and now you."
Luke sighed. That much was expected. After all, he didn't even know his true name or age.
Folinic continued. "Your psyche is further complicated by a type B personality disorder—a coping mechanism. This is common amongst dissociative amnesiacs. Based on field reports submitted by your team and elements from your story, it appears you suffer from BPD—Borderline Personality Disorder.
"This manifests itself with unusual quirks in personality such as: impulsivity, extremely unstable emotions, inability to form close interpersonal relationships, social isolation, distortion of self image, fears of abandonment, irritability, risky and reckless behavior, self-harm, substance abuse, and other antisocial tendencies.
"I suspect you were abused as a child, but a combination of BPD and desensitization has left you unconcerned with the finer details and the experience as a whole, for which I'm unsure if I should feel concerned or grateful for. Regardless, I cannot be entirely sure, as your lackadaisical recollection leaves too many questions unanswered."
A fog of silence fell over the room as Grani gazed up at him with a mist of concern hazed with uncertainty, eagerly awaiting his response.
Luke merely shrugged with a chuckle. "I figured. That certainly explains a lot."
Folinic glanced askance, catching Perfumer's attention.
She simply smiled.
"Well," Folinic started, returning her attention to Luke, "there are several avenues towards convalescence. The majority of which revolve around recovering your memories, thus riding the need for a coping mechanism and clearing your psyche."
"Okay."
"Among those avenues are varying methods to assist your recovery. You could actively search for clues regarding your past, or you could simply wait and see what happens. Most dissociative amnesiacs will naturally recall their identities after a period of time, but given how long it's been since you were found, you'll remember little if anything.
"There's circumstantial evidence that suggests regular aromatherapy may lead to a faster recovery, but success seems to come on a case-by-case basis. However," she paused, gesturing towards Perfumer. "That's where Lena comes in."
Perfumer clapped her hands together, pleased with having her turn in the spotlight. "Indeed! I am no ordinary Perfumer! By utilizing modern medicine and aromatherapy, I'm able to heal both mind and body. Through experimentation and observation, we found that my aromatics are well suited for psychological treatment."
Folinic thanked her friend with a slight smile. "Regardless, what we do is entirely up to you," she said.
Luke sat in silence, mulling over his options. Of course, he would like to recover his memories, that was without a doubt. However, he wasn't entirely sold on the whole "aromatherapy" thing. On one hand, it sounded like a bunch of hocus-pocus magic bullshit. On the other hand, he would need all the help he could get, even if it came in the form of magic bullshit.
"I need some time to think about it."
"While unfortunate," Folinic sighed. "That is completely understandable."
It seemed like she was expecting an immediate answer. However, this could be a monumental decision for him. It wasn't something he wanted to decide on a whim. "Will that be it?" he asked, eager to blow off some steam.
Folinic nodded. "That'll be all."
Luke stood and, pulling Grani by the hand, hastily made for the exit. Halfway through the doorway, he looked over his shoulders. "You know," he said, catching Folinic's attention, "you're surprisingly agreeable when you aren't badgering me about smoking. Maybe that Prince Charming will come around after all."
Folinic's face exploded into a cloud of red. Reaching down, she slipped a shoe from one of her feet. "Why you…"
Luke slammed the garden door shut just as Folinic hurled her boot towards him. It smacked the door with a sharp thud.
He chuckled, ignoring Grani's stern look of disapproval.
She sighed. "You're impossible, you know that?"
Luke shrugged. "I seem to recall you mentioning that once or twice."
"Yes, and I believe it's worth repeating."
"Sure…" he said, unconvinced.
Grani looked down, taking a sudden vested interest in her feet. "Hey, d-did you really mean that? W-What you told Folinic…" she asked, fiddling with her hair.
There was something remarkably endearing about the way she was acting, and he couldn't help but find her unusually timid reaction attractive. "Of course. You're irreplace—" Luke paused abruptly, turning away from his partner.
Shit. Why did I say that?
Grani's eyes twinkled brightly as a Gigawatt smile illuminated her face. He had never seen such a wide grin on her face, yet somehow it felt natural. "What? I'm what?" she asked, her tail whipping back and forth.
One peek was all he needed: She damn well knew what he had said. Luke hid his growing blush behind his shoulder. "N-nothing!" He coughed, clearing his throat. "I didn't say anything."
Grani pranced around him. Despite his best efforts, she managed to catch a quick glimpse of his flushed face. Gasping excitedly, she thrust her face into his personal space. "Oh my god… Are you blushing?!" she cried, zeroing in on his flushed features. "I can't believe this! You're totally blushing!"
Luke shoved her face away from him, hiding his cheek with his free hand. "N-no, I'm not!"
Undeterred, Grani pressed her soft cheek against the palm of his hand. "Marvy! Camera, I need a camera!"
Before Luke could even blink, Grani had whipped out her phone and had snapped a picture of his red face. He tried to swipe the device from her hands, but she simply danced away from his grasp.
"You…" he growled. "You better hand that over, right now…"
Grani stuck out her tongue, blowing a raspberry. "Blegh!"
The indignation drained from Luke's body in an instant, leaving behind joyful notes of amusement. A slight smile slipped through his ambivalent mask. "You're lucky I'm in a good mood today…"
Scrolling through her gallery, Grani rolled her eyes. "Oh please, you're so melodramatic."
Together, the two settled into a comfortable silence as they made their way back to Luke's room in the medical ward.
"You knew, didn't you?" he asked suddenly.
Pocketing her phone, Grani scratched the side off her cheek sheepishly. "Dr. Kal'tsit filled me in while you were out. Said that your erratic actions weren't yours entirely." She looked away. "I ought to apologize."
He frowned. That was news to him. Grani hadn't done anything that warranted an apology. Besides, even if she had, he'd still refuse to accept it. She could do no wrong in his eyes. "For?"
Her shoulders slumped forward—a sharp contrast to her previous elation. "Giving you the cold shoulder—back in the stadium. I should've stayed by your side, because of that you—"
"It's fine," Luke said, interrupting her. He didn't need Grani blaming herself for his stupid decisions.
She glared up at him. "You could have died!"
"…But I didn't. And it wasn't your fault. Just as it's not your job to protect me—It's mine."
