As frequently as his journeys take him to the Moonglade, the Crescent Isle isn't a destination Kvasir travels to often.

There's no particular reason for it, really; just like any other part of the Moonglade, the Crescent Isle is vibrant with life, yielding myriad types of strange herbs and fruits and flowers, each of them rich with different nutrients and properties all waiting to be tapped into. He's sure he might have been once or twice in his teenage years; if he stops and forces himself to dig deeply enough through his muddled mess of memories, he's confident he can call to mind visions of bamboo forests and the gentle sea, hazy and distant, but there all the same, buried deep within the ruins of his brain. Of course, it could just as easily be a desperate wish for familiarity, a wish to parse something from blank spaces.

It's hard to say, nowadays, but Kvasir won't linger on it too deeply-- half the reason he caved and took a boat out here despite preferring the mindlessness of wandering was to venture so far across Charon that his guilt couldn't chase him, that all his lingering worries in the wake of the World Crown couldn't hunt him down.

It's sobering to forage; something about sifting for plants, looking for familiar flowers he can use in medicine works wonders for his brain, the fine details occupying spaces emotion no longer can. Properties, taxonomy, medicinal merit, synergy with other plants, negative reactions with other samples-- all of the details mesh together, overpowering, demanding all of his attention, logic forging such a strong wall that emotion has no crevice to bleed through. It's easy-- it always comes so easily, just to focus on this, to channel his energy into helping others and doing little else.

Damp grass quietly crunches beneath his feet as Kvasir approaches a moonlit lake, the clusters of bamboo receding around the edges, reflections gently swaying over the illuminated water. He pauses for a moment, glancing about the area for anything particularly strange-- when a blossom by the side of the lake happens to catch his eye.

It's purple, deep purple-- nearly dark as the night, a starless void of thin, curling petals, hardly even catching the light of the moon it blooms up toward. It's ethereal, otherworldly, and... Kvasir has never seen anything quite like it. He's quick to scramble for his journal, already ready to take notes, ready to sketch out something rudimentary so he can keep track of whatever this is. It's not every day he encounters an entirely new plant, after all.

"And what, precisely, are you...?" he mumbles to himself, looking over this strange little flower.

Akari is quiet as he wanders through the forests of his youth. They were quiet, as they had been ever since the day his world ceased to turn as it once had. Only the sounds of distant water and small animals to be heard through the stalks of gently swaying bamboo.

Once, the distant sound of people could be heard, even this far into the woods. The sounds of life, of home, a village of faces he had loved so dearly. Once. But no longer. Now, the houses that had once made his universe sit empty, some already falling to decay and rot with no one to maintain them. The village is a graveyard. The forest is quiet.

How many times had Akari traced this path? Dozens, hundreds, thousands, though his feet had been smaller and he had never been alone. But those years were gone now.

He hadn’t really intended to come back here, at least not so soon after his last visit. But when he was in the area of the Crescent Island, he had a tendency to wander here. Akari supposed it made sense, in a way, that inevitably his feet would carry him home. It was a good reminder of why he had travelled so far to begin with, what exactly he was doing in the first place.

At the very least, he was running low on Hizuki’s flower. It would be good to pick up some more.

That thought is what draws him through the woods from his village to the edges of a placid lake, where he had awoken those many moons ago. He is prepared to mourn once again, and do his gathering, but the sight of someone else by the banks of the water brings him pause.

He was... Supposed to be alone. So then who was this?

Akari darts forward, quickly, his steps snapping a branch undertow, but he pays it no mind. No, the first concern on his mind is making sure this stranger does not touch the plant he is so closely observing–

Not that one. Anything but that--

He grabs the stranger’s wrist and stares down at him with dark, intense eyes.

Part of the benefits of being a foxfolk is the slight additional keenness of hearing; when you bear the features of a creature with refined senses, it's only natural that you'd have just slightly sharper ones yourself. It isn't always a blessing, of course-- really, Kvasir considers it his own special hell when he's out in a city, where all the sounds coalesce at once into one big overstimulating mess--, but it does have its benefits out here in a place like this.

For once, though, it does little to serve him well, for as soon as he hears a branch snap a short distance away, there's a hand encircling his wrist and a stranger standing over him, a frantic intensity darkening his entire face.

All Kvasir can do for a second is blink, frozen in some mixture of shock and uncertainty. Wherever this stranger had come from, he'd been impossibly quick, and there's a fire in that dahlia-dark gaze that Kvasir is very, very confident he does not want to challenge. He knows when there is a fight he can and cannot win, and he is not entirely sure he wants to try anything with a stranger who'd charged at him so quickly, so clearly hellbent on stopping him from doing... something.

"...h-hello?" he begins uncertainly, though he's quick to amend his tone, not wishing to show signs of how startled he really is. "I will say, friend, if I've done something to upset you, I apologize, though I would really like to know what that is."

The strange, fox-like man’s hesitance and fright gives Akari pause. He quickly lets go of his hand, though he does not back away as perhaps would be polite. He hadn’t really meant to frighten him, then again, maybe he had. Better to be frightened away than to make a potentially deadly mistake.

He struggles to figure out what to do when the stranger begins speaking to him. The smartest solution would be to dig through his bag to bring out his pencil and paper to write his warnings, but there’s a part of Akari that feels too flustered to do the logical but tedious thing. Instead, after a long pause where he merely stares the stranger down, he raises his hands to try and speak.

‘You do not want to touch those, they are poisonous and can irritate the skin.’ He warns with a frown marring his face. ‘This place is abandoned for a reason, why are you here? How did you find this lake?’ No one came by this lake and these woods anymore. Word of an entire village dying in a single night had spread to the other locals like wildfire, warning them away.

Akari was fairly certain he had also heard tale of a dark eye’d ghost wandering around these parts, though he had mixed feelings of being labeled as a ghost.

Maybe it was an accurate description…

'Have you not heard the warnings?'

Some of the tension slowly begins to ebb away from Kvasir's body as the stranger withdraws his hand, the phantom feeling of a foreign and sudden touch slowly beginning to fade, even though the stranger does not step back, those dark eyes like the oil that lights a lamp, burning, alive with an intensity that's almost indescribable. The silence that sits in the air between them is practically unbearable as this stranger just stares, those ink-dark eyes contemplative, turning over some unknown thought in his head, and then--

Kvasir pauses as the stranger lifts his hands, everything clicking into place as he studies the motions, the quick gestures-- he thinks back to the hand signs his father taught him as a child, the language spoken by those with no ability to speak themselves. The importance of it had been hammered into him very early on, especially with the number of patients they'd see who could not speak or could not hear or simply had spells where they could not bring themselves to use their voices.

Oh.

Oh!

"I see," he says slowly, glancing back down at the flower by the water. It makes sense it'd be poisonous-- it hardly looks the most friendly of flowers, after all. "Thank you for the warning, friend. I... do not intend to cause any trouble. I merely happened upon here while mindlessly traveling."

He pauses for a moment, studying the stranger's hand gestures some more, tilting his head curiously.

"I... warnings? I'm afraid not," Kvasir gives a bit of a sheepish smile, still clearly uneasy. "I'm not exactly from here-- I'm a traveling medic. Just... looking around this area, in search of plants and the like. Ah, my name is Kvasir Sigurros-- it's lovely to meet you...?"

He's quick to move his hands as he speaks his name, forming the signs his father taught him to help represent his own name so very long ago.

There is a moment of surprise that flashes on Akari’s face when this stranger immediately seems to recognize his hand signals and responds in kind to his words. He wasn’t very used to people understanding his form of communication, but he could not say it was an unpleasant surprise. If the situation were a bit different, he’d likely be delighted by the opportunity to have a long conversation with someone else for the first time in… He didn’t even know how long it had been. But this was not the time for such frivolities. He lets the surprise drop from his expression as it morphs back into something more neutral, a little guarded, and he listens to the stranger’s reply.

Ah… So he was a foreigner, which made sense from his appearance. It was strange that he had not passed through one of the nearby towns before stumbling onto this particular lake, but Akari supposed it was not totally out of the realms of possibility.

That meant Akari had the grim task of telling him, this Kvasir, about the grim truth he’d unwittingly stumbled onto.

’This place is a grave, there once stood a village nearby this lake, but no longer. The living do not often trespass here, now.’ He explained with a grim expression. ’Anything you find here will likely have been fed with the blood of the dead, including this lake.’

This lake, this place, which has haunted his grimmest dreams. The ones where he is forced to remember everything he once had. Everything he’d never have again…

Akari shakes himself out of those thoughts, turning his mind to the present. Coming here always made him dwell, but now wasn’t the time to sink into those dark memories. There would be time for that, later, as there would be a time to mourn and a time to make things right again…

Later.

’...My name is Akari. I am the only one who remains in this place.’

Ah. So that would explain the silence.

A long, quiet moment passes where Kvasir glances around at the dismal area, at the eerie stillness of the lake, at the dark floral sentries that bloom around it; the longer he spends just processing everything, drinking in the minutiae of his surroundings, the easier it is to see how everything clicks into place, fitting the very description Akari provides. There are no tombstones, no ashes, none of the traditional makings of a graveyard, but oh, does it feel like one all the same. There's a greater sorrow in its abandonment, in the fact that only one person has been left behind, and doing anything to honor the dead is far too great an undertaking for one man.

All Kvasir can manage is a bitter nod, briefly, his teeth worrying his lower lip in an uncharacteristic display of unease. When he lifts his gaze, there's sorrow festering in that forest-green gaze, an apology sewn into that ring of gold.

"I... I am so sorry, Akari," he begins, voice strained. Of course, even a venture taken to clear the mind, taken to run from guilt and grief, would still lead him right into the arms of death and ruin. "...I... apologize for stumbling into this place. I mean no disrespect, I assure you."

He lets out a quiet, uneasy sigh, still searching for the right thing to say.

"...My attention is easily seized by unfamiliar plants, is all," Kvasir finally adds, managing a weak smile, though it does not linger long, seriousness returning to his face in a quick and easy rush. "I'm always looking for anything with potential medicinal properties, and I... I thought looking into something unfamiliar might yield some potential results."

A slow nod comes when Kvasir apologizes for wandering into this place, but Akari’s eyes are not on him. Instead, he looks to the water, watching where the still waters meet mud and dark flowers bloom.

His sister had been here once. But like so many mortals before her, all she had left in her wake was dirt and flowers.

She had never gotten a proper grave. Maybe it was better she hadn’t. Akari refused to think of her with words like passed on or deceased. He couldn’t, not when she wasn’t really gone. Even if he could not see her, he knew she had not really left his side. Even if sometimes her whispers turned to the idea of him moving on–

He… No. That just wasn’t an option. There was nothing to move on from. She wasn’t gone. She wasn’t.

One day, he would avenge the lives taken from them.

‘It is fine,’ He signals to Kvasir, ‘The living no longer tread here, not even I, not as often as I should. Unless you passed through one of the local villages, you could not have known what happened.’ When he finally looks back at Kvasir, his eyes are darkened with grief but steady.

His grieving was an old wound. It constantly bled a sluggish trickle of dark liquid down his side. It always lingered on the periphery of his consciousness. It was a chronic pain. He woke up with it. Slept with it. Lived with it, but only barely.

Some days he felt like the grief was himself. Like it had overtaken the man he used to be. Given time, he would come to remember himself, even if the grief felt like it would carry more of him with it every time it rose to crash against the shore and ebbed away, like sand disappearing into the ocean.

‘That flower… It does have strange properties. But touching it can be enough to cause abrasions on the skin.’

He hadn’t known that the first time he grasped onto those dark petals. He had been almost shocked to see the angry reddened skin they left in their wake.

Akari had been less shocked by the way they burned as they slid down his throat the first time.

It was like some animal instinct in him. Some rage he couldn’t name drove him that night. But when he heard Hizuki’s voice in his ears, she pleaded with him...

He handled them with gloves now. Dried them and kept them to make tea. They were easier to keep that way, but he could not recommend that someone else do the same as he had.

Unconsciously, he touches the pads of his fingers to his throat, absently thinking of what scars could not be seen from the outside of his skin but were surely there nonetheless.

Guilt still festers in Kvasir's expression even as Akari signs that it's fine, that he had no way of knowing the history that stained the earth and waters of this place-- it's hard to shake it, even knowing he speaks the truth. He's always tended to favor the quieter paths on his journeys, weaving out of the way of settlements more often than not, far happier to savor the sound of nature than he is to bother with human chatter. The need to dodge other people has felt a bit more pressing since he left Bleakfort, too; it's easier to clear his head with the company of the earth and sky alone, after all.

But even knowing that he had no word of warning, he can't shake the feeling that he's trampled upon sacred ground, tread upon the ashes of the dead with open disregard. He'd hardly be surprised if Akari had elected to regard him with far more scorn-- Kvasir would feel the same way had something like this happened way back when in the days of his second home, where the ashes of the dead were carefully packed away with lotus seeds and sent to Niloufar, in hopes that their souls would flourish a second time as one of the goddess's beloved flowers. Even accidental steps upon a graveyard were steps upon the dead all the same.

Even so, Akari is not angry, at least not outwardly, and it is not Kvasir's place to tell a stranger how to feel.

"I see," he finally says, evening out his voice as well as he can, ironing out the wrinkles of remorse cast across his tone. "I promise you I will not be so careless again, Akari."

Contemplation seeps into the open spaces left in Kvasir's expression as Akari continues signing, his brow furrowing at the mention of strange properties, at the way Akari's hand rises to brush against his throat, the gesture seemingly unconscious. Just what manner of properties could he be referring to, precisely? And if this flower was so poisonous, then... why, exactly, was Akari so well-acquainted with it?

"...you seem quite familiar with this flower," he says carefully, gauging Akari's reaction as he speaks. "Ah, what... manner of properties were you referring to, beyond the toxicity, if you don't mind me asking?"

‘Thank you.’ Comes the easy reply when Kvasir promises to be less careless. Though anger and near-panic had first seized Akari when he saw someone about to touch Hizuki’s flowers, after a moment to calm himself he realized there was very little to be angry about. This Kvasir had not meant any harm, and had in fact done nothing to trample on this place.

It wasn’t his fault he didn’t know. Akari imagined in a few years, when the surrounding villages moved on and forgot about the tragedy that had happened here, he may be the only one to remember. No one else would have a reason to continue mourning after all.

And when he died, there would be no one.

‘...It first bloomed on the night of the massacre here.’ Akari explains, albeit reluctantly. ‘I do not know how or why, only that I have never seen anything like it before. As for it’s properties… It seems to have some kind of hallucinogenic quality.’ He isn’t sure how else to explain what he hears when he drinks of this flower. Other than just that, a hallucination. Even if he knows that every word whispered into his ear is painfully real.

He does not explain how he knows this.

Though to a trained doctor, by this point, it may be fairly obvious how he knows.

Ordinarily, when provided with information on a plant like this, Kvasir's first instinct would be to go and start writing-- to reach for his journal and sketch, diagramming and making note of every component he can. He'd scribble the properties down, making note of any merits found between the toxicities, all before putting together a quick few sentences on the plant's vexing origins. It's his usual procedure whenever he encounters a new plant.

But not this time-- instead, Akari's signs just make him pause.

He narrows his eye just slightly as he watches Akari's hands still, the motions falling still so easily despite the weight of the words they carried. He seems to know, too, just what pieces he's left for Kvasir to put together-- his expressions do not reveal much, but there is some indistinguishable sense of knowing all the same. A heavy sigh falls from Kvasir's lips as he fixes Akari with the most withering glare he can muster, his arms folded across his chest, viridian eye burning with what can only be called deep disapproval.

"You are extraordinarily acquainted with its properties despite having discouraged me so," he says, voice sharp with that same edge. "...Don't tell me you actively interact with it? Even knowing its dangers? It doesn't take a doctor's knowledge to know that's a terrible idea, Akari."

Akari stills like the surface of the water near them, his whole body stopping as his eyes linger on the flowers between him and Kvasir.

He hated looking at them. Yet he could not bare to have someone else near them. They were all he had left of his sister, and his greatest reminder that she was gone. Gone. Gone. She was gone and he was here, and now the only way anyone would know her would be through these flowers.

Hizuki would have loved to meet Kvasir. She always enjoyed it when strangers came to the village after all. She would walk with them, asking as many questions as they allowed. Seeing someone who clearly was not from the Crescent Isle would have delighted her without end. Hizuki would have adored speaking of the local plant life with Kvasir, just as she would have loved to hear just the smallest bits of stories about the world beyond their forest and their lake. She would have loved and loved and loved some more, her heart and smile as endless as they were.

Akari’s heart was not as vast. His love not so all-encompassing. But he was what was left of her now. Her face and her eyes lived on in him, but never her smile. Akari was what was left of Hizuki. He was her lesser shadow and her walking grave. Akari and her flowers.

Movement comes slowly back to Akari. His fingers but a twitch of a ripple on the water before he is able to make words again.

’I am aware of the dangers of these flowers, Doctor, but care little for them.’ The dark-eyed man eventually replies to Kvasir. ’These are all I have now of my sister, and my only avenue to hear her still. You may warn me of the danger in that, but it matters not to me. The benefit far outweighs the damage they have done.’

What did it matter if Akari would never speak again, after all, if he did not have his sister to converse with? What did it matter if his body was cut down when his life had already been cut short? He may still walk this earth, but it did not mean he was alive. No. He had nothing left for him here. Why care what the poison of these flowers did to him when his only desire was to see justice done and then… leave.

No. It didn’t matter what that poison did to him.

It didn’t matter at all.

Kvasir has seen a lot of strange and wild cases in all his years as a medic.

He could not name all of them, no-- so many of his memories have slipped out of his reach, as indistinguishable as grains of sand in the vastness of the desert, and so many things he knows he should remember clearly only linger as mere fragments, now. He's seen adventurers chase valor over and over again no matter how the world itself decides to crush them down, desperate to know what heroism tastes like; he's seen fools tempt fate with dangerous substances, staring down Death and daring to laugh, somehow reeling when It decides to strike out in retaliation. It is a mere fact of the world that there are those who are not dissuaded by pain or by threat of loss and death, and that it will always be Kvasir's job to do what he can to fix them.

Akari is not like those people. Those eyes, dark as a starless night, yield no desperation for valor's afterglow, and he does not carry the spirit of a man who would stare down Death and carelessly ask for a game of cards. He is not some fool or aspiring hero or any one of the typical individuals Kvasir would anticipate to do something like this, and that is where all of the strangeness of this comes from.

At least, until Akari gives him his answer, hand signs delivered in a silent lament.

Oh. Oh.

"Oh," Kvasir manages, that viridescent eye wide with a storm of feelings-- sorrow and surprise and a regrettable tinge of pity, swirled together with confusion.

Charon is a land of magic, its very veins pulsing with the arcane lifeblood of its gods-- light and dark, earth and space, sea and sky, an entanglement of its overseers' breath. It is no wonder that the plantlife the land yields would be capable of all kinds of strange and mystical things. But a flower like this, that-- if the unspoken implication remains true-- provides an avenue to speak with the deceased...?

"...I am sorry," he whispers at first, voice hushed with guilt and regret and too many other sad little things to name. But then it sharpens, just so, still soft but firm, chiding as his gaze lingers on Akari. "...But I cannot... simply stand idly by and just let you actively continue to interact with something that hurts you. That goes against everything I stand for as a doctor, Akari."

There is a moment of silence, of stillness, when those dark eyes simply look at Kvasir. Where they really look at him, as if truly seeing him for the first time, and they study his every minute expression. But Akari does not take note of the sharpness of his features or the viridian gleam of his eyes. These surface, physical traits mean so little to him.

What he notices is the crease of worry at the corner of his eyes. The frown of distaste twitching at his lips. That knife’s edge look of determination as he decides to stand firm even in the face of all of Akari’s apathy.

‘You are a good doctor.’ He decides. A very good doctor indeed. Perhaps this soul in front of him was like Hizuki in the way he could care for complete strangers so unconditionally. There was love there in that concern, certainly, even for a stranger. A love like steel, firm and undeniable.

Perhaps that sharpened love was like his Mother’s.

But Akari did not need a good doctor. He had a lifetime of love already. He had felt all the cool edges of a love so sharp and persistent. He had basked in the sweeping concern of a gentle soul. And he had outlived them both.

‘There is nothing you can do for me, Good Doctor, nor is there any way that you can stop me. I have chosen my path in life. You are far too late to make me consider changing it now.’ There is no tremor in his fingers as he speaks, only a steady and grim confidence. ‘Your concern would be better placed with your patients, not with I.’

He would not stop what he was doing now. Even if he were not on this path of justice and revenge, he wouldn’t stop taking what he could of these flowers. Not when they meant he could still hear Hizuki’s voice. Her whispers in his ears, her concern, and her guidance. They were…

That was all he had left now.

How in the world could he possibly give that up…?

Kvasir is well-acquainted with how stubborn people can be; he's seen it a hundred times, in younger mercenaries who shy away from treatment because they don't want to admit to their captains that things are worse than they let on, in elders who have no interest in taking medication for natural ailments of age, in children who despise the bitterness of herbs. Tenacity is sewn into the instincts of many, just a part of countless personalities, and he is all too used to navigating around it. It all comes down to knowing people, understanding how they will respond to what you have to say to them, figuring out how to weave between their worries.

Akari is a difficult case, and it is easy to see why; grief is a powerful tether, and it... really is no wonder that he'd cling so steadily to a means of communicating with someone he's lost, and refuse to loosen his hold on his resolve. Kvasir is not so foolish as to think that he can talk him into letting go of something like this in one meeting alone. He'd love to, really, love to be able to talk him into giving up the poison he's readily taking in, but he knows it will not be that easy.

His approach will have to be gentler-- more calculated. If he approaches with the sharpness of a scalpel, expecting a clean cut to get to the heart of the problem, it is inevitable that the shield of bone will throw him off.

"...Akari," he sighs quietly, giving him a somber look. "Just like you've chosen your path in life, I've chosen mine, and mine is one of concern for others. You are included in those numbers, and you will continue to remain included. But... I'm no fool, and I know I... probably can't talk you out of something like this so easily, friend."

Kvasir lets his attention drift over to those flowers by the lake, gaze flitting from their harrowing silhouettes back over to Akari.

"...at the very least... would you let me take note of these flowers? I'd like to at least... keep record of them. I understand if not."