No pigeons, and now he probably thought she was weird. Oh, well. Auraliese wasn't going to worry about that. He was the guy who'd been looming over the lake with a knife like he was trying to re-enact some fourteen-year-old's epic fanfic tragedy.
She was not going to ask him if he wrote fanfic. Some lines you just didn't cross. "Well, there you go then. See? One normal point in the Vincent column. It tastes kinda like quail, by the way. At least, woods pigeon. Don't eat city pigeon. Just... do not. Anyway, come on. Might as well finish the trail, right? You keep the knife put away, I'll stop telling you about eating local wildlife. How about... tell me one normal fact about you? There's gotta be something, right?"
Cain moved up next to her and they were walking, it felt casual enough and Cain was surprised when he opened his mouth and the words came out so easily.
"'Fraid I'm not exactly your typical man but I suppose... my daddy used to bring me fishing every weekend, it was always quiet and peaceful. We'd go to Old Hickory Lake, I was good at he, he's always tell me what a good job I did when I caught somethin' that was the only time he..." Cain's voice caught. That was the only time he ever told me I did something right. Pain formed in his chest and Cain squashed the memories down, he swallowed hard. "We stopped sometime when I was a teenager"
Okay, so, daddy issues. Auraliese didn't need Vincent to finish the sentence for her to have a pretty good idea of where it was going. That sucked. For him, that was. She supposed she had plenty of her own daddy issues to deal with. Secretly, she suspected everyone did, it was just that the issues themselves varied a bit.
"My mom used to take me camping when I was a kid. Summers, mostly. She'd tell me to put everything I needed in my backpack and we'd go." It always sounded cute if you just left it there, with people who didn't actually camp. Auraliese shrugged, apologetically, because maybe she was doing one of those same sorts of pauses and it was just a little smoother because she'd had more practice at it. "She meant it."
Yup. Auraliese had learned to do without. Didn't bring enough to eat for a week? Better learn to trap squirrels or find somewhere to fish. She liked fishing a lot better.
"I used to like fishing a fair bit, too." There, that was a nice, normal sentence. "So, did you use a pole or just stab 'em with the knife?"
"We used a pole," Cain said, his mind still reeling from the emotional reaction. He hadn't thought about his father in... he didn't know how long. Not since he left him dead. He was surprised when he didn't see his mangled body in his minds eye, but just him and a young boy named Vincent fishing on a lake. Cain shook his head. Thoughts like that wouldn't lead to anything good. "You know, it's not that weird for a man to carry a knife in the woods."
"No, it's not weird for a guy to carry one, it's weird for a guy to crouch over a lake with one like he's trying to murder his own reflection!" Her tone was exasperated, but also amused, because what the heck, it was actually kinda funny - and yeah, he'd called her out and she'd deserved it. Well, that was fine, she could deal with that. It wasn't the first time someone had thought she was odd.
That was... like... her whole life after 9th grade, really. It didn't even really bother her any more. Vincent still seemed a little shell-shocked, like maybe he was processing some things in his own head. It was definitely that look. As someone who also tended to process things in her head, Auraliese tried to give him the space to do it if he didn't want to talk about it, and be there enough that he could if he did, and also offer enough distracting conversation that he could talk about other stuff if he really wanted to.
She wasn't necessarily good at all that, it was just that it was what she was trying.
Her exasperation was funny, hilarious actually. He giggled, his chest actually hurting slightly from the action - when was the last time he'd giggled - but he did now. Bending over slightly and stumbling. God he missed laughing like this.
"Yeah I guess you don't rightly see that every day do ya'" Cain wheezed. He genuinely tried to think of he last time he'd laughed liked that it hadn't been since...
Not since Ash.
He braced himself, tensing in anticipation of pain. But none came, there was a dullness yes, an old wound bothering him still. But Cain didn't find himself spiraling into oblivion. He didn't feel anger or misery at the old memory. Just... grief, but a dull grief, one who's sharpness had been lost by time and circumstance. Cain didn't know what that meant, but he knew right in this moment, he could let himself laugh.
"Haven't laughed like this in a while," he found himself saying out loud. He hoped Auraliese didn't notice his internal turmoil too much, though strangely he found eh wouldn't mind if she did too much.
Okie dokie, so Vincent was having a little giggle there. It seemed like the sort of laughter that came on the edge of hysteria, though fortunately it seemed to be the going-out edge rather than the going-in edge. She kind of wondered what had been on his mind earlier, with the whole knife weirdness thing that he was pretending was not a thing, but if he didn't want to talk about it... well, she wasn't a therapist. Maybe he'd broken through, and that was what all the giggles were about.
Well, she wasn't going to stop him. She offered a shrug and a vague smile, in the sort of no big deal, happens to everyone manner, even though it really didn't, but pointing that out wasn't going to help either one of them, and he did have a knife. He didn't really seem like the murdery sort, though, at least, not as far as she could tell.
It was possible that Auraliese was a bad judge of this particular aspect of character.
She decided that she wasn't going to think about that. If he wanted to murder her - well, she had bear spray, she supposed, and honestly, the world was weird enough that whatever happened was going to happen, with or without her input, and she wasn't about to change what she wanted to do just because someone might be a little murdery on the inside.
"So what's the first thing you're gonna do, when you get back?"
