Leave it to Kyle to have discovered this room and immediately become infatuated with the flames of possibility in the hearth. He has a very good understanding of his contract with the Hearth, and attends to the fire with his eyes as if it were an old friend. In fact he's curled up right next to it, dressed in his often-seen suit but with his top hat off and held in his lap. He leans back against a stone of the fireplace and hums pleasantly now and then, happily warm. Call it a symptom of his state of Cat that he often cleaves to things and places that are warm.
As usual, it takes Gisa a considerable time to get from there to here. Not because she's slow, not exactly, but because she seems to be considering the halachic consequences of every footfall. She trundles in, slowly, and settles down next to but a bit off from Kyle, then leans down and unlaces her boots, sliding her feet out of them and placing the soles of her feet flat on the cavern floor. The eye-flames go out for a moment, and the ponderous sigh that comes from her sounds like the product of an overworked blacksmith's bellows. Siiiigh.
Interesting fact: when one of her boots topples over onto its side after she takes it off, there isn't a sole on that boot, just a strap across the arch to hold it in place. It just covers the tops of her feet? For some reason?
Kyle of course notices her but at first says nothing. In fact he says nothing for a while, watching her sit, remove her footwear, and then ponders the footwear itself. Slowly he stretches one of his own feet, wearing as it is a black shoe, and touches her foot with the toe. Then he kind of tap-nudges it, to see how solid her foot is. Huh! He relaxes again and huddles up against her because she is another source of warmth, and says in a sleepy-happy way, "Shalom." Smile.
Her foot is very solid: hard-fired ceramic that's stained dark on the bottom with all of the earth ground in from where she's walked across multiple continents. The sole of Kyle's shoe goes thunk against her clay foot. When Kyle huddles up next to her, she is, in fact, a source of warmth: Gisa's furnace heart flares inside of her, and her hand, ruffling his hair and petting him absently, is a gentle, soothing warmth. His greeting makes the flames in her eyepits come back on, however briefly, and then it disappears again as the shin on her forehead glows all the more brightly. "Shalom, my friend," she answers him, a low rumbling in her chest following. Something that sounds like what would happen if a desert could purr, or if sand battered against a window in a kibbutz.
"Yeah, that's right. I said it. Mmm you're warm." Eyes close and his tail wraps around his feet as he curls into an almost-fetal position. Between the fire and the golem, this is presently happy place fo Kyle the Cat. This is doubly true because she's petting him, and his ears gently fold back with every pass only to flap upright again as her hand leaves them. He is a soft-furred little guy. "What's new, Gisa? Been a day or two since I saw you last."
"It pleases me that you did." Elementals are straightforward, you can say this for them, certainly. "Yes. I am warm. I come from the desert." As if this is the most logical thing that's ever been said by anyone at any time anywhere. She continues to slowly pet him, her smooth ceramic fingertips occasionally scritching around his ears. "Not so much, Kyle. I have been working on the problem of Beth's murder. Nana is helping. And Dielle is coming to synagogue with me tonight. She is driving me and asked to come." She pauses, then. "And you, Kyle?"
"I have been driving people back and forth all over the town and I made enough money for my grocery budget. I'm working on rent, but I'll probably get that in another two weeks." All sleepily stated. "I want to help more with Beth's murder. I ended up feeling really bad about what happened to her. Doing that autopsy," if you can call it that, "and seeing all the ways she had been hurt. It was a little like reliving it. Every time I found a new bruise or cut or something I almost felt like I was there watching it done to her." A couple of breaths pass and he adds, "Met a new Lost yesterday named Kip, and Oberon tried to hit on me."
She frowns a little bit at that, as if trying to figure out how driving people all over makes money. "You drive a taxi?" That's how it works. Gently petting his ears still, she listens to him. A big sigh again, one of those huge blacksmith's bellows sighs, that echoes through her chest all the more with him leaning on her. Up close, it isn't quite a blacksmith's bellows, exactly, it's more like a sandstorm trapped inside the ceramic hollow of her chest. "Yes. I felt the same way, performing taharah. I could see everything that happened to her. Putting her back together." Her arm squeezes around him tightly, if briefly, in camraderie. "Tried?"
"Almost. Uber...it's like a taxi service." Kyle's tail lashes out and around in time to his agitation at the Oberon thing. "Tried. Kind of sloppy. I'm not into guys anyway but also the first time I met him he was with some Asian guy named Haruki and I couldn't help thinking like, pick a companion man." He makes an amused noise and adds with a slight purr in his voice as she squeezes him, "I told him cats have spines on their penises and he found other things to talk about after that."
"Ohhh. Yes. I have heard of the Uber." Her clay nose wrinkles up a little bit, though. Look, can you blame her for not really liking to say German words? Her expression smooths right back out, though, and she listens to him talk. Her toes absently wiggle and she keeps petting his hair, scritching his ears. "Ahh. Yes. To feel like a second choice, or maybe that this would be done to you, if you were with him and out, that would be uncomfortable, even if you did like men." Gisa snorts loudly at the end, shaking her head slightly in bemusement. "Do you, or was it just a way to shut him up?" Her tone of voice never really changes throughout. 'So you have spines on your dick? How's the weather?' Oh, goylomim. Never change.
"Oh if I change all the way into a cat I do. Which I can do. But for obvious reason I don't just do in mixed company when I'm talking to people. I mean seriously." Let's see a mohel deal with that mess, eh? Kyle doesn't sound particularly bothered by the topic, and if anything sounds smug and amused. Anyway he's still getting pet and adored, and that satisfies all feline moods. He'd probably answer any question at all posed to him, no matter how outrageous. "On the bright side because of my job I'm convenient for travel. If you ever need to get somewhere in a hurry. Although I don't think you really do 'hurry', do you?"
A little chuckle, there. Gisa laughs, wonder of wonders! "So you were just scaring him off, because he was behaving inappropriately and you were not interested." Goylomim and their understandings of social niceties, gotta love it. And hey, you have to figure there's some mohel out there who's had to deal with something weirder. There have to be Lost rabbis in Israel, right? Cat converts, somewhere along the line? Who knows. More pets. Gisa learns the way to get answers from Kyle: provide golem warmth and pets. Check. Another low, rumbling chuckle. "That depends on need. Goylomim are where they are needed, when they are needed, or they are not doing what is necessary."
"Well if you are needed somewhere quickly, call for me. I can help. I can...actually help with almost everything." In a nutshell it seems to be Kyle's self-appointed purpose. He's a helper. Eyes still closed, he ponders through moments of purr, "Like when Aneira asked me to help with the autopsy thing. Sure, I'm not the best choice, but I'm not going to say no. I'm not going to refuse. I always do my best. Always."
When he offers to help, quickly, with almost everything, the golem turns her head and gently lays her ceramic lips on the top of the cat's head. It's almost impersonal, but the solemnity of it, and the fact that Gisa almost never emotes, let alone touches people, let alone shows any kind of affection, makes this almost a secret, and not at all impersonal. "I know. This is because you are a mensch, Kyle."
His ears lay back and his opens those eyes, pupils large, dark, and round. The nictitating membranes pull aside slowly and he says in a very small voice, "You really think so?" Apparently the gesture and the title means quite a lot to him. It's not like Jewish terms like mensch are unheard-of at all, so count it very likely that he knows the core meaning as well as the implication. "I don't really know what to say...but thank you." It's actually enough of an occasion that he extracts himself from golem-warmth and stands up to his full height facing her to declare in a formal manner, "You will never be without a friend. You will never be alone except by choice. You will never know what it is like to be abandoned, not so long as I live and have strength." As a seal to this promise he bows to her in very much a courtly manner, the top hat in his furry hands flourished behind him.
"I do." Two words, a solemn pronouncement, as if, indeed, she is confirming the title. "It is a thing to work at. You do your best always, for making things better. Tikkun olam is healing the world. This, you try to do, in your way. And so." But then he's extracting himself from her arm, and Gisa allows it, somewhat puzzled from the look on her face and the tilt of her head. Her eyes widen, and the golem is, entirely, at a loss for words. So she doesn't say anything. Goylomim don't expect people to help them. They help. So while she doesn't often speak much, or quickly, for once, she's rendered entirely mute.
Yeah well, take that Gisa! Kyle doesn't exactly reply to her silence in that way, but explains as he straightens himself up and dusts his coat off a little, "No one has ever said something to me as kind and as genuine and with as much meaning as you have just then. I have been lied to, tricked, abused, taken, twisted around, misdirected, mistreated, misled, and mistaken. Since coming to this freehold I have been welcomed, accepted, fed, accommodated, and even hugged. Until this moment in my life no one in my memory has ever actually honored me. Not until you." There. Let that stand as an explanation.
She considers this for a long time, and then nods her head once. "I made myself to be honest. None of our Keepers makes us whole. It is up to us to make ourselves whole." Apparently she considers 'being a golem' to be 'whole,' but that's her own definition, isn't it? "I only tell the truth. You do the best you can all of the time. That is the definition, I think, of a mensch." She extends her hands toward him. "Be sure, when you make a promise, that you wish to make it for your whole life. You do not know how long that will be. I will promise to you, but I caution you to promise yourself for a season first, or a year and a day. What if someone finds a way to turn me into an evil golem? Then you would be bound to an evil creation. You do not know."
"Well there's a way out of that isn't there? A true friend would not allow you to continue being evil. Wouldn't abandon you. It would be up to me to redeem or destroy you." Oh my. That IS a serious committer there, Kyle is. And he looks at her with determination. "But I'd do a year and a day easily if it makes you feel better. The fact is that life is short. Our lives won't be so long as their potential. Look at me, Gisa..." He spreads his hands and even pulls open his coat a bit, loosening the ascot there to bare his (very furry) chest. "How long do you think I really have before this...this stuff starts getting into my mind?"
Her eye-flames go out for a moment, and then go back on again. "Life as one of us can be very long indeed. I have walked the earth for eighty-seven years." She moisturizes, clearly, because she doesn't look a day over twenty-five. "But yes, it would make me feel better if you would not promise me all of your life within a week of knowing me, Kyle. Perhaps I am a carefully crafted lie. You cannot know." She extends her hands out to the sides, leans forward a little. "You have the choice to make yourself. I made myself. You, too, will make yourself. Of that I am sure. And if you are unsure of that, then I will help you make yourself. What you were made does not matter. What you make yourself matters."
"You are no lie." The determination behind the cat's eyes is steel, sharp and clean. He smiles with those sharp teeth and says, "Then for your peace of mind it will be a year and a day. For that I swear what I stated: That so long as I am alive and have strength to do so, I will be your true friend and ally. I will not abandon you in the face of danger or to walk a path alone, nor leave your side except if you wish it. I will stand with you in your causes. Let my blades and claws strike swift and true on your behalf, and if my promise breaks then let it fall into the dirt, never find the mark, and my claws blunt against my enemy's armor."
For such a peaceloving and kindhearted guy Kyle sure seems to have the language and determination suddenly of some kind of intense warrior. What the hell WAS his Durance like anyway?
That he believes that seems to be enough for her, or at least enough for her not to argue it with him. Gisa's teeth are diamonds, when she briefly smiles: sharp and glittering, tougher than tough. No wonder she never shows them when she smiles, maybe someone would try to rip them out of her mouth while she sleeps. "I cannot permit you to swear one-sided," she answers him. "So I will keep as you keep. So long as I am alive and have strength to do so, I will be your friend true and ally also, for this year and day. You will not walk abandoned, I will not leave you to walk alone, or in the face of danger, nor leave your side except if you wish it. I will stand with you in your causes. Let my hands strike sure and true on your behalf, and let me find my way more surely through the world, and if I break my word, then let my hands never find the mark or my feet their path."
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