Strays [Adilet]

It wasn't exactly true, as the Transnistrian had imagined, that Adilet stayed on site all night when he was too tired to go home. But it was true that he stayed much later than the others, sometimes even if there was no work left to do. The city was strange and unpleasant to him, but the dreary gray kommunalki even more so. They weren't warm or homey, like a home should be--and worse, they were full of people he didn't know and was uncomfortable being around. Even with Mirza he felt that way, despite that his half-brother was the extreme opposite: comfortable around everyone, and therefore comfortable to be around. It would have been a lie to say that the redhead wasn't a bit envious.

In any case, he didn't like having to go back early only to have to either attempt sociability or shut himself away in his and Mirza's shared room (which sometimes wasn't an option, if Mirza himself was there and tried to drag him out). It wasn't that he didn't like people--in fact, part of the reason he'd agreed to move to a large city was his thinking that being surrounded by people would help him feel closer to them. Much to his dismay, it seemed to have the opposite effect.

One good thing, though, was that being in a modern environment meant that he was being taken care of much better, in regards to his...condition. He looked down at his fingertips, bandaged expertly after years of experience, so that they wouldn't peel off as he worked. The grafting process had been handled much more efficiently here, and the skin had already healed over, despite looking radically scarred, as always. At least a few months had gone by since he'd last woken up to find it covered in black patches, and had covertly disappeared from the kommunalka (one of the conditions he'd had to agree to in order to be allowed to live in such a densely populated area was that he'd take responsibility for having himself treated immediately when his symptoms flared up, to avoid causing an outbreak), leaving only a note informing Mirza that he'd be back later. His half-brother was one of the few people in the family that didn't know why the Kyrgyz looked so ill all the time, and Adilet didn't intend for him to. Not while they were living together. It didn't take long for him to be discharged, much to his relief, and no questions or explanations were passed between the two upon his return. Sometimes he had a feeling that Mirza had a sort of intuition about people, to know not to ask.

But perhaps it was that they weren't really close enough to be asking personal questions, even now that they were sharing the same living space. It wasn't like they had much in common beyond that, their father, and the Soviet Union. And the last two weren't even saying much; there were a lot of people that had those in common.

As he considered all of this, he sat at a picnic table that had been set up at the site for the workers, staring vacantly at the skyline as it began to slowly darken. His construction helmet and vest lay on the tabletop, leaving just his pants, boots, and long-sleeved shirt. It wasn't always exactly comfortable working in long sleeves, but it was better than exposing the bandages on his arms, which weren't as secure as the ones on his hands. And there was the question of modesty. He didn't take it as seriously as some of his family, but it still usually felt more comfortable to cover up. Especially since, even here, he tended to attract a lot of glances, given his vivid hair color combined with Asiatic features. Perhaps that was part of the reason he was less uncomfortable in the past; it had been more common for Kyrgyz to have red hair and blue eyes, back then. Now he didn't fit in with any group of people. Just animals, who didn't understand that he was strange-looking or diseased.

In that moment, almost as if someone had read his thoughts (God??), he heard a rustling nearby, and turned to see a dog poking around near the construction site's garbage bins. Getting up, he approached it, and, confirming that it didn't appear to be rabid (though really, it should have been the dog who was weary of him--), leaned over and petted it, to no objection. It looked like a mutt, and a stray. The fact that it was rooting through garbage seemed to suggest as much, anyways.

"Sorry, I don't have any food," he said quietly to it, scratching behind its ears. Why was it so much easier to talk to animals than to people? Simply because they didn't respond?

((Wow idek if this flows well at all or not, but I am way too tired to revise it--))

Ever since she'd been forced to evict her dogs because that Jewish woman's cats were upset, Güzäl had been at a loss for what to do with them. Why was someone allowed to have six cats when she couldn't have even one dog? In the end she had settled on penning them in in a large area with materials thrown out of the construction site, and bringing them the sandwiches she hadn't sold. Which was usually many-- for some reason people thought she was pushy with the food, and never bought any. They seemed delicious-- the dogs liked them.

But something was different this time, one was missing. So, like any concerned owner or parent, she went to go find him. She had searched all around, avoiding the construction site at first, for fear of finding him hurt there. But it was the only place left, and she was getting desperate.

"Capkin...!" She called, climbing around rubble and avoiding large pieces of metal. Her breath was coming short, and she was almost in tears. "Capkiiin...!!" Spotting a figure bent over, she rushed to it and began to ask, "Hey, have you seen a--" before she looked at what the man was bent towards.

She laughed shakily as the dog came to greet her as if she was the one who had been lost. "You found him...!" She smiled at the man, too relieved to notice his hair or hands. "Thanks...!"

Stiffening when he heard the female voice calling out, he quickly straightened up, realizing that it wasn't a stray, after all. By the time he considered slipping away before she spotted him, it was too late. She was already approaching him.

And she was beautiful. Why. Whyyyyy??

Standing back as she was reunited with her pet, he found it hard not to stare. What was a girl who looked like something straight out of a pastoral poem doing in the middle of the city? If these were the old days, he'd already be making plans for ala kachuu. As it was, he just found himself standing there motionlessly, blushing.

"I didn't really...he was just kind of there..." He mumbled uncomfortably, denying any credit for the dog's discovery. He hadn't done anything. Though in retrospect, if he'd gone along with it, she would have been grateful to him and maybe even impressed. Dammit. Why was he so stupid?

Deciding to just cut his losses before they began, he gestured in a direction away from where they were standing, beginning to turn, "I have to go now... Um, glad you found your dog..." Smooth.

Well, if he was just there, maybe she should have gone there in the first place. "I guess it's always in the last place you look, right?" She beamed a gap-toothed smile at him-- but it faltered slightly when he didn't seem as happy. Usually when someone smiled, the other person did it back. ...So she became even more determined to make him do so. He seemed depressed, and tired-- if he was so exhausted, perhaps she should have let him just go home, but she had too much pride.

"Oh-- He's not my dog." She corrected almost as if she was offended. "He's his own dog." They were strays, and she fed them, and before she'd housed them, but she would never say she owned them. The dog was a symbol of independence to her, not dependence or ownership. Remembering her manners, she thrust her hand out with another smile, "Güzäl--" but soon saw how wrapped up his hands were, and grabbed his arm enthusiastically instead. "It's nice to meet you. Hey," She seemed to overflow with excitement for the both of them in an attempt to cheer him up. "You like dogs? Animals? Hungry?" Those were both different trains of thought. "Come with me--!" She squeezed his arm and pulled him along, with the dog jumping up at his side the entire time.

She stopped at the large makeshift corral she'd made, and waited to see his reaction while putting the stray of the strays back inside. If he was looking for something pastoral in a city, he couldn't have found a better scene. "There are puppies, too-- I had to make a smaller area over there, so that they didn't get stepped on or crawl away." Apparently trusting him enough to think he would stay there, she stepped over to the puppy pens and carefully brought one back to him, its eyes still closed. "These are his puppies-- the one that got out." She chuckled. "That's why I named him -'Capkin'-- Casanova."

He (being unfamiliar with the idiom) was tempted to say that of course that was the case, because no one would ever keep looking after that, but as it was, she seemed displeased with his assumption that she owned the dog. Which didn't make any sense to him, because where he was from, anyone who had and loved and took care of an animal would have said they owned it. Did that mean it was up for grabs, then? Not that he wanted it--

And suddenly she was offering a hand that he couldn't accept (it wasn't proper Muslim custom), and slamming him with a barrage of questions, "Yes--I--what?" Then she had him by the arm, making him blush a shade of red nearly on par with his hair, and was whirling him off somewhere. And he had no idea what was going on. An introduction had been thrown in there, too, at some point, but he didn't even have the opportunity to return it, assuming he had his faculties in order. Her mind seemed to operate at a different speed than his. Or maybe in a different dimension.

After she dragged him to see where she kept all her dogs (or were they 'hers'?), he stood there nervously--the out-of-place pen was strangely comforting in the middle of the city, but a million pens wouldn't have soothed him in that moment. He tried for a small smile when she brought the puppy for him to see, but it was pained with uncertainty. What did she want from him? Deciding to go back to her original question, he affirmed, "I like animals..." And then quickly added, as he hadn't sounded very convincing, "I used to be a nomad." Then, quietly, he threw in, "My name is Adilet..." Like it mattered.

If a puppy wouldn't make him smile, then what would? She found her own smile faltering a bit, but kept strong. She was saved when they seemed to have so much in common. "A nomad...? Me, too. Maybe much longer ago than you, I stopped when I was a kid." She was a muslim, then, too. She laughed. "Maybe I wasn't really a nomad, maybe I just kept getting kicked out of wherever I was staying." The puppy began to whistle, distressed, so she left her companion to his own distress, and returned the dog to its mother, coming back with two sandwiches wrapped in foil.

"Adilet--" She'd once heard the more you said someone's name, the happier they were and the better they liked you. Everyone's favorite word was their name, apparently. "I don't remember if you said you were hungry or not..." She handed him one, assuring him, "It's just a few hours old... I sell them in the office." And she wasn't about to tell him she hardly sold any. She smiled at him, again. "But you can have that one for free. Just don't tell anyone."

She unwrapped hers and took a bite, staring out into the sunset while leaning on the sides of the pen, wondering about him. He looked extremely unhappy (by her standards, anyways). Swallowing, she turned and asked quietly, "Did you lose your job, or something...?" Was he homeless? Was that why he was just sitting out here?

He practically sputtered when she said she'd likewise once been a nomad. Back in Central Asia, it wasn't saying much, but here...he thought he was surely the only one. He wanted to tell her that he'd stopped only (relatively) recently, when Kyrgyzstan joined the Soviet Union. When the old ways were replaced with the new. But the pup began to whine, and she had to leave momentarily to reunite it with its mother.

Blushing when she repeated his name after him, he averted her gaze by keeping his downward, politely refusing the first offer, "I couldn't..." But his stomach betrayed him by announcing its emptiness, and, cringing, he accepted the sandwich, mumbling an embarrassed thanks.

Biting into it and chewing carefully, he nearly choked when she asked if he was unemployed. Not a good sign. She must have thought he was a pretty worthless man--that was how it was in his village, anyways. Men who could provide the best were the ones who worked in the mine. Otherwise... Coughing with his mouth closed, he swallowed and quickly stammered, "No...! I work here. This construction site--any construction site. I mined, back home, but there aren't any mines in a city, so I couldn't do that here, but construction is...pretty similar..." He quickly took another bite to shut himself up. What was he even saying? She didn't want his life's story, she just wanted to know if he was a loser or not. But he kind of was...just not an unemployed one.

Some animals began to gather around the fence at her feet, and she tore off a few pieces of her own sandwich to give to them. Sure, they'd already been fed, but in her mind, something that could give unconditional love deserved to be taken care of without condition. She wasn't about to say anything about his over-politeness, but it wasn't something she appreciated in a person.

Neither was his next speech, which had come as a surprise from someone so quiet, but was, on the whole, unsurprising. She had heard it before, though not with the same components. She was not, in fact, trying to eliminate him from her list of eligible bachelors. For the first time in their conversation, she was solemn. "I know what you're trying to say," She mumbled, tearing at the bread on her sandwich. "But I don't have a father, so you don't have to practice your audition for him on me." She was going to college (or trying to), she was making her own money... sure, she'd like to get married and everything that came with it, but she wasn't about to decide to spend her life with someone based on their salary or how much livestock they had in their herd. Those were all side perks. She smiled a little at him again, to assure him it was alright that he'd said so, anyways. "Okay...?"

"You just seemed kind of... sad." She looked at him as though urging him to tell the truth this time. "I wanted to know if you were okay."

If he'd known she didn't appreciate politeness, he wouldn't have even tried. He was too awkward to get it right, but too disinclined to offend people to not try--especially considering the respectively strict codes of etiquette coming from both sides of his family. If his father (not that he cared much for his diseased son, anyways) had seen him accept the food after such a pathetic excuse for a refusal, he would have been scandalized. It was no way to behave with a lady.

Not that it made much of a difference, if said lady wasn't interested. Not that he expected her to be; he just didn't want her to assume he was the kind of guy who didn't even work. Cringing and looking just as mortified as he felt, he tried to keep his composure...or what remained of it. "Aha... Well, I can't even get my own father's favor, so..." Wait, that wasn't an appropriate thing to tell a stranger about, not even as a joke. Not even as a depressing joke. What was wrong with him? He wished the earth would just swallow him where he stood.

Especially when she asked if he was sad. Was he? Who cared? Smiling as painfully as if he were having his legs run over, he tried to shrug it off, "Erm...thanks, but it doesn't really matter." She didn't have to bother herself with wondering about whether he was okay or not. It wasn't like anyone else did, unless it looked like he was going to cough on them.

In fact, she was interested. Interested to know why this man seemed so defeated just by living. It wasn't normal, to her-- and it simply didn't seem right.

"Who cares about fathers?" Sure their opinion was important but she'd been without one long enough to care, and he might have been, too. "Just act like a normal person-- if you're only about your job or your income or your limits or your politeness or... or..." She was on a roll but she didn't know what else she could cram into the sentence. "If you're that you're not a real person." She looked up at him with a joking smile. "Or are you too polite to brag that you're a real person with real feelings?"

She made a face at his making-a-face. "It 'doesn't really matter'? I asked, didn't I? I want to know." She cringed. "You act like someone's watching you with a gun for whenever you say something. I just want to know, Adilet, and then I'll leave you alone, or whatever you want." It seemed like he was dying to say something... but for some reason, couldn't. "Are you okay?"