shattermelt | EN AU: part thirteen (Reply)

Kippei had done a little more thinking, later, about Shinji's suggestion of tents for sleeping in the gardens. He was pretty sure there was a better way. He just couldn't quite remember. So he sat on one of the upstairs balconies, chin in hand, staring out at the tangled mass of overgrowth that used to be the gardens. Actually, he was pretty sure it had never looked exactly well kept, it had always been rather wild, but he knew it was a lot more wild now than it used to be. Hell, it was practically it's own forest, now. No mere fifty years, but several hundred left untended. Still, there was something...

He let his eyes roam over the wilderness, trying to picture each spot as it had been before, some with more success than others. There had been a large tree, there a fountain or a clearing or a small pond, and that particularly dense tangle on the south side he thought had used to be a hedge maze. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, was the problem. A place to sleep? How odd. He frowned to himself as he kept looking. Maybe a crypt of some sort, a cave? That would be plenty dark, but it wouldn't really be outside. He didn't think that was it.

Ah well, there were more interesting things to find. He got up, stretching lazily, and went back in to look for Shinji.