[Life is awkward, at first, which is not unexpected; but it's less awkward than it could be, which is an odd occurrence. It's ... simple. Discomfortingly simple. Kratos keeps waking up expecting there to be something else to do, and every time, he's thrown by the idea that he has nothing more responsible than housework. Which, to be fair, is responsible enough. Maintaining a home is a foundational sort of task; it holds up everything else. Still, it's ... not what Kratos is used to.
[The house and surrounds are, also, something to which to become accustomed. The wind he isn't sure he'll ever start accepting; but the windowless rooms and the stone walls start becoming unexpectedly comforting after a while.
[True to estimate, Yuan returns to duty only a couple of days after he brought Kratos home. It leaves the house a little emptier, makes it ... lonely isn't the word Kratos would use. But it makes the work seem less like it's of benefit, without someone around to do it for. It's an odd feeling which Kratos ignores, since Yuan certainly benefits from it when he arrives home.
[The chores are not as easy as Kratos anticipated, not because they're difficult in themselves, but because they're difficult for him in his current state. Everything takes much longer than he estimates, unless he can sit down; he learns to overestimate, to account for walking time. The markets for this area aren't far, but they're far enough that it makes his leg ache by the time he gets home, and it usually takes him hours. Then he needs to attend to his leg as per the healer's recommendations. (He ignores the looks he gets. People seem more likely to walk away in a hurry than look at him. He can live with that.)
[The house takes a while to get clean, but ironically, once that's done it's easy enough for Kratos to maintain to the point where on non-market days he finds himself at a loss for things to do unless he wants to take the risk of being caught loitering.
[Once that occurs Kratos occupies himself with cooking, at first. It seems safe enough, and the extra food can't go amiss, especially if Yuan takes it to headquarters. (The tomato plant in the corner of the living-room gets a sternly baleful look every time he passes it. He really needs to ask Yuan about getting rid of it, but it seems a little too presumptuous at this early stage.)
[It's a routine. It's easy to get into, after a fashion. Not unlike a sword pattern, except that it isn't nearly as challenging. Even when Kratos puts the whole of his mind to each task, in order to overcome the ache in his leg, soon enough the task is over. And there's only so much he can do that with dusting.
[He's getting bored. He can't remember the last time he got bored, and yet here he is, a technical slave to a Sylvaranti half-elven commander, reaching for something extra to do. He's taken to pulling out Yuan's armour just to polish it, despite the fact he has no orders for deployment. The armour leads to doing the same with Yuan's boots. And the books are taunting him. Kratos has nothing against reading. He would be perfectly happy to spend an hour or two reading. But he can't read them; they're mostly in elven or a dialect of Sylvarant which he doesn't understand. The few he does understand can only take him so far.
[So, six weeks into being owned, Kratos is leaning on his cane in the living-room entrance and eyeing the tomato plant speculatively, and wondering if Yuan would truly miss it all that much.]
BONDVERSE; acclimatisation
[The house and surrounds are, also, something to which to become accustomed. The wind he isn't sure he'll ever start accepting; but the windowless rooms and the stone walls start becoming unexpectedly comforting after a while.
[True to estimate, Yuan returns to duty only a couple of days after he brought Kratos home. It leaves the house a little emptier, makes it ... lonely isn't the word Kratos would use. But it makes the work seem less like it's of benefit, without someone around to do it for. It's an odd feeling which Kratos ignores, since Yuan certainly benefits from it when he arrives home.
[The chores are not as easy as Kratos anticipated, not because they're difficult in themselves, but because they're difficult for him in his current state. Everything takes much longer than he estimates, unless he can sit down; he learns to overestimate, to account for walking time. The markets for this area aren't far, but they're far enough that it makes his leg ache by the time he gets home, and it usually takes him hours. Then he needs to attend to his leg as per the healer's recommendations. (He ignores the looks he gets. People seem more likely to walk away in a hurry than look at him. He can live with that.)
[The house takes a while to get clean, but ironically, once that's done it's easy enough for Kratos to maintain to the point where on non-market days he finds himself at a loss for things to do unless he wants to take the risk of being caught loitering.
[Once that occurs Kratos occupies himself with cooking, at first. It seems safe enough, and the extra food can't go amiss, especially if Yuan takes it to headquarters. (The tomato plant in the corner of the living-room gets a sternly baleful look every time he passes it. He really needs to ask Yuan about getting rid of it, but it seems a little too presumptuous at this early stage.)
[It's a routine. It's easy to get into, after a fashion. Not unlike a sword pattern, except that it isn't nearly as challenging. Even when Kratos puts the whole of his mind to each task, in order to overcome the ache in his leg, soon enough the task is over. And there's only so much he can do that with dusting.
[He's getting bored. He can't remember the last time he got bored, and yet here he is, a technical slave to a Sylvaranti half-elven commander, reaching for something extra to do. He's taken to pulling out Yuan's armour just to polish it, despite the fact he has no orders for deployment. The armour leads to doing the same with Yuan's boots. And the books are taunting him. Kratos has nothing against reading. He would be perfectly happy to spend an hour or two reading. But he can't read them; they're mostly in elven or a dialect of Sylvarant which he doesn't understand. The few he does understand can only take him so far.
[So, six weeks into being owned, Kratos is leaning on his cane in the living-room entrance and eyeing the tomato plant speculatively, and wondering if Yuan would truly miss it all that much.]