YOU! Akwasi and Graham realize they've met each other once before!
Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2025 7:24 pm
ᴄᴜʀʀᴇɴᴛ ᴍᴏᴏᴅ ➢pleasantly worked, shocked ᴛʜᴏᴜɢʜᴛ ➢ "I know this mofo!" ʟᴏᴄᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ➢ Utopia > Training ground (archery range) ᴍʏ ᴄᴏᴍᴘᴀɴʏ ➢ Akwasi ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴꜱ ➢ Xenia and Shahiti crew (not by name) ᴀʟʟ ᴅʀᴇꜱꜱᴇᴅ ᴜᴘ ➢ training clothes and boots,, single glove - right hand
talking - thought
When Graham first saw the man, he thought his eyes or his brain must have crossed wires and identified him with a name he almost forgot. He met him years ago during an unexpected detour into Thah. One that wasn’t exactly logged in his official field journal. The weather was fair enough that he was able to spend his morning on the training field practicing with his bow. When he first came to Utopia he went a week without practice and noticed the difference when he went to pull back on a bow the first time. With the war he never had to worry about feeling off and was proud at how he progressed to heavier bows. It wasn’t something he’d skipped since. The weather wasn’t as cold as Shahiti got in November but he appreciated what reminders of home he could get. It was just enough to n** at his cheeks and exposed arms. What hair on the top of his head was pulled back into the tiniest ponytail, similarly to the bullshit hairstyle he used to rock before chopping it off. Gods, he looked like an a*****e back then.
The last arrow flew left his fingers and made a satisfying thump when it hit the target across the way. It was time for him to collect them and start another round. The quiver he held in one arm filled back up and he made his way back to the mark. After a couple more rounds he planned on picking up on it again tomorrow. He could go wash off the morning and finally eat something, then sit in the classes. The art class resumed a normal flow and while he and his group were able to turn in an admirable painting, he was happy when the project was over. He could go back to sucking at art and bullshitting with his bestie and kin.
At first he didn’t think much that someone else was in the range but when recognition kicked in, he slowed his pace to a stop and narrowed his eyes. It was the scarification on his face that he noticed first. Graham had only seen it on a couple of people before, one person being a man of similar stature and height. This guy… looked a lot like that guy.
Graham set his quiver down and started walking again, this time toward the familiar face. Once close enough, there was no doubt in his mind that this was the same Thah warrior he encountered when he was on the hunt for a Windurian spy that pissed him off something especially bad. He held the two fingers on his gloved hand and pointed at him, surprise plastered across his features. ”You!”
The temperatures he braved to have a solid grasp of the territory, Akwasi thought with a wrinkle of his very cold nose as he wandered, seemingly aimlessly, the academy’s grounds. There was a lot to cover, and he was still finding new things everyday, but today he decided to head to the training grounds for a little lookie-loo. See who was up to what, how they trained, what their fighting styles were. Of course, there weren’t many out today in this weather, preferring the sort of warmer castle to the definitely cold outdoors. Some men were palling around as they sparred hand to hand, and Akwasi struck up conversation with them for a few minutes before moving on with a friendly wave.
What freaks, going around shirtless in this weather.
The archery range nearby only had a single occupant, one Akwasi couldn’t quite discern from this distance. It could have been that Jack fellow (no, not broad enough), or Luka (hair wasn’t long enough), Jamal (skin was too fair), Milo (not thin enough), new guy (not tall enough), Stephanie (hair really wasn’t long enough), Ambrose (no glasses), or…Graham.
Bingo-bongo.
Akwasi had spent a few days puzzling over how he knew this man’s face, and still hadn’t placed it. It wasn’t his fault all these pale faced, pale haired men looked the same. He leaned against the low wall that acted as a divider for the grounds, eyebrows raising as Graham finished up and began to head his way. Understandably, considering he was right next to the entrance, but then he seemed to be going through a facial journey the closer he got until he was pointing accusingly at Akwasi.
”You!”
"Me?" he twisted around as though to see if there was anyone else the other man could have mistaken him for, knowing full well there wasn’t. "Me!"
And yet there was something about his voice that was sparking a memory, and then he was pointing back just as accusingly with a disbelieving grin.
"You!" he laughed, clapping his hands. "What a small world we live in, eh? Say, no hard feelings, yeah?"
location⊕ Archery Range accompanying⊕ Graham wearing⊕clothes ooc⊕
Posted: Sat Sep 13, 2025 11:38 am
talking★thinking
So he wasn’t alone in the moment that was unfolding. The face from the past recognized him too, or at least as a man who went by Baal for a very brief time. This bizarre instance where the past and the present were intersecting. Graham's feet were planted firmly in Utopia but for a second he could see the half-scorched fields he had to sneak through to get into Thah, where he first met the man known as Akwasi. His voice was filled with much of the same jubilance it had back then too. It felt deceptive at times way back when, considering the state of the world and the circumstances around and between them.
Hearing him now didn’t fill him with the suspicion it used to. Instead he had to let out a short huff of laughter with the way the Thah Warrior reacted. Graham straightened up into a stance that was more casual and less accusatory, and pulled his hand back. “Small world indeed. It’s nice to see you made it to the flipside.” There was no denying that. Graham pulled the glove off and put it in his pocket while he looked over his long and heavy looking layers he was rocking.
He extended his hand out to Akwasi. “I take it this is your first time feeling a cold winter, hmm?” And it was only going to get colder from there. Thah was hot he recalled, and humid to boot.
No hard feelings? Unless his mind had started to fail him so soon, he didn’t have any. Not toward him. That didn’t mean he didn't still have a bad taste in his mouth after what went down. The Windurian spy got what was coming to him, even if it wasn’t by his own shadowy clutches. Graham had spent days tracking him, fueled by adrenaline, tobacco, and wrath for what the spy did to his young protege when they escaped his camp. The Shahitian Duke sighed a sigh. They were mostly just feelings now, reduced to a simmer with all the time that had passed. “No hard feelings. I trust things are just as good for you. Do you come out here often?”
Akwasi was glad to see his usual affability puncturing through the other man’s tension, even garnering a little laugh, and he kept his body language open and at ease. Graham seemed more relaxed these days than he had in their first encounter, but that was the difference between a standoff in the middle of war and an encounter during peacetime. Was he pleased to be spending that time in Utopia rather than Shahiti, though?
"And to you," Akwasi returned, though the phrase was a curious one, something to look into later. Because what were they on the flipside of?
Watching the duke tug off his archer’s glove, he met his gaze with a grin as Graham’s eyes traveled very clearly over the heavy threads he was adorned in. Akwasi was no doubt wrapped up as cozily as one could be in this blasted cold while the archer was going sleeveless. Absolute deranged behavior. At least he wasn’t gallivanting shirtless in the snow.
"What gave it away?" he joked as he grasped the other’s outstretched hand, which was cooler than Akwasi cared for, but managed not to be like icicles. Slinging arrows must have been keeping the blood circulating. "My smart fashion sense, or that you never saw my face outside of a green environment until now?"
Pushing off the low wall to shake the other man’s hand properly, it was amusing to find that they now stood eye to eye. Their last encounter hadn’t seen them get close enough to each other to gauge easily, but Akwasi remembered having the sense that the self introduced Baal was tall. But then, while Akwasi had been a man by war standards, he had still been growing. Graham had to be at the threshold of the age cut off in Utopia, then.
"Would be better if it was warmer," he said ruefully, dropping his hand to tuck it back under his sleeves with the other. "More than before the temperature drop, but I thought to be brave today. Lucky I did, I kept thinking your face was familiar in class, but could not place it! Still keeping healthy, uh?"
He indicated the quiver Graham had set down with his chin, eyebrows curious but not intensely so. Any warrior worth their salt was going to maintain their strength, so it wasn’t a surprise, just something to keep the conversation going.
location⊕ Archery Range accompanying⊕ Graham wearing⊕clothes ooc⊕
Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2026 1:25 pm
talking★thinking
If there were any changes about the man from Thah in front of him, outside of appearances, they had not occurred to Graham just yet. He stood taller, tall enough that they were now eye to eye, and more filled in. It was possible the Thah Duke was older than he originally believed and blessed with a more sprightly appearance. He was so jovial, and that did not feel so different. It was that lack of difference that had him lifting a figurative brow. For the moment he pushed the observation aside, but not away entirely.
He gave a polite smile to his next question. His clothing choice was indeed smart, looking thick and plentiful with its excess of fabric. “Both would be right.” Graham remarked as he took the man’s extended hand and shook it. He could recall how green his environment was and how it possessed a beauty unlike the forests he grew up around. If this had truly been the man’s first time facing a winter, then had he experienced the same season outside of the only Kingdom he knew him to be from? “What other corners of the world have you ventured to? Or was Utopia the lucky exception?”
“Lucky indeed for the both of us. It wasn’t until now everything came together up here.” He repeated, pointing up toward his head. Like with Akwasi, he’d experienced deja vu with a number of their classmates over the past few months, their faces and voices stirring up memories or at the very least emotions. Seeing him at Utopia told him he was either royalty or nobility, but which one he did not know yet.
Graham gave a nod of his head. “Healthy, on my game, and like you get some time outside before it all becomes snow and wind out here.” He did like the cold, but not enough to risk becoming sick and miserable. “I’m sure they’ll set up something indoors if they haven’t already. What about you?”
The school did accommodate when it came to practicing, so there had to be something out there that caught the man’s attention. “What would you be doing out here if it were warmer?”
"Ah, I did not often venture far past the borders of home," Akwasi admitted, deciding to see where a fair amount of openness would lead him. "When I did, it was usually to Winduria and Funkazan. Perhaps, if the war had continued on, Hyouden would have made the list."
The one thing all three countries had in common? An open policy on slavery. Not that this made them special; most countries in Lomacht had some form of slavery or another, with even certain parts of Thah continuing to actively participate in the trade. The previously mentioned countries were simply among the boldest and most ambitious in stealing away Thah’s most precious nature magicians. Entire clans had been decimated and dismantled in their desire to attain food security for themselves, disrupting supply chains and weakening the country as a whole. As a result, Thah was more tight knit than it had ever been before the war, with the largest remaining clans coming together to protect each other. The Ananses had been foremost among them, being the most eager to protect from without just the same as from within.
"Was our encounter your first time visiting my home? It was my first time meeting someone like you," he added with a wink, broadening the definition of home for now. If he were honest, he had had no idea where Baal, as he had known him, had originated from, but knowing now that he was Graham and Graham was he? Things were clicking.
"No, noooo, do not saaaaay such things, you are cursing us! Cursing us to worse cold than this!" Akwasi groaned, rolling his head so hard that he had to do a full physical turn to follow, arms flapping out to gesture at the snow already around them. "Praise the Ancestors that I did not have to go to Hyouden, I hear it is nothing but snow and wind up there!"
Hopping up onto the low wall, he turned to face Graham and sat crouched atop it, rubbing his hands together to chase the chill away. What would he do? As soon as this winter fled from the sun, he would lay outside to bask in its heat! But that wasn’t what the archer was asking.
"Maybe not too different from what you are doing," he said with a lingering grin, "I am not a bad archer myself. Or pitting my fists against another; I do enjoy a good tussle under the sunshine. Do you spar, friend?"
location⊕ Archery Range accompanying⊕ Graham wearing⊕clothes ooc⊕
Posted: Sat May 09, 2026 1:56 am
talking★thinking
He made a thoughtful squint as he considered the kingdoms his old acquaintance listed off. Three realms that at first glance seemed vastly different from one another, yet carried a number of similarities when it came to certain practices. Graham was not aware of any kingdom that was unstained by enslavement, especially Thah of all places. No doubt that was just as noticeably evident that day as it was when he first crossed into Akwasi’s kingdom all those years ago. “That makes two of us.” He could remember the permanent adornments that hung off those who were enslaved the few times he went into Winduria and Funkazan, and how they represented that status. It was as unnerving a sight back then too. “I haven’t been there either.”
“It was. Not under the circumstances I would have hoped to visit under, but it was.” The same could be said about most places he visited during the war. He gave a small grin to complement the wink, only for it to widen a little more at what followed from the warmly dressed and dramatic Akwasi. It seemed Graham gone and damned them all to a seasonal fate only Hyoudans were born capable of enduring, and he was having none of it!
Graham laughed a little, unconvinced it took only his word to convince Mother Nature to pile down on them harder. He wasn’t superstitious. Okay, maybe he was. A little. “And ice.” He added, as if that made that particular outlook sound any better. “or so I’ve been told, but relax. If this used to be part of Alore, I don’t think it’ll get as cold as Hyouden around here.”
Maybe it was a part of that holiday nostalgia, but he was looking forward to the seasonal shift as well. Graham turned to look at Akwasi and where he perched. Where the man loathed the loss of sun, he disliked it when there was too much. Much like Mars, Thah was just too hot and he was prone to burning if he wasn’t careful.
“Ah. We should practice together sometime.” He suggested, seeing no harm in getting to know him better in this post-war world. He gave Akwasi’s question about sparring questioning glance, intrigued. He did. “I’m decent in a rumble. Why, you looking for one?”
OOC: If there's any details I got way off please let me know!
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