deercountry | Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone

[ Gideon has summoned her Omen once, before today. She manifested tall and strong and frightening and strange, and Gideon had startled and said I don't know what the fuck you are. She had responded with I know.

When Gideon calls upon the smoke-and-haze creature she thinks of as "Big Boy," it's only because she's out of options and out of time. They split up, (why would they stay together? what's the point?) with Gideon leaving the dojo to look for Paul elsewhere. There's a horse loose in the dojo, but thankfully, she does know what she's doing.

She starts by checking the corners of every room, bowing her head and gently poking around with her nostrils. Where are you, little friend? ]

[Sophia came to Paul with his memories, a pooling of ink out of the dark water of his resurrected grief. She had curled over his racing heart and said nothing as it slowed, and she has been an anchoring calm to his storms ever since.

She is not calm now. The approaching presence of another Omen pins her ears tighter to her head, her back hunching as she wedges herself tighter in the gap between two bricks at the corner of the room. The horse (Gideon's, she perceives dimly - she does not know how -) is not there yet. She will be soon.

In a flicker of thought that threads blue and hot, she projects a fervent sense of wordless warding off.]

[ Big Boy is the manifestation of a locked door's soul. She's also a rather curious horse. The warning does not stop her, but where Gideon would aim straight for the source of those thoughts, Big Boy takes her time, as if trying hard not to spook someone.

One corner smells a little different. Fortunately, horses see a little better in the dark, and Big Boy catches a small, out-of-place shadow. She bows her head once again, letting it rest close to the bricks, thinking something like a concerned hello. ]

[In the shadowy crevice, a light flares, blue and sickly pale. The ghosts of tiny claws scrabble at brick and crumbling mortar, Sophia rendering herself corporeal in her alarm, and that is not how it should be, but none of this is how it should be.]

I beheld a dark horse, and upon her back a rider raised a sword, a pair of scales falling from her eyes-

[A very mouse-like squeak follows, piping distress, and Sophia thrusts her head into the light to stare up at Big Boy with blue-stained glow where wholesome eyes should be.]

[ Big Boy is not nearly as put off by prophecy as her Sleeper is. She doesn't need to be. It's easier for her to feel afraid. ]

It's me.

[ Big Boy makes herself smaller, in an effort to make the tiny mouse more comfortable. She shrinks herself down to the size of a little pony, keeping her head bowed in case there is something the other Omen wants to inspect. ]

You know me. My name is -

[ The thought goes unclear, fuzzy. It is the warmth of the afternoon sun, the feeling of having told a joke just right. It is something far away and lost and still here. ]

[Sophia knows this name, as sweet as summer. It lures her out in hesitant, shivering hops to approach the nose of the little pony, her ears flicking back and forth in indecision before she sits back on her long hind legs.]

I know you.

[Another Omen, another bit of soul-stuff intermixed with celestial magics, a part of and apart from their Sleepers. The presence of another is a balm against the fever. She presses up, paws outstretched, and touches the horse's muzzle.]

I am afflicted, sister. [She tells her, small and woeful.] I am beset by flames.

Hello.

[ Big Boy is not a tense creature. Even so, she relaxes a little when Sophia recognizes her, and even more so at the touch. She closes her eyes and nuzzles in closer, encouraging. ]

You're hurt. [ She agrees, hoping the recognition is at least somewhat soothing. Big Boy knows her Sleeper hates to be alone, even when she drives her away. She applies the same principles here. ]

Who set the fire?

[ Big Boy has a guess, but will not name him. Not if she doesn't have to. It hurts too much. ]

We do not know.

[ She tells her, sorrowfully, from the well of her ignorance. She molds her little body to the horse's still much larger nose, her whiskers twitching fitfully as she curls her tail around her own feet.

It is better to be together. Her Sleeper does not understand this, either, even if he says otherwise. Not in his heart, which shies away, a shadow slipping along a cave wall in flickering light. ]

It has been burning for ten thousand years. It comes with us, wherever we go.

You know. [ Words are coming more easily, more clearly. The present intrudes on the future. ] How it can be.

We know. She tries to make it go away.

[ It never works. Her Sleeper is good at hiding things: Big Boy herself is a hidden thing. It has never protected her from the burning.

Big Boy's breathing slows, as to not jostle the smaller creature too much. ]

She is not very good at it. But we want to help you try, anyway.

[ Even small, Big Boy is large enough for a mouse to find an obstacle to scale. Sophia sinks low and then hops, launching herself up to land on her mane, climbing to the crest of her neck and nestling there. ]

You do. Help.

[ Hot and cold are relativities to her. Big Boy is cool anyway, an oasis in a desert, and Sophia buries her face into shadowed horse hair. ]

We don't mean to make you worry. [ She is sorry; how much it matters is beyond even an Omen's knowing. ] We should find her.

[ Big Boy shakes her head, gently, a motion that is a cross between helping the little mouse get settled and soft laughter. She's glad to help. It's something she and her Sleeper have in common. ]

She's looking for your Sleeper.

[ Big Boy honestly doubts she's found him, but she keeps that to herself. It is so hard to be the ephemeral soul-manifestation that does the thinking for the entire duo. ]

Do you know where he is?

[ Big Boy will follow Sophia's lead, wherever that may be. She'll take the search at a slow and steady trot, hoping that the easy, back-and-forth motion will be at least somewhat soothing. ]

No.

[ She delivers the news fretfully, and with a tinge of shame. It is not proper for an Omen to lose track of her Sleeper. ]

I know where he should be. But he goes away from me. I do not know where. His body is outside, with the boy-wizard.

[ Sophia tucks herself in close once again, a huddled, nearly invisible passenger. She remembers the smell of horses, even if she's never scented one herself. There is something about the rock that does soothe her, a sense-memory not her own. She pulses the coordinates of her Sleeper's physical form to the other Omen. ]

When she was gone, in the other girl, where were you? Do you remember?

[ Big Boy knows what it is to go away. To be separate, fractured, less. There is no judgment, only the steadiness of someone with a job to do.

Her calm is disturbed by the other Omen's question. There is a shock of fear, too quick for Big Boy to hide. Sophia's question does not have an answer in words, because there are no words to describe what happened to her Sleeper's soul. What happened was an atrocity. The best Big Boy can do is an amalgam of gone-drowned-eaten-lost, and even that is not enough.

(There are parts of Big Boy that are missing, even now. Bald patches in her coat, places where the smoke does not fully coalesce, no matter how hard she tries.) ]

[ Sophia does not coo and pet as some Omens do. Her comfort is a quiet dig of snout into neck, pressure that insists on being felt. ]

We would have brought you back.

[ She had been tucked inside her Sleeper's heart when he dove off the side of the ship, reaching for a body he never quite touched. She had already been gone, thought they did not know, would not have believed. The moment when the covenant had been broken. ]

We bring each other back.

[ Like Big Boy does now, giving Sophia substance and form even if she cannot hold her own. ]

We do.

[ Big Boy flicks her tail, a thank you that is almost playful. It's not the easy dismissiveness of her Sleeper, though. It's not as difficult for Big Boy to make her gratitude felt, especially when Sophia points out they look out for each other. ]

But I hope you don't ever have to. She -- [ and there's only ever one she to Big Boy, a Sleeper who doesn't like her, but needs her all the same ] -- doesn't like going there. It scares her.

[ Sophia's Sleeper is probably scared too, and at that thought, Big Boy quickens her pace, sticking her snout into various buildings and crevices where a mouse's boy might hide as she goes. ]

[ Sophia grooms Big Boy's mane in answer, with a warm draping of solicitousness transmitted through the ephemeral connection of Omens. She knows about having a frightened Sleeper, held apart and away from themselves, and whatever suffices as her heart bruises for her fellow Omen and that laughing, golden-eyed girl.

If she has more to say, it's cut short by Big Boy nosing into a dusty backroom, where the body of Sophia's Sleeper stretches out his arms and blinks as the right soul surfaces behind the right eyes. He is fuzzy with absence, and so doesn't question the apparition of this unknown Omen until Sophia flickers a call to attention to him, as she often does. ]

Hello. [ His voice is scratchy as he sits up, rubbing at cheek creased with red lines of pressure. ] You're Gideon's, aren't you?

[ Oh! There he is! Sophia might recognize the emotion Big Boy radiates as similar to Gideon when she wins a fighting match, mixed with relief. They found him! He seems relatively healthy, too, as far as Big Boy can tell these things. He does ask phenomenally dumb questions, though, but Big Boy assumes that's common to all Sleepers.

Big Boy gentle nuzzles the top of his head in the way that Gideon sometimes musses his hair, a wordless yes.

It takes her a little longer to remember how humans work. Big Boy has to come down off the high of victory, first. Once the Sleeper is adequately greeted, she asks: ] Can you stand? I can help.

[ Paul has always loved horses. This small one is no exception. He leans into her nuzzle with eyes that half-lid again, letting out a warm huff of breath not unlike a horse himself as he runs a hand down her arched neck. ]

Aren't you something?

[ She's a well-turned mare, to his appraisal, which does not linger on the rough, shadowy patches that are not quite whole. He loops an arm around her as he levers up to his feet, a wordless yes of his own. ]

You came looking for me. [ Like she said, he thinks, and is not sure why. ] I'm all right. But - thank you.

Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone

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