deercountry | let me look at the sun

[L, ungroomed and unwashed, with a pair of filthy threadbare jeans and beaten sneakers under his arrival robes, is realizing that he hasn't quite sold being a typical dude out by the edge of the woods for typical reasons. He feels a sudden pain in the knuckles of his left hand, and realizes it's clenched in a tight fist against his lower ribs, as though he's preparing to perform the Heimlich maneuver on himself.

In fairness... who else would do it? Very consciously, he tries to relax, and jams the offending hand in a pocket. It gives him a crooked and lopsided appearance, more than usual.

The stranger definitely thinks he's daft. Like Light Yagami, the first time they met. But there's no target on him as a result of this, no attempts on his life for very good reasons; in fact, it looks like he might be about to receive some meaningful help.

Gingerly, he draws closer as Paul unshoulders his bag, finding his focus consistently drawn to the mouse. He sinks to a crouch, just enough distance away to make a reach awkward, with potential to overbalance.]

What trick?

[Paul's not a killer. At least, not of these animals. The bones are too old; he doesn't point it out. Better not to seem overconfident, or make a premature call at the expense of his own safety.

His own incense is half-gone, traded bit-by-bit for pastries and caffeine delivery methods. He still puts his pack between his knees, revealing two things: that it's very disorganized, and that his own incense smells like smoke and pipeweed.]

[At least he's not difficult to work with. Paul does appreciate that, and as a consequence he politely ignores any oddness he perceives about the way the other man holds himself - like an unexploded bomb, unstable energy packed tight in fixed chemical bonds waiting to be disrupted. What he does do is alter his own behavior a bit, his motions slightly exaggerated and slowed, easy to follow and predict. No surprises to disrupt the disorganized equilibrium dangling in front of him. It's a kindness, not a defense.

Paul picks out two pieces of bone and one antler of about equal length and diameter, and lays them into the shape of a triangle. He produces a length of soft leather cord from a pocket, and a minuscule fish filleting knife from somewhere up his sleeve.]

It's not just making an ornament. It's about the intent. You could make a hundred of these and have nothing happen if you don't will it. When you tie it, you have to think about the past, or about what you want from it. You won't get what you ask for, but there has to be something you do want to see.

[Paul takes off his gloves with his teeth, sets them aside, and flexes his fingers. Both hands are a mess: the right has the marks of human teeth behind all the second knuckles of his fingers, and all the joints on each are colored with deep bruising. There's an audible cracking as he breaks the weaker crystals, and Paul grimaces, a slight tilt of his head accompanying it, but then he moves on to carefully, cautiously tying the end of one bone to the antler, in clear sight of L. The fish knife turns out to be for cutting the end of the cord when it's done, and then Paul reaches over the shape and sets the rest of the cord on the ground between them. L might notice: not the knife, which is laid at his side, and almost immediately joined by the still staring mouse, who bounces more instead of scampers.]

There. You try the next one, tell me if you feel anything. If it's working, it's almost... [He pauses, tilting his head the other way, as if listening to something.] You'll know.

[With some effort, L extracts his finger from his mouth. It helps him think and provides comfort; letting go isn't exactly easy, but when one spends most of his time behind a locked door, away from prying eyes, he can tend to any rude whim as he pleases. It's different and strange to moderate it consistently, even after so much time handcuffed to another man.

Would this one ever guess? Better if he didn't; better if he continued to think him daft, and quiet, and harmless.]

How is intent determined?

[Though most of him is stooped and odd, with a bent spine and strange clashing features, L's hands are actually quite elegant as they reach for an antler. Long-fingered and pale, they're lovely, even if the nails are bitten down to nearly nothing.

He hums a troubled sound at the contrast; Paul's hands aren't nearly as free of blemishes, as they work, seeming quite suited to the task at hand and rougher ones yet... but L doesn't think often of the past or what he wants from it. What's the point, if we won't get what we ask for?

He nods, reaching for a leather cord and tying it. Using only his thumbs and forefingers, it's a finicky, arduous process. One would be forgiven for feeling frustrated, watching it. ]

How do you know? Is it like a vision?

[A man who doesn't feel would prefer a vision, really.]

Edited 2021-12-20 06:35 (UTC)

[Paul actually snorts at that, a sound that's well beneath his dignity most of the time. It's not directed at L, as he quickly explains:]

We'd be so fortunate. It's different for everyone. For me - it's like solving a problem. The moment when things resolve into their patterns.

[He does seem frustrated, although not at L's slow progress. It's his own that bothers him. His inability to fully articulate what he means, or define things more clearly, with more rigor: he's not used to finding himself at a loss for words, or facts.]

And my theory on how intent is determined is that it's the near-impulses in the nervous system when you activate it by imagining an action, so - imagine yourself completing the Mourning, imagine it working. That should be enough.

[Paul is, despite his preoccupation with his existing difficulties, always ready to add another: he's finding it difficult to read L's intent in his questions, something that almost never happens. They could be read as insightful, or childish, and Paul can't quite settle yet on which way it really is.]

[L cants his head, perturbed by the explanation. He wants to pick apart the minutiae of the phrasing; the moment when things resolve into their patterns implies that the pattern wasn't there all along. One can realize and recognize, or remain always in muddled darkness, but the truth is eternal and constant. Gifts to open, again and again with each new question, if one knows how.]

I see...

[It's semantics; it would be pedantic to harp. It's not as though he doesn't understand, but would it be a mistake to hint just how much he can relate? Problem-solving and patterns are where his savant brilliance shines the brightest, but once that's known, he doesn't have the safety of being perceived as a fool. That can be a powerful shield; what does he need more?

The cord twists and twines together under his fingers' absurdly delicate work, coming together clumsily. He's tying leather, not a spider's web; the knot probably won't hold.

He speaks just as carefully as his hands move, but with more precision and deftness.]

It's a manifestation of survival in the face of great difficulty, isn't it? To imagine that it's worked... it would mean believing in what it represents. At least... that's how I understand the implication.

[One spindly hand pulls away, wanders to the pulse point under the shaggy dark hair grazing his jawline. He doesn't remember death, but he remembers dying; he knows that he did not, in fact, survive his greatest difficulty. Since arriving, he does periodically check to see if his heart is still beating, one more comforting tic to add to the heap.]

Would you give your heart to a prayer if you thought no one was listening?

Edited 2021-12-21 05:30 (UTC)

[Insightful, Paul decides, possibly to the point of debility. The way his hands and words wander suggest a mind not fully at ease with itself, a body not aligned with the higher purposes of thought. Yet what he says is more thought to the implications of Winter Mournings than Paul has heard from anyone else he's spoken to, being delivered by a disheveled stranger in the middle of the night over a 'bones arts-and-crafts'. (It's a borrowed phrase, one he found charming.)]

'To pray; to walk out into the trackless wild, fearless'.

[It sounds like it's meant to be poetry, a fragment of a larger work. Paul is watching L with his interest evident now, the way he touches at his own neck.

The way he talks about it is as if - Paul wouldn't have believed anyone could travel the city without being exposed to the Pthumerians, in their cult if not their presence, but it isn't impossible.]

Is it a prayer if you know it can be answered? [Question for question; sometimes there's more in the asking than the answer.] It sounds as if you don't believe in survival in the face of difficulty.

[Which, Paul's tone implies, seems an interesting perspective for someone wandering around at night in a city infested with monsters.]

[L's attention is a collapsed and caught thing, at the quotation. He tries to determine whether he has heard it before, and after a few beats, an organic database search, he's sure that he hasn't, at least in that particular itineration.

It's not familiar. He waits, round-eyed, on the off-chance that more accompanies it. Noticing the gaze of the younger man, he pulls his hand away from near his face, rejoining his other fingers at the antler's root.

Too late, then, to remain a fool.]

I don't pray, as it happens, but...

[Why would a living atheist or a dead heretic pray? L is one of those, or somewhere in between, and he has seen a god that was little more than an opportunistic predator between dimensions.

Such a sucker punch.]

I suppose it would depend on whether your deity has your love, or your fear. Whether survival is living, or just not being dead.

[His fingertips start, absentmindedly, to shred one end of the leather cord.]

Are you alive, then? The definition you choose for yourself is the one I care about.

Oh, I'm alive.

[There's something not entirely pleasant about Paul's smile at that. It's a sharp thing on his mouth, in his eyes.]

And you should fear god. Or gods, in this case. As a rule, and because these ones don't care much for our love. They're more interested in our blood.

[A person might normally say something that ominous either as a warning or a threat. Paul says it like it's fascinating. He leans over a bit, to examine L's progress, and shakes his head slightly.]

You should start again. Something less structural. Here. [He selects another antler from his pile, one with a notch in its side, and produces a length of pale red ribbon from a pocket. Both are offered to L, who might notice Paul's frank interest in his next move.] Are you alive?

[L could get pulled into that sharpness. It invites so many more questions, also not entirely pleasant.

He decides that he's not being threatened, accepting attempt #2 with his slender hands that look like they've never been subjected to manual labor, but have been torn to ribbons at their tips by his own compulsive, tearing teeth.

He holds the end of the ribbon against the notch with his thumb, beginning to wind the length around the base. He's meticulous about how the edges line up, slows as he questions what to do when he reaches the end of the ribbon's length.]

I... am...

[It could be a complete answer, but the man's inflection isn't final. It sounds like there are words he considered adding, then let die in his throat, where they form an aching lump. For some people, it would connect to their eyes, starting with an over-bright sheen and perhaps overflowing, but L has never been wired that way. It's just hoarseness, an ache, annoying.

There's no shame, really, in dying. It happens to every human, but there is so much in losing.

He glances down at the antler in his hands. Though his attention of the process has been sporadic, he didn't intend for the comforting, constant winding pattern to resolve in a small noose with the last bit of untied length.]

[Paul is stuck by the thought of putting this one under glass for study as they both look at the ribbon noose. The other man isn't a mentat, can't be, no signs of the marks or the drug, but he may be the closest thing to one that isn't Paul has ever met.

But he's not so curious or so heartless as to not recognize this conversation has turned from abstract to more personal. Paul nods at the Mourning instead, encouraging.]

That's closer. Let's see if it lights up. It doesn't always happen right away.

[That hasn't been true for him, but it might be true for others, so it's not technically a lie. He doesn't want to discourage him. Paul wants him to stay around. And that's when it occurs to him that he still doesn't even know the stranger's name.]

My name is Paul, did I say? [He knows perfectly well he didn't.] I'm glad you're alive. It'd be difficult to have this conversation if you weren't.

[L can sense, pricklingly, that things are not so vague as he'd like. Maybe his companion even suspects something about his past intentions based on the shape of that noose, and the nearly unconscious ease he practiced in tying it. Not what he'd prefer; not what he'd wish for at the best of times.]

Perhaps...

[Soft. It sounds parched and dry.]

If there's a community of hedgehogs in particular need of capital punishment...

[He probably intends it as a joke... but he's the intense sort of creature who can't make even intended jokes sound lighthearted and tension-breaking.

But there's something deeply earnest in the statement. There must be, because the Mourning does glow. Faintly, but it's noticeable and there. His breath catches.]

Paul? It's Lazarus Sauveterre.

[A fake name, but the realest one he's given anyone yet.]

[The truth is that Paul thinks execution, before anything else. He imagines having been killed (as sometimes happens, before people come here, and that's another endless hall of questions) would be disorienting.

He doesn't laugh out of pity or compassion, though. Paul laughs because it's the kind of joke he hasn't heard in a while, off-kilter and dark and too close to the bone (so to speak). His laugh is a soft, warm thing, and he seems surprised but not displeased by it.]

Lazarus Sauveterre. [Paul accepts the name as it is, no doubts.] If I plant a garden in the spring, I'll let you know if I need any pests dealt with. And there, see?

[Paul gestures at the Mourning, although he knows Lazarus has seen it:] You have the trick of it.

[Execution is what L thinks, too, often, even when there's no real pretense for it. It's always on his mind, knowing that conviction and punishment are the real tells that he has truly won... but now the noose carries additional connotations. He was himself executed, and may have hastened it with his own actions, rushing to the gallows in his haste to secure a victory against a foe who turned out to be too dangerous. He slips a finger through the noose, curling it, letting the knot tighten, before withdrawing.]

So that's really all there is to it... it seems absurdly simple, now.

[So do a lot of things that L has difficulty with. The opposite is also true; there are things that he manages with little effort that others dedicate years or even lifetimes to understanding and performing. His intelligence is the type that comes with a high cost.]

You're collecting them to trade, then? It's the only reason I can think of to keep collecting more supplies, with your...

[His gaze flicks to the mouse Omen accompanying Paul. His own Omen hasn't appeared yet; he suspects it may be like a magical eye picture. Something else with a trick to it that still eludes him.]

My omen. She's a desert mouse.

[It's volunteered readily enough, and the mouse perks up at being mentioned, rising on limber, long back legs. Paul runs a gentle finger over her head between her ears, silently promising she's not in line for the chopping block, to which she flicks her ears in annoyance. Paul looks back up at L, gauging his reaction.]

It's simple and difficult. That's why I'm collecting more. If there are any left... [He shrugs with one shoulder, and then shifts to sit more comfortably, legs crossed in front of him.] We'll see. But I'm using these for an academic study on memory alteration magic.

[He doesn't see a need to dissemble about that. The truth is, he thinks it might interest Lazarus, and as much as he has things to do - Paul feels like it would be a mistake to walk away too quickly.]

She seems nice.

[Simpler and more earnest than L typically is, when he's in his element. Receiving necessary help has a way of humbling even the most arrogant of men, and Paul has been both non-judgmental and patient with his oddities. He didn't think he could rely on that in this world from anyone, especially not casually, on a first-meeting basis.

Either the world is kinder than he thought, or he is infinitely more pathetic.]

A paradox? I see that. It's been clear since the start.

[Murmured. His own Mourning stands in the dirt before him, like a tree with a hangman's noose dangling from a branch.]

What's your study's working hypothesis?

[He's absolutely right, about Lazarus' interest.]

If a memory can be altered... is that right, in the end?

[That last one in particular is a question Paul has asked himself before, based on his brief grimace. He leans over his folded legs slightly and begins stacking loose bones and antlers, preparing to tie a few up to gift Lazarus when they do part ways, and buying himself a few moments to organize his answer along the same lines.]

She is.

My hypothesis is that it's possible to control the conditions of a memory sufficiently to gain accurate insight into how the events originally unfolded. These remembered hardships are meant to be lessons we learn from, so it's only an extension of the original principle.

[More cord: Paul has meters of it hidden away. He ties the bundles with square knots, eyes still focused on his work.]

As for if it's right...there's a distinction between the original memory, as recollected, and what we're experiencing here, recreated externally. The original isn't changed. It's like war games based on real conflicts, playing out alternative strategies.

[Now he straightens up again. There's no pity in his expression, only an attentiveness, a genuine interest in what Lazarus thinks. This isn't a one way gift of help, even if it started that way.]

Isn't it worth knowing if you could have done better?

[He nods, numbly and softly, appreciating what another has without pretense or envy. It's very rehearsed; he has to try, for it to seem convincing. It's at odds with the gratitude he feels on an uncomfortably sincere level.

He listens. Again, without pretense, but his eyes still widen. He still struggles to tamp down his natural misgivings and biases.]

I wonder about the distinction... as well as what we could learn as opposed to obsess over. I can't help but feel that the ones who want to learn the most from their past mistakes are the ones most likely to be trapped and mangled by what could have been.

[In spite of this reasoning, he's obsessed. He might as well be attached at the hip to his own Mourning, for what could have been corrected, probably killed him.]

[Paul does not flinch at trapped and mangled, the impulse to do so transmuted into a fluttering twitch in the corner of his left eye. The effort of doing so means Paul misses some of Lazarus' reactivity, but he still sees enough to realize they're both brittle around the subject of past errors. But then again, who isn't?]

That's a risk. [He can concede that much, although it's slightly strained.] But as you say, I wonder about the distinction. Isn't it true that people with the regrets that would make them vulnerable to being overwhelmed are prone to being weighed down by the past as it is? What is there to lose?

[Your mind, your health, your safety, your life: pick one or several. But there's a fervency in Paul's voice and expression that he doesn't even realize in order to correct it. Trapped and mangled, indeed.]

[Lazarus, in fairness, is well-acquainted with expending so much energy to regulate his own emotions and reactions that he might miss something in the wider world. He'd never hold it against someone else; using it against someone else is absolutely possible, of course, but only if he has a reason.

So far, there's none. Just a precocious youth, who has perhaps taken a chance on someone who doesn't deserve it.]

So much...

[Spoken hollowly, but certainly, because he thinks this is obvious. He thinks that Paul knows, and his desert mouse, too.]

I think that in many cases, forgetting entirely is a better outcome than understanding why it happened and how it could have been averted. Life-changing mistakes aren't the sorts you're in danger of repeating, typically, because the cost was great enough that you lost something you can't replace, or ever pay again.

[Like a life, one's own or another's.]

If you did something unforgivable, and irreversible, and you learned that it could have gone differently... I don't see how that helps anyone who needs to live with the results.

[He shifts, the slight weight of his forward-leaning body perched and balanced on his hands and the balls of his feet, in untied shoes that have seen better days.]

The only reason I can think of for someone to actively seek out those kinds of answers is to find none at all, and thus be exonerated... to learn that whatever happened was bound to, independent of their choices and their guilt.

[His huge eyes are wide and haunted. The effect is soul-like, if not soulful.]

What are you trying to change...?

Edited 2021-12-29 07:16 (UTC)

[As Lazarus speaks Paul stills by degrees. By the time he finishes, Paul is as motionless as a coiled snake, his eyes as gleaming and flat. But the immediate threat he's watching for doesn't come. It doesn't make Lazarus less dangerous, but it does mean that Paul stays motionless.

This place is full of unexpected tests and strange people. Not all of them are weapons aimed at him. He has to maintain clarity about that. Paranoia is only healthy up to a shifting circumstantial line.]

...'whatever happened was bound to'.

[Paul eases his weight back slightly (a false sign of relaxation; he's as tense as ever) as he pulls back his shoulders.]

That sounds like fate. A fixed future, predetermined and unalterable. Do you believe it exists? [A rhetorical question, asked in a well-trained persuasive tone.] You say we don't tend to repeat life-changing mistakes. I say that we do. I say, we tell ourselves that fate exists to explain why we repeat ourselves.

Have you ever heard of Cassandra? The person, not the place. They say she was a woman of Troy, cursed with prescience, doomed to true prophecy that would never be believed. But do you know what she predicted? That stealing an enemy king's wife would bring war, and war would bring bloodshed, and bloodshed would bring ruin. Is that fate or history?

[Here Paul stops, waiting this time for an answer. He hasn't given one of his own yet to the very simple question Lazarus asked him, but it seems like the rudeness of that - and many other things - are outside of his concern at the moment.]

[Lazarus has seen that look before, in various iterations and with various outcomes. He tenses subtly, but decides that it's defensive, not foretelling of an impending attack. It's wise and prudent to practice caution in all cases, but years of subterfuge and stress have taught him that treating every single encounter as an earnest threat is a way to burn even faster through stores of energy and vitality already prone to rapid depletion.

In spite of what he's been known to take on alone, he's just a man, after all. A boy like Paul, just a few years ago, reckoning with similar loads.]

Cassandra?

[It's either amusing to him or heartbreaking. His odd and sharp features read strangely in the moonlight. The smile he wears is twisted and the edges of his eyes are strained. His long-fingered hands falter and freeze in front of him, an awkward compromise between someone who has seen the fluid ease in those adept at using gestures to communicate, and someone who would rather stuff them in his pockets.]

I know her story, yes.

[It's his story, isn't it? Whether she was a seer or just a very perceptive person who would have made a great modern-day detective, her prediction was accurate. So was his. She was punished for it; so was he.]

She knew something about the world and the people who lived in it, alongside her. I don't believe that prediction is necessarily prophecy... and I don't believe in fate.

[It's difficult. He's seen things to contradict what he always thought was sound logic, contradicting determinism and simple and childish magical thinking. How does one reconcile that with a supernatural ability to kill with a notebook, an indifferent and alien god of death with cold yellow eyes gleaming in the dark?]

In my world, at least, time only moves forward. Death is permanent, and any given individual is at the mercy of both time and death. These are immutable and unchangeable truths; "fate" contextualizes uncontrollable circumstances for an impotent and helpless human. Fate isn't fixed, but at terminal moments... future options are forever eliminated and aspects of it may become that way. If Cassandra had been heeded, that particular terminal point wouldn't have been set, but the chain of events following were bigger than she was. Just like prediction isn't prophecy... it isn't even power, in the end.

But it can guide power.

[There's a thread of the conviction of a convert in Paul's voice, mixed in with the overconfident certainty of youth. He sees the twist in Lazarus' smile that can only be a product of the painful tempering of wisdom earned through experience. The way he holds himself, Paul sees as someone not knowing precisely what to do with this foray into myth and theology and magic.

He wants so badly for Lazarus to believe him, and at the same time he's still clutching the reins of self-control to dim his fervency, a push-pull of micro-expressions and body language.]

Isn't that what knowledge is? The ability to understand and predict your environment. But without power, the capacity to enact change, you can't apply that knowledge to your advantage. Cassandra's problem was not being believed, but what if she had been a general? A king? Who asks a king to prove their knowledge before they act on her orders?

Or make her a warrior. She steps down on the battlefield knowing every move that Achilles will make, every weakness in his near-perfect form, and there's no death of Troy to avenge that day. Hector comes home.

[And there it is, in the way he says Hector, like this mythic prince was someone he's still grieving millennia later. The answer to what he's trying to change, if not who or when or how.]

If you could see the future as a memory, if you could walk through it, observe the impacts of branching choices...perfect prediction and perfect knowledge are impossible. Entropy forbids it. But you could be closer to it than anyone, and with the right power, at the right times -

[He cuts himself off, letting the possibilities hang. It's more than he should have said, it's less than he could have said.]

[L holds his tongue for the entirety of the time Paul speaks. He can recognize where logic has taken leave, and faith has taken over; he does consider the two things disparate. He wonders to what extent they can be reconciled, and if so, if they even speak the same language.

When he speaks, it's slow, soft. Careful.]

"What if" is not what was. Cassandra was a woman, speaking an unpopular truth, in a position that made her less powerful than a king or a warrior. All of those things contributed, doubtless, to the worthlessness of her words on ears that would have benefitted from listening.

[His large, dark eyes are not filled with reverence for mythic figures, but deep pity what what is lost and gone.]

You speak of wishes and would-haves. That's all well and good where you're from, perhaps, and worthless where I'm from, but...

[He glances back at the stone he smeared his blood on. It shines and glows in the moonlight.]

I have heard it isn't always the case, here. That there may be more to it than a simple postmortem, and all the guilt and sorriness that entails.

[Following the other man's gaze to the stone, Paul realizes a few things in rapid succession, each of which could explain why Lazarus seems to doubt him so much. He could nearly laugh at himself, if it wasn't so embarrassing - but that's beside the point, as it usually is.]

I forget myself. You're not familiar with Cassandra the place. [Paul bows his head slightly in apology, but he leans forward at the same time, as if about to share a secret.] Is that your blood?

[He's gotten ahead of himself. Fundamentals first, then theoreticals. Then he'll banish that soft, cautious tone from Lazarus' voice, the one suggesting that Paul is being irrational.]

[He shakes his shaggy head, confirming his ignorance... then, after a moment's hesitation, nods to confirm the evidence on the stone. Was he foolish to put it there? Is there any benefit to concealing such information about oneself, as there was back home where the untimely revelation of identity could result in a swift death?]

I've learned something new about myself tonight. I know something of theory... hardly anything of practice... but I'm assured that such things follow, after...

[Terminal events, that converge to mean that he can't be anything but a Paleblood.]

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