deercountry | let me look at the sun

[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.]

[Lazarus' admission of his lack of knowledge grounds Paul a little, reminding him of how it was when he first started exploring his own new blood. He's been reluctant to be explicit about his own type even though it seems to be a commonly shared fact here, an old instinct that may no longer be adaptive.

Discretion or kinship. Paul weighs the decision, and rolls up his left sleeve, revealing a thin cut on the back of his wrist. The scab sealing it shines silver in the moonlight. (Lazarus would have been able to infer it after his first memory anyway, Paul tells himself.)]

In Cassanda, there's a tree soaked in blood over a buried room made of paleblood stone where people dream the future. [He rolls his sleeve back down, speaking quietly, as if not to be overheard in the empty air.] Not all of us have that talent. But all of us can alter Winter Mourning memories, ours or others.

It's not as hard as you might think. I have a few books I could recommend.

[He wishes the other man shared more reference points with him, but explaining what a mentat is alone would take longer than they should sit here. The incense is already half-burned.]

[Discretion will usually be L's choice in all matters. It's a powerful token when someone sacrifices their own because his has been compromised, and his dark eyes drink in the sight of the silver-glowing scab.]

Difficult things have never scared me... so why should things that aren't...?

[The lit incense glows, a little bead of warmth in his pupils once his gaze flicks back to it.]

There's learning by reading, of course, but... that's scarcely the only way, is it?

[There's a terrible freedom in revelation, Paul is learning. He should feel exposed, but instead he feels galvanized, connected.

He has to be careful about indulging in too much honesty. It's seeding a habit. Still - he's less on edge, latent threat disarmed again.]

An applied approach. [Paul nods slightly in agreement.] You'd want to start by finding out what you can do.

For most of us ['us' - the first time he's included himself as a paleblood, he thinks] it has to do with the mind, but it's variable. Have you been noticing anything?

[More revelation. He weighs what he should say before he does; similar to Paul's previous approach, it's more than nothing, less than he could say.

Never mind the wry self-knowledge he has, that noticing things is just kind of his brand, has been long before he turned into a squid-person. In fact...]

Much of what I've read could happen has always been true for me, which is why I wanted to test it under moonlight to be sure. I've always been more active at night... understood what people may be thinking and how it might influence their past or future actions.

[He's always been aloof and had difficulty properly feeling or expressing emotions in a conventional sense. He doesn't mention this; it's always seemed more like a weakness than a strength. A man who can laugh and cry with his comrades is so much easier to trust, after all.]

That being said, I never used to dream, and now, I do. It's not like what I've heard from people in my own world.

[The lucidity and clarity just don't match up. The intuition, the sense that there are puzzles scattered all around him that he can piece together contentedly until he wakes. Far from a dissonant soup of thoughts and images and anxieties, it seems to hold meaning, before he wakes and after.]

[Paul's mouse, until now content to be an onlooker, creeps to Paul's side, and he lowers a hand distractedly for her to climb onto. She disappears up his sleeve like a magic trick while Paul stays quiet and attentive, his dilated pupils the most overt sign of his internal agitation.

Tell me about these dreams bubbles up from memory, and Paul's blood is restless quicksilver in his veins. He curls his hands over his knees loosely and breathes, half-shading his eyes behind long lashes.]

That's not unusual, your blood type having synergy with your existing capabilities. It makes sense, if the theory is that we're pulled here to help the world. Why give us unfamiliar tools?

[He doesn't want to ask about the dreams. All he wants to ask about are the dreams. Paul thinks Lazarus will be able to see that, even if he couldn't easily infer it. He restrains himself.]

Is the moonlight making a difference?

[It's frustrating to know that what is supposed to be one of the most intuitive and natural ways to use blood abilities, summoning an omen, isn't something he's managed yet. He suspects it's not something that can be forced, no matter how diligent the effort, but his mind simply hasn't been very quiet since he arrived. There's always something else to think about, some new worry, how to survive another day without all the tools he's truly used to.

He blinks abruptly, staring at Paul as though his words have continued beyond his voice quieting.]

I think the moonlight is. There's... something you want, but I don't think you want to say it.

[A pause.]

Say it...

[What Lazarus says is not compelling like an order, or the harmonic trick of the Voice. Paul isn't forced by custom or impulse to answer. But he meets Lazarus' strange, knowing eyes, and the words spill from his mouth like an unburdening.]

What do you dream about? What do you see?

[There's a clear image in his mind: a long grey beach, a pale figure barely visible in the distance on the cusp of the storm-troubled horizon. As innocuous as it seems, the feeling that clings to it is one of vertigo, the undoing terror of a sudden, uncontrolled drop from a great height.]

[It's the kind of question he doesn't immediately know how to answer... but the answer that Paul is looking for visits him, less like a screen behind his eyes and more like an atmospheric shift. His hand draws closer to his chest, curling, and tightening until his uneven nails bite four silver crescents into his palm.]

Sometimes deep water... or a hallway of doors. Sometimes a dark room that only gets smaller, with voices outside.

[His already soft voice gets softer, thinner, just above a whisper.]

Not that...

[Dizzy and swaying slightly, he sounds hoarse, and he knows that it's not because his inner ear is off, or he's eaten something that's turned and wants to come back up. He takes deeper breaths, trying to discern any sweetness in the air to temper thoughts of being ill.]

Did you bring that back from Cassandra, yourself?

[Under almost any other circumstances, Paul thinks, he would be alarmed - and then he wonders if Lazarus can sense that as well, a rill of fascination underlying both ideas. The moonlight refracts in his dark green eyes as he leans forward, hands delicately tented on the ground.]

Yes, I did. You can feel that? [He sees the disorientation, and on experimental impulse conjures a memory of candied ginger, drawing up as much detail as he can muster, which is a remarkable amount.] The deep water. Do you see anything in it?

[The way Paul's thoughts are coming together is like intricate whirring clockwork mechanisms rapidly colliding and pulling apart in new configurations, all of them focused intently on the puzzle at hand. There's remarkably little concern for anything else.]

[L hesitates. He thinks of his true feelings and thoughts, not even his secrets, the way he thinks of his teeth: riddled and fraught from pernicious influences and not to be extracted except through violent force or great and dire need.

The desire to understand, he thinks, does in fact qualify as dire need. They both feel it, don't they? The shallow breath he was holding exhales.]

I don't know what else to call it.

[It's definitely a sensation, affecting him physically. That drop in the pit of his stomach was real, the dizziness has him glad that they're close to the ground already. And it's saying something, he thinks, because he is neither squeamish or particularly prone to fainting or vertigo.

He closes his overlarge eyes, thinking.]

I did. Not clearly, but there was a dark shape. Movement, clicks and pops...

[His fingers curl, only to snap outward a moment later swiftly and simultaneously.]

I felt them in my chest, more than heard them.

[Relating this feels deeply and uncomfortably personal in a way he can't explain. He might be able to later, once his own labyrinthine mind finds a still place and his omen finally appears to him. For now, who says this isn't relevant to what Paul wants to know?]

Did you?

[Seeing the additional discomfort that he's causing is enough to make Paul hesitate, but not enough to make him stop. It does remind him that Lazarus is a person, which reminds him in turn that he is one too.

He tempers himself, moderates his tone, eases back. There's less of an effort to make it seem anything but calculated than there usually would be. Why bother?]

I don't know what I saw.

[Another image: a massive, roiling shape illuminated only suggested in vague bursts by the bio-luminescent life it crushes on its path towards the surface.]

The Pthumerian patron of the sea, Mariana, she's also the patron of fate. [Lazarus needs more information to work with, he decides, and Paul will gladly feed it to him.] There's a connection, but I haven't worked it out yet.

[For all his oddness and uncanniness, L would benefit from more people recalling that he is fully (and merely) a human being. It can only get truer, the further outside of his own domain he finds himself, his wide eyes both all-knowing and hopelessly bewildered.]

You were chosen by Mariana, no?

[The longer he's adjacent to Paul's mind, the more certain things feel greater than plausible, if less than certain truth. He'd stake an 80 percent chance, though, which is why his question sounds more like a statement.

Now he does hear the beast; the ancient, groaning creak of bones as its bulk moves through the deep?]

If you believe in predetermination, or... at the very least, risk...

[His voice is quiet and tense. He's out of breath, but can't seem to expand his rib cage to draw in much-needed oxygen.]

...I would think that you're receiving a warning.

[The crushing pressure of knowing, that's what Paul recognizes in Lazarus, like a crooked mirror. Perhaps that's why he stays fascinated, mesmerized; perhaps he's the mouse after all.

He says Mariana's name and Paul doesn't need to say a word to betray himself. It's in his face as much as his thoughts that Lazarus has hit the mark, and then - ]

Of what? [A bleak and softly asked question, one with no hope of a real answer.] What am I supposed to see?

[I'm right, then.

He's usually right, at least about other people. It's just so very rare for them to like it much; it makes him uncomfortable to be around, but Paul remains, at least for now.

The weight gets heavier every moment that passes. L's back is curved forward as though under the icy pressure of leagues.]

I'm not Mariana.

[Or Cassandra.]

I can't know fate, but... if we weren't here... I'd wager that it was a metaphor for something that you've suppressed or ignored for too long that's coming to collect its due. Given that we're here... it could well be literal.

[And so much bigger, than the shape in his dreams of locked knowledge just out of reach.]

I did wonder.

[Paul knows she walks in many shapes, and a disheveled pale stranger tying nooses and reading fortunes in the night surely could be one of them. But he doesn't taste the bitterness of citrus and salt, and somehow, he thinks he would know.

So Lazarus is only himself, a mind bending under the unwelcome gift of awareness. Paul wonders what would come out of the fault lines, if Lazarus broke under that weight, and of all the thoughts it's that one that finally, mercifully catches him on its hook.]

It could be anything. It could be nothing. [He is a human being. He is Paul Atreides, son of Leto Atreides, son of Jessica. He is a human being and he will behave as a human being.] It's not your burden to carry. Breathe in for a count of five, breathe out for a count of seven.

[Something of the fanatic light leaves him, his expression resigned. He looks both younger and older than he is, an ancient and exhausted child.]

[The weight and pressure are crushing him slowly. He's tapped into something he shouldn't have by initiating this connection, he realizes as his head starts to droop and his fingers grasp the dirt and twigs beneath his palms, trying to keep his elbows from buckling under him and perhaps putting one of his eyes out with that Mourning on the ground in front of him.

He almost doesn't hear Paul, because the roar of water is in his ears and behind his eyes, the salt burning his throat, and he has to brace against it longer, find more, understand--

The roar fades. Paul's voice grows clearer and louder, because something has been severed, someone has been released. A thick, warm sensation on his face startles him, and a hand reaches up to wipe slugs or worms away from his eyes and nose. His dirty fingertips come away smeared in muddied silver.

Blood and earth streaking his face, he inhales, coughs, tries again. He doesn't have the patience for a longer exhale.]

I have to go to Cassandra. Tonight if possible.

[If he can stand to get there, or at least to a stop on the lamp friend network.]

If the dreams at the stone are as you said, more could be revealed, now that I've seen it, too.

[If he must collapse and pass out from spent effort, why not capitalize on a burgeoning talent? Being tired, he reasons, means that he's just getting started.]

Edited 2022-01-07 06:02 (UTC)

You're bleeding.

[Paul doesn't raise his voice, but his alarm is clear anyway. He plunges back into his satchel and produces a faded but clean floral patterned towel from his bag. He's seen something like this before when magic was used, but it wasn't this visceral, or that much. Guilt floods the hollow that prophecy left behind.]

You're not going tonight. It takes time to learn how to control this. [He draws out a canteen and pours water on the towel, then shifts forward, rising on his knees and moving within reach of Lazarus.] And you shouldn't be doing this outside in the cold. Here, let me -

[Paul leans in to either clean Lazarus' face for him, or to hand him the towel to do it himself, if he prefers Paul not be so close. There's no self-consciousness in him about it, or pity - mentats are prone to exhaustion, and they need to be taken care of as the valuable things they are.]

[L allows it with a sort of dazed acceptance that is automatic for him. His is a mind that flies, encased in a body that crawls. The disconnect between the two can be vast, and he forgets himself in pursuit of the Unanswered Question, the only mistress he cares to covet. Over the course of a career not unlike a mentat in Paul's world, he's been carried to bed when sleep is possible, fed caffeine and sugar and even stronger stimulants when it isn't, and slipped tranquilizers when his answers give way to hallucinations born of an insomniac's unsustainable deprivation.

His mind might fly on, confused at the mess below, wondering how it got that bad down there on the ground where humans had to live with their mistakes. There was always a cleanup crew, back home, a handler to sweep the glass or stitch the wounds or gag the rambling madman. L doesn't even reach for the towel; this is familiar, even welcome.]

How much time?

[The dark hollows under his eyes make them look larger and hungrier. His tone is tugged by impatience and anxiety.]

Time is a luxury, and not assured.

[Unless it can be bought with some sort of sacrifice, and L is clearly no stranger to that.]

Edited (last one sorry it's my bedtime) 2022-01-07 07:06 (UTC)

[Paul is made gentle by regret, wiping away blood and other mess as carefully as if he were oiling a blade. The question of time makes his mouth quirk in a not-smile, the urgency behind it familiar.]

It varies. I'm sure you'll pick it up quickly. [Paul doesn't think Lazarus would settle for any less.] You'll have to take the risk of not trying to learn it all in one night.

[The other man cleaned up, Paul begins packing to go. The assorted antlers and bones go back into the bag, the incense kit is disassembled and the remaining burning stub thrust upright into the dirt. He doesn't touch the Winter Mourning, instead putting the wet, silver-stained towel over it - if he had his way he'd just leave it, but Lazarus might want to keep it, and Paul has decided he's in no condition to fling himself into a memory from here. He thinks the towel will be enough buffer; either way, he slings the strap of his satchel over his shoulder and stands up, extending a hand down to Lazarus.]

Come on. Let's get you back to where you're staying. It's not safe here.

[If anyone can learn with necessary speed, it's always been L. Limits don't exist when he's pressed... until, of course, they do, like the one he's just smashed into.]

Right... whatever's coming isn't on top of you, so... feasibly, there's a margin of error.

[Given the tightrope margins he's used to working inside of, that's hardly reassuring.

His hands are filthy. He takes the cloth, using it to give his palms and fingers at least a cursory brush-off before handing it back to Paul for cover his Mourning with.

They had quite the adventure, even without it. He's careful not to let his skin brush the antlers as he lifts it between a thumb and two spindly fingers. He handles things that way habitually, Paul will learn, as though determined not to leave more fingerprints than he absolutely must.

The antlers have a tremor to them, just like his hand. Unsteady, he's glad for Paul's hand, accepting the help and rising to his feet. He doesn't need to be told that it's not safe; it was a fey and exciting risk before, it's absolutely stupid now.]

I'm staying in Cellar Door for the next few days. I'm trying to get a job as a Night Walker.

[If it sounds like an odd choice for the off-putting pale man, Paul would not be the first one to think so.]

I think there's a lamp friend, maybe... a quarter of a kilometer away, or so. It's back west; that's where I came from.

[His ankles feel a bit like jelly, but he can walk in his typical shuffling hunch. The scuff of his feet help mask the occasional stumble as he starts off that direction.]

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