deercountry | I don't wish to evade the world

Entry tags:

I don't wish to evade the world | OTA

Who: Illarion, Ives, and anyone else sucked into the chaos vortex
What: A yurtwarming party + memories and misadventures (in comments)
When: Whenever
Where: Wherever
Shakira: Shakira

Content Warnings: Will warn per prompt!

November had been a cruel month for all Trench, mired in corruption and sacrifice; December had opened no better with its piercing chill and Sleepers pit one against the other by an ancient and echoing folly. Darkbloods in particular had been afflicted with the compounding feeling of control slipping through their fingers, and even Illarion--whose dead heart was beyond most emotions (so he thought)--couldn't escape the sense that everything was about to go horribly, irrevocably wrong if he didn't rein it in.

So he'd vanished into Trenchwood to get control of his ~~life~~ existence and somehow ended up building a couple of yurts with Ives. Funny, how that worked out.

Forever my home (OTA-ish, with Ives, early January, Trenchwood)
With the start of the year and the advent of the Egg Moon, life (and undeath) is suddenly looking a lot more positive. Once they'd finished their house-building, Illarion noted (and Ives agreed) that there were certain forms to be upheld: They should invite other Sleepers over to visit. Invitations trickled out over Omni and Omen to people they know, informing them of a new Lamp location and offering an opportunity for food, camaraderie, and conversation away from the heated and busy confines of the Snake Den.

The square for their odd little village of two (sometimes three) is where all the action's at, for any who come looking in response to the invitation. The fire pit is the center of attention: Large enough to contain a bonfire, lined with hand-laid stone, and often host to a simmering stewpot with food enough to share. Several logs surround it at a comfortable distance from the heat, allowing ease and conversation. Ives' yurt stands nearby, just large enough to give the Giant a sheltered place to sleep, and a small covered well with attendant pail offers fresh water. The Lamp, and its Lamp Friends (decorated with ribbon for the season), are opposite the fire from the yurt and a little ways into the trees. Discreet incense burners ring the clearing in a faint pall of smoke, with scents of pine and wet moss that pleasantly smooth Trenchwood's harsher odors--and more importantly, keep the beasts away.

A path leads away from the fire, off toward the distant mirror of the Salt Lake, permanently red this month thanks to Moon Presence's... presence. Sleepers with very sharp eyes might make out the mounded shadow of another yurt in that direction.

One or both of the Giant and the shrike might be found hanging around the place if expecting guests. Ives may be tending to a fine vegetable stew, attending to various little maintenance tasks, or simply sitting at his ease by the fire. He's also acquired a pan flute at some point and is looking for any excuse to play it. Illarion's often keeping incense lit, mending gear and cleaning weapons, or when he's in the mood--and that's often, this month--holding forth in story or song to anyone around to listen.

((OOC: Let us know if you want one ~~furry~~, the other, or both on your tag in!))

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[As a dutiful Disciple, Illarion's created his own Winter Mournings for the season. Then he'd secured them in his house in the woods, away from where all but a very few could find them (and the antlers wouldn't bother Ives).

He hadn't counted on Pthumerian caprice, or something else, that made his memories reachable even by those who hadn't touched the bones.

Those who find their way into one of the shrike's memories might find it disorienting to start. The world he remembers is richer in color and deeper in dimension than the one most other Sleepers see; the higher realities may impose themselves strangely on sight used to three dimensions alone.]

i. How's the one drowning in the mire? (cw: familicide, implied dismemberment)
[This is an office as might suit many a military leader with sybaritic tastes. Its silk-draped walls boast many detailed and lovely maps studded with troop markers and embellished with notes; the heavy carven desk (skulls and flowers, bones and birds) at the center is stacked with parchment and paper in tidy piles. Illarion--younger, bright-eyed, alive and visibly stricken with worry--leans over a spray of letters fanned out on its surface. His outfit's a barbarian warlord's: A mantle of sable and bones worn over a high-collared felted coat worked ornately in silver; loose pants tucked into soft boots; a hood and veil to obscure much of his face.

Aleksandr, line Piautos, reported missing on patrol by his lance-captain today, stands out a sentence in one dense and cramped parchment. --no word of your son's whereabouts, in another, and, our deepest condolences, Margrave.

There's a knock and a muffled announcement. Illarion looks up from his letters. A small and round person enters the office on six legs, carrying a scrollworked wooden box nearly as large as their chest with both caped arms. They look up at Illarion with careful scrutiny; he is distracted a moment by how he can't see through the box to its contents. Then he shakes his head, visibly assuming the whole of his authority. "You are the Swan Sorceress's messenger, yes? What is this she sends?"

"Yes, Margrave. She said to announce it as 'a gift from Domnika Cor Hydrae to her estranged son, Ill--'"

"Neither you nor she have rights to this name. Do not speak it," he cuts the messenger off cold. "Give me what she has sent and go."

Paling, the messenger swallows. "My commission was to remain until you'd opened it, Margrave. No payment and worse than that if I depart early."

He considers this, visibly wrestling with some emotion behind his heavy veil, before conceding. "If you will; I would not have her punish you."

The messenger's odd face contorts in what might be relief at that. They hand the box over to Illarion's keeping. He frowns at its weight and the faint whispering that comes from it before setting it gingerly on his desk to undo the clasps dogging the lid. One uneasy breath passes his painted lips before he throws it open.

 The box is empty. The box is not empty: It is full of feathers, white on black, with dead staring eyes as gold as his, and severed talons still drenched with blood.

Staring, stammering at what they see in his face, the messenger begins, "It was as empty as that when she gave it to me, Margrave--"

"G̴̯͋͝E̵̤̦̤͆̈́̃T̵͈͔̤̆ ̸̮͎͌͝O̴̫̱̊̈́U̵̲̝̹̿T̵̥͓̒̍͠.̶̮̊̚͝"

The door's scarcely shut behind the fleeing messenger when Illarion collapses over the box, a high and awful keen caught in his throat.]

ii. A child of light, another tale
["Another one here, Dusya--Swallowtail's Rout and the Massacre of the Innocents. King and Throne, the colors she's used for them..."

Memory places the viewer before a ruined, soot-grimed wall in a ruined, soot-grimed city cloaked in the hush of recent violence that's left buildings flattened and streets emptied. Three figures cluster at the far end of the wall, bright in the dust and smoke in their high-collared embroidered felt coats and skins of shifting, whispering feathers. One of them might be familiar, magpied white-and-black with golden eyes and dark red stripes on his face. He's the shortest of the three, not helped by how he's sitting on his heels to stare up at wall like he could look beneath the soot from that angle. Whatever he's looking at (overlay: a mural, dark and elegiac, of lissome feathered warriors dying in their dozens beneath a crush of human cavalry), it's upset him nearly to the point of tears. The man beside him in grays and oily starling-starred iridescence--his clothing far more nondescript, his face undecorated--rests a hand on the shorter man's snowy hair in a comforting gesture.

The third member of their party, duller of feather and dark of hair, stands head-and-shoulders over the taller man. They--no, she, undeniably female though no more curved than either man--takes shorthand notes in a leather-bound volume tucked into the crook of one arm. She looks up once at the distress in her companion's voice, intent expression softening in a moment of fondness, before returning to her writing. "One we never had an agent in to see before the siege," she mutters. "A good candidate, Dusya; she knew St. Halusion before he died there. We don't know his face and have wanted proper icons of him."

(Some thread of knowledge woven into the memory's weft suggests these three seek their people's history, shattered by war and the deep ideological schisms that cleave brother from brother. Whoever she is, the unknown muralist, she's memorialized parts of it they've lost.)

"And," The woman punctuates the sentence she's working on decisively, looks up once more, "if you keep La--"]

You do not belong here.

[An older, wearier, dead version of the smallest shrike interjects on the name, suddenly there in his own memory at the intruder's side. He doesn't seem upset.

He doesn't seem much of anything.

No matter who he's intercepted.]

Though you may witness on my sufferance, if you will not speak of what you have seen.

iii. Dull the blade and dance some more (cw: undeath, mind control, depersonalization, emesis, gore, cannibalism)
[More than a single memory tumbles over the unfortunates who find this--it's a torrent, an overwhelming deluge of impressions rendered icy and detached by the emotion that's been riven from them. They threaten to drown the unprepared in their grey and thoughtless crush:

Illarion is dead. Illarion is still walking despite his death, raised to the service of a grinning human madwoman with unquenchable violence in her eyes and an axe wet in the blood of nations. He joins her Court without protest or consent; he kills at her direction or at her generals'. He is given three weeks of free rein to murder any elf he sees and demonstrate the utility of his pillar corruption before he is remanded for further training.

Illarion is dead. Illarion has been tasked to become a necromancer, wresting the magecraft native to the undead. He spends days at a time in one place, still as a corpse, lips working soundlessly and eyes glazed as he repeats, repeats, repeats the subtle internal motions that further detach his poorly moored soul from his body. The separation and sucking pressure of the grasping Void should be horrifying; he cannot feel horror. He cannot feel triumph when a year into the unending process he lures another soul up, across the Veil, and through him into the waiting rotted corpse laid out for it; he cannot feel anything as he collapses from the strain and his body, confused momentarily into a paroxysm of life, vomits old bile. The corpse reeks of saltwater and screams as the threads binding it to Illarion are drawn out of him and reanchored to something Larger.

Illarion is dead; Illarion is dying. Whatever they did to him to keep a shrike's uncanny nature attached to one of the undead is destroying him. His outself warps a little more whenever he steps through a wall or removes a beating heart with his bare hands. Eating flesh helps. Eating flesh that once could think helps more. Illarion is dead and sitting at the bottom of a mud-filled trench, dividing a dead human soldier between himself and a patient hungry ghoul.

Something laughs in the back of his head whenever he's particularly cruel and his cruelty particularly funny.

Illarion is dead. Illarion steps right through the locked gates of a ramshackle outpost, slipping past the exhausted orcish soldier guarding it in shadow and parts outward. He bypasses the walls as well with ghost-like ease, before dropping back inward and stifling a wracking cough in his elbow with absent habit. Blackened blood and worse spot his uniform sleeve; he pays it no mind--he's already moving again, head on a swivel. Cinderblock and cheap pinewood alike are no hindrance to his sight. Even if he didn't know already which office held his target, he could see her from here, bent over the keys of her encryption machine and her face a mask of furious concentration. The feathers on her ears have all been plucked out from stress. He steps through the last wall between them and something

s n a p s

behind his eyes and color floods the world. He lurches to a stop.

Everything goes black.

Illarion is dead and Illarion is blind and Illarion is screaming for his target to run before his backup arrives.

Illarion--Trench's Illarion--grabs his living witness by the shoulders and hauls them out of memory's current with a violence born of awful worry.]

iv. Here I am to share the fear
[Or perhaps you're not in Illarion's memories; perhaps there's a chalk-pale specter standing in one of yours, watching (watching) everything with thoughtful golden eyes and a dispassionate expression.

The temptation of witnessing what lay hidden in his fellow Sleepers had been too much to resist, though he won't be intrusive about it, if he's not noticed right off.]

Edited 2022-01-06 07:30 (UTC)

[He's always there.

He's always there, some strange tall male that is both terribly out of place and precisely where he's meant to be, standing out of the way with sharp clawed hands behind his back, posture upright and steady. He blends in, he's supposed to be there (he's not supposed to be there, who is he), he's always been there. Eyes like banked glowing coals, feathers tinged with the barest hints of orange-red fire, clothing severe and dark and somehow improbably not out of place.

He watches and he says nothing, only the faintest tugs of air currents ruffling a feather now and again. Watches a pale messenger flee in terror, watches a man not unlike Illarion give voice to some unknown agony.

He does nothing; ember bright eyes gleam in the dull burnt-out shadows.

Things distort, things change and he's still there, amongst the ruins of some broken city.

He always has been.

And when he has company, he only turns his head slightly to regard Illarion directly, the intensity of that stare terribly old, and terribly alert. It's familiar. It's completely out of place.

No shadows flicker in the light of this place, not cast by him anyway. His head tilts, a brief sharp gesture. You do not belong here.]

I have always been here.

[It's not one voice, it's two. It's a dozen. It's countless voices stretched across eons, it fades to one single pleasant sounding tone. It is not the sound of these strange elezen birdfolk. He doesn't belong. He does.]

Watch. Listen, and remember.

[The flood of memory rises and snatches them away.

The glitter of fire in the shadows where none should burn is always there. Illarion struggles with death-still-moving and he's there, watching, listening. Death, the parody of life, the stink of blood and bile and sickly sweet rot of corpse, countless lives snatched by reaching claws and terrible magic.

It is an ongoing relentless parade of suffering and misery, of release denied and peace drowned in horrors so familiar they stagnate into mundanity. Never once does the dark shape observing so much as twitch, never mind move to interfere, the regard dispassionate and detatched, and always, always there is no shadow where there should be.

Never once does he blink.

As hands grab shoulders and pull, it's not fire-lit eyes or ember tinged feathers but ordinary brown and terribly human eyes, ordinary white hair, ordinary skin and warmth and there is a shadow and he is not what has been there always been there throughout countless disjointed memories. This is a man Illarion had fetched from the water, warmed and aided as best he could.

This is not the too-watchful shadow bidding Illarion listen, remember, watch ... is it? Certainly he seems normal enough the way his teeth click as he's shaken under a grip fierce with concern, the way a large equine omen with wings fanned wide in avian threat display rushes close, sharp teeth bared, never quite snapping, never quite stomping but certainly making a good show of trying to be intimidating.]

H-hey! Hey, it's alright, it's alright!

[content warning: hunted prey animal, religious discussion]

Tracking down a disciple not born to this place has been more difficult than Paul expected. He thinks it may have to do with the curious indifference of these gods to worship, the way they seem to tolerate their cults in the manner of a dowager aunt accepting trinkets from small children. Who would be attracted to the fractious self-defined faiths of the passionately mad prophets of Cassandra if not born to their orthopraxy?

Paul intends to find out, so he's brought rabbit meat, fresh from the trap, and a bundle of edible mushrooms. The best of the antlers and bones he had left as well, besides those set aside for the Houses. A guest ought to come bearing gifts, especially an uninvited one.

He walks to the encampment through the night, stepping into the edge of the firelight as a slender figure wrapped entirely in black with a heavy rucksack on his shoulders. Paul pulls down his scarf to reveal his face, a sharp-featured young man with a serious look to him, and he casts around the clearing for anyone who might fit the frustratingly vague description he's eked out of Trench citizens.

Edited 2022-01-06 20:15 (UTC)

[After the first stumbling Sleeper intrusion into one of his memories, Illarion'd prepared for visitors with an unworried practicality. Realistically, the notion of someone walking through his memories and learning his secrets should have evoked concern, even anxiety--if not for himself then for his people--but he doesn't have a pattern for guarding his own memories.

So he was prepared for visitors.

He is not prepared for an intrusion with the quality of the hallucinations he didn't experience anymore, a seamless insertion of someone he doesn't recognize, that was impossible, that nevertheless felt familiar as Esfir or Dusya when it stands beside him and bids him watch, listen, remember. The creature's constant present evokes a different set of memories entirely--a bloody period he has, praise Generation and all the stars following after, not yet seen echoed in the Winter Mournings--when every new-minted shrike fell to the madness that would stalk them, and rose from it, and fell again.

It is enough to wake something that's damn near panic in him by the time the memories draw to their close, and he knows it's the specter he had grabbed for, knows it with that horrible also-knowledge that his knowing could be wrong. Because whoever he's pulled up was someone his mind labeled too fragile for what they're both submerged in, who couldn't be allowed to drown in it,

and the apparition was solid enough to give the lie to the very concept of fragility.

What was that?

He stares through Thancred, literally not seeing him--though he ((feels)) the shape before him--before jerking his head with avian abruptness toward the onrushing Omen. The sound and ((feel)) of the onrushing Omen, who's doing a good enough threat display that Iskierka bursts into existence above her Sleeper and carols a challenge to this beast a thousand times her weight.

Everything's gone black around them, but the sounds of a disturbed military outpost scrambling like a kicked-over ants' nest persist. They're still in the memory even if this part isn't as awful.]

Is it? [All right. It doesn't feel all right. But after that first reflex outburst--the shrike clears his throat.] Are you, I am meaning. [He lets the other man go, stepping back and holding up his hands so Thancred's Omen can see them.]

You have taken no hurt from this?

[Was that normal? Was any of it? There had been warnings, and he a newly awakened Sleeper, had paid close attention to those warnings, and this wasn't the first time he seemed to have fallen sideways into someone else's mind.

Don't interfere. Nothing can be changed anyway.

But now, now with everything very much waking and sounds and smells reverting themselves to what they should be for a foul little mortal town in the dead of winter, Lahabrea has an act to keep rolling and as soon as he's freed he makes an immediate grab for the pegasus, who seems thoroughly intent on latching sharp teeth onto the mothbird OR Illarion, whichever is closer, and yanking the equine's head to the side so teeth snap closed on air and nothing else.]

Stop that! It's fine! Everything's fine, see, nobody's bleeding at all, nobody's hurt, just.. ...stop.

[How much is to reassure the ruffled, stamping Omen and how much is to reassure Illarion? Maybe it's one and the same, though it's the horse that buries his head against Lahabrea's chest with a low sound disturbingly like a human moan.

The Ascian reorients himself neatly, though he keeps a hold on the pegasus, fingers knotting slowly in sooty black forelock.]

I think it is. I don't.. feel hurt, maybe a bit disoriented and fuzzy about the last few minutes but.. [Was that normal? Was that how a hyur should be reacting to that situation? Should it have torn at his mind, or his spirit, left wounds in thought and soul? Should he be hurt? Should he pretend being hurt?

Would it help?]

Was.. that not supposed to happen?

[This last is ventured quietly, uncertainly, like he's missed something terribly vital in his act of humanity and wasn't sure how to mend it now.]

[Ives is a very particular eater. He spends a lot of time surveying various stores for quality ingredients and spices, building relationships with merchants, testing what is and isn't to his standards. Flavor was simply too important on Myddvai for him to not care about it. Without the magic he's used to associating with taste, it does feel like square one in a sense. It was easier back home to have wonderful meals even when he wasn't playing some important role and being lavishing with such luxuries. Here... he has to put in the work.

But, as a result, he's generally cooking something very good. Today, he has a special trip to and from town, returning with a paper wrapped parcel. He has a bone and veggie broth prepared and set over the open fire of the hearth to boil. Opening the parcel, it revealed some beautifully rolled and hand cut noodles that would fill the bowl and feed all the guests they might hope to have... or just the two of them for days on end.

After her stirred them in for a while, he noted Illarion had appeared. How and from where was something Ives didn't ask anymore,]

Did the smell summon you?

The lack of Sleepers who felt the call of Discipleship wasn't lost on Illarion. To him, the decision had been an obvious one: The Waking World was every bit as god-haunted as Shroudwood and anyone who sought to learn it would need to treat with divinity. While he could respect the Scholars in their devotion to knowledge, he could not embrace their methods and casual neglect of any relationship to higher powers.

He'd developed his own theories on the matter, of course. Even before he'd been a Warlord and charged with understanding mortal hearts and minds well enough to guide them, he'd been attracted to what was unusual and what needed explaining. Sleepers, the shrike conjectured, were not only often outsiders from their people, but stemmed from times and places where the understanding of ritual in interdependence had lapsed. Many of them would sacrifice safety, sanity, or even their lives for near-strangers at a mere request, but wouldn't think to bring a guest-gift unprompted.

So the appearance of a stranger at their fire, his hands full of proper offerings, has the shrike intrigued from the jump. He lifts his head from his mending (restringing a snowshoe) as the newcomer stops at the edge of the firelight, well within what the shrike can ((feel)) where he's seated by the pit. "Well met," he calls. "You have come out of curiosity, or you are looking for someone?"

In snow-covered Trenchwood, where sound's already a chancy thing, the uncanny echo to his voice is less obvious--but far from gone.

Paul has not been avoiding aliens deliberately. Even under rigorous self-examination, he knows that's true. He gravitates to other humans for the natural reason that their intelligences are like his own, because they have the sympatico rhythm of shared species origin no matter how far apart their worlds diverge. A human seems to be a human almost everywhere. There's a comfort in that. But he's too curious, and too bold, to linger in easy comfort forever.

Watching the face that converges on human without ever quite reaching it, shaped in minute details to signal its otherness, Paul feels not unlike how he did when he first learned of the Pthumerians' divergent minds: a ripple of anticipation tinged with the awe of the fathomless unknown.

"Well met," Paul answers, turning to face the stranger with the same bow he would use in the House of a fellow lord, regardless of their rough surroundings, "I am looking for the Disciple. Are they here?"

It would help if he had a name, but even that was impossible to come by.

[It's odd when he doesn't see Illarion for a few days. At first, he tells himself it's a relief, an opportunity for some peace and quiet. He revels in it. He's free to do what he wants without anyone asking questions or otherwise making commentary.

It last a few hours before the emptiness starts to fill his chest, growing larger, heavier, pulling everything in like his heart is nothing more than a sinkhole. Did Illarion lose interest in him? Did he find something else to occupy his time? The thoughts rattle in his head, gnawing at his brain like little rats.

Then he gets a call to come. At first he thinks about ignoring it. That would teach the Old Man not to ignore him, right? Serves him right. He quickly realizes his resolve isn't that strong. So he goes.

He arrives at the yurt, dressed in his uniform, but now with a weather appropriate jacket. It's too large for his small frame and makes him look frail, like a small wisp in the wind. The incense, as always, makes him sneeze. Kaworu mutters "ow!" and rubs at his chest as he glares at Illarion like his nose being unused to strong smells is somehow the shrike's fault.]

So this is where you've been?

[One of the smaller but more miserable consequences of undeath was the loss of one's senses, full or partial. The worst afflicted--the worst afflicted that survived--rarely had more than vision and enough kinesthesia to keep themselves out of trouble. Most could still hear, but smell and taste were vanishingly rare--though that was sometimes more a blessing than a curse, with what the Unearthed favored for field rations.

So Illarion takes it as an unquestionable gift from his stars that Ives can ask that question, and he can answer it--grinning--in the affirmative:] Yes. It surprises me that there are not so many more visiting us, to find out where these smells come from.

[He's clearly been at the Salt Lake, from the string of gutted and glittering fish he's carrying. He holds them up for the Giant's inspection.] Do you wish any of these to cook now? Otherwise, they go for drying.

Very good, then. It would be a shame to not share this meal, as it will be exceptional. [Ives has the utmost confidence in this! Stern and level though his tone is, as usual, he has an undercurrent of aggressive pride. He planned this meal and it will be a treat for them both.

Fish, though, would not due.]

Dry them. They would not compliment this dish. Raw salt would, if you collected any.

Are they ever not? [The shrike replies, still smiling.] You have not managed to disappoint, yet.

A moment, and you will have your salt. [He's going to go hang the fish over the drying rack to free his hands, then come back with a little velvet pouch in one.

He holds it out to Ives once he's near enough.] I am minded to lay up extra for the future, if the Lake will sustain the harvest.

[With no vodyanoi around to ask the question probably falls to Moon Presence, but he'd hate to wake her up right now. Just Disciple troubles.] How much would you use, if it you are having it ready to-hand?

I could never have enough salt at the ready.

[simple enough! It's exceedingly useful for punching up flavor in most dishes. Many will overuse, if given the chance. Given it can be scarce on Myddvai, depending on the region one is in or the state of the blight changing resources around, it was best to be sparing. Ives is experienced enough to have an even hand with it.]

[Illarion thinks about that.

Thinks about that a little more.

And, of course, says the first stupid thing to come to him,] Trench does put one in such a mood, hm?

[Anyway,] But, then, I will take as much as I am permitted. It would not do for you to run out.

[Illarion was not ordinarily one to abandon his loyalties--he'd held them more dearly than his own life, after all--but November had been a...difficult month. Learning only in retrospect how deeply and strangely corruption affected him had necessitated a withdrawal to Trenchwood to regroup. He'd kept in contact with Tabris though much of it, but as the month waned--and his odd little building project with Ives took up more of his sleepless hours--he'd fallen out of touch.

It took him a little time to realize it, and a little more to experience a shade of regret over it. Less that he'd given the young man a chance out from under his wing (though how ready Tabris was for that remained debatable) and more he simply hadn't been in contact. He was quick enough to rectify it with the invitation--and was frankly, flatly pleased to have it so quickly responded to.

...And the sneeze gets an involuntary smile out of him, needless to say.]

Building a refuge, yes. It was passed time. [He can admit as much now, though he'd believed he neither needed nor deserved one, as one dead.] And you are invited to share it, if you will.

[Not as formal as such an invitation would usually be, but there was an entire cultural lesson needed to explain that formality and--it wasn't necessary.

One never needed to invite family, codified or not, to share one's home and refuge.]

Hmph.

[He rubs his nose on his sleeve and inspects the place. It's... very different from the rooms he's lived in at SEELE and NERV. Those were all concrete and metal, artificial lights, square angles. This is softer, with round walls, a high ceiling and a funny smell that he can't recognize as the scent of cut and treated wood.

Maybe it's the light, or the soft angles, or the candle light but something about this place feels warm.]

Invited to share... a refuge? Why?

I would appreciate that, Peripheral. [he takes the spoon on hand to stir in the salt and and turns the ingredients over themselves, humming]

... do you still like that name? I suppose I could call you Peri, for short. [a beat]

Or Feral, if you're being unmannered.

[With the soup bubbling away and salted, Illarion returns to the drying rack to properly lay out his catch.

Ives' suggestions get a chuckle out of him.]

Feral! This is a proper brother-name, a barracks-name, already. You honor me. [That's not sarcastic.] Though this is to say I was once tame, yes?

"You have found him."

So proper a greeting requires a proper response, and with the words Illarion lays aside his mending and rises fluidly to his feet. He returns the bow with one hand splayed over his heart and the other arm behind his back, matching depth to the millimeter. A gesture to a presumed-equal, for Trench's upheaval to set them all on even footing to start, but with a certain precise relish to it.

To be a lone elven island in a sea of humans is to cherish even the little things those humans did that reminded one of home.

"What is it that you seek me for?"

[The shrike keeps still throughout Thancred's reassurances, trusting the man can wrestle his own Omen into submission. That it needs to be wrestled at all is very interesting... And an observation he's not making consciously right now, with much of his focus on managing twin concerns of how much did he see, and what else might be in here? Right now, the winged stallion's fractious anger could well be a product of his Sleeper's disturbance, kept from ruffling the steady surface Thancred presents to the world.

It's a dim relief the other Sleeper's at least something like calm, after what he'd witnessed. Illarion's not much used to being disturbed anymore, not in a felt way (stirrings of corruption, then), and having someone else project relative stability makes it easier to recoup his usual dispassion.

Though the uncertainty, oh--that evokes a ragged shred of sympathy.]

I do not know. I cannot say, [he replies, wrestling some gentleness into his voice.

The blackness around them doesn't relent at the sounds of footsteps drawing near, though there's a sudden sense of presence that's vaguely human-shaped. It's followed by another, and another, all whispering in terrible unease. "Shoot it!" "It isn't doing anything. I don't know if it's even alive--" "Shoot it, for the love of Sacrifice! They're not alive to begin with!"]

I have known Sleepers to take wounds of the body, in these memories, but I did not know whether it might wound your mind to take in so much at once.

["Shoot it where? Throne and powers, it doesn't even look like it's got a head..."

Illarion's expression twitches; he turns his head toward the invisible speaker like he's hearing a familiar voice.]

...What did you see?

"Why this place needs to make even the aetherytes disturbing, I will never understand."

Someone is sternly addressing the Lamp Friend. One of the...er charming creatures must have appeared to respond (or at least look up) for the someone also chides.

"Don't give me that look!"

Gaia knows these aren't aetherytes. And she knows the creepy... well, whatever the creatures around the Lamps might be, they're 'good'. This doesn't stop her from projecting her nervousness on them a bit because traveling to a new place. A new place in the Trenchwood. The teen has her hands on her hips and is looking sternly at the nearest of the endearing entities.

Then she crosses her arms defensively. "Nevermind. Thanks... I guess." Gaia has also projected a little personality onto the creatures. And with personality comes reluctantly given gratitude for the safe transit. With that she steels herself and looks around.

Some who know her origins might be surprised about how well the rich girl from Eulmore adapted to her circumstances in the last month. Winter is a bitter time to arrive, on top of the horrors, the dangers and the urges the blood gives. People who know her might not be surprised that she's managed to maintain a piece of herself through it all and not just break down. From scavenging items from boats to bartering and the handouts given when she first been hauled from the bitter cold waters, a look has been assembled.

It's a far cry from fashion but she worked with what she had. The robe has become an outer wear to warmer layers. Sturdy pants and thigh-high, water-proofed boots, protective leather gloves. Her raven locks have been firmly braided into a french-style single braid. And if a person is really astute, it's clear she's wearing light makeup. A compromise to the environment and conservation; the cosmetics she arrived with are only going to last so long and nothing she's found here has compared. Sigh.

But back to the moment! In which Gaia realizes this is not a public location, so to speak, but possibly one's private home. One's private home in the middle of the Trenchwood. Someone- she hasn't noticed the larger yurt in the distance- that might not like to be intruded upon by a stranger. After that short look around, she's ready to turn back to the lamp and find another and more public destination to start her explorations for the day from before the scent of something cooking reaches her nostrils.

Gaia's stomach audibly growls. She's managed to find food but there's still days where it's not been a lot. Perhaps she should stay. Barter for a bowl. Hunger wars with cautionary tales.

"Hello? Anyone home?" There's a stranger approaching the fire and stew which... may or may not be currently simmering without an attendant. Not that she's going to touch it! Or steal! That would be idiocy. But it would explain why she calls out in search of someone.

From unfamiliarity to familiarity. Paul is surprised to be answered with the same kind of courtesy, but well-trained enough to shield that from his eyes. It wouldn't be a good start to offend him.

"I wish to speak to you about the gods," Paul says, unslinging his wrapped bundle of offerings after he rises, extending it to the Disciple held in both hands, "About Disciplehood. I was told you were the one to seek out, if I wanted to speak with a fellow Sleeper."

Not in so many words. Paul had been indirect about his approach. But it was what he had put together, from snippets.

[There's a twitch, almost in the same moment from man and omen at harsh whispers in the dark, tracking the sound but not yet finding origins. Although the equine of the pair remains alert, ears perked and swiveling, Lahabrea relaxes a little. But only a little, this situation is still off-kilter, he's not entirely sure he'd accidentally let slip something he shouldn't, and this wasn't.. really over yet by his guess.

The presence of the mothbird is kept in his peripherrals, he's not worried about her.. but she's still a fascinating design.]

Well, luck's with me then, I think I'm as whole and hale as I ever am.

[Which if he were completely honest wasn't actually all that great a marker to go off of, but there's no need to get into that. Illarion is remembered, from the cold and mess of the ship, and here it's a little easier to mark that the man (?) is actually blindfolded, for all that didn't seem to be a problem.

What DID he see? Was any of it secret?

The white haired man hesitates.]

A warzone, by my guess. Lead ups to it, mayhap. The results of it. Necromancy if I don't miss my mark, but the taste of it wasn't the usual sort.

[None of it sounds, to his tone or bearing, as if it's alarming, unusual, or even for that matter remotely unfamiliar. Not for Lahabrea - or for Thancred, for that matter. Even the idea of necromancy, it's ... interesting, but ultimately not something he ever felt the need to pursue much.

As Illarion turns towards the invisible speaker, the pegasus' demeanor changes, from alert and listening to laid back ears and bared teeth, aiming another snap at the shrike with a brief half-fan of wings. He is once more intercepted and pulled away with all the ease one might expect of a person wrangling their omen before teeth have even a prayer of actually connecting.]

Illarion accepts the gift as it is offered, with both hands, and makes a place among his mending tools to set it down on the smoothed stump that's his worktable. He knows already what it contains; to give a reasonable post hoc simulation of coming by that knowledge requires either his Omen be present or he unpack and examine all of it.

Better not to interrupt this conversation with either, in its opening moments.

"My reputation as an oddity is preceding me," he says, with the beginnings of a smile. Not only did that reputation precede him, this young human had bothered to investigate it deeply enough to find the lack of a name beneath it, and proceed anyway. Another mark in his visitor's favor. "Join me, then, at the fire, and we will speak of the gods, and Disciplehood, and whatever may come up between them."

He lifts a hand to gesture in the rough direction of Ives' cauldron, its well-seasoned contents, and the neat stack of bowls sitting ready near-to-hand. "You are welcome as well to our substance, if you hunger. All who visit are."

A meal could be a binding thing, though this one was only set to snare them happy neighbors.

[It's to Illarion's (memory of) shame that he's had neither time nor inclination nor resources to furnish the yurt so completely as a real refuge should be. The hangings on the walls are not so many or so bright as they should be, though they are thick enough to further soften the cold threatening to creep in. Large furs are difficult to come by in Trench, so a bright rag-tied rug covers the floor. Furniture's lacking--chairs properly suited to elves required explanation--but there's pillows around to recline on, and folded blankets to sleep under.

No personal touches, but then Illarion's still struggling with what it means to be a person after the end of one's own life.

He's also struggling with Tabris' complete inability to use a handkerchief.]

You still have my last handkerchief, [he remarks, mildly.] You might use that for your nose.

[They'll also have to work on this scent-aversion thing, but one step at a time.

(Parenting was never meant to be a single-person job; Saints and stars, what's he taken on alone.)]

Because, little bird, you are my charge. As one of my own children might have been. This is a place for you to lay down your burdens, as well.

[This part will need explaining, he's sure, but he's also sure to get many more questions.]

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

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I don't wish to evade the world | OTA

How is that heart, underneath the silence (Winter Mournings, OTA)

Everything.

Forever my home; Illarion

i am estimating the weight of a pegasus here and getting it wrong 100%

'bigger than mothbird'

Belly of the beast, act 3, but it's just them eating good food; Illarion

this went through six revisions and a truly execrable bird pun before i was happy with it

well now i have to know the bird pun

a visit for the old man

honestly the best act 3 possible

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welcome home, son boy!!

TSUNS ABOUT IT

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absolutely involved calling illarion both a strange bird and an odd duck

reasonable measurement; she's roughly breadbox-sized (please give her bread)

Forever Home - Hope it's not too late! - Ives, Illarion or both! Just let me know if I should wait.

fantastic, thank you

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i live to serve

deres right back; also stares at embarrassing typo in last tag. o well!!