deercountry | you're standing in the sea

In the city of Trench, there is a correspondence conducted, if two letters count as such.

Paul only needs to read the answer to his supplication once to know it by heart, with a kind of despair he will not name even to himself. He reads it again anyway over the next few days, as if he can divine some new insight from the words, the medium, the messenger.

It is, in the end, unnecessary. The answers he needed come from other sources.

In retrospect, Paul can see that much of his recent behavior has been reactive. He has demonstrated a shameful lack of discipline. He has allowed himself to be provoked. He flinched.

Things are going to be different here.

When Paul arrives on the doorstep in person, his hair is freshly trimmed. He is dressed plainly but appropriately in solemn black, twin silver pins set on either side of his collar beneath his hooded overcoat, his signet ring under his left glove. He discarded his shield generator and his wrist knife in one of his caches, judging them unnecessary, even vulgar - the pair of swords sheathed on his back are only a formality to be set aside once over the threshold.

The warm, candlelight moon is just beginning to crest in the sky as he knocks on God's front door like the light tapping in of a nail.

Edited 2022-01-31 01:40 (UTC)

The mansion had been grand, once. Now it's half-decayed, a big creaky haunted house at the outer fringes of Gaze; the gentle light of the clocktower barely touches its roof, and the dead trees of the Trenchwood press tangled to its back. John hasn't seen Canaan House in a hell of a long time, but he still finds this fitting.

Bare moments after the last tap, a skeleton answers the door. It bows to Paul with mechanical politeness, the movements of a construct without a soul, and then turns to lead him in. The floors are tiled in the same black stone as the ocean cliffs, and where age or violence have gouged chunks away, the cracks have been filled with a bright whorl of bone.

God is puttering around the kitchen down the hall. His shirtsleeves are rolled up to his elbows, and when Paul and the construct arrive at the door, he's wiping flour off his hands.

"Navigator," he says, pleased, as though he cannot see the set of the boy's shoulders and read trouble. "Welcome."

Paul bows at the waist on acknowledgment, stiff with formal reserve. When he straightens, he slides the swords from his back and tucks them under his arm, looking around the innocuously macabre kitchen. There is a certain incuriosity in his observation that's unlike him.

"Thank you, captain," Paul says, calmly, with the respect he feels is due, "I'm sorry to have interrupted you."

He looks over the kitchen again, and decides to set his weapons down on the open counter nearest the doorway. His movements are unhurried and smooth, his heartbeat as steady as a downward ticking clock. There's a deliberateness of control in every gesture and breath, a studied stillness.

"...does your offer of conversation still stand?"

The camp on the beach is only a suggestion at the end of January on the distant Farther Shores out of sight of the boardwalk, the city itself a suggestion on the horizon.

Paul Atreides sits cross-legged outside of his four-sided tent and looks out at the sea with a notebook open in his lap, occasionally adding a line here or there to a sketch of what seems to be a mass of squirming, mouthed tentacles, which might be more disturbing in a different universe. A long-tailed hopping mouse that appears to be made of black ink crouches besides him, but she's alert to the rest of the world in a way he is not, and she's the one who notices the approaching stranger with ears raised and whiskers outstretched as she rises on her hind legs.

In a stranger, this would be an interesting degree of control and a baffling degree of disinterest in skeleton-themed decorating. God is accustomed to a certain level of fear in the people around him, a baseline hum of expectant anxiety. There's really no shame in getting jumpy around a guy with this many titles and this much stuff made of bone.

In Paul, the clamped-down stillness makes him look two seconds from snapping. Only question is what direction he'll snap in; they've already checked the 'horrified vomiting' box.

"Of course, Paul." His tone is warm, pleased to be asked. "We can have a seat in my study. Mind if I put the kettle on?"

The faint twist of Paul's mouth at the sound of his name is evocative of that very memory of lime peel bile, but his eyes remain deferentially shaded away as he nods.

"Not at all," he says, and means it. There's no reason this has to be uncivilized. Paul isn't a barbarian, which is one of the things he's here to illustrate - so he leaves the swords where they are without so much as a backwards glance or a lingering brush of his fingers.

Instead, he undoes his coat and folds it over his arm, and politely adds: "Is there anything I could help with?"

The beach is something unfamiliar to Satoko, something uniquely alien. It's nothing like the warm rivers of her youth; it's ice and sand and detritus encompassing a vastness unlike anything else on Earth. Another world encased by eroded rock and decayed life. And while the emptiness and scale of that other world isn't entirely new to her - while she has been into that vastness and returned more times than she can possibly count, whether human or squid or something else entirely - the land surrounding it feels almost liminal. Like it can't decide whether it's land, or sea, or something else entirely.

She despises that uncertainty. She has for as long as she can remember. Maybe that's why she's put off exploring this part of their surroundings for so long. And maybe that's why she honestly appears taken aback to find another Sleeper out in this place.

"...my apologies. I wasn't aware anyone lived so far out from the city." She doesn't sound quite like she's questioning his sanity for it, at least - just like she's considering it. "Is this private property, then, or am I allowed to look around?"

"Private - ?" Paul looks up in surprise, echoing the word, and he smiles immediately and easily at the appearance of a newcomer. "No. You're free to look wherever you like."

It's an informed guess to assume that whoever this is, she hasn't seen the message on the network. Paul has been mildly surprised at how many people that seems to encompass.

"My name is Paul. May I ask yours?" There is a slight emphasis on the may I, a sliver of recently acquired specific tension around the asking of names that has nothing to do with her, personally.

If she notices that odd note in his voice, she certainly doesn't show it. "I can't imagine why you wouldn't. It's Satoko Hojo - a pleasure to meet you, sir."

The words she uses are respectful enough. But there's a certain disconnect between them and the rest of her demeanor: her tone, her body language, the look in her eyes. It's slight enough for most to wave off, but whatever it is she considers Paul, it certainly isn't 'her elder."

She immediately begins to take a closer look at his camp, walking around the tent as she speaks. "If you don't mind me asking, are you bothered often out here? I can't imagine many come to visit without good reason."

"There's no need for that," Paul says, at being called 'sir', waving it off with the pencil still held in his hand as he closes his notebook and rises to his feet. Once standing, he inclines at the waist in a polite half-bow. He notices the slight discrepancy, but it doesn't bother him so much as he takes it as something worth noting, just in case.

"I have visitors occasionally. More so lately." He's not going to drag out the mystery too long. "This is the site for a monster hunting camp. That's what I've been calling it, anyway."

There has to be a better name, but he's deliberately not trying to supply one.

"Is that so? Where I come from, all sorts of people pay attention to the way you talk." She shrugs, almost theatrically, and shakes her head. "Well, I'll do my best, but it is quite the old habit. I wouldn't expect any changes overnight."

Not that she has any intention to try, of course. She might not be beholden to custom for any real reason by this point, but there's some comfort in sticking to the way she's always done things. Perhaps once she gets bored, she'll spice things up then-

-and given what she's just heard, she doubts she'll be growing bored of this young man too soon. "A monster hunting camp? That's quite an ambitious project, don't you think?" Her interest is clear down to her very movements; she stops in her tracks, turning her head to face him directly as she speaks. "Are there others that stay here, too?"

"Mugs are in the cabinet by your shoulder," he suggests, because it always seems to do Harrow good to be given rote tasks when she'd otherwise hover a tight two paces behind him. God fetches the kettle and fills it, then drops in a little moonlit orb to heat the water, where it goes plunk. Once everything is set out and the water left to boil, he leads them from the kitchen and down the hall, absentmindedly righting his shirtsleeves as they go.

"We don't see many visitors, so I hope you'll forgive the mess." The study is nearly spartan, after the rest of the house. The furniture has a greying, neglected sort of quality; the walls are mostly bare. If anything, it looks like the office of a professor: on every flat surface is a riot of papers and notes; books borrowed from the Archives; bits of bone and bloodstone set down here or there. God shuffles things aside for a moment, rather unceremoniously, and gestures Paul to take a seat. He chooses the chair opposite, not the big one on the other side of the old oak desk.

He does not sit backwards on the chair, but he really thinks about it.

"So. What brings you by?"

"It's the same where I come from," Paul says, with a half-wry smile as he tucks the notebook under his arm. "But given how many places we all come from, keeping track of the appropriate levels of formality to use with everyone -"

He holds out an open palm as if to say, what can you do? Her other question is much more imminent, so he turns to that next.

"It is, and there will be. It's a large monster." While Paul isn't writing off this newcomer as a potential aid, he has a certain ambivalence about recruiting people, even interested ones, without a full accounting. "A reality shifter from the ocean. People have been having visions of its arrival."

Paul takes off his gloves before he dutifully reaches for the mugs. His thoughts are a hot white static as he watches God's hands at work on kettle and sleeves, as he watches the rise and fall of divine breath in the movement of his back.

He has to get it right the first time. Every nuance has to be exact. He still isn't sure if that's going to be enough.

"You should have seen my corner of the Archives when we met." Paul sets out the mugs, tone mild, and takes his seat across from God. He rests his hands on his knees and sits straight backed, but not tensed.

"I've been thinking about where I left things between us," Paul says, eyes full of his open, unguarded observation, "The miscommunications that have kept happening - and I've realized, I have you at a disadvantage, lord. I know so much about you, and yet I've told you so little about me. I'd like to correct that."

God's eyebrows quirk up. He thinks, possibly, he sees where this is going. Whatever has been laid on this kid's shoulders, it's a hell of a thing; it's enough to wind him up this tightly just because he doesn't trust himself not to break.

With a monster on the horizon, maybe he's being asked for absolution. Or pressed into believing it isn't deserved, which is exactly the same thing.

"You're under no obligation," he soothes. "But I'll confess some curiosity."

There is only so much control that Paul can exert at a time. The trade off of his completeness of focus is that it leaves him exposed to reciprocal observation.

So God may well take note of the fact, now and in hindsight, there is an instant of hesitation shading into doubt, a single, slender crack in an otherwise expert mask. His eyes flick away, and when they return, there is nothing left of it.

"Thank you," he says, a little softly, "But I confess, I've struggled with where to begin. It's a challenge, explaining yourself. I thought - what would any of the words I might use mean here? What does it mean for me to say to you - I am Paul Atreides, a ruling Duke of my House, Imperial kinsman? Or Paul Atreides, student of the Ginaz school? Paul Atreides, Bene Gesserit trained? A whole empire of context that isn't here. The context I have acted in as if it still exists, or it matters in this place so far from it."

"I've been trying to communicate with you as if I expect you to understand any of that." Paul leans forward, slightly. "And that's a kind of communication, in its own way, isn't it? The ways that we fail, and misunderstand each other. On the ship, for example. Do you mind if I ask you - and I won't be offended - what you thought I was afraid of, lord?"

He sees the crack, and wonders at it. But this still seems like nothing more dire than a personal crisis of faith, the wavering over which secrets to share. God listens politely, tips his head in half a nod to acknowledge incomprehension of Ginaz and Bene Gesserit. There's not a speck of real worry in his posture or his face: only an earnest willingness to play mentor.

At the question, his mouth slants into a rueful little smile, though it doesn't reach his eyes.

"You've an excellent point, Paul, that I don't know what Emperor means to you. But I suspect it's a human universal," and here the slant of his smile deepens, wry, "that there's little more dangerous than a powerful man who feels slighted."

He sits forward over his knees, hands clasped, and regards the perfectly relaxed— the tightly-shuttered— face of the boy in his study.

"Even worse if he thinks the slight has come from within his own house," he observes. "You seemed more concerned I'd be angry with them than with you. I appreciate that."

"You do?" Paul asks, with a slight smile, his eyes somehow unchanged and yet become hideous above it. "I suppose we'll see."

There is no trick to what he does next. It's not a thing of that kind, or of degrees, or of trying. It is perfect or it is nothing, and it requires an absolute discipline of intent before a single syllable is brought forth. The pitch, the tone, the cadence, the sum of it must be developed in the mind, articulated exactly through the instrument of the body, and delivered with inexorable authority.

"Be still." Paul says, in a Voice that swallows all motion, in a Voice that carries the command of a maternal chain of automatic obedience that stretches behind him for millennia. The air should shiver with it, dust itself should hang waiting for leave to resume its electrostatic dance, but all that happens is that Paul sits back in his chair, and he waits to see if he has been perfect, or if he will be nothing.

Edited 2022-01-31 19:41 (UTC)

God goes still.

He'd been drumming the pad of his thumb upon the side of his palm, an absentminded fidget; his thumb now pauses in the air, muscles arrested mid-flex. The casual shift and lean of his body stills to silence. He is frozen with his lips still slightly parted, breath arrested to a gentle resting baseline. His body waits.

But in his eyes, something shifts.

The expression of John Gaius has frozen in gentle bemusement, but from behind those black eyes, he looks at Paul as though seeing him for the first time.

Paul rises from his chair unhurriedly, draping his coat over its back, and the tension in his shoulders is gone as he rolls them back. He looks at God, and then around the room, and then back to him. His approach is casual, his stride even, as he walks behind God's chair and takes a careful hold of its back on either side of God's shoulders. The idea of touching him is abhorrent for reasons that have nothing to do with danger, so Paul avoids doing so as he tips back God's chair and drags him into the rough center of the room.

He does not untip the chair. Instead, he balances it on two legs, so he may lean over God and look into his eyes. Paul meets his gaze evenly, above and reversed, and contemplates him.

"'The weight of a kindly God is a fearful thing'," he says, and then, "So there was at least one thing you weren't lying about. That's a start."

He lets that float between them, and then, as cold and empty as vacuum itself, adds: "I come to you in intercession, lord, not as an assassin, or a thief. I come to you as a supplicant. I come to you covetous of your attention. Will you hear me, lord? Say nothing if you will."

So: this is new.

It's really a very good showing, a well-executed play. Paul leans over him, hand braced beside his shoulder— but not touching, which he notes— and John looks back into his eyes. Not much choice in the matter, really, but that's not an issue: this is interesting. There's nowhere else he'd rather look.

He says nothing, because he cannot. His lips are still; his body has paused in utter obedience. For the first time in the span of an empire, he does not hold his own strings.

(Probably best for everybody that he doesn't have a chance to get mad about it. His gaze is watchful and intent as a man presented with a complex algorithm, trying to unpick its parts.)

"I imagine this is the part where people usually talk about the necessity of their actions," Paul says, continuing in his awful quietness, "Their motives and their causes. I considered that, lord, but the truth is, I found myself at a loss. What could I say to you that hasn't been said already, and better, by those with true grievances against you? It seemed tiresome. And you must be so tired, lord."

"So I'll spare you that. You know why I'm here. You told me yourself. I'm afraid. There's nothing interesting about that, or surprising." Paul shrugs, dismissive of the notion, and tilts his head slightly to one side. "There can be so little that's either to you anymore. So I have wondered at what was."

He thinks God will see where he is going with this, so Paul pauses to collect himself. He balances blasphemy on the tip of his tongue. He looks at God with a thing not unlike gentleness, except for its cruelty.

"Of all of the things I said to you, that was the one that caught you out, and I have come back to it, so many times, asking myself - why? And I think I have begun to understand. It presumed the desires of God, as so much religious philosophy does." Paul nods, thoughtfully, as if in reply to a thing God has not said. "It must be so easy to despise us for that. To hold us in contempt for our selfishness. How could I blame you for taking offense? Of my errors, that was the worst of them. I seek to make that right between us. I seek to correct my presumptions. I wish to know you, lord, as you have asked that we seek to know you."

Paul breathes in, and savors the miracle of it, the transmutation of air to life and word.

"The question shouldn't be, does anyone still love God? The question is, does God want to be loved?"

He listens. There's little other choice, but again, he wouldn't make one: there can be so little that interests you anymore, says Paul, and he has the right of it. This clears the bar. This is among the most interesting things to happen to him since waking up with tentacles.

"Yes." The word breaks like an exhale, more shudder than sound. It takes him a beat to even realize he's spoken— that Paul can wrench this from him, too, sudden as a torn-out tooth. It sharpens the attention in his flat black eyes.

Now there's a useful trick.

He does not say, Well, this is getting a little personal, because he hasn't been asked. Everyone always wants to talk about God, and never mind what he has to say.

On the other side of that attention, Paul's gaze drops from God's eyes to his throat, then back, a rapid flicker of shifted and returned awareness. He nods.

"I believe you," he says, with a soft, dreadful resignation, and he closes his eyes. Not for long. There are very few choices he's left available to either of them.

"Bene Gesserit trained," Paul tells God, still softly, when his eyes open again, "It means my mother made me a weapon. A ruling duke of my House means my father taught me what weapons are for. Ginaz school -"

There is a distant sound in the house, a creaking groan of settling age, and Paul tenses, his hands bloodless on the side of the chair as he glances at the empty doorway.

"No one knows I'm here." It's an admission offered up like Paul can't quite believe what he's saying. "If you've been wondering. No messages. No contingencies."

He looks back to God, in quiet desperation: "You'll need to get rid of the swords, anything else I touched. Don't forget that. You've been letting too many details slip."

Paul, he wants to tell the weapon, you're doing it again.

He has not been freed; there is nothing to do but sit as passive audience. There's a horrifying claustrophobia to that, some sick helplessness that he's lost the art of. He is too old; he's forgotten how to let himself be hurt. He's been relearning fast, here.

It isn't terribly comfortable. It's a demonstration of something he needed to see. He understands more than he had before, which is always worth something.

Does God want to be loved? He hadn't even felt the yes until it was in the air. An automatic reflex, like a tap to the knee. The power to halt him is one thing; the power to drag out truth is something else, and he likes the feel of it even less. He watches Paul like some kind of savannah animal, a lion let loose among his papers and notebooks: fascinating, impressive, and definitely not safe to have here.

Presented with no other option, God waits.

you're standing in the sea | february catch-all

no church in the wild | the emperor

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the dirt is temporary | satoko hojo

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