[Paul comes to his feet at Lazarus' urging without hesitance, that slight, kind smile still upon him despite the lashing violence of the rain. When Lazarus charts a direction towards high ground, Paul is a ready follower, easily guided, and in the darkening downpour he is as faithfully illuminating as a lighthouse.]
I'm with you.
[His voices are gentle and endless. They shouldn't be audible in the thrashing tumult of rising waters, but they shouldn't be at all, so what is one more barrier breached?
(He is not himself. He is something else, sometimes, more and more. His body twists on a borrowed bed, pulsing infinitesimal cell-slitting unlight that casts no shadow.)]
And you're all right, if you're with me.
[There is water at his knees, slick and black. On its surface float the lunar-disc strands of ever-seeking fungi, of limitless, colonizing growth. The ambient warmth of the desert, what there was of it, is gone. It's cold here, as cold as the depths of the last dark place that Paul bled light in. But there are no monsters here, no gaping maws and ancient yearning hungers.
There's just him, and Lazarus.]
I won't drown you. [Soft, unfurling.] Do you believe me?
no subject
I'm with you.
[His voices are gentle and endless. They shouldn't be audible in the thrashing tumult of rising waters, but they shouldn't be at all, so what is one more barrier breached?
(He is not himself. He is something else, sometimes, more and more. His body twists on a borrowed bed, pulsing infinitesimal cell-slitting unlight that casts no shadow.)]
And you're all right, if you're with me.
[There is water at his knees, slick and black. On its surface float the lunar-disc strands of ever-seeking fungi, of limitless, colonizing growth. The ambient warmth of the desert, what there was of it, is gone. It's cold here, as cold as the depths of the last dark place that Paul bled light in. But there are no monsters here, no gaping maws and ancient yearning hungers.
There's just him, and Lazarus.]
I won't drown you. [Soft, unfurling.] Do you believe me?