faithlikeaseed | AEFENGLOM INBOX [IC]

[Myr bites at his lower lip now, nigh on a frown of concentration as he listens to Everett's explanation--as he feels the underlying distress through the Bond. Ah, so: This is what had been shadowing them for so many months; he recognizes it now that it's out in the open. It grieves him doubly to feel it so: One, that his Bonded, his beloved is suffering; and two, that someone so gloriously, beautifully confident in himself was being eaten hollow by such a wound.

Perhaps not unjustly, if that confidence was part-founded in a lie Everett had been told by those who owed him the truth. But if he'd grown up believing all along that he was the reincarnation of a monster, doomed by the Springtide's beliefs to carry on what he'd begun in a past life...

No. No, that would not have done either.

Myr unfolds his hands, extending them across the table to Everett. More, he leaves himself open to their Bond; while there is some part of him reserved, quietly fomenting with thought as he works through the implications of what's been said, all the love he bears his Bonded is still there, unshaken.]

Andraste's mercy, dearheart--little wonder you'd shy from that.

[Breath in, breath out.] I'd hear more of him, [which he knows is surely not what Everett wants to hear, or share, with the looming possibility that something in Sherwood's past might turn Myr away from him,] but I'd like you to answer two questions for me first.

[The perpetual subterranean night is soothing to L's over-dilated eyes, and naturally occurring glints and glows among the rocks and creatures are no more glaring than distant stars. For the first time in recent memory, he's not preoccupied with Niles' stalking or Mello and all that associated heartache. He could spend hours here, or days, and let the earthy damp air sweeten the process of breathing until it comes easily to him again. He's dealt with worse beds than the soft moss in places, more distressing bedfellows than the soft velvety worms who seem peacefully ignorant of his quiet, observant presence.

Perhaps he should be afraid, in spite of the fact that he knows this to be a dream, for their sheer size and power. But he can wait, and observe a little longer, and maybe settle in to lose himself in thought. His slender white-clad form blending easily into its surroundings, cast in the same soft blue glow as the surrounding rocks and tufted flora.

He's easy to miss. It's almost inevitable, unless one has very sharp eyes... or happens to be Bonded to him, perhaps.]

[And in dreams, Myr has both things in his possession: A fallow deer's eyesight is nigh on a falcon's, and the vibrant thread of their Bond is--if anything--stronger in a realm where physical distances are often mutable and strange.

The Faun was fascinated with the giant worms himself; the nearest he could analogize to anything seen on Thedas was the humble caterpillar, but those were never ever so large nor so beautifully colored. Nor, Myr suspects, quite so gently placid in their thoughts. It's this beauty--inner and outer--that's made him linger after other dreamers from Aefenglom have continued across the lake; it is soothing beyond measure to lose himself in befriending the beasts, to wander with them as they traverse their feeding grounds.

It's soothing, also, to know both his Bonded are rejoicing in different ways at this dream, wherever they are; the knowledge sets Myr's anxiety at rest, keeps him from any urgency in seeking them out. Though as the perambulations of the worm-herd he's following brings them close to one of those bright spots in Myr's heart, he breaks away from them to follow the thread of his Bond. A click of hooves on stone announces his approach well before he's settling down beside L, legs tucked under him in a way that seems patently uncomfortable.

He doesn't say anything, yet, content to just be in the same space.]

[Everett's less terrified that something of Sherwood will pull Myr away from him, but some of Everett's own feelings towards the figure. After all, it's not the necromancy necessarily that Everett has a problem with. It's what that necromancy was used for. How Sherwood was disloyal, as he also is, using up all who loved him as tools to serve until they are no longer useful.

Myr is surely not going to appreciate that Everett has no real qualms with the base practice, only Sherwood's actions with those practices. He tries to joke a bit, if lightly, for once not fully dodging away with his humor]

I would say yes, anything, my darling... but do allow me my hesitancy. I will do my utmost best to answer. [a rat gets all too defensive if cornered, he'd rather not be driven to that]

Of course, [Myr is swift to reassure, with a softening to his expression.] You hardly need ask.

[Or perhaps he did, given Myr cornered him here after weeks of that same hesitancy... But they're talking now, and Myr truly does not wish this to be any more distressing than it's already been.

On to the questions, then.]

Your friend, the mermaid. What would Sherwood have done with her, in the same situation?

[Even though Myr cannot see the way Everett's eyes round and his lashes bat rapidly, his shock is clear in the bond. His stunned silence clear in the air. His answer, quiet]

I... am not certain. Perhaps. Just the same. [is that good? Bad? He can't wrap his mind fully around the idea.]

There was a charm to Sherwood, that much is clear. He was not a man driven by cruelty, but... he did not value those who loved him. [and there's the dread. Is Everett any better than that? He's far from altruistic, after all. He leaves people over and over out of fear and selfishness, not wishing to be hurt.]

[So Sherwood's was the cruelty of abandonment and neglect, not deliberate malice. Which is a little surprising to Myr--he'd asked the question on a hunch about the conclusion he'd wanted to draw--but...it is not, necessarily, a bad surprise.

He is quiet as he considers that, and the renewed flux of dread across the Bond. He did not value those who loved him.

Well. In Myr's estimation, that's certainly not a trait Everett shares, but he can extrapolate from his own experiences where the seeds of dread might begin. There is no use in hastening to offer false reassurances--no, dearheart, of course you'd never do that--when he hasn't full information on what Everett holds up as his own failings; that does not change his own unstinting affection and concern for the man across from him.]

And how did he think of the Springtide themselves? What bound him to them?

[The next question is... easier. Or rather, Everett has stronger feelings towards it, has thought on it already. Those thoughts hadn't been put down or spoken in any manner, so he does consider before answering, a sternness in his tone.]

Necessity... and survival. Sherwood negotiated the banishment of his remaining follows to save them and himself. Vaughan would have been apart of that, the Vampires sought to continue living at any cost. [which was why they led the aristocratic families, those with the wealth and drive to continue to thrive even in the caves and the dark]

Majesty Ygrayne had great mercy to send them to the Below Lands. Even she had some fondness of the man. Despite... his known flaws. [a mystery, that, Everett couldn't fully understand that, not with what he knew of the Land Dragon and her strict manner. Perhaps that influence was apart of the Springtide, appeasing her sensibilities for them to be proper and orderly, should they wish to continue living]

[That's more in-line with what Myr had expected to hear, from Everett's level of dismay about his spiritual ancestor. But because it is, he's prompted to another question:] Did he love them as much as you do?

[It did not do to be over-certain about this. He's learned a great deal since coming to Aefenglom about checking his own assumptions, his own need to tidy people into boxes.

Sherwood, no less than Everett, couldn't be enclosed so simply, it sounds.]

I don't... believe that he loved anything or anybody. I think he saw most actions and most people as curiosities. He perfected a magic that turned souls, quite literally, into objects. Incarnate, he called them.

[he sighs again, feeling a deep well of pity and the name bubbles up again.]

Even his own wife, Adelheid.

Maker and Lady, [Myr breathes, involuntarily. He leans back in his chair, shuddering as if someone's walked over his grave; his fur's all on end with the heart-chilling horror of such a thing.

It isn't a magic wholly unknown on Thedas. There were rumors...

Faintly,]

His own wife? [...He recognizes the name.] You--you mistook me for her once, didn't you? Back during the mist...

[L's posture is often curled and tense. The dream has unwound him into something still slouched, but relaxed and at-ease, and there's even a slight upward tilt to his chin when he glances over his shoulder at the approaching Faun with a pale smile. He pulls his heels and crossed legs a little closer toward his body, perhaps making an effort to sit up a little straighter as Myr joins him on the cushy spread of moss.

He's the one to break the silence, in the end, prefaced with a gentle sigh.]

I don't usually dream. If I thought it could be pleasant in this way, I might wish otherwise.

That I had... she's also a reverent figure to my people. It's a common decoration to dye black a skull of a deer or elk, decorate it in white carnation and golden twine and stars. An Adelheid's ward, like the one I keep above the door out front.

[it's rather soured, now, that gesture he made to remember her. His fondness, what he always thought was some part of Sherwood still in him, drawing him to her visage and making him fascinated with her as more than just any figure of lore... It felt disingenuous now. Like he'd been tricked him believing there was some special connection he had to her, when there was only betrayal]

Her legacy was of self sacrifice, as she was who slayed Enki, ended her reign over the Unquestioned. I did not realize Sherwood's part... and that he could have saved her, but did instead refuse.

[Even without knowing the whole story--of Everett's upbringing or of Sherwood and Adelheid--Myr can grasp at the edges of how the other Faun is feeling. To have learned such a thing about the previous bearer of one's soul and how he'd acted against someone reverenced, someone Everett held in obvious high regard... As if Myr had woken up to find he was somehow, some way a reincarnation of Maferath.

Awful to contemplate.]

How did it come to that, between them? [A pause.] And why--how is it you learned all this, counter to what you knew growing up with the Springtide?

Ah, well... some time ago, when the objects from home came through the mirrors. A book appeared through mine, a collection of historical notes written by Sherwood himself. I was the third to read it, as Lord Viren discovered the bound volume and Sokie some stray pieces.

[which was irritating, but also... he'd not have had the courtesy to keep himself from reading such a thing, if the roles where switched. Stones, glass houses, something to that effect.

Everett, also, can't much stay mad at those two. They're gremlins just like he is.]

Sherwood wrote everything down. His journals are a cornerstone of Springtide culture, kept in utmost regard and under intense protection. They are too precious to allow any read should they not be a Druid. As his reincarnation, especially, I was forbidden ever be close to them. [so he promptly read it, like, five times and suffered. Everett sometimes suffers some real only really wants cookies if told not to touch the cookie jar impulses]

[Oof. Myr winces a little sympathetically; not that Viren and Sokie were the worst people to find such a thing and read it--in fact, they're probably the best of all the options--but being suddenly known to the people one loves the way Everett loves those two... That would not be the best feeling.

The very fact of those journals, and how they'd been kept from Everett... That's strange, though. That's very strange.]

So of course you did, once you could, [with gentle, wry humor. Yes, Myr knows you.] Why--why d'you think they kept them from you? They set him up in such high esteem but you make it sound as if they were ashamed of who he was.

[Or, more generously, trying to keep his reincarnation from the path he'd walk. Maker, what would expectations like that do to a child? To a man? Well, Myr, witness here your beloved and the result of that.]

This is the kind I miss, from back home.

[A mage's lot in life was demons in his dreams, most nights, but now and again Myr had found himself in parts of the Fade controlled by gentler spirits who fed off a dreamer's wonder or nostalgia or joy. Those had been a welcome respite, and so this is too, made all the better that he can share it with one he loves.

That it's also an opportunity to get a real look at said beloved, undistorted by too many eyes feeding information to a brain three years out of practice in seeing... Ah, that makes it a double joy. Certain compensations needed be made for how dreams reflected a dreamer's ought rather than his is, but now that he can see L, he is unabashed and curious in his regard.]

We do get some lovely ones, here. [Among the frightening, awesome, and apparently prophetic ones.] I wish I'd the time to study more on what they know of dream-walking.

[One of the worms has followed him, breaking from its herd to make its slow and shambling way to where faun and detective are taking their repose.]

Of course, I had. [he chuckles, albeit sadly to admit. He's predictable, in that way, too curious for his own good. All the warnings in the realm couldn't stop him from reading that tome, knowing finally what Sherwood was.

Even if the answer was unsatisfying, Everett wished to know that terrible truth, even if he'd prefer not to be living with it]

It was always said to be improper. That one shouldn't relive the past, in such a way. And... Vaughan always insisted I need be my own man.

A man he'd been fond of, but didn't want you to emulate? [Interesting. Very interesting. And--entirely academic, really, to the far more important subject of the weight of dread and guilt Everett's been carrying with him over the subject.

Myr considers approaches, gently pushes aside his own curiosity and the desire to dig deeper yet into the history of the Springtide. Ample time for that later--maybe even tonight, depending how the rest of the conversation goes and where they end up at the close of it.]

Are you afraid you've come to be too much like him anyway?

Afraid... well. [this would completely escape Myr, obviously, obviously it would. He could lie through omission with such ease!

It takes so much of his better judgement to share]

I know I'm much like him. As a matter of fact. [he doesn't like it, but it is. A fact with evidence.]

The Springtide can tell a reincarnation through matching handwriting. We're taught young to read and write so the comparison can be made. When young, it matches closest, since life experience has not had much influenced. [so, it follows, Everett's handwriting should be different now that he's older, if he is so different]

Mine is still the same. [he has the direct comparison to study and. Urg. It's bleak.]

[It is a fact that Myr's immediate impulse is to contest--because he's not Springtide and the matter of someone's handwriting seems petty and inconsequential. Everett is the sort of man who'd weep for a near-stranger's sorrow and keep a grieving mermaid company through the night. What did handwriting signify in the face of that?

And yet--and yet. Everett's also a man with a gift for stepping inside someone else's troubles and taking on the weight of them himself, however bizarre and removed they might seem from his own experiences. How could Myr do any less than follow his Bonded's example in this?

It seems such a small thing as to hardly matter, but it matters so much to Everett, and that's what's truly important.

(The emotions across their Bond roil and simmer as Myr works through this, settling on a quiet sort of worry.)]

Do you think that dooms you to committing all his same sins, dearheart?

I... do not know, my darling. I fear as much. Even if I am no druid, not in the sense Sherwood was... [the faun powers are more what Sherwood claimed of the druids, generating wealth and plenty without the drawing on of necromancy to do so, so that's safely different.

It's more his actions, the way he has always run from caring too deeply for others.]

I know of myself. I know the distance I keep with those I have loved. Others do not deserve to carry the burden of my inherent... selfishness. [he puts his hands to Myr's holding gently, if the bond belies the calmness.

He is lonely and filled with guilt for that, feels his desires too needy, too desperate, too childish. That is a weight not to be shared, like the soul supposedly held beneath his gloves.]

[Myr left his magic back home, and L experienced it for the first time in Aefenglom. While their backgrounds are profoundly different, it creates a strange kind of mirror image symmetry to know that they meet so amiably in the middle, in gentle agreement that the intimidating majesty of these fae dreams offer more than they threaten.

L's dark-eyed glances at Myr never last long, enough to take in the image of his Bonded before flickering away. The comfort of the dream's harmonious surroundings is interrupted slightly by the fact that L is used to Myr not being able to see him, allowing him a very certain kind of mercy and freedom. It doesn't help that the dream reflects perhaps a harsher version of L than what appears in the waking world; there is a surreal and spectral quality to his appearance, faded, nearly translucent in the bioluminescent underground glow.]

I've made some study of dream-walking, you know. It fits into the work associated with divination...but the associated risks are significant. I haven't gone further than theory yet, for those reasons.

[He takes note of the worm that seems to be making a beeline for their resting spot, raising a brow.]

I see you brought a friend.

[A more welcome companion than Niles, certainly.]

Selfishness?

[Myr's tone rises on the word, not to incredulity but near enough. Near enough, as he takes Everett's hands in both his own and holds tight.]

You are anything but a selfish man, Everett Vaughan. Fearing to love too deeply, [he sees you there, in spirit, even if he can't in flesh,] is a world away from being the sort of man who'd take me, or Sokie, or Viren and sacrifice us for magic.

[If he's strident it's because he loves Everett so fiercely, so dearly, that he will fight on his behalf. Even if he's fighting Everett for Everett's own honor.

He lifts one of his Bonded's hands to his lips, pressing them against Everett's knuckles in his own gesture of knightly esteem. Quietly, then, and more gently,]

Instead you've given me back something I thought irreplaceable, believing in me when I couldn't.

[Where it might be disturbing to someone else, Myr takes a...certain kind of familiar comfort in L's ethereal qualities. It isn't so unlike how a spirit might appear, and even if Myr had always been chary of the Maker's first children after his Harrowing, it's yet the case some part of him misses seeing them in his dreams. That L reminds him of them in other ways, too, makes the analogy more satisfyingly complete.

...Which does not entirely erase the worry that comes in seeing L this way; but then, Myr had always known his Bonded was little more than skin and bone, had braced himself for the struggle of keeping the detective eating and caring for himself despite ingrained tendencies to do otherwise.

He does not miss, either, those flickering signs of unease. His own curiosity sufficiently satisfied, he takes his gaze from L--to the convenient distraction of the oncoming worm.]

I have, haven't I? They're sweet creatures. If we ever meet them outside dreams, I think I'd bring one home--provided they can live aboveground.

[He offers out a hand to greet the beast once it's near enough, smile softening as it brushes his palm with its antennae.]

How much of the foundational work in the area was before Monsters and Witches started Bonding in earnest, d'you know? [From cute animal buddies right back to magic. How the passions of the faun and the passions of the ex-mage sit strangely by each other, but not without harmony.] I know there's a considerable risk of becoming lost entirely to the waking world, but Morgana Drummond was fearsome powerful at it; I suspect she'd some way of mitigating that danger.

Edited 2020-04-03 04:25 (UTC)

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