[When L had said "featureless expanse," this is admittedly far from what he'd meant. Even without the unpleasantness currently gripping his foot, there's too much going on, too much sharpness, too much clarity. This isn't a place for notions and revelations to sift through the sand when bidden, rising to be examined and then left otherwise undisturbed. This is a place where much is preconceived, much is changed and challenging.
Maybe these changes are recent. Maybe they've been here far longer, always buried from view by more superficial things like Jin Guangyao's hypnosis. He's sure he's only seeing it now because of the hypnosis, and in spite of some internal sense of fairness and justice, L blames Jin Guangyao, the same way one might blame a smear of turpentine stripping away a coat of paint to reveal rot and mold beneath.
He could repaint it, but never look at it the same way, knowing what's under the fresh coat.
L hears Myr's voice as he grasps his ankle with both hands. In dreams, he appears as he almost always did back home: barefoot, clad in a pair of loose jeans and a white t-shirt that's perhaps a couple of sizes too small, exposing bony wrists and collarbones past a stretched-out collar. Soft cotton; a simple uniform. It's easy to bend and move in, and as he braces and drives in his other heel, and pulls, the release is sudden. He nearly overbalances and has to stagger to remain upright and regain his footing; once he has, he surveys the pooling wound, the several red footprints his escape left dotting the pale sand in an uneven pattern.
He steps back further as the landscape shifts and twists so he can better see what is resembling, less and less, a featureless expanse. A wall, a tower, if only half-formed and finished, and then, finally, he sees Myr emerge in the oddness he's unlocked.]
...it's OK.
[Frustrating, even infuriating... but not on Myr's account. L's settled on a target for his blame, and his focus is legendarily laser-hot. Concentrated, and so Myr won't suffer the brunt of it. Myr is safe, or... at least, he will be, when L has dealt with messes and threats. He promised; this is what he is capable of offering one who has given him so much.
L and Myr strike more of a physical contrast than they usually do. In his mind's eye, L's shirt is solid, pristine, whiter than the dunes in the moonlight. His skin is slightly translucent; it's possible to see the dim outlines of the dunes through the parts of him his clothes leave exposed, but there's not a mark on him. Even the scars ringing each of his fingers has vanished, but Myr...
Myr looks somewhat worse for wear, in spite of having his eyes. That's new and different; L dislikes it intensely.]
You're tired.
[You don't have to be here, he thinks, because of the two of them, one is distressed to gaze upon monsters. The other is not only untroubled, but practically hypnotically drawn toward the gruesome, the twisted, and the haunted. How else to strike a monster true, but to look directly at it without blinking or flinching?
He reaches for the dropped quilt, offering it silently to Myr once more. The dune stares on in cluster formation.]
no subject
Maybe these changes are recent. Maybe they've been here far longer, always buried from view by more superficial things like Jin Guangyao's hypnosis. He's sure he's only seeing it now because of the hypnosis, and in spite of some internal sense of fairness and justice, L blames Jin Guangyao, the same way one might blame a smear of turpentine stripping away a coat of paint to reveal rot and mold beneath.
He could repaint it, but never look at it the same way, knowing what's under the fresh coat.
L hears Myr's voice as he grasps his ankle with both hands. In dreams, he appears as he almost always did back home: barefoot, clad in a pair of loose jeans and a white t-shirt that's perhaps a couple of sizes too small, exposing bony wrists and collarbones past a stretched-out collar. Soft cotton; a simple uniform. It's easy to bend and move in, and as he braces and drives in his other heel, and pulls, the release is sudden. He nearly overbalances and has to stagger to remain upright and regain his footing; once he has, he surveys the pooling wound, the several red footprints his escape left dotting the pale sand in an uneven pattern.
He steps back further as the landscape shifts and twists so he can better see what is resembling, less and less, a featureless expanse. A wall, a tower, if only half-formed and finished, and then, finally, he sees Myr emerge in the oddness he's unlocked.]
...it's OK.
[Frustrating, even infuriating... but not on Myr's account. L's settled on a target for his blame, and his focus is legendarily laser-hot. Concentrated, and so Myr won't suffer the brunt of it. Myr is safe, or... at least, he will be, when L has dealt with messes and threats. He promised; this is what he is capable of offering one who has given him so much.
L and Myr strike more of a physical contrast than they usually do. In his mind's eye, L's shirt is solid, pristine, whiter than the dunes in the moonlight. His skin is slightly translucent; it's possible to see the dim outlines of the dunes through the parts of him his clothes leave exposed, but there's not a mark on him. Even the scars ringing each of his fingers has vanished, but Myr...
Myr looks somewhat worse for wear, in spite of having his eyes. That's new and different; L dislikes it intensely.]
You're tired.
[You don't have to be here, he thinks, because of the two of them, one is distressed to gaze upon monsters. The other is not only untroubled, but practically hypnotically drawn toward the gruesome, the twisted, and the haunted. How else to strike a monster true, but to look directly at it without blinking or flinching?
He reaches for the dropped quilt, offering it silently to Myr once more. The dune stares on in cluster formation.]