A dream is mutable if one has the will for it; even nightmares might be rewritten with sufficient volition. Where only the Somniari might wrest the Fade on Thedas, Talam's dreamworld is easier to grasp, and the little crippled dreams that lived solely in the dreamer's own mind were easier still. Dreams could be rewritten.
But this isn't a dream; it's a memory, and nothing in Myr's power will let him undo the past.
Even that certain knowledge hasn't stopped him from trying, sweating and struggling under the punishing desert sun to lever rubble off the trapped mages beneath, abrading his hoary fingertips to bleeding in the crooked shadow of Hasmal Circle's damaged tower. His friends are down there, he knows; his family (herd) is down there, though they have long since fallen silent, and still he digs.
Nothing else lives or breathes on the untidy pile of broken stone. This memory has long since run its course, the past-echo of Myr collapsed somewhere from exhaustion and despair. The sun has not even continued its descent where it sits fat and lambent on the far horizon.
None of the lines are right, none of the edges sharp. This is nothing he had seen, the scree-slope of the shattered tower reconstructed from imagination and touch. There are lacunae in the scene, soft-edged black voids gaping wide where he had neither heard nor touched anything in the past.
It is stomach-churning to look at. It is a reminder of what he had done to himself. He does not look; he digs, expression slack of anything but a faint despair.
Nothing he is doing matters. You cannot change a memory.
He doesn't understand the mirrors well enough yet to know whether it's a dream, a memory, a hypothetical, a present reality, or anything in between. He'd only been looking for a way home.
But like everything about this elf so far, the way he reminds Simon of home is very, very much a double-edged sword. If before he had been blooming with life and good humor and the kind of magic that would be at home in the Emerald Dream, this, then, is the Dream's horrible mirror, and he dodges one of those hungry fuzzy-edged voids the way he would any manifestation of the Nightmare. It doesn't occur to him that they're merely a reflection of Myr's blindness.
He doesn't know where these ruins are supposed to be, or how he got here, or what they mean to his new elven friend. But he knows, somehow, with soul-deep certainty that wrenches at his stomach, that the digging is futile. There's nobody alive under that debris.
Myr doesn't--can't bring himself to--look up from where he's trying to lift a stone block that must weigh nearly as much as he does. He can't get a grip on it for all he tries, nor firm footing to lift from as his hooves slip against the wreckage.
"Please, Simon--I can't get to them alone--" The sheer desolation in his tone says he knows very well there's no them left but he cannot, cannot give up until he's seen it himself. Until the dimensions of his failure and incapacity are made real.
He leans back from the task only long enough to reset his footing before bracing his shoulder against the stone again, shoving almost so as his heart would give out from the effort if grief didn't get him first.
He doesn't know what's going on, and yet at the same time it's agonizingly clear, familiar as the screech of tortured muscles after battle. He knows where that desolation comes from.
"They're what? Fucking--we can't hold the line like this! We can't do it without the Horde!"
"Look at them! They're gone, we have to go, there's too many--"
"But the Highlord! The Highlord, he's still...I'm not going without Fordring, I won't do it--"
"If we don't go now, there won't be a Crusade left for him to lead."
He reaches for Myr's shoulder, fearful for his health in body and soul, and holds it tight.
"It isn't failing them if you let go of the ones beyond help, friend. But you don't help anything if you wear out all your strength so you have none left for the living. They're the ones who need you. These ones--all that can help them now is prayer."
It's a speech he's given more times than he can count, on that interminable journey back from the Broken Shore.
It's a speech Myr needs to hear, for all he was in no state for it when this was no memory but a moment of his life, nor were there any to give it him.
"Maker damn the rebellious little beasts to the Void! We'd have had a chance if they hadn't destroyed the phylacteries!"
"We'd have had a chance if we weren't reduced to invalids and cripples for mages; you saw how Shivana did."
"We all saw what Shivana did to himself; he should never have been let out of the infirmary, whatever he thought he could do. A mage like that--"
He stills as Simon's hand closes on his shoulder, a noise starting low in his throat and building to a keen of denial. "No--no, I have to--I have to help them because I can now, I can and couldn't then--and the living didn't want me anyway!"
He doesn't deserve the comfort he's being offered. He lurches to standing, tries to disengage, but muscles cramped from hours of futile digging and shoving betray him at last and all he manages is a graceless staggering collapse against Simon.
Fortunately, this is precisely what a brick wall with arms is best for, and Simon catches him without thinking, holds him first for steadiness and then for comfort, gentle and firm. It's slightly difficult, unaccustomed as he is to having to avoid a faceful of magnificent antler, but in a situation that so clearly and urgently calls for a hug, he will make it work.
"But you can't help them like this now," he says softly. Not 'can't help them' period; it would be cruel to be so blunt. "Not by hurting yourself, or by tending to their bodies alone. And whatever happened then--whatever people said--it isn't true anymore. I know the living care for you now and want your help. I'm living, aren't I?"
He's just one man, and a new acquaintance at that, but already he knows the faun well enough to know how well-liked he must be among the other Mirrorbound. How could he not be?
Brief though their acquaintance has been, there's something about Simon that struck Myr as stone-stable. It's something the faun can instinctively trust even when he can hardly think for grief and fear; it makes him freeze rather than fight when the paladin wraps him up in a hug.
It pulls another wretched noise from somewhere deep within him to be reminded the living care. "They wouldn't, if they'd seen what I'd done. No one did, after. A l-liability," he manages. "A danger. Please--"
He doesn't have strength for more than an abortive pull away from Simon, before he's sagging against that solid wall of him with his face against one broad shoulder. "Please," he echoes. "I have to save them. It has to work, if I try enough; it has to change,"
Exactly how many times has he been through this without it altering in one detail? Too many.
Simon doesn't know how this tower came to lie in ruins, and the mental picture he's beginning to build from Myr's words involves the faun singlehandedly wrecking the place with what must have been an incredibly powerful spell gone awry. Surely, from the way he's talking, the collapse must have been his doing--but equally obviously, he can't have meant to.
He rubs at Myr's back with one large hand as his friend relents and leans on him, and after a long moment, tries to steer him gently to a place where they can sit and rest.
"What is it that happened, exactly? That you think people would condemn you for?"
Perversely, it may have been easier for Myr to bear if he'd had a hand in the destruction around them. Intentional or otherwise it would have warranted opprobrium and exile; it would have deserved the treatment he received (he thought he received) in way he understood. For what he had done--
He consents, in his numb and nerveless way, to be led a space away from where he'd been digging; there are ample seats among the upthrust rubble. He has eyes only for the slab he'd been digging futilely at; he doesn't hear Simon's questions at first for the force of his attention. When it does register that he's being spoken to--he stiffens, the fur about his neck and shoulders standing up.
"I--" His eyes go to Simon's face--back to the slab--then to the nearest void in the memory, his pupils widening as he realizes what that means. At what's obvious, to someone who already knew what had happened (that Simon doesn't and can't does not occur to him, not when his logic's snarled up in knots by emotion).
What is it that happened, exactly? The memory of that is too close at hand for proper distance and it sits on his chest like a sudden weight. He tries to draw a breath but it is juddering, jagged, does nothing to calm. "--I can't--I d, don't, I don't want to remember that," but there's hardly any helping it when everything conspires to remind him.
He takes an unsteady step back, away from the paladin, like he'd run--if he weren't trembling so to make it nearly impossible.
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faithlikeaseed) wrote2019-08-01 12:00 am
for Simon, backdated to April;
A dream is mutable if one has the will for it; even nightmares might be rewritten with sufficient volition. Where only the Somniari might wrest the Fade on Thedas, Talam's dreamworld is easier to grasp, and the little crippled dreams that lived solely in the dreamer's own mind were easier still. Dreams could be rewritten.
But this isn't a dream; it's a memory, and nothing in Myr's power will let him undo the past.
Even that certain knowledge hasn't stopped him from trying, sweating and struggling under the punishing desert sun to lever rubble off the trapped mages beneath, abrading his hoary fingertips to bleeding in the crooked shadow of Hasmal Circle's damaged tower. His friends are down there, he knows; his family (herd) is down there, though they have long since fallen silent, and still he digs.
Nothing else lives or breathes on the untidy pile of broken stone. This memory has long since run its course, the past-echo of Myr collapsed somewhere from exhaustion and despair. The sun has not even continued its descent where it sits fat and lambent on the far horizon.
None of the lines are right, none of the edges sharp. This is nothing he had seen, the scree-slope of the shattered tower reconstructed from imagination and touch. There are lacunae in the scene, soft-edged black voids gaping wide where he had neither heard nor touched anything in the past.
It is stomach-churning to look at. It is a reminder of what he had done to himself. He does not look; he digs, expression slack of anything but a faint despair.
Nothing he is doing matters. You cannot change a memory.
But it hasn't stopped him yet.
no subject
But like everything about this elf so far, the way he reminds Simon of home is very, very much a double-edged sword. If before he had been blooming with life and good humor and the kind of magic that would be at home in the Emerald Dream, this, then, is the Dream's horrible mirror, and he dodges one of those hungry fuzzy-edged voids the way he would any manifestation of the Nightmare. It doesn't occur to him that they're merely a reflection of Myr's blindness.
He doesn't know where these ruins are supposed to be, or how he got here, or what they mean to his new elven friend. But he knows, somehow, with soul-deep certainty that wrenches at his stomach, that the digging is futile. There's nobody alive under that debris.
"Myr--" His voice is gentle, apprehensive.
no subject
Myr doesn't--can't bring himself to--look up from where he's trying to lift a stone block that must weigh nearly as much as he does. He can't get a grip on it for all he tries, nor firm footing to lift from as his hooves slip against the wreckage.
"Please, Simon--I can't get to them alone--" The sheer desolation in his tone says he knows very well there's no them left but he cannot, cannot give up until he's seen it himself. Until the dimensions of his failure and incapacity are made real.
He leans back from the task only long enough to reset his footing before bracing his shoulder against the stone again, shoving almost so as his heart would give out from the effort if grief didn't get him first.
no subject
"Is that--she can't be--the bitch is calling retreat! They're leaving us!"
"They're what? Fucking--we can't hold the line like this! We can't do it without the Horde!"
"Look at them! They're gone, we have to go, there's too many--"
"But the Highlord! The Highlord, he's still...I'm not going without Fordring, I won't do it--"
"If we don't go now, there won't be a Crusade left for him to lead."
He reaches for Myr's shoulder, fearful for his health in body and soul, and holds it tight.
"It isn't failing them if you let go of the ones beyond help, friend. But you don't help anything if you wear out all your strength so you have none left for the living. They're the ones who need you. These ones--all that can help them now is prayer."
It's a speech he's given more times than he can count, on that interminable journey back from the Broken Shore.
no subject
"Maker damn the rebellious little beasts to the Void! We'd have had a chance if they hadn't destroyed the phylacteries!"
"We'd have had a chance if we weren't reduced to invalids and cripples for mages; you saw how Shivana did."
"We all saw what Shivana did to himself; he should never have been let out of the infirmary, whatever he thought he could do. A mage like that--"
He stills as Simon's hand closes on his shoulder, a noise starting low in his throat and building to a keen of denial. "No--no, I have to--I have to help them because I can now, I can and couldn't then--and the living didn't want me anyway!"
He doesn't deserve the comfort he's being offered. He lurches to standing, tries to disengage, but muscles cramped from hours of futile digging and shoving betray him at last and all he manages is a graceless staggering collapse against Simon.
no subject
"But you can't help them like this now," he says softly. Not 'can't help them' period; it would be cruel to be so blunt. "Not by hurting yourself, or by tending to their bodies alone. And whatever happened then--whatever people said--it isn't true anymore. I know the living care for you now and want your help. I'm living, aren't I?"
He's just one man, and a new acquaintance at that, but already he knows the faun well enough to know how well-liked he must be among the other Mirrorbound. How could he not be?
no subject
It pulls another wretched noise from somewhere deep within him to be reminded the living care. "They wouldn't, if they'd seen what I'd done. No one did, after. A l-liability," he manages. "A danger. Please--"
He doesn't have strength for more than an abortive pull away from Simon, before he's sagging against that solid wall of him with his face against one broad shoulder. "Please," he echoes. "I have to save them. It has to work, if I try enough; it has to change,"
Exactly how many times has he been through this without it altering in one detail? Too many.
But surely he could fix the next one.
no subject
He rubs at Myr's back with one large hand as his friend relents and leans on him, and after a long moment, tries to steer him gently to a place where they can sit and rest.
"What is it that happened, exactly? That you think people would condemn you for?"
no subject
He consents, in his numb and nerveless way, to be led a space away from where he'd been digging; there are ample seats among the upthrust rubble. He has eyes only for the slab he'd been digging futilely at; he doesn't hear Simon's questions at first for the force of his attention. When it does register that he's being spoken to--he stiffens, the fur about his neck and shoulders standing up.
"I--" His eyes go to Simon's face--back to the slab--then to the nearest void in the memory, his pupils widening as he realizes what that means. At what's obvious, to someone who already knew what had happened (that Simon doesn't and can't does not occur to him, not when his logic's snarled up in knots by emotion).
What is it that happened, exactly? The memory of that is too close at hand for proper distance and it sits on his chest like a sudden weight. He tries to draw a breath but it is juddering, jagged, does nothing to calm. "--I can't--I d, don't, I don't want to remember that," but there's hardly any helping it when everything conspires to remind him.
He takes an unsteady step back, away from the paladin, like he'd run--if he weren't trembling so to make it nearly impossible.