[Unfortunately, Myr's relief is palpable. It's positive reinforcement, tossing a silver fish in the direction of something ravenously hungry.
He nods; yes, he does do good work. He can always prove that more is possible, especially now that he seems to have found his niche, the way that is best and most appropriate to demonstrate affection for his Bonded. A competitive one-upsman like him will find a way to top the last effort, even if he's the only one vying for this particular, odd and nearly professional niche.
Deeper, then.
They've reached the point where, paradoxically, he can't see clearly with his eyes still open. They slide shut, and in a waking dream that could only be this immersive between two Bonded and a diviner's touch, he can feel the cool sand molding to the contours of his bare feet, see the moonlight bathing the dunes in bluish light. They could almost be snow...
He takes a step, and his foot sinks, to the ankle, into what feels firm at first, then gives and pops, taking on the texture of gelatin as it pools, and bleeds.
He glances down. Before he'd taken his step, the sand might have peered back.]
Myr...
[Stepping here has created a vacuum. Extracting himself from the squelching grip is taking a moment.]
[They've dreamed together often enough that it's become a comfort to Myr, but this--this is palpably, startlingly different. The Faun hasn't placed his own position in his mind's eye and isn't apparent in the scene at first. The landscape itself is oddly realized--sharp as cut crystal in some places, especially where L directs his gaze, and vaguely smeared like gelatin over glass in others.
The eyes and the bleeding flesh are all too palpable.]
Linden, I...
[He wants suddenly to duck away from this, pull his quilt up around his pinned ears and hide. To be known this way when he's in the depths of his own despair and uselessness is agonizing.
A little frustrated noise escapes him, a near-sob. The landscape in his head ripples and twists to afford a high crenelated wall dividing the dudes, and beyond it a vague sketch of Hasmal's Circle tower. Myr's memory device, made apparent, and here at last is the Faun himself at the wall's base. He's even more disheveled here, stained with blood and dust and an uncertainty about his face that's both eyes and scars.]
I--I do, I've done nothing but think these past few days--I'm, I--
[His imagined self sheds the quilt and throws it over another cluster of eyes that's emerged from the dunes.]
--don't know where all this has come from.
[Not precisely true. But the whole truth is something he can't face head-on for fear of forgetting it, except last time he had forgotten so L had accused him of lying--]
[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.]
[It is a symptom of how Myr's mind works that he carries whole ecosystems within it; that his idea of an expanse is vibrant with life, detail, change.
He can quiet in prayer or when he's working. Or could; lately, it's become more difficult, and that too is one of the things keeping him sleepless and--yes, tired.
L looks too-real and unreal all at the same time, in the way spirits do. It draws the eye uncomfortably, though it's a better place for Myr to rest his inward gaze than whatever's going on beneath the dunes. It means he cannot help but note how his Witch's leg is red to the calf, nor the gaping hole where an eye had been--
Don't look at that.
He'll look at the quilt instead, as L offers it back to him; he'll soundlessly take it and wrap it around his shoulders once more.]
I'm tired, [he echoes, at last, and then laughs without any humor.] Amatus, I'm exhausted.
[In a way it's good they've been separated because every time he's tried to sleep these last few days he's tossed and turned to no avail--or woken screaming from the nightmares.]
What should I do? [Please, tell him. Take the burden of deciding from off his shoulders.]
[It's one of the things L not only likes, but admires about Myr, feeling deep affection for his tendency to consider the way life catalyzes and interacts with other life. It's perpetual and lovely, from the outside; even, at times, when the context itself is a strange or uncomfortable one.
He doesn't fully let go of the quilt until it's fully around Myr's shoulders and secured by the faun's hand, where L's lingers for a moment before drawing away.]
I know... I know.
[Said in a different tone, it could sound flippant and dismissive, but his words are soft, somber. Myr is tired; he can sense it, bone-deep, in a way that natural empathy rarely affords him insight into the plights of others.]
So rest. Right here... envision your staff, and give it to me, and you'll be safe while I work, OK?
[The sand, after all, is enough of an expanse that he has ample space to work. He's so talented with runes, and maybe more so, on one of the rare occasions that Myr can actually witness him etching.]
[Touch soothes, and Myr is so inclined to lean into it that a sigh can't help but escape him when L pulls his hand away. He almost wants to beg his Witch to put aside everything else he's come here for and simply sit with him a while, but--this is important work, and mere cuddling isn't going to fix any of what's gone wrong with Myr.
At least L isn't asking anything difficult of him to carry on with it. He lifts his chin in acknowledgment of the request and reaches back as if to draw his staff from its usual place on his back, and does through the logic of dreams.]
Here, [he says, proffering it. Once L's taken it from him he takes a step back toward his solid wall, putting his back to it and sliding down to sit on the sand. It is a profoundly defeated posture--but there's at least a little glimmer of interest, of hope, in the Faun's eyes as he waits to see what L will do.]
[L's inclination to lean back is existent. Like so much of what he wishes for, it feels taboo, like something he was audacious to even desire. Sitting with Myr awhile is for others, those kinder, gentler, and nobler. L leaves the quilt and takes the staff; L will focus, and consider, and slowly, the unnecessary weight will fall away, and he'll be left with his perfect, elegant runes.
He steps away, starts slowly, gaining confidence as he goes and realizes the ease and beauty of etching in sand. The desert is vast, but at the very least, it's assured that when L traces symbols around any cluster of red-rimmed eyes, they will close, if not vanish outright.
His skill is not yet perfect. He's not a witch with the benefit of a lifetime to study one discipline, but he's whip-smart, actually brilliant. There's hope for people like him, in their particular situation. He can still be worthy of something, in spite of what he brings to the table paltry and underwhelming. There's some kind of productive recourse even if he lacks and languishes, and is no kind of man.
The lines are steady, precise, and careful. No one could find an error in these runes, traced under Myr's moonlight. No one could call them selfish, or aggrieved, or deadened. They're for Myr, offered the way a man incapable of loving might present them.]
[As a student of Creation magic, Myr himself had spent long hours practicing at drawing glyphs. It is an exacting form of spellcraft, and not one he was immediately suited for, given his propensity for enthusiasm over rigor. But he had become proficient in time, and so it's with a fellow-mage's eyes he watches L set out his runes. The forms and arrays are alien, but the particular nuances of placing them have a universal appeal. In this context, illuminated by the stars and writing upon the sand with sure grace, L is breathtaking.
Even the acute distress of seeing the eyes pop open beneath the sand is muted by L's motions; they are a focus and distraction Myr gladly devours with the deer's sharp eyesight. He does not know what spell it is L's casting--he knows only a handful of runes, and those only by touch--but even now his head's begun to feel a little clearer, the intrusive onus of his thoughts less burdensome.
Exhausted as he is, even that little bit of reprieve is enough to push him toward sleep. His eyes flutter and his chin dips toward his chest--only for him to jerk alert a moment later. This is a rare opportunity L is giving him and he wants (wants in excess of what meager emotions he has lately) to see it through.]
[L's eyes are drawn skyward, more often than not. The touch of rain, glance of starlight and yawning silence of questions unanswered all come from that source, home to comfort and yearning alike.
His earthly form, and the one that appears in dreams, isn't capable of flight, and cannot vanish into vapor even if his edges seem uncertain, wispy, and translucent. Grounded, with narrow shoulders hunched according to the laws of a forward-curved spine, L seems made instead to look at the earth, the details in the dirt and dust that others might miss. He's good at it, of course, both discerning and creating; as the staff moves in the sand, what he knows, and owns, it comes together in meticulous and graceful characters. They're combined uniquely and elegantly, and though blood would make them stronger, Myr can watch, here, and it's therefore out of the question.
Just more care, and time, and precision will have to make up for it.
He writes until Myr is asleep, and then after, until every eye is closed. They are still present, as well as the wounds and flesh, but they seem softer and soothed as though spread in balm. It's beyond his current skill to heal, or cover completely, but he believes that won't always be the case. He's always studying, always working, always growing, even if his form is lopsided and stunted in places. He has some faith that his infinite potential in one narrow arena can help Myr, even if all the rest has never enamored anyone.]
[Eventually, the time comes when Myr cannot fight the creeping exhaustion any longer--even for all the novelty and awe of watching L at his craft. He struggles for it like a child trying to sit vigil the night before Satinalia, knowing that even though sleep will hasten morning's arrival, there's a certain magic in sitting up to greet the dawn.
But he will not, tonight, for the first time in many nights; as L promised, he'll sleep better than he has in weeks. His imagined-self's own eyes slide closed as the desert quiets and its colors fade in their intensity. (All but the eyes, reliably and startlingly green; they remain vivid until L shuts the last of them.)
In the waking world, the Faun relaxes, still leaning into the hand on his temple, his hand fallen to rest on his Bonded's knee and his expression--at last--one of slack peace. The sunbeam he'd been sitting in fades with the evening's onset, leaving the cottage in a dim gloom that seems, now, more restful than dismal.]
[L had promised his Bonded sleep, and the satisfaction of delivering feels well-earned when he lays the staff down beside the dream representation of his slumbering Bonded, then opens his eyes to where, in the soft glow of a setting sun and wrapped in a quilt, Myr is breathing softly in his chair, still wrapped in his quilt and with a hand on one of L's bony knees.
He reaches out cautiously to rest one of his atop Myr's knuckles, and he lingers for twenty minutes or so while realizing that he can't stay, not fully or truly. Like the fading golden hour outside, he, too, should depart while he is still wanted and welcome.
Telekinetically, he draws two plump throw pillows over, propping one under Myr's head and using the other as a placeholder once he's extricated from his own chair.]
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faithlikeaseed) wrote2019-08-01 12:00 am
no subject
He nods; yes, he does do good work. He can always prove that more is possible, especially now that he seems to have found his niche, the way that is best and most appropriate to demonstrate affection for his Bonded. A competitive one-upsman like him will find a way to top the last effort, even if he's the only one vying for this particular, odd and nearly professional niche.
Deeper, then.
They've reached the point where, paradoxically, he can't see clearly with his eyes still open. They slide shut, and in a waking dream that could only be this immersive between two Bonded and a diviner's touch, he can feel the cool sand molding to the contours of his bare feet, see the moonlight bathing the dunes in bluish light. They could almost be snow...
He takes a step, and his foot sinks, to the ankle, into what feels firm at first, then gives and pops, taking on the texture of gelatin as it pools, and bleeds.
He glances down. Before he'd taken his step, the sand might have peered back.]
Myr...
[Stepping here has created a vacuum. Extracting himself from the squelching grip is taking a moment.]
You... have a lot on your mind.
no subject
The eyes and the bleeding flesh are all too palpable.]
Linden, I...
[He wants suddenly to duck away from this, pull his quilt up around his pinned ears and hide. To be known this way when he's in the depths of his own despair and uselessness is agonizing.
A little frustrated noise escapes him, a near-sob. The landscape in his head ripples and twists to afford a high crenelated wall dividing the dudes, and beyond it a vague sketch of Hasmal's Circle tower. Myr's memory device, made apparent, and here at last is the Faun himself at the wall's base. He's even more disheveled here, stained with blood and dust and an uncertainty about his face that's both eyes and scars.]
I--I do, I've done nothing but think these past few days--I'm, I--
[His imagined self sheds the quilt and throws it over another cluster of eyes that's emerged from the dunes.]
--don't know where all this has come from.
[Not precisely true. But the whole truth is something he can't face head-on for fear of forgetting it, except last time he had forgotten so L had accused him of lying--]
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.]
no subject
He can quiet in prayer or when he's working. Or could; lately, it's become more difficult, and that too is one of the things keeping him sleepless and--yes, tired.
L looks too-real and unreal all at the same time, in the way spirits do. It draws the eye uncomfortably, though it's a better place for Myr to rest his inward gaze than whatever's going on beneath the dunes. It means he cannot help but note how his Witch's leg is red to the calf, nor the gaping hole where an eye had been--
Don't look at that.
He'll look at the quilt instead, as L offers it back to him; he'll soundlessly take it and wrap it around his shoulders once more.]
I'm tired, [he echoes, at last, and then laughs without any humor.] Amatus, I'm exhausted.
[In a way it's good they've been separated because every time he's tried to sleep these last few days he's tossed and turned to no avail--or woken screaming from the nightmares.]
What should I do? [Please, tell him. Take the burden of deciding from off his shoulders.]
no subject
He doesn't fully let go of the quilt until it's fully around Myr's shoulders and secured by the faun's hand, where L's lingers for a moment before drawing away.]
I know... I know.
[Said in a different tone, it could sound flippant and dismissive, but his words are soft, somber. Myr is tired; he can sense it, bone-deep, in a way that natural empathy rarely affords him insight into the plights of others.]
So rest. Right here... envision your staff, and give it to me, and you'll be safe while I work, OK?
[The sand, after all, is enough of an expanse that he has ample space to work. He's so talented with runes, and maybe more so, on one of the rare occasions that Myr can actually witness him etching.]
no subject
At least L isn't asking anything difficult of him to carry on with it. He lifts his chin in acknowledgment of the request and reaches back as if to draw his staff from its usual place on his back, and does through the logic of dreams.]
Here, [he says, proffering it. Once L's taken it from him he takes a step back toward his solid wall, putting his back to it and sliding down to sit on the sand. It is a profoundly defeated posture--but there's at least a little glimmer of interest, of hope, in the Faun's eyes as he waits to see what L will do.]
no subject
He steps away, starts slowly, gaining confidence as he goes and realizes the ease and beauty of etching in sand. The desert is vast, but at the very least, it's assured that when L traces symbols around any cluster of red-rimmed eyes, they will close, if not vanish outright.
His skill is not yet perfect. He's not a witch with the benefit of a lifetime to study one discipline, but he's whip-smart, actually brilliant. There's hope for people like him, in their particular situation. He can still be worthy of something, in spite of what he brings to the table paltry and underwhelming. There's some kind of productive recourse even if he lacks and languishes, and is no kind of man.
The lines are steady, precise, and careful. No one could find an error in these runes, traced under Myr's moonlight. No one could call them selfish, or aggrieved, or deadened. They're for Myr, offered the way a man incapable of loving might present them.]
no subject
Even the acute distress of seeing the eyes pop open beneath the sand is muted by L's motions; they are a focus and distraction Myr gladly devours with the deer's sharp eyesight. He does not know what spell it is L's casting--he knows only a handful of runes, and those only by touch--but even now his head's begun to feel a little clearer, the intrusive onus of his thoughts less burdensome.
Exhausted as he is, even that little bit of reprieve is enough to push him toward sleep. His eyes flutter and his chin dips toward his chest--only for him to jerk alert a moment later. This is a rare opportunity L is giving him and he wants (wants in excess of what meager emotions he has lately) to see it through.]
no subject
His earthly form, and the one that appears in dreams, isn't capable of flight, and cannot vanish into vapor even if his edges seem uncertain, wispy, and translucent. Grounded, with narrow shoulders hunched according to the laws of a forward-curved spine, L seems made instead to look at the earth, the details in the dirt and dust that others might miss. He's good at it, of course, both discerning and creating; as the staff moves in the sand, what he knows, and owns, it comes together in meticulous and graceful characters. They're combined uniquely and elegantly, and though blood would make them stronger, Myr can watch, here, and it's therefore out of the question.
Just more care, and time, and precision will have to make up for it.
He writes until Myr is asleep, and then after, until every eye is closed. They are still present, as well as the wounds and flesh, but they seem softer and soothed as though spread in balm. It's beyond his current skill to heal, or cover completely, but he believes that won't always be the case. He's always studying, always working, always growing, even if his form is lopsided and stunted in places. He has some faith that his infinite potential in one narrow arena can help Myr, even if all the rest has never enamored anyone.]
no subject
But he will not, tonight, for the first time in many nights; as L promised, he'll sleep better than he has in weeks. His imagined-self's own eyes slide closed as the desert quiets and its colors fade in their intensity. (All but the eyes, reliably and startlingly green; they remain vivid until L shuts the last of them.)
In the waking world, the Faun relaxes, still leaning into the hand on his temple, his hand fallen to rest on his Bonded's knee and his expression--at last--one of slack peace. The sunbeam he'd been sitting in fades with the evening's onset, leaving the cottage in a dim gloom that seems, now, more restful than dismal.]
no subject
He reaches out cautiously to rest one of his atop Myr's knuckles, and he lingers for twenty minutes or so while realizing that he can't stay, not fully or truly. Like the fading golden hour outside, he, too, should depart while he is still wanted and welcome.
Telekinetically, he draws two plump throw pillows over, propping one under Myr's head and using the other as a placeholder once he's extricated from his own chair.]