ꙮ the mask carries the both of you in a single soft-gloved hand and it lifts you both up, it tries to lift you up and hold you up and keep you above the swirling swirling swirling ever-vortex it knows the light that light in your eyes the reflection of all that you wish to keep and it knows and it knows and it
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- Aurelius
- The Awoken
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#saint
#badri
: “With love and respect for our time together, go powder your nose, old friend.” He punches the floor and you’re falling, again, but you’ve got each other. It’s a little bit like when you were adrift amongst strange paths, actually? It’s easier, with Badri there.
ꙮ AND THEN THE DEEP RISES TO GREET YOU but there is a comfort in that too. the mask is gentle. the mask is kind. above everything else. it was made to play a role and it is a tiny god of its own and it is bound by rules and the zeroth rule is kindness but that does not mean it is bound to never permit harm. it could not be such. it would have splintered uncountable cycles ago. AND THEN THERE IS A QUESTION.
: “Yes, did you think we were here for our health? There’s an onsen, it’s not far, I’m not that old yet that I’d choose -this- for a pleasant stay-in.” Badri, perhaps, has had a lifetime of kindness, and there is a certain rapport. And so he closes his eyes and seeks. “There’s never been… steel men, has there been? Or little… the nerd with the lovely purple cloak who looks like an underfed swift.” And he projects it out into the DEEP THAT RISES TO GREET YOU, again, like a Rite-challenge.
ꙮ And there has not been. Not either of these things.
raises an eyebrow, to Salme. “Well, that’s an intriguing start. Where do we want to go from here?”
is always a little awed at how Badri gets a straight answer from the mask; it certainly doesn’t feel like that for her. “Gnosis against the overgrowth. Red and Blue against Green. Has anyone ever tried that? And what happened?”
: “Ooouuuuuggggh.” He holds your haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
ꙮ And you fall. Deep. This one’s deep. They tried it EARLY.
ꙮ Cataclsysms pass you by like signposts on the road and your swift’s got promises of apples on the far side. Deep, and deep. A hundred, two hundred, layers in. Maybe more. Deep enough that the palimpsest is muddy as all hell, deep and dim, dark as a midnight you’ve never seen but somehow have the abstract concept of buried in the soft animal parts of you, and- the Sword-Saint was a doctor, once, at the end of all things.
ꙮ Or, well, a healer, is the right word, I suppose. And she worked -miracles-. The Sword-Saint’s kept some of her tricks alive, spreads them around at the beginning of a cycle. You get to ‘joy’ faster that way.
ꙮ And she knew about that disease that the Archivist mentioned, and had two husbands and they were tall and strong and had several other properties which were admirable but the one we’re focusing on today is that they were astonishingly accomplished gnosis-workers, and she could do a thing with them where they moved as one, worked as one, she held the flourishing and he held the burning and he held the pellucid, and there was precious little of the two to go around but if they focused, for days and days, and cupped the thousand small hands in their soul together, they could have enough, to heal one person of this wretched disease, and they got better at it and better at it, and it was good.
ꙮ And then Almachadta fell ill, and they knew what the problem was, and they knew how to fix it. And they tested their theory out, on a patch of horrific overgrowth, a writhing plant-mass of tentacles and mouths-with-no-esophagi and sacs full of honey, red as the reddest apple, and their mouths watered while they worked and they wanted to plunge their hands in and eat of the horror but they had work to do,
ꙮ And they destroyed it, that way, the way they’d destroy the illness they cured,
ꙮ And they knew that they’d never have enough to cure Almachadta’s heart, and so they prepared to die happy, together, and the Mask was set to rest, in a certain place, and its tale ends.
gasps, sobbing.
: “Light, I’m- I’m sorry, it’s- it’s vivid. I’m sorry.” 🙧
: “It’s fine.” The coldness is back in her. “Tell me of the hunger they felt.”
shakes his head a bit, to clear it. “It’s… weird, right? It’s… oh. Hm. If you can’t remember, then…” …he reaches out, with a hand, and suddenly there’s a light in his hand, and it’s casting all sorts of shadows on the deep. Patterns that repeat, over and over again. Mostly fire and tearing-apart. But before that, there’s always the hunger- no. Not hunger. The satiation. The temptation. You know, suddenly, with utter certainty, that if you laid eyes upon whatever the hell sundered the grove, you would wish to eat it, and if you did, it would be delicious beyond your capacity to imagine.
shudders and shakes his head again, like a wet dog, and the shadows flicker away, with a ‘so that’s pretty fucked up, yeah?’ eyebrow raised.
: “I remembered the fire but not the hunger.” She will keep herself together, she will not let the horror of this get to her. “Can you show me Ciet?” she asks either the mask or Badri.
nods. Steels himself, a little, and…
ꙮ …the Mask, in its kindness, does most of the work. A bald cypress. Dignified, adaptable. A presence which commanded respect, without ever demanding it. The Mask remembers them with the Palimpsest-King, and another - it’s hard to tell if it’s a Spoken Wood, a Lightdrinker, or both. Badri leans over and whispers, “That’s Tsem”. They’re listening to something, together, the three of them, entangled like that for days.
ꙮ The Mask is, vaguely, disapproving of this. Considers it to have been a waste of Ciet’s time, in light of Ciet’s duties, all things considered. A dangerous game, even.
: “Oh, you’re just being an arse out of spite from earlier. They were -curious-. That’s not a sin.”
: “It’s mine to forgive them for what they… focused their attention on. And I do.”
: “Oh, Salme, they were brilliant. I wish you could have met them. I… Light. I think you still might. I don’t know.” 🙧
: “Ah, but I’ve already met the greatest Sword-Saint that ever lived,” she says. She is. Perhaps trying not notice just how much her internal sense of–appropriate behavior has come to mirror the mask. She could have done without that knowledge.
And then, more seriously, “so the King knew too.”
laughs, and smiles, and then is solemn again: “The King knew about what Tsem found. He… Ciet told him and Tsem both a story. If-this-should-ever-happen. You can’t play Go with the King and expect to win, he always wants to game everything out to the rafters and there’s never been an ever where he didn’t have the patience of a man who lives as long as Almachadta does, give or take a few decades, that’s not just -our- King. So… Ciet leaned on that. Told him there -might- be a threat to Almachadta. That this -could- help them prepare for. I think…” There’s a wry, barking laugh. “I think deep in their heartwood they’d seen everything on this world and were intrigued by the prospect of getting to travel to another. I don’t think that’s the only reason. But I do think it was a reason. And they were absolutely sure they’d… that everything would be fine. And maybe… I don’t know. Maybe the Lady played knucklebones and Ciet came up empty. I don’t know.”
: “But if… if what you… -saw- was true. You saw it. The Mask saw it. Your friends aren’t lying about not being from here, they couldn’t be.”
: “And if that’s true… and Ciet was right. If you could…”
ꙮ Yeah, he’s just going to gesticulate vaguely, for a minute. 🙧
: “There were others. The Architect,” said like a curse word, like she can’t think of a foul enough term to embody the way he made her feel, “he said he had ‘saved’ some souls. I met one. They were–I’ll show you, later. I don’t know if Ciet might have been another.” She hadn’t explored. She wishes now that she really had.
: “Oh, Light.”
knows this next will be awful, awful beyond words, but she has to know. “Ciet’s last–Ciet’s last memories. Badri, please.”
shudders. “It’ll be… theirs… then mine, and-” He lets out a breath, and reaches out. Plaintively, to the Mask. “One more time? Just one more. I promise I’ll… I’m sorry.”
squeezes Badri’s other hand. He shouldn’t have to bear this. He gave it up. She took it from him. He shouldn’t have to bear this.
but he must.
ꙮ There is a room. It is a room you have, impossibly, seen before. Not in the Mask’s memories, because the Mask DOES NOT WANT TO REMEMBER THIS PLACE, and neither do the Saints who have been there. No, you saw a glimpse of this in shimmering Path-aether: a tight, cramped, wandering cave, or… oh. It wasn’t a cave at all, it was a hollow, in the roots of a vast… tangle, of trees and rock. With tally marks scratched on the wall- Almachadta has always used those, haven’t they?- each Saint adds one more, at the end of all things, when they return the Mask to its rest.
ꙮ Ciet went here before it was time. Ciet should not h
: “I am trying, help me Light, to be good. Tell the story.”
ꙮ Ciet came here on a mission which was their own, and ventured deep into the depths of the cave, where it is not safe to go, and that is not a value judgement of Ciet, that is a statement of fact, the Mask implies, primly, and Badri was there too- young, tight curly black hair, an impish smile he never lost, wanting to follow Ciet to the ends of the earth and then some, willing to assist on any wild adventure (if it means that) (even if it does not mean that) (but hopefully it means that Ciet will tell him another story or teach him something new Ciet knows SO many things and so many stories and Badri wants to be just like them, except not a tree, probably, that would be strange)
sobs, quietly, but does not protest this.
ꙮ And Ciet had visions of a new world in their heartwood, and Badri would not be able to follow them there, but Badri would go back and tell the world that Ciet had done what no Almachadtan had ever done before and there is an absolute FLARE of pride because
grins through his tears, because, look, Salme did it, -Salme- did it- even if they don’t know how, even if this freakarse Architect was involved but frankly Badri’s sure Salme did it all on her own and that tanglevine’s tit just wiped her mind clear of it-
ꙮ And Ciet found a Door there between heartwood and heartwood, and it was open a crack, and it was ill-made from the outside, and there were fingers holding it open with desperate and wavering strength.
ꙮ And Ciet was halfway through the door, turning back to beam at Badri.
ꙮ and the fingers slipped, and the threshold slammed shut
ꙮ on Ciet,
ꙮ whose last thought was to save the Mask because they could not imperil the future even i-
howls, on his knees, slams his fist against the DIRT, CONTINUE-
kneels next to him. She keeps her eyes on the scene, but before, where she merely held her hand out to Wolf and he did not take it, here she throws her arms around her father-mentor-idol-savior, man-who-is-just-a-man and she holds him close to her heart. He must bear this, but he does not have to bear it alone.
ꙮ -and Badri is looking out of the Mask, at the threshold, at what’s left of Ciet, trapped there, blinks once, twice, and the Mask tries to shield him from it and from the worst of itself and it cannot, because it is kind but it was carved for a very specific purpose, and Badri is a very curious child, who wanted, after all, to grow up to be just like Ciet, and as such he cannot look away, he would not if he could. He never would have done.
cannot look away either, would not if she could. She never would have done.
gasps for breath, and leans into Salme, letting himself sob great, heaving, wracking gusts, and catches his breath, and… “…oh, Light. Oh, Light. I was running from that, and…” …he will not say he should not have done, because he is kind to himself in the way that the Mask could not be, but it is very loudly unsaid. Instead, he says, “Thank you. For. For being here, with me. I don’t think I could have… remembered that without you.”
: “Of course. For you, anything.” and then, holding him tighter, “you were so young. You were so young and it was so much, and you grew to be everything you wanted to be. You did not deserve that, Badri, but you bore it anyway.”
presses her lips to his temple in a quick kiss. “Thank you for sharing your memories.”
just lets out a breath, and laughs the laugh someone who just cried tears they’ve held for some time, and smiles, weakly. “Did it… did you find what you were looking for?”
: “I … don’t know. Another piece, I think. And I can tell this story to the others without you having to tell it.”
nods, a bit. “I don’t… think they would have done it, if they didn’t… they said they’d -talked- to people from the other worlds, Salme. A scholar. Tasna. Who said she had gnosis that could… fix things. And I don’t… know. I don’t know. I spent my life being angry at Ciet but not being able to hate them, because… they tried to fix what doesn’t need fixing, and… tried to do something impossible, and died trying. But it wasn’t impossible. And I don’t know anything any more. And, oh, Light, that scares me more than the scar on the world.”
: “…any event, I think I’ll be able to be in the same room if you… tell people what happened to Ciet. So that’s… thank you.”
: “You’re–welcome.” She’s not used to Badri leaning on her. “Let’s get out of here?”
: “Yeah, don’t… need to tell me twice.” He stands up, with some difficulty, or more likely some help, and looks up-
ꙮ -and you rise and it feels like flying.