ꙮ A quiet moment, at the Obsidian Road. Caion had been coördinating on his tomestone with Jae, Badri, and Izaak, and talking to Salme, because– he’s been talking to Salme nonstop on the linkpearl since Emberlight left Samudra, really, and there’s a brief moment where he looks up from his tomestone, and goes, hey, this is silly, and sends another message to her, and she sends a message back. And so:
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#saint
#caion
makes his way over to wherever Salme’s at, physically, his staff clanking dramatically on the obsidian ground. “Have I mentioned that it’s good to see you safe and smiling? Because it bears repeating, my friend.”
looks up from where she’s been alternating between tomestone and embroidery and smiles, a little sheepishly. “It’s … good to see you too. I guess I should spend some time actually seeing you, huh?” She hops up from where she was sitting cross-legged on the ground. “Want to cash in on that promised stroll along the obsidian road?”
grins out of the corner of his mouth that’s not slightly crystallized; it gives him much more of a rakish air than his personality would ever demonstrate, but it’s not without its charm. “Getting so used to communicating in letters that you let the time slip by when physically present is a proud Academic tradition, don’t worry about it. But, yes, I’d love that. You’re far more familiar with the place than I.”
: “I’m not quite sure that’s an Academic tradition I’m eager to embrace.” She gives him a dramatic bow and offers her arm in lieu of his staff, if he would like. “What would you like to see?”
takes a moment, and presses his staff against the crystal part of his own body, and it telescopes in on itself, and then he neatly folds the head up on itself and it vanishes into its own self-similarity, folding into a tiny little cube, which he stuffs into a pocket of his many-pocketed robe. “Whatever you’d like to show me, Salme. I’ve done a good bit of wandering before you got here, but I’m interested in what your eyes saw that mine did not.” A beat. “And more than that, just the chance to talk to you again.”
: “Well,” she says, laughing a little self-consciously, “I do like to talk.” And then, before she leads him anywhere else, she leads him to the dueling circle inside the Ziggurat.
follows, arm in arm. He’s definitely gotten used to having his staff to hand, so there’s a few moments where he doesn’t quite match his pace to Salme’s and they both almost stumble, a little, and he laughs, and she laughs too, and they move on. The Ziggurat, too, is more full of colour and contrast than you remember it being from the last time you were here; the dueling circle’s floor is white marble with a deep ra’kaznar gouge forming the boundary of the space. “…you know, I bet dueling traditions are just subtly different enough across the planes that the first duels that happen will be quite something. Hopefully they’re all pleasant ones.”
pauses for a long, long, long moment, and then says, “Light. Jae is going to immediately challenge you. You and Badri and the Palimpsest-King and … if you need help wrangling her, sic Saranzaya on her.”
laughs. “There’s– I’ve a friend in the Academy who’s itching to duel her just based on my description of her. Maybe they can inaugurate the place. Actually, -have- any of you dueled here? It’s– it’s strange to me that this place would have one of these. It seems like it’s… responsive to what’s needed, but I’d be surprised if Emberlight needed a dueling ground?” Not outside the realm of possibility, though, clearly.
: “Ah. Yeah. Archie, Wolf, and I had a duel once. Archie needed to sort out of his head, and he decided the Rite was the way to do it.” She gives Caion a wry look. “For an academic, he sure does love punching things. Or, not punching, but you get what I mean.”
sounds fond though, not judgmental.
raises his eyebrow, but does not ask further questions, because it seems to have worked. “Well, you saw how many dueling circles we had back in Samudra. None so fine as this one, I don’t think–“ –and he lets go of Salme, and hunkers down, and runs his fingers along the outer edge of the white marble floor. “C’mere.”
goes over to him and kneels down next to him. “What is it?”
runs his fingers along the stone, and motions for Salme to do the same, and when she does, she feels– what must have been letters, once, an inscription etched into the marble, so long ago that it’s impossible to form any concept of what the inscription might have been, just that it was once there. He looks over at Salme, his eyebrow putting on a dramatic performance.
gives Caion a smile. “And here you wanted to know what my eyes saw.” She turns back to the circle. “I wonder what it said. This is where—if you read the folio in the library, about the Unsundered World, we received a—memory of two people dueling here as the world ended. I think. The Ziggurat provides what we need, but it’s also … remembering what it once was.”
: “I did, and you brought me here.” He takes a moment, to look around. “…it does match, doesn’t it? That’s interesting.” He turns back to the inscription, whispering softly to it. “Who -were- you? Stingy with your secrets, aren’t you…”
laughs. “Welcome to my fucking life.” She puts her hand to the ground again, and reaches with gnosis and tries to … bridge past and present. To collapse time between then and now, to sew a single stitch, albeit a temporary one, that might let them see.
ꙮ One cannot engage in methexis with an inanimate object, of course, and yet– Liminal, DC 15?
- Salme invoked their 🌌liminal gnosis [d10] -> 3.
- Salme has gained 1 Arete, and now has 4.
lets out a little irritated huff.
ꙮ …you do know one thing. Whoever carved these– or whoever carved the original, well-beloved, worn by time, and reproduced here as their weathered self– they were singing while they worked.
: “What’s wrong?”
: “I tried to use liminal gnosis to reach across time and see. No luck. Though, apparently, whoever carved these—whether reproduction or original, and who can say—they were singing as they carved.” She stands, and offers Caion a hand for getting back up.
lets out a soft, incredulous snort. “I tried to use the kind of gnosis previously unknown to science before my work to reach across time and remember the form which the inscription once took. You are blissfully free of the restrictive confines of the conventionally possible.” Grinning ear to ear, he lets Salme help him back up to his feet. “Feels appropriate, though. The more I find out about the Ancients, the more I think they… took joy in their work, no matter how small it was. Or maybe that’s a… wish, or a hope, on my own part, that I’m reading into the extant record.”
: “I think there’s certainly a lot to suggest joy. Joy and love and care. And singing itself does seem to be a … fundamental element of gnosis-work. I got very upset about that in Samudra, you know, since it’s not a skill I particularly have.” She starts to lead him through the passages of the Ziggurat. “Though I mean, I have no formal training in gnosis or science, so it’s very,” a small shrug, careful not to jostle him, “hard to get caught on the confines of the conventionally possible when you don’t know what they are?”
before leading him out, she pauses at the ramp and says, “The Zigguarat itself unfolds into an airship dock, if you want to see that? Still no airship though.”
nods. “Part of what’s brought me joy, since you all came to Samudra. Some of our most brilliant Scholars have been people who formed a theory long before they came to us, came to the Academy to share it with us, ended up teaching us something brilliant we’d never have found on our own. That’s… part of gnosis, and that’s part of science, I think, every bit as much as the transmission and perpetuation of knowledge.” He passes, on the airship dock, for the time being, at least. “I’d like to see the outside of the Ziggurat itself, actually?”
nods and leads him out of the Ziggurat, keeping an eye out for Ember, or the Crepuscular Cat, or the the Disreputable Dog, or the Hated Hummingbird, or any new member of the Metaphysical Menagerie. “I’ve started to think that … gnosis is as much about our personal relationships with the various concepts than … I mean, there is something true or inherent there, but … our use of gnosis is personal? My somatic assumption of tenebrous gnosis looks very different than Wolf’s.”
nods, once. “And if you’d both learned how to do it from the same person, in the same context, they very well might look the same, but… that wouldn’t be speaking to something true about the gnosis, just about the context in which you learned it.” He looks up, admiringly, at the Ziggurat, reaches his hand out to run his fingers through a stream of water trickling down its side. “Which, actually, I did want to ask you, speaking of gnosis, and how you learned of it. Your thoughts on radiant and tenebrous gnosis, and their interplay… it seemed like something better explained in person?”
is here, too. Has she been here the whole time you’ve been outside the Ziggurat? It doesn’t matter, she’s here now.
sees the Crepuscular Cat, and gives her two pleased, slow blinks. “I can, sure, but … is there a specific thing you’d like me to do to explain it?”
gives the Crepuscular Cat the polite nod he’d give to a passing Scholar whom he much respects, because that feels appropriate to him, for some reason. “Not… as such? I just assumed it’d be a lot to type into the tomestone, I suppose.”
: “I can show you the memory? Or I can … hm.” She closes her eyes and breathes, drawing tenebrous gnosis into herself, becoming shadow and wind—or, less wind and more a playful breeze. Endless swirling eddies, gentle enough to tug at Caion’s hair, smooth the Cat’s sleek fur. A part of her, the human part of her, still stays next to him, supporting. “It’s a certain kind of formlessness,” she tells him.
looks up, and around, and also towards her standing next to him, and also towards her, everywhere around him, and he laughs, in delight, some of his own assumptions and certainties falling away as she observes.
whiskers at the air and sniffs it like she’s smelling something new, and grumbles in contentment, tail lashing from side to side.
isn’t sure she can do this next part, but tries, anyway, to pull radiant gnosis into her, alongside the tenebrous.
ꙮ You’ve done it before, haven’t you? [Take Half] Not quite so much, as you did in the amphilyke cave, and it seems almost easier here, for some reason, and the radiant and tenebrous gnosis which you, in that moment, are, twine together, furl and unfurl, ravel and unravel, forming little self-perpetuating patterns in the air, propelled forward as if by tenebrous winds; little gnosis-flickers dancing and gliding their way through the air.
: “And radiance gives structure. In the caves, it was the stone itself letting the wind blow through it. As light, it gives shape to shadow. It isn’t that tenebrous can’t exist on its own; it’s that its given meaning and definition in the light of radiance.”
ꙮ Like little white stones on a black board, or sparks of light in the darkness of the Obsidian Road, forming patterns that repeat, that change, that loop, always shifting, or moving forward through space.
: “…ahhh. Oh, that’s beautiful, Salme. They’re… each others’ context, aren’t they?”
: “Oh.” She laughs. “Yes! Caion, did you know that text and textile share a root?”
tilts his head to the side. “I did not, offhand, but just– thinking of the words side by side, it stands to reason. Tell me more?”
: “They’re both about building—using words to build meaning, using threads to build fabric. And ‘context’ would be something about … building with? Building together? To interweave, to connect. Which is how meaning is built in some ways, isn’t it?”
pauses, and laughs, again, in delight, and nods.
: “If radiance’s Virtue is Harmony and tenebrous’ virtue is Selfishness you need both, don’t you? To have anything at all like—like a society? Harmony between multiple selves, and selves in harmony.” She lets the gnosis fall away, both tenebrous and radiant. “I always kept getting caught on where ‘selfishness’ ended—privileging your community over another one is a kind of selfishness, right? Even if it’s also an act of community? And similarly … putting aside yourself for the greater good can be harmonious, but it, too can be an act of selfishness.”
: “I should know, with the last one,” she says, wry.
thinks about his time both before, and after, becoming the Acting Academician of the Academy, and nods. “And when the two have– a shared vocabulary, a shared foundation– shared stitchwork, beaded with memory, even–“ –and he grins at her again out of the corner of his mouth– “–that’s when you get… complex patterns, societies that thrive, -people- that thrive. In the dance between. Not… without conflict, or struggle, of course, but.”
: “Never without conflict or struggle.”
: “But that’s not the point, the point is…” -and he looks at the air where the gnosis was flickering, curiously. “The point is the thriving, despite and amidst it.”
lashes her tail from side to side, and mrows.
laughs a little. “I did a whole spoken word poetry thing about that, in Mu. But yeah. It’s living anyway, the best you can, even if something awful waits on the horizon.” And then, after a long moment, she says, “and then sometimes, there’s hope when you never expected to see it.”
looks around at the Obsidian Road, at the hope that it provides, and nods. “Indeed there is. It’s… strange. Having prepared myself for the worst, I think… more than anything… I’m excited to run this experiment, and see what happens? It’s.. freeing. That probably sounds quite strange.” He laughs. “I wish I’d been there for the poetry on Mu, that sounds like it was beautiful.”
: “It doesn’t sound strange at all. I think. Some of the others might have a harder time with what’s about to happen. And I know that I still feel melancholy, a little. But it’s also … I know I’ll never be able to convey to Jorule what it means to me, that he made this happen, and how much I value him but … no. It doesn’t sound strange, to be excited to have a chance.” She tilts her head. “As for Mu, I mean. That is what Methexis is for. And Wolf and I have managed to craft it into a techne.” Another small shrug, careful not to jostle him.
laughs. “Then perhaps you can share the memory with me, if it’s not inappropriate to ask? Although perhaps we ought to go back inside somewhere more comfortable, for that.”
snortchuffs, very softly, and as Salme is leaving, butt-checks her leg softly and deliberately, and then she’s gone like she was never there.
: “Caion. I literally offered.” She elbows him gently and they walk together back inside to sit and reminisce (literally, in this case).