Scene Archives

is sprawled out in a corner of the “conversation pit” in the newly-minted…well, whatever it’s being called, idly scrolling through his tomestone. His naginata rests in the corner, casually propped up against a wall.

has tried a couple different doors before she opens the door to the game room. She holds a reasonably large pile of paperbacks in her hands which she immediately sets on the bar (she’ll find a place for them later) before going over to Wolf and flopping next to him dramatically. “Hello, stranger.”

chuckles, tucking his tomestone away, saluting jauntily with two fingers from the freed hand. “Additions for the Library, I see?”

glances back at the paperbacks. “Sort of. Jorule said he wouldn’t mind some mystery novels. I picked them based off their covers and titles. My favorite so far is, Gato and Garrote: A Muujgai Murder in Queenstown.” She shakes her head in wonder. “There are so many books available cheaply, and so many of them are … bad.”

blinks slightly. “That hardly sounds like a tome of religious secrets, so one takes it that the term means something somewhat else, here..?” He laughs, shakes his head. “It seems like it is like so many things–that which is done easily is rarely done well.”

laughs. “Well, there’s some joy in doing something raucously and badly. It seems very … burning that there’s so much schlock available so readily. I discovered some very … fascinating? Uh. ‘Romance’ is too highbrow of a term. ‘Smut,’ I think, is correct.” She glances to where the paperbacks sit on the bar. “I love it a little, actually. The freedom to just be ridiculous and over-the-top.”

: “There is very little about this place that is not joyfully raucous,” Wolf replies, not disapprovingly. “Though one is also not surprised that, given the opportunity, that energy overflows into, ah…certain channels.”

laughs a little. “Yeah, it’s pretty relentlessly horny here. Which is weird, considering our two companions who originate from this plane.” She pauses, then wobbles her hand. “Well, Aurelius is … complicated, but.”

: “What have you been up to? I just got back from tea with Zaya, and she said you gallantly saved her from some copper scandal. Recovering after your duel with Jae.” Her eyes flick to the naginata, “and learning your new weapon, I suppose.”

glances over at the naginata and pulls a very wry face. “More like…acclimating. Or remembering. It seems I have very little need to learn the technique.” His expression gets slightly more dour. “A gift, I am told.”

shakes his head as if to clear it, and continues. “And yes, I ran into Lady Saranzaya when I was exploring the Bazaar. She is a most remarkable woman. And I was able to confirm that she is, as her title suggests, the ‘true dreamer’ of this world.”

blinks rapidly at ‘Lady Saranzaya’ then smiles at Wolf. “I think it meant a lot to her. I think—she’s been alone a lot. Not necessarily lonely, but singular. She is remarkable. Admirable. A good friend, to me.” She looks at the naginata again. “Do you want to talk about it?”

sighs, with a distinctly grumbly edge. “It’s not as if I am not grateful for the replacement for my blades, and it is a…a beautiful weapon. One simply finds the feeling of unconsciously dancing to another’s tune…disconcerting.”

: “Hm. I know we talked about this a bit already over the linkpearl, and … I also haven’t been a huge fan of when I get Angel backwash either, but. I think Shijin would … well, cut off his hands (if they weren’t also your hands) before they interfered with your autonomy. Would it help to think of it as … carrying on a legacy, perhaps?”

makes another distinctly grumbly noise in the back of his throat, and his voice is borderline petulant when he speaks. “…that’s what he said, yes…”

laughs a little. “Isn’t it a bit of an honor? To be part of something greater that yourself? To matter to someone from a story lost to winter? To call someone’s attention down on you solely by being yourself?” She laughs again. “Or am I just a romantic about it?”

chuckles, a little, clearly relenting. “Yes, well…there are worse things in the worlds, one finds.” He tilts his head at Salme. “‘Lost to winter’? That’s a turn of phrase I’ve not heard before.”

: “Oh. It’s … Jorule’s phrase. It’s the ending of a story or of a world. The stage after the curtain falls. He doesn’t love to talk about it, but. He’s been through several of them.”

blinks, then suppresses a shudder. “I see. That does seem…hrrm.” Wolf chews his lower lip. “…that might well explain the truculent attitude.”

: “Yours or Jorule’s?”

draws himself up indignantly. “When could I have ever been called truculent, I ask you?!”

: “Just now? Or was I misinterpreting all those grumbles, brother?”

makes an expression not entirely unlike a rather much younger man being caught contradicting himself. “One doesn’t make a habit of it,” he says, drawing himself up with a great air of wounded dignity.

smiles at him. “No. You don’t. Though you’re allowed your grumbles, you know. Light knows I’m enough of a messy bitch. As for Jorule …” she takes out her tomestone, slides between some screens until she’s showing him her pinned messages in the void, Jorule’s at the very top. “908 ripples, Wolf. And a lot of it is him helping me through stupid shit. He affects an abrasive tone, yeah, but,” she looks at her tomestone herself, “he’s a good man,” she says softly, a half to herself. She shakes her head. “He also likes getting a rise out of people which, you know, is also certainly a Character Trait one can have.”

: “But I don’t know if it’s trauma that makes him a dick sometimes, or if it’s just fun for him.”

sighs softly. “One admits that his truly awful first impression may have overly colored my view of him. I am glad that he has been good to you.” He gives Salme a wry smile. “So long as–so long as–he is good to you, I may come to adjust my view of him.”

: “I mean sometimes he’s a shit, certainly, but so am I.” She scootches closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder. “Thank you, though. For caring. For looking out for me.”

: “Though,” she adds from his shoulder. “To be clear there’s nothing romantic happening there. He’s. My. Weird friend and asshole older brother and … something else, but he isn’t. We’re not. Just to be clear.”

smiles and wraps an arm around Salme’s shoulders. “It is my honor and my pleasure.” And then Salme’s second statement makes him pause, take a deep breath, and exhale it slowly. “You know, I really hadn’t had that thought…until just now…”

: “Please. Don’t have that thought. I try not to have that thought. It’s … very confusing, considering the whole,” she waves one of her hands helplessly, “Spark thing. So. Yeah.”

: “I wasn’t having that thought,” he says, part pained, part laughing, “Until you decided to reassure me that it wasn’t happening!”

starts laughing too. “I know, I know. I’m terrible. I’m sorry.” She takes a breath, trying to stop laughing, and manages it after the third or so. “Anyway … I guess that does … is there anything about the Truth That Burns you’d like to talk about with me? I offered but it feels like it’s been forever since then.”

: “Not beyond…that,” he says, nodding towards the naginata. A little bit of that grumbly tone returns. “It was a bit easier to stomach when my…companion…wasn’t constantly sending messages to my friends, is all.”

: “You know, this might be something you could bond with Aurelius on, though I suppose Jorule actually does try to stay out of the way.” She looks at the naginata. “You know. You could refuse. You could shatter it. Or, if you didn’t want to destroy it, give it to someone else. Melt it down.” She shrugs. “It’s just an option. You don’t have to take it.”

snorts softly. “I think not, sister. I will face my fears, not run from them. And…” he can’t not cast a glance back at the naginata, gleaming gently in the warm light of the ‘den.’ “…it is a beautiful weapon.”

: “What … is your precise fear? That your will is not your own?”

: “Will, self…choices?” He sighs. “I am aware that I am likely fretting overmuch. As I said, I did not expect my companion to get quite so…loud.”

: “It still matters, even if you think it’s just fretting. Zaya—I will be honest, Wolf, I’ve been struggling a little, thinking about how I might not have the things I treasure if the cards had fallen a little differently. I spoke with Zaya about it, after I kept saying it doesn’t actually matter, that that’s not what happened, and she said there’s nothing that doesn’t matter. That I should give myself permission to ask the question, even if it doesn’t have an answer. You can ask whatever question you like, Wolf. I’ll help you answer it as best I can.”

exhales slowly. “I do not think I so much have a question, as I must settle myself in…trust. I have asked my questions of he most likely to have an answer, and either I must believe him or not.”

thinks about that, rolls it around in her head for a moment, and then nods. “For what it’s worth, I like him.” She laughs a little. “Which, I like almost everyone it seems, and easily too, but. I like him. He saw something in me that I have been scared to acknowledge to myself and he was … kind, about it. In the only way I think he knows how to be kind.” She reaches down and takes his hand. “I will say, though. Whether I like him or not, I am so, so grateful that you are you and not anyone other than yourself. Even if you wield a naginata instead of your knives.”

laughs a little, but looks a little confused too. “How could I be anyone other than myself?” Then he blinks. “I suppose that is an answer to my own question.”

: “Yes. I think it is. But I guess I was trying to say …” she looks down, at their hands. “I don’t think his world was kind to him. I know … I am certain our world has not always been kind to you, but I am glad it seems to have been kinder. And beyond that. Hm.” She settles her head more heavily on his shoulder, and looks at some distant part of the couch. “I’ve been thinking a lot about choosing and being chosen. And it does not make it matter less that I chose Aurelius, or Awa, or Badri, or the Mask. But. You might not remember, but when we were in Sanctuary, you looked at me and called me ‘friend’ first. And you have been constant in that ever since. To someone like me, where that’s still a wound … that matters a lot. So I’m glad that you are yourself and not any other potential iteration of the Wolf-Priest that might have been.”

: “Hrrrm.” He digests that quietly for a long moment. Then, simply: “I am glad as well.”

: “Though. Speaking of … making strange friends, one thing I wanted to share with you was. When we were in the void, I went out to speak with the Omniclast. I had some success, but I was wondering if you could help me make sense of it”

blinks, sitting up somewhat straighter. “You did…what?” He doesn’t sound scandalized, more just…floored. “And it worked?”

sits up straighter along with him, wobbling her hand. “Sort of? He.” She presses her lips together. “I’m not sure how much he can communicate outside of the Architect’s Sanctuary. He spoke to me on the wind. I was wondering if you might be able to decipher it better than I could.”

: “It seemed like a worthy project for refining our methexis work.”

: “Ah!” Comprehension dawns. “Indeed. And this runs together with a desire of my own–I have been hoping to transfer some of the dream-visions I have had to you, both to make sense of them, and perhaps to pass into the Mask. I have had a newer one recently–I spoke to the Lady Saranzaya about it.”

nods, and gives him a sly little grin. “And to avoid having to add them to the library yourself?”

draws his tattered dignity around himself once more. “No, as an additional safeguard should something happen to the Library.” He does sound rather more serious than grumbly. “They are our clearest visions of the world-that-was.”

nods thoughtfully. “I don’t know if … wearing the Mask while we for the link would be the best approach, but that’s the best way to make sure they’re inscribed into the Mask itself. Can you think of any reason why that would be dangerous?”

: “Hmm. Unless the Mask, for whatever reason, reacted badly to the information…” He shakes his head. “Perhaps I am overthinking this. I am hardly the only person to dream these things. Let us share for your purposes first, and then I will share my dreams with you alone, and you can judge whether or not the Mask need be involved.”

nods, and then closes her eyes, and reaches for him, inviting him in.

lets his eyes go heavy-lidded, reaching for her hand in turn, connecting out–taking the greater care he’s been learning, not to simply swamp her with his own self.

is in the void, Salme is imagining a home. It is an Almachadtan home. It is her home, or is the memory of her home. Its courtyard where the rainwater pooled. Her stuffed-straw bed shoved as close to the hearth as it could be without catching fire. The atelier, the Centrelight. But it is also—more. There are rooms, sprawling out in a rootmass, a threadmass. Aurelius crafts fiends in one, Awoken juggles gnosis in another, Wolf sings and sings and sings. Luĉja, patiently carving, Archie, riffling through books and crystals with Caion hooked over his shoulder. Jorule, even, tugging at threads of magic she doesn’t understand, couldn’t. Wider still—Badri, Tsem, Silver-Throat, Solei, Synthesis. A house, but also a village, but also a city, and herself at the center, in the rain-clear pool. She thinks of Melpomene and Ksenija. She thinks of strangers, coming to call. She thinks of hospitality. ⁂

is in the void, and she is inviting someone in. The first stranger, the strangest stranger. She does not cast her self out through the Song. She opens her self up—a house, a home, herself. “I celebrate myself and sing myself / And what I assume you shall assume / For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” And Wolf can feel the weight of her hair, heavy against the back of her neck, the chill of the void, this far out, the determination threaded through with doubt. And then Wolf can hear the wind. 🙧

, for his part, thinks of dreaming–thinks of floating deep in the worldsong, catching scraps and snippets, until they float through his mind as he drifts far from wakefulness. It is a sensation not unlike drifting deep beneath Samudra’s waves, but warmer, and without any fear of losing breath–so warm and comfortable that one could lose oneself in it, if one was not careful; something deep within his mind holds a barrier there, a chain held against drifting–there is a dark memory there, and he carefully shoos it away. He thinks of dreaming, of the odd, realer-than-real quality of the things that he has seen, and gently, draws them from the depths of himself. ⁂

shows you a mountain, sky-splitting, snow-capped, an imperious wedge against a sky so blue and vast it seems to stretch on forever–yet there is nothing fearful here, but a sort of ancient majesty; ‘Healing-Mountain,’ is its name, though you do not know how you know it to be so. Then, a mountain warrened with tunnels and workshops, kin to the Beast but greater even than Queenstown, with its joyful fiends and watchful crystal–this one vivid, new, tinged with Beast-born fire. Then finally, last of all, deepest etched and oldest–the Tower and its City, ringed by swamp; alabaster, shining, ancient. This you have seen before, once–on a card held in Wolf’s hands, shattering, lightning-struck. But there is no lightning in his dream–just the City, the Tower, and the marsh that surrounds it. 🙧

drinks in the images, she remembers, will remember, could never forget, and there is a kind of wild joy at the images, a kind of strange sorrow, and wonderment—at the mountain, the swamp, the crystal-fiends. Gratitude and wonder flood the link, but she modulates them, spinning them into thin, manageable threads instead of a snarl of uncarded emotion. And then, questioning, she draws his attention down to a moment in the past. ⁂

, in the memory, asks the wind, “Is there anything you’d like to tell me? Anything else I can do?” and the wind whispers back, at length and in detail, a real monograph of a mistral, but it’s all just- wind, tossing Salme’s hair this way and that. There’s always something faintly suggestive of a melody when the right kind of wind blows; sometimes it’s mournful, sometimes it’s joyous. This time it’s both. ⁂

asks for his aid. He can hear the melodies that make up the fabric of reality. Is there anything they might know from this moment? Perhaps working together? 🙧

starts to listen–then pauses, and tries something different than he might on his own. Carefully, gently, he draws closer to her in the meld–and less listens than lends her his gift. No mere interpretation here, but his instinctive skill, freely given, almost as if it had been hers in the moment.

staggers back from the link, two-and-one falling apart into separate pieces, forced back into himself by the magnitude of the knowledge that ringing in his mind like the peal of a gigantic bell.

: “…what? What?“

hesitates, hesitates, hesitates, and then tries to dive after the memory, even though she knows it’s futile, even though she knows the link is broken and the moment is passed.

just laughs, in a sort of stunned amusement. “I…how?”

breathes, and breathes again. “It was like when silmät cast [Sorrowful Memory] on themself. It’s…” She looks at Wolf, then looks up, at the ceiling. “Want to tell me the truth, silmät?”

glances upwards sharply, though not suspiciously, just–having had the same idea half a second after Salme started to voice it.

’s smiles is sharp, maybe borrowing some of Wolf’s wolfishness. “Oh. You know that’s not what I mean.”

looks away, first at the naginata–and then at Salme. “I knew you once.” His tone is half puzzlement–half wonder.

follows Wolf’s glance. “Not as Shijin. Not as—they’ve told me. My … Spark. They’ve told me I’m new. If we knew each other once it was in this world, in this context. Or the context-that-was.”

: “Ah, forgive me, I didn’t mean to imply…” he shakes his head, chuckles. “More thinking of the strange resonances of things. But still. We, once…” Something catches up to him. “…we lived in that world, Salme. The World Unsundered.”

nods.

exhales. “Yet another answer that opens up seven thousand more questions.”

nods again.

: “Not now, silmät, please.”

: “What are you thinking, Wolf?” She asks.

: “To be quite frank? I am not. This turns so many things upon their heads that I cannot even begin to wrap my head around it in one go. I would have to be able to unhinge my mind like a serpent’s jaw.” He just…laughs softly, again. “I am simply appreciating the strange wash of the universe.”

nods again and then says, “I am so tired of not knowing. I am so tired of feeling answers just out of reach and not being able to reach them. Jae knows something—a lot, maybe. The Glory does as well. Tuuli—or the Omniclast, whatever. Zosimos, whatever he is.” She feels tears, hot and shameful, and she tries to wipe them away. “Why am I upset? I don’t understand.”

sobers, instantly, leaning in to tug Salme gently against him. “Because it is frightening, love. Because every step towards certainty instead makes us less so. It is frustrating, and I oft feel as if I dance on the edge of a chasm that I cannot see the edge of.” He sighs, softly. “In many ways, your reaction is saner than my own.”

scrubs at her eyes. “I just. We’ll find a way through. Your wonder feels … it’s lovely. It was lovely. I just. The implications are …” scrubs at her eyes again.

: “We’ll find a way through,” she says, more steady.

: “The implications are…unknown, yet. We have speculations, but no more than that,” he says, gently. “What this means is yet to be revealed. Until then, we walk the path.”

nods again. “You’re right.” She closes her eyes to steady herself. “Aurelius has been at the forge all day. I wonder if he’s back yet, or if Awa’s still awake …” she looks at Wolf. “I’ll be okay. I think I just need. I’ll be okay. Permission to accession this in the library?”

: “Absolutely.” He gently bumps the side of her head with his forehead. “Go. Seek your loves. Ground yourself.”

nods again. It seems like that’s about all she can do. “And if you need grounding too, I’ll be here. We’ll all be here for each other.” She stands, shakily. “Thank you, though, for your memories and for your aid. It was … amazing. Truly. That oughtn’t get lost in all of this.”

: “Anytime. I am here if you need me.” A bit of a stern glance. “And you will come find me if you need me, do you hear?”

: “Wolf,” she says, and her laugh is a little shaky but it is a laugh, “it seems that, no matter what, I will always find you.” And then she is gone through the door, not quite running but walking quickly, thoughts churning.

takes that parting shot like it hit him between the eyes, rocking back in his seat. He sits there, silent, thinking, for a very long time.