ꙮ It’s later in the evening, but not yet late in the evening, of your second day at the Academy. People have been keeping themselves busy, or exploring, or attending lectures, or ‘attending lectures’.
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- The Dragon
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← Active ScenesThe 36th Tower, V
#saint
#caion
knocks on Salme’s door, quietly.
cracks the door open, and then blinks when she sees Caion and opens the door more fully. There’s a copy of the pamphlet on the academic virtues laid out on the bed, frustrated marks scribbled over certain ones.
: “Hi?”
: “Hi.” A quiet smile. “I wanted to– well. I’d been wanting to give you a hug for most of Xie’s lecture, for one thing. And I wanted to see how you were doing. May I come in?”
nods and steps back. The bed–still large and fluffy, is neatly made. Aurelius keeps everything in a [Pocket Dimension] so there’s not much mess, but Salme’s pack is set out and some stray scraps of fabric hang out of the pouch. The Awoken seens to carry only what he needs, so it’s mostly Salme’s stuff. She gestures to the desk chair.
then realizes exactly what Caion said, and says, “a hug?” a little dumbly.
steps in- offers Salme a hug, first and foremost! It’s one of the things he was here to do! And he’s pretty good at hugs, particularly for a Samudran. (It’s all the ‘growing up with and around the Kushtaka’.) “Might be a tenebrous hug. I felt adrift mid-sea, and I’ve been around Xie all my life, and you seemed… like you were exercising your eidesis with grace, but it’s my experience that hugs are nice when you’ve been exercising your eidesis.”
then sits down in the desk chair, whether or not the hug was accepted. He’ll back off gracefully if need be!
accepted the hug with grace and then a little bit of clingyness. She’s excellent at hugs as well, and she likes him a lot. It’s a good hug. “I don’t think I was gracefully exercising my eidesis,” she says, a little wryly. “Earlier that day I … heard a thunderclap, when I got upset. That’s why I’d like to learn the bubble spell.”
: “I’ve also been having nightmares and … I’m concerned that I’ll cause something by accident.”
smiles just as wryly at Salme. “Well, I’ve got good eyes for it, and I’ve utter faith in yours. And for what it’s worth, it’s… -quite- as likely that some student somewhere fouled up a laboratory assignment and handled it poorly at just the wrong moment. One of the… many joys of thoughtstorms is getting to wonder if any given thunderclap was your fault.” A slightly tired smile. “I’d say you get used to it, eventually, but I’m not sure that’s true. The bubbles help, and I’d love to show you how that’s done. Come here? And would it help, to tell me about the nightmares?” He starts doing something complex with his hands, like he’s playing a string game without string.
hesitates. “It’s … it is something I wanted to ask you about, though not from this angle.” She goes over, and pulls up another chair to sit next to him. She watches his hands as he talks. “Archie told you that on Almachadta there’s been over two hundred cycles. Two hundred, of death, and then rebirth. And the Mask doesn’t remember, not with any precision, but it remembers the feeling. The heat and the hunger and the despair.” ⁂
: “I keep dreaming I’m back there, and the world is on fire, and it wasn’t different this time either. And I’m trying to set the Mask in its place, and I’m trying to have hope in my heart, but when I go to carve my tally, it won’t … take. It won’t take, and I feel despair, and I am alone, and I need to go outside and face the flames, but I can’t make the tally, and everything burns and nothing is saved. I don’t even get to the mark that’s mine to make.” ⁂
: “It’s not a … very good dream. At least when I wake I’m with Awoken and Aurelius, but the fear remains.” 🙧
slowly loops fingers around fingers, and Salme can see the -pattern- he’s building, and how he’s building it. The basic element of a Bubble, repeated like knotwork. He does it slowly, again and again, and it’s more legible each time. After a moment… “May I tell you my interpretation of that dream?”
Salme knows thread. Salme knows knotwork. She tugs a string–a real one–out of one of her invisible pockets and begins tying and untying it in the same pattern. “Please.”
nods at Salme, as she follows along with him with her own hands, as he weaves the gnosis-work with his fingertips- with his own Song, if Xie’s right, with the force of ancient law, a working that’s been done for generations without changing, the weight of history and the drive towards closeness, guiding his gnosis as he weaves. “I used to have nightmares that I was drowning. Which is a… weird thing for a Naiad to have nightmares about. We -can’t- drown. And eventually, I realised… the nightmare was about being adrift in the ocean, but surviving.” Gently, he threads gnosis through its own weave. “I think that your mind is trying to tell you that you haven’t got a tally to make, Salme. That’s why you can’t dream yourself making it. And there is a- a familiar fear, that takes the place of the Dread of the utter unknown.” ⁂
: “We may both see the Visitors’ true faces, but nightmares are still what they are.”
laughs softly. “That’s true,” she says, as she watches the gnosis thread itself through its own weave. “I think it’s that. I also think it’s also–I’ve begun to believe I don’t have a tally to make. But what if I do? Everyone else is so certain we can change things, and I wish I was. But I know many people have been certain that they can change things, and it didn’t matter, at the end of all things. If possibility is infinite, that too is a possibility. And I want to guard against it.”
adds, more quietly, “I often also feel like I’m drowning here. In thoughts. In knowledge. In the new and unknown. It’s wondrous but it’s a balancing act. And I’m good at balancing acts, when I know the rules. Which, I do not.”
: “Mmm.” His motions widen - he’s looped the weave around itself a couple of times, now, and there’s more tension with each loop. The more loops you can manage, the bigger and more solid the Bubble, and Caion’s a little bit of a showoff, -and- wants to show Salme the tricks he’s discovered. Wants to be able to help her feel safe. “In all your Mask’s memories, has anything like this ever happened before? Not saying that guarantees that you’ll have success. But it means that you KNOW that, no matter what happens to us, you’ll have flung the light of truth forward for your world, yes? Small comfort for you, as a person. Sometimes… before the five of you arrived, quite -often-, I’d meditate on how I could leave my recollections of what -I- saw, when I beheld a Visitor, in a way that would not threaten my world, or run afoul of its ways. How I might fling that knowledge into tomorrow’s hands. Let someone else, perhaps, succeed, and rest knowing that I played my part in… someone finally -understanding- them.”
: “I feel this drive less urgently now.” And he gives Salme a brief, unguarded look of profound gratitude. “But I still feel it!” He draws his hands together, at the point where the gnosis converges. “Can I help you? With the rules you don’t know?”
watches him, memorizing each step carefully, thoughtfully. “I’m sorry you’ve been so lonely. I know you had Archie and I’m grateful you had Archie, but I too … wanted something I thought I’d never had, before I met my clan. You’re a part of that, by the way,” she looks up at Caion. “You belong with us, even if you are not able to come with us, and you will walk the strange paths with us from your place in Archie’s heart, and the place you’re building in my own. I know that.” ⁂
blushes and looks down, confidence leeching away. “As for the … rules. It’s just. I can play at being an assistant. At … fetching or recording or being useful. But I’m not a scholar. I’m not. I don’t know how to pretend to be that.”
🙧
tilts his head to the side, and smiles- and it’s never the right -moment- to ask what she, or Wolf, is doing, when their voice goes like that, but he’s struck by it, profoundly, each and every time- and with a slight sigh of relief, he releases the Bubble-working from his fingertips, and it unfolds with a satisfying feel of solidity and certainty. “Synthesis and I are working on something, by the way. So that even if I can’t follow you- and I intend to try- I’ll never be too far away.” And he leans back in the chair, and looks up at the intricate coral-pattern on the ceiling. “But, mmm. If I told you you didn’t have to -pretend- to be a scholar, because you just have a certain idea in your head about what a scholar is, -would- you believe me? You’re not a scholar like Archie is a scholar. You’re a scholar the way -you- are a scholar. And you don’t have to pretend to be Samudra-trained. So in every way that -matters-, you’re already who you need to be, right here and right now. To me, to Archie, to both of your lovely and strange gentleman friends, to Wolf and Unua. When it’s convenient, certainly, pose as Archie’s assistant, it’s a clever ruse to avoid answering questions you’d rather sink. But I suspect…” -he glances at Salme. “-working from my own first memories of this place, when I followed Archie towards his dreams, and felt like I was drowning, that you’re the only one who has the expectations you have of yourself in mind, here. Do we, indeed, share that singular honor?”
looks at him, like he immediately saw through her, and nods, dumbly. “And also the fear of … how did you say it? Falling out-of-sync with your clan and with Archie. Indeed, you’re the only person I’ve met here who … makes sense to me? Not that everyone else isn’t lovely. But. You know.” She shrugs, inelegantly. “I didn’t learn to read until I was in my early twenties (which is only a handful of years past). I still don’t think to … read, when I can ask. And. I’ve always thought about things in terms of stories, which are always true but never in the same way you think about truth here.”
smiles. “Then I’m very glad there’s at least one person here who makes sense to you, my friend. And I’m sure you’ll find more. I… wish Solei were in better spirits, not that I can blame them. I think you’d get along well.” He looks over at her. “Scholarship isn’t -reading-. It’s -understanding-. More of the Virtues are about asking the right questions than about anything else.” He peruses the list, on the desk, idly, while he continues. “And a good theory -has- to narrativise the facts that it explains, or else it won’t survive the voyage across the sea into someone else’s mind. Do you know -how- many good theories this world’s lost -because- we didn’t have Scholar-Storytellers to hand?” He smiles. “When we succeed, at whatever undertaking we’re even performing, here, I’m going to beg you to come back to the Academy and teach a class or two.”
looks at him and … nods. “I’m still not sure I understand.” She presents the worse-for-wear list of virtues. “I was … trying to mark out where I was succeeding and where I was struggling.” She hands it to him. Circled in green are Curiosity, Evenness, Empiricism, Humility, Scholarship (“at least when it comes to asking questions”), and Counsel. With less-certain blue questions marks, Relinquishment (against which she’s written “sometimes and sometimes very much not”), Argument (“largely unsuccessful”), Precision (“except people keep misunderstanding”). In deep purple-red, the rest have an X noted next to them, with two large, frustrated X’s next to Parsimony (“how can you cut away anything???) and a flat “ha ha“ written next to Perfectionism. There are more notes, but those are the most telling.*
looks over the list, the corners of his lips curving up in a smile. “No wonder we get along so well. Although I suspect that you, like me, exercise Perfectionism to a fault. It’s…” He looks up, and, hell, there’s a Bubble up. “Nobody wants to talk about it, but the Virtues have traps and pitfalls built into them. You can… fall in to Humility and Perfectionism, and never find your way out. Mustn’t act until you’ve eliminated all errors, but you can never feel certain you’ve eliminated all errors. Sometimes… mmm. Sometimes I think the entire Academy’s gotten its foot stuck in thick mud. Except for my Archie.” A soft, conspiratorial laugh. “You didn’t hear -me- say that, of course. But I want you to know that you’re not alone.”
: “Oh, so we’re alike in another way. Yes, when it comes to Aurelius and Sininen I feel like they really could do the impossible.” She smirks at Caion. “It wasn’t lost on me that Xie was casting you are Arcs-Through-The-Depths-Towards-Truth’s-Light as Stillness and Song. Though I was a bit lost as to which one was which?”
”Oh, I think I was the Song in that metaphor, and he the Stillness. Although I’m not sure if I think Xie’s got them backwards, or not, and I hadn’t it in me to argue the point when I just- wanted to show him the friend I made who’d seen the Visitors the same as me.” He laughs, a little. “It was good to be able to spend some time with the Awoken, though. On which note, help me track down Aurelius, sometime tomorrow, after we meet with Solei? Or, well. It doesn’t have to be tomorrow. I need to spend some time in your Library, I think it’s the piece I’ve been missing to a puzzle I’ve been trying to put together.”
: “I also wasn’t sure if Xie had them backwards or not. I might ask Awoken. As for later–of course. And I need some help from ideally both you and Archie with Mask tasks.” She pauses, and then, carefully, says, “I did. Want to thank you. I took your advise spoke to Aurelius–I had already spoken to Sininen, but I spoke to Aurelius and. I’m still not doing. Great. But I asked him to leave space for me, and he asked me to trust him, and. I’m going to try. So thank you for that gift as well, Caion.” ⁂
: “Though, if you have another moment or two, do you think you’d be willing to show me how to read and perhaps write to these Samudran memory crystals?”
looks at Salme and -beams-, and motions her over again. “I’m so very glad to hear that. And, it’s not so hard once you just know the trick, c’mere…” He takes a few memory crystals out of various pockets, including one or two empty ones, and it really is pretty easy once you have the hang of it.