ꙮ Somewhere out of the way, somewhere near the ocean. It’s hard not to find places near the ocean at and around the Academy, but it’s hard to find places that are properly out of the way. Across the bridge, onto land - and it’s funny how much you can FEEL the ocean underneath the rock of Ripple’s Rest in comparison with Tulinsuojat, isn’t it? It feels perfectly stable underfoot, and yet you know - there’s a rocky shoreline that looks out onto the sea.
No song playing
Up next: 0 songs
1 listening
- The Dragon
Scene Archives
← Active ScenesThe Sea's Edge, IV
#wolf
takes a small chalkboard, clearly cadged from somewhere in the Academy, and props it up with a rock facing the narrow little path he’s taken to get down to the shore. It reads: “Meditating, please do not disturb.” Underneath that, in slightly smaller letters: “May be unresponsive. Do not be alarmed.” Underneath that, in a bit of a scribble: “(Unless not breathing. If so, then please revive, if possible.) ⁂*
makes sure that the sign won’t fall over in the sea breeze–he adds another rock, just to be sure–and then goes to find a suitably flat bit of rock to sit on. He settles down, cross-legged, and takes a deep breath. Exhales it, slowly. His expression is as stormy as the skies above the Academy, dark brows drawn down above grey-green eyes. Inhale…exhale. His jaw works, as sorrow and anger dig in their claws and resist letting go. Inhale…exhale. Slowly, haltingly, his breathing evens and slows, coming to match the steady wash of waves across stone. Inhale…exhale. The face relaxes last, from stormy, to cloudy, to a kind of calm overcast, like the kind that hung over Samudra on his first glimpse of it. ⁂
sits there, for a long moment. Breathing. Centering. A score of waves splash across the rock before he finally closes his eyes. Lets the wave-song and wind-sound blow over him in steady, unceasing rhythm. Then, in his mind’s eye, he pictures a ball of black yarn–if tenebrous gnosis was yarn, anyway. He breathes in determination, will, and breathes them out into the ball, making it brighter and brighter, more and more solid. 🙧
ꙮ In Almachadta, they talk about hope like it’s a physical thing - a rope you’d use to bind yourself to something from which you did not wish to be torn away. An expression of will and tenacity. It makes sense, then, especially with what you’ve seen the Awoken do, to imagine– it’s not yarn, it’s rough kudzu twine. Harsh, not terribly forgiving, strong as oxen. Roll Tenebrous, if you’d like? DC 2/9.
- The Wolf-Priest invoked their ⚫tenebrous gnosis [d4] -> 4! It ✨explodes!
- The Wolf-Priest invoked their ⚫tenebrous gnosis [d4] -> 3.
- The Wolf-Priest spent 1 Arete and now has 8 remaining.
- The Wolf-Priest‘s ⚫tenebrous gnosis has ascended unto the 6ᵗʰ rank.
- The Wolf-Priest invoked their ⚫tenebrous gnosis [d6] -> 4.
ꙮ Ascension! Belatedly.
ꙮ Wolf’s will exerts itself upon the waiting world; a tenebrous twine-ball manifests, both in his hands and also, at the same time, purely conceptually. You could take one end of it, plant it in the rock, and it would not break, and the whole island would move before it was torn free. Purely hypothetically, that is, as a description of how strong the binding would be.
wraps some of the “twine” around his hands–feeling the rough bite of it, the way even a gentle touch threatens to rub his skin raw. Clenches his fists, feeling the stinging ache of it. His face is stone, now–immovable, but not serene…weathered, heavy. One end of the twine, he envisions wrapping around the hand and wrist of his physical-self, an anchor of pain and the selfish need to live anchoring himself to his body. The other, he coils around his soul-self’s waist like a rope–and it does, in that moment, become a rope, a rough length of sea-cable, unbreakable by anything but the desperate strokes of a hewing axe. ⁂
tugs on the rope, once, feeling the answering pull on his own wrist–knows, somehow, that if he jerks on it hard enough, he will pull himself home. Satisfied in his anchor, he turns his attention to the sea. He lets it linger in his mind’s eye–that vast, ever-moving expanse, endlessly overcast, constantly shifting between grey, blue, green…black. He has stared at it enough, in recent days. How did he not realize? On Almachadta, Zosimos sang truth into Fire, but what Fire could live here, in a world awash in sea and ice? But the Sea has a song all its own. ⁂
allows himself to feel the ocean with his inner self. The rise and fall of tides, moderated by some distant force as yet unseen. The boundless depths, dark and darker. The wind that skims the waves, and the waves that beat against the shore. Allows them to blur. Allows them to blend. Allows them to become rhythm, and rhythm to become music, and music to become Song. He Sees now with his true self, Hears with the ears that hear even in silence–and, silently, he bares his fangs to the Song. For, in this moment, he is not the Shepherd. He is a hunter, the Wolf-that-Sings, and he will find his quarry in the depths. ⁂
hurls his soul-self into the Sea without a backwards glance, and thinking heavy thoughts, sinks like a stone. 🙧
ꙮ The sea, like the forest, when you listen to it, when you really listen- the boundaries between what is stillness and what is song blur together. There’s nothing human about it, nothing made, nothing sung into being by mortal souls, and yet. There is a song to it, there is a rhythm and a melody–
- The Dragon invoked their 🌌liminal gnosis [d4] -> 1.
- The Dragon invoked their 🌌liminal gnosis [d20] -> 16.
ꙮ As Wolf dives, he has a brief disorienting sense of being utterly -surrounded by- Song, that the ocean is nothing but for Song, that the water itself is a thing his mind is doing to make sense of it all, the way the enormity of the Ancient Ones was, itself, too much to bear– or perhaps that the Sea itself is a substrate for something ungraspable– and then he acclimates, and he– his soul– cuts through the water like a fish; Ripple’s island falls away behind him.
allows himself to stabilize, for a moment–getting his bearings, if such a thing is possible in a Sea-realm made of Song explored by an astral self. He can hear Ripple, and the Academy, and the strange song of the Dream-Whales circling below it, keeping it safe from…what? From the world itself? Wolf shakes his head. No matter. He’s not here for that. Too many competing songs, too much upheaval, the Song-Sea itself made turbulent by their troubles. He checks his tether–still slack, still strong. Banishing the world above from his thoughts, he sinks deeper–and then deeper still, down into the Song-depths, until it is all he can hear, all he can perceive–save for that black and ever-present tether. ⁂
floats there, for a long moment, listening. He’s spent many an hour like this, as a boy, lost to the world outside; soaking in Almachadta’s Worldsong like a tree might soak in sunlight. Sinking deep into the earth like reaching roots, and catching the flickers of what he now knows to be ancient memory. Could he see them, if he tried, here in Samudra’s ocean? Perhaps–but they are not his quarry. Not today. Today, he opens himself and floats in these middle depths, listening for a scrap of a very particular song–like a wolf hunting a scent.
🙧
Let's call that the complete segment, actually.
ꙮ Kushtaka reels, Academic chamber pieces, chants and work-songs, the lilting warble of the dream-whales underlying it all- and echoes, traces, reverberations of an ancient instrument, magnificent in its clarity and dynamism. Not -louder-, the deeper you sink, but less drowned-out by everything else. Soft, muted to the point of barely being perceptible, floating in the lightless sea, keying out the notes to a now-familiar melody. You would have to dive deeper for it, you think.
bares his teeth in a predatory smile, as he catches that faint melody, and growls a wordless note of satisfaction. Could a Song ever be untouched by its Singer? He might not have worn the Mask–cunning, that–but where his prey’s truth resides in the Song…so must some trace of him. And yet…he hesitates, just a moment. He has never gone deeper than this–has never dared, but once. He had nearly lost himself, then–had been lucky that his mentor had been able to haul him back from the depths, days later, herself half-frantic from the near miss with loss. He had learned wisdom, from that. Had learned his limits. ⁂
curls his fingers around the rope around his waist. Feels it bite into his palms. Neither was he a boy, anymore. He was not a pup, but a Wolf. Yeresh, World-Singer, world-walker, survivor of silence, hunter of truth. Helpless he might be against thought-storm and world-eating, but this, this he could do. He was the Song, and the Song was him. He casts out fear, and dives, letting the ocean he dreamed of for so long swallow him within it–ever-seeking that unmistakable melody. 🙧
ꙮ You notice that there is a light, in the depths of the sea. Flickering, shimmering, pale blue.
ꙮ You listened for the melody, and it brought you close enough to see, and the light and the melody are the same thing, inextricable from one another, lost in the depths.
floats near to the light–swirls around it, examining it from all sides. Feels its presence radiating against his skin, like an orb of blue flame in the depths. He smiles, a wolf-grin of satisfaction…and reaches out to touch it, with a steady hand. ⁂
Show me your secrets. Tell me everything. 🙧
ꙮ As you approach the light, you realise that it is not one thing, but many things, a whole school of them - close enough to reach out and touch – it’s a swarm of quick-swimming, luminescent noöplankton, and when you reach out, they simply part smoothly around your hand!
blinks in shock, falling in amidst them. You? You all are Zosimos’ Song?
ꙮ ”Hello!” “No, I am a fish.” “Be solemn!” “Fish are not solemn.” “Who are you?” – and a gentle cacophony of other questions, comments, and nonsense, as the noöplankton course around you like a new, immensely chatty kind of water. You are surrounded by light.
struggles to swallow down a sudden, blinding pulse of rage–this is not his quarry, these are not the answers he seeks! He wants to howl, he wants to scream, another dead end, another answer with more questions, and he takes a breath– ⁂
exhales in a rush, and then it’s a chuckle, and then he’s laughing, helplessly, at the absurdity of it all. At his own arrogance, to demand answers of the world and expect them to be given simply and clearly, in a language he understands. ⁂
I am Wolf, he ‘says.’ And then: Little Ones, do you know this song? And he sings, with his soul-self, that melody he sought–at once so familiar and so strange. 🙧
ꙮ ”Awoo.” “You smell like the Grove.” “I like this song.” “I like your song, too.” Closer, and closer, to the centre of the spinning orb of noöplankton, and some of them pick up the song in a rippling cascade around him. ⁂
ꙮ It is very very difficult, if not impossible, to determine what the centre of the orb of luminescent noöplankton might be, precisely, and yet you feel you’re at it. Surrounded, on all sides, by light that makes it easy to forget that you’re deep in the unknowable depths of the ocean, in soul if not in body. ⁂
ꙮ One noöplankton in specific floats, at eye level with you, iridescent streamers tasting the sea. Light ripples through its body, vivid purples, light blue, like little flashes of lightning; it is, somehow, the source of the melody you followed, amplified by its coterie. 🙧
gently, carefully, reaches out to touch that one in particular, still singing that song of Sanctuary. Please, Little One. Share with me. Help me understand.
ꙮ It drifts closer to Wolf, willingly; iridescent streamers overlapping with Wolf’s soul– and you feel something strange, something which you’ve not felt before– like something reaching towards you from both the past, and the future, in the same breath. Like immensely strong deja vu, and nostalgia, and a premonition, all at once. There is something powerfully familiar about this noöplankton in a way that defies all reason.
thinks, briefly, perhaps irrationally, of Mu’s sun, and its rage at an injustice, all at once happened, happening, and yet to happen. He makes no attempt to make sense of it–not here, not in this place–but reaches back, with his soul-self…embracing the paradox, imagining himself reaching back with his past self, his current self, and the self he might yet be, all at once…
laughs to himself, even as he reaches, strange words coming to his mind unbidden: Let expanse contract, let aeon become instant…
ꙮ Liminal, DC 2/9.
- The Wolf-Priest invoked their 🌌liminal gnosis [d4] -> 4! It ✨explodes!
- The Wolf-Priest invoked their 🌌liminal gnosis [d4] -> 3.
- The Wolf-Priest spent 1 Arete and now has 7 remaining.
ꙮ Ascension!
- The Wolf-Priest‘s 🌌liminal gnosis has ascended unto the 6ᵗʰ rank.
- The Wolf-Priest invoked their 🌌liminal gnosis [d6] -> 3.
ꙮ A connection is made.
nearly staggers back, blinking, as knowledge blooms in his mind, with comprehension coming like the bow-shock of a wave. How? he asks, half-marveling, half-baffled–not expecting an answer, but having to ask the question nonetheless. What did you…do?
ꙮ A couple noöplankton gently bump into him as he abruptly shifts positions and warble pleasantly at him, and shift their course, going with the flow. Here, in the depths, in their soft glow, you can catch glimpses as they daintily nibble imperceptibly-small motes of dust, glowing in their luminescence, out of the water columns.
laughs again, part wonder and part bemused frustration. Considers, for a moment, speaking a particular name, and then…shakes his head, sighs, and laughs. Answers that become questions, and then questions again… Wolf allows himself to just bask in the Song, and the gentle light of the nooplankton, for a long moment. Then he becomes aware, once again, of the rough-twine around his waist–the way it’s dragging at his attention. ⁂
exhales softly, and reaches out to brush that one particular nooplankton gently, one last time. Farewell, Little Ones, he ‘says’–and tugs hard on the rope of gnosis, once, twice, thrice. 🙧
ꙮ ”Goodbye!”, the noöplankton says, as Wolf cuts backwards through the water with the grace of a noöplankton himself, feeling absolutely none of the sea’s drag on his body- the school of noöplankton shrinking in the distance, and then a gentle, increasing light, Samudra’s song overtaking the quiet of the depths- for all that the rope itself feels rough, it’s incredibly -gentle- when Wolf’s soul is tugged back into his body, although it’s definitely a -startling- feeling, for a moment or two. Breathing air; the sea lapping insistently at the rocks and casting spray onto your body.
catches his breath, blinking rapidly–squinting against the way his body feels almost too small and tight for his being for a moment. Stretches his legs out with a grunt, and a crackle of knees that he could swear wasn’t happening just a few seasons ago. He looks out at the sea for a handful of breaths, then shakes his head, levers himself to his feet, retrieves his chalkboard, and retreats to the Academy and its sheltering crystal wave.
ꙮ And somewhere, very distant, in the depths, noöplankton orbit, and shine, and feed; they sleep and wake, they rise to the surface or descend once again to engage in their own unique noöplankton mysteria.