SUMMER

Angkar: Wet season. Precipitation is common during the late afternoon and evening hours. Vegetation grows significantly during the summer, but flooding is a danger due to the monsoons that ravage the country. The rainforest sees evenly distributed rainfall throughout the season.

Ashoka: Desert: Extremely hot and dry. Violent, heavy downpours following long dryspells. Jungle: Hot and humid with frequent, violent rainstorms.

Morrim: Relatively hot and dry, but with a chance of thunderstorms from time to time. The heat may cause forest fires.

Soto: Hot and humid, tree cover is dense while ground growth is restricted. Thunderstorms see the most amount of rainfall during the season, and it can be very windy. On occasion, there are flash floods that can destroy homes and farms built on flood plains.

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March 30th, 2018 As you might have noticed, Elenlond has changed hands and is now under new management! If you have any questions, please direct them to DaringRaven! As for the rest of the announcements, including a season change, you can find them over here at the following link!

January 16, 2018 As you might have noticed, Elenlond has a new skin, all thanks to Mel! Don't forget to check out the new OTMs as well!

December 2, 2017 Winter has settled on Elenlond, bringing sleep for some and new life for others.

September 26, 2017 With the belated arrival of autumn come some interesting developments: new OTMs, a Town Crier and the release of the Elly Awards winners!

July 14, 2017 After a bit of forum clean-up, Elly Awards season has arrived! Head on over to make your nominations!

May 31, 2017 Summer has arrived and so has activity check! That's not all though – we also have some new OTMs for you and some staff changes!


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Elenlond is an original free-form medieval fantasy RPG set on the continent of Soare and the Scattered Isles, which are located to the south in the Sea of Diverging Waters. The four chief nations of the western side of the world—Ashoka in northern Soare, Soto in western Soare, Morrim in eastern Soare, and Angkar, the largest of the Scattered Isles—continue to experience growth and prosperity since the fall of the Mianorite gods, although power struggles within the countries—or outside of them—continue to ensue.


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    The Meeting of Selves; for ylsa! 0:
    Topic Started: Dec 17 2015, 03:53 AM (409 Views)
    Phaedrus
    Member Avatar
    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    [tw: TL;DR, alcoholism, mental illness, general ickiness. I’M SORRY IZZY D: ]



    Red.


    It was dark — a living silence, a void that pressed on him from all sides. His breathing was shallow, fast—a trapped rodent’s, his heart ready to burst from his chest.

    Red.

    The stars had bled away — like lamps extinguished one by one, throwing a black pall over the dunes. He could not see where he was going — only felt the cold sand beneath him, sliding every which way. Twice he stumbled, whimpering, moaning—till at last he fell, hands grasping at nothing. Cold, cold. It trickled between his fingers, lived in the grit of his mouth; there was no up, no down, no direction—he could fall from the earth, the darkness was so absolute—he clutched the sky, the hems of the gods, and they cast him down, buried him. Around him—nothing.

    He screamed.

    The sound fled to the desert—snatched and strangled by the wind. Sobbing, the necromancer crawled like a worm — shuffled on his knees, on his belly, dragging himself over the sands—knowing it could only go one way. One way, one path, dragging him inexorably on. He could crawl, on and on — he could walk for eternity, but the way would always turn; once the stars left he had crossed that threshold, left the realms of gods and men.

    “Nailah, help me,” he sobbed. But there was no answer. He could beg, beg—and the gods would stay silent.

    “Nailah, help me.” The scream ripped from his throat, raw and unending. “Nailah, help me.” Wailed like a child torn from their mother’s breast, shrieking— “Nailah—

    Have mercy. Have mercy. Have mercy…

    He knew it was there, hanging above — swollen, piercing the black veil and yet illuminating nothing; alive, a glimpse to another realm, a thing where great Beasts shifted over eons—red, red, lightless star. It compelled him—he crawled like an animal, fettered against his own will, gasping and spluttering out sand—strings of saliva, bile clinging to his chin. All of him tremored, fell ill.

    Don’t make me go back to that place.

    The night sky fell — crushed him like an insect, powdering his bones and filling his lungs, erasing choice. Numbly he crawled on—wished to die, to die,never again to that place… never again…

    The whispers began. At first a soft breath—then a susurrus, a rasp of leaves in a swirling wind—scraping each other, trembling like the wings of insects—the curtain between realms shivering, brushing by in diaphanous limbs—sick, gods, he was sick—and the devils cavorted, fled in shadows, became dancers amidst the screaming, the screaming—his own and a thousand others’—

    Some force seized him—craned his head up, up; his limbs shook with palsy, his control voided, his body no longer his own. A scream guttered in his mouth.

    A great, palatial wall thrust from the desert, flanked by two colossi. Dead kings stared down at him — their eyes wrought coldly in stone, faces whipped by the sands. Their faces bled into the bodies of lions—above them soared wings, each feather chiseled in sandstone veins; around their feet curled barbed tails, gouged and broken by the wrath of some Beast. And above — up, up, dizzyingly high — rested the crown of the red star.

    Phaedrus screamed.

    At once the blackness rushed to meet him — a pulsing, ravenous force — it swallowed the sands, made them flee behind him. The stare of dead kings followed him through the Gates; red, the walls red like the gullet of a beast, lined with mangled crucifixions—a frozen procession, their desiccated limbs pointing towards the second gate— around him, empty stares, around him, the continuing screams of Dead—a hall without gods, stones gorged on blood—the paper-dry heads bent in supplication.

    There was something there, past the second gate — a Thing great and long of limb; as though the shadow of a man had peeled itself from the dunes and now walked among them. He felt repulsed by it—howled, fought its advance, but the Thing hung there as a spider in its web, limbs spread and curling; faceless, faceless — its head swirling into darkness and then to some diaphanous horror, a rippling mirror of water, a veil.

    Come,” it whispered, and the voice was his own, dulcet, vile—his own, and he screamed—his own, and he twisted away, repelled by it. “Come…” Its breath fell on his neck. He could not move, pinned as though his own limbs bent in crucifixion; and there — the Thing came forward in a slither of hems, dead hands outspread.

    The walls bled away—drained through an hourglass, siphoned and trickling to a single fall; he clung to stone and felt his nails break — clawed towards the dead, but they had turned their faces away — the red star spun overhead, beneath him, filled his mind until he went blind — and he reeled, clutched at nothing, plunging down, down…


    ***

    The sheets flew off in a mad whorl. They tangled at his ankles, constricting him while a scream howled from his throat.

    Phaedrus pitched forward, choked silent by waking. His scream kept on in his mind—the quiet too abrupt, torn to shreds by his ragged breathing.

    For a moment of plunging horror he was still there—still in the Bayt Ifrit, the darkness buzzing, alive as it danced before his eyes. Then the dimness of his bedroom slowly came into focus, hyper saturated, teeming — as though the shadows could detach themselves at any moment and begin walking. He could not move, paralyzed by that fear — until they resolved themselves into the familiar shapes. The necromancer’s eyes settled on each, not moving until he felt sure of their true forms— his chair, yes… his writing desk, the armoire—not a hulking set of armor, not a gaping, palatial door—just his house, his house—

    “Oh gods.”

    Phaedrus fell back into his pillows with an airy shff — the terror still pounded in his veins, galvanized him, sent his fingers clawing at his face. “Gods…” he could not still his breathing, head buzzing, too afraid to close his eyes lest the darkness swallow him again.

    That dream again.

    Every time he had it, he found it harder and harder to wake up. The first time… the sight of the red star amongst the banner of the sky had been enough to wake him. The second, once the sky became black — save for that single, shining eye — he flew abed like a man chased, paced his parlor and had enough tea to kill a man, cup rattling all the while; the third time, Marcel had shaken him before he could reach the Gates proper, and he had almost attacked the concerned face shining in the darkness, half-lit by moonlight.

    Now… now…

    He dreaded sleep, feared what it would bring the next time — as though the Bayt Ifrit still had power over him all this time; could still swallow him from that distance, eroding the leagues between the northern deserts and Madrid. Irrationally, he felt like it would trap him if he slipped past those Gates. What if he did not wake up, indeed? What if he remained in that sepulcher forever? Phaedrus’ hands clenched, trembled—ran over the sweat on his face, fisted in his hair. That Thing— that Thing in the gate… For a moment he feared it would materialize there — in the gaping wound of his door, swung open to the mouth of his hallway. The necromancer could not bear to be in the darkness any longer, drawing the warmth from the air; a candle sprung to life by his bedside and he snatched it up, almost extinguishing the flame with his panicked breaths.

    How absurd, that a creature like him was afraid of darkness.

    Phaedrus shambled out of bed, still half-drunk from yesterday— a bottle went skittering away from his feet and he jumped at the sudden noise, the t-t-thump as it rattled across the floorboards, caught by the leg of his writing desk. Cursing, the necromancer ran a trembling hand over his face, whisking it away. By some miracle he found his bathroom, shaking all the while — threw down the candle by the wash basin, plunging his hands into the water.

    “Wake up,” he growled at himself, a huffing mantra of Ashokan. It splashed against his face, cold, bracing — snapped him somewhat to his senses, though reality seemed to quiver about him still, a veil to be torn asunder at a wrong breath. “Wake up, up, wake up…” Phaedrus scrubbed his skin— horrified at its elasticity, its lack of substance, as though it were dough he could keep stretching under his fingers — looked up in the mirror with a jolt of horror, unable to recognize the reflection as his own at all. White—white—bloated, ghastly pale—how could anyone be convinced by that mask? It looked as though he’d borrowed the face of a corpse, and it hung loosely over his false bones—slack, horrible, not his own, feeling instinctually it was wrong; the dysphoria swelled in him until he could almost see it coming apart under his fingers, crumbling in his kneading hands, wrong, wrong…

    “You’re Phaedrus,” he whimpered at himself, nails clawing into his cheeks—but somehow the sensation felt divorced from his own flesh, his fingers digging into a stranger’s, clammy and unresponsive. “You’re Phaedrus…” The man’s lips slurred, out of sync with his own, hanging slack and lifeless. His hands trembled, flew up in another splash of water. It drenched his shirt, slopping onto his belly, trickling down his chin — spluttered from his lips as he uttered the words. “You’re Phaedrus,” he shouted, as if that would will it to take form. The Thing in the mirror could be anything — a thousand faces and none at once, all shining through with the same queer yellow lights — two stars, two stars in his mirror, above a hilly lump of white flesh. Water ran down his arms, caught in his sleeves — for a horrible moment the candle hissed and nearly guttered, throwing ghoulish shadows across the thing in the mirror — was it him? Was it him? — chasing away the ridges of his cheekbones and shading his eyes, so the face seemed to rot before him and live again in an instant, morphing to the thing of his nightmare; water, water, water.

    Phaedrus’ nails scraped the bottom of the basin.

    He did not know what happened. The moments blotted away—and he jarred as though shaken from a second dream, gawping at himself. His clothes hung sodden and wet — all of him positively drenched. He looked ghastly — eyes wide and frightened, his hair lank and plastered unpleasantly to his skull. Rivulets of water dove off his nose, quivering at his chin before they joined his nightshirt. It clung to every lump of his body as if to assure him of his contours, every beginning and end — his physical space, a second skin hugging tight as a lover. It gave him comfort, assured him of his reality.

    Still here.

    He looked down at his hands—skittering, jumping, trembling like white spiders. After some time he took the candle — the wax leapt like a living creature, doused his trembling fingers, but he felt grateful for the sudden, warm pain.


    ***

    The night breathed hot, muggy.

    Phaedrus moved like a man still lost in a dream—could not anchor himself, gliding past the familiar sights of Madrid. His mouth tasted sour with whisky, and still his mind somersaulted a thousand paces ahead — would not stop whirring, like some damnable machine. More than anything he wished to be held; to simply be held, assured of his safety, vulnerable as a child. Devils… he was so tired.

    What hell was it — to be so exhausted, tormented in waking hours — and then flagellated in sleep? He woke to one nightmare and dropped into another; everything… everything just… Again his knuckles met his eyes — a dazzling array of stars exploded before him, fading as he took another gulp of liquor — sick of it too, sick of living from bottle to bottle, its taste forever mingled with its exit, void of pleasure anymore. He could have screamed—could have woken the whole of Madrid with the sickness building inside of him, a tangle of maggots waiting to erupt from his mouth.

    The necromancer squeezed his palm, released it — left half-moons embedded in the flesh, an unconscious way to keep himself present; the walk helped, at least — the feeling of the cobblestones under his boots, jarring his knees, the humid wind against his fresh tunic, the comforting path of lanterns to follow through the streets.

    By this hour the revelers found their sleep in a bottle or a whore’s teats — and the merchants hadn’t yet risen. The streets were eerily quiet, slumbering — familiar but vacant, strange and dreamlike without the bustle of people. The necromancer shuffled to a stop in the market — an every-day scene, so mundane as to be a part of him… peppered with sharp memories here and there… running his hand through a bag of coriander… the sharp pain in his chest when he saw Saqqaf’s bakery had closed permanently… stumbling into that melancholy healer, leading her and her dead robin to that very fountain…

    Phaedrus inched towards it, sitting hunched on its very edge. The gurgle soothed him — ran over his mind, filled it with its repetitive language, serenading the back of his neck with its spray. The damp stone put him in mind of Eldahar — the sun dappling his legs, another hand in his, looking over to see her smile…

    For a moment he forgot all his anger towards Bast, suspended of all indignation — her absence simply punched a hole in his chest, left him crumpling. All of him ached for her to just… be here. Not for affection, not for her body, another feverish night in his bed—but the most basic desire of having someone to talk to, hell, to be in her presence and simply know she’d understand.

    Her… even Glede—he knew those waking terrors, the fear of being enslaved again, the horror of knowing you weren’t what looked back from a mirror—

    The isolation felt like a knife — working at his ribs, burning through his viscera, physically painful. The necromancer put his head in his hands, flask at his lips — it trembled with a metal rattle, and he choked on the drink as it went down wrong, liquor bubbling from his lips.

    Phaedrus’ stomach burned as though it’d been lit aflame, rejecting its contents— Madrid spun sickeningly, even as he tried to swallow, keep himself under control. His hand didn’t make it in time; the necromancer puked, shuddering with disgust as it spewed through his fingers and splashed back onto himself, soiling the side of the fountain and the stones. He went light-headed of a sudden, lurching sickeningly — scraped his hand along the fountain, nearly skinning his palm. His elbow hit stone with a jarring ring up his arm, all the way to his neck — suddenly he found himself sideways, ears ringing, burning with abject humiliation. You piece of thrice-baked shit.

    A hideous croaking came from his throat — the air sucked into his concave chest, shuddering out in the carcass of a sob.
    Edited by Phaedrus, Dec 17 2015, 03:55 AM.
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    Ylsa
    Member Avatar
    For as long as space endures/ For as long as living beings remain/ Until then may I too abide/ To dispel the misery of the world...

    Some nights, it was just a bit harder to sleep than others.

    She had dreamed of her first exorcism -- of that pregnant young woman, the inn, and the tree. It had started out like any normal memory, but as dreams often did, tiny, strange details were added that made no sense in the waking world, but that made perfect sense while you were asleep. There were certain pieces of furniture that disappeared throughout the course of the dream, and before she had finished exorcising the woman she found herself walking around the corridors in the upstairs. The building was far more massive than she remembered, and it felt like it was breathing, and there were a hundred rooms here now that simply weren't there when she usually remembered it. It was no longer a modest inn but a sprawling palace as ornate as the temples in Northern Daro, only there was no one in it, and there was hair everywhere. She had found some dumplings in one room and tried to eat them, but choked on the long hairs embedded within. She tried to wash it down with wine, but the hairs caught in her throat in layer after layer until she couldn't breathe, and then there was blood on the floor and dead girls everywhere, and downstairs a baby was screaming...

    --------------------------

    Some nights.

    Ylsa had woken up with some of her hair in her mouth -- it happened, sometimes, but tonight it had frightened her for a moment. When she sat up, the taste of it hit her full and she gagged on her way upstairs to the stove.

    Water boiled within minutes as she yawned and shuffled, still groggy from an evening full of smoke and laughter. It got lonely sometimes: smoking was always fun, but it just wasn't quite as fun without someone else to enjoy it with, someone to bounce ideas off of. She had sat and watched the tendrils of smoke dance slowly, hypnotically, forming its own little patterns and symbols, signing its own language. Her eyes looked like glass, lying on the sofa with Geordi curled up heavily on her chest, pondering the licks and curls of grey-blue wafting calmly up from her pipe. "What are you saying..?" She had asked it. It answered, but of course, she didn't understand it.

    Calm... Like the steam from the cup. For a few moments she simply held the cup in her hands, watching it steep, and the steam roiling from its surface. Calm. Her eyes half-lidded. The shocking nature of the dream had left a residue of unrest, as dreams were wont to do. It bothered her, not knowing where it came from. She gave up on trying to decipher what it meant, and thought back instead on that very first life, that very first second chance. It had been... a troubled life, saturated with indecision and fear like wine staining the sleeve of a silk kimono, running through and dousing the patterns, but never fully extinguishing them, condemning them to live in limbo until someone decided to just toss it and make a new one.

    She had worn many robes. Many robes, many colors, many patterns. Her sleep-and-smoke-fogged mind rolled straight over from these dark contemplations into wondering what their patterns and would have been, and how pretty they would look all laid out neatly on a table. There was one in there with cranes on it, she was sure.

    A blink. Reality manifested once more, and she set the cup down to find that her hands were a bit burnt, and the dream-fugue was still present and likely would be for the rest of the day. No matter. Sometimes all you learn in defeat is that you've been defeated.

    --------------------------

    At first she felt like having her tea outside to listen to the earliest-birds, and threw on only a very basic outer robe, not bothering with shoes: her bare feet on the sometimes-cool, sometimes-warm earth was grounding, and after a while of stepping carefully around the house and on the roof to examine her plants, the pall lifted enough that she enjoyed the far-too-early morning (in reality she wasn't sure what the time was, but it felt like those ungodly hours of the morning where there weren't even any stragglers stumbling out of the bar). Her steps carried her around her property, then up the path a bit. Then, she found herself going up the stairs that scaled the living wall of ferns up towards the city proper. Not even a breeze ruffled their fronds. Do ferns dream?

    Shortly after that she was wandering the streets, a tall cup of steaming tea in her hands, bare-footed and sleepy-eyed, looking for all the world like the should be lounging in her bed instead of being out walking. She passed by Elsing's stand, by Furlow's shop, the little area where she usually laid out her own blanket and set up her wares. What did ferns even dream about, anyway? Did they worry over what time it was, or what anything around them meant? Did they get nervous or excited about sporing season?

    Were they happy?

    The cup lifted to her lips and she blew on it gently before sipping. Still too hot to enjoy.

    She had been walking for about twenty minutes and was planning on heading back home when she brushed by something invisible and stopped. For a moment she was afraid it was Mammon and that she'd have to try and take a roundabout way home to avoid getting mixed up in his violence and moral ambiguity, but something wasn't right. It was dark and horrible, certainly, but also so..... sad. Very, very sad.

    The energy of emotions can be powerful and tangible: her chest contricted and she felt a lump rising in her throat, feeling for all the world like something had broken and would never, ever be fixed. Something vital and personal. It felt like the time she had wandered in the desert for days with little water and no food, suffering, but not yet dying, burning up during the day and swallowed by darkness at night.

    Somewhere nearby, someone sobbed.

    Ylsa paused in her steps to listen, peering around the square until under the cover of the starry sky a vague silhouette revealed itself, just around the corner of the centerpiece of the fountain she sometimes liked to set up shop under. Her heart beat a little faster, a bit excited, remembering when she first met Baqi here -- her best friend in this incarnation. He too had been crying, and she had sat beside him, talked to him, not understanding his problems but understanding his feelings. She'd cried a little too, that day, simply because she was sad that he was sad. Some days were like that.

    Her bare feet made no din on the cobbled stones when she carried herself a bit closer. Within moments the smell hit her full-force, the smell of stale wine and vomit and a downward spiral of misery. It was as though an emotional black hole had gathered right at the center of this person: their aura was the deep grey of absolute depression, but smattered here and there were their true colors, as everyone had them. Some intense red, shifting pearly whites, and robin's egg blue. Occasionally some green as well. Ylsa raised her cup to her lips and tried sipping again, with more success this time.

    Without a word, she sat down near them, not too close, but close enough to glance over and see at least if it was a man or a woman.

    Well, they looked like both, but it didn't take her long to recognize the hair and, even in its shattered state, the face. She had seen it many times before in passing, at the bakery, by Mr. Elsing's stand, every so often on the streets as they walked by. They had never spoken before, and perhaps this wasn't the most comfortable way for them to meet someone new, but their misery was so complete and so permeating that she just couldn't leave them to be alone with whatever was hurting them.

    The source of the smell was evident as well. He was in a very bad way. She scooched a bit closer, laid a hand on his shoulder.

    "What ails you?" She ventured gently, concernedly.
    Edited by Ylsa, Dec 17 2015, 11:12 AM.
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    Phaedrus
    Member Avatar
    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    He was disgusting.

    The smell cloyed him — filled his nose, slick and wet on his sleeve. Disgusting. Filthy in a way a bath would not cure—he knew that, long after his skin felt clean, he would keep scrubbing; keep washing himself, perfumed to a neurotic degree, scratching until prickles of ichor seeped up under the loofah. Scrubbing for something beneath his skin — if only he could run the water over his soul and cleanse it, turn himself inside out and scrape out the maggots. But it was there, there, eternally so; a thousand crawling insects in his flesh, a den of filth. He would return to it, again and again — it did not matter how much it hurt him; the futility of resistance would saddle him, send him crawling back like a filthy whore, as powerless in waking as much as in dreams. So much of him flew out of his grasp, reeled out of his control.

    Again—again with those dreams, he felt on the precipice of some awful revelation, memories rising from their sepulchers. All his life he had chased the tails of his past, had thought to find himself there. For—closure, for a shred to cling to, anything — had thought that his identity would anchor him, at least stop the dysphoria — but now he felt a great rift in himself, an impasse, his present and past repulsing each other like oil and water. He was terrified of himself — terrified of accepting that creature in the shadows, linking himself across Time.

    What had he done, in that place? What had he done?

    He had memories—nightmares of killing — of blood and unanswered pleas for mercy, felt his soul crying in revulsion even as that nightmare-him plunged onward, a beast separate from himself. He awoke from those shaking, profoundly ill — sometimes with the taste of metal in his mouth, the memory of blood still slick on his hands, feeling as though someone lifted him from his body.

    I am not… I am not…

    Again his mind left, went somewhere far away — the fountain was a surreal gurgle, lost to the choking, garbled sobs in his throat. For all he knew, Madrid had gone — the city whisked away like a mummer’s backdrop, leaving him in those black sands again. For a moment he had the sensation he would wake again — never stop waking, jolted from an endless succession of dreams, hiccuping, and the final time his eyes opened he would be manacled again, his Master there, eyes lit like silver discs—

    What ails you?

    The touch jarred him abruptly back to his senses. Phaedrus yelped, completely blindsighted by the appearance of a woman; when his eyes snapped open they were feral, the hunted yellow of an animal’s, glowing through a sheaf of matted hair. For a moment his mind struggled to put the face together — it was as though the moon had walked down from the sky and fashioned itself into a specter, her face bright, shining-white—her eyes yellow, dual, liquid black and then human once more — Phaedrus blinked rapidly, till at last they converged.

    He knew that face.

    It came to him clearly, simply: the incense seller. Ylsabet Troy. How many times had they passed one another without speaking? And yet he knew of her reputation as a mystic, and—Glede had spoken fondly of her, when he…

    Shame hurled itself at him once more. He felt humiliated by his state—could not meet her eyes, dropping his stare down to the fountain. Gods, if only they would smite him, now. If only he could release himself, go whisking into the nether, lost in a vaporized trail, gone, gone, gone. No more of this.

    His answer to her question was a low, gurgling groan — for a moment he feared he might vomit again, cheeks burning, mouth welling with saliva; but instead he only felt the chill of nausea, the spasmic jerking of his diaphragm.

    What ails you?

    The necromancer could only shake his head—realized there was no way to answer without all the reasons flooding forth, stuck in the bottleneck of his throat — unable to get out, unable to form any coherent sense. He felt like he would burst if he kept it to himself a moment longer, but wasn’t that a divine irony? Someone had appeared to talk to him, yet he had no words.

    Everything. Everything is wrong. Everything ails me.

    “Can’t sleep,” Phaedrus slurred, hiding his face with his clean hand. His features twisted, spasmed, lips jumping in the bastard of a sob and laugh. It never vocalized, caught in his burning throat, crushed so tightly he could barely rasp the words out. “Memories, I suppose.”
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    Ylsa
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    For as long as space endures/ For as long as living beings remain/ Until then may I too abide/ To dispel the misery of the world...

    The look of surprise and embarrassment in his eyes caused a pang of guilt: she had just interrupted a man during a very personal and vulnerable moment (Owen, now isn’t the time for those jokes). However, had she thought of it beforehand, she still wouldn’t have just left him alone. For a minute he just convulsed, and this too was easy to understand. People were so lost in their misery that having someone simply ask how they’re doing was wildly painful.

    She waited, of course, knowing that it took time to process the question and formulate an answer, moving her hand in slow, rhythmic circles on his back, dribbling in a bit of soft energy to try and soothe him physically, at least, even if only a little. The answer that did come was a bit short when it came to explaining absolutely everything about the scene, but that was all right. They were strangers; she had no right nor desire to expect him to pull his skeletons out of their closet or his head straight away.

    But then, the answer struck her, and she found herself nodding. “Mm. I know what you mean.” She didn’t have to force it, for it was true. “Maybe it’s the position of the stars or something. Would you like some tea? It’s lavender and peppermint, it may help your tremors and stomach. But be careful, it’s quite hot still.”

    She looked around, enjoying the sight of the square without all the throngs of people in it. In a way it felt as though she owned it, for the time being: here she was in her nightdress and a thin robe and a cup of tea, sitting on the fountain that on a good day was full all the way around with people. There were spirits everywhere of course, but right now the strongest belonged to the poor gentleman beside her. Her hair lifted at its ends and reached out, probing his aura, transmitting information to her like external synapses. Momentarily, it jerked away and she turned her head to gaze at him once more, eyes widening slightly with surprise at what it had found.

    This man is not alive.

    Carefully she rearranged her face before he could notice her shock, but he was absorbed. Sheltering Heaven… what kind of memories were they..? She swallowed a lump that was forming. Not only was he not alive, but he felt like no human spirit she had ever encountered. He felt more like…

    …well, like a yokai.

    Ylsa shifted a little, adjusting her robe so that it was more comfortable, and smiled at him. “I am Ylsabet Troy. And you?”
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    Phaedrus
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    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    Her hand continued in rhythmic circles on his back — strangely intimate though they were complete strangers, an unexpected kindness. He shook like a leaf under her twiggish fingers, supremely out of himself. Gradually the trembling subsided, at least a little. Enough to feel as though he could take a slow, deep breath — not those skittering, half-formed wheezes.

    I know what you mean. Ah, he doubted it. Doubted it wholly, but at least the sentiment existed, he supposed. He still could not look her in the eyes, gaze skirting the damp stone of the fountain—noticed the pale thinness of a nightgown, following it to its end. Slippers…

    At the mention of stars he flinched. For a moment of galloping paranoia he feared she could read his mind—if she somehow knew — somehow in being physically vulnerable, he wondered if his mind had spilt out as well, unraveling amongst the streets of Madrid, adding their reality to the dim pre-dawn.

    “Maybe,” Phaedrus croaked, hand clenching. How many augurs feared the bad stars? Some constellations were poisonous—the eye of Mars was squinted and full of wrath. People refused to plant on dark moons—the stars had power, said to be the faces of gods. Maybe some fetid alignment was at work—if only! It’d be a relief, then, for alignments passed. “They cannot disperse fast enough, then.” Did a dead man speak through him? He sounded ghastly, hollow around the edges. When she offered him tea he looked up, swiftly casting his eyes down again and blinking rapidly.

    “Thank you,” the necromancer managed, taking the mug. The unexpected kindness almost brought him to tears again, and he blinked rapidly. Phaedrus stuffed his other hand out of sight, disgusted by the feeling of sick beginning to congeal upon it — wished he had a basin.

    If it was too hot he did not mark it — hardly felt the pain of it through his palm, scraped as it was. The warmth anchored him, felt like a living thing in his grasp. The steam had a cleansing quality and rose to soothe him, comforting as he breathed it in. By some mercy the tea did not slop over the edges, even as it skittered and jumped in his hand — after a length he rose it to his lips, taking an experimental sip.

    The mint bit crisply into the foul taste in his mouth — balmed his throat, blooming warmly as he swallowed.

    Oh.

    It was good. It reminded him of good, proper Eldaharan mint tea — fortifying in its little gilded glasses, steaming warmly from a silver pot. The image struck him with such fond lucidity he did not know where it came from — fled just as rapidly again, leaving him staring into the cup. A little fleck of lavender spun in the tea, twirling along the surface. It occurred to him that he'd not drank anything other than wine or liquor for some days, and on food he had little recollection -- awoke feeling rank, only to chase it off with more hair of the dog; he had almost forgotten that some drinks did not hurt, weren't punishing.

    He could not describe the next feeling — as though hairs tickled him, or a spider puttered down his arm; the air took a charged quality, but when he broke away from his reverie, there was nothing there. The woman smiled at him, her face and robes carefully composed, porcelain hands folded perfectly on her lap. She looked like a doll, and some part of his mind still fancied her an apparition -- some spectre called out of his desperation.

    Ylsabet Troy.

    Not a Sotoan name, by any account. It had a sort of sing-song ring to it, divorced from its surroundings, existing apart from them.

    "I'm... Phaedrus," he returned, with a note in his voice that almost verged on despair. After the fit in his bathroom it still felt somewhat unreal to him, a hollow lie, and the dysphoria almost reared its head again. He allayed it with a fresh sip of tea, taking a deep, steeling breath. The rest of him shambled after, moving like a sluggish machine.

    "I'm... ah... you are..." The necromancer tried to start too many sentences at once -- paused, his tongue feeling thick, swollen, strange. He sounded like a stranger to himself, the usual chirp of his voice gone-- strangely subdued and monotone, dampened without its foppish exaggeration. "I know you," Phaedrus concluded lamely. "Well. I have seen you, ah. Often." He shifted uneasily -- found a better position on the fountain.

    Glede had spoken of her warmly, in only the best of ways -- he did not pry, did not ask what they discussed between them, but it seemed to put the paladin at greater ease than he ever could. Indeed, my friend, there is no harm in speaking to her about anything that ails you, the man had rumbled on his return. But he'd whisked his fingers out, poured himself a glass of wine, back turned to the great construct in his living room.

    Ah, I am sure she is quite busy. Indeed, I needn't trouble her, he'd tittered. His avoidance of her little incense rug had been a matter of pride -- never deliberate, never malicious, but ...

    Devils. What an awful way to finally get acquainted.
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    Ylsa
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    For as long as space endures/ For as long as living beings remain/ Until then may I too abide/ To dispel the misery of the world...

    In fact, Ylsa loved meeting people like this. Well, to a point. It obviously was very unfortunate that people were so wretchedly broken that they ended up here on this fountain, weeping or throwing up or just contemplating life and death and which would be preferable, but it also gave her an opportunity to do her job, and she would much rather meet them here than have them sitting alone somewhere with no one to talk to. Sometimes an unbiased stranger's ear was best.

    Her curiosity about him was burning, though, bordering on anxious. Jool had not had a proper conversation with someone [sort of] like herself in... probably never, actually. Yokai generally did not become bound to mortal bodies unless they were possessing someone, but this certainly didn't feel like one of those cases. She steeled her patience, determined not to rush or disturb him any more than he already was.

    "Yes, I've seen you often around town," She replied conversationally. "I understand Elsing gets as irritated with you as he does with me. Drink up: you'll feel better. There's no knot that can't be untangled.

    "But you must feel terribly uncomfortable. Perhaps a bath will help. Or you could swim around in the fountain, it could be very refreshing." She dipped a hand into the water behind them and oohed in genuine appreciation. "Very refreshing." A moment later she had swung her legs over the edge and settled her feet into the water, swishing them around and enjoying the feeling of the water running over her skin, cool in the balmy summer night air. "But if you'd prefer to talk -- or just sit and think -- it is up to you." She paused, and asked: "Would you like me to stay or would you prefer to be alone? I'm happy to stay but I won't be upset if you'd like me to leave."

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    Phaedrus
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    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    The mention of Elsing injected some mundanity into the moment, an anchor to his usual business. Ah, yes, the butcher. He’d noted the way the man skirted from him, judged his manicured hands and shoulder-length hair, jarringly curt when he tried to make pleasantries. As a result he had begun counting how many meat related innuendoes and lascivious stares he could direct at the butcher before Elsing’s vein popped on his forehead, a sure sign of victory.

    It had unexpected benefits. Mid-week, the best cuts of loin and sausage were already cut and waiting for him. The butcher had perfected the art of shoving the meat across the block and scooping up his coins in a single gesture, ending their interaction before he could breathe hello. And, devils! How he relished those days that he decided to pick up lamb or pheasant instead. Never had he caused someone so much offense with the words erm, actually…

    “Hh.” A faint snort left him, at least — a huff of air leaving a corpse, flat without the energy for mirth. “You witnessed that?” What sort of loins do you have? The necromancer had winked once, sure to intrude on the man’s space by leaning his elbow against the counter and lurching forward, ignoring Elsing’s butcher knife. Oh, and I find myself needing a proper flank.

    He thought he’d heard someone tittering behind him, but hadn’t turned to look.

    Phaedrus drank.

    It was slow going — he could barely get down a swallow’s worth, but gradually the fire in his throat cooled, the knot in his stomach loosening ever so. As though she’d sensed his discomfort, the mystic aired out his dilemma, and he found himself clearing his throat in embarrassment. Why was she being so kind to him? He wondered what she expected to gain — felt querulous, like a beaten dog shrinking under a gentle hand.

    “A bath would do wonders,” he murmured absently, flushing — but the thought of going home plunged in him like a stone. He did not want to face those halls again, so constricting and alien in the dark; if he tried to sleep again, the dream would wait patiently in his bed. “But…” the words tapered off, silence speaking for itself. Ceramic clinked against the stone as he set the mug down, trailing his filthy hand in the fountain. The water ran over his skin, danced around his fingertips. He knew she was trying to be kind — that she was showing more graciousness than he should ever deserve — and somehow it just made him feel angry, sloshing with self-loathing; that fact he had gotten to this point — was so weak as to… as to…

    End up here.

    Would you like me to stay or would you prefer to be alone?

    His pride tortured him. But if he stayed alone for another second he—simply didn’t know what he’d do. There was some grinning darkness in him, some barreling urge trying to cannon its way out, and— thinking so far as a breath into the future halted his mind, chafed against every inch of him.

    “You’re very kind.” He couldn’t answer—stalled instead, throat catching, fist clenching in the water. What he meant in genuine compliment only came out sounding resentful—as if he mocked the woman’s goodness. He swallowed, not intending it — hells below, what was wrong with him?

    “Devils, I’m sorry, I just—I don’t know you,” Phaedrus laughed, a hoarse and brittle sound—his fingers bit into the bridge of his nose, lips twisting. But did he truly know anyone? Years in this city, and he’d barely gotten close enough to people to move past tea-time conversation. When people reached that impasse they usually grew bored of him, or he pushed them away in fear. To be honest here, to come forthwith about his past — was… was impossible. Insensible, even. He could not truly tell anyone what was wrong, so he was content to let them think he was a shallow, moody rake—but it left him so alone, so apart from everyone.

    Yet she had spoken to Glede, hadn’t she? She hadn’t flinched from his otherworldliness.

    “I simply… I don’t know. I have not been myself, lately.” A breathless chuckle died in his palm—he shook his head into his hand, hiding his face. 'Myself'? Who, precisely, was that person? Only his twisting lips gave the indication that he fought another sob, strangled by the degree of that understatement. “Not for a long time. And I’m…” tired? Exhausted? Afraid of hurting someone? His entire face screwed up, air pinched in his lungs, frozen in his throat. All of him trembled with the confession welling inside of him, the little germ of self-realization that had been threading itself past the filth of these weeks, those months, those years—weaved around his false smiles and glib denial, the countless I’m fines, soiled sheets and bottles, inn to inn to inn; finally, finally sprouted, in a voice so quiet he almost didn’t hear himself.


    “I’m not well.”
    Edited by Phaedrus, Dec 19 2015, 07:07 PM.
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    Ylsa
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    For as long as space endures/ For as long as living beings remain/ Until then may I too abide/ To dispel the misery of the world...

    The apparent bitterness in his tone did make her feel a bit self-conscious, but for different reasons than may have been evident. In such a fit of depression it was easy to become irritated with someone else's kindness: a complete stranger seems to have it together enough to shower you with emotional charity, while you were barely managing to keep from drowning yourself or setting yourself on fire. Kindness could sometimes make you feel much, much worse, simply by highlighting the contrast between yourself and the rest of the world. Normally, of course, one's own perceptions on others' happiness was skewed. Oftentimes the one providing help saw just as many moments of despair as the one they were helping. Some were patients, some were doctors: but most people ended up gravitating back and forth between the two their entire lives. Even an apparently perfect day could be filled with tears. Life is like that.

    "I understand. These are, admittedly, rather sweeping things for a stranger to say."

    It wasn't surprising that he couldn't quite put into words how he was feeling... Feelings didn't translate easily into words, especially not the darkest ones. For many years after her first incarnation Jool had a very difficult time with words, and didn't quite master the art of using them constructively until her fifth or sixth. Even still it was hard to explain some things: emotions did not operate on the basis of logic that humans held so dearly. That was often why people went their entire lives being misunderstood. How could you explain something to someone else that did not explain itself to you?

    “I’m not well.”

    A succinct way to sum it all up, She thought. Her mind went back to those days, to the days of being completely lost and atomized, not understanding friendship or compassion, confused about why you were here. What was the Plan? What was her Purpose?

    "Like you loathe yourself. You loathe yourself and wherever you came from, and whoever brought you here. You wonder idly what it's like to be normal, what it's like to not pretend so that others do not loathe you as well, but you're so consumed with the darkness in the bottom of your own heart that you can never form an accurate image -- you don't even know what it's like to have an untainted mind's eye. You hate the things you've seen, the things you've done, the things you've been driven to do, the things you've not done... your love for those close to you is almost bitter because they don't see you the way you see yourself and you cannot fathom how they could be so foolish... and then you hate yourself for thinking such things about them. That they deserve better than you, that you have no positive influence over them and yet they stick with you anyway and your guilt for this predicament consumes you. There are times when you want to run away from everything, even the things you love, but you've formed bonds now and would only feel worse if you broke them. You want nothing more than to disappear and for all the things that are yours to disappear too: your possessions, your emotions, your friendships and conversations, so that the world never knew you were even here, but you cannot, and it destroys the already-broken pieces of the shriveled up remains of your heart... If life has a purpose for you you do not see it. Like being forced to play a losing game whose rules you do not even know." She stopped here, feeling those old feelings strongly now that they were brought so close to the surface, compounded the feelings of the one sitting next to her. She looked over to Phaedrus without her usual peacefully detached smile. Instead there was a smile that was sad, wistful. Open, and as bare as her feet. "I do understand."
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    Phaedrus
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    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    [tw: suicidal ideation, severe depression.]

    Like you loathe yourself.

    He did. Some days it grew unbearable. A crushing weight, a poison that sapped him of all energy and will — the days his own mind assailed him, whispering his own Master’s words. He didn’t come from anywhere—he was nothing, no one, a mistake, an abomination of nature; where once he felt sure he’d been human once, now that was suspect — everything was lost, lost, blotted to eternity, and the more he revealed the less he wished to know. Fool, fool.

    The necromancer put his knuckles to his teeth, gnawed them — could not meet the woman’s eye, staring far past Madrid and into elsewhere.

    He felt like an unwanted child. No, worse — at least a child could be accidental; at least they arose of natural means. But him? He was deliberate. Calculated. Built knowingly to be abused. Whether from his barest conception—and hells, hells, he prayed it wasn’t—or his conditioning, it was all deliberate; years of study that had culminated in him, magics that existed to cow him, bow him, wrench him screaming out of a dark and fashion him in mind and body to—to what? To be a slave? To be locked and beaten and forced to kill people, to obey without question, to be little more than a piece of flesh, an extension of a Master? Why, hells, why— what sort of cruelty was in this world, what sort of thing had he ever done to deserve that? He did not ask to be made; he did not ask to be born, to exist, to be anything.

    You wonder idly what it’s like to be normal.

    He wondered every day. He wondered what’d it be like, to take it all back — to shed his skin, divorce himself from the past, to have been born of a mother and grown up in a normal household; to fall with a scraped knee and bleed red; to never know about necromancy at all, else to have a blind, parochial folk’s knowledge of it — what would it be like, to have a single name, a single face, a single life led, done—to one day lie down and let go, to know nothing of what waited beyond? To feel laughter, and warmth, and pain, proper pain, to get a cold and dripping nose, to cry and have it come hot; what would it feel like, to settle, to marry—to one day wake up and hold a child that had come of him, that shared his own eyes and nose, to know himself, see himself in another—to share blood, to not be blasted apart across so many centuries, an atomized monster, a shadow gone walking, lost, bloody apart, always severed from reality.

    He wanted all of those things — wanted them so deeply it hurt; wanted them while knowing their impossibility; something so simple, so taken for granted—something so basic he wished to scream at points, could not help but feel consumed with jealousy and loneliness at the sight of strangers. How blessed they were, how whole, how perfect.

    What would it be like, to sleep one night through? For his worst nightmare to be the price of grain or the worries of the neighbor’s gossip? One day, to rest his head and not be assaulted by the things in the darkness, his cries of no, no, no — his begging, screaming, of skinned corpses and hanging men, of dead with their tongues torn out, still talking to him — of walls that changed shape and corridors that led to cold places, manacles, vivisections, impossible horrors and geometries, of terror, bright and pulsing, ever present, and through it all his Master’s voice, bidding on, and on, and on…

    You hate the things you've seen, the things you've done, the things you've been driven to do, the things you've not done...

    Was she in his mind? Was she a psion, prying, prying — his guts flipped, insides reversing on themselves; it was as though something revolting had crawled from under the surface of his skin, burst forth, and he could not hide it. Layer by layer the words peeled off his defenses, mounted up against him. Yes, he wanted to cry out to all of it. Yes, yes, yes.

    But instead his knuckles met his teeth — Phaedrus chewed the cold, marble flesh, hunched upon himself like she had raised her hand to strike him. And on the mystic went, as if she meant to torture him—her words a cutting brand, searing into him, hunting out weakness and sinking a bodkin there.

    There are times when you want to run away…

    His head spun. If only he could—if only it was as simple as a change of pace and scenery. Naive fool. He’d thought so once, barreling wildly from town to city, shooting off across Soare and never finding any peace for it. Madrid had been the longest term of residence… and would it last? Again he felt the fire under him, an itch in his skin—chafing against the bonds he’d built for himself, as if the stability had suddenly become a coffin. But he knew it would happen again and again—after the initial chaos and novelty wore off, and he settled into a comfortable routine, he would have to live with himself. 

    You want nothing more than to disappear.

    Yes, that was it—to disappear. Not to die, but to simply cease to be. To be divorced from oneself, suspended entire, all his thoughts and emotions wafting up like smoke. Consciousness overwhelmed him, became too much sometimes—his head swollen like a balloon, his body too heavy, his memories racing. He had tried to disappear in plenty of ways -- throwing himself into work, erasing his thoughts with wine, losing himself to pleasure, but he always returned. Whether he woke in his study or a whorehouse... it found him. It never went away for long. He had to live with it forever—it was a part of him, inescapable, would never go away— never. The thought made him want to choke— the thought of another moment spent grappling with it, a prisoner sentenced for a crime he never committed. Eternal. Again, again, again.

    And for what? Where was he going? What had he accomplished since crawling back into Life? His triumphs felt so fragile compared to the weight of all else — a losing scale, crawling out of one ditch to find he’d been in a greater valley all along. It never got better. It never led anywhere for him. It never would.

    If life has a purpose for you you do not see it. Like being forced to play a losing game whose rules you do not even know.

    “…Why,” he finally quavered, voice hoarse and terrible. “Are you torturing me?”

    Phaedrus’ upper body trembled— his shoulder, his arm, as if it could no longer stand to bear the weight of keeping him upright. All of the feelings washed up unpleasantly inside him — as though they’d finally been given permission to come out of the woodwork, enticed by the mystic’s words. Her monologue left him shaken — left him feeling like something taboo had been aired, some private ugliness dredged out of him and forced into the light. He wanted to be sick again, felt exposed, naked, aching — afraid of himself, afraid of what had rooted inside of him, pulled out by its sickening thorns.

    The necromancer ironed his mouth into a white line, rocking forward—forgot the tea altogether, feeling the need to curl like a child. His hands fisted in his hair, wrists blocking the world from view. For a long while he lapsed into silence, did not seem intent on budging or speaking. His face crumpled, eyes burning— peeled his lips from his teeth and took a shuddering breath.

    “…I hate myself,” he spewed suddenly, vehemently — thick with loathing, venom welling in his teeth. “I can’t stand it. Being awake, I mean. Being aware. Of anything. Nothing matters. Nothing makes sense. It’s all just— pointless, flashy distraction; there’s no purpose to it, any of it, and I can’t even pretend I enjoy it anymore because—“ Phaedrus cemented his teeth together, shaking his head against his arms.

    He took a deep, wet breath—sucked in air till he felt his lungs would explode. He held it, held it until it burned—then blew it out explosively, nostrils flaring, a shuddering, mirthless laugh dying into his wrists.

    “I shouldn’t be here,” the necromancer confessed—and it felt ugly, gruesome, all bramble and piss, pus forced from a wound. But it was true. It was—he’d denied it, he’d been proud of fighting, but they were all right; they were right in their scorn, right to look down at a Dead thing, to be disgusted that he shared their air and defied their laws, spat in the face of Nailah and every god they worshipped, an unholy imitation of Life. An inferior copy, a leech, a thing apart. “I shouldn’t be alive, I shouldn’t— it’s a fucking joke, what I am — if I had known I wouldn’t have come back— if I’d have known it’d be like this then piss on it, take it, I shouldn’t be alive—“ he lost coherence, vomited a senseless, angry, loud jumble—he wasn’t talking to her anymore, couldn’t think straight, lost elsewhere.

    “I didn’t ask to be made. I didn’t—want—” The words scattered, too loud, soaring to a drunk’s volume. “Just—I had forgotten so much and now it’s— there, I can’t make it go away, it’s…?” Phaedrus’ mind launched into a thousand directions at once, couldn’t vocalize anything, a hundred thoughts crowding his mouth.

    “I don’t know how to live with myself. I don’t know—I don’t know how to keep living, keep going on, when…“ What was the point? What, exactly, did he have to keep trudging on about? The streets blurred, careened—his mind left one trail and found another, throat closing.

    “I just wanted to leave it behind,” the necromancer choked, raking his hands down his face. They slapped onto his lap, fingers curling. “All of it. I don’t want to be that person that I remember — I don’t know— I don’t know what I want, but this isn’t it.”

    He felt terrible. Ill all over — a deep sickness, a long-term ache in his bones and his joints and his insides, as though he was a decaying shell; felt hyperaware of the vomit still caking his shirt, its cloying smell and clinging thickness. His eyes felt puffed and swollen, and there was a splitting ache in his head and back of his neck— he wanted to lie down and never get up, just… bloody drift away. If only he could drink himself to death—had tried wholeheartedly but never gone past a stupor and a day’s blackout.

    It’d be easy. So easy, if he were true flesh-and-blood.


    “I shouldn’t be here,” the necromancer slurred again, swaying, brought it back in a circle—latched onto the phrase, turned it into a crutch, an object of obsession; it all rounded back to that one, final thing. He wasn’t wanted. He wasn’t necessary. He shouldn’t exist. And—perhaps that was the answer. Dying somehow, somewhere, erasing his mistake, making everything well again.

    That, at least, was guaranteed to end it forever.
    Edited by Phaedrus, Jan 19 2016, 01:22 AM.
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    Ylsa
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    For as long as space endures/ For as long as living beings remain/ Until then may I too abide/ To dispel the misery of the world...

    (TW: Village Idiot)

    It all came tumbling out, an avalanche of emotion, an aeon or more’s worth of loneliness, frustration, hollowed out by the acid wash of self-loathing and resentment. Ylsa nearly began weeping herself, if only because of the familiarity of the words and the feelings of isolation, of having no one to talk to for so long. She clasped her hands in her lap to keep from pulling this poor stranger down onto her shoulder, and gave him time.

    But there was no advice for a feeling like his, no words or comfort – comfort itself wasn’t relatable. In this state, some people just wanted the world to hate them. Tragically it was often the only way those in so deep a depression could feel validated. Ylsa caved, placed an arm around his shoulders and a hand on his wrist, and leaned her forehead against his temple.


    Meanwhile, Elsing had been out a bit early to set up shop: his idiot son had gone and broken the fingers on one hand and was as useless as his wife. He trudged along through all the familiar shortcuts, hauling the things he would need for the day on one shoulder, thinking pleasantly on all the different ways he could make his customers feel uncomfortable.

    He was about to cut through the square but, whether lucky or not, raised his eyes and spotted a truly awful, earth-shattering thing sitting on the fountain. Well, it was two people, but in his unfathomable revulsion it might as well have been one hideous, amorphous blob of tittering cat puke.

    The flaming schoolboy, the one that giggled rudely at his stand almost every day and profaned the table with his spindly pasty fingers, covered in what appeared to be an assortment of wine, soup, and mucus – and beside him the albino concubine who pretended she was Daroan, looking like she had never been more in love.

    His gorge rose. His two least favorite customers!! And he hated ALL of his customers! Elsing swore up and down right then and there that if those two ended up getting married – or worse, going into “business” together – he was packing up and moving to Morrim, with or without his wife and son.

    But his entire day would be ruined if he dwelled on this… abomination he saw before him. If he could just wash his eyes out with soap and vinegar, he could easily pretend that he had never seen anything, or that he had only had a horrible dream. Yes… he had begun sleepwalking on his way to work, and had hallucinated a nightmarish conjoining of the two Most Disgusting People In The World. Satisfied with this rationalization, Elsing turned and sought a different avenue to work.

    Maybe when the other merchants got there he could visit the apothecary and chug a healthy litre of cobra venom.


    Ylsa pulled away only a couple of moments after she had embraced Phaedrus, not wishing to crowd him for an uncomfortable amount of time. She stood, however, and took his hand with a smile. “Come to my house,” She said simply, neither ordering nor asking. In such a chaotic state of mind, sometimes making decisions was difficult. Hopefully he didn’t mind having a decision made for him.
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    Phaedrus
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    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    With all that gone from him, he felt like a wrung rag -- spent, exhausted, left clutching the cinders of an ugly truth with his bare hands.

    He won.

    The knife had won. The cold stare beneath the hood, the trembling, black hand.

    Alloces won.

    His master had killed him once -- again, again, in so many ways; perhaps he would never stop, perhaps he would live out that cycle for the rest of his days, a lamb to slaughter. He had taken his Master's knife -- no, devils, he had to fight against that word; he had to cull it from his mind like putrid flesh, infection. He had no master. He had no master -- from his dead palm and taken it up himself, maimed himself, killed himself, because the closest thing to the object of his fury was...

    Right here.

    His dead palms stared back at him, scraped and lily-white, and he wanted to curdle, wanted to wither to black smoke, escape the physicality of himself. As long as he lived, so would Alloces -- as long as he lived so would the Bayt, the horrors, the past wound up in him like a lover, breathing its presence into his ear, a thunderous you are.

    His breath skittered along like cast stones, frightened rats. Suddenly, he felt a hand on him -- a touch that reached through the wall, shocked him into the sensation of himself; his mind was floating, careening, wheeling away from him. For a moment Ylsa's presence was a dream, a pale, moonlit thing -- her fingers grazed his wrist, soft, warm; hair tickled his cheek, fluttered to his shoulder as she leaned against him, bringing with her breath and life and a dozen little scents: rosemary and incense and the faintest musk, perhaps perfume.

    And in that horror of being himself, he wanted nothing more than to plunge himself into it, had a mad urge to kiss her neck, her smell mingled with memories of Bast, of pipes and hookah, bouncing whore's breasts, the same plea, always the same -- don't let me be alone.

    Did he say that aloud? He couldn't tell.

    Come to my house.

    Phaedrus looked up helplessly, unable to argue. Her eyes were like electric moons, wide and golden, meeting something in him.

    Thankfully she had gotten up and taken his hand before he could act upon anything in that delirium, the mingling of people and places. The necromancer swallowed, suddenly squeezing her hand in his -- and felt the keen hollow of loss, a terrible punch in his chest. The square swam.

    "Yes," he choked, nodded, her touch like a lifeline, a rope out of that dreary place.

    ***


    By some miracle he ended up at Ylsa's. Much of the journey was a tangled blur -- a great blip in his memory, a here-then-not-here. Plants had tangled around his feet-- the cobbles had given way to a path like a verdant gullet, a winding snake of green and treachery. The sun had crept up during that long walk, prodded tentatively through the leaves, blurred smears of light in his spinning vision. His head had gone to throbbing again, a sickening pulse that built behind his eyes.

    A bird started to warble, somewhere, somewhere. The necromancer shut his eyes, and the last he remembered opening them, he was at a door.

    ***

    The steam rose faintly from the bath.

    He wondered, for the hundredth, for the hundredth-thousandth time, if he could drown himself and escape the shame of confronting his host.

    His drunkeness lingered like a second self, an extra shadow -- he felt himself being lifted out of it, stewed from it by the warm water and steam; his mind tottered back into his skull, knobble-kneed, swollen and fragile. He blinked laboriously: once, twice, the washcloth clenched in his fist.

    I have to get up. The thought drizzled across his skull. The rest of his body ignored him.

    I must, he pleaded with himself. It remained unsympathetic.

    Phaedrus sat there until the water went lukewarm, running the thread of conversation through his mind. I thank you for your hospitality, he recited for the hundredth time. But I must... go?

    And do what, precisely? His foyer awaited him like a black hole -- back into the den of bottles and misery, the stink of unwashed plates and souring wine in dirty glasses, the curtains drawn against the world. He'd tumble right back into that pit, right into the teat of liquor, and his insides twisted with preemptive disgust and futility.

    Perhaps I will call upon Marcel.

    Also not. He rejected the notion at its proposal -- he could not take the chittering, gossipy energy of the boy right now. In fact, he supposed, I cannot take anything right now.

    But he had to get up. Else she'd think him dead in the bathtub, or some kind of deviant. The coming conversation approached like a glacier, slow and immutable. Taking a deep breath, the necromancer forced himself up, groping at the edges of the wooden tub -- feeling awful and ponderous. By some series of small, laborious miracles, he grasped at the towel she'd left for him, patting himself dry and squeezing out the curls of his hair, suddenly lost without his bone-comb and array of perfumes and creams, the ritual of fopperies he had designed for himself. He felt acutely like a stranger, that the air he breathed and the floor he stepped on and the water that dripped off his nose did not belong to him -- that he was an intruder, aberrant, inconvenient.

    Phaedrus dressed hurriedly in the clothes she'd provided -- some sort of... silken robe, perhaps? And a pleated skirt? No, were those pants? What the devil? After several bemused moments he managed to make sense of them, not sure if the whole lot was on backwards. It fit him quite snugly, in the manner that leaned towards the disagreeable, and with a pang, he realized -- my clothes. He couldn't just... steal off without them, or steal off with her's, and then the issue of his shoes...

    Hells.

    Phaedrus padded barefoot from behind the divider, moving like a drunk thief. His eyes flickered around the premises without really looking, but he didn't see her at all.

    "Er... hello?"

    Croaked, mumbled, ashamed. No answer. Afraid of trying again right away, Phaedrus tugged the shirt closer together and meandered, taking a better look at her house.

    Well, for starters, there was a great tree in the middle of it -- as though the rest had simply sprung up around it; it possessed nothing of the neat, manicured, symmetrical order that most Sotoan houses had. Antiquities and curiosities packed the walls -- books, scrolls, odd masks and ornaments, paper slips and tags, incense holders... it drew him like a moth to candlelight, allowed him to forget his discomfort for a moment. Unconsciously he still clutched at the kimono, yellow eyes flickering over a scroll.

    "Daroan?" He asked of no one -- stared at the strange, inscrutable script, the red stamp at its corner.

    Something brushed his leg and he nearly leapt from his skin -- till he looked down and saw the familiar flicker of a tail, the lamplike, unimpressed eyes of a dear creature. Immediately he felt more at ease -- squatted out of habit, tentatively reaching out a hand towards the cat. It seemed to oblige, stare unmoving -- and the necromancer scratched it behind its ears, loosing a long sigh he hadn't been aware of holding.


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    Ylsa
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    For as long as space endures/ For as long as living beings remain/ Until then may I too abide/ To dispel the misery of the world...

    ((The Duck Song))

    Geordi had smelled the bath. He often liked to visit bathers in the house and paw at their water and stand on their shoulders. He had tried to visit this one but the door, usually ajar as the Lady kept it, was closed. He pawed at it for a time, then flopped onto his side and pushed his paws under the door and pulled at it before giving up and walking away. Geordi had never been the loudest of the four cats here.

    But at last the hand was offered, and the smell of soap this cat liked so much pulled his tail upright. A few scratches were permitted until he ducked the fingers and repositioned himself to sniff the hand on his own terms. As Geordi sometimes did when he was curious, he sniffed higher up to the stranger’s face, and being a large breed this was easy to do. His nose, dry and cool, poked gently at Phaedrus’s chin, his mouth, nose, eyelids, then snuffed lightly at his hairline. Geordi lowered his head, aimed at the chin, and…

    Bump.

    The spotted feline jumped a little when the tick-ticking of Kirk’s clawed feet interrupted the moment. A judgemental stare met the two and refused to break away, as though intending to make the tender display as awkward as possible.

    ”A duck walked up to a lemonade stand
    And he said to the man running the stand
    Hey! You got any grapes?”


    Both creatures looked up at the sound of the Lady’s voice outside in the garden, coming towards the door. Geordi meowed in response. Kirk promptly shot his tongue out and hit Phaedrus on the earlobe.

    ”The man said ‘No, we just sell lemonade
    It’s cold and it’s fresh and it’s all home-made,
    Can I get you a glass?’
    The duck said ‘I’ll pass’…”


    The door opened and Ylsa stepped inside, singing softly. A basket of fragrant jasmine hanging from one arm. Geordi trotted around Phaedrus to greet her, and Kirk had already begun his escape.

    ”Then he waddled away,
    Waddle waddle waddle,
    Til the very next day
    Ba-ba-ba-ba-bababa...


    “Oh, hello,” She greeted, sweeping down towards the stone oven, which still burned low even at this hour. The basket was set down and she began hanging the flowers up on the line. “I’m sorry; there’s a foreign lady in town who’s buying me out of all my jasmine. I think she makes teas with it. Speaking of, I thought we’d have some chai, so I put milk on the stove to heat up. Could you stir it for me please?

    “How was your bath?” She called gently over a shoulder. “I hope it wasn’t too hot, I’m afraid I like to be scalded, myself.”
    Edited by Ylsa, Jul 23 2016, 04:50 PM.
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    Phaedrus
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    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    What a precious little thing.


    Phaedrus kept his hand there as the cat snuffed at it, knowing better than to defy a feline. His own cats practically ruled the house. He only lived there. A faint smile curved his face as Geordi investigated further, tickling his face with his whiskers and poking curiously with his nose.

    Bump.

    How adorable. He’d just reached his hand out to chance a little behind-the-ear-scritching, when another creature interrupted them. He looked up to see two distinctly unimpressed yellow eyes staring back at him, and a scaled mouth permanently set in a judgmental frown. The round, spiky little demon squatted a pace away, not breaking eye contact.

    ...Oh. What a curious pet.

    It reminded him of the lizards in the desert, dust-brown, rotund and mean. I wonder if this sort shoots blood out of its eyes, though. Phaedrus set his brow and stared back, not to be outdone. He pursed his lips at Kirk, giving Geordi a gentle scratch behind the ears.

    He heard a soft singing -- then something wet and globby and altogether unpleasant hit him in the ear.

    “Ugh,” Phaedrus grunted, his face curdling-- one hand slapped over his ear, and he shot a brief glare at the scurrying culprit, his stout little legs propelling him out of sight with a frantic clicking. His new cat friend had abandoned him as well, leaving him with his own anxieties.

    As Ylsa’s singing grew louder, closer, her approach inevitable, the necromancer felt an acute embarrassment, dreading the moment she might open the door. The doorknob rattled like a scene from a nightmare, right before some terror forced itself into a room. Phaedrus braced his hands on his thighs and clumsily pushed himself upright, choking on the words he'd recited like a mantra in the bathtub.

    Hello, he imagined himself saying. I thank you for your hospitality, but I...

    Then she appeared in the doorway, the sunlight igniting a halo around her hair, a basket swinging under her arm. Just like-- a pang came to his chest at the sudden memory. Jam, summer smiles. He felt disgusting a thousand times over, shut his eyes briefly. When he reopened them again, Ylsa still stood there, an impossibly serene smile on her face--as if this morning had not happened at all..

    All his recitations came to nothing.

    "Uh," Phaedrus managed instead, lingering like a ghost in her parlor. His brain felt like a dying mechanism -- a clockwork insect ground to a halt, curling, foetal. He couldn’t think. Why couldn’t he think?

    “Jasmine is good,” he finally decided, a beat late to the conversation. He’d had it once in the great trader’s market that passed through Madrid -- an old Daroan woman had convinced him of it in broken Common, peddling her baskets of dried flowers and strange roots and curiously shaped teapots, wildly gesticulating at all of them.

    “Spicy? You like spicy things?”

    “Certainly.”

    “Then try. Not so spicy; very good.” And she’d passed him a strange glob of greenish-white ground root. Without thinking, he popped the whole thing into his mouth and had a violent coughing fit in the middle of the market--all while she cackled toothlessly at him.


    At some point he came back down to earth, to the wooded floor of her parlor and crackling stove-fire, the soft tamp-tamp of feet as she descended the stairs. He belatedly realized she’d asked him to do something, coming back into himself with something of a start.

    “Oh. Yes. Of--course.” His options of escape dwindled further and further -- we, she’d said, we will have some chai. Numbly, like a shambling corpse, he followed her down to the oven, unconsciously tugging the neckline of the shirt closed once again. The necromancer felt grateful for something to do, making a beeline for the little pot on the stove. He instinctually seemed to know where a wooden spoon would be, and other cooking utensils, for that matter -- he’d developed a sixth sense for it after working in a kitchen, whipping a hand out without really thinking and stirring the pot. He scraped at its bottom, breaking up some of the mean-looking froth that had bubbled up.

    “It was... nice, thank you,” the necromancer managed, averting his gaze. Suddenly boiling milk had become the most fascinating thing in all the world. “I do like a hot bath.” Every word felt like tip-toeing around a leviathan, a sleeping elephant, the grand, ugly, unsightly thing in the room that was him. His grip clenched on the spoon -- scrape, scape, it went. He tucked a wet curl behind his ear with a trembling hand, lips sucked against his teeth, every inch of him burning with its own self-awareness, the milk bubbling, a cat meowing, the faint chirrup of birds, and oh, ye gods, this robe would not stay closed.

    Her presence burned on his back, in his cheeks, in his guts -- even though he’d bathed he could still feel the sticky, wet vomit down his front, relived that moment in flashes of humiliation. The milk burped up a new bubble, spit froth.

    Phaedrus looked away, up at the neat little arrangement of pots and pans, the eclectic collection of spoons and ladles.

    “I’m sorry,” he blurted out abruptly. The thick, hot rush of shame followed him -- shuddered through his veins. It meant he had something to apologize for. It meant he had done wrong; it meant he had failed in some fundamental capacity, and somehow he had never realized that when he woke up in a jailcell or an angry woman’s bed or on the side of the road -- had never felt a shred of regret beyond the pulsing headache of his hangover, or a mysteriously empty purse; he had not felt this regret, the regret of himself. He had never felt like he was the thing to apologize for.

    Her kindness was painful. It left him no room to become defensive -- no room for blame, no gaoler to scorn or wife to write off as a hussy, no lushes to pin his excess on.

    Only you.

    “I am... the way I acted was... was... unseemly.” A coward’s understatement. His throat closed. That was humiliating. Disgusting. A woman should not have to see you make sick all over yourself and almost fall into a fountain. He thought he’d continue, have something more to say -- but suddenly he couldn’t find the words, the air sucked out of his lungs, dying in a croak.
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    Ylsa
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    For as long as space endures/ For as long as living beings remain/ Until then may I too abide/ To dispel the misery of the world...

    She had almost expected an apology: his discomfort was palpable, though he tried very hard to contain it. Sometimes it was impossible to reign it in. Vomiting all over oneself and being ashamed about it afterwards was, in fact, probably the most human thing to do, but in our throes of self-reproach we forget to be objective and merciful. It was probably one of the greatest tragedies of mortalkind.

    So she listened, hanging the jasmine, and when he finished she stopped thoughtfully, hands still on the line. Remembering something, she spoke aloud:

    “When I was about fifteen and I’d first visited Madrid, I was with my father and we were very, very poor. But, I wanted to come and see the hanging gardens and look at the guild halls, and he was feeling generous that year, so we went. The first couple of days were wonderful, and I got to see all the stuff I wanted to see. Around the fourth day I started to feel a bit unwell, but I didn’t care: I was too excited and naïve to tend to such things. So, I ran about, carefree.

    “Sometime in the afternoon I started to feel very unwell, and was walking back to the inn where father was staying. People were staring at me as I walked by. I got back to the room, and my father frowned and turned me around, turned white as a sheet, and told me to go change, so I went into the bath room.”

    She paused, and her ears went slightly pink. “There was blood all over the back of my skirt. I hadn’t been paying attention to my cycles, and I bled all over myself in front of the entire city. It was ten years before I dared to come back.”

    A smile lit her features, and she continued hanging the jasmine. “But no one remembers that anymore. We all have accidents and episodes, but usually we’re the only ones who remember our own unseemliness after a time. Here,” She picked up a small porcelain bowl filled with dried tea leaves and spices. “It should be ready to start steeping.”

    Birds were beginning to sing outside, and Kirk made his way lazily up the tree to sunbathe in the morning’s first light. Geordi came back around to wind himself around both humans’ legs, and on a cushion in the corner, Bones rolled over. The last of the jasmine was hung. Ylsa looked to Phaedrus again, and this time her expression was one of genuine curiosity; almost imploring.

    “Your aura is…. So similar, to mine. If I may ask… where did you come from…?”
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    Phaedrus
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    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    The milk bubbled, popped. He felt he stared into it for an eternity -- the sickly white of it bleeding to the edges of his vision, filling his head with the s-snap-crack pop of the flames and the burbling of the pot. He was alone with his apology. There it was, a silent judge regarding him from across the room. The necromancer stared at his knuckles -- how they stood out as he clenched the spoon, little nervous, jumping hillocks of flesh.

    When Ylsa spoke it broke him out of his reverie -- reminded him of his task, and he resumed tending the pot, finding it difficult to focus on her words initially. But soon they became a soothing rhythm of their own, a welcome distraction from his own mind. There: a vision of Madrid, a girl’s slender hand linked in her father’s, a smile at the great hanging gardens. He’d felt like an awed child himself when he first entered the city, climbed the cobbled hills, saw the flowers and gardens beyond count…

    As the story went on he wondered at its point — found the courage to look up from the milk and at her instead, watching the way she hung jasmine, the ghostly sway of her hair and robes. His brow crinkled at the mention of illness, tried to fathom what it could have been. Diarrhea? A shart in the gardens? But soon enough, she revealed the culprit.

    Oh… oh!

    His ears would have reddened in kind, had he the blood — instead he fluttered a paper-white hand over his mouth, gasping at the scandal.

    “Devils.” He forgot, sometimes, the fouler details of human nature — the constant leaking from every orifice, the cramps of menstruation, the tedium of a daily poo. He himself did not require such... relief, and every reminder was like a dividing line scored into sand. You go here, and true humans go there. He had to remind himself — in extended stays with polite company — to occasionally excuse himself to the latrine; that was, wait in a bathroom for a time he thought appropriate, fanning himself and reapplying perfumes.

    But no one remembers that anymore. Their shared embarrassment faded — he dropped his hand from his mouth, gathering the point of her story. Phaedrus flushed, fumbling with her graciousness. Her ease gave him permission to smile faintly, a breath escaping his nose, head hanging in equally embarrassed sympathy.

    Another him would have howled with laughter at her — and to be sure, such a story would have been the object of vicious jeers in a parlor of polite company, if not ruinous to ones reputation. But here it did not matter.

    “We’re very good at remembering those things, aren’t we,” he muttered. In fact, it feels it is the only things I can remember, of late. She handed him a bowl, and the aroma drifted up to him before it’d even left her hands. He brought it close to take a deep breath of it, enjoying the mingling of cardamom and pepper, tea and cinnamon, the faintest whiff of vanilla.

    “It smells marvelous,” he remarked, without hyperbole, turning to carefully scrape the spices out of the bowl with a spoon, mixing them into the milk. The recipe impressed him — that particular blend came from southern Ashoka, thick with spice and sugar, an ambrosia that made up for the humid breath of the jungle and stirring insects.

    “Have you been to the No’bu...?” He wondered. Chai was hardly popular here — not even amongst the Ashokan population of Madrid, as the vast majority had come from Eldahar, preferring mint-tea and confections of granada. He felt the whisk of a tail about his legs and let the spoon be, squatting down to pet Geordi once more.

    Where did you come from?

    It knocked him like an unexpected blow -- rattled his mind, launching up all of its defenses. His hand froze; Geordi slunk away, curling around Ylsa. Amazing how such a simple question had too many answers, one giant complication that lodged in his throat. His hands twitched of their own accord -- his mouth spasmed in some mockery of a desperate smile, an oh no, not now, please, by all the devils.

    "I..." She'd mentioned auras. Auras. He met her golden eyes with his own, examining her for a moment. Her face was round, serene -- pale as the hair that floated around it in an ethereal halo. Her hands were small, composed -- moved in deliberate but unhurried ways; there was such a self-possessed peace about her that struck him with envy. He felt like a twitching, spastic wreck by comparison, a rabied fox stuffed into some veneer of propriety.

    Vicious paranoia struck him. For a moment everything felt wrong — her kindness manipulative, her security false, the gentleness of her manner hiding a predator clawing for information. She talked about the stars. She knew about the stars. And now she was asking where he came from. His emotions lunged in all directions -- he was chewing his lip like he meant to bite it off, realized this, stopped.

    Auras.

    The necromancer had not noticed before -- his mind had been occupied and pickled in whisky besides -- but...

    Was she human? He felt an expansiveness that did not accord with a single life, a single flame — yet she was hardly inhuman, surely a creature of flesh-and-bone. No tint of necromancy tainted her. Nothing of false construction, nothing that defied the gods and prolonged life. But she felt… old. Very old.

    Phaedrus got up slowly, wiping his hands on his stomach, and took a deep breath.

    “You’re not entirely mortal, are you,” he noted, without judgment. Similar to mine, she’d said. He bit his lip, thinking on what Glede had said of her, glowing with praise. He thought on the disaster of his parlor, the construct’s raging, bull-headed quest north, threatening to ruin everything, reveal everything to anyone who would listen.

    Still. She had invited him into her home. And likely saved him from the cusp of some… he did not know. The possibilities blotted from his mind like ink.

    “I come from a terrible place,” he decided, finally. Phaedrus' hands lingered on his belly, stark and terribly white against the dark silk. “To say its name would invite disaster on you, and upon me, and… that is no way to repay kindness.” He inclined his head some, curls falling from his shoulders.

    “And you? I sense something in you.” A multiplicity… no. She wasn’t Legion. He struggled to make sense of it, canting his head and narrowing his strange yellow eyes. “You are old, aren’t you? I—oh,” he started at his own rude social hiccup. “Though I do confess. You do not look a blush over twenty."
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    Ylsa
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    For as long as space endures/ For as long as living beings remain/ Until then may I too abide/ To dispel the misery of the world...

    "Ahh... the No'bu," Ylsa almost visibly melted at the mention of the jungle, clasping her hands together. "I went there a very long time ago on an expedition: we were trying to find some giant simian creature, or at least document its existence. We never did get the hard proof we wanted -- that is, a live specimen -- but I think now that perhaps that was a good thing. It makes me uneasy these days to think of specimens. We did make a nice plaster cast of its foot, but someone... broke it." She suddenly swallowed and fiddled with the jasmine on the line a bit, and recomposed herself. "I've only been there twice since then, but goodness I miss it. I should make another trip sometime." Normally it was her clientelle that kept her from travelling, but unbeknownst to her, that would soon change, and the window to travel would be open, even though it would be opened in one of the worst ways.

    The conversation went on, but then halted, and she could feel his unease, and was stricken with guilt. Even when you were many centuries old you still made conversational slip-ups, and still felt awful about them after the fact. She studied him from her peripheral vision, noted the defeated slump in his shoulders, the weight of centuries upon him as well, but in a much more awful way. He was like a pristine carnelian with a single dark striation slashed down the center, crackling on the surface and threatening to break. The cracks made people beautiful, though. She would never be one to romanticize emotional suffering, but those cracks proved to whoever could see them that he had gone to war with himself, perhaps over and over, and survived.

    "I'm sorry," She offered sincerely. "I didn't mean to push."

    Perhaps a distraction from his pain was what he needed until he was able to face it again. His earlier battle had been exhausting, and it would be cruel to make him talk about hurtful things. That was all right: Ylsa was surprisingly good at talking. After all, she had a thousand stories to tell. She laughed politely at his faux pas, almost tittering with a hand to her mouth herself. "No, you're right. I am not entirely mortal. This body is rather young -- actually, ten years older than you guessed! I'm glad to know I still look youthful so far."

    In the last two years she had met some very, very remarkable people. People who were similar to her, people who she felt safe to share her own secrets around, and this gave her pause to think at times: why was it that suddenly, she was finding so many misplaced souls, who had so much in common with her? Perhaps it wasn't entirely for them. Perhaps the kami were trying to tell her something. Perhaps this life was her opportunity to tell people her story, but it didn't seem like only that. It was beginning to feel much like the unburdening of the soul on one's deathbed, or the race through one's life that one experienced upon dying.

    Even as a child Ylsa never considered that she would grow old. It never even occurred to her that she might, old age seemed like an outside thing that would happen to others, but not to her. Maybe all of this was happening so that she could move on sooner. A great pain rose in her chest, not knowing when the cut-off would be to see all of her friends here a final time, or to comfort them when she went. She didn't fear death itself, only leaving behind the people she loved most. I should write a letter, just in case...

    "I am old," She said. "Most of us are old, actually. Most just don't remember times before we were born into the lives we currently live. I do remember, though it takes time with each life. There is a continuity to my existence and even though I am born again and again in different places and under different circumstances, I am always the same person, essentially." After a short pause, she then jumped, and turned to offer him an apology.

    "Oh goodness, I am so sorry -- I invited you to my home without even telling you who I am..! I am Ylsabet Troy -- at least, that is how people know me, as this physical form. My real name is Jool, though not many people know that." She talked while she swept up to the kitchen to get cups, spoons, and sugar. "I came from Daro, originally, although..." She came back down with a small tray of all the bits and pieces and began to set them up on the little table before the sofa. "...it was a rather terrible place itself, though it was only terrible because I myself had made it so."
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    Phaedrus
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    Thus conscience does make cowards of us all/ And thus the native hue of resolution/ Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

    A giant simian creature, mm? Some of the peoples of south Ashoka worshipped monkey-gods, and held the creatures in high esteem. Himself, he had never been taken with them -- they seemed more like nuisances, and had an uncanny intelligence about them.

    Something like the child of a chuckle and scoff left him -- a mirthful little hmph!

    "Perhaps it was fortune. Even the small ones are clever little devils -- I cannot imagine what a giant one would be like." He sniffed, tended the pot. "You know, one time I saw a monkey fill a bucket with its own shit and throw it on someone's head. Nearly cackled at its own cleverness, I swear. Ever since then, they make me uneasy." He patted his hair, as if in terror that a phantom shit existed there, slopping down the back of his neck. The foul image earned him a little shiver.

    He had not thought about it since leaving the No'bu, on the way to Eldahar some years ago -- but it came to him in the ways memories do, poking their heads out of old cracks and scampering about, a startling reminder of different times. He remembered the howl of disgust all too well -- the frantic, gagging sobs of the poor victim. And of course, the gales of laughter from everyone unaffected.

    It opened a little key in his mind, swung open a forgotten vault. "I knew a man who lived in the No'bu, studied all its flora and fauna... I wonder if he ever found your bigfoot." A faint smile touched his lips. Then it suddenly faded again, the memory of Galeas like a jolt -- the wild chase through Eldahar, the brothel, the... dying... and then a more sinister memory, the ghost of the man that had appeared on his doorstep, when his head plunged into other things. The way he nearly insulted a dying man out of his home, all but refused to help him. The spoon scraped the bottom of the pot, freezing in his hand. He wondered suddenly, with a pang of too-late empathy, if the man had ever succeeded. If he was even alive.

    He missed a bit of what she'd said, his eyes lost beyond the kitchen for a moment.

    "Oh. Yes." Phaedrus tapped the spoon against the edge of the pot. But his words were faraway, empty. "It is lovely..." His hand crept up unconsciously to his shirt, and he fiddled with the fabric, beset by a flash-flood of guilt. Galeas and the brothel and the whores and the inn keeps and the priests and the town of Ahmim and the dead men and the way he'd forced Glede into fighting and then betrayed him when he came back a zealot and...

    I'm sorry. I didn't mean to push.

    His body moved in vague ways -- he shook his head somewhat, as if to say no, no, it's alright, forced out some hoarse words to that effect. But it wasn't alright, not really -- he just found comfort in the ritual courtesy.

    “Ten years? No.” He planted one hand on his hip, incredulous. I'm glad to know I still look youthful so far. "Like an orchid, dear.” He almost winked, stopped himself in mortification. Why the hell did he say that? Habit, he supposed. For years he had been raking about Madrid, always with a some-such dangling from his arm. You doth put your boot far down thy throat, Ser. He gave a coquettish little smile and just hoped she’d think him a… a… dandy in more than dress.

    Most of us are old, actually. His ears piqued — he forgot his earlier stumbling entirely, absurdly not sure what to do with the spoon. He clutched it protectively, instinctively, as if it were a weapon to ward off the words. Most just don't remember times before we were born into the lives we currently live. It touched something in him— a chord that sung to his bones, a strange concept.

    “Reincarnation.” Such a strange concept. Near everyone could accept the existence of a soul — but no one could agree on where it actually went. He thought of the listless crowds of spirits, the susurrus of whispers, their diaphanous limbs trailing where no one could go. Perhaps some swam ashore again, not as undead or phantoms, but… infants.

    “But how is that—“ He drew in breath sharply, not quite a laugh. The spoon twisted in his hands. If he had a heart it would be thundering. “I mean — how, how do you know you are the same person? How can you possibly be the same person if...”

    Phaedrus choked on his own question. The earlier nightmare washed his consciousness again — his cheeks prickled as he remembered the horror in the mirror, his face white and unrecognizable, a moon in the darkness. The necromancer swallowed, wavering near the pot. Get a grip. He clacked the spoon down on the counter, stringing his fingers together instead. Had they introduced themselves? He couldn’t remember. If they had, the blur of his head had erased it.

    “A pleasure, Ms. Troy.” He inclined his head, splaying a hand foppishly on his breast. Predictably, like an old friend, the pleasantries came back to him. “I am Phaedrus…” A pause. Then a violent, twitching smile. “Well… that is the name I use now. I stole it from a philosopher.” He had not admitted that gem to anyone in Madrid. Why it blurt from his mouth all the sudden, he did not know — perhaps because she’d entrusted him with her name, Jool, perhaps because she had been many people herself. Then, added quietly: “I am not sure I have ever had a real name.” His mouth twisted like barbed wire.

    The one I was given was a devil’s name. A slave’s name. How true of a name could that be? What value did it have? And yet it was his. But he could not say it. He was not sure he could ever say it.

    Phaedrus followed her numbly to the table, feeling naked and useless watching someone else prepare tea. His fingers itched to put a cup there, lay out the sugar so, smooth some doilies on the table. But it wasn’t his house. Instead, he lowered himself slowly into a chair, looking about the room.

    “I’d wondered,” he mused, referring to the abundance of scrolls and incense about the place, curious artifacts from across the sea. It was only terrible because I myself had made it so. He felt like he was being accused of something, indirectly — a pang gripped him. Phaedrus shifted uneasily on the chair, making it creak rather unpleasantly. “I have… never been. I know woefully little of Daro.”

    His catlike eyes continued to dart around the curiosities in the house—anywhere but Ylsa. “I do know not to eat an entire ball of that green devil-root. I thought I was dying.” The old woman’s toothless cackle haunted him; he finally returned his gaze to Ylsa. There was a question in him, but he wasn’t sure how to ask it yet—didn't even know what he wanted to ask. His mind still buzzed with her admission, struggled to swallow it.

    “Why was it so terrible? You weren’t convincing hapless foreigners to eat that, I hope.”
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