number the stars
Apr. 15th, 2010 10:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yukieTITLE: Nomine
CHARACTERS: Teh Bird and Teh Lich
SUMMARY: "...I remember those who came to me long before names, before words. 'I' was all they needed. All - from the beginning. All who have come to me, I know."
RATING: G, shockingly!
NOTES: Because my friend Frank destroyed my brain with the plot rabite. XD Also TYPOS GO TO HELL XD
If you want to get a feel for things, start this as Vicky walks into the inner sanctum.
***
Vicky opens her eyes to darkness and at first isn't sure if her eyes ARE open. She blinks a few times. ...This is unusual. She hasn't started off a dream like this that she can recall - inevitably the dark draws back like a curtain somehow and she's off and soaring shortly...but this time it's simply dark.
She can't even see her hand in front of her face, though she can feel herself waving it.
This isn't, as far as she knows, one of the dreams in which she's dead. If it were things would have got unpleasant by now.
As it is they're just strange. Dark and still. The air is cool and when it moves slightly it makes the hair on the back of her neck prickle. It smells of damp stone, dark earth, vetiver root.
She has a feeling she's waiting. ...Waiting for what? Someone? Something?
There's a faint sound off to her right. She turns o see a tiny pinpoint of light suspended in the dark.
A candle flame?
A lamp flame.
More and more ignite and by their faint glow she can discern enough to recognize the surroundings: that temple she dreamt of once. It was fallen to ruin then, but here it's sound and whole and oh Lady and Lord she doesn't want to be here.
She's attempting to recall which way the exit was when quite suddenly - he's there, where there was nothing before.
Vicky backpedals in a tearing hurry and flattens against the wall opposite.
Thanatos - of course it couldn't be anyone else! - tilts his head slightly (a gesture so like Xavier's quizzical one that it's unnerving) but he doesn't move.
After a long silence (she's sure he can hear her heart pounding), Vicky says, "...Y-you're not doing anything."
"I have no desire to harm you tonight," he says.
"Tonight," Vicky repeats. Well, he's honest, she'll give him that. "...I'm not sure what to say to that. Thank you. Maybe."
He inclines his head in lieu of a bow. "My pleasure."
Vicky glances up and down the empty halls, then looks back at him. "Why - am I here?"
He turns and starts down the hall, beckoning Vicky to follow.
She has a feeling that she couldn't do otherwise, even though she's chosen to go willingly. There's the faint resonance in the air that speaks of spellwork woven subtly. If she tried to turn away, or stop, she'd more than likely find herself unable.
Even when he's being reasonably polite and rational, Thanatos is who he is. Power is for him to hold, and for none other, in this place.
Vicky isn't going to amuse him by squirming. She follows.
"You seem at least slightly curious," he says, glancing back over his shoulder at her. "I would have thought you would be far more concerned about what I might be leading you toward or drawing you into."
"You don't feel like you do when you're doing that to me," Vicky replies. And, "Wow, that was a mess of a sentence."
He makes a faintly amused sound. "And you are understandably flustered."
There's a door here - enormous and heavy and wooden. He opens it with a gesture.
It doesn't close behind them. Vicky says, "You're confusing me badly. Every other time you've been in dreams where I am, you've been horrid..."
"I decided it might be more effective for me to change my tactics, since I cannot deter you in the ways I can others. Indeed you seem only to grow more insistent the more cruelty I demonstrate. You are a strange creature, Victoria."
Vicky makes a noncommittal noise. "I'm a knight," she says.
"You are, very much. Adversity only adds fuel to the flame. So I will instead appeal to your intellect."
He pauses before an arched doorway that opens into yawning blackness.
"This is the inner sanctum. Few mortals - and semi-mortals - have ever seen this place. Count yourself fortunate, that you do so with soul and body as one yet."
He gestures for her to go in.
"Look. Past the flames, past the candles of those who were great, of those who were loved, and you will come to a great hall, a reflecting pool. Count the candles you see, for they are the souls of every person I have ever performed my duty for."
He smiles.
"Take all the time you need."
Vicky, if only to not see that expression on him any longer (somehow it's more unsettling than the malicious ones hes worn every time before), does as invited.
At the end of the wide corridor (it's utterly filled with those tiny sconces, diminutive flames flickering each in its tiny alcove), Vicky stops short and bites back a sound of incredulity, hands pressed over her mouth.
Here at the end of the hall is an enormous, impossible CAVERN. A grotto, with the reflecting pool there as he said it would be. The water is still and dark and seems bottomless.
On its surface float innumerable tiny candles. They number in the billions - at the very least. They cast a soft amber glow upon everything, and the water reflects each flame, doubling their number in Vicky's eyes.
So many.
They are all moving slowly past, drifting in solemn procession to - where?
A pair of very cold hands settles on Vicky's shoulders and she goes still.
"Each of these marks a soul who has passed through my dominion, as you well know now. These are my pride, my duty and my honour. Some of the dead pass from your world to mine forgotten, but I have never once forgotten a being who, at the end of life, came to me."
Vicky looks back, wide-eyed. "You - you remember everyone's name...?"
He nods. "I do that - and I remember those who came to me long before names, before words. 'I' was all they needed."
He takes his left hand off her shoulder to gesture at the river of flickering light.
"All - from the beginning. All who have come to me, I know."
He smiles at her again.
"Victoria. Did you wish to see the very first among them?"
Vicky's silent a long time, trying to comprehend what he's said. Her mind won't stick to it, can't wrap itself aorund the concept - the first?
Before she realizes she's spoken, she says, "Yes."
Releasing her shoulders, Thanatos walks to the edge of the pool and crouches down, extending one pale graceful hand in a gesture of beckoning. One light among the billions of billions starts to weave its way toward him, and once it's near enough he cups his hands beneath it and picks it up, cradling the tiny lamp and its flame in his palm.
"I can call unto them thus because I know them all," he explains.
He's so different, dealing with these delicate votive lights. Gentle. Reverent. it's so very strange. If she didn't know this was the same man who'd come at her scythe raised in a fit of mad ecstasy, the man who put her through weeks and weeks of nightmares, the man who regularly makes Xavier miserable, she would not believe he WAS the same man.
It hits her then: Thanatos is the Reaper, the Psychopomp. These are the dead, or the memories thereof. Of course he would be kind to the dead. After all, once an enemy dies, the life that vexed him is over and done. What's left is the soul, and its memorial here. The soul moves on, but leaves its mark. "I was here" is the message of every candle.
Vicky's absolutely not expecting Thanatos to put the lamp in her own hands. But he does, taking hold of her wrist delicately and turning her hand palm-up and placing the votive light there. Vicky's startled enough that for a second she's terrified she might drop it.
She has a feeling, though, that it wouldn't fall.
She looks from the lamp in her hands to the river of candles.
"It's - like the stars," she whispers.
"The stars, my dear, are simply their reflection in the skies at night, when the realm of my world is closest to yours."
Vicky can only nod. After a moment, she goes to the edge of the river (he's watching her intently, she can feel it), and sets the lamp back on the water, where it drifts off to join its brethren.
"There is another reason" Thanatos says, "why I have shown you this. Why I have allowed you to see this place."
Vicky turns back to face him.
"What reason? It wasn't to scare me. I know that much. if you wanted to terrify me you would have."
He gazes out over the water for a moment, then says, "You are a Mediator, yes?"
"I--I am."
"Then by the decree of the Orphaean Prince, you are permitted to bear arms and to kill in self defense. Victoria...not a one here" - he spreads his arms, indicating the entire room, every candle - "not a single one here who knew you was sent here by your hand."
"I don't want to kill someone if I can avoid it," Vicky says.
"You fear feeling their death, I am certain, but more than that it is the notion of playing at judge, jury and executioner that disgusts you and stays your hand. You carry my sign - that 'Lumen Lunae' of yours is thus, regardless of your protests to the contrary - but you have no delusions about holding power over others' life and death."
"It's not for me to decide the hour of someone's death," Vicky says.
"Precious few think thus, my dear. And - I am pleasantly surprised. I ought not be surprised, I suppose." He sighs heavily and shakes his head. "Ah. I am finding it difficult to hate you longer, knowing what I know now."
"Er," says Vicky. "...Thank you?"
"Do not mistake me," he says, turning back to her with eyes slightly narrowed. "We are still at odds. But I shall grant you some respite, for now."
Vicky isn't sure what to say to that; it doesn't really matter since he's turned away from her again; he's gazing out over the river of votive lights once more.
"At two points in time," he murmurs, "I saw a flame begin to kindle itself on the water, and then vanish as soon as it had come. Only the lives of the Fair are so, much of the time...there are exceptions, but more oft than not, only your people cause such phenomena. You fly near to the borderlands of my realm, but you do not cross over so easily. I wondered then why that should fascinate me so; it was hardly the first time I had seen such a thing. But I paused - here - and watched it shimmer and then disappear."
He looks at Vicky.
"I realize now that the light of which I speak so bemused me because it was the one that belongs to you. I knew, somehow, that this person should be significant somehow in the future."
Vicky stares. He saw the times she's almost died and been drawn back. It stands to reason then that he would have seen -
"Then," she says, "then you saw when - "
"I did that," he says. "The light that belongs to Tahran's incarnation..." He trails off with a strange sigh. The way he says 'Tahran' makes a slight shiver walk up Vicky's spine. All that he feels for the other god is plain and clear. Rage. Envy. Sorrow. Longing. So, so much longing.
For a moment or two he's silent. Then he seems to shake himself a bit, and he goes on. "...He was a child, and while children do pass through here, it was not his fate to remain yet - "
He pauses and then looks wry. "And now I suppose you shall scold me for speaking incorrectly of 'fate'...?"
"No," says Vicky. "That was fate. You chose your path, and at the end of it was the option to save him." She will not give him Fabian's name. She will not. "You chose to do that, and opened a new way - made a new destiny for yourself."
He chortles silently. "Your kind are very curious beings, Victoria. They do not revile me." He takes a step toward her, and another. Vicky stays where she is. He stops three feet from her, regarding her with a quizzical expression. Vicky can't help but be struck by the similarity between he and Xavier, now.
"They do not revile me," he says again, "and you, in spite of my actions, do not despise me."
"You are who you are," Vicky says. "Who you are is not what you do."
He's smiling now. "Very curious beings," he amends.
Vicky looks past him at the candles, still slowly drifting, a solemn procession of tiny lamps. "I have to admit, I never could have expected this."
"Does it please you?"
"...It's beautiful."
Hands behind his back, he looks down at her, sombre again. "Do not mistake me, Victoria. I am not your ally and I am hardly your friend. This changes little; we are still at odds. But...I find now that I have some respect for you. Thus I would that you know better exactly whom you oppose."
"I appreciate that. Sir." Vicky bows formally to him.
He mirrors the gesture, then raises a hand. Vicky doesn't recognize the mudra he moves through. But now everything is curiously drifting - she's rather dizzy and lightheaded -
"Remember this when you wake. And remember that you shall still come unto me in dreams when I call. My mark is yet upon you, and the upper hand is still mine. But you deserve, at least, to know this."
Vicky can only barely hear him. She falls back and down and it's slow, slow, she's sinking slowly like a feather no longer borne up by a thermal -
She lands on her back in the grass in her own dreaming.
No one is here but her.
But there, by the cromlech, a scattering of black feathers has been left behind.
***
...He was actually DECENT? What the shit's that, man?
My friend Frank (whom I've known since - oh shit, 2001ish?) is responsibibble for the river of lights. Also for two of the most epic lines in here. "Look past the flames..." and "The stars, my dear..." are the result of Siri gnawing on his hair. So too is the concept of the first candle his idea, and 'no name but "I"...' - both of these are also the result of Siri being an evil hairchewer. (Don't gnaw his hair, dude, it's not proper.)*
The imagery Frank dropped in my brain wouldn't go away, so this happened.
*I actually don't know if he WAS hair chewing. He was being a dork at me though. It's like
Me: Dude he's got you PEGGED.
Siri: I devoured his mind }:3
Me: You mean you chewed his hair.
CHARACTERS: Teh Bird and Teh Lich
SUMMARY: "...I remember those who came to me long before names, before words. 'I' was all they needed. All - from the beginning. All who have come to me, I know."
RATING: G, shockingly!
NOTES: Because my friend Frank destroyed my brain with the plot rabite. XD Also TYPOS GO TO HELL XD
If you want to get a feel for things, start this as Vicky walks into the inner sanctum.
***
Vicky opens her eyes to darkness and at first isn't sure if her eyes ARE open. She blinks a few times. ...This is unusual. She hasn't started off a dream like this that she can recall - inevitably the dark draws back like a curtain somehow and she's off and soaring shortly...but this time it's simply dark.
She can't even see her hand in front of her face, though she can feel herself waving it.
This isn't, as far as she knows, one of the dreams in which she's dead. If it were things would have got unpleasant by now.
As it is they're just strange. Dark and still. The air is cool and when it moves slightly it makes the hair on the back of her neck prickle. It smells of damp stone, dark earth, vetiver root.
She has a feeling she's waiting. ...Waiting for what? Someone? Something?
There's a faint sound off to her right. She turns o see a tiny pinpoint of light suspended in the dark.
A candle flame?
A lamp flame.
More and more ignite and by their faint glow she can discern enough to recognize the surroundings: that temple she dreamt of once. It was fallen to ruin then, but here it's sound and whole and oh Lady and Lord she doesn't want to be here.
She's attempting to recall which way the exit was when quite suddenly - he's there, where there was nothing before.
Vicky backpedals in a tearing hurry and flattens against the wall opposite.
Thanatos - of course it couldn't be anyone else! - tilts his head slightly (a gesture so like Xavier's quizzical one that it's unnerving) but he doesn't move.
After a long silence (she's sure he can hear her heart pounding), Vicky says, "...Y-you're not doing anything."
"I have no desire to harm you tonight," he says.
"Tonight," Vicky repeats. Well, he's honest, she'll give him that. "...I'm not sure what to say to that. Thank you. Maybe."
He inclines his head in lieu of a bow. "My pleasure."
Vicky glances up and down the empty halls, then looks back at him. "Why - am I here?"
He turns and starts down the hall, beckoning Vicky to follow.
She has a feeling that she couldn't do otherwise, even though she's chosen to go willingly. There's the faint resonance in the air that speaks of spellwork woven subtly. If she tried to turn away, or stop, she'd more than likely find herself unable.
Even when he's being reasonably polite and rational, Thanatos is who he is. Power is for him to hold, and for none other, in this place.
Vicky isn't going to amuse him by squirming. She follows.
"You seem at least slightly curious," he says, glancing back over his shoulder at her. "I would have thought you would be far more concerned about what I might be leading you toward or drawing you into."
"You don't feel like you do when you're doing that to me," Vicky replies. And, "Wow, that was a mess of a sentence."
He makes a faintly amused sound. "And you are understandably flustered."
There's a door here - enormous and heavy and wooden. He opens it with a gesture.
It doesn't close behind them. Vicky says, "You're confusing me badly. Every other time you've been in dreams where I am, you've been horrid..."
"I decided it might be more effective for me to change my tactics, since I cannot deter you in the ways I can others. Indeed you seem only to grow more insistent the more cruelty I demonstrate. You are a strange creature, Victoria."
Vicky makes a noncommittal noise. "I'm a knight," she says.
"You are, very much. Adversity only adds fuel to the flame. So I will instead appeal to your intellect."
He pauses before an arched doorway that opens into yawning blackness.
"This is the inner sanctum. Few mortals - and semi-mortals - have ever seen this place. Count yourself fortunate, that you do so with soul and body as one yet."
He gestures for her to go in.
"Look. Past the flames, past the candles of those who were great, of those who were loved, and you will come to a great hall, a reflecting pool. Count the candles you see, for they are the souls of every person I have ever performed my duty for."
He smiles.
"Take all the time you need."
Vicky, if only to not see that expression on him any longer (somehow it's more unsettling than the malicious ones hes worn every time before), does as invited.
At the end of the wide corridor (it's utterly filled with those tiny sconces, diminutive flames flickering each in its tiny alcove), Vicky stops short and bites back a sound of incredulity, hands pressed over her mouth.
Here at the end of the hall is an enormous, impossible CAVERN. A grotto, with the reflecting pool there as he said it would be. The water is still and dark and seems bottomless.
On its surface float innumerable tiny candles. They number in the billions - at the very least. They cast a soft amber glow upon everything, and the water reflects each flame, doubling their number in Vicky's eyes.
So many.
They are all moving slowly past, drifting in solemn procession to - where?
A pair of very cold hands settles on Vicky's shoulders and she goes still.
"Each of these marks a soul who has passed through my dominion, as you well know now. These are my pride, my duty and my honour. Some of the dead pass from your world to mine forgotten, but I have never once forgotten a being who, at the end of life, came to me."
Vicky looks back, wide-eyed. "You - you remember everyone's name...?"
He nods. "I do that - and I remember those who came to me long before names, before words. 'I' was all they needed."
He takes his left hand off her shoulder to gesture at the river of flickering light.
"All - from the beginning. All who have come to me, I know."
He smiles at her again.
"Victoria. Did you wish to see the very first among them?"
Vicky's silent a long time, trying to comprehend what he's said. Her mind won't stick to it, can't wrap itself aorund the concept - the first?
Before she realizes she's spoken, she says, "Yes."
Releasing her shoulders, Thanatos walks to the edge of the pool and crouches down, extending one pale graceful hand in a gesture of beckoning. One light among the billions of billions starts to weave its way toward him, and once it's near enough he cups his hands beneath it and picks it up, cradling the tiny lamp and its flame in his palm.
"I can call unto them thus because I know them all," he explains.
He's so different, dealing with these delicate votive lights. Gentle. Reverent. it's so very strange. If she didn't know this was the same man who'd come at her scythe raised in a fit of mad ecstasy, the man who put her through weeks and weeks of nightmares, the man who regularly makes Xavier miserable, she would not believe he WAS the same man.
It hits her then: Thanatos is the Reaper, the Psychopomp. These are the dead, or the memories thereof. Of course he would be kind to the dead. After all, once an enemy dies, the life that vexed him is over and done. What's left is the soul, and its memorial here. The soul moves on, but leaves its mark. "I was here" is the message of every candle.
Vicky's absolutely not expecting Thanatos to put the lamp in her own hands. But he does, taking hold of her wrist delicately and turning her hand palm-up and placing the votive light there. Vicky's startled enough that for a second she's terrified she might drop it.
She has a feeling, though, that it wouldn't fall.
She looks from the lamp in her hands to the river of candles.
"It's - like the stars," she whispers.
"The stars, my dear, are simply their reflection in the skies at night, when the realm of my world is closest to yours."
Vicky can only nod. After a moment, she goes to the edge of the river (he's watching her intently, she can feel it), and sets the lamp back on the water, where it drifts off to join its brethren.
"There is another reason" Thanatos says, "why I have shown you this. Why I have allowed you to see this place."
Vicky turns back to face him.
"What reason? It wasn't to scare me. I know that much. if you wanted to terrify me you would have."
He gazes out over the water for a moment, then says, "You are a Mediator, yes?"
"I--I am."
"Then by the decree of the Orphaean Prince, you are permitted to bear arms and to kill in self defense. Victoria...not a one here" - he spreads his arms, indicating the entire room, every candle - "not a single one here who knew you was sent here by your hand."
"I don't want to kill someone if I can avoid it," Vicky says.
"You fear feeling their death, I am certain, but more than that it is the notion of playing at judge, jury and executioner that disgusts you and stays your hand. You carry my sign - that 'Lumen Lunae' of yours is thus, regardless of your protests to the contrary - but you have no delusions about holding power over others' life and death."
"It's not for me to decide the hour of someone's death," Vicky says.
"Precious few think thus, my dear. And - I am pleasantly surprised. I ought not be surprised, I suppose." He sighs heavily and shakes his head. "Ah. I am finding it difficult to hate you longer, knowing what I know now."
"Er," says Vicky. "...Thank you?"
"Do not mistake me," he says, turning back to her with eyes slightly narrowed. "We are still at odds. But I shall grant you some respite, for now."
Vicky isn't sure what to say to that; it doesn't really matter since he's turned away from her again; he's gazing out over the river of votive lights once more.
"At two points in time," he murmurs, "I saw a flame begin to kindle itself on the water, and then vanish as soon as it had come. Only the lives of the Fair are so, much of the time...there are exceptions, but more oft than not, only your people cause such phenomena. You fly near to the borderlands of my realm, but you do not cross over so easily. I wondered then why that should fascinate me so; it was hardly the first time I had seen such a thing. But I paused - here - and watched it shimmer and then disappear."
He looks at Vicky.
"I realize now that the light of which I speak so bemused me because it was the one that belongs to you. I knew, somehow, that this person should be significant somehow in the future."
Vicky stares. He saw the times she's almost died and been drawn back. It stands to reason then that he would have seen -
"Then," she says, "then you saw when - "
"I did that," he says. "The light that belongs to Tahran's incarnation..." He trails off with a strange sigh. The way he says 'Tahran' makes a slight shiver walk up Vicky's spine. All that he feels for the other god is plain and clear. Rage. Envy. Sorrow. Longing. So, so much longing.
For a moment or two he's silent. Then he seems to shake himself a bit, and he goes on. "...He was a child, and while children do pass through here, it was not his fate to remain yet - "
He pauses and then looks wry. "And now I suppose you shall scold me for speaking incorrectly of 'fate'...?"
"No," says Vicky. "That was fate. You chose your path, and at the end of it was the option to save him." She will not give him Fabian's name. She will not. "You chose to do that, and opened a new way - made a new destiny for yourself."
He chortles silently. "Your kind are very curious beings, Victoria. They do not revile me." He takes a step toward her, and another. Vicky stays where she is. He stops three feet from her, regarding her with a quizzical expression. Vicky can't help but be struck by the similarity between he and Xavier, now.
"They do not revile me," he says again, "and you, in spite of my actions, do not despise me."
"You are who you are," Vicky says. "Who you are is not what you do."
He's smiling now. "Very curious beings," he amends.
Vicky looks past him at the candles, still slowly drifting, a solemn procession of tiny lamps. "I have to admit, I never could have expected this."
"Does it please you?"
"...It's beautiful."
Hands behind his back, he looks down at her, sombre again. "Do not mistake me, Victoria. I am not your ally and I am hardly your friend. This changes little; we are still at odds. But...I find now that I have some respect for you. Thus I would that you know better exactly whom you oppose."
"I appreciate that. Sir." Vicky bows formally to him.
He mirrors the gesture, then raises a hand. Vicky doesn't recognize the mudra he moves through. But now everything is curiously drifting - she's rather dizzy and lightheaded -
"Remember this when you wake. And remember that you shall still come unto me in dreams when I call. My mark is yet upon you, and the upper hand is still mine. But you deserve, at least, to know this."
Vicky can only barely hear him. She falls back and down and it's slow, slow, she's sinking slowly like a feather no longer borne up by a thermal -
She lands on her back in the grass in her own dreaming.
No one is here but her.
But there, by the cromlech, a scattering of black feathers has been left behind.
***
...He was actually DECENT? What the shit's that, man?
My friend Frank (whom I've known since - oh shit, 2001ish?) is responsibibble for the river of lights. Also for two of the most epic lines in here. "Look past the flames..." and "The stars, my dear..." are the result of Siri gnawing on his hair. So too is the concept of the first candle his idea, and 'no name but "I"...' - both of these are also the result of Siri being an evil hairchewer. (Don't gnaw his hair, dude, it's not proper.)*
The imagery Frank dropped in my brain wouldn't go away, so this happened.
*I actually don't know if he WAS hair chewing. He was being a dork at me though. It's like
Me: Dude he's got you PEGGED.
Siri: I devoured his mind }:3
Me: You mean you chewed his hair.
