terriblepurpose | Deer Country Contact

[Don't think he hadn't noticed.

Those times when he had use enough of the hands to send quick messages out into the world, to check on his friends, make contact with allies, and harrass god-- don't think that he didn't notice something else happening in the periphery.

Oscar Pine implicitly understood the rules of sharing headspace with another. A part of him had done so dozens upon dozens of times over the millennia, after all. However, Oscar was still a country boy. Certain matters of simple politeness needed to be followed. It meant being an asset to his 'host' and not making a pest of himself...

And evidently it meant making sure that the other occupant didn't get swept away in the ether.

No matter how high the walls were between them, Oscar still understood enough about what Paul knew to recognize the way Paul had turned himself both inward and beyond. Those eyes seemed to see nothing-- and everything.

...And Oscar was just a voice.]

Paul, what's going on?

[He asked finally, ending his odd reunion with Pyrrha. There would be more conversations and requests later-- but that wasn't important.

Oscar trusted his strange counterpart to have the matter of John as under control as she could. For now, Paul was his responsibility.]

I know everything's weird and scary and confusing-- And, I'm sorry for it. But, if something's happening? You've gotta let me in to help.

[Paul knows the black.

It's the emptiness underneath his dreams, the unlit forge where they are born and die. It's the silent mouth of purpose that presses against his heart, and whispers. It is riptide and abyss and gravity.

The grey is new. The grey is a place he drifts in between moments, a sleeping cinder tucked into a bed of ash.

It takes a little while for Oscar to call him back from it, Paul coalescing into coherence like a wakened sleeper of the mundane kind blinking to consciousness.]

Would you specify?

[Even then, he's muzzy, lulled towards torpor by the recollection of heat.]

[This was beyond him.

Oscar Pine was lost. He had no one to confer with about the strangeness that was Paul and whatever 'this' was. A myriad plus two years didn't cover the sheer desolation beyond his non-existent fingers.

Nor whatever kind of entity Paul was.]

It's like we're losing you,

[He tried to explain, grasping at straws of hay and the metaphors written for the public by his forebears. ]

You start slipping as soon as you're not outside.

Please don't go where I can't bring you back.

Edited 2022-07-17 11:19 (UTC)

[Paul draws more of himself back together like he's scooping at wet sand and moulding it into shape. He can tell it's working when a faint ripple of apprehension disturbs the whole, one he banishes as soon as it comes to him. He keeps himself calm for both their sakes.]

Is it that bad?

[Here is his body, here are his bones, here is the beat of his heart and the flutter of his lungs. Paul stretches out to occupy himself again, nudging Oscar gently out of the way. It's been less difficult than he imagined to learn to live with a second self, at least one so amenable to cooperation.]

It doesn't feel like I'm slipping. It feels like...

I almost see something.

It is if I can't help you.

[Or pull him back. Oscar didn't want to face the particular outage of not one but two boyfriends that had their piece lost to the ether between wakefulness and dreams. His unease was apparent as he shifted aside.

This was unknown territory to him. Whatever danger that meant, he didn't want Paul to take any of it. ]

... What are you seeing, Paul?

[He asked, shoring up enough confidence to hopefully bolster his host. ]

I know something of the precognition that's from Remnant, but it's different from what you do.

[They're in a room. It has four walls, a ceiling, a floor. It is a place Paul has been before. He rubs his eyes as he leans over his knees, aware now that he is sitting.]

A star.

[He meant to think fire, but the substitution etches over the thought as it comes to him, and he knows that it's right.]

I don't know what it means. [He admits, a fragile curl of uncertainty.] I want to know. I think if I know, then I won't be...

[Afraid doesn't form as a word so much as an impression, a fear that's bewildered by itself, a fear that is the haunting of an idea more than an experience.]

[He could superimpose his own internal space, if he wanted. He could take them to his bedroom in the Mistrali countryside, Ozpin's ornamented office in Beacon before it's destruction, or even the courtyard of the fortress that the King of Vale had resided in.

Instead, Oscar didn't fight it. Four walls, a ceiling, and a floor was good enough. With memories of his physical body at the forefront, He looked down at his feet uncertainly before moving and sitting himself.

Two legs was already an improvement.

He followed Paul's cue and sat down. The rules of this space were unknown, but mimickry was usually safe.]

A star?

[He repeated, as curious as he was concerned. Paul's bizarre texts had been worrying him in recent days... If this was related...

Heaving a tired sigh, he studied the space for a moment while he thought.]

Was kinda guesses or clues do you have? I don't know much about stars, Paul.

[Paul looks at Oscar with an involuntary widening of pupils he'd never tolerate from himself in waking, as if he's surprised to see him there. (He'd thought he was awake. He still isn't sure that he's not. He feels the tug of fabric texture on his skin, the slight disparities of temperature and air current not present in this dream-room, but here Oscar is. He doesn't know what that means.)]

You have a single planet. I remember.

[Still a strange, unsettling concept. The whole of their culture confined to one fragile world beset by horrors and cruel gods. One calamity, and they could all be wiped out, as if they never were.

It's not unlike this world, for all its anchoring in others. The people of Trench, the culture and city they've built, isolated in a sea of blood pollution and monsters.]

It's a... [he has to make this intelligible, simplified] It's a pulsing star. A timekeeper.

A single world. When we tried to reach beyond the sky, the remnants of our past cut us off at the knees.

[The very Dust that permeated every aspect of their lives on Remnant, created wonders like elementally infused fabrics and hard light projections like the device he still kept in his pocket, was rendered inert once they broke through the barrier into the void of space. In his minds eye he could see it-- and a part of him wondered if a young man that would one day be General hadn't been involved.

Few other factors could destroy a body like that. Even if his Mettle allowed him to power through, it was still proof that the cost of trying to defy their absent gods was still too great.

Oscar watched Paul, hazel eyes as solemn as the barley that had come ready to harvest. He had been raised in a world without option to leave, and held captive by forces that didn't care about the toils of regular life. Food needed to be provided to those in the protection of the walled cities. Beyond those walls, they had minimal layers of safety.

Oscar knew how to live with such fragile conditions. It was likely why himself and those from his world had adapted to Trench so quickly.

It was still more stable than the one they came from.]

I know that doesn't happen in other places. Your normal life is something I could only dream of.

[He huffed in what could have been a wry laugh. He was very good at dreaming. ]

The sun and moon can be timekeepers. How is this different?

[Paul is good at dreaming, too. He's had an excellent teacher.]

A pulsar is a dead star.

[He opens his palm. A star with the low red glow of a forge blooms from his fingers in miniature, as large as a skull. Paul twitches a fingertip and sets it spinning.]

When some stars reach the end of their lives, their cores - their internal engines - collapse.

[The star flares outward in a brilliant, heatless flash, enough to half-blind even dreamed eyes, and then it retracts, shrinking down to a sphere no larger than a marble of cool blue light still spinning. It pulses in oscillations that are barely visible until Paul brings his other hand up to cup it like a fragile flame, the star slowing as fountains of particulate light become visible from each pole.]

What's left of them is condensed by gravity, hungry for everything around it, but energy can escape from the poles. Some are nearly as good as atomic measures. They're like lighthouses and clocks in one. That's how the Spacing Guild uses them, or so I understand.

As for what that means...

[He shrugs, lopsided, almost indifferent.]

... It's like a Beacon.

[That was an explanation he understood, fantastical as the overall content matter was for him. There was a great deal that he wanted to understand, that he needed to know to even begin to understand--]

Could it be guiding you towards something?

Or warning me away.

[He decides they're seated on the edge of a bed, so that he can lay down on it, the star collapsing down (black, fierce-) into nothingness so he might fold his hands on his stomach.]

Or I'm just having bad dreams.

[Almost a joke. He can't remember the last time his dreams were anything but portentous, one way or another. It's no wonder he never feels as though he's getting enough rest.

(There's a door in the wall. There's a door in the wall that is open a slit, the latch flat, held in place by a knob held fast on its other side.)]

Edited 2022-07-25 17:09 (UTC)

I don't know if it's just dreams... But I don't know what it looks like when you're doing your Oracle thing, either

[Sliding over next to the bed, Oscar made himself comfortable on the floor. Were this Dipper or Ruby, he'd have picked the bed... But, boundaries needed to be maintained as much as possible.

He mulled over the star-- it's collapse, the way that somehow nothing was heavier than everything, and heaved a sigh. Somehow they both were nothing-- and everything. ]

What could it be warning you from? [He inquired, his concern not as veiled as he hoped. ]

What does The Sun mean to you?

Edited 2022-07-27 20:01 (UTC)

Silver eyes, usually. Sometimes I speak in tongues, asleep or awake.

[He runs his empty palm over his face before letting it drop again. There was a time admitting that would have been unthinkable; now it's almost mundane.]

Do you remember the book I told you about? The one I was learning fire from?

[Not fire magic, but fire. It's a linguistic collapse he doesn't notice, and it might mean nothing. It isn't as though Paul is known for his straightforward speech, everything layered and calculated to particular effect, like this apparently abrupt change of subject.

He moves past it. A red tome manifests in his hand. (The pages inside are blank. He knows this intuitively. This is an image of the thing, not the thing itself.) It's a small, unassuming book, its title engraved in the leather cover worn down to near invisible lines. The visible pages are lightly marked with smoke, but not themselves singed.]

It was written by a solar occultist. Part of it have been...

[The doorknob in a door that shouldn't be in the wall, but is, turns. Paul doesn't seem to notice.]

...challenging.

[Oscar only had his eyes on Paul.

~~He should have paid better attention. He would likely regret this, in hindsight.~~ ]

Yeah, you mentioned silver eyes before...

It's funny. The woman that inspired Qrow, and who inspired Ruby through him? Had a kind of future sight as her Semblance... Before she lost her eyesight.

[But he was leaning in, curious about the book despite the warnings of his teacher. 'Make fire' was a strange phrase...]

What parts are trouble?

Silver is an element often associated with mystery. It makes a certain sense.

[Paul has given up so much already. He's sworn his Voice to silence - he's had his anchored knife torn out of his soul - he's surrendered pride and dignity and the hope of forgiveness on the altar of trying to be better, a state that he still can only define by the ways he fails to meet its conditions.

He knows what he has in his hand is dangerous. But it's his.]

It's esoteric. Sometimes a little troubling.

It's not like I haven't dreamed of fire before-

[The door opens a crack. Paul is on his illusory feet, book dropped (but not vanished) from his hand as he stares at the slim black gap in the wall.]

Is that you?

No. Never!

[And yet the thrill of panic was tangible in their shared space-- as Ozpin had confirmed early on, little was sacred in this space. When asked about reading thoughts, he recollected Oz's words: 'They're our thoughts now.'

Oscar was on his non-existant feet as well, placing himself between Paul and the unknown with a frown and an outstretched arm. As much as Paul blamed himself, Oscar knew he bore his own blame in their circumstances.

He had promised not to let anything hurt Paul; he wasn't going to go back on it.]

I take it this hasn't happened before.

[It wasn't a question.]

[A compensatory pulse of focus meets Oscar's panic, the mental and physiological reorientation of Paul's inner states now something Oscar knows better than most. One of Paul's quietest implicit not-quite-secrets is his, if he cares to look at what it is - and now it seems like a secret not even known to Paul is poised to fall into his hands.

Paul doesn't feel panicked. He feels a runnel of unexpected anticipation, trickling up from the base of his skull and expanding in a gleaming net, and this is why he doesn't think to protest Oscar placing himself between Paul and the doorway.]

No. [He doesn't know his own voice.] I've never-

[The door pushes open further, revealing a long, tawny arm, then a gleam of bronze, and then the silhouette of a well-muscled thigh through white linen as the shape of a handsome, tall woman with dark curls and high cheekbones is half-framed in the threshold. She blinks her visible eye at them, lined in gold dust and kohl, and the microlens implanted in it flickers.

She asks them a question, and lightning bursts behind Paul's ocular nerves at a language he does not know and has never heard.]

Who are you?

[His magic was cut off in physical spaces-- but his reasons, his being in this would was born of dreams. He was a paleblood, a dreamwalk, and he knew enough of the logic after over a year in Julia's domain to have a grasp of limits... And capabilities.

Without a second thought he was in a room, dipping into the well the myriads before him and calling up his shield. Crackling green energy bubbled up around then, interwoven with the autumnal gold he knew to be his own power and strong despite it's apparent gossamer fragility.

He moved closer to Paul, eyes focused entirely on the entity that had intruded while the panic alchemized into adrenaline.

We've would Ozpin do? What would Dipper do?

What would Oscar do?

In a voice that was his, but heavy with the weight of his chosen task and the understanding that one wrong move could be both of their deaths, he asked:]

... Who's asking?

[The woman does not flinch. She pushes open the door the rest of the way, her other ~~eye~~ revealed as a hot yellow mismatch to her dark green one, the ~~pupil~~ bending, contorting to an hourglass -

~~that never happened~~

- but it is a trick of the light. Her eyes are the same color and shape, except for the lens shining in the iris of one.]

Oscar, it's all right, [Paul starts, with an odd, fascinated lilt, even as she says, musically,] You raise a weapon against me, in the hall of my ancestors?

[The black behind her is no longer black, not wholly. A dark hall opens up behind her as if it had always been there, draped in shadows, and the smell of night rain pours in with her light footsteps towards them. She raises a hand towards the shield, but does not touch it, canting her head delicately, like a bird.]

[ He listened.

He breathed.

Oscar felt a stirring, a recognition in his own depths at this particular question-- and, on a level too deep for word or story, he knew what needed to be done.

The shield flickered and stilled at the woman's gesture, but Oscar held his position between her and Paul. Carefully, in the polite but measured tones he had learned from Ozpin-- and from someone far more than a headmaster-- he replied.]

I'm fulfilling a promise I made to one of this boy's partners, that nothing would bring him any harm while I am here. I'm a guest, but I'm not going to be a burden on my host either.

[He canted his head to the side, his shoulders squared and strong despite the obvious fear he was keeping in check.

Fear was what defined humanity after all-- and he was choosing to not let it define him in his uncertainty. ]

Edited 2022-08-05 03:55 (UTC)

[ The woman lowers her hand, contemplating Oscar with the weighted eye of a jeweller, as if peering into deeper facets of his self than are visible from her surface. She takes a step back. This should seem a concession, but somehow, it has more of the air of a creature circling the glowing rim of a fire's light in the tall grass. ]

I would not harm him.

[ There is an omission there. She smiles slightly, a knife-slit curve, and bends her graceful reed of a neck in acknowledgement. Behind Oscar, Paul rocks on his imagined heels, more held at bay than she is by Oscar's intervention. ]

You do not belong here. You are not blood of our blood. And you are a male, unless I mark you falsely.

[ Another specific choice of words. In Galach, there are distinctions of sex beyond a crude binary, and if the word she used was to be transcribed in full it might be written as womb-born, chromosomal pattern XY, generative, ancestral, a term more of the biological than the social realm, but even that would not be the whole of it. The Bene Gesserit are exactingly precise. ]

He is only a guest. [ Paul says, setting his hand on Oscar's shoulder. ] He will return to his home, soon.

[He wanted to step backwards. He wanted to put some space between himself and this woman-- this creature of precision and rationality and the weight of myriads in that sharpened look which only made him feel small.

It was like those moments with John, when his hand was newly regrown but his multitude of imperatives to move, to stay, to be reborn, all converged and locked him from his shell. Once more he felt perceived-- himself, as well as the drunkards, sailors, warriors, and kings all before him.]

I'm myself. Claiming any single gender or identity in my situation is something only a fool would do before people like you.

I'm just me. And, if I need to swear a pact in my own blood that this my benefactor won't be harmed by anything of my doing... Then I will.

[He didn't want to make a blood pact. Blood carried power, and he already had his baggage...

But, he would.

Still feeling small, but curious as well, he dared to ask:]

... What is this?

What would I want with your blood, oh multitude?

[ She does not laugh. There is the suggestion of it only, another shadow laid across her voice. ]

I came to see my...

[ Her gaze flits to Paul, whose hand tightens on Oscar's shoulder, his breath a soft but audible inhale behind him. She gestures to him, fluidly, her fingers rippling in an intentional shape. ]

Descendant. I have no quarrel with you - yet it seems you take one up with me, wanderer.

He doesn't. [ Paul says, bright, compelled. ] Oscar, lower the shield. This is our dream. We control it, don't we? What is there to fear?

[The one constant between all living things... Was fear.

And, in the midst of the unknown, even the most well tempered of minds would still jump at shadows because of fear. Fear for their families, friends-- and for themselves.

Oscar sucked in a breath (--it was a dream, he didn't need to breathe--) and reached inward to take that trembling, tumultuous fear by the hand. Lifetimes and centuries of despairing over the unknown was impossible to erase from his soul, but he could at least remind the part of himself carrying this fear that he didn't have to wear the Crown and bear the burden of Choice alone in this one. The weight of a multitude of lives lost needed to be remembered, but it didn't have to define him.

He wasn't Oz. Not yet-- and hopefully he never would be as long as the Pthumerians allowed. And, as long as he didn't return to the seas.

Shoulders relaxing, the shield dissolved away with a flicker and a shower if disintegrating dust. Oscar looked up at Paul, still wary but willing to trust.

This wasn't his game.]

Fear is what makes us human, Paul. Ancestor. I'm sorry. So much has happened recently that I am afraid.

I'm sorry. I'll do better.

Edited 2022-08-10 14:35 (UTC)

ic contact

mid july | somewhere...

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cw: eye horror

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