Paul Atreides (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
terriblepurpose) wrote2030-12-01 07:56 pm
terriblepurpose) wrote2030-12-01 07:56 pm
Deer Country Contact
ic contact
un: younghuman ✦ text ✦ voice ✦ video
Paul,
I sincerely hope I have found the correct person! These devices are not the easiest for me to navigate despite several months' learning and a few guides. In the hopes that I have in fact found you, I would like to extend to you my sincere thanks. You were put in a remarkably tense situation with no good outcome and you did everything you could to try and help me change it. There was no reason for you to do this, putting your own self at risk like you did, but you did, and you were there for me the whole time, and I never really got the chance to thank you for that.
Not many people would have done that, I think. I hope you know how remarkable a thing it was, and how much it meant to be, no matter the outcome. Looking back, I do not believe my actions or the actions of anyone could have changed Alexei's mind. He was a great man, once, but I am beginning to think that with such greatness comes a sort of isolation, particularly when one feels desperate and alone.
You reminded me that, despite my now holding that same office (or, well, I suppose I did, at home! I don't any longer, and I am still attempting to make my peace with that), there are people in my corner who are willing to help me. That I am not alone. Sincerely, from every corner of me: thank you for that.
I hope you are well, and that you will give me a chance to return the favor when it is required. We are none of us here alone.
Sincerely,
Flynn Scifo
I sincerely hope I have found the correct person! These devices are not the easiest for me to navigate despite several months' learning and a few guides. In the hopes that I have in fact found you, I would like to extend to you my sincere thanks. You were put in a remarkably tense situation with no good outcome and you did everything you could to try and help me change it. There was no reason for you to do this, putting your own self at risk like you did, but you did, and you were there for me the whole time, and I never really got the chance to thank you for that.
Not many people would have done that, I think. I hope you know how remarkable a thing it was, and how much it meant to be, no matter the outcome. Looking back, I do not believe my actions or the actions of anyone could have changed Alexei's mind. He was a great man, once, but I am beginning to think that with such greatness comes a sort of isolation, particularly when one feels desperate and alone.
You reminded me that, despite my now holding that same office (or, well, I suppose I did, at home! I don't any longer, and I am still attempting to make my peace with that), there are people in my corner who are willing to help me. That I am not alone. Sincerely, from every corner of me: thank you for that.
I hope you are well, and that you will give me a chance to return the favor when it is required. We are none of us here alone.
Sincerely,
Flynn Scifo
Flynn Scifo,
As generous as your assessment of my actions is, the effort and the risk were yours, not mine.
If there had been a way to change your former commander's mind, I believe you would have found it. I regret promising you an outcome I could not give you, and that fault lies with me, not in any word or gesture of yours. You demonstrated integrity, honor, and compassion, while my irresponsibility put you in danger more than once.
The debt here is mine to repay, and I will repay it. You have my word, sworn by the honor of my House. If you wish to grant me a favor, let it be that you allow me that.
Yours,
Paul Atreides
As generous as your assessment of my actions is, the effort and the risk were yours, not mine.
If there had been a way to change your former commander's mind, I believe you would have found it. I regret promising you an outcome I could not give you, and that fault lies with me, not in any word or gesture of yours. You demonstrated integrity, honor, and compassion, while my irresponsibility put you in danger more than once.
The debt here is mine to repay, and I will repay it. You have my word, sworn by the honor of my House. If you wish to grant me a favor, let it be that you allow me that.
Yours,
Paul Atreides
Paul,
You tried, and in the end, I have come to believe that matters more. Promises cannot always be kept, and in the end we were both safe. Please believe me when I say there is nothing owed and no debt to repay, except perhaps one of friendship? I would like to meet you outside of such dangerous contexts, if such a thing can be found in this city.
If you really must grant me something, then let it be that. Connection is hard to find in a place like this, and I know it is vital.
-Flynn Scifo
You tried, and in the end, I have come to believe that matters more. Promises cannot always be kept, and in the end we were both safe. Please believe me when I say there is nothing owed and no debt to repay, except perhaps one of friendship? I would like to meet you outside of such dangerous contexts, if such a thing can be found in this city.
If you really must grant me something, then let it be that. Connection is hard to find in a place like this, and I know it is vital.
-Flynn Scifo
Flynn Scifo,
If that is what you ask, yes.
You are right about connection. There is another thing I should tell you. I recognized one of the people in your memory, Yuri. He pulled me from the ice when I arrived. It seems like people of your world are prone to acts of kindness.
Do you plan to visit the Snake Den this month?
Yours,
Paul Atreides
If that is what you ask, yes.
You are right about connection. There is another thing I should tell you. I recognized one of the people in your memory, Yuri. He pulled me from the ice when I arrived. It seems like people of your world are prone to acts of kindness.
Do you plan to visit the Snake Den this month?
Yours,
Paul Atreides
Paul,
Please call me Flynn. Honestly, that does not surprise me in the slightest: Yuri is one of the best people I know from home, and is not actually a very good representation of what the people of Terca Lumireis are like. That is not to say we are not kind, only that Yuri is exceptionally so and will spend a lot of energy telling you otherwise.
I was planning on going to the Snake Den, although I have been informed by a person who came here from the dream that one may not trust the parties thrown here? Still, it seems like precisely the thing, and it would be nice to get out of the house. I've learned that taking a break from work to attend such things is a wonderful way to learn what people need. Were you planning on attending at all?
Please call me Flynn. Honestly, that does not surprise me in the slightest: Yuri is one of the best people I know from home, and is not actually a very good representation of what the people of Terca Lumireis are like. That is not to say we are not kind, only that Yuri is exceptionally so and will spend a lot of energy telling you otherwise.
I was planning on going to the Snake Den, although I have been informed by a person who came here from the dream that one may not trust the parties thrown here? Still, it seems like precisely the thing, and it would be nice to get out of the house. I've learned that taking a break from work to attend such things is a wonderful way to learn what people need. Were you planning on attending at all?
Flynn,
He also insisted I owed him nothing. I would be grateful if you passed along my regards.
Given how much you can trust anything here, I don't see a reason to believe that attending is more or less dangerous than any other way of spending time, and like you say, it's a way to find out what's going on in the city. We could meet there.
- Paul
He also insisted I owed him nothing. I would be grateful if you passed along my regards.
Given how much you can trust anything here, I don't see a reason to believe that attending is more or less dangerous than any other way of spending time, and like you say, it's a way to find out what's going on in the city. We could meet there.
- Paul
Paul,
I would be delighted both to pass on your thanks and to meet you at the Snake Den. Naturally I'll be avoiding touching anything made of bone, but hopefully this will be a normal party with normal drinks and we won't be pulled into any sort of memory. Do you suppose that's asking for trouble, saying something like that?
Hopefully not.
-Flynn
I would be delighted both to pass on your thanks and to meet you at the Snake Den. Naturally I'll be avoiding touching anything made of bone, but hopefully this will be a normal party with normal drinks and we won't be pulled into any sort of memory. Do you suppose that's asking for trouble, saying something like that?
Hopefully not.
-Flynn
Flynn,
If we are, I'm putting that stag over my mantle.
I'll see you there.
- Paul
If we are, I'm putting that stag over my mantle.
I'll see you there.
- Paul
[ Flynn actually laughs aloud at that, grins foolishly down at his Omni, and then searches for a full five minutes for the appropriate picture to send back.
Emojis are hard. ]
👍👍👍👍👍
-Flynn
Emojis are hard. ]
👍👍👍👍👍
-Flynn
un: merlinus; at least twelve hours after their conversation on Paul's post
unsheathedfromreality
2022-01-27 11:00 pm (UTC)(link)
[ooc: cw for dead fish, descriptions of fish innards, fish body horror.]
Paul,
With Ives' supervision, I've examined the fish. I have included photographs of them for your perusal. Much of the divinatory significance is beyond my interpretation as zhrets, without a priest or augur to confirm. I will leave ultimate interpretation to your authority.
There were twenty-eight fish in the original sequence. The twenty-ninth, last of them, was caught the following day as comparison. The first picture in each pair is what the Omni captures and what I presume a human will see when looking at them. The second is through my Omen's eyes. Her sight is much as my own was before I lost it. It may be disorienting at first.
Text in this color represents a word that may not translate correctly from Shriketongue. These are terms pertinent to directions and aspects present only in the higher dimensions.
[The first picture is of a single sunfish set on a piece of oilcloth. A short ruler is laid beside the fish for scale, showing it to be roughly four inches from nose to tail. A shallow x has been cut into the flesh of its top side.
The second picture is identical in subject, but represents the Omni's absolute best attempt to compress a four+-dimensional image down into three dimensions. The sunfish, the cloth beneath it, the earth beneath the cloth, the roots beneath the earth, are all visible in a view the brain insists on interpreting as a cross-sectional profile while still showing the entirety of the three-dimensional structure, inside and outside. The fish's innards appear normal. It had eaten an insect shortly before being caught.]
This is the twenty-ninth fish. It is as normal and healthy as any fish caught from the Salt Lake during the full moon.
[The third picture is twenty-nine sunfish, lined up in very widely spaced rows of six. The marked fish is the last, on the right, in the bottom row. To all appearances the other twenty-eight fish are also "normal and healthy," varying only subtly in size and coloration from the last fish.
In the fourth picture, all but the last fish--the control--are totally opaque to Iskierka's high-dimensional sight. The first fish is subtly monstrous, with surplus fins in the additional dimension(s) and odd projections on its scales; the last fish is no longer recognizable as a fish, being instead a massive teratoma of disparate sea life nearly twelve inches in diameter. Eyes of every conceivable description stud its flat surfaces. Some are human and may seem horribly familiar. All seem to follow the viewer, no matter what angle or distance the Omni is held at.]
These are the fish as I caught them. Their inward selves appeared wholly dead as of this photograph, by Ives' confirmation. Some of them were still moving their outward parts.
When gutted, all of them contained more offal than fish their size should hold. This held true whether I started my cuts from an inward or outward direction. I understand the volume of the entrails to speak to the extent and chaos of the coming battle, though the signs of the organs in each fish otherwise contradicted each other. Many of these organs also had eyes or mouths where they did not belong. I have included individual photographs of the entrails in an appendix to this report, if you are more skilled in haruspicy than I.
The last of the fish did not contain a heart. Nevertheless, it was alive when I caught it.
In addition to the offal, many of the fish also contained small objects. These include coins, small bones, scraps of film, and flowers. I have included a detailed list of their locations as well as a photograph of the set.
One of the coins had my own sigil on it, but I do not remember where I found it and have since misplaced it entirely.
[The two appendices contain the promised pictures of twenty-eight piles of fish guts--all low-dimensional, thankfully--and the eclectic collection of other objects removed from the fish, along with a list of where they were retrieved from.
Many of the objects have blatant Sleeper symbolism. Others appear to be meaningless (but who ever knows with prescience).
Some of the Sleepers' tokens were found in stomachs or mouths. At least one was broken in half.]
Paul,
With Ives' supervision, I've examined the fish. I have included photographs of them for your perusal. Much of the divinatory significance is beyond my interpretation as zhrets, without a priest or augur to confirm. I will leave ultimate interpretation to your authority.
There were twenty-eight fish in the original sequence. The twenty-ninth, last of them, was caught the following day as comparison. The first picture in each pair is what the Omni captures and what I presume a human will see when looking at them. The second is through my Omen's eyes. Her sight is much as my own was before I lost it. It may be disorienting at first.
Text in this color represents a word that may not translate correctly from Shriketongue. These are terms pertinent to directions and aspects present only in the higher dimensions.
[The first picture is of a single sunfish set on a piece of oilcloth. A short ruler is laid beside the fish for scale, showing it to be roughly four inches from nose to tail. A shallow x has been cut into the flesh of its top side.
The second picture is identical in subject, but represents the Omni's absolute best attempt to compress a four+-dimensional image down into three dimensions. The sunfish, the cloth beneath it, the earth beneath the cloth, the roots beneath the earth, are all visible in a view the brain insists on interpreting as a cross-sectional profile while still showing the entirety of the three-dimensional structure, inside and outside. The fish's innards appear normal. It had eaten an insect shortly before being caught.]
This is the twenty-ninth fish. It is as normal and healthy as any fish caught from the Salt Lake during the full moon.
[The third picture is twenty-nine sunfish, lined up in very widely spaced rows of six. The marked fish is the last, on the right, in the bottom row. To all appearances the other twenty-eight fish are also "normal and healthy," varying only subtly in size and coloration from the last fish.
In the fourth picture, all but the last fish--the control--are totally opaque to Iskierka's high-dimensional sight. The first fish is subtly monstrous, with surplus fins in the additional dimension(s) and odd projections on its scales; the last fish is no longer recognizable as a fish, being instead a massive teratoma of disparate sea life nearly twelve inches in diameter. Eyes of every conceivable description stud its flat surfaces. Some are human and may seem horribly familiar. All seem to follow the viewer, no matter what angle or distance the Omni is held at.]
These are the fish as I caught them. Their inward selves appeared wholly dead as of this photograph, by Ives' confirmation. Some of them were still moving their outward parts.
When gutted, all of them contained more offal than fish their size should hold. This held true whether I started my cuts from an inward or outward direction. I understand the volume of the entrails to speak to the extent and chaos of the coming battle, though the signs of the organs in each fish otherwise contradicted each other. Many of these organs also had eyes or mouths where they did not belong. I have included individual photographs of the entrails in an appendix to this report, if you are more skilled in haruspicy than I.
The last of the fish did not contain a heart. Nevertheless, it was alive when I caught it.
In addition to the offal, many of the fish also contained small objects. These include coins, small bones, scraps of film, and flowers. I have included a detailed list of their locations as well as a photograph of the set.
One of the coins had my own sigil on it, but I do not remember where I found it and have since misplaced it entirely.
[The two appendices contain the promised pictures of twenty-eight piles of fish guts--all low-dimensional, thankfully--and the eclectic collection of other objects removed from the fish, along with a list of where they were retrieved from.
Many of the objects have blatant Sleeper symbolism. Others appear to be meaningless (but who ever knows with prescience).
Some of the Sleepers' tokens were found in stomachs or mouths. At least one was broken in half.]
Edited 2022-01-27 23:02 (UTC)
[The fish are difficult to look at in the most literal possible sense. Paul is only able to maintain his focus on them with sheer force of will, and even then, it's as if he's trying to press together repulsing magnetic fields. It hurts parts of his mind that are incapable of feeling pain.
He needs to see. He huddles in a folded lotus on the floor of the bare cell in the Sanctuary and he stares until the sea comes to take him, the undertow of dreams pulling him from his body.
The beach. The wave. The beach again. The pattern rarely varies anymore, now that it's been set. Still, without Lazarus' guidance, the details shift and blur. Clarity is lost. He rises to his feet in a vision that has no weight, a gauzy, silver-tinted paleness. The steps that lie in front of him do not have the assertiveness of stone, the sky overhead does not bear true light, and the choir -
The choir is worse to look at than the fish in the way that the sun is worse to look at than a candle. Paul sees into it, and through it, and into it, into the many segmented, clashing layers of its past, its doubled, tripled, hundredfold perspectives and anatomies. He perceives eyes. He perceives teeth. He perceives no distinctions, no boundaries, he forgets, he forgets, he forgets.
There is a coin in his hand. There is a coin in another hand. There are feathers and fine bones and new eyes, a golden bursting profusion of them, and they both turn to observe the intrusion-severance-inwards that invades the choir as a disease.
The choir raises a blade that shines like invisible light, and severs an arm at the elbow. By this time, the few Disciples that visit this deep in the Sanctuary have learned to ignore the screams.]
Merlinus,
Thank you. I appreciate your thoroughness, as ever. This has confirmed several of my suspicions.
I believe I found your coin, but I also misplaced it. If I come across it in the Waking World, would you like it returned to you?
Paul
He needs to see. He huddles in a folded lotus on the floor of the bare cell in the Sanctuary and he stares until the sea comes to take him, the undertow of dreams pulling him from his body.
The beach. The wave. The beach again. The pattern rarely varies anymore, now that it's been set. Still, without Lazarus' guidance, the details shift and blur. Clarity is lost. He rises to his feet in a vision that has no weight, a gauzy, silver-tinted paleness. The steps that lie in front of him do not have the assertiveness of stone, the sky overhead does not bear true light, and the choir -
The choir is worse to look at than the fish in the way that the sun is worse to look at than a candle. Paul sees into it, and through it, and into it, into the many segmented, clashing layers of its past, its doubled, tripled, hundredfold perspectives and anatomies. He perceives eyes. He perceives teeth. He perceives no distinctions, no boundaries, he forgets, he forgets, he forgets.
There is a coin in his hand. There is a coin in another hand. There are feathers and fine bones and new eyes, a golden bursting profusion of them, and they both turn to observe the intrusion-severance-inwards that invades the choir as a disease.
The choir raises a blade that shines like invisible light, and severs an arm at the elbow. By this time, the few Disciples that visit this deep in the Sanctuary have learned to ignore the screams.]
Merlinus,
Thank you. I appreciate your thoroughness, as ever. This has confirmed several of my suspicions.
I believe I found your coin, but I also misplaced it. If I come across it in the Waking World, would you like it returned to you?
Paul
Edited 2022-01-30 03:55 (UTC)
Paul,
I am, as ever, glad to be of service.
Where did you find it?
Merlinus
PS: I would appreciate its return. It's uncomfortable having a piece of myself somewhere I can't retrieve it.
I am, as ever, glad to be of service.
Where did you find it?
Merlinus
PS: I would appreciate its return. It's uncomfortable having a piece of myself somewhere I can't retrieve it.
Merlinus,
I perceived it in a dream, though I couldn't see it, and I find myself unable to describe it, or how I knew it was yours.
I apologize for my carelessness with it, in that case.
Paul
I perceived it in a dream, though I couldn't see it, and I find myself unable to describe it, or how I knew it was yours.
I apologize for my carelessness with it, in that case.
Paul
Paul,
Did you see any eyes?
Did you meet their gaze?
Accepted and forgiven. I lost it to begin with and must assume it mislikes being held.
Merlinus
Did you see any eyes?
Did you meet their gaze?
Accepted and forgiven. I lost it to begin with and must assume it mislikes being held.
Merlinus
[paul...........]
Paul,
Something's a little odd about your previous message. I can't put my finger on it.
Does your world have a notion of contagious madness?
Merlinus
Paul,
Something's a little odd about your previous message. I can't put my finger on it.
Does your world have a notion of contagious madness?
Merlinus
Merlinus,
eYes. Is that something we could use, do you think?
Paul
Paul
[He's got Iskierka sitting on his shoulder now, reading along and relaying.]
Paul,
My people have before in battle. A consequence of meeting our eyes.
Especially those not ordinarily seen.
Are you feeling well?
Merlinus
Paul,
My people have before in battle. A consequence of meeting our eyes.
Especially those not ordinarily seen.
Are you feeling well?
Merlinus
Merlinus,
Well eyenough, but you're beginning to concern me.
What should Ilook for?
Paul
Well e
What should I
Paul
I don't know. What is the difference between a jeweler and a jailer?
I'll have to steal that one from you, once I find out what a watch is.
This isn't you telling me you're in a cell, is it?
This isn't you telling me you're in a cell, is it?
That's not worse. Switching to riddles when you're frustrated is a good idea.
I should ask if you'd like advice first. Would you like advice?
I should ask if you'd like advice first. Would you like advice?
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