thecrossing

Hm. Try thinking of it the other way. Have you ever created a moment of comfort or safety for someonething else? Convinced an animal to trust you, say?

[Need considers becoming distracted as Celehar has to once again wrestle to speak clearly. She's certainly curious. It would mean giving him a reprieve, but also without the ability to read into someone she doesn't know if pressing will work.]

Prelate... if you don't mind. [She exhales through her nose and half-smiles, wryly.] Can I ask if you were ever injured in the throat, or born like this?

I am roughened by a youth of shouting and however many decades of breathing smoke, and because I was seventy or so. [Her voice certainly isn't as harsh as his, but it's got a deep cracked gravel element.] Which - for humans that's not ancient, but it's old. How old are you, and is it old for an elf?

I don't think feeding sardines to cats counts, Othalo.

[Certainly not when the cats were never his. Unbidden, he wonders how quickly they stopped collecting on the stoop, when he disappeared. He brushes the thought away. There is a reason he never named them.

The question doesn't appear to offend, though it takes Celehar out of thoughts of the Crossing entirely. He doesn't clear his throat again - normally he's not self-conscious of his voice, and it doesn't often leave a burr in his throat, but the attention drawn to it makes him aware, in a way he is not always.

There is little sting to be perceived - after all, Need is right in that her own voice is rough, as well, albeit in different ways.]

Not an injury, but sessiva - a fever plague. It swept my first prelacy. I was lucky. [Compared to death, blindness, deafness - yes, he considers himself entirely lucky.]

Do you ask because of my hair? [He's seen from hers, and in goblins, that hair often enough goes white and silver with age - his own, curling in the dry heat, hangs down his black coat mostly confined to its braid.] It is Elvish coloring. I am some thirty years, but one hundred is not unheard of, among the nobility.

You do that, do you? [She's teasing a bit with the instant reply:] It could. They're wary beasts, so if one climbs on your lap or lets you pet it, it's not nothing.

[He looks startled and the foreboding aspect lessens at the question. Need nods slightly to herself.]

I don't know the name 'sessiva', but it sounds like a bad one. [She thinks of saying something about Tarma, but since her very first thought was that over the eighty years between Tarma being strangled and her actual death her voice went from shocking and hard to parse to merely unpleasant, she doesn't. It's unkind to tell a dead man that he might have healed a little if he'd survived.]

Hmm. Yes, actually! It's difficult for me to measure age. I was wondering if you were albino, but you've got strong eyes and don't have that translucent aspect.

[and now, appropos of nothing but the thought that it must be strange for him to have none of his own kind around, she's gonna 'splain humans to him a bit:]

Human coloration is thanks to brown-black, red, and yellow pigments. Different amounts and proportions give us the inherent colors of our skin, eyes, and hair. Our skin darkens to try and protect us from the sun. Our hair lightens with age and exposure to magic. Mine used to be black. Some forms of it also lighten our eyes to gray and blue.

[Something about the way she says it makes him feel unaccountably like he's being teased - he doesn't clear his throat again, but he looks to the side, consciously stilling his ears so that they might not give him away.

There is, luckily, some topics he can dodge away from the subject of cats for - and, perhaps what Need intended, it certainly distracts him from mulling over the oncoming Crossing, at least for a moment.]

It is not maz that does so - elves are pale, goblins dark, though in cooler tones than the humans I have seen. And all things in ranges, in places where both live. Certainly elven eyes are not the result of maz-working, though I've no doubt some would latch onto such a claim, if it could be made.

[The explanation of Elves and Goblins is one he's given before - he holds no grudge about it, though he's now wondering, of some of those he's seen here. The only part of it that's sour is the last sentence.]

[Well, that's someone trying not to react to being poked at. She makes a mental note: Celehar and cats. Find a reason to bring it up.]

Sounds like you know some elves who're overly proud of the distinction.

[Need tilts her head a few degrees.]

When I first saw you there was a moment when I thought you were of the Tayledras. They all have, you'd say a calling, that bleaches them so young that it's part of puberty, and they're none of them all that large.

[Spontaneously she adds:] They might be kin of mine. There's a little resemblance, but it might just be coincidence.

[...hmm, that kind of thing makes it sound like she spends a lot of time looking for remnants of the world she knew. She doesn't, it wouldn't do any good.]

You should come to me if you ever have a question about humans. I know the subject.

There are some elves, Othalo, who are overly proud of everything.

[Celehar's expression says all that needs to be said about that - a very impolitic grimace that he only belatedly thinks to disguise by turning to look out over the dunes where the faint shadow of the wraiths can be seen. The Celehada linger in his mind, but he does not mention them - being disowned is part of that, but explaining the circumstances of that is a diversion too far, by his measure.

He does note, however, the language there - the possibility, buried in that implication, that when they'd first hauled themselves out of the river she'd carried, however briefly, the impression that he might be a people not so different from hers.]

What calling is it they follow? As for the Ethuveraz, I hardly know everything. But you may ask questions in turn.

[Easier to invite her to ask questions of the Elflands as a whole than to offer answers as to himself, of course.]

Ahhhh. [Need smiles rather grimly and not just because Celehar had looked like a cat smelling a lemon and then remembered to appear composed. This, too, is a seemingly universal prejudice, and one she knows she's not immune to herself.]

The Tayledras calling is cleansing the aftereffects of a weapon that... [Pause. Need had fought for Urtho, had liked him - he'd been very likeable - but her existence is broken into pre-Cataclysm and post-Cataclysm.] Killed almost everyone on the continent, frankly, either immediately or in the fallout. It's been slow going, but they've made great progress. Whole countries have been established that never knew their land was warped at all.

Tell me something about names. You called me something when we were still half in the river and seemed put off when I told you to call me a single one-syllable word. And you prefer people to call you by the second of the two you give.

A weapon that powerful... [Celehar trails off, his words and tone slipping off into horrified incredulity. With the nascency of airships, and the stricture of Maz, the worst disasters he has seen have been fires - but eisonsar explosions, stretched in his mind to the breadth of a continent, is enough to beggar belief.] It seems to me a miracle that the people or the land could recover.

[Just the memory of the burnt bodies makes it difficult to move on - he has to take a few seconds of silence before he does, and the distraction loosens his grip on his usual bluntness.]

"Need" is a very un-elvish name. [He says it, then dips his head in a slightly apologetic fashion, recognizing how that might sound rude.] First I called you Merrem - it is the proper address for a married woman. [Which - he's still not sure if he got right, in fact. Need has spoken of wielders, but never of a partner. When she speaks of her life before the sword, it seems most often to be in abstract.] Othalo or Othala is for a dedicant of the gods. I am most often Othala, or Othala Celehar.

[As for the rest...] A given name is... intimate. To call a stranger thus would be - presumptive to the point of rudeness. [He sighs.] I understand it is different for many here.

[Need starts to say something, then sighs instead.] It was a miracle, from the sound of things.

[After the Cataclysm she'd been asleep for... what, ten years? more? until Mel came to claim her from the temple where she'd been stashed. Mel was addled by the effects, as a lot of mages had been, and before long Need had chosen Pol and sent herself back to sleep helping her. By the time she woke again things weren't as dire. Remembering this, in that pause she's quiet too, and a little startled and amused when Celehar moves on.]

Need's not a name, but I can't have everyone calling me "you". And I never had a man at all, let alone a commitment. No woman either, I think. Men, especially, either don't like women with a face and arms like mine, or they do but only because they think they belong to a man. Sorting that out was just... [She flicks her eyes upwards in a sarcastic gesture. This is a faintly derisive aside, not an admission of vulnerability; something that had been painful when she was young and became silly with more perspective.] Work was more compelling. And then I was in the Sisterhood, and we were expected to be chaste and celibate within the walls of the enclave anyway.

[She doesn't mind being called 'othalo'. It's hard to care too much about what people call her, but she vaguely favors 'Sister' over other prefixes and that's something close enough to nod to.]

Given names just mean something different for a lot of them. For you it's not so prosaic. [She wants to say 'why tell it to others at all?' but it has the whiff of one of those cultural tendencies that trying to pick apart won't help with.] Family or clan - is that what it is? - must be important in the, the Ethuveraz.

[Need reminds him of some of the older Elven women he's met - having reached a venerable age, they'd determined - and rightly so - that their positions in their house were secure, that they certainly didn't have to worry about impressing anyone, and as such could speak their minds on any number of subjects that a younger woman might seek to be more diplomatic about.

Though it's hard to picture Need as ever settling herself to be diplomatic at best.

In this case, the casual mention of having a woman, as though it's an option simply available for consideration, seems to freeze him in place for just that moment. The Crossing is hazy in retrospect, and he'd almost managed to convince himself that he'd not told her he was marnis, but the casual mention seems, to his mind, to prove otherwise. He opens his mouth, then snaps it closed again, biting the inside of his cheek to wait ruthlessly for her to finish, and for him to master his own words.]

... There is nothing wrong with devoting oneself to a Calling.

[Convincing yourself, Celehar? He glances away, answering the actual question, instead.]

One's House, yes. It is why being Foundling is a grim fate. [Or disowned.]

[Need doesn't miss the sudden tension and something close to fear that Celehar rapidly clamps down on. She had brought up women - she knows she'd been more interested in men, back when she cared about intimacy, but is pretty sure she wouldn't rule out women - partly to signal she was open to talking about that kind of thing.]

Of course there's not. There's no tragedy in going unpartnered. I was happy with my Sisters, I wouldn't have left them for a set of well-turned legs and a nice smile. It's only natural for some people to fill that need with other forms of love.

[Romance had never been a very high priority for her anyway, but she's seen people to whom it was still end up happy without filling it. It's one of those things that she has to remind herself is individual, and she can't just dismiss it as unimportant for everyone.

Celehar seems very reluctant to talk about his House. Hmm, and he'd expected her to push him away when he'd admitted to having had a male lover... it's not necessarily that simple, she tells herself, but it's suggestive. Need knows what being clanless means and this may be in the same constellation. She hesitates. Celehar looks like he might panic or go entirely wooden. She wishes she could tell what step is too far - he is afraid of her, after all.]

...I'm not going to bite, Prelate. And I don't just spread rumors. [She puts on a smile, offers an out.] You'd rather talk about what's to come?

[Of course he understands the implications, of her saying that she won't spread rumors - That's not the sort of thing that could be said if one didn't have information worth spreading rumors about.

He believes her, when she says she doesn't. That hardly makes it easier to point his thoughts in another direction. Celehar turns towards her, clasping his hands behind his back to keep any tremor in them from catching her eye or consuming his attention.]

In time. You asked about names, Othalo. The other truth of the matter is this - names have power. There are name-maz, which might work on the living, or in my Calling, the name of the dead, which settles the soul to rest. [They've talked about this - and it's steering once more into dangerous territory, but after all, isn't this why she would ask? (Or would he choose an argument to avoid the vulnerability?)]

It is with a name and a marker that we tend the dead. Some sects might theorize that it is the name itself, that gives rise to the soul - that this is why even children must be named, before their burial. There are some, the Vikhelneisei, whose names, they claim, are between themselves and the gods, but their belief does not quiet the ghouls.

[Celehar seems to be taking some refuge in formality. Well, determination not to talk about it is probably better than naked fear or rigidity, Need supposes.]

I could see their point when they're still alive. That's a tremendous vulnerability. You non-Vikhelneisei must not fear mages... maza, was it? to go by both names at all, rather than, I don't know, having them recorded and revealing them on death.

In Velgarth - well. We've had a lot of peoples who believed a lot of different things over time. But we do have one 'name-maz' of our own: it's possible to use someone's name to learn their past. Though it's a lot of effort to learn much, especially the longer ago something was.

[Need acknowledges that Celehar would like to have her name with a little tilt of the head. Her past is so removed that learning anything would be an unbelievably wasteful and selfish act, even if she remembered her name. It's passed from the world as all things pass.]

Changing names or taking on titles obfuscates it. If you worked this on Hesri Fire-Bride, you couldn't get much about when she was Hestien. [Had Hesri had a family name as Hestien? Need doesn't remember.] How does name-changing factor for you?

It is - anathema.

[Celehar shakes his head. With the Ferryman's light behind him, he considers the dune, then settles onto it with a sigh - his coat might be dusty, but it's better than the mud, and in truth the wandering is beginning to get to him.]

One's House and title might change, in degrees - adoption or marriage change the House name. I know not how it affects the name-seeking maz to change in these ways, but to change a name entirely...

[He presses his lips together.] I have told you, of the man who murdered his wives? He was convicted for their murders, not for obscuring his identity each time he did so again. He did so three times, that we knew of - simply because it seemed so outlandish as to not require a law against it. He will be buried with all three on his grave marker.

[Need raises her eyebrows to hear this. It seems odd to her that the elves change their House names - the ones they want most people to call them? - when otherwise it's taboo and scandalous, but culture is like that sometimes. She can see, through the habitual reflex to control anger, that Celehar does find murder considerably worse than name-changing, which is something. If it was the other way around she'd have to completely change her mental image of him.

Celehar really wouldn't get on with Firesong, she thinks, who would probably find a high horse to get on about this. Need's not going to make the case for changing names. Some cultures feel differently about it than others and while she might lean more towards the Tayledras in this way, it's a mild and distant lean. Not something she can get worked up about in the abstract.

Maybe this is part of Celehar's antipathy towards her, that she can so casually talk about forgetting and going by a word that isn't a name.]

And his [she clears her throat-] victims were buried given these false names, were they? Has someone gone and changed them back?

[She's gone and assumed that much of the taboo of it is claiming a nonexistent relationship to one of these Houses rather than intrinsic.]

I've had an enemy a bit like that. But he's a heavy subject that would be difficult. I'd like to describe the memory I might give up and try to work out if or how it could be used to hurt you lot before we actually Cross.

[Need says it with a little mordant humor. The Mage of Black Flames - she's called him Falconsbane for her young friends since they think of him by the final name he held, and it's correct for his final incarnation, but as a whole entity no one name seems right to her - is everything Celehar fears she is and more.]

[Just remembering that man - Broset Sheveldar, Segevis Michezar, Crois Avelonar - the mention of it and the remembrance renders him equal parts frustrated and concerned.]

The women he targeted were those he could isolate from their families, poison to death, and make off with their inheritance. Two we found through clerics, who remembered their sick young woman, and her uncaring husband. There may be others - there were gaps, between the victims he discovered.

[He seems to realize the grim picture he's painting, so Celehar adds,]

Min Inshiran Urmenezhen's brother and sisters brought her to be buried in her family plot, not to leave her as Merrem Avelonaran. For the others... it will depend if their family can be found - if any remain.

[A grim topic, but then they so often end up upon them - Celehar can never, it seems, stop himself from clouding conversations with it. A wonder that Pel-Thenhior seems - seemed - to tolerate it from him.

But there's a direct question, being asked - and so Celehar turns to Need.]

Needst not refrain from paying the Toll, for our sakes - but if it weighs on you, I would hear it, Othalo.

[Need nods a bit stiffly.]

I've seen that sort of thing before. Sometimes the victims know but social consequences make it hard for them to have any ways to escape it.

[There's no shying away from grim topics. If anything, she's less aware of them here than ever before, with so few people around and no Empathy.]

My fear for this memory is you'll call me kind again. I can bear it.

[She says quite solemnly, invoking waiting for stern judgement without actually playacting it. ...It's really that she can't un-tell Celehar about the kinds of things she'd been able to do and can't relate this without at least hinting at them. She pauses to turn her face to the wind and draw a deep breath of it, eyes on the horizon.]

I'm a very good Healer. Some years ago I was put into the hands of a boy - a young Tayledras man, he was about twenty - who'd collapsed. Darkwind k'Sheyna. I was inclined to dislike him, but then I saw what he'd gone through recently, the strain he'd borne. Loss of a loved one, terrible revelations, his so-powerful father who'd become cold and hateful was their enemy's puppet and had tried to protect him by driving him away, near-disaster many times. Darkwind was heartbroken and at the end of his strength but still had a duty and kept trying to meet it.

So I... [and Need is uncomfortable here] felt for him and I said he'd suffered, and he should let me help. He let me. He thought of, hm, his... mother... of how it felt to be embraced and made safe, and I Healed his exhaustion.

[Darkwind was one of the comparatively few people who thought of her as a friend, genuinely, without reserve. She coughs and has to force herself to turn back towards Celehar.]

[Whether it could be used to hurt - given that phrasing, Celehar in truth came to expect something like the memories of the dead, as he's used to them. Suffering and pain, perhaps even Need's own death, though he can't square that against the Toll, at first. A single kindness to the dying?

It's the straight-faced joke that starts to clue him in, lifts the start of a pinch of concern away from his brow. No, whatever the concern is, this is something else. He listens through the explanation with equal solemnity, the only retort, if it could be called that, to Need's self-deprecation is a faint raising of his eyebrows, one that shifts instead towards a more puzzled silence the longer she speaks.]

You followed your Calling.

[How neatly summarized it is, like this. And yet the pieces don't fit together - by his measure, Need's response is out of proportion with that simple summary. Where then is the disconnect? Darkwind himself, the actions that he had taken to make Need dislike him in the first place? Or the hesitation around Darkwind's conjuring of a mother's embrace. To be sure, it would be a bittersweet remembrance to any who had lost such a thing, but there is no comfort that would not be painful in the loss.

The fact of the Healing? But surely he has spoken of the Clerics of Csaivo, at least in some measure.

He mulls over it, the way he does a Witnessing, and decides to begin by finding a thread and tugging at it. Start at the end, and work back.]

How does the Healing maz work, to remedy exhaustion?

A good all-purpose response. I think I said something to the effect of 'thank my bearer'. It was her strength, directed at her discretion. [Need snorts.] She said if I didn't help him she'd drop me in a well! That's Her Highness for you.

[If Celehar has any visible reaction to 'dropped in a well' she's certainly going to pause.

Need is bringing this up in the first place because she doesn't trust that this Crossing will be easier than the last, that the only bite of it will be giving up a better memory. If it's voices again, well, this couldn't harm her and would mean little to others beyond 'Need is not as hard as she wants to seem'. That's embarrassing but not devastating. There must be some way it can be used to make the Crossing difficult. Not to her, she thinks - she's not giving up having had Darkwind as a friend, just their meeting - but to someone.

She wonders if Celehar's missed the implications - that she'd been able to see memories, read thoughts - or if they don't bother him enough to show.]

It's tricky business to do well, I'll admit. I have to come up with some metaphors or I'll be an hour explaining technical concepts.

Edited (forgot a line) 2025-04-02 19:27 (UTC)

[Called on his usual response - it's often a deflection when he says it, though still true, for his Calling holds him ever to the truth. He acknowledges that only with a twitch of ears, latching onto a different point instead, the implication of friction in the threat, rather than the mechanical reality of it.]

Did you and your bearers often disagree on your course of action?

[As for the rest;] By all means, Othalo. A technical definition is apt to be beyond me. Even my own Calling I am given to describe in metaphor. Even calling it speaking to the dead is only an approximation at best.

Often enough. They've always had their own lives and their own interests, and I can get in the way.

[She tips her head back a moment. 'Speaking to the dead' isn't quite what he did, hmm? He does think anything but passivity is unnatural.]

Picture a pond with a little stream running to it and a little stream running from it. You have a bucket. This is your only source of water. If you only dip out so much in a day and then can rest it fills itself back up and all your water is sweet and clear, but of course that's not always possible. The less water there is the more muddy it is.

Now, sometimes someone with their own pond can fill a barrel for you. If they don't know what they're doing the barrel leaks and they just dump the water in and churn the water up. Your pond fills back up but it's murky for a while and there's a lot of waste and footprints. What will fill the pond with sweet, clear water is more like rain.

[She grins suddenly.] Which is not how that would actually work.

[The soul is an onion. Maybe he won't seem quite so reverent after he pulls out that particular comparison. For now, though, he listens to that, thoughtfully - at least until Need fills in that last part. He doesn't roll his eyes. It's a near thing.]

Metaphors are at best imperfect, I understand.

Nevertheless, in this circumstance, you might provide the barrel... or, if the water is flowing murky, you might install a dam, to control the flow, or some net to filter away the silt. Or embank the river that it might flow more smoothly and clear the pond once more. Perhaps repair their bucket, if it instead were to become damaged.

[He doesn't roll his eyes, but enough exasperation shows that she snorts.]

And if someone's expecting donations they can pave a footpath and set up a receptacle so there's not so much disruption to their pond or the space around it, even if their friend is clumsy. So there's plenty that can be done. Incidentally, the outflow from those ponds forms 'rivers' and 'lakes'. Mages draw on those to supplement our own reservoirs. That's what I 'ate'.

[Celehar might remember this when Need writes about batteries and the energy released in pain and death.]

Now that we've wandered around in the reeds, the point is that going to any real effort releases poisons of a sort in the body, and therefore the mind, and these accumulate if there isn't a chance for proper rest. Yes? [she asks this because she is entirely certain Celehar is familiar with that state of being.] It's not hard to give energy to the weary but on its own that doesn't clear the poisons. You can still get that poor judgement and temper and so on.

I can neutralize poison. Any Healer can, but the effort's just not usually worth the benefits, especially if they have more serious concerns. I'm more efficient about it and the bottom of my 'pond' is all oiled steel. It's still not good for me when the water level drops too low, but there's no mud to stir up.

[A chronic insomniac like Celehar - the penchant for exhaustion certainly shows in his own impression of himself - something about the accumulation of lines around his mouth, the impression of himself as someone with the dark smudges of sleeplessness below his eyes.]

The Clerics of Csaivo, in my experience, might recommend sleep and rest, rather than healing such a thing. With any number of remedies that one might try.

[Though they're not magical souls kept in swords, and are often called on to help enough people that they have to worry about their own reserves - and the 'mud', in the metaphor.]

It seems to me, that your intention was in fact to cure Mer Darkwind of his ill temper and poor judgement - and the despair that comes hand in hand with them.

The clerics are right! You don't want to have people walking around never resting because someone's taking care of it. It's not good for anyone involved to have it be anything but a rare gift.

[an old, vague memory stirs - the weight of Duty, the ache that wouldn't let up - but she lets it slip away, it would take a long time to explain and Celehar would just be dismayed.]

Well, yes. He's a good b- a good young man but the worse off he is, the more he gives in to internalized prejudice, like hatred for outsiders. [Need has to keep herself from thinking about how he treated Nyara before Need arrived.] And he was locking horns with my Elspeth, who's a headstrong royal brat. Getting those two idiots to stop posturing about territories and travel-rights so they'd work together against a common enemy was important.

[she has not addressed the despair.]

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