thecrossing

[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.]

[Ah. Something settles into place in Celehar's mind, about the picture being painted. A man fearful and angry of outsiders, attempting to argue from a position of power against those he mistrusts, collecting fear and anger on the inside and lashing out at any and all around him, then put into the hands of his rivals - not only that, a weapon of his rivals. Maybe even his enemies, if paranoia had fully taken him, in his exhaustion.

He turns to catch Need's eye, watching for her reaction to his next question. It's not an interrogation really, but there is an importance to the way things are said as much as the contents of the words.]

You thought he might resent you for it?

[He's become intent suddenly. Need considers, unable to see past the skin to what he's looking for.]

It was possible. Certainly many people are put off by me and I can't work against resistance, so if he hadn't accepted my help we would all have been the worse off.

But he was also in the company of people who'd half-raised him and knew me, or knew of me, and said it would be all right. That helped - "Treyvan and Hydona think we can stand with these outsiders" and "Need trusts Treyvan and Hydona so their 'featherless son' can't be all bad", that sort of thing.

[Well, that is interesting. Can't work against resistance is a particular phrasing - it, added to her concern with the working of name magic, paints a picture of skills that much more require the active participation of both parties.

And yet that too seems to hobble her concern that had brought her to bring up the subject in the first place - they will not be the subject of her working, in that memory.]

Truthfully, Othalo, I do not imagine the memory would be any more painful than that we faced before. In a more bittersweet way, perhaps... but you need not worry for them. [The children, obviously.]

[well. she can't Heal or change the body of someone who's not willing, anyway.]

Call me a pessimist, but I don't trust that it will be easier. It might be. Maybe the unpleasantness of all of this will vary. If there's a pitfall, it will have to be an escapable one, I hope.

[She doesn't trust, period. There's also the possibility that this situation is wrong and not, as both of them profess, the only actual option and something to pursue with grace. Need can't actually dismiss that. The lack of any of the spirits she might expect here...]

But that's my problem to untangle. Have you decided on one yourself?

It is not meant to be a trial we cannot overcome.

[Overestimating himself, again. But he does truly believe it - believe in the Ferryman, and it echoes in his words. As much as he nearly failed the first Crossing, was nearly lost to the dark water, if there's any blame to be laid there, he clearly thinks it must be laid at his own feet, for his own lack of - strength? Moral character? Sheer terrible sentimentality?

Just as well the topic is happier memories. He does not voice this, but simply nods.]

Amalo is a city of a dozen pilgrimages, and they are meant to find peace and resolve.

Hm. Not without each others' help, maybe.

[Maybe that's why she's here. As a shoulder to lean on. Others would do it better, she knows. Feel less irritation towards these poor children, isn't as caught in the push and pull of being able to provide guidance and knowing not to just override peoples' decisions.]

Pilgrimages! [Need's startled into a smile. She knows the word, but hasn't heard it in a while. They were more common before the Cataclysm. Even the enclave of the Sisterhood she'd been part of while alive had been a site of pilgrimage, she's vaguely inclined to believe.] Are there shrines?

Else why bring such strangers together? I agree.

[He's of a similar mind, that he's been brought here for a reason - is grateful, he thinks, that death is not so lonely a prospect as he might have feared, if he'd come to think of facing it in long, quiet moments.]

Some, yes. All have tokens for the pilgrim to take. Not elaborate things - small stones, or a weaving, or a embossed coin. There is one that is a half-carved stair. Another, a maze among the corn crops grown by the Orshaneise, another at the bottom of a well. [He grimaces.] One atop the Hill of Werewolves. Perhaps it would have been more pleasant in the day, but I endured it as a trial.

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