thecrossing

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[The Crossing is coming again.

There is no advance warning from The Ferryman this time. There is nothing to draw your attention towards the message that appears on your device, whatever it may be, except perhaps the expectation that it should be appearing soon.

Whether you think to check for it or you simply stumble upon it, the words are there just as before:]

A toll to be levied for safe passage
from the desert to ǝɹǝɥʍǝsʅǝ

envision a place of comfort and safety
a haven from the wants and ills of life
be it for a moment or for a lifetime

offer it to The Ferryman
and let go

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[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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