Demiurge
It was nearing sundown at the chantry, and
all around the property the late-summer insects were humming with
twilight energy. The day had been almost oppressively hot, the kind of
heat that drained a person's energy and left them feeling hazy and
sluggish. Ian had returned from his most recent scouting mission and
jumped almost immediately into the shower. Some days the cold water was a
shock to the system, but on days like this, without the benefits of
climate control, it was a welcome relief from the heat.
Last
night, he'd spotted a couple of walkers near the edge of the property,
but they were old and half-rotted and easy enough to dispatch. Today
there'd been no sign of them. Yet. Maybe the vague sense of anticipation
in the air was more a result of the waiting than anything else. Waiting
did that. It made you almost hope for something - anything - to happen.
Now
that he'd showered and eaten, Ian was sitting on one of the sofas in
the living room, gazing out the windows at the horses in the pasture.
They were romping around together, enjoying the respite from the day's
heat as the sun set behind them.
What were they doing here,
anymore? Did they intend to stay, or was this merely a rest-stop on the
trail of some greater journey? No one had yet asked that question out
loud. It was hard to know what to do when you weren't even sure how much
of the world was real.
Kalen Holliday
[Nightmares]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Kalen Holliday
Kalen,
who has spent almost all his time inside in the library and definitely
not in places like the living room, pauses there today when he sees Ian
there. He's had time to make at least some peace with what his memories
are (and aren't). He's had the chance to talk to Ian, at least.
And...that had gone alright. Once.
It's
enough that he stops and then, a bit hesitantly, makes his way toward
Ian and settles on the same couch, but at the far end. They're hardly
in a place where they're in each other's space again, regardless of how
their last conversation went.
"Hey," he says quietly.
Sid
Despite
the heat, Sid has continued to recover from her four-day fast. Still
not quite up to the task of scouting again, she mostly remains indoors
checking their supplies, or makes her way outside to check on the
horses. No one has asked what they'll do next, no one has made any
suggestions. But for Sid, real or not real as this world is, she
doesn't intend to saty here forever. For her, it depends on what Kalen
discovers in the library, if anything. He and Kalen came here for
answers. Sid had hers the moment their horses' hooves touched the
property line.
At least she's clean again. At least she's
eating. Ian doesn't have to watch her to make sure she doesn't topple
over into something, though the trails she leaves when she walks
barefoot through the grass are still meandering and shaky.
The day
is oppressively hot and still Sid persists in wearing jeans with her
t-shirt. Today, when she makes her way downstairs, it's the first time
she's seen Kalen since...since...The march of days has lost its meaning
for her. It's the first time she's seen him in a while, she thinks, and
that makes her stop at the end of the hallway, just inside the living
room.
"You're up," she says quietly to Kalen.
Demiurge
Ian
glanced over when Kalen sat down on the other end of the white
sectional. With only two of them, the space between the cushions felt
wider somehow, and Ian inclined his head in a manner that seemed almost
tentatively inviting.
"I was beginning to think you'd gotten lost
in the cave." (By this, of course, he meant the library.) "I don't know
what else you think you're going to find in there."
A moment later
Sid appeared at the entrance to the living room, and Ian shifted into
the corner of the sofa to regard her. To take in the state she was in
that evening. She looked better. Perhaps not yet fully recovered, but
more herself. After a silent pause, he stood up and made his way to the
dining room, passing her as he went. "Anyone else feel like a stale
beer?"
Kalen Holliday
Kalen starts to ease a
little closer to Ian. A few seconds later he goes very still when he
hears Sid's voice. He turns his head to look at her, and remains
otherwise motionless. Silent.
He does not retreat. Not into
Ian's space and not out of the room. He does not attack either. It
takes a few slow breaths to remind himself that Sid has done nothing to
warrant such a response. Not in this conversation. Very slowly he
turns to look at her.
Bridging distance is not what he's good at.
He can maintain distance and broaden distance and occasionally fall
through distance like a meteor. Bright. Burning. All gravity and
impact.
“Hello, Sid,” he says.
And then Ian is moving and Kalen is shaking his head about the beer. “No. Thank you.”
Sid
Bridging
distance isn't something Kalen's good at, nor Ian. It's something Sid
could do in the time Before, but became a lost knowledge in the After.
Until the other day, when an epiphany finally roused her from a growing lethargy.
There
is a distance between the Hermetic and the Verbena. Maybe it was
always there, maybe recent conversations pushed it into place. Maybe
Sid finally managed to shine light on it in such a way that Kalen
noticed. Distance doesn't mean separated, though, and however infinite
the gulf between them may seem, Sid knows that they're connected. They
are connected by this place and by what's happened to them and by little
moments in their shared history before this place happened to them and
Sid is closing the physical distance between them. She heads for the
couch, for Kalen's corner of the couch.
"I'd like one," she says to Ian. And unless Kalen rises, Sid settles down on the couch, her warmth pressed in against his side.
Demiurge
In
another life (not even that long ago - but somehow so very far removed
from this one) Ian had not really been known to drink a lot of beer.
(Just as he had not been known to eat coffee-house danishes or pizza or
any number of other things.) Certainly he would never have touched a
beer that was old and warm and of less-than-notable quality. But one
made due with what one had, and right now, what they had was stale
Corona. He'd picked it up at a gas station the other day, although he
probably needn't have wasted the space in his horse's pack on something
so trivial.
Now it was just as good an excuse as any to leave Sid
and Kalen alone for a moment, though they weren't likely to get very far
in the span of time between his exit and his return. As Sid settled
herself in the living room, Ian walked into the kitchen and opened the
cabinet where he'd stored the Corona. He pulled out two bottles, and
took his time hunting down something to open the caps with.
Back
outside, the horses stopped running and grew still, gazing off into the
distance with their ears facing forward. Dusk swatted something on her
flank with her tail.
Kalen Holliday
Kalen extends
his no retreat and no attack philosophy to Sid's approach. His eyes
track her movements, all wary distance. He does not flinch away from
her, makes no move to prevent her from touching him or to push her away
after she does.
Before, he has relaxed into contact. He relaxed
the night he curled up with her and Lena on the couch in another world's
version of this very room. He relaxed and smiled the night she paused
to touch him while he was collapsing on Pan. He does not relax now.
His eyes stay wary.
"Is this what people who don't hate each other
do?" His voice is quiet and full of the kind of distance settling
against his side has not crossed. But there is no anger now. Nothing
cold. Nothing barbed. Nothing venomous.
His attention is almost
entirely on Sid. There is a sliver of it on where Ian went. Not so
much, in this moment, is his attention on the horses.
Sid
"Shhh,"
she says, resting her head against his shoulder. She takes his hand in
both of hers, rolls her head to look at it. Against her pale fingers
Kalen's skin is almost ruddy by comparison. "Stop saying the wrong
things and just listen."
Which is when she goes silent. One hand
releases his. The one still holding him presses the back of his hand
against her chest, where her heart beats steady and strong.
She
lifts her head enough to listen for Ian, moving around the kitchen. Her
attention, at least for the moment, doesn't shift to the windows or the
horses. Nestling against Kalen's shoulder, she says, "If you have
something to say to me, say it. Then tell me if you found anything in
the library."
Demiurge
Ian could hear the low
murmur of Sid and Kalen's voices in the living room. Eventually he found
a bottle opener and popped the caps off the beer, smelling the contents
with a less-than-enthusiastic expression. He leaned against the kitchen
counter and gave a quiet sigh, imagining for a moment a world where so
many things were different.
After a while he picked up one of the bottles and drank from it. He did not immediately return to the living room.
Outside,
the horses continued to watch whatever they were watching, gazing off
in the direction of the road with their posture alert and ready. As of
yet, none had given any sign of warning. (And no one was looking at the
horses now anyway.)
Kalen Holliday
"It was a real question."
For
a second it seems he will not say anything else. That that is all he
is willing to give her. "Because until Ian asked you, I thought we were
friends. So whatever the rules for this other thing are, I would like
to know.
"Perhaps he was right. And I should have asked you
sooner. But this is the kind of thing I was always given to understand
friends do. They aren't a thing I have much experience with. Perhaps I
am wrong. But this...has never been something I have considered as an
option with people who were not friends or lovers."
He sighs.
"The only books that have text in the library seem to be books that we
read. And only the parts we read. So perception shapes reality. We
knew that before. Though I suppose this may be a more extreme version
that than we're used to."
Sid
"You thought we were
friends," she repeats. "I thought you didn't like me. I still do,"
she says, and sighing she releases him. Sitting up, she continues.
"Why do there have to be rules? Rules just lead to expectations and
when those expectations aren't met people hurt each other."
Her
gaze lowers to the hands now lying limply in her lap. "That's childish,
I guess. But we're connected. Even if we don't like each other we're
connected. We've shared things. We worked together once. We have to
work together here if you want to get out of this."
The library. Sid lifts her chin and stares at the ceiling. "Like a dream. How do we wake up?"
Demiurge
Right
around the time that Kalen started talking about the books in the
library, Ian finally reappeared. He moved with a deceptively relaxed
gait down the stairs that led into the living area, carrying two open
bottles of Corona in his hands, and when he reached the sectional where
Sid and Kalen sat he held one of them out for Sid.
"It's terrible. I apologize in advance."
If
this place was a dream, it was unlike any that Ian had experienced
before. That made it all the more difficult to understand how to wake
from it.
Suddenly, his posture went still. His eyes were on the
horses. And further... on the shadow of something he'd spotted in the
road beyond. Whether Sid reached for her beer or not, he didn't release
it. Instead he said, "There's someone out there."
Kalen Holliday
"So
we were both wrong. I am only trying to clarify because trust only got
us here," Kalen says softly. "Perhaps I was the only one of us that
did that. I'm not going to pretend I knew what you were or weren't
thi-"
Kalen stops talking when he sees Ian go still. He rises,
which puts him close to Ian, but he doesn't take the last step or two to
close the distance, just turns his attention to the window.
Sid
Sid
does not, in the end, accept the bottle of terrible beer. She was
listening to Kalen, but when Ian went still she turned to look where he
was looking. Trust. Sid trusts people to varying degrees. She trusts
that Ian wouldn't freeze and draw attention to the window without
reason.
Someone out there. Sid rises, but she doesn't stay in the
living room. Instead, her conversation with the Hermetic put on pause
she hurries to the kitchen, to find a knife, something she can use to
defend herself or cast, whichever ends up being called for. When she
finds one, she runs the edge of the blade against the back of her hand,
just enough to raise a few tiny droplets of blood (in this world she has
to be careful about how she does this work).
[Life 1/Matter 1: scanning, practiced]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
Demiurge
The
thing on the road that Ian was looking at; that the horses were looking
at - it was another horse. Pale and dusky in the shadow of the setting
sun. It moved at an exhausted gait, walking with its head down and its
sides heaving. And atop its saddle sat a small, indistinct dark-haired
rider.
Sid was on her feet in a moment, moving to fetch her knife.
Ian quickly set the beers down on the nearest end table (potential
distraction now forgotten in the face of possible danger) and ran to get
his sword from where he'd left it leaning in the hallway.
"I'm
going out. Kalen, get a gun and cover me." He glanced toward Sid as she
worked her effect, waiting for some sign from her that they weren't
about to walk into a trap. Meanwhile, he slung the katana over his
shoulder and placed his hand over his heart, focusing on the flow and
rhythm of his own blood.
[Life 1, diff 4 -1 (practiced)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (2, 7) ( success x 1 )
Demiurge
What
Sid finds when she casts out her senses is this: there is a horse
approaching the house. A horse and a living, human rider. A girl,
somewhere around the age of 12 or 13. Both of them are exhausted from
overexertion, and the girl's body is malnourished from lack of food.
Kalen Holliday
"For the record, I already hate this plan." Kalen sighs. "Be careful."
Which
is not, in any way, actually like stop. And, provided Ian heads out,
he does grab his rifle from where it is waiting by the door and step
outside. Once outside though, with the horse and figure in sight, he
does not continue toward them. Instead he stops and aims the rifle at
the figure atop the horse. Just in case.
And tries to remember to breathe. It will be fine. It will be better than last time. It will be fine.
Sid
"It's
okay," says Sid after Ian speaks. It's the first time either of them
have heard her voice raised. Not shouting, as she did before they faced
the walkers, but raised. Louder, distinct, sharp. Then her knife is
clattering back onto the counter as Sid rushes out the nearest exit.
She
goes without hesitation and without telling either Ian or Kalen to
prepare to cover her. Chances are, even if she had picked up on
something else out there she wouldn't tell them to cover her. Get
ready, yes, but not cover her.
So, they all end up outside. "It's
okay," she says again, brushing her hand over Kalen's shoulder, the
touch light and terribly brief. Sid hurries to the side of the strange
horse, running her warm hand along its neck before reaching up to gather
the rider to her.
"It's okay," she murmurs when she has the child in her arms.
Demiurge
[Extending]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (4, 5) ( success x 2 )
Demiurge
Kalen
left the house ahead of Ian, who waited just long enough to confirm
what Sid had said before he ushered himself out the door at her side.
And then it was Sid who ran ahead, while Ian reached out to touch the
long muzzle of Kalen's rifle and nudge it safely toward the ground.
"Wait. It's a kid. I don't think anyone is with her, but keep an eye out anyway."
He
wasn't so quick to rush forward as Sid was, but he wasn't long behind
her either, jogging through the grass until he reached the road where
the horse now stood. It was a white mustang stallion, wearied and
exhausted from hard travel, but though it looked about ready to fall
over, its first instinct was to rear its head and shy away from Sid's
sudden approach. The girl, though... she was in bad shape. Barely
conscious and delirious as Sid herself had been after days of fasting.
She didn't put up much fight except to mumble, "You hurt me, I'll kill
you." And her hand strayed toward the pistol strapped to her belt, as
though to grab hold of it, but then Sid was reaching up and the girl was
falling into her arms.
And now the stallion grew still, if for no
other reason than to keep his rider from falling onto the pavement. But
he turned his head and watched the two of them with wide dark eyes that
somehow, despite his condition, held a spark of challenge.
"I'll
get the horse," Ian offered, and he stepped forward to take the
stallion's reigns. It flared its nostrils and gave another wild jerk of
its head, but when Ian raised his hand and uttered a quiet, "shhhh..."
it calmed down enough to let him handle it.
Kalen Holliday
Kalen barely glances at Sid when she touches him.
"I
have known plenty of dangerous children," he murmurs. Still, he lets
Ian nudge the rifle down. And he watches over them. Ian and Sid and a
child they've decided to save and her horse.
He does not tell them
to check for bite marks. He does not warn them not to get attached
until they know. Not to hope that she's safe now. He barely lets
himself look at the girl, but if they have any hope...he doesn't try to
ruin that. It will be crushed or not. Fate doesn't need his help with
that here.
Sid
Sid picked up nothing, neither
undead nor virus nor serious injury on the girl or her horse, before she
rushed out. If there was time to respond to Kalen's warning - well,
there's not. And then Sid is ignoring a challenging stallion to gather
up his charge.
When the girl threatens Sid, the Verbena, without
so much as a flicker or a twitch of humor, says, "Not in your condition
you won't." And when she has her, "We'll see if we can fix that." Her
tone is gentle and her embrace is warm, comforting as Sid adjusts the
weight of the girl so that her head lolls against her shoulder. If the
child is infected and somehow Sid's scan for Life patterns missed it,
Sid makes herself an obvious and easy target.
Ian is going to see
to the horse. Sid nods. She would ask Kalen to help, but he has
already shown an unwillingness to listen to her. Sid moves past him
into the house and carries her into the living room that they all
recently vacated. As she lowers the girl to one of the couches, she
asks, "Where're you from?"
Demiurge
[Mind 2 - beast speech, diff 5 -1 (slow)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (4, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Demiurge
The
girl didn't have any bite wounds. Sid and Ian already knew that. She
had bruises and cuts: some old, some new - none serious. She hadn't
eaten in days. Hadn't slept in a while either. But she was alive and
uninfected.
That didn't mean she wasn't dangerous, as Kalen
pointed out. Maybe not now, but later when she woke up. Later was a
hypothetical they could deal with when it arrived.
Perhaps Kalen
expected Ian to offer some resistance to the notion of taking in a
stray. Ian, who of the three of them had been the most inclined to avoid
other survivors. But he didn't. Because she was a kid in obvious need
of help, and he was still a human being.
The horse wasn't in great
shape either, but it resisted being separated from its rider, following
along after Sid until Ian finally put a hand out to the beast's
sweat-soaked neck and uttered another soft murmur. He met the horse's
eyes when he spoke, speaking in low, calming tones.
"It's alright. We aren't going to hurt her."
And
that was all that Sid would be able to hear before she ascended the
steps back into the house with the girl, leaving Ian to tend to the
exhausted horse. Despite her current state, the girl's weight was a
noticeable burden in Sid's arms. She was tall for her age, and athletic,
and it took a bit of effort to get her into a comfortable position. Sid
was right though, the girl wasn't likely to do her much damage at the
moment, even if she could get to her firearm.
The kid allowed
herself to be carried into the house without much protest, and when Sid
laid her out on the sofa, her eyes fluttered open briefly to take in the
high ceiling. They were dark brown, her eyes. Large and deep and framed
with heavy lashes.
"South Dakota," she mumbled. And then, "Don't take my gun."
Kalen Holliday
Kalen watches Ian with the horse and lets Sid step past him into the house.
"I'll be back out in a moment," he says. He doesn't raise his voice. He knows he doesn't have to.
Kalen
slips back into the house only long enough to grab a few things that he
sets down beside where Sid has put the girl. A blanket. Some water.
Something Sid can give the girl to eat.
But he does not stay.
Instead he goes back outside to watch Ian and the horse. He does not
try to get close to that horse. He doesn't think the horse would love
that and he doesn't think Ian needs help with the horse. Any more than
Sid needs help with the girl. But, if he's going to be of no use, he'd
rather be of no use with the one of them he can get along with.
Sid
"Thanks,"
she says to Kalen when he sets the things down near her. She doesn't
expect him to respond, doesn't have time for him just now.
She
takes the water, holds the girl's head up, and offers her a small sip.
"Easy. Not too much or you'll be sick. I won't take anything from you
if you say you'll do the same. I'm Sid. That was Kalen. Ian is
looking after your horse. Are you alone?"
Demiurge
Ian
had already pulled the horse's gear off by the time Kalen reappeared.
The two of them (Ian and the mustang) were in the pasture near the stable
entrance, and Ian was running his hands slowly over the horse to check
for injuries (and to calm it down.) Nearby, the three mares stood with
their heads raised, watching the scene with wary interest. Ian paused
briefly at the sight of Kalen. "Do you need something?"
Back in
the house, Sid lifted the girl's head up and offered her water. For a
moment, the girl's eyes wove in and out of consciousness, but then she
felt the cup at her lips and blinked, taking a couple of slow but greedy
swallows. When she was done, she looked at Sid and nodded. A drop of
water ran down her chin, and she wiped it away with a shaky hand.
"Yeah.
I was with some people, but we got taken. Now it's just me." She didn't
elaborate on that. It didn't seem like she wanted to. "Thanks for the
water. I'm Trey."
Kalen Holliday
Kalen smiles, very faintly. "I need a lot of things. I don't think the universe is going to cooperate though." He sighs.
"Just-"
Just
he doesn't want to see their perhaps rescued child right now because
she calls to mind thoughts of the one whose ashes he mixed with earth
and pumpkin seeds not so far from here. Just the last time he tried to
ask anyone questions he drove her away. Just he doesn't want the
tension between him and Sid to spook the girl.
"-wanted to be out here in case something was chasing her."
Sid
Sid
doesn't intend on asking her to elaborate. They've all been through
things since ending up in this world. Although she does wonder, is this
place as dream-like to this girl as it is to them? Is she part of it
like the horses? Or perhaps is she someone else trapped inside?
Questions to mull over another time.
"It's
not just you anymore," Sid says quietly, lowering herself so that she's
seated beside the couch. "You can get some rest. I'll be here when
you wake up."
Demiurge
Kalen didn't think that the
universe was going to cooperate with his needs, and Ian didn't offer
any counter to that. And truth be told, he'd stayed outside just as much
to keep guard as he had to care for the horse. That the girl might have
been pursued by someone or something dangerous was a possibility that
had certainly not escaped his attention. But they didn't both need to be
here, and if Ian hadn't remembered what Kalen had told him about the
boy back in Kansas, he likely would have snapped at him.
But he
did remember. So that didn't happen. Instead Ian led the horse to the
water trough and left it to drink its fill. Then he walked to the edge
of the pasture and rested his hands on the fence.
"The girl had a gun. We shouldn't leave her and Sid alone."
It was calm and reasoned, the way he said it.
"I'll
go in, if you want. Keep an eye out." Then he pushed up over the fence
and hopped onto the other side, making his way toward the house.
Inside, Sid offered the girl the only reassurance she could give, but it was an important one: it's not just you anymore. And
maybe the girl didn't entirely believe that, but she didn't offer any
objections. Instead she nodded and settled back on the couch, letting
her eyes slide shut. She was asleep within a matter of seconds,
breathing rhythmic, shallow breaths.
And for the rest of that night, at least, the road and the woods outside were quiet.
