Still I'm spinning like a roundabout in motion

[allmydiredreams]

On the front of the Kashtta, there is a small heap of angles, knotted hair, and tattered clothes. It's up against the Kashtta's wall, one hand pressed flat against the building's wall and face totally obscured by tangles. For a good few minutes, it doesn't move, but then with a small gasp, the hand balls into a fist, hits the wall, then uncurls

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[sophicsulphur]

She doesn't really mind that her question didn't get answered. After all, the other girl's obviously got something really important to do, and Iris would understand perfectly well if she didn't have the time to talk to her right now.

Her curiosity won't dampen down enough to let her leave, however. So she takes a seat against the wall next to Babel, closes her eyes, and tries listening to the Tower, too.

The structure itself doesn't feel like much of anything, to Iris. That's something she's always noticed about it: a building this tall should feel like it's bound by something more solid than metal and stone, some magical force that keeps it from toppling in on itself. That's how they build castles so tall in her world. But the Tower feels inert, with not even the dormant wisdom of an old weathered bluff to tickle at the edges of her consciousness. It's vaguely disconcerting.

The Tower's inhabitants, on the other hand, are a general sort of hum, the dim and constant pulse of life. Every now and then, there's a surge in the currents as a particularly potent demon or supernatural enters or leaves, but most of it's just the regular weft and flow that she feels around her every day. It doesn't exactly help her senses that the girl sitting next to her is easily the brightest thing in her metaphysical periphery. It's like parking yourself next to a brass band while trying to hear birdsong.

"What are you hoping to hear?" she says eventually, her thirst for knowledge having surpassed her patience. She feels a little guilty for disturbing Babel, but this is one curiosity of Chicago she doesn't just want to pass by. "And how will the kitten help?"

If the creature's capable of being some kind of magical conduit, she certainly wants to know about that. A familiar might not be a Mana, but it'd certainly be an assistance to her work.

[OOC: Yeah, meeting-place shift sounds good-- I was wondering how we'd fit things in around the splode. I'll do that in a while, and yeah, don't worry about bringing him in any time soon. Glad I checked. :)]

[allmydiredreams]

Babel smiles when Iris sits down next to her, imitates what she's doing. For a moment, a single, hopeful moment, she wonders if this girl can feel what she does, knows what it's like -- but no. No, there's no marker, no telltale countdown ticking at the very base of the footsteps shaking her bones.

She's different than Babel's felt before, though everyone is different to a certain extent. This one's so curious and driven and scared, though -- the fear seems less, now, dissipating under the curiosity. She's not anything from here, nothing like the natives Babel has been existing between on the street. Something else, which always means Wanderer. Babel has the marker now, in her own song, she knows. But that's where the similarities start and end, as far as she can feel.

Sometimes she wonders if she'd be able to tell if she did find someone like her. Would she be able to feel their clock the same way she can feel her own? Would she be able to differentiate? Right now it doesn't feel like she can differentiate anything at all.

Iris's question -- this one Babel actually does hear -- cements the fact that she's not like Babel at all. But it's okay. It's probably for the best, that she doesn't have to go through everything Babel does, see all the apocalypses. At least, this is how Babel tends to console herself, sometimes, when she's even capable of thinking of it.

"It's murmuring," she whispers, looking up at the Tower. She blinks, wide-eyed, at the sun and then looks back to Iris. "The kitten is focus, sharp and small and simple. Like the ground, only louder--louder than the ground, than the--" She shakes her head, moving a hand in front of her face for a second, eyes scrunching shut as though pulling the words out of her mind is painful.

Then it passes, and she bundles the kitten into her arms. "Knew a kitten once," she says, sadness touching her entire demeanor for a moment. Then that, too, is forgotten, or at least pushed aside. "Why are you afraid?"

[sophicsulphur]

"I can't hear anything," she admits, with a shake of her head. "I wish I could. I think I'm just a lot weaker than you are." She means her senses, her abilities. Babel clearly perceives things she cannot, and for a moment her whole being flinches with the truth of that, painful and aweing. Painful because she wants to feel everything, and she did, once, back when she was dead, and she misses that so terribly much. Aweing, because it's wonderful to know that others can do that, even while remaining alive.

It gives her hope, for her own evolution, and she's left with chills down her spine: the good kind, the kind that fill you when you hear a song that moves you to your core.

She understands how the kitten can be focus. The girl's reasoning is practically alchemical. The kitten has its properties, small and sharp and simple, and using its proximity as a touchstone, she can apply those properties to her own self-- it's simple genius, the kind often overlooked. She smiles, genuinely, and nods, at that. Yes, she thinks she'll get along well with Babel.

"Afraid?" She's surprised, and intrigued, by the question. She didn't think she'd been radiating fear, not so very much, and the fact that this girl, this-- being can hear the deepdark currents under her fascination, that's another thing she can't do.

Maybe she's a deity. Her energy's powerful enough for it, bright where Allen's is dark, shadowed and tangled where his is clear, calcinating fire. She likes to be straightforward with deities, so she's straightforward with Babel, now. "This city... makes me afraid, sometimes," she admits. "So many people get hurt, all the time. And I feel like I'm not enough to save it."

[allmydiredreams]

"Revel; not the same," Babel says, reaching out to put a hand on Iris's collarbone. It's not a terribly intimate gesture, and yet at the same time it somehow is; she can feel Iris's emotions and wants and powers and being so much clearer this way, and it steadies for a moment, but at the same time, she extends this to anyone and everyone. It's routine. "It all hurts after awhile."

She moves her hand then, the jangling in her arm lessening back into the general hum of everything around her. She can still feel Iris, but she's not so horribly loud anymore. The kitten helps immensely. As does, strangely, the Tower. So Babel leans her head against it again.

And then nods at Iris's answer. "So much pain and power pulling--it all sings sharp and minor key," she says, singsonging a little bit. Then she blinks, fixing Iris with an intense, near-unblinking stare. "Only one solo isn't going to stop it."

[sophicsulphur]

She doesn't quite parse that first utterance, but the touch is surprising, yet not startling, and rather nice. It reminds her of the very fringe beginnings of forming a pact, the way Babel comes more sharply into focus around the point of contact-- a point that runs deeper than skin, and she knows both of them know it. It's nice because it's the obvious thing to do, and it's something that people don't, not normal people, not so spontaneous and sure.

Babel acts like she knows the workings of the world, and isn't afraid to flow with them, rather than living a life based around constructs, around illusions of what life should be. She likes that. It's how she'd rather live, too.

She nods slowly, in return, at Babel's second statement. "I... think I knew that, really," she admits, her voice soft, almost reverent. The girl's strange, hushed tones make her feel like it's important to speak similarly, to keep her voice low and thick with wonder, as if merely by existing here she's made the space around her a cathedral or a shrine, a place of sanctity and worship. Yes, Babel is certainly a deity, if ever she's known one. "It's just different. Where I was from, I had the power. Here, I'm smaller."

She's not quite speaking in complete sentences any more, because she gets the impression the girl will understand. Babel's staccato way of speaking is contagious, and oddly freeing. For the first time in a very long while, she feels like she doesn't have to put any effort into making her tangenting, multilayered thoughts into something presentable to the outside world, and lose so much of the meaning in the process.

She'd forgotten how nice that could be, how much of a weight it was off her heart.

"Can you tell me who you are?" she inquires gently of her, in the kind of tone you'd use to coax a bird to come eat from your hand: a combination of compassion, and a child's quiet wonder.

[allmydiredreams]

Babel looks sad for a moment at Iris's feelings; she can tell there's a tiny beat of want, and part of her wants to figure out how to demand of the clouds (the clouds that aren't there) that they make her another, that she's not the only one anymore. But she wouldn't want anyone else to feel what she does, for their sake as well. Everything vibrates, pushes in, until she can't find herself anymore.

At least Iris is here to focus on. So is the Tower. "With great power comes great responsibility," she mutters, curling in on herself. For a moment she just looks like another crazy homeless girl on the sidewalk, unable to keep herself from twitching. "No, no...with its--no."

She's frozen for a moment, and then Iris asks her who she is. That's...it's not always easy, but it's what she's working toward. She wants to be able to walk outside with her mental walls back up. She wants to be able to walk into the Tower and see how many of her friends are left.

So she looks up and smiles, too many teeth all in a row, but it's not a mean smile by any stretch. "Babel," she says. "Who are you, curious one?"

[sophicsulphur]

Babel's display doesn't put Iris off, only concerns her. One of her best friends beyond the Rift is a man who looks homeless, but to her he doesn't read that way at all. He's a prince of shadows and rats (and she thinks this, knowing nothing of his true status), a fine and friendly creature who she trusts almost as much as anyone she knows in Chicago. His dishevelled appearance, to her mind, is only a marker of his status, as rat-man, decay-spirit, walker with darkness and death.

Similarly, if Babel's unkempt and dirty and flailing around on the sidewalk, well, that's just a sign she wasn't wholly meant for this physical world. There's some component of her that's off on another plane, leaving her body under only partial control. The Mana of her world are that way, too, out of their depth as corporeal things, preferring to exist in the energies that power the mountains and oceans.

Regardless, she understands that statement. "Yes," she says, reaching out to put a hand on Babel's shoulder to steady her. "But I've borne it before. Rather too responsible, and feel the pain, than not enough, and they all feel it." She sweeps her other hand around to take in Chicago. "For me, anyway." She understands Babel may not feel that way, and the last thing she wants is another ideological conflict like the one she had with Harry. "--Are you okay?" she adds, just to be sure.

She smiles back warmly, reading the intent behind the smile perfectly well. "Babel." She echoes it, to remember, because she should know the local forces. It's part of knowing the world, the universe, she lives in. And she likes Babel, and she wants to remember her. "I'm Iris. An alchemist." Because she feels that's relevant for a deity to know, and because no meaningful introduction is complete without it.

[allmydiredreams]

Iris is certainly right that Babel wasn't necessarily meant to be wholly in this world, for all that she was made for it. To record it, to live it. Sometimes even the best laid plans go wrong.

She freezes when Iris puts a hand on her shoulder, not out of fear but in order to listen better. Because the bodybeats are nigh overwhelming; she has to listen for herself. It's hard. She can't really find herself at all, just the ticking of the clock underneath everything else. Always ticking. It feels like everything's going to go wrong at any minute, like at the ends, but this is different. She hasn't been able to figure it out. It's why she's come home.

Home. If only.

She shakes her head at the question, her face screwing back up into an unhappy grimace. "Not, no, never. Pretends very well," she mutters. "Always pain, always--not responsible. Nothing to respond." She starts to curl in on herself, one hand gripping Iris's wrist in a vice-grip.

The kitten in Babel's lap mewlps up at her as she does so, though, and she uncurls so as not to squish it. And scritches it. It helps a little.

"Alchemy," she repeats. "But what kind. Mind or matter. Mind over matter." Half of what she says might be verging on word association.

[sophicsulphur]

Iris doesn't mind the grip on her wrist. If Babel needs comforting, she'll do her best to provide. "You don't need to pretend," she says, her voice as soft as she can make it. "It's okay." She feels a little odd, attempting to comfort a deity, but that won't stop her from being there for her. "Why is it pain? Can I help?"

Her own kitten releases his deathgrip and crawls cautiously down from her shoulder, to butt his head against Babel's knee in an empathic display. Iris giggles at the cat. Flamel will make a wonderful familiar. The bond's already there, between their hearts.

If it's word association, it's a kind that makes some instinctive sense to her. Besides, it's almost the exact question Allen asked her, coincidence or no. It's becoming a ritual, now, and ritual soothes her heart. She's in amongst things she understands, now.

Perhaps few would say that of Babel. But if there's one thing Iris has been told all her life, it's that she's not most people.

"Mind and matter. It's neither without both." Which is to say, alchemy is nothing if it isn't complete. It's an entire discipline: as above, so below.

[allmydiredreams]

"Always pretend," she whispers. "Else it consumes -- lost yourself once? Lost yourself twice, thrice, a million apocalypses later." She smiles, a sad sort of little smile; she wishes Iris wouldn't wish for it, and she wishes she could stop wishing she'd find someone else like her. "Nobody wants to live forever."

She squeaks at the headbomp from Iris's kitty, turning her smile on him. She bops his head and flicks at his ears, then scritches. Kittens are always good. No matter what world. Kittens or their kitten-equivalents. There have only been a few that didn't have something equally cute in them.

Babel's word association usually makes some semblance of sense, if she stops long enough to figure it out. Most people don't. But that's what keeps it separate from word salad, the narration supposes.

"What do you want to change?" Babel asks. That's what alchemy is about, is it not?

[sophicsulphur]

Always pretend, or it consumes. She takes a few beats to analyse those words; she likes Babel's way of talking, but it can take some figuring out. "...You don't want to think about it. Because it's sad. Okay." She gives Babel a sympathetic look and a smile. "If that changes, I'll hold your words." And... that didn't make sense either, but that's what Iris likes about Babel. She can say the words that feel like they really mean what she needs to express, and she'll hear.

If Flamel's ordinarily wary of other cats, he isn't showing it right now as he crawls up, deliberately, into Babel's lap, his footfalls slipping and faltering as he tries to find purchase on the uneven surface. Having made it, he gives a mrow that seems almost triumphant, before making several turns around and eventually settling down next to the other kitten.

His head jerks up abruptly, though, as Iris' eyes go wide. "...Change?" She falters on that word, because it's out of nowhere, and so insightful, on so many levels. So much so that it can't be a guess, though that's not really what startles Iris. She's used to deities just knowing things, and she's rapidly becoming used to the fact that Babel falls into that category. She just... didn't expect to be asked, not like this, not right now.

"This world is broken... needs healing," she says, but she knows before the words come out that it's a lie. Or not a lie, exactly, because that's true too and she does believe in it; but it's not really what's on her mind, lately, and so it feels like lying, when she says it.

No, of all beings, she should not lie to Babel. She feels terrible for it. And maybe the girl-- the deity-- could even help. She just can't make her lips form the words.

I am broken. I need healing.

[allmydiredreams]

"Take my words and feel them," Babel replies, though it's more of a mutter. "Roll them on your tongue--swallow them. They grow." She makes a little motion with her fingers, exploding from a fist into a open hand, palm up, in slow motion.

She squeaks in delight when the other kitten wanders into her lap, and for a moment her face lights up just like anyone else's might; there's no trace of the crazy. She leans over for a moment of fuzzy kitten time, making indiscriminate little happy noises at them, and then looks back up at Iris. "Small things, so many tiny bones," she says, as if this is a revelation. "So many tiny beats."

But then she calms, the smile dropping from her face and her eyes unfocusing again as she concentrates harder on Iris. There's something in her beats that makes Babel think--she can pick out the lie, but she doesn't know what the truth is. The beats falter, but she doesn't know the rhythm yet. "The world always needs to change," she says. "But you don't want to just. Just. You falter."

[sophicsulphur]

Iris takes the statement as a blessing, a call to worship, invocation. She closes her eyes, breathes deeply, lets the sound and the meaning and the echoes fill her. It's a strange sort of communion, a spiritual sort of intimacy, being forged, here, crouching in the dirt, outside a repurposed office building in the middle of downtown Chicago. It might not seem like the place for blessings, at least not if you're the average Chicagoan. But Iris is used to seeking the magic between the cracks.

Her eyes slowly open again, as she finds her tongue. "Warm, inside." The spiritual always makes her feel that way. A gentle fluttering in her chest, at the feeling of breathing with, resonating with the world, with Babel's words.

She watches the kittens settle, smiling. "They really are," she says, quietly, and she sounds almost as awed as Babel. "You hold them, and you're-- aware, just how small their lives are. How fragile." She reaches out to run her fingers slowly through Flamel's fur, scratching a little at the scruff of his neck. "It really makes you want to protect them. Protect everything."

And she does, but yes, she's not being wholly truthful, and she sighs a little. It weighs too heavy on her heart, the lie, the guilt. "I do falter," she admits. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't. In front of you." She looks up at the overcast Chicago sky, watching a small bird wing overhead. "I need their soaring." Her hands meet over her heart. "Something's calling me."

[allmydiredreams]

Babel thrives on that magic; it's her life. It's how she sees the world, even when the magic is painful and dark and hurts more than anything. She can't really see the mundane for just the mundane, anymore. When you've seen so many worlds die, it's hard to overlook anything at all -- everything is important.

It's sometimes hard to tell whether she believes that or whether it's simply a part of her programming, but she doesn't like to think about that too hard.

She reaches forward again, but stops short of touching Iris, this time. Like there's a wall; her hand is splayed out directly in front of the other girl's face, inches away. "Drumbeats, uptempo, up tempting."

The kittens knead at her knees, but she doesn't take her concentration off of Iris, this time. The tiny rhythms can wait. The Kashtta can wait. There's a new song to concentrate on.

"Can't help it," she chirps in response to Iris' apology. "Couldn't hide -- can find the lie, but where's the truth?" Her hand flutters for a moment before resuming its motionless vigil right in front of Iris. "Calling, calling. Always, drives you down."

[sophicsulphur]

Oh, Babel. Iris hears your song. Magic is everything to her too: more than just a practicality, more even than an art, it forms the weft and flow of her existence, her entire reason to be. Because of magic, she knows she can fix things. Because of magic, she knows everything's connected. Because of magic... sometimes, there is no because. Sometimes, magic just is. Sometimes the thirst is for the thing itself, for the raw substance, the essence of it, no more and no less. Some days she drinks down magic like it's water, like it's a sustenance she needs to be complete.

Magic's the one thing she cannot lose. Without it, she'd truly fall apart.

"Tempting," she echoes back, with a nod. Having someone else's energy around you, within you, coiled-up-bright-and-shifting, is tempting, yes. A call to the infinite, to the invisible, wondrous world just beyond that flimsy veil.

Almost without thinking, she holds her hand up, to press her palm against Babel's palm. Acknowledging the wall, and the bond, all at the same time. "There's always something in the way. Isn't there?"

In retrospect, she isn't quite sure if she meant to say Calling, as such, but it fits. No-- call it a Freudian slip. It means exactly what she meant, what she meant and didn't really plan on saying, because it sounds belittling of others' troubles, when she does. But maybe Babel will get it. "It is like a Calling, sometimes, I think," she says, a little wistfully. "A Calling to have a Calling. If I had a Calling, my Calling would be sated. ...Isn't that funny?"

In this scenario, she can almost think it is. With Babel, with the world spinning all around them and the birds high in the sky above them, down in this little nook between the cracks, stuff somehow seems a little more okay. She smiles, at her own little joke.

[allmydiredreams]

Babel curls her fingers between Iris's, gripping perhaps harder than she actually should -- or should be able to. She's getting the pieces very slowly, little notes here and there she didn't catch before, and trying to put them into the song. It's hard, with all the background noise.

"Angel girl," she whispers, suddenly sounding so much more coherent than she feels, or is, "nobody wants to live forever."

It hurts so much to do so. There is always something in the way, but what Babel means and what Iris means are completely opposite things. All Babel wants, right now, is for it all to stop, and yet she still can't help but dwell on the beats, let them consume her. It's what she was made to do.