Still I'm spinning like a roundabout in motion
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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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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."
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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."
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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."
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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.
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"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.
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Though she supposes if there's one place she's always found communion, it's with deities. It's surprising, yet sensible, in that respect, that Babel would act this way. It's exactly what she'd expect, but Chicago's taught her not to expect the familiar.
She doesn't know if Babel's happy or sad, when she says no one wants to live forever. She doesn't know if she's happy or sad. She doesn't know what she feels right now, other than-- flooded.
She's at a loss for what else to do. So she simply leans forward, over the kittens, and hugs Babel tight. "Everything'll be okay," she says, softly. Because it's what she believes, at the heart of all else, no matter the circumstance.
In the absolute long run, everything will be okay.
Even if all the worlds burn, and everything they both know is gone, things will be okay.
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But she can never argue with hugs.
"Everything's okay in the end," she whispers. "If it's not okay, it's not the end." She can feel Iris's bodybeats so loudly, so strongly, that they threaten to overwhelm her again, and she taps them out on the other girl's shoulderblades without registering she's doing anything. "Bullshit, all of it, all a bunk and a bunker won't keep you safe in the end--nothing won't keep--"
There's a gasp as she cuts herself off. "It's close to midnight," she tells Iris, pulling out of the hug and holding the girl's shoulders. "She thinks, has never been so unsure, so sure, so..." And then she breaks off again, letting go of Iris and looking away, down at the sidewalk and out toward the cars, the people passing them on the sidewalk.
For a second she seems to completely forget what's going on -- and indeed, if she could, she would. And then she looks back at Iris, gives her a sad smile, and plonks her head against the Tower again. It's comforting, in a weird way, this tower that hurt her so much when she was living in it, but she's not sure she could manage to go inside just yet.
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She wants to meditate to it, to let herself get lost in the tapping, let her selfhood slip away until the slight touches are all that's left. Right on her wings, too. Her would-be wings. It's easy to put her focus there, into those twin knots of energy and hope. They're already magically hyperaware, like the universe has two fishing lines run through those spots on hooks. And when it pulls, she dances. She follows.
--she needs not to think about this right now.
But then Babel's pulling away, and she hears it's close to midnight. "Do you have to go?" she asks, tilting her head. It makes a strange kind of sense, to her heart. She's so much like the light to Allen's shadow. Perhaps she disappears at the stroke of midnight, like all good fairy tales do.
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No. "No." She doesn't have to go. "Yes." She always does, at the end. "Not now, just...when it all comes crashing down." There's a little sliver of hope now, just a little; maybe this time she won't. Maybe this time the clouds will leave her alone. They've been so absent.
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"--But until then. Find me." Her words are quiet, reverent. It's not a command; it's an option. An offer. "Find me any time. Here." She touches her heart. "Or here." Her hand goes to her head. "I know you know how."
It's her Babel-attuned way of saying, If you need me, I'll be there.
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