FAREWELL LOG
Set from October 24th onwards:
( -To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due. )
( -To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due. )
Luke actually laughed. Settling, he pressed a hand against his mouth, but his eyes danced. After a moment he lowered his hand to say, "Well, there'd be a reason for that. I did reestablish the Jedi Order, and my life has been structured around the Force. It's so much more than a power source. But don't worry, I'm not going to try and recruit you."
"And don't worry about bothering me. My perception of time will have changed. It's..." Frowning, he visibly searched for the words. "It's like a story. Everything has happened a long time ago, and is happening right now, and will happen in the far future." Snorting gently, he added, "That's not quite right, but... well, don't worry about it. It's not like being interrupted."
He let his expression lapse back into fond solemnity. "It won't take a lot of blood. A few drops... but there are two ways to do it, and they both have drawbacks. With one you'll need to suffer a small cut, and you'll have to have have a mild fever, for a day or so. With the other... it will stay with you, but you'll stop noticing quickly. You don't usually notice the feeling of your toes in your footwear, or your tongue in your mouth - it's a little like that."
Reply
"The second one would probably be preferable," he said, doing what he thought was a fairly good job of ignoring his tongue and toes now what he had been reminded of them. "Unless it matters to you."
Reply
Luke drew a small scalpel blade, no longer than the first joint of his thumb, out of a protective paper sleeve. He held it in his left hand and without ceremony drew it just briefly over his right arm, above the nearly invisible seam of the prosthetic, before returning it to the sleeve.
The blade was not bloodied, and the mark showed red but didn't actively bleed. It was a tiny cut, and shallow. Luke stroked and pressed the skin around it with his thumb, coaxing enough blood to well up that it stained and covered the pad of his thumb. He seemed to be focusing intently at it and, simultaneously, very far away.
Almost palpably now there was a sense of focus on that tiny point, of something shifting or coiling just perceptively - flowing - and then something which had tensed relaxed.
"There we go," Luke murmured, looking up. "Now I'm going to need to mark you with this. You'll be able to remove the blood once it's dried, so the spot won't be visible. It will feel acidic, especially at first, but most of it will fade, and you'll stop noticing the rest, like I said before. You'll be able to call on me partly by focusing on the mark."
He held his hand out, fingers loosely curled and bloodied thumb extended. Though he didn't move much otherwise, it felt as if his whole body had come that much closer. "Last chance to back out," he teased. "If you still want this, just take my wrist and show me where."
Reply
"Let me know if this is too awkward," he said, taking the other man's hand and guiding his thumb towards the center of his chest. Close to his heart, though he only realized the symbolism once he had placed it.
Reply
There was a flicker of movement the instant before contact, as if the couple drops of blood on his thumb had started to move. Then the distance was closed, and Luke was almost leaning in as the sense of focus came back, not quite the same.
It did indeed have that acidic feeling of skin getting eaten at unevenly. It wasn't strong enough to hurt, quite, but it wasn't far off, and there was a sort of radiating effect coming off it. Maybe that was just the pressure.
Then, a distinct sense of something splitting off from him, sinking in, spreading - not far, not yet anyway, maybe just a few square centimeters beneath a layer of skin. Luke let out a breath and pulled back.
His thumb wasn't clean, but it didn't quite look bloody now, either. There was a residue. There was a bloody thumbprint on Cephiro's chest, not as bright a red as it had been. A sensation remained, fainter now and warm against each heartbeat.
"There we go," Luke said. He wasn't out of breath, but breathing a little more emphatically than before. "All right?"
Reply
"Are you?"
Reply
When Cephiro let go, Luke took up his mug again and took a deep pull before responding.
"I'll be okay- I am okay. It's all right." He wiped chocolate from his lips and nodded at Cephiro's mug. "You can finish now, if you want. If you can fix this in your mind, all of this-" his gesture took in the fall garden behind Wellspring Clinic, the little fire still going to the side of them, the two of them themselves. -"it will make calling on me easier."
The sights, the sounds, the feel of it, the smells, of course the taste... Luke hadn't picked this place and made these preparations at random. He himself, what he'd done, might work for whatever other senses Cephiro used, but it was good to make an impression with every sense. Ideally there would be an emotion, too, but he had an idea for that.
Luke steepled his mismatched hands around his mug, fingertips meeting fingertips and thumb touching thumb. He couldn't remember if this was something he already knew or not, but he had to ask. "Do you meditate, Cephiro?"
Reply
"Every day," the mage replied, nodding. That was one of those things - he had really started doing that well before he had realized that he was a mage, and even before he took up martial arts. It must have been an old habit.
Reply
He didn't get more specific. This was the kind of thing it was better to figure out for oneself. "I don't think it will work perfectly every time. It won't always be like this, like I'm physically with you. It won't even always be like speaking plainly to me. But if you call on me, I will know." He said it softly, but with great certainty.
What was left of the blood had dried enough, he decided, and drained the mug before setting it to the side again. Slowly, Luke unfolded his crossed legs to get his boots on the ground, and stood, gesturing for Cephiro to do the same.
Reply
His tone implied a lot more confidence than the words themselves did. He stood, then, setting the mug aside, and looked up at Luke questioningly.
Reply
"It won't hurt." Luke stepped forwards and just folded Cephiro into his arms, pulling and holding him close.
He was strong - stronger than he looked - but gentle. Murmuring down into the other's neck, he said, "It's okay to miss me. I know what it's like. But I'll be right here, when you need me."
Luke smelled like clean laundry and human, with touches of machine lube and woodsmoke and chocolate, and just a faint undertone of something like the ground after rain.
Reply
Leave a comment