Livia Cascade, fic responses #2, E3 2014
Second batch. This lot are more cheerful!
Impression of Dušan, from raggedhalo
There’s a point during this summit where I’m coming out of the hub, walking to one of the camps, and this red blur dashes past towards the regio. Running as fast as he can, and not in the way that someone runs to take an urgent message or escape someone. Running for the joy of it, because he can run fast and there’s this long straight road down from the Marcher camp to the regio, and why would you not?
I see him later from the other side of the regio, and though I step back when the water splashes our way it is only to protect my notebook. The energy and happiness in their ritual - that, I will gladly stay to watch.
The Night realm is heretical, from nyeti
What? Don’t be ridiculous, that argument doesn’t hold water. What does that term even mean? If you unpack that sentence, you’re just restating what you already said. And that’s not a valid step of logic unless you’ve defined what else you mean there.
Do I really have to play games to go and talk to you? The sort of semantic games I finally got tired of playing with Xavier and his essays after realising it was like wrestling a dodo?
(The dodo is faster than you, has far more patience for it, and has a higher goal in mind - such as getting to that pot of dried fruit you left open on the desk - and so all you end up with is bite marks, injured pride, and a fervent desire to not do that again.)
This sounds an awful lot like the nonsense I heard second-hand about one of your heralds before. For fuck’s sake, was that actually representative of how you are? Surely you don’t manage to exist for at least five hundred years without realising that you can’t just reach truth through reason alone.
...fine. I’ll take this one on, but I am going to take it on my terms, not yours.
Scoured clean, from nyeti
Problem 1: We’re doing things a little differently to normal, and nobody has briefed the visionary, and the guide is confused about exactly what we’re doing, and whoever briefed Barak was also confused, and the person who knows this stuff isn’t here so what we are going on is my memory and my notes.
I remember correctly, and when the person who knows does turn up she confirms this. Problem solved! And they come out alive about half an hour later.
Problem 2: Well, this is awkward. We’ve had to deal with someone who thinks they’re dead before, but not with someone who doesn’t know who they are. No, correct that, two people who don’t know who they are.
Problem 2a: And Abraham is no bloody help either, as either he’s drunk or that attempt to exorcise the Changeling out of his chaptermate has addled his mind.
They’re looking for a bar - someone suggests their chapter’s own bar, excellent, someone who knows them can keep an eye on them. And meanwhile I should take a more thorough look at them.
Problem 3: Souls do not usually look like that, they really don’t. The edges are all wrong, and I can’t focus on any of them for long without my sight sliding off them. It’s as if what makes them them has been scoured clean, just leaving an abstract human soul-shape.
There’s enough still there that an exorcism can reshape the soul properly and something else can set them right again - a testimony would work - as I explain to the others here. All we need is to get some exorcists and make sure that the visionary and his guide...
...have disappeared out of the Hub, apparently. Make that Problem 4.
Exorcism, from rubecso
Solas turns up quickly at Phoenix Reach, enough people with him to deal with the several rounds of exorcism that we need. Pete and I both have to remind Harald that no, he can’t join in, because we’re sorting that problem out with the third round. The Arete displayed in these ceremonies is reassuring to watch.
Marrok brings people to the Shattered Tower with a little less speed and a little more fretting, but after a second check there are enough people there. Petra does the second part of the healing process, and is so obviously unimpressed with this ridiculous situation (who needs a testimony of their own name?) that I smile.
Bachelor Party, from listen2navi
I’m not sure where Fiducia picked up the idea of a “stag night” - it sounds like something Summer-related - but I’m guessing either Dawn or the League. And it’s Dawn where the first of the Friday trouble starts.
Someone tells me Cyrus has been kidnapped, and I have to go rescue him. The idea is so ridiculous (remind me, which one of us has practiced with a sword at any point between now and their citizenship test?) that I thank them, ignore it and get back on with work.
Then someone else comes to tell me. And a few more, with more details, until half an hour or so later I am informed he’s in the Glory Square and the Dawnish are expecting me to come rescue him.
And at that point I go and do something about it, not just because they’re wasting Cyrus’s time (even if I’d rather they didn’t waste mine as well), but because it is only going to get even more embarrassing if I leave it.
Time spent in the Dawnish camp is mercifully short, as embarrassing as I’d feared, and then for the rest of the evening both Cyrus and I dodge the rest of the celebration and spend the evening talking theology with friends. Just what I’d hoped for.
Cake, from nyeti
Fiducia did say she was planning to make a cake for the wedding. I thought I’d heard a mention on our trip to Anvil that it was fruit cake - which I like a lot - but when I talk to her the day before the wedding it turns out it’s buttercream and sponge. I think of the heat we’ve had already and of slowly deflating cake and I probably look sceptical. But Fiducia’s trying her best to organise this and I appreciate the gesture.
I don’t feel much like cake on Saturday. Someone mentions that people have eaten it. Good - it shouldn’t go to waste.
On Sunday I’m around the Phoenix Reach camp and I spot it there - squashed sponge with pink sprinkles in the remaining icing. A whole lot of people have been at this with a knife, and left it in pieces.
Morbid comparisons of cake to corpses thankfully don’t occur to me until a few days later.
Impression of Dušan, from raggedhalo
There’s a point during this summit where I’m coming out of the hub, walking to one of the camps, and this red blur dashes past towards the regio. Running as fast as he can, and not in the way that someone runs to take an urgent message or escape someone. Running for the joy of it, because he can run fast and there’s this long straight road down from the Marcher camp to the regio, and why would you not?
I see him later from the other side of the regio, and though I step back when the water splashes our way it is only to protect my notebook. The energy and happiness in their ritual - that, I will gladly stay to watch.
The Night realm is heretical, from nyeti
What? Don’t be ridiculous, that argument doesn’t hold water. What does that term even mean? If you unpack that sentence, you’re just restating what you already said. And that’s not a valid step of logic unless you’ve defined what else you mean there.
Do I really have to play games to go and talk to you? The sort of semantic games I finally got tired of playing with Xavier and his essays after realising it was like wrestling a dodo?
(The dodo is faster than you, has far more patience for it, and has a higher goal in mind - such as getting to that pot of dried fruit you left open on the desk - and so all you end up with is bite marks, injured pride, and a fervent desire to not do that again.)
This sounds an awful lot like the nonsense I heard second-hand about one of your heralds before. For fuck’s sake, was that actually representative of how you are? Surely you don’t manage to exist for at least five hundred years without realising that you can’t just reach truth through reason alone.
...fine. I’ll take this one on, but I am going to take it on my terms, not yours.
Scoured clean, from nyeti
Problem 1: We’re doing things a little differently to normal, and nobody has briefed the visionary, and the guide is confused about exactly what we’re doing, and whoever briefed Barak was also confused, and the person who knows this stuff isn’t here so what we are going on is my memory and my notes.
I remember correctly, and when the person who knows does turn up she confirms this. Problem solved! And they come out alive about half an hour later.
Problem 2: Well, this is awkward. We’ve had to deal with someone who thinks they’re dead before, but not with someone who doesn’t know who they are. No, correct that, two people who don’t know who they are.
Problem 2a: And Abraham is no bloody help either, as either he’s drunk or that attempt to exorcise the Changeling out of his chaptermate has addled his mind.
They’re looking for a bar - someone suggests their chapter’s own bar, excellent, someone who knows them can keep an eye on them. And meanwhile I should take a more thorough look at them.
Problem 3: Souls do not usually look like that, they really don’t. The edges are all wrong, and I can’t focus on any of them for long without my sight sliding off them. It’s as if what makes them them has been scoured clean, just leaving an abstract human soul-shape.
There’s enough still there that an exorcism can reshape the soul properly and something else can set them right again - a testimony would work - as I explain to the others here. All we need is to get some exorcists and make sure that the visionary and his guide...
...have disappeared out of the Hub, apparently. Make that Problem 4.
Exorcism, from rubecso
Solas turns up quickly at Phoenix Reach, enough people with him to deal with the several rounds of exorcism that we need. Pete and I both have to remind Harald that no, he can’t join in, because we’re sorting that problem out with the third round. The Arete displayed in these ceremonies is reassuring to watch.
Marrok brings people to the Shattered Tower with a little less speed and a little more fretting, but after a second check there are enough people there. Petra does the second part of the healing process, and is so obviously unimpressed with this ridiculous situation (who needs a testimony of their own name?) that I smile.
Bachelor Party, from listen2navi
I’m not sure where Fiducia picked up the idea of a “stag night” - it sounds like something Summer-related - but I’m guessing either Dawn or the League. And it’s Dawn where the first of the Friday trouble starts.
Someone tells me Cyrus has been kidnapped, and I have to go rescue him. The idea is so ridiculous (remind me, which one of us has practiced with a sword at any point between now and their citizenship test?) that I thank them, ignore it and get back on with work.
Then someone else comes to tell me. And a few more, with more details, until half an hour or so later I am informed he’s in the Glory Square and the Dawnish are expecting me to come rescue him.
And at that point I go and do something about it, not just because they’re wasting Cyrus’s time (even if I’d rather they didn’t waste mine as well), but because it is only going to get even more embarrassing if I leave it.
Time spent in the Dawnish camp is mercifully short, as embarrassing as I’d feared, and then for the rest of the evening both Cyrus and I dodge the rest of the celebration and spend the evening talking theology with friends. Just what I’d hoped for.
Cake, from nyeti
Fiducia did say she was planning to make a cake for the wedding. I thought I’d heard a mention on our trip to Anvil that it was fruit cake - which I like a lot - but when I talk to her the day before the wedding it turns out it’s buttercream and sponge. I think of the heat we’ve had already and of slowly deflating cake and I probably look sceptical. But Fiducia’s trying her best to organise this and I appreciate the gesture.
I don’t feel much like cake on Saturday. Someone mentions that people have eaten it. Good - it shouldn’t go to waste.
On Sunday I’m around the Phoenix Reach camp and I spot it there - squashed sponge with pink sprinkles in the remaining icing. A whole lot of people have been at this with a knife, and left it in pieces.
Morbid comparisons of cake to corpses thankfully don’t occur to me until a few days later.