[open] jannat al-ma'wa

[lumenrelegandus]

Who: lumenrelegandus and multiple/open (see below)
When: Backdated to before the Shadows manifest
Where: Naruto's dojo
Format: Have some Choose Your Own Adventure! Then prolly switch to action/prose. ;)
What: Thanks to sudden popular demand, Lupin's going to start holding tutoring sessions in General/Scorched Studies. Thanks to Sakura, they'll be at the dojo

Comments

[impossibly]

For a moment in the face of that white light, the tumultuous chaos clears and River's mind is a deep, still pool. She closes her eyes and smiles, just a small curving of the lips, standing stock still and oblivious in the doorway until the feeling passes.

Then she gives a soft little sigh and steps forwards, curling her toes against the cool texture of the bamboo - she prefers bare feet, anyway, there's more agility, even if sometimes she's paying more attention to the signals coming up from her toes than the world around her. Touch is just as important a sense as sight and sound and scent.

"It's nice." The guan, she means, but also that fragment of clarity. Meditation had never brought such surcease. Abruptly, several steps into the room, she ducks her head so that the tangled brown strands of her hair fall across her face. She hadn't mentioned she was coming; what if he was busy? She knew without looking that he wasn't trying to want her here in that pitying way some people had, but this was a working environment, no place for casual camaraderie. "I should have told you," she murmurs, glancing up at him, distracted immediately by the way the moon pulled at him as though he were the tide, the tragedy that etched his bones, and she couldn't help but read all the injuries his limp spoke to her of. His posture shouted liewu: it would be so easy to get behind him, if she wanted.

She doesn't want to. This is a house of training, and respect. If martial arts is about weaponizing oneself then it is also about learning how to control that weapon. "Laoshi." A short bow; she presents herself.

[lumenrelegandus]

Interesting, the way being barefoot made her steps less hesitant. Drawing energy up from the ground, culminating in dancerlike grace. Intense focus, deliberation, desire for grounding, determination not to loose touch-desire for self-mastery. Perhaps linked to her default (probably earned) assumption she would not be welcome.

In their four year (is that really all?) acquaintance, Harry had several times noted how Lupin would give responses as though he had read Harry's mind. River could tell quicker than anyone, this wasn't the case. There was some hint of ability to block mindreading, if he was aware of it, but otherwise: just perceptiveness. Good at reading people not their thoughts. His dominant perception so far might as easily be projection: things he and River seemed to share.

Still, when he returned her bow, it was with an emphasis, an understanding, above and beyond the already given sincerity, that he said, "I'm very glad you came."

He smiled and gestured for her to sit. The process of gingerly lowering himself to the floor took a moment, so he filled it saying thoughtfully, "I appreciate the honorific, though not fully sure I understand it. Wasn't… Lao Tzu the author of the Tao Te Ching?"

[impossibly]

Small smile. She is not used to being welcomed; she has grace but not graciousness. But it eases her heart.

It's been a good day, and this clockwork city is abruptly lacking in Mandarin, so she instantly forgives him the misunderstanding. "A problem of the lion-eating poet in the stone den," she tells him, kneeling until her legs have folded up under her and tiny bare toes poke out at the back from beneath the gem of her dress. "Sensei might be more appropriate."

If River's talents are extrasensory, they are not solely so. She would make just as good a charlatan, her brain as much a Holmsian catalogue of identifying traits and speech patterns and clues as it is a receptor for impossible insights. Even if they often get jumbled up with each other, impossible to use in any useful way. No detective she.

But she knows the Tao Te Ching. The crooked shall be made straight. "You can be Laozi, if you prefer. What are you teaching?"

[lumenrelegandus]

He glances at her toes and as quickly away, but smiles. She'll keep him on his, clearly. Not just for her unfolding apparent psychological needs; intertwined with the confusion and pain is exceptional, poetical cleverness.

"It depends on the student," he said. "What they wish or need to learn. My official field of expertise is not directly applicable to most people here. The main thing I can offer is discipline itself. Academic structure. One student is studying history and philosophy. Another, furthering her original studies in magical theory and practice. Another is being taught to harness her innate powers, learn to apply technique. I suppose my specialty-" here again that acute look into her face, "-is self-control."

[impossibly]

For River, who had steadily outstripped all her tutors and teachers since she was very little, the concept of a subject she did not have mastery of was an intriguing one. She shook her head, focus shifting to the wall behind Remus.

"Is five thousand fragments moving in sync not a self-controlled whole?" A loose-limbed shrug. "What I want to learn may not be quantifiable."

[lumenrelegandus]

"Certainly not before learning it," he agreed. Deliberate application of body language to invite her to say more anyway.

[impossibly]

Sometimes River likes to sit still for hours. Sometimes she wanders. Sometimes she fidgets. Now she begins to shift as though restless, changing the way she is seated on the floor, glancing around the room. It's frustrating: she wants to say that she needs to be taken apart like a building, stone by stone, so her cracked foundations can be repaired. That peace of her entry, that is what she wants to know. If it's in the blood, she'll get a transfusion, grow closer to Frankenstein's monster. But the words are too tangled, not proper thoughts that can noun verb noun off the tip of her tongue at the back of her teeth.

"Life isn't as linear as you want to think it is. Everything will circle around eventually. Cause and effect." A cheeky little look from under her lashes, corner of her mouth starting a smile. "Perhaps we should decide what the teacher learns from his student."

[lumenrelegandus]

As you want to think it is. She could say that to anyone and be fairly accurate. Part of his mind spins off on its own as to why it's particularly applicable to him. He stops it for now; keeps focus on her.

He gives her an open smile back.

"Almost everything," he answers seriously. "Every time."
Qui docet discit-- decides not to test her yet.

"Let's settle on a starting place. Were you at school before you came here?"

[impossibly]

This question elicits a reaction that seems out of proportion of its innocence.

River's head snaps up. Her gaze is a thousand-mile stare, and then she ducks her head again, squeezes her eyes shut as though she can stop the whole world from existing just by not looking hard enough. One of her arms cradles and cocoons it, and her breath has to slow from its hyperventilate hiccoughs before the answers building swirling growing in her brain can start to spill out.

"Everyone has a choice to make. Thought I could reach the sun with only wax for wings. So many people that didn't get away. They'd hold you down with the - fingers, telling you, the sharp jabbing because it's - you have to learn, should have learned, you will learn. Ten thousand libraries in my brain, couldn't cut class couldn't lie down. All those cold metal monsters, xing xing zhi huo ke yi liao yuan, put them in a bag to drown them and tell yourself it's for the greater good..."

So that's a yes, then.

[lumenrelegandus]

He starts to reach out to her. Hold you down- sharp jabbing fingers could be figurative but cold metal- Stops his hand shy of contact. No good; don't restrain.

星星之火可以燎原! The student teaches. Already she's given him a new project. Next time they meet he'll have worked out a translating charm. What she says in pain might be exactly what needs hearing.

What else did she just teach him?
Definite yes.
Point of reference in common - expand upon.
A choice to make, thought I could - blames herself. (a choice made in innocence should never be held as a contract Pomma)
So many that didn't get away but she did - cold metal monsters, greater good - oh god.

His hand, having remained suspended near her arm, he sets very slowly on the ground; close to, within reach of, hers.

"Ut saepe summa ingenia in occulto latent," he says quietly.

[impossibly]

"Hic qualis imperator nunc privatus est," River replies, without blinking, without even thinking. Sometimes being a data processor is tiring.

She shakes her head, almost violently. She doesn't want to feel that bemused/trying-to-understand/empathy when she is used to pity. (It reminds her too much of her brother.) Yet there he is, solid and teeming, wanting to help. Looking at her like a jigsaw puzzle, testing pieces that look like they fit one by one, confined by his own concepts of what the finished picture should look like. He didn't mean it, and she had come here because he was so unlike the Academy and all its parasites.

The storm calms a little, and she's just shaking, darting a glance to his hand as if wondering whether it is a waiting snake. "Dropping... golden beads." One deep breath, another. "I know you want to ask."

[lumenrelegandus]

"Yes," he says, "I would like for you to feel able to tell me everything." He sits back-hurting for her terribly, hurting at his inability to instantly understand; yet somehow his smile still isn't a lie. "But we only recently met. Neither of us has earned it yet. I'll ask you if we get there."

His eyes narrow, looking at her more critically. Silent questions whirring. Clinic might hurt more than help | Can I really help? | Respect her choice | Someone hurt her terribly | don't do the same trying to save

Simultaneously, on another layer: dancer's grace. fragments in sync self-controlled whole. Xīngzhī huǒ kěyǐ liào Laozi docet dis-

He said suddenly, "Do you know Tai Chi, River?"

[impossibly]

Even slower, calmer, quieter. Her fingers play absently with the material of her dress, the almost-ragged hem. "Yes."

[lumenrelegandus]

A smile less complicated. "Wonderful. Well…" He starts to push himself back to his feet. "At the risk of looking utterly foolish, what would you say to teaching the basics to me?"

[impossibly]

River hadn't expected that, and it's pleasant to be surprised. More than pleasant. A delightful flip of her heart, even as her red-rimmed eyes go wide. "I would say yes."

With ease, she climbs to her own feet and then, after a hesitation borne both of touch and knowledge of what can be shaming, holds out a hand to assist him, should he need it. "Let's try softer tai chi chuan. The sun to cure the moon."

[lumenrelegandus]

His hand falters on its way to hers. Not reluctance to take her hand or her help: the uncanniness of the choice hits home.

It's less than momentary. He grasps her hand, doesn't drag on it as much as would gain optimal leverage, still lands on his feet. He smiles and follows her lead.

He's an agreeable pupil. He's unselfconscious even as the moves palpably suit her far better than him. He's more likely to laugh than get frustrated when his limbs simply won't work in the way they're supposed to. The mental discipline is there. With her help, the physical discipline may surprisingly dawn as a future possibility.

Not that his physical impairment is an equivalent for her mental one. Not intended as a "cure". A starting place. One cannot give real trust or comfort without taking it too. No one can mend while being treated only as broken. How better to find control than by rising to a position of wielding it. All as she said: the teacher must learn.