in the desert you can't remember your name [open/narrative]
Who: Jin Tian and potentially others
What: Jin being introspective in a desert
Where: The desert zone
When: Any time between Dec 27th and Jan 4th
Warnings: abuse triggers; references to sex; tl;dr; waxing philosophical
( cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain )
What: Jin being introspective in a desert
Where: The desert zone
When: Any time between Dec 27th and Jan 4th
Warnings: abuse triggers; references to sex; tl;dr; waxing philosophical
( cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain )
Snow has always been terrible, for her, associated with darkness, with sorrow, with depression. She grew up in western Massachusetts, and then moved to Boston and in both places snow was darkness, snow was a thing to dread. In her dreams it never snowed, she walked in sun-soaked cities along southern coasts, and her own place, her own, singular dream is much like this, a vast desert, her own huge stone temple among the rocks (though she still doesn't know to whom the place is dedicated. A dead god, she thinks. Or one not yet born)
So she's come here. SPF 40 sunscreen, loose white clothes, a wide-brimmed hat, a parasol and a backpack filled with water bottles, huge aviator shades to complete the tourist look. Here she's no warrior, here her hair is brown and so are her eyes, here she stumbles across the sand and trips a little and struggles to get up the hill.
She sits down, spreading a towel on the sand, setting up her umbrella so she has some shade and opens a bottle of water. She watches him silently, just observing his movements.
Why can't I be like that? that's her question. Even in dreams she's not strong enough, but at least she has some strength. Out here, awake, she's nothing, nobody, less than worthless.
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As it is, he notices her presence right away, but he keeps running through his drills, slash, block, thrust, spin, for another few minutes. He'd been hoping to see her sometime soon; they have a lot to discuss.
He finishes the pattern with a shout and a wicked upward slash, then brings his scythe back to a resting spot by his side, upright in the sand. Then he turns to her.
"Alex, hi."
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The unspoken is not sure if you need water but she's too well practiced at secret-keeping to phrase it any other way.
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"I could use some water." He doesn't sweat, but he loses water in other ways. "But, I have some of my own, and I'd hate to deprive you or anything..."
He takes a step forward to go sit near her, but then seems to remember he's shirtless.
"Oh--uh--let me put a shirt on..." he says. He has a tent pitched nearby, which is mostly just two strips of cloth held down by stones and a bedroll. He gathers up his shirt and canteen and pulls it on, then tugs his scarf back into position as he goes to sit down across from Alex.
"How have you been?"
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She waited for him to come back, and at his question, she sighed.
"I'm going to be honest, I... sick. Depressed, still, but mostly worried. I was..."
She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut.
"I was terrified that I'd hurt you. I didn't, did I? I'm still worried that I've done permanent damage. I fucked up there, I really did."
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"No, no, don't worry about it. I'm okay, really. I had a headache for a little while, but that was all." He smiles brightly. "I'm pretty hard to permanently damage, so you don't have to worry. And, you know, despite all that you really did help me."
He's been sleeping longer at least. He still has nightmares, but he doesn't wake up screaming or sobbing. Not for now, anyway. Those have always been something of a constant, coming and going.
He sighs under his breath and reaches for his shackle before remembering his wrist is bandaged. He lays his hand flat in the sand.
"You...probably have a lot of questions."
He has a lot of questions for her as well, but he's content to wait.
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She seems surprised. When something goes right, it always confuses her, and she blinks a few times. "I'm glad, then, I was so afraid..."
Deep breath.
"Right. ... I mostly want to know what the hell that thing is."
And how do I kill it.
She suspects the answer there is 'you can't.' Hence why she leaves that unspoken.
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But here are the questions. He takes a breath to match hers. He can talk endlessly about the war, about star-eaters and their machines, but Nifraim...Nifraim is always difficult. Too many memories.
"I...don't really know enough about things like that, like, how humans dream, what things in them represent. For my kind it's a lot of memories. And, I don't know how it works in your world, this idea of...actual things living in that place. The dreamworld, or whatever you want to call it. Nightmares, stuff like that. But he..."
He takes another breath to rein himself in.
"He wasn't really a 'thing.' He...said he wasn't a nightmare or a memory, but he's actually both. I guess. He's...a real person, actually. In there, I think...I don't know. He was...a representation of certain things, I think. Things...I can't get rid of. I think that's why he couldn't t-tell you certain things, because h-he was...part of me."
He has to pause for a moment. He has long, long since accepted the fact that Nifraim, Nifraim as a concept, is a part of him--will always be a part of him. But to have it represented so acutely has left him almost sick to his stomach.
"In re-real life, he's a star-eater. The commander of the forces that are currently attacking Earth. Before that, he...he was in charge of the forces that...that destroyed my star and killed my people." Jin pauses again, scrubs at his face. "I...have a long history with him."
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"So a nightmare taking the form of a memory or a memory bound up in a nightmare. Not much of a difference, really, the result is the same. He's all your insecurity, your fear, your failures, given flesh and a name."
She has one too, of course, not quite so tied to any literal shape, but a huge corpse of some kind of vast black bird that haunts her nightmares. Not a place to say, though.
She's not sure where Jin's boundaries are, but she reaches out and takes his hand quietly, just squeezing it. She can't say it's okay -- it never is -- but she can at least be present. She's never lived through it, but it's possible to imagine what such a trauma would be like.
"You remind me of a friend of mine, really," she blurts. "His people, his home, his family are long dead too, save for one, and he blames himself."
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But it makes sense. He has feared becoming Nifraim for years, centuries now. Nifraim says it every time they meet--"We're the same, Jin Tian. Cousins. Brothers." Every year that goes by he seems to get closer to it.
He squeezes Alex's hand back, glad to have someone to hold onto.
"He does, huh." It's said dully. Survivor's guilt. He knows he has it himself, though he also knows he shouldn't. He's not a survivor; he's a murderer.
"I. Can understand that."
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She sighs. "It's complex, that's for sure."
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He looks upwards and is silent for a moment, just thinking and letting the warmth of the desert wash over him and calm him back down.
"That reminds me, though. If...we ever want to 'go dreaming' again, there's something that I think I can show you there."
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(A black bird skeleton looms in her dreams, and it asks her, again and again: do you belong? do you really belong? what is your purpose?
and she screams at it to fall in silence)
"Really?"
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"It's sort of...a thing from my world. Well, not really. It's just something I can see, or hear, rather. It's. Well, it's kind of hard to explain and it's better to just kinda experience it. But yeah. Next time we go dreaming, or whatever you want to call it, I can show you."
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Boy, if only that were the case with his own nightmares.
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