Khu Ioduan Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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archishellago2018-01-05 10:58 am
khuimods) wrote in archishellago2018-01-05 10:58 am
Entry tags:
Test Drive Meme #001
KHU IODUAN; TEST DRIVE MEME #001    | |
I. THE VERDANT SENTRY - Attention, New Recruits! It's clear that all of the city's law enforcement is handled by the various branches of the Sentry: from Mounted Division handling street patrol, to the Aerial Corps provided airborne support for tactical and rescue operations, to the Nautical Branch undertaking regular sea patrols as the first line of defense along the archipelago's borders. But everyone interested in joining up has to go through their basic training program, and that starts today with a general skills assessment. There's quite a mix of attendees today, spread across nearly every race represented in Aifaran and including other Dreamfolk, but whatever the recruiter is saying is getting lost in the two chatty Igheeri who seem to think they're too good to listen to the standard welcome speech... time to interrupt by signaling the person in charge? Take care of it yourself? Gripe about it to the person in line beside you? II. KIRIN RODEO - Place Your Bets! At the end of every month, the Mounted Division of the Sentry holds their skills competition. When they're not on the field, their steeds are often the subject of much admiration from children and more than a few adults. Astride many breeds of kirin, some lithe and fleet, some stockier and stronger, these off-duty officers demonstrate their control and bond over the notoriously strong-willed and intelligent creatures with complicated maneuvers. There's a surprisingly in-depth system for betting on one's favourite to win the various matches, and just about everyone's willing to explain the odds to newcomers. There's only one rule: all proceeds go to funding of the city's charities. (Bragging rights on winning are still yours to keep.) Two bells ring loudly over the crowd - last call for wagers! III. WE HAVE REGULATIONS ABOUT THIS - Munga on the Loose! Munga are ill-tempered, rat-sized spiky lizards with a gift for camouflage, and whose venom in their spines and teeth is also highly hallucinogenic. And... they're on the loose. Fortunately, keeping them is highly regulated, and pretty much everyone in Aifaran knows about them, but loose Munga are uncommon enough that the reaction is more likely to be startled flailing at a hint of spines and skittering. Today someone's exotic pet has slipped out of their hands, and it's trailing a harness and lead as it zigzags away, prickling and hissing and going for the ankles. It's given a wide berth, except by those who don't notice until it's too late or those too preoccupied by something else. Hopefully the proper authorities have been notified to catch and return the creature, but maybe someone helpful can keep it from getting too far away? IV. A SURPRISE WINDFALL - Officer, This Isn't Mine... There was a loud thud as someone tosses a heavy bag from the window of a dilapidated building. Five seconds later there’s smoke pouring out the windows and your holding what seems to be someone else’s luggage. Opening it, you find carefully wrapped bricks of some very illegal drugs, and someone down the side alley is pointing at you and yelling. A mounted Sentry officer is giving you a rather peculiar look as well while he calls in the fire brigade. And among the people fleeing the building, there are five Kin’nal looking at you, wide-eyed, as it suddenly dawns on them that they messed up. Take your new prize and split before reinforcements arrive? Try to explain the mistake? Take note that the building is still on fire? V. INTO THE UNKNOWN - Watch Your Back Out There The sea patrol discovered the new irregularity a few days ago, reporting that it looks like a series of tall and jagged stone towers rising up from the ocean. It's incomplete as these planar-shunted locations often are, as if something massive had taken a bite of some mysterious city and then spat it whole into the seas of Konryu. Having been chosen as part of the exploration team, you've been working your way through the complicated labyrinth of stone tunnels and dead ends, searching for what the Opara engineers had enthusiastically described as a potential new power source. "Trace the green glowing power lines," was their (sort of helpful) instruction. However the lean, dark and toothy thing you've just glimpsed should probably be a more pressing concern... warn others? Take it on yourself? Pray it hasn't spotted you? VI. WILDCARD - Because You're Not The Boss Of Me Anything else that doesn't fit the above prompts is welcome, just keep it within the game setting please! Applications • Reservations • Taken List • Game Navigation |
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What a peculiar sensation it is, to experience joy and grief in tandem with each other. The Fool winces in sympathy and almost reaches out to rest his hand on Fitz's forearm, before thinking better of it. (No, he counsels himself, he had good reasons for choosing to let go of this friendship, to let time and distance put space between them that he himself had never been able to do. Don't make this harder on yourself than it already is, don't reach for what is not yours.)
"I'm so sorry, Fitz." And he is, in a way that defies his ability to describe it. Molly Chandler, Molly Redskirts--the love of Fitz's life--at least they'd had those years together, after all they'd lost. Then he smiles and makes himself recall the good news coupled together with the bad. "And--congratulations are in order," he adds, laughing some, "I suppose, though they come very late. Tell me of your daughter. How old is she now? What does Nettle think of her?"
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The Fool will not even touch him. It is clearly not from lack of emotion, for sympathy shines in his eyes. Fitz looks away for a moment. It's probably easier. Something about this whole endeavour is exceedingly wrong, even moreso than their usual 'adventures', and he may not ever see this Fool again after this day.
"Only recently," he murmurs, and then he shakes his head. "It is so strange to tell you of this when you first returned to my life with little Bee in your arms."
On 16 January 2018 at 07:34, afoolsgold - DW Comment <dw_null@dreamwidth.org</p>
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"It is so strange to tell you of this when you first returned to my life with little Bee in your arms."
Yet a cruelty, even kindly done, is still a cruelty. Something in the Fool cracks, and at last he reaches out his gloved hand to rest it against Fitz's arm. "It broke my heart," he admits, "to leave you when I did. But Fitz, to my ear, you've lived well in my absence--a life with Molly, a daughter to raise with her... Please."
Now he seeks his friend's eyes, his own almost pleading. "Tell me you knew happiness. It is all I have ever wanted for you."
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Fitz should change his shirt. He knows the Fool's sensibilities to be far more refined and delicate than his own, and the blood scent is strong enough to himself. Molly would make him change it.
He pauses with the Fool's hand on his arm. Such a small gesture, and yet it soothes him like a chord settling into place on a harp. "You did not need to leave," he mutters, churlish, but his lack of movement betrays his emotions only too well. He meets the Fool's eyes, and nods.
"Indeed. I... and you?"
On 17 January 2018 at 05:11, afoolsgold - DW Comment <dw_null@dreamwidth.org</p>
cw for mention of past torture, body horror
"...no." The admission comes softly after a heavy pause, but he cannot lie. Not about this, at least. In a movement that betrays the source of his bone-deep anguish, he places one hand in the other and touches his fingernails, as though to reassure himself that they are still there, that the Pale Woman had not come to him again to pry them from his flesh in her revenge against him for his hubris--
He takes a breath and sits up. "...Aslevjal may be but a distant memory for you, but to me, it was mere months ago." Another weighted pause, one in which he still cannot bring himself to look at Fitz. "I won't tell you the number of time I woke in the night tasting blood in my mouth."
Re: cw for mention of past torture, body horror
Fitz covers the Fool's hand with his, very briefly, very lightly. He knows the way that torture undoes a person, that memories of pain and fear and lack of control over one's own body make it impossible for the logical mind to combat fear, for all that Aslevjal was indeed a long time ago for him. Fitz still has nightmares from Regal's dungeon, and that was even further back in his own history. And this Fool has not even been though the horrors of Clerres, yet.
Does he tell him about Clerres? Does he keep it from him?
He will not say 'sorry', not again. Instead, he says quietly, "Will you sleep near me, tonight, so that I might be close when you wake?"
A familiar presence doesn't mean no nightmares, but perhaps he can help the Fool ground himself should he wake in a horrible panic.
On 17 January 2018 at 14:00, afoolsgold - DW Comment <dw_null@dreamwidth.org</p>
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He carefully stands up and stretches, going up onto his toes like the acrobat he might have been decades ago, then ventures over to his pack to sort through it in search of his sleeping pallet. Already this could be one of their many shared adventures together in the Six Duchies: trekking beyond the Mountain Kingdom in search of Verity, or their quest to find and rescue Prince Dutiful from the Piebalds. All that is missing is the wolf, Nighteyes warm against his side.
The Fool settles down onto the pallet, introspective and quiet, and waits for Fitz to join him.
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Fitz watches half agape as the Fool moves so comfortably, then scolds himself. When will he adjust? He cannot gape in such an unmannerly fashion at his friend every single time he is reminded that this is not his Fool (although all Fools are his, inasmuch as they are anyone's).
He unrolls his own bedding, which has had a place not far from the fire for the few days since he has been here. He shifts it closer to the Fool, mindful that the other might well need heat.
"Wake me, if you cannot sleep," he tells him, awkward and earnest. What is it about the Fool that so frequently reduces him to the idiot that he was in his youth. "I would prefer to spend the time with you."
On 18 January 2018 at 05:20, afoolsgold - DW Comment <dw_null@dreamwidth.org</p>
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There's such an intimacy, such an attentiveness to the way that Fitz looks at him now, and it unnerves as much as it excites the old longing in him. Memories of seeing small black and white posies left for him on his tea tray back in Lord Golden's chambers in Buckkeep Castle, believing for so long that they were tokens of affection from Fitz, only to discover after that terrible quarrel, that they were not. That they would never be, for Fitz would never desire him that way.
It is better, the Fool believes, to let that go.
Would that it were easier, with Fitz laying so close to him by the campfire.
"We'll return to Aifaran in the morning," he says softly and pillows his head with one slender arm. "Then you shall tell me everything about Bee, and your new life."
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Fitz reddens, feeling heat in his face as the Fool looks up at the sky. It is fortunate, he thinks briefly, that he has an older, hurt Fool waiting for him at home. It makes it slightly easier to...
To what?
He shies away from completing the thought, settling on the odd comfort of being discomforted by the Fool's gentle teasing. He fusses with his blankets, waiting for the blush to die down.
"Indeed." He cannot help but reach out to grip the Fool's shoulder for a moment, still marvelling at his presence. "Then we can work together on finding a path back home."
On 19 January 2018 at 12:36, afoolsgold - DW Comment <dw_null@dreamwidth.org</p>
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Anticipating shock, he angles his head to look back towards Fitz with a chiding look. "And why should I want to go back to your cold, cold Buckkeep Castle? I was born to luxuriate in this unending springtime." All this said with that light, whimsical glitter in his eyes as he stretches again--truthfully, he has no need even for the heat of the fire anymore, but the Fool has never liked the cold. Not as a child, and certainly not since Aslevjal.
But that is not why he won't return. With him, the answers have never been so simple, and he does not pretend for a moment that Fitz won't see through the disguise.
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Something inside Fitz shrivels.
"That is a pity," Fitz says, voice low and hoarse. He is only too aware of the Fool's stubbornness, and only too aware of his own heart near torn in two. He cannot leave Bee behind with no parent. - even if Molly still lived, he'd want to be there for Bee. He cannot leave the Fool here.
He knows it has nothing to do with climate.
He considers for a while, pushing down the shock and dread. "Please do not go to Clerres, Please stay here, if you - if you won't return with me."
On 19 January 2018 at 14:58, afoolsgold - DW Comment <dw_null@dreamwidth.org</p>
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Yet the Fool had never set any limits upon that love--and no expectations, either.
It takes a great deal of his courage to roll over onto his side so that he faces Fitz, to prop himself up one one elbow, and gently frame his face with both gloved hands. There's tenderness in the touch and in his eyes, but great sorrow, too.
"I will stay here," he assures him softly, gently, "just as you must go." Then he nearly laughs, but it is a quiet, pained-sounding thing. "As you have described it to me, it seems that I already wait for you to return to me in Buckkeep Castle." His eyes soften with regret. "It would not do for you to keep me waiting. If I know anything about myself, it is that I will long for you always when you are gone."
'Me,' he says, 'myself,' he says, but he isn't who he means. The Fitz in front of him is no more his beloved friend than he is his Fool. He knows that.
And yet...
The Fool's amber eyes have grown wet with feeling, and he takes a breath, starts to draw his hands away.
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He should tell the Fool that no, he is wrong, that he must follow his path otherwise the future will fall apart. He should tell the Fool that it is not up to him, as it never has been, to see all possible futures and to move time's great wheel in its track. He should tell the Fool that he will tell him nothing of what he knows, as it is not fair to do that to him given his life's work to protect the future.
...he should take the Fool into his arms and keep him safe, forever, away from Clerres, away from torture and brokenness and despair. He should protect him. He should...
Ha. As he has protected Bee? And Molly? And the Fool himself, near slain by Fitz?
The Fool cups his face with clever long-fingered hands, and Fitz relaxes into the touch almost entirely involuntarily.
The Fool speaks about the two of himself, and Fitz wonders if there is another of himself, also, about to endure so many long years with no word from the Fool. "I am so very confused," Fitz admits. "Surely you are you, and I am myself, and yet this makes no sense."
He catches the Fool's birdlike wrist with one hand. "No, please-"
On 20 January 2018 at 04:00, afoolsgold - DW Comment <dw_null@dreamwidth.org</p>
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"You mustn't make this harder than it already is, Fitz," he tries to say so gently, so tenderly, but already emotion makes his voice weak, unsteady. He struggles to take another breath and touches Fitz's hand with his own, working to loosen his beloved's grip from his wrist. "I am a prophet out of my time. There is no place for me in the world that I've left behind--not if, as you say, you left me waiting for you in Buckkeep. I must still be waiting for you there, waiting for you to return, to fulfill your role as Catalyst again."
He sits up now with his back to Fitz, turning to face the fire again. This is too much, it is too painful, it would have been less agonizing if they'd never seen each other again after that fateful, final visit to Aslevjal--
Another breath and he squeezes his eyes shut tightly. "I cannot go with you," he whispers, "and I cannot keep you here with me."
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Fitz... lets him go. As he must. He will not force the Fool to touch him. Duty has always had too great a hold on both of them, for all that the note in the Fool's voice makes Fitz's heart break.
For all that Fitz wanted to ease the Fool's sleep, he has managed to do entirely the opposite. There is nothing but tension in the lean line of the other's back. "I understand," he says, and it is simultaneously a lie and one of the harsher truths of his recent life. "We will - we will manage, as ever, Beloved."
On 20 January 2018 at 12:20, afoolsgold - DW Comment <dw_null@dreamwidth.org</p>
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"...Beloved."
He turns, then, at the sound of his name, and meets Fitz's eyes. That name had been such a source of torment to him while he lay suffering under the Pale Woman's knife. Still, it made an old ache twinge in his heart--but to hear the name from Fitz's mouth soothes the pain. He was always insufferably gifted at saying just the right--or just the wrong--thing.
Wordlessly, he lays back down onto the sleeping pallet and opens his arm to Fitz, a silent invitation for him to come, to be close, in what little time they may have left. "Sleep next to me," he pleads softly.
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He leans his cheek on a fist, watching as the Fool turns. Oh, this is such a gentle torture. He cannot stay, he cannot make a home in this place. He must go home to Bee and to Buckkeep. He must report to Chade, and check on the Fool himself, and strengthen his sometimes difficult relationship with his other daughter.
Fitz moves instantly closer, tugging his own blankets with him. He settles down with the Fool, exhaling softly at the feel of the other's lean strength against him. He has always felt like a blundering ox next to the Fool's grace.
(He enjoys feeling like a blundering ox next to the Fool's grace.)
On 20 January 2018 at 12:49, afoolsgold - DW Comment <dw_null@dreamwidth.org</p>
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(Fitz seems to crave it, too, some part of him realizes. The realization gives him pause, fills him with some inexplicable dread, some premature loss--)
"Fitz," he murmurs quietly, his eyes on the stars overhead. "In your time... what am I to you?"
("I will never desire you," the Fool remembers those biting words so clearly, even now, and he cannot put them out of his mind.)
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The Fool holds onto him like he's something precious, and while Fitz cannot believe it, for a time he can believe that the Fool thinks it so. His head is tucked beneath the Fool's chin. The Fool's scentlessness is in itself reassuring.
...oh. Oh, the tenderness in the fingers through his hair.
"...what am I to you?"
There's a jolt somewhere inside him at the Fool's words, as though the Fool himself is more aware of the shifting sands inside Fitz than he is himself. This would not be the first time that the word 'close' is laughably inadequate to describe what they are to each other, how well they know each other. What- what has the Fool sensed?
"Very dear to me," Fitz murmurs against the delicate skin covering the Fool's collarbones, aware that the answer is somehow gapingly insufficient. Has the Fool sensed Fitz's guilt over near murdering him? Or... is there something else?
On 20 January 2018 at 13:21, afoolsgold - DW Comment <dw_null@dreamwidth.org</p>
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"Very dear to me," Fitz had said.
The Fool sighs and gives in to some long held impulse to kiss the crown of Fitz's head. "I will miss you so," he confesses softly, "when you are gone."
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This is perhaps the closest they have been without catastrophe. Without a wild attempt at Skill healing, or a combining of their spirits as they travel through a pillar. Fitz has not slept with anyone holding him in such a tender manner, or he them, since - since Molly.
It is a luxury, and it is quite possibly entirely stupid, for once he leaves here neither of them can have this once more. The Fool who awaits him in Buckkeep can barely stand to be touched, after all he has endured.
Fitz won't move away, however, and he exhales a tiny sigh at the Fool's words. "And I, you," he responds, lips against the other's skin, in what is as much a kiss as speech.
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Fate can be kind, sometimes, even as it must be cruel.
Breathing is so hard, so difficult, all of a sudden, and the Fool's eyes grow wet with tears. He's weeping before he realizes it, tears stinging his eyes. "Fitz," he starts to speak, but his voice breaks before the rest of his words can leave him. He just shakes his head and squeezes his eyes shut.
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Ah.
Those miniscule shudders are not his pain. He protests wordlessly, softly, moving up to hold the Fool against him. It is such a punishment that the Fool should be crying, but it is such a treasure to be able to hold him. He presses his lips to the Fool's forehead, to comfort and soothe. To each cheek. Finally, unthinkingly, to his lips.
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Even if it is pity, it is more than he will ever have again.
"Fitz," he breathes at last when he draws back, just enough so that their lips touch, "what are you doing?"
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