Taithamanat

§ 2019-07-13 21:10:41

[21:23] For a long time, no sounds reached Ryrha from the Torunyema's Lair – there'd be the hints of a loud mewl at some point, but even that had been ambiguous. She would have preferred screams, anything to make whatever it was Valcen was doing more tangible, anything to break the facade of mediocrity.

For a reason she couldn't put a finger on, her implied loneliness perturbed her. The idea that after Valcen was done, there would be no one here in this forsaken place that was 'on her side', should hardly bother her – it had been her initial state, before it was even clear that Valcen was even going to manage to acquire a male assistant.

But she had been blessed with a loosely like-minded individual. What Valcen was doing – or what Valcen had done, as she couldn't track the progress of the matter – was brutally taking him away from her again.

She couldn't bring herself to nap or do anything to distract herself from the line of thought. In any realistic situation out there in the wild, someone would be nearby to take her mind of the subject, but she was perpetually on her own now.

Beyond all selfish concerns, empathy only worsened her mood. If Baishar was not being replaced by an artificial construct altogether, what would that do to his mind? Would his thoughts grind against each other like rough stonework, threading his soul with strands of pain?

She lay on her back amongst the pillows, staring at the ceiling, trying to focus her gaze between two of the dim lights that spilled a near-perpetual, shallow twilight into the Den. The illumination attracted her gaze repeatedly; by now, she had thin, banners of retinal burn smeared across her vision, painting twisted pictures.

[22:25] The door opened with a respectful silence, and Baishar — or at least, something wearing Baishar's flesh — entered the Den.

For a long moment, there was no further motion; his eyes quickly found Ryrha, staring at the ceiling as if lost in some other world. Observing. What was happening behind those eyes, what thoughts swam through the mind of what had once been her amanat? Just how much of Baishar had Valcen torn away from her? His expression gave few hints — there was concern, there, but for what?

Then the moment passed, and he approached silently, stopping only once he was close enough to whisper. "I'm back," he said, and the tone alone betrayed that he was gone — it was softly encouraging, with none of the fear one would expect from someone who had just had their soul brutally scarred. As if he was just returning from a walk. A moment later, he added: "...I'm sorry you had to witness that."

[22:36] The words struck through her heart effortlessly, like an impossibly sharp blade. For a moment, she forgot to breathe, although nothing else in her outward appearance immediately betrayed her distress. With great effort, she managed to slide her gaze across to Baishar, tracing his outlines, searching them for fragmented remnants of her amanat.

I'm sorry you had to witness that. It tasted like velvet in her mouth. It was something Valcen would say, delivered with the exact same gravity, the exact same meaning, but no less hollow for it – also just as when Valcen said it.

Some mangled strand of emotion and empathy fought its way past an attempted abortion and wrung a few words out of her throat, light, but sounding to grounded to register as flimsy: "Are you all right?"

She regretted the question immediately. There was no safe answer. Every possible response was going to be harrowing. By fearful reflex, she nearly appended 'nevermind', but stopped herself – she had asked, she would bear to hear the answer. She'd put herself through worse before.

[22:59] The response was a soft, earnest smile. "I am." There was a moment where it looked like he was going to elaborate on that, but he stopped himself. I've never been better wasn't going to reassure Ryrha.

Instead, Baishar closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, struggling to rein in his enthusiasm about his new state. "I know that's not easy to believe. I know it must look..." He trailed off, searching for the right word, and realized he didn't know it. How would it look to me if it had been Ryrha instead? He'd be able to understand it, to recognize the necessity. How would it have looked to me before? He couldn't say; he could hardly imagine seeing it differently.

"How does it look?" His eyes opened again, looking at Ryrha with a mixture of curiosity and apologetic concern. "What do you see in me?" What about this situation is terrifying you? How do I help?

[23:07] The question knotted into Ryrha's gut. Valcen. I see Valcen in you. And he wasn't there before. Not in that pair of eyes. She pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth, her muzzle slightly ajar, trying to grasp some means to express her feelings without sabotaging her freedom.

"Different," she compromised on, the word travelling as though back down her throat in a swallowing motion. "It looks different." The more she spoke, the clearer it was that she struggled to do so, a hint of hoarseness to her vocalisations with no underlying physical cause. "You're... very calm for someone whose soul was just rearranged," she ventured.

[23:51] 'Different.' Which didn't necessarily mean 'bad', but clearly Ryrha wasn't happy with the differences.

At her second comment, his first instinct was to respond that of course he was calm; Valcen knew what he was doing, why would he have left him otherwise? But he could recognize that as unhelpful in this context. But then what to say to that? 'Would it be easier if I were shaking in terror?'

After a very long silence, he dipped his muzzle to nip gently at the feathers of her shoulder. "You once told me that fear and trust were not mutually exclusive." He sank down into a sit, tucking his arms under his chest as he looked at Ryrha. "For a long time, I tried to manage those two feelings. I tried, and I couldn't manage it. I still admire your strength to maintain that balance."

He looked downward, briefly baring his blunted teeth in disgust at his own actions. "I let fear win. I let it win, and it nearly cost us everything." 'Us', meaning him and Valcen. "Now the fear is gone. I can trust him." His gaze turned back up to Ryrha, a hopeful expression on his face. "Just as you can."

[00:09] Something about the gesture of affection felt impossibly alien, hovering somewhere between the repulsiveness of a kaaru and a perfectly amicable stranger. The words dug into her, carving hollows into her spine, robbing her of the certainty that she could ever get up again – the certainty that she could do anything to escape.

A small nodule of her mind envied Baishar for his state – that fearless certainty. The rest of her felt fear was the one thing they needed to keep Valcen's machinations in perspective; but Valcen had just stripped it away, as easily as peeling skin off a corpse.

She tried to imagine what it would be like – trusting Q'ur, without any of the sensible fear to go with it. What could that be other than dangerous? What was Baishar capable of now?

It was clear he was still going to do his duties for Valcen, which meant he likely expected her to do the same – no doubt she could manage to meet that expectation. But she feared that it would be a duty, not an affection. The way the Nayabaru would have us do it.

"So," she said, still keeping herself more or less immobile amongst the cushions. "What changed? What insights have you gained?" Still her voice was quiet, more quiet than her usual vocalisations, mildly betraying her unease. Even as she was asking to bridge the inferential gap, it was likely clear to Baishar there was little that could possible bridge it.

§ 2019-07-27 21:06:29

[21:06] What changed. That was honestly a tricky question for him to answer; he couldn't be certain that he could identify everything. He remembered feeling the rush of sudden insight while in the Torunyema, but the contents of those insights were like a dream, only dimly remembered. Now it all seemed obvious, self-evident. He tried to fit together the story of why he'd tried to sabotage Valcen's work in the first place, but the attempt filled him with disgust — what reason could possibly have driven him to such a reckless act?

"I suppose that before this, I hadn't realized how terrible of an idea my actions were," he replied with a light grimace. "Or I hadn't thought out what would happen to him if I'd succeeded." He offered another tentative nuzzle of Ryrha's shoulder — clearly meant to be comforting, if uncertain how it would be received. "But all is well now. The Torunyema is fixed; I understand that breaking it was wrong; all is forgiven, and we can move on."

[21:29] And the gap remained, unimpressed by Baishar's attempts to bridge it. Ryrha yearned to close her eyes, but some instinct prevented it – there was just enough danger to Baishar's presence that she didn't yet want to leave him out of her sight, even if he was still mostly confined to her peripheral vision.

Worst of all, though, the words made sense to her. If Baishar were still himself and Valcen had given him a stern talking to, they'd be the right words to say. Baishar had done something incredibly stupid – but he'd already paid the price for it and it had turned out to be steeper than reasonable.

Ryrha decided frankness was the only way she could manage expectations and keep herself from stumbling blindly into the same fate. "Okay," she began, arranging her thoughts. "Please don't take it personally, but we are not going to be friends for a while. This may or may not change as time goes on.

"I won't let this get in the way of our arrangements with Valcen. But I do need to know and I ask you to be honest with me, what behaviour you expect from me. Understand, you may be happy with your fate, but I don't want that kind of change – so, should we have differences in opinion, I hope you will respect them and they will not serve as an excuse to do the same to me.

"But I need to know to what degree that's realistic. To what degree you'd be willing to withhold information from Valcen, if it's something that might set him off."

There were enough words there to make it clear just how unsettled she really was, both in content and, more strikingly, in tone.

[22:48] We are not going to be friends for a while. The blow was softened by the fact that he was expecting it, but no less real. I guess that's the way it is, then.

"I expect you not to make the same mistake I did," he replied after a long moment of thought. "Nor to do anything else that would put Valcen or his projects in danger." A long pause, punctuated by a slow exhale. "Aside from that and our obligations, that's all. I understand that you don't want this; I don't expect you to. I understand that we... are not friends, now; I hope that this is something we can repair, but I am not expecting it... or not requiring it, at least."

Be gentle to Ryrha for a while. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, took a few moments to center himself. "I'm sorry that things have turned out this way." If there were some way his old self could have embraced this change willingly, perhaps this would have been better. "...You are welcome to whatever opinions you like," he said, trying to steer his attention back to the conversation at hand. "You are obviously welcome to disagree with me and Valcen; you are obviously welcome to make your disagreements known."

"You are welcome to talk to me about any of this." There was a long, pensive silence, Baishar's gaze off to the side, tongue tracing across blunted teeth. Finally: "I can promise this: If I think you intend to do something that will harm him, my first recourse will be to urge you not to do it. If you sincerely promise me you won't do it, I will not tell him that you wanted to." Baishar turned his gaze back to Ryrha, expression a mix of concern for Ryrha and concern of Ryrha. "Is that acceptable to you?"

[23:12] I expect you not to make the same mistake I did. Were she human, Ryrha might have bitten her lip at the remark. What Baishar had done was far removed from anything she might have attempted – her weapon of choice was rhetoric, persuasion, but it was precisely that which had gotten so much more dangerous for her now.

Valcen had altered Baishar's mind to suit him, proving – to himself as much as to his associates – that he could do it. All he needed now was an excuse to do the same thing to her. A simple disagreement might be all that was needed. Just one.

But Baishar at least remained calm, oblivious to the emotional whiplash his sentence had struck through her. So calm. So reasonable. So detailed, to the degree he saw himself capable of being. "...yes," she said, finally, feeling her way along a plateau of private terror, assessing it as stable. "Thank you. I appreciate it."

Fearfully, she let her gaze slip across to Baishar, to dare to look him in the eyes, dare take in his aura. It was hideous – she could tell at a glance he was analysing her. She imagined him carefully measuring how much to care about her eccentricities, weighing it against his new axioms in all their immeasurable strength.

She imagined herself losing.

It was a very convincing scenario.

"I know it doesn't mean anything to you," she said, softly. "But I'm sorry I wasn't able to prevent this."