TEST DRIVE #2

[thecrossingmods]

TDM #2

Welcome to The Desert, wayward souls.
It's good to see you again.

The TDM is game canon and will be active FEB—APR. For further details about the setting, please reference our current setting page. All the information there is fair game for this TDM.

arrival

— BENEATH THE RIVER ( NEW CHARACTERS ONLY )
CW: claustrophobia, being buried alive
If your journey is starting here, you begin as all others have, and all others will: in The River.

You awake in the dark and the damp, with pressure all around you. In this case, however, it isn't water that surrounds you— but earth. Specifically, it is mud made from the sand of the desert and the standing water of the sparkling white salt flat that The River has become, and it behaves like quicksand. It has you here, and it doesn't want to let go.

You aren't in any direct danger; you may or may not notice that you don't need to breathe down here (or at all). But that may be difficult to appreciate in the moment: immediately on waking, you are seized by what was perhaps your last memory— or, at least, the somatic feeling of it. Panic, terror, pain; or (depending on the circumstances) maybe peace, or relief. It is the moment of your death as told by your body's visceral, emotional response, and it won't stop until you pull yourself out of the mud.

You are close to the surface. Even a bit of lucky thrashing might be enough for you to break through the sludge, and crack the shell of salt above. But The River will not release you easily; it will continue to suck you back down until you are able to fully pry yourself free— or someone else is able to lend you a hand.

— BEYOND THE RIVER ( EXISTING CHARACTERS ONLY )
If you arrived here from the Cavern, you'll find that the cave you came from opens up onto a rocky cliff face, not unlike the one you may have found yourself settled in before The Crossing. From here you can see the sprawl of the Desert ahead of you: the Oasis tucked against the base of the cliffs, the endless dunes, and the wide, white expanse of The River — though it hardly looks like one now.

There is no city to be found among these cliffs, though. They are steep and rocky, with dry, loose sand making finding and keeping traction difficult. There is a narrow, winding path to the Oasis below, but it will take time to hike, and the sun is already hot and oppressive above you.

Theoretically, there's a more direct route... if you're feeling bold. The cliffs are covered in jutting striations (as if, say, carved by a massive river, or maybe a River) that make halfway decent handholds and footholds for anyone hoping to climb their way down instead.

Just don't change your mind too much. If you turn back, you may find that the path behind has become impassable or now leads somewhere else entirely. You don't ever see it happening, but it's almost as if the cliffs are rearranging themselves whenever your back is turned.

shelter from the storm

— THE OASIS
The Oasis, as well as the rest of the surrounding Desert, is bustling with life. (Or do plants and animals have a Journey they need to complete, too?) It's a green, if not lush, patch surrounding a small lake of fresh water, partially shielded by the arms of the cliffs from the winds blowing across the dunes.

There are creatures besides you making their homes here: from small, skittering mammals to circling scavengers. If you look closely, though, you'll find it's a bit of a mishmash, as if an ecosystem appeared rather than developed... and, depending on where you're from, some of it might even be recognizable to you.

Those of you that came from the Cavern might appreciate the return of natural light, though you might be disappointed to discover that day and night don't always arrive at the cadences you might expect them to... In fact, they don't seem to follow any recognizable or even trackable pattern at all. Some noon suns stretch on forever; some sunsets speed run straight into dry, cold night.

If that were all the unpredictability the Desert had to offer, it might be tolerable enough... but the weather proves to be just as erratic. One day is clear and bright, with wide-open skies; the next brings dust clouds and lightning storms rolling in from the dunes. (And when today might be half as long as yesterday, those swings add up.)

Luckily for all of you, there have evidently been others here before you, just like in the Cavern. There is a collection of shelters lining the Oasis, no more than huts designed to keep everyone within as cool as possible. There's less space than there was in the Subterranean City, but that means some things are easier to find... The huts are decorated just like the city was before it, as if in layers with the odd familiar trinket from your home stashed in a drawer or under a mattress.

shifting sands

— THE DUNES
The Ferryman is holding vigil at The River, as they always are. They have positioned themselves (and their Lantern) so that their Light casts over the Oasis— but that aura can only cast so far.

The Lantern's Light might not be quite so obvious here as it was down in the Cavern, drowned out as it is by the desert sun, but you can still feel when you approach the edge of its protection, the way the sense of comfort and safety wanes. Beyond it are the rolling dunes of the Desert, where wraiths gather in great numbers.

Those who have been paying close attention will recognize that these are not the same wraiths you encountered in the Cavern. Or, at least, none of the wraiths you encountered in the Cavern are represented here.

These wraiths are not the violent, wailing beasts encountered by some during The Crossing. They are just the same as the wraiths originally found in the Cavern: silent, insubstantial, and always watching. The ones who have found the Oasis prowl the edge of the boundary; the others wander the dunes as if lost. Or, perhaps, searching.

If you, yourself, wander the dunes, you'll find them at best difficult to navigate— or, at worst, impossible. You may be swallowed by a sand storm, or lose sight of your landmarks when descending into a valley between the dunes. You might find yourself somewhere you never expected to be... Or, you might just need to send a message out to the others for help finding your way home.

code

Comments

[witnessvelama]

"Drama," Celehar echoes, unimpressed. "Othalo, forgive me for saying so, but it appears a wound, not a drama." Given the lack of signs or other pain, he doesn't approach to try and prod at it, but he catches her eye, holding it. "It seems the sort of thing that would be... troubling."

And more than that, Celehar listens to and follows the shake of her head, and his tongue sharpens further, his attention caught on a thread like a mystery. Need may find hers unraveling in the darkness, but Celehar has only just found his own thread to trace the path of. Once is maybe the product of age, twice is suspicious, but three times, after she asked after the gap - after the hole in his own ritual prayers - he stops gently handling the subject. "Do you find it a subject that you ought not burden me with, your home? Or one that has slipped away from you?"

[hasapoint]

So Celehar can just get right to the point! She'd wondered, after all the times she'd asked a question and he'd had this look as if she'd trod on his foot and he was too polite to say. Maybe it's the heat. Regardless, she's glad he shows fight. She should take this seriously.

"Prelate..." Need says, and pauses, looking from his right eye to his left. Should she make a gesture? Yes, she decides, and with an effort says, "Celehar." Names are important. People like to have them spoken.

She continues at a deliberate pace, trying to choose the right words, to leave all sarcasm out. "You didn't like to hear what I am, when we met. It disturbed you. I'm not saying you shouldn't be disturbed, understand. It's easy for me to forget that these things are disturbing for other people. Even my own people, I think, and for them a kalyke - a spirit-sword - was sacred.

"I can tell you these things, but I don't know how much they'll shock or repulse you." Another pause, and she pushes on, more forcefully and rapidly, some of that sardonic tone creeping back in. "You seem like you have a good brain and a good heart, you're an adult and act like it, I think a lot of our goals align and you have more patience for these children than I do. I think we can work together. But if I alienate you too badly, that's much more difficult."

She likes him. It's happened yet again, that she cares about someone she's just met, and it really doesn't matter if it's not reciprocated. All the same.

[witnessvelama]

Such a grim conversation to be having in such an informal setting - the solemnity he's met with makes Celehar long for his coat of office and his desk, rather than to be sitting here in rolled up shirtsleeves, unquestionably mussed from his attempts to relieve the heat.

He's dealt with worse conversations in worse conditions, though, physical and mental. He continues to meet her eyes, letting the gravity of the concerns level him. She's not wrong - it did and still does weigh heavily on him that such a thing would, or could, be done to a person. He cannot hide the lines it draws on his face even now, even as he doesn't pull away.

"Oth - Need," he says, echoing her choice in names, with only a touch of a hiccup to it at the informality tied to the solemnity. "Please understand - there are many things that I have seen, that trouble and disturb me. Those I have come to hate, has been for their deeds." He closes his eyes, dredging up the past, to recite in grim exhaustion. "A man who sought monied, vulnerable women to marry, then poison, separating them from their families and burying them in paupers graves. A schoolmistress blackmailing the foundling girls in her care."

The next, he has to pause, to fortify himself against the memory of pain and cruel laughter echoing through his mind. "I hate the revethavar, for in its solitude it had lost every shred of the personhood it once held, reduced to nothing but cruelty and hunger. The lingering dead, in everything I know, become twisted. They consume the flesh of the living, the life, the very minds." Despite his best efforts, his ears pin back, but he soldiers past it.

"Of all the things you have lost, I have seen no evidence yet that you have abandoned your Calling. Do you mean to tell me otherwise?"

[hasapoint]

This time, Celehar schooling his expression was a warning, so Need can swallow back the gut-fire rage before it has any force. Her lips compress and a muscle twitches in her cheek, and she can move on and pay attention as he braces himself to talk about the revethavar.

There's a lot in that description that she finds familiar. Should she tell him about the Mage of Black Flames? Or that she too can and has consumed the living, if not quite in the fashion he means?

"I am twisted, compared to who I was. Sometimes she seems like a different person entirely," she admits in a low voice, uncomfortable with the topic. It's easier when she re-frames it as someone else's life. She looks away, and then back. "It hurt me to hear her name, so I told Vena to forget it. My memories of her life started to fade, especially as they got further away. I realized it was happening, eventually, and I was mostly able to stop it, but only the final few days and her death are anything close to complete. Sometimes I start to reach for something and I don't find it, so I have to change the subject. That's what you've noticed."

The discomfort is less, not absent. Need frowns, her voice becoming sharper. "But don't pity me for it. It was a long time ago and you can get used to anything. Anyone who manages to linger is changed, it's a matter of how. I don't have a calling in quite your fashion, but I have what I chose to be. The rest? Less important. I'm not selfish enough to be caught up in it."

[witnessvelama]

"I think you carry the pieces of it within you," Celehar says, his crackling voice starn and intense. As earnestly as he says it, it comes across nearly sounding as an accusation. "Were those pieces not still of you, would you be here with us?" He turns, not entirely taking his eyes off of her as he gestures towards the center of their little haven, where the Ferryman has placed their lantern to serve as beacon and protection.

"Revethalo or not," and he stumbles, slightly, marrying the words for undeath and for priestess in a way unusual for him, yet carrying on despite it, "there is something in you, some aspect that cannot yet be consigned to darkness."

He remembers those tears. It... aches in a familiar hollow way, remembering so many nights where he had lain sleepless, the horror nearly overwhelming him. He thinks of the Witnesses vel ama he has met, burned out and hollowed out in the face of pain. How, in the Untheileneise Court, he had experienced everything as though from the depths of a well (a well, like her body had been dropped down).

"You are not so far degraded as that Revethavar, Othalo Need. Full little of your deeds could echo what that monster committed in the dark."

[hasapoint]

Need thinks Celehar's arguing with himself as much as he is with her. Trying to reconcile the revulsion and dread he has of a dead thing that can (could) still think and reach out to the living with... a sort of colleague who takes the duty seriously, she supposes. It seems like a good sign that he wants to think well of her, and wants her to know it too, but she can't think why.

She does still have utility, even diminished. That's probably it.

Maybe she shouldn't have used his word, 'twisted'. Obviously Celehar thinks she's despairing of what she is. "Of course I'm not consigned to darkness. The Star-Eyed notices when one of Her implements goes out of true and She isn't subtle or gentle about reminding us of this. I've given good service without bias for a period of time that sounds absurd if I give it a number. I've served Her since She went by a different name. This thing that is abhorrent to you isn't as terrible to us - it's Her way, even if it's normally Her who chooses."

She can't bring herself to say it's not terrible at all. After millennia of Mindspeech, it's ingrained in Need that if she speaks a bald-faced lie it will ring as one.

"Those parts of myself that faded or wore away might be here in some form, or I wouldn't almost remember things. Even if they aren't, I'm not degraded. I'm just changed to meet my purpose. Much of that purpose is violent, Oth...a?" Need's picked up what othalo means and that it's gendered but not the male form of the word. "The rage and the hunger are there - were there - but to a purpose. Not indiscriminate and to serve myself."

[witnessvelama]

Despite the heat, Celehar rises to his feet, in a stiff movement. He breaks away, moving two paces before turning back - not departing, but feeling some need to move and disperse the restless intensity that this conversation brings up in him, standing far enough back that he does not loom over Need, as if someone of his slight build could serve to intimidate.

He grimaces at the word hunger, his pale eyes fixed intently on Need's face. "What is it you sate them on?" He asks. "Whose flesh? Whose souls?" He doesn't address the title, in that moment, just watches her. "To kill in defense is still to kill - to wear the stain of that blood. You may be a soldier of it, and may even need to be done, but you must be changed in the doing. What is it that your Star-Eyed does, to set her instruments to right?"

[hasapoint]

Still cross-legged, Need props her wrists on her knees and refuses to rise, to take a defensive posture, though her chin goes up and her back is straight, her eyes alert and watchful. She's frowning, but not agitated or ashamed; she doesn't snarl, doesn't flinch, keeps her hands relaxed. The sentiment is annoying and wearying and familiar. She did invite this.

"Not like that. No more than you knock someone down in the street and start chewing their flesh when you're hungry. You're physically capable of it, it would nourish you, but you don't. You live off other people indirectly, at a remove. So do I. What I 'eat' is something living things give off every moment, as flame gives off light and heat. People give off more. If someone's not there to collect it it just drifts off." Need is making the assumption that elves are like humans in several regards here, and being honest but very much simplifying the way magic comes into the world. Now she invokes something he'd said a bit ago, about hating people for their deeds: "Cannibals are wretches for what they do with their teeth. Not for having them."

...Need can siphon the strength from the flesh and will of the living directly, therefore metaphorically taking a bite or... sapping the flame? but she does it very rarely, only with consent, and she stops before she can cause permanent damage. It takes a lot of precision and bringing it up would complicate a conversation that already has a lot of moving pieces. Really, she's not sure now that she should have said hunger. It's a closer term than cold but clearly much more loaded.

Of course, gentle soul that Celehar is he has a horror of killing. And something of a point. It would be very easy for her to draw on blood magic, the power inherent in pain and death, and he has no reason to believe her if she says she just doesn't.

"If we're one of Hers, She can take us apart," she says plainly, feeling a prickle of unease at saying this. There are a lot of things Kal'enal likes to keep mysterious. Despite herself, Need's face closes. "The final resort is cutting out the part that makes us able to think and plan. That way we can still be of use." As the Sword that Sings is of use. Was of use now, Need hopes. The Storms...

While neither of them were watching the sun has slipped west, becoming less intense as it neared the horizon. In the pre-sunset light, shadows aren't as dark and highlights aren't as bright.

[witnessvelama]

It isn't possible for Celehar to be any more washed out given his coloring - except for perhaps his eyes, the blue tinted towards a grey-lavender with the softening light, doing nothing at all to ease the intensity of his stare.

"There are those in my homeland who have no experience of ghouls, as you do not," he says, after a moment of staring her down. "They do not rise as often in the South, and well-tended graves may come to seem an effort unnecessary when no one has seen such. There are all manner of skeptics - until one rises." The pacing has stilled, now, but the coiled wire of tension comes through in his voice as he rasps it.

"A new ghoul is slow and weak. It can only dig up other gravesites around it at first, and clothe itself in rotten flesh. Even this can lead to the rise of other graves - the soil of a cemetery that has brought up one ghoul often brings more." He closes his eyes, licks his dry lips as he thinks of the last ghoul, in Tanvero. "They do not confine themselves to corpses, when they have the strength. They hunt the living. They tear them to shreds, and they wear their flesh in tatters. They become faster, stronger. The last I quelled... it had eaten twice of the living. When I found it, it had begun to hunt us. Had I not found its name, it would have killed three more."

He lets that sit in silence for a moment - Need, he's sure, will understand the why of this tale, but he still needs to say it. "They are not instruments of the Gods, Othalo," he says, tiredly. "And it is my duty to see the living safe from these dangers. I do not accuse your Star-Eyed of our ghouls, but neither might I forget the dangers."

[hasapoint]

Though she listens carefully, Need is not sure about the why and feels he's unfairly painting her with this brush. She can clearly see why Celehar would see her as akin to this revethavar creature, but ghouls, nasty creatures that they seem to be, don't sound like they have anything to do with her beyond an association with death. He's determined to make that connection, though.

Finding the ghoul's name... Was that why he'd reacted as he had in the Cavern, when she said she'd forgotten hers? He wanted to be able to have power over her? Far away, the anger pulses incredulously. She keeps it down. Need keeps her face still and doesn't take or release a breath, but in that quiet pause her shoulders start to lower and she lets her wrists slide into her lap so the backs of her curled fingers touch.

Of course. It makes sense. Without being a Companion about it - and frankly the Companions' way has never sat right with her, even if she did have those Gifts available here and was dazzlingly beautiful on top of it - there's no way to just inspire trustworthiness. It's only sensible. All manner of people in Velgarth, several of her bearers included, would also want that option, and maybe rightly; she's positioned uniquely and could harm them as they couldn't harm her. The drop-you-in-a-well threat favored by Kero and Elspeth has never rattled her and that's the strongest one they have.

That's fine, she tells herself. You're not a Companion and you don't have to be liked. It's no good hoping otherwise.

"I can see that," she says in response, keeping her voice level and interested. A light tone wouldn't be appropriate. "And that it'd be a terrible thing to have to be on watch for. I wish I could convince you I've got no malice for the living as a whole, but that's hard to prove, isn't it? Your only experience with the unquiet dead is as monsters. No one in your world lingers for the love of it, or out of compassion, or because their god wanted them to stay."

[witnessvelama]

From the outside, as calm as she is, it seems more like solemn understanding. Celehar's shoulders unwind, his expression settles, his ears dip ever so slightly. The intensity is set aside, in favor of quiet exhaustion, in the sunset around them.

(Never mind that something about it seems practiced, a focused gesture of reaching towards calm. He does mind it, in one corner of his thoughts, the corner that must observe and note in his investigations. How else might he press her, here? She has spoken to the heart of it, in a sense. He knows nothing like her.

Maybe, were his touch not guttered here, it would be easier for the both of them.)

"I suppose, in the end, it no longer matters," he admits, reaching up to rub his forehead. He's already looking pink, missing that sun covering as he is. The tips of his ears will probably be painful, soon. "We are here because we need to pass on into darkness."

[hasapoint]

Need laces her fingers together and squeezes them. In many ways it's good to have a seeming of a body, to feel. The pressure of her hands, the ground below her, the moving air, the dimming light all around. Still, once again she feels her true self must be far away.

The annoying thing is that she does like Celehar, and with more than the exasperated affection she has for bullheaded Elspeth. She was honest when she said all that about wanting to be able to work with him. She still does.

It will be harder now that she knows, but it's nothing she hasn't done before. Even Firesong found her not having a face to be profoundly unsettling. He'd tended to hold her bared blade and tilt his hands unconsciously so light rippled across it as she spoke, and that eased his mind a bit.

"It's hard to let go of what was most important. Your sense of duty is admirable, Prelate," Need says with unfeigned, if deliberate, sympathy. She presses her lips together into a faint smile. "You don't think there's light on the other side?"

[witnessvelama]

"I know not what happens to the souls of the departed after they are gone, Othalo," he says, tiredly. "Not in my world or in yours. Ulis is god of dreams, and of the dead, and in him, we find rest and darkness - I would not ask for more." Around them, the shadows deepen with the sinking of the sun, a gentle mirror.

Another moment, before he adds, "It would, at least, be tranquil, in that end. True death, not a living one."

He has not yet sat down again, but he doesn't look towards her, pointedly or otherwise, when he says it - he turns his attention towards the horizon, and the slow creep of stars above into the night sky.

[hasapoint]

The air cools fast in the desert. At the moment, with light still reflecting from the deepening blue above and the sand still holding some of the heat of the sun, it's a quite pleasant temperature.

One of the choices the Star-Eyed gives Her favored is rest in the Havens. Peace. Even if Vanyel and Yfandes and Tylendel/Stefan had yearned for it so expressively, there's something in her that resists. How could she rest? She can pause, certainly, but how could she stop? This time she's spent here has already been more idle than any period she can remember since before her death, when she had had her one great span of peace.

"Tranquility," Need muses, her voice a softer grade of gravel. "Like sleep, you think? The way living people sleep, I hope." She doesn't miss true sleep, doesn't really remember how it felt when she did it. It must have been better than the 'sleep' she has as a sword, when her thoughts cease and there's little to her but the pain of the people in her reach and the frenzied rage of trying to get to them. The merciful thing is that she remembers those times indirectly for the most part, though the eyes and minds of her bearers.

Better not say anything about that, she thinks. She's tried before, and the effort was wasted.

[witnessvelama]

"I do not know," Celehar says gravely, still watching the oasis around them. Maybe it would be more persuasive to assure that it's true, but Celehar has no ability to muster the comforting lies. He does, at least, muster this; "Ulis is the god of dreams. If this, too, is dreaming..."

He trails off to silence, unwilling or unable to finish the thought. The shadows crawl further, and Celehar takes some time to let it lapse. The thought hasn't yet occurred to him, that they may all be on the path to becoming someone - something - like Need. Celehar has been more concerned with the thought of what lingering in this place might do to them, if it might turn them into ghouls. It occurs to him now, reflected in the flattening of his ears.

He dismisses it. Need has said nothing of finding this place and process familiar, has in fact said thing something to the contrary. Best not to think of it, to continue the process of the Crossing as best they can.

"I will remain here, for the night," he says. "To watch for the stars and the moon."

[hasapoint]

If this is dreaming... It's coherent, she supposes, but that's probably better than being conscious during the chaos of most of the living dreams she's looked at. Celehar makes some ear motion that appears to be negative, and she wonders if the 'plan' he shares is meant to be rid of her.

"However long that night lasts," she says, and because she doesn't want to wander off with her thoughts, and to be contrary since he didn't say he wants to be alone, she stays put. Need pulls her hood down to wrap around her throat and adjusts her position, staying on the ground but putting her feet before her, her knees bent so she can prop her forearms on them.

"I know some of these stars. That's a constellation called the Wheel or the Artificer. And there's the Healer, I think." One of the Twins, the name and pattern surviving the goddess. "But they're not set in a sky I know."

time to make up constellations

[witnessvelama]

If that was the intention, to politely signal to Need his desire for her to leave, then the lack of capitulation earns surprisingly little rebuke. He nods, falling into the silence without seeming discomfort. He remains standing rather than risk the damp earth around the oasis, for all that his much-beleaguered coat of office is not in danger.

The quiet that grows while they watch isn't cold or pointedly left to hang, it's just quiet, the air around them filled with the occasional hum of an unfamiliar insect or the susurration of the wind. Need is the first to break it, and Celehar doesn't look to see where or whether she gestures towards the dark arch of the sky overhead.

"I have not looked," he admits. "In the time when I died, the Dragon would be low to the horizon, but Cstheio Caireizhasan's Touch is always bright in the heavens."

lackey came up with a few for kickstarter merch but I had to look them up

[hasapoint]

It doesn't feel right, to be so apart from people as Need's been here. She can't know what anyone's feeling or thinking, only guess. Sometimes it's like she's not around other people at all. The living flicker and flow, even when holding still; more and more intricate the closer she looks, and warm with the magic they exhale, and she can bask in that life. The dead on the Moonpaths are less beautiful but she can still touch them, commune with them, share their joys and try to ease their pains. Here she's deafened and sees as through a fog, feels through heavy gloves.

Some sensation she can't identify, something like wind soughing through long grass, wells under her breastbone. Need argues it down as pointless and absurd. As irrelevant. Whatever else has changed, she's here in another variation of her usual role, the tower on the plain. She will fill it.

"Warflyer should be up there," she says in a bit more of a croak than she'd intended, and clears her throat. "But it's not, there's an entirely different arrangement. Is the Touch a polestar? I don't see the one I'd expect. It's a patchwork. I'm going to guess drawn from all of us."

[witnessvelama]

He hears the ache of it, turns to watch not the stars but Need, for a moment. Celehar's expression is hard to read but the flickers of it are - melancholic? dismayed? concerned? disapproving? - read mostly in the tightening at the corners of his mouth.

If she could hear him in this moment, what she would hear would be a musing on the many ways that grief finds in infecting the furthest corners of one's life, in ways that cannot be expected, and yet make sense, in the enormity of loss.

But his thoughts are silent to her, and so in the moment he only looks, then turns away. "It is," he says. "It is one of the few that remains bright in Amalo." He looks over the stars, with a more analytical air, this time. "For a place that feels all too real, it carries the quality of dreams," he says, in agreement. "It is fitting, in the realm of death."

[hasapoint]

She's probably lucky she hadn't altogether lost the ability to notice and interpret expressions, Need thinks glumly. Being interested in comparing the internal life and what shows, and sharpening her focus on the visual as she's had to do here, is what's saved her from finding people completely opaque. Just partly. It's easier with the actual children, who've only just started schooling their faces. Even if the elf signals like a horse some of the time, he clearly has some control.

Amalo, she supposes, must be lit enough at night to make most stars fade. Big place, then. Need reminds herself that she's never going to go there. She doesn't have a practical reason to learn it, only curiosity. There's so little to do here.

Death and dreaming being similar is familiar, anyway. "Most of my time in the spirit realm was in a place called the Moonpaths. It's close enough to the living world that living priests can visit in their dreams and try to speak to spirits, or fellow priests." A simplification, because she doesn't want to get into Kal'enedral versus shamans versus Sunpriests and how any Shin'a'in with the dedication and focus can get there if the moon is full. "For them, it's a series of clear, hard-packed dirt pathways surrounded by thick fog. If they stay on the path they're safe. Nothing can even touch them without their consent," she adds acerbically, wanting to head off Celehar if he's about to get back on the topic of any dead that aren't passive being man-eating monsters.

[witnessvelama]

A reprimand, or at least a warning, heard and taken. Celehar hears the needling and bites the inside of a cheek, lest he say something that throw the conversation back into their endless circling on this topic.

So instead, when he breathes in, then out again, he settles on a different topic - certainly a more comforting one. Easier, to think of Need as a fellow priest, to try and find the aspect of her Star-eyed that reminds him of Cstheio Caireizhasan. The gods and their aspects have shifted, merged, through the centuries - easier to think of Need as old-fashioned, rather than entirely strange.

"If there is such a thing among maza or priests, I have not heard it of the Ulinese. Only once has Ulis come to me - in a dream which simply twisted itself to circumstances at hand." Oh, he aches, talking about it. Expression inscrutable as he has tried to render it, there's a pain and a hopefulness to remembering that his Calling had not abandoned him. "Even in his aspect of the moon, we do not walk the path of the moon to serve. Were I to seek to listen, I would do so in the Catacombs, or the rock-chapels."

Down among the bones and dead, to be swallowed by the earth.

"... If it is not a secret, Othalo," he asks, cautiously, "what practices you and your Sisters made."

[hasapoint]

She glances over at the tone that creeps into Celehar's voice.

"I'm happy for you," she says without mockery. It's hard to put a certain label on it but Need can pick up on something of the way Celehar holds the memory and make an estimate, and her damned soft heart hurts. To push that away she then considers the visual contrast of a milk-white elf in utter darkness, like a tooth on velvet. "Did the Cavern feel like one of those places, or was it too open?"

Deep, enclosed places. Need's not afraid of those, exactly, but a cave-in would likely kill her bearer, and it would be a very long time before she could be found again. Worse than being lost at sea - except she doesn't have to worry about that anymore, does she? Never? ...Regardless she's happier out here.

Need's brows draw together until she consciously relaxes her face. She doesn't want to be suspicious, but she is. What's he playing at?

"Do you mean rites, or the purpose of our Enclave? The Twins taught humans the skills they needed to rise. This sect - I don't remember what it was called - we thought of it as the Twins' will to pass those gifts along. I'm not going to say 'learning was holy' but I suppose teaching was a Calling. Most of the girls and women were only there to pick up a trade and move on, which was all right. Very different from the sect I was born into."

[witnessvelama]

"Too open by far. The maze, perhaps, was closest." But even that felt too open, and the presence of the wraiths spoiled the effect, somewhat. "... And perhaps it felt crass, to walk it in worship with the Ferryman there."

Despite his caution - it seems his question wasn't the right one, even as she answers the bulk of it. Celehar considers the offered information carefully, the aspect of it. She focuses more on the practical piece, rather than any devotions - it makes sense, in a way, from such a practical person. The Ulinese traditions are themselves shrouded in secret - is it so different, here?

"It puts me in mind of charitable schools," he notes. "Though only occasionally were they the work of the Caireizhese. More often - in Amalo, at least - they were the purview of strong-principled nobles, with the time to lead them and the funds to hire teachers." He looks down at her weathered hands. "You taught them?"

[hasapoint]

Need very much wants to tease at him and settles for a "You Ulis-prelates aren't claustrophobic at all, then" that might be a neutral statement.

"We tried very hard to say it wasn't charity," she says with a huff of laughter. "Including rules about kicking out shirkers, but it's hard for the wounded to learn or work, and not all wounds bleed. We made such a lot of things to try and sell to keep the whole thing running, it really helped that there was a market for my swords. But I did teach too. Smithwork, mostly. How to bind magic to hot metal. Forge-songs, to help with rhythm and for the Crafter-Twin."

Though she's kept teaching, it's a very different experience, to be a bodiless presence looking through a student's eyes and moving her hands to show her what to do, then it had been to demonstrate and oversee. Strange thought. Strange recollection. And of course, she hasn't taught smith skills often if at all, and that the god who loved forge-songs and who she'd embraced after leaving the Fighter behind is long gone.

"...It was good," she says, more quietly and mainly to herself. Need will pull herself back together and ask about the Ceireizhese in a moment.

[witnessvelama]

So much of his work is in understanding when to press, to ask questions, and when to sit quiet and listen. He does so, without even shifting, as the stars chart their course overhead, as the slowly cooling breeze of the oasis's night tugs at their hair and clothes.

He wonders, but does not say, how much Need felt, in her sword. Whether she often found herself reminiscing, or whether no one thought to ask. Children are so often wound up in their own lives, the children who might need a sword in hand perhaps justifiably more so.

Celehar's head dips, simple acknowledgement of that quiet admission of her own. Still he lets the silence fill the space without rushing to swweep it away, to unlodge the odd shapes of the memory from where they might have gotten stuck in her throat.

"You were kind to them, in your own way."