un: timaeusTestified | text | Birthday Boy

[givehead]

Turning 21 has been a completely underrated experience. I was expecting the blackout and loss of time. Even the warping to a new place isn't out of the realm of estimated probability.

But being genetically altered is a plot twist. I assume it is so we can fuck the monsters.

I call dibs on the raven dude.

cw: looots of kink/fetish/nsfw jokes/conversation going on in this here post.

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[unsheathedfromreality]

From all my study, it's exactly as you've said. Nature doesn't give them the right instincts from either parent. Humans never need learn to contain their form and Pthumerians never need learn to contain their powers.

[He suddenly wonders what would happen to a shrike-blooded Pthumerian child. His kind, at least, were accustomed to having more of themselves in more dimensions than humans occupied. And if the rules held--doubtful in this case, but just pretend--she would be full Pthumerian.

...Probably a good thing he's too dead for any interested god to test out. He thinks.]

I'd heard that, too. That she died despite all your efforts.

I am very sorry.

If it is not too much to ask, I have a question about your own choices at the end of the Nightmare. I've had the eggs explained to me. [And he has a working theory he wants more data for.]

The cruelty of their situation does seem that no one can help them, not even their Pthumerian parents. It may be one of our purposes as Sleepers is to try.

Or to ease their passing. [Which felt much like enabling their mothers, but so did doing nothing, and Disciple lore had few examples of anyone successfully persuading a Pthumerian to change her attitude toward anything.

They were Chernabog. As fruitful as asking a windstorm not to destroy your house as it was blowing it down.]

[creidim]

That... explains a great deal, actually. That's awful for them.

[ No wonder Sodder barely stood a chance, nor how Cynthia could truly help her daughter. She couldn't teach Julia something she just knew herself as simply as breathing. ]

I'm sorry, too. She deserved so much more. Cynthia deserved so much more.

[ She takes comfort in knowing she was at least able to help give Cynthia that, to allow her to be reborn as the Moon Presence. To be given a life outside the confines of motherhood. She loves Cynthia, very much. ]

Oh, you mean what I did with my eggs? Well, I kept and nurtured the Dog Keeper's so he could be awakened. He was nice, always tried to help us. He just wanted to go home. The rest I buried, including my own. I didn't like the idea of smashing them.

Cynthia wanted to be killed, and I felt there wasn't anything to be done with Julia to save her so I considered that killing her would be a mercy, like with her mother. They'd both suffered a great deal considering the design of their fate. The Mayor... I didn't want him to be without his family, so that maybe putting the Sodders to rest as a family would be better. Ramona didn't want to be awakened. I felt a great deal of sympathy for her, and I didn't think awakening her would be kind after everything. I think she deserved an end.

[ Which unfortunately, she didn't get. Luna feels awful about that. ]

The exception is Mother Superior's, which I left alone. I did nothing with it. She expected us to punish her, I didn't. But I didn't give her mercy, either.

I suppose in a way that's why Sleepers were brought to Deerington. We were there to try and help Julia.

[unsheathedfromreality]

It is awful. Moreso that the Pthumerians seem at a loss for helping them, when they care to.

Both deserved better.

[Yet they don't stop creating them. No; he doesn't say that, as much as it itches at him. Has been itching at him.

It may be his place one day to judge and rebuke the Divine for that particular perceived injustice, but he doesn't know enough yet to call it injustice. Inviting a mob to share his incomplete judgment wouldn't somehow make it right.

He listens to Luna's description of how she handled her eggs, noting with interest that at least this one Sleeper had made it more than a binary of keep or destroy. Which is no real surprise, but did highlight the--particularly black-and-white way of thinking employed by his original source on the eggs. (White gods bless the kid, truly.)

It does also put a potential wrinkle in his assumptions: If Mother Superior had demanded punishment, and smashing her egg could be seen as doing that, how many would've paradoxically chosen to spare it out of spite?

Did it explain her incomplete transformation into the False Patron?]

You have a kind heart and thoughtful mind. They do you credit.

Thank you for sharing this with me. It explains a great deal, though it also raises more questions.

How much were you told about what your treatment of the eggs would mean? And do you have any guesses on what the majority of your fellow Sleepers did with each egg?

[creidim]

In some way, I can hardly blame them for now knowing what to do. But then again, it is their own doing.

[ A sentiment they share. Pthumerians at a loss of how to help is sad, but then they keep trying to bring more half-Pthumerians into the world. As if they keep thinking next time might be different. ]

Thank you. I suppose I just... did what I thought was right.

We weren't really told what our actions with the eggs would explicitly mean, it felt... largely down to interpretation. We found out that our choices weren't so straight forward.

[ Cynthia was sacrificed but was reborn. Julia was sacrificed but died. ]

I suppose the fates of each person corresponded with what the majority chose to do with the eggs. I had... dreams, or maybe not quite dreams about them. It's hard to explain. But Julia, Cynthia, the Mayor and Mother Superior were all sacrificed. The Dog Keeper and Ramona and the Sleepers were awakened.

[unsheathedfromreality]

It is their own doing. What drives them to it is something I'm still learning.

[Though by analogy to the gods, it might be folly to try understanding. It may be so completely within their nature that judgment didn't apply.

But let that go for now.]

Given this was a matter of the spirits and dreams it's not at all surprising. Metaphor and relation are the strongest rules there.

So I've learned anyway. I'm not the authority others are.

[Ah, now, that is something. He experiences a moment of intellectual satisfaction to hear his guesses vindicated in nearly every detail.]

Thank you. That lines up very well with what I'd guessed based on who they all are here.

How do you interpret the Sleepers being awakened? I know you had a choice to depart for your homes or continue on to a new world, but that wasn't made by how you treated your egg?

[creidim]

If I should like to take a guess: Power. Some people will always want power. [ A particular song she's quite familiar with. In this world, in her own — there will always be those who want power. Julia, at the end of the day, was still an incredibly powerful being. ]

In all honesty, I believed Sleepers choosing to nurture their own eggs and be awakened would mean we would have to go back home. If sacrificing Cynthia's egg would mean she could be reborn into the new world, it felt possible it would mean the same for us.

But it turned out Sleepers awakening meant would could see clearly about what our next actions would be. It would give us clarity. Cynthia assured us that we could choose to leave behind our own worlds and things would be fine.

I'd been so worried about my choice, uncertain I was doing the right thing in refusing to return home. But when all was said and done and the votes cast, I felt... lighter, certain. Even if it hadn't been the outcome of my initial choice. I think if Sleepers on the whole had chosen to sacrifice themselves, they would still be reborn but perhaps things would be different in some way.

[unsheathedfromreality]

It is certainly possible. Some hybrids might outstrip both their parents in strength. A half-Pthumerian in full possession of her faculties and powers could be a truly formidable being.

Though I wonder. The ones devoted to having these children speak of a "bridge" between the two kinds. As if it's understanding they're seeking. [He's no stranger to the lust for power and all it might do to mortals--or immortals--who sought it; some of the Pthumerians seemed as base, by their natures, to want that.

But others seemed to take a higher meaning from following their dead Queen's vision.]

I may well have assumed the same in your situation. It made a certain kind of sense.

I suspect, also, that you're right that the Sleepers would have returned in a different form. Moon Presence and Koz are no longer bound by who they were. Even by memory, in Koz's case. Mother Mercy's transformation is less understandable to me without more study.

[On the surface she seemed truly penitent for having tormented the Sleepers, but she was also pretending to a place that wasn't hers. Which spoke to a capacity for greater deception.]

Might I ask why you chose to stay?

> locked

[creidim]

That was the Pthumerian Queen's vision, I believe. Joining Humans and Pthumerians could create something far greater than possible. Humans can do things Pthumerians can't, after all.

Mother Superior [ Or Mother Mercy, in this case. ] was always a difficult one to understand. There was a fight, between Moon Presence and Mother Superior. A friend and joined in to assist Moon Presence. When all was said and done, Moon Presence told her that is was time she did ask for forgiveness for what she'd done. I think Moon Presence did have a part in helping her become reborn, perhaps much like with her husband.

[ Cynthia had asked for The Mayor's soul, and she could create life. Perhaps she was behind these new reincarnations.

There's a long pause at his question, and she considers it for a long time. It's not something she openly discusses. Peter's the only one who really knows, Diarmuid too — but now he's gone. It's a difficult thing to answer; in some ways it seems selfish that she did choose to leave her world behind. But then leaving those in Deerington to return home didn't feel like the right choice either.

She opts to lock down the conversation from here: ]

My immediate future if I returned home was uncertain. It's quite likely I would not live past the next couple of days.

I chose to remain here in hope of having a future. There's people here from Deerington I care about deeply, I couldn't leave them behind.

locked ∞; and pfff no worries!! i'm an edit champ myself

[unsheathedfromreality]

[He absorbs everything she's got to tell him and tucks it away with the rest of what he's gleaned on the Pthumerians. Some of this, the other Disciples had pieces of--in their oral histories, in their visions and their dreams--but it did not compare to the direct and personal experience of Deerington's Sleepers. Trench could but research her own history; these had lived it.

He's lived long enough to make histories that became warped beyond recognition in the telling. It makes him far prefer a primary source.

It is little surprise to him that his question requires some thought before an answer--or a denial--and he waits for her full reply before he begins composing his own. When it arrives locked--ah. He sets aside his other questions on the Pthumerians, for now. This is both more interesting and requiring of more of his attention.]

That would make the choice easier. Even so I don't imagine it was truly easy. It does gladden me to know you have people here with you.

Forgive me if this is forward or goes into things you'd rather not say. But I've heard it mentioned that Sleepers sometimes learn of what's happened in their lives after the point they left them.

Do you know what happened to the self you were?

[No motivated reasoning in that question, whatever.]

[creidim]

[ It certainly isn't an easy choice. It's one she knows she'll have to live with. There were no winners in such a choice. Either she left her world behind, or she left the people she loved here behind. Someone would lose either way, perhaps Luna the most.

There's a long pause at his question. She's thoughtful, frowning down at the words. It's certainly something she's come across before, in a way. The Wastes back in Deerington, when they'd died — they'd turned out to be the Sleepers themselves, alternative versions of themselves, the different forks in the road. ]

I don't, no. I've never found out.

I'm aware of the fact that in some worlds, I'm actually a character within a book series written for children. I've even met someone who's quite a fan, here in Trench. It's likely my fate is written in those books, although I don't know if what's written might be the case for me back home.

I don't know if I want to know, or not. If I've died, then it would certainly confirm I'd made the right choice in coming here. But if I'd lived?

[ She remembers what Peter had asked her: Would you hate yourself if you stay? She still doesn't have a real answer for that question. ]

Perhaps it's best I never find out.