multiversallogs | it's all right, ain't no God in my eye

Entry tags:

it's all right, ain't no God in my eye

Who: Wolfgang and Xas
What: Xas a roof is not a bed. Get a job.
Where: Chimer
When: Late Ged, before Samsdream, evening
Warnings: idk will update if needed

Among the other nasty surprises brought on by the siege, Wolfgang was rather put out to discover the Badside inn he had been staying in since his eviction from Bonetown had been partially blown up. The partial bit had, in fact, been the side he had been staying in. He'd lost all his things. It wasn't as disheartening as it should have been, but maybe he was just too exhausted from the last couple of weeks to have any spare emotion left over for this. He felt a tinge of frustration, that was all. He owned nothing that couldn't be replaced, anyway.

But that left him with a more pressing concern -- namely, where he was going to sleep. His friend Kahnde -- the one who kept trussing him up and dragging him around to parties thrown by Baedal's new money eccentrics, as well as the one who kept him in supply with the medications Wolfgang desperately needed -- offered him a place to stay and he couldn't turn him down. It makes him uncomfortable to stay there when he knows he's sort of leading the xenian man on -- but Kahnde also took the siege extremely poorly as several of his friends had died rather gruesome deaths. Wolfgang came out here partially as a babysitter. He's a bit worried about Kahnde doing something drastic.

The townhouse in the urban half of Chimer is a large property considering it's inhabited by only one person. The architecture is typical Baedalite weirdness, a mish-mash of various time periods, and the whole thing is painted an unfortunate shade of puce. It's got a flat roof upon which are mounted several solar panels for power, two balconies, and a superfluous amount of windows that at least offer a fantastic view of the beach.

He sleeps an awful lot, which means the hours he's awake tend to be ... odd. He sleeps very deeply these days, waking only if he's touched or if one of his dreams ends, and the latest one -- a very strange one that only further blurs the line between reality and fantasy for him -- lets him go just when everyone else is starting to go to bed. Well, fantastic. He's rubbing the sleep from his eyes when he hears it -- the distinct sound of something in the walls. No, not in them: on them. Something's climbing up the side of the house, towards the roof.

The fuck.

He freezes for a moment, then decides the last thing they need is a burglar or giant rat or something. Whatever it is, he can handle it, he's pretty sure, which is why he comes out on the balcony alone, his hair sticking out in every direction like he stuck his finger in a socket, as he looks up for the source of that sound.

It only occurs to him after he gets out there that whatever is out there could very well be a leftover monster. Oh. Well. Oops?

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"Ah, that's all right." His smile in response to that is fleeting but genuine, without the strain of the effort it usually takes him.

"The monster flood?" he supplies, his tone dry -- people are calling it a lot of things, some more euphemistic than others. He'll be interested to hear what the official name for it is. "Yes, um -- the inn I was staying in... half of it blew up, the other half, uh... I'm not sure what they were but it got, like..." He raises his arms enough to gesture as he speaks, pantomiming lifting something box-shaped and moving it away. "Pulled apart, I guess? By something?"

So the last couple of weeks super sucked! It's all right talking about things that he only indirectly experienced, at least -- and where no one was actually hurt.

The smile makes Xas look proud, for a moment - satisfied and a little surprised, like he's inadvertently discovered a solution and the problem it solves in the same thought.

But the feeling doesn't last. Imagining a shadowy something large enough to pull a building apart kills it pretty quickly. He doesn't know what happens to the dead here. He slips off the ledge to sit with his back against it, feathers compressing under his shirt; unlike the rest of it, the vacuity at his back is an uneasiness he can ease.

He pulls his plant closer with a foot and rubs a waxy leaf between his thumb and forefinger, like that's the reason he moved. "I'm sorry," he says, and then assumes: "It's good you weren't there."

"I wish I was. I could have helped."

Because apparently everything else he did wasn't enough? In fairness it's more that it's extremely upsetting to know how powerful the residents of this city are -- how powerful the gods are supposed to be, or how they claim to be, anyway -- and still witness that much destruction. So many dead, so many lives disrupted.

It's pretty inspiring in terms of helplessness, knowing that people who can rearrange reality on a whim (that's not him it's not like that none of it is real) can't do more than put a figurative band-aid on the problem. And that it, or something like it, is probably going to happen again in a couple months, like it always does here.

Fuck this city.

Wolfgang shakes his head and shrugs, his expression self-deprecating. Oh, well. "But ah, if wishes were fishes, blah blah."

He hasn't heard that before. If wishes were horses, the English said, and this probably means the same thing, only it rhymes. Xas likes it better, he decides. Sometime he'll ask someone for the second half.

"I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking of that," he says to Wolfgang, twisting his head around so he can see him. He doesn't look like he'd be much help against monsters, but Xas should know better than to assume, by now. He's learning.

And anyway, even if there was nothing he could do, he understands the desire to have been there. Even if it was old age and inevitability.

He hesitates, weighing his desire to ask against his desire not to bring up anything potentially painful; it only takes a moment for the former to win out. "What do people think happens when they die here?"

"I've heard a lot of different things. Some people say you go home -- for good." That's supremely optimistic, to say the least, and the dryness with which he says it implies it's not an opinion he shares. "I've heard there's an afterlife. One the local gods control or, ah -- the usual, Heaven and Hell. The House Ecumenal, um, one of their values professes a belief in an afterlife. They aren't specific about what that is, but um, they're very... I mean, it seems to me they skew Christian."

And that's why he's not very comfortable there.

"Umm -- I've also heard that when you die... nothing happens. You just stop existing." He frowns, squinting, and tugs on his hair in thought. "But the city's called the Market of Spirits. It seems strange to me that after the body's death, there would be nothing left."

Wolfgang is not afraid to die -- far from it, he knows he is going to, and very soon. He knows it will probably be in Baedal. What frightens him is the idea that if/when he dies here, his Avatar may be trapped here, never able to leave. What if it can't be reborn? What if it can't go home and do what it was meant to do?

Edited (I AM CHAMPION AT TYPING) 2012-04-08 07:38 (UTC)

"That would be strange," Xas says; really, it hadn't occurred to him that it was an actual possibility. He's never really thought of himself as having a soul the way people do, but Apharah insisted he must, and he does think there's something to him, even if it's nothing his god would preserve.

Maybe someone here wants it. But for now he'll try to focus on not dying, probably. He might get to go home. He knows some do, even if it's not when they die. He has to agree with Wolfgang's disbelief, there.

"I should have been more patient with atheists," he says after a moment, wry. He was never in the conversion business - none of them were, it would have been considered crass, and lately Xas hasn't been inclined to advance God's causes anyway - but he did sometimes get frustrated by what felt like arrogance, a refusal to see what was so obvious to him, a shut and bolted door. But now, well. "Not knowing is hard."

"Is it a certain thing, where you're from?"

He is not actually sure if that's more or less comforting. The unknown is frightening, yes, but the idea of an eternal afterlife has always made me awfully uncomfortable. He's not sure if it's better or worse to imagine it the way Christians do, or the way people who worship the Twelve Point Divinity do.

"There are people here who are dead, where they're from... I think it's a bit disturbing to think that for them, this may be their afterlife." He turns around, swinging his legs over the edge of the building -- quick and careless enough to make someone with any fear of heights dizzy, but that's probably not an issue for either of them -- and frowns out at the sparse lights of Chimer at night. "Which is a terrible thought, because this sort of sucks."

"Heaven and Hell. And Purgatory, but I've never." Been there. His pause and pursed lips aren't caginess. He doesn't mind talking about it. Right now he just wants to talk about other things more. Still, in the interest of not being confusing or dishonest, he adds, "I'm an angel," and then, "It's complicated."

Wolfgang's pivot does startle Xas, make him tense to go after him - an old instinct, and one he'd probably have the sense not to obey if Wolfgang did actually fall. Even with wings, there wouldn't be time to catch him and stop before they hit they ground.

He hoists himself up and back onto the ledge, anyway, so he won't have to turn quite so far to see Wolfgang or what he's looking at. He feels a little better. "It could be worse," he offers, beginning half-hearted but then warming to the idea. "They could have taken away everyone's autonomy or self-awareness. Or alcohol."

Wolfgang chokes and then nearly does fall off the edge, catching himself in time and raising his hand to his chest like he needs to catch his heart before it goes leaping out of his throat. "Sorry, a what?"

Why that trips him up of all things, he's not entirely sure. Wolfgang was four the first time he talked to a demon, although at the time he didn't know what that word meant; it had told him a story about a little lion who fell off the edge of the world, and he called it the Funny Man. It wasn't the last one, either.

And this is Baedal, where everything is weird. There are vampires and faeries and gods that walk among men, so what's an angel? If anything, he should be used to this.

(Fuck this city.)

"Ah -- sorry." He has the grace to look sheepish about his reaction, at least, his face faintly flushed. "I, uh. Never met one before."

"Yes, well," Xas says, torn between feeling amused and inadequate and then settling, as a compromise, into awkward. He flaps a vague, rueful hand that doesn't at all manage to convey his taller, winged, much more frightening siblings. "I'm not representative."

And he doesn't see what Wolfgang has to apologize for, aside from making Xas worry he was going to topple over. He didn't faint or start gibbering in Liturgical Latin - or lose control of his bladder, as far as Xas is aware. Thank God. Xas cuts a less impressive figure than he used to, and the people here are undoubtedly less prone to being shocked by anything, but that's still progress.

"And I met a demon in the park," he says, "but he wasn't like the demons where I'm from, so if there are other angels here, they're probably more… I'm sorry. I'm having an identity crisis." He sounds almost cheerful about it. "That's normal, right?"

"Oh." Because, yes, when he thought angels, he did not expect them to look like Some Guy. More like the traditional flaming wheels covered in eyes etc type, which he is actually very surprised have not shown up in Baedal, city of weird and creepy bullshit. Is it better or worse to think there might be more, and they just look like regular people?

"Um. I think so." He runs a hand through his hair, a nervous gesture. He absolutely now wishes he had stopped to brush it or at least get properly dressed. Dammit. "The, ah. Multiple realities thing does not... tend to help with that, either."

"Yeah," Xas says, looking down at his hands in his lap long enough to stave off panic. He can't think about it too much at once. God lying to him, standing by when he was maimed, not being here at all. Despite everything, there's still part of him that's spinning, a compass needle that can't find North. Thinking about it only makes it worse.

He thinks about flying instead - about the airship he's seen, about the possibility that someone here could help him cobble together something resembling a Fokker - until he can smile again, just a little. "Is there anyone here from yours? Your reality."

"No, not -- well, if there are, I don't know any of them." He shrugs. "We don't really have, ah..." He trails off there because it occurs to him that although he's been saying that for months -- it's wrong. They do have supernatural things where he's from; it's just he's not known about any of it for nearly ten years, and he didn't have much contact with them when he could remember it. Demons and fae hardly count since that was rarely in the material realm.

It's troubling that a child with as much power as he had went completely under the Council's radar. Someday, what that means will sink in. Until then...

"I mean, outside of a few... things, we're, um... pretty mundane."

Xas looks at him for a moment, hoping he'll elaborate, but doesn't let the silence drag. "I'd like to to hear about it," he says. He means it. He'd also like to hear about the brand on Wolfgang's hand, but that would be going too far, he thinks. It might be part of why he seems so sad. Xas doesn't want to chase him off the roof.

"Even the mundane things," he goes on, because so far a lot of what people think is normal has surprised him. "Someone mentioned dragons, earlier, and she said it like it was nothing." He shakes his head, still impressed, even though he's not completely sure she was telling the truth. He should probably stop spending so much time in bars. "Or computers - are you from one of the places with computers?"

"Oh, well... yes." He has to stop and think about it; Xas mentioned being in the military in 1914 and he looks young but, of course, angel, right, but he has to be from at least before the late 30's, so...

"Actually Baedal has a lot of technology that I wouldn't expect, considering otherwise it's, um... a lot of it's from the 30's or earlier, but then you have stuff that is very, weirdly advanced. Like -- the CiD?" He has to make a box-like gesture to encompass one, because he didn't bring his up; he doesn't have it on him as often as they're probably supposed to, although the last time he got hassled by the Militia for not having his ID on him (and Wolfgang obviously being a violent, unpredictable criminal) should have taught him better. "We've had mobile phones for decades, but nothing like the CiD until the last, ah, five years or so. Video chatting on mobile devices is relatively new to us -- it was popularised by the iPhone and devices like it, they're like, um... small, portable computers, essentially. And the Internet, it's... like the Network, but it's much more wide-reaching. I actually miss it a lot, um... it's much harder to --"

He stops himself from saying police or censor.

"-- Much harder to regulate the content that goes out, but much easier to reach a wider audience, anonymously. A lot of important activism happened over things like Twitter -- which um, is, was, a thing like the Network, but accessible to the entire world, not just a cohort, and it can't be individually tracked or shut down the way the Network can."

Wolfgang has a lot of feelings about the way communication is severely limited in Baedal, despite the omnipresence of the CiD making individual communication easier than the city's general tech level otherwise should allow. It's the lack of anonymous mass communication that's disquieting -- but he won't be the one to bring that up in public, because he's trying to not attract the Militia's notice any more than he already has.

"And then cars -- um, well, all vehicles. Public transportation is fine here, it's mostly, um, farming equipment I'm thinking of. Baedal doesn't have the kind of high-tech factory farming there is where I'm from, but with a population of three million I suppose they don't exactly need it, it's just... interesting the way these things evolve. I've seen, uh... I'm sorry, I don't know the word in English, the flying balloons? in the sky before and I know in Serpolet and the university there are the gutted remains of vehicles that could do space travel -- that's something else we have where I'm from, ah, they just found evidence of life on Mars -- and I wonder if it's not intentional we can't use them and see what else is out there past the atmosphere --"

Also apparently once he gets started he will never shut the hell up; witness how he immediately becomes twice as animated and enthusiastic.

Edited 2012-04-10 08:40 (UTC)

The enthusiasm is contagious. Xas is entranced, trying to store up ideas: tiny computers, Twitter, high-tech factory farming (which, in his head, looks like something out of an illustration of an H.G. Wells novel), life on Mars. He's seen people from other planets, or at least from an age with space travel, on the Network, but it's jarring to hear about something so close and familiar-sounding - something that could be the future in his world, too.

"Has anyone tried?" he asks, craning his head back to look at the unfamiliar sky. The stars never intrigued him the way they seemed to do people; they were navigation tools, not the heavens, certainly not gods. But now he's fascinated. "Do you think something is out there? Someone should try."

"I don't know. I'd think so, but I haven't read about any exploring there yet. I don't know if it's because there's nothing there so there's nothing worth recording or if no one's made it that far. There's barely fuel for cars, let alone the few things they have that could do space travel, so... I'm thinking maybe nobody has been able to try. I would be interested to know what's out there, beyond what we can see. I mean, are those real stars or illusions?"

What's more unnerving: a vast emptiness stretching millions of miles beyond this city, or the illusion of space deliberately crafted to keep them all calm?

"Are those moons real, has anyone been on them?" Wolfgang is fascinated by Baedal's moons, but he was like that on Earth, too. His eye is automatically drawn to that brightness, and he stares at it -- and them -- without being conscious of it. "What would we find if we went there. I wonder." He pauses. "Then again," he says after a moment to consider it, "it's probably just more fog."

And whatever creatures are lurking out in the fog in space are likely infinitely more terrible than the ones down here.

"Maybe," Xas says.

His doubt is all optimism and self-preservation. Believing that would freeze him, like his first year without wings, when the ceiling was oppressive and making the clumsy journey from the front door to the garden wall made him feel trapped and humiliated. There was no reason to go anywhere when he couldn't go anywhere. But he learned. He doesn't want to regress.

He pulls the sleeves of his borrowed sweater down over his wrists, grateful for it. He does feel cold now.

"Heaven and Hell - at home," he says, without really knowing where he's heading, just casting out a net for anything to counter the claustrophobia; "Heaven and Hell are - pockets. Like someone's folded the map, and people step across the creases without seeing them. They're finite, but there's a way out, if you know where to look." That's all optimism, too - a door, thousands of doors, hidden under rocks and behind trees out in the fog - and too much of it for him to sustain. Reason creeps back in as soon as the last word leaves his mouth, and he punctuates it with an unhappy noise that means ignore me. "Sorry, I'm. Do you want to take a walk?"

"I've known places like that." Pause. "Not, ah, not... like that," because honestly he can't even imagine, given everything he's seen, although there are parts of the High Umbra he imagines might be a little bit like it, "but existing in the same way. It --"

Wait, shut your pie hole for half a second, Nerdicorn. It takes a moment for him to realise that maybe Xas' discomfort -- which he does pick up on eventually, dense as he is -- and the topic change is a hint. He tugs on his hair, shrugs, smiles. "Um, yeah, sure." Well, why the hell not. Maybe it will wake him up.

He swings his legs back over the edge of the roof and straightens with his usual awkwardness.

Xas stands, too, and pulls the sweater back over his head, folds it and holds it out. "Meet me down there?" he says - he doesn't want to go inside, even if Wolfgang is comfortable inviting him. "I want to hear about it. Where you're from."

It's interesting, and easier than hearing about how they might all be trapped somewhere closed-in and limited, like flies under a glass.

Wolfgang accepts the sweater back and his mouth quirks upwards. "Okay." So it's off to the access door with him and through Kahnde's scary-ass attic again. He pauses in the guest bedroom to get properly dressed, throwing on an ill-fitting sweater and jeans and putting on some shoes. He's not happy with it but he's aware he is unreasonably fussy and if left to his own devices tends to spend three hours agonizing over shoes.

He does stop to brush his hair. You don't talk to angels looking a mess.

He pulls it back out of his face in a loose braid and is just tying off the ends when he emerges from the front door onto the street. If nothing else, he at least looks less like an electrocuted lion. Just a sleepy one.

Getting down didn't take any time at all - he jumped - but once he'd sat down next to the street to tie up his boots, Xas stayed there, peering at the first page of his book through the dark. It's in English, but it's either science-fiction or from another world (or both), and between the strange terminology and what he thinks are jokes about a popular culture he isn't familiar with, he hardly understands a word.

He's still on the ground when Wolfgang comes outside, but he's quick to swivel up onto his feet and tuck the book under his arm, thumb hooked through one of his suspenders. "Oh, I did wake you up," he says, though it's too late for him to feel sorry for it now, and wiggles his free fingers near his own hair to indicate what he means. "I thought maybe it was cultural."

Wolfgang stops up short and his hand immediately goes up to his hair as if maybe he didn't do a good enough job taming it. Even in the dim light, it's obvious that he's blushing. "Oh, no, I --" He sounds and looks flustered, which to be fair is not difficult to achieve with him and is closer to his natural state.

Then he stops himself and tries to school his expression into something cooler, which is a losing battle. This just in: Wolfgang is not cool. "You're teasing me."

He does make it really easy.

"Yes," Xas says. Manners keep him from laughing, but he's on the verge, grinning wider for a second before he starts walking - slowly, to make sure Wolfgang is still coming along, and in the direction he happened to be turned toward. Xas isn't aiming for anywhere in particular. He just wants to move, to shake off the feeling of being closed-in and stuck. "I had long hair for a while. I don't miss dealing with it."

Wolfgang does follow, hands at his side because he doesn't want to cover his left hand. Being about 90% leg, keeping pace with other people is awkward for him, but he manages. This part of Chimer is really nice -- and once they get out of this block, it's a lot less quiet. A few businesses are still open, some nocturnal residents just getting out and about, but it's not rambunctious in the way, say, Howl Barrow or Griss Twist are at this time of night. It's more family-oriented; he likes that. "It's a pain in the --" He stops. Changes what he was about to say. "Neck."

Honey.

"But I did it to myself, so..." True: it's this long anymore because people kept telling him how "handsome" he'd be if he just "looked normal". Spite, as it turns out, is a terrible reason to style one's hair. Back on the subject of where he's from and not how Baedal is basically a prison, though: "There's a lot I miss here. Books and music, mostly. I mean, there are books and music, obviously, just... the ones from home that they don't have here."

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Funny Man is officially on my nightmare list 8|

don't you like stories :)

NOT ANYMORE

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