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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"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."

Neck. Okay. Xas wouldn't have noticed if not for the pause, but as it is he gives Wolfgang a sidelong look, more amused than anything, that shifts into reserved attentiveness as he goes on talking.

"Yeah," he says. He looks away to sidestep a passing pedestrian and slides both his hands into his pockets, book caught in the crook of his arm. "Anything in particular?"

He's been trying to find jazz - did find it, once, but it had unfamiliar instruments and an altogether different feel. Probably of a different time, maybe of a different planet. Anyway, it didn't do a thing for the homesickness; he just sat there missing his friend Millie, benzedrine, and Duke Ellington.

"Anything in Hebrew. Or Arabic. My English, um --" He flaps a hand dismissively. "It's okay but sometimes I don't get stuff." He sounds fine, but that's largely because the city helps; people who intend to be understood usually are, in Baedal. "AB Yehoshua, Amos Oz, Yoram Kaniuk, no one here's even heard of them. They have a lot of the classics here, it's the pop fiction and not-English stuff they don't... And of those sometimes they don't even have them in the original language, just translations, which. They vary in quality. I found a really horrible translation of Invitation To a Beheading a while back. Like someone ran it through Google Translate to, like, Chinese and then English.

"And music -- gosh, you'd be from before... like, the Beatles. The entire birth of rock." That's a bit of a headfuck, actually, most of the people he talks to are either from the future or from worlds so alien there's no common ground to begin with. "Even the popular stuff with that is hard to find here. Like, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Morrissey... and forget about anything lesser-known or, you know," he raises his hands and does some finger quotes, "foreign."

It is really weird to feel like a foreigner in Baedal. Everyone is foreign here, but...

He nods his head at the book. "What are you reading?"

"I haven't decided," Xas says without looking at it. "I think it's meant to be science fiction. And funny, maybe? But either it's very bad or it's over my head."

Or both. Both is a distinct possibility. He'd bought it off a bargain table, without considering why it might be there, because he liked the artwork on the dust jacket. In any case, he'll read it through.

"I know Arabic," he adds belatedly, then reconsiders and amends, "Or I - it was a long time ago." He hasn't forgotten it, but languages change (and are resurrected, apparently), and with that and dialectal differences and his antiquated vocabulary, it might not be any better for Wolfgang. He shakes his head. "You like rock music? Someone tried to explain it to me a few weeks ago. Made a lot of guitar sounds." He pulls a hand back out of his pocket to slide it down the neck of an imaginary instrument, much less enthusiastically than the other fellow had. "It wasn't persuasive."

"I would put money on it just being bad." If it's native, anyway. There are some talented writers in Baedal, but statistically speaking, the majority of them are awful.

"Do you?" he asks, switching -- he definitely speaks modern Arabic. And his accent is ridiculous because Wolfgang is ridiculous. "The problem with language here is that the city lets you be understood if you intend to be, which is great unless you're trying to learn something new. So you're trying to speak another language with someone and you're not actually sure if you're hearing what you're hearing or if the city is helpfully translating. I'm not even bothering right now," whereas he was before; the change is clear in his broader vocabulary, greater fluidity, and less verbal static, "I mean... I try to speak English because it's good practise but it's also kind of a pain."

Yes, English is a dumb difficult language, unlike Hebrew which is natural and intuitive, jeez.

Watching that air guitar gesture, his face contorts like he's trying not to smile. He ultimately fails at it and laughs. "Yeah, I... it's one of those things you need to experience rather than have explained. There's a couple venues that do live rock shows, but whether or not you see anyone good, um... well, depends on the night. The music's not bad here, just different. Sometimes they play some Earth stuff over the radio but most of it's easy listening cr -- stuff. I guess they're talking about changing that."

There's that pause again. It's okay to cuss in front of angels, Wolfgang.

"Yeah, English isn't what I would have chosen," Xas says agreeably, "if I were - ." If he were an unseen force plucking creatures out of space and time to populate a terrifying city. That's actually impossible to imagine. He supposes giving everyone a more melodic common tongue might not be a priority, though. At least Ragamoll is interesting - as is Wolfgang's accent and the shift in phrasing.

Xas listens with his head tilted. It took him a lot of long nights listening to Ivie Anderson at Apex for jazz to start making sense to him. He can give the music here the same amount of time and effort.

He's about to ask if there's anyone good in particular he should look out for, but this time the aborted curse is too much. It makes him laugh, a quick and quiet exhale. "I hope you're not watching your mouth because of me," he says. "God may care - " His God, Wolfgang's, one of the ones here; he isn't worrying about which he means, because he cares equally little about all of them, thanks. " - but I really don't."

Wolfgang nearly misses his step -- walking is a dangerous activity for him under ordinary circumstances, he's uncoordinated -- and his face colours faintly again. He ducks his head, suddenly fascinated by his shoes. His friend's shoes, actually, he barely looked at them before putting them on. Perhaps he will do so now. Yep, those are some shoes.

"It seems disrespectful," he mutters.

... which. Honey. Really.

"It's not, not to me," Xas says. He eyes him with equal measures of friendly interest and impatience. He doesn't let himself think of Sobran, the first night they met, saying forgive me, and something ridiculous about communion - or he can't help thinking about it, to be accurate, but he only holds it in his head for a second. Then adds, tone self-deprecating and effortfully light, "Would it help to tell you I'm from Hell?"

It's half true.

"Um..." He looks awfully sheepish. "Not really, because that doesn't mean much to me."

Wolfgang has a vague understanding that Christians believe in some kind of horrible flaming torture-pit that the souls of people who don't believe enough go to to suffer for all eternity, but the concept is pretty foreign and confusing to him, and has very little to do with what he's been taught about the nature of God.

... namely that He is not some kind of vengeful psychopath, because that's what that sounds like to him.

Anyway, result: he mostly knows about it from pop culture.

Xas looks surprised. Pleasantly so. The last person he told needed three years to speak to him again, and three more to forgive him; not having the conversation cut short is more than he would have bet on.

"That's probably - that's good," he says, a bit distant, collecting himself. Once he's managed, he grins. "Either way, I'm not very respectable. I'm an animal with a famous owner. And now I'm going to say fuck at least once before you go home." Wait. "Twice."

Wolfgang barely avoids covering his face in embarrassment. "I'm not --" sheltered? He's not actually sure what word he wants to use there. He is aware that he projects an image of being a lot more delicate than he is and that pearl clutching over a couple of swear words is not helping.

He throws his hands up helplessly. "This place is kind of a mindfuck." Then he looks at Xas sidelong like, so there, hah.

(He still feels vaguely guilty about it.)

"It is," Xas says, though he doesn't sound as unhappy about it as he might have a few minutes ago. Mostly he sounds satisfied. He could get used to this - to being able to be honest about himself - as long as it doesn't make people be careful with him.

Maybe that means he's a bit of a hypocrite for not asking about Wolfgang's brand, even though it catches his eye again. Oh well.

"So books, and music," he says instead. "What else?" He eyes Wolfgang's face, trying and failing to gauge his age, to guess whether he should be asking about school or about a job. He's never been good at that. "What did you do?"

"Umm..." Talking about himself feels weird. Things that sound interesting were usually pretty boring at the time. "A lot of the same as here. Bike courier, actually, just before, um, and bartending... poorly." He wrinkles his nose. "I moved a lot. Traveling." That sounds much nicer than 'running from the police,' as if it was just a decision he made one day.

"I lived in Izmir, before here -- in Turkey. Another coastal city, it's very much the same as Tel Aviv, in that... you know, they're both pretty secular and multicultural. It's a beautiful city, there's so much history there, and a lot of the ruins of the old city are really well-preserved." He talks with his hands when he speaks -- it's always been a habit of his but it's getting more pronounced lately. "But the politics there, um... they're a little volatile. Especially with language, that made it really hard."

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

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