i wrote this song while i was drunk

[boomvox]

Who: Jae and you.
What: Sorting his head out, getting back to work.
Where: Various places around town, including bar hopping and slice of life activities in Creekside, at work at the Vault, Anarchy 99, and the radio station, and at a temple in Brock Marsh.
When: Over the next week.
Notes: Would you like to bump into Jae somewhere? Note the location/vague timeline in your tag and it shall be so.
Warnings: Unpleasant thoughts about rape culture, drug use.

In the aftermath of attempting to help Megan and his encounter with Hilmi, Jae has a difficult time processing the series of events as things that happened to him - because things haven't happened to him. Things happened to Megan. Sure, if you hit a vanity with a sledgehammer, it's not just the glass that's cracked, but he's still not the fucking mirror; Jae's reeling from the turbulence. So is everyone else who knows (well, maybe not Sonja) and everyone else who will know - and more people will react to what Jae did, and so on, and so on, like ripples, because every time anyone does something violent or cruel, the whole of their world feels it. Society didn't become soulless overnight. It took a hundred million weeks like these and now, even when people feel the backlash, they don't seem realize it.

It's normal.

(It's horrible.)

Jae buys a couple of tabs at the Vault before his shift and rolls all the way through it. If there's one thing he appreciates about Baedal, it's that so much more is perfectly legal (or at least, perfectly unregulated), and the ecstasy (or space ecstasy) he can get is pure, none of this shit cut with coke or speed like he had to worry about back at home. It's a good night for everybody, which is fortunate; it's always good when he works whether or not he uses any enchantments, but this week, he's not even letting his subconscious do anything - he feels like there's a great gaping wound somewhere intangible inside him, and the stitches keep splitting. He just doesn't want to bleed anymore.

While he's been made one of the floor staff family with ease at the Vault, his experiences at Anarchy 99 have been more - well. It caters to dwarven metal. Still, there's a fair amount of enthusiasm for his style ("Just put some more INXS on it"), and when one of the waitresses asks him what happened that one night with Hilmi (because he hasn't come back), he just shrugs. Jae isn't sure if he should be feel fortunate that she's the only one who noticed they walked out back together, but while some of the girls liked Hilmi, some of them really didn't, and she decides to interpret that shrug as him having done everybody a favor. The notion of it makes him uneasy - but it's not like he can correct her and not lie, so he just stays quiet, and thinks about the same thing he thought about that night. That if somebody comes to arrest him, he'll just go. The notion of being locked up is like a suffocating nightmare at the end of a long and dark hallway on his head, but what's even more terrifying is the idea of becoming the kind of person who wouldn't take responsibility for doing something awful. (He'll ask Ilde for Sonja's number, he decides. He'd rather apologize to her than the police, and he knows enough about the military to know speaking to someone's commanding officer is as good as.)

Too much liquor, long nights, and investing in a pill cutter; Jae almost feels human again, losing himself in work. The radio station is a hilarious disaster, but he likes his boss, as much of a lunatic as she is. That he's at the bottom of the ladder again makes him feel like even more a child, stumbling over himself and his magic and his emotions as he is in this strange place. But there, it's not as bad. He hits the bar across the way from his flat in Creekside, he buys groceries and a new pair of sunglasses, and then he comes home ("home") and lays on the floor and stares up at the ceiling and pretends his head spins because he's been drinking too much.

He doesn't sleep for two nights, and then spends the third up and reading the book that appeared in the arrival room with him. It's the first time he touched it since he shoved it in the back of his closet when he moved in. The next evening, he goes to one of Shada's temples in Brock Marsh, and doesn't do anything beside sit quietly in the back.

Comments

the temple to shada;

[rhinemaid]

In a manner of speaking, Ilde is here because of Fish.

She's spent months walking past Shada's temples in the city; lingering outside, thinking about it, never quite managing to go in. She's been curious, watchful, and a little oddly shy - religion is something alien to her, though the desire for that connection isn't. She'd toyed often with the idea of appealing to the goddess for aid and never come to any firm conclusion. She's swum beside Shada's children in the Gross Tar, and wondered, but it's only after inadvertently participating in Fish's observances to Maryis that she has the right push under her feet to keep moving towards, to go in and sit down.

Beside Jae, at the back, where she can see what's going on.

[boomvox]

Religion, in the context of what gods-with-faces-and-morals seem to mean to people, is something Jae's never understood or, frankly, liked very much. Not that he liked the system he was raised with, either, but after an upbringing studying Confucianism, surrounded by Buddhism and Shinto, he finds orthodoxy to be a strange thing.

Somehow, this feels more real than the churches in London and New York. He doesn't know if God exists, but it's easy to believe the gods exist; but then again, he's here for a real reason, versus tagging along somewhere just so he can see Christmas lights. Maybe God was just unimpressed with his priorities.

When Ilde sits down next to him he isn't surprised - he didn't expect her, either, but if he was going to have company tonight, it makes sense that it's her. There's a priestess leading prayer and talking with people up at the head of the room, by the altar, and some other people sitting in scattered seating, at the edges of the service. Or ritual. He's not entirely sure. Whatever it is, he feels like it's almost certainly rude to talk during, so instead he just offers Ilde his hand.

[rhinemaid]

Her fingers lace through his, her skin cool as ever and her grip only a little bit tighter than necessary; this is what she calls 'progress', but only to herself where no one else is listening. 'Progress' is also sitting down and staying where she is, watching if not listening and committing it all to memory to unravel later into something she can understand. (That's the idea, but mostly she just thinks please and feels-- something she can't explain.)

Eventually, she rests her head against Jae's shoulder.

[boomvox]

He doesn't understand the significance of anything that's happening in front of them, and he wonders if there's meant to be gravity about it, or if Baedal is like Earth, where so many religions and faiths have watered down into millions of people going through the motions and then going home and forgetting about it.

He's not sure why he's here.

Jae holds Ilde's hand, rubs his thumb over hers for a moment, and watches.

[rhinemaid]

Ilde goes back and forth, often, on whether she thinks living gods that touch lives with their own hands make for a more powerful faith or a more complacent one; then she stops thinking about it, because it isn't a thought exercise in Baedal and passing a great generalized judgement on Twelve Point devotees is just rude, among other things. She thinks of Fish, and how it had seemed personal most of all, and how she'd envied him, and how strange it felt to be included.

The gods of her world are dead, and so is she. She doesn't think about any of those things, wonders if it's selfish - rude - to ask a goddess she doesn't understand for a blessing, and lets the sense of unfamiliar magic sink into her skin.

[boomvox]

Jae's conflict is layered, fighting, too many questions and hurts competing for which one gets enabled the most in his head. He doesn't want to be a sorcerer. He doesn't want to be a part of the supernatural community. He doesn't want to be in Baedal. He resents his birthright. He resents being imprisoned. He wants to know about himself. He wants help. He wants to understand the pride that other people have, he wants...

He asks for nothing, and yet the strange air seems to find him inside where it hurts the most.

(They're all hunted or hunting, terrible to each other, beautiful to each other, no matter what they are, there's no point in drawing lines around what he is or isn't. Would it be so awful, for him to identify with something, for once in his life?)