o14. quasi closed.

[forgodssake]

CHARACTERS: Charles Xavier + Caprica "Natasi" Six + Garrett Hawke; and others.
LOCATION: Probably there are trees.
WARNINGS: TBA.
SUMMARY: The sad story how we became lonely two legged creatures.
NOTES: A series of pre-planned threads and a general catch all for October, so please, if you want to do something, shout at me!

Comments

[metempsychotic]

It was easier before I came here.

I thought that these little machines- these nanites- [ something she'd feel dubious about had they not been explained to her by someone whom she trusted implicitly, a trust extended based upon a misconception, but a trust not yet misused ] -I thought they had mended me.

The optimism of vitality, [ she says, dry in all senses. ] They only delayed the process. Drew it out. And I remember it too well, now. Living. Feeling. Learning.

[ And should Charles be seeking to know, the truth will trickle out here. The careful calculation she made before dragging Erik back to camp, the brief but very serious thought she'd given to devouring him so as to regain herself. The decision not to, based less on any ethical restraint than the knowledge that the crime would have consequences upon her return to what counts for society here.

And she most certainly would have done it anyways, had she the impression Erik truly wanted to die. His will to live, and the love Charles bears him, were the only things that stayed her hand. ]

I will kill hectares of forest to be able to learn again, to change. I would broaden the scar tenfold for just a month's extension of true life.

[ She parts her hands in an open gesture of appeal. ]

But I'd rather that not be necessary.

[forgodssake]

Quite.

[ Alright. He hasn't had to think this way for something like two months, but he has had to, before. Vampires in need of living human blood and werewolves changing to monsters despite being out of sight of any moon and angels who were dying from being cut off from Heaven and demonic possession and the children infected with zombie diseases and so many things that had landed in his lap over the past year and a half. He is a scientist, one with an open mind by necessity.

One of these days, he won't be surprised if something fell out. ]

When the ship we all crawled out of was in the air, it had-- infrastructure. For a time, I was the department head of a science division called xenobiology and genetics. Myself and my colleagues converted it into more immediate usefulness, I suppose -- we realised that we all came from places with different rules. In my world, there are people with exceptional human ability, springing from mutation, that are able to do things others consider impossible. In another world, a secret society of magic users manipulate reality directly with magic wands and incantations.

We existed in a terrain with its own set of rules, impervious to our own means of comprehension, but we thought, if we worked together, pooled intellect and experience and speciality, we could create new solutions.

[ He pauses, there, absently scratching his dog's ribs. ]

I'll need a comprehensive description of what sustains you -- if 'life' suffices normally, then details as to what entails would be a start, and what makes 'life' important. There could be ways to find substitutes -- I have a colleague whose witchcraft is involved in blood-related magics, who was able to help sustain a passenger who suffered similar restrictions.

[ How he misses Severus Snape. ]

[metempsychotic]

[ If she yet lived, this conversation would bring her such joy. Her desire to live is driven by a wish to engage actively in just that sort of collaboration, to drink deep of the potential this world and its strange arrangement have to offer. She does not resent being here, being far from home; she resents being unable to take advantage of it.

As it is - as she is, at least right now - Ieza grits her teeth. This is not what she asked for. She requested a specific kind of assistance, a living offering, a material boon- not some motions about a compromise with the rules of the universe.

Also, she's already received this advice, albeit in fewer words and without her applying leverage, and already rather violently rejected it. And while she no longer has the wherewithal for quite the same degree of volatility, a mental rigor mortis has superseded emotionality. Hers is a double-bind, almost entirely of her own devising. It is difficult for her to change her ways, even as she insistently desires just that capacity. ]

Parsimonious translation- [ she answers, able at least to call up a response to the question, even if she lacks enthusiasm. ] It is a practice of the body remembering its previous state. It requires an equivalent concentration of complex vitality. One can't get something for nothing, not at this level of elaboration. [ Unless that fairly fundamental law has been suspended. And who knows, it might just. But she can't seem to get excited at the prospect. ] There are some specifics to the ceremony, but mostly it involves a kind of ritual sacrifice. [ Like most ritual, it is less what it is than what it means that grants it efficacy. ]

A horse would suffice for a fairly lengthy period of restoration. As would a fully grown human being.

[ Any chance he has some of those lying spare? ]

I could be of more help - be more flexible in my thinking - were my present condition ameliorated.

[forgodssake]

I don't have a horse.

[ There's no frustration in Charles' tone, because that isn't an emotional rebuttal. It is a fact. ]

No large livestock of any kind, and no companion animals anyone will be willing to part with, and no fully grown human beings who deserve to die. [ In Xavier's world, no human beings deserve to die, but that's beside the point. ] I'm not trying to get around helping you, I promise, but I can't give you what I don't have. What I'm offering is some other method, some other alternative.

But I heard there's giant fish tentacle crustacean things in the river. I could find people willing to help net one for you, but I think finding a more sustainable solution is a better idea.

[metempsychotic]

[ Even leaving aside Charles' charming humanist sensibilities, Ieza is aware that picking off people in the camp one by one every few weeks is definitely not a sustainable solution. And though her ethics do not form the most robust of interior structures, she was raised with a nominal appreciation for the wills and lives of others.

And a 'giant fish tentacle crustacean thing' sounds, by dint of descriptors alone, both sufficiently large and sufficiently complicated. ]

That should serve.

[ This is what she wanted, what she asked for, what was not agreed upon, but what was expected. And now the suggestion is made, she's not liable to let it go. ]

I cannot demand a routine hunt on my behalf. But this once it is necessary. [ On that point she seems entirely set; and with that assurance secured, to her mind at least, she is willing to make a compromise.

There is a lingering misgiving inside of her, a dark-winged flutter of protest from something that is not quite an inhabiting spirit, but more autonomous than a cultural misgiving. But she is not its thrall, and Charles is - to be fair - being eminently reasonable. ]

I will pursue a sustainable solution. With vivacity. When I am capable of it.

[forgodssake]

[ Charles rubs one half of his face, fingers worked around the eye socket. It's the face rubbing of a man who is regretting opening his stupid mouth and pledging a giant fish tentacle crustacean thing to a walking corpse.

As if his life couldn't get any stranger.

But he doesn't take it back, already considering who he will ask. Not Erik. Kate Bishop hunts, doesn't she. He doesn't know the people that dragged back the fish the first time or he'd simply ask them. But back to the immediate conversation-- ]

You did bring him back, [ he grants. ] And I know it was in no small part because you needed something in return, but it was still... good. Of you.

So I'll do it your way, then we can discuss mine.

[metempsychotic]

[ This is one of the ways in which privilege operates, by dint of expectation, of asking for something as if one had a right to it, of assuming that - if what one wants even exists - one can and must have it. That the world owes it to you.

It's a neat little tactic, this kind of thoughtless presumption, though it leads to fits of pique when it finally does meet hard and fast denial. Charles' acquiescence saves him from witnessing any such postmortem tantrum. Instead he gets a thin, dry, but by no means grudging or insincere: ]

Thank you.

[ And really, their business should be concluded at this point, short of setting a future agenda. Short of his receiving a forwarding address for the delivery of aforementioned river monster. Her shade should be passing, but it lingers a bit longer, drawing another deliberate breath. ]

I had a question. About your friend. His reprisal, in the forest, when he tried to kill me- not in his right mind. [ She adds this to make clear there are no hard feelings - this is an inquiry, not an inquest. ] He used a praxis I have never seen. One I did not perceive as a praxis. Turned my implements against me.

Do you know what is was?

[forgodssake]

Mutant ability.

[ He supplies the term, a little clipped. 'When he tried to kill me' seems to inspire some generousity, which is not a hard thing to inspire in Charles Xavier. More remarkable is the reserve inspired instead, which is isn't sure he ought to combat or strengthen.

Still. Reserve or no, generousity aside, it's his favourite topic. ]

We all come from different universes. Or a few of us may share one world, but there are almost as many of those as there are people, save for the majority that are native to this reality. What you call praxis, others might call magic, or power, or gift, and they all follow their own set of rules, so you might perceive them differently.

[ He should maybe move their conversation to conclusion, also, but-- ]

How did you perceive-- how did you know to find me?

[metempsychotic]

[ This line of discussion would be a lot more fun for Ieza if it were able to leave more of an impression, if she were in a position to do more with it. As it is she's stuck lining up the terms she's given with the terms she already knows, trapped in the first stages of association, with a limited ability to produce genuinely new syntheses. What 'mutant' might mean is superceded by what she already knows it should mean, in her experience. That is, that it is derived from cantum - mutare, mutatum. ]

'Changing ability'? [ or maybe ] 'Ability to change'? [ or even ] 'Changed ability'?

[ That could describe just about any praxis. ]

What is the mechanism? [ That is, what is it behind its name, a name which could mean anything. We are all of us changing, all the time.

Well, most of us are.

Way to rub it in, Charles. ]

I observed his memories, [ she replies, icily self-satisfied that at least her answer will be a real answer, ] the ones most laden with emotion. The broadest leaves of his rose. It is an anamnetic praxis. More like examining the rings of a tree than asking a question in language. It is a consultation of the being's being as time and experience have shaped it.

[forgodssake]

[ Oh. Charles follows with about as much comprehension as she did as to mutant ability, which is to say, he has to fit words and concepts where they hadn't previously, and he doesn't even have the excuse for being dead. Just hungry and tired, mainly, but interest continues to niggle at him. He'd like to see it in practice.

Later. ]

I think I understand, but perhaps not completely. In the way that I'm not sure I can relate the mechanism of Erik's power to you very well. If it's of relevance, he won't hurt you. Not unless given reason.

[ That much doesn't feel too much like lying. ]

And in his right mind, obviously. But he can move metal, putting it simply. It's as easy to him as thought. Less about an ability to change, and more-- already changed from being completely human, into something more. What we call 'mutants'.

[ One day, he'll figure out why he doesn't always include himself right away in these conversations, especially when the truth comes out fairly easily when prodded. Habit, maybe. ]

[metempsychotic]

[ Ieza is not sure what to make with the idea of someone being 'more' than human. In her hierarchy of being, the notion of 'humanity' is a wide one, encompassing many structures of class and caste distinction, but not designating any given category as essentially 'more' or 'less'; even the pseudo-magocracy of the Old Syl did not confer superhuman status on practitioners, even if it seemed a qualitative distinction. To ascend from the high rose-bearing rank of humanity would be to aspire to apotheosis- and nothing about what she saw in the bleeding, delirious Erik seemed particularly divine to her. ]

So he is the changed, the 'mutant', [ she says, trying as best she can to get her conceptual ducks in a row, ] and this power over metal is the ability, an ability that is - or is the result of - the change?

[ She wants to make comparisons, to link what she's seen and what she's been told to what she already knows. Metal is hybrid elemental - earth and fire - and she knows that the Schola had made experiments into the hybridizing of prime elements as a way to overcome both material parsimony and aggregate complexity problems. But a scholastic technique would still be identifiably a praxis as she understands it, however foreign.

No, she'll never make sense of it, not when all she can do is process the strange into a rough facsimile of the familiar. She is growing frustrated, something noticeable more in the tight loops of her mind than in the deathless stillness of her countenance, but just as acute as it would be in a living person. And frustration is a steep and narrow path to any knowledge. ]

I would be curious to learn more. [ She is curious, even, but even that curiosity is one-track, acquisitive without being assimilative. She is locked in an attitude of grasping, but can do little with what she gets hold of. ] But it will be of more value once my vitality is restored.

When can I expect to receive my request?

[forgodssake]

[ Her ponderous question gets a nod out of Charles, silent as her thoughts continue to struggle and settle, his own questing curiousity-- sort of rusted, honestly. Something like a year ago, he'd have been pinning her down with questions of his own, assisting in the drawing of comparison, but there have been a great deal of people coming and going since then, with their own worlds and their own rules.

Still. Maybe once all this fish business is sorted, and the imbalance of debt unpaid taken care of, and she isn't wearing a mask anymore. The notion of an institution stirs an old interest, unsettling the accumulation of apathetic dust.

His dog settles down to lie next to him, and he rests his hand on Lincoln's thick canine head. ]

I'll need to talk with-- people who're better at hunting than I am, to say the least, but I don't see why I can't have it arranged within the next couple of days. Will you be alright until then?

[metempsychotic]

[ When the time comes, and if Charles is indeed as good as his word, Ieza will be amongst the most enthusiastic - if not necessarily the most agreeable - members of any scholarly society that forms in the wake of the Tranquility's crash. As she has been at pains to say, it is more than anything her wish to learn that drives the desire to regain her lost vitality.

The promise secured, the time frame established, Ieza-as-she-is senses little profit in tarrying. In a couple days, she will be a changed woman herself. And then Charles can enjoy the fruits of this exchange: the acquaintance a voraciously curious and extremely verbose young woman with penchant for what might charitably be called 'life science'.

For now, however, she rises from her kneel, already making for the tent's exit, her only words the assurance: ]

I will endure.

[ That's not the trouble. It hasn't been for some time. ]