( otherwordly )

[absurdities]

Otherwordly Meme

Sometimes all you need is a word to spark off an idea.

1. Post a comment with your character's name, canon, and any preferences you may have (no shipping, no smut, etc.)

2. Leave the comment blank or post a word or two in the body.

It may also help if you list scenarios you would like to play.

3. Reply to other people, either with words you picked out, or words they posted as prompts for a thread.

( A cleanup of the previous Otherwordly Meme. )

Comments

[cadcamlan]

He's good at following. He's good at moving just a half-step behind and keeping his head slightly ducked down, somewhere between a chastened child and a well-trained dog.

Instinct is instinct. If there's a demon in him, it clearly hasn't found its way anywhere toward the surface.

His attention stays on the ground before them as his head tilts slightly. "Because of fate?"

[toweredingly]

"Aye." Roland looks back at the boy - he can't help thinking of him as a boy, although he's significantly older than Roland himself was when he became a man - with a little nod. It's rather disconcerting to see how he holds himself, so closed-in and uncomfortable. "Relax, cully. Nobody here's about to do you harm, if I've anything to say about it."

[cadcamlan]

It isn't clear, for a few heartbeats, that the words have even registered. It comes largely as the slightest further tilt of his head in consideration.

"Does the whole world listen to you, then?"

Maybe he is more like Arthur.

[toweredingly]

"There's not a soul anywhere that the whole world listens to," Roland replies gravely, and touches the gun at his hip. "But most of the world listens to lead and steel, and those that don't learn sooner rather than later."

[cadcamlan]

Guns certainly aren't swords. Ballistics as a concept in Mordred's mind can't quite be fully fit into the size and shape of anything smaller than bows and arrows--and usually only much larger than that.

There's something dubious in the way he glances toward the indicated weapon, but it's hardly the question most pressing on his mind.

"Isn't there? Someone-- infinitely wise to be heeded?"

[toweredingly]

Roland has to think about it for a moment. At last, he says in a low voice, "There's people to be heeded, right enough. Wise men, and sometimes fools too. But nobody's infinitely wise, and if they were, they'd not be trusted."

He can't help thinking of his father, and Cort, and Vannay. All of them were wise men; all of them were to be heeded. All of them, he reminds himself sharply, are dead.

He shakes off the thought, his thumb brushing over the stock of his gun, and looks down at Mordred. "All things serve the Beam, and the Beam serves the Tower. If there's anyone infinitely wise, he dwells at the top of the Tower, and he's had little enough to do with the world."

[cadcamlan]

"The Beam."

Repetition comes easily, in the pattern children take time to grow out of once they're released into the world of adults. The scattered nature of his own upbringing--and what passed for his education at the various hands which had attempted it--had left the desire for rote rather strong in him.

"Is it what's-- guiding fate?"

[toweredingly]

It's not the first time Roland has had to explain this. Once, he would have been amazed that anyone could not know it, baffled by the lack of understanding in other worlds. Now, though, he just shrugs one shoulder.

"After a fashion. The Beams hold the universe together, and have for eons before any of us were born or thought of. And they shape us, and guide us, likewise. Especially here, so close to the Tower. Here, look."

He stops, pulling out a knife, and drops it. It spins in midair, landing in the dust to point behind them and a little to the left. Hunkering down to pick it up, Roland pushes it back into his belt, satisfied with the demonstration. "I could drop that knife a thousand times, it would always point that way. Path o' the Beam. Path I've followed a thousand thousand miles. People serve the Beam just the same way, and that's a part of ka, sure enough."

[cadcamlan]

The twitch of his fingers for a sword that isn't there comes by instinct. There's enough of a tenuous trust that this man drawing a knife won't end in an attack, but things deep enough in a psyche are impossible to unlearn in the space of so few minutes.

His fingers stay tapping at the empty scabbard even as they start forward again, a quiet frown on his young features.

"Doesn't it-- get frustrating?"

[toweredingly]

Endlessly. Endlessly, and forever. But Roland isn't about to say that to someone he's just met, particularly not someone who's twin to his son. His trust, like his patience, has very short limits.

"What?" he says instead, with what might be considered blitheness if his face weren't so craggedly stony.

Sorry for the delay; holiday madness. Happy 2015!

[cadcamlan]

"Serving. Being ruled. Being-- stuck."

Mordred is young enough yet that the words bubble out without being properly monitored. In moments of distress and uncertainty, the child he still hadn't grown out of couldn't help letting frustration--and, in some ways, a degree of almost innocent trust--bubble up without restraint.

His brow is clouded as he follows along, frown drawn more intensely across his features. "Having to-- be nothing more than a cog. Knowing every single-- step you take has been laid out before you. Arthur always-- looks so calm about it, even-- though he knows it will end in so much pain."

And to you! (it's no worry anyway - I've had no internet to speak of for the last week)

[toweredingly]

Roland's frown echoes Mordred's, though his is deeper, etched with the pain Mordred speaks of. He looks, of a sudden, every bit as old as the plains around them, dusty brown skin worn into deep hollows and crests like the windblown stone underfoot. His pale eyes, so crisp and clear, close for a moment, and he might be part of the landscape itself.

He doesn't slow, or stop, but he's silent for several long moments before he finally answers. His voice, too, seems to have gained age and weariness; it is low and hoarse, and bitter beyond belief.

"And what choice do we have? Turn back ka's wheel? Go back to youth and innocence and forgetfulness? When you've swum across oceans of blood to get where you are, what is there to do but keep swimming and hope for a shore?" Now he looks at Mordred, and his eyes are not half as cold as they were. What's there is worse: a grief and an anger that are terrifying to behold. "Frustrating? Aye, and painful, and awful, and fearful beyond counting. But what we must carry, we must carry. May as well do it with grace and strength, and holding our father's faces ever in our minds."

For a moment, though, his mouth twists, and his eyes flicker towards the far horizon.

"But if I reach the Tower, if I climb to the top... well, then whatever dwells there has much to answer for."

[cadcamlan]

It's been difficult to see in his own father, perhaps, but it's coming much more clearly to the fore here following this mirror along. There's no forced happiness, no sharp smiles; it feels almost as much like following along beside the Immortal One than it feels like following beside the King.

They're all bound so much more tightly together, it would seem. The lines of fate are curling much closer between the forces which keep Pendragons in their lot than he could understand before.

"...but will it help?"

[toweredingly]

"Does anything?" That momentary flare of emotion in his eyes has faded, and he's back to stony, steady unreadability. But his hand, the one with the trigger finger sheared off at the knuckle, is almost unconsciously caressing the sandalwood grip of his gun, as if it holds the answer he doesn't have. "It won't change anything. All that happened, stays happened. But I'd have to say that having something to blame and rage at... aye, that might well help me, if nobody else."

They're almost back to the little cluster of shacks and paddocks that passes for a village. Roland walks with purpose, as he always has, but his expression is distant.

At last, he looks back at Mordred again. "Ka's a bitch. She'll fuck you, one way or another, and all you can really do is make it be on your terms. Let's get your sword."

[cadcamlan]

In his own life, with his own Arthur, heat was always met with heat. Anger hit anger hard and everything dark and ugly was drawn out in both father and son.

This is different. This is a stone wall Mordred is still young enough to understand quickly he won't be able to break. This is a mountain which he could try to scramble to the top of with his own anger and uncertainty and self-loathing, but he would never be able to crumble it.

There's something rather comforting about that knowledge. It sets a certain sort of looseness into the boy's shoulders as he follows along--very much the same way he might follow with uncertain trust beside the Wizard.

"--thank you."

I am so sorry for the delay. Life fell on me like a ton of bricks lately. :x

[toweredingly]

Roland shrugs one shoulder, not looking down at the boy at his side. His blue eyes focus, instead, on one of the little shacks, the one he heads towards now.

"I've done nothing for you to thank me for," he says bluntly. "Not yet, anyroad. Most I've done is help you out of a prison you were led into on my behalf." And hide his disappointment, and his relief, at the boy being the wrong Mordred. He's not sure whether that's something to call for thanks, or for blame.

Putting it from his mind - those concerns are for another time, and perhaps for a mind better-suited to riddling - he shakes his head and turns to one side, towards the shack where Mordred's affects are locked away.