jade ☃ harley (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
basslines) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
bakerstreet2016-09-08 02:14 pm
basslines) wrote in bakerstreet2016-09-08 02:14 pm
thursday pic prompt
the picture prompt meme
i. COMMENT WITH CHARACTER
ii. OTHERS LEAVE A PICTURE (OR TWO OR THREE....)
iii. REPLY TO THEM WITH A SETTING BASED ON THE IMAGES.
THIS POST WILL BE IMAGE HEAVY.
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Brother certainly seemed the right term to use in this case, but for Charles, it seemed even more fascinating simply because of all of those born in Aurus' generation that this sylvari in particular was the one Aurus chose to call 'brother'. A far more intimate sort of relationship that friend, cousin, or the numerous terms that Aurus had taught him their kind used. Knowing the other's face from our Dream... so the time before they were born, then? Why would the Dream link these two together?
The comment about Keserhn's strange sort of attitude made the corner of Charles' mouth lift in amusement. To have that unasked question so readily answered meant that it was probably a very typical question and thus it wasn't just him thinking it. Did other sylvari, or only non-sylvari think Keserhn to be a bit... odd? Charles mouthed the name to himself so that he would remember it, listening as the two spoke. So they could tell, at least to some degree, where they were when they spoke to them here? Keserhn was dead on the money about being so far away, worlds away.
He straightened up ever so slightly at being introduced, bowing his head slightly towards Keserhn in a small sign of respect, only to balk at the hand reaching towards him. His eyes flickered over to Aurus, wondering if this was typical (Aurus was a bit touchy himself, after all) or just his brother, but he didn't pull away. His brows lifted when Keserhn suggested he was taking care of Aurus - Aurus seemed fully capable on his own - but that suggested as well Keserhn perhaps saw himself as the older brother?
After a moment, Charles offered over a smile and took the offered hand (was this typical among sylvari, he wondered, or had Keserhn spent time among humans?), giving it a firm but not crushing shake. "I would say that I'm not sure Aurus is capable of not causing trouble," he said with a bit of amusement, a gentle tease and a hope to warm Keserhn up to him as someone so close to Aurus, "but he is welcomed in my home and has been a pleasure to have. It's wonderful to meet you." Both as another sylvari and Aurus' chosen brother.
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Smiling, Keserhn returned the hand shake but then, when it would have been usual for someone to let go...he didn't. Not that he gripped Charles' hand so tightly that it would be hard for the man to pull it away if he wanted to. But if Charles didn't pull away, Keserhn would happily take this opportunity to run his thumb over the man's knuckles, his fingers over his palm and the heel of his hand and up to his wrist...(and he'd probably keep right on going if he wasn't stopped).
Not that this seemed to distract him from talking, his voice retaining that same breezy calm, and his expression still that languid, almost sleepy smile. "Hm, yes, that's true," he said of Aurus's trouble-making proclivities. "I'm glad to hear that he hasn't changed."
(Aurus had the good sense to look just a wee bit sheepish at that, the way one does when people are openly talking about them and saying not-entirely-complimentary things in rather affectionate ways.)
"What's it like where you are?" Keserhn's question was directed at Aurus and Charles both, his gaze sliding from one of them to the other (though admittedly when he looked at Charles again, his eyes seemed to wander from the man's face towards his hair). "Is it a nice world?"
For his part, Aurus was also keeping a close eye on Keserhn's hands and Charles' body language. Even among sylvari Keserhn was strange. It was just that sylvari were almost uniformly direct enough to just tell him if he was doing something they didn't like. Humans, by contrast, tended to struggle much more with the question of how to handle a person who behaved this way--who constantly wanted to touch anything and everything that looked like it might have an interesting texture without so much as beg-your-pardon.
From what Aurus knew of him, Charles was exactly the kind of person who would struggle to figure out how to handle Keserhn, which meant that he expected he'd need to intervene sooner or later.
Until then though, he could give quite genuine smiles and keep up the conversation. "Charles runs a school from his home. It's a very beautiful place. Quite palatial." A subtle hint to Charles here that he could disclose as much or as little as he wanted about the sort of school it was, and about the topic of mutants in general.
Keserhn was perfectly trustworthy with information, and if Charles chose to reach towards Aurus's mind with a question to that effect, he would find Aurus's reassurance. Ironically, Keserhn had an encyclopedic knowledge of people and meetings and events that took place in the Grove, but he never bothered to speak about those to anyone, mostly because he wasn't the sort of person anyone ever asked.
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Charles would allow Keserhn to get about as far as his wrist before he cleared his throat slightly and pulled his hand away despite the nudge in him that suggested it was rude to do so but this had become... uncomfortable. Still, the bit of info he was getting from Aurus' brother was amusing and somewhat unsurprising, given what he had seen of the sylvari so far. It didn't come as a complete shock that Aurus would be a bit of a troublemaker. The more he learned of Aurus, the more he could see a bit of his younger self in Aurus. Curious, intelligent, a touch mischievous, wanting to know everything and prepared to take the chance to get it, more open. Far more open.
If Keserhn went for his hair, he was going to step back from it or gently try to nudge aside the hand with a 'please don't' expression, but would do nothing more unless Keserhn insisted. It was like dealing with the younger children who hadn't quite learned about personal space yet. A little.
"I run a private school for children who need more personal attention due to their gifts. Sometimes very bright students who need greater stimulus than their age would normally allow them in a typical school, sometimes children who have difficulty and need a more precise form of schooling... the cases tend to be very varied." Aurus, who knew the truth, would know that this was most likely a rehearsed statement but it came off very natural. It wasn't entirely a lie, after all.
But he smoothly shifted the attention from himself, looking around pointedly. "The Grove... is like nothing I could have imagined. A thousand times more beautiful than the picture I had in my head."
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Aurus suppressed a smile at all of this--at the tactful way Charles described his school's mission without ever using the word mutants and at the way Keserhn registered only a slight frown of disappointment as he released Charles' hand when the man pulled it away.
What Aurus knew and what Charles obviously would not (yet) was that hints and expressions implying he ought to stop what he was doing were, as a rule, lost on Keserhn. He did seem interested in what Charles was saying, but his interest didn't interrupt his wandering hands.
"How fascinating," he was saying to Charles, "It sounds very personalized--is that not how all human children are treated whilst they are learning? I can't imagine them being able to truly expand themselves in any other set-up." He was also, indeed, reaching out to pet Charles' hair as he spoke, and the fact that Charles moved to evade him seemed only to make him try again, like maybe he'd just missed his target the first time.
When Charles remarked on the Grove's beauty, though, Keserhn's hand paused--momentarily. "Yes, it is, isn't it," he agreed, and then looked very pointedly at Aurus, "I can't imagine why anyone would ever want to leave." Stare.
"I believe you are making him uncomfortable," Aurus said as Keserhn's hand made yet another reach for Charles' hair, using the opportunity to make his own dodge away from his brother's remark on his long absence from their homeland. Slight passive aggressiveness? Slight sibling tension? ...Well, maybe.
Keserhn looked at Charles with a smile, as though he'd genuinely only just realized. "Oh. I'm sorry." And he reached out to pet Aurus instead.
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The look Charles sent towards Aurus suggested there would be many questions later about Keserhn, unsurprising, but for now he kept that to himself for the most part and instead, responded more easily towards Keserhn because it was such a familiar topic -- though somewhat dodging that hand coming towards him. A part of him hoped that Aurus' brother was the uncommon because he wouldn't be keen on meeting many more sylvari if this was the case.
"There are... a great deal more children out there than teachers, so unfortunately that isn't so very true. We only take on very special cases of children out there that are more difficult for the normal school system to properly handle, so a very specialized school." But oh, what was that look? Was this a hint of how the sylvari actually felt about Aurus' travels or was this something more attuned to only the brothers? Maybe an anger for Aurus leaving him? Charles could only speculate but questions were being piled neatly in the back of his mind to ask Aurus later, if he was allowed.
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Aurus was pretty well expecting the questions to come at some point. Veritably no one, whether sylvari or human, ever met Keserhn without having quite a number of questions afterwards. Actually, the ones who managed to formulate questions were a step ahead--for many people they were left with nothing but deeply perplexed confusion.
At least Keserhn didn't appear to be holding on to that momentary show of displeasure with Aurus's long absence. In fact he'd already moved on.
Now that he'd been directly told that petting Charles's hair was something he ought not to do, he was occupying himself with Aurus's fern fronds instead. He stroked them with a single finger, each from its root where it began at Aurus's temple, tracing down along the grain of the leaves, and then returning up to the top and repeating the motion again.
(Aurus gave him a passing glance, then gave Charles a look as if to say Best to just accept and not question it just now.)
"And you are a very special case too, aren't you?" Keserhn was saying to Charles, looking at him in a way that left his meaning quite ambiguous. Was he suggesting that Charles was special simply by virtue of teaching special children? ...Or did he perhaps have some way to tell that there was something more to the man beyond what was being said?
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Keserhn certainly had a fascinating with touching things, Charles noted with a bit of a dry note, watching as the sylvari all but petted his brother with those oddly intimate gestures. Still, he wasn't about to judge when he had no idea what was going on and Aurus seemed calm about the whole situation. Still, Keserhn's comment to him gave him pause, debating on the possible meanings of those words. After several moments, and a brief glance to Aurus, he decided that he was comfortable enough in telling Keserhn some of the truth even if protecting his students came instinctively.
"My sister," a choice to say as it might give a greater connection, "would suggest that I am in many ways." Hoping that dry humor came across to both species. "But yes... I have a gift of my own, something very different than most people of my world, that allows me to join Aurus in his coming to the Grove. When he offered to allow me to see such a place, I was excited at the possibility."
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In a way, Aurus was actually quite flattered that Charles was willing to share this information with Keserhn. Even if it wasn't tremendously specific, he recognized that it was still quite personal for the man, and as cautious and reserved as Charles was, letting even this much be known by someone here in the Dream was significant.
He also knew that they were fast nearing the end of Keserhn's typical attention span. In his mind, he'd already begun the countdown. So he wasn't the least bit surprised with the seemingly spartan answer that his brother gave to Charles' disclosure and his choice to focus on the topic of the Grove:
"Hmm, yes well there is quite a lot of it." His eyes drifted absently to the space around them as though he was momentarily somewhere else. Then he returned.
Tucking a stray fern frond behind Aurus's ear, he caressed his cheek and the line of his jaw before letting his hand drop away with an airy, "Good seeing you."
And then, for one more moment he looked at Charles. "It was lovely to meet you. You look like you would be soft."
He didn't even wait for an answer to the remark before departing, hand back on the railing, carrying on down the walkway, evidently as engrossed in the green vine as he'd been before he stopped for them.
Aurus watched him for a beat then looked at Charles, trying unsuccessfully to suppress a smile, but at least managing not to laugh. Of all the parting comments that Keserhn could make! Truly, he couldn't even be surprised; he just hoped that Charles wouldn't be offended. Let all the inevitable questions begin.
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Charles just stood there, watching Kaserhn leave, before he just looked at Aurus. There didn't need to be questions asked; his expression asked all of them. So he raised an eyebrow and gestured towards the leaving brother, then crossed his arms over his chest and waited.
Start talking, Aurus. What was that all about? What was with the constant need to touch things? Did Keserhn have some issue with not understanding personal space? Were most sylvari like that? Was he going to have to suffer that with anyone else? Why did Keserhn seem inclined to act with them unlike all of the other sylvari who had mostly ignored them?
Start talking, mate.
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Aurus couldn't help it. He burst out laughing.
He did at least manage to reel it in and apologize before it got away from him though. "I'm sorry," he said, still chuckling, "He is a rather singular experience, isn't he. I promise it's not just you--most people who meet him for the first time wonder if he isn't mad, and that includes most sylvari! He's not though, just a bit different."
Managing to regain his composure, he gestured along down the path, continuing the route they'd been on before they paused for their meeting. "Come, let's walk and I'll try to explain. He's right that there is much more yet to see." They hadn't even made it to the commons yet.
"Keserhn sees the world--I hope you'll understand what I mean when I say this--he has a telescopic sort of viewpoint. This is how I make sense of it anyway.
"You and I look around us and we see things in context. I, for example, look at your mouth and see the softness of your lips, their muted shade of pink," (evidently Aurus had no plans to stop flirting, even in the midst of a reasoned discussion), "and I think it would be lovely to feel the touch of them, but my attraction is because they're yours. I focus on them from a focus on you. That's not the way Keserhn works at all.
"He seems to see the world as though it's all a matter of magnified textures. Like looking through a telescope. You'd never see the whole picture unless you took your eye away from the lens. So Keserhn sees your hair and he immediately wants to put get his hand there because the texture is something captivating--there's more information than sight alone can't tell him. Touch is needed to fill in the rest.
"Of course he can, if he's reminded, pull his focus back and see the texture in context, but it's an effort for him. He needs to be told. Otherwise he's left with a texture that seems to just keep dodging out of reach.
"Mind you, it took me quite some time to figure all of this out about him. Believe it or not, Keserhn's actually incredibly astute. He could tell you almost anything there is to know about the Grove and the happenings within it. But most people never notice because they can't manage to get passed the initial," he made a vague gesture here with his hand, as though to indicate abstractly all that touching stuff.
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It was funny and yet incredibly endearing to see Aurus burst out laughing. Charles couldn't have pinpointed why, maybe because it was usually for the normally restrained sylvari (as far as Aurus had shown him of himself so far) but he liked it. It brought out a smile in him just to see.
"I've never quite met anyone like your brother, but he certainly is something else. I suppose it makes more sense on hearing it that way, but I'll admit I'm grateful I met him with you there to curb things." Certainly fascinating, though. Any human who would have acted like that would have most certainly been labeled as somehow mentally damaged but the sylvari seemed to take things much more easily. Forgiving. Humans somehow could be the most and the least forgiving species, and when it was the least, it was in ways often more vicious than death.
There was one question Aurus didn't answer that Charles was still curious about, and he leaned in, not entirely against the bit of flirting Aurus was doing. In fact, he moved just a bit closer than most would have. Here, though under the eyes of others, it still was removed from his own people and their social limitations... and perhaps his own limitations as well. "Why was he the only one who chose to interact with us, though? Can the others see us?"
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"It's probably best for everyone that he rarely leaves the Grove and certainly not on his own," Aurus admitted of Keserhn. "I suspect that he'd get into a good deal of trouble were he alone in a human city." It was all too easy to picture Keserhn taking too keen an interest in the lace of some woman's bodice and getting himself dragged off by the Seraph or the Lion Guard in a spectacular misunderstanding.
"Certainly the others can all see us," he explained, happily welcoming the closer proximity of Charles' body as they walked, the gradual way that the culture of the Grove and the experience of the Dream seemed to be putting him at ease. "It's merely a matter of priorities, shall we say. In the span of a night's sleep, one can only dream so much, and thus only see and hear so much in the Dream. When one chooses to speak to one person, they necessarily will not speak to others.
"Besides, the area we're in now corresponds to a more residential part of the Grove. Very few would choose to spend the bulk of their time in conversation here when there's so much more happening in the Upper Commons, where we are, incidentally, heading next.
"If there is something exceptional in what Keserhn was able to perceive it's this: he had no trouble at all discerning that you appear here as yourself and not merely as my memory of you. Most sylvari will simply presume you to be the latter, almost as if you were a hologram or an echo of yourself projected at my side by my mind--someone who has made an impression on me in my waking life and thus appears in the Dream by extension.
"So if I were, for example, to kiss you," he said it as though it was a purely innocent example, but he paused in his steps with Charles close to him, close enough to laden the soft sound of his words heavily with implication, "they would presume that they were seeing it here because I have already kissed you when we were awake, or perhaps because I wish to kiss you when I wake again."
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Charles was quietly making his comparisons, thinking that it sounded very much like a savant from his own world. Someone utterly brilliant, though usually in a specific area, but there were difficulties in social cues often expressed as if trying to restore balance. It fit Keserhn into a known category and thus his mind was satisfied for the moment, though he was sure to go back and think on the topic more than once. For now, though, what Aurus was saying was far more of interest.
He slid his hands into his pockets and listened, not letting his eyes focus on Aurus as he might have back home or otherwise be considered rude but instead taking in everything that he could, trying to commit it to memory before it seemed like nothing more than a dream itself. It made sense that there would be another area to congregate that around their homes and Charles was keenly interested on seeing not only more of this place but more sylvari in all of their fascinating types.
Oh, very subtle, Aurus. Charles gave him the raised eyebrow that suggested he wasn't buying that 'innocence' for a moment before it turned into a faint smile, choosing to stick with the topic despite their closeness. "I didn't realize that would be such a subtle difference that his recognizing would be considered significant," he said easily and truthfully, though his change in expression suggested he was curious why that was so difficult. But perhaps that latched back onto the idea that one could only dream so much. There wasn't a point to figuring out if someone else's dream was only that or real.
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All right, all right, guilty as charged. Of course Aurus knew precisely what he was doing with the example that he gave. He was still hoping that at some point Charles would assent, would feel the answering want of his own body, and decide that he was ready to go with it. He didn't mind that the time was not right now though.
In that moment, however, he realized that there was something that Charles had perhaps not fully understood. "It's not that," he said. "You must understand that every non-sylvari that you see here--whether they are human or norn or hylek or something else entirely--appears in the Dream only as the memory or perception of some sylvari who is Dreaming right now. The Dream is quite literally populated by our minds.
"There is no one else here the way that you are here now. There is no path of access. What you and I are doing, what's brought you here--to most of my kin it is simply unimaginable, because no one in my world can do what your abilities allow you to. They won't recognize that you are different because the difference is such an impossible one as to be altogether invisible to them.
"Perhaps I should say that it exists...in a place they will not look. And in a place, I suppose, where Keserhn does. It's not a matter of subtlety, I think, but merely that he sees a dimension of things that does not appear for others. It's true that he is a powerful mesmer in his own right, but there are many mesmers of great skill and this--this is something else again."
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That answering need wasn't going to come anywhere that was public to his unconsciousness. It might have when he was younger - he would have enjoyed giving Aurus a run for his money in the flirtation and teasing department - but everything had changed since then. That personality was shattered by reality, the loss of innocence, and in its place was someone a little angier, a lot more defensive, and far more hidden beneath the surface he portrayed. Still, in this very different place, he was letting some small glimpses show that wouldn't have happened in a similar situation elsewhere.
"I understood most of that," Charles said with a small shake of his head, "I merely meant the sylvari who might be here like you. However, I didn't realize that there was no physical aspect to this at all. That this was only the mental landscape." A small cutting motion with his hand as if saying 'and nothing more'. "I wonder what your breathern would do if they knew the truth." There was a brief touch of a smirk to his lips, that hint of mischief again, that faded soon after.
"If your brother is capable, then I am more impressed than previous. Yet..." There was a hesitation, struggling for the right words, before he lifted a brow. "He didn't seem bothered by it, despite the fact you say the sylvari couldn't imagine me doing what I am. Is that simply his attitude about things or has he seen this before?"
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There was no rush, Aurus felt, to any of this. In fact the only rush, to his mind, was in trying to fit as much as they could into a single night. Because of this, he encouraged them to carry on walking while they talked, leading the way down the walkways until they came to a sloping ramp that took them out of the network of dwellings and back to ground level.
"Sometimes I wonder what many of them would say if they knew the extent of my experience--my travels--as well. There are other sylvari who have gone into the Mists, certainly, but to my knowledge no one has traveled as far or as extensively as I have. Keserhn knows more of my travels than many of the others because I've shown him so much of what I've seen in the past.
"This is something I think humans find most difficult to understand about the Dream. They fancy that it's some sort of hive mind collective--that's what Hank thought when I tried to explain it to him. In reality it's much more...well, it's almost like a great tableau vivant made by gossip, isn't it? Some of us gossip to anyone and everyone, and others are somewhat more circumspect." He, clearly, was of the latter category.
"For Keserhn's part, he's the type of person who's inclined to be accepting, and to observe far more than what he talks about. But I suppose it would also be fair to say he's been primed to expect rather fantastic things from me. After all, I've been traveling this world--and beyond this world--since the days when our race was still very young. In the beginning, almost every story, every new experience I shared with him held for us the amazement of the hitherto unimaginable.
"I wasn't terribly close to most of the other Secondborn, you see, and certainly not to the Firstborn. I left the Grove because I wanted more than their company, so when I came into the Dream, I certainly wasn't rushing to share my life with them. There was even a time when I experimented with the path of becoming Soundless. Despite what you are seeing tonight, I have to admit that I'm much less intimate with the Dream than most."
They had come to front of what was basically a giant seed pod, easily big enough for two people to stand in, with diaphanous sail-like leaves at its top. As they approached, one side of it swung open for them like a leafy door on a hinge.
Aurus extended a welcoming hand to invite Charles to step inside, smiling with that smile that betrayed his eagerness to show his companion yet another of the Grove's wonders.
"Fancy a ride?"
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Charles followed along, his hands in his pockets, his brows lifting as he saw a particularly elegant drip of vine down to one patch of flowers, large and pouring delicately out that glowing pollen like a small waterfall. He listened as he walked beside Aurus, intently, though he wanted to take everything in he could visually. "An outlier, among your people. Something I can well understand. Sometimes to be different is to dare, but other times to be different is to live." But was Charles talking about Kesehrn or Aurus himself? From the glance over, it very well might have been the latter. The tiny smirk confirmed it.
There were some mutants that could very well fit into the Kesehrn-style of existence, even amongst the rest of them. Hank, who hid himself almost entirely while telling students to be open, immediately came to mind, but socially that didn't quite fit. There were some mutants that were so different they had told him to fuck off, literally or figuratively, because they wanted nothing to do with the idea of being a part of the X-Men or the school.
When they approached the seed pod, his brows went up, studying it, stepping back very slightly at the sudden opening of the 'door', his fingertips reaching out to brush over it. Organic, like everything else. "A ride." Dry, but interested, and he stepped inside with a smile. "Did someone create this or did the Grove ... invent this?"
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"At the time when I left, it felt as though no one around me as asking the right questions. It wasn't just that their answers seemed wrong, it was that every answer to what was being asked felt like it would always be. I think in that sense I wanted to be an outlier. And now that I am, perhaps it explains why I've not simply been satisfied to return home."
Of course Aurus didn't know about Hank's bluer side, so he would never have been able to make sense of any comparison between him and Keserhn, and perhaps he wouldn't have seen it even if he did know. But he would never deny that Keserhn was also an outlier in his own way. He just jutted out at a different odd angle than Aurus did. And Aurus's angle was what brought him closer to Charles.
Joining the man within the seedpod, Aurus brushed his fingers momentarily over an interior wall, musing. "Honestly," he had to admit, "I'm not sure. I've never stopped to think about it before. It's just always been here, ever since I can remember. I suppose Kahedins would know. If we see him we shall ask." The door swung closed behind them, and a moment later the pod began to move, rising smoothly into the air with the near silent thwip thwip thwip of a tiny, helicopter-like flapping and a soft breeze as they moved.
From out of the open window gaps in the sides of the pod, the ground could be seen dropping away as they ascended through a sort of open-air shaft made by the Grove's broad sloping paths and thoroughfares--a network of natural "roads" that spiraled from its lowest levels, where they'd first arrived, up towards the commons.
The sky was more clearly visible here, along with the lowest branches of the Pale Tree, which bent down in a graceful spiral of pinkish-white leaves from above. What was most striking though, was that unlike the quiet serenity of the lower levels, up here the Dream was positively bustling with activity.
Even before the seed pod landed and the door swung open to deposit them on the ground, the rush of sound and life began to reach them. And here, for the first time, were many of those translucent green ghost-like sylvari that Aurus had told Charles to expect--the as-yet-unawoken saplings for whom the Dream was their whole world. They walked among others who appeared as solid and real as Aurus and Charles did, and not just other sylvari either.
The whole scene was like a tableau of little skits being acted out by all the races of Tyria. A group of soldiers battled a line of undead here, an asura tinkered with a golem that malfunctioned again and again over there. Everywhere a person looked there was something new to see, and amidst it all were sylvari walking or sitting together, talking, watching the scenes play out, all seemingly perfectly at home in this great bazaar of sights.
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One hand splayed against the wall, unconsciously bracing himself as he heard the quiet sounds and felt the world leave beneath their feet. It was little surprise he was drawn to the gaps, staring out as they moved up in this natural elevator, getting his first glimpses of the leaves of the Pale Tree which was like no tree he had ever seen before. There was the desire to explore it more closely, to feel the texture of the tree that had given birth to a new species, the wish to somehow fly above and see the whole of it at once merely to be able to understand it as a whole instead of trying to sum up its pieces.
But what was happening as they approached took precedence. So many! Charles' grin had returned, looking across everything with that curious light in his eyes and trying to see it all at once. There! The 'children', as his mind dubbed them, those not yet born. The ones he was forbidden from interacting with, lest he influence them somehow. Yet even his wonder over those had to be put aside for seeing even more new... new everything! Creatures like he had never seen and over there, a wilderness that was more vast than anything that remained on Earth and there, his brows shot up at the sight of two topless... women? he wasn't quite certain, they stood upright like a human but looked more like cats. He said nothing, merely stood just outside of the elevator, taking it in.
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He gave the man time to survey it all, take it all in, before he began to offer quiet explanations for those parts of the scene that he guessed would be most foreign.
"Charr," he murmured, standing just behind Charles and indicating the cat-people that the man was looking at. He spoke in a voice pitched for only the two of them to hear though in reality this was not a place where one had to worry much about anyone taking offense like they might in the waking world. Charr, for example, would likely raise their proverbial hackles at being stared at by a human--relations between the races, though better than they'd been historically, were still not always good. Here in the Dream, however, they could not just look but listen as the charrs' voices carried towards them.
"No one's debating that we have to do something," one was saying, "your plan is just stupid and won't work!" (No mincing words amongst charr.)
But the other evidently disagreed. "Well I'm not slathering my fur with harpy pheromones, no matter what you say. Next thing you'll be telling me we're going to build a trebuchet and fling ourselves into their nests like Mad Mardine and his cattlepult!"
"...It's not a bad idea."
"I do not have an innate affinity to being hurled through the air!! Anyway, everyone knows those cattle never survive!"
Context? Well there was no context. Not even a clear sense of where in the world the pair had been standing when this conversation originally took place. It was all seeming non sequiturs, and this was just the first of them.
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"So somewhere, a sylvari listened to this conversation taking place and now it's playing here? Or is this... a dream? Made up by the unconscious?" Charles questioned, wanting to be certain on just what he was witnessing. "Either way, that? Is something I will never forget." Hurling cats. The thought made his lips curl up again.
"Is this what you saw, before you came out of your... pod?" A mental note to ask if that was something he could see, where these children slept, or was it possible to view the whole tree, but that was for later. "All of these people, these things happening?" But he also wondered if it gave sylvari 'children' a certain skewed view point on the world, should they witness one thing and not another, or something that was unkind, wrong, or an outlier among the sylvari.
Cattlepult: a real GW2 thing...into which you must climb and get shot out of. No lie.
In short, Charles was right that the charr were warriors through and through. So much so that even their craziest inventions and schemes were inspired by the problems of warfare.
It took a moment after all that for Aurus to regain his composure. It was pretty rare for him to lose himself to laughter that way, and he needed a moment before he could say more. Presently though, he did manage.
"Actually, this field was far less populous when I was still in the Dream. After all, there were only a dozen sylvari alive in the whole world at that time, as opposed to the many thousands whose combined memories and deeds populate the scene here now.
"I am sure that I must have seen things here, seen this space--the Grove always felt familiar to me from the moment I awoke--but it is not what I most keenly remember, not what most stayed with me.
"As I understand it is with humans, so to it is with us: you dream many things, but when you awake, you may remember only piecemeal flashes. Narratives become hazy, it becomes unclear how you got from one place to the next or how events are connected. Once you awaken, what becomes most important about a dream is not what you saw, but the attempt to express it, recapture it, find the right words to keep it alive. Your mind focuses on whatever had the most impact.
"The thing I most keenly remember from before I awoke was a vision of mountains." By this time, Aurus was no longer laughing at all, but instead had a serious, thoughtful expression, like he was recalling something very personal and intimate, something that had changed him as a person. "They were snow-capped, and mist clung around them, and they extended seemingly forever. I can't remember how I moved through them--it was like flight, but not--and as I moved the landscape changed, the light changed. I saw desert canyons and old lava flows and vast cliffs of ice and some things I still have no name for."
It would be hard to extrapolate from his experience to that of most sylvari though, he thought--like Charles had said, he was an outlier. He gave a slightly apologetic smile. "Everyone's Dream is different."
I LOVE IT.
The loss always seemed so much worse than the benefit.
Charles ended up biting the inside of his cheek to stop his laughter as it was clear Aurus was telling him something quite personal, but by the end of it his brows shot up. There were places like that on Earth, but it was vague enough that it could be here as well, couldn't it? He pondered it briefly, then spread his hand. "It makes sense, to me. This Dream of yours." It wasn't hard to miss that importance of it. "Look at you now. A traveler, seeing all of that. Why wouldn't your Dream be of so many different places around the world? A drive to see it all, before you were even born into the world to do so."
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"It makes sense now, it retrospect," Aurus agreed. "When I first awoke its meaning felt far less than straightforward. Many of my kin had Wyld Hunts--personal quests to fulfill. I had mountain vistas. At first it wasn't even wanderlust. Even that only came with time.
"I can tell you that none of the Firstborn, not even those who fancied themselves skilled in interpreting the Dream, saw mine as portending anything like the life I've led. Mostly they saw me as the troublemaker who inspired my siblings to orgiastic experimentation...and at least one or two actual orgies." It probably said quite a lot about Aurus that he could deliver that line with a straight face, but there it was.
Meanwhile, the charr that they had been watching had moved a little further away from them, and their words no longer carried so clearly, but from the looks of things their disagreement was certainly heating up given the bared teeth and the snarls.
Near them, a translucent green sapling with a long "ponytail" of leaves approached with wide eyes, her mouth held open in the shape of an O and her hands raised to her face as she seemed to gasp in fear at the sight of the pair.
Aurus leaned close to Charles, pointing her out and saying in a low voice, "If I was a betting sylvari, I'd give you good odds that's one who will awaken believing that the first charr she sees is going to eat her. Or potentially launch her out of a trebuchet if there's one nearby."
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Cough.
It took Charles a moment to find his voice after that little bit, briefly covering his mouth with his hand and bringing it down over his chin as he fought to keep his expression under control. Not going to react to that even though his mind conjured up an image or two. He knew Aurus was doing it on purpose; he'd have to find a way to get him back for it, of course.
"From what you've said about the Firstborn," Charles said, keeping his voice low between the two of them alone, "they might believe themselves skilled in interpretation but honestly? It seems like they might be too stuck in their ways - socially and otherwise - to be able to have understood something like you then or now."
His eyes followed Aurus' point towards the young one, then felt a grin fight its way up to his face. "I wouldn't take that bet because I think you're right. To be fair to her, though, if I met a large feline-creature like that... my first assumption might very well be, if it was snarling and growling like that, that my hide was on the line."
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