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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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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On purpose? Him? Surely not! You'd think he was some kind of bad influence or something! Why, look at how calmly and decorously he was treating the topic--like he'd done nothing more scandalous than invite his siblings round for tea. Oh, were you struggling not to react, Charles? My my, can't imagine why that would be!
"They're not all bad," Aurus continued as though he hadn't just dropped any remark about orgies at all. He was trying to be fair to his older siblings, though really he thought Charles was right. "Perhaps I would have found more affinity with one like Riannoc, the first sylvari to die, or with Trahearne, the very first of our race to awaken--he spent much of his life far from the Grove in the ruined land of Orr, though he's since become Marshal of Tyria's greatest alliance, the Pact."
He gestured for them to turn their attention further along the open field, continuing to lean close and speak confidentially to Charles as they flanked the timid sapling who was now backing away from the two charr. "To be fair, yours might be, if it happened to be the wrong charr. In any case though, I imagine you'd have the good sense to be diplomatic about it, whereas saplings are a bit notorious for 'helpfully' blurting their most outlandish assumptions aloud to whomever happens to be standing nearby."
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The first sylvari to die. For some reason, those words stuck out to Charles and he frowned, debating with himself how it must have happened. Given the time frame Aurus had suggested that the sylvari had been around... Charles doubted that it had been from natural causes and the thought brought a faint pall to the amazement of this place.
"There is something very child-like about them, regardless of their fully-formed bodies or not. It's something any child of any race might do, I get the feeling, until they're taught otherwise." Still, Charles gave a bit of a teasing look towards Aurus. "And some still tend to say whatever's on their mind even long after their emotional childhood." He chuckled, his gaze going back to the bits of the Tree he could see.
Seemed as good a time as any to ask the question he had been thinking on earlier. "Is there any way to see the Tree as a whole? From here, it's difficult to imagine the true size or shape of it... and I'd like to have that memory for many years to come, if there is a way."
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Not from natural causes at all, and Aurus watched that momentary cloud cross Charles' features, hazarding a guess at what troubled him and supplying an answer: "Riannoc died when our race was still very young--he had no understanding of death and no fear of it, and not having those, he also could not understand how the fear of death would impact those around him. He took a young human squire and marched to face a lich, armed with a sword gifted to him from the Mother Tree.
"But during their battle with the legions of the undead, the squire lost his nerve. In fear for his life, he stole Riannoc's sword and fled, leaving him defenseless when the lich arrived."
Aurus's smile was momentarily sad, but the story was one from which his race had learned important lessons. "So there have been times when our childlikeness has come at great cost. And who knows--perhaps it also explains why so many of my kind have been fascinated with death ever since."
Then his lips quirked at Charles' teasing. Whatever's on his mind, eh? "I'll have you know I'm very circumspect," he countered in mock affront. "I haven't told you a thing about how I want to lay you down in the grass and run my lips across your bare skin, from your throat right down to your ankles." A beat. "Until now."
He watched Charles sidelong, looking to see if he would blush or fluster or play or tease back. But he kept his expression carefully mild, as though he was perfectly innocent of any wrongdoing.
Now, about the Tree.
Actually, they were on the right track to a spot that would give Charles the best opportunity to see, if not the whole of it, than as much as it was possible to view at once. Raising a hand so that his fingertips just brushed the back of the man's shoulder, he gestured in the direction they were to head, one which, as it happened, took them right through the thick of activity in the Commons.
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Somehow, hearing about the death of Riannoc proved truth was far more awful than fiction. Charles frowned further, trying to imagine the fear that would come at fighting a foe you know you couldn't defeat but had to fight to save the lives of others. The fear, the courage needed, the understanding that death was coming. He questioned within himself if he would have been able to face down such a creature. "...what happened to the squire?" Charles asked quietly. Perhaps it was that old, deep down human need to know that some punishment had come to the squire for not only his cowardice but his even greater crime of theft and in a sense, murder by that theft.
But his brief descent into that faint anger-sorrow was completely abolished by Aurus' brash words. Charles almost tripped over his own feet for a moment before he stared at Aurus, then chose to look away from him completely to not give Aurus the further enjoyment and victory of his expression as a mind and body in long, sore need of such pleasures threatened to remove him from what he was focusing on - which was keeping himself connected here, not in the physical world! A heartbeat, two, three, as he made sure he remained before he swallowed and looked back, managing to keep his voice calm enough to please him. "I'd prefer if your breathern were not so lucky as to witness that given that it might end up replayed as someone's memory for the rest of their lives and beyond." But his lips quirked.
Right. Charles took another breath before he started in the indicated direction, knowing that he would have to find a way to get Aurus back for all of this at some point.
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"For a long time no one really knew--he disappeared, which was easy since back then he was little more than a rumor or legend. Then a few years ago a young Valiant, as we call those who've felt the calling of a Wyld Hunt, learned the precise circumstances of Riannoc's death and tracked down the sword and the squire both. He'd taken up with bandits and was using the blade's magic to win pit fights at an outpost in Kryta. She defeated him and reclaimed the blade, but just as important, she gave us answers about Riannoc's fate that allowed his story to be completed within the Dream."
Perhaps it wasn't a story of grand justice, but in the end Aurus clearly seemed to consider it justice nonetheless. And anyway, he was far more focused on the effect that his forwardness had.
To be sure, pleased though he was to get a reaction, he wasn't planning to startle Charles that much, and for a moment he worried that he might have gone too far. He was relieved when the man seemed to recover, but he still felt as though perhaps he'd pushed harder than he should. He wanted his flirtation to inspire, to tease, to play, but not to truly discomfort. And the fact that Charles was clearly fighting to keep that playful calm...
"I would say that it just means I'll have to make sure to take you somewhere more secluded first," his smile grew more gentle, intimate, "but I think I ought to apologize--if I went too far, crossed a line. The last thing I want is to make you feel pressured."
(Of course Charles would still be well within his rights to devise a plan to get him back later if he wanted.)
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Such a dark end for the weapon that had been used to try and fight the darkness, only to be rescued and brought back into the light. It wasn't a happy ending, not really, but there was something in Charles that felt settled in knowing that the Squire in fact did meet justice in the end for his crimes. It wasn't just fear, fear Charles could understand, he had seen so many times in the children he had brought into the school, but the choices made from it...
Though even that was ironic to be angered about, given that he had forgiven someone of their choices no matter how terrible they had gotten.
"Pressured... no." Charles chose his words carefully, realizing that Aurus was, in his way, truly apologetic for what he had been saying. He didn't want the other to feel that he couldn't tease, even if it was to his embarrassment. "If I was pressured, I wouldn't be waiting to see what happens when we are done here tonight."
With that, he picked up his pace in the direction they were heading, leaving that with Aurus as some serious food for thought. It was true; he was eager to see how the night concluded, but he had a feeling in the moment things might be very... different, outside of here where he functioned normally again.
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As Charles' words settled in his mind, Aurus's smile grew. He did try to keep it under control but there was an undeniable warmth and swelling fullness in his chest. If he'd been the type to blush this was a moment when he very well might have.
It wasn't as though Aurus was so promiscuous or so casual about sex that he didn't care about his partners. But there was something about Charles that went beyond the usual for him--the amount he'd grown to feel for him in such a short amount of time stretched the normal limits of affection and caring into places he had almost no names for. And the sound of Charles' words--what happens when we are done here tonight--made his pulse flutter, dazing him momentarily still.
Aurus exhaled a puff of breath and found he had to trot a few steps to catch up after momentarily falling behind. And when he did he nudged Charles gently with his shoulder as he fell into step at his side, a near-glow lighting his smile that had nothing at all to do with bioluminescence.
He didn't say anything right away, but he did let his hand brush against Charles', pinky finger against pinky finger--a light and secretive touch, a whispered invitation.
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Nice to manage to catch Aurus a little, even if only a fraction of what the sylvari had managed to do to him, so far. When their hands brushed it sent a spark down through Charles, briefly closing his eyes until he chose to shift his finger, just enough, to intwine their pinkies together. Only a moment, a heartbeat, before he released it, but it spoke volumes. His hand stayed nearby, bumping occasionally as they walked along this path.
"Do you and your people believe that the Tree is alive?" Charles asked curiously, his eyes lifting up to the pale leaves high above them. It was beautiful, even what he could see of it here, like a natural skyscraper going endlessly up into the sky, but as ghostly and ethereal as sheets blowing in the wind. There was nothing like this on Earth, nothing that could be even properly compared. Not that he believed Earth any less incredible, for there were things he believed would blow Aurus' mind, yet this was doing the same for him.
Then, even more quietly, "...what does it feel like to touch it?"
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It was funny how such a little touch could convey so much, how it made a tendril of heat unfurl through Aurus's chest, made him thrill with the sense of shared secrecy, as though the two of them really were conspiring to break some rule together. The feeling was heady, and he didn't rush to disrupt it with words as they walked.
They passed by a muttering asura with ragged ears and mottled skin the color of lichen, a tengu with feathers of brilliant green and white, a quaggan--squat and cumbersome like a little grayish beluga whale--wearing a beaded headdress. (Three translucent sylvari saplings stood around it, conferring:
"It burbles and bubbles like a walking waterfall! What is it?"
"It's...squishy. How interesting!"
"Do you think it'll be our friend?")
The farther they walked, the more the crowds thinned, and the closer they got to a proper view of the Tree, not just the partial glimpses that could be gained by looking into the sky above them.
"We don't just believe the Tree is alive, we know it thoroughly because the avatar of the Mother Tree is alive. She dwells in a chamber still higher than where we stand now," he pointed it out--a bowl-like spot woven into the trunk high above them with windows that looked like stained glass but were really thin, translucent plates of colored resin.
"Were we on Tyria itself and not within the Dream, I could take you to meet her. That's something that humans do isn't it--take the people they hope will be their lovers home to meet their parents?" Clearly he hadn't been put off from the teasing too much. He smirked.
"How can I describe her to you... She looks similar to us, but also different--all white and gold and petals, suffused with light, and she moves very little, like a flower caught in a soft breeze. We go to her for guidance sometimes. She's very wise, very kind. I believe she would like you very much. And," here he quirked another smile, "I have no doubt that she would approve of us. She would probably even say that you're good for me."
They were coming now beneath an archway of vines that led to a long grassy pathway, like a high-walled promenade, set with those colored resin panes along its curved sides. Like stained glass, the resin showed shapes of flowers and buds against brightly colored fields of blue, green, gold. And here, as they came farther out from under the Tree's branches, the sky was bright with stars and a clear moon overhead.
"If I could take you to Tyria with me as quickly as I have brought you here," Aurus sighed. There were some things, alas, that the Dream could not impart. "I enjoy imagining that some day you might come here with me in the flesh, lay your hands on whatever it pleases you to. But I know you could not leave your children for that long--you would worry for them too much.
"I can offer something else though." He gave a slight nod in the direction they were heading, "How do you feel about a little bit of a climb?"
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Charles's fingertips found Aurus' forearm as they walked but the reason why would be obvious within moments. Not another tender, sensual touch, not this time, but a practical one. His eyes kept going upwards, again and again, taking in the majesty of the ethereal tree above them and the small touch kept him moving forward on pace with Aurus and in the correct direction. His gaze only dragged away briefly at the comment about the avatar, thinking it sounded a great deal like people spoke of gods of old having avatars, but why not? Why could this living being above them not have a way to speak to her children?
Yet Aurus planted another idea into his mind. If Aurus had known him when he was younger, he might have recognized that brief change in expression as something like his old mischievous 'I am possibly about to do something stupid' look.
"I wish I could meet her," Charles said honestly, "though... I'm surprised she would approve." But not for the reasons Aurus might think. "Most mothers would be less than pleased that their son... might not return." His words were hesitant as they walked, finally spotting the stained 'glass' and wondering who created such works of art, but mostly not looking towards Aurus given what he just said. A hint of awkwardness, there.
This is not a world he would be able to see himself.
"Lead the way. Anywhere."
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Content to be the anchoring guide, Aurus watched the path so that Charles could keep his eyes up in the branches, setting a steady, unhurried pace for them.
He did have to wonder what that fleeting look he saw on the man's face might portend--Charles couldn't actually be entertaining the idea of coming with him to Tyria for real. It had to be a fantasy...didn't it? (He imagined, suddenly, the very cross expression that he'd probably receive from Hank McCoy if it became clear that he'd not just seduced Charles but someone managed to convince him to take a wild, mystical holiday to a far away world of magic and dragons.)
"She's not like most mothers," he said quite honestly, thinking of what he'd heard that the Tree had told Trahearne against his protests that he was no General: You must be whatever Tyria needs you to be. She had known that he would lead the Pact before he did. "After all, she is still a tree.
"If my life leads me to stay with you, then that is where I belong, even if it is worlds away." It was no promise, but still a far cry from the earlier sense that he would, ultimately and inevitably, leave. He didn't dwell on the point though.
Ahead of them the path was coming to a natural terminus where a steep wall of exposed rock and roots narrowed the way forward through a shadowy arbour. "The entrance to Caledon Forest," Aurus explained, before leading Charles to the right, doubling back the way they came.
The steep, decorated walls of the promenade had been impossible to scale--too high and too smooth--but here there was a spot, just where once side sloped lower to the ground, that a few shoots of leaves grew, with stems easily strong enough to hold a man's weight. This was what Aurus meant about a climb, and clearly it was one that he'd made before--Charles wasn't the only one to have gotten up to mischief in his youth.
It wasn't terribly strenuous, but it might be a bit of a challenge to anyone who hadn't had much practice climbing trees. Aurus could lead by example though, and so he pulled himself up astride the first stem, pausing there to offer Charles a hand should he need it.
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Maybe Charles was. The very idea of being able to come to this place for real, to not see it through a dream but to truly experience it... it was terrifying, dangerous, and yet absolutely something he wanted to do. A short time, a week, two, no more than a month... as long as he could reliably get back. Without that reliability he could never agree to venture here. His students, his school... it was a life line for him, a life time goal. He couldn't, wouldn't, desert them willingly.
"...Is she just a tree, though?" Charles questioned quietly, his eyes drifting upwards again. To him, it sounded far more like a goddess in the shape of a tree, a spirit of nature. Perhaps the legends of Gaia or Mother Earth.
His eyes peered through the shadows, wondering what sort of forest began at such a strange point, but if Aurus wasn't concerned, he wouldn't bother to be either. Still, he was surprised that Aurus meant a literal climb versus, say, a very steep hill. He did not, in fact, have any particular skill in climbing trees and while he had kept himself fit in younger days that was very different now. ...Despite that, he chuckled and walked over to follow after Aurus, dryly commenting, "be prepared to possibly pull me up the last few feet." He followed after, though he could feel the burn in his biceps and thighs relatively quickly. Exactly where were they going??
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