☆ TDM: MARCH

[faileas]

Test Drive: March 2021

Welcome to aefenglom's test drive! All threads can be considered game canon, should you choose to do so; regardless of if you pick specific threads to remain canon to the game, the prompts and test drive itself will be. Aside from that, here are some quick reminders:



• The Application Queue is open. Applications run on a rolling queue system. The application page is always open to submissions, and applications will be processed in order of submission. Verdicts will always go out by the final week of a month, though we can't promise an exact date -- we'll get to them as quickly as we can throughout the month! If your application is submitted during the last week of a month, it may be rolled into next month's batch of applications. The application page can be found here.
• We have a brand new Game World Wiki created with the immense help of our Wiki Bards: Noa, Prince, Maruah and Ran. Thank you so much! It's still being updated, but most of the main game info is there for you in an easily searchable manner. All other info can still also be found through our Navigation page!
• If you have any questions about the game or the world, please refer to the FAQ page; if you still have questions, feel free to ask them! For questions specific to the test drive, please ask them on the appropriate thread.
• For the purposes of the test drive, your character will have access to all magics taught by the Coven if they're a Witch, and as much of their shifted form as you'd like if they're a Monster. Feel free to play around and experiment with each!
• Test drive threads can be used as samples for your applications!
• For current characters, TDM threads can be used for AC.
• And finally, since this is part of our event, characters already in-game ARE allowed to top-level on this post.



With that taken care of...

You feel like you're floating. Around you, colors and sounds and smells swirl as if trapped in a whirlpool, vibrancy and hue ever-shifting. The more you watch them, the less solid they are; they only become clear out of the corner of your eye. The area around you begins to feel more solid as well, until your feet are on the ground, the wind brushes playfully against your face - and you know one thing, and one thing alone: this is a dream, and an incredibly realistic one at that.


The Calamity


The taste of magic in the air is electric on your tongue, supercharged, bright, a little tart and fizzy like popping candy. The settlement you find yourself in is unfamiliar to you, but you can tell it is bustling, beautiful, a center of culture and activity for its bygone era. The architecture blooms with elaborately carved flourishes, but you cannot shake the feeling of... otherworldliness that it brings to mind. (Perhaps you are a veteran of these dreams and remember a ship with similar embellishments from far away, that came bearing invaders, in a time long ago.) It is nearly impossible to tell what season you find yourself in - pockets of spring bloom with new life, right next to pockets of winter snowstorms; playful fall winds laden with leaves tug at your hair, and in some spots, it feels hot and muggy like the middle of summer. None of these patches of seasonal mayhem are very large, a few city blocks’ worth at most, and they all butt up against each other, tumultuous, fighting for real estate in a place where the magic bubbles freely up through the ground like a wellspring, uncontrolled. In a way, it seems like a wilder version of Aefenglom’s seasons always being opposite the season in the Wilde, similar but more widespread, more disharmonic.

Fit to Burst The settlement is bustling and full of that otherworldly architecture, spirals and tendrils and vaguely floral embellishments, except... If you look closer, you can see that only a few of the buildings are really made that way. An illusion covers the rest, purely cosmetic, a glamour; it's a shimmering image laid over reality until you look beneath it at the squat, simple houses made by mortal hands out of rough hewn wood or bricks of packed mud. The people are just as disparate as the buildings beneath it all - glittering-eyed Fae, taller, more elongated and insectoid than those seen around Aefenglom, though many of them use glamours to appear more fantastical and beautiful; humans teeming with magic, who use it freely for anything and everything; other bipedal Monsters with rougher, more bestial features than longtime residents might be used to, more in tune with their natural abilities. It wouldn't be a bad idea to explore your new surroundings, though you're likely to garner attention. Unless the world you come from is a more medieval time period, your clothing, perhaps even your hair or other aspects of your appearance are likely to stand out. What will make you stand out even more, though, is not drawing on your abundant new magical powers, or strong new Monster abilities. That shop there requires flight to get up to the second story front door. That home down the street can only be unlocked with a burst of flame. Torches when it grows dark? No, don’t be ridiculous, you can't light your own way? Your hair looks hideous, darling, why haven’t you put on a glamour? Reluctance to use these abilities abundantly and freely garners frowns of scrutiny and disapproval from those natives around you. "We're free here under the Fae folk. They've taught us so much, we never go hungry, we’re never beaten down by the weather." Their words hold truth - their twisted-trunk trees are bursting with fruit, their haphazardly laid out crops flourish in a matter of days rather than a season, rain and snow can be directed at will with just an application of the wild, free magic bubbling up from the ground in rivers. There is a hierarchy in this settlement. The Fae are above all, and can often be found partying into the night with sweet wine and hallucinogenic mushrooms, teaching humans and Monsters to harness their natural talents and the magic of the land by day. Their attitudes are condescending toward these lesser beings they’ve granted their favor to (including you, now, and aren’t you just the most interesting, darling little things?), delighting in spreading their knowledge. The humans and Monsters still seem awestruck by their benevolent masters - a word they mean in the sense of 'teachers' - accepting their gifts, using their magic, and none of them will so much as whisper a complaint. Not when it’s safe here. Not when all is well. It's more than they can say for the lands outside of their paradise, even if things do happen here that the Fae do not like to hear them speak of. Gain the trust of the natives, and you might hear rumors, whispers of a rotting pox hitting other communities far from here, or first hand accounts of how so-and-so witnessed another death just last week, a human woman blew up in town, and some of the Monsters, they been goin’ right bestial. Shh, shh, you didn’t hear it from them! (Don’t let the Fae catch you gossiping. They might just take you and the native both aside, whisper in your ears, let the magic wind its way around your brain until you don't remember any longer what you were talking about or even who you are, where you come from. You were having a good time though, right?) You can try to leave the settlement, to explore the woods that surround it, but you’re likely to be noticed and warned: "You should stay here, make sure you don’t run into any of the unfriendly locals - they don't care for our masters."

The Emergence Time passes strangely in a dream. It might feel like a handful of hours, or even a few days, before a change can be felt all throughout the strange, unsettling paradise. If you’ve had a recent brush with it in the waking world, you might recognize the signature of it - the Cwyld. Something in the air feels very wrong, like a chill in the middle of summer, a sudden warm wind in winter; the plant life beneath your very feet begins to blacken in color, with near-indiscernible white lines marring their surfaces, and no matter who you are, no matter the pride you may take in your courage, a shiver raises every hair on your body without fail: Something wicked this way comes. The wellspring of magical energy flowing like a river beneath your feet takes on a new feeling when you try to draw from it, a dark and heavy sensation, oily and creeping. Reaching for the magic, it feels as though you're reaching into hollow darkness, dried up and consumed, and the disparate plants of different seasons, growing alongside each other, begin to bulge grotesquely and burst, splattering an unknown black substance over anything unfortunate enough to be in the splash zone. Possibly even you. Don't pass under the fruit trees. The infection has seeped into the overtapped leyline, and it bleeds through the settlement quickly, much quicker than it seems to move in the current-day waking world. The plant life, with their roots dug deep into the earth, are only the first casualty, as it spreads rapidly to the animals, and then the natives, blackening and tainting everything it touches. The village is thrown into chaos. Fae and any who seem to have Dragon in them are the first to show signs of infection, blackened veins visible under paling skin and white film growing over the eyes. Bodies grow brittle and twisted the more it spreads and settles in. Humans with an abundance of magic are the next to lose themselves to it, quickly followed by other Monsters. While in the waking world, infection spreads more slowly, here, it can be almost instantaneous, the process of becoming a Shade, losing all sense of self. They have no resistance to the Cwyld, and in this dream, neither do you. You're just as susceptible to the infection, and some may find themselves succumbing to the infection spreading to the heart and pumping itself through their veins. Becoming a Shade is a painful experience, a painful existence, as the life is snuffed out of you and your body keeps going. In this dream, you might be lucky (or unlucky) enough to keep your wits about you, to remain sentient and somewhat yourself - or you might become one of the mindless, violent many whose only directive is to spread the Cwyld to everything that lives, including your fellow dreamers. Even if you do stay aware of yourself, it is hard to resist the pull of the Cwyld on your mind, urging you to spread and infect, to leave nothing whole and living. Before your eyes, the settlement begins to die. You can't help anyone who is already infected, even if you know healing spells that work in the waking world, unless you're willing to put them out of their misery before they become a Shade corrupted beyond all assistance. You might be busier trying to save your fellow Mirrorbound, though, as they try to avoid that fate themselves or fall prey to it in front of you. And while the earth and plants and people around them turn black and fall to ruin, any of the Fae who managed to remain untainted simply flee, running from the settlement without stopping to help anyone in need, not even the students who so looked up to them. Note: Becoming a Shade in this prompt is optional, and Mirrorbound Shades may keep their minds or not at player discretion! Infection will not carry over out of the dream. Dying in the dream will put your character back at the edge of the village, uninfected and alive again, to witness the rest of its downfall.

Light It Up Help comes in an unexpected, unwanted form. Those unfriendly locals the residents of this village spoke of previously appear through the morning mists, shrouded in clumsy protections like masks and gloves, and practical, non-flashy spells. The group is made up of grim-faced humans and Monsters, a surprisingly cohesive unit of people who look out for each other as they make their way through the woods with torches held aloft. They are hardier than those indulged, magic-glutted folks who suffer now. These newcomers are dressed more practically, for working land or fighting battles, but they, too, have humans among them who can harness their magic. Their witches keep their torches lit, and work closely with their Monsters, helping each other in a way that will not feel unfamiliar. They've come today, they'll say if you get a chance to speak with them, however briefly (they're a little busy to answer too many questions), to try and stop this blight on the land before it can reach their village, some miles to the south. They've seen it before, though never this severe. This Cwyld will spread and spread, until there is nothing left. Best to burn it all down before its tendrils creep too far, before its roots dig too deep. They fight and destroy the Shades however they can, showing no mercy, though their spells are crude and simple, and their Monsters use their natural forms without any showy abilities, depending on claws and teeth and strength to do their jobs. Working together, with simple weapons in their hands, they are formidable. Even if you kept your mind, kept your speech, they will not let you live if you were infected - and may not let you live even if you weren’t infected, just to be safe. You may join them, if you wish, help them burn down the blackened trees or even Shades that were once people - or you may fight them, but they won't relent. They burn the whole settlement down, leaving wide patches of scorched earth like blackened scars on the land. It’s the only way, they say, from their limited experience. Everything must return to the earth. As the settlement goes up in flames fully, they retreat, only remaining long enough to ensure the fire stays where it needs to stay, and will not spread to uninfected forest. For those of you who were completely uninfected and may have thus been spared, they are still unwelcoming and will not allow you to travel back to their own village with them, threatening with swords and flames any who are too insistent. They aren't too keen to talk, but you may get a few answers out of them, the basics - some of their parents originally lived here, learned magic from the Fae, though when they saw the dangers, they left, believing that such power should be used more sparingly, more responsibly. Against the Fae, if at all possible, and against their destructive ways. It was just a matter of time, they thought, until calamity struck, and lo. You just saw what happens, what that much magic can call down in divine retribution. How magic itself fights back against the excesses of those who would abuse it.

Comments

[faithlikeaseed]

[This isn't a new horror: L had, after all, wanted to break their Bond to spare Myr the referred agony of a death at Niles' hands.

It isn't a new horror, but it twists in him with exactly the same awful shock it had then. To imagine his Witch dying alone, in fear or pain--]

I do not know how I would bear it, [he says, quietly,] to feel I'd abandoned you at the last.

[Should a man's death be something he owned jealously and kept private? I'd never want you to see troubles Myr for that reason, but he shoulders past it for now; it is a conversation they should have, but not one to be hand now.

Not with Death's touch still on them, however illusory the death.

He gives a shake of his head, charms jingling, at the notion he's better kept whole.]

I'm not. [He hasn't been, for a long time. But it's not so much a burden when he can think of being whole as an unfolding process, an eternal work-in-progress. Some days harder than others--some days much harder than others--but one still in motion.] We're none of us whole, who have parts of ourselves tied up in others. I gave you those willingly.

[Would you take them from me forever?]

[hearthebell]

[Uncertainty wanders through L's expression, near-realization without quite making the connection. Both of them believe they are being kinder like this. Myr, by offering a companion to hold a hand, hear final words, ease the burden of passing, and L, by hiding his death like an indiscretion, a last secret handled as privately as possible. Even as a shade, had he felt that would be best? He's still not sure if someone had slain him, or the Cwyld had just run its course quickly in his sparse, anemic flesh. Given the rapidness of its onset, different from when he'd been infected at the Circle gathering, he realizes that both are possible.

Regardless, Myr is saddened for not having been there. Myr, also, had presumably died alone, and the thought had not occurred to L or troubled him prior to this moment. Why? Does he just take it so fully for granted that he'll certainly die before Myr, as he had the night before?

A conversation they must have, surely... just not right now. It demands a centerpiece's position, and not the injustice of a mere side mention.]

I hadn't thought of it that way.

[Maybe he'd started to, with Myr so often at his side. He's fallen out of the habit lately, thought of it more in his old terms. Dividing oneself that way made one more structurally unsound. From the moment L arrived here and allied himself with the SQUIP, and others since, his integrity has faltered and flickered. Though he's part of a larger army (he has had help, after all, in moments he couldn't have handled alone even at his strongest), his identity is tied up with so many others, now. He's given away those pieces, or had them taken from him, and what has he done to Myr, in that regard? How willingly were those pieces given to him?

He glances up, as he did in Aefenglom many years in this dream's future, over a year ago in the waking world's past. It's daylight, and overcast; there are no sharp, clear stars that lift his feet from the ground, creating an alarming situation that just may have forced a kind hand.]

I don't know what others give me willingly, or what I've just taken, or manipulated my way into getting. If I want something... my motives are probably selfish.

[How much does he actually want to help Myr? Is it actually bound up in wanting to master some coveted skill for his own sake, increase his own value and indispensability to others?

He knows that he wants to take Myr's hands. He also knows that he would want to keep taking until both of them were hurt, because that is just what he does.

Go? I think you should wake up... but it's not his dream. This isn't his domain. They're both here until this plays out to some conclusion.]

[faithlikeaseed]

[Conversely it had not occurred to Myr to lament his own lonely death; had it been something other than a dream-death, had it been his true (and only, for he cannot bear the cost of a resurrection on his conscience--but that, too, is a conversation for another time) death, it may have been vastly harder to go into the dark with so much left unsaid between them. But he is accustomed to finding his end in dreams, enough so not to fear the possibility--however real the pain, the fear, and the stinging regret might feel in those last moments before blackness and reset.

It is good, in its way, that they have the dreams to give them that. It is good to have that remembered regret fresh in his mind as L's need to draw away pushes at him through the Bond, and in mirroring his Witch's glance to the sky, he remembers calling stars he'd never seen through his own eyes.

He keeps his hands outstretched still.]

I wonder that about myself sometimes, you know. [This is a different tactic than he's tried before. He dimly grasps the pedestal his Witch sees him on and how far out of reach it puts him. Like something sainted, holy--proper to the Golden City and as apt to be profaned by a mortal touch that grasped beyond its ordained reach.

It's a terrifying height to surmount. More so that he doesn't know he fears falling from it as much as he does L walking away from a base grown too remote to touch.] If I'm acting for your best interest or because I fear losing you.

[The sky doesn't hold much of interest right now; the clouds obscure the sun and blur it all into a silvery sameness. Myr looks back down, studying L with a look that's as exhausted and unguarded as it is intent.]

We don't fit together naturally, I know that. We weren't shaped for each other by the same Maker--or the same blind, uncaring processes of the world. [The gap in their beliefs being only one of innumerable unmatched edges.] But we've grown into something I treasure very much--and I hope, I--think, you do, too. For all the work we've put into us.

[It has been a very hard road to walk together; there was no denying some of that difficulty arose because they had walked it together, sometimes at Myr's stubborn insistence when L would have done otherwise.

His ears droop lower. He doesn't look away but the struggle to not do so--to not hide his own shame--is visible in the downward twitch of his chin, the dart of his eyes. A moment passes; he takes a breath, squares his shoulders, steadies his gaze.] And yet I still find myself sometimes jealous of what you have with Light--how naturally you two work together, and how beautifully.

[It's a blotch in him, a stain. Though which part of it is worst shifts like sand on the face of a dune--that he is jealous of Light when his haphazard, stitched-together and inconsistent morality of relationships says he should not be; that he is jealous of Light, L's murderer, who is better kept away. (That a part of him thinks that awful death is the end L was Made to fulfill and thus he is obliged to turn aside from fate.

That there's someone he misses who he'd fit as naturally beside, and sometimes fits L into the shape of.)

It is not who he wants to be, any aspect of it. It is not what he's Made for, and it is still an inescapable fact of his life.]

I find myself wondering if some of what I do is to protect you, or to fetter you. To clip the wings of something I don't have and couldn't ever have with you.

[Had he pushed so hard in their last argument because he sensed something vulnerable, something that could shatter the hold Light had on L? Had he done it for jealousy's sake or to save his beloved from a perceived threat?

He doesn't know his own mind on the matter and that is a form of exquisite self-torture.]

[hearthebell]

[For all that Myr has dedicated and committed to trying to reach L, the detective can be grimly staunch in his belief that there are just some ways it's futile. There are tools and experiences and maybe something crucial and innate he lacks. His attempts to reach for Myr might as well be the Leviathan's destructive, infant attempts to pull itself onto the bank and toward the forest: terrifying, but ultimately going nowhere, only causing more damage and making its dwelling place larger and murkier with the chunks of earth clawed to pieces around the edges.

His slender fingers with their uneven, bitten-down nails might as well be clawed. He reaches instead for his own opposite elbows, watching Myr's hands as they wait, open and empty. It's indeed a way of walking from a base insurmountable, finding it too steep and humbling, even humiliating. Never mind that L has made no proper try, just inhabiting his surety that his failure is guaranteed, that any insufficient attempt would be an insult at best and actively damaging at worst.

His glance returns to meet Myr's as the faun speaks. The lovely elven face is more complete with the addition of a pair of expressive eyes, but it's always strange for L to feel seen by him. It's uncomfortable exposure, difficult to face the truth of directly in a way it somehow never was with Light. Myr isn't wrong; they've worked for what they have because they've had to, because it wasn't easy. And as a result, L, who ever admires and values a challenge, admires and values the realness of what they've built together. All the more reason to fear losing it; all the more reason to be afraid every time a new development threatens the status quo, when one misstep or mistake or ill-timed word could mean all of it crashing down in jagged pieces.

He nods, as much as to demonstrate that he is listening to the sum of what Myr is saying as to agree with him. No; we don't fit together naturally. Yes; I treasure it, in spite of the hardship. His fear of loss needs no agreement; it's known between them, a truth as observable and present as the wind or the ground beneath their feet. He'd played at gallantry several times by offering Myr chances to leave, or even just to annul their Bond with the promise of no hard feelings and no further heartache. Every time Myr had decreed it out of the question and refused to fold, L was in for more, stood to lose more, stood for that loss to potentially devastate him in a way he hasn't felt since he was a helpless child.

His comeuppance, perhaps, for being a gambler, although these days his only goal is to break even and keep what he has.]

...jealous.

[Not upsetting to him, but... deeply surprising. L has observed Fauns to not be jealous, giving affection freely to their entire chosen herd. Having not known Myr's attitudes and practices prior to the influence of a faun's wonts, L has observed Myr to largely follow what is typical for the creatures, most notably in the easy harmony that comes about at their parties. He's come to consider himself blessed, doubly so to be Myr's Bonded, but not special in any particular regard. "Jealous" implies that he misread, that even as Myr considers all of his herd members special (and doubtless far less trouble), there is something that sets L apart and gives his decision to allocate his own affections unbidden emotional weight.

Myr sees it as a stain; to L, it's some insight, perhaps, into the elf Myr was before Aefenglom's antlers and easy mingling.]

Thank you for telling me.

[He means it. He's grateful on multiple levels to know that Myr is jealous, to know that Myr can be jealous, to know that Myr can feel such things toward him specifically. It's exhausting, and much to examine, but it isn't loss. That's significant, even if he can feel the uncertain shift of the status quo, in small but noticeable ways.

He's surprised to realize that the knowledge that Myr can feel something he deems unbecoming makes him rather more accessible. His hands drop from their lock on his elbows, fingers clasping and worrying at each other in front of his ribs.]

I love you.

[Something he's always had difficulty saying out loud, because he's tried so hard not to have a reason.]

I love you in every way.

[The gentle and chaste ones, and the amorous ones that ache at night.]

Since I was born, the things I've loved the most have tried desperately to get away from me.

[A pair of sewing scissors in tiny, trembling hands. Rejection and isolation from other humans; the thrilling game of suspects, including Light, trying ever to evade and deceive him.]

Light can't get away. He can't leave, he's... not allowed, and nothing I do to keep him with me is actually unreasonable. I can be as selfish as I want, because of what he did.

[It's some kind of love; more importantly, it's allowed.]

He's my prisoner.

[Because that's what it means, to be loved by L.]

[faithlikeaseed]

[Jealousy was not for Fauns any more than it was for Circle mages--though the reasons lay at opposite ends of the same pole: One so unstinting in his affections that he could not fairly expect fidelity he wouldn't reciprocate; the other so sexless and controlled he shouldn't ever find himself with a lover to be jealous of.

And yet. Dragging the admission out of himself leaves Myr standing open from the effort and shame of it, waiting for deserved--invited!--judgment to be passed. Even knowing his Witch as he does, knowing what L holds in contempt (and how his own flaws did not make that list), he expects disappointment and dismay; isn't--

Thank you for telling me.

--braced--

I love you.

--for the blows--

I love you in every way.

--that land.

His eyes widen and his breath catches; bewilderment ripples through his side of the Bond. It's not the content of the words but their context that catch him as from ambush: He knew that L took truths as gifts, and that L loved him, but hadn't thought this truth worthy of gratitude and hadn't expected to earn those words aloud--maybe ever, after their last disastrous waking encounter.

And it is not pain that follows hearing them--not them, nor even L's confession after until the very last (he's my prisoner, and oh, heart of Myr's heart, you are his)--but an echoing gratitude and renewed affection and the quiet, heartening awe of an understanding grown larger.

That was all I had to say? He'd never thought he'd given the impression he was infallible, by any standard; but then the flaws he'd actually let L see--anger and impatience at the world's cruelties, dismay at his own shortcomings, exhaustion and weakness at the limits of his mortal endurance--could be so easily misread, couldn't they? Someone whose loves had always run from him would (and had, Myr knew) take those all as warranted responses to the mere fact of his affections. Leviathan gazed out from behind those wide eyes (so the thought went); anything but another predator must flee its presence.

Myr swallows, hard, finding himself at an unaccustomed loss for words. What could he even say to capture all that's in him, tangled and inexplicable as it feels right now? Did he owe apologies, reassurances, warnings? Is he supposed to know how to make the best of this moment, turn it into something profound, or maybe--

--simply,

leave off worrying for once.]

And I love you, too. [In every way. Oh, they would need to talk of that, in a quieter gentler time and place. In the waking world, by themselves and unwitnessed, as something that new and easily squashed deserved.]

Is it because I haven't run that you're afraid, or because I haven't run yet?

[The mere fact of a love that didn't need caging, or the looming threat of its end?

He keeps his hands out, waiting, still steady in that for all his inner turmoil. Whatever the answer, that won't change.]

[hearthebell]

[Maybe the freedom to speak so plainly and unguardedly does come from having died the night prior. There's stark awareness that as much as L desires to preserve a precious status quo, he is also between states, whether he likes it or not. The death-in-life of Cwyld infection, the bridge between sleep and waking formed by a dream, the world that existed a minute ago when he hadn't said these things and the world that exists, now.

It's like a purging religious confession. Relieving himself of some heavy weight, before the changes he can't control bring with them what they may. It's accepting a sandcastle swept out to sea with the tide, more than having the courage to finally give voice to these matters.

He builds a lot of sandcastles here. He lives in one now, with Light, that's ever-threatened by an impending tide. Myr had dared to point it out and L had panicked... so what about their sandcastle, dissolving and lost to the deep now that the status quo is irreversibly changed?]

I'm not asking you for anything, to be clear...

[Sandcastles don't make suitable dwellings, anyway.]

Nothing has to change.

[It has, and there's no going back to that precise iteration. His hands reach out tentatively, hovering over Myr's. It doesn't feel as easy as it used to, as though power has been reconnected to a wire that's been dead for a long time, taken for granted by a habitual and careless handler.]

If it does, though... I'm not afraid, because if the truth is known, I can accept the outcome that follows as the only correct one.

[faithlikeaseed]

[In every ruin, in every failure, there are means and opportunity to rebuild. There's something meet in having this conversation in the smoking, Cwyld-scored ruins of Talam's deep past: However dire the Cwyld's eruption had been, humans and Monsters had survived and lived to build the world of the Looking-glass House.

How small was the loss of a idea grown too cramped for them to inhabit, given that context?

He breathes out a rueful noise at his Witch's words and shakes his head without breaking gaze. It's not denial, precisely--not laughter at L, but a dim species of ironic humor a sentiment he'd held so dear himself. To pretend nothing further would change between them would be to try and keep the dunes from shifting, or hold back an onrushing tide.

The truth similarly could not be restrained; what they know now, about themselves and each other, would not be put back. Still, it's a deer's instinct to tiptoe around something that feels of danger; the specific embedded in L's vagueness is something Myr has not had an answer for since the night his Witch tossed him out of a dream of the Leviathan.

Yet he has always thought better on his feet (hooves), and perhaps in speaking of the general...]

I am asking you to ask, amatus. [Their palms are close enough he'd know they're nearly touching even outside the dream, from the heat of L's skin.] An infant isn't selfish for needing care when she can't care for herself. A child isn't selfish for needing love and food and shelter to grow. Even we as grown men sometimes must rely on others to thrive--as I do on you, and you on me.

[The circumstances of their Bond are never far from his mind, even a year and more after the fact.] When we're denied what we need and surfeited on what we want to keep us quiet, it's easy to think all our longings are selfish ones.

[It isn't only L in his well-maintained seclusion he speaks of; the we is a deliberate one, rather than Myr's reflexive vanishing into the Circle or the herd. He knows his own first instinct in struggle is to swallow it and hide in his duty toward others. And perhaps that's wherein his fear and jealousy lay: L is no ornament, no project piece, no toy clutched for the comfort of his presence. He is Myr's Witch, and he helps, and the threatened loss of that strange and quiet support cut deep.

Unlike the infant he'd survive if abandoned; but in his current state, he doubts much he'd thrive. Nor is L precisely thriving in their current state, in part because of that specific desire that rests unacknowledged between them.

Talking in generalities hasn't found him a better answer, but as L's being as open as it's in him to be--handed Myr this fragile truth he'd so long avoided giving over--there is no dodging any longer.

He lifts his hands the fraction it takes to press them to his Witch's, pressure delicate as he'd use to hold a fledgling fallen from its nest.] In another circumstance, the truth would be I'd have you, in every way.

[Had L been another mage at Hasmal, in all his awkward brilliance, the conclusion would've been foregone that they'd end up in bed together.]

In this circumstance, I fear to hurt you, to use you, as others have. Even acting out of love, I'm not perfect, and you let your oughts and shoulds get in the way of your own wellbeing, amatus.

Someone needs to safeguard that for you, who knows you as a person and not a means. [And so long as that someone is, and had been, Myr...it made certain more earthly forms of love feel like a violation of what he'd been entrusted with.]

[hearthebell]

[While L doesn't think himself an overly chivalrous or courageous man, he knows that he's not a coward. A coward, after all, is one who takes the easy way, turning away from peril and challenge and risk... and while his fear of loss has made him more guarded, more prone to caution in keeping what he values unchanged, he has reached a realization. The status quo, coveted as it is, is no longer sustainable. Myr has to know, and now he does, and L knows what he expects.

It'll be kind, the gentlest possible letdown. Myr cares for him, of course, but there are so many kinds of love, all valid and precious, so many roles within a herd. With pity and easy grace, a face-saving opportunity will probably be presented so that L can clarify, and agree a little too quickly, that all along it was exactly what he meant. It's even bleakly believable, for what does a man like him know about love? Is it that he uses the word like a child, all purity and little substance?

He thinks so, when Myr speaks of children, those missing pieces and striving to acquire them without guilt or apology. He does rely on Myr to thrive; more, he believes, than Myr relies on him, but it's an old perceived truth, nothing new or more uncomfortable. He lets the faun's hands meet and support his, keeping his gaze steady even as a rush of heat seeps into his cheeks.

He's surprised, not to be humiliated. Glued to Myr's gaze, his eyes widen, and he nods, accepting, as he seeks for words to answer.]

I... know that's the correct outcome. You're probably the first person to consider that... or feel concern.

[Myr wants to safeguard him from old damage that even L himself won't fully acknowledge, new damage that he might not notice for the blinders he wears. He's not a coward; he'll burn, absolutely, in pursuit of his oughts and shoulds.]

Thank you. Whether or not you want to hear it, I... love you more, for having said as much. For the truth in what you said.

[Slender fingers wrap against the edges of Myr's hands.]

I want a different circumstance. I'll wait and hope for it.

[faithlikeaseed]

[In every tender moment, in every small victory they win together, there is a bittersweet lacery of old sorrows. It is something Myr was long accustomed to in his old life; it is something he's grown accustomed to again, though L's sorrows were a sharper and stranger breed than any he'd known.

Though sometimes, however carefully he handled them, the razor edges still broke through.

"You're probably the first person to consider that... or feel concern."]

Maker's love. [Halfway between a whisper and a sob, a prayer and invocation both. Myr dips to press lips to his Witch's knuckles, silencing the rest of what he'd say while it's yet too raw to verbalize. His eyes are tear-bright when he looks up again, but his smile's steady, for all the grief behind it.] I shouldn't be, amatus.

[He should not be. Those L had spent his life for should be better; they should be cognizant of the man handed to their keeping as a man--not a means, an idol, a nemesis.

How well he recalls his own failure to impress that on one of those stubborn monsters that thronged his Witch, though. Therein the bounds of his remit; he is unlikely to fare better with Light, however part of him clamors for that challenge.

He dares a step closer to L to drive out that thought, keeping the other man's gaze in part for the pleasure of doing so.]

But I am glad that I can, and I won't tire of hearing how you feel for me. And pray for that changed circumstance myself.

[More than anything, because it would mean a life grown wider and healthier than the cramped thing L's only just begun to emerge from. Much of the journey might not be pleasant: It would mean changes as sweeping and devastating as the tides come up through a home and floating all the jumbled wrack from it.

But oh, the space left behind...

Another step puts him close enough he can tilt his head just so--an awkward, jingling angle--and rest his forehead against his Witch's. He is, as ever, a creature of gestures...even when they don't go off exactly as romantically as he'd hoped, since this one ends up with a dangling bee charm trapped somewhere between their noses.

He regards it for a cross-eyed, faintly mortified moment, before giving a quiet huffing laugh at his own pretensions.

Maybe it's perfect for his purposes anyway.]

Just remember I'm really not perfect, all right?

[hearthebell]

[L knows, in a general sense, what is considered a normal expectation for a family, a friend, or a lover. His experiences have been abnormal, and he's aware of that too, but his ability to compare the two only extends as far as a particular charged boundary with barbed-wire wound around the humming perimeter. Somewhere on the other side of that, perhaps, is health and peace that would permit him to love Myr, openly, "in every way."

For now, it stands, as it did when he was twenty-five, or fifteen, or five. It burns and slices to reach past it even just to hold Myr's hands this way, look in his sighted eyes, entertain a pleasant notion that may never come to pass. It's the kind of thing that they can hope and pray for, but not plan for, and in that sense, it's still a fantasy, and therefore wholly safe. Even if the confession is out in the open, they both know what they can and can't have, and there is therefore no loss.

A net win, truly, and the bee is an appropriate symbol. The sweetness of honey, the looming threat of a sting.]

I do know it, Myr.

[The same way he knows the boundary that exists between his experiences and what's reasonable to expect in a life, the people in it.]

And I'll keep saying so. To the extent that it isn't annoying or repetitive, or...

[Pining. If it's a prayer, or a hope, then it's reasonable to assume that both of them only have so much control over it. He closes his eyes, enjoying the warmth of Myr's forehead against his own, having dipped his neck lower to make the contact possible with their height difference.]

For all the chaos, and the death... it was a good dream. I'm grateful.

[It's multilayered, perhaps even referring to multiple points in time and people. He loved the sense of acceptance and belonging with the true fae, just as he loves the sense of acceptance and belonging with Myr, now.]

I wouldn't be opposed if it lasted a bit longer.

[Before he wakes up alone, to process and consider all of this.]

[faithlikeaseed]

Then let it last, [Myr murmurs, words low and warm as those used to keep a lover in bed. He twines the fingers of one hand through L's, freeing the other only long enough to brush the charm from between their faces. It makes for a better fit as he closes his own eyes and nuzzles wordlessly against his Witch.

He would not weigh it a good dream himself, but he had seen what it had meant to L and will not dispute the description. It is a grand thing, to feel accepted, and for all Myr's horror at what the true Fae were and did--they are past, and gone, and punished amply for their abuse of magic. There is no reason to taint this moment with that.

It is a similar respect for the sweetness of the now that Myr is content to let it stretch on in tender silence until the faintest intimation of wakefulness begins to steal in on him. Only then does he ask, low and soft,]

Am I welcome in your home again, amatus?

[No Vampire, he, to be barred by a disinvitation; but nor would he violate a place he'd been driven from by one he loved.]

[hearthebell]

[It's a nice moment, a comfortable silence. Though they've acknowledged that their fit is more difficult than some, as Myr nuzzles against him and their close breath mingles, it seems blissfully easy.

He wants to hold onto this, but all who are living wake eventually from their dreams. The impulse still exists to cling, stay sleeping, not wake up at any cost... but that means something else, eventually, and he certainly doesn't wish it for Myr.

He nods against his Bonded, fierce, the excuse a convenient one to hide eyes that reveal more than he wishes. A voice that's both meeker and thicker than usual betrays it, anyway.]

Of course.

[faithlikeaseed]

[There's a catch in Myr's breathing to hear those two words. He lifts his hands to cup L's face; lifts his head to kiss his Witch's forehead, then the bridge of his nose. (The temptation quivers in him to go further than that; he is a Faun... but it would be cruel to both of them.)]

Call me, then. When you wake--when you're ready. I'll come.

[And bring food, and a wormipede, and all his presence that he's aware...might be a little much, in the wake of all this.

But he can bide, trusting that he's wanted. He can leave space no matter how much he wants to cling, in the aftermath of separation.]

[hearthebell]

[L appreciates being spared cruelty, as much as a part of him wishes for that little touch of selfishness, that taste of what makes his cheeks burn to think of.

It's better not to, after more than just "a little much."]

I will.

[When he's ready. That's a few hours after he wakes, it turns out, because that's what it takes for him to pull himself together after the "nice dream" that nevertheless left him in a few pieces.]