View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
Thinking is hard.
She knows, she knows that it's safe when her beloveds both sleep - that they can read nothing while they dream - but every thought is so relentlessly punished when the demon is awake, and the parts of her mind that generate thoughts have stopped trying. She focuses, when she can come up with anything worth focusing on, or just on breathing or clouds or a tree, as much as she can. The demon "hyperfocuses" on gentle thoughtless love, as much as he can. She sleeps too, as much as she can. And none of these solutions lead to her having thoughts.
There's not enough thinking left for her to register much horror about it. But there are parts of her remaining. Automatic reactions to things, that can pass from her memories through her actions without her intervening much at all on the level of consciousness. She has enough terror of oblivion in her not to look contemplatively at knives. She has enough of an echo of what it used to mean to her to love someone to ache inside if her beloved thinks of harming himself, to beg him not to. She has enough access to her own memories to recognize the strange door, the second time it presents itself to her, and to go in without fear, holding her book and her pen that she has no real reason to carry anymore but holds out of old affection the way a child slightly too old for a stuffed toy may clutch at it.
The blank book is no good to her anymore, but it feels good to hold it, and she does.
The door may not take her far enough away from her beloved to protect her if he wakes while she is there, but it is somewhere to go and sit and wait for her thousand-year span to elapse, and she enters.
+ Show First Post
small_magics
dark_light
Amariah appears a minute later. "What's - oh, new Bell," she says. "Friendly new elfy Bell. Who - intensely upsets you? Hi."
truthwright
"She has a me but she says he can't help reading her mind all the time," says Kas.
small_magics
"Sometimes they sleep," sighs Isibel, "sometimes they concentrate, sometimes I sleep, sometimes I concentrate -"
small_magics
"A year - and some moonturns - I don't count them - it's spring again -"
dark_light
"Goddesses all. Okay. Elfbell. I know thinking must be - agonizingly hard right now - but you need to answer just a few questions - okay? If we can fix it, can you put yourself back together - if we can magic the mindreading away and you're safe and private in your own head for forever - can you fix it?"
dark_light
"But maybe? Okay. We're not short on time for you, if you can do it then we will find a place to put you that's safe and you can work on it there, okay, we will take care of you - there are ten of us and we are okay - will you trust us to decide things for you till you're put back together?"
dark_light
"Okay. We'll talk to them," says Amariah. "We'll figure something out with them. We'll have to talk to them - can you take us through the door to where they are? And then if you wake them up I can send you to sleep, and keep you that way, until everything's fixed, will that be all right?"
small_magics
"I'll take you where they are and wake them and go to sleep and when I wake up I'll be safe," says Isibel trustfully. She kisses Petaal - a chaste little kiss on the head - and disentangles herself and collects her book and pen again and goes to the door.
dark_light
[This,] Amariah tells her sweeties as she follows them to the door, [is a disaster. I think we should bring in all the Bells - maybe all the Jokers - when we get there; this isn't like Shell Bell where she had a stable version of herself to do the steering, we don't have one of this exact instance.]
dark_light
[...They'll cooperate, right? They won't want to go on reading her? She's turning over a lot of the steering power over to them but she's so loopy I don't know why she's doing it.]
truthwright
[Looking at her makes me want to cry. I don't know how they could feel any different.]
dark_light
[I was thinking something like - how vampire mates work in Aurum. Those only usually work out and when they don't the keener half can get deluded about it in a hurry. Something like that.]
small_magics
Isibel opens the door. It leads to a pretty little house, beautifully decorated, listlessly maintained. Something comes over her - her breaths drop into even rhythm and she starts walking with singleminded purpose. Out the door, onto a subtle path, up.
dark_light
Amariah wraps herself and Path in invisibility before following the elf out of the building.
truthwright
Kas does likewise. Petaal turns into a least weasel and rides on his shoulder.