To bed with them!

He dreams of being back in the caves. He dreams of someone using him to torture a sobbing prisoner while he tries to stop and tries to scream and tries to apologize. He dreams the Yeerks have joined forces with the demons and it's all his fault for imagining anyone might ever help him.

It's not as awful as usual, at least. As he's waking up he checks whether he can move.

Nope, Ashkon's driving again. Up they sit. <Wow, I didn't experience your dreams while they were happening but from your memories they were nasty as all get out.>

It's disorienting to wake up to Ashkon being in control. Not in a bad way, though. Well, maybe bad compared to what most people experience most of the time when they get up, but.

He doesn't succeed at laughing bitterly. <Yeah. They always are. Thank you, though.> He wants to stretch, or wants Ashkon to stretch, whichever.

Ashkon stretches obligingly and starts getting himself presentable for his first class.

Imaginary bouncing! He’s so excited about classes!

Off they go to voice lessons. Their tutor wants them to do vocal warmups and will listen for timbre and test their range.

His voice is hard to place and strange, out of step with itself. It's not obvious anything's odd about it when he's just carrying on a conversation by someone who just wants to hear the words he's trying to say. Along every individual axis it's a very average human voice, it's just that the vocal fold length and thickness and position ought to belong to different life stages or to different sexes or both. Whether they want to say his voice has even settled at all is really a question of whether they want to privilege the fact that it's unlikely to randomly change any further on its own for no reason or the fact that it's unusual for a mature voice.

He could probably sing tenor. If he could sing. Which he's horrible at because he completely lacks any talent and has a tendency to forget to drink enough water and hates using his voice.

Well, Ashkon can drink plenty of water and he doesn't hate it at all and he attends very anxiously to the teacher's suggestions for what to relax and what posture to stand in.

It makes Ashkon's body feel more alien than when Ashkon is just walking around. It's a claustrophobic sort of feeling, being so saliently helpless and trapped and no more than a passenger.

Only - when he had mixed feelings about getting himself into this it made Ashkon hesitate even without him changing his mind. The only time he's asked for control of his body he's been given it, no questions asked. He's surrounded by people who could hear him if he screamed for help and might be in a position to actually do something. He trusts Ashkon, or the system Ashkon is embedded in - sort of because it's not really decision-relevant, but at this point also because empirically the thing Ashkon-or-the-system-Ashkon-is-embedded-in does with total control of him is take him for walks in beautiful places and help him sleep. It feels silly to be afraid, it really does, though he still is.

Whatever. It's math time. Graphs are fucking incredible.

Ashkon will make this body as good at singing as it can get over the course of a two hour lesson, but there's a break halfway through to rest his voice. <Holding up okay?>

Is he? That seems like a hard question. He's not entirely sure if he is, and what if the answer is no even though he would rather let Ashkon achieve things than be definitely okay every moment? Or maybe if he's not okay it's actually fixable really easily and without getting in the way of anything? Or maybe he is okay? Is he okay? How would he know? He could maybe guess if his emotions were embodied like they usually are but that sounds really stupid because if that were happening he would probably be having an awful time about being subjected to lessons while completely immobile and the thing that's happening instead is slowly shredding his habits of fear and that's great.

There probably isn't anything worth doing about whether he's okay right now in two minutes except, actually, there is one thing. That teacher reads minds. Knock knock. Hi, it's me - he sends his sense of the location and arrangement of his body - can I just ask you what you'd do if I didn't want to be here?

Oh, probably I'd sing you to sleep and then call emergency services.

Thank you, I'm glad you would. Don't, though, I'm fine.

And, actually, he is. Not comfortable, but going to come through without any new nightmares and glad to be here.

<<3 Thanks for checking in. I think the answer is yes but mostly because you asked.>

<Anytime!>

After some water they resume the lesson.

Which is still disconcerting and he's still just going to do math and Not Be Here but it's still up there with sitting in a park on Earth so really of the hard things he's done this is not one of the hardest.

Yesterday he was having a crisis about having abdicated all responsibility for making choices. That seems ridiculous now but he can't laugh. He thinks about graphs in his indoor thoughts where anyone who might want to comment can see what he's up to. (What he's up to is trying to derive the quadratic formula, except that he doesn't know the quadratic formula exists and is just sort of fumbling around for some kind of interesting result.)

A mathematically inclined Elf a ways away wants to know if he wants spoilers!

He would hate spoilers per se but would be delighted if they'd use their knowledge of the spoilers to point out questions with particularly interesting answers. Also he's vaguely curious about this person and their math education.

This person is named Tulindo and she used to do lots of math back in Valinor. Here is a quadratic equation hint!

He doesn't know anything about Valinor except that he's still really very annoyed about his brief visit thereto but he's sort of vaguely curious about its ostensible traits and wouldn't mind being further interrupted. (If he isn't further interrupted he'll have the answer by the end of class.)

Valinor is the continent where the Valar live. I grew up there but a lot of us came over here a few years ago and I don't really want to go back there either, even though they say the Valar are better now.

He would rather be talking about cool math but he doesn't really know how people do that and even though he kind of dislikes exposition it's better than nothing right now since he's not trying to assess whether it's true or why anyone would say it. (This is public but not actually sent.)

Thank you. I don't know if anything I didn't like about it had anything to do with them not being good enough, I just didn't like the forest or that they were bothered when I tried to leave it.

Oh, I have really fond memories of Lórien, I used to go there on vacation with my family. I think humans make the Valar nervous because they're not as well behaved as Elves so humans don't get the run of the place.

He can't wince. He can't freak out like he did on the balcony. There's an awful moment where he just exists, and it's just true that he's been found unworthy (that he's damned), and he can't do anything (he never could) and his breathing doesn't even hitch because it's not his (it's not like this body ever belonged to him anyway) and it's just... true.

Their loss, he answers, but even in his own mind he sounds brittle and defensive.

Oh, I know, I think humans are neat. I've been to human cities a few times but I have to go around with my eyes closed because otherwise I'll get flinchy looking at their hair, but I love human music and stuff.