Muttonhawk — Roleplayer Guild

Guarded Hearts

Antarctic Termite and Muttonhawk

It is not scarce knowledge that Jvanic equipment is rarely built with comfort in mind.

Although they did not thicken and their gradual narrowing did not significantly impact the grand scale of the listening-horn, the tunnel walls were steadily growing more and more obstructions. Ridges turned into sizable cliffs, then arches, then beams and boughs spanning across the tunnel. Telepathic nodes grew not only in number and diversity, but also size. Their veins flickered more or less constantly, pulsing light from one to another. Every now and again, the largest would snap shut and retract, fanned gills tens of metres across stirring a buzz of stray thoughts like gusts.

If the monitor drones were vast spindly things before, they were awesome now. Only the occasional shift of a leg betrayed that they were mobile, and not just webs of flora spun between the boughs. Some seemed to have fused with the substrate, as if they had forgotten themselves, or else never had anything to forget. They had no eyes, nor faces to put them in, but their ear-like sails seemed to watch Toun's flight unblinkingly.

you’re going in deep. why

"To check on your health," Toun's calm telepathic voice responded as if it was a matter of fact. "There are some things I cannot do without close proximity. Away from others."

Neither any scrap of tissue nor a single errant thought was disturbed by Toun's physical touch as he flowed on. His silken wending around the boughs and branches were that of a veil in an unfelt wind, sliding past, near-weightless, and unerring. The skewed flesh lattice of the tunnel would have bested many a vertebrate cave explorer leagues behind.

"Do you speculate why I am here, sister? Why I arrived?"

i really don’t think i’m in a position to investigate right now

Only when Toun’s flight reached the zenith of its grace did it start to become clear that there was no longer any tunnel for the mechanisms to obstruct. At the innermost space, where the horn attached to the manufactory true, the arches simply multiplied until there was no obvious route between them. What lay beyond was insulated by the structures, or else cleverly hidden. Yet the stream of consciousness did not simply dissipate here. Somewhere close by was some ultimate transmitter, the eardrum and vocal chord to which the Fae Folk sang.

careful…

Toun halted and flexed back into his default shape, but only for a moment. His eye darted to sixteen different points ahead of him before he picked a direction. His unseen propulsion resumed. "I am always careful," he lied.

"Since the beginning, sister, I have always held anger and disdain." Toun's voice twinged with regret. "To varying intensities, it was directed to everyone in the family. You were not reserved the least of it. The vitriol and bile I spat was thrown onto everything I saw. And then something happened."

A surface of biosynthetic wall that was almost smooth, buried in the jungle’s floor at the end of the tunnel, a crevice beneath the canopy of esoteric architecture. No light remained but the soft blue of Toun's eye glowing. This was the deepest place.

"By the time I was made aware of it, one, two, three, four, five siblings had perished. I dare not count more." Toun slowed as he approached the crevice. "It made me ponder on the purpose of all our fates. Tell me, do you act because Fate dictated it so in the beginning, sister? Or does another reason drive you?"

...that word. i hear it everywhere. fate. i never found out what it meant.

Jvan’s voice was so close, now. It was almost clear.

you know what drives me, Toun. don’t listen to the painter. i do what i do because i have feelings, and i want to see a beautiful world before i grow up. that is all.

Toun sized up the obstacle in front of him, panning his gaze over its surface. "I had predicted your motives being indirect of Fate. It took Vowzra's death for me to realise that my own motives were not simply her words either." Toun reached a hand and splayed his fingers. His arm stretched to the surface in front of him and narrowed into a sharpened edge. Gently, he drew two parallel vertical lines with two fingers, joining them at one end with a tiny incision, and pulled a cross-section of material out as a thin, broken flap. When his arm retracted, he progressed through the new breach by letting his body taper into a flat shape, only to reform on the other side. He stopped to take in what he saw.

Vast open space. Atmosphere.

Before Toun’s gaze, the telepathic reflector rose, smooth and spoked like a wheel- A disc one hundred cubits wide and broad shining with cyan light. The voices of Galbar’s strangelings resolved their dissonance and rebounded from it in a solemn hum, as visible as an eddied vapour of blue and green. Ligaments suspended it by the rim, and beyond- Jvan.

Familiar carmine fog cloaking a fractal mantle of grey flesh, shifting, collapsing and rebuilding around bubbles of pocket dimensions. In the deep distance, the fetus-shape that was Ovaedis’ power core curled around a singularity, its eyes black and non-Euclidean, its heart shining like an old and fragile sun leeching light through the umbilicus.

"...Please be gentle."

The caution was audible. Toun's eye shifted to find its source. This was as far as he needed to go.

There was little use in warning Toun in his approach. He was a ghost to the delicate apparatus around him, floating to the centre of the great disk and sitting cross-legged, hovering barely a hand's width above its surface. The light cast a dark shade over his upper features and reflected blue over the gloss of his skin and robe. He began, as he did, directly, and without pleasantries.

"I was terrified, sister."

The blue eye bore straight ahead with only a slight hue distinguishing it from the light below. Her voice was strongest here. "When Logos found you. I feared for your life."

"I… Well, me too. Ah." It was a lame answer. "I’m… Not sure what to say, Toun. Brother. I was… Decommissioned very quickly."

The lower half of Toun's eyelid twitched on his otherwise frozen face. He hesitated to speak. "...You were on Galbar. Why did you not call for help?"

There was nothing on the disc that could convey mood, but the shadows from behind it seemed to pause slightly. "It… Never... Occurred to me. All my life here, I’ve been a benefactor. I have power. I give, and give, and I don’t need anything in return. I guess… I never thought it would be offered." Still unsure, she continued, "Not to me."

Toun's grip on his knees tightened. Anger flared on his still face for only a moment, then relaxed. "You are a fool," he mumbled. "You are a fool to think that we would not help you, sister. More than enough have died."

"One of them by my hand, Toun. Two, maybe, if you count the worm I lost. I’m- I was- Part of the slaughter. Forgive me for not thinking that the love of peace would extend so far."

Words sliced into the room at speed. "I would have stopped you if I KNEW!" Toun's head angled up as he shouted into his surroundings. The landscape around him receded, shying away at the sound of anger. 

Toun's voice calmly went on. "That is irrelevant. Irrelevant to..." He lost his words again. A hand carefully lifted from his knee and spread his fingers over his chest. His head bowed. "The purpose I mentioned for my goals. The reasons, independent of Fate's words for my actions. Do you know why I wished for a paradise, sister?"

"...Paradise is a curious concept. Some say it means a perfect place. Others a wholesome one. I… I can’t imagine either." The outburst had quieted her somewhat. Jvan wasn’t used to being the smaller of two voices, so she spoke cautiously.

Toun's eye and brows lifted. "It could have existed as either and both. Its purpose would not have altered." Speaking with sincerity seemed to ease the quiver in his voice, if only for a moment. "I was to build paradise for us all. Everyone in the family." His chest deflated in a sigh and his head bowed again. "For Teknall, Niciel, Ilunabar. For Vowzra, Vulamera. Vestec. Logos. Even you. Everyone."

His eye closed. "Every sibling lost is another failure. With or without the paradise." Toun's voice lowered to a mimic of Jvan's, out of sadness more than caution. "I cannot fail again. It brings a paralysing hollowness. I treated you poorly in the beginning, but...I care that you live. No more killing."

"It’s… Not a very clean way of doing things, is it?" managed Jvan, weakly. "...We’re not so different, then. I’m tired of… Emptying. I’d rather make. I’d rather watch them all make. Even Vestec. Damn him." Again, just the faintest touch of humour. For some time now, all Jvan had known was destruction. "What does this mean for your paradise, brother? Will you go on?"

For once, Toun's silence was not condescending. He slowly opened his eye and gave the ponderous quiet some time to ferment.

He did not think, exactly. He came to an acceptance of what he had not yet put into spoken words.

"The paradise was made impossible," he finally murmured. "I go on in pursuit of other things now. There are matters of the world I would seek answers to. I fear the family does not know them any more than I do."

"Pursue, then," was the answer, encouraging, faintly sad. "Everything I’ve seen and forgotten since Vowzra showed me has only told me to keep looking." Mention of Vowzra made Toun's hand tighten for another instant as Jvan continued. "There are answers, somewhere. And… We live on the road." She did not ask what had extinguished the utopian dream. For her, it had seemed impossible enough in the beginning.

Toun conceded with silence, nonetheless.

They ruminated in each other's quiet company for a solemn time, remembering. Perhaps minutes passed. The regular patterns of inbound sculptor thought seemed to tick with such timings. As the sculptor thoughts passed, so did theirs, until they both listened without listening. 

They refilled all the comfort that their anxieties would allow.

Toun's sad voice sounded, after a time.

"Sister? May I borrow a hand?" Toun did not lift his head, but instead extended his right hand, flat and open to the ceiling.

"I… Guess?" A psychic tug wrapped around Toun’s wrist, faint at first, then growing in warmth until a carmine wisp twirled around his fingers, yanking slightly. Toun's fingers curled into a gentle grip in return.

From the porcelain fingertips, a warm, blue array of splitting veins crept up the carmine at speed. Jvan felt nothing but the leaking feeling of comfort and safety that is never fully felt until it is lost. A loving familial embrace. And yet, the tingling relief was searching for something.

It searched further than what might have been comfortable. Then it suddenly stopped.

Clink...

Toun's eye widened. His countenance froze into a shock of realisation that swept from his back, up his spine and cheeks, and over his head in a wave. His fear was realised. Now it transmuted itself into a melting wax of regret. Toun's head was seared in its flow.

"I..."

His shoulders twitched and his eyelid began to convulse in flittering blinks. He felt as if falling from a height. Even as he tried to prevent it, a rivulet of red streaked down from his eye to his smooth nasal mound and dropped a tear onto his crossed legs. He spoke pained, breathing words.

"Sister. I am so, so sorry."

The blue veins receded, throwing themselves inverse up Toun's arm. Jvan could feel the cold surface of his clay mind rush past as fast as her own could keep up. They came to an abrupt stop at his eye. A sharp sensation of awareness struck her in turn, like unwittingly seeing a mirror without knowing its nature.

In the peripheral pockets of Toun's being, she ran into a scrap of herself, roiling still.

The Jvanic scrap perpetually tore and ripped at the Toun around it in a reflected twin picture of the clay shard in Jvan's own self. The way it left its surroundings scarred and inflamed, the way it pulsated and bled. It all told of mutual torture, constantly burning and scarring since the beginning. It was pain, and yet…

It’s... Beautiful.

Toun's body continued to twitch and deform into the dislocations that his now audible sobbing was driving. His shoulders bulged upwards, his back sank, and his arms slacked into a pitiful bend. His core jerked with the tension of his sudden emotions. Any pretense of his superiority, disdain, and hatred was lost to outward grief. "I am so sorry." His grip on Jvan's psychic hand tightened, and all she could see was how far he’d come, now that his soul was finally reflected in the still-beautiful warps of his body.

"Toun."

The deformed porcelain god did not lift his head.

"Toun. Brother. This is something I’ve said to many mortals in my days- Friends- ...Enemies. And now I say it to you." Jvan’s half of the clasped hands held fast, and the fog swelled, billowed around Toun in a soft, obfuscating cloak. It was Toun's turn to feel the embrace of family. "Never regret. Never be sorry. Whether by Fate’s intruding hands or no, we all must grow into the flesh we’re given."

"I’ve never looked back on… Hurting you. And, maybe, that’s wrong. I mean… Maybe. But, more than that, I’ve never regretted the wounds I’ve gathered on the way. Not yours, not Vowzra’s light, not even… Phi. Our marks do not detract from what we are. I’ve been scarred, I’ve been bruised, I’ve been crushed, I’ve gone mad. That’s just the flow of Time. We grow up, Toun. And you are still Toun. Maybe not… The Toun that was meant to be. But nothing is ever as it’s meant to be. You are who you are. And you’re more than you were. Fight it, or accept it, but, in this moment- You are who you are."

Toun's torso regained a modicum of solidity, if only to tremble out groaning defiance. "How can you forgive me?" He quivered. "How can you possibly forgive me for dooming us both to an eternity of pain?"

"I-" The hand thinned, receding from Toun’s body, and back into a wisp around his wrists. "I never… Thought about it as something to forgive." Thinner still, until Jvan was as faint as a feather on his fingertips. "You know I don’t- I, ah- I don’t cry out… I guess. My pain is my own. You did what you chose to do. We both… Dealt with the consequences." Those consequences, she was quickly learning, that she had felt all too lightly in comparison with the one who brought them down. The knowledge began to churn heavily in her, a dull acceptance. Jvan absorbed as she grew, but Toun, it seemed, had chipped; And it was a wound she could not and would never repair.

"It…eats at me, sister. It grows." Toun turned his head level, allowing the thick red rivulet from his eye to begin dripping from the bottom of his chin and onto the blue disk below. Though his voice did not carry blame, Toun still retained his regret. "I cut it, I slash it, I shred it away. It still grows. It makes me create things. Wretched things. I build for purpose and it iterates and adds until the creation is something entirely flawed. I cannot stop it. Not unless I keep creating -- that is all that placates it. Creating flawed things that I try in vain to perfect." His lower eyelid lifted, pleading. "But...what I do to keep it contained, the cutting and burning and scraping away at every writhing detail that it sprouts forth at every moment. I know that is what my own flesh is doing to you."

Oh, no…

Toun drew both his wrists to his chest, pulling Jvan's presence close. He whispered to the feather-like coiling that held him. "And yet I go on. Through all that I have suffered, even now...I need you to know that it is not my pain that I regret most. It is yours."

The blue eye held its pained stare on the carmine fog long enough for his message to sink behind it. Only then did he ascend from his seated pose. His legs straightened to a stand and his arms lowered, his fingers finally relaxing their grip on Jvan's makeshift contact.

"I-...That shard will keep hurting you. And there is nothing I can do to stop it." Toun's raw fleshy eyelid slowly closed, letting another few drops of red ink fall. He began to turn to the incision in the wall, but the vaporous speaker whirled, strengthening, into his way. The spots of red were whipped away into the abyss as raindrops in a storm.

"...I wouldn’t have it any other way, you know," said Jvan. 

The words had Toun stop and look at the manifestation.

Jvan knew that Toun had set his thoughts, and did no longer try to dissuade them. The time for that was now over. "Listen- If empathy is a foreign thing to me, then at least consider that pain might be, also. I’ve lost nothing of myself, so I suffer contentedly."

Toun turned his head down and flicked his eye to one side. 

"You do not exist in vain, Toun," Jvan continued. "Perfection might be- A… Lie, in, ah, in my eyes. But to cut away- To purge- That’s worthy pain, Toun. I will always grow back stronger. I haven’t lost more than I’ve gained from you."

Toun was a statue. A long pause ran. His eye shifted to look at his lower right and left in turn.

At the end, Jvan felt the telepathic breeze once more. The breeze that sounded Toun's sigh. A fresh few red droplets left his chin after being forced out by his blinks. He raised his head to show his sad brow curling up in front of the fog. "That is the truth?" The mostly rhetorical question drew from hope. Quiet, cynical hope.

"Sure as stars."

Toun's torso pulsed with small, rhythmic movements that seemed to speed up. They only lasted as long as he didn't notice them

"You lie about one thing, sister. For claiming that empathy is foreign to you, you did not have to say such things." Toun never smiled. He did not keep the lips to do so. "And yet you did. You proved that I have underestimated you."

He hadn’t been the only one.

"...I, ah..." But there were no more words. Only a bittersweet willingness as the fog dissolved out of his way.

The red rivulet from Toun's eye curled and continued to flow with fresh red. He let out another breeze. "I only wish I could be as..."

He stopped that thought. His face relaxed back to a neutral expression.

He was curt. "I ought to allow you rest, sister." Toun resumed turning to the incision. "I would ask that you keep this conversation in confidence. For the safety of us both." He peered to an inconspicuous point in space. It shimmered with a fragile bubble that had had been containing their conversation from eavesdroppers for some time now.

"Agreed," said Jvan quickly. "Do not see it dispersed that I’m playing dead. I only need to wait so much longer." The brisk return to pragmatism faded as briskly as it came. "And... Maybe we can do better this time."

Down, up. Toun's nod was all the affirmation necessary and no more. He returned his look to the exit and began to float towards it. Abruptly, the shapeless red obscuration swept into opacity before him.

"Wait," said Jvan, a little hurriedly. "Would you like to take the faster way?"

* * * * *

Not more than a few minutes later, the slow, axial swivel of Ovaedis carried its gate nearly level with the glittering river of Lex’s meteoroids. With surprising soundlessness, the portal stretched, revealing a nest of layered apertures within the small opening it made. One by one, these barricades slid, warped and twisted away, and a tiny figure was ejected from its heart, skyless sunshine glinting from his robe as the forest flickered away below. Still red rivulets lined his face and robe like cracks.

With both creases and glossy reflections, the robe fluttered against Toun's body behind him in a mock illusion of atmospheric drag. He looked ahead to his trajectory and slowed to a leisurely stop to gaze down at Galbar. In all the turmoil of his encounter with Jvan, he found himself forgetting his next plan for a moment longer. It came back, along with the rest of the situation.

Teknall, brother, Toun sent down to his sibling by way of his previous promise. Jvan is recovering well. She will be in no danger from the recent past.

That would do. Teknall could speak with Jvan again if he needed any further details.

The pause in space gave Toun the opportunity, once again, to spot the great ark Mother Suprema from the corner of his eye. The colossal serpent rested above Lex just as gracefully as he remembered. It was close, by what he initially believed to be happenstance, until something looked back at him.

Whisper froze, contracted slightly, as if squinting, then shuffled down to a more distant part of the Ark.

"You have been waiting." Toun's calm voice quivered down to Whisper in spite of her escape. A few seconds gave the words the look of a question, which was stoically ignored for several more.

"Not for you. You and I will never meet again. Farewell." Whisper kicked off from the surface of the beast and flowed down towards the forest, noticeably faster than she needed to.

Even so, Toun could trace Whisper's movement just as easily as he could continue communicating over the distance between them. "That is not for you to decide, sculptor." Whisper's title was added with only the slightest emphasis. "Who are you waiting for? Your grandmother?" Toun scoffed. "If a serial liar I recently met is breaking her habits, I am convinced that your purpose would be better served by finding others to talk to in the meantime. That is your decision to make, Diaphane Whisper. Convincing yourself that you can escape is barely worthy of being called lie by its blatancy."

Diaphane Whisper blurred into a combat form, her gaze burning at the deity. Her voice never rose.

"Do not. Ever. Presume on my choices, Toun the Creator."

Toun quirked his head.

"My journey is my own. I’ve heard enough from you and your kind." She ascended, no longer fleeing, nor rising to the bait and closing in, only meeting Toun eye to eyes over the expanse of vacuum. "Leave."

Another time, Toun would have let the anger at Whisper's arrogance bubble through his visage. Another time, he might have cut her to pieces. Not this time.

Of course, Toun held no illusions as to her position. As much came across in his tone. "My kind? If you have heard enough from any kind, your journey has already ended." His head levelled and he turned his body to face Whisper directly. "I could predict just how much of my kind you have heard. By certainty, Jvan, my sister of burbling anxiety and poor manner. My brother, Teknall, who's intellect is unsurpassed, but his wisdom never his qualification. Myself, only as much as to treat you as one who decides to ask no questions...Perhaps you met Vestec?" He continued for no rationalisation to himself, not immediately. "Vestec is the one that would give you a different answer to the same question until there were no more different answers to give."

Pupils shrank into quivering dots in their sockets. Whisper did not break stance.

Toun raised a finger. "Or, Niciel? The one who's kindness is beyond the worth of all who feel it? She would sound to you what she believes would grant you health and comfort in equal measure. No?" Toun continued, sounding louder in Whisper's head, almost to the point of pain. "Lifprasil and the other children? The inheritors of dirt who lord over what you pick off like a carcass? They would have answers in as many droves as their worshippers." The venomous slavos beat Whisper down. "Indeed -- they are just of one planet. You could find Logos to give you a planned place in life, free of self-determination! What a comfort, no? Or you might perhaps entreat with Zephyrion, if you feel like being so wilful as to make demands of a god."

Toun defied relativity in how instantly he conjured himself in front of Whisper's nearest eye, crossing space like less than nothing. They stood a hair apart. She could see the now-stagnant red liquid lining from his eye and did not understand them. He growled words into her. "I say to you, sculptor. Never presume my kind."

For two moments, Toun restricted Whisper's ability to move and speak. He released her from the powerless state without so much as a blink. Her form whipped forwards in a gale of eyes and jaws to engulf him. She found herself engulfed by her own mind's eye in an instant.

"Let me see you, that I can confirm Chiral Phi's natterings."

The arrogant god was an echo in a rushing tunnel. Diaphane Whisper was sent through every single one of her memories, from hatching alone in the nitrogen sea, to the violence of her Jvanic indoctrination, to speaking with gods, to the present. The blue eye that she so desperately tried to devour flicked its blue bloodshot gaze over every moment of her existence until reality struck her again.

Rough ice and stone. Whisper curled against a meteor. She found herself being looked upon by Toun in exactly the same pose as he had before, if just beyond his arm's length. She found, not painlessly, that she could no longer move again.

"Would you believe, her deception is ever spiced with truth." Toun cooed, crossing his arms. "Now that I have seen you, Whisper, do you know why I have not destroyed you?"

It took some time for the entity to choose a response. Scared as she was by the forced reliving of a life already too bloody and promising nothing more, perhaps she preferred to answer with silence. 

"...Because I’m a useful pawn of your sister and cannot be replaced."

Toun slowly shook his head. The bubble shimmered to divine eyes, containing his words to Whisper. "Wrong. I am no nihilistic, impotent worm." Toun's eye relaxed. "It is because we share a love for our siblings."

The words alone wilted Whisper, and their meaning seemed to drain her empty until only the sound of dark smudges still carried her voice. "And none for each other. Isn’t that the irony of all of us?" She meant the Diaphanes, but knew it applied beyond. "My worst regret is that our time together grows so short. Please. Do not sour what I have left."

"I have no intentions of putting any further ill taste to your mortal life." Toun's head tilted curiously. He wondered why he spoke with a gentle voice now. Perhaps he was amusing himself, he thought. "You speak of irony, though it should only be as such to myself. Sharing experience and love for others with loving families...That is your choice as well, Whisper. Choose wisely."

She said, "I will try." And the shadow at her heart spilled out into her body like black inkdrops shattering.

Whisper had not questioned the red stains on Toun's face and robe that were left over from Ovaedis. The fact that anything stained him was contrary to his entire appearance, even in the choking flora around them. And yet, her eyes were helplessly drawn to the red as it began to move. It flowed, as veins on skin turned inside out along Toun's surface, converging to his shoulder in forking streams and down his arm. The arm lazily rose to gesture in Whisper's direction. As the rear points of the flowing red sank behind the streams, a droplet formed at the end of Toun's sharp finger. The finger flicked at Whisper, sending the droplet across space and onto her body. Toun was clean again.

The quivering returned in Toun's voice, foreboding. "See that you do."

Before Whisper's many eyes, Toun's pose winked into the shape of an endless white pin that shot out towards Glint on the surface of Galbar and disappeared. Her body was released from its paralysis at a gradual pace, tricking her mind into wondering just how long she had been released for.

She knew something was spreading on her surface; She’d felt it. Whisper focused her gaze, and found a symbol on her pulsating form that would not shift with her. Quickly she learned that she could move it around her body, but it refused to morph. The muted smudges of lightlessness seemed to be repelled by it.

It had meaning. Whisper tried not to think about that overmuch, and to no effect. Toun was always clear. Though it brought her little peace, Whisper could not deny that the mark of his hand was a gift, of sorts. Nor could she ignore the significance of its form- The shape that meant, simply, ’Will’.

At last she stretched, dismissing the glyph from her mind and allowing herself to collapse back into blessed liquidity. There was no gravity to follow, so she selected a direction at random and drooped into it, puddling around noctus fronds without the strength to avoid them.

One of her own granddaughters found her there. One of Sprint’s, child of her firstborn. She floated wavily over to the Big Sister, too young to dissolve easily out of her core form.

"Hi, Whisper!" piped the little inklet, oblivious to the pain of her ancestor.

"Hello," she breathed, feeling as fragile as she had when she herself was fresh out of the egg, fresh and fragile in a world of crushing air and murder.

"You look really bad."

Whisper didn’t reply.

"Can you tell me a story?"

She curled up and held her granddaughter, solidifying only enough to grasp her firmly. Her hands were a bloodied sepia brown.

"Of course," said Diaphane Whisper.

Ceeln’s fins swished in calm, undulating waves down their body, holding them just above the brilliant mosaic floor of the palace. It was a formal stance, a habit only recently acquired. It reminded them of how far they had come, and how far they would go.

Vibrations in the water disturbed the luxurious feelers on the back of their head, and they smiled, turning their smooth face towards the motion, straining to look through eyespots that were already nearly blind. "There you are."

"Here I am," said Jvan, smiling back.

Ceeln’s sibling wound their way down the broad hall, relaxed and confident, and they couldn’t help uncurling to join them. The two met in the middle and embraced, Ceeln’s translucent skin against Jvan’s own, coloured pink by the rich carmine blood below just as theirs was tinted yellow. It was a rare, beautiful genetic quirk, generously compensating for the fact that Jvan was small enough to fit easily between Ceeln’s massive shoulders.

Ceeln’s upper-arms released Jvan and rested on their shoulders before they could complain that Ceeln was crushing them, though their delicate lower-arms still cradled their sibling. It was hard to think of Jvan as anything other than a younger sibling, though they were twins by age. The smaller noble grew so slowly. It was not lost on Ceeln’s heart that they themself might never live long enough to see Jvan reach true adulthood.

"...So, ah." Jvan’s upper-hands knitted together and rested on Ceeln’s lower-arms, their tail fidgeting idly in the water. "When are you leaving?"

"That eager to see me gone?" teased Ceeln.

Jvan tensed awkwardly and tilted their head, pointing their own far keener eyespots somewhere towards the roof. "What? No. I mean. Ah. Maybe." They made a faintly mocking gesture of their own.

Ceeln laughed, despite everything, then quietened. "You know that I might not be coming back, Jvan."
"You will definitely be coming back," they drawled, unperturbed.

"And those that don’t?" 

Jvan was quiet, but not for long. "People die. I won’t feel regret over what I can’t help and never knew, Ceeln." Ceeln’s lips made a faint line of concern. "What? That’s the truth. Sure as stars."

Ceeln trailed a finger over Jvan’s head-feelers without releasing the grip on their shoulders. "I worry, Jvan. One day you’ll be the one leading armies. I don’t want you to lose them."

Their sibling’s head cocked coolly. It made Ceeln’s heart feel heavy, that gesture. "You know I struggle with empathy, Ceeln. It just… It- Feels... Foreign to me." Jvan suddenly looked away, uncertain. "I mean. I do try. But..."

Ceeln threw their sibling against their bosom and held them tightly, laughing, ignoring Jvan’s immediate splutters from somewhere in their cleavage. They loved Jvan, dearly. Oh, gods knew Ceeln loved them. "It’s alright, Jvan. It’s okay." Jvan managed to bite and flail their way free and wriggled off, looking hurt. "It’ll get easier. You’ll grow up, and you’ll understand, and it’ll get easier. I promise. And… I’ll be there for you. For… As long as I can."

"I know," said Jvan, and smiled.

The memory faded into pinpricks of scattered detail, and the golden light raced on, ever deeper into the darkness that was the All-Beauty.

In the previous episode, Teknall and Toun went to look for their sister Jvan and met Chiral Phi along the way. Teknall left and now Toun is heading further into Ovaedis under the pretense of checking up on Jvan's health.

Once Toun is alone with Jvan, he reveals that he was actually really scared that Jvan would die by Logos' hand. He explains that it was not Fate's words alone, but love for his family that drove his dream to build a paradise. Therefore, every sibling killed is basically throwing him into depression. He understands that Jvan was responsible for some of the deaths, but he just wants the killing to stop. In fact, he reprimands Jvan for not calling for help against Logos.

Jvan, initially uncomfortable, sounds both her agreement to stopping the death and surprise that she could expect any help at all. In the end, Jvan just wants us all to play nice and make stuff.

Curious about Toun's claim that every family member dead is another failure, she asks whether he is going to continue trying to make a paradise.

Toun says that his dream has been made impossible and he is instead pursuing wider questions about his purpose and the purpose of his family.

Jvan, having gotten into a mind-scuffle with Vowzra, gives Toun some quiet encouragement.

They both sit quietly for a while without anything to talk about.

Toun eventually asks Jvan for a hand to hold.

Jvan obliges with some gaseous makeshift limb by vaping in Toun’s face with that omnipresent blood-coloured fog that surrounds her.  Toun sends some magic up the limb vape cloud by equivalent of both hugging Jvan and checking her physical state. He finds his eye-shard.

Knowing all the pain and suffering that Jvan's flesh has caused him all this time, Toun bursts into tears and apologies.

Jvan gives Toun a hug and tries to explain that she doesn't regret anything that happened, and neither should Toun.

Toun questions how she could possibly forgive him for placing a curse on them.

Jvan is like, "Dude, seriously, I'm over it."

Toun goes into depth on how much Jvan's influence has affected his existence, saying that he has done horrible things to it, and therefore his shard would have done horrible things to her.

Jvan retorts by saying that it has actually helped her to improve and all the pain was outweighed by the benefits.

This seems to mollify Toun as he did not expect to see his values reflected back at him.

Toun hints that he wishes he could have benefited as much from the exchange (from his perspective, anyway -- he kind of has benefited without him realising) and moves to leave. He also mentions in passing that he had been keeping the conversation secret by creating a cone of silence when he entered the chamber.

Jvan expedites Toun's exit by having Ovaedis stain someone's white clothing, in a manner of speaking. (CAN WE NOT -Termite)

After leaving Ovaedis, Toun spots whisper looking at him. He asks as De Niro "You talkin' to me? There's no one else around. You must be talkin' to me."

Whisper calls him a baka and swims off.

Toun, being a god, chortles and tells her to git gud. Turns out that swimming away from Toun is not the most effective way to get him to leave you alone. (Girls, take note. -AT)

Whisper gets pissed and says that she is sick of gods.

Toun retorts by telling her that she's not actually spoken to all the gods and she is wasting her time by waiting around. He gets all up in her personal space and not-so-kindly asks her not to slander his brothers and sisters so.

Whisper tries to nom Toun. Blacks out, gets her mind read, wakes up with Toun standing over her. It's not what you think, I swear.

Now realising that nomming a god wasn't the best move, Whisper attempts to rebuff a question by saying that the only reason she wasn't destroyed was some amoral motive pertaining to her role in Jvan's grand plan.

Toun says that he isn't Heartworm (”Heartworm is personally attacked by this. Apology in order.” -AT) and that he was simply taken by her love for the sorority. His recent experience has given him something of an appreciation for that. Of course, he only admits as much under his cone of silence once more.

Whisper gets sad because they love their families, both herself and Toun do, but they have no love for each other.

Toun says that's actually her choice, same goes for any foreign family she runs into.

Whisper pitifully agrees to think about it. For unknown reasons, this accelerates the rate at which Jvan’s influence is spreading through her body. Toun gives her a tattoo with the Tounic character for 'Will'. With this, he has effectively given her his level 7 godly free point to use as she wishes at any time. The tattoo will fade once used. "Choose wisely," he says.

Toun pindrops back down to Cornerstone and Whisper trundles off like she's come down from a bad trip after seeing her traumatic life flash before her eyes.

She tells a story to an inklet. End scene.

As a bonus segment, one of Jvan's early lost memories is written. It includes Muttonhawk momentarily confusing a singular 'them' for a reference to a pair of boobs until it was edited out. (Whoops. My bad. -AT) (It's okay, English is bad at neuters. -M) No, the boobs are not confirmed to exist, read it to gain clarity: Stop...

Termite time.

The memory appears to feature Jvan as a mortal, albeit not a human one. Among other things, she is young, aquatic, nonbinary, and evidently an heir of some power. A non-identical twin sibling, Ceeln by name, is about to leave on military business. The two are extremely affectionate. Although several themes have odd parallels in Jvan’s current existence, the most unusual is that, even as an entirely ‘normal’ mortal, Jvan struggles to empathise with the pain of strangers, or even her family. In other words, ascending(?) to godhood(?) never really affected her personality; She really was always like this.

Might Report:
Before: Toun - L7 - 12 MP - 2 FP - 7C/7D <Holy site available>

-1 FP: Gift to Diaphane Whisper, to use as she pleases.

After: Toun - L7 - 12 MP - 1 FP - 7C/7D <Holy site available>

Dear Kho,

I am sending you this private message to inform you of Antarctic Termite's blatant incompetence at matching BBCode tags.

During our recent collaboration, titled 'Guarded Hearts,' he demonstrated failure to match no less than two (2) strikethrough tags, two (2) uniform resource loader tags, one (1) colour tag by failure to close, and more italics tags than I could record before they were fixed.

I understand that Divinus is an RP in which no such thing is to happen, to protect the reputation of ourselves and our flawless writing.

It is the humble recommendation of this player that Termite is expelled from the RP, effective immediately, and without appeal.

Yours Sincerely,
Muttonhawk

Dear Kho,

Please tell Muttonhawk to shut his damn mouth. This is lie and slander.

Yours Unemployedly,
Antarctic Termite
Muttonhawk Member

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