I hope your bite is bloodier than your emotional rhetoric.
[pac-man is getting closer, pinging off the ethereal sonar of koby's ability. a long-legged lope, an indolent gait. not particularly hurried. negging happens on a lot of simultaneous levels for him.]
[neatly, clipped, while koby holes up in his particular favorite corner of the library, stacks of his notes and his books and his dossiers all around him, stone cold mug of tea he'd forgotten hours ago sitting next to a placidly sleeping white duck. it's an odd sight, except for the constancy of it -- his unofficial office, his home away from home.]
→ action! (I have chosen to assume desk or I will delete this tag accidentally somehow)
[it would be obvious to few others, when the stranger arrives. he's another good-looking patron in a library that's host to almost entirely good-looking patrons, with some margin for subjectivity. but his aura is guttural and carries across the space. red migmatite trails spilling vivid through the snaggletooth rows of books, black deepening the shadows between the stacks.
and then he steps into view. looks at koby. looks at the cold tea. also, the duck (??). walking up to the desk without pause, his face pleasantly neutral. even when it—that is, his face, his whole head, his entire person, drops below the level of the table, vanishing underneath. he is very agile with the asian squat, for a person who does not know he is asian. and it's an easy pivot, heel and hand, til he's arrived at koby's feet.
his arms are layered up in cozy folds of merino wool today, arranging themselves comfortably atop of the boy's knees. his head is at about crotch height, and something about the lazy sweep of his eyes suggests he is contemplating whether or not he can undo koby's fly with use of his teeth alone. but his tone is conversational:] What do you think anger is?
[koby doesn’t look up for a moment, from highlighting and annotating and paperclipping pages together, though of course he feels the stranger’s presence appearing in the library, like watching the first red tendrils of light creep over the horizon, impossible to miss, blaring and bright.
however, when the stranger steps around the corner of the nearest shelf, takes in the mess, the duck, the tea, then suddenly – disappears, koby sits up a bit straighter, with a quiet sound of alarm –] Oh, that–
– oh. [because now there’s a (potentially) dangerous man under his desk, arms resting on his knees, looking upwards at him with quiet eyes and sharp cheekbones and questions about anger. koby is in his typical library uniform – overalls over a sweater, an aesthetic that has gotten him more than a few kindergarten teacher comparisons – but he doesn’t move away from the gentle weight of the stranger across his knees.]
Well. [said as he reaches out to stroke the duck’s feathers, as she lifts her head and gives the entire situation a bored sort of fowlish look.] An emotion? And – a reaction?
[the stranger makes a face that's the equivalent of a teetering hand. looks a bit like one of those smushed nosed cats. obviously, koby is not technically incorrect. it's a good starting point. requires contemplation, briefly, the stranger scratching his thumb across his chin, rasp rasp. he's not too stubbly there, but the psychological havoc of simply existing at saltburnt does periodically put him off his shaving routine. there's more friction there than there should be.
lesson planning takes a lot of time and effort. more than the teaching itself.] Sure. Yeah. Anger wants things to be fair. Even when its impossible. Even when it can't know what fair is.
But that's what it wants. [there is a steady expectation fully formed in his face, a stalagmite of sentiment growing up to meet koby's regard. that the boy from the sea will take the matter to thought. even if there is a vaguely inappropriate older man sitting at his feet, legs crossed over the toes of his tasseled boat shoes, or whatever. the stranger does no mind reading. he just watches the soft oval of koby's face like it might change moon phases if he forgets to blink long enough.]
[the position is, perhaps, a bit odd – koby doesn’t usually have conversations with people sitting under desks. but he considers the comments with his usual level of focus and dedication, tilting his head as the stranger speaks and eying the dark brush of stubble along the sharp line of his jaw. koby, in contrast, has pink hair on his arms, beneath them, on his legs and between them, all light enough that even though he rarely addresses the existence of it, it’s impossible to see unless the light hits just-so.]
So it’s – a response to injustice. Perceived or otherwise. [perhaps incongruously, koby’s wearing converse all-stars. he likes them, they remind him of home.] I guess that makes sense.
[then, at the question, koby shakes his head, reaching to scoop the duck off the table and into his lap, petting along her smooth, sleek feathers. she regards the stranger with cool indifference.] Not when I think of it that way, I guess? If it’s just a response to injustice, that’s – understandable. Not worth being afraid of.
Lincoln doesn’t bite, by the way, unless she’s hungry.
[for some reason, the stranger's apprentice has a duck. he had clocked this earlier, but the evidence is somewhat harder to ignore on eye-level. he studies the avian. back home, in his caves by the sea, he had a tendency to let marine fauna wander in and out. made peace with the occasional incidence of guano. considerably less corrosive than sea air.
he likes animals, as a general rule. less when they're trying to kill him, but the ones who try to eat him with lesser ambitions are just doing what they are meant to do. in the quiet of a sunlit library, the stranger reaches out to pat the duck. he should donate a finger to a good cause, honestly. there isn't even a lightsaber to wave around here.] I'd say, it's worth a healthy respect. An a long and intimate acquaintance. One thing to know, logically.
Another to have it, viscerally. [the feathers are nice. capture a lot of warmth. he pets with the grain. no wonder earth people are constantly stripping nests to fill their winter clothes, comforters, and pillows. he's not going to do that, obviously. lincoln is plainly a lesbian; hopefully above the self-disfigurement that comes of compulsory nesting behavior.]
Will you show me, the last time you were angry? [it's a big ask, and a gesture at boundaries set. can't possibly be a shock.]
[the duck tilts her tiny, fragile, birdish head into the patting hand, scrunching her eyes close in the sweet way ducks do, and clacking her beak in approval a couple times – revealing a couple rows of incredibly sharp, incongruous teeth, like a piranha. koby seems unconcerned, still stroking the longer feathers along her back.]
Logically. Right. It does seem to be one or the other. [lincoln, self-satisfied, turns to mouth lightly at koby’s hand, deadly teeth not so much as scratching his scarred-up knuckles, guiding him to pet another spot.] You either feel it or know it.
[the question gets a thoughtful headtilt, then koby shakes his head.] No. I’ll tell you about it, but – no. [showing is too close, too viscerally vivid, the memory still one that jabs and aches in his chest.]
[being told no is no fun, but the stranger has been here before. recently. someone else small, stubborn, compelled by principles that felt at odds with the grief raging inside her mind. the stranger looks at the duck's mouth, wondering that koby doesn't see it. like drawn to like.
or maybe he does. that being the problem. the latent cyclone of energy waiting around him more dangerous than a bird's mandibles. the stranger's face is neutral, looking up from the shadow of the table. no gentle tricks of posture and rhetoric will grant him passage across this bridge. he'll reassess. may have been a mistake, starting this with words; they make distance.]
All right. Tell me. [—or it wasn't. distance is strategic, too. a slow approach, a steady pace. people talk themselves into feeling, all the time. his fingers follow the grain of duck feathers and his chin settles on his wrist, a neutral weight on the cap of koby's knee.]
[he doesn’t push, and some of koby’s carefully-held defenses retreat, folding in on themselves like brandished swords sheathed. the stranger looks at him with dark, intent eyes, unreadable, the ebb of energy from him little more than present and listening, and maybe koby could delve deeper, try to parse out his intent, but. it’s a nice day, the sun is streaming through the windows, and he doesn’t find he wants to.
so instead he shifts backwards in his seat, thinks – as if he needs to think, as if he doesn’t already, immediately know.] It was when I came back, from dying. [a bizarre statement in any context except saltburnt.] When we first come back to life, we’re not…really ourselves. We need to have a stone with our name on it retrieved from the lake before we’re fully back to normal.
[lincoln lifts her head at that, a keenly knowing glint in her eyes, watching the way koby’s hands tremble a little when he adjusts his glasses, pushing them up the bridge of his nose with a fingertip.] I was very angry at – pretty much everyone until I recovered my stone.
[sounds like the esoteric bullshit of souls again, except that the prevalence of narrative suggests metaphysical rule of reality beneath the abstraction. the stranger does not usually mind improving upon his ignorance, but the month has brought an adequately unpleasant series of surprises. still, he carries off well. looks patient. koby isn't the object of his ire.
this place is fucking terrifying. but it takes him a breath—three—to measure this new information and cut around it. by end of week, it might be ready to wear. not as fashionable as converse shoes. better arch support, though. some of this is not new at all. learning from his pupils. be they embodiment of vergence, traitors, or particularly well-versed in twenty-first century sexting. (he'd like to see koby angry, but at this point, that's a foregone conclusion. the quake in koby's finger feels like a promise made in a room built to echo.)]
What shape did your anger take? For whom?
[he stops touching the duck, which is not a euphemism for anything. token respect. she is also present, listening, and a little too intense. the dark deserves to be loved with dedication. he folds his arm over the other.]
[sometimes the mention of it – death, resurrection, reversal, coming back wrong – is what prompts people to really understand that saltburnt isn’t the place they might’ve thought it was. hedonistic, ostentatious house of lavish luxury, yes, but there’s a circle of scar tissue around koby’s throat that’ll never let him forget what else it can hold.
he reaches up now, tugs his sweater collar into place, self-consciously, even though there’s little to no chance the stranger can see the thick band of scarring. the one on his forehead, yes, a criss-cross from another death fall-out, months before, half-hidden by the overgrown flop of cotton-candy hair. but the scar of his death is hidden, still, until spring and summer and warmth comes.]
I was a selkie. [and in spite of himself, there’s a note of fondness in the word, affection for the form he’d taken, the way this place had protected him from the horror of coming back to life when he shouldn’t have.] Is that a legend, where you’re from? Seals that can turn human, shed their skins.
[lincoln is watching, silent, knowing. koby’s rough fingertips are impossibly gentle when he strokes the tiny feathers of her head, her neck, small as scales.] It sounds like a nice fairytale, but – I’d wake up every night, go out and stand in the lake in my pajamas, watching the water. I’d go blue, before I went in, and if anyone stopped me, I’d be so – angry. So upset at them. Even though they were trying to help me.
['qimir' shakes his head without lifting it. the grind of his chin on the matching twins of koby's knees gives the selkie boy a tiny secondhand wiggle on his library chair, thus. no. they do not have that legend, where he's from. but he understands 'story.' the influence of narrative, the anatomy of propaganda, the beats required to convey emotional truth. he can smell the catch. that there is one. he doesn't ask. contrary to popular opinion, a good story is like good fruit. good sex. a good hunt. makes patience—of a variety—easy enough.
nothing in the old world took this much fucking effort to understand. this paradigm is a strange environment. but koby's words reverberate through the force with emotion familiar as color and necessary as air, and that's a counterweight, stabilizing, in a world that otherwise can't stop swaying. (like the sea. but that's neither here nor there.) (he does not think it sounds like a nice fairytale; he thinks it sounds like an open wound waiting to end in tragedy.)
[the unrelenting, dark, thoughtful eyes on him get a little scrunch of koby’s nose as he lifts lincoln to settle back into her makeshift nest of sweater on the table. he keeps his attention there for a moment, adjusting the sleeves until the bird settles into a warm, white-feathered mass of contentment.]
I yelled at people. [it sounds – mild, and koby knows it, leaning back and spreading his arms over the back of his chair, something wry in the way his mouth tucks at the corner.] I think the last time I yelled at someone before that was – a year and a half? Almost two. It’s not something I do.
[comparatively, then, a complete loss of control, of propriety. koby looks down at the stranger for a moment, at him knelt there (petitioner, worshipper, crouching beast, which will it be). one hand twitches forward, like koby’s about to touch, to feel, to brush the loose fall of dark hair out of the man’s face. he doesn’t.]
Then I went into the water. All the way in. Until it swallowed me up. [wistfulness, longing, something like nostalgia, maybe, maybe.]
[a single moment can hold many dimensions of grief. the conviction koby did, at one point, wish he hadn't come back from his long sleep in the unthinking abyss. painful sympathy, that the lake's fistful of water was the only offering the selkie might find, instead of a wide, wild sea. (the certainty that he should not kiss koby before koby kisses him, because that would be the lesson. a lesson. a year and a half, almost two, is not long in the scheme of things.)
the stranger thinks about losses that add up like sand in the hourglass. he thinks about the motion that died in koby's scar-mired hand before it could bear out its potential. he thinks how touch might have felt in his hair, and finds he does not mind the exercise in patience.] Strange, isn't it?
What feels fair. Unjust. Or like you're being cheated of what's rightfully yours. [he lifts his head, finally. puts a thumbnail against his own brow, scratching like a creature interrupting its own serenity to sate some negligible discomfort. afterward, he does not lay his chin down again. looks at the soft knit of koby's shirt, then the soft shadow of koby's throat, at the scar he surely, surely cannot see.]
[the stranger lifts his head, and koby is reminded of sleeping cats, settled clawed things that sleepily move as if an afterthought. he folds his own hands in his lap, squares his shoulders.]
I guess it is. But it’s – selfish. [the longing to have justice, balance, the awareness that he should not be there to crave it, that he’d gone past a door he shouldn’t be able to return from. the nightmares. the remembering. humans weren’t meant to go there and remember what it felt like, dying. there’s no black-and-white justice, no easy scales of right and wrong. the house chose weapons and wielded them and now koby’s throat burns with the physical mark.]
After – oh. [for a moment he thinks after the anger, what had happened – but the answer is the same, after the anger, after the water. koby’s mouth quirks, wryly, leaning further back in his chair, tapping his toes with that overflow of fidgety energy he possesses.] Then I turned into a seal.
[his eyes flick upwards, towards the overgrown fringe of his cotton-candy-bright hair.] A pink one, yes. [that’s typically the first question people ask him, after all.]
[pink is the color of capillaries distributed through muscle, skin, and other tissue. the stranger acknowledges the palette of the pinneped in question with a vague jig of his head, his thoughts apparently elsewhere.
he sighs. the assessment looks, frankly, fucking dire, but that's not for koby to experience as disappointment. the stranger likes hiking. a good peak is better than a flat trail. cold tides, better than the lake.] Every emotion wants something. Even your joy. Even your shame. [and that—is either a gesture of some value or a careless lapse. the stranger does not talk about shame often. it's the dirtiest fuel available, and unpredictable.]
What do yours want now? Do you know?
[there's not enough room under this table for him to sit upright fully, so his arms leave the gentle grotto made by koby's lap, under the overhang. instead, he grasps the legs of the boy's chair. pushes him back, out over the library carpet. far back enough that 'qimir' can hitch himself out, uncoiling like the predator of your choice. shoulders squaring.]
[koby is, of course, ravenously curious about the direction and focus of the stranger’s thoughts, but – there are manners, propriety, avoiding the nosy shuffle of a too-curious mind through someone else’s head. koby’s never enjoyed having his own thoughts spied on, after all.
so he stays still, thoughtful, except for a startled almost-squeak of sound when he’s suddenly gently pushed away from the table, the movement effortless. koby’s not a particularly large or weighty person to move around, he knows, but there’s a fluidity to the gesture that speaks of strength, power, capability. in light of that, koby keeps his gaze fixed upwards as the stranger uncoils, stands, shoulders squaring and blotting out the light.
almost as an afterthought, looking up and up and up:] I’m not sure. All different things, I suppose? [a beat, taking stock of his emotion, his thoughts, plucking out the ones that have more to say than simply oh, tall.] To be less afraid, I guess. That’s always there.
I can't teach you that, [fails utterly to sound humble. the stranger should stop talking about humility on the network. it's the worst way to persuade anybody it's true. he pulls over another chair with a hand on the back, settles it perpendicular to koby's repositioned perch. he drops himself onto it, glancing around the library.
this is actually not a bad place to do the things he wants to do. he prefers outside, as a general rule. but this is a good spot. the window. the quality light. the gay duck contemplating them from her nest. his eyes come to back to koby afterward and it's a little like they never left. not enough blinking. the stranger is too still again.] I can teach you to bury it deeper. Or change your relationship with it.
[there is a right answer, actually. but the stranger finds that he is not in a rush today, to explain what it is, to drag anybody over rough terrain to the milestones out on the horizon. something about the window, the quality of light, the queer bird listening with her chin pillowed in her own breastfeathers. he is neither as good or bad at acceptance as he believes he is.]
[something about the way he speaks makes koby’s cautious, wide-eyed posture quirk up into something mirthful, bemused, one hand reaching to cover his mouth, cover the grin. it’s – confidence, full satisfaction in his abilities, and it’s the sort of thing koby’s always been drawn to inexorably, irresistibly. luffy had it, that of course i can do that, duh, obviously. the stranger is smooth edges and careful, long looks, not quite luffy’s frenetic sunlit energy, but – koby can’t help but be reminded of him.
so he lowers the hand, lets the flash of his smile be seen, the way his cheeks, his freckled nose go pink with hopeful eagerness, big bright eyes fixed on the stranger with so much unguarded curiosity and happiness that it’s like looking into the sun.]
Change it. I don’t want to go back to burying. [there’s confidence in koby’s voice, firm and eager, and lincoln blinks her knowing, sapphic bird eyes a couple times before closing them in contentment. koby reaches out, strokes her feathers, sits a bit taller.] It’s nice of you to help me, and I don’t – want to waste your time. Anyone’s time.
[firmly, chin up, bright youthful determination:] So. I want to learn everything I can to change, not hide. I want to keep moving forward.
[there is nothing but time here to waste. there are no jedi upon which to spend his cruelty, no vendetta by which he might draw purpose. but the stranger looks at the younger man, chin up and chest out and bright with brass, and cannot bring himself to be anything but gracious—and that's only a little bit of an act.]
Okay. I'll show you. But you still have to let me into your head. No memories. Promise.
[he stoops down then and moves koby's chair again. grip around the leg, rotating him so that they can face each other without losing the back support, which is important, whether you're pushing forty with decades of combat training or barely out of childhood and in need of a squat regimen, according to the soonest available data. and then the stranger is offering his hands. palm-up.
some days, it's very hard for 'qimir' to keep irony out of his face. life at saltburnt seems like a cosmic joke, and it's the only defiance he has, to give zero fucks about it. but koby is very earnest. don't nobody point out that the stranger's expression might be softer for it. unless they're doing it in the unknowable language of ducks.]
[koby keeps his determined posture until the stranger is gently tugging his chair around again, at which point he squawks a little (sorry, lincoln) and scrambles to grab the sides of it to keep from being dislodged. again, there’s a fluttery little feeling in his chest when he thinks about how easily this man in particular can move him around – across a ballroom, through a library, up against a wall – but licks his lips, clears his throat and pushes that back down into a box for the time being.
their chairs are facing one another, and koby sits back up, squares his shoulders, looks at the offered hands for a moment before reaching to settle his, palm-down. he doesn’t hesitate perhaps as much as he should, perhaps as much as truly wise man might’ve, but the way he looks upwards, hopeful, eager bright eyes suggests that pure wisdom is not part of koby’s appeal, in the end.
his mind calms, too, the sensation of early-sunset pink, something still barely peeking over the horizon, something not fully realized, but holding the potential of a sun, several suns, somewhere inside the unassuming boy offering his hands, his smile, his trust that the stranger will keep his word. lincoln watches, nonplussed but aware, ready to adjust her opinion accordingly. she’ll be the cautious, wary force that koby doesn’t possess.]
['qimir' and 'duck' exchange brief glances now. while koby's radiant doe eyes are closed, master and pet will achieve a cool, queer understanding. if the stranger tries something, he'll be out some wrist meat in the shape of a razor-edged beak bite. or his nose? nobody would fuck him if he didn't have a nose.
he looks at his student. maybe koby would feel sorry for him and fuck him if he didn't have a nose. the stranger twitches a smile off his own face. closes his eyes.
the storm wracks the air, splitting atmosphere with the cracking boom of thunder and the raw white light of electricity. claw marks in the sky. below, the sea is devouring maw, black veined with white. caving in one moment, rocketing up into peaks the next. of course it's the sea. but it's angry tonight. not the deep trench boil of the stranger's aura, or the taut, brisk promise of the illusions (hallucinations?) before. this sea is rage. an inhuman scream with no end to the depth of its stratospheric lungs.
and in it, the boat. sails full to bursting. it is so impossibly small. tosses up and down like a toy. there are bodies in it, of course. one of them, pink-haired and slender in moonlight; the other tatty black and skinny, a ship's cat befitting such a pitiful vessel. the wood is wont to burst in the chaos below.
a final detail emerges in a fork of lightning: land. neither near nor far. but the tide pulls away, and the wind pulls toward.]
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[he should probably be asking how koby did it. or, you know. 'what is the undead?' and yet, and yet.]
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[pac-man is getting closer, pinging off the ethereal sonar of koby's ability. a long-legged lope, an indolent gait. not particularly hurried. negging happens on a lot of simultaneous levels for him.]
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[neatly, clipped, while koby holes up in his particular favorite corner of the library, stacks of his notes and his books and his dossiers all around him, stone cold mug of tea he'd forgotten hours ago sitting next to a placidly sleeping white duck. it's an odd sight, except for the constancy of it -- his unofficial office, his home away from home.]
→ action! (I have chosen to assume desk or I will delete this tag accidentally somehow)
and then he steps into view. looks at koby. looks at the cold tea. also, the duck (??). walking up to the desk without pause, his face pleasantly neutral. even when it—that is, his face, his whole head, his entire person, drops below the level of the table, vanishing underneath. he is very agile with the asian squat, for a person who does not know he is asian. and it's an easy pivot, heel and hand, til he's arrived at koby's feet.
his arms are layered up in cozy folds of merino wool today, arranging themselves comfortably atop of the boy's knees. his head is at about crotch height, and something about the lazy sweep of his eyes suggests he is contemplating whether or not he can undo koby's fly with use of his teeth alone. but his tone is conversational:] What do you think anger is?
all good haha :D
however, when the stranger steps around the corner of the nearest shelf, takes in the mess, the duck, the tea, then suddenly – disappears, koby sits up a bit straighter, with a quiet sound of alarm –] Oh, that–
– oh. [because now there’s a (potentially) dangerous man under his desk, arms resting on his knees, looking upwards at him with quiet eyes and sharp cheekbones and questions about anger. koby is in his typical library uniform – overalls over a sweater, an aesthetic that has gotten him more than a few kindergarten teacher comparisons – but he doesn’t move away from the gentle weight of the stranger across his knees.]
Well. [said as he reaches out to stroke the duck’s feathers, as she lifts her head and gives the entire situation a bored sort of fowlish look.] An emotion? And – a reaction?
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lesson planning takes a lot of time and effort. more than the teaching itself.] Sure. Yeah. Anger wants things to be fair. Even when its impossible. Even when it can't know what fair is.
But that's what it wants. [there is a steady expectation fully formed in his face, a stalagmite of sentiment growing up to meet koby's regard. that the boy from the sea will take the matter to thought. even if there is a vaguely inappropriate older man sitting at his feet, legs crossed over the toes of his tasseled boat shoes, or whatever. the stranger does no mind reading. he just watches the soft oval of koby's face like it might change moon phases if he forgets to blink long enough.]
That scare you? Does it only scare you?
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So it’s – a response to injustice. Perceived or otherwise. [perhaps incongruously, koby’s wearing converse all-stars. he likes them, they remind him of home.] I guess that makes sense.
[then, at the question, koby shakes his head, reaching to scoop the duck off the table and into his lap, petting along her smooth, sleek feathers. she regards the stranger with cool indifference.] Not when I think of it that way, I guess? If it’s just a response to injustice, that’s – understandable. Not worth being afraid of.
Lincoln doesn’t bite, by the way, unless she’s hungry.
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he likes animals, as a general rule. less when they're trying to kill him, but the ones who try to eat him with lesser ambitions are just doing what they are meant to do. in the quiet of a sunlit library, the stranger reaches out to pat the duck. he should donate a finger to a good cause, honestly. there isn't even a lightsaber to wave around here.] I'd say, it's worth a healthy respect. An a long and intimate acquaintance. One thing to know, logically.
Another to have it, viscerally. [the feathers are nice. capture a lot of warmth. he pets with the grain. no wonder earth people are constantly stripping nests to fill their winter clothes, comforters, and pillows. he's not going to do that, obviously. lincoln is plainly a lesbian; hopefully above the self-disfigurement that comes of compulsory nesting behavior.]
Will you show me, the last time you were angry? [it's a big ask, and a gesture at boundaries set. can't possibly be a shock.]
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Logically. Right. It does seem to be one or the other. [lincoln, self-satisfied, turns to mouth lightly at koby’s hand, deadly teeth not so much as scratching his scarred-up knuckles, guiding him to pet another spot.] You either feel it or know it.
[the question gets a thoughtful headtilt, then koby shakes his head.] No. I’ll tell you about it, but – no. [showing is too close, too viscerally vivid, the memory still one that jabs and aches in his chest.]
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or maybe he does. that being the problem. the latent cyclone of energy waiting around him more dangerous than a bird's mandibles. the stranger's face is neutral, looking up from the shadow of the table. no gentle tricks of posture and rhetoric will grant him passage across this bridge. he'll reassess. may have been a mistake, starting this with words; they make distance.]
All right. Tell me. [—or it wasn't. distance is strategic, too. a slow approach, a steady pace. people talk themselves into feeling, all the time. his fingers follow the grain of duck feathers and his chin settles on his wrist, a neutral weight on the cap of koby's knee.]
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so instead he shifts backwards in his seat, thinks – as if he needs to think, as if he doesn’t already, immediately know.] It was when I came back, from dying. [a bizarre statement in any context except saltburnt.] When we first come back to life, we’re not…really ourselves. We need to have a stone with our name on it retrieved from the lake before we’re fully back to normal.
[lincoln lifts her head at that, a keenly knowing glint in her eyes, watching the way koby’s hands tremble a little when he adjusts his glasses, pushing them up the bridge of his nose with a fingertip.] I was very angry at – pretty much everyone until I recovered my stone.
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this place is fucking terrifying. but it takes him a breath—three—to measure this new information and cut around it. by end of week, it might be ready to wear. not as fashionable as converse shoes. better arch support, though. some of this is not new at all. learning from his pupils. be they embodiment of vergence, traitors, or particularly well-versed in twenty-first century sexting. (he'd like to see koby angry, but at this point, that's a foregone conclusion. the quake in koby's finger feels like a promise made in a room built to echo.)]
What shape did your anger take? For whom?
[he stops touching the duck, which is not a euphemism for anything. token respect. she is also present, listening, and a little too intense. the dark deserves to be loved with dedication. he folds his arm over the other.]
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he reaches up now, tugs his sweater collar into place, self-consciously, even though there’s little to no chance the stranger can see the thick band of scarring. the one on his forehead, yes, a criss-cross from another death fall-out, months before, half-hidden by the overgrown flop of cotton-candy hair. but the scar of his death is hidden, still, until spring and summer and warmth comes.]
I was a selkie. [and in spite of himself, there’s a note of fondness in the word, affection for the form he’d taken, the way this place had protected him from the horror of coming back to life when he shouldn’t have.] Is that a legend, where you’re from? Seals that can turn human, shed their skins.
[lincoln is watching, silent, knowing. koby’s rough fingertips are impossibly gentle when he strokes the tiny feathers of her head, her neck, small as scales.] It sounds like a nice fairytale, but – I’d wake up every night, go out and stand in the lake in my pajamas, watching the water. I’d go blue, before I went in, and if anyone stopped me, I’d be so – angry. So upset at them. Even though they were trying to help me.
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nothing in the old world took this much fucking effort to understand. this paradigm is a strange environment. but koby's words reverberate through the force with emotion familiar as color and necessary as air, and that's a counterweight, stabilizing, in a world that otherwise can't stop swaying. (like the sea. but that's neither here nor there.) (he does not think it sounds like a nice fairytale; he thinks it sounds like an open wound waiting to end in tragedy.)
(but he's lost a lot of skin, before.)]
What did you do?
cw: vague passive suicidal ideation if u squint
I yelled at people. [it sounds – mild, and koby knows it, leaning back and spreading his arms over the back of his chair, something wry in the way his mouth tucks at the corner.] I think the last time I yelled at someone before that was – a year and a half? Almost two. It’s not something I do.
[comparatively, then, a complete loss of control, of propriety. koby looks down at the stranger for a moment, at him knelt there (petitioner, worshipper, crouching beast, which will it be). one hand twitches forward, like koby’s about to touch, to feel, to brush the loose fall of dark hair out of the man’s face. he doesn’t.]
Then I went into the water. All the way in. Until it swallowed me up. [wistfulness, longing, something like nostalgia, maybe, maybe.]
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the stranger thinks about losses that add up like sand in the hourglass. he thinks about the motion that died in koby's scar-mired hand before it could bear out its potential. he thinks how touch might have felt in his hair, and finds he does not mind the exercise in patience.] Strange, isn't it?
What feels fair. Unjust. Or like you're being cheated of what's rightfully yours. [he lifts his head, finally. puts a thumbnail against his own brow, scratching like a creature interrupting its own serenity to sate some negligible discomfort. afterward, he does not lay his chin down again. looks at the soft knit of koby's shirt, then the soft shadow of koby's throat, at the scar he surely, surely cannot see.]
And after?
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I guess it is. But it’s – selfish. [the longing to have justice, balance, the awareness that he should not be there to crave it, that he’d gone past a door he shouldn’t be able to return from. the nightmares. the remembering. humans weren’t meant to go there and remember what it felt like, dying. there’s no black-and-white justice, no easy scales of right and wrong. the house chose weapons and wielded them and now koby’s throat burns with the physical mark.]
After – oh. [for a moment he thinks after the anger, what had happened – but the answer is the same, after the anger, after the water. koby’s mouth quirks, wryly, leaning further back in his chair, tapping his toes with that overflow of fidgety energy he possesses.] Then I turned into a seal.
[his eyes flick upwards, towards the overgrown fringe of his cotton-candy-bright hair.] A pink one, yes. [that’s typically the first question people ask him, after all.]
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he sighs. the assessment looks, frankly, fucking dire, but that's not for koby to experience as disappointment. the stranger likes hiking. a good peak is better than a flat trail. cold tides, better than the lake.] Every emotion wants something. Even your joy. Even your shame. [and that—is either a gesture of some value or a careless lapse. the stranger does not talk about shame often. it's the dirtiest fuel available, and unpredictable.]
What do yours want now? Do you know?
[there's not enough room under this table for him to sit upright fully, so his arms leave the gentle grotto made by koby's lap, under the overhang. instead, he grasps the legs of the boy's chair. pushes him back, out over the library carpet. far back enough that 'qimir' can hitch himself out, uncoiling like the predator of your choice. shoulders squaring.]
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so he stays still, thoughtful, except for a startled almost-squeak of sound when he’s suddenly gently pushed away from the table, the movement effortless. koby’s not a particularly large or weighty person to move around, he knows, but there’s a fluidity to the gesture that speaks of strength, power, capability. in light of that, koby keeps his gaze fixed upwards as the stranger uncoils, stands, shoulders squaring and blotting out the light.
almost as an afterthought, looking up and up and up:] I’m not sure. All different things, I suppose? [a beat, taking stock of his emotion, his thoughts, plucking out the ones that have more to say than simply oh, tall.] To be less afraid, I guess. That’s always there.
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this is actually not a bad place to do the things he wants to do. he prefers outside, as a general rule. but this is a good spot. the window. the quality light. the gay duck contemplating them from her nest. his eyes come to back to koby afterward and it's a little like they never left. not enough blinking. the stranger is too still again.] I can teach you to bury it deeper. Or change your relationship with it.
[there is a right answer, actually. but the stranger finds that he is not in a rush today, to explain what it is, to drag anybody over rough terrain to the milestones out on the horizon. something about the window, the quality of light, the queer bird listening with her chin pillowed in her own breastfeathers. he is neither as good or bad at acceptance as he believes he is.]
Up to you.
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so he lowers the hand, lets the flash of his smile be seen, the way his cheeks, his freckled nose go pink with hopeful eagerness, big bright eyes fixed on the stranger with so much unguarded curiosity and happiness that it’s like looking into the sun.]
Change it. I don’t want to go back to burying. [there’s confidence in koby’s voice, firm and eager, and lincoln blinks her knowing, sapphic bird eyes a couple times before closing them in contentment. koby reaches out, strokes her feathers, sits a bit taller.] It’s nice of you to help me, and I don’t – want to waste your time. Anyone’s time.
[firmly, chin up, bright youthful determination:] So. I want to learn everything I can to change, not hide. I want to keep moving forward.
okay fine this was very anime bb boy
Okay. I'll show you. But you still have to let me into your head. No memories. Promise.
[he stoops down then and moves koby's chair again. grip around the leg, rotating him so that they can face each other without losing the back support, which is important, whether you're pushing forty with decades of combat training or barely out of childhood and in need of a squat regimen, according to the soonest available data. and then the stranger is offering his hands. palm-up.
some days, it's very hard for 'qimir' to keep irony out of his face. life at saltburnt seems like a cosmic joke, and it's the only defiance he has, to give zero fucks about it. but koby is very earnest. don't nobody point out that the stranger's expression might be softer for it. unless they're doing it in the unknowable language of ducks.]
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their chairs are facing one another, and koby sits back up, squares his shoulders, looks at the offered hands for a moment before reaching to settle his, palm-down. he doesn’t hesitate perhaps as much as he should, perhaps as much as truly wise man might’ve, but the way he looks upwards, hopeful, eager bright eyes suggests that pure wisdom is not part of koby’s appeal, in the end.
his mind calms, too, the sensation of early-sunset pink, something still barely peeking over the horizon, something not fully realized, but holding the potential of a sun, several suns, somewhere inside the unassuming boy offering his hands, his smile, his trust that the stranger will keep his word. lincoln watches, nonplussed but aware, ready to adjust her opinion accordingly. she’ll be the cautious, wary force that koby doesn’t possess.]
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he looks at his student. maybe koby would feel sorry for him and fuck him if he didn't have a nose. the stranger twitches a smile off his own face. closes his eyes.
the storm wracks the air, splitting atmosphere with the cracking boom of thunder and the raw white light of electricity. claw marks in the sky. below, the sea is devouring maw, black veined with white. caving in one moment, rocketing up into peaks the next. of course it's the sea. but it's angry tonight. not the deep trench boil of the stranger's aura, or the taut, brisk promise of the illusions (hallucinations?) before. this sea is rage. an inhuman scream with no end to the depth of its stratospheric lungs.
and in it, the boat. sails full to bursting. it is so impossibly small. tosses up and down like a toy. there are bodies in it, of course. one of them, pink-haired and slender in moonlight; the other tatty black and skinny, a ship's cat befitting such a pitiful vessel. the wood is wont to burst in the chaos below.
a final detail emerges in a fork of lightning: land. neither near nor far. but the tide pulls away, and the wind pulls toward.]