aefenglom | ota | did someone break your heart inside?

Entry tags:

ota | did someone break your heart inside?

Name: Myr Shivana (un: mshivana)
Date: Mareuer 02, evening
Format: Video (!!)

[Somehow, this is a video post. Myr must've toggled it accidentally in trying to get to voice. The angle's awful, with the camera halfway covered by one of his hands, but what's visible of the Faun looks--

Well. He's seen better days. His face is hollow with sleeplessness and his hair's coming out of its usual braid. Even his blindfold seems mussed, pulled up a little on one side so there's a hint of scarring visible.]

We're accustomed to saying someone who's left us through the mirrors has "gone home". [Hello to you, too, Myr.] Like our time here in Aefenglom's the same as a trip to the Orlais countryside--a temporary jaunt and then home we go, with only the memories to keep.

Except we haven't got any evidence that's the case. Mirrorbound from the same world don't remember each other going missing or coming back with strange stories to tell. Those of us who've gotten new memories from home don't leave and live out their lives and return, they go to the Looking-glass House and see something in their mirrors.

I don't think we're who we think we are. [He shifts, tucking his chin toward his chest and covering the camera a little more. The charms on his antlers rattle against each other.] That is--I think the best explanation is we're not the people we remember being, taken physically from our homes in an eyeblink and returned the same way.

Back home, spirits in the Fade--our realm of dreams--will often imitate what they see in the waking world, or pick out of someone's memories. Some of them are very good at it. I wonder that we're not the same kind of thing--some product of Talam's dreams, created from magic and given memories of our homes, with the mirrors as our binding focus to keep us here.

And when they take us back--we die.

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[With that sort of slow careful phrasing that comes with utter disbelief:]

Please clarify; those who 'go home' and experience changes in their life are merely walking up to their mirrors and ... hallucinating a while? No-one actually leaves? Is this common? Everyone does it this way?

That's my understanding.

There are some Mirrorbound have left through their Mirrors--Bonds broken and everything--and come back with new memories. A few come back remembering they've been in Aefenglom before, but many don't.

[He fidgets with his watch, which results in more of the camera being covered.]

I haven't...investigated in any systematic way, whether the ones who do remember also remember knowing about Aefenglom when they were back home.

You're blocking your own recording.

[It's almost absent. You can see part of a Myr! But not all of the Myr! And it's all sepia.]

Even for those who 'leave', do we have a way to be certain they left at all, or is it merely absent bonds, which distance alone can shatter, and an absence of person? Have they been observed walking back through their mirror or however that goes?

[This is dumb, and she kind of hopes true, but she'll indulge it.] Not a bad supposition, but it takes too much of your experience from home into account. And if there is anything I have learned about this place it is that it is not going to work like your home. After all, if it worked like mine, Monsters would still be hunted in the streets, as fate would also dictate they would not be able to control themselves from killing and feasting on the blood and flesh of everyone around them.

We have dream worlds in my home, as well. Dreams which both the living and the dead can enter, but only those connected to a Great One can leave. Dreams and nightmares where time doesn't matter, because to the Great Ones... time does not matter. The Hunt could last for hours, days, weeks, if you went by your own reckoning; yet the Tomb of the Gods never moved a minute, trapped eternally in stasis in the catacombs. It would repeat, as well. You'd leave, and come back, and things you had killed would be back. Watchers would return to their posts, the rats would scurry over the corpses, but the doors would be open, and the vaults would be empty of whatever you took. And life in the waking world, when the Hunt was over, marched on at a tempo you'd find very familiar, despite both of those things.

And furthermore... what does it matter? Why even bring this up? Your existence is suddenly completely pointless? You've not made an impact on the lives of those around you; animals, humans, even the residents here, even if it's in this small bubble? So what if you die afterward? My world is an endless nightmare of blood and violence, and I've already died twice within it. If even a small part of me got some kind of reprieve from it, I consider it a welcome, if undeserved vacation.

I'm going to die when I go back through the mirrors anyway.

[It's easy, when he's in a mood like this, to hear tone rather than content; that he takes Maria's response as a rebuke initially is obvious from how his one visible ear lowers and he rounds his shoulders.

Then the rest of his intellect catches up with him and he shakes his head firmly.]

You mistake my intent, Lady. I don't like the thought we may be some kind of spirit or construct; it means I won't return to the Maker's arms when I die. [And that is, frankly, horrifying to him.] But I don't believe it makes anything we do here meaningless.

[He's only in this much agony right now because of his effect on other lives and he Doesn't Like It.

Not enough to wish he weren't existing, curiously, beyond wanting to sleep most of the day to ignore his problems. But he finds himself not actually wanting to die and that's...something. That's something to hang on to.]

This matters because the truth matters. If we really aren't ourselves, then it's pointless to sink resources into "going home" to homes that were never ours in the first place. It's a choice already made, I know, for those of you who are dead--but if it's true for all of us that there's no "home" to return to, it should inform how we act and the sort of future we seek for ourselves.

I'm sorry--I'm what?

[Wait. These things can take pictures, is he on--

Oh no.]

Oh, Maker. You got an image of that? [He's a mess!!! In his pajamas!! ~~On the Zoom call!!~~] You're getting images of me?

If I was dishonest in suggesting it the first time, why would I tell the truth now simply because you questioned it?

Edited 2021-03-03 17:38 (UTC)

[Congratulations, Lahabrea, you get a perspective: You're Myr's watch of him covering his face with his watch hand.

high-resolution_antler_sepia.jpeg]

Just a moment.

[The entire call drops then re-establishes as voice only.]

There, that should have fixed it.

As to your question--I don't know that, either. It may be someone has observed a friend or Bonded stepping back to a mirror, but I [obviously] don't have direct experience.

There was a flood of temporary Mirrorbound several months ago, none of who had fixed mirrors, who did vanish wherever they were when the month was up.

It's too late, you've been seen. If you can't get proper rest on your own, medical sleep is just as good.

[His tone is dry; it's hard to tell if he means it or not, if it's any genuine concern or just idle commentary, but that's par the course.]

Mm, that aside. There's no evidence then that anyone actually ever leaves. Some disappear, which might simply be to a distance further than a bond may stretch, another continent or even an island off the coast would be far enough. And for most, 'going home' simply means staring at a mirror and ... accepting whatever it shows as reality ...

[Something shifts slightly in his voice from incredulous to something far less pleasant.]

..Without ever questioning or doubting. Without ever wondering if a star which duplicates or kidnaps might be invested in keeping its victims in place and thus show whatever is required to keep them captive, passive, and not struggling to find a way out..

Well if you ask me, it would have been pointless to begin with; I am already dead, and thus there is no reason whatsoever to want to yearn to return home. All I'd be doing is going back to a cold grave. [A scoff.] If that. I was prepared to accept it, if that was the fate. So your argument holds very little bearing for someone like me, but, at the same time...

Why rob people of their hope? If that's what motivates them, let them have it.

That's another thing I've learned from being here.

This makes an awfully great number of assumptions, don't you think?

You're leaping to conclusions to explain the memory gap when wouldn't the most likely case be that the magic that powers the Looking Glass simply doesn't preserve memory? Memory loss due to traumatic disorientation is not unheard of, particularly in teleportation magic. Anything that travels over space time is going to cause issues with the perception of space and time. Certainly, this is also an assumption, but at least it's an assumption based on observations of similar phenomenon we can see right here in this world.

I feel like you're leaping to conclusions based on extremely limited information. If you have to supplement your explanation with "back home", then you're already presuming that your world and this one operate on similar principals when we already know that's not the case or all of our worlds would hold such principals.

you say that as if it is a misfortune

To me it certainly feels one right now. [Depressed Faun is at least aware he's depressed.]

if it means that i never truly left the person i swore to stand by, i would welcome oblivion for this part of me

It fits what facts we have as well as a number of any other explanations might. [~~Alas Thedas doesn't have a robust philosophy of science yet, or he'd say the whole theory is underspecified.~~]

Amnesia on our return being one of them, but if it's an effect of passage through the mirrors, why do we retain our memories in full on arriving? The effects of teleportation between locations here are agnostic to the destination, unless there's some kind of interference between the teleporting Witch and her intended target--and that would operate for those teleporting from her destination to her departure point, too. Further, we've no precedent for anyone's memory being entirely erased by dislocation. Brief disorientation's a very different beast from losing months of one's past.

You could posit that there's a spell, or effect, that only operates on departing Mirrorbound to erase their memories, while not interfering with arrivals. Which, as far as I know, does not have much precedent within Talam's magic.

Further, we ourselves are a phenomenon without much precedent. We aren't exactly like our native counterparts, Witches or Monsters, and so far as I have heard the Coven still has no explanation for that. Saying our experiences must be completely explicable within the bounds of known magic here thus falls flat, because they are demonstrably not. Therefore, while any analogy to magical or metaphysical processes from our homes is inexact, it isn't a bad tool for developing hypotheses about our actual nature.

[He...actually sounds like he's enjoying this.]

This is all leaving aside the metaphysical question, of course--if all our memories and all physical evidence of our time here are erased when we return through the mirrors, such that we're returned home exactly as we left it with no hope of remembering what we've done here-- Did our selves here not effectively die?

[A quiet huff.] It is some comfort to me to know that--in some sense--I haven't left Thedas at all.

But the part of me that's here exploring the idea it may never return is taking it hard.

[Because Myr has a sweet and generous soul he's going to assume that's something like concern, insofar as ageless conquering demigods experience such an emotion toward mortals who are not their concern or creation.]

Maker, [he says with a huffing laugh,] that's the only kind I've been getting. [Clearly not very much, though.] Likely have to get something stronger, since I've been told Fauns can get resistant to it over time.

[He's then silent for a looong moment, considering what Lahabrea's said. That would fit known facts as well as his own explanation, but it's decidedly more...sinister.] If that were so, messere, I'd think it likewise obligates us to determine what we are, under the premise that it's licit and moral to resist one's captors after being abducted.

[When Myr replies to this one he's switched back to voice-only.]

I hold hope in very high esteem, Lady, and wouldn't want to deprive people of it unduly. But I don't think this is a merely metaphysical matter--we saw last year that interfering with the mirrors can have dramatic consequences for not only us but the entire city.

What if any spell that would let one of us return also forces all of us to return? Would our assent to using that spell differ if we knew all it did was wipe us from existence, instead of returning us to our homes?

Conversely, since the mirrors can call us back at any time, wouldn't knowing whether that's a return or a death make a difference to how urgently we study finding ways to stay?

And I ask again, would it matter either way? The trend is that, regardless of anything else, more people leave than stay. Think of how long you have been here, and think of how many others there have been that are still here from that time. There are not many. Even Eren has left, and he almost seemed a permanent fixture in the town; it seems those that stay are exceptions, not rules, and none have been here permanently. Besides, the Mirrorbound arrive in... spats, and disappear more scattered than that. What makes you think the mirrors even can handle the influx of power that would come with... doing whatever it is that they do, to all of us at once?

I think the odds are extremely in the favor that finding out how to reverse the spell on the mirrors and send people back into them will be individualistic - especially if it can be casted, it can be controlled. But even imagining the strangest, most characteristic-defying idea - I still don't particularly mind either way. If we all did have to be sent through at once, I already came to terms I'd just be going back and doing what I was before I came here. Which was being dead. For some years, if the Hunter of Hunter's memories had anything to say about it. Long enough to be forgotten. And nothing will have changed. With enough time, here, too, will have forgotten us.

If there are ways to stay, no one has learned them. If there are ways to go, no one has learned them. Some have been studying it from the beginning, and have no more answers than before. And since the trend is that we'll be going back through them eventually regardless, then studying ways to stay should have been the priority from the beginning. Conversely, it may be too late now.

You may want to start hoping that it isn't death to return, or come to terms with it if it is.

[Lahabrea sounds just ever so slightly annoyed.]

One would think you would have more faith in your deity. Do you think your Maker is so weak and pathetic as to not be able to fetch His faithful back to His grip upon your demise because you're on another world? Or is He merely that petty as to reject one of His faithful simply for being of a different origin? If He is either that narrow minded or that feeble, He is not deserving of adoration. But if He is capable, then walk a life that would make you worth fighting another star to reclaim.

[Wow, rude???

Myr has no immediate answer for this one because it's not the direction of attack he was expecting.

Finally,]

I don't--

[You do still pray to Him, Myr, so why do that if you think He's neither listening nor willing to rescue you?]

--Excuse me a moment, messere.

[Is he turning off his watch to cry?

Yes.]

I went home and returned.

( at least, he's pretty sure he wasn't just stood at the Looking Glass house for those five minutes on Tierra. what would be the point? )

[Though Myr's not there to hear it, there is a low disgusted noise and a clatter as the device is tossed aside.

What these people need is more Zodiark in their life. Then they won't have to spend all their time handflapping about whether or not their God might bother to fight for them.]

Thank you for that, messere.

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ota | did someone break your heart inside?

NO VIDEO just audio

you still get video because myr has no idea he's broadcasting

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OUT OF NOWHERE

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audio; un: steak.

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much more than a moment later,