exsiliumlogs | this is the way of it [OPEN]

Entry tags:

this is the way of it [OPEN]

Date & Time: 1/18 -> end of Jan
Location: near and around a bed
Characters: Soldier Blue, tbd
Summary: a psychic dying tends to dreamhop or suck nearby people into his own dreams.
Warnings: dying, references to such, any bad memories lying about in any given headspace

The way of it was unprecedented in his world: If any Mu before him had lived a life to its full extent, it was done so hidden away from notice. All others suffered and inevitably died far, far too young. Too many children.

Soldier Blue found his eyes wouldn't open, his body barely stir, disobeying every command just the way it had at the start of his fifteen-year sleep. He'd been so much more resigned to that, back then. Secure as he could be in the faith he had in his successor, his comrades. Here, though? Here, he wasn't so sure.

Throughout the days that passed, he found the strength to exert, push his mind away from the prison of his body, if only for a moment. But he'd lose himself in doing that, lose the purpose, drift and find himself straying into dreams or the passing presence of more focused, willful minds, some more familiar than others. It all twisted into pasts distant and near, making for disorienting journeys that often ended in the darkness that he constantly tried to shake himself from, harder and harder each time.

He chased the specks of light he perceived in the place of those thoughts and dreams, feeling weight bearing down upon his body the further he reached. Warmth on his cheek, the gentle breathy voice of his goddess...or some other? Everything blended together so seamlessly that the tears reality caused were frightening.

His reach shrank and lights grew distant like stars, became stars, a canopy of a hundred-years old vigil in an entirely different world.

Ataraxion? Exsilium? He couldn't say, not without someone to tell him the right of it. Whether they were ghosts or truly present, though...

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Elvish dreams are not quite the same as those of mortals; they are memories, more than anything else. And in her sleep, Galadriel now wanders through some of her oldest memories.

There's a city on a hill, its white walls shining in some undefinable light. It's not the sun; there is no sun. But all the same, the entire scene is awash in that warm glowing light. The streets bustle with activity; hundreds of elves going about their daily business, speaking in an ancient tongue.

Galadriel does not mingle with them. Not now, at least. Instead, she sits in a large courtyard near the center of the city, resting underneath a tall tree, just watching people come and go.

A dream like this is much more solid than the shifty vapors of feelings and memories Blue's mind has become tangled in, pulled from one resonating emotion to another like a leaf tossed and carried down a rough stream. The sensation of falling into Galadriel's nostalgia is...like a runner hitting a membrane, a recording dropped to half-speed slower, where all the rush becomes like a heavy pit bringing him down, and Blue's awareness of body and self comes among the filing of strangers whose faces he can barely discern.

He is able to break free of the flow of this accidental procession right at the mouth of the courtyard, where Galadriel herself rests and is, as ever, radiant. As the heart of this memory, she is impossible to resist being drawn toward, yet Blue doesn't understand it himself, still lost and dazed from simply entering this private place.

"Blue." There's a brief flash of surprise on her face when she sees him (because why would he be *here*), but it doesn't last long before settling into a warm smile. This is a place close to her heart, but lost to her in all but memory; it would be pleasant, she thinks, to share it.

"Come, sit with me."

In his confusion, he mistakes the radiance that Galadriel is for another, pushed forward by an aching need to see her again. Physis. Assuming it's her pushes so many questions, many that argue even being there, that slow his steps and make him realize it's not her at all.

Mere feet away from her, Blue stands frozen, his face contorted with confusion, washing into dismay and shame.

"Galadriel..." How could he mistake her for anyone? His head shakes, slowing as he brings his hands to his temples. "I don't understand. Where am I...?"

"You are in Tirion upon Túna, as it exists in my memory and my dreams." There's something sad in her smile, a longing that she does not put into words but that can be felt all around her. This is her dream, after all, and her emotions are intimately tied to the memory of this place. "Here I was born and raised."

He looked up from his hands, his face painted with greater alarm than before.

"Then this is..." His head turned, looking back the way he came, to the streets and passing people. This is her heart. A place within...

For all her kindnesses and gestures of welcome, Galadriel to Blue was something like the sun: to be admired, yes, but one couldn't stare at it directly, nor touch it. He felt himself somewhere terribly taboo, looking into a world that he didn't belong to. Troubling still: He didn't recall how he got there in the first place.

Blue looked back at her, fishing for words despite the shock.

"To be in such an important place..." He shook his head. "I didn't intend to trespass...I couldn't have."

"Peace." She held up a hand, as if to stop his protests. "You are welcome here."

A flash of movement catches her eye and she pauses to watch a group of young children run laughing through the streets. This is how she likes to remember the city: warm, friendly, innocent. Before a shadow had descended upon them all.

The fond smile is still on her face when she turns back to Blue. "The walls around my mind are tall and strong. If I did not wish you to be here, you would not be; I could have shut you out."

There's an ache that comes with being received so warmly, an awareness in him that he's neither earned nor deserving of it. Yet she offers it all the same, incredible being that she is. It makes him feel small, perceive himself as such, and with that thought carried along as he moves to sit at her side, he is smaller. Younger. And while Mu age so little themselves, the evidence somehow plays out on what leaves his features, in contrast to what remains unchanged.

Small, young, unknowing. He's in a place where he's simply that.

"I don't remember coming here," he says softly, his gaze downcast. "If I was invited or...if I fell her on my own."

Even she feels young here; this city was built long before her birth and, no doubt, it remains in Valinor still, untouched by the wars that have plagued Middle Earth.

"Consider it a happy accident," she answers. "It is not often I am able to share this."

"It's different than anything I've seen before," he murmurs, slowly lifting his head to actually look. "Warmer." The kindness of nostalgia, perhaps? Many things grew kinder and gentler in hindsight. Even past terrors lost their bite as the years carried on, though never utterly gone.

It wasn't fear that suddenly struck him and makes him correct himself.

"...No...That isn't true. There's something from before...something that I've known that resonates with this warmth..." He frowns, trying to pull it to the surface of his mind. "From another world."

"Will you tell me?" She's intrigued. She can't help it; even in her own world, this place is rather unique.

He could try, but there's already doubt lingering around him as he mulls it over.

"Before I was brought to Exsilium," said Blue, talking slowly, "I had been taken to another world. Another kind of Earth, under circumstances not dissimilar, but...still different." He looked at her. "But I didn't know of it until coming here. Until I found there were memories of me within others who had shared the same fate. Once I found those, though...I learned there was a life I led completely lost to me."

His hands folded, squeezing tightly as they settled in his lap.

"And in there...I can still only find pieces. But the memories of beloved friends surfaced...while I couldn't give them their proper names, they became undeniable. The warmth you've given this world...it's like that which I can detect in those people."

She listened quietly and attentively as he spoke, nodding slightly. The existince of other worlds was no surprise by now, of course, and this was not even the first she had heard of theses circumstances- others had told her of learning of lives they had led but could not recall.

This 'warmth' he spoke of, however, was new. But might that not simply be because others cannot sense what he does? It was a puzzle, certainly, and she was not at all sure that it was the same sort of warmth that surrounded them now.

Galadriel shook her head. "The 'warmth' that you feel here is not my doing. It is the Light of Two Trees." And it's that light that is reflected in her eyes- in her hair; it's left it's mark on her.

"It exists now only in memory."

Even with her familiarity behind it, building facets of the dream they were within, Blue couldn't wholly understand. Her understanding wasn't his, after all, and his power only went so far...perceiving someone like Galadriel wasn't simple.

The light she spoke of, in that case...for how much light seemed to burn within her, he couldn't see it as trees. His kind were far detached from nature, a product of centuries of neglect on Earth. It made her more of a mystery.

"I don't understand," he admitted, hardly needing to.

"No, I imagine you would not." Her eyes grow distant for a moment, staring out at the horizon, as if she's seeing something he cannot. Maybe she is. This is her memory, after all.

"When Arda- my world- was young, there was neither sun nor moon. The world was lit only by starlight, save for Valinor, the Undying Lands, where dwelt the Valar and where the Valar led many of the Elves to live alongside them."

She turned, pointing to the southwest. "If you were to travel in that direction, beyond this city, you would find another hill outside the gates of the city of the Valar. On that hill, Yavanna Kementári, Giver of Fruits, sang into being the Two Trees of Valinor, Telperion and Laurelin. Teleperion gave of light of silver and Laurelin light of gold."

She held out her hand in front of her, watching the light play across her skin. "Laurelin is in bloom now."

It was plain truth for Galadriel, and that made every fantastic, strange image and name that she spoke unarguable fact. But Blue was still an outsider, and to him it was some kind of fairy tale: She could stand solidly on the foundations of those truths, but to him they were like clouds or shifting sand. To him, the names were more music than memory.

His gaze turned and followed where she pointed, trying to peer through the walls and trees that blocked the horizon before settling back on her hand.

A world lit by the light of trees...

"Is that what magic is?" he asked quietly. Magic was just as unsteady footing as all the rest.

"Mortals use the term so freely and so broadly; I confess I am still not certain as what is meant by it. This is the Power of the Valar- the force that set the world into being." Her voice was soft and reverent, even as she struggled to put the reasons into words. There were many things that she just accepted as a part of the workings of the world; having to explain them called upon her to articulate things that she has scarcely questioned.

"You might call it 'magic' if you wish, but it is... more. It is sacred."

What was sacred in Blue's world? Machines dictated daily life, even the selection of parents for children. Everything was sterile, methodical, and calculated by a force more mundane than destiny.

The heart is a sacred place, Kaworu had said. Blue had felt the significance in his trespass there, profound and contrast to the openness with which Galadriel has accepted him. It meant there was more to the concept of a sacred thing, changing from one person to another.

"That you let me know of it," he said at length, dipping his head, "I understand enough that I should respect it."

"Perhaps that is why I let you know of it." She answered quietly. "This memory is old. The Trees are no more. The city stands still, to the best of my knowledge, but it is lost to me."

Her fingers curl into the grass beneath them, as if assuring herself that it is still there.

"Perhaps I wished to share it with another who could experience it fully, with every sense. It is not an opportunity that I am likely to have again."

"Will you never see it again?" he asked, feeling the echo of her ache in his own chest. The best he could relate was the ingrained hunger for his own origin, but that couldn't come near her experience. She'd been there, where he only dreamed of his.

Did it make it worse, he wondered, to have had something so important rather than never know it at all?

"I have been told that I will, one day." Her voice is still strangely, uncharacteristically uncertain, however. "Those from my world who have lived what, for me, is yet to be tell me that I will sail. Yet I almost dare not hope."

She had reason to, though. She has had an inkling since she refused the Ring- some small idea that it was a possibility. But still-

"I have been in exile for Ages of the world. To be pardoned now would be...quite an extraordinary thing."

Blue hesitated, biting down on the urge to insist on hope. For how many times he himself had stumbled and lost sight of hope in his own wanderings. Those years had sometimes felt like an eternity; trying to grasp how long her waiting had been was hard to imagine.

Yet even so, he wasn't willing to leave her words unaddressed.

"For all the things in this world," he said, quickly adding on, "and these others...Things I never fathomed. Would it really be too unbelievable to see your home again? I spent years searching for Terra...and here I am, in a distant figment of it. Unbelievable, but..."

She smiles softly, glancing back at him. "I suppose it would not be."

And that's the strangest part- for thousands of years, it would have been. She had been offered pardon before- or given the chance to request it- and she had refused, to proud to even consider it. And she had thought for so long that that had been her last chance. To receive another... she scarcely felt worthy of it.

"Thank you."

Over the time they had spoken, Blue's discomfort and lack of knowing had made him almost the child he remembered he'd been before. Where their own histories resonated, different but filled with familiar tones of loss and longing changed him, gave him the tired and old-eyed shape of the present. He could feel it again: heaviness in his chest, the odd tingle of limbs present, but unwilling to move. It drained some of the warmth of Galadriel's memory out of him, made him grayer than the shine and color all around.

Despite all of that, he could still smile for her. For her kindnesses and willingness to give him the glimpse of something purely her own, golden and good.

"We won't know anything for certain until it's all come to and end, will we?" he said. "Whether we've done right or wrong, where we'll be...I've said so before, to others in my past."

"My people speak of a time, after the unmaking of the world, when all the Children of Ilúvatar will sing together. We will understand his plan fully then, they say, and see our part in it.

Until then, even the most foresighted can only guess."

Galadriel had noticed the change in him as they spoke, even if she hadn't remarked upon it. She still doesn't say anything aloud, but when she turns to face him, there's concern in her eyes.

this is the way of it [OPEN]

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omg I tried to use plurk formatting instead of html in that last comment

come on galadriel ur power of formatting should transcend websites

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