George Eldred

wake

Why does that still clear lake remind her of the sea. Why does she stand on the scree at its edge with the wind scouring down from the heights, raw and bitter in the – failing light? Dawning light? – in the slanting light that consents to touch only the edges of this dark valley. Why does she long for it. Why does that longing –

ache

in her throat. The rip-tide roar of fire through the still-green wood. The wood is always green; it has no time to cure. The dead don’t know. It’s only the living. The water is skinned with ice, but she knows where the ice is thinnest, and when she takes the hatchet in hand -

---

she is dreaming. This is the dream, the same dream that she always dreams. The same sky, the same waters. The same wind, the same cold. Where she lives it is spring now, and warmth gathers in the lowlands, radiant, but when she dreams, the pale mountain lake is still framed with ice.

Cinder Song

The girl fey-blooded with a wolf under her skin and a wolf in the marrow of her bones and a monster that men and women should and do run screaming from run mad away from that girl here she is in a dream again the same dream it is always the same dream and they who share it or seem to share it have discussed it yes and the Fianna tries to pull meaning from the slant of light from a premonition of disaster from bitter salt on her tongue that stayed for weeks that she could not cease tasting although this is not a sea-place but she has yet to pull meaning, does she, and here she is with a hatchet in hand and it is about to splinter as it always does before she wakes but instead she doesn't wake and it doesn't splinter because she doesn't sink it into what ice perhaps or more wood. The wind takes her hair and blows it into her face and she cups one hand around her mouth and yells into it - " - what do you know? Where are you?"

wake

Everything in the dream is always the same until it is not, and then it changes; or it ends. Everything rises and then falls see and the last change that was not her own was a voice, shouting, insistent, absolutely insistent that they had ruined EVERYthing and should get OUT GET OUT get OUT and now the voice is gone,

and she is here again, axe in hand.

There is a half-cord of wood piled on the spare graveled flats of the shallow lake and the sky reflected on its icy surface, this mottled melange of many-colors of raw grays and choked corals, every stage of filtered, impermanent golds.

She shouts:

there is no answer; just the echo of her voice against the high peaks, which narrow into a couloir that leads to this glacial lake, which in turn trickles further down the slope, beneath the low-swept, shrouding branches of a dark wood. Fir trees, that perfect and impenetrable green, too dark to suggest anything like spring. No: no cycle here. Just a sort of wintry permanence to the wood, the light scrawl of snow across the narrow track that leads -

down.

Smoke somewhere, and she can smell it. It tickles the back of her throat.

And this too; and this somehow, and this:

this sense (when she shouts) of awareness, all around her. Above, below, within.

Waiting. Waiting.

From below, the sound of footsteps. Climbing up the track.

Cinder Song

"I know you're - " Tamsin begins to say, shout, Fianna-thing wants words, wants to speak wants a tongue to unriddle and unrule everything, but then there is the crunching and crunching of footsteps and she knows that there's a fire and she knows that there were matches bought by somebody else and she knows that somewhere else there was a light-filled room full of anticipation and she knows there was a path of thresholds with ash falling and sorrow and she knows:

not who the crunching footsteps belongs to but isn't that an answer of sorts to where are you. Maybe it's Erich or Melenatha or Thomas or Keisha; Tamsin doesn't set the ax down but she quick quick takes a pocket mirror from her pocket and unsnaps it to look herself in the eyes; to find her eyes, arrest herself still for a moment wondering what will happen if; then hurry toward the track and the sound and -

"Is that finally you?"

wake

A man: pale-skinned, shadow-eyed, older than he looks, older than you'd think. Tired but with a threaded determination that Tamsin can sense somewhere beneath the threshold of his skin, a sort of grit that has not made itself entirely manifest here. That is sloughed-off and held back; that is dammed but not damned. He has a yoke over his shoulders from which fall two rough-hewn and hempen ropes, and two roughly shaped buckets.

Bristle on his face is gray and dark. The hair on his head, too: iron-threaded and his hands are old and his knuckles are oft-broken and his nails are split and dirty.

"Aye," he says, as he emerges from the track and the dark march of trees to the spare shore of the icy-choked lake. He always says that.

He always says this, too, after a long moment's winding pause. Somehow it startles him. The frame or shape of it, but - "Were you waiting long?"

Cinder Song

"Hours," she says, and it is strange, remembering things as she does in these dreams, this sort of knowing which is beneath her skin and does not mean knowledge; just a visceral knowing.

"I fell asleep and had a terrible dream," she says: "A wood was on fire; people died or were going to die and I didn't know who I was. I opened my mouth and I tasted the sea and I wanted to cry; maybe that's what I was tasting."

"Did you yell at me?"

wake

"I don't remember my dreams anymore." The man returns, a wry sort of shrug cresting over the shadow of his mouth in the shadow of his beard. His eyes are weary, bloodshot. The closer they are the worse he looks.

And he's working while he speaks. Lifting the yoke from his shoulders and the empty buckets with it, lowering them - with a degree of care that must come from regular repetition - to the ground.

"They were so intrusive when I first came here." And here, a moment's odd consideration. He - smiles - but it is as spare as the land feels, and older than it seems like he might ever be. Older than the trees that shiver over the flanks of the peak. Older than the bones of the earth beneath.

Old as a dream.

Knowing.

Known.

A breath out; his breath mists in the cold air and this is laughter, wry. "They seemed to devour the edges of everything. Now, though, I can hardly remember what they were. This hallway that moved like water. The lights above my head, rushing, with this rhythm like a train. That intercepted regularity. Anyway - "

And he shrugs, and he gets to work, carries the buckets to the lake's edge, where she has broken through the ice with her small, splintering hatchet. Where water skims over the ice through a small, jagged hole.

"I didn't yell at anyone and there's no one up here. Could've come from the house, though. Sound travels strange up here."

Cinder Song

"You look like you could use some sleep," Tamsin says, now that he's close; now that she's looking into his eyes. Her own eyes are still somewhat narrowed; watches the yoke and the bucket without offering to help. Perhaps she has no idea what the hell they're for, city girl that she is; or she thinks he's some sort of sisyphus and he's going to go down to the smoke or this house and then -

He's still an answer. Even if he says he didn't yell at anyone. They ruined something. Maybe -

- her eyes are dark. This wary alertness cupped within them. Tamsin does stay at the man's side, pacing him to the lake's edge. He looks like he could use some sleep.

"Maybe you are still dreaming and that's why you don't remember them anymore. Maybe you came here and your body said finished lay me down this is a good bed of bones. You know, um, what's better than sleep?" she says. He looks like the kind of person who'd say work, so she cuts that off at the pass with: "Stories."

Wistful: "Will you tell me a story? Tell me a story about me. About us. Me n' you."

wake

His laughter and it is a kind of laughter is also: nothing more than a breath, exhaled, a sort of sliding sigh, a sort of sighing slide. He is kneeling, somehow, one knee down and the other bent, rough hands ripping the lip of the bucket beneath the water, and doesn't this feel like rote, like ritual, like a prayer to the heavens.

Pauses in his work to hold out his rough hands. Swollen red knots at his knuckles.

"Pretty sure I wouldn't get chillblains from a dream. You sound like - "

But he does not have a word for what she sounds like and he glances back at her; the lifting look has his irises briefly framed in the slanting light, all illumined, all illuminated. His breath, doesn't it suddenly feel rattly, as if he were drowning, as if he were already drowned.

"A story."

Another laugh. Another smile - genuine - as bright as the light in his eyes, but also so polished-worn around the edges that if seems to below to an age ago. Two. Three.

"A story," indulgent though. See: he wants to please her, wants to satisfy that wistful note in her voice. " - alright, a story. Let's see."

Pause.

"Let's see."

He's glancing away from her, the moment spooling out from him, and a note of consideration slips between his brows. He looks like somone remembering everything he has forgotten or nothing that he has forgotten but merely the act of forgetting, the fact of forgetting.

Brows narrow together and he gives her a glance, skinned and strange. Inhales.

"Well. I climbed up with the buckets and you were here with the axe. You cut the wood and you cut the water and I climb up after to ferry the water and the wood back to town. They use it to wash the dead or sometimes the living. For the hearths or the pyres. That's the story about us.

"That's what we do." Another noise in the back of his throat. "Strange, that's the only one I remember."

Cinder Song

Tamsin reaches for and picks up one of the buckets. The one he hasn't dipped into the lake already; maybe she's going to help. He did just tell her a story, watch it thread chill into her eyes more surely than the wind; a spark of anxiety, sublimated by a little persuasive crescent moon sharpness of a smile -

" - you made it sound like a fairytale. You didn't give us names. You should give us names."

Tamsin still has that axe; now she has an axe and a bucket. She looks at both, considering.

wake

He gives up the bucket easily enough; lets it go, allows it to be taken from his hand. It is cold up here, and his breath mists and the lake mists and the seems to be wreathed in it; or is that smoke. How do you tell the difference, except for the flame.

The ash in the back of your throat.

The flash of his teeth in his rough-hewn face, the way that expression settles into the remarkable network of lines framing his eyes. The depth of the look.

"I'm George Eldred." His catches her eyes, still smiling. He knows her. He has always known her. He has known her since time before time and in measure beyond measure. They have always been here; she is as familiar as his shadow, and as changeable. He knows her, he meets her eyes with that knowledge in his, and opens his mouth, and looks away, away, away -

"You're - " another glance back; such recognition. And yet, " - you know, I don't know your name."

Cinder Song

"I'd like it if you called me Éowyn - no! Idril Celebrindal," Tamsin says, and then her shoulders hunch forward. "But it's Tam actually." See how cagey she is: just part of her name. And she would like to be called Idril. "Somebody did yell at me; maybe it was from the house. Let's go there right now!"

Tamsin reaches like she's going to help George Eldred stand but her hand's are full, aren't they - she frowns at the bucket but keeps it - keeps it - then throws it onto the ice as far as she can.

"I'll do the work later. Double. Just once." The just once tacked on quickly like just in case the devil's listening and it's a contract. "I mean um double the amount of work the one time."

wake

"Well, alright [name-slew]," George Eldred seems relieved to have a name, to have three names, to have any names to give to the girl at his side, but also all the more tired. There's no way for Tamsin to know what name he gave her, what name he named her. Éowyn or Idril or Tam, any or all of the above. When he says her name to her, whatever her name, it all smears together like a word-sludge.

"Except, we don't go to the house. The boy does sometimes, no one can stop him, but even he doesn't get close. No

"You know where it is. You can't see it from town, but it's just over the rise. No one does.

"Except the dead. But we can't stop them.

"No. I'll do my work. That's what I'm here to do."

Cinder Song

"Don't you want to remember another story?" Tamsin says, urgent, reaching out to pluck at his shirt - cautiously: "Please come with me, George Eldred; please? Come away from here just once. If you went away from here, you'd be there to do something too, you know?"

Cinder Song

[Manip + Expression! Manip Specialty: Persuasive. C'mon bro. You're clearly in an evil dream trap or something.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

wake

He's standing up.

George Eldred is standing up, there's a creak in his knees and a crick in his back but he is, listen, rising. Watching her cantwise and then cutting a glance back to the rough-hewn bucket as it skitters across the thin-ice of that glacier-fed lake and breathing out see like a sigh or a song. He regrets the loss of that bucket.

It will be back the next time he dreams this dream.

Or - no, see. Come away from here just once she says and something plaintitive in her voice cuts through the fog of his awareness, and he feels like if he comes away from here just once he might cease to exist, he might disappear or he might die, his heart might be carved through with a thousand wormling holes and filled and then retracted, sapped, collapsed. He might consume himself, he might be consumed, he might find himself devoured he might -

It is painful for him and Tamsin can read all of his in the framework of his body and thw twist of his mouth, but - but -

A deep sigh out.

"Alright. I'll come with you as far as I can."

Cinder Song

Tamsin doesn't smile bright; she isn't a bright sunlight girl, somebody with a hearth burning in her bones. Tamsin was born as the light waned from the moon; leeched into darkness, but still full enough to slant poetry across the land - and her smile is a quiet thing, and the caution in her fingers when she plucked at his shirt is behind her smile, the plaintive whatever, that's there too, a certain darkness which is aware of what she can read in the wry twist of his mouth and his body; but she's glad he said he'll come anyway. She doesn't think he'll disappear. She doesn't know what she thinks except she wants him to come with her and maybe he's caught and maybe well she doesn't know - yet?

"Thank you. You'll see. It'll be good to do I bet. Over the rise you said? That one there?" she gestures to it with her chin and, another lick of caution, offers George her hand, the axless one. Maybe she thinks he's so old he needs it; that's what she read from his shape.

Once he indicates yes or no off she (they) set.

"What boy goes sometimes? Do people try to stop him?"

wake

"The boy. No on tries to stop him. He does what he wants, when he wants, how he wants, here."

No. No, not over that rise there.

They have to go down before they can climb.

They have to descend before they can rise,

and so they do, down the narrow track beneath the weight of the limbs of the fir-trees, the heavy branches, the steep slope, the suggestion of a streambed gamboling alongside. Down they go to a place where the track intersects with another, a place of crossing, a cross-roads. This road is wider, is made for more than two men to walk abreast. Three or perhaps four could comfortably walk here and the woods are silent all around them, except for the occasional flush of a bird from the treets.

The birds are always crows: the beat of great black wings against the snow.

There is a fire somewhere close and now she can smell it, and they have been walking for hours or days or moments, three beats of her heart, time slews until it has no meaning beyond the immediate: this is now, this is now, this is now.

--

And the track descends as the road descends and perhaps they speak, perhaps Tamsin tells George Eldred some stories, perhaps she tells him old stories or made-up stories or faerie stories. He feels, he tells her half-way down, very, very strange. Light-headed and contrary but maybe, he is thinking, maybe this is right, correct, proper. Maybe -

The road descends, see, through the woods still, shouldering it on either side, down to a long, spare line of white clapboard houses all same-like, marching in rows and wreathed in mist, and if it was winter above, doesn't it feel like autumn here, the neverending edge of it, wet pavement, strange skies. Here are there, silent faces in the windows, behind the doors.

And here, here, after they have descending so far, here is the ridge. Here is the rise, beyond the houses, behind them, rising, see, the shoulder of another mountain that sweeps upward and casts half the long-hollow in shadow. They are climbing, climbing, climbing, George slower, and slower.

Up there, he tells her.

Just let me catch my breath.

---

Down below, in the town, a door swings open.

Two young men emerge from the house,

at a run.

--

When Tamsin turns around, George Eldred, he is gone.

Cinder Song

Tamsin wants to know how the boy looks. How old the boy is. What boy? Tamsin doesn't remember a boy; she describes Thomas and Erich, testingly, but that was as they were descending.

Tamsin does tell George Eldred stories since he only has one. She makes something up; then the made-up something becomes a fairy story that First Light told her the night they met; then it becomes something quoted from Tolkien because she loves Tolkien because Tolkien, man, because fighting against impossible odds and darkness. It's hard for George Eldred to leave his work; he doesn't want to; feels he might disappear. Tamsin; she can't leave her work either, really, and she is disappearing; she doesn't want to do it. It's hard.

The point is: she does talk.

Her eyes are narrow on the faces in the windows; her eyes are narrow on the crows, which she tries to count. Her eyes are even narrow on the town; she waves to somebody to see what happens. Looks for Keisha, Melantha, Erich, Thomas -

George Eldred feels very strange. Tamsin asks him if it's his heart. Wants to feel it; she doesn't know how to heal anybody but maybe if his heart is beating fast that'll tell her one thing maybe if it's slow it'll tell her another thing.

He wants to catch his breath; below, in the town, two young men emerge from the house at a run.

Up there. The house where the dead go? Where nobody goes? Tamsin does turn to look at it; when she turns around, he's gone and she almost drops the axe, a lick of rage-fury-alarm, breath sucked in suddenly -

- she spins around in a tight circle, looking for some sign, something, and then she shouts,

"GEORGE ELDRED!" a beat. "GEORGE?" another beat. Lonely: "ERICH MELANTHA KEISHA." Another beat. Her grip on the axe tightens; up there, he'd said, and Tamsin squares her shoulders: sucks in another lungful of air - autumnal air.

She's going to go into the house; going to go up there. Going to disappear, too? It's just a dream but it feels so real and she still wants to go to the house that maybe the insistent shout earlier came from. She calls - deliberately; seething, rimmed in tension the way the lake, see, was rimmed in ice -

"Hey! Hey, boy! Boy are you here? Was it you? I'm coming in, by - " - a pause; it sounds like an oath " - by the black in a crow's feather and the heat in a pyre burning in winter, I am, I want to - "

- plaintive; perhaps she's just yelling at an abandoned house in a dream and she'll wake up and it will be with a sense of loss. Tamsin wants to know.

Anyway: that's what she does and that's what she says.

Cinder Song

ooc: shit, there should be "THOMAS?" pause. "ERICH MELANTHA KEISHA." in that post.

wake

Tamsin waves and Tamsin tells stories and Tamsin wants to feel his heart: how is it beating, what is its speed, how fast does it pound, and Tamsin is in a strange place with a strange taste on her tongue and George Eldred is gone and down below two young men emerge from a house (a white house) onto a sidewalk (a gray sidewalk) and somehow the morning light is gone. Somehow the morning is gone.

Somehow the morning,

shifts.

Two young men are coming out of a house, they are named Thomas and they are named Erich and they hear a young woman shouting:

"GEORGE ELDRED!" a beat. "GEORGE?" another beat. Lonely: "ERICH MELANTHA KEISHA."

from up above.

--

They wake.

"Hey! Hey, boy! Boy are you here? Was it you? I'm coming in, by - " - a pause; it sounds like an oath " - by the black in a crow's feather and the heat in a pyre burning in winter, I am, I want to - "

- plaintive; perhaps she's just yelling at an abandoned house in a dream and she'll wake up and it will be with a sense of loss. Tamsin wants to know.

Anyway: that's what she does and that's what she says.

Tamsin wakes.

With, yes, a sense of loss. Something shifting. Something changed. Something moving underneath. Something, somewhere, slumbering see:

but waking up to her presence, too.

Cinder Song

- and Tamsin wakes up and curses the fuck out of everything.

[Manipulation + Expression: CURSING ELOQUENTLY.]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )