Faolan cants his head in acceptance; it wasn't a bad suggestion. But also, it was a shot in the dark. He doesn't know if the hand moved, or if Rin and Sen are having a laugh at their expense, or if they've missed the Market (if it exists.)
[ Rin seems to have hopes hung on this. I've dashed enough of those already. ]
For a long moment, there's nothing. Just as Sen (and possibly Rin, and most definitely Fae) is about to sigh disappointment, the hand begins to shift, the leather skin stretching and crinkling as long-unused musculature begins to work. Three fingers curl and one extends, but in its suspended state, it can only point to the ground.
Sen reaches and places his own hand, palm flat, beneath it, giving it somewhere to stand.
Seeing as it was the way they'd been told to go, he aims for toward the docks; nothing happens, so he turns the pointed finger away from the water.
He tries not to shudder as its muscles contract - as though emphatic now.
A hundred feet ahead, something in the air shimmers.
Faolan hums, intrigued, but rather than striding forward, he steps aside for Rin to take the fore. "Your hand. Your adventure."
Sen, meanwhile, mutters quietly, "That better have been a purely platonic clench.”
<.>
They would have tried another bribe and another, maybe for as long as an hour, but it doesn't take as long as that. It doesn't take so long at all, all things considered, and Rin breaks into a grin at the sight of shimmered air. Oh, yes. Yes! (They know such, hypothetically, that such entrances ought to be approached with care. They're also far to excited for much wariness.) There's a laugh, short but gleeful, and they grin to Sen and Faolan and the hand all in turn.
Sen looks maybe not thrilled to be holding the— Is the hand holding him now? Well, whatever's going on, Rin's grateful, and glad, and beams at Sen once more, Messaging, [ Good catch! ] They're also going to draw the hand back from Sen's, so that it keeps suspended on the rope.
And to Faolan, with a nod of their head in thanks - he did have a very good idea! - "I'm not sure it *is* my hand anymore. But I guess we'll figure it out."
They look at the hand, cant their head. "You'll have to let us know."
And, shaking out their hair, Rin moves toward, means to move into the shimmering air.
<.>
As the elf and tiefling move toward the shimmering barrier with the relic, Faolan hangs back with Dmitri a moment.
Whatever Dmitri is thinking just now. Whatever he's hoping for or against, brooding about, or simply musing, Faolan doesn't interrupt. He gives Dmitri a sidelong, almost lingering look, then raises his gaze skyward.
Overhead, there's no moon, but the sky is littered with stars casting their gentle glow. He looks, then closes his eyes as though feeling warmth even from such dim light.
For that moment, Faolan pretends something. Just in his head, of course, and never to be spoken. But it's a nice, brief fantasy.
Then, he breaks his own silence with, "Nice night."
With that, he inclines his head toward the others. "Shall we? I'll bet it's worth the looks on their faces when you tell the tale in Morovsk."
<.>
He intends to follow the thieves. Whatever’s beyond that shimmering air— Dima isn’t ready to credit it as being one thing or another (not yet) (why hope for truth in myths?) (has he been wrong all this time?) (and what magic brought that hand to animation? what tie might it share with the shimmer?), but whatever’s over there, he’s not about to stand here all night, or let Sen and Rin wander alone into fuck knows what.
It’s grown quieter, and at some point, he becomes aware of eyes on him.
At some point he looks out from himself, looks over, and realizes that in his frustration regarding this midnight search, he hasn’t had a chance to properly glimpse Faolan in starlight.
Or. He hadn’t had the chance.
He sees now, subtle silver luminance on an upturned, gentle - and not only gentle; and acquainted enough with life’s wounds to appreciate its respites - face. Sees stars’ glimmers reflected on blond. Feels warmth in his chest, at his temples.
(Perhaps they should spend more time in forests, he thinks.)
(Fire’s light or star’s light; which does he like better on this man?
Oh, both; Faolan shines true in both.)
He almost startles as Faolan speaks. Finds the words soothing, evocative of something (a want) (a dream’s image) a few steps removed from this world. A shimmer, an almost-opening of its own.
He’s watching Faolan still, fixed near-frozen, his expression now less clouded, now traced with a heart’s relief, when the man looks at him. Though Dima blinks, turns his head slightly to the side, he doesn’t quite stop looking.
And he nods, slightly, his smile slight but appreciative. “So it will be— Should I choose to share with them, at all.
“I find many don’t know the worth of what they learn, or what they have, at all.”
He extends his hand slightly, low, palm open in a query, and, “In any case, I’d like to see it.”
Now. With Faolan close by.
<.>
Faolan realizes now, looking at Dmitri's outstretched hand, that someday - soon - he's going to have to tell him 'no'. Dmitri (Dima) will hold out his hand and Faolan will refuse, and that's when he'll walk away.
(Long, long before Dmitri can do so, himself, one more man come and gone with pieces of Faolan.)
The ache in his chest doesn't pass. It hangs there, hooked on his lungs, because another thought's occurred to him: someday, maybe soon, Dmitri might stop asking for his hand.
Shouldn't he...indulge it now, just a little? Does it have to be tonight, under all these stars, going somewhere that doesn't exist, that he says no?
He grasps Dmitri's hand with a complicated smile.
Holding on to the other man, Faolan is the last to pass through the barrier.
One by one the party passes through the chill barrier; on the other side, they find themselves surrounded by (un)lively activity. The temperature has plunged and their breaths cloud before their faces. The murmur of a crowd of voices churns and rushes together like a tide.
Canopies and tents have been erected with everything from patchwork internment clothing to funeral shrouds; from the poles supporting them hang caged will-o-wisps that illuminate the market with a steady blue light. At the center of the market, the stalls and canopies give way to a central dais, above which gibbets are magically suspended. Within these, dead and live bodies moan and decay.
The dead have dominion. Animated corpses shuffle between the stalls, eyes lit by a dull balefire. Ghosts and specters glide among and through the other customers, filling the air with their quiet aching. The merchants are as dead as their clientele, from the translucent bookseller to the pair of ghouls standing protectively over their butcher's stall and its overtly humanoid wares. Along the perimeter of the market, skeletal beasts of burden are lashed to spectral carts.
As the party moves forward, a skeleton dressed in armor of some long-forgotten city intercepts them. The skeleton may be grinning, or it may be the result of its fleshless state; whatever the case, it hands each person a slip of paper. Printed upon it in large, gothic letters, are the words, "Condition upon entry: Living."
<.>
Hard to say what ran behind Faolan's expression; what Dima knows is the bright trill he felt when Faolan accepted his hand, and as they walked together toward the shimmered air. What he knows is that Faolan's hand remained in his as Dima passed through the barrier - Liviana swooping back to settle on his shoulder - and that he holds Fae's hand still as he beholds impossibility, another kind of beauty.
(He might have missed this.
How long has this place existed, just barely outside of reach?)
He doesn't know which measures of the myth are true, what actuality might have filtered into fictions, but this place is very present, the dead are all around, and it's wondrous. It's wondrous.
His eyes widen, his breath suspends.
He's tightened his grasp on Faolan's hand without realizing it, and he relaxes his hand, finds he's grinning just slightly. To Faolan, he Messages, [ I've never been so pleased to find myself proven wrong. ]
“Sen.” It's what Rin manages to speak before words get away from them - though they do, as well, give the hand on the rope a nails-to-nails tap of thanks - and they gaze at— Oh, at everything! Looking one place and another, half-dizzied, and twirling once, settling back on their feet just in time to take the slip of paper, giving the skeleton a graceful little nod.
"Sen, we did it!" Their voice is only just above a whisper. There's so much to see here, so much to discover! (But not steal. They're going to have to keep their itchy fingers still; they can do that. In a place like this, anyway.) And, lifting the hand up, nodding at it and then at Sen - are Faolan and Dima coming? oh, yes yes they're here okay - "Thank you very much, hand!"
<.>
The hand slowly curls itself into a fist with its thumb sticking out - either hitchhiking or giving a thumbs-up to Rin.
Sen is too busy to speak; he has to remember all of this. For the right audience, stories and songs of places like this are worth a small fortune. (He needs, as well, to find a souvenir. Something to lend credence to his tale.)
Faolan is watching all three of them with a sad little smile; Rin's hope was fulfilled, Sen's desire for stories satisfied.
And Dmitri looks awed. (How long has it been since he's felt awe?)
They three see wonders.
Faolan looks around past the shine and sees the tragedies: not far to their right, the ghost of a woman sells cups brimming with love for the man who betrayed her. He can hear her telling an interested woman that a broken heart's love has more intensity of feeling than any other.
He almost scoffs. (But it's not untrue. It's just that despair makes love ache, and pain means life.)
Not far from her, a ghoul offers bottled memories of the companionship among the bandits he once led.
(And betrayal from a loyal friend is, Faolan reflects, almost as painful as a lover.)
It's not all misery and memory; some creatures buy and sell body parts - one ghoul is advertising 'Finger Food' down the way.
Grotesque, most of it.
...But Dmitri looks so happy. (Maybe he needs to wander on his own a while, and not think about how happy Dmitri Voronin is or isn't, and how he'd like to see that happiness on his face more often.)
Before he can say anything, Sen is loping off at a jog, pleased as a pig in shit about something he's seen and calling back for Rin to hurry after.
Leaving Faolan alone with Dmitri and Liviana.
"Why don't you wander? I'll...follow along." He looks around mildly, then with a chagrined, lopsided sort of smile, he adds, "I doubt there's anything here for me."
no subject
[ Rin seems to have hopes hung on this. I've dashed enough of those already. ]
For a long moment, there's nothing. Just as Sen (and possibly Rin, and most definitely Fae) is about to sigh disappointment, the hand begins to shift, the leather skin stretching and crinkling as long-unused musculature begins to work. Three fingers curl and one extends, but in its suspended state, it can only point to the ground.
Sen reaches and places his own hand, palm flat, beneath it, giving it somewhere to stand.
Seeing as it was the way they'd been told to go, he aims for toward the docks; nothing happens, so he turns the pointed finger away from the water.
He tries not to shudder as its muscles contract - as though emphatic now.
A hundred feet ahead, something in the air shimmers.
Faolan hums, intrigued, but rather than striding forward, he steps aside for Rin to take the fore. "Your hand. Your adventure."
Sen, meanwhile, mutters quietly, "That better have been a purely platonic clench.”
<.>
They would have tried another bribe and another, maybe for as long as an hour, but it doesn't take as long as that. It doesn't take so long at all, all things considered, and Rin breaks into a grin at the sight of shimmered air. Oh, yes. Yes! (They know such, hypothetically, that such entrances ought to be approached with care. They're also far to excited for much wariness.) There's a laugh, short but gleeful, and they grin to Sen and Faolan and the hand all in turn.
Sen looks maybe not thrilled to be holding the— Is the hand holding him now? Well, whatever's going on, Rin's grateful, and glad, and beams at Sen once more, Messaging, [ Good catch! ] They're also going to draw the hand back from Sen's, so that it keeps suspended on the rope.
And to Faolan, with a nod of their head in thanks - he did have a very good idea! - "I'm not sure it *is* my hand anymore. But I guess we'll figure it out."
They look at the hand, cant their head. "You'll have to let us know."
And, shaking out their hair, Rin moves toward, means to move into the shimmering air.
<.>
As the elf and tiefling move toward the shimmering barrier with the relic, Faolan hangs back with Dmitri a moment.
Whatever Dmitri is thinking just now. Whatever he's hoping for or against, brooding about, or simply musing, Faolan doesn't interrupt. He gives Dmitri a sidelong, almost lingering look, then raises his gaze skyward.
Overhead, there's no moon, but the sky is littered with stars casting their gentle glow. He looks, then closes his eyes as though feeling warmth even from such dim light.
For that moment, Faolan pretends something. Just in his head, of course, and never to be spoken. But it's a nice, brief fantasy.
Then, he breaks his own silence with, "Nice night."
With that, he inclines his head toward the others. "Shall we? I'll bet it's worth the looks on their faces when you tell the tale in Morovsk."
<.>
He intends to follow the thieves. Whatever’s beyond that shimmering air— Dima isn’t ready to credit it as being one thing or another (not yet) (why hope for truth in myths?) (has he been wrong all this time?) (and what magic brought that hand to animation? what tie might it share with the shimmer?), but whatever’s over there, he’s not about to stand here all night, or let Sen and Rin wander alone into fuck knows what.
It’s grown quieter, and at some point, he becomes aware of eyes on him.
At some point he looks out from himself, looks over, and realizes that in his frustration regarding this midnight search, he hasn’t had a chance to properly glimpse Faolan in starlight.
Or. He hadn’t had the chance.
He sees now, subtle silver luminance on an upturned, gentle - and not only gentle; and acquainted enough with life’s wounds to appreciate its respites - face. Sees stars’ glimmers reflected on blond. Feels warmth in his chest, at his temples.
(Perhaps they should spend more time in forests, he thinks.)
(Fire’s light or star’s light; which does he like better on this man?
Oh, both; Faolan shines true in both.)
He almost startles as Faolan speaks. Finds the words soothing, evocative of something (a want) (a dream’s image) a few steps removed from this world. A shimmer, an almost-opening of its own.
He’s watching Faolan still, fixed near-frozen, his expression now less clouded, now traced with a heart’s relief, when the man looks at him. Though Dima blinks, turns his head slightly to the side, he doesn’t quite stop looking.
And he nods, slightly, his smile slight but appreciative. “So it will be— Should I choose to share with them, at all.
“I find many don’t know the worth of what they learn, or what they have, at all.”
He extends his hand slightly, low, palm open in a query, and, “In any case, I’d like to see it.”
Now. With Faolan close by.
<.>
Faolan realizes now, looking at Dmitri's outstretched hand, that someday - soon - he's going to have to tell him 'no'. Dmitri (Dima) will hold out his hand and Faolan will refuse, and that's when he'll walk away.
(Long, long before Dmitri can do so, himself, one more man come and gone with pieces of Faolan.)
The ache in his chest doesn't pass. It hangs there, hooked on his lungs, because another thought's occurred to him: someday, maybe soon, Dmitri might stop asking for his hand.
Shouldn't he...indulge it now, just a little? Does it have to be tonight, under all these stars, going somewhere that doesn't exist, that he says no?
He grasps Dmitri's hand with a complicated smile.
Holding on to the other man, Faolan is the last to pass through the barrier.
One by one the party passes through the chill barrier; on the other side, they find themselves surrounded by (un)lively activity. The temperature has plunged and their breaths cloud before their faces. The murmur of a crowd of voices churns and rushes together like a tide.
Canopies and tents have been erected with everything from patchwork internment clothing to funeral shrouds; from the poles supporting them hang caged will-o-wisps that illuminate the market with a steady blue light. At the center of the market, the stalls and canopies give way to a central dais, above which gibbets are magically suspended. Within these, dead and live bodies moan and decay.
The dead have dominion. Animated corpses shuffle between the stalls, eyes lit by a dull balefire. Ghosts and specters glide among and through the other customers, filling the air with their quiet aching. The merchants are as dead as their clientele, from the translucent bookseller to the pair of ghouls standing protectively over their butcher's stall and its overtly humanoid wares. Along the perimeter of the market, skeletal beasts of burden are lashed to spectral carts.
As the party moves forward, a skeleton dressed in armor of some long-forgotten city intercepts them. The skeleton may be grinning, or it may be the result of its fleshless state; whatever the case, it hands each person a slip of paper. Printed upon it in large, gothic letters, are the words, "Condition upon entry: Living."
<.>
Hard to say what ran behind Faolan's expression; what Dima knows is the bright trill he felt when Faolan accepted his hand, and as they walked together toward the shimmered air. What he knows is that Faolan's hand remained in his as Dima passed through the barrier - Liviana swooping back to settle on his shoulder - and that he holds Fae's hand still as he beholds impossibility, another kind of beauty.
(He might have missed this.
How long has this place existed, just barely outside of reach?)
He doesn't know which measures of the myth are true, what actuality might have filtered into fictions, but this place is very present, the dead are all around, and it's wondrous. It's wondrous.
His eyes widen, his breath suspends.
He's tightened his grasp on Faolan's hand without realizing it, and he relaxes his hand, finds he's grinning just slightly. To Faolan, he Messages, [ I've never been so pleased to find myself proven wrong. ]
“Sen.” It's what Rin manages to speak before words get away from them - though they do, as well, give the hand on the rope a nails-to-nails tap of thanks - and they gaze at— Oh, at everything! Looking one place and another, half-dizzied, and twirling once, settling back on their feet just in time to take the slip of paper, giving the skeleton a graceful little nod.
"Sen, we did it!" Their voice is only just above a whisper. There's so much to see here, so much to discover! (But not steal. They're going to have to keep their itchy fingers still; they can do that. In a place like this, anyway.) And, lifting the hand up, nodding at it and then at Sen - are Faolan and Dima coming? oh, yes yes they're here okay - "Thank you very much, hand!"
<.>
The hand slowly curls itself into a fist with its thumb sticking out - either hitchhiking or giving a thumbs-up to Rin.
Sen is too busy to speak; he has to remember all of this. For the right audience, stories and songs of places like this are worth a small fortune. (He needs, as well, to find a souvenir. Something to lend credence to his tale.)
Faolan is watching all three of them with a sad little smile; Rin's hope was fulfilled, Sen's desire for stories satisfied.
And Dmitri looks awed. (How long has it been since he's felt awe?)
They three see wonders.
Faolan looks around past the shine and sees the tragedies: not far to their right, the ghost of a woman sells cups brimming with love for the man who betrayed her. He can hear her telling an interested woman that a broken heart's love has more intensity of feeling than any other.
He almost scoffs. (But it's not untrue. It's just that despair makes love ache, and pain means life.)
Not far from her, a ghoul offers bottled memories of the companionship among the bandits he once led.
(And betrayal from a loyal friend is, Faolan reflects, almost as painful as a lover.)
It's not all misery and memory; some creatures buy and sell body parts - one ghoul is advertising 'Finger Food' down the way.
Grotesque, most of it.
...But Dmitri looks so happy. (Maybe he needs to wander on his own a while, and not think about how happy Dmitri Voronin is or isn't, and how he'd like to see that happiness on his face more often.)
Before he can say anything, Sen is loping off at a jog, pleased as a pig in shit about something he's seen and calling back for Rin to hurry after.
Leaving Faolan alone with Dmitri and Liviana.
"Why don't you wander? I'll...follow along." He looks around mildly, then with a chagrined, lopsided sort of smile, he adds, "I doubt there's anything here for me."
<.>