InsaneJournal

Friday: February 15, 2008
Who: Lysander harsi Herrenlaia and... well. A star.
When: A frozen moment in time, just barely passing as early morning
Where: A combination of Lysander and the star's memory
What: The Kytherion tries to get some outside perspective on Theora's intuition. Really far outside.



Lysander slid fluidly from sleep to the intermediate state between consciousness and unconsciousness. It was an odd sort of state and one that he had a difficult time putting himself in just out of hand; he needed to be pulled into it, like a turtle might be coaxed into sticking his head out and, as Lysander had just done, walk completely out of his shell. No longer lying on the ground, he stood in the gray, fuzzy nothingness, the only light glowing brightly around his head despite his hair covering its origin.

Light flickered before him, a melange of colors moving in slow, smooth flashes that no matter how quick his eyes were, his mind simply couldn't grab hold of.

His face fell into deep relief. There was a time when this was commonplace and he would sit and they would share and Lysander would come back to the world with, if not time and space, certainly his educators none the wiser. But the fact that the fleeting shape of Korrace before him was attributed not to the ease of contact, but to the urge with which Lysander had put out the call. It brought him back to the purpose with which Korrace had risked himself to learn.

"The Darkness," Lysander's thoughts manifested and echoed through the negative space between himself and the star, bleeding until it surrounded them. It was more abrupt than he had ever been in the past, but time was limited now.

Limited time. Lysander swallowed hard and tried to be focused on the memory.

It was where he'd been shown last time. The surface of the moon he was on was covered in a fine, sea-green silt that when whirlwinded into an occasional dust devil scattered through the air like pixie dust. It flittered over his view of the sky above him. Lysander could easily find Earth - in this frame of the memory, it was still visible in the night sky.

The bright point of light, as if on queue, winked out.

A combination of panic and bile rose up his chest at the sight, even thought his own mind had crafted the exposure of the memory. He couldn't help but relive that feeling, the sudden knowledge that something was wrong, something was really wrong and it wasn't just home or where he'd been in Germany, but it was the whole planet. Darkness (which was the wrong word, but it was a word that Xanthus and his teachers understood) was swallowing it and the fear of every star was being played out before their unblinking eyes.

The presence beside him wrapped around Lysander's core, hugging it with the mantra that had been singing him to sleep since before he could remember.

"We're in this together, you know."

Lysander gave over a little to the warm, stabilizing intention, leaning mentally into it like he would a hug. "I do know, Korrace," he acknowledged with a sigh. Korrace meant it, just like they all meant it, but it meant something greater that the star was telling him to (the equivalent of) his face.

"I just miss when this was... wasn't what it is now."

"We yearn for the simplicity of youth," Korrace agreed and the surroundings flickered for a moment on a memory of a gap-toothed centaur, falling over laughing on top of a creature that looked halfway between an elephant and a green kangaroo. The moment was short though, the image sweeping away in favor of a closer examination of Earth.

It was still at a distance, but the Earth was no longer wholly wrapped in darkness. It was speckled with light, little keyholes of swirling blue, brown and cloudy white in the nothingness that had swallowed the better part of his home. It was a picture Lysander was familiar with. It was the one he was introduced to a year ago, the one that immediately followed the memory on the green sand. It was the one that had enlightened him, that had driven his small herd south as fast as they could go to Elysium.

One of the knots, the openings in the gray fog, disappeared.

Then another.

"Oh." The reply was succinct, disappointment and surprise at the new dimming obvious.

Lysander looked to the infinitely older presence, but the question died on his tongue before he could ask it. "But it doesn't work the same--" Lysander protested plaintively instead, eyes pleading at the swirl of light.

"For all our sharing, I know that I cannot know what it is to experience things in such a... limited, exploratory manner," Korrace began, faintly uncomfortably with the concept. "I don't understand why things function in such a complicated, contradictory manner with your inhabitants, why they cannot communicate as you do. But I do know you. And I know that your..."

"Heart," Lysander and Korrace said at once, Lysander with a sly smirk and Korrace with a needling snicker. Korrace continued.

"I remember - your heart. And I know that your heart will lead you to the answers that you seek, because for all your complaining that things just aren't the same with your Earthlings, you are a part of them. That piece, that link, that is what you need now. Not me. Save that you need me to tell you this rather obvious fact. Again," Korrace added with a smirk.

The surroundings dissolved back now into the gray space of potentiality, memories clearing like smoke in a wild breeze. Lysander folded his legs underneath him with a sigh as he sullenly pondered what Korrace had said to him. He knew that Korrace couldn't tell him what was going on any more than Lysander could - Korrace only saw the Darkness. The differentiation that Lysander wanted was impossible to decipher from the distance Korrace saw, and certainly impossible with no memories of Lysander's to pour over.

But he wanted Korrace to simply know. No, he wanted Korrace to have seen wrong, to have shown him the wrong memory so there wasn't anything to look for.

"Kytherion."

Lysander looked up abruptly, then looked down embarrassed. You didn't get to have internal thoughts in this state. When his eyes met the flickering mass, his voice echoed once again through the gray.

"Do you blame me? It's so hard..."

Korrace reapplied that same warm sweep of love around him as Lysander stared into the gray and it was hard not to reciprocate. It took him right out of his fear and sadness.

For the moment.