Myrobalan Shivana (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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aefenglom2020-09-15 05:07 pm
faithlikeaseed) wrote in aefenglom2020-09-15 05:07 pm
a totally normal and innocuous wanted ad
Name: Myr Shivana | un: mshivana
Date: 9/15
Format: Voice
Evening, Mirrorbound. My name's Myr Shivana, for those who don't know my voice.
I've need of someone with experience mediating disputes--a village elder, a judge, even a senior ench--senior academic, if you've had particularly bad students. [There's a note of faint amusement in his voice, there.]
You'd be helping settle a matter that's caused no end of pain and distress to those involved. The reasons behind it are sensitive in nature, so discretion's a must.
I can compensate your time--with cunes or honey or service, whatever's preferred.
[...]
Also--unrelated to the other issue, if there's any Witches or Fae who specialize in illusions invoking taste instead of sight, I'd like to talk to you. Or cooks specializing in food for folk who can't taste much, I s'pose could work too. [He sounds cheerier about this one, at least.]
Date: 9/15
Format: Voice
Evening, Mirrorbound. My name's Myr Shivana, for those who don't know my voice.
I've need of someone with experience mediating disputes--a village elder, a judge, even a senior ench--senior academic, if you've had particularly bad students. [There's a note of faint amusement in his voice, there.]
You'd be helping settle a matter that's caused no end of pain and distress to those involved. The reasons behind it are sensitive in nature, so discretion's a must.
I can compensate your time--with cunes or honey or service, whatever's preferred.
[...]
Also--unrelated to the other issue, if there's any Witches or Fae who specialize in illusions invoking taste instead of sight, I'd like to talk to you. Or cooks specializing in food for folk who can't taste much, I s'pose could work too. [He sounds cheerier about this one, at least.]
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[Softly,] What's led you to despise your flesh that much, amatus?
[Even before being mutilated.]
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Oh, don’t take it that way. It’s common enough that it’s practically a cliche, to drink for reasons besides the taste.
[To the point of numbness, escape, ruin, to spit in the face of a body’s limitations while soundly proving their existence.]
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[Deflection accepted. Now is not the most opportune moment to dig out this piece of rot--not when Myr suspects the effort of debridement will flense out wide swathes of L's maladaptive coping mechanisms.]
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It's a non-issue these days, anyway.
[Not only does he fail to taste it with the same acrid intensity as before, he rarely leaves the house to obtain it or make decisions under its influence. The times he's ambushed Niles have been very deliberately sober.]
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How long will it remain one?
[Myr's areas of study have never led him to the idea of an addictive personality, but even lacking words for that facet of his beloved he can still recognize it and its black implications.]
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As long as something else remains to occupy my time and attention and fill the void, and there's no temptation to crawl into a cavern and be unborn...?
Niles has been filling that void; they both know it. Myr is L's Bonded, more devoted than the detective could ask for, but not his minder, and L has a brain prone to restless wandering, likely to bend and focus on one thing to the detriment of all others. An addictive personality is in fact precisely, devastatingly apt.]
It's a sloppy, soft-minded vice. I don't think much of a person who falls back on something false to avoid what's real.
[As if enough disdain can inoculate him from both the false and the real.]
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[If Myr were not so newly come to the idea that L could, would, and had lied to him in the pursuit of his single-minded focus, he might let that pass him by, or make of it a purely intellectual point to challenge.
But he is aware, and keenly sensitive to the falsehood embedded in the words.
Simply loathing the sin rarely kept the committed sinner from repeating it to his own shame.]
And what will be real to you now, amatus?
no subject
They're working on fixing it, but he'll still be the same person when he wakes up tomorrow. That's the hardest part to grapple with, overall, more so because the name that is always understood through their Bond as a Tevinter term of endearment gets translated as "beloved" through the watches.]
Real things, Myr.
[He intends. He hopes. He wishes his clever mind was connecting better to his tongue, but it's hardly Niles' fault this time.]
There actually isn't anything else, in the end.
[Belief, inherently, implies a fiction. Is it cursing this to believe in it?]
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But there are so many more real things than what we see, [deliberately said,] or hear, or touch.
[He knows belief does not come easy, or at all, to his Witch. It makes all of this the more fraught, for Myr is so defined by his believing that he would cease utterly if he lost his faith.
Certainly their Bond would have been annulled a dozen times over if he had lost faith, but his conviction that L can achieve the whole of his promise is weed-stubborn and sometimes as painful.]
I want to find you one of them that won't tear at you to cling to.
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You make me happy. Furthermore... I feel some of the joy you find elsewhere, here. One of the benefits to being Bonded with a Faun is that I can experience it, to some degree.
[Things, implicitly, he wouldn't seek out for himself.]
It would tear at me the most to think that you were taking time away from those experiences to find me a new fixation. A degree of shredding is a birthright, for some of us, and we can manage it.
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Life is meant to be more than a series of pleasant experiences--even, [with a dry, self-aware amusement,] for a Faun.
I am glad I can share that with you. [Deeply glad, to know that what he did on his own time did not cause his Bonded pain or jealously. (Is that selfish?)] But you are meant for more than scraps of someone else's enjoyment; for more than destroying yourself over one foolish Chimera.
You can shine so brightly, amatus. I've witnessed it. I want to help it continue.
no subject
A clinging, clutching child is a pitiful thing. A clinging, clutching adult is still pitiful, but also possessive, potentially a stalker, unhinged and off-putting. L perhaps tries over-hard to prevent Myr from viewing him that way, to the point where some distance is forced from his end when he feels most in need of a presence to hold onto.
He can shine brightly, he knows. He's been told, but it's the kind of brightness those who still have their eyes probably need to view through smoked glass to do so safely.]
Thank you for believing that.
[Gratitude has always been something L felt easily and honestly toward Myr. It's something he can express without risking a lie, to his Bonded or himself, neutral enough to require no hedging shield.
It also puts no immediate pressure on either of them to come up with a plan immediately. The day has been productive, and demanding, enough already.]
no subject
Certainly his halfway hands-off approach over the last months...had left too much unstructured space for the detective to grow into, and distort in the filling of it. But Myr's got an equal fear of clinging and clutching to ease his own anxieties; a lingering worry he would smother L, who needed no more crippling by overprotection.
They'd work through it, he hopes--he trusts, even if trust is still hard.
He's got to.]
I believe it gladly. You've shown me so much.
[Though it is, as L senses, time to lay this thread down.
There's another thing that's been niggling at Myr anyway, since the start of the conversation--]
And maybe can tell me--what's kimchi taste like, anyway?
no subject
Like fermented cabbage and radishes, I imagine.
[He imagines that it tastes terrible.]
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[Not...actually a surprise, given the givens, but here Myr thought an aversive reaction that strong came from direct experience.
...]
How many other things d'you imagine taste terrible?
[The response to last year's gift of moretum is suddenly a lot more interesting in this potential context.]
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[He could probably provide either, but he's going for a simpler answer. He can do that; there's safety in it, with Myr, the advantage of a Bond.]
Most meat, vegetables, legumes and grains likely also taste bad. Especially when they start to rot, but... the foods I like don't keep secrets. You can see the blemishes on fruit, or smell when cream's started to turn. Honey crystalizes, but won't make you sick, even after years.
no subject
Quietly,]
How often did you have to eat something that was already rotting?
no subject
Nearly always, once. Then never again.
[It was part of the promise his handler had made, and kept. For all that L had lived too much, or not at all, it could at least be said that choosing hunger or illness wasn't one of the choices that faced him every day.]
I almost don't remember what maggots taste like.
no subject
[He breathes out the oath, and lets an acknowledging silence follow it.
L's attitude really isn't all that foreign to an alienage kid who'd, once upon a time, been suddenly introduced to a Circle where three fresh meals a day was the norm.]
We weren't forced into that choice so often. [But he's had recent experience to remember it by; Hasmal's stores had been dwindling badly by the time the Inquisition's offer of help arrived.]
Cured and spiced foods might be a good addition to your list. To try.
no subject
Do you think so?
[He sounds doubtful, but not dismissive. He doesn't think that Myr would steer him wrong out of malice, after all. Like Watari, his is a hand that feeds him.]
no subject
Though, [with a clearing of his throat,] we don't need to be so dire about it as we're both feeling right now. I think this'll be fun, to be honest with you.
[He's willing that into being in the act of saying so. Food is love and enjoyment for him, after all--an attitude born out of his own remembered childhood hunger.]
no subject
Yeah, it... could be fun. I'm willing to give it a try. The worst case is that I can't taste it, right?
no subject
[They can have hope about this. It will get better.]
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...Come to think, d'you know what a pineapple is?
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