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sixthiterationlogs2017-09-01 12:13 pm
3ofswords) wrote in sixthiterationlogs2017-09-01 12:13 pm
Entry tags:
[closed] my own kind is much too dangerous
WHO: Kira Akiyama
WHERE: 7I; out along the northern shore of the lake.
WHEN: September 10th (predated)
OPEN TO: Tim Gutterson
WARNINGS: Probable NSFW content
There’s a seventh notch in his walking stick today. Seven days in the new village, seven days away from everyone he knows. Hoshi perches at the top of the branch and Aurora’s chewed up the other end, but every day he gets up, notches it again, sets out to find them all something to eat. It really is a mirror of the old, the paint still relatively fresh, the structures yet to slouch in on themselves from the tremors that reshape the narrow passage between. The inn stands just as tall, the town hall sits across from an intact schoolhouse. Fresh blackboard, fresh bits of chalk. The field behind the town hall is just as wide, but empty of any crops.
He’d spent a morning just laying in the grass with his dog and his bird, staring at clouds, resting. There are only a couple of people really living on this side of things, and they’re easy to avoid.
Everyone is easy to avoid, now. Even their mundane feelings are sitting at the surface. Even a few of them nearby buzz the back of his teeth. It isn’t unbearable--he isn’t back at the point where he’s taking every up and down with them, but it’s more than it was before. It’s more than it was when he arrived, and it’s more than he’s had to deal with since he was a teenager in Manhattan.
He doesn’t have to deal with it here. Any more than he has to deal with the coat Tim helped him bury, or seek out the room full of blood and hair. Maybe that’s what this is: another distraction. He pushed for greater action; they found a way to take him out of it. Segregate him from the village by connecting him too closely to it.
Paranoia: not predicition. That hasn’t come back at all, none of the wider sense of the world, none of the magic that kept the rest in check. He’s been alone for a week, fending for himself, and if he didn’t have the dog or bird he thinks he’d go insane. At least they make it seem less like he’s talking to himself by day three. They help with the foxes too: nasty little things, an approximation of those across the sea. They’re bigger, but faster, and he isn’t sure how much of the offerings keep them at bay, and how much is just Aurora’s hackles going up when they approach.
Regardless: he wakes up in the mirror of his house each morning and fills the sake bottle and its cups with spring water from a jar, setting them out on the porch with a peach and leftover fish. He sets extra lines on the shore and leaves Hoshi to guard them, pecking at pretty rocks. He talks to Aurora like she’s a real companion: he sings with her keening along at his side, he makes up her half of the syllable game, and he keeps his knife tucked under all of his clothes, difficult to pick off of him.
So far, he’s only had all of his fish stolen once; his pets are alive; his house is intact; he hasn’t been bitten. Managing the foxes gives each day a greater sense of purpose than wandering and gathering food, and maybe they’re as much to thank, for the lasting edge of his sanity.
He tried to go home yesterday. The notes he left for Bodhi and the Orientation house didn’t give a time for his return, but how long could he really stay away? He’d gone three days in the hum of everyone’s emotions: he could put in an appearance.
But when he’d crossed the river on that side, the heavy, draining presence settled back over him, and he hadn’t met more than a few people before retreating back out toward the beach. At least if Tim or Credence asked, someone could say they saw him. At least Bodhi would keep up with the house, just like the day in the fog. This is like that: it’s just a break. It’s just trying to find the strength to live by his own two hands, in his own head and heart, until he can be useful to people again.
Kira just hopes it isn’t seven more days. He sits down with his spring water and sake cups, and makes up prayers to things he can’t see, that he’s only starting to believe in, that this isn’t permanent.
Nothing here is. He has to trust that.
The slant of afternoon light on the seventh day finds him walking the northern edge of the shore, his lines tied to sticks buried deep in the rocks and sand, bare feet leaving shallow tracks away from it. Hoshi is perched on the stick, stuck between a pair of moss-covered rocks, and Kira has his shorts rolled as far up as he can get them, risking the cold of the water in the heat of the day. He’s waded out near to the waist, staking similar sticks into the water to secure the rest of his clothes in the tide, soaking them something like clean where foxes that move like lightning would still have to swim to steal them. Aurora plays in the surf, held back by the depths of his own position, and for all that he feels like the only person alive, he hums as he works, breaking gently into song when something moves in the corner of his eye.
Don’t be bothered, pay respects: they’ll find a better target. Maybe he should take that approach with the Observers themselves, next time he wants to run his fucking mouth at a meeting.
WHERE: 7I; out along the northern shore of the lake.
WHEN: September 10th (predated)
OPEN TO: Tim Gutterson
WARNINGS: Probable NSFW content
There’s a seventh notch in his walking stick today. Seven days in the new village, seven days away from everyone he knows. Hoshi perches at the top of the branch and Aurora’s chewed up the other end, but every day he gets up, notches it again, sets out to find them all something to eat. It really is a mirror of the old, the paint still relatively fresh, the structures yet to slouch in on themselves from the tremors that reshape the narrow passage between. The inn stands just as tall, the town hall sits across from an intact schoolhouse. Fresh blackboard, fresh bits of chalk. The field behind the town hall is just as wide, but empty of any crops.
He’d spent a morning just laying in the grass with his dog and his bird, staring at clouds, resting. There are only a couple of people really living on this side of things, and they’re easy to avoid.
Everyone is easy to avoid, now. Even their mundane feelings are sitting at the surface. Even a few of them nearby buzz the back of his teeth. It isn’t unbearable--he isn’t back at the point where he’s taking every up and down with them, but it’s more than it was before. It’s more than it was when he arrived, and it’s more than he’s had to deal with since he was a teenager in Manhattan.
He doesn’t have to deal with it here. Any more than he has to deal with the coat Tim helped him bury, or seek out the room full of blood and hair. Maybe that’s what this is: another distraction. He pushed for greater action; they found a way to take him out of it. Segregate him from the village by connecting him too closely to it.
Paranoia: not predicition. That hasn’t come back at all, none of the wider sense of the world, none of the magic that kept the rest in check. He’s been alone for a week, fending for himself, and if he didn’t have the dog or bird he thinks he’d go insane. At least they make it seem less like he’s talking to himself by day three. They help with the foxes too: nasty little things, an approximation of those across the sea. They’re bigger, but faster, and he isn’t sure how much of the offerings keep them at bay, and how much is just Aurora’s hackles going up when they approach.
Regardless: he wakes up in the mirror of his house each morning and fills the sake bottle and its cups with spring water from a jar, setting them out on the porch with a peach and leftover fish. He sets extra lines on the shore and leaves Hoshi to guard them, pecking at pretty rocks. He talks to Aurora like she’s a real companion: he sings with her keening along at his side, he makes up her half of the syllable game, and he keeps his knife tucked under all of his clothes, difficult to pick off of him.
So far, he’s only had all of his fish stolen once; his pets are alive; his house is intact; he hasn’t been bitten. Managing the foxes gives each day a greater sense of purpose than wandering and gathering food, and maybe they’re as much to thank, for the lasting edge of his sanity.
He tried to go home yesterday. The notes he left for Bodhi and the Orientation house didn’t give a time for his return, but how long could he really stay away? He’d gone three days in the hum of everyone’s emotions: he could put in an appearance.
But when he’d crossed the river on that side, the heavy, draining presence settled back over him, and he hadn’t met more than a few people before retreating back out toward the beach. At least if Tim or Credence asked, someone could say they saw him. At least Bodhi would keep up with the house, just like the day in the fog. This is like that: it’s just a break. It’s just trying to find the strength to live by his own two hands, in his own head and heart, until he can be useful to people again.
Kira just hopes it isn’t seven more days. He sits down with his spring water and sake cups, and makes up prayers to things he can’t see, that he’s only starting to believe in, that this isn’t permanent.
Nothing here is. He has to trust that.
The slant of afternoon light on the seventh day finds him walking the northern edge of the shore, his lines tied to sticks buried deep in the rocks and sand, bare feet leaving shallow tracks away from it. Hoshi is perched on the stick, stuck between a pair of moss-covered rocks, and Kira has his shorts rolled as far up as he can get them, risking the cold of the water in the heat of the day. He’s waded out near to the waist, staking similar sticks into the water to secure the rest of his clothes in the tide, soaking them something like clean where foxes that move like lightning would still have to swim to steal them. Aurora plays in the surf, held back by the depths of his own position, and for all that he feels like the only person alive, he hums as he works, breaking gently into song when something moves in the corner of his eye.
Don’t be bothered, pay respects: they’ll find a better target. Maybe he should take that approach with the Observers themselves, next time he wants to run his fucking mouth at a meeting.