sixthiterationlogs | [closed] dancing in the dark in the pale moonlight

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[closed] dancing in the dark in the pale moonlight

WHO: Jude Sullivan
WHERE: 6I Woods and paths
WHEN: September 23rd, after dark
OPEN TO: Bodhi Rook
WARNINGS: Usual warnings for mentions of epilepsy symptoms, specifically hallucinations.

Sometimes you have to steer into the slide. Sometimes you let circumstances take you by the hand and lead. Jude’s used to being led: by Parker, by his dad, by a tug in his center of gravity that just told him to go. He’d drop everything to drive out to whatever field Parker woke up in on a given Wednesday; he’d quit a job that hurt his hand under Charlie’s orders, or he’d go find another one when the stuffy summer days in the trailer started to suffocate.

The illness is a little different.

Given a choice, he wouldn’t bow to it at all, but maybe that’s why he rolls over so easy in the day to day. If the strings can cut at any moment, if something can spark a nightmare, if something can take over his head and launch him at a given target--what’s control anyway? What’s its weight, what’s its worth?

The things he sees, the ones that aren’t really there--a lot of them are easy to ignore. It’s just a bad smell no one else notices. It’s just bugs that dart between one crack and another. Tonight a creature of pure shadow sat a physical, choking weight on his chest, looking at him with baleful eyes, breathing sulfur across his face. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t anything: he could close his eyes and breath through his mouth against the stink. But it sat so heavy, pressed down on his chest until it felt like the burn of water in his lungs, and he’d shoved up, tangled in a curtain, torn the hooks off the rod rolling onto the dining room floor.

That had knocked the weight off his chest.

The air outside is clean and fresh, cold enough to warrant his new jacket. There will be dew in the morning, and he might stay up to feel it on his ankles. He puts his feet on the path and starts walking, no destination in mind. Nothing better to do when he blinks white butterflies against the dark than follow their lead.

When next he looks up, he’s in a moonlit field, probably south of the village proper. Shoving his hands deeper into his pockets, he tilts his head back, wondering if all the stars in the dark sky are really there, or--projected, imagined. The best part of being alone, he thinks, is having no one to tell you the difference.

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Bodhi isn't moved tonight by any spike in his usual levels of personal crises. This is just his usual way of coping when there's nothing to keep him dutifully at home, squinting at chores around moonlight and guttering candles. He actually did try to sleep this time, after he finished folding the laundry. Stretched out on the sofa to wait for dawn and couldn't keep his eyes closed. Couldn't lie there and stare at the ceiling without the ghosts getting after him, couldn't even bear the weight of a blanket on him. Trying seemed like a waste of time.

He'd rather walk, anyway. He does it whenever he can justify it in daylight, too, but it's better at night, alone with cool air that feels nothing at all like home, too soft and wet. He has actually pulled his cloak on over the tunics and sash and properly fastened his headscarf in deference, though. Cold is cold.

Usually he wanders into the trees. Stays close to home, aware of potential dangers and also of unfamiliar paths, but it's in the alien calm of the forest that he seems best able to slow his head down and get it to follow the paths he wants it to. Tonight is an exception mainly because he remembered about the foxes, and thought it might be best to do his wandering somewhere with a bit more visibility. In the same spirit, he has Aurora with him. She doesn't interfere with being alone, somehow, and she does seem concerned when he slips out alone sometimes.

He almost turns around when he spots a silhouette in the field. There's somewhere else to be, certainly. He's halfway through spinning on his heel, perfectly incurious about what would bring out a second wanderer, when he recognizes the fall of Jude's hair. There's not a lot to distinguish one shadow from another, especially in a town where everyone is a human, but he... apparently knows that gravity-noncompliant tumble well enough to spot it in even an outline as faint as this.

Also Aurora wants to say hi. He has no idea what Jude's feelings are in dog terms, so he catches her collar gently before she can go introduce herself. Starting Jude up close would be worse than bothering him now and being told to fuck off, so, voice still low, he ventures, "Come here often?" Because apparently some terrible jokes survived into space-faring civilizations.

Jude's silhouette shifts from stars to voices: man and dog. They're both quiet enough he doesn't move to wander away into the trees, and Bodhi's own silhouette is specific enough to register as his own. Jude's sketched him enough in his spare time to pick out the shape of him and his odd clothes, though the dog is a strange addition.

He's seen it before, with Kira. Bodhi must be bringing it out, and Jude trails his hand over the tall grass in a mild distraction from that line of logic.

Where people sleep isn't any of his business.

Giving the field a second look, he only manages the barest smile for the question. He likes this side of Bodhi: very little about him ever seems forced, even if it's without grace. The grace would be forced, probably. It's nice to have someone try for you, Jude guesses, but he likes it better when it's just--okay. He's not very graceful either. "Sometimes," he says, making his own steps toward the pair. "I wasn't really paying attention to where I was going; you?"

Bodhi is trying desperately all the time, and only moreso with Jude, but it's not readily apparent. It's just that this is him at his best. It's all that's left. One reason among a great many that he's walking the dog (walking accompanied by the dog?) in the middle of the night instead of sleeping.

Since Jude seems alright with talking (Bodhi notices with surprise that he wants to talk, rather than make polite noises and escape into the night as soon as possible), he closes the distance between them without further hesitation. "No, not really, besides... I don't usually come this way, I guess, but I don't think I really decided to." Walks after midnight pick their own routes, as far as he's concerned. He watches carefully, hoping to see Jude understand what he means. After the paper making, he thinks Jude may finally not mind his company, but things still feel uncertain. Or maybe that's just the witching hour talking.

There's a clammy layer of dried sweat under his clothes, a twinge behind one eye and lingering notes of old eggs in every breath. Jude doesn't have names for half the moods he gets into, and maybe this one shouldn't want company, but if it's Bodhi? He thinks it must be alright. Bodhi and a friend, a sleek black shine of a dog. They always got their hackles up at Parker, so he never tried to have one, but he's never met one he had any issue with.

"Did this one decide for you," he asks, crouching into the weeds to offer hands and chin for inspection. A warm tongue distracts him from his own clamminess, and the physicality of it--a dog, a talking companion--grounds him a little more from the nightmare.

He could probably admit to it, out here, with Bodhi. But he'd rather rough up a dog's cheeks and kneel in what might become Bodhi's shadow, given light. The grass quiets then crescendos back to the normal hum of insects. He's going to miss that when the frosts come. "Are you warm enough," he asks, looking up at the shape of Bodhi's robe, like his own jacket could offer anything more.

Well, Jude clearly knows more about what to do with dogs than Bodhi does. No worries on that account, anyway. He stands a bit uncertainly, not sure where to put his hands or if he should join them in the grass. "This is meant for much colder," he says simply, picking at the robe. "I'm good with, well, I'm better at cold anyhow." He's a little more scattered and rambling than usual. It's probably just the hour. "It never really got warm at home."

Well, he's tired of looming over the other two (admittedly, not a new experience for Aurora, but he's not accustomed to looming). Bodhi sits down clumsily in the grass with the dog between them. It looks softer than it really is. Grass is almost weirder than trees, the way it covers everything and no one else seems to think it's worth commenting on. "You?" he adds a little belatedly once he's settled in.

He hadn't meant to plant them down, but when Bodhi shuffles down to sit, Jude follows the rest of the way from his crouch. The dog seems happy enough to be between them, though her attention divides more between Jude and the chirping grass than Jude and Bodhi.

"I'm good," he agrees, though his layer isn't keeping him warm, just--okay. "Cold keeps my head clear." Keeps him awake despite the hour, alert to the changes in sounds.

Even normal forests are dangerous after dark: he doesn't treat the village as any exception. In both settings he's always struggled with that kind of caution. He doesn't feel like he knows so much that he won't get hurt, he just--isn't always sure he cares. As long as it isn't deep water, it's fine. "I couldn't sleep," he admits eventually, an arm resting around the dog's sloped back. "And I don't want to see what it would look like if I started sketching in the dark."

While that's the obvious first guess, it's also an admission of... something. Not really weakness. Not being able to sleep could have plenty of reasons behind it. But it's still the kind of sharing that still surprises him a bit when it comes from Jude. Well, anyone, but especially Jude. He doesn't feel like he's earned it.

"I'd sort of like to see sketching in the dark," he says idly, looking for something neutral. Then the move suddenly seems cowardly and he corrects his course. "I, um, I don't really sleep most nights, honestly, so... welcome to the graveyard shift." He turns his head toward Jude, the near-total darkness keeping the idea of direct eye contact from being so daunting. Jude's just a series of interesting looking shadows.

Despite the low visibility, Jude turns his head as well: it seems important to meet any direct attention Bodhi gives, even if he'd only make it a moment before shying away in the daylight. What started as a simple promise of consideration in the next disaster has turned into--something. There hasn't been anything worse than some asinine foxes on the other side of the wall, but he considers Bodhi all the same.

"I guess I'm lucky to run into you during the day, then," he says, the dog losing his attention enough that she shakes her shoulder and fur under his idling hands. A hand at her ear, just as idly scratching, seems to appease her.

Bodhi's confused for a moment, blinking almost invisibly into the dark, and then tracks Jude's completely reasonable misunderstanding. "Oh, uh, I don't... really... sleep during the day much, either. Hour here and there when I can't help it." Which makes it sound like sleep is an unpleasant chore. Not an entirely inaccurate picture of Bodhi's opinion. Some of that is just pilot's habit--sleep is the enemy. Most of it is what chases him if he closes his eyes without total and complete exhaustion to force his brain down. He looks sheepish admitting it, not that he looks like anything in particular in this gloom.

So, probably not walking the dog as any kind of favor: the dog might be walking him. Jude doesn't dig in to the hows or whys of it--some weeks Parker didn't sleep either, or Charlie would save it all up until his next day off and sleep for sixteen hours straight. Without a nightmare to wake him, Jude sleeps just fine. He has to imagine what chases a person day and night.

Different kind of nightmare, probably.

"Isn't that spring nearby," he asks, eyeing the dark edges of the field. He has no interest in the water itself, but it might be warmer around it, and it's never seemed prone to the dangers of the rest of the canyon.

It feels like an abrupt change of subject, but not one he minds one bit. "I think... yeah, that way." He nods toward it generally. He doubts he could pick his way there very reliably in the dark, but he's got a decent sense of direction, even on the ground.

"Have you been?" He sounds politely interested, but not excited the way some people seem to be. Bodhi's not a huge fan of the spring itself, put off by the idea that you'd choose heat and humidity that would be deeply unpleasant if it was just hanging in the air, but the puzzle of where it's coming from is neat. Well, used to be. Now he supposes it's clear that this whole place was built for them, and a hot spring can come from wherever the person in charge wants. Neat rocks, though.

"Passed by a couple of times," he answers, giving it another moment before he pushes up: destination idled over and confirmed, time to keep moving. Company will keep him awake, but so will activity. If he sits too long in the grass, he isn't sure what he might start seeing in it.

He pauses when he's up though, to see if Bodhi is willing to follow. "It'll be warmer by it, and a little less--" he looks around at the crisp moonlit field, summer dried, musky from recent rains. "Less open," he decides, instead of more alive.

Bodhi's already getting up without deciding to, the hem of his robe billowing a bit with the efficiently clumsy movement. He's not graceful, but responding quick is built in for an academy graduate.

Half the point of these rambles is to be really, truly alone and not have to risk bothering anyone with... himself. He's not at all interested in being warmer; he's actually quite enjoying the crisp air and its air of green and damp. Going to the spring in the dark feels like a good way to fall in.

And he's following Jude anyway, and not questioning it a bit. "It's not... much of a walk," he says helpfully. When the point is already rambling, the distance can't be that big an objection, can it?

Jude's layers aren't sufficient for sitting in this kind of cold, and he doesn't want to give that kind of excuse to leave Bodhi alone out here in the next hour--unless Bodhi would rather be alone, which is a tangle of thoughts he holds for only a moment. Too complicated, too wrapped up in things that aren't seen or heard. He sets it aside.

Bodhi's following him, that's all the proof he needs.

The stars are out overhead, where the sky can be seen beyond the canopy they're approaching. Bodhi speaks of minerals and planets freely, but they've never discussed the sky. "Do the stars here look like anything to you," he asks as they walk, the dog at his heels. "Did you have constellations, where you're from?"

Bodhi smiles to himself in the dark at that question to a starpilot. He's not sure if it's absurd or just too perfect. The two concepts seem oddly close. "Everyone, um, has their own. Constellations only really work if you're in the same part of the same planet, so... And, um, that's if you're on a world with enough visibility. I never learned any that weren't from home." And the pictures never grabbed him as much as the science. Even as a child, he was more analytical than imaginative. "It doesn't work well with--with three dimensional star charts. Too much going on."

"But then you could make three-dimensional constellations," is the thing he latches onto. The idea of a room full of stars, drawing lines between, making up the shapes as they come along. He isn't the storyteller--he's always needed Parker for that--but he could build an image, he could make something out of a line.

Maybe the stories he tells are just incredibly small. The story of how Bodhi's scarf moves. The story of a bird's hovering motions. Creatures that are there before they aren't, empty woods, long shadows.

"I only know a few of ours. Hunters and bears. I never understood why we didn't keep making up more of them."

"The ones I know are... things like that." He's not totally clear on what a bear is, but hunter is a simple concept. And you can really only get simple concepts into the stars. Seeing shapes spelled out by a bunch of random dots is itself a leap of abstract reasoning, and maybe there's just not much left for long explanations afterward. "They just... I don't see pictures that easily." He can see why Jude does. Bodhi appreciates that talent even if he doesn't have it. "I see... roads, I guess?"

That's a nice thing to think about, with so many overhead. The night is clear, if cold, and when they reach the open space around the spring, the sky opens up to them. Jude finds a rock to perch against, a safe enough distance from the simmering water, and steam catches moonlight as it rises behind him.

"Maybe you'll find the road out of here, then," he says, casting his gaze back up. He's traveled plenty of roads back home, but it's all points of light and pictures to him.

"Be kind of hard to get everyone onboard a cargo ship," he says absently, and then stops for a moment. Just a moment, but enough to be a bit of a stutter in the smooth movement as the shadow that is Bodhi trails the shadow that is Jude toward the spring. Aurora notices, as she often does his little lapses. He doesn't notice her noticing, but the slight nudge from her nose does prod him quickly back to reality.

It'd be cramped, but we'd all fit. There and gone. It doesn't happen often now. He can even consciously think about it without shutting down, but when it surprises him like this... At least it's just a moment from the last mission. Everything after Saw and Jedha he can handle, if not gracefully or easily. Poor Jude doesn't have to be subjected to one of his rare downward spirals, just a blip that could easily be ignored.

"I don't... I don't really think I'm likely to fly again." The tone is much more melancholy, but those are much easier words. Being resigned to the future isn't anything worse than a bit painful. It's not the trap of the past.

The flow of conversation is not Jude's purview, and he lets it stutter and go where it will. Usually he isn't even a participant: it's a thing that moves around him. His parents arguing in the next room; his father on the phone with lawyers; his classmates chattering their breaths away.

Bodhi, like few before him, manages to slide inside his bubble of attention when he isn't drawing him out of it. The rejoinder pulls him back, looking across the open space, his eyes adjusting to the moonlight.

It's a sad thing. Charlie selling his bike, Parker's silence around university. Jude watching his mother walk into court. "There's a lot of things on the ground. Or in it."

Bodhi starts to smile a little at the thought, which has the advantage of being both kind and quite true, and then the followup comment makes him grin broader than daylight would allow. Edges are mutable in the dark, and it's much easier for Bodhi to go from feeling sorry for himself to amused than to drag himself free of an u safe memory. It helps that this is a topic he's not the least but sensitive about. "I promise not to talk at you about rocks too much," he says with mock solemnity. "You're safe."

"You can talk about rocks," Jude promises, eyes rolling behind his hair. "You like to talk about rocks, and I don't mind hearing about them." In terms of people talking at him, wrapping their words and voices around his bubble of willful calm--rocks are a lot better than most the things he hears at school or home. Gossip and idle conversation, ranging from the pointless to cruel.

Or the theories he's subjected to here. People at meals discussing the vials in hushed whispers, or the food stores, or--he just wants it a day at a time. To fill up his basement with wood for the fires, to fit the tub back to the pipes in his bathroom. "Where I grew up, they mined fuel out of the mountains." He can't just call it Coal Country, unsure of Bodhi would know what coal is.

Bodhi nods and dislodges the end of his headscarf. He did mean to tie it up properly but he's very out of practice. He huffs in annoyance at himself and begins the awkward process of trying to secure it back where it belongs without redoing the whole thing. In the dark. Ah, well. He never thought he had any dignity. "You said mining before," he says without a polite nod, since it didn't go well the first try.

"We, um, us too, actually, or, well, not up on the plateau, but even back before they expanded, it was a big part of what kept NiJedha running." His family weren't miners, but he feels like he at least has a general understanding of the process.

It's pure coincidence that both coal and kyber crystals could be more or less accurately called fuel.

"Where I'm from, they build the whole town around it; they fall apart when the mine closes or collapses." And there were a lot of collapsed mines in Hollow Creek--some kind of record, overall or for a few years, he can't recall. Why Charlie moved them to a dying town, he doesn't know. Maybe he just thought no one would find or recognize them there, after the publicity of his mother's trial. No one really recognizes him at school, though he can't fight the feeling he'd been approached. The tattoo itches when he tries to hold onto that feeling, and he always lets it go. "Maybe it's better if we never figure it out, here. The caves fall in on their own already."

The thought that Jedha sure as hell collapsed skitters across his mind without being allowed to form. It'll probably be back, but later, when he's not around Jude. For now it's worth it to fight off, whatever that might cost in the long run.

He's not sure how to reply anyway. He knows he and Jude have very different opinions about what's going on and how much to think about it, and everything he could say might be annoying. Usually he'd either start an argument or just never mention it again, depending on whether he wanted to preserve the peace. The twin desires to talk about something significant and not upset Jude even a little are less familiar and he doesn't know how to reconcile them.

Cave-ins, at least, call for a little tact under the circumstances. "Well, at least we probably don't need anything from down in the caves?" Oh, good, babbling like a weirdo. Why does this happen so often?

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