sixthiterationlogs | † monstra evenerunt mihi

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† monstra evenerunt mihi

WHO: Gaius Gracchus
WHERE: Outside the Inn
WHEN: During the aurora event, around Jan 6
OPEN TO: Anyone willing to try talking to the guy who knows barely any English
WARNINGS: Slightly squicky injury reference
STATUS: OPEN

The gods are speaking.

It is hard to look at the sky at night and not think that. Gaius has never been a man to let omens stand in the way, but twice now, he and his brother had continued their work under ill-favored birds, and it had ended badly for them. Tiberius, he's been told, had split his toe crossing the threshold as he set out for the forum on the day he'd been killed. And the omens in Junonia had been nothing but bad, wolves stealing the boundary markers, winds breaking the standards and scattering the sacrifices, and he's been wondering ever since his return to Rome if those omens weren't for the colony, but for him. Nothing had gone right for him since Junonia. He'd lost his support, he'd lost the elections (or had them rigged against him) and he'd found his enemy elected to the consulship.

And now here the skies are afire at night, blazing in greens and blues and colors he's never known the night sky could have. It can surely bode no good to this strange village he's found himself in that the gods have set their aethereal flame every night for more than a week now. It can bode no good, but that hasn't stopped Gaius from going out to stare up into the dancing light and wonder at it. Wonder, and marvel, too, for all his fear.

"O, Iuppiter," he murmurs, the start of some half-formed evocation to the sky god, king of the gods of Rome: tonight, the skies are brighter than ever.

He's wrapped up in his coat, but the Roman is standing in the middle of the path that runs past the inn and paying no attention to the weather, or to anyone who may approach: instead, he's entirely absorbed in the sky.

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Cougar's always liked the Northern Lights, having seen them in several countries when it was too cold to bear. He's dressed for the cold tonight and is out to see the colours painted in the sky. He's also outside to give the strange rings some more thought, which he hasn't stopped doing since they first turned up in a very small box from Jake, one that he hasn't told him about just yet.

He still needs to understand them, honestly. He's nearly home when he finds someone else out there, gaping upwards at the lights, but looking not half as warm as Cougar does. He hears the Latin, which is an old language, one he only knows vaguely because of mass, but enough to place it. "Beautiful lights, aren't they?" he asks in Spanish, though he knows it will likely go over the man's head.

Ohio is not exactly known for its auroras. Ohio, in point of fact, isn't actually known for much of anything, contrary to what the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tried to make them all to believe back in '86.

As is made evident nearly every minute of everyday, this place is pretty damn far from Ohio. In Ohio, you didn't walk outside to watch dancing lights in the sky. You tipped cows and ended up covered in shit.

Veronica's on her way back home from the inn when she sees the guy just standing there, all wrapped up in the sight of the bright, shuddering night. It shames her a little; she'd barely glanced up, too focused on getting from one snug little enclave to another.

She stops beside him, shivering in the fur-lined coat she'd gotten for Christmas, and tips her head back to watch.

"It almost doesn't look real," she says, shoving her hands into her pockets.

Gaius is a man whose life has been built on his ability with words. Even those who hate him -- hated him, perhaps, as in this strange place he's not sure what held true in Rome still counts -- know that he is one of the most gifted orators in the city. Here, though, that gift for words counts for near nothing, because so few people can understand him.

He's stopped expecting people to know Latin, to speak to him in any words that he can begin to understand. This man, though ... it's not Latin, but it's familiar. He can recognize what he's talking about, well enough to guess that it's something about the lights being beautiful.

Gaius considers, then gives a slow nod.

"Beautiful," he replies in Latin, in the hope that the man might understand him a little, the way he understood the man. "But some would say dangerous. Some would say the gods are angered."

He hasn't been able to pray here, to make the sacrifices that would be part of every day in Rome. He's offered what he can, but that's so little. This, though, is surely something more than one man's failure of piety.

The dancing lights in the sky are so unlike anything Gaius has ever seen before that it's hard not to feel awed, though awe isn't a natural sensation to a man who all his life had been told about the greatness he should claim. He's never seen anything like this before, and he can't speak well enough to most people to ask about it.

He does, though, feel that he remembers something similar being described, feels it but can't place the memory. He's still thinking over it when the woman approaches, wrapped up tightly in one of the strange sleeved cloaks that people here wear and that he himself is wearing.

"I don't know your language," he says, slowly, repeating the words that were some of the first he'd been taught when he'd asked Rory and Helen for help learning to speak. His words are heavily accented, a rolling, foreign sound something like Italian to an English-speaker's ears.

Cougar narrows his eyes at the words, puzzling through them. He's not completely lost, but it's not the same as understanding a different dialect of Spanish. This, he understands maybe a word here and there, and the rest he has to fill in the gaps. It's not so different than what he'd done for English for so long, though, so he can't help but smile a little, when he picks out a certain word.

"Why would God make something so beautiful, if he was angry?" Missing the plural is an easy mistake, given the completely different languages. He means it, though. He's not sure how such beauty could be the result of anger (a word he'd picked out).

The lights are beautiful.

The lights are also mysterious, and Benedict isn't quite sure he trusts them. He's learned, in his time here, that the things he thought he knew about the Surface aren't necessarily true, that there are some things he'd thought were deadly that were, in fact, harmless, and almost everyone in the habble seems to think the lights are one of those things; harmless and pretty, albeit something of a nuisance with how bright they are.

They do have some good qualities, though, and one of them is that they illuminate the paths they keep digging well enough that Benedict doesn't have to squint at all when he darts outside one last time before bed to collect some more wood to burn through the night.

The man standing in the middle of the path is obvious, and he doesn't bump into him, but he is somewhat in the way. Clearing his throat, Benedict stops a few paces away, and lifts his eyebrows when the man doesn't turn his head to look at him immediately.

"Excuse me," he says politely, hoping the newcomer will take the hint and get out of his way so he can get back inside. As soon as the thought forms, however, he feels immediately guilty for it; when he first arrived, everything had seemed new and overwhelming and strange, just because he's been here long enough to grow disenchanted doesn't mean everyone else should. "They're incredible, aren't they?"

Gaius is starting to learn that even when he can't understand the language, the tone can tell him a great deal. A question, after all, is as much a matter of inflection as of interrogatives. This is a question, and it has to do with the gods and with anger. And beauty. That much he can tell, and he's always been good with words, and with language, so he can guess at the man's approximate meaning, difficult as it is to understand the nuance.

Not all portents are bad, and Gaius takes another long moment staring at the dancing light to consider that. He's known many bad portents, but perhaps this beauty is a sign of something great, not something terrible.

He wants to ask the man what his interpretation is, but he's not sure how to say it in a way that would be understood. Still, he's going to try. He needs to make connections with the people here if he's to have any hope of getting by.

"What do you think they mean?" He asks it slowly, and he hopes the simple words he chooses are like enough to the man's own language that they can be understood.

The night near as bright as day is one of the unsettling things about the lights. It's not simply the green ribbons of light twisting through the sky, it's the eerie glow they cast over the night's landscape, leaving the snow layered in green. The light gives the whole word an unearthly tint, enough that Gaius' appeal to the gods seems the only appropriate response.

Yet he is fascinated, staring in awe at the sky, and he's so awed that he's not looking at the people around him, an unusual state for a man who's spent the past several years needing to be aware of his public image and his public following. It's strange to be around so few people here, not to be crowded with clients and petitioners and supporters whenever he's out in public, not to have his wife and mother and children and slaves around him when he's home.

So he's not listening closely enough to parse what the man says first. It's only when he pauses that Gaius is listening, and though one of the words is familiar, it's not familiar enough for him to understand the man's meaning.

"I don't know your language," he says, slowly, in one of the few English phrases he's yet learned, his words heavily accented.

Benedict feels even worse now for his unconscious irritation, and he nods, hopefully smoothing his expression out into something much more pleasant and inviting.

"Right." They've been lucky, somewhat, that most everyone who came through the fountain seemed to speak the same language, but there are enough people here who are struggling with language barriers that he's grown used to the idea. "Er..."

Adjusting the wood in his arms, he cautiously greets the man in each language he speaks, not really expecting much to come of it, as it seems that there is little parallel between what Benedict has known in the Spires and what everyone else knows on the Surface. Still, he's been able to muddle through alright with people like Thorfinn and Cougar, who both speak different languages to him, so logic dictates that he should, hopefully, be able to speak to this man as well.

"The lights are beautiful."

This young man, it seems, is very well-educated, by the number of languages he cycles through, and Gaius appreciates the effort. He appreciates it even more when he says something that Gaius can understand: that the lights are beautiful.

"Truly, they are," he agrees. He's been learning to keep his sentences shirt, his choice of words simple, because there are a handful of people here who can understand some of what he says in Latin, if he doesn't speak with his customary high-flying rhetoric.

"But aren't they also a concern? What might they mean?"

It sounds, perhaps, a little like a rhetorical exercise, a prompt for a child's discourse, but it is, simply, a real concern to him. Why would the gods do this to the sky?

Latin? It had been Benedict's last resort, as the man hadn't reacted to Auroran or any of the other languages Benedict had tried, and he's surprised that Latin is the one that struck a chord. But then again, it's possible that Latin isn't the man's first language and he, like Benedict, is making do with the only common denominator they have between them. In any case...

Thinking hard, his words a little stilted as he tries to pull up lessons he'd long ago ceased taking, Benedict responds.

"People say they mean nothing. That they are caused by...science."

Benedict isn't entirely sure he believes that — he, himself, votes for ethereal magic, which automatically makes him distrust them — but as it is the general consensus around those he's heard discussing it, he will allow them their opinions.

To Veronica's dismay, his isn't a Spanish accent. Spanish she knows pretty damned well at this point. Her French is passable. Hell, she can even get by with some Norse, thanks to Thorfinn. But no, this guy has to speak Italian.

"Parlez-vous Français?" she tries, and then, "¿Hablas español?" because you never know; Europe is a pretty multi-lingual place.

Well, it isn't like she hasn't had to resort to effusive hand signals before. At least she's had some practice.

"The sky," she says, gesturing broadly, fingers splayed to indicate the whole of the undulating colors, and then touches her temples and motions outward like her mind is blown. "Wow."

Edited 2017-01-29 08:45 (UTC)

Cougar shrugs at the question. He knows what they mean from a scientific perspective, can practically hear Jake in the back of his head rambling on about what causes a phenomenon like this. What it means here, in an enclosed space, with no technology and seemingly endless traps, that's the part he doesn't know. "Maybe a portent. Maybe a warning. Or maybe, all-clear," he says, rambling on because he could make out the 'what' part of what the man had been saying.

Maybe this is just a way of saying that whatever observation had been happening with the pod and creature is now over? Or a reminder that someone is still always watching.

Once more, Gaius wishes that he could understand these people better. There's enough there that he can grasp some of the words, enough to think that perhaps this man's thinking is not so very different from his own: signs, warnings, or who knows, what?

The tone, though, says that the man is no more sure in his statements than Gaius had been. And whatever Gaius may have done in the face of omens in Junonia, he remembers what Claudia and her servants say of the day his brother died, the portents that foretold the ill fate he'd find. Those portents had spoken true. And he's been haunted, since he arrived here, by the memory of the vision of his brother that appeared to him so many years ago, foretelling that he would meet the same fate, to die in the name of the Roman people.

What, then, could the green dancing in the sky mean?

"I am certain a priest could tell us."

Perhaps even Crassus Mucianus could have, his own father-in-law, were he still alive. The words, though, have a suggestion of sarcasm in them. He's not fool enough not to think a priest would make whatever he wanted of this sign from the ether.

Gaius won't question somebody knowing his language, though everyone he's spoken to here who knows Latin seems to know it as some distant thing that takes them time to recall. Still, he's learned to be grateful, and that gratitude brings with it a patience that is not inherent in Gaius' character. So he listens, his face turned away from the lights for long enough for the man to finish speaking.

Science, he has to pause over. By wisdom, learning, philosophy? The thought of philosophy sparks a memory, of Greek lessons and things read avidly in the period of his retirement from public life after his brother's death.

"Aristotle said crimson lights in the sky are caused by air condensing and taking fire." There is something in the dance of the green threads above them that is like what Aristotle had said: something about the light filtering through the air and the colors appearing different to us.

"What do you believe?"

Benedict is grateful for the man's patience, although the more he thinks about what to say, the more he remembers. He speaks with an accent that Benedict is unused to, but that would be logical if he's from a different Spire, so he doesn't comment on that or even lift his eyebrows in surprise.

He doesn't recognize Aristotle, but it's obvious the man is someone Benedict's new friend reveres or at least respects, so he won't ask.

Aristotle's explanation doesn't exactly put Benedict at ease, and it's probably obvious in the cast of his face. He rolls his lips together, thinning them, and glances up. "Magic. Ethereal magic," he adds in Albion, not having the mental fortitude at the moment to try and figure out a way to translate something that he's never learned the Latin word for. "I do not like them much but they have been burning for weeks and nothing evil has happened. So I have learned to accept them."

Priest, he knows. He'd know priest in any language, mainly because he's sat attentively at enough masses in Latin to know the entire service in that language. Maybe he should have been using prayers to communicate earlier. "No priests," he says, because if there were, then Cougar would be able to indulge himself in confession.

He's woefully lacking in that ability, something he's never had to deal with before. Even in Bolivia, he'd been able to sneak off and have confession at least a few times a week. "Auroras," he clarifies. "They're called auroras." Why they're there, that's the question. It's too easy to think they're here naturally. Nothing around here seems to happen naturally.

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† monstra evenerunt mihi

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