2018-07-28: A Small Miracle
- Log: A Small Miracle
- Cast: Loren Voss, Lan Lilac
- Where: Uzda Il-jam
- Date: July 28th 2018
- Summary: After the proving grounds of Uzda Il-jam, Loren finds himself with a bit of a problem. Lan helps out.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
In one moment, Loren reaches out a hand for the seal.
He has the time to feel his heart beat thrice -- too fast, too fast, a side effect of the drug.
For a moment, there is light. It burns into him, hollows him out, fills the gap. There is light.
And blinking, he stumbles amidst the green knee-high grasses of the island as he simply appears out in the sunshine.
It could be said to be a perfect day. A seagull calls out somewhere. Waves lap the shore in their eternal rhythm. He blinks, turning. Bright spots dance in his gaze and he for a moment stares into the space beyond the horizon, as if he'd taken a blow to the head or had too much to drink.
Then shakes his head, then pushes off through the plantlife away from the temple-like structure and heads down for the shoreline.
He isn't far onto the beach before he drops his bag and similarly drops to the sands himself, leaning to flop back and spread out on the shore.
He stares up at the sky.
It's probably just the drug. He might have overdone it. He should take the antagonist, reverse it. He lifts a hand to rest against his chest. His heart's pounding. He takes a deep breath. Easy. Calm down. It's just the drug.
Where... where did he leave his bag. Blindly, he reaches for it.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
This entire temple complex - it is a temple, right? Lan isn't sure anymore - is getting ridiculous. Water puzzles, light puzzles, fighting-a-beast-made-of-light (even that might have included a puzzle somehow and they just failed it) to an actual honest-to-god maze.
It's a really, really good thing that Lan is pretty adaptable and not entirely a coward, because now she's tripping the light fantastic thanks to Thomas's spacefuture drugs. Whee! She slaps her hand down right in the middle of the seal at the end
and her feet sink into the softness of beach sand. "Huh?"
Relief wars a bit with disappointment; she'd thought a place like this would have something more exciting to find than 'getting dumped back outside'. Maybe they failed it somehow after all. It could be worse, Lan decides. She really likes all this water just lying around...
The sound of shifting sand encroaches on the edges of Loren's awareness. But it's just Lan, though she's still looking just as 'altered' as she did mere minutes ago. "OhhiThomashereyouare!"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Some treasures are a little more esoteric than others. In their case, the true value of what they have gained in the light beyond light will bear out the moment they leave the safe embrace of the island.
In the end, Loren manages to pinch a fold of the fabric between his index and middle finger.
Got it.
He drags the bag towards himself, slowly, and without rising from the position in which he continues to lie, flat on his back with his teeth grit.
This is the scene that Lan arrives into.
"Yes," he answers, one hand pressed against his chest, the other sunk up to his elbow in his bag. His voice is only just above a whisper. "Here I am."
His fingertips brush against the contents strapped against the inside of the bag. Not that. Not that either, that's an antibiotic. That's andrenaline, definitely not that. Not that, it's an anodyne. No, that one's something he'll regret.
This one.
And slowly slides the vial back out, uncaps the top in a shaking hand, and downs the contents.
It tastes bad. Even in his condition, he grimaces.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She's really happy to see him again. That dream from the other night's still bothering her a bit, it seems - for all that she hadn't really missed him immediately, the sight of him lying stiffly in the sand is alarming. What's wrong with him--?
But he moves, and Lan's heart eases back down out of her throat. "Are you all right?" she asks, making a conscious effort to shake off the effects of whatever it was Thomas gave her. Steady, steady. She drops to her knees in the sand beside him, hesitantly trying to rest her palm on top of the hand he's clutching to his chest. "Easy," she guides him, voice perhaps surprisingly quiet.
She doesn't recognize the antidote any more than she did the drug itself, and for the first time she's starting to regret just swallowing whatever was in that vial. Resisting the effects is stretching her mental resources; but being kind comes naturally. "Easy. Are you hurt?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
His gaze shifts from the skies overhead -- barely brushed with clouds, he notices -- and over to her as she sits down alongside him and stares down in clear obvious concern.
Go away, the thought runs, but instead of voicing that fact:
"What are you..." he says, his voice cracking halfway through the question. His hand shakes; the vial tumbles to the sands.
She puts her hand on Loren's chest, overtop his own hand. He's breathing slowly but deeply, an attempt on his part to wrestle control of the biochemical cascade. But his heart's still pounding. Even she'll feel it.
"Easy... for you to..." he chokes out, before sputtering into a sort of semi-silence, taking instead another open-mouthed breath.
"Can't... talk..."
Even saying that's overtaken his resources, stretched thin as they are. Between breaths, the words just seem to die in his throat, and all the will in the world isn't enough to get them out again.
He might have taken the proper antagonist for the drug he'd had before, but it won't kick in automatically.
This is worse than before. Why...?
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She can feel it. His pulse is worryingly fast.
What are you supposed to do for someone like this? "Did you take too much of this?" she asks, but it's a bit rhetorical when she follows that up with, "It's okay. You don't have to talk. Just breathe." Lan looks down at him, eyebrows furrowed slightly. "It's okay. Just breathe, and listen."
What can she do? What would she want someone to do, if she were in Thomas's place?
She wouldn't want them to hover, or get upset themselves. Lan adjusts herself, moving her legs out to the side without letting go of Thomas's hand, and lies down on her side next to him.
The position threatens to dislodge a thought into her brain, but it's gone as quick as blinking. Instead, she pillows her head on her free arm and carefully twines her fingers between Thomas's. "It's going to be okay. Listen to me, follow my voice."
It's a small miracle that her own heart isn't racing just like his. What should she say? There's got to be a song or a story or something she can recite...
Lan is quiet for the span of several breaths before she takes a deeper breath.
"The first word was 'dream'. I heard it in my sleep, deep in the dark of the center of my heart..."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
One of the elite, lying on their back in the sand like a stuck turtle. Isn't this pathetic?
It's not normally like this. It's not normally like this! It's not--
Those twined thoughts run through him, right down to the core. This is pathetic. It's not normal. It's--
And she's still there, watching him. Isn't that wonderful, he has a witness for this most ignoble of moments.
It feels like someone's wrapping their hands around his throat and squeezing--
She tells him to breathe. His breaths have started to get shallower, though, haven't they?
Calm down. Slow down your breath. Or did you forget how to do even that?
I can't. I can't--
He's gone entirely rigid against the sand.
Which is the moment where she slowly lays herself down alongside him. Sidelong, he stares almost panickedly over at her as he manages a deeper-if-jerkily-so breath, and not for the first time in his life wishes he could spontaneously develop telepathy.
Go away!!
His hand tightens against hers nonetheless.
Listen to her...? What...?
But right now, he has no choice but to listen to the sound of her voice. A dream...
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
She doesn't know what else to do for him, not really. But Lan can do this, and maybe it'll help. "The second word was 'wind', guiding me along," she continues, voice rising and falling - though you couldn't really call it 'singing' yet. 'Reciting', maybe. Her fingers are warm. The sand cradles them both, warm from the sun. The waves lap over and over at the shore. "Fanning my wings from the arms of the gods."
The words seem like a dream on their own, said just loud enough to hear over the waves. "Another golden apple fell, as if counting melting sorrows." You'll be okay, right Thomas? Even if it takes a while, you'll feel better.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
She doesn't go. She doesn't leave him, even if he desperately wishes for precisely that. She just lies there alongside him under nearly perfect skies, against the sunbaked sands, half-singing and half-reciting something he doesn't recognize.
Lambs are... always so strange...
A recovery occurs only by inches: enough time for the agent he ingested to reverse the action of his earlier mistake. Enough time for him to breathe, properly.
She's still singing.
Or, not quite properly singing. She's still...
By now his breathing is much more normal. He lies slack against the sand, head back, eyes closed.
Under her hand, his heart still races, still not entirely back to a normal tempo. He still hasn't said anything.
Until, his voice hoarse, he says:
"...Why are you here?"
He hasn't opened his eyes.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Song or poem, whatever it is doesn't seem to be very sensical. "An old magic book, moondrops, the curtain of night," she murmurs, eyes growing heavy-lidded. "Just a premonition of meeting someday..."
It's been a very long time since Lan heard that song. Years, definitely. But it still makes her sleepy, just as it had when she was little. With the sun and the water and the sand, she could almost drift away right here. Surely she'd wake up again before the tide came in.
And finally, Thomas says something.
It's about what she'd expected, really. Lan makes herself wake up a little bit, watching the side of his face. "...I don't understand the question, I think," she admits. "Why am I here right now? Why did I come to the island? Why am I where?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
He wonders, vaguely, who wrote it. Or what they'd meant by it. The words are nonsense, strung together like beads haphazardly threaded on a cord. Probably, it doesn't mean anything.
But still, he wonders about things like that, all the same.
"Why are you here," he repeats, not even opening his eyes. "Right here, right now. You should have gone."
His hand tenses under hers, as if noticing for the first time that she's got her fingers entwined with his. He doesn't jerk his hand away, merely instead moves to slide it free by degrees.
After which he sits up abruptly and almost loses his glasses in the process. He lingers like that for a moment, his gaze straight ahead and off towards the sea, before he shoves his glasses back up his nose and rises to his feet. He only sways for a moment, a casualty of standing so quickly.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Sometimes things are worth thinking about. Even Lan had wondered about it... but she was a child back then. It's just a lullaby. Maybe it's not even that important.
Why, again. Lan doesn't protest or cling as he gingerly disengages his hand and sits, then stands up. "Because I guess that's the end of the temple, maybe. I got here right before I found you, and I didn't do anything you didn't do..." She doesn't know why she's here. "Where else would I be? Halfway to Meribia?"
One eye still open, she watches him sway. Huh, something's off... "What's that?" she asks suddenly, lifting a hand to point at the leather pouch at his hip. "Did you find something useful inside?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"...That's it?"
He hesitates before he looks back over at her. But he does look back over at her.
"There's no other reason? Just because you were here?"
He exhales, a plosive-sounding breath; he shakes his head. "If it had been me, I would have..."
He trails out, hunching his shoulders slightly. He never does finish that statement.
"You're a weird girl."
That's a funny way for someone to say 'thank you'.
It's as if he'd gained a second belt somewhere between the point where they'd split up and reunited, out at the ends of the ruin. A weird belt with a leather pouch hanging off it.
He glances down at it.
Remembers for an instant what he'd found inside it when he'd looked.
It belongs to that woman, Margaret.
A point of clarification is necessary at this point: in no way is Loren particularly embarrassed by a naked body in practically any capacity. He studied medicine, he's done gross anatomy, he even (like most studying medicine did) treated Worker Bees for practice. A body is just a body. Still, the artwork on those cards is a little bit...
Embarrassing. There's no getting around it. There's something just primordially embarrassing about even being in close proximity to those cards.
So when he sees an opportunity, he takes it.
Unbuckling the belt, he all-but-shoves belt and bag both over at Lan.
"I have no idea what's in it," he lies. "It was on me when I got out." Which is close to being true, even if it's probably the least believable part of his story.
"You can have it, if you want it."
He hopes she does.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"That's it," she echoes, gazing up at him from the sand. Unlike him, so quick to get up, Lan seems to feel perfectly content to lie in the sand and just 'be'. "Was I supposed to have another reason?" Or an excuse, maybe?
If it were him, he would have... She waits, but he doesn't finish the thought. Oh well. It was probably going to be '...would have left you here', anyway. Lan rolls over onto her belly, resting her chin on her crossed arms. There's probably no helping it~
Fwump! The bag and the belt it's on land next to her. "Oh, was it in a chest or something?" She's already opening it, of course. He didn't warn her not to...! Sliding a card out, Lan holds it up, turning it over to examine it... 'The Moon', it says once she's turned it right side up. "Pretty. Are you sure, though? Or is this just your way of saying, 'Thanks, Lan, you helped me out'?"
She's probably teasing him, just a little bit.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"...Yes?" he asks, as if incredulous. "Listen, people don't..."
Not without some sort of kinship.
Or friendship. Or--
Is... that what she thinks this is?
Loren shakes his head. "No, it wasn't in a chest. I think that... light at the end mixed things up." Wait, does that mean that belongs to someone else...?
Or maybe he just lucked out and found a moderately naughty set of tarot cards from time unremembered. Honestly, either is probably valid at this point.
Which is, of course, when she pulls out a card.
He takes a breath. His back has gone awfully straight.
"I don't need something like that," he says, pushing his glasses up his nose. "It's just superstition."
A part of him wonders if it's possible to tell the future through cards--
Which, as she teases him, just prompts him to gain the sulkiest expression possible and cross his arms over his chest as he stares out balefully at the rolling waves.
He might protest when pushed that he's nineteen but he's still not much more than a kid.
"Mm."
(Lan might as well take it as a yes. Of a sort.)