A Clockwork Heart [Torin]

[Sivan]

Sivan looked awkwardly at his boots at all the praise. He did manage to look Torin in the eyes after a while, though. He said, "You have been kind to me without making me feel like a chore. You owe me nothing, though, I would not be so rude as to turn down a gift given by a friend."

It came out slowly, stately, giving Torin a chance to understand it to the best of his growing abilities.

"You can visit a wizard when you want to." He winked, then immediately felt like an idiot for it. Thankfully, Torin had more questions. "Fae'ethalan." It sounded strange without the lilt of an elven tongue, but he wanted Torin to understand. "Not dead..." He paused and then murmured to the entity that sort of resided in his mind. "Exael, can you...?"

Something shifted within him, not physically, but spiritually. At the same time, he channeled his Rune of Semblance and he saw. With his augmented vision, everything was a riot of light and color, more information that his mind tried to process. Only Torin saw how he himself began to glow with a pale, blue-white nimbus. Sivan reached out to touch the trunk of the tree, then hesitantly brought his other hand up to Torin's temple. There was a gentle wrench behind Torin's eyes and then it was as though he was peering through aura glass, though even that was a pale comparison. He could see Sivan as so much more, though there was much he hadn't the context to name. But he could see the Runes of Semblance and Summoning written into Sivan's aura, and when he looked at the tree as Sivan bade him do, he could see that it was a tree but it was also a person.

Flower was hibernating. There was a darkness within but it was contained and it, too, hibernated. Not growing, just sleeping.

"It was a temporary measure, but the best I could think to do. There were clues in the archives. Exael helped, and the nature spirits, as well." Perhaps the bridge Exael had made between their minds so Torin could see also helped him understand what Sivan was saying more perfectly.

[Torin Kilvin]

The words made sense in his head, spoken with care, meant for him directly.

"A gift, from a friend." He gestured at the garden and the cottage, implying that he saw what he was being given as a gift.

The smtih's apprentice had no idea how the magical beings lived really, so the idea that one might exist under a tree was no odder to him than the idea that a bird lived in a tree. He was about to make the comparison, finding it a little funny, when Sivan gave way to something Other.

Blinking hard he tried to process as the part of him that understood magic far better than his conscious mind ever would shifted his weight onto his back foot. Curious but wary of the massive energy that moved inside Sivan's form as the water might ripple from the movement of a creature under its surface far too big for a human mind to comprehend. Part of him wanted to run but it was such a small part next to the childish fascination that was still heavy on him. Sivan's pale features began to glow the soft color of his eyes and Torin breathed out a sound that might have been awe or laughter or terror. He did not flinch away when the hand came up to touch him, only held very still as a deer might freeze before a lantern.

His vision went sideways but then reoriented, not as if he was seeing normally again but as if gravity had shifted to one side and he was now standing on the new down. He could see Sivan, like he saw raw magic through the aether glass, like he grew to know the things he wrought with time and care. It felt so personal he would have been embarrassed had his normal social mindset been available. Information poured into him that he wouldn't really understand when he came out of the place Exael had brought him but that would imprint on his subconscious.

His attention was gently brought to the tree where he could see a glow of golden-green light flowing all through the growing form, down into roots where there was also a person. The images overlapped each other like after-images, each wrapped around also by dark tendrils of something not of them, but in them.

The words came into him like water. He supposed he could hear them but they felt like he was soaking them through his mind instead.

"Oh." Was all he could say at first. Reaching out he touched. Not the tree, certainly not the creature under it, but the energy that made up both. He barely brushed with a fingertip, feeling the vibration of life, rest, healing, and hate intertwining with each other in a complicated combination of tapestry and sound. Those were how his human mind could interpret it, at least. After a time that he couldn't have expressed the length of, a moment, a lifetime, he turned back to the elf. Exael was there too, behind Sivan, a nimbus of light too bright to look at directly.

"Can you see me too?" The words were Mythrasi but the meaning echoed beyond language into Sivan's thoughts, his mind. Torin knew the other man would understand what he was asking. Could he see the essence of Torin as Torin could now see his. "Is this what Semblance is like?"

Did Aurin see him like this? The thought was immediately frightening and then warmed him to his core.

[Sivan]

Sivan was quiet through most of it. He knew Torin's mind would be swimming in sensations and such that he wasn't used to, experiencing what he could only see through his aura glass. The mind needed time to understand what it was seeing and there wasn't time enough for that. Sivan too was still learning to process what he felt through his Rune. But when Torin asked a direct question, Sivan was quick to respond.

"I can see you," he affirmed. "You are seeing through your eyes and you are seeing through my eyes. You are seeing through my Rune. And you are seeing through my blood... Dratori are connected to the elemental spirits, even if we do not become summoners. My mother is Dratori." He couldn't remember if he had told Torin that.

Exael, obliging a thought it sensed, twisted something in the connection so that Torin could see himself through Sivan's eyes. He was not at all how he looked in the mirror. For one, he wasn't a reflection but a true thing. Glass wasn't warping the image at all. The pattern of his aether was there, beautiful in the way that all life was beautiful. Unique and personal, though it would take Sivan hours of meditating upon his friend like this to really learn what the patterns meant.

Whether this was how his master saw him, Sivan didn't know. He knew little of Torin's life outside his work and his interests. But there was no denying that Torin was beautiful.

"Some of this is how Exael sees you. As a celestial spirit sees you."

Some of this is subjective, Exael added, sounding in both their minds. His affection for you is another variable.

Embarrassment flared, and then everything flared out. Torin's vision was still picking up more than it ought to, but some of the information was like lights in the eyes after staring too long at the sun. Sivan tottered forward against Torin and grabbed him reflexively about the waist. This too was embarrassing, but he found himself suddenly too weary to make another decision.

"S-sorry..." His accent became much more pronounced as he lacked the energy to correct it. "New magic. Difficult... to hold..."

[Torin Kilvin]

His mind had tried to hold onto its intense information gathering, tried to see the experience as a gift that allowed him to learn. He still felt all those things but it was so Much.

He began to be overloaded with information, knowledge in so many new forms he couldn't keep up. He was absorbing it, analyzing it could he couldn't keep up, he had to stop. Taking a deep breath that shook badly through his nose he made his mind slow down, made his heart rate, currently trying to hammer its way out of his chest as fast as he could, slow. He used the breathing techniques Aurin had taught him to keep himself relaxed when he was frightened or in pain. He flushed a little, trying not to think about any of the times he had used the method with the redhead.

It was still too much, his mind was beginning to hurt. He squeezed his eyes shut but it did almost nothing to slow the information flowing into him. In his growing, though controlled panic he reached out for the part of him that he became when he truly sank into weaving magic in his work. His mind let go. Everything slowed, or maybe he was just faster? The way he processed was fundamentally different in this part of him and it was easier. What he was seeing started to make sense. Sivan and Exael were there, the tree and its Fae'ethalan, the little sprites, those half-tamed by Sivan's contracts and those not tamed at all. He looked around, turning slowly. The Earth itself was alive, the Air, even the little cottage had bits of life flowing through it in water, fire, and under those other things, deeper and harder to name.

When his revolution took him back to Sivan he let himself see his friend, there was so much, a whole life. He didn't push at it beyond what was available on the surface but it was still a lot. Worries, fears, needs; tentative little hopes growing like seeds working their way up towards the sun.

Then his Vision was flipped and he was seeing himself the same way. Torin tried to be as self-aware as he could but this was a whole new level of understanding. He was beautiful, as Sivan was beautiful. Different in lots of ways but also the same in several that were too personal for either to talk about. Exael's words rang through both their heads, even if for a moment it felt like they only had one, or perhaps shared the two. Torin flooded with embarrassment that felt as truly his as any emotion that came from his side of the connection, and then the connection broke, came apart like a bubble losing cohesion.

The larger blond blinked as after images that felt like they were on his soul rather than his eyes clouded his consciousness. They came together and it took Torin's mind a moment to realize it meant they were touching, even as his body caught on instinctively and reached out to catch and gently hold his friend.

"S-sorry..." His mouth formed the word as Sivan's did until he pulled back into himself enough to stop it. When he could speak on his own, which took a few moments where he shook but was strong enough for the both of them he answered,

"No, please don't be sorry."

Torin carefully sank them down till his back was against the growing tree, Sivan tucked against his chest. There was no shame in him, only a great weariness. He hoped some of his own energy had been used in the connection and when he thought of it he tried to push a little more of his own into the elf. "We can be strong, together."

He tried to keep the outcry of his lifelong loneliness from translating through their fading bond but he didn't really know how and it slipped, from him and then, unexpectedly back to him tinted with Sivan's own.

[Sivan]

Sivan felt their distinct senses of loneliness resonate and flare up inside him, stronger and more terrible, though also brought into a strange alignment that brought calm. It almost felt as though he were developing a migraine, though Exael assured him he hadn't overstepped — not exactly. The two fleshly creatures just weren't prepared to process so much sensation at once and their bodies were forcing them to slow down. And they were slow, laying there against the trunk of the tree he had called into being to shelter Flower. Though he made no sound, his eyes leaked into Torin's shirt. It was one thing to be endlessly lonely, to barely acknowledge it, and to muck through life as best one could. It was quite another to have it recognized and met in kind, observed by all three of them at once.

The elf curled up into a ball under Torin's arm. He had brought him here with good intentions and it had gone fabulously wrong. He had already said he was sorry, so he wouldn't irritate the gentle giant by reiterating them, but he felt it all the same.

"How...?" he eventually asked in a small voice. "You are in love with someone. Powerful in love. And still lonely...?" His voice almost cracked as if in despair. Sivan didn't imagine he would ever be in love, but he imagined that if, through dumb luck, he ever stumbled into it, that it would solve all his problems. Or at least those linked to the loneliness he could admit to himself now, though he might not by tomorrow. Old habits died hard.

With his eyes firmly shut, he could ignore impulses toward being embarrassed and clinging to his friend. Torin was his friend. Exael's link had allowed him to see that and recognize that there was a bond between human and elf that was both comforting and terrifying.

[Torin Kilvin]

Torin let his friend cry softly against him, his own tears fell, though fewer, more echos of what they were each feeling than an outpouring. He had needed several such outpourings when Aurin had held him similarly and would likely need more but he was filled with Sivan and wonder both, too much to need one then.

One arm was wrapped around the elf's shoulders and the other came up to hold him too, hand gently cupping the back of his head to support him so he need not even hold himself up.

The question took him by surprise but he was too weary and still reverberating through the shock of what he'd experienced to try and demure or be ashamed of the intimate parts of him that had been revealed.

"I..." He waited, took a breath, tried to find an answer that was both true and might help. "I guess I am in love. I do love him. Aurin." He swallowed again, somehow closer to crying thinking about his man.

"I think he loves me too." It was something he'd never said out loud, tried never to think about aloud because as much as he desperately wanted it, it also hurt so very much.

"Someone loved me when I was growing up too. One person loved me, very much." He was choking back tears now but his speech was still slow and clear. "I feel so ungrateful saying that being loved by just one person, even very much, still leaves one feeling alone." He spoke, haltingly, of how he'd been raised. How his first memories were of a father who hated him, though he did not go into the details of that hate, and a mother who cared for him but also allowed the hate to continue. Until she had taken him away and given him to his first teacher who had become his ideal of manhood. How even his teacher's love didn't stop the hatred and disdain of his peers and the rest of society from etching onto his heart that he wasn't good, not worthy of affection or love.

"I guess, when everyone around you is telling you in everything they do that you aren't accepted or wanted it just... sits inside you and turns into loneliness so big even one person loving you can't take it all away. Not all at once. Maybe over time... but I would rather have more people who could care about me who..." He curled around Sivan a little, his tears leaking into golden hair, careful not to hurt his friend even as his grief bowed him low,
"Who would let me care about them too."

Even more painful than being told he wasn't worth love as a child had been realizing that his own need to love and care for others was rejected just as hard. He thought he could have stood up to having to earn love but even that had been offhandedly denied him.

"Thank you for giving me a chance. I know I was annoying you when we first met. I didn't mean to. I'm not good at this yet. I'm trying."

[Sivan]

"You were not annoying," he said on a sigh into Torin's chest. It felt strange. "I am not generally a nice person. Not bad, I think. But not nice. I was ready for you to be like everyone else, but you were not. I am glad you were patient with me."

He sighed again, thinking he owed Torin a reply to his own story, but also wanting to share as well.

"I think my parents loved me. My father just loved his dreams more. And when my mother had a new husband and new children, I was just... other. Still loved, but not fitting. That is why I spoke more to spirits than to people. And magic gave me something to be good at. And eventually, I think my master loved me. He trusted me and taught me and traveled with me. He even gave me direction for after he died.

"The only other people I have a connection with... they need me. And I am failing them. It is tiring. I thought you... could be someone to share ideas. To show our progress and be happy for each other. I am not an easy person to care for. I am angry a lot. At everything. I don't know what friendship looks like... or..." It occurred to him that Torin might be angling for something sexual, which was also terrifying, but flattering. Probably not, though, as he was in love with someone else. Not that Sivan believed monogamy to be the only way — he just didn't really know anything about anything, especially Torin.

"Do you want to see what I brought you here to show you?" he asked, the quickest change in subjects. At least in part, he was worried that if he didn't share it, this whole scene would drive Torin away.

[Torin Kilvin]

The idea that someone could be nice and still bad was quite present in the larger apprentice. Someone being good but not nice was new, though it made perfect sense when it was presented. He nodded to show he understood.

Listening carefully was something he could give, something he wanted to give, so he did as Sivan gave the bones of the emotional landscape of his childhood.

"Magic gave me something to be good at too, a way to earn my keep, have value." He meant to his master and his village, but it had assuredly added value to his idea of self as well.

"I hope I am those things. You are those to me. Not need, but want." He finished in his sing-song Mythrasi. "I haven't had a friend before either, maybe we can learn together." He was smiling now, soft, hopeful. No one needed him, no one had ever needed him. He thought it must be scary to have others relying on you, especially as much as they seemed to be relying on Sivan.

"Oh," He blinked at the change of topic, smile widening, "Yes, please. I would like see." His hands came carefully around Sivan's waist and lifted his friend onto his feet with almost no effort. When he was sure the elf wasn't in danger of falling again he made his own, less graceful way up. Once he was sure he wouldn't fall either he gave the tree a polite little pat, murmuring,

"Thanks" Without really thinking about it, It was a habit he'd retained from a time when the forest had been a friend. Turning back to Sivan he brushed the seat of his trousers off and followed him back inside the house. "I thought perhaps your garden was what you wanted to show. I am lucky to have a friend full of surprises." He just used the Common for the last word, having no idea what its Mythrasi equivalent was. It was odd but very nice walking into a house that felt as good as, or actually better than the outdoors, especially this time of year.

[Sivan]

Torin putting his hands on his waist to help him up seemed strange, but he didn't know if it was a human thing or a Kalzasi thing or if he was reading sexual interest where there wasn't. It wasn't unwelcome, the touch. Everything he knew about Torin said he was trustworthy; even the spirits seemed to like him.

Is this a mating ritual? Exael asked.

I. Don't. Know. He hoped it heard him; he didn't want to have to say it out loud and make a big deal of things.

Corporeal procreation isn't an area of interest for me, but I don't think the two of you can procreate.

Thank you. I know. Could we discuss this later?

Sivan smiled at Torin, though his eyes were a little wild around the edges.

"Then follow me, if you please," he said in Mythrasi. He could immerse his friend in it, at least, and Torin could pick up some of what he was saying by context as he opened the back door into the house. Inside, he led Torin to the large object in the corner draped with a spare sheet. "The sprites keep the dust under control. And out of the air. That is especially important when I tinker with its insides." That said, he pulled the sheet away, revealing the slumbering Awoken. Truly, IX was a marvel even when comatose. But most of its working parts were internal; its creators had been artists as much as artificers and its armor or carapace was beautiful. Sivan kept it buffed so that it had a dull sheen to it, matte rather than mirrored. Its hand was upturned, holding a few implements that Sivan needed here more than he needed at the shop. With one, he held a magnetic key to specific places, loosening a section of its armored carapace to pull it carefully aside and tuck it under his arm.

Its innards were a marvel, far beyond the clockwork either of them could create, even working together. It took all Sivan's skill just to maintain it, so it was probably for the best that IX was out of commission. Less could go wrong. But he smiled at the expression of awe on Torin's face and sat there happily pointing things out, answering questions, and the like.

It was good for apprentices to see what masters were capable of—it kept them humble, but taught them that it was possible to reach the stars.

[Torin Kilvin]

Torin enjoyed it when Sivan spoke Mythrasi to him, even if he didn't know all the words he could usually figure out the meaning and it gave him more words to work with. Either he would hear them multiple times till he understood their meanings or he would eventually ask.

It took careful listening to understand what was being said about the surprise, his head tilted in his stereotypical gesture for trying to suss out information. He'd picked up a lot of words used in clockwork over the two seasons since the pair had started tinkering together.

He repeated 'sprites' so Sivan would translate it for him, then nodded and watched as the sheet was literally pulled back to reveal...

It was an Awoken. The race that he hadn't believed in as a boy, but dreamed of. The concept that mental could be made to live had been too miraculous a thing and he had taken years for his first teacher to convince him of the reality of them. It had taken an artificer coming through the village and showing him some of the small wonders the magical art could craft to truly convince him. Torin worked in embuing magic into objects himself but it had still been like waking up and realizing that the impossible was real. He had never seen a real Awoken before, in a way it was like meeting a god, or your childhood hero.

He took a step back, a little stunned, before turning to look at Sivan as if checking that he was still there and real.

"Oh." It was more a breath than a word, he reached out a hand as one might to something precious and delicate before yanking it back hard. "I am sorry." He looked horrified and it was impossible to tell if he was talking to the elf of the hulking metal creature in the corner. Reaching out to poke someone upon meeting them was exceedingly rude and he was blushing instantly.

"It's beautiful..." He spoke, again, without thought and cursed himself in his head, correcting himself.

"He? She? They are beautiful." Sivan didn't seem at all offended, a little pleased in fact, as Torin stumbled over himself in shocked admiration.

The elf opened a panel and Torin fell more than crouched to squat on his heels and watch the movement, delicate and perfect in a way that left his mind overwhelmed.

The two spent hours, Torin marveling, asking questions, carefully respectful giving way to jubilance and curiosity. Sivan indulged him, explained what he could, and let Torin pull out his sketchbook and begin taking notes and making little sketches. The elf would occasionally take it from him and correct something, until, eventually, Torin let him do most of the drawing so he could watch, look at the corresponding parts moving inside IX and try to understand.

The evening passed and it was late into the night before the two fell asleep, Torin leaned back against the wall and Sivan with his head on his wide shoulder. The sketchbook was fallen between their laps and the charcoal pencil rolled away under the little table. Khal lowered his glow to embers, increased his heat output enough that they would be warm without coverings and a quiet settled over the cottage broken only by the tiny sounds of sprites and the sleeping breath of two apprentices.