Reaping Recollection (Part XVII)
Posted: Sun Nov 28, 2021 9:54 pm
32 Ash, 121
There were reasons why a guard was nearly always in his presence other than for the safety and continued occupation of his person. There were things, one in his blood, one in his mind, one in his body, and one in his soul, that he was not allowed to access. They were his, but they were also not. The thing in his mind was the easiest to ignore, but also the easiest to access without being caught at it. It did not push into his mind and force him, as the others did, but if he sat still for a long time, cleared his mind and relaxed he could hear the little voices of what existed around him.
He had learned as a boy that most things had spirits, even simple things if they were alive, or seemed as though they were alive. He wasn't sure what the difference was, if the wind was less alive than a tree or a fish. According to science the tree was alive but not in the same way as the fish and the wind was a 'force of nature' and not alive at all. The spirits told it differently, but he was not allowed to spend too much time sitting silently and calmly in the way that Dr. Ilex called 'meditation'. It had taken him a long time to connect this forbidden act with the spirits, as long as it had taken him to understand that the voices he heard sometimes since he'd started into puberty were spirits and sprites.
This morning he was tired, having stayed up very late finish a project with Ilex, and he was given more laxity in the rules on such days. When he woke he stayed still, kept his eyes closed, kept his breathing even. Knowing he would not be called from his bed until he rose of his own will, or until time for the midday meal had come and passed, he had put it in his mind as he'd fallen asleep to continue to act as though he slept when he woke.
The guard seemed drowsy himself, standing near the fire and staring into it, relying on other senses than his sight to tell him when Rivin woke. The Lysanrin did not hold too still, nor did he move about over much, continuing to feign sleep as he let his mind slip under into the place where he could hear the spirits.
There were not many, so deep inside the house, but there were a few. A small fire sprite flitted between the chimneys of the bedroom fireplaces. Rivin greeted it, not pushing his own ideas of gender or personhood upon the tiny near-consciousness. It had seemed confused and attempted to hide from him at first, but he had coaxed it, offered it the merest thread, finer than a single hair, of his own aether as a greeting gift. The sustenance had been enough to lure it back out to peer at him. He did not know their language, if they had one at all, but he could communicate through feelings and thoughts that were more like feelings. Once it had consumed his gift it settled down and babbled at him in it's baby-emotion-language about the niceness of the fireplaces out of the cold wind and how it had almost perished in the hard rains that had come several days before. Rivin's mind was learning to interpret such 'talk', and it felt like the same stretching his mind had done when he'd learned vastly new things as a child. He would have liked to invite the little sprite to live inside his own chimney, safe through the winter, but the creatures had their own intention and it might flare up or otherwise take actions that would alert the guards to it's presence, so he did not.
When the flame sprite lost interest in him and slipped away, he sent his mind out looking for others and found a flock of wind sprites whipping themselves all about the house. Rather than contacting them he only watched as they played games of rattling windows and trying to see who could rip more of the dying leaves from the trees. The games were soothing as they were amusing and it took effort to keep a smile from his face as he lay in the trace-like state required to find the spirits. He could have delved deeper, tried to reach for the older spirits tied to the area, of earth, and possibly water, but he did not. Contacting such entities took a long time, a lot of energy, and how they might react to being woken towards greater consciousness wasn't something he had any way to predict.
He had learned as a child that not all of what he might find would be friendly, or of what might find him.
~~~~
The day he had first been contacted by a spirit had been shortly after the doctor had began using him as a minor assistant when he was busy. It was not all that often, as Ilex usually had one or more professional assistants, but the boy was called on at least twice a month to do small, often repetitive tasks that felt like a waste of time to give to more skilled helpers. There were opportunities to prove himself, both happenstance and offered by Dr. Ilex, and he was even bold enough to ask for time to study or work with equipment now and then. They requests were not always granted, but they were not treated as a step across the invisible line from acceptable behavior into unacceptable.
The relationship between himself and his mother had also settled into something comfortable again. His work earned them extra privileges and better treatment. Their clothing was of better cloth and cut, their bedding was finer, their fire tended more carefully and Rivin was allowed to bring back books for her to read as well as for his studies. They even read some of the same books, discussing them while cuddled close around the fire on cold nights. He was even allowed, upon request, to spend a few warm Searing nights out in the court yard to watch the starts. He had cried the first time he had watched the sun setting and its more distant cousins winking into sight as the velvet darkness chased the blue away. His mother had held him, but he hadn't been able to look away for a single moment of the time before the guard came to take them back to their room.
It was a comfort to feel the connection to the first person who had known him settle into something that was different but still good. She would sit and listen with interest when he explained what he was learning or how he'd been helping the doctor, even though he knew she did not understand most of it. Her interest was in him, and the details were less important. One day she had asked if she could have a kit for sewing, to make some of his clothes herself. The guard had carried the request and carried back a basket with all the things she might need, as well as some fabric that was not decorative but was well woven. Now she had something to do, to create and keep herself occupied while Rivin studied and worked. Coming back to his room felt good now; at least as good as attending his lessons or assisting in the doctor's research. Rivin grew content.
One morning he woke slowly, still partly dreaming. There had been a voice in his dream, high pitched and childish, calling to him. He tried to stay under, keep dreaming, figure out where the voice had been trying to lead him. Until he heard the voice again and knew it to be not a dream. He'd sat up abruptly, startled and whipping around to try and see from where it had come. His mother woke as well, looking over at him as though he might be injured. She asked if he'd had a disturbing dream and he'd been about to answer her when the voice had again called. He thought his mother would hear and understand and behaved as though she did. When she was only confused he asked her if she could hear the voice, but it became apparent that she could not. The voice continued to come to him off and on all day, which was, thankfully, not a day of lessons with his tutors nor had Ilex called for him. His mother worried for him, not sure what was wrong that would make her son hear a voice in his head. By the time he went to bed the voice seemed to have lost interest and he fell back to sleep exhausted from a day filled with anxiety. Days passed without additional issues, but then, when he was outside climbing high in the trees a murmuring, not quite words, but constantly sounding as though, if he listened hard enough he would hear words began to whip through his hair and slip around the tree.
Fear gripped him and he slid down so quickly he fell the last few feet and dashed over to where his mother sat, comfortably in the grass, soaking up the sun. She could tell he was upset and sat up, running her hands over him to check for wounds. He told her what had happened and she had frowned, taking him back to their room. The voices began to increase in frequency from then on, sometimes it would just be once that he heard them and other times they would scream in his head for hours.
When he had to send the guard to tell his tutors that he was too sick to attend lessons he had been called to the exam room where Dr. Ilex had stood, looking surprisingly anxious over Rivin's health, and the woman mage. She assessed him and pronounced him exhausted but otherwise alright. He was excused from all activities for a week, which only left him time to dread the coming of the voices. His mother had asked for several books that he had hardly paid attention to, but one morning she had woken him gently and asked him to listen. She had been studying the Dratori race, for she had heard that they could contact spirits. It was his father's linage that was plaguing him.
This did not, at first, give him relief. If this was a part of his blood, what could he do about it? But his mother had researched the answer on her own while he had suffered. The slave that had taught her the slow dances had also taught her how to meditate, though she had seen little value in it, it seemed that the Dratori used the quieting of their mind to learn to control how they heard spirits.
Rivin was too tired and confused to understand really what she was telling him about the nature of the voices he heard but if meditation would help him quiet them when he wanted to he would try it until it worked. They meditated together, anything he heard voices, and even on the days he didn't. That first week they had spent almost all their waking hours practicing. By the time he was called to his lessons again he could at least push the voices to the back of his mind so he could think when they came to him.
He kept meditating any time he was in their room and a voice came, and even decided to start each of his days that way. It helped. He read the books his mother had, learned about the nature of spirits and sprites, how they connected his his father's race. The ideas helped too, and gave him the inspiration to attempt to communicate back with the creatures intruding into his mind. He learned to ask them to leave him alone, which mostly they did. The ones who did not he learned to mute and ignore.
All went back to normal, except that now, if he grew bored with reading he could reach out and usually find a small creature to talk with. They didn't really talk, but he began to understand the flush of colors, thoughts and feelings they projected as a sort of language. Each one had their own, though they followed categories like the plants and animals in his biological studies.
It was when Dr. Ilex noticed him speaking to a sprite one day as he weighed out liquid into vials and labeled them with his careful lettering that he learned he was not allowed to use the gifts of his blood. The doctor had asked him what he was talking to and, innocently, he had answered honestly. The doctor had not looked pleased, at all, but nothing else had been said at the time. The next day he called Rivin to the exam room and told him to try and talk to a spirit in the presence of the mage woman. The feel of the room was off, not good, but he knew better than to blatantly disobey. Reaching out he had been relieved not to feel anything close by at first, but, after a minute of trying, a little water sprite had come slipping through the plumbing, curious to answer his call. The mage had began speaking rapidly to the doctor in the language Rivin did not know as soon as the sprite began 'speaking' to him. He had tried to keep the interest of the little water creature but it seemed to believe it had important things to do and left after only a minute or two. Rivin told the doctor immediately that he had tried to keep the sprite around but could not. Ilex told him he was good to be honest, that he expected honesty from Rivin always. It did not sound like praise. He was sent to sit near the door while the doctor and the mage spoke at some length. When he was called back over Ilex asked him if he could suppress the spirits. Rivin explained that he could, spilling out the story of learning to meditate and eventually speak to the spirits. The doctor told him that, so long as he could suppress them he must do so, that he must stop meditating and reaching out to them intentionally. If ever he was unable to suppress them again he must tell the doctor immediately and wait to be told what to do.
Rivin had nodded, spoken his acceptance of the rules, and been sent back to his room. That night was the first time the anger came.
There were reasons why a guard was nearly always in his presence other than for the safety and continued occupation of his person. There were things, one in his blood, one in his mind, one in his body, and one in his soul, that he was not allowed to access. They were his, but they were also not. The thing in his mind was the easiest to ignore, but also the easiest to access without being caught at it. It did not push into his mind and force him, as the others did, but if he sat still for a long time, cleared his mind and relaxed he could hear the little voices of what existed around him.
He had learned as a boy that most things had spirits, even simple things if they were alive, or seemed as though they were alive. He wasn't sure what the difference was, if the wind was less alive than a tree or a fish. According to science the tree was alive but not in the same way as the fish and the wind was a 'force of nature' and not alive at all. The spirits told it differently, but he was not allowed to spend too much time sitting silently and calmly in the way that Dr. Ilex called 'meditation'. It had taken him a long time to connect this forbidden act with the spirits, as long as it had taken him to understand that the voices he heard sometimes since he'd started into puberty were spirits and sprites.
This morning he was tired, having stayed up very late finish a project with Ilex, and he was given more laxity in the rules on such days. When he woke he stayed still, kept his eyes closed, kept his breathing even. Knowing he would not be called from his bed until he rose of his own will, or until time for the midday meal had come and passed, he had put it in his mind as he'd fallen asleep to continue to act as though he slept when he woke.
The guard seemed drowsy himself, standing near the fire and staring into it, relying on other senses than his sight to tell him when Rivin woke. The Lysanrin did not hold too still, nor did he move about over much, continuing to feign sleep as he let his mind slip under into the place where he could hear the spirits.
There were not many, so deep inside the house, but there were a few. A small fire sprite flitted between the chimneys of the bedroom fireplaces. Rivin greeted it, not pushing his own ideas of gender or personhood upon the tiny near-consciousness. It had seemed confused and attempted to hide from him at first, but he had coaxed it, offered it the merest thread, finer than a single hair, of his own aether as a greeting gift. The sustenance had been enough to lure it back out to peer at him. He did not know their language, if they had one at all, but he could communicate through feelings and thoughts that were more like feelings. Once it had consumed his gift it settled down and babbled at him in it's baby-emotion-language about the niceness of the fireplaces out of the cold wind and how it had almost perished in the hard rains that had come several days before. Rivin's mind was learning to interpret such 'talk', and it felt like the same stretching his mind had done when he'd learned vastly new things as a child. He would have liked to invite the little sprite to live inside his own chimney, safe through the winter, but the creatures had their own intention and it might flare up or otherwise take actions that would alert the guards to it's presence, so he did not.
When the flame sprite lost interest in him and slipped away, he sent his mind out looking for others and found a flock of wind sprites whipping themselves all about the house. Rather than contacting them he only watched as they played games of rattling windows and trying to see who could rip more of the dying leaves from the trees. The games were soothing as they were amusing and it took effort to keep a smile from his face as he lay in the trace-like state required to find the spirits. He could have delved deeper, tried to reach for the older spirits tied to the area, of earth, and possibly water, but he did not. Contacting such entities took a long time, a lot of energy, and how they might react to being woken towards greater consciousness wasn't something he had any way to predict.
He had learned as a child that not all of what he might find would be friendly, or of what might find him.
~~~~
The day he had first been contacted by a spirit had been shortly after the doctor had began using him as a minor assistant when he was busy. It was not all that often, as Ilex usually had one or more professional assistants, but the boy was called on at least twice a month to do small, often repetitive tasks that felt like a waste of time to give to more skilled helpers. There were opportunities to prove himself, both happenstance and offered by Dr. Ilex, and he was even bold enough to ask for time to study or work with equipment now and then. They requests were not always granted, but they were not treated as a step across the invisible line from acceptable behavior into unacceptable.
The relationship between himself and his mother had also settled into something comfortable again. His work earned them extra privileges and better treatment. Their clothing was of better cloth and cut, their bedding was finer, their fire tended more carefully and Rivin was allowed to bring back books for her to read as well as for his studies. They even read some of the same books, discussing them while cuddled close around the fire on cold nights. He was even allowed, upon request, to spend a few warm Searing nights out in the court yard to watch the starts. He had cried the first time he had watched the sun setting and its more distant cousins winking into sight as the velvet darkness chased the blue away. His mother had held him, but he hadn't been able to look away for a single moment of the time before the guard came to take them back to their room.
It was a comfort to feel the connection to the first person who had known him settle into something that was different but still good. She would sit and listen with interest when he explained what he was learning or how he'd been helping the doctor, even though he knew she did not understand most of it. Her interest was in him, and the details were less important. One day she had asked if she could have a kit for sewing, to make some of his clothes herself. The guard had carried the request and carried back a basket with all the things she might need, as well as some fabric that was not decorative but was well woven. Now she had something to do, to create and keep herself occupied while Rivin studied and worked. Coming back to his room felt good now; at least as good as attending his lessons or assisting in the doctor's research. Rivin grew content.
One morning he woke slowly, still partly dreaming. There had been a voice in his dream, high pitched and childish, calling to him. He tried to stay under, keep dreaming, figure out where the voice had been trying to lead him. Until he heard the voice again and knew it to be not a dream. He'd sat up abruptly, startled and whipping around to try and see from where it had come. His mother woke as well, looking over at him as though he might be injured. She asked if he'd had a disturbing dream and he'd been about to answer her when the voice had again called. He thought his mother would hear and understand and behaved as though she did. When she was only confused he asked her if she could hear the voice, but it became apparent that she could not. The voice continued to come to him off and on all day, which was, thankfully, not a day of lessons with his tutors nor had Ilex called for him. His mother worried for him, not sure what was wrong that would make her son hear a voice in his head. By the time he went to bed the voice seemed to have lost interest and he fell back to sleep exhausted from a day filled with anxiety. Days passed without additional issues, but then, when he was outside climbing high in the trees a murmuring, not quite words, but constantly sounding as though, if he listened hard enough he would hear words began to whip through his hair and slip around the tree.
Fear gripped him and he slid down so quickly he fell the last few feet and dashed over to where his mother sat, comfortably in the grass, soaking up the sun. She could tell he was upset and sat up, running her hands over him to check for wounds. He told her what had happened and she had frowned, taking him back to their room. The voices began to increase in frequency from then on, sometimes it would just be once that he heard them and other times they would scream in his head for hours.
When he had to send the guard to tell his tutors that he was too sick to attend lessons he had been called to the exam room where Dr. Ilex had stood, looking surprisingly anxious over Rivin's health, and the woman mage. She assessed him and pronounced him exhausted but otherwise alright. He was excused from all activities for a week, which only left him time to dread the coming of the voices. His mother had asked for several books that he had hardly paid attention to, but one morning she had woken him gently and asked him to listen. She had been studying the Dratori race, for she had heard that they could contact spirits. It was his father's linage that was plaguing him.
This did not, at first, give him relief. If this was a part of his blood, what could he do about it? But his mother had researched the answer on her own while he had suffered. The slave that had taught her the slow dances had also taught her how to meditate, though she had seen little value in it, it seemed that the Dratori used the quieting of their mind to learn to control how they heard spirits.
Rivin was too tired and confused to understand really what she was telling him about the nature of the voices he heard but if meditation would help him quiet them when he wanted to he would try it until it worked. They meditated together, anything he heard voices, and even on the days he didn't. That first week they had spent almost all their waking hours practicing. By the time he was called to his lessons again he could at least push the voices to the back of his mind so he could think when they came to him.
He kept meditating any time he was in their room and a voice came, and even decided to start each of his days that way. It helped. He read the books his mother had, learned about the nature of spirits and sprites, how they connected his his father's race. The ideas helped too, and gave him the inspiration to attempt to communicate back with the creatures intruding into his mind. He learned to ask them to leave him alone, which mostly they did. The ones who did not he learned to mute and ignore.
All went back to normal, except that now, if he grew bored with reading he could reach out and usually find a small creature to talk with. They didn't really talk, but he began to understand the flush of colors, thoughts and feelings they projected as a sort of language. Each one had their own, though they followed categories like the plants and animals in his biological studies.
It was when Dr. Ilex noticed him speaking to a sprite one day as he weighed out liquid into vials and labeled them with his careful lettering that he learned he was not allowed to use the gifts of his blood. The doctor had asked him what he was talking to and, innocently, he had answered honestly. The doctor had not looked pleased, at all, but nothing else had been said at the time. The next day he called Rivin to the exam room and told him to try and talk to a spirit in the presence of the mage woman. The feel of the room was off, not good, but he knew better than to blatantly disobey. Reaching out he had been relieved not to feel anything close by at first, but, after a minute of trying, a little water sprite had come slipping through the plumbing, curious to answer his call. The mage had began speaking rapidly to the doctor in the language Rivin did not know as soon as the sprite began 'speaking' to him. He had tried to keep the interest of the little water creature but it seemed to believe it had important things to do and left after only a minute or two. Rivin told the doctor immediately that he had tried to keep the sprite around but could not. Ilex told him he was good to be honest, that he expected honesty from Rivin always. It did not sound like praise. He was sent to sit near the door while the doctor and the mage spoke at some length. When he was called back over Ilex asked him if he could suppress the spirits. Rivin explained that he could, spilling out the story of learning to meditate and eventually speak to the spirits. The doctor told him that, so long as he could suppress them he must do so, that he must stop meditating and reaching out to them intentionally. If ever he was unable to suppress them again he must tell the doctor immediately and wait to be told what to do.
Rivin had nodded, spoken his acceptance of the rules, and been sent back to his room. That night was the first time the anger came.