| Logs |
2003 April 30
| These Shattered Stars |
| Realms |
Retired
| Reality Fault |
General Info
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| Realms: These Shattered Stars Logs |
Interlude XVII
For the time being Vakkal has been quiet; Freyja is unsurprised he's reluctant to talk about what he's been experiencing. He does tell her what it is Caul and he are doing, but chooses not to go into details. Freyja doesn't press. She knows remembering that which we've chosen to forget is painful and discomfiting. Plus, poor Vakkal is having to re-remember in great detail. Still, he returns to the suite at night to sleep, which reassures her, and gives her the opportunity to try to reassure him as well with silent closeness and companionship.
Fhazil too has been returning to the suite to sleep, which leads on occasion to brotherly banter between the two which causes Freyja giggles... "Watch it with that tail, Vakkal." "I don't have a tail. Nor do I have freezing bare feet -- I have a pelt!"
Freyja wakes up suddenly the night following the group's first attempt at joining as a triat. She can tell it's very late during the small moon's night cycle, as she lies in bed staring into the darkness. She's quietly, calmly awake -- very alert feeling, in fact -- but not sure why or what woke her.
Freyja finally sits up carefully, running a hand down Vakkal's side in their shared body language that lets him know she's just leaving for a moment. She slips out of bed, shrugging her short, light, sleeveless sleeping tunic back into place, and tiptoes silently for the door, trying not to waken either of her two friends further.
Freyja pauses on the way to the 'fresher, realizing she's really just restless. She stands irresolutely for a moment, listening in the darkness. It's so quiet. There's the soft hum of the re-breathing machinery, but nothing else past that. If there are guards at night, they're making no noise she can hear. She finally wanders slowly towards the dojo room, wondering what woke her.
Freyja steps into the room, bowing with formal habit towards the triskele set into the floor. Then she steps onto the mat, padding with silent bare feet to stand in the middle of the pattern, looking up at the ceiling window framing the huge gas giant above. It glows scarlet and amber above her, swirling and indescribably huge, lighting everything in the room with a dim reddish glow. Though she does not realize it, it picks out her colors and amplifies them... in this light she's a slender, willowy woman of gold, lightly clad in soft cerise and topped with a short, tousled mane of gleaming fire.
Freyja sighs quietly, missing the feel of her senses outdoors. Sunshine resting warmly on her shoulders... the wind's fingers teasingly lifting her hair... the scent of golden blooms drifting by, coupled with the mad glee of birdsong in springtime... the taste of last season's mead, sweet as honey on her tongue... the heat and strength of an exuberant slaypneer pounding along at a gallop, under her... she wonders when she'll be able to sense all those things again... if ever...
She's come so far... she has so far to go. Quiet and drifting, almost bittersweet, the symphonic melody of a song of her homeland floats into her mind, swells and twists and turns like an orchestral stream growing into a river, and with slow synchrony her arms rise, her hands open like birds awakening in the morn... her body sways gently like the river of her life... and she takes the first light, careful steps of dance.
Freyja dances with the music, with the thoughts singing in her head. She dances longing for butterflies bounding in the wind, and peace with one's neighbors; she waves like the willow tree she used to climb by the river, and swirls with the confusion and uncertainty of whether it's love or lust... like the rippling, flashing stream growing into a wide and powerful river she sways and twirls, her short, curling mane of hair streaming away from her like dancing flame and her bare golden arms flashing like the wings of birds in flight... she's lost in the dance and the music in her mind, eyes half-closed and dreamy with her internal symphony.
Somewhere in the dancing, Fhazil arrives. He holds his roiling emotions close to himself, not wishing to disturb Freyja or Zero through the link. The fact is he can't sleep either, and his stumbling in the first test of the triat is only part of it. Zhar reminds him far too much of the Pinnacle -- admittedly, he's not feeling nearly as claustrophobic as he did at that other place. Here at least he's keeping very busy, and not with endless boring meetings, briefings, and debriefings. But still he's discomfited.
He pauses at the doorway to the triskele room, watching and trying to remain unobtrusive. When Freyja finally notices him, he is leaning with calm happiness against the doorway, watching her dancing with a warm, quiet smile, simply enjoying watching her being in rapture.
Freyja's eyes open a bit as she registers her audience... then she grins, half self-conscious, half pleased. She sways gracefully in a bow of invitation, and Fhazil can feel the faintest touch on his mind -- a gentle brush of soft fingertips to see if he'd like to open up and share. Fhazil's smile widens a little, and he bows grandly in turn to her, his mind opening a little at the gentle touch.
Freyja brightens, and Fhazil can 'hear' it as well now -- the drifting, swelling beauty of the music, composed centuries ago in tribute to the millennia-ancient river that winds through Freyja's homeland. She takes a few swirling, dancing steps closer, extends a hand, then draws back slightly, inviting him again to join her in the dance.
Fhazil can 'feel' a bit what she's offering -- a shadow dance, the old Corellian ritual where the partners mirror each other as closely and accurately as possible, while not actually touching. It works best and looks most beautiful with partners who have good 'chemistry' between them. Fhazil can 'hear' Freyja's mental hope that their link will help them partner gracefully and well, as well as her gentle amusement at the appropriateness of a Darksider and a Lightsider shadow-dancing.
Fhazil blinks a little, then smiles and nods as he moves forward onto the triskele with Freyja to join her in the shadow-dance. The irony of a Darksider and Lightsider shadow-dancing is not lost on him, certainly, but he seems to be rather intrigued by the idea. And soon he can hear the music as well, the symphony dancing in Freyja's mind, as he begins to move in mirror to Freyja's motions on the triskele beneath Zhar's baleful glow.
Freyja sways her torso and arms in graceful rhythm to the music, moving slowly at first so Fhazil can easily match her. As he warms up and falls into the music, she adds more careful, deliberate movements to emulate the swell of the orchestra shared in their minds.
Freyja sighs quietly in silent, internal pleasure -- there's a deep, soul-pervasive joy in creating beauty with a beloved. Within the link, Fhazil and she are dancers in a common vein, a pattern-matched symphony of movement, Light and Dark intertwined to create a shadowy loveliness. They swirl and sway face-to-face, turning and bowing and darting together close enough to feel the occasional soft brush of flying hair, or the touch of warm breath on the other's flushed skin. Freyja feels as if her skin is alive, tingling with the knowledge and heat of the closeness of her dancing partner, so close and yet touching only through scent and shared warmth. She's not sure any more if the sunshine she remembers resting warmly on her shoulders is her memory or another's... nor is it important which planet's laughing breeze plays fondly with her hair in cherished memory...
As the dance makes both Light and Dark dance together under the eye of Zhar, Freyja better sees what the Sithstain is like. It's not unlike the kundalini serpent of the chakhras, except it's active, it's alive, and it's not at all entirely friendly. She supposes it could almost be called a qlippothic kundalini, in that it is the ultimate expression of Self-Identity, seeking the exact opposite of the selfless, individual-less Nirvana. But for the time being it sits in the tree of Fhazil's life, watching Freyja with cool-ember eyes, curious and wary. And he can feel that inner fire of Freyja's own tanden chakra, impossible for him not to. The Sithstain snake doesn't reach out, in fact it holds to the shadows of his kundalini as Freyja's fire illuminates him.
Freyja's quiet enjoyment is as much physical as mental. There is a pleasurable tension in almost-but-not-quite touching, a gently subsumed and sensuous eroticism which highlights tiny details -- details that would have been missed in simple, straightforward touch. The glint of scarlet moonlight on his dark silver hair turning it a softly gleaming almost-maroon... the flowing grace of muscle down the ribs of one side as she arcs slowly around him in the sway of the dance... his soft breathing next to her head and the way his eyes half-close in concentration...
This is clearly not something Fhazil does often, though every so often the steps he takes in the dance seem slightly different from the steps Freyja takes, and there is the faintest harkening to dances tens of thousands of light-years from here, in the stately halls of Ziost or the formal chambers of the Malice. But each moment passes, drawing him closer and closer to the here and now with the slow, gentle ritual and yet also so very free shadow dance.
In Freyja's mind the river of music flows, thrumming with life and energy. She shares it freely with her dance partner, letting the river flow easily to him as well, and back again, sharing their knowledge of dance/music/creativity/life in a physical gestalt greater than the sum of its singular parts. Time passes into unmeaning, even as the dance and her partner grow to encompass the world in her perspective... slowly her internal 'Self' manifests in her mind. It's not yet clear, although it's much sharper than the single silver cord used to be... a blur of flickering flame, slowly shaping with her concentration into a slender humanoid shape -- is it female? -hard to tell in the colorful, musical recesses of the inner mind -- swaying in fiery echo of her patterns, a mental partner searching for her physical partner's mental form.
She knows he can hear the music; it is written in the steps he takes in the dance, the turns he makes with her, never quite touching her. As he senses her reaching for him through the Force, his own mental form emerges -- predictably dark, shadowy, drinking in the light and cool -- not the deathly chill one might expect, but the gentle, cool breeze of an autumn evening as the leaves are falling upon the grass, chill winter's promise in the air. His serpentine kundalini, the Sithstain, seems wrapped about him like a thin armor of self, no longer watching her warily but simply there. Like his physical form, the dark dancer whirls and sways with the soundless music; like Freyja's, a hand reaches for the other.
Freyja lights up, both internally and externally -- her inner fire 'defines' a bit more obviously, becoming a shimmering woman of bright flame, at least from about the waist up. A softly joyous smile lights her golden face, and for a second she starts to reach for the dark shape before her -- then catches herself. This is a shadow dance, after all... instead she simply swirls a bit closer. Externally her dancing appears to slow down a bit, becoming a bit less complex. Internally, the fiery woman shape flickers lightly around the darkling serpent with the joyously bright-hearted abandon of a firefly dancing in the velvety darkness of a warm, flower-scented summer night.
It takes a moment for the fire-dancer's mutual creation with the darkness to come clear... then they can both see it -- see what she's trying to create -- wild-spirited, exuberant shadows dancing rhythmically to the full-throated music, silhouetted into shadowy creation behind the swaying shadow snake by the fire salamander's joy and light.
The dark dancer that is Fhazil's projection swirls around Freyja. Fhazil immerses himself into the danse, his eyes closed now as if some sight beyond his eyes lets him follow Freyja's shadowdancing. As he does so, the Sithstain becomes an odd thing, almost intangible; less a suit of armor or a coiled serpent around his tree of life. In a silent flash, barely noticeable to Fhazil, the essence of the serpent seems to evaporate -- no, it does not go away. It expands, becoming a faint cloud of dark ashen silver, no longer watching Freyja but surrounding her mental form and Fhazil's, a mesh of Self that encompasses the Selves of both Freyja and Fhazil.
The glowing fire woman sparkles slightly in astonishment, looking up and around, her hair streaming out in scarlet flames as her head turns. It had never even occurred to her that one's Self could be separate from one's perception of the Force! To her the Light quite naturally fills and imbues her Self, and that of all life. She ponders as she sways in being, musical meditations rippling with fascinated notes across both their minds, trying to comprehend this interesting new discovery.
Freyja gives her dark dancer partner a faintly puzzled look, eyes glowing like embers as her concentration creates a sturdier, clearer form of her Self's being. She doesn't yet understand how one's mind can appear to be quite so... separated into individual entities... but she'll try her best. More knowing... she needs to understand more. She swirls up and around, the dancer wisping like flaming smoke through the branches of Fhazil's sturdy young Tree of Life, searching for his understanding to share with her.
Fhazil is smiling, and he feels 'complete' to her -- his tree is not vacant. As Freyja's glowing, fiery form dances betwixt the myriad branches of his tree, so too does his form dance through hers. The Sithstain, muted and quiescent, seems more and more like a thin paper boundary surrounding the two rather than the ember-eyed serpent it had been, and Freyja no longer gets the sense of malice from it.
Slowly she understands -- the Sithstain/serpent/ashen-silver cloud is neither truly a thing, nor the Force conceptualized. If anything, it's a shielding portion of Fhazil's ego -- what the philosopher she studied referred to as one's 'shadow,' now lessened to admit her Self. She ripples from golden through orange into scarlet, and back again, as she happily internalizes understanding from her darkling Sith partner. The flourish of orchestral music accompanies the colorful fire changes as she also comprehends and appreciates the honor paid her to allow her so close.
The music continues to make him dance, movements and swirls as the dark dancer pirouettes with the lady of fire. Perhaps within that shadowy form Freyja can see something of how the young Corellian Sith sees himself: much as he appears physically, dark and yet warm, bringing to mind the infrequent midnight bonfires with which Balmorrans celebrate second winter's solstice. Sparks of vivacious energy lick at his core, a microcosm of motion and energy flitting through robes of shadow, moments of drama trapped in brief instants of liquid amber. The rich scent of burning cedar, warm and not at all unpleasant, seems to surround the dark-fired heart of Fhazil's shadow form.
Freyja swirls joyously around and about her dark partner in ways physically impossible, glorying in the freedom from gravity of the mind. Her multicolored streaming flame leaps and darts to flare up in gleeful synthesis with his own sparking energy, and the warm, almost smoky scent of sandalwood mingles sensuously with cedar... like the incredible, breath-taking beauty of the Golden Lady's Scarf (known more mundanely on Balmorra as the Northern Lights), she glows with life as she ripples gently through and about the darkness in iridescent rainbows of softly orchestral presence. He can feel her quiet, wondering curiosity within her, both at internalizing him so and at what they will become.
The music whirls around the two mingling entities like a gentle, velvet caress, encouraging them closer. Sensuousness returns physically -- the ripple of silky hair across strong arms, the scent of young and physically fit bodies mingling breath, inhaling deeply, warmth and tactile delight urging ever closer... golden skin and pale pressed close, they awaken languorously entwined, deep within a kiss. The Darksider stands sturdily, supporting the willowy woman of Light clasped close in his arms, clasping him equally close, even to having one graceful leg arched around him... they drink each other in, in a long, leisurely, exploratory kiss that doesn't seem to need to ever end.
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