Identity (Shade's NaNo Thread)

[Shadaras]

50,082. I blame not getting more on talking to lovely people. xD

SPOILER: Click to show

I kept walking, following the trail that was now obvious to my eyes. Cyrus had been walking the path often enough for the fey to have cleared some of the obstacles from it, but it wasn’t a trail in the way animals on earth created them; the trail was in the lack of branches and brush, not in the worn-down earth. The earth here didn’t wear down unless the fey allowed it to, and they liked this part of the forest too much to let it be anything but autumn shades, with soft green grass and ferns and moss underfoot, sprouting from among the fallen leaves and needles of the forest.

It was beautiful, of course. I’d grown used to the beauty, and looked beyond that first impression as much as I could, trying to find the spots that were of greater beauty than most, or those of lesser. Those, Cyrus had said, indicated a fey full of life or one growing sickly. It was an interesting exercise, trying to spot them. Cyrus prodded my shoulder just as I was crouching down, knocking me off balance. “The fey do like you, Seth, but don’t push it too far.” He grabbed me and dragged me deeper into the woods, continuing to follow his trail. “If you didn’t have Han Lian’s blessing – and mine – on you, you would be dead thrice over by now, at the very least.”

“Will you explain why?”

Cyrus shrugged. “You forget the rules more often than you should, mostly.” He glanced over his shoulder at me with a grin. “And this is why you aren’t coming in here alone ever.”

“I don’t even know if I could come here alone.” I almost certainly could, by now. I had the power. I knew what it felt like to go from Earth to the Twilight. It was similar to how it had felt to come to Earth from Hell: a brightening, lightening, of the heart and body. I didn’t have the blood or spirit connection to the Twilight that I had with Heaven, Hell, and Earth, though, so that made making an opening between the realms harder.

“I’d be surprised if you couldn’t,” Cyrus said softly. His words seemed a warning as much as anything else, by now. “I don’t want you to try. Let me keep you safe here as long as I can.”

I couldn’t find any words to reply to him with. I just followed him, trying to forget about the tears threatening my eyes. By the time we reached the end of the trail – a spot next to the creek twining through the forest – my eyes were dry again and I knew they’d stay that way. Cyrus knelt to touch the water, and, as he’d told me to, I touched his shoulder. I felt him shudder slightly at my touch. It wasn’t quite the right feel to be called a shiver, but it was close. Cyrus spoke those water-laced words and the world shifted around us.

[Rikku]

50k! Congrats! ^__^ *large hug full of congratulatory awe* Midway point, eh?

Their interaction is good. And your prose is pretty. <3

[Shadaras]

Midway in my word goal, yes. In the story? I have no idea. xD ..probably.

<3 ..thanks, love.

[Amneiger]

I said it on the bloids, but congratulations! =D

[Shadaras]

xD ..thanks.


Amount of time I'm likely to spend being amused by implicit comparisons = far more than I should. xD ..the quote I have as my signature right now is, in full, this. 'This' is the sort of conversation I can have with certain friends sometimes. It's quite interesting and annoying all at once. Usually just interesting, though. And. Yeah. Anyway, here:

Cyrus rolled his eyes and turned back to the food. “I’m fey.”

“That isn’t an explanation,” I said, exasperated.

“Of course it is. It’s just not an explanation of the sort you’re used to.” Pulling out a pair of carrots, Cyrus continued, using the carrots to emphasize his points. “Tell me what you know about fey and how our mindsets differ from those of humans or the Host.”

“More prone to emotional outbursts, getting distracted, intuiting connections, seeing into the heart of the matter.” I paused, thinking. Cyrus tossed me one of the carrots and I caught it without really registering it. “What are you trying to get me to look at?”

“What about the Host?” Cyrus took a bite of his carrot, chewing and talking at the same time. “How are they different from humans and each other?”

“Angels are calmer and logical. Demons are more prone to bursts of fury and can be infuriatingly unimaginative. Fallen are just generally depressed, but they’re closer to angels than demons. Um.” I started nibbling at the carrot Cyrus had tossed me, and finally said, “Devils are nearly human in moods and mindsets. We just tend to be smarter and more religious.”

“Define ‘human mindset’ now.”

“N—” I stopped myself before I could finish the word.

Cyrus favored me with a smile. “You’re beginning to learn, aren’t you? Go on.”

[Amneiger]

*thinks* Human mindset: In the context of this conversation, an assumed baseline used for judging the psychology of other sentient beings. The human mindset is assumed to represent a "medium" between persumed inclinations or extremes that other beings have. Basically, a convenient measuring stick.

And I can't tell what word Seth didn't want to say xD

[Shadaras]

Normal. xD ..a word that means nothing without context.

*

I sighed, disgusted with this. “Humans have nothing as set as the Host or fey, as far as neurotypical individuals go. We have general strictures and within style, type, race, whatever you want to call it, everyone’s pretty much the same. Humans have a huge spectrum. Non-humans tend to fall on the brighter end of that spectrum, if we can make ourselves fit in well enough for them not to suspect we’re any different from them.”

“Go on,” Cyrus said when I paused. “You’re just getting to the interesting part.”

“So a ‘human mindset’ is essentially a mindset that is not focused on any specific emotion or style of thinking, but one that is open to any and all possibilities. Within this greater group, there may be people who find it easier to focus on one type of thinking – logical, say, or emotional – or find it easier to become happy than sad or vice versa, but, as a whole, the population has no preference.” I ran a hand through my hair, thinking. “We use humans as a baseline because of this, yeah, but we need to use their neurotypical standards, because they have ones that work for everyone.”

[Shadaras]

Yesterday's total was 52,009, by the way. Today? 53,000. xD ...why must writing only start coming easily now? Why?

[Shadaras]

54,023.

SPOILER: Click to show

I waited about ten minutes, pacing under a don’t-pay-attention-to-me veil as I waited. People could still see me under this, so they wouldn’t think it especially odd when I dispelled it and walked into St. Francis. I spent the minutes watching cars slowly crowd the parking lot and worrying about nothing I could put a name to. It irritated me far more than I liked. Of course, many things did. When the ten minutes I’d allowed Cyrus were up, I entered school at a normal pace, as if I weren’t an hour or so later than usual.

Nobody thought much of it. I suspected that a lot of them assumed it was because of Cyrus leaving me or something like that. The looks that a few students did give me seemed almost more pitying than anything else. I tried to keep from wanting to lash out at them and tell them I didn’t need their pity, but I wanted to. I could feel a cold rage building up at my core, eating away at me, whispering for me to lose control, that it wouldn’t matter, there were always more of them, it would give me the respect I deserved.

At the last, I shook my head and closed with the statue of St. Francis. Sure, Lucifer was Fallen, not demonic, but it eased his pressure on my mind. I sat on the pavement, not on the bricks, and leaned my head against my knees and my back against the low brick wall. “Unfair,” I whispered. I knew that someone would hear that and interpret it wrongly, but I didn’t really care. I did care when I felt an unfamiliar touch on my shoulder. Startled, I looked up and saw a girl. I’d seen her around fairly often. She shared a couple classes with me. I searched for her name in my mind, and finally came up with, “Adele, right?”

She smiled, crouching down next to me. “Rumors have been flying around you, Christopher. What’s up for real?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Seriously?” I paused, and then started to laugh. Adele looked at me, confused. I shook my head. “You don’t want to know the truth.”

“How’s this for the truth?” Adele leaned closer to me, and I tried to keep myself from shying away. She whispered, “You and Cyrus have made yourselves miserable by breaking up something.”

I closed my eyes and sighed. Let Adele interpret that as she wished. It wasn’t the truth, but it was close enough for the students. There was nothing to break up, thus nothing had broken up. Sure, neither of us could exactly say we were alright anymore – if we ever could’ve – but that didn’t mean that we were miserable. The rest of it may as well have been truth, for all I cared.

“Why?”

Simple question. There was no simple answer to it. I considered and threw away more answers than I wanted to. Eventually I figured out something that was close enough to the truth that I didn’t mind saying it, but enough of a lie that she’d believe it. “Because I hate people paying attention to me and spreading rumors, and Cyrus wasn’t exactly happy with them either.”

There was a frown in that pause. There had to be. “You could have come out entirely and they would have stopped.”

I glared at her. She was indeed frowning. It was also not nearly as demeaning as I’d thought. “It’s complicated in ways that I don’t want to explain.”

She just kept looking at me, expectant. I ran a hand through my hair, debating with myself over just how much I could say. And over the consequences of saying anything. I sighed. “He wants me, I don’t want him.” A thought occurred to me. “Hey, are you one of those girls who wants to know if Cyrus would make you his girlfriend?”

“Nope,” Adele said cheerfully as she stood. “I’m part of the small contingent of girls who thinks you’re cute and has only just figured out that you aren’t antisocial and asexual.”

I stared after her, mouth agape, as she wove her way into the crowd. For one blessed moment my mind was completely blank. Then the full consequences of what had just happened settled into my mind and I started banging my head against the bricks behind me. Life truly had a sense of irony sometimes.

[Trilly (18426 words)]

I'm actually really enjoying reading these excepts. ^^ It seems like a really interesting story so far.

Think I could read the entire thing when it's done? =D *is hopeful*

[Shadaras]

^_^ ..and yes, I think you could.

Edit: 55,043; final count for today. Seth and Cyrus are lecturing on fey and trying not to make it too weird. xD ..I love these guys. Only Cyrus would think up a stunt like this. And be able to get away with it.

[Shadaras]

56,042. At some point (aka, tomorrow) I need to start writing more than 1k a day. xD

SPOILER: Click to show

“I believe all of you hold some idea in your head of what a fairy is,” he said quietly, looking and sounding perfectly at ease. I envied him. I suspected that all the people who had spoken before us envied him even more. “Give me some examples of what ‘fairy’ means to you.”

I heard things like “Tinkerbelle!” “Elves!” and “Goblins!” shouted out, for the most part. I sighed, and called on just a touch of my power as I raised a hand to silence them. It worked remarkably well, and I dropped the magic as soon as I could. “Fairies can be all these things,” I said. My voice was louder than Cyrus’s, but I didn’t care. “Fairies can also be pixies or centaurs or even—” I grinned, mirth lacing my voice, though only one person would understand why “—dragons.” I didn’t give the students any time to protest my assertion. “The word ‘fairy’ can be used to refer to any Earth-tied spirit or non-human entity.”

“Ghosts, say.” Cyrus shook his head at the laugher. “How many of you have heard ghost stories, or visited a place said to be haunted? Isn’t it noticeably colder there?”

“It’s just psychological!” one particularly brave student called out. I didn’t pay attention to which one. My attention, like everyone else’s, was on Cyrus.

The dragon nodded gravely. “You are correct to say that part of this is a psychological effect. But isn’t everything that happens in our minds a psychological effect?” He waved a hand at the church. “We view the church, but the process of seeing is more complicated than that. I won’t go into the details, but suffice to say that our psyche is tied to the world only through the medium of our senses, and it is difficult to experience anything that is not proven by some sense of ours.”

“This includes,” I added, staring at the crowd, “a sixth sense of intuition. A sense that can see into the fairy world.”

Cyrus grinned. “I won’t say that’s true, but I won’t dispute it either. But a psychological and philosophical discussion isn’t what the point of this was. Fairies were.” He took a breath, seemingly to settle himself. It worked; I could feel power settle around him like a cloak. “The Sidhe of Europe are the best known of the fey kinds, and are the kind that Dr— Christopher and I focused on.”

“Well, those and the Seelie and Unseelie courts.” I shrugged. “Arthurian legend holds that there are two kinds of fairies.” I held up one finger. “The dangerous ones who don’t like humans.” I held up another. “The dangerous ones who are amused by humans.” Laugher filled the room. I smiled a little. “Truth,” I said over them, quieting them down again. “There are very few stories of fey doing something nice for humans without asking for something in return.” I paused. “Well. There might not be any.”

“Anyway,” Cyrus said, cutting me off, “some of the medieval people of Europe and the environs essentially worshiped these spirits. They left gifts for the fairies outside their doors so that the fairies would leave them alone. They believed that they either were gods or were descended from them, and that they lived in a world adjacent to, but separate from, that we live in.”

“Of course, another group thought that fairies and demons were one and the same.” They most definitely weren’t, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if demons had used fey forms as disguises to get humans to trust them more easily. “Another thought that they were the spirits of the dead.” I smiled a bit. “Ancestor worship was definitely common back them, so you can see how those groups starting paying tribute to the fairies.”

“What we’re trying to say is that there was never one standardized kind of fairy and no standardized way to worship them, avoid them, pay tribute to them, and so on.” Cyrus crossed his arms. “It’s like animism, if you want to compare it to a religion that can be discussed in further depth. The fairies were almost always tied to the land, and if you disturbed them, they would have their revenge on you. This typically took the form of death or a curse that may as well have been death.”

I hesitated, but at a glance from Cyrus, went on to one of the crazier parts of our speech. Presentation. Thing. “How many of you believed in fairies when you were children who didn’t know better?” A lot of hands went up. Not all, I noticed, but I had no way of telling if anyone was lying. “Do any of you still believe in some sort of fairies?” Most, but not all, of the hands went down. I glanced at the few people left and smiled. “Thank you for your courage,” I said quietly. “I had no way of knowing if any of you would raise your hand, and I wouldn’t know if you withheld something from me.”

“See, the point is that even in this day and age, where we are supposed to believe in science and established religion, there are always outliers.” Cyrus clapped a hand onto my shoulder, and I winced, trying not to stagger. “Christopher here follows God. You guys all know this, of course. I don’t exactly follow God, yet I live by many of the same strictures you people do, just because they feel right to me.”

I’d told Cyrus that he was going to get swarmed after saying this, and that it would be over the entire school by the end of lunch. He’d said he didn’t care, but I could feel how tense he was. His hand was too tight; it’d leave bruises on my shoulder, I knew, and I suspected that it would have done more than that to a normal human. And he was trembling slightly, though I doubted he knew I could tell. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “That concludes our presentation on fairies and religion. Thank you.”

[Rikku]

... Love your description of the Seelie and Unseelie. xD And fey in general. About sums them up.

[Shadaras]

I adore fey sometimes. xD ...they make so little sense and so much sense all at once. I need to actually have Seelie/Sidhe and stuff in the story, though, instead of just talking about them a lot. It'd make this more fun.

Also, fairies/fey/what have you are the only thing I've really looked up for this story, and even then, not much. ^_^ ...so much fun.

[Shadaras]

I think I wrote 3k in about two hours. =D ...or something like that. 3.5k, actually. I think. Which leads back to my theory that I average 30 minutes for a thousand words.

Anyway. 60,155 final for today. About 3k of the 4k I wrote today was ramblings on Hell and Heaven and random junk like that. xD ..so much fun.

SPOILER: Click to show

The smell of books was wonderful; it was the smell of old paper and ink combined with the soft spell that all words wove, a spell that humans were never aware of, to my knowledge. The spell was gentle, a simple whisper that said “come and read me, I hold knowledge that you do not”, and all humans heeded the call in their own way. Humans are born with the desire to learn, and books are always the simplest way to learn. I ran my fingers along the books as I passed, listening to them with half of my mind, a soft smile on my face.

Hel’s library had always been my favorite place in that city; it was my hideout, the one place I could go and be sure that Lucifer could not punish me for entering. He loved that I enjoyed learning, and encouraged me as much as he could. I’d keep going in spite of that, learning about things that Lucifer didn’t think were useful. Old kinds of magic written on brittle scrolls that I had to bind together to read, complex formulae for creating silly potions that didn’t work, treatises on Terran civilizations long passed away, and other such random bits and pieces.

Knowledge is power and all things are worth knowing. I believed that. Lucifer said he did, but since he didn’t encourage me overly much, I doubted him. In any case, I didn’t understand much of what he had wanted me to learn. More magic, he said, magic that angels practiced. I’d learned some interesting tricks, to be sure, like how to heal and how to cast gentle light and peace and other such things, but all the skills were filtered through my demonic blood, which, due to living in Hell, was uppermost. If he’d taught me on Earth, I suspected that I would have learned more and more easily, since Earth was evenly balanced between the sides of the host.