Post by Muse on Sept 2, 2013 5:12:13 GMT 10
Title: The Voice Paradoxes
Rating: PG-13
Category: Tortall <1,000
Length: 836
Original and Subsequent Haunts: Goldenlake: 1 2 3 4
Summary: I. Jon is the Voice. It takes adjustment, and Jon adjusts in two.
II. Jon is not the Voice. No Bazhir may make war on the Voice of the Tribes.
III. Jon is and is not the Voice. The clamor rises in him. He is and is not, and it is glorious.
IV. Jon neither is nor is not the Voice. Alanna watches as Jon undergoes the Ritual of the Voice.
Warnings: References past-canon-character death, Canon-character death, Non-explicit character death.
I.
He learns to live with the sound of hundreds of other voices in his head.
They talk, not always to him, but he doesn’t mind. They show him things he has never seen, places he will never go, people he will never meet.
In the space of his mind, both infinitely vast and terrifyingly small, he is free.
For anyone else this probably would have been enough to be diagnosed insane; Jon wonders about this sometimes, in the Moment when he’s everyone but himself.
Alanna peers into his eyes, then, when he comes back to himself. She doesn’t say anything, and for long moments he blinks, feeling the phantom heat of sand through the soles of his feet while twilight breezes steal beneath the burnoose that billows around him.
He blinks, and its gone.
Alanna doesn’t say anything to him, in those in between moments when he is both here and there. It’s never awkward, although sometimes Jon sees the outlines of shaman’s robes blowing around Alanna as the Moment fades away from him and he returns solidly to himself, Jonathan-as-King.
He wonders if he looks different; if something fades out of him and leaves him, desert-less and chilled under the grey Northern sky.
II.
No Bazhir may make war on the Voice of the Tribes.
Alanna brings back another report; the southern-most tribes have mobilized against the nearby fiefs. Breakout fighting has been happening sporadically since the year turned, five months ago, but now this is different. There is sand in her hair and lines around her eyes from squinting in the sun, and Jon reads no good news in her expression, her eyes hard and set under her burnoose.
The Voice has spoken in favor of the southern tribes.
Alanna doesn’t look Jon in the eyes when she tells him this and Jon knows why. He remembers Ali Mukhtab just as she does. Jon remembers the heat of his skin—too hot, sick,dying--the desert, his anger as Jon rode away from the tents of the Bloody Hawk and didn’t look back.
Jon remembers, and struggles with memories he wishes he didn’t have.
He hasn’t returned yet—to read the history he had requested, to declare war and call the sporadic fighting what it has become—and he and Alanna hold a secret between them.
No Bazhir may make war on the Voice of the Tribes.
But Jon is only the son of the despised Northern King, and war rides behind him when he goes.
III.
“I am, and I’m not, and it is glorious.”
Alanna’s hands are fast and frantic on him, and Jon is lying in the sand.
It doesn’t bother him; crisp, cool grains sliding into place under him and cradling him close to the heart of the desert.
Above him and away, there is still a rim of blue fire on the Bazhir, and Jon looks into Ali Mukhtab’s eyes and grins.
“We are.”
There is nothing—and everything—and Alanna looks alarmed when he tells her this.
“Jon,” she holds his head gently, hands on the sides of his face. She tilts his head so she can see him straight on and looks deep into his eyes. “Jon, snap out of it!”
He’s drowning in violets and voices.
It’s wonderful and maddening. Something rises in him, growing in his chest and bubbling, popping like tiny bubbles of champagne against his throat and he fights the urge to let it burst out.
Would it be a shout of laughter or a scream?
He is so many people. He grins at Alanna. “There are four hundred and fifteen of me.”
Her face is dead white above him—he hasn’t moved, and neither has Ali Muhktab—and Jon lives four hundred and fifteen lives at once.
IV.
The glow of the fire burns a strange cold blue-white, sending ghost shadows skittering across the desert sands, and Alanna’s throat closes. The night air hangs heavily on her, cold in a way she did not expect to find this deep into the desert.
She clutches the ember-stone, but even it gives no warning.
No words, no voices make it through the shrieking of the winds, and Jon and Ali are buffeted, bodies bent forward against the force of the gale.
One hand drops across the other, and Jon reaches for Ali, a gash dripping down the length of his arm. Ali reaches, over the fire, towards Jon.
Pressure builds, and then cracks in two when they touch.
The fire explodes, freezing fire engulfing two figures that make a single silhouette.
The ember in Alanna’s hand burns as she is blinded, magically and physically.
When she finally opens her eyes, dazzle-spots flicker across her vision and sand is in her mouth. She spits, grit between her teeth as she climbs to her feet.
No one stands at the top of the hill, and there are two shapes that do not stir.
There is no Voice; there are no longer any Tribes.
There is only the Northern King, and the madness of his resurrected heir.
Rating: PG-13
Category: Tortall <1,000
Length: 836
Original and Subsequent Haunts: Goldenlake: 1 2 3 4
Summary: I. Jon is the Voice. It takes adjustment, and Jon adjusts in two.
II. Jon is not the Voice. No Bazhir may make war on the Voice of the Tribes.
III. Jon is and is not the Voice. The clamor rises in him. He is and is not, and it is glorious.
IV. Jon neither is nor is not the Voice. Alanna watches as Jon undergoes the Ritual of the Voice.
Warnings: References past-canon-character death, Canon-character death, Non-explicit character death.
I.
He learns to live with the sound of hundreds of other voices in his head.
They talk, not always to him, but he doesn’t mind. They show him things he has never seen, places he will never go, people he will never meet.
In the space of his mind, both infinitely vast and terrifyingly small, he is free.
For anyone else this probably would have been enough to be diagnosed insane; Jon wonders about this sometimes, in the Moment when he’s everyone but himself.
Alanna peers into his eyes, then, when he comes back to himself. She doesn’t say anything, and for long moments he blinks, feeling the phantom heat of sand through the soles of his feet while twilight breezes steal beneath the burnoose that billows around him.
He blinks, and its gone.
Alanna doesn’t say anything to him, in those in between moments when he is both here and there. It’s never awkward, although sometimes Jon sees the outlines of shaman’s robes blowing around Alanna as the Moment fades away from him and he returns solidly to himself, Jonathan-as-King.
He wonders if he looks different; if something fades out of him and leaves him, desert-less and chilled under the grey Northern sky.
II.
No Bazhir may make war on the Voice of the Tribes.
Alanna brings back another report; the southern-most tribes have mobilized against the nearby fiefs. Breakout fighting has been happening sporadically since the year turned, five months ago, but now this is different. There is sand in her hair and lines around her eyes from squinting in the sun, and Jon reads no good news in her expression, her eyes hard and set under her burnoose.
The Voice has spoken in favor of the southern tribes.
Alanna doesn’t look Jon in the eyes when she tells him this and Jon knows why. He remembers Ali Mukhtab just as she does. Jon remembers the heat of his skin—too hot, sick,
Jon remembers, and struggles with memories he wishes he didn’t have.
He hasn’t returned yet—to read the history he had requested, to declare war and call the sporadic fighting what it has become—and he and Alanna hold a secret between them.
No Bazhir may make war on the Voice of the Tribes.
But Jon is only the son of the despised Northern King, and war rides behind him when he goes.
III.
“I am, and I’m not, and it is glorious.”
Alanna’s hands are fast and frantic on him, and Jon is lying in the sand.
It doesn’t bother him; crisp, cool grains sliding into place under him and cradling him close to the heart of the desert.
Above him and away, there is still a rim of blue fire on the Bazhir, and Jon looks into Ali Mukhtab’s eyes and grins.
“We are.”
There is nothing—and everything—and Alanna looks alarmed when he tells her this.
“Jon,” she holds his head gently, hands on the sides of his face. She tilts his head so she can see him straight on and looks deep into his eyes. “Jon, snap out of it!”
He’s drowning in violets and voices.
It’s wonderful and maddening. Something rises in him, growing in his chest and bubbling, popping like tiny bubbles of champagne against his throat and he fights the urge to let it burst out.
Would it be a shout of laughter or a scream?
He is so many people. He grins at Alanna. “There are four hundred and fifteen of me.”
Her face is dead white above him—he hasn’t moved, and neither has Ali Muhktab—and Jon lives four hundred and fifteen lives at once.
IV.
The glow of the fire burns a strange cold blue-white, sending ghost shadows skittering across the desert sands, and Alanna’s throat closes. The night air hangs heavily on her, cold in a way she did not expect to find this deep into the desert.
She clutches the ember-stone, but even it gives no warning.
No words, no voices make it through the shrieking of the winds, and Jon and Ali are buffeted, bodies bent forward against the force of the gale.
One hand drops across the other, and Jon reaches for Ali, a gash dripping down the length of his arm. Ali reaches, over the fire, towards Jon.
Pressure builds, and then cracks in two when they touch.
The fire explodes, freezing fire engulfing two figures that make a single silhouette.
The ember in Alanna’s hand burns as she is blinded, magically and physically.
When she finally opens her eyes, dazzle-spots flicker across her vision and sand is in her mouth. She spits, grit between her teeth as she climbs to her feet.
No one stands at the top of the hill, and there are two shapes that do not stir.
There is no Voice; there are no longer any Tribes.
There is only the Northern King, and the madness of his resurrected heir.