tushanshu_logs | EVENT | LANDFALL

EVENT | LANDFALL | VALISHAERA

Characters: ALL!
Date: JULY 13-26
Location: Valishaera
Situation: Tu Vishan has made landfall on Siaxhi, to explore the Dreaming Watch City of Valishaera.
Warnings/Rating: Please indicate content warnings in subject headers as applicable.

As Tu Vishan draws near, the heavy jungle visible even from miles out quickly identifies the landmass as Siaxhi, one of the westernmost continents in Konryu and one that has been largely untouched insofar as the kedan themselves have gone. There is a natural inlet along the southeast shore on the continent and Tu Vishan makes for that, though he fills nearly all of it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I'm Frank." He said, raising an eyebrow. Was he one of those superheroes with secret identity? But no, they wouldn't actually share they had more than one identity. Would they?

"I'll be right back, Solomon." Like the king, right? Cool name, Frank thought.

"Very well." Solomon returned to his work, not doubting the boy's word so much as his skill. He obviously had some trouble maintaining manifestations; he was perseverant, but Solomon wasn't expecting to see him before he finished himself.

When Solomon's book was filled and his notations all made, he went out into the yard and looked up to see if he could see Frank in the air.

Frank seemed to be either in deep concentration or full of anger, judging by the frown in his face. He kept doing basic strokes at the sheet of papers in his hands, which seemed to be slowly but surely getting filled with very simple scribbles of what he was seeing.

Eventually, though, he noticed Solomon was down there looking for him and he looked startled- but luckily, not startled enough to make the sheets disappear.

"Oh, hi! Are you done?"

"I am," Solomon replied, looking up. In spite of the trouble Frank had been having inside, he was still able to keep maintenance of his pages thus far--and after being startled. So he was untrained, or suffered some sort of learning disability, but had enough tenacity to make up for it.

"Would you like some assistance?" Some teenagers reacted so badly to having aid.

He'd usually accept the assistance, but in this case he just shook his head.

"I'm nearly done, actually. I just never had to summon this kind of thing before- and flying is still new to me, so it also takes some of my concentration." And true to his word, he was hovering down to Solomon a second later when he'd managed to make the last symbol stick.

"Here" he announced, handing the paper sheets to him. "I hope it helps a little."

Solomon accepted the sheets to look at them. The sketching was crude, but it got all the important parts across, and anything the teen missed were things Solomon could extrapolate on his own.

"It suffices," he agreed. "You did well for someone unused to manifesting objects for significant periods of time." He had been anticipating the teen would take longer due to the need to stop and start. Solomon held out his book. "I'll need to reproduce your work to fix it in my mind. Would you like to have a look at what I've observed?"

Fair was fair. The boy wasn't a scholar, but he was willing and had done the work. He'd earned the right to see what he'd contributed to.

"Sure!" He said with a grin. Figuring out those kind of things couldn't hurt even if he didn't get all of it at first, and the little work he'd just done had proven he shouldn't underestimate the power of using dreaming to their advantage. Maybe if he saw the man summoning things on his own he'd be able to do it easily.

"Excellent," Solomon said approvingly. "You will need to manifest a second book to write in." There were some places to sit in the garden, but they needed a desk as well. Rather than go in search of one, Solomon put out his hand and manifested a chair first--timber, with a high back but thick cushions on the seat and back. It grew out of the ground almost like a tree in fast-motion.

"Manifesting objects is easy in principle," he said as it did. "It's simply a matter of wanting it hard enough and directing that want into a physical place. The difficult part is maintaining the manifestation and without requiring the entirety of your focus." He glanced at Frank. "Have you heard of the memory palace?"

Frank was already staring at his hands, as if wondering how as he going to manage to make an entire book appear. It was why he'd been basically using only sheets of paper: he'd found them easier to manifest and easier to focus on, so they lasted longer.

He blinks at the last part, his attention back to Solomon. For once, something about Camp Jupiter comes in handy. "Uh, we were told something about that at camp. But it's more Greek than Roman, and most demigods have too much of hard time focusing to manage something like that either way, so it was a mention in passing.

It's something like imagining your mind as a literal place, right?"

"Something like," said Solomon dryly. "It's a technique more to do with memory. It uses a place extremely familiar to you as a medium by which to remember lists--names, or tasks, or numbers. Manifesting objects uses a similar set of principles."

He laid a hand on the chair. "This is the chair from my office, at home." Moving around a rectangular area, his hand flat against the air, he visualised a desk and a moment later one sprouted under the ground beneath his hand, in the same sort of style as his chair. "And this is my desk." He put down the book. "And this is the most recent journal I had been using to write in."

Solomon looked at Frank. "The more familiar the object is to you," he said, "the less work your mind needs to do in order to manifest them, and the easier it is to remember that it exists without your needing to focus upon it." He tapped the book. "If you need to write in something, don't simply manifest a book, or a set of pages--manifest a specific book, or a specific set of pages. If you need something in which to sit, visualise your favourite chair, or stump, or stool--it doesn't matter what it is, so long as you know it well enough for your subconscious mind to accept that it is there."

"Oh!" Frank's eyebrows rose up in a transparent 'it had been so easy all along' kind of way, and it was clear from his expression that something had just clicked. That sounded like his shapeshifting powers: the more he knew the animal, the easier it was for him to shift into it. Frank didn't know almost anything about Rhinos, so he could turn into one- but he'd been taking care of Hannibal for months at camp, so turning into an animal had actually been easy once he'd gotten the hang of it.

Dreaming seemed to work the same way. The more he knew what he was going to summon, the easier it would be for him to do so, according to what Solomon was saying.

"Okay. Okay, let me try..." He frowned at his hand, pursing his lips in concentration. Soon, a big and solid spear was in his hand and he let out a little laugh of triumph. "I got it! I totally got it!"

Except that... wasn't really going to help them with the writing at all, but Frank was too happy to have gotten that much to realize that.

That look of gleeful comprehension was the one thing that made teaching worthwhile, in Solomon's opinion. Some students were idiots; they didn't want to learn, and Solomon had no time for people like that. But the ones that did had always made Solomon want to come back to tutor the younger acolytes, something few masters bothered to do.

"Very good," Solomon said with a smile, though he regarded the spear with a curious eye. They had been talking about what amounted to office utensils; why, suddenly, the spear? Clearly it was something Frank knew well, if it was what he chose first.

"However," he added, dryly but not degradingly, "I think that's rather too large to use as a writing utensil." He put his hand out on the table and a book identical to his first materialised on its surface. "You will also need a chair." With a slight, too-innocent smile Solomon looked up. "Perhaps you should begin with that."

He was playing around with the spear, getting used to the feeling of it in his hand when Solomon spoke, and with an oops face he tried to pretend he wasn't turning red. But the spear didn't disappear when he was distracted, so he thought that should be considered an improvement.

"Right. Uh." He looked at the spear, shaking his hand to make it disappear in a puff of smoke. Then he looked at his other hand and frowned. 'A chair...' he muttered, trying to remember a particular chair that meant something to him. He discarded camp right away since they usually ate lying down, but if he thought further back...

Suddenly a very old-looking but cared for chair appeared, and he grinned. "There. That was Grandma Zhang's office chair, and I used to sneak in and sit on it all the time when I was little. Made me feel like one of the big boys."

"A good choice," Solomon said. It was: it was a very personal object, one from Frank's childhood. It was the sort of object that would last; something so deeply rooted in the teen's consciousness and memories that Solomon wondered if it would vanish even if Frank told it to. "You shouldn't have trouble keeping that manifested."

Solomon took off his coat and hung it over the back of his chair, and took a seat. The chair was a good start, but the writing materials would be the difficult part. Solomon could have summoned a chair for the teen himself, if necessary. "The book is more important," he said. "It's what will represent your subconscious mind, and therefore is something you'll have to manifest and maintain on your own."

Frank sat on his own chair, worrying his lower lip as he thought about it. He could have summoned a desk as well, now that he had the vision of his grandma's office in his mind but like Solomon said, the book was the important part if they were going to keep on writing.

And he was painfully aware that every moment Solomon took to explain because Frank didn't understand was a moment he could have spent studying on his own, so he was going to make the most of it.

"I don't really have a book or a journal in mind, but..." He took a moment to remember, to focus on the memory. Eventually he placed a hand on the desk and slowly a calligraphy kit began to appear: a pot, some ink, an ink stone, a few brushes and paper. "I think this might also be useful?"

"It would," Solomon said with a nod. "The pages on which you write don't necessarily have to be bound, though you may find it more difficult to retain or connect the knowledge together. In the subconscious, a bound book would represent something a touch more ... cohesive than otherwise."

Actually, the fact the teen couldn't manifest a book, but pages, said something about his psychology. For whatever reason, he seemed to have trouble connecting thoughts together--not obviously, but enough that concentration was an effort. Dyslexia or something similar, if Solomon recalled correctly; mental states hadn't had much in the way of name or description when he'd been born.

"Fortunately there is no limit to the pages you can create, here," he said dryly, manifesting his own utensils--a fountain pen and inkpot. They weren't what he meant to create, but they were an image of the ones his father had owned, and personal. Possibly Frank's explanation of the rocking-chair had influenced him. Either way, it meant that he could pull the empty journal and Frank's notes closer, and being his transcription. "If you need help with the interpretation, feel free to ask."

"I will!" he says with a grin, because it seems like he's done well enough judging by the older man's reaction. Sure, he could try to materialize a book... but with his luck he'd end up summoning The Art of War or something like that.

"But... can we- I mean, I'm not sure if you're usually busy or whatever. You seem a man of many talents. But we could maybe try training this thing again, right?"

Flattering and eager. Solomon had to laugh. "I am," he said, amused, "but mostly because I occupy myself. A teenager willing to learn is a rare thing not to be allowed to escape."

The smile he flashed Frank was one more teasing than anything else, not directed at Frank himself so much as a much-believed perception. "Is there anything in particular you are seeking to learn?"

He smiles back, though his smile is more shy and awkward. He isn't sure how to take what he said, so he chooses to take it as a compliment.

"Well..." a little laugh. "Okay, I admit at first I was interested because my girlfriend is kind of sort of a magician, I guess - it's a long story- and what you're describing sounds a lot like the kind of magic she uses." And he misses her, he has been missing her for months. Months feel like an eternity to a teenager.

"But now I think this kind of thing would be really, really useful in the long run, especially in a place like this. And I like learning everything I can, because I guess I like feeling useful?"

None of which answered the question in the least, but Solomon was at least somewhat adept at reading between the lines on behalf of muddled teens. Well, that and thanks to the spear--it was likely Frank was able to summon it so well because he already knew weapons. But judging by the teen's trouble with manifesting objects, it seemed his mind hadn't been given the same opportunities to develop.

It was a pity. He seemed like a decently intelligent youth.

"We have only so much time here in the Dreaming," said Solomon, and tapped the book. "But if we're fortunate, it may be possible to recreate a portal into the Dreaming. If that's so, we can use that space to sharpen your concentration in this sort of manner. Otherwise, would you be familiar with chess, or any similar game?"

"I am, though I haven't played much."

He was actually pretty good at it. Some people might have said it was surprising given Frank's ADHD and his problems paying attention to something long-term, but considering the natural affinity for strategy and battle he had inherited from his father it was only logical. Chess might have just been a game, but a game based on a war nonetheless.

And a child of Mars should never, would never lose a battle.

"You think it would help?"

"In lieu of the mental gymnastics required for such a these," Solomon tapped the book, "yes, I think it would. Training the mind requires using the mind in ways in which you're unfamiliar. Chess may be something of a cliche, but it is for a reason. It you can conceptualise the movements needed to strategically out-think your opponent, you'll be able to use that approach for other things as well. The importance is in the manner of thinking, rather than the game."

Solomon didn't play it frequently nowadays, but when he had been young it had been one of the first ways his father had engaged him directly. After that, he had played it frequently with some of the older acolytes and Morwenna Crow--but she had been his only regular partner, and he hadn't seen her in centuries.

He was certainly good enough to teach someone, if Frank needed teaching. "If we finish transcribing these expediently, perhaps we can have a game here."

"Sounds good."

He wasn't sure if it would help, since to him it was more of a battle field playing out in his head than strategy. But if that was the first step of the training he was gladly going to do it. And he definitely wouldn't mind playing some with the man, he as an interesting person so far and any excuse to learn from him would be good.

"I better stop interrupting though." He added, with a grin.

"It may be helpful," Solomon agreed dryly, and gave the teen a careless 'back to your studies' sort of wave. It would likely take Frank longer than it would take Solomon, given Solomon's experience in this sort of transcription. He kept an eye on the teen but otherwise didn't interfere unless Frank explicitly asked for help.

When Solomon was done he lay down the pen, stretched his wrist and looked to Frank. "How are you progressing?"

Time was difficult to tell in this place, but Solomon was starting to feel the desire to go home again. Depending on Frank's progress, they might need to arrange the chess game for another day.

He actually looked quite proud, something he hadn't since the whole conversation started.

"Not too bad! I'm almost done. It was harder at first but I think I'm getting the hang of it, I find it easier if you don't actually think logically about what you're doing."

EVENT | LANDFALL | VALISHAERA

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