tushanshu_logs | [EVENT] A NEW WORLD ORDER

Characters: ALL!
Date: December 8, 2015 (with some starters for the following weeks)
Location: Keeliai, the Midnight Hotel, others
Situation: The Foreigners have awakened.
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings as needed.

They've been in the Dreaming for so long that when they wake up their bodies feel more like automatons, alien and ill-fitting. They haven’t atrophied, thanks to Milyn, but they’re stiff and a little bedsore, and the solidity of the Life Plane is jarring. Here, the surroundings don’t move on a whim. Here the world is more stable, almost harsh and unyielding in spite of the homey surrounds.

It’s been a year, says the clock on the mantle and on the second floor. Says Milyn, too, when she’s able to stop hugging them long enough to speak.

Nothing much has changed in the Midnight Hotel. There are dishes out of place, objects belonging to either Milyn or Eva in evidence, the diorama exactly where it had been but now brightly-painted thanks to Milyn's boredom. Milyn and Eva took a room each, in the time the Foreigners were sleeping, though neither used them much.

Eva’s upstairs, Milyn will tell anyone who asks. In her room.

Eva hasn't left that room in three days. She hasn't spoken in three days, either, or walked, or moved, or breathed. Her effects are neatly arranged around her bed, and the sheet has been pulled up. There is heavy incense in the room and Milyn has managed to preserve the body enough to remove the risk of too much mess (and other things). In a way, that makes it worse: as though Eva is sleeping. It’s difficult to tell whether Milyn is in denial or whether spending three days with no one to talk to other than sleeping Foreigners and a corpse has had its influence.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Is it not simply going through motions until we've understood what that new life is to be?"

Enjolras wondered, not quite in agreement yet. To him, life and living actually came in the moments of more certainty, or at least in moments of clarity, even if it did not have to be perfect yet.

"It serves the act of living." he mused now. "But to put them on the same level...I am not so certain that it works for me."

Iroh shrugged. "Just as long as you don't forget that there are many more quiet and uncertain moments than large ones."

Enjolras could think to many of those, particularly toward the end of his life. In those last three days, it seemed like he had lived more than ever somehow. But it was different than the quiet he felt now, when he compared the two.

"Do you suppose? That helps."

"When you've lived as long as I have, you've had both and can count," Iroh said. But, really, it was the sort of thing soldiers learned young. Especially in sieges.

"I suppose that would explain it." Enjolras mused. "The last three days of my life, we had our share of those moments. I have always thought I never was more certain than upon our barricade. But I remember too...I could not go to my men...to my brothers in our last quiet moment. I've regretted that since, but I've at least had the time to make it up with some of them."

Uncertainties had never sat well with him and being shy even of those he loved beyond all else had felt wrong somehow. And off. "I can see that much of the point, I think. One of those moments of quiet and feeling...small, I think. They have their purpose anyway."

"I'm glad you had the chance to make it up to them," Iroh said.

"So am I. It helps, to have things clear between us."

Even those Enjolras had not seen here, he had spoken with either after the Dream ritual during the festival, or in the Dreaming itself, while he had been wandering around. He was not certain that either of them accurately reflected the spirits and thoughts of his long dead friends, but having spoken anyway did seem to help. As much as all of the change bothered him, there was a peaceful certainty when he thought of them, even of Feuilly, and Combeferre, who he had missed the most, and that was doing its job to serve him well.

"I suppose those were the times the quiet was the most uncertain, lately." he admitted. "They are not the worst things in the world, are they? Odd, that it still makes me a little ashamed. Perhaps, once I've grown used to them, that will fade as well. I certainly see no objective reason to let them make me feel that way, at least. Another chance to learn and grow, I guess. Funny, how I did not learn nearly so much in Paris the last time I was there."

"Perhaps not. Perhaps you learned more than you think you did," Iroh said. "Sometimes we don't realize what we've learned until the final part of the pattern is put into place. Or until we are tested on it."

"You never quite know, do you, when something that seemed so incidental will come back to you, do you?" Enjolras was fairly sure Paris was over, much as that bothered him, and maybe that was why it seemed like he hadn't learned much there. "I suppose the future may have something different waiting if I'm patient enough. I certainly never imagined any of this."

"Yes, while I have gotten used to the idea that I can't predict the future. Then I find myself on the back of a giant turtle-island."

"Quite the surprise for all of us, I think. But yes, it was a good reminder for me."

"Then it wasn't all bad, even with the struggle."

"No, indeed." Enjolras smiles. "That makes it better, in a way."

[EVENT] A NEW WORLD ORDER

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