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I Know What This Isn't [Kalen Mood]
#1
Ian was sleeping.

I know it doesn't really have anything to do with me. That would be like claiming that the mottled orange and cream and copper cat that once lived outside of one of the places I had found to claim as mine came there for me. It wasn't a large space, none of them ever were, but it became my favorite. I always tried to tell myself that it was because the entrances were so small no one bigger than me was getting in, that it was always dry, and those things were good but they were not true; I preferred it because it was the only place I could go and feel safe but not entirely alone. I loved it the most for that mottled cat.

The mottled cat was small too, when I first met her. We both claimed that place because no one else wanted it. There wasn't much around for people or for cats but space. I started bringing her food, because we understood each other in ways no one had understood me since Melody. I would leave it, and she would come to eat it once I was far enough away. She grew up into a sleek, athletic creature. She had a litter of kittens, and I gave the kittens Names, but the mottled cat had a Name, I was always sure of that. She, and her Name, were never mine.

She would sometimes come inside, into the space that was mine, when there was rain or it was very cold. She was not afraid of me, she was simply not interested in being petted or loved in ways that involved contact or proximity. I left her food and she killed all the rats, chased away racoons and I once saw her at the mouth of the alley, stiff-legged and teeth yowling a challenge at a dog twice her size. He was skinny though, and more skittish, and he slunk away.

'That could have been you, once,' I had told her, but it wasn't really because I disapproved. We both knew that there wasn't really ever enough of anything. We both knew we couldn't let everyone into our space. There was, in the end, only ever so much. I was sad about the dog, because I understood that in not so different a world the mottled cat and I would have been the ones starving and run off, too hungry to fight with something even half our size.

We had an understanding, even some affection, but our arrangement was never really about me. She didn't stay because she loved me, that mottled cat; sometimes there were things that she needed that she knew I would give her, and that was enough that she stayed close even when she was big enough and strong enough she could have gone off on her own.

Ian is sleeping in my bed. It means no more and no less than it did when the mottled cat came inside and stayed with me. In the morning he will leave, and we will probably never talk about it. And if he needs it to happen again, it will; because he knows sometimes there are things he needs and I will give them to him. I will give him coffee, and maybe breakfast, and he will return to where he came from. It changes nothing, these moments. I know what they are.

He won't let me Name him either.


I talk to him anyway. Quietly, so that he won't wake. There are people who say they remember things they hear in dreams, but that isn't why I'm careful what I tell him. It isn't because I don't trust him, because I do. I brought him to the chantry; even if most of the others don't know what happens when a chantry falls, I do. It means everything that I brought him there. He doesn't know that. I think only Gallowglass really knows that, though I'm sure Grace has it figured out. It isn't about trust or vulnerability, at least not mine. He can hear me, and even if he will never be consciously aware of what I'm saying, he might incorporate it into his dreams. My past causes enough nightmares as it is. Ramon used to pray while I was sleeping, hours and hours of mantras in Latin. He makes a face when I call them mantras, but it's basically what they are. I don't know if they changed much about my dreams, but I know what it was like to come half awake and disoriented and hear his voice. For awhile, I'm sure that's the only thing that let me stay even a little sane.

So instead I've told him about other things.

About the way that Melody wanted to be an ice skater, which is something like dancing, and she used to do those spinny whirls in the lot with the tiny chalky gravel because that gravel let her slide her feet over it the best. It was gravel and she was eight, so it was far from elegant, but she loved it so much it was still something to see. Her eyes would light up, like Grace's do when she comes to some conclusion or another and the excitement of being right in the middle of what she most wants to be in the middle of turns them practically luminescent. Grace looks so sad when I tell her stories about me and Melody, like we didn't have the things children are supposed to, but the only thing we didn't have enough of was time.

About the tangle of bodies and needs and dreams on the floor of this old Victorian house with pink shutters and how everything dissolved into this haze of light and sensation and perfect transcendent bliss and when I was aware of who I was and these other people were other people and not part of me I was kissing Jack and there was this pause, like he suddenly realized it too, and probably he did because it wasn't like it was a drug-induced altered state where metabolism is a thing, and I started kissing him again and that was how that all got started. Some people think it's weird, me and Kharisma and Jack, I think because I was so young when I met them and they were my mentors, but they aren't really that much older than I am.

It doesn't even matter, we've all stared at Eternity anyway.

About the way Jenna stalked me through the library, about her eyes that were too old for her face and the way she collected secrets the way some people collect lightning bugs, all wonder and pure joy of discovery. About kisses in rooms full of old books and rolls of parchment and priceless artifacts that almost came crashing to their untimely demise. I left out the parts about how she wasn't even a little bit who she said she was and that is probably how the chantry came to fall, because Ian was sleeping and this was about good moments. Almost everything I've ever had that was good has gone so horribly wrong, but I have good memories of Jenna. Almost no one else I know would even listen to them, because they think they know what she is. I know I don't know, and I know that thinking I know is foolish, but I also know that she saved me before she left me to die and I know that when I asked her for help not so long ago she risked a lot to get me the secrets I needed to know how to fight Thakinyan.

I tell him about that too. Thakinyan. About how we all learned about it and tracked it and then eventually banished it back to where it came from, because I think he needs to hear that we've fought with horrible spirit creatures already and won and I don't really know how to try to do that when he is awake. He fights so hard when he's awake. And I don't mean to, but then I explain about the near-soul-stealing shadow tentacles and I really hope he doesn't incorporate that into any dreams.

I give up then, because I know how tired I am and how darkness swallows everything whole. So I tell him that everything will be alright, and I mean it, because even if we can't save his friend and all die trying there are lives to come after this one. Chances to come after this one. It is a world of infinite possibility and I know that that means it could all go horribly wrong but I have looked into the face of Eternity and she is beautiful. It could, but it won't.

We won't let it.

I won't let it.

There are infinite possibilities and I will die as many times as I have to, but I will not let this world Fall.

I keep the hand of his that I have already in one of mine. I do not curl against him. I know what he is. I know what this is. I know what it doesn't mean. I do curl up a little, and I let my forehead rest against his shoulder.

I close my eyes. I know what it doesn't mean. But I let it help me fall asleep anyway.
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