tanarill | I Have a Laser Pen

It is the coolest laser pen ever. It points in patterns.

A weird conversation I had with my brother:

Me: Bitches!
JJ: Damn bitches!
Me: Fucking damn bitches!
JJ: Motherfucking damn bitches!
Me: Motherfucking damn whore bitches!
JJ: Motherfucking damn slut whore bitches!
Me: . . . Slut and whore are kind of repetitive. You lose!
JJ: [flicks me off]
Me: Thank you.
JJ: [flicks me off again]

Because I have the most awesome little brother ever. We swear like sailors, and have the strangest brother-sister dynamic ever. And know all the lyrics to Avenue Q's porn song by heart.

Title: Angst and Ice Cream
Fandom: DP (C) Hartman, ASRP (C) the ASRP-muns, which now includes Rags, huzzah!
Rating: G
Warnings: Angst

Heres Tanarill woke up to the sound of rain on the roof above her (there was no rain, there was no roof) and a violin. She hadn’t even heard of violins until she had gone to the Shattering Maze, but loved them. In fact, she had spent a long bit of time learning to Walk in the Maze as part of trio of musicians who played flute, violin, and drum; that was, each musician could and did play all three instruments in turn.

But there was a violin, echoing slightly as the sound bounced around corners and played like a kitten. She hadn’t been in a world with violins for who-knows-how-long, so she got up to follow it.

By the time she emerged into the ballroom, the music had changed from light and happy to almost mourning, as gradually and as inexorably as a storm moving in. She waited until the last sighs of music died out, which took a while considering the size of the room, and then said, in the kind of quiet voice that radio commentators use when playing classical music, “Is that really what you feel?”

Freakshow started, and turned to look at her. “I didn’t know anyone was listening to me.”

“Mm. You play very well. But you didn’t answer the question.”

“I–sometimes. Most of the time now, I am happy. I’m with people I love, people who love me, and I know this. And then I do something that makes me wonder what I ever did to deserve them.” He looked at the instrument in one hand and the bow in the other and said, “I killed people, and it didn’t seem wrong and I didn’t regret anything. I killed my own parents. But I am happy, and they are just dead.”

A long, quiet moment. “Are you going to let it dictate your afterlife?”

The quiet lasted longer than a moment before Freakshow responded. “I don’t want to. But sometimes it feels like that’s how it’s going to turn out.”

“Don’t. I did enough of that in the Maze–I still do it enough. You can’t let who you were rule who you are.”

“And you can?”

“I mourn every morning for who I was when I went to sleep, and say goodbye every evening to the person I was when I woke up. I don’t forget, and I don’t let it rule me. There’s a fine line there.”

“How?”

“I measure my . . . this is not life, but it isn’t death either.” She paused, searching for the word. “Very well. I measure out my existence in heartbeats, daylights, midnights, especially in love. Not in how much I am loved but in how much I love. I get better. It’s enough.”

“In how much you love?”

“Before I left, at home, as a Hunter of Horune, I practically run the country. The old Queen will abdicate in favor of her son soon, but he’s spent years on the run and has no idea how to be a king, so he has to be taught before he can assume the crown. My cousin Reson Tanarill has always been a Hunter First Class, no matter which system you measure by, but he’s not good at long-term planning. Jan is, but Jan is smart enough to stay out of running the country while he’s in love with the heir.”

She paused to let him digest this. “Which leaves me, because I was always the heir to House Tanarill so I had to learn how to run these things, and because during the Revolution the Talents looked at me as a cross between their darling child and their savior. I am loved, but the only ones I loved in return were Jan as an older brother and Sol as far more than an older brother and Reson before I stopped hero-worshiping him. And now I’m loved on more worlds that I can count and I’ve still only loved a handful in return. Yes, I must measure things in how my capacity to love has grown, or what, really, was the point?”

“None,” sighed Freakshow. “But you haven’t changed all that much, have you?”

“Yes, I have.” Heres Tanarill didn’t move a muscle, but suddenly it was quite apparent that she was unhappy in the extreme. “Just not nearly enough. I can’t love the demon in my heart. At least you can love your besherut.”

“Not enough.”

“You walked out of death for them!”

“Yes, but–”

“That’s not enough?”

“Eternity won’t be enough.”

There was a warm, rumbling, not-a-purr from her heart, where the demon curled. The sense was of

“He knows truth,” and friendliness

and Heres Tanarill said, softly, “Alo-alhandra ehyi Taki.” It was a set of words from a scholarly language only spoken in her home worldset, and rarely even then, and roughly translated it meant, “Love undying can kill gods,” or translated another way, “Eternal love is stronger than any other power.” It was said a lot of Jan and Sol, usually by people who had never met them before. She saw Freakshow’s puzzled look, and said, “It means--you love them, and they love you, and there is nothing in any realm that could prevent you from being together again, now that you have found each other. It’s practically the definition of besherut, but it goes both ways. People who are besherut to each other.”

“Oh.”

“You are.”

“I don’t deserve them.”

“And I don’t deserve a demon who loves me so much that he spent forty thousand years proving it to me, but I have him. You don’t have to believe you deserve it–I certainly don’t, I can’t return his love–you just have to accept it.”

“We’re two of a kind, aren’t we?” mused Freakshow.

“Hmm?”

“I love mine back and wish I could love them more. You just wish you could love yours. And it’s never going to be enough . . . ”

“Ice cream,” said Heres Tanarill firmly, and apparently at random. “You need ice cream. So do I. There’s nothing so good for pointless self-pity as ice cream. Is there ice cream in this world, or do we have to make it?”

“There’s ice cre–” began Freakshow, confused, but was cut off when Heres Tanarill grabbed his wrist and yanked him along.

“Good, let’s go find some.”

I am convinced that is how it would happen. At some point, they will have a jam session but for people who play classical instruments, and Dan will tackle FS and leave Rill to have a discussion with CW about the forms of music that are common or unique to worlds. And CW will introduce her to jazz. Later, she'll learn to play the sax.

Brainbunnies!