Yay, TTOAT update! I know this chapter gets kind of dark, but I didn't feel like it was intense enough to change the rating. If you disagree, any and all opinions are excepted! To Odalisque: I totally had this chapter planned out before your review, but there were some interesting parallels in the finished product. It made me smile, anyway. Well, I just finished a Margaret Atwood masterpiece, and I'm afraid I kind of adopted her fractured style of writing for a bit. I tried to fix it, but it turns out the whole story is a bit convoluted. My main goal is to get everything to fit smoothly and seamlessly, so if the trend was already a bit random, this should work well. And as a side note, I love Draumur. :) Enjoy!

Empathy. There is such infinitesimal variation in your Speaking. Sympathy I’ve experienced. Ophelia pitied me, and much as it irked me it was sympathy, of a kind. But empathy is not the same. Empathy is knowing and understanding another’s troubles. Empathy is saying ‘I’ve been there.’

Who has ever been here? You’d think no one, but this new shadow, this Draumur, seems to empathize with me greatly. Don’t ask me how; it’s not like I encourage his ceaseless rambling. On and on into an eternity of explanations. Not that I didn’t appreciate the conversation at first. I’ve not spoken to many, and certainly not for this length or over this wide variety of subjects. It was nice to simply have the sound always going, all around. I felt as though I were swimming, the lilting baritone of his voice helping me float through this surreal trek. Splashing through sound waves. But this tsunami of information is more than I think I can stand. Whoever needed so much information? Draumur was the one who broached the subject of empathy. He broaches every subject, it seems.

Empathy. What a strange concept! You Speakers create so many intangibles. If you have to define it, does it even matter? It seems to me the only things worth bothering with are the ones that are self-evident. The gangly tangle of limbs striding next to me guides me carefully around an icy pond, then warns me to duck under a different sort of limb, a bit more wooden, but no less clumsy. Perhaps empathy is evident, in it’s own way. Or maybe it’s another miasma of the mind, created to comfort whatever it is inside us that insists on desiring company.

Or maybe I’m over thinking it.

He’s still going on about something. Forests, now, or is it winter? Trees falling. These word games entertain him greatly, somehow, though I don’t understand it. He tried to explain that blasted saying to me, ‘If a tree falls in a forest, and no one’s around to hear it . . . ’ Trees falling. I mean, really. Another one of your Speaker inventions, of course. It’s too nonsensical to come from a Story.

He acts as though a witness is required for an event to occur. A popular outlook, especially given the institution of Chronicling. But it happens for the witness, doesn’t it? No matter what.

What does it matter if the witness is a tree?

Things have been changing, lately, and it frightens me. Even my fear has changed, which in and of itself is rather terrifying. This loon has stopped me from thinking the same way. I no longer think like a fugitive, which is dangerous, but even worse, I no longer think like a Story.

Draumur is fascinated by Speaker lore. He lectures continuously of your virtues, of your failings. I fear I’m beginning to see things as you do. Perhaps that is to be expected, as death looms nearer. Maybe mortality has to be indefinite for us to behave as immortals. Once it is defined, I begin to understand you so much better. I begin to empathize.

What is he babbling about now? Salmon, I think. How they live their whole lives only to die. Death is on my mind often. Perhaps it’s more of a fading than a destruction. Eventually I won’t even be a memory.

Forgetting has always been my greatest fear. With our Chronicles, you have none but yourself to rely on, not where the woven rug of history is concerned. Always beneath our feet, it seems, until it gets pulled out from under you. And if that happens, and you don’t recall the truth, it might as well never have happened at all. What if history comes unraveled? What if we all lose what we thought we had tied, irrevocably, into our very nerves? Nothing.

We become nothing.

Back to the trees; he steers the conversation effortlessly, breezily, like the wind. The wind is a new feeling. Not because I’ve never felt it before, but because I never noticed it. What a marvelous thing, to change a course invisibly. What strength the wind must feel, outrunning us, outsmarting us. I feel made of stone, left in the sun too long, heated and heavy.

Life is just too much sometimes. Even this life, which I never thought I’d travel. Some moments, when I am far less a creation of the Storytellers than I would like to be, I feel so full I can’t swallow. This is when Draumur looks at me strangely, and says that one thing, “Penny for your thoughts?”

I blink and turn to face my companion, who is gazing disinterestedly over the rise. But I know better, now. This look of his, of inattention, is one of his favorites. It is a tricky look, saturated with the conflicted irony of Speaker expression. When he looks bored, I know he’s paying close attention.

“Mine are more expensive, I’m afraid.”

He smiles, still searching the distance for answers, or perhaps dimes, to try again. This smile is also a trick. It means I’ve troubled him.

I’ve a habit of doing this, apparently. He is easy to read, if you don’t expect him to react conventionally. Fortunately I’ve not much to compare him to, and what there is is questionable. Ophelia was a bit of a freak.

“You weren’t listening.” Still amiable. He speaks in short bursts when he’s working on me. Chipping away, trying to decipher the alien wiring. I speak in short bursts all the time. Perhaps I am always working on the world? I doubt I’ll ever understand it.

“No,” I agree, and he only nods and continues his lecture on deciduous forests. Germination is the topic of the day, I see. Better than the fertilization lesson I received yesterday.

I never felt bemusement before. My experience, emotionally speaking, is very limited. The rare gratitude and vague guilt I experienced with Ophelia, and the consistent hatred of the Ancients pretty much cover it.

It’s a strange thing, to be human. Or at least, to be alive as much as I am. It is a weight I feel, pressing upon my open eyes. Does he feel it too? Or is this an experience only for the inexperienced? Perhaps all feel it once, and then it is forgotten. The ignorance of the wise is a different sort of stupidity. It appears as the naivete and lessons of youth are forgotten. A meiosis, where illegitimate knowledge spawns more folly, with an exactness that is a jest in and of itself.

I’ve never lived before. Existed, yes; survived, fought, bled. But never lived. If one is born in a forest, and no one’s around to hear it, are they alive? Are we alive without others? Or are we merely a reflection in water, shifted and rippled, but still a mirror? And nothing once the others move away, out of the line of sight. But then does he see in me what I see in others?

I had hoped I was different.

“I will force you to speak eventually.” His voice is good-humored, but it occurs to me that he fell silent several moments ago.

“Is that a threat or a promise?”I murmur against the wind. It’s not pleasant, but the fellowship makes it bearable. Though I’ll never admit it.

“Perhaps a bit of both. Are you feeling well today?” Silly question. When you ask so many, I suppose an obvious one slips through the cracks, every now and again.

I don’t answer, thinking once more of you Speakers and your empathy. It is like a web, I’ve decided. A network, connecting me to your Lepers and the Dark Princes. Perhaps through his empathy towards me, Draumur empathizes with them as well. Perhaps it is a group consciousness, a guild of the downtrodden. Perhaps there is an oppressed mind we are all simply a part of. Guerilla warriors, ducking from persecution and making small victories with stolen treasures. Maybe every lie is a hand grenade for this war. Maybe I am a soldier, even as I avoid his questions. Maybe it is a military tactic.

Or maybe it is cowardice, and I am only failing at trying to fool myself.

“You talk too much.” I say at last, with no clear understanding of why I’ve said it. He is so persistent. I don’t think even the most hardhearted among you could triumph over him. Hardhearted, sure. The heart of a Speaker is a fragile thing, not hard at all. It is one of the few things we inherited from you immediately, as soon as everything Began. It is a burden, sometimes.

I do not expect him to respond. He often doesn’t. Despite his probing, I think he does not always want to hear what I have to say. Selfish of me, but often times I want to say it because he doesn’t like hearing it. Whatever ‘it’ is. This revelation, the triumph of my tiny war, is beautiful, in it’s own way. Beauty is often selfish.

It’s more of a ballet, I think, than a war. This competition with the Ancients, or even Draumur. He changes sides, in my mind. I can’t decide whether or not to trust him. The underdogs are always on the front lines, the Ancients with their Facilitators facing off, on the other side. Draumur is usually dancing over the line, first one side, then the other. Always smiling. Still, in a war someone is clearly gone. Obliterated. I don’t feel this will happen. Instead it is a ballet. We each have our turns, our movement. Spinning and stretching with no clear purpose, except to play it back to each other.

Are you aware of your strange flexibility, Speaker? Being limber is only possible after you’ve broken your muscles down and they’ve had to heal themselves over. They make better workers, once subdued.

Perhaps it is not a ballet but a sacrifice. Throwing us over, into the volcano, to appease your Speaker gods. Maybe I’m falling.

“You think too much.” His reply is emphasized by it’s timing. I’m so deep in contemplation it doesn’t register for a moment, and when it does, my reply is still thoughtful. Perhaps he’s right.

“I feel too much.” I’ve shocked him, I know, or at least surprised him. Once in a great while this will happen, though nothing like our first meeting. He doesn’t find me funny, anymore. I still find him strange, curious to a fault, dangerous. He is too much like my disease, too unpredictable and sleek. He adapts too easily, like molten silver, reaching into every crack and crevice. Quicksilver. He is quick; sharp, bright. Intelligence, it seems, has much in common with weaponry.

War, again.

“Sometimes it’s easier . . . ”

He trails off and I turn my full attention toward him. It is not often Draumur rethinks what he wants to say.

“Sometimes more is better than less.” And that’s that. Our conversation is over. His feet tell me, in their quick paces, running away. He is a coward, too.

There are icicles on the eaves of my thoughts. My mind is a home, where I can build a shelter. There is no key, and even if there was, it would do no good. I’ve stacked so much against that door.

My heart is not a home. My heart is a prison cell. I’ve locked everyone out, somehow. Or perhaps I’ve locked myself in. I am afraid.

I do not know how to respond to this new phase of my life. Ever since he rescued me out of the snow, Draumur has been tied to my side, traveling with me though he doesn’t appear to know where we’re going. I’ve not offered a destination, and he hasn’t asked. He seems content with the idea that I just felt up to a hike one morning, and never stopped.

We’ve been making this journey for the last several days, spending each night in the convenient shelters Draumur seems to know so well. Perhaps he is a hunter of Poems, tracking their wild movements through the outskirts of our world (Poems are a bit different: still Stories in their own right, but much simpler. They don’t often speak, they are not clearly defined. Instead they move as wraiths in and out of the edges of our sight. It has become a bit of a sport, to track them down. They are, in many ways, the ghosts of Stories. )

“It’s getting dark.” I note. More to myself than to him, but he stops anyway.

“I know a place up ahead.”

Shocking.

The snow has darkened from lavender to dark plum in the shadows of evening, and we finally break through a stand of trees into a clearing. In the center is an uneven lean-to, sheltering the cobwebbed remains of what was once a campfire.

“It’s not much,” He hesitates, his tone apologetic. He does this every now and again, as though he expects me to reprimand him. He thinks I have high standards. I hide a smile.

“It’s nice.” This is a lie, or maybe not a lie so much as an exaggeration. Dirt and soot are nice, I suppose, if you’re a naturalist. Tree-huggers. I smile again. Do any of you Speakers enjoy the ridiculousness of your own expression? Imagine if one were to take it literally . . .

“Well, that’s something you don’t see every day.” Draumur grins at me, dropping the kindling he’s already begun to gather next to the abandoned fire-pit. “Two smiles within a thirty-second period, and a blatant swipe at tact. Whatever has come over you?”

I shrink back immediately, studying the few shriveled blades of grass poking through the ice. I take a moment to dig my toe beneath the crust of frozen water, kicking it off to bring oxygen to the pitiful yellowed edges. A few of the sodden plants are uprooted and flung to the side as well. Is it fair, to sacrifice a few for the sake of all?

“I didn’t mean anything by that, bright eyes,” His voice is chagrined. He feels he’s been rebuked, that I’ve disapproved of him. How did I come to influence him so easily? I don’t speak for a moment, waiting for my muddled head to clear.

“Do you think,” I begin, speaking slowly and quietly, the words almost stolen by the wind, “it is right, for the minority to be . . . ” A word, I need a word, “Lost, so that the majority may be saved?”

It is an offering, this question, a step. I like his eyes when he’s been surprised. I like making him smile. Suppose I can’t, someday? I’d best take advantage of it now. You learn, when you’ve been running as long as I have, that sometimes you just have to hold on until you’re pried loose. Burn bright until you burn out, just like fireflies. Perhaps I am more like you Speakers than I’d care to admit.

“I don’t think it’s ever right to give up on someone.”

There is something measured in his statement, something I am not privy to. He’s trying to say more than he actually is, trying to give me a key. He speaks in code so often, everything has a meaning beneath the double-meaning.

And still he did not answer the question.

“I don’t understand.” This, too, has weight. It is not often I admit any deficiency on my part, other than the obvious. And I would deny that, too, if I could.

Draumur sighs and motions me forward. “Come here,” he says. I feel a strange pull, somewhere in my chest, and walk forward. He has a power over me, as well.

“Lay down,” Another imperative. Like a puppet I follow his lead, stretching out on my back to stare up at the empty sky.

“You know about stars, right?” He gestures toward the blanket of deep grey above us, his palm starkly pale against the hollow expanse.

I nod, turning to look at his face and finding us far too close. Clearing my throat I shift to the side, refocusing on the present lecture.

“Well, in the Speaker realm, stars are representative of possibility. They represent what could be, and what may never exist. They are defining, but also definite.” Draumur pauses, whether to check my understanding or order his own thoughts I’m not sure. But then he continues.

“Did you ever meet Pinnochio?”

I grin and whisper a near-silent “No,” into the night.

“Me, neither. I hear he’s a good chap. Anyway, we know from him that Speakers connote stars with wishes. Why, I’m not sure. Maybe it goes back to-“

“Wait, wishes? What sorts of wishes?”

Draumur props his head up on an elbow to look at me. “All sorts of wishes, bright eyes. The ingenuity of the Speakers is they’re forever looking at what they lack. It makes for a pretty unhappy existence, to be sure, but,” Here he turns back to the sky, which suddenly seems naked, now stripped bare of all those unspoken wishes. Barren. Childless. Is a wish is a child of the stars?

“It gives them the most amazing imaginations.” I think of this. We Stories are often a product of unhappiness. Still, I don’t want to think of you Speakers that way. I don’t want to think I was the cause of my Storyteller’s destruction. Oh the irony, for the pain it took to create me to be the very thing that keeps me incomplete.

“Sometimes they come true, though, don’t they? Sometimes that’s why we’re here.” Draumur twists his head again to meet my plaintive gaze. I do not want to be a Nightmare.

His voice is soft when he answers. “Yeah, bright eyes, sometimes they come true. That’s what I meant, before. You can’t give up, because the impossible does happen, sometimes. Usually by accident. But it’s there, it happens. In Stories. In Chronicles. It’s there.”

I stare past him at the gaping hole, so like the gap in a mine’s wall when the ore has been removed. The valuables are gone, stolen. Outer space. So much is Spoken about that; whether it be science fiction or historical essays. I suppose even you Speakers are fascinated by what is just beyond your reach. I think you all have personal outer spaces: thoughts you’ve never had, Stories you’ve never written. Things beyond your view. Of course, that bears the question, where is the inner space? Where are those gems you hold so dear? Where are they, these things within the reaches of your souls?

“I wonder,” I murmur sleepily, suddenly washed in exhaustion. “I wonder if those stars ever wish on Speakers?”

Draumur laughs quietly. “Oh, bright eyes, stars aren’t alive.”

I push farther beneath the rough blanket that’s appeared from somewhere, and quickly stifle a yawn. “Mmhmm, maybe. But isn’t that what they said about us?”

The next morning we awake just as light begins to permeate the edges of our view. We have nothing resembling your sun, of course, just as we have no stars. Instead there is a sort of mist; not quite clouds, somewhat like fog. It glows as though there is something quite bright behind it, being shrouded. In the evening the mist slowly retreats, and darkness encroaches on the boundaries of the sky.

Our conversation from the day before still vivid in my mind, I help clear away the debris of our camp restively. Draumur finally breaks my contemplation by trying to trip me with his foot.

“Charming.” My grumbled response is met by more of his wonderfully brazen laughter.

“You’re not much of a morning person, eh, bright eyes?” He’s packed up the sleeper and is now just leaning against a tree at the mouth of the path we’ve been traveling. I say just leaning, but of course there’s more to it. There always is, with him. He looks like he’s moving even when he’s not, expressions flinging themselves across his features with a speed that unnerves me. He would make a great actor.

“Clever, too. Where has this surge of wit come from? It’s so unlike you,” I know immediately I’ve said too much, I’ve encouraged him. Now he thinks we’re bonding.

Draumur opens his mouth to speak, and I hurriedly cut him off, afraid of what he might say.

“Tell me more about the stars.”

He stares for a moment, far too smart to not have picked up on my unease. Still, he’s not one to fight for confrontation, so with a smile that really is more like a shrug he hoists the pack and makes his way through the entrance of the clearing.

“Stars. All right, bright eyes, I can tell you about stars.” And then, almost as an afterthought, almost to himself, he says “I can certainly tell you about stars.”

So in that we continue our journey.

“The celestial bodies of the Speaker realm hold their business as their own, and owe no explanation to anyone. They are, to many Speakers, the last great mystery of the modern times. I say modern in the most relative sense, of course, since we don’t live in the same time frame. Many a man has fallen under the spell of the sky. If you only knew of the- well, at any rate, that vast emptiness appears to have some sort of hypnotic quality. Though, as you have so clearly deduced, it’s not empty at all, given that it encompasses all the life on their plane . . . ”

He keeps going, and I listen with the same rapt attention I did when we first met, mind void of all thought except his words, his voice, his eyes, and his hands as he gestured to our starved sky.

He talks a lot, but says very little. He reminds me of your Storytellers in that respect. Storytellers are peculiar creatures. We ( my fellows, such as they are, or were, and myself) admire them, of course, but there’s no doubt they’re a bit odd. They tend to mean what they say, and as a result don’t say much in a very clear fashion. They are, compared to the rest of you Speakers, fairly well grounded in what It All Means. But they keep their heads in the clouds. Maybe they like it better up there.

Draumur also seems a bit entranced with the sky. I think maybe we are all a bit infatuated with what gives us Hope.

You leave a bit of yourself, when you Speak a Story into being. A Storyteller is always recognizable by their creation; it’s the meeting of two twin souls. If we even have souls.

So many Storytellers pour their whole selves into the birth that in the end, their Story is closer than they are to their old reflection. There is something all-consuming, about beauty. I had told you it was selfish.

No Story is an exact replica of their creator. No, the connection is far more insidious. Instead, the similarity grows as the Story is Spoken. Small things, really- details that leave fingerprints on our hearts. Something as simple as a color or a name. Like your snowball effect (this term from Draumur’s tutelage, of course), these tiny things compound, one on top of the other until they are more of a Storyteller than the Storyteller themselves.

Perhaps that is why you love us. Perhaps it is Narcissism.

“...though The Storyteller knew we didn’t need them. Stars, I mean. He always provides for what we need, though desires are a bit more difficult to answer.”

I smile softly as Draumur continues to talk. I didn’t know, then, that I was happy. Happiness is really just that funny thing that sneaks up on you between catastrophes. Like peace, and love, if you aren’t paying attention you’ll miss it completely.

Like the first night, and every night after, I am the one who suggests we make camp. And like the first night, and every night, Draumur ‘knows a place just up ahead.’ I suspect if I were to break tradition and not mention the infringing shadows, we would keep marching into eternity. He knows this land so well the dark doesn’t trouble him. That should warn me of something, but it doesn’t. Happiness has a blind inertia about it, a sort of self-delusion. No one wants to leave it.

His ‘place’ turns out to be an icy cavern, the glassy walls so crystalline I can see our pair of faces reflected in pristine detail. “It’s beautiful,” I whisper, moving to take in the many glinting dips and rises of the uneven walls. I can practically feel his pride, his inflating ego, and it makes me smile. But as I turn my eyes catches an imperfection, a scar in the sparkling hide.

A solitary scarlet crack runs right across the two-dimensional Draumur’s neck, making my stomach lurch. Disturbed by the eerie sight, which is only heightened by the paleness of his crystal corpse, I lean forward to rub my hands across the crack. This does nothing but make it appear as though I am the cause of this mirror-murder. Unreasonably frightened, I continue, wiping the edge of my cloak across the image, only to be rewarded with a sudden, tortured scream that leaves me as cold as the shining walls.

I’ve unconsciously thrown myself backwards, away from the wailing wall and against Draumur’s torso. As the cry echos into the cavern, rebounding again and again like our images in the faceted ceiling, I feel my embarrassment battle against my dread.

“I’m so sorry,” I begin quickly, breaking loose of Draumur’s hold and putting a comforting few feet between us. “I didn’t-“

But I’ve only spoken a word or two when the howling begins again, shrieking in a voice -no, voices, more than one-so horrible and pained that I clasp my glove-clad hands over my ears. Unfortunately this doesn’t prevent me from seeing what happens next.

As I tremble the great sheets of ice surrounding us split apart and pry loose of the stone behind them, the gaping chasm suddenly reminiscent of a large mouth, wide and screaming, for vengeance, for gore, for death, for everything I’ve never wanted to think of. And then crimson spray, across the frozen lips. A scene of horrible violence, played back in living color as the walls speak, naming the crimes and victims. Bruised figures bent over, a nightmarish arm reaching and ripping, and more blood.

I press my face into his chest, sobbing and yelling myself, trying to drown out the din. Against my will I see the ruby vessels of my eyelids, breaking across just like that awful crack. Then we’re moving, running from the crumbling voices and ancient stone that burst forth so readily with tales of blood, blood from a stone . . .

But this word game isn’t funny.

The screeching agony fades away behind us as we flee, whether stopping of it’s own accord or being lost in the expanse of distance we’ve covered, I don’t know. Like that first night, in the snowstorm, I feel we’ve moved farther and faster than is normal, but I am far too relieved to analyze this.

Draumur’s carried me all this way, and still he’s running, stumbling over roots and snow banks, ducking under branches, his breath coming in short, panicked gasps against my forehead. I notice with a sort of detached terror that I’m still yelling, probably red in the face, probably hurting his ears. I quiet.

Finally he stops, bent over, swearing in this breathless rush that almost frightens me more than the screaming cave. He is afraid, maybe even more than I am. He is afraid, and that grips me with a dread so fierce that for a moment I wish the Ancients had captured me, because now there is something in this world far deadlier than they are.

“I’m sorry.” I croak again, my voice torn and raw from the strain of emotion. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry.” It was a bad omen, this discovery, this geographic witness in the unforgiving foothills of the Dark Princes’ domain. I’ve cursed us. Both of us, or maybe just him. I’m to die anyway, but now I’ve drug him down with me. I’m deadweight. Dead, heavy. I am the curse.

Draumur only shakes his head fervently, pressing his face against my hair. “It’s not you, bright eyes, it’s not you.” I don’t believe him, but I don’t contradict him either. I feel fragile, in the aftermath of this episode. I don’t feel like fighting.

He’s forgotten his pack, dropped it in the desperate rush from the cacophony of destruction, but neither one of us mentions it.

Instead, we sleep beneath the trees.