un: absterge

[downswing]

( 'lo, from the depths of the Mouse House, post-Unwinding: )

If... this were no dream. The child of the rains, bearing a vulpine mask. 'Hyang-Won' and his pale protector.

He is remembered? He did not appear as the other manifestations.

Though we have retrieves ourselves, we cannot abandon a child to nightmares.


( Guilt is strong among exorcists. )

Comments

[somebadnews]

What does that mean?

[weifinder]

They were more alive than we were, in a sense. Which the Beastmaster himself has not been.

[somebadnews]

[ That... was not an explanation. ]

Meaning what, exactly? We were dying in there?

[weifinder]

No, just that our life presence wasn't as strong. The... people who weren't, the ones who had no faces, they were difficult to tell from living to dead, nebulous if anything. The people of our ragtag group I came across were alive, but the sense of it was like brushing past someone walking down a hall. The masked child and the man in white were like walking into a closed door by comparison.

[somebadnews]

[ Vivid metaphor, still not good enough. ]

How unusual is that?

[weifinder]

In the places we've been wandering the last few days? Singular.

Here? Likewise singular. Nothing outside of the Mouse House reads as dead or alive. Serthica is the kind of neutral that speaks of enforced blindness. Only the new-hatched dragons read of anything, and they felt dead.

[somebadnews]

Maybe they were somewhere else. Or we weren't there physically like they were.

You can read into it however you like, but there's a reason he was the only one to give his name. He wanted us to make that connection.

[weifinder]

If you gave him what he asked for, yes. If you didn't, as Miss Hermione tested, you were sent back to the bathtub.

Taking too much out of what felt like a fevered dream may be assigning meanings however we like without a logic to back them up. I agree, as you seem to, that reading into it is personal, not from a remove.

[somebadnews]

[ Over and over again until they made the right choice. It's hard not to take it as personal, but anyone would in his position. ]

Does that mean you're against going after him?

[weifinder]

Do we have a "there" to go in after anyone right now?

[somebadnews]

They had to go somewhere. A few of them are stubborn enough to try to find it.

[weifinder]

Do you count yourself in that number? For various reasons, I'd suspect your chances higher than many.

[somebadnews]

I do hate to leave things unfinished.

[weifinder]

Take care, Lao Five. Bring Allison with you, ah?

[somebadnews]

If you're worried I'm being irrational, I'd remind you this wasn't my idea.

[weifinder]

I'm worried about several people right now. You're one of them, Lao Five, not the total of them.

[somebadnews]

[ Well, that's only partially better. Five was against even offering to help before he made his own connections, as much as Wei Wuxian seems to want to disprove them. He can't be sure, so he doesn't have a choice. ]

Is one of them Hyang-Won?

[weifinder]

No. Not with this kind of concern.

[somebadnews]

What kind is that?

[weifinder]

The one for companions whose lives I would see preserved.

[somebadnews]

[ ...Is that why he was trying to convince him that the kid has no idea what happened to the Beastmaster? ]

How far would you go?

[weifinder]

Hell and back.

[somebadnews]

[ Unexpected answer. He's never been confident of where he stands with Wei Wuxian, and he doesn't know how to interpret that, so he puts it aside. ]

If the child turns out to be the bigger threat, what would you do?

[weifinder]

Address the threat in the manner it merits.

[somebadnews]

[ At least he's sounding more reasonable. Five is still stuck on the threads he linked earlier, but he's not surprised he's in the minority again. ]

Could you tell anything else about him? How can we be sure he's trapped there?