[Iskierka writes with monomaniacal focus, now with one pen, now with the other. What emerges is braided, confused, the Omen's best attempt to process two never-sent letters into a single text for the two young men who weigh heavy on her Sleeper's mind.]
Tabris, Kaworu, welcomed and well-loved, friend, commander, fellow-Disciple of Pthumerians and Old Ones and gods beyond,
Or, to the Paul I imagine I would write this to, if I had a hope of a letter escaping Hell. (Not Navia, but the hell of endless torment desperate monolaters imagine us damned to, rather than the one we got,)
Hail and well met, o thou construct of memory and conjecture. I am sorry I am sorry I'm not there when you return from the ocean. I am sorry, I must (imagine I can) write you this letter proclaiming my own demise, at least so far as the Waking World is concerned. How are you? I imagine, also, I wasn't more watchful in the month before Leviathan arrived. I fear I asked you to be careful without giving an example of what careful meant as a balm to my own grief--being corrupted enough to grieve--that you and Trench survived the beast and it is dead. I imagine it's returned the souls of those it devoured, and the last of them have flopped their way back onto the beach by now. I imagine that Kaworu (Tabris, little bird,) was with them. It's a father's duty to teach his children when to run and how to hide from what hunts them; I failed you in that. If I get back from where I've found myself, I will give you those lessons. They're better demonstrated than explained.
To imagine otherwise, imagine Better explained than demonstrated is Sleepers aren't imperishable after all, is to give myself that many fewer reasons to want to return. If that's possible; [Iskierka starts to write a name and then scribbles over it violently] did escape. It's the return I question--I don't doubt her determination to rescue me but I doubt the possibility. (Don't tell her that. Or I can imagine you not telling her. Easy enough.)
Something I quaver even now to explain to even knowing this is an all an exercise to keep myself sane and won't go beyond my own skull
It comes down to the coin. I must suppose, should I never return to the Waking World, the coin will not make a reappearance. It is a terrible thing to have been part of a god (a Monarch), and to no longer be one. If I do, perhaps it will be waiting there for me, somewhere I put it down and misplaced it, and will never slip my fingers again. It is a lonely thing and an isolating thing. If you are the first to find it, it deserves a better resting place than a pocket or coin purse. It is terrible to see your god die and know all avenues of return are choked off. In hindsight, it did its job well. Not its fault it was sent to warn a blind man. Not its choice to be another victim of the inevitable. And my god did not even want me except as a tool, and I don't want to return (except when I do). (Did you call it? Did you call it? Was it lying? What would it say to survive? What could it?)
Nor yours. I didn't (won't) release you from your promise then even if there was no keeping it and you would break yourself over that. Whatever you feel now: It is natural. It is expected. I say: Don't break yourself over that. How much we are responsible for those feelings or what we should do with them I still don't know. The situation was impossible by the time you got to it, let alone when I arrived. Every world contains as many impossibilities as possibilities--the Waking World, yours, mine--and you will meet many more than this in the future. Two final words of caution:
(What is a pillar of the world but impossibility piled on impossibility? What am I stuck in but an impossibility, a didn't-happen, where St. Sacrifice wasn't as we knew them or never lived to give up the Throne?) There is a black-eyed man who is much larger on the inside than he appears on the outside. He is another black god (like Leviathan). If you have not met him: Good. If you have: Avoid him if you can. If you can't, if he is kind to you, don't refuse his help (you can't refuse a Throne-gift anyway, anymore than you can reject gravity), but think in the back of your mind about the men who raised you. The mercy of Trench, whatever its horrors, is we can make up for every impossibility given enough time.
Besides, you wouldn't have left him even if I had let you go, would you? Don't leave Paul alone with himself. If I know him at all, he may try to be alone in the way the responsible always make ourselves alone, in a crowd but apart from it. (The same thing you're always chastising humans for.)
Look after him. He needs you. Look after him. He needs you.
With love, In faith, Merlinus Old Man
[She draws a shaky rendition of Illarion's sigil at the bottom to close the letter(s). Laying the pens aside, she turns her eyes back on her audience and warbles softly.
no subject
Tabris, Kaworu, welcomed and well-loved, friend, commander, fellow-Disciple of Pthumerians and Old Ones and gods beyond,
Or, to the Paul I imagine I would write this to, if I had a hope of a letter escaping Hell. (Not Navia, but the hell of endless torment desperate monolaters imagine us damned to, rather than the one we got,)
Hail and well met, o thou construct of memory and conjecture. I am sorry I am sorry I'm not there when you return from the ocean. I am sorry, I must (imagine I can) write you this letter proclaiming my own demise, at least so far as the Waking World is concerned. How are you? I imagine, also, I wasn't more watchful in the month before Leviathan arrived. I fear I asked you to be careful without giving an example of what careful meant as a balm to my own grief--being corrupted enough to grieve--that you and Trench survived the beast and it is dead. I imagine it's returned the souls of those it devoured, and the last of them have flopped their way back onto the beach by now. I imagine that Kaworu (Tabris, little bird,) was with them. It's a father's duty to teach his children when to run and how to hide from what hunts them; I failed you in that. If I get back from where I've found myself, I will give you those lessons. They're better demonstrated than explained.
To imagine otherwise, imagine Better explained than demonstrated is Sleepers aren't imperishable after all, is to give myself that many fewer reasons to want to return. If that's possible; [Iskierka starts to write a name and then scribbles over it violently] did escape. It's the return I question--I don't doubt her determination to rescue me but I doubt the possibility. (Don't tell her that. Or I can imagine you not telling her. Easy enough.)
Something I quaver even now to explain to even knowing this is an all an exercise to keep myself sane and won't go beyond my own skull
It comes down to the coin. I must suppose, should I never return to the Waking World, the coin will not make a reappearance. It is a terrible thing to have been part of a god (a Monarch), and to no longer be one. If I do, perhaps it will be waiting there for me, somewhere I put it down and misplaced it, and will never slip my fingers again. It is a lonely thing and an isolating thing. If you are the first to find it, it deserves a better resting place than a pocket or coin purse. It is terrible to see your god die and know all avenues of return are choked off. In hindsight, it did its job well. Not its fault it was sent to warn a blind man. Not its choice to be another victim of the inevitable. And my god did not even want me except as a tool, and I don't want to return (except when I do). (Did you call it? Did you call it? Was it lying? What would it say to survive? What could it?)
Nor yours. I didn't (won't) release you from your promise then even if there was no keeping it and you would break yourself over that. Whatever you feel now: It is natural. It is expected. I say: Don't break yourself over that. How much we are responsible for those feelings or what we should do with them I still don't know. The situation was impossible by the time you got to it, let alone when I arrived. Every world contains as many impossibilities as possibilities--the Waking World, yours, mine--and you will meet many more than this in the future. Two final words of caution:
(What is a pillar of the world but impossibility piled on impossibility? What am I stuck in but an impossibility, a didn't-happen, where St. Sacrifice wasn't as we knew them or never lived to give up the Throne?) There is a black-eyed man who is much larger on the inside than he appears on the outside. He is another black god (like Leviathan). If you have not met him: Good. If you have: Avoid him if you can. If you can't, if he is kind to you, don't refuse his help (you can't refuse a Throne-gift anyway, anymore than you can reject gravity), but think in the back of your mind about the men who raised you. The mercy of Trench, whatever its horrors, is we can make up for every impossibility given enough time.
Besides, you wouldn't have left him even if I had let you go, would you? Don't leave Paul alone with himself. If I know him at all, he may try to be alone in the way the responsible always make ourselves alone, in a crowd but apart from it. (The same thing you're always chastising humans for.)
Look after him. He needs you. Look after him. He needs you.
With love, In faith,
Merlinus Old Man
[She draws a shaky rendition of Illarion's sigil at the bottom to close the letter(s). Laying the pens aside, she turns her eyes back on her audience and warbles softly.
Message received?]
[[ the letters can be read separately here. ]]