[Closed] Fly, pigeon fly, cross your windblown sky

[espigeonage]

Who: Thorir, Aaron, Julien
What: Let's find the prodigal pigeon and haul him back home
Where: Within the Neuschwanstein boundary; a mountainous place without that many people
When: This weekend


yes okay maybe the main reason I cut this was for the text.

Comments

[1]

[espigeonage]

The roads to the town are clear. With many better places to ski nearby, the town itself is quiet in the winter. There have been sightings of some kind of "white eagle" up the mountain, around Schernbergalm. A few days ago there'd been an avalanche on a nearby slope - apparently, the "eagle" had flown over it and dug out a tourist. A very large bird has been sighted over other fresh avalanches in the area too. There is debate about if it's looking for people, and if it is, whether it's really helping them by circling dramatically and digging, or looking for an easy meal. Sometimes singing can be heard, and there's been a little smoke, but the "eagle" keeps away from the town and no one really wants to make the climb now, when feet of snow cover the path. Any photographs of it aren't helpful, a distant fast white bird against snow.

[elfstoned]

Aaron stands at the edge of the town, at the foot of the path that leads up into the mountains, where, as of his last surreptitious check five minutes ago, Julien is. He gazes up the path, taking in a deep breath and letting it out. It's not going to be an impossible climb, he thinks, but it won't be an easy one.

"Almost makes you wish you had wings."

He adjusts the bag that's slung over his shoulder, letting it hang more comfortably.

"But he's there. I'm sure of it."

[disdainfully]

Thorir could point out that at least Aaron didn't shrink 50 centimetres since last winter and thus still is a good deal further above the snow, but instead just starts marching, his boots leaving deep imprints as he trudges up the mountain path that in the summer attracts plenty of hikers, but now is unused.

He is slowly coming to understand this body more and knows that he will be able to get up the mountain without a problem as long as they don't start running.

"I prefer hands. They're a lot more versatile - you can both use a computer and swing a hammer with them."

[elfstoned]

"Not the way his work. I've seen them fasten buttons." Aaron trudges along after Thorir, walking softer but not much lighter. "I don't know if that's still the case after this last change, but he may have us outmatched when it comes to versatility."

[disdainfully]

"They are not without uses; but hardly as sturdy as my hands." He walks in silence for a good while. When he speaks up again, it is in a heavily accented Sindarin, imperfect but also clearly derived form the variant of Sindarin that Aaron himself speaks - he got it from Julien and has almost a year of learning under his belt now. "Julien told me about you. We're from the same world." The grammar is simple, too simple for complex things, but it is oddly reassuring to speak this language that is so firmly Not Thorin. Sure, English and Icelandic aren't, either, but this is still different. Thorin would have learned English and Icelandic.

[elfstoned]

He smiles, in spite of the cold, and lets out a soft, breathed laugh. "It is true," he replies in the same language, unable to suppress the smile. "A memory of you came to me today, when we met. Nay -- not of you, of one named Thorin. I was unsure of how to begin to speak of it." He is careful to use plain language -- not out of any condescension, but in the interest of clarity.

[disdainfully]

Thorir has to pay attention to the words even with the plain language - learning from someone who only learned it himself in the idle manner of "I'll probably never need it" didn't really help the learning experience.

Sometimes, he wonders if he would teach anyone how to speak Khuzdul if Fil lost his echoes, but... no. He won't.

"What do you remember of Thorin?" Ariel remembered Killian, but that is the closest that he knows of that his side of that world has gotten to any of the Elves yet (that "fire in the mountain" thing was a pretty big misunderstanding, after all).

[elfstoned]

"He led a company," says Aaron, boots crunching in the snow, "a company of dwarves like him. There were thirteen in all, and a fourteenth: a Hobbit named Bilbo Baggins. I remember little, only that I was a child at the time, and they were in my home. It was a beautiful place."

[disdainfully]

"So you were an elf." Themselves aside, he cannot remember seeing anyone who was not an elf in Rivendell. Plus going by what little they know... "And Eliot's and your other knew each other."

[elfstoned]

Aaron blinks in surprise, staring at Thorir. "No, I was a Man," he says. "I am certain of it. And if I knew Eliot then, I have not remembered him."

[disdainfully]

..."But that place was full of Elves." He is pretty sure that Thorin would have taken notice of anyone who was not an Elf, even if only as an aside of "slightly more trustworthy."

"...He lived there as well, we think, and Gabriel too." It is too bad that Eliot lost his echoes. ...And John. And a lot of others. All his friends who aren't young enough to be his children lose their numbers.

[elfstoned]

"Yet I was there. I have no other memories of it, so I cannot tell you why. I am sorry." Aaron's memory of Aragorn's life is patchy at best.

[disdainfully]

He nods slowly, and then shrugs. "We all know very little of that world; I remember more about Thorin's childhood and young adulthood, and a time that I assume was not long before his death, than many remember about their others, but between those stretches of time there isn't much."

[2]

[espigeonage]

The alm is built for summer stays. There's no heating and poor insulation, but if Julien buries himself in hay with blankets on top and fluffs up he's warm enough to sleep. He'd be more comfortable with the woodstove kept on more often than what he needs to boil bone-and-grain water into gelatinous sludge porridge. Just about any time that he's not out flying, and he's flying a lot, he's fluffed up to the point of being spherical. It helps with the cold.

The chief virtues of living like this are that it's hard and numbing, and there's no one to judge or pity him. Julien is well aware that he can't stay here and do this forever. Someday, he's going to have to come down back to the real world.

[elfstoned]

If he's awake, he'll hear footsteps outside. Not even Aaron can move silently in this snow -- you need an Elf for that -- and Thorir's footfalls are heavy, as well.

The door is pushed open, slowly, and Aaron steps inside and looks around. Yes, this is the place. (And wat a place it is.)

"Julien?"

[espigeonage]

This is where they keep the cows. Admittedly the summer tourists come here too and take sleeping bags when the prettier rooms upstairs are full, so it's well put together, decorated a bit and maintained, and clean but for the evidence that he's been here. It's... 'rustic'. Also, cold. That it's out of the wind is the most you can say for it.

Julien was asleep in a great heap of hay as they approached. These days he's a light sleeper when there's light to see by, so he was stirring, and thrusts his head up after the door opens. Bits of grass lay over his head and stick to his rumpled crest.

It's easy to read faint amusement into his face. It's blank. His inner eyelids flicker as he stares mutely at them.

[disdainfully]

Thorir's steps are quieter than they were before these days - dwarves, like all beings under the sun, are more quiet than humans. But he isn't exactly silent in the first place, and even wants to be heard now - he'll just hope that Julien won't try to run from them.

He walks over to Julien, stopping only a few feet away. "I came to apologize for my behaviour at the beginning of the month." He's thought this over for a while, and perhaps it will be better to start off with a part that absolutely doesn't relate to Julien's looks (startling as they may be - but then, they all knew that he was headed there) or his running away. "I am sorry for what happened and will do my best to not see it happen again." For everyone's sake, including his own.

[elfstoned]

Aaron understands how important it is that Thorir says what he wants to say. Thorir has the more pressing apology to make: Aaron will let him make it without interruption. He stands behind Thorir, several feet behind him actually, and watches the proceedings with a cool eye and gloved hands in his pockets, quiet for now.

It's just as well -- seeing Julien leaves Aaron with a pulse. The only evidence of it is a brief lack of focus in his eyes, followed by several quick blinks and a small shake of his head, and then Aaron is in the present again. He'll file that memory away later, when less important things are happening.

[espigeonage]

As Thorir approaches Julien stands, some of his bedding rustling aside. He's not as tall as he was, but he is a very, very large bird. With his feathers ruffled to save heat he looks like he couldn't get through a door, a big fluffy sphere on feet with translucent scales. Those feet are chilled and less red than usual.

...he'd kind of hoped someone would come. But like this? He half turns his head so that his beak points at another door. Julien wants them to know he's considered running. He doesn't know what tack to take. Should he be angry? He's wanted to be angry.

"So you came out here." Julien's voice is produced in his chest, where his trachea splits. With a much longer windpipe to pass through to his beak it's richer, deeper. He hasn't been speaking enough to modulate it to sound like it did. Right now, it's neutral. "You stopped being insane. And you." Now his beak points at Aaron. "He either dragged you out here so I wouldn't just leave, or you got your pulses back." He's willing to bet on the latter. Especially now, Julien's eyes are very good.

sorry for the delay! This was the worst week for starting anything apparently

[disdainfully]

"I did." His features darken for a moment, remembering just how far gone he had been for a while - having to push people away in the most hurtful ways for fear that he would physically hurt them otherwise, worrying everyone tremendously, being unable to even take care of himself when most of his time that has been the core of his life, taking care of everyone being taken care of...

But he remembered how to pull himself out of it. "Thanks to Fil, though perhaps not like one would think." He won't comment much on Aaron - the young man (hey, he's totally a young man compared to Thorir, so shush, don't tell him that he's not) can speak for himself perfectly fine - but he allows: "Aaron and I came together; I had planned on coming for you either way, but he sped it up a lot by finding you."

np np!

[elfstoned]

Aaron gives a nod, a slight one -- a closing of the eyes and a dip of his head -- when Julien makes his guesses.

"Dragged me?" he says, his mouth twisting into something wry and almost smile-like. "Is it so hard to believe that I came because I wanted to?"

<3

[espigeonage]

"Shouldn't it be? It's hard to imagine you leaving the clinic for long enough to take a plane to another country." He wants them to leave him alone - no, he doesn't, but it hurts to think even this hasn't really raised his spirits. He wants to go back to sleep, or bolt out the door and take to the skies. During his period out here those have taken up most of his time.

Julien's beak moves when he speaks, not like a puppet of a bird, opening and closing with each syllable. More like if he were a normal bird and singing. Some syllables are said with his beak more open, some less, sometimes it gapes wider again, sometimes it closes mid-word as his voice continues. His throat swells too.

Now he turns again to Thorir, inner eyelids not closing but showing in the corners of his eyes. "And that's it then? 'I'm better now, forget what happened'?"

He was hurt. It still hurts.

[disdainfully]

"We came by teleporter." We, and that carries a lot of implications.

"And no, I cannot ask you to forget - I wouldn't want you to. I cannot ask you to forgive, either, but I hope that you can, one day." He shakes his head. "What I said - it was a sickness speaking, and while that makes nothing better, I expressed an opinion and attitude then that outside of this sickness I do not mean. I am just glad that you left before I could do something worse."

[elfstoned]

Aaron can't blame Julien for -- if you'll pardon the expression -- ruffled feathers. Did you ever ask? he wants to say. If you had, I would have.

But he holds his peace: Aaron isn't going to interrupt Thorir. A look is the only answer he gives Julien. The look is patient and exasperated at once, holding eye contact, half o ye of little faith and half bitch please.

...he's also listening to Thorin, unable to stop himself from wondering. What had happened?

[espigeonage]

Julien's wings flick. They're kept mostly closed along his back and sides and twitch or slightly open before closing down again. His pupils are small. He wants to yell at one or both of them, which is not something he'd ever so much as consider normally, but this has been the worst month of his life. He feels like they've both betrayed him and yes he understands it was not intentional but he is so, so tired of accepting that and welcoming people back in. All his life he's accepted and adapted and made the best of things and it has led him here.

One of his eyes shifts independently - oh, yes, they can do that, and it's made a lot more obvious by how big it is and how the pupil contrasts with the bright iris - to look directly at Aaron, but he keeps his other eye and his beak directed at Thorir. "I left some of my blood in there. There's a scar on my foot I got escaping." He suspects it's hard for human eyes to see, but damn it he'd come out of that blank spot with the memory fresh and his foot bound up.

"How did you even find me? This is as far out as I can get without passing the boundary which, by the way," and there's an aggressive friendliness to his voice, his tail is fanned and half raised, "I don't intend to try again."