|
Dandelion: Is this the phone of Pavlichenko?
Pavlichenko: Yes.
D: Hello, my name is Dandelion. I have some information on your friend Bernice that might be helpful to anyone working on that end of things. Are you an appropriate person to pass that along to? I wasn't sure if it should be posted publicly or sent directly.
P: I am currently holding Bernice's leash, but that's about it. I can certainly pass your information along. Or you can post it in public if you believe it prudent.
D: Prudence? Among the groups we have working on these matters? That's rare. Is there any one else in particular who you know is involved with this aspect of the situation who would find the matter of Bernice's bane worth knowing? Otherwise, I will just go public.
P: Harmony has offered her assistance. And I would benefit from knowing her bane, too, I believe.
D: Her bane is any weapon made from something that was alive in the previous three days. This can be wood from a tree, or bones from a creature or person.
Also in my research, it's clear that she isn't the sort who'd be around for no reason. Someone must have made a promise to her, to lure her here.
P: Interesting. Makes sense. I'd prefer not to destroy her. She doesn't seem malevolent. Just... big.
P: I try to take the long view of things. We're all going to be in her wheelhouse some day. Rot is part of living.
D: Decay feeds the bloom, as someone once told me.
P: That is so. She is even in a rather ideal position for her. That whole place is rotting around her. The problem really is that she is so large she will disrupt the spirit ecology of anywhere she travels that isn't there. That's above my knowledge of how to address, though. I keep collecting wayward spirits this way. I have a little spirit I am nursing back to health, actually. I named him Oontz-Oontz. He is very cute.
D: Oh, I'm certain he is! It's funny, how we fall into relationships with ephemeral spirits. I know a psychic medium who works with ghosts, while I've ended up more of an exorcist. And you, you seem to be an accidental rehabber. Anyway, I think a large part of dealing with potential harm to the spirit ecology will be a matter of healing the Gauntlet and ensuring Bernice is on the other side of it.
P: I think it's natural for us. We no longer see the world the way others do. Once you've had a glimpse of the world beyond and beneath this one, you begin to lose some of your kinship with beings of vice and all the self-interests of the flesh. There is something refreshing and calming about the rationality of the ephemerals. They simply are what they are and by knowing what they are you can know what they desire. No hidden motivations or complicated rationales. Oontz-Oontz likes to party because he's a spirit of a Rave. It's very simple. It makes them easy to love.
P: And if not love, at least to understand.
P: Which is a kind of love, I feel.
D: I'm not sure if you realize this, but I'm a Sleepwalker, not a mage. I'm not sure I count as having that 'glimpse' you mention. But, yes, I know what you mean about their simplicity. They are exactly what they are. Which is something we can't ever experience, completely.
P: You spent two weeks under Centralia, housed by spirit infested rat beasts and a giant marquess of decay then fought your way out with magical swords because a fox pulled them out of her flesh.
D: Point taken.
P: If anything I imagine your position is more alienating than mine.
P: Which I do not mention as an unkindness.
P: I am still not very good at saying what I mean in english without sounding mean.
D: It's alright. I think I can appreciate the sentiment.
D: Perhaps it's better, to be complex, not like a spirit. To be a mother and a warrior and a scholar and a Factotum all in one, instead of having to focus all my energy on one thing. But some days, it almost seems like it would be nice, to whittle everything else away, and just get to be one thing perfectly, instead of trying to juggle.
P: Yes. That is it exactly. How uncluttered and untroubled must they be?
D: They have a sort of purity of purpose. That which gives them essence is what is good.
P: We get chiseled into ever smaller divisions of who and what we are, seeking for the pieces of ourselves that make us who and what we are, and we never get to the fundamentals of our being. Not really. Perhaps the Archmasters.
P: Behind every answer, just more questions.
D: You sound like this is something you've been struggling with.
P: Don't we all?
D: True, but I'm not sure most people think about it.
P: I'm a Mind Adept.
D: Ah, that would do it. Introspection.
P: Uprooting everything in your life to flee your life's work and your nation for the mere condition of continued survival will help that along, also.
P: But, yes. I have been doing a lot of introspection as you put it.
D: Yes, it certainly will. Is there anything I can do to help you sort through your thoughts? Metaphorically, I mean, unless you actually want me in your Oneiros.
P: Not unless you can get me within a half mile of Vladimir Putin with clear line of sight and good windage.
D: I think Maddy would be more capable of that, though I probably should discourage you from acting on that. Probably.
P: I asked my caucus for kill permission before I left. I never heard back. I think they think I was joking. Anyway. I am trying to decide what it means to be in America when I am not American and am not an immigrant and do not want to be a citizen. I am a fugitive and a refugee. And I want to go back to my own country one day. Anyway. You have your own problems right now, I am sure. Thank you for helping me with Bernice and for realizing she is not an enemy, simply an obstacle.
D: I do have my own problems. That doesn't mean I don't want to help with yours. I am old and sick and tired and I'm afraid the legacy I leave will be meaningless and I will be remembered as the kind old woman who adopted any lost lamb who crossed my path, instead of as someone who was capable and got shit done. That's my problem. Maybe if I can help people, it will make me feel like I did when I was younger, when I was full of life.
P: Misogyny doesn't lessen with age, its character simple alters. This was certainly the case in Russia.
Has someone tried to take credit for your work in this yet? I am guessing the answer is yes.
D: Regarding the rats? Not as far as I'm aware. I was very open with my research, but I didn't hear anyone else claim it was their own. But in the past...it has happened before. I was in a cadre in the early 90s, and one of the members had a bad habit of repeating what I said at Council meetings, but louder--not to amplify my voice, but to seem like it was his idea all along.
P: This is very common complaint I hear from women, yes. I believe it.
P: The culture I was raised in was egalitarian with regard to the sexes, just in a very sexist way. Much of the Soviet Union was like that, growing up. Once the union was dissolved, those cultural biases only intensified. We forget our own history.
D: We don't like to look at the unpleasant bits. And we like good stories about heroes. Even villains, when they make for good heroes. Scholars of history discuss the 'great man theory' (a misogynist name in itself, but often accurate to how history is told), and the assumptions it's based on.
P: I think I disagree. We love looking at unpleasant bits and then casting ourselves as the ones who would have opposed and righted the wrong of it. The people who support cages along your southern border and mass incarceration in your prisons swear they would have opposed slavery and institutional white supremacy in the 1850s. I believe it has much more to do with the belief in goodness. Not in the concept of goodness so much as the quality of goodness in ourselves and in our nations and our beliefs. Such that we cannot imagine ourselves succumbing to the zeitgeist and living simply as people of our time and place. All in response to the contemporary zeitgeist. TL;DR: I think it has more to do with our self delusions of thinking we are different from the people who fucked history up.
P: If you are not a rebel today, you would not be a rebel then. If you are not on the opposing side of today's oppression you would not have opposed historical oppressions. There is nothing to suggest this is otherwise, but Americans love believing in this falsehood for some reason.
D: Is that quality truly unique to Americans, in your experience?
P: Uniquely? Oh, no. Prominently? Yes. Whether this is simply due to more opportunity for your culture to exhibit it or not is up for debate.
P: But I have never met a German who would meet a conversation of the Holocaust with instant platitudes of 'I would never'.
D: You're not wrong. Though the German government response to the Holocaust, compared to the glorification of Confederate leaders is a thing. Someday when I'm not getting dressed for a Council meeting, I might like to dive deeper into the topic. I think you don't have as many opportunities to lay these thoughts out as you need.
P: Hazard of the job.
P: And not speaking english as well as I type it. My mouth doesn't have a backspace or built in dictionary.
D: I thought you were an Adept of Mind. That doesn't come with a dictionary function?
P: Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Remember who I work for.
D: Understood. In any case, I hope to speak with you again, in person or otherwise. This has been rather refreshing, honestly.
P: Oh no. Things must be very bad for you if this was refreshing.
P: Haha
D: My cadre is all young up-and-comers. Prodigies.
P: Maybe I will see you at the meeting. You can sit with me if you need friends. I will be the gopnik in the sunglasses.
D: I'll be the old bat in the factotum robes.
|