Sometimes I Feel Like My Brain Turns To Leaves [OPEN + CLOSED]

[overharrowed]

Sometimes I Feel Like My Brain Turns To Leaves

WHO: Julius
WHAT: Catch-all
WHEN: mid-Solace through mid-August, give or take
WHERE: Various
NOTES: Besides the open starter, feel free to reach out if you'd like something bespoke or have a wildcard idea that doesn’t fit (or if I was supposed to give you something bespoke and fully forgot because it took me so long to write this post, heyo).

open

It is long enough past the attack on the Gallows that Julius has resumed something like his normal schedule again, including regular office hours, eating meals at typical mealtimes (mostly), and attending regular meetings with the Division Heads with lists of the supplies, personnel and other resources they didn’t have and needed. (If they fill the Quartermaster position, will Julius delegate this last one? Apply and find out.)

He mostly works with his door open, accessible if he’s needed, and has regular check-in with those whose jobs he supervises. But his main focus in the aftermath of the attack has been shoring up goodwill for Riftwatch and parlaying that goodwill into resources. Cash is great, though supplies won’t be turned away. Anyone with ideas for furthering these aims is especially welcome to drop by his office. Maybe without even knocking; he'd love some potential good news.

for marcus and petrana (slightly backdated)

They’d been able to retrieve many of their truly precious belongings, which given the state of the Gallows was more than Julius had initially expected. But as work continues on the remaining residential tower, it has become increasingly clear Riftwatch’s staff will all be in incredibly close quarters going forward. Marcus’s temporary (“temporary”) new position came with some housing of its own, of course, but the question remains. Julius isn’t sure he has an answer, but it’s on his mind one afternoon when he starts looking for his partners, not urgently but with the idea of starting a conversation that is becoming less theoretical by the day. He tries Petrana's office first, mainly because it's the place to check that doesn't involve changing floors.

for clarisse

Of course he’d spoken to Clarisse when she was first appointed as Griffon Keeper, but Julius is sensitive enough to know that the way she’d received that promotion remained something of a healing wound. He gives it some space in consequence. Still, now that she’s settled in enough to start voluntarily increasing her record-keeping duties, Julius feels assured he can make her part of his regular rounds.

He generally checks the eyrie before the Griffon Keeper's office, which hasn't changed with the occupant of the post. He’s happy enough to catch Clarisse either place, but given the current state of the eyrie, he approaches with reasonable caution. It would be extremely undignified to put his foot through a weakened board and seriously hurt himself, and he can't shake the sense that none of the griffons especially care for his presence there.

for benedict

It’s probably inevitable that things are strange with Benedict for some time after his rescue from the demons. Julius has said — and meant — that he doesn’t hold the younger man responsible for the actions of a demon wearing his face. To the extent that the incident has led to any extra caution on Julius’s part at all, it’s not specific to his interactions with Benedict. (It wasn’t even the first time he was poisoned in Riftwatch’s service, which is almost bleakly funny, though he suspects Benedict wouldn’t find it especially amusing.)

Still, even if he’s careful of the feelings of those around him by habit, there’s plenty of work to be done. When he shows up for their scheduled meeting, it certainly isn’t with any shortage of topics to discuss on his list. And if he hopes that the more he acts as if everything is normal, the more it will feel that way, well … it doesn’t undercut that the very normal pile of work is real and needs attention.

“So. Should we begin with the easy part or the hard part of the list this time?”

for stephen


In fairness, the practical side of his meetings with Stephen as head healer are usually fairly brief; an update on what they’d out of, a check in about any concerning upticks of illness or other things he should bring to the Division Heads. Because they’re so brief, it has become easy to tuck them at the beginning or end of a much more interesting standing appointment.

He wouldn’t call it teaching, exactly; he’s taught many apprentices over the years, and enjoys teaching very much. But working with Stephen feels, more often, like an act of translation. The way he thinks of magic, on an instinctual level, is so fascinatingly different from Julius’s experience that when Julius begins an explanation, it is less an instruction than an opening bid. They do make progress, certainly, but it feels collaborative in a way he’d seldom been able to enjoy.

“Right, so. Back to glyphs today, or do you want to take a break and start on something new?” Sometimes they’re in an office; today they’re in the training yard. Glyphs can be easier to work with in an open space, but it’s also nice to be outside on the rare day that isn’t oppressive this time of year.

Comments

[portalling]

Stephen is watching so intently that he actually forgets to respond. Belatedly, realising that Julius has finished talking, he finally says, “It does.”

Their mutual interest in the theoretical underpinnings is part of what makes their approaches so compatible. As eager as Stephen is to get to the action, he also always wants to understand how and why things tick the way they do; he wants to see the building blocks beneath it all. Negative space. Pieces of a whole. An act of translation. Stephen’s horrid at languages (Petrana de Cedoux he is not), but he remembers patterns, shapes, a photographic memory searing them into vivid recollection: it had helped him when he was first learning magic.

He holds the pieces in his mind’s eye, his gaze faraway and looking inward to his memory. The trick, too, is to draw it in seamless motion without faltering. He takes another stab at it, starting to reproduce what Julius had drawn.

“I used to think that I had an unfair disadvantage,” he talks while he works, “because, y’know, the hand tremors. How the hell was I supposed to draw these complex infinitesimal runes when I can’t even sign my own name. But then I saw a man without an arm cast them perfectly, so I learned it’s about intent—”

The colours spark, coalescing, branding into the ground.

[overharrowed]

"I'll admit, I'd never thought so much about doing magic with a staff before I met rifter mages. It seems like a great deal of pressure to put on your hands, in some ways." It's not exactly that, of course; the way Stephen uses his hands and the way Julius learned to use a staff have commonalities, but it's not a simple one to one correlation. Still, instead of lingering on the point:

"That's better," of the glyph. "You can see ... it's brighter in some places than others, but you're getting it more even as you practice. You want it to all be the same, not because the light matters, but because the light shows you you've gotten the spell right." An effect, not a cause.

He smiles, briefly. "If it helps, I remember one particular student's reaction when I tried to explain that the glyph extends beyond the visible boundaries. I'll take your interest in the underpinnings of it over a why can't it just work approach any day." At least the story was fondly told. He hadn't begrudged the student their frustration, it seems, even if it reflected a type of pragmatism Julius doesn't share.

[portalling]

Standing there, now leaning against his staff, Stephen sizes up the glyph and the relative brightness along its edges and curves and shapes. It’s not any readable language, but neither had been the runes back home. He’s good at this part.

He suspects that you could trace these lines with perfect mathematical precision and still not activate the glyph properly; so much of Thedosian magic is sheer raw willpower and thus uniting that with the craft. He has been getting better, but it’s taking time and practice.

Again. Again.

At least this is a more laidback method, at their own time and their own pace, with no particular rush. He’s not downing lyrium potions and sleep-deprived and working himself to the bone, back when he’d dug his fingers into magic and made time obey his will. Which, speaking of…

“Once I get this next one working, you should step on it. I want to see it in effect,” he says. “And then, I’ll trade: I’d like you to cast a Time Spiral on me. I built on it as a foundation last year, but being able to feel it from the inside,” he wrinkles his nose in accidental distaste, phrasing, “will be helpful, I suspect.”

[overharrowed]

"I suppose so," is more to the second one than the first; he trusts Stephen, and stepping into a paralysis glyph is not especially unpleasant unless it's immediately followed by someone attacking you.

"Did you learn a lot of spells by feeling their effects, at your monastery? I admit, it's not a technique I personally used much, but I'm not sure if that's a difference in how our magic actually works or merely temperament." It's said warmly enough that it's clear he's not judging Stephen for his eagerness to test a spell by having it cast on him. On the other hand, it does seem like the sort of way Stephen specifically might prefer to learn.

[portalling]

“Oh boy, did I.” Stephen sounds just as warm; there’s an odd sort of nostalgic fondness as he thinks back on his hands-on training. “I can’t remember if I mentioned— the very first bit of magic I ever experienced was my teacher blasting my consciousness out of my body and sending it reeling through the cosmos. I eventually grew to be able to do the same thing, like yanking people’s spirits out of their physical forms. And then all my combat training thereafter, my trainer, Mordo, liked to put me through my paces by setting me on the receiving end of everything.”

Even now, even after all that had happened, there’s regret seeped into his voice as he remembers the man. The way their paths had so drastically, violently diverged.

He presses on.

“Humiliating when you got it wrong, of course, but you still learn and you get back up. For all that I appreciate the theoretical foundation, some of it’s also— you get a muscle-memory for it. You can study an endless number of diagrams to know where the organs are in the body, but it’s never quite the same as making the first incision yourself. And then doing it often enough that your hand remembers and knows where to cut. Once you know what it’s meant to feel like.”

[overharrowed]

"It's still strange to me, sometimes, the way you describe your training." Without the undercurrent of fear, he doesn't say but clearly means. "I must seem frustratingly cautious to you, sometimes."

He exhales, as if shaking off a mental cloud, and adds, "I understand what you mean about 'muscle memory,' though. There are spells I've done so much that I don't consciously think about them, for the most part. I can feel if it's going right because I've felt it so often before. Glyphs, especially, for what it's worth. There's ... it's something like a click when the parts of something mechanical align."

this clicking in my head when certain things line up when like is put with like and there is order

[portalling]

“Exactly,” Stephen says, warming to that shared image, the rightness of it. “It’s— precise, which the way I tend to work with magic to begin with. Some of it is heart and soul and spirit, yes, but much of it was also brute memorisation and specific application of runes in a specific order. This is similar. Like how you can play a song on the piano by memory, pressing the keys in the same order, and the end result is a beautiful song.”

Or, used to be able to play the piano.

He closes the paralysis glyph and pinches it off, the magic flaring, ready for Julius to step in. He considers, and adds: “Besides. You’re cautious for good reason. It’s not how I did it, personally, but one could say that I’m far too reckless.” No, he’s definitely too reckless. “There’s a time and a place for either.”