rowancrowned | fade rift ✧ inbox

[ sharply: ] I am well. We may speak.

[ myr is one of the only people he'd allow to see him right now, but he's cloistered himself away and disinclined to leave his nest. ]

What knowledge do you seek?

She'd said you called them--yourselves-- [a brief pause,] --"dreams made flesh". Do you suspect--you're some kind of spirit, then? Creatures born of the Fade?

Why do the Andrastians insist upon the Chant needing to be sung in all the corners of the world? What do they hope to wake with their own endless song? [ in the end— the bitter, bitter end— he is only feverish. but he pours out the words like a prophet, endowed with all his age and authority.

it is more than myr asked for. ]

But they have failed—so far— and our people have been dreaming and hoping for so much longer. A dream in the Fade, solidified over years, calling out to us, the right moment and right Craft creating an imprint, and we, summoned, arriving— the sum of two thousand years of hopes.

[It's far more than he asked for, pieces of the puzzle spilled out without a frame to put them in or even an idea of how many there ought to be, what shape they were supposed to make at the end. The best he can do in the instant is slip them into the holes left by his own expectations--

As always, the fit jars. He bites his tongue, keeps his words to himself; better the patient listener than the loyal son of the Chantry right now.]

Our people, [softly.] We--we elves brought you here?

Perhaps the why does not matter. There are enough who are not elvhen that there may have been other dreams, but something anchored us in the Fade, ready to spill forth when the Rifts opened. Why not the endless hopes of the Dalish, the elvhen? There are more of the Quendi than any other.

[ he exhales slowly. ]

Potent dreams. Enough to form us more solidly than the spirits, enough that the Veil cannot hold us back. Enough to give us living flesh, or a simulacrum of it. I am not myself. Somewhere, I yet live, ignorant of this place, for in the memories of others, I never left. This is- I am- only a copy. A reflection.

[ this is approximately where he had the near breakdown when he put the pieces together. ]

[It makes a devastating amount of sense, even as it rearranges everything he thought he'd so-cleverly reasoned out for himself, leaves it all shattered.

An ugly, unstable feeling, like sand shifting beneath his feet--but not so preoccupying that he misses the next Thranduil has to say.]

Andraste's ashes-- [Only a copy.] So you've not been stolen; it's--worse than that.

[Or so it seems to him, trying on the idea of himself as not being fundamentally real, not being the one who lived the memories of all he was.

How awful; how corrosive.]

But you're--reflections true as the Fade could make you-- You've all your memories and dreams, everything that makes you real to us. Everything you've given us is real, everything about you worth caring about-- That's all real.

Not worse, [ and he scoffs at this. ] More. None of our past obligations, only what Ilúvatar intended of us.

[ packaged neatly. reembodiment is not an alien concept to him, this is that, if strange. he is himself, yet he is not. he is thranduil, on the other side of the mirror. he has been given a chance and yet there is a price. ]

You dreamed. We awoke. I feel no shame, only purpose.

[For once, it's a relief to be so thoroughly wrong. He listens with his tongue between his teeth to stop an instinctive outburst, recognizing in himself that tendency to fuss--

How little he needs to do that over beings older than his entire world. Especially when they've so much grace and certainty about things that fill him with instinctive horror.]

Ilúvatar, [quiet, respectful, testing the alien name on his tongue,] who Made you. [There are questions he'd ask if the situation were less dire; questions he's not sure would be answered.]

"Dreams made flesh," you said; you were drawn to us across the Fade and given shape. But something's sickened you and begun to eat away at that... [It trails off; there's a quiet oath as he wracks his brain once more. This is a piece--

But they're missing so many others.] Damn. It means something--it has to.

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