Codrin Bălan#Emissary — 2346

“Prophets!”

Silence around the table. Answers Will Not Help pushed herself to her feet. Waves of skunk and human crashed violently across her form. She was laughing. She was crying. Her back arched taught and she laughed up toward the ceiling, a choked, gasping sound.

True Name, struggling to hold her own form together, reached out to tug at Answers Will Not Help’s sleeve. “Please, my dear,” she murmured. “Why Ask Questions, please sit down. I know it is–“

“I am not her! I am not her. I am Why Ask Questions When The Answers Will Not Help. Don’t…I…”

True Name froze. Everyone froze.

“You told us you were–” Sarah began, before Answers Will Not Help cut her off.

“Oh, where is Ezekiel when we need him? A meeting of prophets! Navi to nevi’im! The voice of God from the sky in a pillar of flame! Or Qoheleth, a prophet of our own blood, bearing warning of memory entrancing!” Her words came out in an unceasing torrent. “But instead we are Israel to nevi’im, a people to prophets, a people to prophets, and the only time I know my true name is when I dream, and to know one’s true name is to know God. Time feels so vast that were it not for an Eternity— Fuck, I…time makes prey of remembering, I…I fear me this Circumference engross my Finity— Oh AwDae, oh AwDae. Could you ever have guessed at the depths of the death of memory?”

True Name stood quickly and, with a decisive wash of skunk down her form, growled, “How fucking dare–“

“To his exclusion who prepare by process of Size…of…” She was phasing in and out of local time now, her words jittering now fast, now slow. “I miss em, I miss em. I miss…was that eir prophecy? Was that why ey wrote me? Is this AwDae’s words come true?”

“Stop!” True Name shouted, tackling the blurring, crumbling form of Answers Will Not Help to the ground. “Fucking stop! You cannot–“

After a moment’s tussle, Answers Will Not Help collapsed to the ground, limp and laughing. “For the Stupendous Vision of eir diameters—” she said, and then quit, leaving True Name to fall to the ground, weeping.

There was a shocked silence around the table, and when no one moved, Codrin slid out of eir chair to kneel by True Name’s side. Her form had begun to waver once more, and, remembering the aversion to touch that came with that, ey simply sat beside her, waiting until she calmed down.

It was Sarah who broke the silence. “What just happened?”

“True Name and, uh…Why Ask Questions — that is, Michelle Hadje — was one of the lost, and I guess time skew is similar enough to—“

“No,” the Odist said between heaving breaths. “She was right. That was Answers Will Not Help.”

Tycho frowned, nodded. “We had guessed.”

“She should not have been able to do that,” Iska said, nearly growling. “She should not have been able to do any of that. No skew, no exit. What was she?”

“Leader True Name,” Turun Ko said. “Please explain ‘lost’ in this context.”

She did not move from her spot on the floor. “

(TN comes clean, talks about getting lost, Turun Ka says Artante’s race ran into similar, but stops her from talking about AWNH further for now. Codrin helps TN to her room, skews it to fast time to give her as much time as she needs)

“You heard nothing today, Mx. Bălan,” True Name mumbled, quiet enough that ey had to lean closer to hear. “I know what you thought you heard, but you heard nothing. Do not tell anyone. Do not tell Ioan, and certainly do not tell any others within the Ode clade.”

Ey took a half step back from the skunk. So hoarse and clouded was her voice that ey couldn’t piece together her mood. “I feel like there’s some deeper implication there.”

She smiled weakly and shook her head before laying on the bed, facing em. “There is not. It is a request from me to you, from my clade to yours, across our two entangled clades.” The smile faded as she added, “Not a request, a plea.”

Ey nodded, struck silent by the sincerity in her voice. Real, actual sincerity. It made em feel almost bashful. Ey bowed and started to turn back toward the door.

“Codrin?”

“Yes?”

Her voice was small. It bore fear and anxiety alongside the omnipresent exhaustion. “Can you please stay for a few minutes?”

“I, uh…” Ey swallowed dryly. “Do you need anything?”

“Just for someone to be present,” she said. “I may need your help writing a note back to Castor in a little bit, but right now, I just need someone to anchor me. You are very good at that.”

After a moment’s hesitation, ey nodded, pulling up a chair from the small table in the center of the room. Ey sat beside the skunk as she lay still on the bed, eyes closed, her breathing growing more steady, and then slowing as she apparently drifted into sleep.

Ey watched her doze fitfully.

What the hell just happened? ey thought. And how the hell am I going to keep this buried within me?