Re: (Not) Far From Home - A Dream

[Killick]

Rosco couldn't know how poetic his choice in therapy animal was. Killick held out his hand and when the crab climbed inside he lifted it to eye level to examine it before looking up to where the lighthouse would be if the dream had taken them home. "I only wanted to learn. But I might know less than I did before I got there."

[Rosco Agassi]

"The world is, unfortunately, filled with never ending questions." He watched Killick with a slight smile, thankful he had seemingly made the right choice. "Some of them will never be answered, but I am of the belief you should always keep trying."

[Killick]

Killick looked back to the crab in his hands. "I don't want you to die. It's not a very practical feeling."

[Rosco Agassi]

"No, no it really isn't," Rosco chuckled. "Holdfast has lots of ways to bring people back from the dead, though. Even death isn't permanent. That was something that took me a long time to get used to but I think I've started to accept it."

[Killick]

Killick looked back up to where the lighthouse would have been, feeling something uncomfortable churn inside of him. He opened his mouth as if to say something but closed it again and was silent for a long while before responding again. "Is that true out here too? All those people who drown when their ship wrecks, or fall through the ice, or try to swim against a current. When the people in boats come and collect what they can find, do they bring them home and wake them? Could the fish and whales that beach on land and suffocate in its awful dryness have life breathed into them too? Do they even know what's happened to them?"

[Rosco Agassi]

"The people lost at sea often have the option to come back, I think. They don't tend to die as frequently as folks in Holdfast, and the first few times you go you can come back without help." Rosco followed Killick's gaze as he spoke, wishing he had a better answer to their questions. "The animals...well I've never seen an animal resurrected, but I like to believe they don't realize what's happened. In the afterlife, I hope they forget the minutes before they died just like we do."

[Killick]

“I didn’t realize there was so much choice in dying.” He admitted, “It always looked so final.”

[Rosco Agassi]

"I thought the same thing, when I came to Holdfast I had never seen someone come back to life before. Now I've seen it over a dozen times."

"I met a guy once who had died eight times," Rosco smiled as he spoke, affectionately remembering his war-time friend. "I think his ninth was his last, but eight times coming back is pretty impressive. No one in Holdfast has even gotten close - thankfully."

[Killick]

“He’s dead for good now?”

[Rosco Agassi]

"I think so," Rosco confirmed. "I tried to bring him back with the resurrection scroll but he didn't wake up. Sometimes that means they'll come back later, but...I think Nekko was ready to go. He died for the final time fighting a courageous battle with people he cared about very much, and I think that's what he needed to find peace."

[Killick]

Killick’s brow furrowed. “People choose to stay dead when they’re at peace.” It was said not like a question but like a contemplation.

[Rosco Agassi]

"I think so," Rosco agreed. "But I always like to give them the chance to come back, that's why I have the resurrection scroll. Maybe some day I'll have the spell myself, but until then I'll use what I can."

[Killick]

Killick reflected on everything they’d said so far and felt… he didn’t know what he felt. His head hurt and his body felt heavy. He didn’t like it when he didn’t understand things. And everything felt like it was too massive to grasp. Like he was trying to pick up the ocean in a bucket. With so many questions running through his mind he said one of the few things he was sure of, “I don’t know what to do about Holdfast.”

[Rosco Agassi]

"You don't need to do anything," Rosco explained with a smile. "If you want to come back to Holdfast, you're more than welcome to just be. I am of the belief that every member of town is important to Holdfast's future in some way...that doesn't mean they have to do anything. The world keeps moving, eventually you find your place or it finds your place for you."

[Killick]

“But it’s not my place.” He argued. “At least, it’s not supposed to be. But whatever is wrong there is getting to me. And I still haven’t found out if that’s a bad thing. But I’m not… normal anymore.”

[Rosco Agassi]

"I think that means it is your place, Killick." Rosco had been careful until now, avoiding putting pressure on him to go back to Holdfast. If this was where Killick wanted to stay then he was more than welcome to - but there were only so many ways to dance around the subject. "You're still normal, but your normal may be a little new."

[Killick]

“I’m cursed. You told me not to make friends but then you became one. It’s not very fair.”

[Rosco Agassi]

"Oh Killick," Rosco sighed. He reached out yet again, as if to give some form of reassurance but pulled away before making contact. "Sometimes friendships are just meant to be. I'm sorry they're hurting you like this, but that just proves how much love you have to give. That is not a curse."

[Killick]

He considered that. Were they hurting him? He guessed this counted. “I’ve never lived as a part of a shoal or a herd before. I don’t know if I know how to do it.”

[Rosco Agassi]

"I think you're doing just fine."

[Killick]

He felt… squirmy, hearing that. Like the water that made him had been sloshed around in a bucket. It felt good and bad in a way that was hard to understand. That was maybe the most frustrating part about Holdfast’s mysteries. The way it made him a mystery too. “I’m not very strong or fast. When predators come I just hide or blend and watch them eat the things that weren’t fast or smart enough. Holdfast isn’t like that though. No one runs. Not away anyway. When things come in the inn and I hide and watch it doesn’t feel like hiding in the ocean. I thought that maybe if I reminded them they’d learn to do it right but I realized that the land is different. You’re the apex predators. I’ve never been on that side before. In a herd animals work together. But when I don’t hide I’m in people’s way. And when I try to help all I can do is find someone who actually knows how to.”

[Rosco Agassi]

"The beauty about Holdfast is that you can learn so, so much. That may not mean learning to fight - you can heal, you can defend with magic or psychic. You can learn to make or repair armour or even just hand out glasses of orange to people who look too tired. Everything you do is helpful, even hiding. Overtime, if you want, you can learn more."

Rosco paused for a moment in thought, recalling the helplessness he felt the first night he saw ghosts in Oldfast, or rather - the first night he didn't. Hiding under the stairs with Z as he pointed out where each one was, slowly beginning what would become a long friendship.

He smiled. There likely wasn't long before the dream was going to end so he had to rush. "I want to show you something."

The scene around them faded. The night remained but the sand turned to dirt and both Killick and Rosco were standing on a small mound of earth. It separated them from the front steps of the Oldfast inn and the exit of town. Around them, ghosts floated through, taking things and talking to Holdfasters. There was no combat, but there was a heavy fear in the air centered on one person - Rosco.

”Look at me and Z,” he pointed to the steps, two bodies crouched and hiding in their shadow. Killick had never met Z, but even if he had, the Z of times past was hard to recognize. His hair was cut as short as he could manage, his psychic glow teetering on non-existent. He wore no armor, and his staff wasn’t even a quarter the quality of the one he had taken on his trip to the mainland. “I couldn’t see ghosts then...I couldn’t do much of anything. That was my first month in town. All I knew how to do was stabilize someone, and even though I was sure they were going to, the ghosts never hurt us. I felt useless, but that night with Z is something I’ll never forget.”

”But, watch this.” The sun rose to mid afternoon and the two were placed on the opposite side of the old inn. A deck spanned between two buildings, wide enough to house a crowd of blurry shapes in the form of people. Rosco couldn’t remember who was there - and it didn’t matter. The most important part was Dimitri, sprawled on a table with his chest cracked open. A young Rosco worked on him with shaking hands and wide, terrified eyes. “He had hellion blood in him,” he explained. “It’s a long story for another day, but this was my first month in Holdfast too.”

God, that first month packed into it the action he would now normally see in three or four.

”I knew so little, but I was still helping - or, well, trying my best. It was my first big catastrophe in Holdfast and I was terrified.” He laughed at the memory now, watching as his old mentor handed him a stethoscope. The dream version of himself looked woefully between the stethoscope and the visible, still-beating heart, before gently laying it to the side to move onto other tasks.

”Even when you think you know nothing, you still know enough to help.”

[Killick]

The Rosco in the visions looked foreign. A child, in comparison to the man he knew. “If Nero takes things over I’ll probably be okay. I don’t think he has many plans for the ocean. And the ocean is resilient. Nature doesn’t care for the individual. Even if you destroy a biome it will regrow. And even in the destruction, the resourceful organism survive. I’ve never thought of myself as being bigger than an ecosystem. I’m a parasite, really. The cove isn’t my natural home. I’m an immigrant. A self introduced species. And the only one of my kind. On a trophic level my intelligence and blending capabilities put me alongside the octopods but I have no natural place in its food chain. I try to observe and engage without upsetting the balance. And if the balance is upset I might be able to help it recover. I understand my place there. Holdfast won’t be okay though. Nero will destroy everything. And I don’t think people recover like other biomes. If a fish had ghosts in it I don’t think its school would share the ghosts out. It lets the fish survive but it also makes the fish expendable. No one in Holdfast treats anything as expendable. Even though there are many medics and smiths and fighters and alchemists, having a Rudi is not the same as having a Yanna. I don’t understand the rules well. But I haven’t been able to just forget it. It’s very frustrating. I understand my place in the ocean. I don’t understand my place in Holdfast. I know how to help the ocean. I don’t know how to help Holdfast. But when Nero comes… will knowing how to help in the ocean matter more than knowing who at Holdfast can help where? Will being safe at home matter if I just feel stormy? I have too many questions. I wanted less questions. But now I’m not even sure where I belong. I was never meant to be in the ocean. I just chose to go there and make a home. Is that even different from how people come to Holdfast?”

[Rosco Agassi]

Rosco listened intently, fingers fidgeting in the sand beneath him. When the speaking finished he looked up at Killick, genuine admiration sparkling in his eyes. "That's how I ended up in Holdfast. I had a home before then, and that home still exists, but it doesn't feel the same. I feel like an outcast in that town, more of a nuisance than a help. In Holdfast...I know that's where I'm meant to be. It took a long time to feel like that, but I look at the people around me now and they are more home than anything else I've ever known."

"If Nero wins, we will rebuild," he continued, trying to address everything he could. "I don't think the world will end - it will just look different, and Holdfasters will adapt to that. We're good at adapting, even if we hate it."

[Killick]

Killick listened to Rosco compare their situations, thought of the visions he’d shown him. “I’ve never been like somebody else before.” He said quietly.

The phrase we're good at adapting, even if we hate it. repeated comfortingly in his mind.

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