THE DOCTOR.

(the sunlight, its warmth. / rippling against my light-ached flesh.)

[arcticdoctor]

EITHER “i burn for you.” OR “it is you i cannot sacrifice.” FROM JACK

i burn for you. 

the papers ( piles of scattered letters, open books that were carefully marked, handwritten scraps with drawings that became more and more harried ) were spread around jonathan, each pile a chaotic mess that seemed to perfectly match the state of his thoughts. the doctor sat amongst them, his hand outstretched to shift one paper to another pile, when jack spoke. jonathan’s hand stilled, and he blinked --- a delighted flush crept into his cheeks, a delicious warmth under his skin. 

“you’ve thoroughly distracted me.” a false complaint, really. yes, jonathan had been intent to go through his notes again that morning, but no, he was far from pressed about the steady way jack watched him now. i want life, jonathan had said; jack answered in a hundred ways. “ --- thoroughly,” he reiterated, his smile growing. instead of reaching for another paper leading to another thought he had gone over countless times, he reached for jack’s hand. brought the man’s knuckles to his lips. “it’s truly a good thing i didn’t meet you while i was in school. i never would have gotten any work done.” 

[arcticdoctor]

aylumin​.

post mutiny backsies mutiny attempt (landfall) on the streets, like a lady open to anyone

“If you forego questioning where I got it, you’re more than welcome to share.”  Course what she’d actually prefer would be for everyone to question everything- even if it discomforts them. So long as it might better keep than safe. And that’s really what it comes down to; distrust.  It’s not something she’s familiar with, when she wants to trust everyone until they prove she can’t, and even then offer another chance. This, oh this she excuses as being more about the island than the people on it, more about the terrible acts and fleeing of such that got them here. 

“I think it’s rum, or turpentine. Who’s to know really.” Lifts her hand to lift the bottle, holds it out for whoever’s approached.  “As far as I know there aren’t any laws here, aren’t any peelers, so there are worse things than drinking in the streets. Call it a distraction from doing those worse things, if you like. Doing them or suffering them, what’s your poison?.”

“are you certain you wish to be drinking right now, dear ayla?” it seemed a dangerous idea, not for their place but for their peace of mind. a wild world had blossomed around them; a strange mystery continued to spread. and what of them, amongst death and horror? what of them, if they turned to the bottle? ( this was something jonathan had learned quickly in school: the taste of it never did well to make anything lighter. ) “but if you are, perhaps it best not to do so alone.” he held his hand, either out for her or what she held. “how are you faring?” 

[arcticdoctor]

"there is nothing you cannot do." from nedward!!

the compliment ( could it be a compliment? might it just be, instead, something accidental, something overthought on jonathan’s end? ) came as they often did, a bubble of unexpectedness. the town around them, the circumstances suffocating them --- it all paused at the sound of the words. from edward. edward. 

“why, mr. boyne...” sometimes, jonathan realized, this was all it took. a moment of positivity amongst it all, a moment of encouragement to keep going, keep it up, keep your chin high. “you have certainly brightened my day. sometimes, believing in oneself becomes too much a burden on any one soul.”

with a bright smile, something rarer these days than he would have otherwise liked, jonathan gestured for the other man to take a seat. 

“might i offer you some sort of advice --- something kind in repayment to your own genuine nature? what might i say to you to help relieve your own worries?”  

[persephonememes]

* (  𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐃𝐆𝐄𝐑𝐓𝐎𝐍 /  𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒.

These may have been edited for clarity or length or to better apply for roleplaying.

do it. be bold.

we must continue our ruse until i’ve found my match.

me, unavailable; you, desirable.

i trusted you more than anyone in this world, and you took advantage.

you do not know me, but i know you.

you have no idea what it is to have one’s entire life reduced to a single moment.

is this not lovely? all of us together again.

an expert in the art of the swoon.

i wish to be entertained.

it would be better if you refrain from thinking about me at all.

lovely indeed. we should tempt scandal more often.

the social season is upon us.

your love is an unrequited fantasy.

i cannot stop thinking of you.

i am anything but interested in you.

it is more than just your honor at stake.

i write in my diary which is not the same as writing in my novel.

a pairing like that would be most enchanting indeed.

the season’s diamond, even more precious and rare a stone than previously thought?

stare into my eyes.

is it awful that i’m enjoying it?

if you desire the sun and the moon, all you have to do is go out and shoot at the sky.

we could pretend to form an attachment.

if there is a scandal, i shall uncover it.

must our only options be to squawk and settle or to never leave the nest?

all is fair in love and war.

there is nothing you cannot do.

my honor is not for sale.

if this is to work, we must appear madly in love.

i’m aware of your reputation.

do not tell me that is another scandal sheet.

you’ve always amused me.

we find ourselves seated next to each other. i’d think you’d be happy about that.

marriage has it joys, but it also brings with it its special trials.

it’d be better if you refrain from thinking about me at all.

you do not know me, and never shall.

you do not humiliate the one you love. 

i’m aware of your reputation and i am anything but interested in you.

what if i want to fly?

the ones we love have the power to inflict the greatest scars.

every presumptuous mother in town will leave me alone and every suitor will be looking at you.

you do not trick the one you love.

if you desire the sun and the moon, all you have to do is go out and shoot at the sky.

let it be known that if there is a scandal, i shall uncover it.

you think that just because i’m a woman, i’m incapable of making my own choices?

love, conquers all.

you can choose to love me as much as i love you.

i am tired of pretending.

from the mornings you ease, to the evenings you quiet, to the dreams you inhabit my thoughts of you never end.

i cannot continue acting as if i do not love you. because i do.

i love all of you.

i cannot be your fool again.

the brighter a lady shines, the faster she may burn.

we chose to love each other every single day.

pride, it will cost you everything and leave you with nothing.

i am looking out for myself.

you don’t deserve to breathe the same air as her.

you must simply marry the man who feels like your dearest friend.

i am ensuring my own future. because i know in my heart i know that there is no one else who ever will.

you do not lie to the one you love.

to meet a beautiful woman is one thing, but to meet your best friend in the most beautiful of women is something entirely apart.

circumstances change, ladies. sometimes over night.

her heart is no matter, as long as her hand remains free.

you cannot assure me of everything.

i will always protect you.

i believe i should like to stay.

i believe you should like to go.

what others should ever want such damaged goods now?

you have no idea what it is to be a woman.

you are perfection itself.

what? you don’t love me for my subtlety.

would you rather die than marry me?

i am yours, i have always been yours.

it is you i cannot sacrifice.

i burn for you.

it pains me you should think every compliment a mockery.

i ask you, can the ends ever justify such wretched means?

[arcticdoctor]

lijinmarked​.

her head dips as she listens, pictures diagrams in books, claws in glass cages, bears in the wild, the step through the pages into the senses and the brutal fear they bring, the horror accompanied. tilts her head at the conclusion he comes to, pulls the propositions into order, itches to shred them, ink blot and torn parchment, wonders if the cost isn’t in blood.

‘ no. ‘ shakes her head, raises her gaze. ‘ not many gods are kind. ‘ a beat, a consideration.

‘ i would not say that polar bears are not intelligent, and also would not say that nature is incapable of being cruel. but those veer on the theoretical, the philosophical, and i doubt that’s what concerns you. ‘

hurt and pain and fear have edged into this ship as sure as the salt air, slathered on its people like tar and smoke, in the tension before every sunrise, in the shadows under their eyes. ‘ is there anything that i can help with? ‘

it was sharp, the relief he felt at hearing her say it aloud --- those veer on the philosophical. he had spent too long dwelling on it, hadn’t he? on all the possibilities, instead of the weighty reality of what settled around them. the cruelest what ifs seemed content to crawl to him, to fill him with dread and excitement over baseless things. 

so here were presented the facts: there was a monster, there were the dead, and there were the lost. he was not yet sure who they ought to count themselves among.

“will you give me the truth, in all this?” he made it sound like the dearest vow, instead of the very thing she had always done for him. “will you tell me what you think is happening?” 

[aylumin]

HAPPY HOLIDAYS, KAT  @arcticdoctor

[arcticdoctor]

paintedsins​.

he is foolish, he thinks, to still have wonder in a place like this. among the snow, there is nothing but the cold  —  ( and wouldn’t you know best of that? )  —  that punishes them for trespassing, or perhaps just existing. the clairvoyant has yet to decide which is a greater sin. 

“what is worthy of your death, my dear jonathan? your curiosity? your wonder? discovery? knowledge?” hollow eyes watch his friend, words neither cruel nor kind. merely a part of the wind, a whisper that you could ignore that he would understand if you did. 

“i want  —  “  a pause. the statement is foreign to him; a wanting and a asking. “  —  i want this to mean something. to be more than nothing; more than losses. i want to go home, but even if we were to find our way back to london it will no longer be a home, for we will no longer be the people who once existed in them.” 

there is a soft sigh, a slow uncurling of limbs. “you have made the least mistakes out of all of us, my sweet. if anything, i am sorry you are being punished with a grief  —  a guilt  —  that you are undeserving of.”  

“i should like to die for love. i always have, i’m afraid.” should he find his death here, he would like to greet it as an old companion, rather than an enemy to be bested; he would like to take its wrinkled hand, clasp it tight in his own, and smile at the rotted eyes and lipless smile. a love for others, for the world, for this place --- cold and bitter as it was, cruel as it could be. a love for things undiscovered. death would understand that, he believed. “i don’t know if i’m worthy of it, or it of me. i only know that most of us will not get good deaths here, but if i might choose it... yes, i think it would be love. and isn’t love all of those things --- wonder, curiosity, discovery, knowledge?” 

but he could not take death’s hand, not yet, and so instead, he took snow’s. dragged his thumb over the other’s palm, tried to make his own meaning out of the lines he saw there. 

“let us make a home then, here.” it might as well be a vow, a knight swearing fealty to some great cause. “i am so, so tired, snow. i want it to mean something too. i want to know that i did not lead pippa to an island to die for nothing; i want to know that vladya gave his life for mine and that i will treat it kindly.” you have made the least mistakes out of all of us, my sweet. oh, jonathan thought, oh snow. when did you decide to hold onto the beauty? “but i can’t know these things. you can’t know these things. we have only this moment. what will this moment become?” 

[arcticdoctor]

arcancs​.

Love has found me here. It sounds like a tavern song, sounds like a typescript line of poetry in the margins of some train ticket. Sounds like cheap opera; mouse kings, mountain crags, pipers. It also sounds like it’s the only thing that ever existed. The only thing that could ever be touched.

He doesn’t ask: who. No one who has been on that island would ask. He still remembers the soldier’s frozen expression; the deathly stillness on it, when he saw Jonathan walk down over the ice. When he saw what he was walking towards. And then the rousing to action, the impulse of it      the need to save so sharp through him it looked like a bolt of lighting. The younger corporal stopping it before it sprung. The culling of the fold. The mortal foot forward.

No, Iskender doesn’t ask.

He thinks of Elias Shaw, on his knees before him. Thinks of the way he cupped the boy’s cheek, a thumb over the curls, and the odd contrast it drew to his other hand, the hand that was prying his lips wider. Thinks of Elias, shouldering Pippa’s body in the morning glare. The snow blindness, the crackle of ice like coals. Thinks of Elias, shivering in Iskender’s bed, face wet in the crook of his arm. Iskender thinks love, and wants to scream.

Wants to tell Jonathan: you doubt my Gods, and I doubt yours. We both worship things the other doesn’t believe in, don’t we, old friend? Friend that never was; warmth that should have been.

He shakes his head. ❝You know what I’ve been working on; not in so many words, but we both hinted at it. You know what my last three, four years in Britain revolved around. It was this rumour, this hushed tale of an island where life recoils from. Where something else rears up. Jonathan, I think I was looking for this my whole life. At it, into it, who can tell? Who knows what side one is on, until the light starts pouring, until the angle is illuminated? Everything I am… everything I’ve ever been, tried to, tried not to be - it all comes here. And here it stops. So, yes. I suppose the answer is yes.❞

The confession catches him unaware; he feels it jump up in his throat like a wave of sickness.

❝I don’t believe it would’ve taken a trance for me to walk forward.❞

Like an afterthought, it strikes him that he hasn’t said something without planning it ahead, not in decades. Maybe not ever. But there it is. His hand curls on his thigh, a spasm. There’s a resolute hitch to his breath. He pinches the bridge of his nose as if there’s any way to stave the headache, the fog, the pelt of night on judgement.

❝Not sure if that makes me a madman, or you a saint. Not sure what this place makes of either of us anymore. Clueless. We are really so, so clueless; children with their feet on glass. Wondering where the blood springs from and still dancing. Can’t even know whether this is a force clawing its way out or in. But one thing, one thing I cling to. It would have been this. It would have been here, always. For me. Hell, maybe for all of us. Why else would it know our name, our mother’s name - the song and sin of it?❞

“clueless, yes. i suppose that’s it.” it was a strange sort of comfort, to hear iskender say it aloud --- to hear the way his admission fell like confession. i would let it take me, pull me to it; i would let the door carry me away. to know, if this was madness, he was not feeling it alone. curiosity did not have to be an evil thing, even as it led them here. “do you think we have been marked then? that this is simply a destiny, waiting for us to fulfill it?” 

the thought settled in him, far heavier than the threat of death or loss or strangeness --- that there might not be a choice to the matter at all, that this was a question of free will as much as a question of life. ( although, came the quick thought that followed, when had there ever been a question of godhood that did not involve the threat, the promise, of free will? ) 

“don’t answer that,” jonathan decided. “no, i don’t want to argue about the nature of it all. i want to know --- you plan to walk forward. you say your life has built to it. and i plan to see it too, to, at the very least, peer though it.” to make it feel life, despite it surrounding itself with death. what could be sweeter? what could hurt worse? “we cannot, cannot, my dear iskender, risk the lives of others again. we cannot roam blind to its call. we must learn from everything we have suffered. promise me that, at least. promise me you will not sacrifice any others to get what you want.” 

“because then the question becomes... what now?” 

[thejackalhasarrived]

DEV PATEL in THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD (2019)

[arcticdoctor]

location: one of the buildings.  time: landfall.  with: @resurgentisjaya​

one island, exchanged for the next. secrets forged in the swallowing darkness of the sea --- the first, a name, given unknowingly all those months ago; the second, a bond, forged unwillingly through the sacrifice of one of their own. and perhaps that was why jonathan approached her of all the others. despite the venom jaya so often shined at him, despite the fact that he knew what she thought of him, despite all of his attempts at friendship hissed away, truth lived between them. truth was the last remaining reality. 

“do you ever...dream of it?” a hushed question, asked only when he found the seat beside her, asked only when the silence had just begun to stretch on. it seemed he was still unable to help himself. “what we witnessed.” 

[arcticdoctor]

location: the sickbay.  time: after a certain skirmish.  with: @wolfhoundings​

perhaps jonathan was remembering how to find the sunlight, even on the stormiest of days. ( it was, of course, always there, if one took a moment to remember. how else might we see? ) perhaps he had never forgotten but had simply grown tired, for a moment, always for a moment, of being the one who must look. all this to say: the doctor was grateful to have a patient. even if he was not grateful for the patient’s pain, he could still be glad to have some hint of normalcy after the island. the silver lining of it all. 

jonathan had long since learned it was best not to ask what happened when someone came to the sickbay for treatment --- the what of it was not his area. it was the how to fix it that he must care about. and so, at the arrival of the passenger, he gestured for the man to take a seat. 

“take this, please.” he passed a cloth, crossing over to his desk to dig through his bag for the rest of his supplies. “i would prefer you not to get blood on the floor if you’re able to help it.”

[arcticdoctor]

devotedrowning​.

the doctor - it was good to see the faces of those who’d gone to the island slowly filter back, the rescue party evidently having succeeded in its task. of course, not all, or even many, had passed his door, trapped down here for the time period as he was, but still, it was a bit of brightness, a bit of hope. they didn’t all have to die out here.

‘ doctor? ‘ was he a threat or an ally? a healer or a disruption? lies and allies and balances and people, it was the kind of politics that he’d never had much patience for. there was no point in not trusting jonathan, nor, judging by the way there was still a guard down the corridor, any reason either. ‘ i’m doing alright, no-one injured but the door and myself, to my dissapoinment. ‘

the guard let him in with a heated grumble to their fellow --- but the doctor stood firm, frown on his face, until the door slid open and he could pass inside. just as quickly, the door was slid shut behind him. 

there was much to be said about the phrase we only see each other at weddings and funerals; it was something parallel to the idea that the pair seemed only destined to meet when one bore injuries. jonathan set down his bag and glanced at roi, at the battered look of them. oh, what had happened to this ship? 

“i am glad to hear it is not worse.” it so easily could have been, and jonathan did not think he was ready to have another body come to him, too soon and too bloodied. “have they given you enough supplies then --- food, water, a place to lay your head besides the floor? i’ll not have them treat you like a criminal --- to be frank, i’ll not have them treat criminals like that either.”

[rob-pattinson]

DEV PATEL “The Personal History of David Copperfield” 2019 › dir. Armando Iannucci

[arcticdoctor]

thespicn​.

❝ Companions? ❞

They repeat the word, vowels flailing, limbs tightening. They hang onto it, as though that’s what gave them pause, rather than the brusque understanding. He trails off. It’s poor etiquette, not to tarry before you go on shattering your own life. The worldview and the path bend.

A hesitation over the eggshells; then the crunch, the crush, the stepping down. He’s not ready for it; he ask companions because he wants one more moment where is still spectator, still solitary victim. He had hated being left behind; the only thing he could ever hate more was having stayed. Loneliness, all told, was passive, enmeshed on you. It’s what made it endurable in the first place. But if you were to found yourself at the center? At the trail, the trace, looking on? The active participation in your own grief. That’s what the soul recoils from.

That’s what this is about. That’s what Dr. Bhavsar is asking, and Bastien remembering.

When he echoes the question, it goes out like fumes. Syllables peter out in the crisp air, together with confusion, together with the willful, stubborn desire not to comprehend. Just a minute longer. Wholemeal, they get swallowed by the rumble of the ship, sliced onto the underbelly. Bastien stares at this man, this kind man whom he had only glimpsed under the influence of poppy, and sees the thoughts spring from him like branches. An inkling, a twig, a leaf unfolding from iris to brow. The actor’s finger can almost trace the petals, if they reached out.

Are all good things curious? Are all good things doomed?

He thinks of Cedric, still awake in the dead of night. Thinks of Cedric cradling his own arm, bordered only by the star sky, by the polar charts, buried Goddesses. The playwright’s eyes settling on Bast, then. Finding him awake. Smiling, his fingers still on his elbow. Mouthing: go to bed. Mouthing: there’s always a price.

Bastien had been so used to his whims, his mercurial ceremony, that he never thought to ask. Why did you always want to see the Arctic? What do you mean, a price? Why did you take me to bed on every night for the last weeks, as if you couldn’t take all of me, as if you wanted to mark me down, cover me with bruises and scent, marred enough to find you? Marred enough to trace you everywhere? Did you know? Did you mean to go?

He grabs the railing. Holds tight, tight, because the half-deck is spinning over. Over and under. When he blinks next, he realizes it’s flesh he’s grabbing, not metal, but cannot bring himself to apologize to the doctor. Bastien gasps. Breathes, chokes, all of it roiled tightly into one hopeless sound, and then         a laugh. Light motes dancing on their retina.

❝ I thought they fell. I thought they somehow, I don’t know, tripped into the same door. But now I believe… bon sang, Dr. Bhavsar, I think they meant to reach the Other place all along. At least one of them did. At least one of them planned it. ❞ Too dizzy, too dazed for anger; he’ll kill Cedric if he ever finds him again, bloodies his palm with the playwright’s entrails, he will kill him over and over until he apologizes. Was it a test? Did you mean for me to burn, to burn on this low and lonely fire, until I’d find the thin trail back to you? His eyes go out of focus, have to pull pupil and nail back to the doctor’s face. ❝ My God. They knew how to open the door. There are… there are some notebooks, I can, merde, I imagine I still have them. They’re not in French. Not in any alphabet I recognize, but I never did… never could abide the things he usually read. The things he usually searched for. God. ❞

jonathan grew very still very fast --- and it was strange that, at such a reveal, he noticed his own stillness more than anything. there are his feet planted on the deck, there is the weight of himself pressed against the weight of the ship. there is his tongue in his mouth, fitting behind teeth. there is his heart, the only not-still part of him. a jump and a fall. they knew how to open the door. this was what jonathan had been replaying to himself, in all this time since, wasn’t it? not just the death and the failure, but the moments leading up to it. all the steps that it took to reach there, to reach the door. to open it. 

carefully, jonathan reached out, took bastien’s face in between his hands, held them there. like he was choosing the secret, like he was choosing the world’s first fruit.

notebooks. notebooks. notebooks in an unknown language, wishing for some unknown place. explorers with no regard for consequence. was he any better? could he be, knowing what he knew now? he had fallen for the silent one once, its blood petals disguising themselves as roses; let him be better for it. finally, finally, he was ready to make meaning of it all. for he had a chance of understanding the other place, the place beyond, the only place as mysterious as death. he had one more chance. they all did. 

“show me.” 

[arcticdoctor]

paintedsins​.

TIME:11:56pm LOCATION: the sick bay STATUS: closed for @arcticdoctor

there is something secret and safe about this, folding themselves into the room like paper cranes; far away from an outside that is both unchanged from the arctic they have come to know and too different for their old kinds of survival. 

“curious. one would imagine that i of all people would have been able to foresee the death to come on this expedition.” there is no humour to his voice, merely a light emptiness. an echo of what ghost the clairvoyant used to be. “perhaps we did, you and i. perhaps we saw this right in front of us and thought it as something wondrous.” 

he curls into himself, draws his legs closer to his body. paper cranes made out of skeleton-bones. 

when he looks at the doctor again, there is a kind of heartbreak that he does not know how to name; his, or his friend’s reflected onto him. it is all the same nowadays. 

“is this all you ever wanted, my doctor dear? did we discover more than our wildest dreams and then some?” 

jonathan would never assume snow to be cruel --- but neither did that mean he would assume snow to be kind. ( and wasn’t that the way of snow, both the person and the weather? it might be something light and festive, something playful that made a laugh well inside you, made it spill from your throat; it might be something chilled and damning, a reminder that the world meant to turn you blue and cold and dead. ) jonathan looked to snow, saw something sad there still, saw a weight that neither could carry alone. 

“can’t it be both?” it felt a shame to say that now, with the scent of a corpse still heavy in the sickbay; it felt like he was brushing away the deaths that had come to them. “i can’t believe it’s been all horror, even now. and perhaps that’s something i’ve yet to learn, perhaps it’s something that makes me foolish. that’s how the silent one lured me on, did you know that? it showed me exactly that: i am not all evil, i am something that needs help. and it lured me, and pippa died, and vladya... and here we are.” 

the doctor was tired. 

“what would you like me to say, snow?” there was no sense of meanness to the question, and perhaps that made it worse. “i can tell you what i’ve told the others: i am heartbroken, i am sorry, i made a mistake. will that be enough answer?”

[arcticdoctor]

lijinmarked​.

he answers the question, her uncertainity buried deep enough that it doesn’t show in the flicker of a responding smile she manages to grace him. at least it seems he is himself, in as much as the trauma and loss and time here has left any of them human. still, it’s something - it’s a smile, it’s a sign, it’s a suggestion that this might not be the end for them all.

he turns towards her, puts down the book in his hands and as she looks around she can see the titles and the excerpts and the diagrams and - ah. whilst she may not know how to extend sympathy or kindness anymore, this, this could be something she can help in, knowledge and brute force and discovery the very thing that flows through her.

( is it healthy? is it the way that they should proceed? she can see the toll it has taken on the both of them, but her own life means so little at this point, less if she could not even protect volodya. she could dissuade him, force him to stay in reality, with the living, rather than in the search for the dead. but she has never known how to do that. )

she leans against the chair, wouldn’t know how to sit. ‘ never all the gods. but every story i’ve ever encounted, from the deific to the practically human to the animistic to the ones who’ve left this universe - what do you mean of cruelty? an animalistic need to survive? the sheer chaos and uncompromising form of nature? the explanation of the capacity of evil or the reason for the monstrous things we can do to each other? would you ever call the natural cruel? ‘

she did not seem to fit herself easily here, amongst the sickbay; if she had been a doctor, she would have been brilliant --- and, ultimately, useless. there was something to be said about containing all the knowledge of the human body, of understanding how it came together and how it could break, and of not being able to be at ease with a patient. not being able to coax their troubles from them, not being able to gain their trust. but, he supposed, that was why she was not a doctor. she could give full truths and blunt knowledge here. she could be as sharp as a quill to paper. 

“the polar bear has no cruelness to it as it tears its food apart.” a horrible reflection of his conversation with vladya, what felt like years ago. a horrible reflection, cracked with the ending of his story. what is a creature born of terror? could it ever learn to recognize anything else? “no, i would never call the natural cruel,” he agreed. “but if something has intelligence, if it has understanding to pain and to weakness... if the polar bear did not tear its food but played with it, spent weeks watching it, came to understand it, love it in its own way, and then sliced it apart delicately, in all the ways that would hurt its prey the most --- is there not cruelty to that?” 

a breath, a recollection. “it is good to know the gods were not all cruel --- but i suppose that does not mean they were kind.” 

[arcticdoctor]

arcancs​.

He nods, as if it means anything. Nods, yes, the slip inside the wolf fur, the donning of the professor’s blazer. His purchase shifts on the desk, straightens up: as if they can make it mean something. Jonathan, Gods bless him, still thinks in duplicate.

He is a thing seizing up between heart and head. A thing on the scalpel, a thing on the feather tip, fraught with the dichotomy of it all. Iskender has no words to explain: it was for nothing, and yet it wasn’t. We now know more, and yet, oh, how much less. And oh, how lesser we are for it. How lesser we’ll be, with this bargain we made. How it will never leave us.

The language of sacrifice is not one of dichotomies. It is not transaction, and not transcription, either. The language is a wound. You find it, and from that moment on, you go to bed inside it. But that is a confession too wide for grief. In his anguish, Jonathan needs the pinprick, the hook and line of continuity. Needs to conceive that there is a future. A future, and a tally, too. Some Linnaeus square they might draw, and underneath it scribble: it was not for nothing.

There will come a point        no, he will have to walk Jonathan to a point, and show him. Tell him, yes, that Iskender too has stood there, with the trowel, the cutting stone, the block where the head lays, and pressed down. That the blood, too, had brought him nothing, and yet made him who he was. A creature that can survive this. A creature that needs no tally.

❝ Settle down, Jonathan. Let’s take it bit by bit. Yes, I do imagine it’s a bridge. My initial theory, or the gist I could still flesh out, was that this thing is a God. A lost God, a dead one, maybe: trapped in the ice. And where else? If there was any place untouched enough to let Gods to sleep, a place where They have not yet been beaten, or scared, or sold out of… then, surely, it would be this one. But now… no, now I think you are correct. It’s a passage torn asunder. A thing that never should have been. Not here, not in this world. So, first point: why did it appear? What had gone wrong? How long ago? And, finally, the big fish: is it recurrent? Will it spread inland? Will doorways like this once stretch all the way to the continent, and us still speechless, still dazed as to the why and how of it? ❞

Throughout the question, Iskender seeks to meet his eyes. To ground them, maybe; counter their pacing from page to page with some stability. The professor registers what Jon is asking, what Jon isn’t. His mouth closes, sighs. A mark like an understanding.

Oh, he could play along, the naive swing of phrase and theories, but it’s only a tail-chase. Comparative symbolism, the name of the trade. It will get them nowhere: this, too, he knows, and cannot tell Jon. Futility must be reached at one’s own pace; it had taken him years to admit that his knowledge, most of it, was nothing but a sequence that kept on turning in the same barren corner. In the same place from which all things worth knowing, all things worth chasing, have long left. The trailokya, the circles woven by proto-Celtic tribes, the charts of Babylon. Repetitive, down to the last link; down to the last question hauled, and howled, from the ancients to today. From the Armenian khachkar, to the wrought spirals in the mihrab, all cultures shared it. Spirals interlinked. Knots and suspended angles. All who have lived, and dreamed, did so under the promise of continuity. And all of them, inside it, had the same question: what happens where the circles touch? What happens where they open?

❝ You will step through it, then? If we find it again? ❞

“i’m not certain i believe in gods,” jonathan admitted --- the first utterance of such an idea he had ever given another. he had played his mother’s game for a long while. he had played the part of an english boy, good and holy until he was not; he had played the part of forgetting his mother’s beliefs, of following her wishes, of thinking of concepts like the trailokya only when he was alone and safe. 

but now iskender was speaking of gods trapped in ice, and it rushed him --- gods could not be imagined by the likes of them. when he said he was not certain of his belief, perhaps he only meant: those gods written about were pale imitations of the creatures that existed. “but i don’t think that matters anymore. it is here, in whatever form. and if it begins to spread, i suppose our questions will shift. i cannot think of that yet, i cannot. i can only think of what we saw. of this passage. of where it leads.” 

iskender knew him. iskender knew him before, and iskender knew him now. 

you will step through it, then?

“yes,” jonathan answered, with the same flushed cheeks of the first person who had ever answered temptation. the truth, at last. jonathan, stepping through the door. jonathan, meeting vladimir there. jonathan, suddenly lit up with all the knowledge he had ever sought. ( who was the snake, and who was the apple? ) yet the truth dimmed quickly, the cost making itself known. the door closing, him trapped there. could it be a trap when he asked for it, when it was all he wanted for so long? but who was on the other side of him? who was he leaving behind? jack fox, losing another. jack fox, brilliant, beautiful man, alone. and jonathan, without him too. what was knowledge worth? he faltered, “--- maybe. oh, i don’t know.” he rubbed his hands down his face, took a breath. “i know that i would have. even just a few weeks ago. i think the knowledge is...too special to let go so easily. but now?” 

“iskender, i believe that love has caught me here. and i’m not sure where to fit all these things: grief and love and loss and the desire to understand it all. if they can all exist with each other.” 

or if a choice would have to be made again. the temptation played out. 

“would you step through then?”