Tuesday Oct 17: talking about father, then meeting him for the first time in all these years in a dream.
Fallout Shelter
Sepdet took a quick nap this evening. But she wakes up with a start and a whine, hand slipping to her klaive before remembering where she is.
Sebek puts a hand on your side. He is in the bed next to you, watching you sleep.
Sebek says, ~Relax, it is only me.~
Sepdet leans against the boy's shoulder, breathing beginning to slow down. She squeezes her hands open and closed. ~Sometimes,~ she stammers. ~Sometimes I wonder whether it might be easier if we'd been Get or something.~
Sebek frowns. ~I do not think being a Get would have been good. They don't like small metis boys, and definately not small girls.~
Sepdet bites her lip, smiling faintly. ~I suppose so. Still, I think we would dream less.~
Sebek caresses your cheek. ~What kind of dreams do you have?~
Sepdet shivers. ~True ones,~ she murmurs uneasily. ~Sometimes.~
Sebek frowns. ~I have some like that too, but I don't want them to go away.~
Sepdet sighs wistfully. ~Sometimes I don't want to know, when the dreams are warnings. Sometimes I'd rather hope. But one can always hope.~
Sebek says, ~Can you change what happens in your dreams?~
Sepdet considers that. ~Often, they come like flashes in my mind. A story someone whispers in my ear, which I can only see and hear. Others, I can...ask questions, and search, and seek.~
Sebek nods. ~I have dreams like that too.~
Sebek says, ~Do you have the good dreams too?~
Sepdet smiles faintly. ~Yes. I dream about the desert, and being hungry, but out under the sky. I dream of the Wheel, the trees here. I dream of my friends.~
Sebek shakes his head. ~I'm sorry, I mean the _other_ dreams. Sometimes I have dreams about how I will spread the hope to our tribe. Do you have those dreams?~
Sepdet bites her lip. ~I don't see things I'm going to do, usually. I see other people. Like...like Joseph Catches-the-soul, leading the Wheel as alpha. That's a good dream.~
Sebek frowns. ~You don't?~
Sepdet shakes her head. ~Do I need to, my brother?~ She ducks her eyes. ~I just know. When I'm watching, and suddenly I know I have to do something. A few weeks ago, Anpwhotep was starting to break, because of the bad things that were happening. He was falling into Harano. I was trying to comfort him. And then that voice came to me, and I was speaking to him as Sepdet, as...as one who must be listened to. Like when Anubis speaks, and all of us heed him. Anpwhotep heard me. He's better now.~
Sebek nods. ~Okay. I'm just worried, that's all.~
Sebek kisses you on the forehead.
Sepdet smiles tightly. ~Sebek, do you ever see Father?~
Sebek shakes his head. ~No. I'm not sure I want to.~
Sepdet stammers, ~I... he meant for us to be Hope. He shouldn't have. He shouldn't have done it. But he loved us enough to give his whole life for us. I'm angry with him, but I can't help but want him anyway.~
Sebek shrugs. ~I am just curious as to why he left me instead of letting me go with you.~
Sepdet looks pained. ~The Dancers took him, Sebek. He stayed behind, trying to fend them off.~
Sebek shakes his head. ~No, why did he not give me to mother like he gave you?~
Sepdet's hands twitch. ~I don't understand,~ she murmurs softly. ~He gave his life for this stupid dream he had, of hope. I don't see why he didn't send you with me. He was crazy to break the Law, but that's a different sort of madness.~
Sebek says, ~It doesn't matter anymore, sister. We are together and together we can do anything.~
Sepdet smiles. ~Almost anything.~ She looks down at her klaive. ~We've got to be careful. Joseph was upset that we came out of hiding last night, though he was glad to see me. While we're down here, the Dancers don't know where to find us, but there's no guarantee aboveground.~
Sebek says, ~I don't want to hide from them. It is they who should hide.~
Sebek sighs, looking frustrated.
Sepdet slips a hand on your shoulder. ~Gently. I think you are as brave as Coyote is reckless. I had two friends with me, a week ago, and the one Dancer nearly killed me. We are Seers, not fighters, and the twins of hope can still die before their time in battle, if we are not careful.~
Sebek breathes a ragged sigh. ~How long do we have to stay like this?~
Sepdet bites her lip. ~Until Father and the pack have tracked the scent to the enemy's lair. Last time, the Dancers escaped, because I wasn't careful enough.~
Sebek frowns. ~Until then I am stuck here reading those comic book things?~
Sepdet ducks her head, beginning to laugh softly. ~A week ago. A week ago I thought I might never see you smile, or even frown. Now you are pacing the walls as badly as your sister Coyote. Perhaps my fear for your safety has made me timid. I /promised/ you would not have to face them again. But I can't keep you from the sky.~
Sebek brightens up. ~Then we can go outside soon?~
Sepdet nods emphatically. ~Soon.I'll call Father, and perhaps we can go out tomorrow night... and perhaps we can go find Anubis, to look you over.~
Long distance to Sebek: Sepdet can't take Sebek to the caern until she's proven to somebody whose judgement she trusts that he's not harboring--unknowingly--any Dancer-spawned problems.
Sebek pages: Good idea.
Sebek pages: You never know who might have a chest-burster bane.
Long distance to Sebek: Sepdet swats you. I've had to deal with that before.
Sebek pages: I know.
Long distance to Sebek: Sepdet blinks.
Sebek pages: Gray-Ears, correct?
You paged Sebek with 'That was one of them. Shaz was the other--blew up in my face while I was trying to do Mother's touch on her.'.
From afar, Sebek grins. I know. Well, goodnight.
______
The dreaming: Father
Slick pages: Tonight, when you dream, you dream of yourself as a child. Sleeping with the jackals. Running with them. One of them. You remember in this dream yourself running across the hot sand of the desert. The wind has whipped the sand up around you in clouds. You top a sand dune to come face to face with a man who looks like your father has been described to you at the time you were born.
This man stands motionless in front of you, wind whipping the clothes about his thin form.
Sepdet draws herself up straight, eyes wide and hopeful. She starts to reach out with both hands, then hesitates. ~You look...you look well. I was beginning to be afraid you were dead.~
The man's eyes are distant, restrained. His voice is small and not strong. Almost to himself he speaks, so low are his words that you must strain to hear them. ~I have been...in another place. For so long. Sometimes I forget what it is like here. How fast you have been growing.~
Sepdet quivers like a racing-animal trying to hold herself still, toes twitching in the sand. ~I found my brother. Mother never told me.~ Her voice is tight.
The man slowly nods his head, once. ~I know. She would not have. She thought he was dead. She believed in me by then.~ He lifts his gaze to the swirling sand, not looking at you or meeting your eyes.
He says to the moving sands, ~Do not blame her.~
Sepdet's eyes widen. She takes a step forward. ~Tell me what you mean. You were wrong from the start--you should /never/ have broken the Law. But once he was born--why didn't you send him with us? Why did he get left behind? He was Hope too.~
The image wavers as if it has trouble holding itself together under this assault of questions. ~You will never know how many times I told myself that. Not her, not your mother, but do not think it was far from my mind.~ He almost snarls. ~You were not there.~ The voice is hard though still tinged with regret. ~You do not know what I saw. You did not have to make both the choices I did.~ He lowers his voice. ~Both.~
Sepdet's eyes glisten. ~Father. I need an answer. When he tells me that you and mother hated him, I have no words to prove him wrong. When I ask him to help me find you, he doesn't understand why.~
The head looks up and around, as if hearing these words for the first time and understanding what you have said. His voice is strained, growing more desperate. ~Your mother did not hate him. She hardly knew the boy. She did not know. How could I tell her? How?~ He drops to his knees in the sand, seeming ready to dissolve. ~She was wise, my love, wise. She would not have listened if I had told her all I knew.~ He quiets, marginally, and tries to meet your eyes, unsuccessfully. ~You know the story. It was not time. Ra can only tell me if I truly know who you are.~ The last is almost a question.
Sepdet says softly, ~I am Sepdet as you named me. I am Harbinger of Hope for the Wheel Renewed. I am twin to a boy named Sebek, who holds as much anger in him as I do love for my people. I am all these things, and I am also still looking for you. Give me a road--just one step, one stone. I will find you. I was Ma'i's daughter. But now I think it is Sepdet's father who needs help. Let me find you.~
The man's head shakes, almost imperceptibly, no. And the voice is now laden with regret. ~I don't think that I can. I made two choices so many years ago. One in a lonely den with only your mother to hold. And one upon the umbral sand, moons later. I don't think I am ready to face that I may have chosen wrong. I have not changed much since that time, not grown like you and your brother.~ He reaches out a hand, almost tentatively, towards you.
Sepdet does not take the hand. Instead she closes the gap, reaching to embrace the man with her arms, face set in a steady, quiet calm that is her mother's as much as her father's. ~Sa my father. Here is Hope, which you made. Take it, and walk free of the sand. Come back, or you will never know whether or not you were right.~
The voice begins to dissolve as you approach it and the figure is insubstantial; your arms pass through it. It tatters and drifts away like old cloth. More like a thought than spoken words comes a lingering question that hisses like the sand all about the air. ~Are you though?~
Sepdet's hands clench at the sand slipping through her fingers. She stands still and motionless, eyes braced against the biting wind, tearless and angry. She stands still until her vision is completely blurred, and then she drops to jackal-form, whirls, and runs.
The dreams slowly fades around you until you waken in the fallout shelter with Sebek still in your arms. He, too, twitches in sleep as if he dreamed.
