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rainbowfic2025-02-11 03:44 pm
paradoxcase) wrote in rainbowfic2025-02-11 03:44 pm
Entry tags:
Ecru #2 [The Fulcrum]
Name: Directly Connected
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Ecru #2: Ask
Styles and Supplies: None
Word Count: 1894
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Characters: Setsiana, Sapfita
In-Universe Date: Night of 1911.7?8?.?.?
Summary: Setsiana gets some answers from Sapfita.
The day had passed slowly. Qhoroali had kept trying to engage her with questions about her research, or talk to her about things she’d written in her future, but Setsiana had taken to giving one-word answers, unwilling to help her on her quest to kill Sapfita. Eventually, Cyaru had returned and pulled Qhoroali away for some task or other. Alone in the locked apartment, Setsiana had examined the lock on the double doors, and had realized that she really did not remember much of anything about lockpicking from her childhood, and certainly didn’t have a tool with which to do it. The door had opened then, revealing Liselye with a bowl of stew, but was quickly locked behind her. She’d been lead into the room on the other side of the open doorway, which turned out to be a small kitchen with a table in the middle, and Liselye had sat with her at the table while she ate her meal, seeming distracted. Then she’d been taken back to the bedroom where she’d woken up that morning and locked in for the night.
With sleep came Sapfita, as always. For the moment, at least, it seemed unlikely that Setsiana would be given the agency required to make any decisions that would cut her off from the future event that Sapfita claimed made the dreams possible. They sat facing each other on a flat plain of nothing while Setsiana thought about how to phrase her question, bathed in the glow of the ethereal light source beyond Sapfita’s silhouette. At last she spoke.
“Is it true what Qhoroali said?” she asked. “Is this — what I imagine this is — simply not possible, is this all just a dream — a regular dream — a fantasy with no substance? Am I truly alone now, then?”
“Do you really expect me to say yes?” asked Sapfita. “If I were just your fantasy, just your imaginary friend, would I tell you that? Do you think you would willingly imagine such a thing for yourself?”
“Do you have an explanation for how this is possible, or don’t you?” Setsiana said, somewhat crossly.
“Oh, that’s what you meant. Yes, Qhoroali is correct about what she said, about how dreams of me usually work — for everyone except you. We are… directly connected. I told you before that this is possible because of an event in your lifetime; that event forms a direct connection between us, which I don’t have with anyone else. I know you’re probably going to ask about Mureiyo now, but I don’t actually have the ability to switch myself between dimensions like that. That kind of ability belongs only to a higher power. Some of them get so close, and yet so far.” She paused for a moment. “What language do you think we speak, when we are here together?”
Disconcertingly, Setsiana found that she had no idea. She couldn’t say what language Sapfita had just spoken in, and she couldn’t figure out what language would come out of her mouth when she replied. But Sapfita had been speaking to her like this since she was a small child, so there was really only one answer that made any sense. “Vrelian,” she said. “Real Vrelian, not whatever they speak in 1911.” She tried to listen to herself and see if she was right, but found she could not identify what sounds she had actually used.
“Oh, by no means,” said Sapfita, sounding amused. “I never really learned that language well enough to use it like this… well, not without you making fun of me, probably. We are not speaking any language here — we speak mind to mind, directly, because, as I said previously, we are directly connected. The medium of translating our thoughts into sounds and then translating the sounds back into thoughts is an unnecessary circumlocution for us and only has the potential to create miscommunication.”
“If we are just trading thoughts directly, why is it that you don’t always understand me, or I don’t always understand you? Why do I have to ask you these questions for clarification?” As she spoke, Setsiana realized that she was not actually moving her mouth.
“Why don’t I just give you all the information I want you to know in one transmission, or just take everything I need from you?” asked Sapfita. “Personal preference. That is how it normally goes when I ‘speak’ to others in a much more primitive fashion through the dreams they are used to, but I want to have actual conversations with you. Interaction. We are also quite a bit outside of Time here, so this conversation is not really happening in any particular order, it really does all happen at once, technically. But you experience different states of knowing more and knowing less, all simultaneously, and interpret the states where you know less as occurring earlier in time, and will remember them happening in that order. As for me… I have to be very careful about what I give you. There will be a time when that is no longer the case, from your perspective.”
Setsiana tried to decide whether or not this made sense, but was not sure. “If these ‘states’ as you say, are causally linked to each other, and I gain knowledge in them according to what happened in the state that caused the current one, is that not the same thing as there being a timeline linking these states? Is a timeline, personal or global, not inherently defined by such a causal trajectory?”
“For you, maybe, there is no difference. You certainly have a personal timeline, and it is true, you might be able to say that that timeline continues to exist here, outside of Time, in some way. But I do not have a personal timeline. Well, not in this location, at least. You are able to travel along the global timeline within Time, but you cannot, for example, revert back to the state of being a child — you can go to the time when you were a child, and observe your child self, but you would still be an adult there, because you are still bound by your personal timeline. I cannot do anything like that, because I do not have a personal timeline. I can ‘travel’ between states freely here, but no matter what I do, there is never a duplicate of me, the way there would be a duplicate of you. I am never able to be in a state of observing myself; I can only be myself, in whatever state. And for me, the states I am all in simultaneously are not so simply connected by a single line of causality. Just for example, imagine if someone desired to commit a murder: they would go through states of plotting the murder, actually committing the murder, being caught, being tried, being sentenced, and finally enduring the punishment, in order of causality, which as you say, ordinarily determines the direction of Time within a timeline, or the order in which you experience events in your personal timeline. But if that person existed as I do, the state of enduring punishment might actually be the exact same state as the state of plotting the murder, or the state of committing the murder might be the same state as the state of being sentenced, with the causally intervening states of being caught and tried occurring separately. There would not be an orderly way to arrange these states into a coherent timeline as timelines exist within Time.”
“Why is this example about murder?”
“Don’t worry about it, it’s just an example. It’s not something that’s going to happen to you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Setsiana sat in the darkness, with her hands folded pensively. “I don’t know if I can accept it, that I have some unique and special relationship with God that no one else has. Why me? What have I done to earn it? It should be someone talented like Yeimicha, or someone who has put in the years of study and service, like Priestess Chuanyoa. Not me.”
“And how do you know you don’t become someone like Priestess Chuanyoa in your future? No, sorry, scratch that, I honestly wouldn’t want that for you. The reason why — it’s the same as the reason why Qhoroali kidnapped you, really.”
“Why did she kidnap me?” Setsiana thought back to the earlier part of the day’s conversation. “Because I told her to? Because some future version of me told her that?”
“Right. She kidnapped you because she knew that it was something that was going to happen. She was… I don’t want to say ‘fulfilling her destiny’ or something like that, but she was closing the loop, so to speak. She saw that it had happened and reasoned that it must be necessary, so she made it happen. This is a lot of what I do, actually — I see what happens at all points in Time, in all timelines, and I do what I can to make sure all of those things really happen. So here I am, guiding you as you progress through Time until one day one version of you experiences the event I mentioned, because that’s something that happens, and it very much needs to happen, or at least, events that are tied to it do.”
“What happens if those things don’t happen?”
“I don’t know, not precisely,” said Sapfita, “and there are not very many things that I don’t know. But it would almost certainly be something catastrophic. And also…” she hesitated for a moment, as if weighing a decision. “I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t talk to you like this. I’ve already lost so much.”
Setsiana wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Just a few days ago, she’d been pondering what Sapfita’s relationship with the Creator was, and the origins of Her powers, and her history, but the things She was telling her now didn’t seem like the kind of story Setsiana had been looking for, the kind she could write up and publish. And could she really understand the hardships and trials of a god’s life? That seemed like the kind of thing that was likely to get lost in translation through the dimensions that separated them. Maybe she would wake up from this dream, and nothing she’d heard would make sense to her.
Instead of addressing Sapfita’s last statement, Setsiana asked: “I will escape from these people and return to my own time, right?” Qhoroali did not strike her as a particularly competent kidnapper and she was fairly certain she would escape eventually, but she wanted to be sure.
“Well… you will return to 1647, I will give you that. But I want you to know: there is a purpose to this. You are here for a reason. A real reason, and not just the reason that I saw that this happened to you and then played my part in it. You do have a role to play here beyond being an unwilling prisoner. Have strength, and always remember that I love you.”
Setsiana wanted to ask what that role could possibly be, but she could already feel the strange transition between the dreams and the waking world taking hold, and she felt herself fall away from Sapfita and back into her bed.
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Ecru #2: Ask
Styles and Supplies: None
Word Count: 1894
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Characters: Setsiana, Sapfita
In-Universe Date: Night of 1911.7?8?.?.?
Summary: Setsiana gets some answers from Sapfita.
The day had passed slowly. Qhoroali had kept trying to engage her with questions about her research, or talk to her about things she’d written in her future, but Setsiana had taken to giving one-word answers, unwilling to help her on her quest to kill Sapfita. Eventually, Cyaru had returned and pulled Qhoroali away for some task or other. Alone in the locked apartment, Setsiana had examined the lock on the double doors, and had realized that she really did not remember much of anything about lockpicking from her childhood, and certainly didn’t have a tool with which to do it. The door had opened then, revealing Liselye with a bowl of stew, but was quickly locked behind her. She’d been lead into the room on the other side of the open doorway, which turned out to be a small kitchen with a table in the middle, and Liselye had sat with her at the table while she ate her meal, seeming distracted. Then she’d been taken back to the bedroom where she’d woken up that morning and locked in for the night.
With sleep came Sapfita, as always. For the moment, at least, it seemed unlikely that Setsiana would be given the agency required to make any decisions that would cut her off from the future event that Sapfita claimed made the dreams possible. They sat facing each other on a flat plain of nothing while Setsiana thought about how to phrase her question, bathed in the glow of the ethereal light source beyond Sapfita’s silhouette. At last she spoke.
“Is it true what Qhoroali said?” she asked. “Is this — what I imagine this is — simply not possible, is this all just a dream — a regular dream — a fantasy with no substance? Am I truly alone now, then?”
“Do you really expect me to say yes?” asked Sapfita. “If I were just your fantasy, just your imaginary friend, would I tell you that? Do you think you would willingly imagine such a thing for yourself?”
“Do you have an explanation for how this is possible, or don’t you?” Setsiana said, somewhat crossly.
“Oh, that’s what you meant. Yes, Qhoroali is correct about what she said, about how dreams of me usually work — for everyone except you. We are… directly connected. I told you before that this is possible because of an event in your lifetime; that event forms a direct connection between us, which I don’t have with anyone else. I know you’re probably going to ask about Mureiyo now, but I don’t actually have the ability to switch myself between dimensions like that. That kind of ability belongs only to a higher power. Some of them get so close, and yet so far.” She paused for a moment. “What language do you think we speak, when we are here together?”
Disconcertingly, Setsiana found that she had no idea. She couldn’t say what language Sapfita had just spoken in, and she couldn’t figure out what language would come out of her mouth when she replied. But Sapfita had been speaking to her like this since she was a small child, so there was really only one answer that made any sense. “Vrelian,” she said. “Real Vrelian, not whatever they speak in 1911.” She tried to listen to herself and see if she was right, but found she could not identify what sounds she had actually used.
“Oh, by no means,” said Sapfita, sounding amused. “I never really learned that language well enough to use it like this… well, not without you making fun of me, probably. We are not speaking any language here — we speak mind to mind, directly, because, as I said previously, we are directly connected. The medium of translating our thoughts into sounds and then translating the sounds back into thoughts is an unnecessary circumlocution for us and only has the potential to create miscommunication.”
“If we are just trading thoughts directly, why is it that you don’t always understand me, or I don’t always understand you? Why do I have to ask you these questions for clarification?” As she spoke, Setsiana realized that she was not actually moving her mouth.
“Why don’t I just give you all the information I want you to know in one transmission, or just take everything I need from you?” asked Sapfita. “Personal preference. That is how it normally goes when I ‘speak’ to others in a much more primitive fashion through the dreams they are used to, but I want to have actual conversations with you. Interaction. We are also quite a bit outside of Time here, so this conversation is not really happening in any particular order, it really does all happen at once, technically. But you experience different states of knowing more and knowing less, all simultaneously, and interpret the states where you know less as occurring earlier in time, and will remember them happening in that order. As for me… I have to be very careful about what I give you. There will be a time when that is no longer the case, from your perspective.”
Setsiana tried to decide whether or not this made sense, but was not sure. “If these ‘states’ as you say, are causally linked to each other, and I gain knowledge in them according to what happened in the state that caused the current one, is that not the same thing as there being a timeline linking these states? Is a timeline, personal or global, not inherently defined by such a causal trajectory?”
“For you, maybe, there is no difference. You certainly have a personal timeline, and it is true, you might be able to say that that timeline continues to exist here, outside of Time, in some way. But I do not have a personal timeline. Well, not in this location, at least. You are able to travel along the global timeline within Time, but you cannot, for example, revert back to the state of being a child — you can go to the time when you were a child, and observe your child self, but you would still be an adult there, because you are still bound by your personal timeline. I cannot do anything like that, because I do not have a personal timeline. I can ‘travel’ between states freely here, but no matter what I do, there is never a duplicate of me, the way there would be a duplicate of you. I am never able to be in a state of observing myself; I can only be myself, in whatever state. And for me, the states I am all in simultaneously are not so simply connected by a single line of causality. Just for example, imagine if someone desired to commit a murder: they would go through states of plotting the murder, actually committing the murder, being caught, being tried, being sentenced, and finally enduring the punishment, in order of causality, which as you say, ordinarily determines the direction of Time within a timeline, or the order in which you experience events in your personal timeline. But if that person existed as I do, the state of enduring punishment might actually be the exact same state as the state of plotting the murder, or the state of committing the murder might be the same state as the state of being sentenced, with the causally intervening states of being caught and tried occurring separately. There would not be an orderly way to arrange these states into a coherent timeline as timelines exist within Time.”
“Why is this example about murder?”
“Don’t worry about it, it’s just an example. It’s not something that’s going to happen to you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Setsiana sat in the darkness, with her hands folded pensively. “I don’t know if I can accept it, that I have some unique and special relationship with God that no one else has. Why me? What have I done to earn it? It should be someone talented like Yeimicha, or someone who has put in the years of study and service, like Priestess Chuanyoa. Not me.”
“And how do you know you don’t become someone like Priestess Chuanyoa in your future? No, sorry, scratch that, I honestly wouldn’t want that for you. The reason why — it’s the same as the reason why Qhoroali kidnapped you, really.”
“Why did she kidnap me?” Setsiana thought back to the earlier part of the day’s conversation. “Because I told her to? Because some future version of me told her that?”
“Right. She kidnapped you because she knew that it was something that was going to happen. She was… I don’t want to say ‘fulfilling her destiny’ or something like that, but she was closing the loop, so to speak. She saw that it had happened and reasoned that it must be necessary, so she made it happen. This is a lot of what I do, actually — I see what happens at all points in Time, in all timelines, and I do what I can to make sure all of those things really happen. So here I am, guiding you as you progress through Time until one day one version of you experiences the event I mentioned, because that’s something that happens, and it very much needs to happen, or at least, events that are tied to it do.”
“What happens if those things don’t happen?”
“I don’t know, not precisely,” said Sapfita, “and there are not very many things that I don’t know. But it would almost certainly be something catastrophic. And also…” she hesitated for a moment, as if weighing a decision. “I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t talk to you like this. I’ve already lost so much.”
Setsiana wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Just a few days ago, she’d been pondering what Sapfita’s relationship with the Creator was, and the origins of Her powers, and her history, but the things She was telling her now didn’t seem like the kind of story Setsiana had been looking for, the kind she could write up and publish. And could she really understand the hardships and trials of a god’s life? That seemed like the kind of thing that was likely to get lost in translation through the dimensions that separated them. Maybe she would wake up from this dream, and nothing she’d heard would make sense to her.
Instead of addressing Sapfita’s last statement, Setsiana asked: “I will escape from these people and return to my own time, right?” Qhoroali did not strike her as a particularly competent kidnapper and she was fairly certain she would escape eventually, but she wanted to be sure.
“Well… you will return to 1647, I will give you that. But I want you to know: there is a purpose to this. You are here for a reason. A real reason, and not just the reason that I saw that this happened to you and then played my part in it. You do have a role to play here beyond being an unwilling prisoner. Have strength, and always remember that I love you.”
Setsiana wanted to ask what that role could possibly be, but she could already feel the strange transition between the dreams and the waking world taking hold, and she felt herself fall away from Sapfita and back into her bed.
no subject
Sapfita becomes more and more fascinating with each new chapter!
no subject
Thank you!
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no subject
Thank you! Some of the questions will not really be answered until the end of the first part... and I am 60k words in on the first draft now and haven't gotten there yet.