paradoxcase (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
paradoxcase) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
rainbowfic2025-10-07 05:26 pm
paradoxcase) wrote in rainbowfic2025-10-07 05:26 pm
Realgar #5 [The Fulcrum]
Name: Déjà Vu
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Realgar #5: Draft
Styles and Supplies: Diptych, Brushes (October 7 2025: Candor), Glitter (this poem)
Word Count: 1214
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Characters: Setsiana, Qhoroali
In-Universe Date: 1912.3.4.5-6
Summary: Setsiana has a strange dream, and a strange waking conversation.
A week passed in which Setsiana had a series of strange dreams. Not the lucid dreams she normally had of Sapfita, but not normal ones, either. In some she achieved partial lucidity, and in others she had no say in the direction of the dream at all, and no knowledge that it was a dream until after she woke, which was out of the ordinary, for her. Sometimes the dreams were of familiar things, or of her past life in Syarhrít, and sometimes they were of places she’d never been to, or of events that were unfamiliar to her, though they often felt very familiar to her while she was dreaming them. And often Qhoroali was in them, even when she was dreaming about things that Qhoroali should logically have never even known about.
One night, she dreamt that she was back in Priestess Fyäccheira’s office, presenting her paper for review again. But instead of Priestess Fyäccheira, Qhoroali stood behind the desk while Priestess Fyäccheira’s assistant organized stacks of papers in a cabinet. Additionally, it was the wrong paper that was being reviewed.
“This is intriguing,” Qhoroali was saying. “A diversion from Sapfita Herself… an investigation of the stuff that Time is made of, independent of the personality behind it, via empirical examination of the timelines. Clever. Where did this chemical diagram come from? Do you have some of this substance with you to analyze? If so, where did you get it from? Were you able to extract it directly from a Mirror?”
“I don’t have it with me anymore,” Setsiana said, feeling the loss of agency she often felt in dreams of late, her mouth forming words without her consent, and without her foreknowledge of what they were going to be. She let the dream pull her along, curious to see what would come next, basking in the glow of Qhoroali’s praise. “It came from a dream of Sapfita. Not mine — it was a dream that was recorded by another priestess, a few weeks ago.” The name of the other priestess seemed just out of reach, slipping away from her awareness like water flowing through her fingers.
Qhoroali seemed amazed. “Someone brought it back from a dream? You can do that?”
“Yes,” said Setsiana; inside, from her perspective of watching the dream carry her along, she was also surprised. “That’s how a lot of these chemical diagrams get into the papers. The priestesses bring things back with them, from dreams.” She couldn’t work out if Qhoroali was actually Qhoroali here, or some stand-in for Priestess Fyäccheira; Priestess Fyäccheira would have known this already, she was sure. She herself didn’t doubt the truth of it; as she’d said the words, she’d known implicitly that they were true.
“Incredible. Well, I’ll have to take this one to Cusäfä, then, and make some more of this stuff. A 17th century paper to go with the 22nd century one that was already on my list.”
17th century and 22nd century — those dates sounded familiar, but Setsiana couldn’t remember where from. Qhoroali must really be Qhoroali in this dream, if she was talking about Cusäfä now. So why was she in Priestess Fyäccheira’s office? It didn’t make sense.
“The 17th century paper was mine?” she found herself asking, although she didn’t know why. Obviously the paper was hers, wasn’t Qhoroali there to do a review of it?
“Of course,” said Qhoroali. “You didn’t guess? Most of the really interesting ones are yours, actually.”
Setsiana wanted to ask more questions, wanted to know more about that paper, and wanted to hear Qhoroali say that her papers were interesting again, but the dream had other plans, and slipped away from her awareness.
In the morning, she found herself eating breakfast with Qhoroali in the kitchen, but the dream was still on her mind. 17th century and 22nd century… she remembered now where she had heard that before. When they had visited Cusäfä, Qhoroali had brought two papers with her that had been from those centuries. She must have gotten that piece of data mixed up with the mention of Cusäfä in the dream somehow. If she remembered the experiments they’d done with Peatäro, the 17th century substance had been the one that Qhoroali had observed about a month ago, with the ghostly tendrils, while the 22nd century one had been the one that had attacked them more recently, because of the lightning. Hadn’t there been some strange element in it? That’s right, Qhoroali had said it was called “dreamstuff”.
Probably the actual papers from the waking world had nothing at all to do with what she’d dreamed, but she felt compelled to ask about them, anyway. “Do you remember when we went to see Cusäfä?” she asked. “I’m curious about the papers you showed him, then.”
Qhoroali winced. “Don’t talk to me about that ‘dreamstuff’ substance,” she said. “I had quite enough of it last week, and things have been weird since then.”
“I was actually interested in the other paper,” said Setsiana. “The 17th century one. What was it about?”
“Oh, that one. Basically, it was an investigation of the stuff that Time is made of, not from the standpoint of the materialists I told you about earlier, but independent of the personality behind it, which is to say, Sapfita Herself. It was done by investigation and empirical analysis of the timelines themselves, via a Mirror.” Suddenly, she squeezed her eyes shut, and her brow creased. “Sorry, I feel like we’ve had this conversation before… but I can’t remember when. Didn’t we?”
Setsiana felt a strange sense of déjà vu come over her. It was very like the conversation they’d had in her dream, but that had just been a regular dream. Had she been remembering a real conversation they’d had when she dreamed it? If there had been a real conversation about it, she couldn’t remember it anymore, but that seemed like the only explanation. “If we did already have this conversation, I’ve forgotten it,” she said. “Was there anything else about that paper?”
“Just that you’d gotten that substance, the one that we had Cusäfä make, from another priestess who’d brought it back from a dream of Sapfita,” said Qhoroali. “Or… well, you must have said you did in the paper somewhere, or else I wouldn’t know about it.” She blinked slightly, in confusion. “Or I just read somewhere else that priestesses bring these substances back from dreams, and I already knew that you’d never recorded any dreams yourself.”
“I did what?” asked Setsiana, lost.
“Not you, here. You in the other timeline, where you stayed at your temple and wrote that paper. It was one of yours. Didn’t you guess? 17th century, and all. That was the whole reason I brought you with me when we went to visit Cusäfä, actually — since the substance was from your paper, I thought you could give me some insight when you saw Cusäfä make it in person. Then it didn’t work out that way and we wound up having to go get him screws instead, and I completely forgot about that.”
“Ah,” said Setsiana, somewhat at a loss. “Well, I don’t know anything about it, unfortunately — the paper, or the substance. Maybe I’ll take a look at it sometime.”
Story: The Fulcrum
Colors: Realgar #5: Draft
Styles and Supplies: Diptych, Brushes (October 7 2025: Candor), Glitter (this poem)
Word Count: 1214
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Characters: Setsiana, Qhoroali
In-Universe Date: 1912.3.4.5-6
Summary: Setsiana has a strange dream, and a strange waking conversation.
A week passed in which Setsiana had a series of strange dreams. Not the lucid dreams she normally had of Sapfita, but not normal ones, either. In some she achieved partial lucidity, and in others she had no say in the direction of the dream at all, and no knowledge that it was a dream until after she woke, which was out of the ordinary, for her. Sometimes the dreams were of familiar things, or of her past life in Syarhrít, and sometimes they were of places she’d never been to, or of events that were unfamiliar to her, though they often felt very familiar to her while she was dreaming them. And often Qhoroali was in them, even when she was dreaming about things that Qhoroali should logically have never even known about.
One night, she dreamt that she was back in Priestess Fyäccheira’s office, presenting her paper for review again. But instead of Priestess Fyäccheira, Qhoroali stood behind the desk while Priestess Fyäccheira’s assistant organized stacks of papers in a cabinet. Additionally, it was the wrong paper that was being reviewed.
“This is intriguing,” Qhoroali was saying. “A diversion from Sapfita Herself… an investigation of the stuff that Time is made of, independent of the personality behind it, via empirical examination of the timelines. Clever. Where did this chemical diagram come from? Do you have some of this substance with you to analyze? If so, where did you get it from? Were you able to extract it directly from a Mirror?”
“I don’t have it with me anymore,” Setsiana said, feeling the loss of agency she often felt in dreams of late, her mouth forming words without her consent, and without her foreknowledge of what they were going to be. She let the dream pull her along, curious to see what would come next, basking in the glow of Qhoroali’s praise. “It came from a dream of Sapfita. Not mine — it was a dream that was recorded by another priestess, a few weeks ago.” The name of the other priestess seemed just out of reach, slipping away from her awareness like water flowing through her fingers.
Qhoroali seemed amazed. “Someone brought it back from a dream? You can do that?”
“Yes,” said Setsiana; inside, from her perspective of watching the dream carry her along, she was also surprised. “That’s how a lot of these chemical diagrams get into the papers. The priestesses bring things back with them, from dreams.” She couldn’t work out if Qhoroali was actually Qhoroali here, or some stand-in for Priestess Fyäccheira; Priestess Fyäccheira would have known this already, she was sure. She herself didn’t doubt the truth of it; as she’d said the words, she’d known implicitly that they were true.
“Incredible. Well, I’ll have to take this one to Cusäfä, then, and make some more of this stuff. A 17th century paper to go with the 22nd century one that was already on my list.”
17th century and 22nd century — those dates sounded familiar, but Setsiana couldn’t remember where from. Qhoroali must really be Qhoroali in this dream, if she was talking about Cusäfä now. So why was she in Priestess Fyäccheira’s office? It didn’t make sense.
“The 17th century paper was mine?” she found herself asking, although she didn’t know why. Obviously the paper was hers, wasn’t Qhoroali there to do a review of it?
“Of course,” said Qhoroali. “You didn’t guess? Most of the really interesting ones are yours, actually.”
Setsiana wanted to ask more questions, wanted to know more about that paper, and wanted to hear Qhoroali say that her papers were interesting again, but the dream had other plans, and slipped away from her awareness.
In the morning, she found herself eating breakfast with Qhoroali in the kitchen, but the dream was still on her mind. 17th century and 22nd century… she remembered now where she had heard that before. When they had visited Cusäfä, Qhoroali had brought two papers with her that had been from those centuries. She must have gotten that piece of data mixed up with the mention of Cusäfä in the dream somehow. If she remembered the experiments they’d done with Peatäro, the 17th century substance had been the one that Qhoroali had observed about a month ago, with the ghostly tendrils, while the 22nd century one had been the one that had attacked them more recently, because of the lightning. Hadn’t there been some strange element in it? That’s right, Qhoroali had said it was called “dreamstuff”.
Probably the actual papers from the waking world had nothing at all to do with what she’d dreamed, but she felt compelled to ask about them, anyway. “Do you remember when we went to see Cusäfä?” she asked. “I’m curious about the papers you showed him, then.”
Qhoroali winced. “Don’t talk to me about that ‘dreamstuff’ substance,” she said. “I had quite enough of it last week, and things have been weird since then.”
“I was actually interested in the other paper,” said Setsiana. “The 17th century one. What was it about?”
“Oh, that one. Basically, it was an investigation of the stuff that Time is made of, not from the standpoint of the materialists I told you about earlier, but independent of the personality behind it, which is to say, Sapfita Herself. It was done by investigation and empirical analysis of the timelines themselves, via a Mirror.” Suddenly, she squeezed her eyes shut, and her brow creased. “Sorry, I feel like we’ve had this conversation before… but I can’t remember when. Didn’t we?”
Setsiana felt a strange sense of déjà vu come over her. It was very like the conversation they’d had in her dream, but that had just been a regular dream. Had she been remembering a real conversation they’d had when she dreamed it? If there had been a real conversation about it, she couldn’t remember it anymore, but that seemed like the only explanation. “If we did already have this conversation, I’ve forgotten it,” she said. “Was there anything else about that paper?”
“Just that you’d gotten that substance, the one that we had Cusäfä make, from another priestess who’d brought it back from a dream of Sapfita,” said Qhoroali. “Or… well, you must have said you did in the paper somewhere, or else I wouldn’t know about it.” She blinked slightly, in confusion. “Or I just read somewhere else that priestesses bring these substances back from dreams, and I already knew that you’d never recorded any dreams yourself.”
“I did what?” asked Setsiana, lost.
“Not you, here. You in the other timeline, where you stayed at your temple and wrote that paper. It was one of yours. Didn’t you guess? 17th century, and all. That was the whole reason I brought you with me when we went to visit Cusäfä, actually — since the substance was from your paper, I thought you could give me some insight when you saw Cusäfä make it in person. Then it didn’t work out that way and we wound up having to go get him screws instead, and I completely forgot about that.”
“Ah,” said Setsiana, somewhat at a loss. “Well, I don’t know anything about it, unfortunately — the paper, or the substance. Maybe I’ll take a look at it sometime.”
no subject
no subject
Well, it might be time-travel-related...
Thanks for reading!
no subject
no subject
Well... it is one of those things, haha. I'm glad you're liking it!