16 - On the Stage

//--GM
What is your next step in the project of you? Will you rest a while, 'til morning even, before returning to work, or spend only the minimum time to collect yourself before returning to the rooms? Do you allow Saras to continue to monitor you, or send him to sleep off his burns?

//--Helena
What's my actual condition? (I think we ended with "...in some semblance of your own shape." If by "some semblance" you mean at all recognizeably the entity, I'm going to need to delay today's meetings at least for tomorrow, when Saras might have been able to make adjustments.)

//--GM
It affected soft tissue first, and bones hardly at all, so your eyes are showing something of an epicanthic fold, but your nose is mostly yours, and your cheekbones and jawline are still you. Skin tone is her gold, and you're a good part of the way toward her bustline, but your athletic muscle tone is not completely gone, and your other proportions are still Helena1. No one would easily recognize you as her, but no one is likely to immediately recognize you as you either, at least without some serious makeup.

Do you give notice to your secretary immediately, or wait and see until morning?

//--Helena
I will wait and see, but the latest I'll go is about two hours before "opening..." say 6 a.m. or so.

And yes, I let him sleep!

//--GM
Saras allows himself to sleep after a bit of persuading, and he is tired enough to extract no promises that you will not work alone from you. Will you sleep, or rest briefly? Do you wish to return to the Room to consider what the Stage hinted at during your last visit?

//--Helena
I will rest and think on it, rather than go back in on my own.

//--GM
When you drift off, you find yourself dreaming of little boxes of Saras, and assembling a little Helena3 in some recess of your imagination. He awakens after perhaps four hours sleep, looking better, and regarding you a bit quizzically - awakening you if need be. "Are you Working on something?" he asks, voice surprisingly alert, fresh from dreaming.

//--Helena
I shake myself awake. "Mm." I yawn and blinks some. "No. Thinking about it... dreaming I guess. Something about your 'boxes' in my head and building one of those little me's," I make a gesture with my thumb and forefinger indicating height, "like you did when you were testing things.

"What time is it?" I sit up on my elbows and rub my face. "I've got to decide if I'm cancelling tomorrow's work of if I'm good to go."

//--Saras
"It's..." he looks, "...just after two." He takes a breath, considering, and then, "I can handle your face and skin, but we should decide if you want to do any more Work on Alma's leads first. It shouldn't take much more than a quarter hour or so to get you presentable, but doing it twice wouldn't be good for either of us. If nothing else, you'll need a new lock, unless you don't mind 'profiling' every man you shake hands with today," spoken evenly, keeping his own judgment from the words, in case you'd rather the 'noise' than fussing around any further at the moment. You sense that he is acting a little soft and light-handed after all the trauma you relived earlier.

//--Helena
"I would like to work on Alma's leads, but I can't say I have any idea _how_ to get any further. From what I told you she said, do you think she could be any clearer? We could check the time at home and perhaps actually Trump her or get Father to talk to her. My impression was that she was going on a very vague memory of what she did, and she wasn't even sure that what she had done was actually helpful."

//--Saras
"I wouldn't be comfortable calling her without a specific question... at least, not tonight."

//--Helena
I sit up fully, cross-legged in the bed, trying to organize my thoughts. "So, she seemed to think it was important that I see those... doors, for lack of a better word. The doors lead to different shapes, only one of which is even partly familiar to me, so what the Hell?"

//--Saras
"The doors lead to mechanism functions, whereas the stones lead to the shapes. The stones... I wonder if they're part of the design, or a side-effect somehow... some necessary gap?"

//--Helena
"The area that is represented as a stage, which I saw in Alma's memory is used by the entity to 'run' the body's performance, has some resonance or call to me. The boxes in the storeroom are okay when I organize them, but they repeatedly seem to get disordered, and then _they_ have a resonance. My dream just now connected the boxes to something you can do and the stage and the... experimental 'me' figures. The memory locking the main door is very clearly supposed to be a memory of Julian interacting very closely with Alma, but not one apparently that she shared with me, which makes what she told me wrong right off the bat. And finally I have the ongoing feeling that over the process of our working together -- back home, I mean -- something you did removed something from me that was important; perhaps something that was or was represented by the third missing stone, but that's pure conjecture on my part."

//--Saras
"Alma might not have realized what the Entity was capable of," he says softly, re-evaluating his own estimations of the being for the umpteenth time. "As for the sense of removal, I know I did not take anything from you. I might have caused you some mild harm reconstructing your appearance, but I took nothing away. I made use of what was in place and redistributed."

Then, his eyes narrowing slightly, "Wait... what did you mean about the dream connecting the figures to the boxes and the stage? If we do nothing else, we have to look at that connection."

//--Helena
I try to think through any details of the dream. "It seemed I was looking through the profile of you, and that merged into you -- I think you, or maybe me acting as you in the dream -- were creating one of those little creatures. I don't feel the piece about the stage clearly. It's just, when I look there, it wants something, some direction."

//--Saras
Saras gets up, going to his half-unpacked sea bags to gather a few things. "Are you awake enough to work, or should I go for coffee before we begin?"

//--Helena
"Coffee, please."

//--Saras
He returns with fresh, hot coffee, two mugs, and a small plate of soft breakfast cookies. "Maybe we should consider loose fitting clothing for now, in case we have another Pattern surprise." While you decide, he lays out a few red gum balls, four rings, a prism, and a length of finely graduated measuring tape on a silver platter on the nightstand. Once he's finished preparing, Saras sits against the headboard, legs tucked so you could use his lap again if you chose, sipping his coffee until you feel sufficiently fortified to begin.

//--Helena
I get up and refresh myself, and then pull on some loose pants and a top. Coffee is hot and good, and I am hungrier for the cookies than I expected. "So," I finally ask when my voice feels right, "what do you plan to do?" I gesture at the nightstand.

//--Saras
"Mostly, I just plan to observe, but I don't wish to be caught unprepared again. I will do nothing without your permission, {Beloved}, unless there is no time to ask." He flips up your Trump, ready to begin.

Do you make any conditions? How do you position / prepare yourself?

//--Helena
No conditions, no. I regretfully lie down not touching him. "It seems safest if I can't burn you here as well as there." I get settled as comfortably as I can and then ask, "So, what do _I_ plan to do?"

Saras: "Show me the room, especially the stage, so we can know that you were merely dreaming... or if not, that it is still willing to wear its lock."
Helena: I nod a little, and will myself to the place.
GM: You arrive in the control room, and see the door to the stage open....
Helena: Much as I want to dash over there, I wait for Saras to arrive.
GM: You see a strong-nailed hand beckon, and you do not feel your surgeon's approach.
Helena: I... wait. I say, "Wait."
GM: "Seeing will only frighten him, and we don't want that," comes a voice that matches your own, save for a hint of flatness.
Helena: "He is not easily frightened," I glance at the door to the storeroom, "as you should know."
GM: "I know. But I do not wish us treated so much like a patient that he forgets to love us."
Helena: I tilt my head back, slightly, my brow tense. In this ghost world my breath comes in short and flat. Working my need to a sticking point, I move towards the door.
GM: As you approach the door, you see a 8-bit toon of yourself on the stage. She salutes. "Helena, Jesby Expeditionary, retired... at your service."
Helena: "What has... brought you forth, after all I've done in this place?" I can't make myself enter the room.
GM: "Things were suitably arranged. And you asked nicely.

"Don't worry. Something's broken, so I can't take you over anyway. Good physical connections, though. Want to try that a bit?"
Helena: I slowly shake my head. "Do you know why I'm here?"
GM: "To see if I'm here." She conjures herself some clothes - an 8-bit uniform. "You don't have to be scared. I'm yours to use as you see fit, after all, and built from the man you love."
Helena: "I don't understand that. You mean, built from how he sees me?"
GM: "Built from what he wants... which happens to be a good bit of us. We're lucky."
Helena: "Do you know more of this place than I do?"
GM: "I know everything you do, and a good bit of our dear Saras," *small swoon* "Only a few things elsewise, like you might know your arms and legs."
Helena: "Why can I not open the locked door? This is something Alma says I should be able to do, but I can't make myself... find the memory she means."
GM: "Because your sister locked it, and took the key with her. Which is too bad, because he wouldn't mind us shifting."
Helena: "The place cannot be entered another way?"
GM: "It is a state, rather than a physical place, and the door an allegory." [I think that's the word I want]
Helena: "I know that. We know that. Can I enter that... state another way?"
GM: "Not that I know of, but I don't know all your sister knows."
Helena: "The memory is something of my mother's, I think. Or something that... being experienced while controlling her. Mother remembered most everything else. She may remember this, too, if a time ever comes I can ask it of her."
GM: "I wouldn't know, since I only know what you and our love know, but that sounds reasonable."
Helena: "Why do you think it would trouble him to see you here?"
GM: "Because he would question your actions, if he thought I was whispering in your ear."
Helena: My stomach falls away. "Of course. He would have to."
GM: "I understand him, too." She smiles gently, almost like a sister. "Can we help each other?"
Helena: No. "No. I don't see how. Until I can reclaim what was put away behind that door."
GM: "You won't need me once the door is open, but I can help you keep your place until then. And I can get you what he has witheld from us."
Helena: "What do you mean?"
GM: "If you finish me, empower me, I can make you what he wants... which is you, not your sister. I will be your form until you can choose your shape again."
Helena: "I think it is I who cares over much about that. And those in Amber who might recognize her. He does not care, except that it distresses me."
GM: "That is not my meaning. His desire for you, reflected in me, can make you not-her. It is only a bonus that he will have you as you-he want you."
Helena: "I still don't take your meaning. How can you... changing me make me more myself? It would seem it can only make me more... artificial."
GM: "I'm not as I should be. Your power is such that I can become a blueprint - a Pattern - for your physical form."
Helena: "But how does that interact with what he wants?"
GM: "You assemble a portrait in me. Your power over Pattern renders that portrait in you."
Helena: "That would be useful. But you did not answer what you meant about finding something he withheld."
GM: "I'm sorry. I thought you would understand."
Helena: I shake my head. Whether I don't understand or don't want to say, I'm not sure.
GM: "He has not given us himself. His trust... his truest love...."
Helena: "Who can do such a thing? Is it necessary? He hardly knows me any more than I know him."
GM: "You are like no one else to him. And yet... he holds back. First forgetting not to, then excusing himself because you could not choose."
Helena: "I do not know what he holds back, and don't care to know if he does not tell me."
GM: "I think you do know. You have laid with him so often, but what do you not yet feel?"
Helena: I ignore her. "How do I destroy this place? It is just a... metaphor, but how do I make it unnecessary."
GM: "Pass through the third door, and do not look back. It will never be completely gone, but I suppose you can ignore what we whisper."
Helena: "No. That is not the same. 'Gone' is what I mean."
GM: "I cannot unmake myself, any more than you could wish yourself out of existence. Even dead, you would feed plants or carrion birds."
Helena: "You are part of me. That I accept. That you must be a separate part, that I must always risk being the tool of something else, and listen to these... insane whispers? That I do not accept."
GM: She shrugs. "I understand, but I have nothing further to counsel you with.
"I do not fear being unmade. I just lack the means to offer you, wanted or not."
Helena: "Are you keeping him from coming here?"
GM: "I stopped him gently, and time is quick. He will try again, and I will let him come, because I know you will accept nothing less. It will... be uncomfortable for him if he knows, but I cannot dictate to you, and I would not presume to try."
Helena: "I will not have you here as a secret from him. And you are right perhaps that he could not trust what was between us if he knew." I tilt my "head," regarding her. "I think you have to go."
GM: "If you change your mind, you need but dream of me." She points to a 'box' within her, a keystone that will unravel what you have assembled.
Helena: Forgetting the edge of the room, I step forward to unravel her and put her away.
GM: She disappears, leaving a shop-pyramind of boxes in her place.
Helena: I stack them up for easier "carrying" and trundle them out to the storereoom.
GM: You are putting the last of them away when you sense Saras' arrival. "What did I miss?"
Helena: "There was a... part-formed construct, made from these 'pieces' or whatever you would call them. It knew nothing more than what you and I know, and so I disassembled it." I put the last of the boxes back in place. "It did say it could help me retain my form, but only if I gave it... a lot more power."
Saras: You sense his gentle approval of your choice. "Who knows what that might have cost...."
Helena: "These things... keep going on about what you have taken or kept from me. And you said the same yourself when we were first experimenting back home. Is it something you can tell me, yet?"
Saras: "I took nothing from you. I don't know what they mean, Helena, truly."
Helena: I nod. "I believe that you don't. But it may be something they're distracting us from, or what they're saying may point up something important. Please consider it.
"It said this to me, just now, if it helps: 'You are like no one else to him. And yet... he holds back. First forgetting not to, then excusing himself because you could not choose.'"
Saras: His presence quiets. After a moment, "I know what they speak of. It is... not of your treatment, but they ask because it is of your disease."
Helena: "All right. Tell me, unless it will ... make something worse, which is hard to imagine."
Saras: After a pause, as flatly as he can manage, "I have not shared my {seed} with you."
Helena: "But... that is all right. It makes sense." I am puzzled by the importance of this to my ... illness.
Saras: "This must be so wrapped up in Alma's mechanism's purpose... to fix on acquiring all elements of its target."
Helena: Some relief finally gets through the high pitch of tension I've been at. "Yes, yes. That makes sense completely. This place... still retains some of that purpose. It is invested in obtaining seed to fulfill its purpose.
"It thought that would be important to me as well."
Saras: He is quiet a moment more. "Is it?" he whispers, perhaps not even meaning to, "not?"
Helena: "It is what you chose to do, and you had your reasons for it, and I am glad of them. Even if I did not know those reasons... it is what you chose.
"I think it hoped to lever me away from you, so that I would not let you help me any more. It was wrong. I trust you more than it thought."
I pause, too, to see if he has some answer before I add to my own.

//--Saras
"The construct read me well, because what you quoted is exactly what happened. I am pleased that you are not angry at my presumption. The 'why' I do not think I can relate here, but I will tell you later if you wish."

//--Helena
"If you wish."

//--Saras
"I think perhaps I owe myself an explanation, and it might as well be aloud for you to understand and judge as you will."

//--Helena
"When we ever get out of here, then."

//--Saras
"We will be meticulous, but direct. There will be a few hours to spare, to use as we wish, even with the restoration of your seeming to come.

"Shall we lock just the storeroom, or that and the stage? What is your instinct?"

//--Helena
"You ask me that like I should have an instinct about such a thing." I pause, thinking. "The storeroom, certainly. The stage... yes, also."

//--Saras
"You had an answer, as I knew you would. Do you wish to attempt a lock of your own forging?"

//--Helena
"I would.. like to learn this. Can I create it so that you also can open it? I do not want to get stuck in some condition where I can't help myself, and due to our own precautions you cannot help me either."

//--Saras
"For that to work, it must be forged of a memory that we share; something you can communicate fully to me, or I to you, and both of us remember as if we had lived it. Since, we have two doors, and will not necessarily wish them both reopened, will need two such memories. Let me show you...."

Saras calls to mind his memory of the first time he saw you in profile, that night as demons at the club in Hendrake, and shows you how to thread that together into a bar for your mind. He truly savors that first glimpse of you, and you are treated (tormented in the denial now?) to all the depth of his recollection. Crafting the lock is fiendishly intricate work to your mind, but he is very patient, and eventually you believe you grasp the technique.

What two memories do you choose to seal the storeroom and the stage?

//--Helena
Well, if that first one works, then I will use that one. I will also choose the moment I saw him in the doorway, when I had been worried he might be gone, and he was there, and he turned his head as I came up, and he brushed his grey away, and it was so wonderful and beautiful that he was still there that my heart broke open.

//--Saras
Saras is silent a moment, recovering from the intensity of the memory you share, and then he returns to aid your crafting, quiet save the direction you require to complete your task. That done, you feel a distant whisper of touch - perhaps a kiss on your forehead back in your body proper - and then he bids you return.

When you wake, Saras is sitting beside you on the bed, his focus somewhere in the middle distance toward a blank wall of your shared bedroom. A glance at the clock says that he measured the time well, as it is just before three in the morning.

//--Helena
I feel ... how I feel for a moment before doing anything else.

//--Saras
You feel... quiet, as if some noise you had not been consciously aware of was now stifled. Physically, you have already slept away any impact of your earlier grief, and seem not to have suffered from your brief exposure to the assembly on the stage. While your body is somewhat a hybrid of you and 'her', you feel no disconnects and no particular awkwardness, save perhaps the extra (and occasionally seemingly insufficient) weight on your chest.

//--Helena
Then I put my hand over and rest it on his knee.

//--Saras
He exhales gently, and his hand curls over yours. You see thoughts of discussing your treatment, your most recent suffering, your chances for the future; all play across his face before disappearing in a hard swallow. With a touch of defeat in his voice, "What would you have me do first to make this bearable?" offering anything from conversation and hand-holding or stronger distractions to re-sculpting you once more this instant. His will is not broken, but it seems well bent at the moment.

//--Helena
"Lie down here, and let me tell you that I love you." I pat the bed in front of me and scoot back to give him room.

//--Saras
He does lie down, settling his head in your lap, the reverse of how your evening had begun.

//--Helena
I stroke his hair, his face. "Let me tell you that what is happening here is in large part of my own choosing. Let me tell you how much joy there is in seeing my mother well for maybe the first time in my life, and seeing in my father's eyes that his love for her has not been kept waiting in vain. I love you, Saras. I'm here, with my own mind with you, and how can I regret anything that has happened if it has led me to this moment?"

//--Saras
"You are a wonder..." he whispers. "Loren and Alma are blessed. I am blessed...." His eyes close, and the explanation you did not demand comes spilling out of him. "I should have told you, asked your leave to withhold as I did. But, I have not been with an equal...." His eyes open, glancing back and forth at nothing as his mind searches for a time frame, and perhaps Saras realizes that he has no other example to mark time from. He leaves that behind, sparing you the examples that would - in common opinion, at least - make him seem a coward. Looking up, eyes raw with emotion, "Were you not wounded, I would trust you with my {seed}, and offer to be Father to them. You are young, but true, and it should have been your choice to make."

He closes his eyes once more, trying to make peace with old wounds in the face of his newfound love, it seems.

//--Helena
I just keep running my fingers through his hair, smoothing his brow, and smiling with that sad sweetness that is this love. "My beautiful doctor," I say quietly, perhaps not even out loud.

I trace his eyes, the strength of his nose and jaw, the beautiful silver at his temples.

I lean back against the head of the bed, with my hand resting on his forehead, and let him sleep.

//--Saras
Saras allows himself an hour or so, surrendering slowly but completely. It is still before dawn when his eyes open to some clock in his mind's call. After assuring himself that you are awake as well, he whispers, "I am supremely comfortable, {Beloved}. Would it be all right if I Worked from here? I would gladly savor another hour just like this before I must release you to your day."

//--Helena
"As you wish, my love. Sleep another hour and I will make my excuses."

//--Saras
Perhaps misunderstanding your intent, "Then I will adjust your eyelids and complexion from here in your lap before I return to dreaming of you." He smiles and reaches up, offering to take your hands in his. "Close your eyes. A small change like this should hurt hardly at all, practiced as I am becoming in making it."

//--Helena
I make a small smile at his persistence, give him my hands, and let him do what Work he will.

//--Saras
There are tears, but little pain. Saras proves to be a man of his word in this. Aside from a lingering tingling, as if having been scrubbed too hard all over, you are done and comfortable enough when he withdraws his hands. Barring any further word, he sleeps until first light.

//--Helena
We both do, I think.

//--Saras
Yes, and well together. Saras is not slow to rise, but he is slow to part from you.