Reincarnation, twice remote.
[Laelys's return, as triggered recently by variables beyond the boundaries of the Puzzlebox.]
Upwarp -- Omega Sector
Roque steps lightly, quickly, a strange sense of renewed energy in her legs as her feet carry her through the disused tunnels of Omega. It's as if she's actively fighting not to break into a dead run, her cane held in front of her merely as a formality. The fingers of her left paw stray repeatedly to the dragon-engraved ring sitting at its base, tapping it, then spinning in a slow circle around its edge. How long as it been since she heard the voice, felt the cool hide beneath her fingers from an eternity of moments ago? And yet, now, there is the ineffable sense that this search will somehow be different from the times before, that she will find the circuit-trace corridor and the chasm, and that Laelys will again be on the other side.
Omega. Terminus. Void in a hollow way, more so for the stillness of the air. The temperature, the air pressure, the echoes are exactly the same as when Laelys took you there and then to his place. Only what -kind- of place was it? Omega is not supposed to have the kind of corridors he took you through. What direction to start searching in in the first place?
Roque taps the ground repeatedly, as if testing it, daring it to begin to collapse beneath her. She never did learn the route alone, and though her memory is usually sharp enough to recall such things, that day held such a wealth of emotion that only the sensations linger, the imminent knowledge that the ground would give way beneath her feet if she didn't run, the looming presence that swelled behind and below her, the echoes that distorted distance and time, and through it all the dragon's even footfalls and his voice, calling out to her, leading her to safety. Even if it was all a trick to prove her trust, it was somehow /real/, in ways that the austere corridors of Upwarp never could quite manage.
Sudden memory of a silent waterfall. Flowing in an abnormal direction. Black, but trimmed with purple. And there did Laelys want to go, with you. Underneath. The meaning is just there, almost within reach, like a hovering butterfly, and yet out of grasp, not by much... What WAS that place, and in what sense was it real? It was real as Laelys himself is real, of course. Which may be a vastly bigger riddle than Up's topography. In what direction did he lead you from here? It's hard to tell. He really seemed to pick a direction at random at the time. Random--? /Is/ random a direction of its own?
Roque's footfalls echo back to her ears, when she stops, suddenly. Laelys.... She shakes her head, ears turning slowly. This isn't the way. None of these ways are the way. She lifts her cane from the ground, grasping it in her paws in front of her as she did before, marching steadily in whatever direction seems at the moment to be most apropos, trying to conjure to mind thoughts of the dragon, recalling the memories of him and letting those thoughts guide her steps.
One step. Another. The ground is stable. Laelys... Once, he watched after you all night. You were exhausted by the day's emotions, and spent the night with him, huddled within his curled up form. And whenever you'd shift in half-sleep, he'd be there, awake, nuzzling softly at your muzzle, until you drifted back into slumber. The ground seems to be going downward some, now. It is still steady, solid. But the echoes and air pressure have changed: this feels like a corridor. Going downward.
Roque follows it, breathing slowly, fighting back memories of the other failed attempts to find Laelys' apartment. She'd only ever been there with him, and then suddenly he was gone, and so was his home. She'd wandered Omega intermittently for hours and days, off and on, at times fearing that Diafeara had done something to him, at others that Besax had, even once wondering if the dragon had simply /gone home/, wherever that was. The woman in white, did she return for him? Did he find her? Too many unanswerable questions, and all she can do is put them aside as she walks, her feet still moving, flowing along the corridor, never stumbling, never straying from the direction her memories and the voices in her mind tell her to go.
Gone home. That would make an odd sort of sense. But where is Laelys's home? Does he even know, himself? And if he did, would he leave the Mess without warning? Without telling /you/? For all his coldness and strange ways, he's always been so thoughtful toward you. The corridor leads ever down. Was it so long the first time? It seems uncertain. And yet this corridor feels like nothing that would belong in Up. This might not be the same way as the first time. But it is /a/ road, and this road feels of Laelys in a way that senses cannot grasp. Deep below, a vast room awaits.
Roque seems drawn onward, following as the corridor opens ahead into a vast chasm. Is this the bottom of the pit over which Laelys led her before? Where /is/ this place? Is this a room, or merely a thought, a memory of him? She opens her muzzle to speak, to call his name, to offer some word, but then closes it again, unwilling or unable to break the stillness aside from her footfalls, themselves strangely muffled. The dragon's scent looms in her nostrils, hovering around her. It seems this whole /place/ is his, somehow, or at least representative of him.
Sounds are muffled. Yes. Oddly dampened. The ground is level. Immediately, this summons a mental image made of memories of your senses and Laelys's words combined. A large room. Silent waterfalls. (Maybe your paw will clutch at the black fabric of your robe reflexively, for some unclear reason.) It is the room. No, not exactly the same room: much bigger. Immense. A void that would fill the universe. That might spill beyond. And yet it's there. It's the right place. Laelys is here. It's a certainty.
The breath catches in Roque's throat briefly at the sudden surety, her steps halting at this new memory. Laelys once said he wanted to bring her here, to the waterfall, to look at it together, when she had reclaimed her eyes. Maybe that day will come soon.... "Laelys." It's as much a statement as a question, a reminder and a request. She seems unaware of having said it, or maybe it was only a word in her mind, a concrete descriptor attached to the memories and the sensations that flood her mind as she hastens her steps now, chasing forward into the open void.
Once, before the night he looked after you -- or was it soon after? No, no... It was before... -- Laelys was sleeping in your embrace and you in his, and you woke up during the night, and he felt so relaxed against you, so trustful, with an odd sort of innocence in the way his massive dragon head rested against your shoulder. His hide was cool, but not cold, this unique feeling of dense hide and a slow life thrumming underneath, the external coolness linked with something other than temperature alone. Yes. This feeling was strange and unique. And when your paw suddenly meets hide as you walk, cool, but not cold, the feeling threatens to be overwhelming. Laelys. He's there. Motionless.
Roque drops to her knees in front of the dragon, fingers hesitantly moving over his hide as if unsure of any sense at this point. The presence of his memory in her mind, this is real in a way no sense since leaving Omega and coming to... to this place... has been, could be. "Laelys?" She repeats the question, audible this time in the stillness as she strokes his cool hide, hoping the gesture and the contact will rouse the still form.
Laelys is motionless, still, but there is something odd in his posture. As your paw explores his hide, it may slowly become obvious: he's not touching the ground. He's not floating, either. He's dangling. His head is bent at a wrong angle. Dangling. As if from unseen, unfelt strings that would be attached to his articulations, with their other end reaching far, far up, beyond the limits of this reality, maybe held within some unfathomable deity's grasp. Under your paws, he feels like a giant puppet. Only the puppeteer is not there. Idle. Gone. Absent. Away for an extended length of time. And Laelys, empty shell, remains there, dangling, motionless. Dead for all Messian intents and purposes.
Roque flinches as she traces the unnatural angles and bends in Laelys' body, at once exploring for those intangible strings and trying to draw some stimulation back into the apparently lifeless form. No, not lifeless. Inanimate. The body lives, but... the mind, the soul, that essential thing that is Laelys has been somehow removed, neatly snipped away leaving behind this still lump of flesh. "Laelys? Can you hear me? Please, Laelys, I found you." Your body, at least, she thinks. Where are you? Where have you been, and what's happened to you?
Laelys is motionless, but you aren't; you are there, and found this place, this Laelys-like strangeness of a place. This room... Doesn't it /need/ Laelys's life, or mind, or soul to exist? There is a meaning there. Maybe, also, a reason why you didn't find it before. And as you stand there, with your dragon in a way more than physical, and possibly more even than metaphysical, one of his paws twitches. Then his neck. Then a wing. As if the long idle puppeteer was returning. Experimenting with the long unused strings. Getting ahold of Laelys. Returning at last. Back.
Roque holds her breath as Laelys' body moves, each limb moving independently. She rests her paws on the dragon's chest, holding them there, feeling the motions beneath them, as if the whole of Laelys' form were shifting one piece at a time, some long-sleeping marionette being gingerly lifted from its carrying case. "Laelys...?" A whisper this time, hopeful and fearful of the implications of all that's happening.
Something is happening, yes. Something is animating Laelys, right now, even as you stand there, something is back and seeking to make him move, to return him to life, something that somehow needed you to be there before it would start, something that makes him thrash suddenly and gasp for air, and crumble down suddenly with the dampened thud of too much flesh on too much ground. Curling up, foetal. A hissy breath is heard. Then a hoarse whisper: "Where is... the rabbit in black...?"
Roque chokes, her breath jumping, heart missing a beat. "I'm here, Laelys," she whispers as she leans forward, pressing herself against the dragon's chest, seeking ot embrace him, all of him at once. "I'm here this time." The memories of that first encounter, so strong, the woman in white... perhaps at least this mystery need not go unresolved.
Laelys's head is in your lap, without having moved. Simply as if the fact that it is where it belongs was enough to make it become true. His breathing is faint, hissy. "Roque," he says thickly, like his tongue was too heavy with disuse to form words correctly. "I think I've... had a dream." He pauses longly, only breathing. "There was... so much sand..."
Roque is petting you, her paws slowly move down your chest, over your shoulders, while tears drip silently from the corners of her eyes, tears of joy at your return. She listens to your dream, asking you to tell her about it, about all of it, wanting to hear, to know more, all the while shaking from relief, yet her paws never falter in their movements, only her ragged breathing giving voice to her shock and gratitude.
Laelys seems content with simply being there with you, under your paws, quiet, peaceful. No need for any sort of concern right now. Not yet. A long moment passes. He doesn't move, not even attempting to get up, only breathing in silence, listening to your voice, feeling your paws on him. "No, not a dream," he says at last, softly. "'Dream' is but the closest approximation of the concept's projection onto the space of words. But it escapes me now..." A pause, a long sigh. Then his voice is graver: "How long?"
Roque thinks, then says softly, "Two months, perhaps longer. Fleeting impressions of you at points, like... more than a memory, as if you were somehow trying to reach me, but couldn't, and you were never there when I went to find you. Now... you're back, it's a different feeling. You're really here. It's been... over two months."
[Roque's ability to pick up tiny details, understand them and weave them back into RP, never ceases to amaze me, in a most humbling way.]
Laelys doesn't answer. Two months. He lets a long moment of thoughtful silence stretch, and then rolls onto his belly, tries to get up. Fails the first time, grunts, tries again, succeeds. Sounds of paw against hide. He's dusting himself off. Then at last he speaks, very, very cautious: "Any... idea, regarding what happened to me?"
Roque clucks her tongue softly, shaking her head. "None. The last I had heard... you and Diafeara had had some sort of fight. Then you were gone. I... feared the worst, for some time, but that doesn't matter now. You're back." She sounds weary with relief, though tense at the mention of her other lover's name.
Laelys nods against your paw, and as the clucking of your tongue reminds him of the non-vocal ways of communicating with you, he doubles it with a soft throat-popping sound -- 'kek'. "Diafeara. Yes. I remember her." There's a silence, and then he's on the move, something sternly cautious in his demeanor. "Roque," he says, more than an invitation to come along. Something pressing must be seen to at once.
Roque smiles, then rises from her knees, wiping as discreetly as she can at her eyes, slipping in step behind you, her cane again slowly sweeping the floor in front of her, mostly to keep her from tripping over your tail.
Laelys seems too restless about something to delay; he paces a narrow circle for an instant, as if unsure about something, and then leads the way straight onwards, in some direction that doesn't seem so random. There's a soft 'hmm' coming from him as he waits for you on the way, which probably doesn't even begin to express his gratitude for your presence here with him, and then he goes again, in a straight line, thumping his tail regularly to give you a clear sound to follow. And then there's a change of air pressure, and his last tail thump echoes sharply -- small room. It smells of Laelys and of old things unmoved. "We're there," says the dragon, a bit absently, and he immediately begins to rummage with some things on his desk.
Electronic sounds. Something whirring. A saurian grunt of urgency -- where /is/ it? -- and then a sigh. "Just a minute," he murmurs, and then there's a long silence, not even broken by his breathing. And then a heavy sigh. Relief. "At the least," he says, relief coloring his voice with warmth, "it would seem that I am the same me I was before." Renewed worry: "... Or something broke into here and messed with... things. But that seems unlikely."
Roque keks as she steps inside, slowly taking a pace around the outer edge, relearning the layout. "I remember this room. It's... untouched." She moves to the couch, upon which she lay next to you so many days ago, lightly rubbing her fingers over the earring that you gave her. "Your scent is unchanged... it's as if no time at all has passed here...." She chuckles softly. "And you still sound like yourself." She holds out a paw to you, the other patting your mattress. "Laelys... I trust you. Come, please, sit with me?"
Laelys sets whichever device he was using back onto his desk -- thunk -- and comes settle his vast bulk on the couch, close to you. Still thoughtful. "What happened, while I was... gone?" Such cautiousness in that last word. He suspects more than he will say.
Roque shifts closer to you, resting one paw on your leg, the other on your back, gently brushing her claws down along your tail. "Much," she says softly after some silence. "Where would you like me to begin? What do you remember?"
Laelys draws a breath in at the touch -- at least he's not changed that way -- but the touch is so vividly /yours/ that an immediate relaxation suffuses his entire body at once. And he leans against you slightly, accepting what you are giving with no regard for the consequences. He knows he's already bound to you, tight. "I am not certain," he says, quietly, thoughtful. "There was the tension around Untitled and Diafeara regarding Besax. Things got worse, and then better. I talked with Diafeara. I think that I spent that night with you. The day after, I was simply pursuing my usual researches about the Mess." That is all he seems willing to say for now.
[And things henceforth are between Roque and Laelys and whomever else they might be privately shared with. A most grateful 'thank you' to Roque for being so good at riffing along with new ideas, and for her patience in waiting for me, and a most grateful 'thank you' to Diafeara for having helped fuel the will to return in too many ways to count.]
Upwarp -- Omega Sector
Roque steps lightly, quickly, a strange sense of renewed energy in her legs as her feet carry her through the disused tunnels of Omega. It's as if she's actively fighting not to break into a dead run, her cane held in front of her merely as a formality. The fingers of her left paw stray repeatedly to the dragon-engraved ring sitting at its base, tapping it, then spinning in a slow circle around its edge. How long as it been since she heard the voice, felt the cool hide beneath her fingers from an eternity of moments ago? And yet, now, there is the ineffable sense that this search will somehow be different from the times before, that she will find the circuit-trace corridor and the chasm, and that Laelys will again be on the other side.
Omega. Terminus. Void in a hollow way, more so for the stillness of the air. The temperature, the air pressure, the echoes are exactly the same as when Laelys took you there and then to his place. Only what -kind- of place was it? Omega is not supposed to have the kind of corridors he took you through. What direction to start searching in in the first place?
Roque taps the ground repeatedly, as if testing it, daring it to begin to collapse beneath her. She never did learn the route alone, and though her memory is usually sharp enough to recall such things, that day held such a wealth of emotion that only the sensations linger, the imminent knowledge that the ground would give way beneath her feet if she didn't run, the looming presence that swelled behind and below her, the echoes that distorted distance and time, and through it all the dragon's even footfalls and his voice, calling out to her, leading her to safety. Even if it was all a trick to prove her trust, it was somehow /real/, in ways that the austere corridors of Upwarp never could quite manage.
Sudden memory of a silent waterfall. Flowing in an abnormal direction. Black, but trimmed with purple. And there did Laelys want to go, with you. Underneath. The meaning is just there, almost within reach, like a hovering butterfly, and yet out of grasp, not by much... What WAS that place, and in what sense was it real? It was real as Laelys himself is real, of course. Which may be a vastly bigger riddle than Up's topography. In what direction did he lead you from here? It's hard to tell. He really seemed to pick a direction at random at the time. Random--? /Is/ random a direction of its own?
Roque's footfalls echo back to her ears, when she stops, suddenly. Laelys.... She shakes her head, ears turning slowly. This isn't the way. None of these ways are the way. She lifts her cane from the ground, grasping it in her paws in front of her as she did before, marching steadily in whatever direction seems at the moment to be most apropos, trying to conjure to mind thoughts of the dragon, recalling the memories of him and letting those thoughts guide her steps.
One step. Another. The ground is stable. Laelys... Once, he watched after you all night. You were exhausted by the day's emotions, and spent the night with him, huddled within his curled up form. And whenever you'd shift in half-sleep, he'd be there, awake, nuzzling softly at your muzzle, until you drifted back into slumber. The ground seems to be going downward some, now. It is still steady, solid. But the echoes and air pressure have changed: this feels like a corridor. Going downward.
Roque follows it, breathing slowly, fighting back memories of the other failed attempts to find Laelys' apartment. She'd only ever been there with him, and then suddenly he was gone, and so was his home. She'd wandered Omega intermittently for hours and days, off and on, at times fearing that Diafeara had done something to him, at others that Besax had, even once wondering if the dragon had simply /gone home/, wherever that was. The woman in white, did she return for him? Did he find her? Too many unanswerable questions, and all she can do is put them aside as she walks, her feet still moving, flowing along the corridor, never stumbling, never straying from the direction her memories and the voices in her mind tell her to go.
Gone home. That would make an odd sort of sense. But where is Laelys's home? Does he even know, himself? And if he did, would he leave the Mess without warning? Without telling /you/? For all his coldness and strange ways, he's always been so thoughtful toward you. The corridor leads ever down. Was it so long the first time? It seems uncertain. And yet this corridor feels like nothing that would belong in Up. This might not be the same way as the first time. But it is /a/ road, and this road feels of Laelys in a way that senses cannot grasp. Deep below, a vast room awaits.
Roque seems drawn onward, following as the corridor opens ahead into a vast chasm. Is this the bottom of the pit over which Laelys led her before? Where /is/ this place? Is this a room, or merely a thought, a memory of him? She opens her muzzle to speak, to call his name, to offer some word, but then closes it again, unwilling or unable to break the stillness aside from her footfalls, themselves strangely muffled. The dragon's scent looms in her nostrils, hovering around her. It seems this whole /place/ is his, somehow, or at least representative of him.
Sounds are muffled. Yes. Oddly dampened. The ground is level. Immediately, this summons a mental image made of memories of your senses and Laelys's words combined. A large room. Silent waterfalls. (Maybe your paw will clutch at the black fabric of your robe reflexively, for some unclear reason.) It is the room. No, not exactly the same room: much bigger. Immense. A void that would fill the universe. That might spill beyond. And yet it's there. It's the right place. Laelys is here. It's a certainty.
The breath catches in Roque's throat briefly at the sudden surety, her steps halting at this new memory. Laelys once said he wanted to bring her here, to the waterfall, to look at it together, when she had reclaimed her eyes. Maybe that day will come soon.... "Laelys." It's as much a statement as a question, a reminder and a request. She seems unaware of having said it, or maybe it was only a word in her mind, a concrete descriptor attached to the memories and the sensations that flood her mind as she hastens her steps now, chasing forward into the open void.
Once, before the night he looked after you -- or was it soon after? No, no... It was before... -- Laelys was sleeping in your embrace and you in his, and you woke up during the night, and he felt so relaxed against you, so trustful, with an odd sort of innocence in the way his massive dragon head rested against your shoulder. His hide was cool, but not cold, this unique feeling of dense hide and a slow life thrumming underneath, the external coolness linked with something other than temperature alone. Yes. This feeling was strange and unique. And when your paw suddenly meets hide as you walk, cool, but not cold, the feeling threatens to be overwhelming. Laelys. He's there. Motionless.
Roque drops to her knees in front of the dragon, fingers hesitantly moving over his hide as if unsure of any sense at this point. The presence of his memory in her mind, this is real in a way no sense since leaving Omega and coming to... to this place... has been, could be. "Laelys?" She repeats the question, audible this time in the stillness as she strokes his cool hide, hoping the gesture and the contact will rouse the still form.
Laelys is motionless, still, but there is something odd in his posture. As your paw explores his hide, it may slowly become obvious: he's not touching the ground. He's not floating, either. He's dangling. His head is bent at a wrong angle. Dangling. As if from unseen, unfelt strings that would be attached to his articulations, with their other end reaching far, far up, beyond the limits of this reality, maybe held within some unfathomable deity's grasp. Under your paws, he feels like a giant puppet. Only the puppeteer is not there. Idle. Gone. Absent. Away for an extended length of time. And Laelys, empty shell, remains there, dangling, motionless. Dead for all Messian intents and purposes.
Roque flinches as she traces the unnatural angles and bends in Laelys' body, at once exploring for those intangible strings and trying to draw some stimulation back into the apparently lifeless form. No, not lifeless. Inanimate. The body lives, but... the mind, the soul, that essential thing that is Laelys has been somehow removed, neatly snipped away leaving behind this still lump of flesh. "Laelys? Can you hear me? Please, Laelys, I found you." Your body, at least, she thinks. Where are you? Where have you been, and what's happened to you?
Laelys is motionless, but you aren't; you are there, and found this place, this Laelys-like strangeness of a place. This room... Doesn't it /need/ Laelys's life, or mind, or soul to exist? There is a meaning there. Maybe, also, a reason why you didn't find it before. And as you stand there, with your dragon in a way more than physical, and possibly more even than metaphysical, one of his paws twitches. Then his neck. Then a wing. As if the long idle puppeteer was returning. Experimenting with the long unused strings. Getting ahold of Laelys. Returning at last. Back.
Roque holds her breath as Laelys' body moves, each limb moving independently. She rests her paws on the dragon's chest, holding them there, feeling the motions beneath them, as if the whole of Laelys' form were shifting one piece at a time, some long-sleeping marionette being gingerly lifted from its carrying case. "Laelys...?" A whisper this time, hopeful and fearful of the implications of all that's happening.
Something is happening, yes. Something is animating Laelys, right now, even as you stand there, something is back and seeking to make him move, to return him to life, something that somehow needed you to be there before it would start, something that makes him thrash suddenly and gasp for air, and crumble down suddenly with the dampened thud of too much flesh on too much ground. Curling up, foetal. A hissy breath is heard. Then a hoarse whisper: "Where is... the rabbit in black...?"
Roque chokes, her breath jumping, heart missing a beat. "I'm here, Laelys," she whispers as she leans forward, pressing herself against the dragon's chest, seeking ot embrace him, all of him at once. "I'm here this time." The memories of that first encounter, so strong, the woman in white... perhaps at least this mystery need not go unresolved.
Laelys's head is in your lap, without having moved. Simply as if the fact that it is where it belongs was enough to make it become true. His breathing is faint, hissy. "Roque," he says thickly, like his tongue was too heavy with disuse to form words correctly. "I think I've... had a dream." He pauses longly, only breathing. "There was... so much sand..."
Roque is petting you, her paws slowly move down your chest, over your shoulders, while tears drip silently from the corners of her eyes, tears of joy at your return. She listens to your dream, asking you to tell her about it, about all of it, wanting to hear, to know more, all the while shaking from relief, yet her paws never falter in their movements, only her ragged breathing giving voice to her shock and gratitude.
Laelys seems content with simply being there with you, under your paws, quiet, peaceful. No need for any sort of concern right now. Not yet. A long moment passes. He doesn't move, not even attempting to get up, only breathing in silence, listening to your voice, feeling your paws on him. "No, not a dream," he says at last, softly. "'Dream' is but the closest approximation of the concept's projection onto the space of words. But it escapes me now..." A pause, a long sigh. Then his voice is graver: "How long?"
Roque thinks, then says softly, "Two months, perhaps longer. Fleeting impressions of you at points, like... more than a memory, as if you were somehow trying to reach me, but couldn't, and you were never there when I went to find you. Now... you're back, it's a different feeling. You're really here. It's been... over two months."
[Roque's ability to pick up tiny details, understand them and weave them back into RP, never ceases to amaze me, in a most humbling way.]
Laelys doesn't answer. Two months. He lets a long moment of thoughtful silence stretch, and then rolls onto his belly, tries to get up. Fails the first time, grunts, tries again, succeeds. Sounds of paw against hide. He's dusting himself off. Then at last he speaks, very, very cautious: "Any... idea, regarding what happened to me?"
Roque clucks her tongue softly, shaking her head. "None. The last I had heard... you and Diafeara had had some sort of fight. Then you were gone. I... feared the worst, for some time, but that doesn't matter now. You're back." She sounds weary with relief, though tense at the mention of her other lover's name.
Laelys nods against your paw, and as the clucking of your tongue reminds him of the non-vocal ways of communicating with you, he doubles it with a soft throat-popping sound -- 'kek'. "Diafeara. Yes. I remember her." There's a silence, and then he's on the move, something sternly cautious in his demeanor. "Roque," he says, more than an invitation to come along. Something pressing must be seen to at once.
Roque smiles, then rises from her knees, wiping as discreetly as she can at her eyes, slipping in step behind you, her cane again slowly sweeping the floor in front of her, mostly to keep her from tripping over your tail.
Laelys seems too restless about something to delay; he paces a narrow circle for an instant, as if unsure about something, and then leads the way straight onwards, in some direction that doesn't seem so random. There's a soft 'hmm' coming from him as he waits for you on the way, which probably doesn't even begin to express his gratitude for your presence here with him, and then he goes again, in a straight line, thumping his tail regularly to give you a clear sound to follow. And then there's a change of air pressure, and his last tail thump echoes sharply -- small room. It smells of Laelys and of old things unmoved. "We're there," says the dragon, a bit absently, and he immediately begins to rummage with some things on his desk.
Electronic sounds. Something whirring. A saurian grunt of urgency -- where /is/ it? -- and then a sigh. "Just a minute," he murmurs, and then there's a long silence, not even broken by his breathing. And then a heavy sigh. Relief. "At the least," he says, relief coloring his voice with warmth, "it would seem that I am the same me I was before." Renewed worry: "... Or something broke into here and messed with... things. But that seems unlikely."
Roque keks as she steps inside, slowly taking a pace around the outer edge, relearning the layout. "I remember this room. It's... untouched." She moves to the couch, upon which she lay next to you so many days ago, lightly rubbing her fingers over the earring that you gave her. "Your scent is unchanged... it's as if no time at all has passed here...." She chuckles softly. "And you still sound like yourself." She holds out a paw to you, the other patting your mattress. "Laelys... I trust you. Come, please, sit with me?"
Laelys sets whichever device he was using back onto his desk -- thunk -- and comes settle his vast bulk on the couch, close to you. Still thoughtful. "What happened, while I was... gone?" Such cautiousness in that last word. He suspects more than he will say.
Roque shifts closer to you, resting one paw on your leg, the other on your back, gently brushing her claws down along your tail. "Much," she says softly after some silence. "Where would you like me to begin? What do you remember?"
Laelys draws a breath in at the touch -- at least he's not changed that way -- but the touch is so vividly /yours/ that an immediate relaxation suffuses his entire body at once. And he leans against you slightly, accepting what you are giving with no regard for the consequences. He knows he's already bound to you, tight. "I am not certain," he says, quietly, thoughtful. "There was the tension around Untitled and Diafeara regarding Besax. Things got worse, and then better. I talked with Diafeara. I think that I spent that night with you. The day after, I was simply pursuing my usual researches about the Mess." That is all he seems willing to say for now.
[And things henceforth are between Roque and Laelys and whomever else they might be privately shared with. A most grateful 'thank you' to Roque for being so good at riffing along with new ideas, and for her patience in waiting for me, and a most grateful 'thank you' to Diafeara for having helped fuel the will to return in too many ways to count.]