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[ninefox]

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[ninefox]

[Between the mating flight and all the telepathy, it's so horrible that it becomes absolutely absurd; Jedao ends up discovering the entirely novel sensation of laughing while he's in the middle of throwing up.]

seriously do you read anything that isn't profoundly horrifying

i think you might hate yourself more than i do

are you okay? not like, right now, like, ever

im worried

[magician_king]

??? it's basically a romance novel

except the acid falling from the sky bit

ok trying again

[Putting that one down, he finds... the Hobbit! Can't go wrong with the Hobbit. He read that when he was seven, it's appropriate, right?]

[ninefox]

the acid is fine, they get their brains invaded left and right and permanently

[Rose Chalice, that-which-receives. I wish to serve, sir. He presses his forehead against the cool glass of the fishtank. It's good, though. It's how the people survive. What a racket.]

[magician_king]

[The Hobbit, then. No telepathy (except for the ring twist when, they don't have to read the trilogy) and lots of fun rhyming, bears and eagles.]

[ninefox]

[After a few chapters worth of Bilbo's internal monologue -]

well now I'm just hungry

[But Tolkien's races make sense in his head, in a faction-like place, and the view of goblins patches into heretics easily enough. He loves the atmosphere in Mirkwood, the visceral horror of the spiders. He likes the dry jokes, and doesn't know at all how he feels about the dragon, and he tastes ashes at the description of the arkenstone. The most important question is always, how far will you go?

He doesn't know how he feels about Bilbo's reactions to war, in the build-up and in the aftermath. But it makes him think of Sereset, and obscurely of Nidana. It makes him - want to think about it more.]

i liked that

i might borrow it?

[magician_king]

kk it's in my room, let yourself in whenever

new one;

[Oh! The Night Circus, even though he cries a lot while he's reading it.]

[ninefox]

hey super unrelated and you have no obligations and feel free to tell me to fuck off

but after she got shot I promised Selina I'd ask if you'd turn her into a bird sometime

[magician_king]

Okay tell her to bring me a feather of her favourite bird and when she does I'll make it happen.

[ninefox]

how did i get lucky enough to meet you

im sorry im such a corpsefucking nutcase right now

[magician_king]

jesus jedao don't apologize for that

are you doing okay? tell me something nice that's going on over there, i miss hearing about your day

[ninefox]

i'll apologize if i want to

[He wonders if he should not mention Fives, but....it's the only thing that's actually made him happy lately that Quentin missed, no matter the tangle of the circumstances.]

i finally managed to touch Fives again

you were so brilliant with the fox, i actually stopped sitting on my ass being weepy and useless and started problem-solving again

[magician_king]

you weren't touching fives?

[He's trying not to pry, but it's possible Quentin needs some bringing up to speed on what is going on.]

[ninefox]

i haven't been touching anyone. i just

[Which says more than it says, in Jedao's case.]

I haven't told you about my days because there's not a lot to tell.

[It's not that Jedao actually wants to hide it from Quentin. It's just so hard to say. Where does he start? When is it just...rank self-indulgence, whining and begging for comfort from someone he's already hurting, someone he can't even face?]

[magician_king]

well you know you can talk to me no matter what if there's anything good or bad you want to talk to someone about

[ninefox]

just because I can doesn't mean I should




....okay I realize I've never said that before in my life, but still

dear Q-shei, today i stayed in bed staring at the wall for five hours. Fives brought me breakfast and made sad faces until i managed to swallow four slices of bacon and half a muffin. then i switched to laying on the floor. managed to sit up for an hour and watched the fish tank, then ran away to the roci and hid in the smallest compartment i could find until i started getting muscle cramps up my neck. i sneak around like a kid after curfew because most people looking at me feels like ants all over my skin. i miss you more than i used to miss my own hands and i hate myself for it. i go to bed and sleep for three hours and cry for half of that. about-face, repeat.

its pathetic and its boring. you don't want to hear it and i don't want to talk about it, i don't even want to be doing it. i just keep not doing anything else

[magician_king]

[First, Quentin cries his eyes out for sixty solid seconds, on his behalf and for his own stupidity.

Then he writes and deletes five questions.

Then he asks;]

can I tell you about something that helps me when I start getting flashbacks? which isn't often but does happen and sometimes makes me not eat, not move, sit fully dressed in the bottom of the bathtub

[ninefox]

[Jedao is breathing slow and careful, refusing to let himself hyperventilate. He can't take it back once he hit send, so there's nothing to do but go on.]

okay

[magician_king]

it's a stretching routine with a lot of deep breathing. it's not exercise because obviously fuck exercise rn, but it does get you, like, shifting? a bit. and it involves a lot of breathing down through your feet and hands which is supposed to do something for grounding your body in the present

I don't know I feel like a moron doing it a lot of the time but if you wanted I could read you the cues for it with the right time intervals between shifts and you could try

[ninefox]

[He really should still be training. He has a body again, and bodies need practice. He keeps thinking of endlessly, fruitlessly failing to condition the deliberately hobbled bodies Kujen gave him, ways to past the endless time and remind himself how to be disciplined.]

meditation can go bad for me

but stretching could be okay

[magician_king]

ok let me know when

get barefoot and maybe on some kind of rug and wearing something you can contort in a bit

[ninefox]

[He's already barefoot - boots have seemed entirely too much, lately. And he can move in the uniform, at least at the field service setting where he usually keeps it. He doesn't have a rug but he does have a few bolts of cloth crumpled in a crate from his short-lived experiments with quilting and piecework, and after a few minutes, he manages to dig one of them out and and bowl it across the widest empty space in the room. He has more than enough knives on him to slice off some of it, but it's unrolled over the floor, and that's good enough for now.]

ok when

[magician_king]

[He turns the feed on, clears his throat, and instructs him,]

Stand up straight with your hands at your sides, and draw in a deep breath.

[And Quentin leads him inexpertly through a yoga sequence, by audio alone.]

[ninefox]

[It's good, for a little while - gets him moving without having to think about it, or decide, gets his blood moving. He thinks maybe he could train after this, just coasting on momentum - and then the thoughtlessness of it catches him in the ribs like a fishhook, the way he obeys and obeys, I wish to serve, sir, and he leaves the communicator on the rumbled fabric and escapes to the little bathroom, elbows on the sink, saliva pooling in his mouth as a precursor to vomit that doesn't quite precipitate. After a few minutes, he goes back.]

thanks

[magician_king]

of course, no problem

I feel like you need some other hobby like painting or smth

[ninefox]

[He thinks, yes, Quentin-zho out of reflexive memory of Mikodez hassling him about hobbies in another life, and almost throws up after all. He breathes carefully through his teeth.]

i have hobbies. i lose to nico at pattern-stones and teach Fives to dance and duel and i'm trying to teach my fish to do tricks and i have made so many lopsided glass birds, quentin

fuck im sick of hobbies i want a goddamn war and when we were in fantasia i didn't even pick a good one


fuck

sorry that wasn't about you just

i think maybe the barge is finally getting to me

[Kujen always kept him in neat miniature worlds, too.]