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Look. I was reading a Let's Play for this game, and I made some comments, and some other people made some comments, and there was discussion, and...okay. Yes. I wrote a moody fanfic vignette for a video game I've never even played, and I'm only mildly ashamed to admit it.
This probably will not make any sense at all to anyone who hasn't played at least part of the game. I am okay with that.
Dreams of Roses
Asellus dreams of roses.
#
"We could go back," White Rose says. It is not the first night since they left, but it is the first night since they left during which Asellus has felt ready to have this conversation. "It's not too late, and it's not as if he wouldn't forgive you. You're his one and only hybrid, his beloved experiment, the first shoot of--"
"I'm not a plant," Asellus says. She's found a seat by the window, where she can watch the street outside and two stories down. If any one of Them comes to the front door, she'll see them first. If there's another door--
Paranoia is a distraction from the conversation.
Paranoia isn't paranoia if they're really out to get you, is it?
"My Lord only wants what's best for all of us," White Rose says. Her fingers play through the roses in her hair, and Asellus has not--yet--determined if those are silk, true roses preserved in some way, or true roses growing from White Rose herself, some Mystic trait to go with the immortality. The otherworldly beauty.
The ability to sleep in coffins, unaging and endless. The ability to not care that one does so.
Asellus wonders if her caring--if her not wanting that--is an aspect of still being half human, or only a matter of escaping before it all seemed reasonable and natural. One can become used to anything. Even the distant scent of roses, and learning to see, smell, never touch.
"I should be able to decide what's best for me," Asellus says. "You should be able to decide that for yourself."
"That's not how it works," says White Rose, as serene in this proclamation as she has been in any other statement of facts. "Not among mystics. Do all humans choose what's best for them, and do as they like?"
No, perhaps not. No. But Asellus says, "It's late. We should get some sleep," and tucks a knee to her chest, sitting at the window. She should be watching the street, and yet she finds herself watching the lights on the ships, and the dark space beyond that is the ocean.
#
Asellus dreams of rose petals clinging to wet steps. The rain has come and gone, but she can still taste it heavy across her tongue, like a drink of water poured from a stone jar. All around her stand rose bushes, leaves and flowers bent with the raindrops. Overhead the sky hasn't cleared, still a blank gray slate.
I know what I am, say the letters on the sky, but what are you?
She walks barefoot on paving stones that form a path between the bushes. The petals on the ground stick to her feet, gold-white against pink-white. Like skin against skin, or one flower laid across another. With every shower the roses shed more petals, and yet the flowers remain.
She knows that the path spells out the answer to the sky's question, but she can't see the letters, not trapped here among the bushes.
She knows that the path leads to a deep pool of clear water. She knows that within the pool a woman lies waiting, staring up through the water like a crystal lid to a coffin, until someone should break the surface and discover--
#
Asellus does not know what she would discover in the dream. But when she sees the petals in the river, spelling out a message, she knows that it was meant for her. Even if the water mystics didn't mean it for her, the flowers knew better.
When she finds Mersarthim, she's sure of it. There's a message waiting in dreams (but isn't that superstition?) that will tell her the route to freedom (but isn't that nonsense?) if only she can work out how to read it (but isn't that ridiculous?), and the roses will lead her to that clear pool at the end--
No. Now she's mixing her metaphors. She has a woman in danger to save from a dangerous man. Yet another person who thinks he knows what's best for others--for other women--no matter what they say, no matter what they want. Why can't White Rose understand it? Why is Mersarthim so forgiving?
Questions for another day.
(Here's a question: are the roses spelling out the answer, or are they obscuring it?)
(Let's not get distracted.)
When the water mystic slips into the water, she's sure of it. What else could the dream have been telling her? Water mystic to water, human to humanity.
"It's time to go home," she tells White Rose.
"At last! My Lord will be so pleased--"
"No," Asellus says, "back to my home. My aunt. My house. My friends." And because she cannot stand that way White Rose's face has turned so frozen, that smile so fixed, she says, "Please come with me. I can't do it without you."
"Of course," White Rose says. "I wouldn't dream of leaving you."
#
She didn't leave.
That is.
White Rose didn't leave her. Asellus can hold onto that. Her life, her humanity, her family, her home, her history, her possessions, her friends and hobbies and ambitions and habits, these are all gone, twelve years dead, that Asellus-who-was is twelve years dead and superseded by this Asellus-who-is, whoever she is, but White Rose did not leave her.
They're huddled up in another room for another night. They're being...domestic. White Rose is stitching together the tears in their clothes with tiny, clumsy stitches, while Asellus assembles something like dinner out of three packets and a bottle of cheap white wine. (The red was cheaper still, but she guessed this would be to White Rose's taste.)
"Were you always called that?" she asks. "Princess White Rose, I mean. Or does that man just have a thing for flower metaphors?"
"Lord Orlouge," White Rose says, "is a benevolent master who allows us to pursue our own interests."
"When you're not in coffins."
"They're quite comfortable once you're accustomed to them," White Rose says primly, and ties a knot in the thread. "Really, perhaps we should have brought along that tailor, with the amount of damage that's been happening to our clothing. Though you shouldn't think I don't appreciate the way you stand between me and danger. It's so noble. Just as one would expect from a mystic of noble blood."
"I thought kidnapping and imprisonment were what one would expect from a mystic of noble blood," Asellus says, and hands White Rose a bowl.
"That's more of a hobby. Thank you, dear Asellus."
"I used to play the guitar," Asellus says. "That's a hobby, and it doesn't involve locking up anyone at all. But what about your name? Were you always White Rose? Were you always a princess, even when you were human?"
"To tell the truth," says Princess White Rose, lifting a first dainty spoonful of reconstituted wine and mushroom stroganoff, "I don't remember. It was such a long time ago."
#
Asellus dreams of white petals floating in the water. Dark gray stones line the pool. Or is it a well? No natural pool has such even sides, or runs so deep, but the green moss grows all over the banks, and there are no buckets in sight. Nor are there any rose bushes to explain where the petals came from; the trees that tower over the pool and block out the sky have no flowers, no thorns, nothing but slick bark and steady leaves.
She plucks handfuls of leaves, and tosses them into the water. They sink down without leaving so much as a ripple behind.
"The stone is for Mersarthim," she says. "The petals are for White Rose. The moss must be for me, because of my hair, but then what's the water for? What does the forest mean? What is this trying to tell me?"
"Don't ask me," says the wind. "I only bring the roses here."
Asellus spreads her arms to block the wind from the water. "Don't you dare touch them. How do you know where they want to go? Did you ever ask permission?"
"What does it matter?" The wind slips through her fingers. "Why are you complaining? If I hadn't brought the roses to you, you'd never have found them at all. If I hadn't brought you to the roses, they'd never have found you."
She's still composing her retort when she wakes.
#
"I was thinking," she tells White Rose, as they wander the streets of Luminous. "About going back home."
White Rose doesn't ask, this time, which home Asellus means, which is probably for the best.
"I mean, eventually I would have moved out. Eventually I would have made a new life of my own, and new friends. People do change. So if I can become human again, then I can make a new life--a real human one again--and it's...well, it's not as if nothing has changed, but I can do this. It's worth trying for. And I was thinking..."
"Yes?" White Rose asks. She turns her smile on Asellus, and the scent of roses fills the air.
"Let's look in here," Asellus says, and points to a building nearly at random. It's not that she doesn't have the question ready. It's that she's not sure what White Rose would say.
If she never asks, she'll never have to get the wrong answer.
#
Asellus dreams of thorns.
Her coat is made of leaves, and the lace is made of thorns. Sharp points dig into her throat, her wrists, spin about her as laces and buttons, tie her down and drag her back. All she can see is the green of leaves (or is it hair?) and the brown of thorns (or are they eyes?) and they're pulling her away.
She wants to cry for help, but who would she call to? There's a deep, clear pool waiting for her, and the thorns are pulling her in.
"Get used to it," says the water.
"It's not hard," say the stones of the well.
"I always knew you'd be back," says the wind.
#
"Lady Asellus!"
She wakes up, and it's only the smell of roses that keeps her from striking out at the grip on her. But it's White Rose who's holding her arms, White Rose who's sitting above her. White Rose who isn't smiling, isn't looking serene, but who looks so very worried. As she did when they ran from Orlouge's last set of assassins.
"Are they here?" Asellus asks, and tries to find her weapons. She can't remember where--Luminous, that was it, where they meant to spend the night before moving on, and it's only the room there, no sign of attackers yet. "Are they at the door?"
"No one's at the door," White Rose says. "It's no one but us. We left that mage in the other room."
"I'm fine," Asellus says. She is not fine. She is breathing like it's the end of battle, big gasps of air, and sweat has dampened her sheets. Every shaking breath pulls in the taste of roses. "I'm sorry. Did I wake you up? It was only a bad dream."
"You were calling my name," White Rose says. She's still holding onto Asellus's shoulders.
"Was I?"
"You were."
I don't know what I'd do if you left me, Asellus thinks. She doesn't say that out loud. You can't say that to people, not over and over again. They'd start to wonder. They'd get bored. They'd get the wrong idea.
White Rose kisses her. Of course she'd taste of roses.
"I'll never leave you," she says.
#
Asellus dreams of roses, again and again. Messages and meanings, symbols and suspicions. She still can't figure out what the path between the rosebushes was trying to spell out for her.
She stops dreaming of thorns.
This probably will not make any sense at all to anyone who hasn't played at least part of the game. I am okay with that.
Dreams of Roses
Asellus dreams of roses.
#
"We could go back," White Rose says. It is not the first night since they left, but it is the first night since they left during which Asellus has felt ready to have this conversation. "It's not too late, and it's not as if he wouldn't forgive you. You're his one and only hybrid, his beloved experiment, the first shoot of--"
"I'm not a plant," Asellus says. She's found a seat by the window, where she can watch the street outside and two stories down. If any one of Them comes to the front door, she'll see them first. If there's another door--
Paranoia is a distraction from the conversation.
Paranoia isn't paranoia if they're really out to get you, is it?
"My Lord only wants what's best for all of us," White Rose says. Her fingers play through the roses in her hair, and Asellus has not--yet--determined if those are silk, true roses preserved in some way, or true roses growing from White Rose herself, some Mystic trait to go with the immortality. The otherworldly beauty.
The ability to sleep in coffins, unaging and endless. The ability to not care that one does so.
Asellus wonders if her caring--if her not wanting that--is an aspect of still being half human, or only a matter of escaping before it all seemed reasonable and natural. One can become used to anything. Even the distant scent of roses, and learning to see, smell, never touch.
"I should be able to decide what's best for me," Asellus says. "You should be able to decide that for yourself."
"That's not how it works," says White Rose, as serene in this proclamation as she has been in any other statement of facts. "Not among mystics. Do all humans choose what's best for them, and do as they like?"
No, perhaps not. No. But Asellus says, "It's late. We should get some sleep," and tucks a knee to her chest, sitting at the window. She should be watching the street, and yet she finds herself watching the lights on the ships, and the dark space beyond that is the ocean.
#
Asellus dreams of rose petals clinging to wet steps. The rain has come and gone, but she can still taste it heavy across her tongue, like a drink of water poured from a stone jar. All around her stand rose bushes, leaves and flowers bent with the raindrops. Overhead the sky hasn't cleared, still a blank gray slate.
I know what I am, say the letters on the sky, but what are you?
She walks barefoot on paving stones that form a path between the bushes. The petals on the ground stick to her feet, gold-white against pink-white. Like skin against skin, or one flower laid across another. With every shower the roses shed more petals, and yet the flowers remain.
She knows that the path spells out the answer to the sky's question, but she can't see the letters, not trapped here among the bushes.
She knows that the path leads to a deep pool of clear water. She knows that within the pool a woman lies waiting, staring up through the water like a crystal lid to a coffin, until someone should break the surface and discover--
#
Asellus does not know what she would discover in the dream. But when she sees the petals in the river, spelling out a message, she knows that it was meant for her. Even if the water mystics didn't mean it for her, the flowers knew better.
When she finds Mersarthim, she's sure of it. There's a message waiting in dreams (but isn't that superstition?) that will tell her the route to freedom (but isn't that nonsense?) if only she can work out how to read it (but isn't that ridiculous?), and the roses will lead her to that clear pool at the end--
No. Now she's mixing her metaphors. She has a woman in danger to save from a dangerous man. Yet another person who thinks he knows what's best for others--for other women--no matter what they say, no matter what they want. Why can't White Rose understand it? Why is Mersarthim so forgiving?
Questions for another day.
(Here's a question: are the roses spelling out the answer, or are they obscuring it?)
(Let's not get distracted.)
When the water mystic slips into the water, she's sure of it. What else could the dream have been telling her? Water mystic to water, human to humanity.
"It's time to go home," she tells White Rose.
"At last! My Lord will be so pleased--"
"No," Asellus says, "back to my home. My aunt. My house. My friends." And because she cannot stand that way White Rose's face has turned so frozen, that smile so fixed, she says, "Please come with me. I can't do it without you."
"Of course," White Rose says. "I wouldn't dream of leaving you."
#
She didn't leave.
That is.
White Rose didn't leave her. Asellus can hold onto that. Her life, her humanity, her family, her home, her history, her possessions, her friends and hobbies and ambitions and habits, these are all gone, twelve years dead, that Asellus-who-was is twelve years dead and superseded by this Asellus-who-is, whoever she is, but White Rose did not leave her.
They're huddled up in another room for another night. They're being...domestic. White Rose is stitching together the tears in their clothes with tiny, clumsy stitches, while Asellus assembles something like dinner out of three packets and a bottle of cheap white wine. (The red was cheaper still, but she guessed this would be to White Rose's taste.)
"Were you always called that?" she asks. "Princess White Rose, I mean. Or does that man just have a thing for flower metaphors?"
"Lord Orlouge," White Rose says, "is a benevolent master who allows us to pursue our own interests."
"When you're not in coffins."
"They're quite comfortable once you're accustomed to them," White Rose says primly, and ties a knot in the thread. "Really, perhaps we should have brought along that tailor, with the amount of damage that's been happening to our clothing. Though you shouldn't think I don't appreciate the way you stand between me and danger. It's so noble. Just as one would expect from a mystic of noble blood."
"I thought kidnapping and imprisonment were what one would expect from a mystic of noble blood," Asellus says, and hands White Rose a bowl.
"That's more of a hobby. Thank you, dear Asellus."
"I used to play the guitar," Asellus says. "That's a hobby, and it doesn't involve locking up anyone at all. But what about your name? Were you always White Rose? Were you always a princess, even when you were human?"
"To tell the truth," says Princess White Rose, lifting a first dainty spoonful of reconstituted wine and mushroom stroganoff, "I don't remember. It was such a long time ago."
#
Asellus dreams of white petals floating in the water. Dark gray stones line the pool. Or is it a well? No natural pool has such even sides, or runs so deep, but the green moss grows all over the banks, and there are no buckets in sight. Nor are there any rose bushes to explain where the petals came from; the trees that tower over the pool and block out the sky have no flowers, no thorns, nothing but slick bark and steady leaves.
She plucks handfuls of leaves, and tosses them into the water. They sink down without leaving so much as a ripple behind.
"The stone is for Mersarthim," she says. "The petals are for White Rose. The moss must be for me, because of my hair, but then what's the water for? What does the forest mean? What is this trying to tell me?"
"Don't ask me," says the wind. "I only bring the roses here."
Asellus spreads her arms to block the wind from the water. "Don't you dare touch them. How do you know where they want to go? Did you ever ask permission?"
"What does it matter?" The wind slips through her fingers. "Why are you complaining? If I hadn't brought the roses to you, you'd never have found them at all. If I hadn't brought you to the roses, they'd never have found you."
She's still composing her retort when she wakes.
#
"I was thinking," she tells White Rose, as they wander the streets of Luminous. "About going back home."
White Rose doesn't ask, this time, which home Asellus means, which is probably for the best.
"I mean, eventually I would have moved out. Eventually I would have made a new life of my own, and new friends. People do change. So if I can become human again, then I can make a new life--a real human one again--and it's...well, it's not as if nothing has changed, but I can do this. It's worth trying for. And I was thinking..."
"Yes?" White Rose asks. She turns her smile on Asellus, and the scent of roses fills the air.
"Let's look in here," Asellus says, and points to a building nearly at random. It's not that she doesn't have the question ready. It's that she's not sure what White Rose would say.
If she never asks, she'll never have to get the wrong answer.
#
Asellus dreams of thorns.
Her coat is made of leaves, and the lace is made of thorns. Sharp points dig into her throat, her wrists, spin about her as laces and buttons, tie her down and drag her back. All she can see is the green of leaves (or is it hair?) and the brown of thorns (or are they eyes?) and they're pulling her away.
She wants to cry for help, but who would she call to? There's a deep, clear pool waiting for her, and the thorns are pulling her in.
"Get used to it," says the water.
"It's not hard," say the stones of the well.
"I always knew you'd be back," says the wind.
#
"Lady Asellus!"
She wakes up, and it's only the smell of roses that keeps her from striking out at the grip on her. But it's White Rose who's holding her arms, White Rose who's sitting above her. White Rose who isn't smiling, isn't looking serene, but who looks so very worried. As she did when they ran from Orlouge's last set of assassins.
"Are they here?" Asellus asks, and tries to find her weapons. She can't remember where--Luminous, that was it, where they meant to spend the night before moving on, and it's only the room there, no sign of attackers yet. "Are they at the door?"
"No one's at the door," White Rose says. "It's no one but us. We left that mage in the other room."
"I'm fine," Asellus says. She is not fine. She is breathing like it's the end of battle, big gasps of air, and sweat has dampened her sheets. Every shaking breath pulls in the taste of roses. "I'm sorry. Did I wake you up? It was only a bad dream."
"You were calling my name," White Rose says. She's still holding onto Asellus's shoulders.
"Was I?"
"You were."
I don't know what I'd do if you left me, Asellus thinks. She doesn't say that out loud. You can't say that to people, not over and over again. They'd start to wonder. They'd get bored. They'd get the wrong idea.
White Rose kisses her. Of course she'd taste of roses.
"I'll never leave you," she says.
#
Asellus dreams of roses, again and again. Messages and meanings, symbols and suspicions. She still can't figure out what the path between the rosebushes was trying to spell out for her.
She stops dreaming of thorns.
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I am really loving the Let's Play of this game; it has some lovely relationship dynamics, and the person playing it is reconstructing lost pieces of plot, and writing dialogue to go in the missing slots, which fit right in with the official stuff, too. Asellus is an excellent protagonist. (And some of the fan art being linked in the thread is just gorgeous.) Since I can't draw, I figured I could at least fanfic at it.