Video; I Feel My Nightmares Watching Me

[ushahin]

[It's a random day of the week and two o'clock in the morning. Therefore, it's time for, as someone once put it, Ushahin's philosopher's hour. The lights are dim and Ushahin is lying flat on his back on one of the beds in his house. The phone is propped up near him. He's got something in his hands, a pale looking stone carving that is mostly hidden by the fingers closed in upon it.

He's been thinking quite a bit since he was brought back from the dead. His double had caused him to reevaluate some of his previous behavior. Perhaps he's treated some of those around him rather poorly. Well, there's nothing but time here, and always a chance to make amends.]

This place is frightfully full of nightmares. I mean that quite literally. I've never met such a group of people where the night terrors come upon them without provocation. Every night, nothing but tossing and turning amongst you all. That used to be my job.

[He sits up, fingers uncovering the rhios stone he has cupped in his palms. There's three figures carved into it. The one on the left is a long-haired man, stern looking, and with lines around his mouth that suggest he's older than the twenty-eights years he is. This is Tanaros, the commander of Satoris' army. There's anger flashing in his eyes that the carver was able to perfectly capture. The middle figure is Ushahin, his broken features captured starkly, with an unfocused, dreamy look in his eyes as he stares out towards whoever is holding the figurine. The one on the right is an older man in his forties, fat and with a long beard, his close-set eyes looking shrewd as if he's ready to make a bargain. Vorax, the last of the three, and the one who kept supplies for Satoris.]

I'm sure you've all grown frightfully tired of them. So I will make you a deal, fellow denizens. Tell me one of your nightmares and I will exchange it for a better dream. That's fair enough, is it not?

Comments

[outstandingbalance]

I can see how the power would be in line with your priorities.

[It would be easy to be snide; Natasha's not. She wouldn't say she's not concerned though. Admitting to animus and means isn't something that sits well with her.]

Seems like that was a while ago, how you say it.

[ushahin]

Close to a thousand years ago now, all told.

[He says this very casually, as if most people regularly lived a millennia or more. Though he was ancient, he looked like he hadn't even reached thirty yet.]

I calmed with age, but the fury has never left me.

[outstandingbalance]

That's a long time to carry a grudge. Though I guess it depends how long you're going to live.

And how long the people you're angry at have been dead.

[ushahin]

It wasn't a particular someone I was angry with. It was the whole race, every last one of them. I wanted them all to suffer as I did.

[He'd done his best to make the races of Ellyl and Men suffer his wrath. And suffered they had.]

But it was never enough and I saw how anger could eat away at an immortal's soul. My cousin suffered terribly for his eternal rage. So I had to find another way.

[outstandingbalance]

Sounds like you've had a long, complicated story. Very long.

[And probably very, very complicated. Natasha wonders that he talks about it so openly. But then, not everyone is inclined to hide what they are the way she does.]

So, what then? You calmed down in your old age?

[She very much doubts that.]

[ushahin]

Indeed. It has been over a thousand years in the making. I am so old that I have forgotten exactly how old I am.

[The years had blurred together for him after a certain point.]

Hardly. That came later. I simply found someone who could better put my skills to use and give me a purpose. He wanted me when no one else did.

[outstandingbalance]

I see. That someone here too, or is it down to just you again?

[ushahin]

No. Lord Satoris died at the end of the war.

[A cloud of sorrow passes over his features. His heart has been broken and will never be healed again no matter how long it takes.]

Alas, everyone I knew, all that I cared about and loved, all of them are now dead. The war took them all from me.

[outstandingbalance]

Wars have a way of doing that.

[Said in a guarded tone. She doesn't suspect he's looking for sympathy, and she's not inclined to give it.]