anonymous text | in a strange young world

[inuko]

Question: if you're having really vivid dreams that leave you waking up... messy, what are they and how do you make them stop?

[ when you skipped past puberty, don't know what to call a wet dream, and have no internet searching skills... you make the mistake of asking the internet. but seriously. how do you make them stop?! at least give him a term to research, please! ]

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[bailian]

[ All the soft accompanying noises on the other end of the line suggest the kind of unintentional rolling around of someone with unfettered energy to spare and no belief in excessive self-control. Again it dredges up old memories of his peers who could barely hold still in their idle bodies. Flighty little birds darting gleefully about with seemingly not a care in the world once the hawkish eyes of their Shizun landed elsewhere, then huddling stock-still whenever Shen Qingqiu so much as loftily recalled their existence to the tune of several dozen laps.

A lifetime ago he was that antsy in his own skin. But time has tested him to much, laid enough pressure down to drain the whole of his heart dry. Until he found it exhausting to move. To breathe in and out or be more than the untouchable entity he'd once perceived his master to be.

Without Shen Qingqiu hovering near to remind him there is life and joy and so much to feel within his body, Binghe finds himself easily left to stillness. It's the same way he'd settled on what amounted to a throne and listened to endless reports, strategies and all the complaints a Peak Lord finds cast at his feet. ]

By blood and lineage. [ Even if what he was only manifested itself later. ] I was born like this, but I didn't always know.

[ If one wanted to get technical even he was created in a manner of speaking. But in place of anything artificial, be it summoning incantations or the sealing spells to hold something in place within a body, his flesh was knitted together in the most organic of ways. Most demons are, though they were birthed into the world typically well aware of their parentage and raised with the belief that they belonged to the race they were brought into. He had not.

It makes him wonder if someone that isn't human, who wasn't born this way but made, ever knew a similar sense of alienation. Loneliness. And the desperate want to belong. ]

What would it change? You're going through the same things everyone does.

[ It's the most bizarre litmus test of normalcy, but if something walks and speaks and looks as mortals do, then it could be guessed that even functions like these follow the same patterns.

Abilities can throw a wrench into appearing anything but seemingly normal. Binghe himself knows all too well how his behaviors oftentimes dip into the bizarre, too unlike his mortal followers in the the Huan Hua Palace to be met with anything but fright or awe. But one could hope a young man's experience growing up doesn't turn distinctly atypical.

With the issue being so intimate, it's not hard to imagine the fact it could be more frightening than changes that are already awkward, beyond a person's control. ]

If things get worse- [ Worded carefully, the subject sensitive in many ways. ] We'll think of something else.

[ Because saying he'll shoulder all the burden to finding a solution sounds too much like he's taking on the responsibilities of a youth he's not even met. There's a sense of necessary distance here to uphold some propriety for himself and the one in question.

Except, he hears that last word and can't possibly know that Shino may fear he's bound to dream things into reality. His next best guess is the more obvious one, something more tangled up in shame or any deeper meaning behind the end results of such strong reactions. ]

How do you think they'll affect you here?

[inuko]

Ah, that had to be hard. Learning things about yourself that matter to you and others, but you had no way to know before you knew.

[ Alienation comes from all different sources; his health was enough of one, growing up, being a young boy told to follow an older tradition, a young girl to the eyes of the world. Someone who wrestled and contended with the spectre of his own death all his remembered life, who never went to school, rarely was outside, threw himself into rivers and forests in the chances he had to take, including for the sake of his adopted siblings.

Being human and not, now, is a different alienation he refuses to allow himself to feel, a different fear that has to sneak in when his defenses are down.

He sighs out, huffing something of a sound of amusement and annoyance, not at the man speaking with him, but at himself. ]

I don't know, it really shouldn't matter.

[ Even so, it does. Worries he shrugs off to deal with if they become problems. ]

... I don't know? [ He keeps saying that. He hates it. He makes a small noise of frustration. ] Have you noticed... do you have any abilities that work differently here than they do back in your home?

[bailian]

[ He cannot possibly fathom what made this man who or what he is today, or the limitations and laws that his body abides by concerning such unknowns. But being created, in whatever way that he was, shouldn't mean he's so unlike others that his dreams are secret desires. Not when a youthful voice echos only apprehension at the thought. ]

You're still- [ A search for words yields the most obvious result. ] You, whether you were born like this or made to become who you are now.

[ Isn't that true for everyone, no matter the subject matter or person being discussed? Yes, it matters to the person on that journey of self-discovery, but not in ways that detract from the end result. ]

If what happens in those moments aren't things you want, then don't doubt your own feelings.

[ Defensiveness isn't something inborn within him, but learned like all his hardest lessons. So that knee-jerk instinct, the unwillingness to dole out revelations of his own weaknesses, rises to meet the question at hand.

It's doubtful that someone young enough to not know their own body could possibly conceive of using information concerning his abilities against him. And there seems little reason to suspect such a thing would be a relevant concern when Binghe hasn't made an enemy of this man.

Still, he's guarded enough to not lay out the full scope of it all. Vague notions are enough to maintain the honest exchange they've initiated. ]

Yes, some abilities don't work at all. Others only occasionally.

[ Xin Mo can no longer cleave through time and space, nor does the blood coursing through Shen Qingqiu's veins call to him without fail at it once did. Without reintroducing it into his master's system, or that of another soul, it's impossible to tell if the problem is person-specific or due to this world. Neither option is feasible when the mere proposition in his Sizun's direction is likely to dredge up memories he'd rather leave in the past. ]

[inuko]

[ His silence is longer this time, and when he speaks again, it's with a sort of half-sighed laugh that carries no humour at all. ]

Except when I was just human, I was a sick kid who was dressed like a girl because his parents desperately hoped it'd help fool fate into letting me see fifteen. If I said, "I wish you well," it was a nice sentiment, and something I was probably hoping could be true for me too, but knew wouldn't be. As I am now, I can say something like, "I wish you well," and that's not just words. It leads to people being kept alive, forced to live past their natural end and craving blood to sustain themselves, torn up because all they want to do is die, and all I've done without meaning to is force them to see the lies they've been living with to make life hurt less after they should already be dead.

[ Should he say this to someone he barely knows? Doesn't know at all, really, aside from a sort of almost shared heritage? Probably not.

But he's tired, this is something that honestly disturbs and frightens him, and he has no one to tell this to anyway. Which is almost worse. Murasame... Murasame has no advice on any of this.

He grants wishes. He doesn't consider if they should be granted or not. Shino is the moral compass, not his demon. ]

I could afford to be careless when I was just a sick child. I can't afford to be that way now, not when it isn't always conscious, these things that happen. I don't even know how I'd test that here, but... I don't want to find out after it's ruined someone else's existence because I didn't understand their point of view.

[ And with the people here, that's most everyone. ]