"Ya aliens." The tone of his voice was so condescending he was just short of adding a giant DUH at the end of it. Why is it that Roland never even -tried- to believe him? He was full of good ideas, they might be a little abstract but he wasn't even making an attempt to make sense of it. In Henri's mind, it all pieced together.

"Yeeeees but what would they be exiles for?" He was going to start throwing more facts (well one) and ideas at Roland in a snappy matter of fact kind of way. "Besides Paige never said anything about Prompt and unless everyone in Prompt has purple eyes like Donald then they're aliens."

And that's that. There was a bit of an awkward pause afterwords, one where Henri just would not look at Roland and judging by his expression was processing a thought that he didn't like one bit. "Look the point is I wouldn't trust that guy as far as I could throw him."

"He said some...really weird shit." He seemed to say more to himself than anyone else. "ANYWAY." Now Henri was going to pull a fast one on Roland. This would be the wackiest thing he'd say all day. " We're not excavatin the damn thing by ourselves, we're helping a bunch of those Esconians fill it in. I bet the huge steel ship was sent down full of tools and slaves to fix it, that's prolly what it's all about." Because it made sense.

There was a minute there where Roland felt like knocking some sense into Henri's thick skull, but he restrained himself enough that he only visualized it in his head; he was sure Henri would eventually get over his fantasies, probably.

“Okay,” Roland slumped in defeat. There really was no point in arguing the matter with Henri anymore, he was pretty set on them being aliens or criminals, and who was Roland to deny Henri his dreams? Sigh.
“You know, ... If they really are aliens or criminals or something, they probably think you know their secret now, and if I was an alien or whatever, I’d definitely want to shut you up. Hell, you even picked a fight with Donald--do ya often pick fights with things that might want to dissect you? You’re a braver man than me,” he admitted with pseudo-honesty and a pat on Henri’s shoulder, as if to drive the point him.

“Excavation, huh? Whatever, I don’ care as long as it pays well.”

If what Henri said was true, then they did probably need a fair bit of sleep tonight; after all, working like a dog while in the midst of sleep deprivation would have been a miserable, excruciatingly painful thing. Shame, too--tomorrow was another one of Roland’s free days.

Finally, it worked. Roland seemed to be at his wits end for his tolerance for Henri's bizarre stories and was taking it all in stride. He couldn't convince his friend otherwise anyway, and it would be less of a hassle to just play along.

Even though Roland wasn't entirely enthusiastic about Henri's ideas, the fact that he gave up arguing felt like a huge victory for Henri, and a broad broad, ridiculously stupid smile smeared his facial features. It was enough to make anybody sick, especially because he was enjoying it so much.

"I didn't pick a fight!" He protested childishly. " And I think Donald is more interested in YOU anyway, he had that lusty look in his eyes." Which was honestly the cause for Henri's upstart, it wasn't jealously, it was the way Donald looked and spoke that struck him as threatening. As for bravery, he was more stupid and oblivious to how bad things could get, and Roland probably knew it.

The point completely flew right over Henri's head. He chose to take it as a real honest to goodness compliment, his smile couldn't get any bigger.

"Ya he said we're gettin payed. Didn't say how much though..."

Henri allowed himself to get more comfortable, tossing his body pack onto the ground with a thump (and a bit of a squish, probably landed on a carcass) so he could gaze dreamily at the sky, looking over his to do list in his head, staring at the clouds.

....

Letting out a long drawn out sigh, Henri covered his face with his hands once he realized what exactly was ahead of him. "FFffuuuuUuuuuck I gotta clean up the light house n shit too..."

"I saw you shove at him!" He shouted in defiance; he was not going to back down from this one, no way, no how. As far as this lusty look that Donald supposedly had on his face at the time, Roland didn’t see it, and was pretty sure Henri was just reading far too much into it. Which was also kind of gay, but whatever--Henri was just being weird, in the end.

“Them Esconians are the Emperor’s slave soldiers or somesuch, so Maybe they’ll pay us a ton of money for our work, never know.”

And then Roland became a mute. He kind of figured Henri was going to realize that their mess last night wasn’t going to clean itself, and given Henri’s “victory” about Donald, Roland was in no mood to offer any sort of help. Instead, Roland sort of scooted over a bit and after a while, he would get up, stretch, and prepare to leave to go home.

Since Henri wasn't very bright he didn't see anything remotely gay about not liking it when weird creepy guys stared at his friends lustfully, touching them alone by a shack in the middle of nowhere. It didn't seem like jealously to Henri, since only chicks got jealous. Roland was gay for not thinking it was homoerotic.

Henri was sure he hardly brushed Donald's hand away from Roland, yet Roland was convinced Henri mauled the guy. Neither of them were going to back down on this, and it was hardly something worth arguing about, nevermind shouting over. The sudden raise in Roland's voice caused Henri to jump.

"Geezes shoutypants," he said dismissively, then ignored the subject. " Your dad said we'd be payed -well- he didn't specify or nothin."

The silence was kind of welcomed after all the fuss that day, of course Henri didn't figure it was because of the topic of cleaning up after the party, and was clueless to the sort of mood he'd put Roland in. His mind was elsewhere,

"Hey...hey Roland, if you switch some letters around your name and Donald's are like, almost the same." When he finally took his hands off his face and opened his eyes to look at his friend, he'd see that he was standing up and get ready to go.

"Oh right." They had things to do. Henri also rolled up into a standing position, reaching his hands out into the sky in a long stretch. Something in his chest cracked when he yawned. "So Iiiiii guess we should...go. See ya tomorrow."

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later that day Henri busied himself with the monumental task of cleaning up after his friend's party. Surprisingly despite his flaky character the fact that he was cleaning it alone didn't bother him, the lighthouse was entirely his responsibility and in all honesty, most of the mess was his anyway.

Needless to say after being gone for almost 2 days without word, his mother wasn't too happy when her son came home looking like a bad Picasso painting. So Henri went to bed right after dinner to shut that bitch up.

Offtopic: Then Ange went to go have something to eat because what the fuck were the last two paragraphs I don't even.

There was an unfamiliar voice spoken in an unfamiliar language. It was calm, but different--foreign, hollow, and ancient. Like water bubbling forth from a creek, it flowed and slithered its way into Henri's mind. In a world governed by both the real and unreal, this voice needed no body, no throat, no tongue, or intent.

There was a soothing, enchanting quality about the voice; it coaxed Henri from out of bed until he found his eyes opening and his body rising. The sun had just risen outside, but was not so high as to cast too strong a light through the window; outside, Henri would be able to hear his village coming back to life with the morning’s sun: birds nosily chirped and squawked, distant shouts of villagers going about their day rose above even that, and nearby businesses hollered and advertised about their wares and goods.


There was a sharp, resounding knock. It came once, then twice, three times, and finally a fourth; it was the harsh, familiar pattern and force of Roland knocking at Henri’s door--his front door, specifically. Likely, he had come to fetch Henri for whatever today’s job was.

"Mmmm,mmmrrr shhhaaadddrrrr!"

Whoever was on the other end of the door would hear strange slurred words, like someone was muttering, or making a sad attempt at speech. Right now in Henri's deep sleep, he was very loudly dreaming, with only sound and without any images about an odd mystical sort of voice speaking to him in another language.

"Mmmmbrrmm..."

He was trying to tell the voice to shut up so he could get to sleep, face first into his drooly pillow, but he woke up anyway, so it didn't matter.

Henri stood up in his bed, feeling his body and the world around him come to life. He stared blankly while he went over his chores for the day, until they came tapping on his door. That knock unmistakably belonged to Roland, exactly four forceful taps.

"Coming Roland! Just lemme get dressed."

By the time Henri managed to dress himself and actually answer the door, he would find Roland propped outside of the house, using the side of the door’s frame to hold himself up, and a particularly perturbed look was plastered over his white-scarred face; he furrowed his brow and blew a plume of smoke form his nostrils, flicking a small cylinder of paper and tobacco off into the distance.

“Took yer sweet time,” he spat, but his words came out ... different. Roland was speaking in the same language that Henri had woken up to just moments before; however, it was intelligible this time. Bits and pieces started making sense, foreign sounds, vowels and consonants, the way the words were pronounced, became distinguishable, and without exception, Henri, too, would find himself naturally speaking--thinking, even--in this language.

Roland stood upright and moved away from Henri’s door with a gesture that quite clearly meant ‘let’s get to it,’ but as he did this, provided Henri was paying attention for once, he would notice some hints about today’s job; specifically, he would see that unlike usual, Roland was dressed in full temple regalia: dark leather trousers, cut off just above the ankles, embroidered with shimmering, shining thread, a sleeveless, open-shirt tunic, and just where the shirt ended, tethered into a loop in his trousers, was a sheathed sword; its weight did not seem to bother him in the least.

Henri dressed himself in whatever was nearest his bed at the time, which happened to be the filthy clothes he wore yesterday. Not a problem he figured, no use getting clean clothes dirty, just get the dirty ones dirtier. He rushed himself out the door in a rush job of putting himself together, sloppily done without his hat or jacket, hair tied up in a high ponytail for the days work.

"Hey Roland sorry I..."

Tobacco suddenly invaded his lungs, causing him to cough and stand back a little bit. It was coming from Roland. Roland? Smoking? He didn't seem to be the kind of guy to fritter around with that nonsense, and it wasn't like there wasn't an almost empty flask in his pocket so he wasn't going to judge. It's just, well it was totally unhealthy and he wanted to smack it out of his hands, but didn't since he didn't want Roland to smack his teeth out of his mouth.

When did he smoke? When did he talk...that, that LANGUAGE!? Suddenly the cigarette wasn't the only thing wrong with today. Henri could only offer Roland the most baffled expression while he sorted things out in his head. He was smoking, speaking a different language and quite frankly, dressed like a friggen weirdo. Why, why the fuck, and where did he get a sword from. You do not need swords to excavate, you need shovels, it better be a shovel sword.

Worst of all while he thought of all these things he was speaking and even thinking in that language.

"Haha y-y-yeah well, whatever. Let's just g-go." There was an obvious discomfort about Henri, in his voice and now even sweating with nervousness. He started walking, but pondered the bizare happenings to himself while they traveled. Could he still be dreaming? He'd had dreams where he was carrying on his day, only to wake up and realize none of it was real and he'd have to start it all over again. For sure he didn't want to write it off as a possibility, but he didn't want to start making a habit of doubting everything around him, it wasn't healthy. If it was a dream, nothing bad happened yet, so he'd just play along with it for now, but he had to know.

"So er, where'd y-you get the sword? And why do you look like a ch-character from a sappy badly written tween r-romance novel?" One question at a time, there was still more.

Roland turned back to face Henri with a worried expression; it would seem that he had been right in his suspicion; Henri just could not take work seriously... Nervous, asking weird questions... No doubts about it, he most likely got a hold of contraband and helped himself to it, and from the sounds of it, it was something strong.

He sighed, heavily.

"From the armory," he answered and placed a hand atop the sword's hilt. It was a good sword, well balanced, sharp, and forged by a master smith. Their small settlement may not have been as glorious and as grand as the Point of Reflection, but they more then made up for it in quality. Disregarding that, was Henri actually insulting him? Perhaps that was why Henri chose to not wear his uniform, but still... Insulting a good friend like that, that was just going overboard, wasn't it?

“You’re acting weird,” he spoke calmly, “cut it out before we get to scene, alright? This one is different ,” he shook his head and continued on his way.


We found your father.

"Oh....okaaaay."

Shaking his head slowly up and down with an even more upset and downright weird expression (his lips were pursed and eyebrows twisted upwards in utter confusion as far as they could go) he looked down at the sword, then back up at Roland, and back down again, agreeing with Roland but not quite believing what he was hearing.

"From the armory, geeze Henri."


"So-" Why did they need a sword to fill in a hole? He should have asked WHY he had it instead of WHERE he got it but now it was a bit too late. Obviously none of the answers Roland was going to give him were going to help, so he stopped himself from asking any questions, even though he had about a million, and just reached for the flask in his pocket.

"Yeah sure, whatever." Henri tossed his head back and emptied the remains of the flask with great urgency, looking for comfort in his bottle and hoping to God he'd wake up from his dream soon. "I'm not the one filling in a hole with a sword." Following Roland begrudgingly, being very wary of his surroundings, just in case something was going to jump out and eat him, he continued his nonsense journey.

Their path would be a familiar one, one that they had treaded for most their life, in fact, and for a good twenty minutes, there would be a heavy silence between the two young men. Occasionally, a man or two, dressed similar to Roland would pass by, and they would nod a greeting before heading off; it was not particularly upsetting, but Henri would notice that some of these men and sometimes women had extra appendages, a leg here, an arm there, some had more or less than two eyes, and there were more than a few who appeared transient in nature. Roland greeted them as calmly as he greeted the normal looking ones.

Eventually, Roland would come to a stop and gesture for Henri to halt, as well; he would point off into the distance, towards where the road split between a bridge that allowed the temple-folk to travel over the local river and the path that split between the docks and the King's shrine.

"Up there," he said gruffly. "Across the bridge and into the clearing," an audible sigh escaped his lips, his shoulders sagged, and he seemed genuinely tired as he rubbed his brow. "A child found this one thrashing about in its death throes. It repeated the same lines as the others..."

He remained quiet, stationary. If Henri had questions he wanted to ask, now would be the time to ask them, but he would have to be careful and thoughtful of his words.

Henri walked in silence with his friend (or something like him that the dream conjured up) Roland, taking in his surroundings. The more they walked, the more people he saw wearing the same uniform as Roland, and even though it was just a dream it made Henri feel very out of place. Once Roland had invited him to a costume party, and naturally he showed up in full gear, dressed as a dragon to be the only god damned dragon there. There was no costume party.

This was similar, only a bit more backwards. Now he was the only one not in costume. No matter though, it was his dream right?

"Uh...u-uh"

Everyone else were dressed up like strange...octopus people? Too many or not enough limbs,some of them were so out of sorts that they looked like mutilated starfish in uniform. But if Henri imagined hard enough, just maybe, maybe he could fix it. Lucid dreaming they called it? Time to see how far he could take it.

First of all in his dreams everyone, excluding Roland was going to be a smoking hot milf, and secondly, his flask was going to be full. Hopefully if he closed his eyes briefly and imagined hard enough it would come true. When they got to their destination, Henri had no fucking clue what the hell Roland was talking about, but decided against caring. It sounded like he didn't want to know anyway, it was too morbid for a dream like his.

"Up there," he said gruffly. "Across the bridge and into the clearing," an audible sigh escaped his lips, his shoulders sagged, and he seemed genuinely tired as he rubbed his brow. "A child found this one thrashing about in its death throes. It repeated the same lines as the others..."

Henri stopped with Roland and pointed out into the distance over the horizon. "Up there by the rainbow?" (Did he have to announce the changes verbally? He had no idea how this worked.)"Death? Well that sucks. So, what was thrashing around anyway?"

He was scared to ask, but hopefully, if he was really dreaming he could fix it. If not, well he'd look like a huge idiot.

Roland turned to face Henri with a scowl plastered over his face. He neither moved nor spoke, but there was an obvious aura of ill-intent sorrounding him; it would be when Henri noticed this intent that the sharp, persistent buzzing would start. Skull-splitting, this sound was, as it shot through Henri's body, up his spine, through his protesting nervous system, and finally resting at the fringe of his consciousness, ever-present.

Up above, the sun became hidden by clouds, the land grew darker, and as a result, Henri's vision dimmed; it was all followed by a streak of lightning, rolling thunder, and finally the pelting rain, coming down fast and hard, like needles.

"You do not yet know yourself," a voice rose above the buzzing, the thunder, and the rain."An imperfect you can change nothing."

For a moment, there was little more than the pounding, head-throbbing buzz that was throwing itself in assault against Henri, but that would change as he found his limbs heavier, his legs impossible to lift. A sensation akin to vertigo would take hold and Henri would find himself hardly capable of standing.

Everything went silent.

"R-roland?" Henri gulped and took a step back. He shouldn't have said what he said, or tried to take the subject so slightly. Roland's expression was so severe that he could hardly utter out an apology. Worst yet, nothing was working, the dream was not going his way.

"Hey man I'm soAAAUUGHKA!"

His body suddenly seized and shook painfully, tossing him around in place before throwing him on the ground to flail like a fish out of water. There was no control in this dream, not even over himself.

"FUUUUUHUUUUUHUUUUUUCK!!!!!!" Henri expressed his dislike for what was happening by half sobbing, half cursing at the stormy skies. The world darkened, thunder shook the earth and freezing cold rain stabbed his skin. This was the polar opposite of sexy bitches and rainbows.

"What is this opposite day!?" He wondered to himself on the muddy ground. Maybe that's how things worked, maybe you needed to make bad things happen to make good things happen and vice versa, since that's what it looked like. Would the world turn into sunshine butterflies and rainbows if he closed his eyes and tried to make the world burn?

But...what if it didn't work? This dream was over, he'd had enough. If he couldn't change it, maybe he should just try to wake up. Laying on his side, he curled up into a ball, muscles still straining and protesting the whole way, knees up to his chest and closed his eyes, chewing on his bandanna for comfort.

"It's raii-neeeng it's p-pooohoooring the olld ma ha han is snoooriihiing."

Wake up damn it. Wake up.