xp_logs | Alison and Nathan, early Monday evening

Alison comes looking for Nathan to talk to him about Askani music. The two of them discuss an Askani solstice festival called Winternight, and Nathan sings a little and is remarkably unselfconscious about the whole thing.

The wall of her room was covered in eyeliner scribblings, but that was hardly an issue as far as Alison was concerned. She would take the time to transfers things to her computer properly in the morning and then clean up - it wasn't the first time she'd resorted to make-up to take down music notes. And now her entire concentration was bent on the task at hand, which mainly involved tracking down Nathan wherever he might be and get every single ounce of information on the music of the Askani from him as soon as possible. Take your time, this will take a while. Possibly years. Have to do this as properly as possible, not lose a single song, a single note... Mind awhirl she clambered up the stairs, not really concerned about where he'd be. Likely Moira had him firmly tied to her bed or something, to keep him out of trouble. A firm knock on the bedroom door and Alison waited, fidgeting impatiently in front of the door.

Sprawled on the couch, Nathan looked up from his latest textbook candidate for the international relations course, blinking at the door. The presence beyond was familiar, but curiously intent. "Come in, Alison," he called a bit warily, swinging his feet over the edge of the couch and sitting up.

In between the moment in which the door opened and Alison stepped in, there was no doubt of the purpose driving the young woman. "Hi!" A raised hand showed notebook and pen, the door closed quickly. "I took some notes down already and have Marie-Ange, Doug, Angelo and Jamie ready and willing to help and I'm sure some of the others will jump in once we post formally on the matter and -" she stopped, not to take a breath but to give him a sheepish look, and continued. "And how are you?" Waiting, clearly burning to grill him more about the music but remembering if somewhat belatedly so her manners. Barely.

Nathan raised an eyebrow, unable to help a chuckle, or a flash of delight at her obvious determination. He had hoped there would be interest in learning more about the Askani, but this was wonderful. "Fine, Alison. Why don't we skip the small talk and get right to the really important stuff?" He grinned mischievously. "If I zone out on you, which I very well may do, just smack me upside the head."

"No!" Her eyes widened and she shook her head. "No no no, no smacking upside the head. The head is important and has music stuff innit and I want that stuff!" She nodded emphatically, not even a gleam of teasing in her eyes though she had no doubt he'd pick up on it nonetheless. "So. I'll thump you on the shoulder instead. Or the ribs. Sharp elbows are useful that way." She nodded wisely and trotted over, plopping down on the other end of the couch and turning to sit Indian style, facing him with a hungry look creeping over her features. "Muuusic..."

"Mind the ribs," he said seriously. "Stab wound still healing." He reached out, setting the textbook on the table in front of him, then leaned back again. "I'm about back to normal when it comes to English, but if I start babbling, just bear with me. So tell me what you're thinking?"

"I want it all," was the first, obvious response, before Alison managed to reign herself in, or at least made some vague attempt to. "Right. Seriously... we need to start collecting everything we can, from as many sources as possible. First just from memory, visual and audio recordings of every single session. That'll allow for cross-referencing stuff, especially if patterns start to show up. Then we'd start telephathically nudging memories to get to the hidden details. Jamie's already stated he had none in his own dream, but - if we explored the dreamscape, there might be a scene further off he wasn't in, but that's there? Does that make sense? Or did I read too much sci fi or not get stuff Betsy was explaining to me?" She leaned forward hopefully.

Nathan blinked, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully as he regarded her. "Sounds workable. Though it might be easier with the kids that with me," he confessed, a bit sheepishly. "They at least have only one, or at the best a few memories in those dreams, from what I've heard. I'm having a hell of a time filtering at the moment."

"Maybe that's just cause you've been so swamped in them you can't sort them out from being overwhelmed? Maybe all you need is just someone who can step in without being part of it, s'all." Alison shrugged at that, clearly having no issues at all with the entire notion of being brought into his mind, if that suited him. "I already asked Charles and he won't mind monitoring, if you'd rather, too." She bounced in place slightly then stopped herself, mindful of the stab wound. "...wait. Stab wound?"

"Souvenir of my missing weekend," Nathan said carelessly. "But yeah, I think I'm sort of swamped at the moment. Hopefully this is just the adjustment period. Charles is pretty optimistic."

"Swamped is ok. I'd still do it if it's all right with you. Mind walking and all, I mean." She paused, wrinkling her nose at him. "Don't get stabbed again. Not with the good." A pout almost made it through, but instead a definitely stern expression was directed his way. "Now, about that music. I'd like you to be there for all the sessions with the kids. It might help towards setting stuff in order for you too, matter of fact. Watcha think?"

"I think it's a very good idea," Nathan said, trying not to let on how fascinated he was by the shift and play of her thoughts. "What's inside my head definitely seems to respond to the right stimuli. Like when you asked me about sharing memories, the ones of Winternight immediately jumped to mind."

"Tell me about Winternight?" she obliged immediately, discarding pen and notepad for a moment and digging in her pockets to yank out a disgustingly small recorder. "It's ok if I tape this, right? Right," she went on, figuring he'd be fine with this already and deciding on the spot to leave him the recorder and just get another, since he'd need it far more than her for the evening if more memories demanded being told later on.

Nathan closed his eyes as countless memories of innumerable different Winternights came flooding back, almost too much to handle. "A winter solstice ritual, like I said," he murmured, trying to separate the memories, to examine each one individually. "Most important festival of their year. They stayed awake on the longest night of the year, in order to be able to sing to the sun as it rose." He was deluged by images of people standing in the central squares of small settlements, people thronging through the streets of the larger cities. "Fires, they'd light fires in the smaller settlements, but then put them out a couple of hours before dawn. In the cities they would turn all the lights out. The darkness was important..."

Well then, that was a good cue. Alison got up as silently as possible and turned the lights down, using a faint glow of her own to keep them from being plunged in utter darkness. She made her way back to the couch, content with setting an ambiance for him to work things through, ready to light up the room bright as day if needed if things got too intense for him.

He was dimly aware of the lights going down, but too lost in his memories to care. "In the capital, they processed through the streets at sunset," he muttered. "There was one song for then, about the light going away... Valaya'hia, sula'ree teneara octai... Bright Lady, protect us from the dark of the night..."

There was a lilt to the language that was musical in and of itself, Alison already mouthing some of the words to herself while trying to capture the spirit of them, the intonation, knowing already that she would need to learn it to sing the sungs as they ought to be rendered. His words drew her in however and it wasn't an effort at all for her to slowly shift through the lighting, mimicking the rising of the sun every so slowly, light creeping through the room in radiant hues of blues, purples and oranges.

"They met at the center of the city, at the ye'havayra... " He stopped, frowning as he tried to translate the words. "The spire... the song-spire. Then they waited the night, praying. More prayers, during the war." Nathan stopped again, wincing as one memory grabbed him with particular force. One city, carrying out the ritual even under the beginnings of a Canaanite bombardment... He forced his mind away from that memory, back to a quieter one. "They'd start to sing as soon as the first light touched the sky. Avaraya eostre, selen'ai magiora, seles vanestre... welcome the sun, greet the dawn, hold the light in your hands..."

Alison smiled, literally holding light in her own hands as she followed the slow progression of words, focusing only on his voice and tempo of the song. Color and light steadily coruscated to life around her, spilling through the room, a veritable miniature sunset springing to life around her. She refrained from humming to the song, listening instead, knowing the recorder was catching this all on tape and wishing they already had the video set up as well, though she set that aside within a heartbeat, not wanting to distract Nathan with idle thoughts.

He was losing himself in the memory completely, his awareness of the room around him going away. It was a different feeling than his visions, exhilarating instead of terrifying. He was there in the pre-dawn chill, thousands of his Clanmates around him, and he didn't even notice the cracked, flat sound of his own voice as he sang the rest of the song softly in Askani. "~The night retreats, the shadows fade, hope returns to the land... our hearts rejoice, in the face of the light... bright is the morning, renewing the world...~"

A low hum joined him at one point, low and subdued, Alison unable to refrain from joining in subtly once the music started repeating itself, eyes half closed and smiling to herself. She had been careful to keep any of the hypnotic effects from the light patterns she was radiating across the room slowly, keeping only to the natural effects of the dawning sun, a special thing in and of itself regardless.

Nathan took a deep, surprised breath. "Harmony," he said, his eyes still closed. "Or no... what do you call it... a round? Thousands of them... it's so beautiful..."

Alison simply smiled and it wasn't hard to keep humming lowly, running through the song steadily and letting him remain within the memory he was revisiting as long as possible.

It was a child's mind he was experiencing this through, and Nathan took another deeper, more relaxed breath as the little girl dozed off in her father's arms, listening to the singing. "Oh," he murmured, finally opening his eyes and focusing on Alison, who was smiling at him. "I could get used to that. So much better than the war."

"Fair's fair," she answered back softly, not wanting to break the spell entirely. "Things are balancing out. As they should, don't you think?" And she drew her legs up, wrapping her arms around them and leaning her chin on her knees, radiating delight. "And this is just the beginning."