On they way to Caltrop, Tasha had plenty of free time to worry about things. But, as far as she could tell, she hadn't had anymore hallucinations. The Jotoki were also being garrulous, following her around, along with the kittens, when she finally retrieved the fish tacos from stasis. She did manage to shake them in the hangar bay though, by ducking into the private elevator.
Now Tasha faced a new challenge: how to pass the tacos through the crystal containment shell that Tatha-hem lived inside.
Stable, Saddle, Gods, Darks and Lights, Order and Chaos. Tasha once stumbled -- literally stumbled, the book was on the floor of Hakeber's dorm and heavy enough to arrest her leg's momentum by its sheer /mass -- over a five-plus-sub-languages reference work Hakeber used to attempt to decipher the meaning behind Progenitor mythology. She had picked it up, wondering what could be in such a heavy mass of faux-paper and learned a little bit of how complex it is to translate concepts in to other language. Here again she contemplates how she lives that truisim, and not just languages! As she cocks her head, peering at the Horse's might-be-crystal-but-probably-not Saddle she attempts to translate the complex in to abstract simplicity, to understand the obtuse, the advanced, the arcane.
Yes, Tasha finds herself having renamed the product of a ancient and stunningly intelligent species while attempting to defeat its containment system with guesswork and tacos. She doubts that will ever end up in a book, at least.
At least the Horse is responding to her presence. Dark-but-glowing tendrils seem to slide across the edge facing her, like one of the plasma-globe toys she'd seen on Caltrop. Just less.. random.
Despite having been together for months now, and indeed having been together as both male and female, Tasha knows very little about the core of her starship. What she does know mainly revolves around Tatha-hem's contributions to the functionality of the ship -- FTL and STL flight, translation between realities, and so on. Yet, she knows next to nothing about Tatha-hem herself other than the sense that Tatha-hem likes her, somehow. As she reaches out and lays her hand on the Saddle's strange glassy frame, she decides that means a whole lot to her right now.
The tendrils fork, until a little one it touching where each of Tasha's fingers do. And there's that sensation again.. of tacos. She still hasn't tried one, so don't know if there is anything to the sensation or not.
The little basket of tacos in their paper wrappers sits nearby, reheated just in case Tatha-hem doesn't like her tacos cold. Tasha has no idea why a being like Tatha-hem would know about tacos, or for that matter project the concept as one of the sole exchanges they've had. She thinks she may just not understand, that Tatha-hem might be so alien her brain can't process her attempts to reach her, but she's decided to do everything she can to understand before giving up.
"I brough you tacos," she whispers to Saddle and Tatha-hem beyond, repeating the concept in her mind with as much focus as she can muster. She then shifts to the idea of the spices, which were the actual core of the message. With her free hand she picks up the basket and perches it on the rail, wiggling her fingers down at the contents. "Is this what you wanted, Tatha-hem?"
Tatha-hem reflects the thought back.. maybe. It's hard to tell if it isn't something Tasha just came up with herself. But Hakeber had been with her, so if it was an hallucination they both had it.
The young woman could believe Hakeber would be thinking about food, she might believe Hakeber only thought about food and sex if she hadn't seen her hit the books. That they both thought of fish tacos seems unlikely, however, given the fact Hakeber grew up on a world without fish, and hadn't yet stepped foot Calafia. She considers her next step, but without input her options are limited. She does have one idea, however. She moves the basket back to her stool, then pulls out a taco and shows it to Tatha-hem. "I'm going to eat this, because I'm guessing maybe you can feel it? Stop me if I'm wrong." She opens her mouth and waits a moment, taco hovering near it.
The tendrils don't move from their spots opposite Tasha's fingers, and there's certainly no other indication that she shouldn't eat the taco.
"Hokay, I'm eating this taco." It feels really absurd, she trying to somehow get around Nuctipin-Thotep combined engineering to be nice to the Dark being whose very species may be her enemy regardless of what she does. Still, if anything, stubbornly trying to make things work out is part of what keeps her going. She's not even sure why she keeps going anymore, save that being eaten by extra-chronological beings is a decided negative to doing nothing. Beyond that, things have turned out both better and worse than she imagined they would. "Here. Goes!" And then her teeth come down, and mostly she's thinking that fish tacos are delicious.
It's at that moment that she feels a reflection.. but it's of herself and Hakeber, receiving the sensation of... the taste of a fish taco.
Tasha squints. In what feels like a tired old trope by now, she is confused by the message of higher beings. Maybe she should start a list of the things, just so she could drive some other poor fool mad by their revelations -- or lack there of. What could it mean? Not that she stops chewing, she's not going to not eat the taco. That would be insane. Well, more insane. She wonders if sanity even applies to her anymore, so far outside the norm. As she chews, she thinks more, and it occurs to her to wonder if she's getting some sort of chronologically displaced memory. Was her attempt here the reason that memory was send to she and Hakeber back then? She wouldn't put it past Tatha-hem to be pan-chronological, even pa-universal. She could be talking to a gateway through things she used to think were quite unassailable. Thus she tries something else: She thinks of placing a message on her datapad, the word taco, to be delivered in when she says the phrase, "Give me Tatha-hem's message."
Now things seem hard. Because she didn't already do that in the past. But then it isn't clear how the past is connected with the now, other than both times involved touching the saddle. Or it could be that the past is immutable once you arrive in the future. Or something weirder is happening. She and Hakeber tried to communicate with Tatha-hem, and Tatha-hem sent them a taste of the future. There's no way to know if it was this future, however.
Now Tasha thinks even reality is messing with her, that the dimension of time got together with space and the higher dimensions to tease and mock her. Given what she's seen with her godlike allies -- or 'allies' as they sometimes feel -- it seems at least vaguely plausible. But thinking about conspiracies, however tongue-in-cheek, isn't productive. So, she pops another taco in and thinks. Both she and Hakeber are touched by the same forces that Tatha-hem is made from, she thinks maybe that's important. Rather than try to communicate more normally, she reaches inside and tries to connect by that mark the Source left on her. The one the Niss use. Maybe Tatha-hem thinks she's like her, and expects a being like her to communicate their way. It seems worth a shot.
It's not easy.. well, not while eating tacos anyway.. since that little echo is little and alien. After about five minutes of this, Tasha notices that her distoreted reflection on the curved crystal isn't mirroring her anymore. For thing, it isn't holding a taco.
Progress! Tasha will take anything that seems like progress right now, especially now that she feels like she's in her own little world with Tatha-hem. With the ship inbound for Caltrop, there isn't much else for her to do anyway, and she's quite content with hiding from Samael and Horus. It's thus that she focuses harder. She finishes the taco, then pushes the stool aside and sits. Both hands go to the Saddle and she begins her meditation exercises, focusing on the part that links her to the Source, and through the Source, other beings. One by one she eliminates mental and physical distractions.
Her reflection's mouth starts to move.
It's not easy reaching in to herself to touch the mark of an alien power, nor focusing on the tiny thread of a voice Tatha-hem seems to project, but Tasha isn't new at this. She musters her focus and her skills. She listens.
The more she tries to focus, the more the reflection just seems like a reflection. It may be that Tatha-hem needs her to relax instead, somehow.
The hybrid woman thinks on that, then decides it must be like what Nora told her about radio signals such as in astronomy. You can't listen to the whisper of the universe when you're hearing the scream of civilization, after all. She thinks maybe her focus is drowning things out, or even that it's like quantum effects in that she's causing determination through her concentration alone. The Saddle must be a powerful barrier, so what little can get out she decides must be easily squashed by even her focus. Shifting tactics, she stops focusing, lets her mind wander while still reaching to touch the alien mark. She thinks about being half-asleep, or dozing. Empty of thought and focus, drifting. It's hard to change gears so quickly, but after a good few minutes her mind starts to calm.
The reflection's mouth moves again, but this time it's because Tasha's mouth is actually moving. "Gone is T'thogga-hem. Gone is Urgo-hem." There isn't much inflection, which is odd enough for Tasha's voice, but there's enough to make it uncertain if this is a statement or a question.
Afraid she might disrupt whatever link she's managed to establish, Tasha keeps her answer to a minimum: Yes. And that is all. She returns to her mindful emptiness, doing her best to quash her excitement and thoughts lest they, too, disrupt the link.
"Gone is not Sedu-hem," Tasha replies to herself. "Brought you dagger's hilt."
Katha-hem to Sedu-hem, save her. It's more than she'd like to say, but Tasha doesn't think she can reduce the message any further. What is the dagger's hilt? She knows the dagger is the ship, but she had thought it complete, not missing components as seems to be suggested.
"Save why?" An actual question this time. "Dagger have. Hilt to hold. Save why?"
Why save Tatha-hem, is Tasha reply, and she wonders if Tatha-hem knows of empathy. Why save anyone. Need more, to kill. Or why save anyone. More, to be enemy. More than fate. But the young woman knows it's a valid point, and one she asks herself more and more. Why does she save them? Is it pity? Empathy, like with Mel and Sam? An unwillingness to destroy the unlucky for being unlucky? Or perhaps it's regret over what happened to Blackwings. In the end it feels like she has too much empathy, it would be so much easier if she didn't bother and crushed anything in her way. Wander around, destroy all the Ogdru-hem, maybe destroy the evils of men while she's at it. Kill the gods she doesn't like. And while she knows it's a long jump to it, but why not kill anyone she doesn't like? She has the power, now, or could.
Ultimately she doesn't really know, save that it doesn't seem right. Unfair. It's like giving the nasty side of fate that killed Nora, Mariel, doomed the Ogdru-hem and so many else a free pass. Telling the universe it it's okay. Yet even that impulse seems off, now. She's worked with beings like Thotep who are quite obviously awful, she wishes at time she could just do things the Titanian way and side-step all the paperwork and cultural foibles to get her work done. She still believes it's all unfair, but part of her hungers to cut through the pain and difficulty, too. She realizes in a snap epiphany she's afraid of letting go. On top of all the rest of it, she's afraid of who she might become. She was the Empress and her sad, lonely death. She saw Blackwings. If she stabs the dagger without thought, she might become a monster. Or not. But the fear of it ...
"Sedu-hem as Urgo-hem. T'thogga-hem not as Sedu-hem," her own voice struggles to tell her. It seems like Tatha-hem is trying, but thinking like Tasha is clearly a struggle. The fundamentally different nature of the two creates a barrier going both ways.
Is Sedu-hem awake and cruel, then? Those are the characteristics Tasha associates with the two. After all, T'thogga-hem was asleep, perhaps not even aware of what it did. Yet, she indirectly saw its doom. Urgo-hem attacked them because it amused him, and because it was bored. Or, perhaps its their qualities? Powers over space rather than time? But no, Tasha knows this is about reasons, and her reasons are convoluted even to herself. She calms her mind; there's another way to do this, she decides. If her reasons can't be understood, well, there are two beings here.
Why Tatha-hem give hilt, why end Urgo-hem? Why end Sedu-hem? Why help? Perhaps Tatha-hem's logic is better than her own.
"Assume choice," comes the reply. "Long quiet. Gone are masters. Good is to move. Give not hilt. Give dagger. Recent is hilt. From T'thogga-hem. Reined as I."
Tasha follows, but one part stands out: She thought Thotep gave the hilt, effectively. That Samael was the hilt, the means to hold the dagger. Thotep did not give hilt? Sam ... Pharol Xexanoth is not hilt?
"Hilt is," Tatha-hem seems to confirm. "T'thogga-hem from." Well, she did pick-up Sam from Praxafallopus. Tatha-hem may not be aware of everything that happens outside the ship. And Sam certainly had Thotep's reins on him at the time.
I understand, Tasha offers, feeling she should say so just so it's clear. Or, well, as clear as things can be between two vastly disimilar entities. There is also another question she thinks to ask, wondering what the answer might be, and wondering how she herself will use it. If Tasha was dagger, and Tatha-hem hand, how would use dagger? End Sedu-hem? End Ogdoad? Another?
"End self," is the disturbing reply. But it does avoid making the other hard decisions.
Hate Tasha for holding dagger? Tasha sinks against the railing, resting her shoulders against the poles that prop it up, resting her hands to the Saddle. Holding hard. Hold others. Hold choices. Live or die. Save or don't. Serve or don't. Enslave or don't. Without slaves, no victory. No victory end Tasha.
"Nothing end. Start over. Remember not," the odd voice claims. "Good is to move. Move me. Run. Fly. Move."
Rebirth ... Tasha has heard some ideas as to the nature of the end of things, that perhaps every death is a new life and so too the universe. Wordlines as well, perhaps. When she looks at things that way, ending the non-hostile Ogdru-hem doesn't seem to bad, yet she wonders if that's just an easy answer because it sounds palitable. Urgo-hem wanted end. Katha-hem wants Sedu-hem free, so says. But free as Tasha, or free and end? End all Ogdru-hem, start over?
"Time blind your kind," Tatha-hem says. "Not end. Past exist still. Exist there. Relive. Remember not."
Can't no be blind. Try to understand, still can't see. Tasha admits, sinking down more until she's laying heavily against the bars. Wonder if ever know. Blind woman swinging seeing dagger. And then she admits something she'd not really planned to, just because someone's listening. Tired. Can't know. Not Tatha-hem. Not Ogdru-hem. Save self, use dagger. But not know. Not know, can't decide. Can't see truth, can't know choice. Chose and not know, may chose wrong. But can't know.
"That is choice," Tatha-hem claims. "If know, not choice. If know, puppet to fate."
"Uncertainty is freedom," the dark horse says. It reads the same regardless of which direction the statement goes.
Tasha snorts a laugh before even realizing it. It's a good answer, and one that genuinely comforts her, because she could feel herself slipping down a very unpleasant slope where nothing she did had any real meaning or point. A kind of existential crisis, if she were to use Remiel's word. She heard Gabriel and the others dealt with them rountinely, and she has probably had them before, but with all that's happened and the implications here the stress and the cracks felt like they might just break her if she couldn't find an answer.
Well, then. Tasha thinks if that's how it is, then she ought to just go with her gut. Go with her best information and chose. In the past she'd tossed everything aside, either storming off or melting down, meeting difficulty by cleaning house through a kind of inner and outter violence. She's tried to be good, but it's grating when good becomes endless hassle. She's tried to save everyone, but somehoe killed someone she loved and saved beings she was neevr sure of, allying with ones she knows are cruel. In her quest to be perfect she'd somehow become more tame and just as far from perfect, just in a different way.
Tasha even decides this must be why she likes the Titanians so much, they seem made of choice. Of Freedom. Do what they want, live as they want. It appeals to her, as does the idea of making a choice and going with it, rather than this soul-crushing attempt to never make a mistake. Because she knows sooner or later it's going to break her, a yolk as heavy as any.
"Wary be, those who claim to certainty," the horse says, using Tasha's own voice. "Theirs the worst mistakes."
Sound like Vril. Vril-ya. Horus. Order. Leviathan. Must be, perfect be. Mistakes made, feel it worst. Tasha rolls over, shifting shoulders as one becomes sore from having the bars sink in to it. Tasha make same mistake, look to Order, find certant answer. Go same as Order, fall same way Vril. But know, now, how it feels. She scratches her nose, careful not to get in the way of her muzzle, which may speak at any time. But no more.
"God-spark tell," Tatha-hem.. suggests? "Explain."
Yes, tell. Tried his way, falling same way, might end same way if not for Tatha-hem. Not always like, changed in time, thought best but not. Best choices, happier, other way. Tell Horus. Show him why and how. And so the young woman lifts her free hand and knocks on the bars, after if they were a cell holding them both in. Start over. As before, but remember. Talk to Tatha-hem again?
"Bring more tacos," is the reply, and then the tendrils withdraw into the impossible depths of the saddle.
tasha leans back, inhaling sharply and deeply through her nose. She considers, briefly, dwelling on what just transpired. Instead she hops to her feet and hurries to the lift, carrying the momentum of the conversation with her and straight to Horus.
Rock and Rainbow are still chasing the kittens around the hangar, but now that Tasha is taco-less they don't seem inclined to mob her. But Liza is waiting as well. "Do you need anything, Tasha?" she asks, looking prim and proper again after days of debauchery.
"I need to give Horus a piece of my mind," Tasha answers, steaming along without so much as stopping. "Also, I'm done with doing everything the slow, Galactic way. I mean okay, sometimes it's good, but I'm so sick of all these processes. I wasn't always like this. The Titanians have good ideas." She makes her way right up to her Titan and plants her hands on her hips. "I'm not coming out until I've settled with him. Also, also, we're doing things differently from now on. No more Dagh-taken futzing around trying to be perfect, or perfectly civil. I can't do it anymore. You'll have to ask yourself if that's okay with you, Liza, you know, make a decision if you can handle it. I've got a god-spark to deal with now."
"I just need to know if we'll be accessorizing with cutlasses, Tasha," Liza says. "I'll be here when you're done."
"Don't we have acess to something better than cutlasses, like ... laser ... cutlasses?" Tasha scrunches up her muzzle. No, she doesn't have time to focus on exciting and exotic weaponry right now. Later, she can go over it later. "Right. Good. Well. Here goes something." And with that the ship's owner spreads her wings, and soon she's off and embarked.
Once in the vast white plane that makes up Horus's prison, Tasha finds herself alone, as usual. But this time there's a voice at least, before she can call out. "You've been busy," Horus says. "You could have talked to me before striking deals with demons you know."
"I'm sure the demons feel the same way about me talking to you," Tasha retorts, planting a hand on her hip and looking at ... She is never sure wheer to look. She stares at the sky, it feels appropriate. "So, I guess you know that two Ogdru-hem are gone, the Dagger has its Hilt and is ready to be used as a weapon? Oh, and what about the whole worldline twist, why didn't you talkd to me?"
"You have to come to me," Horus points out. "I can't reach out, not anymore. I haven't the energy."
"Speaking of the energy, if you don't like me so much, why did you save me back there on Abaddon? And before I forget, I did come to talk to you about more than the past and what just happened. We need to talk about you. The Vril-ya, you. Order, and Chaos. And related things," Tasha says, head cocking to the side and brow lifting.
"I couldn't let the enemy win," Horus claims. "Not the one I could actually fight. What is it you want to talk about regarding myself and the Vril-ya?"
"It turns out 'the enemy' was actually a plant-god the predecessors to the Celestials made as a kind of last-ditch attempt at revenge against the Sifra. Ahriman probably met him, he calls himself Yama. He was the one who tested me with that whole disaster to see if I wouldn't corrupt or try to use Atum and the Vril-ya. Speaking of which ... " Tasha pauses to inhale deeply, not because she needs to because her body here is just a simulation and she could probably talk for hours if only she truly believed she could, no, she does it for focus and because it feels right. Natural. She needs to feel like herself to do this, talk about these things. She'd been trying to be perfection, but be civilized, and look where how she ended up. Remembering that is important, too. "Hokay. See, look. I just spent the last hour talking to Tatha-hem, about our situation about choices. About fate, and freedom. I'd been so worked up about fighting the Ogdru-hem and talking to beings like you because I could never rea
lly seem to understand you, and therefore never know what my decisions would ultimately do. I was afraid I might destroy something that didn't deserve it, or somehow justify a universe of unfairness because I had been unfair. I'd been so caught up with it, I haven't been able to make a decision when the results don't seem reliable, when I can't have faith in them, except when that all falls apart I somehow do things anyway. It's not that I can't do it without, right? I can. It's that the mindset was eating me up. I was becoming like you. Like the Vril-ya. Have to be perfect, but we can't be. Not here, anyway."
"I never told you you had to be," Horus says. "What does this have to do with my kind?"
"My flaws do not bring understanding," Horus claims. "And I am incomplete. But that, at least, can change."
"I told me I had to be. I have all this power now, so many people depending on me. I'm your warden, I'm fighting the Ogdoad, I have a ship that can unmake things. I felt like I had to do everything perfect. Maybe not openly or in how I went about things, but deep down I was always afraid I'd make some horrible mistake, or lose my sense of fairness. I'd join forces with every godlike being just to try and be fair, but ... But that's not what you asked." The young woman bites her lip, then turns and begins walking. There's no where to go, but the walking helps.
"See, I think this is how the Vril-ya are. Vril is harmony, isn't it? Perfect order, agreement? A whole universe where everything is known, and proper, and all set up in a box. But you see us -- and really you see the Waymakers -- and for some reason that wasn't good enough for you, anymore. You wanted what we have, but you don't understand it at all. You try to live out here, like it's Vril. Like you can know the answers, but you still hold to order. Deep down, you do. You think bowing to the Waymakers will get them to notice you, help you be like them. But it won't happen."
And then Tasha stops, pointing at the sky. "At least not for the others, but you're different. You've begun to understand, or at least act like us. You heard Atum, 'how I change when I split, this has never happened before'. You disagreed. You turned against their order, and chose your own. You knw that the expecattion of order would destroy you by destroying us. You chose, but it was too much because you're still clinging to order, to perfection. You want to go home where it's perfect and the unfairness will melt away. Tatha-hem wants that too, in a way, and I wanted to melt it away by never letting it happen. I was going to end up like Marduk and the others."
"My flaws do not bring understanding," Horus claims. "And I am incomplete. But that, at least, can change. The Waymakers are Atum's gods, not mine."
"That's the thing, your flaws are understanding. What you call flaws are choices. There's freedom in not knowing. And not knowing is freedom. Otherwise it's just fate, just following what's set out for you. The Vril think they can become like the Waymakers through elimination of flaws and perfect understanding, but I think the Waymakers, for all their power, are filled with uncertainty. They make choices. Maybe they make better choices because they know so much, but they're probably still making mistakes. They fight those things. Some of them must never return home." Tasha reaches up and taps her nose. "They looked at me, did you know that? When I came to the Way, one looked at me. But they ignore all of you. Why? I bet they'd come talk to me, if I just decided to call. I've even met the Null."
And so Tasha frowns a little. "But you're differnet, aren't you? The only one, and new at it, too. And because of that, I bet they'd pay attention to you. By chosing and not believing, you probably have what Atum does not. You could achieve what Vril cannot."
"Like having a child?" Horus asks. "I did not place all of myself in the Marker, Tasha. There are things I calved off.. left behind. I think I did so to make my failure more bearable. But.. those things may be of use now."
"Well. Okay. Then." Having her thrown off by the unexpected quick admittance and change in topic, Tasha stares rather blankly at the equally blank horizon. "Uh, where was I ... Or you ... Oh, yes, well, I think I understand about wanting to carve yourself up to get rid of the pain. All this has been eating at me. The Ogdru-hem, Galactic society, you. Oh and now the-god-we-won't-talk-about is trying to drive me insane, and I think Samael is, too. Order of Chaos, you're both kind of a pain. So, uh, pieces?" Her ears thus perk.
A hand falls on Tasha's shoulder, as Horus appears next to her. "Pieces," Horus says. "And.. I think one of them was the map. The map to all of them."
The hand makes Tasha jump, and bark. She rubs her shoulder as if injured, giving Horus a look. "Can't you just appear infront of me? I do hang around a lot of gods, you know." There's a bit more of a stink eye, but she softens after a time, turning to face Horus and while not exactly smiling, at least looking at him pensively. "So. A map. Of course, that makes sense. If you were tasked to deal with them, you'd have to know, and know well enough where you could act while it still mattered. You'd have to map, or else either the Vrik-ya would have vastly underestimated the problem or else would have given you a lot more help. But they sent one of you. Yes, I think it's worth a shot to look." She then tilts her head slightly, pursing her lips, ears forward. "Sooo, are we partners or are we going back to being annoyed with each other after this? I already have one annoying creator and she's my sister."