Memory 03

[wildnight]

Putting out the lights for Yeine. (ref: HTK 74-79) trivial neutral

Description: Yeine's second night in Sky, she has difficulty sleeping. She's dozing at best when she feels herself being watched and wakes entirely—she doesn't react, but Naha calls her on it anyway.

Realizing that a gods sense of time was probably very different from a mortals, I prompted, "To what do I owe the honor of this visit?"

"I wanted to see you," he said.

"Why?"

To this he did not answer. But he moved at last, turning and pacing over to the windows, his back to me. He was harder to see there, with the night view as a backdrop. His cloak? hair?the nimbus of dark that constantly shifted round him tended to blend with the black starry sky.

This was neither the violent monster that had hunted me nor the coldly superior being who had threatened to kill me afterward. I could not read him, but there was a softness to him now that I had glimpsed only for an instant before. When he had held my hand, and bled on me, and honored me with a kiss.

I wanted to ask him about that, but too many things about the memory disturbed me. So instead I asked, "Why did you try to kill me, yesterday?"

"I wouldn't have killed you. Scimina commanded me to leave you alive."

That was curious, and even more disturbing. "Why?"

"I assume because she didn't want you dead."

I was dangerously close to growing annoyed. "What would you have done to me, then, if not kill me?"

"Hurt you."

This time I was glad he was so opaque.

I swallowed. "As you hurt Sieh?"

There was a pause, and he turned to me. The moon, half-full, shone through the window above him. His face had the same faint, pale glow. He said nothing, but abruptly I understood: he did not remember hurting Sieh.

[...]

"By day I am human," said the Nightlord. "At night I am something closer to my true self." He spread his hands. "Sunset and dawn are when the transition takes place."

"And you become... that." I carefully did not say monster.

"The mortal mind, imbued with a gods power and knowledge for even a few moments, rarely reacts well."

"And yet Scimina can command you through this madness?"

He nodded. "Itempass compulsion overrides all." He paused then, and his eyes abruptly became very clear to me cold and hard, black as the sky. "If you don't want me here, command me to leave."

There's a bit more there, mostly Yeine considering Naha's state, and how dangerous he is to command, and so forth. Nothing he would know, because it's all in someone else's head. Then we get:

"I won't command you because I'm considering the alliance proposed by your Lady Kurue," I said at last. "An alliance should be based on mutual respect."

"Respect is irrelevant," he said. "I am your slave."

I could not help wincing at the word. "I'm a captive here, too."

"A captive whose every command I must obey. Forgive me if I feel little sympathy."

I did not like the guilt his words triggered in me. Perhaps that was why my temper slipped, before I could think to rein it in. "You are a god," I snapped. "You're a deadly beast on a leash who has already turned on me once. I may have power over you, but I would be a fool to think that makes me safe. Far wiser to offer you courtesy, ask for what I want, and hope for your cooperation in return."

"Ask. And then command."

"Ask, and if you say no, accept that answer. That, too, is part of respect."

He fell silent for a long while. In that silence I replayed my words in my head, praying I had left him no opening to exploit.

"You cannot sleep," he said.

I blinked in confusion, then realized it was a question. "No. The bed... the light."

Nahadoth nodded. Abruptly the walls went dim, their light fading until shadows shrouded the room, and the only illumination came from the moon and stars and the lights of the city. The Nightlord was a darker shadow etched against the windows. He had put out the unlight of his face as well.

"You have offered me courtesy," he said. "I offer cooperation in return."

After that, Yeine asks him to leave politely and Naha informs her that everything that happens in darkness, he's aware of. He's always there on some level. She's not bothered by that (at least not at the moment), and agrees. Naha fades away, but remains aware of her sleeping in a removed way.

And end memory.

Notes:
-Itempas is in there, in name only, but it confirms what Sieh's memory showed him, and now he has his own bitterness. Itempas is the one who lets humans command him. He doesn't have the full weight of the treachery, and he won't have all of his anger back. But some of it.
-+200 crankiness at being told what to do, but also willingness to be ...fairish... with people who are polite and don't try to force him.
-He knows he's interested in Yeina, partly in a way he doesn't understand even in the memory. He does, however, know that someone named Kurue wanted to work with her. That clicks with his memory of calling her a pawn—they are using her. That makes her different from the other Arameri.
-He'll be crankier/running more to his dark side for at least a little while after this memory.
-OH, and he knows about being someone else during the day, after taking this. Apparently it's different in Aather... possibly because he's got no god mojo.
-Some god perception here, but on the low end of dangerous if mortals take it.

Form: Book of matches.
Uses Left: 2 of 3