Tiberinus

[Thalia]

With a scrunch to her nose, Nimeda wondered why he would choose to taste such a thing, but she said nothing, only looked out across the water as he gestured to its sluggish current.

“There is nowhere here I do not go.” The tilt of her lips took on a decidedly impish cast. Though she had woken with a pall of melancholy to her mood, the glitter of her expression now appeared to have shaken it loose. Indeed, her curiosity was a thing that knew no boundaries, even that of her own disinclination. Nimeda shared such secrets with visitors when they lingered long enough for the adventure of exploration, and she knew many wondrous places in this realm to show them, but Noctua was the only one who had ever thought to offer a similar gift in return. It was the memory of the gardens he shared that lightened her now. A twist of her fingers brought the marked stone idly into her grip, and her thumb traced the engraving there. Straight down, straight across. She wondered what it meant.

“Cities rise and fall and rise again. Their innards shift and writhe. And they remind me I am alone.” She offered it in explanation, not in sadness, the latter being the main reason for her apathy towards them, for they were a glimpse into a world to which she had little connection. Such places were not intended to be so void as they inevitably were in the dream; it made them feel more like graveyards to her. But she thought about his words as her gaze took in the cityscape, and peered anew. “Is this one yours?” Inquisitiveness pulled the currents in her tone. Perhaps the slow turn towards endings threatened something he loved. She was not sure, for his imperious expression seldom gave anything away. Her attention moved back to him, and the storminess she saw now, which nonetheless did not deter the eager question which spilled next. “Will you show me?”

[Patricus I]

Nimeda’s cynicism was welcome company. Cities, like entire empires, rose and fell. Only the Church endured. Intriguing that she did not perceive the overtone upon the landscape. She spoke as a silent witness to the undulations of time. “Do you die?” he asked. Thalia was certainly as mortal as anyone else, although the notion that she could channel was not forgotten. Did that change her? Did it change Nimeda?

The blurted question touched the air, but without wind Philip’s shiver must have been from an internal chill. He was ready to depart Rome, if only to escape the memory of the dream that brought him here. Neither was he in the mood to float in preferred waterbeds. “And no, I won’t show you. If you want to see the city, you can walk around any time you want.”

[Thalia]

Nimeda blinked curiously at the strange question, but gave it due consideration. “Everyone dies. We are much like the cities that way.” She shrugged away the sagely answer, and added thoughtfully, though a little indifferently too, “Perhaps I do it a little differently to most, though.” Her palm pressed absently to her chest, though she did not choose to pour great thought into her own nature. Death unmoored her. She cared for the anchor of her Other as she cared for her own self. And she did not like to think of after.

“Why would I do that?” She laughed. “Without you there would be no point.”

Her clothes abruptly shifted to dryness, peripheral to awareness of the damp cloth beneath her hand, and perhaps aware too of his dissonance if not the source. Noctua seemed like a crab stung back into the safety of his shell at the slightest disturbance, and apt to bite if she got too close. She itched to cup his face, as she might do with almost everyone but the grimnir, but did not think he would appreciate the affection. Nor, truly, did she think she would weather the rejection well, should he snap.

She sighed instead, observing him through the slit of eyes that discerned a particularly unfathomable puzzle. She did not find his prickly manner offensive, nor even problematic, yet she was dismayed at the sense of troubles he would not share, nor relinquish to kinder distractions. He spoke of being displeased to interpret the meaning of his dream when he woke, and she did not know what he Saw, but she also knew his life in the Waking realm was beyond her influence or understanding. It was why she did not push for explanation.

“When you wake you may be displeased to understand whatever it was the dream showed you. But you are not awake yet, Noctua.” The words were said with earnest simplicity. Irritable creature that he was, perhaps he would push himself to wakefulness out of sheer stubborn grit. A fond smile tugged, for she imagined it was usually others sent scurrying away from his irascibility. If he left her now, she would not take offence. Though maybe she would search his city for whatever it was that disturbed him so. In the meantime, she offered out both her hands. “If you will not show me your city, may I show you something instead?”

[Patricus I]

He didn’t understand her answer. What he didn’t understand, he disliked, but it wasn't death that was the enigma. Philip’s constitution of the grave was not the solemn, depressing event that lingered over most people’s lives. If anything, the infinite silence from his creator would finally end and he would sleep content for once. Rather, she seemed undisturbed by the query for entirely different reasons from his own. Nimeda described the erosion of cities as blinks of an eye, but such contemplation of time was antithetical to the temporary nature of a single life. Did she die, or did she live forever? Or was it both? Perhaps this was the confrontation of flesh and soul: one enduring consciousness. He rubbed his temple thoughtfully. Why were these dreams always so burdensomely contemplative?

Her arms were outstretched, reaching like the beloved for their mother and father’s embrace. She needed him, he realized as he studied her statuesque pose. Meanwhile, Thalia was dismissive of the need. Two in one, a contradiction. Much like himself. Philip the lost son’s yearning unfulfilled. Patricus, the blessed father of a billion people.

His chin tilted as he stepped within arm’s reach, but he did not grasp the open palms as offered. Instead, he held out his own as he once did for the penitent to kiss his most holy knuckles. No ring appeared, though for a moment, he saw himself standing on the balcony above St. Peter’s Square revealing to Nimeda the wide, empty world below. The dream tried to shift them, but stubborn roots kept his sneakers firmly planted. “When you return, just remember that Rome is a suburb of Vatican City.”

[Thalia]

Laughter bubbled. Nimeda was delighted and mystified all at once as she watched the stately way he offered his hand, like the king she once proclaimed him to be and he had denied. For titles she did not much care, though she recalled he had inferred to watch over the realm of a million and more souls. “Vatican City.” She tested the name like it might be something she wished to remember, though she did not understand why he would not show her himself. If it was important to him, though, then it was important to her. She reached for his hand warmly, and squeezed. Around them the world fluttered, though it was not her doing. Her gaze roamed the shifting scenery before he denied himself the desire, and the banks of the river returned.

“You are a puzzle,” she said. “And I like puzzles. But I shall not let it distract me.” Her eyes crinkled with the smile that followed. “Everyone needs something, and it’s rarely what they think. A wise owl once told me that.” She grinned. “Or maybe it was a moth.”

The world began to swirl around them. It was not unusual for Nimeda to spread her awareness wide, and let it take her where it willed. Noctua shared but a sliver of himself, if she chose to accept the cutting suggestion that she would have to explore the city alone. It might have scrunched her nose with distaste ordinarily, but instead blossomed curiosity in its place. She’d meant what she’d said, that it would be pointless without him. Yet the words had seemed more invitation than rejection.

In the meantime, she was inclined to share something of herself in turn, though to do so she allowed the dream to unfurl as it chose.

They shifted to another river, which he would likely find unsurprising. The bright waters rushed through a mountain pass, vibrant with surrounding verdancy, subtropical pine and distant broadleaf forest, banked immediately around them by thick rock. Her neck stretched curious, though recognition lit her gaze by the time their passage stilled. It was a place she came to for peace, where memories tickled like fingers at the back of her neck.

“There are many in the inbetween place, but few ever really wake in the dream. Fewer still stay. Why do you think we dream, Noctua?” The question came unbidden as the waters running swiftly at their side, her tone musing.

   

[Patricus I]

The squeeze of her hand on his went unreturned but for the tightness suddenly gripping his chest. He was a mirror, flat and reflective, and the way she sought to see through the crags of his outward shell would not fracture that delicate barrier. He did not desire for someone to attempt to arrange the many facets of his identity. Long ago he scattered them to the wind. From dust he came and to dust he would return. Until then, what was shattered was indecipherable. He was no one, as he told her before, and it was a fool’s cause to seek otherwise.

She turned his own wisdom against him, though, in a way that he would rather avoid considering. What he wanted was unspeakable as it was unfulfillable. There was not enough love in existence to fill what ached within, and as much as God or Man tried, they would find only rejection. He was passive when the world shifted, allowing his eyes to close to what swirled like sand on the wind. He considered departure. The waking world was preferable to the reflection forced upon himself. There, he could unfurl the veil across his face and hide in scarlet shadows. This place for all its ethereal spirit was raw and real.

An alpine woodland rose up around them, and he turned in a circle to consider the purple beauty. The brook bubbled carefree and wild, and he found himself standing above the water, looking into his own face rippling below. He was drawn and pensive, more so than normal. Age hovered like winged shadows accentuating lines around his mouth that were always there. Grey streaked his hair, which he unconsciously smoothed into place as he considered his age. Thalia was likely all but twenty; Nimeda twenty or twenty thousand, he was still her ancient. He once joked about Father Ando’s osteoporotic hump as a Papal credential, but for all Philip’s handsome features, he was the primeval Pope.

He squat to his heels in order to pluck a stone from the water bed. Did Nimeda still have the one he gifted on their first meeting? The stone was wet and slimy in his hand, but he dropped it aimlessly when her question was posed. Philip answered automatically.
“A dream is the language of illumination,” he said.

He swiped his hands together as he rose to his feet as if the dirt that marred his fingertips was rejected by the light within. He walked a few steps, jaw tilted upward and gaze attuned to the sky and whatever it was his eyes beheld hovering there. He spoke like he stood over thousands of people baited to devour his every word, and the Latin that punctured the air was crisp and commanding, majestic as the mountains that turned to listen. Perhaps more so. 

”Semel loquitur Deus et secundo id ipsum non repetit,” the words bit straight to the soul but for all the riddle wrapped up in the meaning. Nimeda, unfamiliar with Rome, was unlikely to translate even more ancient words. 

He continued, “It is a language spoken but unheard by most,". He glanced at Nimeda, the touch of a smile followed but if he expected reaction, it was indecipherable. "But not by me." He drew in a deep breath, eyes falling low as if he was repeating the whisper of the mountains themselves, verse written into the foundations of the world. "‘Then he openeth the ears of men, and teaching instructeth them in what they are to learn.'"

"Who illumines you, Nimeda?"





**(Latin) For God speaketh once, yea twice, though man does not perceive it – quoted from the old testament.

[Thalia]

Nimeda’s hands trailed over the rocks, like she expected her palms to sink straight through. Her expression was a puzzle, caught in the drifts of memory’s tides. At her lowest ebb, before Jon had ever named her Nimeda -- before she had known Jon, even -- it was here that she found sanctuary. She could almost hear the soothing tides of the voice that beckoned back then, before it sank into oblivion. The connection went deeper, and older, though she didn’t follow it to fruition. Perhaps she would drown in the effort, it was so long ago, but it was enough to know that here was a place wedded to the identity of her soul. Not that she could articulate it as such, should Noctua even choose to ask. But it was what she had wished to share.

It was amidst her idle exploration, mind wandering, that something else plunked like a stone dropped in still water. “Oh.” Her brows knit. She shifted to a cross-legged perch, and turned to watch as Noctua stared down at the waters. The epiphany of identity floated for a while. Tristan languished in the conflict of it, caught in a war that left him scant space to exist in between, at least not while he allowed himself to be buffeted by its ceaseless storm. But Noctua clung to his own dualities -- not a war between, but a claiming of; a thing of titles rather than of blood. For while Tristan fought to be a man, Noctua rejected the very same existence.

Yet if his city fell as he inferred, what would that leave of him?

She blinked when he turned to answer the question, caught in wondering if it was what grieved him to such pensive and biting moods. Her eyes were wide, lulled, Noctua’s voice like an echo in the valleys of her very soul. The words were unknowable to her, but their cadence lapped like gentle waves. She had always liked songs, and if she also enjoyed puzzles, it was not necessarily for the solving of them, but for the majesty of their mystery. Her head tilted, palms light on her knees. Her hair spread like a cloud about her shoulders, fauna tucked amidst the curls at her crown, including a bloom reminiscent of those seen in Tuuru’s garden. Nimeda was a curious creature, but not a philosopher. The wash of his words, the ones she could understand at least, took a while to absorb. 

He excluded himself from his own answer, as she realised he often did when he spoke, like he really was the no one he proclaimed to be. Or thought he was. The truth of others Nimeda perceived with fondness. If the dream was a language, then it was one she listened to raptly, pulled into the currents of its visiting souls. She lived joyously through those connections, and rarely judged others for either flaws or magnificence revealed. She had told Noctua before that truth lived in this realm, though they had been speaking of the needs he found impure and she found intrinsic. 

“I do not know who illumines me. Perhaps I do not think so deeply as you, Noctua.” Her lips curled a smile, and though there was lightness to her tone, there was also a teasing gleam to her eyes that perhaps suggested playful evasion. He was prickly as sharp rock, but if he believed dreaming was illumination he would not find such enlightenment by sparring words with her. She stood from her rock then, grinning. “I heard your body break the surface of the water when you fell into the dream, though I was not close by. You tell me you are no one, and perhaps that is truth for you, but that is not who you are to me.” She did not reach for his hand, though the temptation itched as she passed him by. Her bare feet trailed into the clear waters as she headed up the incline, arms outstretched for a game of balance and whimsy. “Come on! It’s this way!”

[Patricus I]

Her words were touching. All the more reason for the snap of his response.

“That’s alright. I did not think you did,” he said. A red vision curled his mind. One of absence and abandonment; a voice that whispered only in silent echoes. The armor was old as his bones, knit together in utero. Where the sleeve of flesh covered men, the plate of mail entombed Philip. It was the reason he became a priest. Because he was a coward. To avoid the pain of rejection, because only the Creator can reject the Prince of Peter; and He wouldn’t do it.

Nimeda once saw him as a king, but magnificence was sterility. Nobody thinks as deeply as the Pope; as profound or inspiring as Philip. She heard the fall but was not there to catch him. He caught himself. He saved himself.

He watched his feet as he walked, sneakers navigating the undulations of rock and small sinkholes of soft earth. They followed the trail upstream, but where Nimeda frolicked, Philip was stoic as the mountain passes. The river may have been the tears never shed, for to cry was despair in disbelief, and Philip’s faith was an everlasting fire. Suddenly, he stopped as a vision came unbidden.

          The sparkle of a mitre. The gleam of rings against red velvet. The smell of decay. The taste of betrayal. The weight of the world.
‘Are you ready to wage a war against me? Because I am ready to wage one against you, and you best come with more than desperation. Are you prepared to face eternal fire? Because I am prepared to set you free. Say you are ready. Say it! You know nothing outside Patricus I. Nothing except hell, but I do. I know hell because I built it. For you.’

He stumbled to one knee the next step. The words echoed drums in his mind. For they were his words. His voice. His seething disdain for the manipulations attempting to clutch their way around his Papacy. They were words he had not yet said, yet he knew they would come. Against whom was the war to be waged?

He felt death slink nearby. When he glanced, it was with eyes wide as saucers, casting their net-like gaze woodlands. There, behind a tree. A small shadow slunk. Twin eyes peered back at him for just a moment. They may as well have been his own, but they were there one moment and gone the next. They struck no fear just as his own pretty blue eyes sparked nothing but adoration.

He turned the other way. His palms were dirtied by the stumble, having landed awkwardly. “I tripped,” he said to Nimeda by way of explanation. She wasn’t there to catch him, he swallowed. Perhaps because he landed on the soil rather than the stream. Perhaps because he wasn't worthy to catch.

The stream had widened as they walked. The rocks became flat slabs smoothed to granite, piled like dishes one atop the other. He craned his neck to follow the sound of rushing air, slowly coming to stand once more. Soft white water, silken as clouds, streamed over the edges. Foam churning at the rush struck the pool beneath.  

“It’s beautiful,” he said, aching to be a part of it. He shifted before he knew he moved. The water buried him to his chest, bare now. The tracksuit was gone. Only the weight of white shorts pasted his skin. He sank into the embrace of the water, arms spread straight from his sides like he may at any moment decide to stand upon the surface itself.

The water was clear as a baptismal chalice and just as holy. Warmth tickled like summer, but it was refreshing rather than uncomfortable. The waterfall was nearby, but not so loud as to banish the profound thoughts sinking in his mind. What war was he going to wage?

He looked to Nimeda, and somehow a smile arose. The kind of smile that shattered hearts and best laid plans.
“It’s a sanctuary,” he said. “Tell me about it.”

[Thalia]

Nimeda was sure-footed in the way of the reckless, splashing in the shallows or clambering over rocks for the sheer joy of sensation. When they came within view of their destination, she twisted with delighted anticipation to gauge Noctua’s reaction, only to find him fallen to the earth. She blinked first at the space he had occupied, and then at the space he did now, and then out into the trees. If a furrow briefly lined her brow, she did not speak to its cause. She did however fold down onto her knees, like she might offer her palms out to help him up, else had decided to otherwise join him down in the dirt.

But then he caught sight of the view behind her.

She’d seen him reject his own desires before, perhaps unaware his appearance even betrayed such impulses bare in this place. The last time his clothes had flickered the urge to swim, she had embraced the waters while he lingered stately on the bank. This time he shifted straight to submergence. That a smile also broke through his melancholy, no matter how brief it might prove to be, elicited a brilliant beam of her own. Warmth blossomed for such simple pleasure as a single moment. Nim perched atop one of the wide rocks, feet swirling, fingers grasped over the edge.

“It’s somewhere that helped shape me,” she said. Then added, “A long time ago, though. It’s not exactly what it was, I do not think, but through the ebbs and flows of time some things stay the same. Like the truth to be found between soul and flesh, perhaps. It is indelible.” She laughed a little for the twisting ribbon of her thoughts, somewhat aware that her answer sounded more like a riddle than the plain honesty she intended. She had no name to tell him, and she did not know what it might be called in the Waking world now anyway. The memories were warm as the water she presently dipped her toes in, though.

She laughed and let herself fall. The water scooped her up until she bobbed back to the surface.

[Patricus I]

“Truth is always indelible,” he replied as soon as Nimeda flushed the surface. Meanwhile, Philip was a pillar in the water. Playfulness was absent just as absence was presence. The statement drew his expression solemn such that the previous moment of mirth may have been a mirage. Distinct from something dreary, he observed her revelry as one might contemplate a sculpture on display. In the Vatican, art infused the very walls. They were monuments to joy, love, devotion, but they also symbolized wrath, isolation, and judgment: virtue and vice entwined together in order to spark reflection of the kind of depths eclipsing mountain streams. The question stirred: which was Nimeda? Vice or virtue?

Inevitably, memory tugged a similar truth imprinted upon him, but he did not speak of it. However, the power of its mark forced his attention toward the waterfall rather than his sisterly companion. From the bank, the water poured like clouds, but up close, it was chaotic and violent. One might compare the duality to all of humanity. Was that the viewpoint of God? A divine inspector who viewed the soul from his throne on high as clearly as he peered into the darkest corners of mens’ hearts: finding a serene and savage creation simultaneously entwined.

What about this place impressed so deeply upon Nimeda? Excluding shadows that moved like cats, the forest was indistinguishable from any other. The trees were of variable families. The mountains were ominous and everlasting. They may be anywhere in the world. What sorts of calamities did they bear witness? What triumphs?

Answers were intangible as the existence of God, he thought, turning aside from the waterfall’s eternal cascade. The globes of his eyes swiveled toward Nimeda, and he wondered what sketch of him Thalia would create come morning. The Pope lounging shirtless beneath a waterfall would make for some disconcerting fan-art.

“Thalia was quite uncomfortable around me,” he said, finally, gauging Nimeda’s reaction carefully.