thehometree

((This is mostly to document what Evan gets up to with the charred tree, hence being a bit of an essay! If anyone wants to respond, though, feel free!))

After a day of helping out a sick friend, Evan had retired late, and therefore it was the the resounding crack of the mighty collision that roused him.

He scrambled out of bed and launched to standing in a heartbeat. But there was no follow-up crash and Evan had no idea what the first had been, so the young man struggled and mostly succeeded at calming himself. When he went to the balcony to get a look outside, however, the swirling ash began to invade the moment he opened the door: coughing and feeling an excited kind of panic rise, he slammed it shut again.

Had something caught fire?! He couldn't feel it, but then, if his meagre fire senses had been nerfed along with his ability to light up, that didn't tell him much. Of course, it could spell doom for the tree that housed them if somehow, something had gotten through its anti-fire protections, but...

...but the young elemental missed his element.

Evan rallied quickly. He dressed, got his pack, wetted down the front of his shirt so it could be pulled up as a filter, bundled up in his little-used canvas jacket, and in very little time had left the home tree to investigate.

The wind cut clear through his clothes with chill and plastered him with ash in moments, but where the finicky young man might otherwise have complained, he was instead stunned by the sight of a huge, blackened trunk leaning precariously, reaching up into the ash-clouded sky. He stood for a moment and marveled: the lightning-struck tree outside the barrier? It had been a couple of weeks, hadn't it? That was too long for embers to survive... wasn't it?

Still, with an ember of excitement hot in his own chest, he put his head down and struck out for the base of the fallen behemoth.

At normal scale, climbing a ragged landscape of charred wood would have been a slick, treacherous feat and a half. Even at a few inches tall it wasn't easy, but Evan could wedge his fingers in cracks between segments of charcoal, could jam his feet into crumbling pockets of carbonized wood. He wasn't sure why he had the urge to climb, except that he wanted to get further up where the char was worst.

The welcome heat seeped into his hands as he climbed, growing till he felt the familiar clamour of instinct that told him it'd've been too hot for human hands. He had to pause and check himself then, but no: the skin of his palms was warm and pink and tingling, but no blisters, no angry red burn welts. It was a relief that he still had that, at least.

Finally, where the angle of the tree took a shift for the steeper, he had to stop. Here, it was a ruined mess of former wood where a branch met the main trunk.

He began to feel against the trunk, seeking out where the heat was greatest. Finding a wide patch of blistering heat, he started pulling away great hunks of charcoal and shoving them aside where they tinkled to the ground. A determined kind of hope drove him, and he didn't notice as soot and charcoal dust were coating him head to foot. It was getting hotter as he went, and when Evan spotted the first little shimmer of orange light he sucked in an excited breath.

Clearing the space, he revealed small patch of embers. Grinning broadly, he leaned over them, pressing his hands towards that familiar warmth... and then turned, rooting around his pack.

He'd gathered a small nest of fresh leaf fragments for exactly this purpose, and laid them out carefully on the trunk, but when he went to reach in and very carefully put his hands around the first of the available embers with intention to lift it from its mooring, it immediately blinked out into ash. The hope he'd been feeling clenched up in his chest.

His second, third and fourth tries yielded little more than additional messy patches of ash, until Evan was sitting back and cursing, staring at the much-diminished patch of embers, now slowly shimmering lower. He rubbed his face with his filthy hands and groaned, self-doubt and anxiety gnawing at his bones.

Was he somehow cursed the same way the tree was, now? Was he going to be stuck like this? In a very specific and visceral kind of misery, the young man slumped back against the birch's charred branch, took his lighter out of his pocket to fiddle with, and tried to think his way around the problem.

[ With all the surprise, the confusion, and downright panic surrounding something as simple as a bit of inclement weather, Pitch was bound to take notice. But instead of being his is as grey and mostly paranoid as Evan. And since fear never announces itself, only steals in on quiet cat's paws, it's just as quiet about being across the failed ember from Evan. ]

I don't think you can think your way out of this one.

Evan jolts to his feet, dragging the back of his canvas jacket up the branch he's resting again in his startlement. The lighter gets jammed back into his pocket and he whips his head up, staring at the figure across the ash waste from him.

It takes him a moment to place Pitch, vaguely, as one of the figures who'd shown up in the amber on Evan's first day in the tree. "Christ, you move quietly," he exclaimed, off-gassing his scare.

But how much had this man seen? Evan wiped his hands on his pants, instinctively nervous that he'd been found out.

"What are you doing up here?"

[ Pitch was...strangely subdued. Even his black wings seemed to droop as he didn't stop looking at the sad little pile of failed ember. ]

Have you looked around at all? The fear is so thick it is almost palpable. Some fear attack. Some fear damage. And more still have the buried fear of being unequal to the task set to them. Listen to the wind. Feel the heat. It's a frenzy.

[ He crossed his legs underneath his robe, grey fingers edging through the grey mess. If he had been there long enough to see Evan's frantic attempts to keep the ember alive, he wasn't giving any indication. He also seemed about as far from frenetic as it got.

Certainly with Evan feeling fear with such strength and clarity, like that, Pitch felt a bit like he'd been slapped in the face with the fact little Evan was afraid someone would find out he wasn't exactly human, but that was a tidbit kept to himself for now. ]

I didn't run into anyone on my way out.

[But that was a non-answer and they both knew it. Evan looked sidelong at Pitch, wary and puzzled, then took a moment to brush some of the charcoal dust off of his hands.

He considered for the first time that the deep unsettled feeling in his gut might not be constrained to just him and his immediate personal problem. To anyone who hadn't been excited at the sight of char, the fallen tree probably seemed like a threat. Certainly no one would be flying today, amidst the wind and the ash flakes.]

So if everybody is in a frenzy, why aren't you?

[ This time, when Pitch looked up at Evan, the glint of golden eyes made him seem anything but normal. Especially paired with that unsettling smirk. ]

Finally figured out what I am then.

[ The latter still disappeared fairly quickly, since Pitch is more fear than frenzy anyway. The surrounding atmosphere of hysteria made him feel a little lightheaded, almost giddy in a way. But as good as the sudden influx of fear felt, Pitch cold only close his eyes and take a slow, deep breath - soot and all - to enjoy it. ]

It does take a bit more than lightening hitting a tree to bother me.

[It was less Pitch's inhumanity than the expression that had crossed his face that unnerved Evan. There were things he was missing here, and if he hadn't been in the midst of his own problem he might have been able to piece them together.

As it was, when something had Evan's back up, sarcasm was a familiar and easy defense.]

And here I thought you looked exceptionally perturbed.

[Pitch was unnerving him badly, but Evan did not himself want to appear suspicious. That in mind, keeping one eye on Pitch, he hunkered back down towards the pit of ash and charcoal he'd been excavating.

Now, though, instead of going for the embers he began to pull chunks of charcoal out of their moorings, put them in the leaf bundle he'd brought along originally for the embers.]

So are you up here to help me gather some new writing materials? [He said, dryly as he could.]

[ Pitch caught the sarcasm thanks very much, but he responded with a bitter nostalgic edge of someone who' been there and seen it. ]

Ah, if only you were a writer.

[ Pitch just crumbles a cool edge of charcoal as he speaks. ]

Spirits and magical beings swarmed around these 'humans', intoxicated by their imaginations. So many Spirits desired to get closer to these fascinating creatures that they started taking on their shape. You might be surprised how many less-than-mundanes there are walking about.

[ A jaded smirk gets turned pointedly on Evan. ]

Then again, maybe you wouldn't be surprised at all.

[ Of course he could come right out and say I know what you are. But what would be the fun (or fear) in that? ]

[In his life, Evan has known of two types of people: human people, who don't know what he is, and nonhuman people, generally known through his mother, who do. He's been lumping everyone here, human or non, into the former category for safety's sake.

...but could this creature sense what he was? Some could.]

I'm not sure I would, given that I'm fairly certain you're not just an oddly-colored human yourself.

[Dissembling, he can do. That doesn't mean Pitch hasn't struck a nerve. Evan's heart is rabbiting.]

[ Evan's sass isn't appreciated. More reasons to only feed off the fears of children. They weren't given to snappy remarks.

At first Pitch's expression smoothed back out into dangerous calm, gold eyes glowing oddly. But it was soon gone again as Pitch grinned.

Evan's fear was both sustenance and like holding up a glass to them. The clarity just confirmed what Pitch had suspected already. ]

But we're not talking about me here, we're talking about you. What are you afraid of, hm? I know that you are. Are you afraid you've been cursed?

[There was a long silence from the young man as all the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Having his own childish moment of paranoia thrown back at him almost verboten was just a little too much: he stared, wary, at the now-ominous creature before him.

Evan didn't believe in curses. The idea of a whole category of magic whose only role was to make someone's life miserable -- it jangled off of his sense of justice.

But then, at the same time, he also knew better. In the world his mother inhabits, there was much that was beyond the reach of his knowledge.]

...how are you doing that?

[He has to at least ask. It's obvious Pitch isn't just wildly guessing, here.]

[ Now it was like a terrible cycle; the more wary and paranoid Evan became, the sharper, and clearer his fears came into focus. And Pitch only smiled. With his black wings, and grey skin he was actually well camouflaged. Usually he would stand out. ]

You're sitting on a burnt tree branch next to a bit of hot charcoal and you're really going to ask that question?

[ Well that's twice Evan's made Pitch laugh. Not a very good average if he hopes to ever be left alone again. ]

[Maybe to Pitch's detriment, that sarcasm jolted Evan out of straight fear again. He pulled his head back, looking offended, and then scrunched up his face in a scowl of concession. Perhaps he was holding tightly to his sense of offended dignity; it was more familiar, and more navigable, than the deep unsettlement that continued as a backbuzz.]

Even I know magic has rules. [His tone was sharp.] And I'm not a fan of having my mind read.

[ Still fizzing with mirth around the edges, Pitch was tempted to let Evan draw his own conclusions. ]

I am not reading your mind at all, but what "rules" do you think I ought to be adhering to?

[ With a lay (and kind of creepy) smirk, Pitch leaned back on one gray hand. ]

Oh, no. [Evan inclined his head, giving the man a wary look.] No, I see a semantic trap when I see one.

You're doing something and I don't take kindly to it.

[He'd finished up shoveling charcoal into leaf wrappings and then into his backpack. He wiped his hands off on his now very cruddy jeans and straightened, heart rabbiting behind his ribs.]

I don't know what you are or how you know what you know and frankly I'm not interested in finding out. [Evidently fear dulled his natural curiosity.] If you'll excuse me I've got to get back to the tree.

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Well that was supposed to say "instead of being his melodramatic self-"

thaaaat makes a lot more sense! thanks!

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