abraxaslogs | Now that you're actually not cool, I kinda like you better. (Open/Closed)

Kell was coming back from the tea shop a little too late. A little too unnerved by the darkness. A small ball of white light hovering over his head, lighting his path, was nowhere enough light for him to feel safe.
So he walks fast and almost barges into Bay coming back to the castle from the gardens.

"Woaah! I didn't see you there!"

Fortunately his light makes him very obvious to her. Eyes adjusting to the light level fast enough to catch his words easily. Which adds to the weirdness of her night. "I can see you just fine."

She sounds distracted, as she's trying to work out exactly what's going on. She holds a hand up to warn him off trying to talk as she turns and scans the darkness. Well past the edge of Kell's light source. And she can still see just fine, eyes adjusting to the gloom, and readjusting when she faces him again.

She drops her hand, facing him fully. "What are you doing out here?"

Kell can barely see anything outside his small bubble of light. He barely sees some rough shapes that he guesses must trees and bushes. Sticks to the path because that's what he remembers. He'd have a lot harder time if he didn't know the way by heart.

"Coming back from the Cauldron. What you are doing outside at this hour? It's completely dark."

He noticed the book in her hand, but it sounds quite improbable that she went out to read. Not in the dark like that. That doesn't make sense.

"I was reading and lost track of time, I found a nice little tree to read under." She's sounds distracted as she answers, her eyes drifting off his mouth a little to compare her vision just past him and his light source, the darkness does obscure somewhat, but that's more to do with trying to see light and shadow at once.

She knows the 'other senses compensate' is nonsense, but that is where her mind drifts to when it comes to her current state. "I know I was reading for hours, but I just can do that now. The rest of this is new..."

"You can read in complete darkness? That's nice! Did you find a spell to do that?"

She really was. Interesting. To be absolutely fair, Kell could, if he wanted, search for a spell to make himself see in the dark. He's pretty certain one exists. That he wouldn't exactly go looking stems more from his dislike for the darkness than laziness. Why bother if he can light his way on his own.

He notices how she keeps looking around, so he does too. That's not exactly reassuring. He stopped jumping at each and every unexpected sound some time ago, but it doesn't mean all of his twitchiness went away. Quite the contrary. The longer he has to spend in the dark, open, desolate places like streets or castle gardens at night, the more his urge to run grows.

"Let's not stand around," he says, going for the most casual tone he can muster given the circumstances. "Are you going back to the castle?"

"Not a spell, I didn't do anything." She's looking at things, rather than for anything. There's nothing obviously dangerous out there. She can see a few things moving in the underbrush but it's just rodents. Maybe rabbits? Nothing really worth considering. The colors are also wrong, there's a muted nature to everything. Not quite black and white but something trying to evoke it. Or cheap out on brighter paints.

"Uh, yeah, I probably should have headed back before sundown. Had I noticed." She's stopped splitting her attention between him and the world around them, focusing cleanly. "This is weird, right?"

She's pretty sure this is weird, but a lot of 'weird' things here are just normal. Like nudity, and magic. So she's not entirely sure where 'see in the dark' falls. This might be a totally normal common cold symptom here.

Oh.

"It is weird," he confirms, but that's a little unspecific, so he adds. "Most people don't just see in the dark. Not without use of a spell."

Now the next natural question will be.

"I assume this new for you, am I right?"

He's suddenly in a lot less hurry to go back. Curiosity can beat fear of the dark for Kell. Not every time, but enough to count.

"I can't see much further than your light when I look at you," her hand drifted up as she turned to explore the distance, growing used to her eyes just dropping the vibrancy and upping the light as she looked into the dark. "But in the dark? I can see into the tree line which... you probably can't even see right now."

Once she's facing him so they can talk properly, the confusion over the whole thing is more evident on her face, "Yes, I don't normally have unnaturally good night vision. This is absolutely in my top five weirdest things list."

On the plus side she hasn't seen anything dangerous in the dark, so they're probably pretty safe to linger while figuring this out.

Kell might have an idea what is happening.

"Did you spend more time in the Horizon lately?"

He looks around, trying to pick something he can demonstrate his own weird skill on. Not the tentacles. He doesn't want to freak her out. He finds a branch, steps away from the path to pick it up, comes back holding it up.

"We sometimes come back from there with weird skills." He lifts the branch, so she can see it's a proper, solid branch. "Mine is breaking things. I don't understand fully how I do it, but I can find the weak points in things and make them weaker." The branch splits into parts that fall to the ground, leaving Kell with a third of its original size.

"Maybe your night sight comes from there too."

"I explore there time to time. It's easy enough, when I can get away with not answering my door." The castle is big on keeping track of them, but Bay of course can just 'get engrossed in research' so she ignores the flickering lantern to alert her of her door.

Bay splits her attention from his words and his actions. Watching as the branch, which shouldn't just break, does. Well, that's certainly a power to have. Useful if you need firewood. Or need to break down a door. Or a femur. Hopefully it doesn't work on femurs.

"So messing with a deeply powerful altered plane of reality has side-effects?" Honestly she should have figured after being there it might be too powerful to just mess with. Given she could recreate whole chunks of her life there as she wanted. "Good to know."

"Yeah, they squint in Thorne if we spend too much time there." If they know they're doing it. "I kind of go around this by not accessing Horizon too often from my room. Mildred says it totally freaks her out, but she lets me do it from the Cauldron."

That's his workplace. Kell doesn't realize how unusual it is that he gets away with half of the things he does there. He doesn't realize either that what he has with that one Abraxan native student that was not deterred by his prickliness when they met, has morphed over time into more of a partnership than a boss employee relationship that they had at the start. He can he, he never had a job before.

Thing is, it absolutely works on femurs, his Koth acquired power. Just like his own magic works on bones, blood and flesh. He only used it on people once here.

"Who would have thought, right? But hey, you can build yourself whatever you want there, gravity and laws of physics be damned. If it clicks something open in your mind, that's not bad either."

"I mostly drive around looking at other people's domains." She missed her car, which wasn't hers in the reality she left. That didn't stop her from creating it for her. "People have some weird domains. Nothing I'd run across at home."

The words didn't sound judgmental, and her expression lit up on the word weird. She's enjoying all she can see and learn. Nothing makes sense and all of it is inviting to explore and draw. Sure, there are problems like how much the castle seems to dislike Summoned going there. But it's worth it.

Bay gestures toward the castle, they can walk and talk well enough given she's not worried about seeing. Provided he keeps his floating light away from her. "So is this permanent, or will I go back to normal if I can't get to the Horizon anytime soon?"

"Does that surprise you?" Kell would be, in turn, surprised himself if she confirmed. "Given opportunity to create anything they want, who would have wanted to makes something mundane."

She doesn't seem off-put by the craziness, so he feels fine with admitting to his own brand of Horizon madness. The domain he shares with Rhy has exactly two stable points. One is a forest, one is a door. Everything else is in perpetual state of flux.

"Mine might be one of the craziest. I like to experiment, and since you can't really hurt yourself there, or anyone else for that matter, it's perfect place to try new things. Besides, if you learn something there, it sticks with you. You don't unlearn it when you come back"

He keeps his ball of light low, dim enough not to disturb her, but bright enough so he don't spiral into full blown panic. It's a balancing act. Sometimes he wonders if he's ever going to feel safe in the complete darkness again. He hope he will. As he is now, it certainly, messes up with his Nocwich plans.

"Pretty much permanent. Once you got, you have it. If you ask Istredd, I'm sure he'd help you figure out how to turn this off at will, if you want."

"I made my art studio, my brother's recording space, and my mother's apartment. I filled them with photos of my family." She had enough weird and wild in everyone else's space for her, thank you. Her whole world was turned upsidedown in ways nobody could properly understand without living her life... twice. She never thought for a moment of a space that would feel comfortable that wasn't stable. "So, yeah, a little surprised."

"I'll look for your domain next time I'm driving around." She's not sure about how true learning things is. What ends up in your head, yeah. But she's tried to do warm up drawings in the Horizon, only to find her hands still cold in the real world. She can practice new ideas for pieces to sell, but she can't actually learn a new brush technique, or the pressure for a new shading. "I tend to visit a place, return to Thorne, then recreate what I saw in one of my sketchbooks."

She keeps testing her new eyes on various things, when Kell isn't talking. "I don't know if I need to turn it off. It just- adjusts. Not sure how sleeping will work. But my eyes adjust just like when leaving a dark room. Only... more. Still, I should probably talk to Istredd anyway."

"That's not mundane. That's personal. It's different. I recreated my favorite tavern. A street from my city. My training space I had under the Sanctuary. Heck, I even kept my room from the palace for some time there."

If she voiced her concerns, Kell would agree that the effects of Horizon learning do not extend to the physical. Someone can show you something, you can try something yourself, but there's no effect on the body once you leave. It has it's good sides. He can be a lot more reckless there than he'd ever risk being outside.

"Maybe you don't. If you can already tune it out so it doesn't bother you when there's enough of actual light to see without it. Then it's just a nice thing to have."

He'd still prefer to keep his lights up, but not because he cannot see in the dark.

"Talk to him. Maybe, there's no harm, but maybe he'll be able to see something your missing, and tell you before it becomes a problem."

At this point, Kell trusts Istredd implicitly, assuming the older mage would know and see things he doesn't. So in his opinion, it's always a good choice to go and consult things him.

Now that you're actually not cool, I kinda like you better. (Open/Closed)

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