[Plot] Sea of Holes

[Samantha McManus]

Sam meanwhile has sequestered herself off in one of the side rooms of the point while the Wills work. She's not hard to find, but she needs a little bit to figure things out and Cerebra is still undergoing repairs.

She's laid out what looks to be a yoga mat, commandeered from elsewhere. Sitting in the center, she closes her eyes and turns her mind inward, descending into the forest within her as she ventures to the deep dark.

[Narrator]

Finding that space between is getting easier and easier each time she descends to it. It took dieing to see it for the first time and even now the feeling required is one of detachment and slipping from the world. Even knowing there's a way back it's still a bit unsettling to let oneself fall through this deep pit of rustling feathers, like passing through the eye of a storm made of ravens and into the endless dark. Eventually the storm around her coalesces and envelops her like a cloak while her destination unfolds around her and she finds herself perched on a branch of her Fractal Tree.

[Samantha McManus]

And this is where they belong. They come out to the warm places for awhile, then they move on. Dragging them back is just... wrong, she muses to herself as she looks around at all the little lights.

[Cailleach]

The lights dance in the branches, all tiny representations of much more complicated patterns. All of these have been shaped, in one way or another, by contact with the world. With a mind that has left echoes of memories and thoughts within them, maybe even more. In a way she's surrounded by Death, a multitude of it, pouring in from countless worlds. Some shepherded by crows, other drifting all by their lonesome back down towards the source. Some are a little tarnished, faded and scratched up like something or someone had chewed on them but not any lesser for it. There are many ways to guide the dead, not all of them kind.

In a branch next to her, wood splinters out into a hand, first wooden and covered in bark on one side, then slowly turning to pale skin as more and more of the branch tears itself free and into a familiar, if much more emaciated shape. Cailleach sits hunched of, both hands and feet on the branch and seemingly unaware of Sam sitting not too far away (and probably a bit more normally) on a branch of her own.

[Samantha McManus]

"You know," she says casually, "we've really got to stop meeting like this."

[Cailleach]

Cailleach startles and almost hops off her branch.

"Phantom Queen!" she hisses, though that might just be her default way of talking. "You're getting more apt at walking the Unseen paths..." she grumbles.

[Samantha McManus]

"I think it's telling that we both come out close to each other, here."

[Cailleach]

"Or did I force it by swimming in your flesh?" she says cryptically.

"Either way it considers us close." she goes on, placing one hand on a larger branch.

[Samantha McManus]

"It branches, smaller and smaller. We may not be the same branch, but we're close."

[Cailleach]

"What are you doing here?" she suddenly changes topics. "Did the Bouba deliver my message?"

[Samantha McManus]

"I'm aware you tried to eat my friend, but I'm not here seeking you."

[Cailleach]

"How would I even do that from down here without sinking my teeth into his flesh." she scoffs.

[Samantha McManus]

"How indeed? Didn't you know to keep your hands off of him? He's marked."

"I'm beginning to think you assume anything that's dangled down here is yours. I don't need that while we're trying to figure out Li Ban."

[Cailleach]

"He intruded here, you cannot lay blame at my feet for being curious. I've done no harm to you since I followed to this world. Toyed maybe, experimented, yes. Let the Electric Song glimpse too much of the truth, that I will admit. But if I wanted to cause you and yours harm I could have done so many times over!" she huffs, pufferfish-spines briefly bristling out of her skin.

"I even warned you of the Li Ban and told the Bouba to let you know I witnessed her trying to lay claim to your body and fail. For all her Craft, the world of flesh and bone rejects her."

[Samantha McManus]

"Cold comfort when she's still sending beasties after us. Possibly after someone specific."

[Cailleach]

"Means you can come here without fearing for your body. But why have you come? You haven't seemed too eager to sup of the deep truths before."

[Samantha McManus]

"It doesn't go away if I ignore it. Nothing ever does."

[Cailleach]

Cailleach cackles at that.

"My offer still stands, Truths for a Favour."

[Samantha McManus]

"What more do you think I could give you? At some point, I can find you as easily as you can find me."

[Cailleach]

"I want to see our sister. Your sister. Meet her."

[Samantha McManus]

"I thought you were fully invested in the immortal hag queen lifestyle. Those don't generally have something so mundane as a family, do they?"

[Cailleach]

"I need not explain myself to you!" she snarls back. "I wish to meet the one who did not perish in the face of monsters."

[Samantha McManus]

"Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe it'd break her heart to see what her sister might become."

[Cailleach]

"She need not know. I can wear a face that's neither mine nor yours."

[Samantha McManus]

"Assuming you could behave, you'd have to bathe."

[Cailleach]

"In the sea."

[Samantha McManus]

"With soap."

[Cailleach]

"Made of kelp."

[Samantha McManus]

"You have to human for awhile if you want to meet her. No matter how much you hate being just human. Non-negotiable."

[Cailleach]

"Fine, yes, clean and human." she huffs.

[Samantha McManus]

"Now, since I again have to pay you for information about the mess you're trying to avoid, what were you offering in exchange?"

[Cailleach]

"Pay? Pay!? Dear Phantom Queen, we deal in favours and pacts, not... transactions. That's one of the important Truths down here. Words matter. Names matter. You think I call the green-haired one's Spark 'Bouba' now because I prefer this insipid name? No, it's because he himself laid eyes on it and named it. It likes him, which is nearly heretical in and of itself, but now the name has taken root and if I wish to speak Truth then I must call it by it's Truth."

[Samantha McManus]

"He's been changed by the passage. He's like... a string of pearls. He's not one of the pearls, he's all of them."

[Cailleach]

"Then you know I speak truth. Our Spark, most Sparks, they lend their strength to many. It doesn't weaken them to split, to share. If anything I believe them to grow stronger from it. Different facets, subtle differences in their gifts and never the whole of it. But 'Bouba'..." she pronounces the name as if it leaves a foul taste on her tongue, "...has given almost all of itself to one that is Legion when he soared across the Endless Deep. Enough to drive one mad."

"I imagine you've seen it when the Electric Song raked her machine across the veil. Unchecked power too deep, too strong. Certainly you know it yourself. Many of us carry some shade of madness. But not him. Not in the broken ways, the ways through the dark woods and the deep abyss. Because he thinks like his Spark. Because there's so much of both of them that longs the same way. You could almost call his Spark alive, so much it has resonated with him."

[Samantha McManus]

"You sound almost jealous."

[Cailleach]

"Maybe of the depth of his connection, but it's left him torn hither and thither."

[Samantha McManus]

"I may not be a goddess of mending, but we're trying to help him there."

[Cailleach]

"Not sure you can, but you all love doing the impossible. Sparks are set, they don't like to change and they resonate in flesh and soul. But... set is not unchanging. They have a central principle, oft very simple if tricky to see and hard to put into words. That you cannot move from it's ways. It's too pure, too deeply writ upon the world. The covenant between us and the void. Ours is parts of a whole, spread out but leading back to the source, splintered or gnarled. When the flesh falls away we preserve the covenant. You seek to return them without delay, I gather them to me like grapes plucked from their skulls."

[Samantha McManus]

"But he's not broken, or he doesn't have to be."

[Cailleach]

"No one's broken. No one needs fixing. Do I need fixing? Do you?"