unilaterallydisarming

"You haven't passed the first gate, yet. If you want to go back, you've only got to walk."

If he can bring himself to get up, and to walk.

Easier, here, than in the true river, whose cold waters leached away at the ghosts within them. This is still Oscar's dream. If he believes in his own conviction, then that will be enough.

Oscar nodded, and took in a deep breath. He brushed off his shoulders, and straightened up.

He would go back. He would be making sure that everything would be finished. Even if it hurt.

He would live and fulfill his purpose.

"Are you afraid?" Kahl asks, and there's no judgement in the question, only curiosity.

"I'm terrified for him. I have no idea what will happen to him or me. And I am, of course, afraid."

He didn't look back. "But that can't stop me from doing what I need to do. Death can come when I'm done keeping my friend alive."

Once he starts walking, Kahl gets to his own feet, shakes himself like a dog, then walks through the shallow water at Oscar's side. They can't see far in the mist - and the First Precinct in the dream can be as large as it needs to be for this conversation - but by moving upstream against the current, they can know the direction.

"What do you need to do?"

Oscar paused- that was still a giant tiger, whether he was dead or not- but went back to walking with the tiger joining him.

"We're trying to find an answer to a problem. There's a...being who has been trapped in our world for a time. We've found, at least, the possible person who brought them here. We're on their property now."

His left hand flexed. "But it's far more dangerous then expected. I shouldn't have touched the stove."

Relax, Oscar. Isn't it better than being in this wide cold dark river alone? Just keep talking to your psychopomp.

"What happened?" Kahl asked, quiet and measured, the patience of centuries.

It's weird that he has a tiger for a psychopomp. He has no idea if this one is going to eat him or not.

"It turns out that the house and barn is infested with...creatures from another world. I read about them on the ride there. And...this thing, if it had been able to get up high enough would have taken me over. I wouldn't have been me anymore. I would have been...a puppet."

"That's not much time to prepare to face something, if you never knew about it before," Kahl observes.

"Neither of us- or the three of us, I should say, as I didn't know John was there at the time- knew much about the situation. I had only just read about the...bugs."

He shivered, rubbing his arm. "And I didn't have time to tell Arthur their danger. It was all so fast."

"You are very loyal to him," Kahl observes.

"Yes I am." Oscar eyed the tiger for a few moments, before going silent.

"Why?"

It's a real question. Has Arthur done something to earn it? Does Oscar have some other obligation to him?

"He is my friend." It was the truth. Even if the matter was more complicated now.

"How did you become friends?"

Mild, musing, moseying. On the way back into life, you talk about your life: the story makes sense. The water around their ankles fees a little warmer now, the grey light a little less dim.

It did feel right to talk but he felt cagey about it. Wanting to protect Arthur. Which was, well, funny in a way, since he didn't know that Arthur could also turn into a tiger.

"He found out I was helping with something he had stumbled on. And it started an intense few days."

"Was it something he did, that earned your loyalty, or are you often loyal those you fall in with so quickly?" Kahl asks. That's what he's interested in, far more than the details of the disaster.

"Something he did." He glanced down at the tiger at his side, frowning. "I'm not impulsive, sir, even if the action I did seemed that way. That was the best choice I could make at the time."

"Sometimes the circumstances call for impulse. Sometimes not. I am not your judge," Kahl tells him. That will be Vincent, in time.

"What did he do, then?"

"Saved my life, and that of others around him." He made a soft noise. looking to the tiger. "You seem awfully curious about my life and Arthur in particular. Why?"

"I'm curious about you, and he is important to you," Kahl says honestly. "As he's come up in your reasons to live. But perhaps we should consider more spiritual things."

Under the circumstances.

"He is important to me." He agreed. "And I still don't know
...well. Who you are. But we could speak of spiritual things."

The tiger is gone; there's a small hand in Oscar's hand, slightly sticky in the way small children's hands often are, stubbornly warm against the river's numbing cold, just as the tiger's bulk had been. He's wearing a tunic in the same orange, defiantly bright against all the grey, of some non-western style Oscar can't quite place, though his eyes look vaguely Asian. His hair is unkempt in the manner of a child not so much wild as distinctly uncared for.

"I am the one who is walking with you in this place," Kahl says, somewhere between blunt and serene. "Once, I was a child rejected, abandoned, betrayed. You know something about that, I think."

Kahl doesn't know the details - but the truth of it lingers in his sight like a faint glow beneath the skin, that Oscar has - at some time, in some way - felt the same sort of rage that lives in Kahl's heart.

For a few moments he was almost filled with absolute terror, thinking that the little sticky hand was that of another-a name he said in his mind before letting it be wiped away.

Anthony would not be used against him. Not again. Even if he was small like the other boy was, he was not filled with the same zest for life. No...as the child...tiger thing had said, they were far more like him as a child.

The terror no longer in the forefront, he still looked away, his voice soft. He didn't like talking about it.

"Yes, I was." His voice was very soft. He still remembered the regret of not being able to finish what he had started not...the pain he had inflicted. "And yes I do. But I am...not filled with that rage anymore."

Not in the same way, at least.

"Why not?" Kahl asks, in the tone of all children asking why.

Re: Cw: self harm, amputation

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