7652/Book of Stars: Canto IV

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Book of Stars: Canto IV
Date of Scene: 01 September 2021
Location: Cumbrian Coast, UK
Synopsis: Clever, clever Sorcerer Supreme. Denying the god-eater one of its favourite treats may be the reason to fight another day.
Cast of Characters: Meggan Puceanu, Stephen Strange




Meggan Puceanu has posed:
The Book of Stars, Canto IV
Once upon a time, there was a girl.

A girl full of light and fierce of purpose held a sliver of doubt to her heart.

Choices in life brought her to the cusp of standing on the sea, water foaming around her ankles. As it surged, the tide too took the warmth from her skin and transformed her from alabaster fair to streaks of dappled cobalt suspended in crystal and swirling jade.

She raised her hands and cried out to her mother, the eldest of all feminine forces. <<I cannot do what is needed of me. How am I to hope, when every act tears me apart and every silent pause strips my strength?>>

<<What is your hope founded on?>> asked the waves.

<<A promise,>> she whispered. Water flowed around her and revealed the line of silver and light for her to see.

Tears ran down her face from eyes greener than the fairest fields, landing upon the wet sand where earth meets the churning ocean waves. A place of war and flux, one of constant change, a place of transformation as she herself was rendered changeable as the moon.

<<Does the promise yet hold?>> asked the tumbled stones.

<<I don't know.>> Flowers sprang up around her in a widening spiral, petals floating in the surf. <<But I will find the knowledge inside myself.>> She reached deep inside herself to a place inside herself, passing through shadows that wrapped around her in tight coils. She spun herself thin and bright to slip from those bonds, stepping through the moonlit veils separating this world and the next before it.

<<How will they find hope when I am sundered?>>

Then sparkling darkness that snapped at her quicksilvery thoughts, sharp fangs spearing her self-shell, making the girl cry out in defiance. She became as the water, washing away from the pain. It pursued her as she cast herself through the seas until unseen.

She stood at the threshold to voice her plea to the gods and to nature that so loved her children, no matter how wayward they might be. For consolation. For help.

A white stone in her head and blazing hope as her soul, she undid herself to mingle with the sea, the sky, and the land of Alba.

Stephen Strange has posed:
In another world, another time, there was a man.

He was a boy once. A boy full of hope all his own. Possessed by intense intellect and a drive to do better, be better, and in so doing raise others up.

Just like the girl, choices in his life led him to see what he assumed to be his fullest potential. The boy became a man, and as all men do, took his good fortune for granted. And, in doing so, fell from his glittering throne from on high.

Only to see that he has much to learn, more to climb. His boyhood wish to do better has still yet to be fulfilled.

Thus humbled, the man returned to his purpose and, in doing so, discovered that there is so much more to learn. More to do. More to experience. And, further more, more to protect...to elevate.

So much more. The many facets of the realm laid before him. Knowledge to be shared. This realm needed a student.

A teacher.

A protector.

And so, did he take on the mantle. The boy within the man was pleased.

After treading on multitudes of paths...some abstracts of concepts, others with visions of what there is and what could be...the man's travels brought him to the edge of the sea. "It is here, isn't it?" The words were spoken to the air, to the waves. Should there be a response did not matter to him. For he was called there. Of this, he was certain.

He did not know why. But he knew what he needed to do.

He needed to do that which the boy within wanted. He needed to help.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Time operates on different scales where worlds collide, and the power to distinguish the pssing of a moment stretches and thins when the familiar waypoints vanish. Is it the sigh of the waves over pebbled beaches or the hurled crash against St. Kilda, a tiny remnant of a volcanic spire thrust ingloriously out from the Atlantic? What makes a second when carried through the chalk downs by slender rivers, seemingly only a leap wide and waist-deep, but treacherously cut to swallow a life? To the trees felled by Celtic invaders and again by Romans, chopped back and rising again, it could be the course taken by the sun from dawn until dusk when no longer can they sup on the sweetest light of the fading summer.

What is time?

She belongs to a place between places, skating in and out of the labyrinthine byways that link the Otherworld to this one. A wave-washed shore rises through wooded hills, one of the last places not so overly cultivated by human hands that the wild was stamped, beaten, and tilled out. Human traces are everywhere, the rambler's path beating a route through the soil or hints of tourist signs here or there. Boats bob in the ocean to catch a diminished trawl, unaware of a girl with glass-clear 'skin' out there, or nor that her hair sways as the tide comes in and draws out.

She communes with the moon. She worships the sun.

She drowns in the leylines patched through northwestern England, close to the dividing line with Scotland where a second wall hemmed in the barbarians and established trade. Across the water lies Eire, ancient Ireland; to the south, Wales. Pinnacles and spires rounded by time mark the conjunction of the Irish Sea and Alban daydreams.

Something shifted. Something cracked.

Bound to the land and part of it, the meagre isolation of a groggy mind trying to awaken takes /time/. What is time? What is self?

A man with dreams of a noble idealist, a reckless boy, a fearless wanderer touches on a nerve somewhere. But so do whole cities, towns and villages swept into the awareness vaguely of tales stirring and grass growing.

She seeks to ask a question, but one thought in the scree of so many dreams piled up holds her taut. <<Who?>>

Who is he? Who is this? Who is I are we only me but them, not I?

Stephen Strange has posed:
Time.

Time is a construct that the man at the water's edge is rather loose with. Lifetimes can happen in the blink of an eye for one. Yet, for the other watching, nothing changes. Where does the truth lie, with the former or the later? The man knows that, really, there is no right answer. Nor is there any wrong answer. Time is simply perception. And perception is fluid.

Just as she belongs to a place between, he knows where he belongs. He belongs to the realm.

Finding her was simple enough. At least, for one such as him, who knows the leylines...who can feel the magic flow. There are few who can. One of the many skills gleaned from his travels. Another skill? Listening. Not only with his ears, but with his entire being. His ethereal presences as well as his corporeal form. And it is heard.

It is heard in the wind, caressing his form with the sea breeze.

It is heard in the waves, steadfastly crashing on the shoreline just a hand's width away.

It is heard in the earth, through the sand upon the beach on which he stands.

Who?

The question is asked. And the man answers.

"Child of two worlds. Beloved of Gaea. Changeling. Hear me and awaken. You have slumbered long enough, isolated within the goddess' embrace. You need not hide anymore. For I am Stephen Strange, emissary of Oshtur, the Lady of the Skies. She who is sister to Gaea. I am the chosen of Those Who Sit Above. The Sorcerer Supreme of this realm."

"And I am here to help."

Such grandiose words. Such titles. But, it is that boy within that is heard last. That simple offer of help. That is the boy, and not the man, that offers.

Would it be enough? Do the waves hear the truth? Does the sky see the sorcerer's intent?

Does the girl feel the sincerity?

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
She dwells where the sea keeps its treasures concealed in the depths, sunlight fractured and bent into iridescent pearls and oblong, uncut bubbles hidden in endless twilight.

<<Is it time?>> A darkness below that preserves and protects the hidden kingdoms likewise shelters lost ships from wars and sanctified places. Curling lines reach up from the depths of a psyche lulled to slumber, dosed by the nepenthe only deepest dreaming permits. Expensive prices paid bring the ghost of a frown.

What is a frown? Why resist the calling to sink back into the oceanic solitude from which life rose? Confusion trickles over a bit to answer him.

<<An oath.>> Leys shimmer. They cannot smile. What hides within them does, tempest-toss'd in a daydream and sinking lower from the highest recesses of consciousness. <<An oath holds me.>>

Colliding lines of energy dance among the leys, scattered so widely as to be a particle in a hundred thousand. Enormous energy webs serve as magical arteries through the isle of Alba, and its reflection in the Otherworld: Avalon. Albion. One and the same sceptr'd bulwark of dreams among humanity's multitudes.

Shimmerings drag in from the sea, drawn over the land, both of them in a communion of the elements. But of all Meggan's forms, the confluence where air, water, and light join produces her. <<Hope holds true.>>

A star burns in the centre of the vastness spread too thin, infinitely narrow streams of self held together hardly at all. Light burns around a jewelled dream. A pearl in the sea: half black, partly grey, a smidge of white.

Meggan. The pearl. But that scrap isn't solely hers, light too bright, holding in fingers ~what are fingers, are they attached to us? They move. So beautiful how they curl at those points. Knuckles? Are those knuckles?~ that flex and widen. Watery immersions lift up and up higher to...

Slumber trickles away, but she revolves, and the endless surf forms a widening, elliptical swell that crashes down vertically and splits apart. She floats curled up in the waves lofted up in grandiose swells of clear, crystal blues and greens. Spinning and churning water lazily surrounds them, following the whirlpool flow as she hugs her arms to her chest. Made of the same, fully embodying the sea, though distinctly female. Misty features lend touches: alabastrine skin, oyster shoulder, shell-pale mouth. Except the eyes, those are stars too. "I never doubted," she whispers. It sounds a gurgle, a playing brook, a whispery zephyr. "But what are we and if we be free, what makes us me?"

Stephen Strange has posed:
The sorcerer takes a moment to consider the question. Apart from the sing-song method in which the inquiry was delivered, the question was still valid. How does one, who is part of everything, discern what exactly is what? How can she separate herself?

Where does the girl begin and everything else ends?

The man contemplates. The answer is tricky, to be sure. But, there is an answer. And, with that answer in his heart of hearts, he begins.

He begins not with words, but with images. Pictures. The finger dance, swirling opposite the whirlpool, weaving motes of light into a tapestry. Though, not a mere two dimensional image. No, not a flat copy. Instead, the fireflies coalesce, gather, and form a three dimensional image. Golden hair, falling down to rest upon light shoulders. Green eyes, still with that celestial spark, peer out from a porcelain countenance. The form takes on proper height, at least, within the sorcerer's own perceptions. And then, it just hovers, a slightly transparent image of what the girl may be.

"All of creation is unique. Each living creature has their own essence. A spark that marks them. Allows them to know who they are." As the man talks, his eyes peer out, looking for something. What, he is not clear upon.

Instead, he continues to speak, even as he searches. "Science attempts to describe this as a unique set of genetic marks. DNA is their concept of this spark. Religion claims that this essence is one's soul. This is partially correct, as the soul does contain the essence of a person, just as any part would, but a soul is much more. You, child of Avalon, are the same. You have an essence that is all your own. It permeates you, through all of you. All that we need to do is gather it together, and you will know what to do."

Ah! There! The sorcerer's hands reach out, the backs of each touching one another, towards the surf. And, then separate, as if parting the waves. For that is exactly what he is doing. A section flows closer towards the maiden of the sea, while the rest flows back away. "You merely need to look to it. Sense it. And, once you do, call it home unto you. You will see."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
A song isn't merely for show. The waves host no siren come to delude the mind of the Sorcerer Supreme. In their frothing tune, her own voice carries melodies churned among rocky points and gently sloped headlands. Rhythmic sussurations tease a response evoked verbally from her mouth, shaped to form human language without the benefit of human vocal structures.

Their approximation made from nature's elemental building blocks comes close enough.

The girl caught in the littoral places of transformation could bear a great many indicators for who she is. What makes a person? Complex sets of decisions induce a cascade they can be called by: apt bartender, environmental activist, flies not rides, vintage clothing shopper, crisps as snack of choice, fruits for dessert. All those little choices that add up consistently over the years form clothing for the deeper psychological measures that define identity at deeper levels, further into the psyche. The consummate environmentalist, the healer who does no harm when repair or redirection is at hand.

/Who am I?/ is the fundamental question to set man apart from his surroundings. The woman must know herself to be, and in naming herself, forges a link less transient than the flesh that can be shed as a cloak of feathers, adopted as a suit of scales, or modulated as often as the wind changes direction.

<<All burn with that light,>> she murmurs. <<The spark. Mine is like yours, like theirs. Their radiance is no less. All of it is loved equally for being so bright.>>

She curls an arm around her chest, another sliding diagonally across her midsection to span her hip. Between both retreating marine walls, Strange forces her to either drop to the kelp and barnacle strewn bed or uncurl, hand still wrapped around the pearly white-to-black stone. The form and figure smooth out into a watery facsimile of something feminine and then retreat back as the slow ebb to flow of ideas permeates a season and a place with no time. For a moment she is Strange. Then half a dozen other people in quick succession, circling around from a ship's crew back to a child -- no, that's not her -- and then isolating some nearer gleam. The process of filtering is not easy.

One jaw-cracking yawn behind her closed fist attempts to shake off the languor in seeing her double, and the features snap and harden into somewhat familiar lines without trying. Her hair remains heavy, made of seawater, caught in the restless waves while announced by a breathless sigh.

"A nightmare is coming. I ought to be asleep still." Her gaze is troubled, vast, green to the core. "Dreams shiver and rasp with scaled coils, and creep in tightening gyres. I don't understand what it means."

Stephen Strange has posed:
"Nightmares should be faced awake. They have little effect, then."

A basic response, but one that is given without judgement, without reservations. The illusion, for illusion it is, seems to have performed the desired function. It was merely there as a visual reference for the girl to remember. The seawater locks do earn a smile, small but there. "You do sense it. The light. The spark. I can see that you do."

Grey eyes shift, looking out past the girl. Beyond the horizon, to some point that only the sorcerer seems to sense. Perhaps the sea-tossed maiden may, though verbal cues will not come from the man. "I know of such nightmares. Nightmares that should not be faced alone, even when the nature of nightmares are such that one is always alone. However, should there be a way to face fear in company, let it be so. I offer my assistance....and my protection."

After all, that is why he is here. He was prompted to. An oath may not have brought him there, to the shores where what is real and what is *other* is a line often blurred....but he is willing to swear to an oath, nonetheless.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Nightmares. Awake. The waxing awareness comes with retracting disparate, widely distributed tendrils of self stretched as thin as cobwebs through the arcane leylines underscoring the isle of Albion and its offshore daughters. Pearls thrown into the Irish Sea make stepping stones to not-so-distant Eire, and every passing moment brings further recollections to the girl summoned from the sea.

"I do, it's important. No matter what else, I swore an oath to protect it. Him. Them." Her smile cracks for a second, her head tilted as preternaturally green eyes absent their dark, deep pupils trace over Stephen Strange and to the land beyond him. He faces outward to the sea while she hears the calling of her homeland, though the ancestral soil and water that claimed her was never there, but in the dream-girt reflection separated by a nearly impenetrable wall that only a sorcerer or one of its inherently magical denizens can pierce.

A troubled line mars her brow as he offers help, and her lower lip bleaches when she bites it. Echoes whisper through memory. Sentences that don't make sense. Spooked, she nods sharper to the Doctor than she should. "Please. I tried. Taking the path alone will not end will, will it?"

An oath brought her here. The traced lines burn up her arm, silver shod on her skin, not scars so much as the fractured silver links that look so fine, they might be mistaken for some manner of artistic paint. Some clever design. She holds out that hand, and the pearled stone isn't a stone at all. It's a fragment of a soul, magically bound into it, something clutched tight enough to leave marks on her skin.

"I said that. Not to be alone, but why am I here by myself if... if..."

The confusion crackles to pieces, and those broken bits of a jigsaw puzzle the elemental tries to sift through in her dreamy awakening click together. She recoils back from the shore with a jerk, the water shuddering where closest to her, the ground starting to tremble as the memories fill in the holes and her distress slams into place. "It wasn't enough when I tried, and I don't know what to do to make anything right now. Not anymore. Oh no. No, no, no."

Stephen Strange has posed:
An oath. Again. The sorcerer does not ask what the oath was for the still awakening Meggan, she who slowly is recovering her form. However, the troubled expression. That catches him. That look of distress...initially.

As much as the sorcerer will not care to admit it, he has, when he was the boy, fancied him a knight. Willing to save the damsel in distress.

And here...the damsel in distress. Could he possibly even think of walking away?

Never.

As the confusion gives away to recognition, the girl breaks down. And....the sorcerer reacts. He reaches out...then catches himself. Is it proper for one such as him to offer comfort? Should he shelter her? What exactly does one do now? The awkwardness and hesitation is rare from one such as him...but it is there. And her distress...reflects in his expression.

But, then the words speak...and the sorcerer finds his footing once again. "It may not have been enough then. But, then, you did not have all of the resources then that you do now. I swear to you, we will make things right. Together. There is no need for you to do this alone. Not anymore."

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"There was so much darkness in him. Constantine. He came back from below with nothing but darkness. Too much of it. I tried to fix it. It didn't work." Her words are filtered, frantic and distracted as the girl swivels and the cohesion in her form starts to fall apart. Subtle but there, an accelerated process. Fingers curve, nails sharp. Her hair flickers with fire. "Something took him in the dark. I heard him say your name. Mine. Why? He was calling you. Warning? Sometimes I can dream true. But when I dreamt it was only nightmares. Nightmares awakening in the city and other places, great clouds of darkness. I don't know what it means, I never do!"

Distress is an accurate descriptor, though lacking the impact it should. It's akin to Meggan jerked awake. She looks behind her and beside her, scouring the water held back by the sorcerer's command as though she misplaced something essential. A sharp turn lifts her from the hard-packed sand washed into rippled waves by passing years, though cruelly exposed for the moment. Grains bounce and jump. Troubled clams and shellfish hidden deep beneath belch gouts of seawater when the ground compresses, then retracts. "The world bleeds. Do you hear the dead yet? They cry, old words, chants struck with fear. I tried to go back to sleep, to /forget/. That the bastard would face this alone. Not with my help. Not with yours."

That rude awakening, even by necessity, leaves something distinctly missing. Not merely content to pat around for the equivalent of a lost object, she reaches for the waves. As if they might conceal what she wants, though there is nothing obvious there to be found. The elusive search that produces no results leads to repeating it again, her hands at her face and that anguished cry more primordial than human. "I tried. Sorcerer, I tried. The words weren't enough." Winter whirls over her, blonde hair turned to frost, hanging in an icy rill from her shoulders. Ash-violet skin, black eyes, the seasonal shift is an impulse of her kind. "The nightmares awakened from its sleep. It hungers."

CANTO V:
For once, there was a girl who sundered herself for the sake of hope, and found nothing of it surrounding her.

She sought as far as she could see, and there was naught to lend comfort to her wounded soul. Her eyes might fail, but surely her gift to read hearts would not. Casting herself wide as she could, open to the sailors hauling in their catch as the Sorcerer Supreme rooted to the shore, she counted them each and all. The deer in the wood, the dolphin hunting in the sea, she knew.

But one was not there.

Stephen Strange has posed:
The sorcerer's face falls. The eyes drop, away from the pupil-less green orbs of the Child of Gaea. There is guilt there, fleeting...but guilt, nonetheless. "I know. I failed to pull him free from below before it had touched him. The anger. There was much in him. It helped me to find him, but far too late to save him from what horrors he must have experienced there."

That statement is telling. The sorcerer has not spoken to the magician since. Perhaps there is more guilt there than just a brief moment.

The world does bleed. The sorcerer knows better than most. He has strived to staunch the flow, to tend to the wounds. "I....do." He does what? A simple answer.

The girl knows. Strange hears the dead, too.

No more words are given. For now, Strange listens. And....what he hears frighten him. For it frightens the sea maiden before him. There is a reason that she would spread herself so thin. To mingle among the elements. To hide. To sleep, despite what nightmares it brings. There are many things that are fearsome. But...what do the divine fear? Enough to wish to hide.

It hungers.

What is it?

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
"I went to your house. You weren't there." The ice crackle coldness of her voice leaves a chill on the air, the raging squall fomented from sky and sea answering the anguish not on display but seething through her. "Next round the bush, through the gate, over the bridge to the Citadel. Roma took pity, for what even her starry eyes saw would have me be undone. 'Sleep,' she counselled. 'Sleep and come undone.' The nightmares take no notice of you yet."

Her eyes blaze, the howling in check only when she grits her teeth and sets her jaw. Teeth grind, the neat little fangpoints slightly too sharp for just a mortal. All the better to cut you with, my dear.

"They will. Poisoning you one by one. A sickness spreads. It stains the living. It comes, and my mother won't stop it. I cannot make him reason at all. He would break my oath. My Oath. I would be dead before that. You must see it. You must hear it. The Otherworld has gone dark. The dreams are full of shadows. It hungers."

A repeated phrase, beautiful lips curled around the agony. "Everything has gone askew. Broken. Broken, broken, broken!" Her hands at the sides of her head turn that repetitive sound around, twisted, practically to a keening sob, a shriek, both. "What else is in the nightmares? What other evil? Never in ones but twos and threes. Watch your back, Sorcerer Supreme. I feel them coming. Gathering clouds. Don't let them fall."

Green eyes from violet, for a moment. "I tried."

Stephen Strange has posed:
Trials and tribulations.

Perceptions and expectations.

It is apparent to the sorcerer that the girl before him is frightened. Terribly, horribly so. And it is expected of him to help her. To pacify her. To offer her some measure of comfort.

But how?

A thought springs to him. She slept to avoid the notice of the divine. To hide from their gaze. To remain hidden from the nightmares that still roam the realm. Can it be possible to take that one component, that aspect of the chaos-touched child before him and hide it away? Seal away the fraction of essence that signifies the divine heritage so that she is overlooked, like she so wants to be?

And....Strange finds that the answer to be so.

Will Meggan agree to it, though?

"I will deal with the nightmares. I will face the oncoming storm and drive it away. I will protect you and enable you to fulfill your oath without fear. I can ensure that the nightmares will continue to take no notice of you."

"Will you allow me to help you?"

The sincerity. The absolute conviction in those words. An empath is not needed to know that Strange speaks from the heart. He does know what can be done.

Should the girl allow him to do so.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Trials and tribulations. A miserable state to be within, as the girl shifts through dark fury to soul-cracked despair. Underlining that is defiance, a torch holding steady in the hurricane-force winds produced on a Neptunian hemisphere.

She stares off to the horizon, clutching that white stone hard enough her fingers bleed, nails driven in through her own flesh. Hard enough for the pain to seal her over and break the space again.

"Yes." Her words are sharp, practically hurled at the sorcerer. "I need help. More than this... this helplessness. Useless to anyone. You, the girl, the vampire, him. They have worth."

So much strength, no direction. The sea moans. Waves crash and wind throws them back, her eyes full of fire. "I undid myself to keep others whole. I failed." Hateful truth she spits in shredded lines, for an instant losing her cohesion when turned to dark fire. "I cannot fail again." The shadows bleed and bend to her, icy construct of a dark winter. "I won't."

He faces her and she holds out her hand, stone and all. "Do not unmake me. Whatever you protect me with, make it breakable. Might need it in the end."

Stephen Strange has posed:
A nod is all the answer that the troubled girl receives.

That nod is given with a grim determination. And the girl's extended hand is taken into the left hand of the sorcerer, the rough skin of his scarred fingers brushing the underside of the fair maiden's own. The pair of hands are turned, slowly, the palms reaching for the heavens as if offering to the sky herself. The cloak billows in the hard wind...the sorcerer who is fortunate enough to be deemed its partner striking a dramatic figure, completely unintentional but majestic, all the same.

And then, the right hand of the sorcerer comes to bear. Hovering above the offering of palms, it tarries. A second, then ten, then half a minute.

The right hand finally moves, the thumb and index fingers pinched together, as if grasping an invisible thread. Only, when the fingers move, the thread is made visible, for any to see. Deep green at first, then iridescent, then yellow, only to be a deep blue the next, the thread constantly changes hue. The fingers draw slowly in the air, the thread becoming a circle, floating above the white stone. Then, more. A curve here. A connection there. Soon, the circle is more that simply a floating halo above the angelically white stone.

Instead, hovering in ever-changing colors, is a Celtic eternity knot.

The fingers release their grip upon the thread, as Strange lifts his right hand higher, positioning it over the circular knot. Slowly, his right hand descends. The knot descends as well, growing smaller, more dense, until it is finally covered by the scarred hand as the sorcerer places it over her own, the stone within now fully covered.

"I have placed your divine side into your stone. I know that which you carry within it." Those grey eyes focus on Meggan alone. "It is this that will protect you, yet keep you whole. The divine shall protect the sliver within, while my enchantment shall protect and mask the divine. This shall remain until you call upon it, in the time of need. It will hear and release."

And, with that, Strange lowers his hands, leaving the girl to hold the stone with outstretched limb on its own.

Meggan Puceanu has posed:
Shifting through a magnitude of selves isn't easy, especially when Meggan can -- and often does -- shift the balance of her blood entirely one way or the other as a matter of circumstance. But properly eradicating her divinity into a thread is neither painless or without its costs.

All it takes is trust and she has no reason to give it.

A golden-haired girl once did, seated before the Sorcerer Supreme for the simple business of purging corruption from a bite in her leg and hobbling out neatly bandaged. A man who did not hurt her then. He hurts her now.

Pain, at least, is an old companion. One she can weather by her body literally fighting through its phases, shifted to the pouring energy source that weaves and strains to fill in the gaps. His art far exceeds her own and with that divinity goes some of the immense wellspring locked inside, a battery that never runs dry because none tap it but rarely. And still, that calls for exahustion, her breath panted, colour fading from ash to ivory, pale blue undertones barely warmed at all.

Until he is done, she shakes, and that metamorphosis locked into her genetic code must dance to whatever the maestro insists is placed. The Otherworld sleeps, stripped from her, no venture she can touch with either a hand or a dream.

"I didn't ask for it." The silver scars of the oath barely form a pattern. Strange is the focal point for those dark, vast eyes. "It was given freely. Please don't think me a thief. Just a daft cow, and fool."

She lowers her hands in time to his, and sinks a good inch or two. Diminished, but not entirely without wherewithal. "Thank you. You need help, I promise on this, I'll be there." This being that balance that makes, oddly, promises not count when invoked.

Stephen Strange has posed:
Yes, there is pain. That was not mentioned. The expression that Strange held during his mystical surgery is the same one that had been seen countless time when at the surgery table, when minutes counted. Impassive...unreadable.

Not the case now. There is sympathy there, for splitting off anything of the sort is painful. Yet, there is appreciation there, for allowing it to happen, for the surgery to be completed. True appreciation...mingled with relief that it worked.

It is not everyday that one splinters another's essence.

There is a wave of the hand and a shake of the head at mention of the sliver that now has company. "I know. One does not simply take from him. I do not judge you harshly for it at all." Of course not. For...there may be one there, on the beach between the mortal world and Otherworld, that did similar.

Strange knows well how precious the stone's original occupant is.

Then...a hand is extended, to assist the girl to the shore....to the beach besides him. "You are welcome. And, thank you for your offer. There may come a time in which I may take you up on it."

The girl has been awakened. Assistance has been provided. There is more to do, certainly. But, for now, the boy within the man who is a sorcerer is content.