the northridden hunter

(The Star-Scarred Navigator says little and expresses less, prone to cold, efficient violence even when a few words might do the trick.  They could be anywhere from twenty to thirty, any possible age-lines concealed behind the scars that break their skin; and don’t you have better things to worry about than their age, anyways?

Like - the fact they’re a navigator, and not just a navigator but a Navigator, but - they’re blind, aren’t they?  Or might as well be, with that blindfold on.  Not even the Captain can name what’s wrong with their eyes, only that something shouldn’t be about them; like they looked straight into a star and came out different - so, star-scarred.  There’s the scar ringed round their neck, deep, like some immense blade cut through flesh and gristle and bone; and if you ask them if they lost their head once, they only laugh and say in a dream, maybe.

And they don’t die.  But up here in the High Wilderness, amongst all these oddities -- is someone whose flickering, unexistent soul carries a place of honor amongst the Judgements in a dream-that-was-real, in the three possible/true realities that their not-existence is tethered to -- are they really that strange?  Are they really that unusual?

Even -- even now, as I am, as we all are -- it still hurts.  I hurt.  ...don’t even have organs, shouldn’t be alive enough to hurt like this, but what’d I know ‘bout physiologies?

thenorthriddenhunter‌:

You could put it like that, yeah. Ain’t all I do, but ‘s enough of it.

Why focus in one area?  Means the Constables’d grow wiser to it that much easier, and as much fun as it is to taunt them, London’s a big city.  No need to keep to one district alone

London.  I’m gonna take a wild guess and that guess is that your London is under the earth, right.  No one from normal Londons fucks with their cops irl because modern london’s for bitches.

And if my guess is accurate then that makes my previous question moot.  I tend not to visit the Neath longer than I need to these days.

Ah.  You’re from one of those other worlds.  S’pose that makes sense -- shame, though, Neath’s a lovely place if you don’t mind the spiders.

thenorthriddenhunter‌:

I deal in plenty of things.  You’d have t’be a little more specific.  Hunting, thievery, murder… ignoring any of those would be missin’ out on a perfectly good market.

You do muscle work, then.  You must be decent, at least, or new; given how that’s an overcrowded, dangerous market.  

Where do you tend to operate, then.  Not that I’m looking to edge in on you.  We steal very different things probably.

You could put it like that, yeah. Ain’t all I do, but ‘s enough of it.

thenorthriddenhunter‌:

Can’t fault you on that.  What else’d deserve them, really.

They do.  Never understood it meself, but who’s to complain.

Nothing.  Maybe cats.  Cats and dogs are cool.

No one’s to complain but the assholes I steal secrets from.  You deal in anything or what.

Thought I stopped having these years ago when I got my lodger, but -- these ain’t the same as the old ones.  It’s still me in them, me-as-I-am, but --

The buildings’re all wrong to be London.  And the place has got a dead, red sun.  And I’m so fucking hungry.

I’m always hungry like that.  Th’ only thing that means anything is when it’s still moving, hot and wet, rich and red - why hunt in secret?  They didn’t always look at me that way.  I know that.  But they do now, and I can’t hardly blame them from any side of it.

(There is something painfully unreal about them, like irrigo has soaked into their clothes, their skin, their bones; they barely raise their voice above a whisper, anymore, and they never come out in a crowd.   

All they will say on the matter is this, hollow-voiced, with the desperation long-dead and gone: 

(I gave something up.  There was a part of me that could never learn those lessons.  The me that left me there - there's nothing left of me in them.  And there will be less than nothing left of them, soon.) 

(They see.  They remain.  They burn.) 

At least there is someone left for those they cared for.

Is it really a mercy, though, to leave them with this less-than-a-husk, more-than-a-memory?

What was sacrificed, in the Nadir?)

I made my choice, at the crossroads, n’ I remember what she said: “All that work, all forgotten.”  When I woke up, I hardly even knew who I was at all, for a bit, but -

But still.  It’s -- hard, to know the people you’ve known no longer remember you.  Some of them remembered, when I came to them, but -- not all.  At best, the last few months were blurry for them; if it wasn’t that, I was half-a-ghost in their memories, faceless n’ nameless.  And if it wasn’t that -- it was like they’d never met me at all.

Hell, they’re better off that way, probably.  

Sometimes I still check, time to time, n’ see how they’re doing.  Usually it’s well.