He ends up liking the stuffed nudibranch.
Time passes. The lembas works; he puts on a little weight. He could leave it at that but in fact he decides to keep trying things, mostly out of curiosity and to have any idea what other people are talking about and a little bit because lembas doesn't come from a replicator and it would be convenient to like things that do. He tolerates a couple of apple varieties in tiny quantities; curry makes him curse the day he was born; vanilla almond milk sort of grows on him a little; plain white rice is bland enough that he doesn't mind the first bite but then it feels too tedious to take another. Peas not only manage to be better than starving, they manage to be better than living on just lembas, in the handful of extremely precise preparations he likes and in very small portions and not every day, and still not right before Ashkon leaves him by himself.
The nightmares improve. Not a lot, but a little. He dreams of discovering that you can swim in the night sky and making sandcastles on the moon and going to class and discovering he's forgotten Ashkon in the Pool. Mostly he still dreams of assorted horrors, but even then he often dreams that there's hope, that he's desperate rather than despairing or that there's pretty Quenya music in the background the whole time or that if he's very fast and very careful he can take breaks in the park.
He finds a math podcast and a little bit of fiction he likes okay. He tries, though not very hard, to figure out what he can possibly actually guess about how his actions affect other people and whether he wants to do anything about that.
He starts putting together plans - not real plans, exactly, barely more than daydreams - for the life he could have if he wasn't lending Ashkon the use of his body. In a lot of ways it would be a more limited life, not less - he might or might not even be able to keep one bite of lembas down, and it'd be harder to sleep regularly without Ashkon keeping his body calm and making it instantly obvious that he's not there when he wakes, and he'd have to worry about money again. But he could take up rock climbing. He could maybe consider taking up painting; sometimes he watches videos of people doing it and that's nice but he's not sure yet if it'd be nice to do it himself. He sort of knows how to talk to people, a little; he wouldn't have to be totally alone. He could spend weeks camping in a real forest that isn't Lórien, without having to worry about anyone having any bodily needs. If he got tired of beauty he could gouge his eyes out again and not worry about taking away someone else's vision. It's not a life he wants, on balance, but he's occasionally wistful about it. When he catches himself wishing he could join this online community about a sci-fi series he likes well enough to want to talk to the fandom, he starts actually trying to sign up while Ashkon is in the Pool one day, only to get stuck and have to wait and ask Ashkon to put something in the username field because he just can't.
He gets an email one day not long after that, from an organization serving people in some nice afterlives he wasn't lucky enough to go to. They've been looking for hundreds of years for a dead French girl. Her name was Helen. She died of the plague. She might not have wanted to grow up to be a woman. She might be going by Vivien. That's far more than enough information to conjure by. There's a mother and a little sister and the mother wants to set up a meeting.
He remembers having a little sister and a mother. He remembers watching the blackness creep up his hands and his arms. He doesn't remember ever being named Helen. He emails the supposed mother of this person he doesn't even really remember being that he doesn't talk much anymore but he can send email and if she's the texting-from-five-feet-away type she can come to the Pool while Ashkon is feeding.
Apparently she is. She shows up. She looks about halfway to tears. "...Vivien?" she asks.
He shrugs with an exaggeratedly clueless expression.
"I'm looking for my - child - I don't have a current name, it's been so long..."
He shrugs again and shows her the email he got about their supposed former relationship.
"For a long time I hoped you hated me," she says, sitting down on the bench next to him. "I hoped you just didn't want to be found because I'd been such a bad mother."
He has no idea what to say to that so he doesn't say anything.
"I gave to charity. For rescuing people. In case that was what you needed. But it didn't end up helping you. I'm so sorry. I love you and I missed you and I... and I missed you, and you were... a child any decent parent would be so proud of."
He doesn't know what to say to that either. If he had guessed he would have guessed that his mother was disappointed in him and maybe hated him.
She starts telling stories, asking him if he remembers them, and he mostly doesn't. She makes things sound so idyllic, except when she breaks off and says something like "I didn't really understand back then" or "times were different and made for worse mothers but please tell me you knew I loved you." (He just shrugs. He doesn't remember if he ever knew anything like that. He remembers that once upon a time he knew how flax became cloth, but he doesn't know it now.)
She sings. She sings something old, something he didn't think he remembered, and the words come to him before she sings them, and he nods vaguely in recognition. Only he can't quite convince himself that he remembers her. His memory holds a few shattered pieces of a picture of a very damaged person who probably tried and maybe failed to love a person he doesn't really remember being, and the person in front of him is begging him to say he believes something else, and is obviously devastated about the loss of this Helen or Vivien or whatever their name is, and he's been told the person he can almost-but-not-quite remember being is Vivien but he can't square the hints his supposed mother is giving him about who Vivien was with his own memories any more than he can square her with his memories.
He types an email. He doesn't send it, just turns the screen to show her.
They didn't give me time to reminisce. I haven't had the chance to speak of my childhood with anyone. They did their best in the mean time to drive me mad and destroy my memory. I have no idea what I knew. I have no idea if you were a good mother. It didn't make any difference. I'm glad you were luckier than I was or a better person or whichever mattered. I don't hate you and I wish I had ended up in the same place as you. I'm okay now. What do you do with yourself these days?
"Yoga. And I teach math to kids. I'm so sorry, Vivien."
It's not his name. It might have been once but it's not his name. It's a nice name, he supposes; he can see why someone who could want a name might want that one. He doesn't remember if he ever got to go by it but they can't have been so trans-accepting in rural France in the middle ages that it's at all likely. It's kind of distantly sad that now he never will.
"Is there anything you need?" she asks.
He shakes his head and puts on a somewhat plausible smile.
"If you ever do - or if you want to talk - or anything at all - well, you have my email."
He nods, smiles, waves, and goes and ducks into the bathroom to escape. He kind of wants to hit his head on the wall but he doesn't.
Instead he finally finishes an email to Nocawe he's been meaning to write for a while.
I have questions about Vanda Nossëo citizenship and what promises or obligations it involves on the part of the citizen. I think I explained to you before how and why I'm iffy on the concept of laws but it was a while ago and I was worse at talking to people from your general context and background then so I can try again if necessary, and I think someone I spoke to before said something that I interpreted (possibly wrongly) as saying I shouldn't seek citizenship if I'm not up for proactively learning and trying to follow the law. But I think my understanding of this entire general topic is somewhat confused so I would appreciate some help sorting it out or some clarification. Thanks.
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