quietmounds | (no subject)

(no subject)

WHAT In person or texting, I don't know, I'm not your boss
WHERE Wherever you'd be at night
WHEN Day 1, night
NOTES aj said i was allowed to make a new post

[So, you've survived your first—or fiftieth, or five-hundredth—day in Quiet Mounds. Tonight, it's raining—or, it's not. Maybe you're trying to get used to your new, quiet apartment. The electricity is buzzing in that way that's hard to ignore, a silence so loud it's deafening, in that poetic sort of way.]

[Or maybe you're one of the sad sacks still working at the 24/7 joints. Or their why-am-I-even-up-this-late customers. You're the reason why capitalism does this to people, you know.]

[☽ ☽ ☽]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Now you've got me curious.

Gifts are powers, abilities, that some people have and others don't. Some of them get you a free education, or occasionally spring one on you with multiple guards marching you away. It all worked out for the best but it was very alarming to a ten year old who thought he'd been sold into prostitution. ...Ah, my phone really didn't want to accept I was typing that word, that's strange...

The phones think they know better sometimes.

You thought they'd be selling you out when you were ten?

I was raised on the streets, my man. I knew I was beginning to age out of the "sympathy alms" bracket my caretaker had been using me for.

That'll do it. Guess it's a lucky thing that you're Gifted.

A very lucky thing. I really only had a limited time before illness or drink would have robbed my singing range from my voice, Gift or not.

Was wondering how good you were with that instrument you were carrying around. So you got a gift for playing it?

I do, though that wouldn't be enough to get me taken into the Collegium. I've got the Bardic Gift—I can influence people with my music, essentially.

Really now. How's that work?

I don't suppose you've heard of other Gifts? Empathy, or ThoughtSensing, or MindSpeech, or anything else?

Only heard of things like that in made up stories. Nothing like that's real in my world.

Very real in mine.

Ain't doubting you. So what's it like?

The Bardic Gift, life with Gifts in general...? My world?

Any of it, all of it. Tell me about yourself, darling.

Turnabout! Well, the Gift is sort of a Bard-only type of projective Empathy, I guess. I can put a feeling or suggest behaviors through my songs. That's why it's regulated by being brought into a college run by the crown, as I'm sure you can guess.

I can gather. Seems like that'd be dangerous in the wrong hands.

Or even the right ones, if careless. Other people with gifts are the Healers or the Heralds, though of course there are people who don't end up becoming any of those, and Gifts in other countries are handled very differently. Most people don't have any, but I've been in the palace long enough that's sometimes hard to imagine.

I know how it is. Surround yourself with extraordinary people you forget what normal's like.

More or less. Well, I actually have an extra Gift too, something called a "Wild Talent". These are things that aren't known Gifts but seem to be a sort of variant that appears. It got me noticed by royalty and I was promoted to full Bard early. Did my duty, fell in love, got involved with the situation as my lover did his duty for the kingdom, he died, here I am. My story.

Sorry for your loss. Sounds like he was a good man.

The best.

[there's a pause before McCree's next reply]

I never had something like that for myself, so this might not mean much to you. Might be talking outta turn considering we've just met as well. But if it's all the same, even if he's gone now, it don't change what you must've had. Think you're a damn lucky man to have had that much, that's all.

[there's an even longer one before Stef does]

Thank you. There's a complication to it too, but it's not something that seems to exist outside of our world either, so describing it is just like digging for someone else's concern. I just hope that I made the time we had together a good one for him.

If the side of you he got to see's anything like what I've seen I'd wager good money that you did.