Kyinnlen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
resolutefocus) wrote2015-04-22 10:50 am
resolutefocus) wrote2015-04-22 10:50 am
Character History
Before Kyinnlen awoke, he dreamed of rhizomes. It's hard to see how a rhizome could be a Wyld Hunt--it was hard to explain or describe it to others, too--but for Kyinnlen that's what it is.
Grown on the Pale Tree, sylvari are not rhizomatic. There are no subterranean rootstalks from which they bud. And yet, in a sense, the Dream itself is something like a rhizome. Or at least it seemed so to Kyinnlen. Much of what he saw before he awoke was an endless arterial maze of forking, twisting, turning roots, vines and tendrils each growing on from the next, connecting everyone with everything around them. For him the rhizome became like a structuring metaphor, a map of the world and his relationship to it.
There's an ambivalence to the rhizome though. On the one hand, its broad roots provide stability. It's the grass on a hillside that keeps the topsoil in place when the rains come. On the other, it can choke out everything that grows around it, an invasive and strangling weed. It's the ivy that covers the side of an old house--it holds the stucco in place long after it would have crumbled...and it has killed the proud old sycamore tree beside it in the yard. It's the ground elder, the pachysandra, the phantasmical potato root. It has no center, no primary stalk. It sends up shoots along its roots as it spreads and spreads.
When Kyinnlen first awoke, he tried to speak of what his dream had showed him. There were questions that it all seemed to pose, but even the eldest sylvari he met seemed unable to give him answers. It was curious, bemusing, an existential mystery for him to ponder. I cannot tell you what it means, they said to him, but I believe that over time you will be able to tell yourself. No one, certainly, called it a Wyld Hunt.
They were right, though, when they advised patience: dreams themselves are seldom straightforward. When it comes to a dream, it is less the thing itself that has meaning and more the words one uses to recount it in wakefulness. The dream is like a pressure; words hold it like a sieve--the finest granules slip through. When we interpret our dreams, we always interpret the words by which we come to symbolize our sleeping visions in wakefulness. In our representations, our translations into the language of the waking, we try to approach something ineffable that our mind seemed to grasp only in the dream.
What Kyinnlen grasped first was his drive to be like the vines that hold the cliff face in place, that keep things from crumbling. Another vision in his dream helped suggest this to him: he was braced at the lip of a vast ravine and there was pale fire all around him though he didn't burn. His hands reached out and grasped hold of someone--someone falling--and he held them tight, refusing to let them go, let them fall. Their face was obscured, invisible to his memory, but somehow it didn't matter. They could be anyone, he felt, but also they weren't anyone. Just someone he'd not yet met, who he'd know when he saw.
The drive that Kyinnlen grasped later took shape only as he heard people speak more and more of the elder dragons and their minions. It was the risen that first made him realize it: a rhizome need not only be subterranean; a rhizome need not have literal or material rootstalks at all. The risen are a rhizome--the sort of rhizome that expands and strangles, invasively attacking all life around it. In fact Zhaitan itself was not unlike a rhizome. And it was then that Kyinnlen understood that this was the strange call he felt in his soul, to oppose the risen and by extension the dragon who propagated them; to battle against the rhizome's totalizing expansion before it could gain hold and choke out everything besides itself.
Kyinnlen had awoken beside a young thief named Shievr and his first months in the grove had been spent by his side. The two were intimate despite their differences, but ultimately their paths diverged. Following his Wyld Hunt as he now understood it, Kyinnlen left the Grove to join the Vigil. Shievr stayed behind and, in a sense, awakened again--the two exchanged letters in which Kyinnlen learned of Shievr's new calling and the animal companions he now made. But it would be a long time before they would see each other again.
During those months, Kyinnlen was inducted into the Vigil and traveled to Vigil Keep, one of a cadre of new recruits. There was nothing, at this time, that particularly distinguished him from others in his cohort--there were other sylvari and other guardians along with members of other races, other professions. They were taught together as a group, as with so many others, and there was nothing particularly exceptional or noteworthy when, in the process of their training, they were led into the Vigil's main war room to be welcomed to the Order by Almorra Soulkeeper, who came in to address them and then left on other business.
At the back of the room, around a long table, a group of people stood discussing troop movements and plans. And there was a sylvari with silvery blue skin and leaves like a fiery sunset. The first time Kyinnlen saw him, it was like a rush of cool air across his face. It felt like springtime.
"Who's that?" he'd asked the Crusader in charge of their group.
"Sesyria. He's a tactician. Good at what he does, but a bit mean. Cold-like. He doesn't get on with people. Best to keep your distance from that one."
Kyinnlen paid the warning no heed.
There was no reason for them to meet or to speak, though. And Kyinnlen, though not shy, was also not the sort to be too forward. He watched Sesyria from afar, seeing him at meals, passing him sometimes in the corridors. He was certain that Sesyria never even noticed him from the rest of the crowd.
Their first real meeting came by chance during the risen attack on Vigil Keep. While the keep was under siege, its walls being pelted by enemy trebuchets, a hit landed on one of the ramparts that brought down part of a tower. The collapse effectively cut off a back quadrant of the keep, and when the dust settled, Kyinnlen discovered himself and Sesyria trapped there together with no way to rejoin the other Vigil troops. Both unharmed, there was only one thing for them to do: battle back the risen that were threatening to breach the keep where its defenses were now weakened. They had to hold the line and keep each other alive, and they did, the two of them fighting side by side with Kyinnlen often becoming the shield that allowed Sesyria to cast spells and rain down fire from afar.
When the bone wall was finally broken, the trebuchets destroyed, and the risen in retreat, they sat exhausted amidst the rubble and waited for someone to clear a path that would free them. Afterwards, they were commended by Almorra who promoted Kyinnlen to the rank of Crusader and, much to his surprise, assigned Sesyria as his mentor. He said little, but his heart sang.
If he had already begun to adore Sesyria from afar, Kyinnlen adored him only more once they began to work together. It was true that the elder sylvari wasn't exactly warm, but Kyinnlen was unwaveringly devoted to him all the same. He was Sesyria's student, but whenever they went into battle together there was always one thing clear in Kyinnlen's mind: he would die for this sylvari; he would lay down his life to keep him safe, step into any line of fire to defend him. Sesyria was in many ways stronger than Kyinnlen, of course, but Kyinnlen, though small, was tough and tenacious, and he was willing to be the shield. He never told Sesyria that he was in love with him, but he didn't exactly try to disguise it either.
It was around this time that Kyinnlen began to cook. He had simply made meals for himself in the past, but he had long since noticed the times at which Sesyria visited the mess hall for his meals. It was easy enough to sit down with a second plate of food and slide it across the table saying, "I made more than I can eat, would you like some?" The sociality was casual and pressure-free, even though Kyinnlen knew that he began planning meals for them both and cooking new things that he thought Sesyria might like.
It must have been simply a look or a smile that finally gave him away. He'd wondered what Sesyria would ever say if he realized that his student was in love with him. Certainly when asked he didn't deny it. But he knew that it changed nothing in his heart when Sesyria advised him to stop--his feelings persisted, undiminished.
Unrequited love is hard, but Kyinnlen never held any illusions to begin with. Sesyria might indeed never return his feelings, but that doesn't alter Kyinnlen's devotion to him. Even if he doesn't understand the reasons behind his mentor's resistance, Kyinnlen still accepts them all the same. He doesn't press, but neither does he alter his own course. Whether Sesyria loves him back or not, they still have a mission to fight for the Vigil, and that means that their path is still the same.
They have been to Orr together. They have fought as part of the Pact together. And regardless of their ranks or the formality of Kyinnlen's position as student, they have continued together side by side. More by chance than by design, the two of them have become gravitational center for a small motley group of adventurers--a capricious thief, a flamboyant engineer, a timid ranger, and any number of others who flit in and out as transient companions. It's a group in which there's always room for one more.
Grown on the Pale Tree, sylvari are not rhizomatic. There are no subterranean rootstalks from which they bud. And yet, in a sense, the Dream itself is something like a rhizome. Or at least it seemed so to Kyinnlen. Much of what he saw before he awoke was an endless arterial maze of forking, twisting, turning roots, vines and tendrils each growing on from the next, connecting everyone with everything around them. For him the rhizome became like a structuring metaphor, a map of the world and his relationship to it.
There's an ambivalence to the rhizome though. On the one hand, its broad roots provide stability. It's the grass on a hillside that keeps the topsoil in place when the rains come. On the other, it can choke out everything that grows around it, an invasive and strangling weed. It's the ivy that covers the side of an old house--it holds the stucco in place long after it would have crumbled...and it has killed the proud old sycamore tree beside it in the yard. It's the ground elder, the pachysandra, the phantasmical potato root. It has no center, no primary stalk. It sends up shoots along its roots as it spreads and spreads.
When Kyinnlen first awoke, he tried to speak of what his dream had showed him. There were questions that it all seemed to pose, but even the eldest sylvari he met seemed unable to give him answers. It was curious, bemusing, an existential mystery for him to ponder. I cannot tell you what it means, they said to him, but I believe that over time you will be able to tell yourself. No one, certainly, called it a Wyld Hunt.
They were right, though, when they advised patience: dreams themselves are seldom straightforward. When it comes to a dream, it is less the thing itself that has meaning and more the words one uses to recount it in wakefulness. The dream is like a pressure; words hold it like a sieve--the finest granules slip through. When we interpret our dreams, we always interpret the words by which we come to symbolize our sleeping visions in wakefulness. In our representations, our translations into the language of the waking, we try to approach something ineffable that our mind seemed to grasp only in the dream.
What Kyinnlen grasped first was his drive to be like the vines that hold the cliff face in place, that keep things from crumbling. Another vision in his dream helped suggest this to him: he was braced at the lip of a vast ravine and there was pale fire all around him though he didn't burn. His hands reached out and grasped hold of someone--someone falling--and he held them tight, refusing to let them go, let them fall. Their face was obscured, invisible to his memory, but somehow it didn't matter. They could be anyone, he felt, but also they weren't anyone. Just someone he'd not yet met, who he'd know when he saw.
The drive that Kyinnlen grasped later took shape only as he heard people speak more and more of the elder dragons and their minions. It was the risen that first made him realize it: a rhizome need not only be subterranean; a rhizome need not have literal or material rootstalks at all. The risen are a rhizome--the sort of rhizome that expands and strangles, invasively attacking all life around it. In fact Zhaitan itself was not unlike a rhizome. And it was then that Kyinnlen understood that this was the strange call he felt in his soul, to oppose the risen and by extension the dragon who propagated them; to battle against the rhizome's totalizing expansion before it could gain hold and choke out everything besides itself.
Kyinnlen had awoken beside a young thief named Shievr and his first months in the grove had been spent by his side. The two were intimate despite their differences, but ultimately their paths diverged. Following his Wyld Hunt as he now understood it, Kyinnlen left the Grove to join the Vigil. Shievr stayed behind and, in a sense, awakened again--the two exchanged letters in which Kyinnlen learned of Shievr's new calling and the animal companions he now made. But it would be a long time before they would see each other again.
During those months, Kyinnlen was inducted into the Vigil and traveled to Vigil Keep, one of a cadre of new recruits. There was nothing, at this time, that particularly distinguished him from others in his cohort--there were other sylvari and other guardians along with members of other races, other professions. They were taught together as a group, as with so many others, and there was nothing particularly exceptional or noteworthy when, in the process of their training, they were led into the Vigil's main war room to be welcomed to the Order by Almorra Soulkeeper, who came in to address them and then left on other business.
At the back of the room, around a long table, a group of people stood discussing troop movements and plans. And there was a sylvari with silvery blue skin and leaves like a fiery sunset. The first time Kyinnlen saw him, it was like a rush of cool air across his face. It felt like springtime.
"Who's that?" he'd asked the Crusader in charge of their group.
"Sesyria. He's a tactician. Good at what he does, but a bit mean. Cold-like. He doesn't get on with people. Best to keep your distance from that one."
Kyinnlen paid the warning no heed.
There was no reason for them to meet or to speak, though. And Kyinnlen, though not shy, was also not the sort to be too forward. He watched Sesyria from afar, seeing him at meals, passing him sometimes in the corridors. He was certain that Sesyria never even noticed him from the rest of the crowd.
Their first real meeting came by chance during the risen attack on Vigil Keep. While the keep was under siege, its walls being pelted by enemy trebuchets, a hit landed on one of the ramparts that brought down part of a tower. The collapse effectively cut off a back quadrant of the keep, and when the dust settled, Kyinnlen discovered himself and Sesyria trapped there together with no way to rejoin the other Vigil troops. Both unharmed, there was only one thing for them to do: battle back the risen that were threatening to breach the keep where its defenses were now weakened. They had to hold the line and keep each other alive, and they did, the two of them fighting side by side with Kyinnlen often becoming the shield that allowed Sesyria to cast spells and rain down fire from afar.
When the bone wall was finally broken, the trebuchets destroyed, and the risen in retreat, they sat exhausted amidst the rubble and waited for someone to clear a path that would free them. Afterwards, they were commended by Almorra who promoted Kyinnlen to the rank of Crusader and, much to his surprise, assigned Sesyria as his mentor. He said little, but his heart sang.
If he had already begun to adore Sesyria from afar, Kyinnlen adored him only more once they began to work together. It was true that the elder sylvari wasn't exactly warm, but Kyinnlen was unwaveringly devoted to him all the same. He was Sesyria's student, but whenever they went into battle together there was always one thing clear in Kyinnlen's mind: he would die for this sylvari; he would lay down his life to keep him safe, step into any line of fire to defend him. Sesyria was in many ways stronger than Kyinnlen, of course, but Kyinnlen, though small, was tough and tenacious, and he was willing to be the shield. He never told Sesyria that he was in love with him, but he didn't exactly try to disguise it either.
It was around this time that Kyinnlen began to cook. He had simply made meals for himself in the past, but he had long since noticed the times at which Sesyria visited the mess hall for his meals. It was easy enough to sit down with a second plate of food and slide it across the table saying, "I made more than I can eat, would you like some?" The sociality was casual and pressure-free, even though Kyinnlen knew that he began planning meals for them both and cooking new things that he thought Sesyria might like.
It must have been simply a look or a smile that finally gave him away. He'd wondered what Sesyria would ever say if he realized that his student was in love with him. Certainly when asked he didn't deny it. But he knew that it changed nothing in his heart when Sesyria advised him to stop--his feelings persisted, undiminished.
Unrequited love is hard, but Kyinnlen never held any illusions to begin with. Sesyria might indeed never return his feelings, but that doesn't alter Kyinnlen's devotion to him. Even if he doesn't understand the reasons behind his mentor's resistance, Kyinnlen still accepts them all the same. He doesn't press, but neither does he alter his own course. Whether Sesyria loves him back or not, they still have a mission to fight for the Vigil, and that means that their path is still the same.
They have been to Orr together. They have fought as part of the Pact together. And regardless of their ranks or the formality of Kyinnlen's position as student, they have continued together side by side. More by chance than by design, the two of them have become gravitational center for a small motley group of adventurers--a capricious thief, a flamboyant engineer, a timid ranger, and any number of others who flit in and out as transient companions. It's a group in which there's always room for one more.