[The vision seems to be everything the shadow thought it would. Of course it is; it's his. It's his clearest memory, for all its details are vague, have to be vague for his own sanity.]
[But it isn't his sanity on the line here. He sees the boy's pain, finds himself thinking of that family he'd been so eager to get back to. Finds himself thinking of eternity, and grief, and a long, empty desert.]
[He steps forward. Into the boy. In the physical world that trick takes a great deal of effort; here it is easy. Here it sets this particular memory right. Him being the one to look on it, when it was too bright for him to even exist near it before, changes the source of all that light, all that knowledge, into the symbol it actually is, here. It narrows down that knowledge to one memory - a wall, a bloodstain, a hand moving its way toward it - and the memory fills out. It's his father he'd - and it had been him, when he'd still had eyes to look with - seen slumped against the wall like that.]
[Steven. His father's name had been Steven.]
[The rest of the memories fill out too into their own, likewise horrible shapes. The boys playing in the distance, Alain and Cuthbert. The memory later had been them, too, and then just Cuthbert, the last battle, the end of everything at Jericho Hill which he'd tried so hard to hide from.]
[It hadn't been the end of everything, though. That had come later. Even after all the death and all the grief - he remembers every one now and it's overwhelming, but it comes too quickly to be overwhelmed - there had still been more to lose.]
[He remembers the long and empty desert. His own family long gone, his own memories on their way out. The man who'd lost them had felt like a different person, had been a different person. It makes you a different man, doesn't it, dying.]
[He remembers wondering where he'd left his body behind, remembers only wondering it for a moment. It hadn't mattered. The only thing that mattered had been going on. And so he had.]
[He remembers having a name, once.]
[Once that thought comes, the instant after it comes, things feel different. Fuller. Heavier. That is how the physical world feels, he thinks, but only vaguely. There's time to be overwhelmed, now, and it comes to him all at once. The mind still sitting around his own might be party to another memory, one of bright and golden light, and horror, and pleading, that last utterly fruitless. It might be party to his horror now, too, and then to a great deal of silence.]
[The mind inside Firo Prochainezo's is trying very hard, if the boy can tell, to faint. It might not be capable but it's trying, all the same. With a little help, it might or might not succeed.]
no subject
[But it isn't his sanity on the line here. He sees the boy's pain, finds himself thinking of that family he'd been so eager to get back to. Finds himself thinking of eternity, and grief, and a long, empty desert.]
[He steps forward. Into the boy. In the physical world that trick takes a great deal of effort; here it is easy. Here it sets this particular memory right. Him being the one to look on it, when it was too bright for him to even exist near it before, changes the source of all that light, all that knowledge, into the symbol it actually is, here. It narrows down that knowledge to one memory - a wall, a bloodstain, a hand moving its way toward it - and the memory fills out. It's his father he'd - and it had been him, when he'd still had eyes to look with - seen slumped against the wall like that.]
[Steven. His father's name had been Steven.]
[The rest of the memories fill out too into their own, likewise horrible shapes. The boys playing in the distance, Alain and Cuthbert. The memory later had been them, too, and then just Cuthbert, the last battle, the end of everything at Jericho Hill which he'd tried so hard to hide from.]
[It hadn't been the end of everything, though. That had come later. Even after all the death and all the grief - he remembers every one now and it's overwhelming, but it comes too quickly to be overwhelmed - there had still been more to lose.]
[He remembers the long and empty desert. His own family long gone, his own memories on their way out. The man who'd lost them had felt like a different person, had been a different person. It makes you a different man, doesn't it, dying.]
[He remembers wondering where he'd left his body behind, remembers only wondering it for a moment. It hadn't mattered. The only thing that mattered had been going on. And so he had.]
[He remembers having a name, once.]
[Once that thought comes, the instant after it comes, things feel different. Fuller. Heavier. That is how the physical world feels, he thinks, but only vaguely. There's time to be overwhelmed, now, and it comes to him all at once. The mind still sitting around his own might be party to another memory, one of bright and golden light, and horror, and pleading, that last utterly fruitless. It might be party to his horror now, too, and then to a great deal of silence.]
[The mind inside Firo Prochainezo's is trying very hard, if the boy can tell, to faint. It might not be capable but it's trying, all the same. With a little help, it might or might not succeed.]