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Feb. 10th, 2008 04:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Piotr and Kate will be heading back to their world, soon. Back to the Mansion, and back to the war.
Even if that's not technically what it is, any more. It always is, one way or another.
At any rate, Piotr doesn't know when he'll be back, once they do. Time passes differently; last time he was gone for two and a half days, a month went by at Milliways.
So he's outside, enjoying the winter while he can. It might be spring by the time he sees this lake again. And Piotr, Siberian farmboy that he is, has always appreciated a good snowfall. He's been out here for some time, while evening darkened around him, strolling slowly with his hands in his pockets and a sketchbook in its case slung over his back, just in case.
At least until a gout of white flame catches his attention abruptly.
(It's far enough away that he restrains the automatic impulse to go metal, which is his usual reaction to being startled. But only barely.)
Even if that's not technically what it is, any more. It always is, one way or another.
At any rate, Piotr doesn't know when he'll be back, once they do. Time passes differently; last time he was gone for two and a half days, a month went by at Milliways.
So he's outside, enjoying the winter while he can. It might be spring by the time he sees this lake again. And Piotr, Siberian farmboy that he is, has always appreciated a good snowfall. He's been out here for some time, while evening darkened around him, strolling slowly with his hands in his pockets and a sketchbook in its case slung over his back, just in case.
At least until a gout of white flame catches his attention abruptly.
(It's far enough away that he restrains the automatic impulse to go metal, which is his usual reaction to being startled. But only barely.)
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Date: 2008-02-10 01:36 pm (UTC)"My sister was a sorceress," he says after a moment. "But I think it is different."
"In my world it is not so organized. There are no battalions of magicians."
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Date: 2008-02-10 01:50 pm (UTC)Maya started to pay attention to the way people phrased things, after she lost Marcus. Piotr Nikolaievitch said 'my sister was a sorceress.' That's a whole lot more final than what some people might say: 'my sister used to be a sorceress.'
"There are none of those in my world, either," she says. No 'magicians,' and no battalions of sorceresses all lined up in a row, though she doesn't say it. "Only the Sorceress Corps. And the Nistaani sorcerer."
(He is a high-priest, technically, Kar Dathra the Eternal, but after what Maya saw at Kar Dathra's Gate -- he will be listed, if with an iron jaw, when she discusses these matters. Always.)
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Date: 2008-02-10 01:59 pm (UTC)And a familiar sort -- the kind that says old trouble, or old grief. She didn't ask about his sister, and he doesn't ask about this.
"All women?"
Huh. Interesting.
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Date: 2008-02-10 02:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-10 02:15 pm (UTC)Piotr makes a hmm, interesting noise of understanding.
Around them: the sounds of the wind, the lake waves, the occasional dry leaf rattling along rock or snow.
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Date: 2008-02-10 02:30 pm (UTC)Maya has never been one to needlessly fill silence just for the sake of hearing her own voice, or anyone else's. Especially not with Kyuzo as a constant companion.
It's the work of a moment to hoist herself up high enough to sit on the boulder she's been leaning against. The stars aren't especially bright tonight, but there's enough light to watch the way that it plays across the water.
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Date: 2008-02-10 02:38 pm (UTC)The ambiguity there -- her country, her world, her childhood town -- is deliberate. Any answer will be interesting, and sometimes it's hard to guess what's a bad subject.
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Date: 2008-02-10 02:49 pm (UTC)Or maybe it was just that she used to be proud of it.
"The United Republics of the Red Star. Times are harder now." Everything's harder; the government is struggling to hold itself together, much less also the few states that still belong to the Commonwealth-that-was-once-a-Republic. "Most civilians are struggling." They're losing hope. The cities are gray, she doesn't say, but she's thinking it.
"I don't see much of the Commonwealth, besides the capital city and wherever I'm stationed. There are still some beautiful places left, though." Ones that she was more inclined to seek out when she had Marcus seeking with her.
"What about your Russia?" she asks, glancing at Piotr.
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Date: 2008-02-10 03:09 pm (UTC)Even when it isn't, exactly.
"Siberia is a harsh land, but beautiful. Very cold in winter, much more than here, but in the summer it is lovely. Wheat fields everywhere, and many rivers. Huge taiga forests, too -- very old ones. I grew up on a farm. The Ust-Ordynski Farm. A collective farm, under the Soviets."
"It was a larger nation then, too. The USSR, in English. United Soviet Socialist Republics -- Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, in Russian. But that changed years ago. Most of the republics broke away to claim independence." Piotr was twelve or so; at the time, he was aware of all this mostly as news on the radio, and policy changes that affected his family on the farm.
He shrugs in the darkness, and glances at her sillhouetted form. Perched on her boulder, she's closer to his eye level now. "It is a very large country, even now. There are important cities -- Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and so on -- but there is more countryside. Forest and mountains and farmland."
Piotr is something of a country boy at heart, and always will be.
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Date: 2008-02-15 03:53 am (UTC)"The same happened in my world. The republics broke away from the URRS, crying for independence. Your Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik -- did it try to stop them?"
Piotr's Siberia sounds beautiful, and ordinarily, Maya would be happy to learn of it. But this conversation takes parallels and turns that she does not expect, continually, and she has to ask about them.
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Date: 2008-02-15 08:13 am (UTC)"For a time. There was -- trouble. Unrest. The economy was bad, and growing worse. Political control was weakened -- a good thing, but it meant we learned of problems the government had covered up. Some wanted reform. Some wanted independence, or a return to the old iron control, and everyone had different ideas. Everything was unstable."
"But there was never war. Clashes, and fights with laws and supply lines. Everything was uncertain. But not war. It fell apart everywhere, very fast. All at once, it felt like. I was young, but the adults said so too. From the great Soviet Union to Russia and all the little nations in only a few years."
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Date: 2008-02-18 02:00 am (UTC)From the great Soviet Union to Russia and all the little nations in only a few years.
The lake is quiet under a sheet of ice.
"It all sounds very familiar," she says, finally. "Familiar enough to be exactly the same. Trouble, unrest, instability; different ideas, problems that the government had covered up, a fast crumbling -- that's how it happened. Except that in my world, there was war. The URRS tried to force the republics to submit to it, and the Commonwealth of Red States is still trying."
The key word here -- and her delivery more than suggests it -- is 'tried' and 'trying.'
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Date: 2008-02-18 04:52 am (UTC)Of course it is. No matter who's winning, there is no good in civil war.
And she's a military sorceress.
"I am sorry," he says, and it's clear that this is sympathy, and sincere.
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Date: 2008-02-18 05:13 am (UTC)Enough of war and of sadness. It has to be faced when she returns home. It doesn't have to be faced right now.
"Would you mind telling me about your farm, Piotr Nikolaievitch?" Maya says with a wider smile, drawing her legs up. "I grew up in the capital city; I don't know anything about country life."
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Date: 2008-02-18 05:47 am (UTC)The Ust-Ordynski farm -- the parts that are homeland and nostalgia, not the loss but the golden wheatfields and loving family of his childhood -- is something Piotr can talk about for a while.