milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Shortly before sunset, Moiraine had come downstairs and gone quietly out the door to the lake. From time to time, a particularly observant or sensitive patron might well have noticed a flicker of golden or silver light near the edge of the building, or by the greenhouse, or at the fringes of the forest.

Sunset had turned into deep dusk, and now night has fallen. The Aes Sedai is still outside, gliding noiselessly over the grass under the dark of the moon. Silver fire sparks from her fingertips as she tests possibilities and considers threads.

Frequently, her gaze flicks upward as she scans rooftops and skies and the branches of trees.

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"Derry." Softly. "It's in Maine."

She looks around, still hugging herself.

"Can we go inside?"

She relaxes very slightly. It would not have been impossible for the girl to be from Twin Peaks, but still...

"I think it best that we do, child. Come with me, and stay in the light."

It is gently said.

Not Twin Peaks. But there are, shall we say, certain similarities between the two small towns.

Beverly nods wordlessly, and follows Moiraine back to the bar, needing no further instruction to stay in the light.

Once they're settled at a table inside, with tea and hot chocolate, respectively, she relaxes some, but still seems unsure, hesitant to talk.

"I really wish there was someone else here you could talk to. Bill, or Mike, or...someone. They could probably tell it better than I can."

Moiraine studies her for a moment or two, and then says,

"I have long been a student of history and a collector of stories, Beverly. In many cases, the most important thing about a tale is simply that it be told, and not lost."

"Okay."

She takes a deep breath, and fiddles with her mug for a moment or two longer, then starts.

"We--my friends and I--think it's always been in Derry. Like, before Derry was even there. Underground." Beat. "We always just called it 'it'--we all knew what we were talking about."

She takes a sip of hot chocolate, then goes on.

"Two years ago, there were a lot of kids going missing. Sometimes they turned up dead. Sometimes they just...never turned up anywhere. There was a curfew and everything, and the police were trying to figure out who was doing it--but they couldn't, because it wasn't really a person. It was it."

Underground.

The Dark One is bound in Shayol Ghul...

The Black Lodge... fear and love open the door.

It is not the same, cannot be the same, and yet the associations are instant. Moiraine's lips tighten slightly, but she remains silent, listening attentively.

"We figured out what was going on--my friends and I--because we could see It. I think that's part of why we got to be friends...we just sort of came together, like we knew."

She smiles faintly, and a little sadly. It fades quickly as she goes on.

"And like I said, we could see It. A lot of the time It would look like something from a horror movie--a werewolf, or a mummy, or something. But most of the time It was a clown. Or even if It was something else, It was in a clown suit."

(full of fun)

"That's what I was going to ask you about, if you'd seen the thing that's here."

"To discern if it was the same thing."

She shakes her head slowly.

"I do not know, Beverly. I cannot say for certain, I am afraid; is there more that you can tell me about this creature, that you faced?"

The girl is so very young, but Moiraine does not show her surprise.

Beverly takes a deep breath, running things over in her mind.

"Okay. Bill found something in a book that he thought was a lot like It--some people called it a glamour, and people from the Himalyas called it a taelus. There were a couple of other names--all things that could change shape.

"The thing we could see--the clown, or whatever It looked like--was really there, even though no one else could see It. Like, you could touch It. I shot It with a silver ball from a slingshot, and we didn't see the clown again after that. But there was something else. We knew It wasn't dead, so we went down under the sewers, and...there was this Spider. This giant Spider. Like, bigger than a horse."

Visible surprise flickers in her glance at the mention of the Spider, but Moiraine remains quiet, listening with clear interest.

"The book Bill found that talked about the taelus had a ritual Tibetan holy men used to fight it."

It's more than clear from the way she speaks of him that Beverly thinks very, very highly of Bill.

"It was called the Ritual of Chüd."

It is clear, but the girl's fondness for her friend is noted and ignored for the present.

"Tibetan?" It is almost sharp, and might have been had she not ruthlessly controlled her reaction at the last moment.

It's close enough for Beverly to sit up a bit straighter, suddenly feeling a bit like she's back in school.

"I'm pretty sure it was Tibetan. I know it was from the Himalayas. And the Himalayas are in Tibet."

She pauses, then asks, "...Is that important?"

"It might well be," she murmurs. "It may simply be coincidence, one of the similarities between worlds that exists in this place, and yet..."

Moiraine shakes her head, adding,

"Please continue, child. I would very much like to hear more of this tale."

Beverly nods, and goes on. "The description of the ritual Bill read said that when you found a taelus, you bit its tongue, and it bit yours, and then you both told riddles, and the first one who laughed in spite of the pain lost. And if the taelus lost it had to go away for a hundred years, but if you lost, it ate you."

Which, really, was all a lot easier to talk and think about when it was just a story in a book and not the memory of Bill and the Spider.

"I think the thing about the tongues was sort of a metaphor. Bill just...it was like his body was with us, but the rest of him was just...somewhere else. I don't know where. I'm not sure I want to. And then the Spider started screaming and thrashing around like It was hurt. Like It was dying."

It is not similar to any ritual she knows, but Moiraine is listening very intently.

Anything that might be of use cannot be discounted, not now.

Bev swallows hard at the memory, and keeps going.

"It ran further back into the cave, and Bill wanted to go after It and make sure it was dead, but Its web was falling down, all over the place, and touching it hurt...so we just got out."

She pauses again, then holds out her hands, laying them palms-up on the table. There's a line of scar tissue, a few years old, running across each.

"Those aren't from the web. We haven't seen any sign of It still being alive, but we all swore that if It ever comes back, we'll fight It together again. That's what the scars are from."

"I see," she says quietly, studying Beverly's scars.

Moiraine looks up then, meeting the girl's gaze.

"It was very brave of you, I should think."

Bev pulls her hands back, folding them in her lap.

"Well...It was killing people. Killing kids. And no one else knew how to stop it."

She's looking down shyly, but there's a bit of a pleased smile there.

"Anyway, it's not like it was just me. It was all of us. I think it had to be all of us."

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