[OPEN] Oh, in dreams I have watched it spin

[northerndragon]

WHO? Jon Snow (northerndragon) & maybe you!
WHAT? Open log including dream event prompts.
WHEN? December 2017! Backdated and forward dated are very welcome.
ANYTHING ELSE? Opening summary below cut, detailed prompts in the comments.

The surface of BASE may be unfamiliar, but it doesn't take long -- a few days at most -- for Jon to begin to realize that in its bones, it's a lot like Castle Black. Everything around them speaks of a military organization with stretched resources. The little machines are like builders and stewards and maesters, and he suspects they eat much less than sworn brothers do. And he can see evidence everywhere of attempts to keep everything in good working order and to reuse anything that can be reused.

As such, in spite of those surface differences, he begins to feel more at home.

Comments

[horsepowered]

"You're a good brother," he says softly. There's respect in that, and a hint of warm that perhaps ripples out into the rest of the tomb. It seems like the only conclusion that Chiron can draw from the matter is that being here is a personal reaffirmation of identity. But that isn't his conclusion to draw.

"A poor goal, yes. But as a byproduct of a life well lived, it leads to other roads. I've walked one of them after my own passing."

Chiron senses the movement behind him. He doesn't like it, and when he turns to see the stone direwolf, he's quite unsure what to make of it. This was Jon's world, not his. He clears his throat, hoping to bring the wolf to Jon's attention.

[northerndragon]

Jon glances over his shoulder and sees the stone direwolf. Far from being threatening, it waits in the path behind them both, seeming content to follow at a distance. Still a little unnerving (what if it doesn't remain content to follow?), but not like the times when the stone kings begin to speak to him to tell him he has no place in these crypts.

"I try to be a good brother. I'm not sure I always am... My brothers and sisters suffered and there was nothing I could do for them. Three are still living, but one is buried down here, and the other is... I don't know where his body is. His killers were dishonorable."

This may be his dream, but he's never really liked talking about himself for very long, so he seizes on Chiron's comment with interest. "After your own passing?"

[horsepowered]

They have a companion now. A lone wolf seems appropriate, here and now, and Chiron makes a note to himself to turn every so often and check that the thing is there.

"That the effort is made is something they're doubtlessly aware of, even if circumstances made action difficult." It's a vague, broad platitude, if only because the circumstances haven't been explained. The only true point is that there has been the kind of loss that the gods might give a man as punishment if this land was Chiron's home. "My sympathies regarding that dishonor. That's unfair to all of you that still live."

There's a little laugh in Chiron's throat. Warm, and like it's a private joke that he's about to explain.

"I am, technically, a spirit, rather than flesh and blood. Don't mistake me for the Sargent."

[northerndragon]

To the earlier things Chiron says, Jon only presses his lips together and nods. He'd expected to see his family again after joining the Night's Watch, even if it might have been after the passage of some time and even if it was only for brief visits: Benjen had been able to visit Winterfell every so often. He could never have anticipated the way things would fall apart just after he'd obligated himself to stay out of them. And he suspects that if he had been able to leave and try to help, it would have been the death of him, even if Lady Stark had prevented him from attending her brother's ill-fated wedding.

Roads not taken are a complicated thing. He responds more to the next subject.

"I did mistake you for the Sargent. And another man... you have the face of another man. I've seen you before.

"It sounds right enough that you're a spirit: I'm not sure anyone but a spirit could walk with me here, though they know you're not a Stark either."

The difference is that the old Kings of Winter don't seem to care, because Chiron hasn't tried to be a Stark. Maybe that's why the feast -- still not getting any louder, though they're much closer now to where Jon thinks it should be -- seems to elude him.

"But you're part of -- "

The word is COST, but for some reason, it won't come to him.

[horsepowered]

"In all fairness to your mistake, he and I are...we are versions of each other. Our broad purpose in the past the same, but with some changed details. Like when you hear different versions of the same story. Perhaps the hero did this thing and then that thing in one tale, and then in another's recollection, the matter is switched around."

It's the best metaphor Chiron can offer. "But I died of poison and gave up my immortality to escape the constant pain of it. And that is where the real differences begin."

The matter of being an actual spirit is for Jon to enquire about, rather than offer voulentarily. Chiron's not about to subject anyone to painstaking discetion if they don't wish it, and he knows few who might.
But Chiron does have to ask one thing, while they remain on the topic of spirits. "Do they frequently take offense at those who aren't blood relations entering these halls?"

The question is half asked to Jon, but also to the stone direwolf behind them. If Jon doesn't have that answer, the wolf may very well be.

"I'm a part of the enterprise of COST. And other things as well."

[northerndragon]

Something about what Jon has just said strikes him as wrong, but in his dreaming state, he can't place why. Something about spirits, feasts, ghosts, what happens after you die, how dark it would be here without a torch: it's on the tip of his tongue, and then it's gone again, something he can't verbalize, something he knows and doesn't know about being dead.

"I am a blood relation. But I still have no place here, and it's me they reject. Except for him." He casts another skeptical glance at the stone direwolf, which is pallid in the torchlight, almost as if it were made of white stone rather than grey. It's padded silently closer to them. "Or they don't want me here, they want me to see the older kings, the ones who are... well, they're stories. They're down below.

"How can you be part of COST if you've died? They've remade you?"

[horsepowered]

There was a level of certainty to Jon's expressions of exclusion that Chiron found, well, sad, in truth. It wasn't the kind of thing to say outloud, but there was no doubt to him that this was not a new thing either.

His attention turned to the stone direwolf again, the word him finally smacking Chiron upside the head. It did seem obvious, didn't it? That was likely some manifestation of Jon's father.

Rather than ask for clarification on that point, he follows another instead. "Why would the emphasis be on the older kings?"

When the matter of himself comes up, Chiron's far warmer. Happier to explain.

"It has nothing to do with them," he said. "Mages back home conduct various rituals. In one, they summon spirits of heroes from myth and from history to act as champions in their stead. I was called forth to that ritual. COST intercepted me from there."