tragic_mask | (no subject)

"Well then, if you really feel the need to keep me safe in your world, it seems there will be options," she says dryly.

"Several of the nine worlds still exist," he says, "though very few can leave the one where they were born, these days. I can."

"Why can't they? Why can you?"

"...well, mortals are limited," he says. "They don't believe in that cosmology anymore, either, so they could never travel. Also, they lack my aircraft, or my portals."

"Those seem to be important things. Belief, and transportation, I mean."

"If you don't believe, it will never be possible, even if somehow you manage to find the transportation," he says. "Though the transportation itself is not easy."

"Sounds a bit... mythical," she says.

He chuckles.

"Well, I suppose it does, at that."

"So, you'll take me there, then?" she asks, seriously. "If I believe, that is. You've seen my world, in its mundanity, now clearly I have to see yours, all of it-- including the war and the mechanical woman."

"If you believe in me--that I exist, that I can do what I say I can do, and having seen my work I doubt you could disbelieve--then you should have no trouble with it."

"I think it'd be hard to deny your existence, and the existence of your power," she says. "Though I have seen people deny things they've seen with their own eyes."

"They will believe in my existence--existence as a mortal man, because anything else would be impossible. They may believe in my power, but only after they have seen it."

He takes a drag on his cigarette. "I take commissions from people who do not believe, and I charge them much more for them."

"Because it's harder to create things without belief?" She can understand that, at least.

"Because they're more likely to believe in something if it costs more," he says. "And a surcharge for the nuisance of dealing with them. I am also more likely to make them supply their own materials, and they may not survive the attempts to get them."

She tilts her head.

"What sort of materials would these be?"

"It depends," he says. "Say someone wants to have a charm made that will help them move more quickly. I could ask them for a wheel from a very old car that had traveled an extraordinary number of miles during its time... or I could ask them for six inches of rail from a particular platform of Grand Central Terminal, that they must cut themselves."

"So... like attracts like?" she asks.

"It does," he agrees. "But there are always easier or more difficult materials to use--easier for me to work with, or easier for them to find. I won't take any more effort than I have to, with people who annoy me."

"Understandable," she says. "I try to pick and choose, too-- the people who will be easiest to work with, to inspire. Unfair, I suppose. But that's how I do it."

"I prefer doing work for people I like," he says. "Teja, for instance--I would have no trouble making nearly any project for him. But there's a certain sadism involved in doing work for people I dislike, and that has its appeal."

"If you say so," she says, quirking a brow.

"I don't have the option of saying no," he says, barely audibly, looking away. "We've all got our limits."

"Always," she agrees, but sadly. "I can't imagine being forced to create something for someone I couldn't stand."

"So I make it more difficult for them," he says quietly, "make it more costly, so they will change their minds, or possibly be killed trying to get the materials or payment."

"I see," she says.