but you're caught in your own glory

[goryteller]

WHO: Katurian and You! (Open)
WHERE: Central Park
WHEN: Backdated to March 14th, all day.
WARNING: Likely descriptions of morbid fiction!
SUMMARY: Katurian tells his stories in the park.
FORMAT: Starting as paragraph, but feel free to tag as you'd like!

Today, Katurian wants to make something of himself. He wants to step outside and suck in the fresh air. He wants the breeze in his hair. He wants people to look him in the eye, to smile at him, to remember his name. He wants to tell stories.

You're manic, he tells himself. He doesn't know much about psychology, but he isn't sure what else it could be, given the week he's had. The bruise he received after wiping Margaret Marks out of existence is a healing, but sickly yellow, and the concussion that came with it hangs between his temples as a dull, but ever present headache. His dreams are fragmented. Awful. He looks in the mirror and isn't sure who he sees anymore. He's a mess inside and out, but today, there's a distant tinge to it, a why does it matter? A vague acceptance.

Acceptance? Of inevitable punishment? Of Death's promised protection? Of the man (ghost?) he's becoming?

Or maybe he wants to enjoy what he has while he still has it. Katurian doesn't know much about himself these days, but the one thing that's constant and will always be constant are his stories. With them, he stays afloat.

At eight in the morning, he brings a crate to Central Park, stands on top of it, and starts telling fairy tales. He tells the ones he's already told the Network, and the ones he hasn't. He tells stories from home, too, although there are some he can't tell, some that left a sickening taste in his mouth when he practiced them in front of the mirror beforehand. The Pillowman was one of them, but that isn't surprising. He knows he doesn't want to use that one anyway.

Comments

[goryteller]

"I remember you." He echoes the slight bow, not a little uncertainly. "Katurian."

He manages a smile. He doesn't think he likes Tyki, all of their conversations considered. He tends to have an almost gut inclination for forgiveness, however, no matter how much he tries to maintain a grudge. He forgave the detectives for torturing him. He forgave his brother for killing those children, for betraying his trust. The only exclusion to the rule is his parents. He can't find any rationale behind their actions that he doesn't hate.

Tyki is mildly unpleasant. That's all. Katurian can treat him like a friendly acquaintance, if he needs to.

"How long have you been listening?" he asks. He glances around, as though looking at the space where the crowd once stood would remind him of Tyki's place within it, although of course, he didn't notice then and won't know now.

[simplyteasing.livejournal.com]

"Since you started," he replied, smiling rather slyly. "You've a great talent for weaving stories, boy. It's refreshing. Not many think it's important in this day and age."

Though Joyd was screaming for blood, Tyki himself bore no ill-will to the story-telling boy, today. He simply wanted to talk and continue listening to the boy's stories, nothing more and nothing less. His smile never faded.

"Do you have any more?"

[goryteller]

There are predictable, relatively simple ways into Katurian's favor. Despite the doubt he feels about the man (and the way he calls him boy), Katurian feels himself smiling. No, that can't be so bad, can it? If he likes his stories.

"It is important," he says. "It is. And I always have more. I have something like a hundred, here and now, but I had much more back home, and it's only a matter of remembering them and writing them down again. You've really been here from the start?"

It's not a question, so much as an almost hopeful, proud excitement.

[simplyteasing.livejournal.com]

He nods, his gentle smile turning into a pleased smirk. Where else might have he been, if not here, with Katurian? Did the boy actually think he had much else to do? Well, much else aside from taking a leisurely stroll that just happened to coincide with what he assumed was the storyteller's first outing into the city at large.

A coincidence, that.

"I have," he answered, nodding. "I particularly enjoyed the one about the Starving Village..." he paused, trailing off as he lightly grabbed at his chin. After a moment, he spoke again. "--Even if it did show the wolf in a particularly lopsided light. Tsk."

[goryteller]

His confidence wavers slightly with Tyki's critique, but he builds himself up again quickly, firmly, and stands a measure taller than he was before.

"But it wasn't a lopsided light," he says. He isn't upset, but he is determined to prove Tyki wrong. His voice hasn't lost the enthusiasm. Talking about his stories is talking about his stories, after all, and Tyki did say that he liked them. "You see, the wolf was desperate. He had become desperate, because there was something he was promised and couldn't have, something essential to his very survival. He's not a bad wolf."

[simplyteasing.livejournal.com]

"Ah, but even if a wolf is desperate, it would never tell its intent so openly. Wolves pride themselves on their ability to hunt, after all."

His smile was slow, nearly sensuous. Katurian had all the right words, but none of the right ideas to go about his line of work. The morbid, grim tone was perfect -- and, Tyki guessed, something he had discovered rather personally -- but, each story seemed too surreal, too routine to him, as if the story-telling boy was speaking from first hand experience, rather than his imagination.

durr edits

[goryteller]

"I haven't met many wolves," he admits, his stance faltering somewhat. He shifts his weight. "There's more punch, though, in that he asked first, don't you think? He was going to give her a choice, but he didn't. In the end."

It has always appealed to him, this hope-but-not-hope, the shifting of terms, the happy endings that hang in sight and then dissipate into thin air. Twists. It's a common theme in his stories (he doesn't have themes, he'd say), but he never questions it. It's just an irony he enjoys weaving. There's nothing more fun than playing the cruel, spiteful god.

[simplyteasing.livejournal.com]

Now that was a lie if he ever saw one. Tyki placed a hand into one of his pockets, half-jutting his hip out to match Katurian's body rather open language. "It's less a punch when you know the story is going to have a twist in it, as they usually do. The wolf -- if he were a real wolf -- would have simply eaten the girl at the beginning, if he were so hungry."

[goryteller]

Katurian could argue with him about the wolf - he could talk about how wolves don't attack people, not really, and that it's important to see the wolf as just as much of a victim as everyone else, but the first thing Tyki says sticks with him.

"What?" he asks. He fidgets, running a hand up through his bangs. "A story can have a twist, but you don't know there's going to be a twist. Do you? I mean, even if you did, it shouldn't give away anything. I hope it doesn't give away anything."

[simplyteasing.livejournal.com]

He lets out a small chuckle, gesturing airily with his other hand as he explains. "Once you've heard one story, you've heard most of them." he shrugs, obviously unimpressed. "You can change the telling or the tone, but to expect anything to break free of the framework that makes it is rather...Ludicrous."

His own situation notwithstanding, of course. There was no such thing as Theory of Noah.