Convention (and memory) Limited n

[aesmael]

"I need help. I don't know what to do about the dragon."
- She doesn't talk to you (anymore?).	And Jayde still motionless in the grass behind this figure, not unconscious but stopped. Inaccessible.Or sitting not facing me. I cannot distinguish.
"You. Again." My lips twitch to be so cryptic. Always composed for an audience, even in private thought. "But why not?"
- Because she never did, not her function. Because you tricked and trapped yourself and locked her away for this story and now she is stuck. Because you refused to listen for so long she gave up. Pick one (or another?). You are already stealing from her.
"..." Pause. Frustrated swirl.
- You think it the second, fear it another. Want to set her free again, to follow her [I silence her before she can continue, say things I do not want said yet if ever. She is affronted. I can do this only as editor and her unspoken words echo, seeding.]	- Amusing, daring.
"You are not going to tell me how to solve this."
- In the role you have cast me in I cannot. It would be a violation of convention. Your doing choice or not. [She steps aside of that frozen image, that role, and approaches me speaking, so much resembling Jayde in her yellow dress] But I still cannot say; if any of us know the answer to your worded question we are not saying or you are not listening. But you do not need to do things in the order you think you do, you do not need to stall with problems as they happen or stay the course you set, and things which happened can be unhappened even if they were real. Stubborn.	- Still you think me she - hope or fear. But we are incompatible.
She presses her fingers to my forehead and casts me back here, outside.

Wasteland, we are tempted reflexively to call it, but maybe it has other names and functions. Neutral ground, meeting ground. Possibly. We blended somewhat. Echoes of our other possible conversations reverberating on every word. The larger questions unasked, wary to confront. Time does not stop for me.

She did me the courtesy of not requiring their asking.