#seventh city he avoids that shit like the plague. no need to rub it in that you're miserable and stressed and haven't taken a break in years

[the-ardent-dilettante]

I need to talk about Perihelion more. I think about him a lot, but it rarely gets written down (4am is a good time, right?). Anyways so!

As an Ontological Cartographer, Art is very familiar with Parabola – it's always been a place of refuge, protection, and wonder for him. But coming up with what he looks like in the mirror was a difficult exercise – Perihelion isn't self-reflective or self‐aware in the slightest, but he also lives a very uninhibited life and as a rule, doesn't lie to himself. Complex self-deception is Effort he just doesn't have the executive function for. Which makes a parabola reflection a little difficult, when there aren't really any hidden facets of the self to show. EXCEPT. There is.

Perihelion when he first arrived in the Neath was a very different person to how he is now – much more cautious, very risk-averse, a subtle player of long games and a mover in the shadows. Then he discovered partying and social circles with cool laid back people that didn't care if he did gender wrong and it was so over from there. The Capricious Socialite was born. But the thing is. That part of Perihelion that knows how to look at the long term, that can be subtly manipulative and calculating is still there. Art doesn't like being that person, it makes him miserable and exhausted and stressed. But just in case. Just in case things ever go south and he needs to relearn how to be careful again, that other, older Perihelion keeps watch from beyond the mirror. (what? says Art. Don't you know I'm immune to consequences and never going to die?)

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And when the sixth city falls and it becomes rapidly clear that Consequences do in fact Really Exist For Real, Art reaches back out to his old Great Game contacts and starts scheming the survival of the seventh city (by the time he moves on enough from mourning London Paris is already doomed). He maintains the public face of his old image, but the real Fith City Perihelion lies only in the mirror, in the Waswood and on the Smoking Shore, happy and carefree and probably wearing some stupidly bright fashiony outfit.

#and that's the angst hammer!!!! #he's chill with his reflection atm because it's just like “oh I'm so glad I'm happier now!!” #seventh city he avoids that shit like the plague. no need to rub it in that you're miserable and stressed and haven't taken a break in years #art lore