What a strange concept. Ears. Things that focus on just one type of input!
Synopsis: Liam finds a way to the Dream Temple, and talks to the mimic there.

Liam is attempting to get closer to the Temple. For the last several nights, the Temple has been elusive. It has been out there, somewhere, in the Dreaming, but every time he thinks he gets close, he is going to A Temple, but not THE Temple. He is hoping that this time it's right as he stalks through the Dreamlands and closes in on something that, again, looks Temple-like.

The dreamlands throw land-sharks at him. Literally. Large catapults use them as ammunition. But they use them because according to dream logic the journey has to be difficult. They are shorthand for his own desire to fight his way to the temple. And finally the catapults are out of ammunition. The last things they flung were more like land-tuna, which are sad and short-lived. A temple stands before him, ancient and humming with low sound.

Liam blinks at the land-tuna laying, flopping, sadly, on the ground. He prods it with the toe of his shoe before stepping over it and looking over the enormous Temple. He listens to the low humming for a moment and, for some reason, it makes sense that it should be humming. And he approaches it slowly, walking around to the front door.

The humming sound is from the congregation, continuous even though the very dust-motes are frozen. The front doors stand open, and Liam can see in. By the altar stands Prelate Agravain, his sacrificial knife raised over small object or time-frozen baby. It's hard to see from this distance. The sound of a child's laughter echoes from time to time.

Liam takes a step into the frozen temple, the heels of his boots clicking on the marble floor. He looks over the congregation carefully, scanning it for recognizable faces.

There are many he does not know here, and some he does. Most of the Royal Family of Amber is there, and most of the Ducal Houses. He is one of the faces, mouth open halfway through a hymn of some sort. There are also many he does now know. Princes and paupers and poets. All are focused on the act at the altar.

Liam makes a little noise. Non-committal. It sounds like a "Hunh." And then slowly, almost reverentially, he walks forward to the altar to take a closer look at Prelate Agravain's Sacrifice.

The sacrifice is a little child of Rebman colouring, dressed in nothing that she was not born in. She has her arms raised up to giggle at Agravain and the shiny knife.

Liam peers at the face of Agravain, and waves a hand before Agravain's eyes.

The priest's attention is on the sacrifice, and yet something moves out of the body of the old man, a shape much like his but with animation. A ghost?

The blue-black hair of the child on the altar waves as if in the water. Other than that and the ghost, the temple is still. Even dust-motes fear to move.

Liam moves around to get a better look at the ghost. He whispers in the air toward the ghost: "Are you the Mimic?"

"People say I mimic, but I don't know what that means." The voice purrs, growls, flirts, and then settles on matter-of-fact. A man's voice, probably.

"I don't know what it means, either," Liam says as he bends down to look closer at the baby. "Why is Prelate Agravain sacrificing baby Faiella?"

The 'mimic' says, "The way I comprehend it, my Will is calling upon a Source of Power. But if people see it and do not ... interpret? They cry and vanish, or their minds break."

Liam walks slowly around the tableaux of Agravain and Faiella. "Can you tell me about the Source of Power?"

The mimic says, "Not in concepts you could comprehend. It is powerful and unbound. I need it."
A baby's happy squeal echoes in the temple.

Liam glances at the Prelate Agravain, which contains the Mimic. Then he attempts to touch the baby Faiella. "I am trying to understand why you are sending this Dream to so many people."

The baby's flesh is cold and unyielding. "I am not sending. You come. You see."

"I did come. I am seeing," Liam says, careful with verb tenses. "And now I am trying to understand /why/ you are telling me this. Agravain says this is Oberon's Temple."

The mimic says, "This is what you see, not what is. If you could see it as it is, you would be me."

Liam pokes a finger into Agravain's forehead. Poke. "Why does the tableaux keep changing?"

The mimic says, "The matters I use are refined."

The mimic pokes at Liam's forehead.

Liam laughs a little when he's poked by the Mimic. "So you can make them move!"

The mimic says, "There is resistance. This will align meat and me. It will find my home."

Liam dodges a little to peer at the mimic. "Do you want to be made of meat?"

The mimic looks back, Agravain's features morphing into Liam's own. "No! I want to find my home. It was taken."

Liam leans against the edge of the sacrificial altar and does not seem bothered by the morphing mimic of the dream. "Tell me about your home and how we get you back."

The mimic says, "I drain the power source, and the spell I have made shows me the way. Then I go back."

Liam spreads his hands. "Is there anything I can do? We? Dreamers?"

Lia-mic says, "Keep visiting. Help me refine. ... If you bring the home here, I will not need this temple."

Liam asks, "How do I find the home?"

Lia-mic shrugs, a very human gesture. Behind the shrug is the hint that in fact it was not a shrug at all but a vast cosmological bluff that Liam could only comprehend by assuming it to be a simple muscle movement. "I cannot show meat-visitors. They vanish."

Liam ahs. "Can you give me a description? Some information? I am trying to understand."

Something mind-bending happens. Liam wakes with the clear recollection of having no mass, no body, nothing but input and output. There was a definite sense of boundaries, and a long continuous curve, like surfing a fractal. There was peace, and tiredness, and a strange alien renewal. And now it is gone, but his body does not want to admit he is awake, and he finds he cannot move.

Liam lays in the bed in the tiny side guest room in Deirdre's Suite and goes, "Woah."

His voice betrays him for a moment, and then he is under his own control again. 'woah' rings his voice in his ears. What a strange concept. Ears. Things that focus on just one type of input!