Private Finished Ask me whats it like to have Myself so figured out

The professor was looking far away, and if he had any kind of skin or human features that Lochlann could read, he might have assumed he looked wistful. But, all things considered, there was a nostalgic tone in his voice that made Lochlann wish he could see it.

A counselor talked to Lochlann about death, once, back in the United States. This meant, of course, that the counselor assumed Lochlann was human and that his relationship with death was comparative.

"We don't worry about the timeline that existed before we were born," the counselor told him. "Why do we worry so much about what will happen after we're gone?"

Lochlann now felt this no longer applied to him, because the longer he talked, the more Lochlann felt like he was missing out on so many grand parts of life. Not just everything that would come after, or would come before, but the parts now. Lochlann liked the sunset. He liked the sunrise. He liked looking for beauty in unexpected places. But he didn't know how to reconcile his desire to enjoy things with his strong belief that he didn't deserve to enjoy anything.

He wondered why he was thinking so much about this. Lochlann's hand reached to his pocket, but his pack of cigarettes was empty, and he still had not replaced his flask.

Lochlann appreciated the lord of the rings reference. He nodded, though the professor's spooky gesture only brought a faint smile to his face. In many ways, the idea of necromancy was less frightening to Lochlann than, say, the idea of public transportation or being asked about his past relationships.

Lochlann realized he had been quiet for a long time. He'd been mulling the professor's words over in his head. It took a longer time for him to process them than he might have been if we was a little more sober.

Lochlann's stomach growled and he ignored it.

"Does it bother you, that you need a glamour to live a normal life?" Lochlann asked.

Maybe it was because Lochlann was drinking. Maybe it was because he was talking to a, well, talking skeleton. Really, it could have been that. For the first time in a long time, Lochlann was talking to someone who wasn't pretending to be anything other than what he was. When he'd met with counselors, met with therapists, they were pretending to be human.

So for the first time, Charlie's words about the relatively of normality resonated with Lochlann.

"How?" he asked. The words came out too quickly, too eagerly, too...desperately. "How did you get used to it?"

Lochlann had lived among humans for a good portion of his life now. He wouldn't even identify himself as fae unless prompted. But he struggled with this, with being human, when such a large part of him wanted to eat. For all that he was that existed in the gray areas of things, Lochlann only looked at things in black and white.

Charlie jumped up suddenly, with more energy than Lochlann felt that he had in his entire lifetime and he was talking about food.

"No," Lochlann said, because he was convincing himself that he wasn't hungry. Lochlann didn't quite understand what he meant about teaching an undead to cook. Because wasn't charlie an undead? He blinked up at the professor, wrinkling his brows, and then he said, "Wait, do you mean like...Clarence? Clarence can cook?"

He wasn't sure if the thought horrified or fascinated him.

The combination of both was evident on his face.

You just do it.

Lochlann didn't remark that he was pretty sure that just do it was an internet meme. Lochlann was adaptable, but he still didn't fully understand memes, and he wasn't sure if the professor was using one now or being very enthusiastic. Lochlann decided to go with the latter.

"You make it sound so easy," Lochlann said.

Could it really be that simple?

For a moment, Lochlann considered that it might be, but he shook his head as if the idea was a stubborn fly buzzing around his head. If it was that easy, wouldn't he have tried it already? Lochlann remembered that he did not really have the option to define his own normal. He had to return home, back to the United States, and go back to being human. His face faltered again, but when the conversation turned to the undead Lochlann threw himself into it with interest.

"Is it tiring?" Lochlann asked, and then, thinking about chopping off the fingers, he had a further question. "Do you hurt when they hurt?"

Which made a very big assumption that Lochlann found himself following with, "Do you even feel hurt?"

Lochlann eyed Clarence a bit askance when the bone spider peaked his head out.

He realized, suddenly, that he had no idea what else was in this office that could probably kill him.

ooc: thanks for the patience!

Not thinking would be nice. It would be a break. There was some relief to the idea, some relief in the memory of what it felt like when the tsunami hit and the wave grabbed him. The pull of the water on him had been a relief like that, too. He didn't have to worry about time, about being human, about thinking or breathing or anything else than just...being.

"So if your undead...er....die, I guess, do you get their energy back? Or is it just gone?" Lochlann asked. Despite his inebriation, he was following this, listening along with interest. Despite his flaws, Lochlann was generally an okay student, and a lot of that came from the fact that Lochlann was surprisingly curious.

He didn't understand if the energy was finite, or if it was something that could be replaced. "If it's like a fire, is there anything that you can add like, uh....kindling I guess?"

He watched the Lich pour a glass of Whisky and Lochlann narrowed his eyes while he watched him in the dim blue glow of the dark room. Was....was he...drunk? Lochlann finally wondered. Could Liches even get drunk?

Lochlann certainly was. He wanted to lean back onto the floor and just feel the whole room spin.

"It's..." his guard was down, so he answered honestly. "It dissolves. It's something I can only feel when I'm like this. It's.."

He tried to put it into words.

Instead, he did something unexpectedly bold. Lochlann reached out and ran his fingers over the Lich's finger bones.

"it's that. It's that i don't have that all the time. and paper is like nothing i've felt before," he said, trying to explain. "It's that there's no comparison to it. Nothing else feels like paper, nothing in the water feels like paper. Not even paper feels like paper when it's wet."

Lochlann made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat.

"Nevermind, it's stupid," he said, suddenly conscious that he'd revealed it. But his fingers were tracing patterns on the floor now, still lost in thought about paper and fire and making a lich's power greater.

Lochlann jerked up when the professor said places of death.

The cemetery. Lochlann hadn't been there in a while. He felt a little bit guilty about it, and then, he wondered why he should feel guilty about not having been there for a while.

"Does it have to be a specific place of death?" Lochlann asked, and then he hesitated, wondering how he could phrase his question. "Like, a cemetery is pretty obvious. Lots of dead bodies. But what about a place someone died? What about...what about being around someone who killed a lot of people?"

Lochlann wasn't sure if being a lich sounded better or worse than being, well, what he was now. Lochlann did not often wonder what it was like to be anything other than human, but his afternoon with the lich was making him wonder. It's not that Lochlann had aspirations to live forever to study the world, but...the idea that things weren't finite was appealing to him.

Ironic, really, that the lich was getting further with Lochlann than anyone else had. Of course, Lochlann had never been in the mental headspace that he was now. He was growing, albiet in a zigzagging manner.

"Do you collect anything?" Lochlann asked, suddenly, and then he narrowed his eyes in thought and said, "I mean, not counting bone-people?"