Poem: Communication

[shiori_makiba]

Poem: Communication

by shiori_makiba

Words: 186 lines (1286 words)

Part of the Capes and Masks universe.

Inspired by prompts from ysabetwordsmith and wyld_dandelyon for March 2016 Thank Muse It's Friday.

Warning!: Reference to past mind rape, violation of body and mental autonomy. Characters' current environment is safe and supportive. Please consider your head space before reading.

“Communication”

Reginald Stratford, Reggie to friends,

The Mentalist when doing cape work,

had an unusual interest.

Floriography or the language of flowers.

He couldn't remember where

he had first encountered the concept.

Probably in a book.

Reggie loved to read and

his parents were enthusiastic supports of the habit.

But he remembered that it had struck him.

It might have been how much you could say

without having to speak a single word.

Maybe it was how easily something that

you might struggle to put into words

could be transformed into a message clear as day.

To those who knew how to read it.

Even in its heyday, floriography was as amusingly prone

to misunderstandings as any other method of communication

people had developed.

Not too many people knew how to read it these days.

You could communicate quite a bit with a bunch of flowers

and no one would be the wiser.

It was almost like having a secret language.

Reggie liked that.

Everyone was entitled to their secrets.

To have personal affairs and communications

remain just that, personal.

It was a worldview that have been severely challenged in his teens.

He was one of the increasing many of his generation

to develop super powers during that stage of life.

In his case, he developed the ability to hear

other people's thoughts, to read their minds.

Of all of the potential super powers

in all of the world, he had to get telepathy.

Some people might think being able to hear

other's thoughts would be cool.

Most of the time it wasn't.

First of all, it was, for lack of a better term, noisy.

Shields down it was like standing

in the middle of a crowded room

where everyone was talking.

All at once and all of the time.

Second, unless he dug into their heads,

most of what he heard was surface thoughts.

Which usually wasn't very interesting.

Stuff like “Remember to pick up milk on the way home”

or “My feet hurt.”

It still made him uncomfortable.

If there was one place someone

ought to have privacy,

it was in their own head.

Once he had realized

what he was hearing and

that he wasn't going crazy,

learning to block out

those thoughts had been

top priority.

He quickly discovered that

while he could completely block out other people's thoughts,

it wasn't a good idea.

Firstly, it was very draining and

he couldn't keep up the blocks

if he was too tired or asleep.

And secondly, it made him increasingly anxious

the longer he went without hearing them.

Lastly, it gave him migraines to have them up too long.

Another solution had to be found.

He eventually settled on shields that dropped the

cacophony of thoughts to an indistinct murmur.

Like standing just outside the crowded room.

You could hear that people were talking

but what they were saying was unclear

unless someone shouted.

Since mental shouts were often cries for help,

Reggie deemed that acceptable.

That those shields generated no headaches

and no twitchiness sealed the deal.

Not all telepaths were as mentally fastidious as he was.

Reggie was willing to excuse inexperience or accidents.

All super powers had a learning curve when they first activated.

And everyone had bad days and

a cape's bad day often involved losing control

of their powers in some fashion.

It was the ones who intruded on other's minds simply

because they could that Reggie couldn't stand.

It was rude, a violation of privacy,

and made things so much harder for the ethical telepaths.

Once they heard you were a telepath,

everyone assumed that you quite literally

couldn't keep your mind to yourself.

If not worse.

It didn't calm people's fears that some telepaths

also had the power of mind control.

Not all of them but enough.

Reggie was one of them and

he was even stricter with himself

about that power than his telepathy.

He considered using it to be the nuclear option.

Something to be used only as an absolute last resort,

life or death situation where all better options have been exhausted

or it is the least terrible option.

Reggie hoped to never find himself

in that situation.

Hearing someone's thoughts

was a violation of privacy.

Controlling their mind and body against their will

was a violation of self.

Justified or not, he wasn't sure he could live with himself

if he did something like that on purpose.

But not everyone shared his ethics.

Ezekial Valguard aka the Green Man,

had unfortunately met one of the really unethical ones.

To this day, Reggie wasn't sure how they became friends.

Especially since Ezekial knew full well what Reggie was.

Ezekial did not trust telepaths.

He really didn't trust ones with mind control.

Reggie did not blame him.

The few pieces of what happened that

Ezekial had shared with him was enough

to give Reggie nightmares.

Ezekial did not trust telepaths.

Especially not ones with mind control.

But he trusted Reggie.

Maybe it was because Reggie had helped save his life.

He had only heard Ekezial's thoughts a few times.

The first time was the pained cry that lead to Ezekial's rescue.

Of sorts.

His mind-controlling tormentor was dead.

Ekezial had killed him.

But he had badly hurt in the process.

He probably would have died in that lab

from blood loss if Reggie hadn't been in the area

and heard his mental cry.

The second time was in the hospital.

Panicked thoughts of

Oh God, not another one. I don't think I can fight it off again

when Reggie explained how he had found Ekezial.

Reggie had immediately backed out of the room.

And refused to return without a specific invitation

from Ekezial himself.

He sent flowers instead.

White heather for protection.

Dragon Lily for inner power.

Cowslip for healing.

Snowdrop for hope and consolation.

Traveler's Joy for rest and safety.

Reggie fully expected that to be the end of it.

But the man asked him to see so Reggie went.

He erected his strongest shields before entering the building.

Mitigating the risk of further violating Ekezial's mind was

well worth the headache and twitchiness

he was going to get for it.

It was a short visit and a tense one.

Ekezial was stiff and watched him with wary eyes,

tensing every time Reggie moved.

Reggie was uncomfortable being around someone

so very clearly afraid of him.

But at the end of the visit, Ekezial had said, “Thanks for the message.”

“Message?”

“The flowers. Or do you not know what they mean?”

Reggie smiled. “No, I know what they mean. And your welcome.”

To use the cliché,

it was the start of a beautiful friendship.

They avoided face-to-face meetings in the beginning,

communicating almost entirely by packages

containing letters, flowers, and trinkets.

Letters for that which could be said plainly.

Flowers for things where words weren't enough or just won't come.

Trinkets for the little things can couldn't be said with either words or flowers.

Or were just useful like pens, pictures of places one of them visited.

Ezekiel trusted him enough now

that they could do long face-to-face visits.

He didn't finch at any mention or use of Reggie's powers.

Perhaps because Reggie never directed them toward Ezekiel.

Perhaps because Reggie was so careful with them.

Who knew?

Such visits were rare affairs.

They preferred the exchange

of packages to face-to-face.

That was how they communicated best,

in language of flowers and hand-written notes.

This puzzled others who couldn't see that

it was the communication, not the method, that mattered.

Besides, they were happy for this state of affairs.

And in the end, that mattered to them

more than anyone else's opinion.