(ooc: I've set this up so people can choose to reply either during or after his transformation (1 or 2), and then choose what setting they want to find him in (a, b, or c). If you'd like a different setting pm me, Roland has a lot of trauma to choose from so it won't be a big deal at all for me to write something else up.)
1, during the transformation
After a while it occurs to him that the heaviness in each step, the weight in every limb and every inch of skin, that the empty and bottomless ache inside his chest is a symptom of grief. The next time his head becomes too heavy, bows down, he catches a glimpse of himself.
"Guess it's not grief, after all." It's a dry, understated thought and a dry, absentminded sentence, one which brings deja vu with it. The phrase, deja vu, does not quite exist in either of Roland's native tongues. The concept, though - the concept itself he knows, and when the sensation introduces itself to him - reintroduces - he receives it with a dim horror. He's realized this before, looked down before, said it before. Then forgotten.
(a, cw death of a child) Perhaps he'd said it in the caves, before he'd noticed the hand. Of course, before the hand. Of course he would have forgotten after that.
(b, cw a teenager burning to death) Or perhaps during the Reaptide festival. That time, it's the fire afterward that would have done it. After the fire and after that scream, then he would have forgotten.
(c, choose your own adventure) Or some other time. Some other place. He has some distant knowledge that not all the places here have been his. Every time he's wandered into one, it's taken him some many moments, minutes, hours, to notice.
2, after the transformation
After a while he stops wondering, even in that slow and dim way, over the odd sensations. He's stopped wondering at which place it is surrounding him, too, or how many times he has moved through it. Could be anything. Doesn't matter. He only goes on, moves on with long, smooth strides. If he looked down it might, once, have occurred to him to wonder at how smooth those strides are - that they shouldn't be, looking like that. He doesn't look, not at anything.
At some point a noise disturbs him. It doesn't matter what - the approach of a new person, a new scene settling itself around him, it makes no difference. One hand goes for a gun; the other stays where it is, raised to investigate the one question which he is still capable of wondering. He does not wonder, as he draws the gun, why his index fingers are the only ones which still move; he does not wonder why even they have lost all sensation at their tips, why they glint hard and white whenever the light catches them. He does not wonder about his hands in the same way he did not wonder about his face, why a moment before he'd had to send his searching hand down and down and down again before finding the corner of his eye.
It'd been disappointment he'd felt, he decides, when he found the answer to the one question remaining in him. If the liquid running down his cheek - well, down his jaw - had shown the sting of salt water against the raw meat of his index finger, that would have been something. But what he'd found running from the corner of his eye had been viscous, oozing over his palm slow and thick like crimson honey.
Most of his mind is occupied looking for whatever'd made that noise. His field of vision is somewhat lower now than it used to be. It takes concentration, accounting for that. But there is a part of his mind that's still aware of it, of the slow thick trail from his eye, down onto the hand touching it, down his forearm, dripping down onto the leaves and petals living now where his chest was, once. It's that part of his mind which might stop his trigger finger if his roaming eye catches sight of something which wakes him enough - the L insignia which sits shining on his own belt would do it. He's forgotten which word the L stands for. He hasn't forgotten what it means. In absence of that, of some reminder he'll be moving in to kill.
Roland Deschain
1, during the transformation
After a while it occurs to him that the heaviness in each step, the weight in every limb and every inch of skin, that the empty and bottomless ache inside his chest is a symptom of grief. The next time his head becomes too heavy, bows down, he catches a glimpse of himself.
"Guess it's not grief, after all." It's a dry, understated thought and a dry, absentminded sentence, one which brings deja vu with it. The phrase, deja vu, does not quite exist in either of Roland's native tongues. The concept, though - the concept itself he knows, and when the sensation introduces itself to him - reintroduces - he receives it with a dim horror. He's realized this before, looked down before, said it before. Then forgotten.
(a, cw death of a child)
Perhaps he'd said it in the caves, before he'd noticed the hand. Of course, before the hand. Of course he would have forgotten after that.
(b, cw a teenager burning to death)
Or perhaps during the Reaptide festival. That time, it's the fire afterward that would have done it. After the fire and after that scream, then he would have forgotten.
(c, choose your own adventure)
Or some other time. Some other place. He has some distant knowledge that not all the places here have been his. Every time he's wandered into one, it's taken him some many moments, minutes, hours, to notice.
2, after the transformation
After a while he stops wondering, even in that slow and dim way, over the odd sensations. He's stopped wondering at which place it is surrounding him, too, or how many times he has moved through it. Could be anything. Doesn't matter. He only goes on, moves on with long, smooth strides. If he looked down it might, once, have occurred to him to wonder at how smooth those strides are - that they shouldn't be, looking like that. He doesn't look, not at anything.
At some point a noise disturbs him. It doesn't matter what - the approach of a new person, a new scene settling itself around him, it makes no difference. One hand goes for a gun; the other stays where it is, raised to investigate the one question which he is still capable of wondering. He does not wonder, as he draws the gun, why his index fingers are the only ones which still move; he does not wonder why even they have lost all sensation at their tips, why they glint hard and white whenever the light catches them. He does not wonder about his hands in the same way he did not wonder about his face, why a moment before he'd had to send his searching hand down and down and down again before finding the corner of his eye.
It'd been disappointment he'd felt, he decides, when he found the answer to the one question remaining in him. If the liquid running down his cheek - well, down his jaw - had shown the sting of salt water against the raw meat of his index finger, that would have been something. But what he'd found running from the corner of his eye had been viscous, oozing over his palm slow and thick like crimson honey.
Most of his mind is occupied looking for whatever'd made that noise. His field of vision is somewhat lower now than it used to be. It takes concentration, accounting for that. But there is a part of his mind that's still aware of it, of the slow thick trail from his eye, down onto the hand touching it, down his forearm, dripping down onto the leaves and petals living now where his chest was, once. It's that part of his mind which might stop his trigger finger if his roaming eye catches sight of something which wakes him enough - the L insignia which sits shining on his own belt would do it. He's forgotten which word the L stands for. He hasn't forgotten what it means. In absence of that, of some reminder he'll be moving in to kill.