“Well, the way the stones here still grumble a little about fire – Alan was here. Years ago. At least as far as this door. And I think he kind of talked the spells into thinking they might be open when they weren’t. And then….” Aladdin moved his hand just above the floor, whispering. “The rukh here remembers you, Maria. And it felt you trying to get out, and – it remembered the pattern-of-fire.”
Maria moved her hand to just beside his, then touched the cloth of her shirt just above the crystal cross. “You can tell? It is so… dim? Not lit?”
“Faint?” Aladdin suggested. “It is. But I’ve had to look for Ali- for Alan’s rukh in some pretty weird places. I know what his magoi feels like, even years later.”
Morgan tried not to shiver. She remembered the way her Household Vessel had guttered out; the cold fear that had clutched her heart at the knowledge that Alibaba was dead, dead at the hands of a friend he’d loved, dead and she hadn’t even been there….
He wasn’t dead. Not quite. He came back. It just – took him a while.
Maria rested her hand near Aladdin’s again, and shook her head. “But Alan is not a magician!”
“He’s a king,” Aladdin told her again, face lit with patient humor. “If the rukh can help him look after his people, it will.”
“He did not even know I was here!”
And Morgan could hear all the doubt in there, all the fear. What if he did know, why didn’t he help, why did we suffer so long?
“He didn’t know,” Morgan said firmly. “He’s not a magician. He has to work to see the rukh; I don’t think he saw it at all until he met Aladdin. But he can feel it. Like….” She cast about for something that might be close. “He is like Han. Aladdin can see the rukh, like Jedi feel the Force. Alan just gets a bad feeling about this.”
Crossover Queen's Creative Chaos 
*grins* There are lots of Star Wars comparisons here. Sorry, Simon, you are never getting away from them.
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Simon: “I refuse to pull an Obi-Wan. Much less a Mentor Occupational Hazard. Lump it, people, I’m going to live!”
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Ja’far: “Damn right you are. I have spent two lifetimes pulling you out of hot water and it better not be for nothing.”
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*G*
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Again with the Jedi comparisons. 😉
Through that Alan was half a soul (+Ugo’s magic and one semi-evil foster brother) until very recently probably complicates matters . . . along with the ‘don’t stand out – it isn’t safe to stand out’ . . . . oh boy . . .
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Alibaba’s soul is feeling much better now, yes.
…And when that happens, we get Fire Pretty. 🙂
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If there’s one good thing about Star Wars being known via Pop-Cultural Osmosis, it’s that modern fantasy series everywhere now has good allegories for how mental powers “feel”. I look forward to when Aladdin finally watches those. Actually, movie night with all the generals sounds like an excellent idea…
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I vote yes for movie night.
I also vote that they watch some of Simon’s movies. Possibly while teasing him about any cheese factor in those films . . . I can help but think that at least some of his movies are gloriously cheesy.
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Gloriously. Gloriously. Think Lake Placid, Tremors (all 4+ of them), and Army of Darkness.
That’s the level of cheese bunnies say Simon aimed for. 🙂 Good stories that make people cheer for the good guys, too!
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Yes! All of them!
Ja’far watching Aladdin watch Star Wars: “It was as if a million voices started giggling. We are so doomed.”
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Well, Ja’far’s not wrong now is he? The rukh loves Aladdin, and I tend to giggle when people I love are laughing. Unless it is at me, and then I’m probably trying to throw tinfoil balls at them.
And Simon, being Simon, would have no shame in watching his cheesy movies. He’d be providing running commentary about certain scenes! And maybe some of his early works have Malachy in them… And for sure when Simon is running his mouth he’ll have a few Noodle Incidents that Ja’far hadn’t learned about yet.
Simon: And actually this next film wasn’t planned, we were shooting something else, and those aren’t extras, they really are trying to kidnap me, never did figure out why. Something about being a Balance, and the Kings of Old wanting my blood so they could return and rule. It’s my first film! And it does kick off the Sinbad portion of my career. That never really left actually…
Ja’far: What?!
Simon: Don’t worry, Malachy shows up! It’s how we met.
Malachy: You were the easiest actor to work with on that set. And you could shut the director up.
Simon: Yeah, the original film got trashed but the camera crew managed to get kidnapped with us, so we got great shots. And then the screen writers, costumers, and I managed to pull out a decent script for the rest, and that’s why we have The Cult of All.
Ja’far: *choking* How old were you again?! Never mind that, *did you get them all?*
Malachy: I did. Shionne helped.
Shionne: It was a wonderful bonding experience. And I spent the next year finding tire irons and bloody shoes on my window sill.
Driven in part to, well, raise Ja’far’s blood pressure and by what Simon references as his actions to get into film. Also, shoe-string budget films, and the idea that a whole set up gets tossed out the window in favor of Simon’s life. An old reference to someone who didn’t research as well as Callimachus, and a crushing of some people who got some wires crossed in the rukh. Also, Shionne and Malachy and why he noticed she kicks ass.
Plus the idea that Simon was nearly sacrificed to his past self? Funny. And maybe helped tug on the memories of Sinbad and Masrur a bit more so that Masrur is willing to follow him around a little. Also, he gets himself a Fanalis bodyguard following him around for a few movies before Malachy is convinced Simon isn’t going to die if he’s not there and wanders off.
A few movies during the movie night later…. We have a movie involving Navy Seals, Sinbad, natives, and a Land That Time Forgot. In which we meet Hinahoho, and Simon explains that there was some more crazy train wreck of his life then actual acting going on.
Ja’far: Malachy…. You were supposed to be watching him!
Malachy: I didn’t know that yet.
Simon: I should check in with those guys actually, we haven’t spoken for a few years. One of them, I think he’d do pretty well in a dungeon.
Ja’far: Do I want to know?
Simon: Well, I did serve as best man at the wedding later in the film. Sweet girl, turned out to be a real economic genius. I think they decided to make a real go of it too.
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…I love this. *G* I actually have a bit of a different plan for Hinahoho (he wrestles polar bears, among other things), but the rest of it is so plausible.
At least, for Simon.
Alan and Morgan would be blinking as they listened, but not surprised. Aladdin would just be nodding at every other sentence, because Simon.
Heaven help them if Richard’s here to overhear any of this. Edna, now Edna I could see taking it pretty much in stride – she’s raised two young men who tend to do Odd Heroics already, the extra measure of King Weirdness is not fazing her. But Richard? Ooof.
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Oh wow, Amon left his mark. Several thousand years, tearing his soul in half, and reincarnating with Cassim filling in the rough spots, and Alibaba still has fire in his soul. Almost as if he were leaving the spot open if he happened to find Amon.
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“My fiery grumpy buddy! I’ll win him over eventually….”
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So our parties are running separate, conflicting Jedi analogies! Will they have to reconcile them later? I can’t wait.
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Actually, they aren’t conflicting. Well, once Ja’far gets his laugh in at Simon being compared to a Jedi, he then goes to shift it to “sensitive”. Like Han.
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Or an empath.
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As AuthorTAG put it, Morgan and Ja’far aren’t so much conflicting as… trying to get at the same thing with a vocabulary that’s not quite suited for what kings actually do with the rukh. They’re both working on it. 🙂
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Because Ja’far cannot resist needling Simon. Who deserves it. *G*
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