Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- sessions:worldbuilding:2024-06-08 [2024/12/14 22:46] – shyriath
+++ sessions:worldbuilding:2024-06-08 [2025/08/23 18:07] (current) – pinkgothic
@@ Line 47: / Line 47: @@
 She glanced down at her companion, who had also been listening, and who bore a look of vast amusement. He, in turn, looked up at her. In her future vision, she saw him say: "Well, dear, it might have gone as badly between us, had you not had the foresight to bring it about," yet the words remained unspoken; long ago, they had determined that a sufficiently strong intention to speak could be used to pass messages to her even if nothing was ultimately said. She could not respond to him in kind, but merely shook her head: //No, I don't think it would have. Not quite like this.//
-Regardless, perhaps it would be opportune to enter now, before they got too much more annoyed with each other. With a quick jerk of her muzzle, she motion for her companion to follow, and then stepped into the doorway. "Do excuse me," she murmured. "There were some things I wished to discuss, if you would be amenable."
+Regardless, perhaps it would be opportune to enter now, before they got too much more annoyed with each other. With a quick jerk of her muzzle, she motioned for her companion to follow, and then stepped into the doorway. "Do excuse me," she murmured. "There were some things I wished to discuss, if you would be amenable."
 Behind Dlyss and to one side, peeking in past her, was a bronze male. He looked thin and travel-worn, and his feet and the end of his tail were wrapped up in the fashion of someone who, at the very least, had had a near brush with frostbite, but despite appearing to still be recovering from whatever he had experienced, his expression was determinedly good-humored; he appeared keenly interested in the contents of the lab, both objects and people.}}
@@ Line 192: / Line 192: @@
 {{wst>shyriath|Dlyss closed her eyes, breathed out slowly, and said, in a milder tone, "Please understand," she said, "that Puugwol's ability to work with you is //very// relevant to both things, or I would not have attempted to intervene. I am attempting to avoid precisely that kind of rupture. But I shall not detain you further."}}
-{{wst>pinkgothic|Exposed to Evrith's self-loathing as encoded into her memories of it all, the immediate emotion was of anger. Of course he would be angry at her for doing such a foolish thing, the same way she was angry at herself for doing such a foolish thing. Of course he would be desperate at the bleeding, broken body, the same way she was desperate as she saw it again. Of course he wanted to lash out at her, the same way she wanted to lash out at herself. It was inescapable, intense, and mercifully brief.
-Nothing he had seen had technically been new information. He had seen the kin. He had seen how she had tried to arrange the death. And he had seen, vividly, how she was hurting for it and had been hurting for cycles, and it was empathy that was driving him to want to hurt her in turn.
-So, instead, he took a few deep, slow breaths, finding himself again in the churn, the calm waters that lived at his core, and he said, by way of prompting for the rest of the story: "But he survived?"}}
-{{wst>shyriath|Evrith stared dully, even vacantly, at the ground in front of her. "Yes," she murmured. "Barely. He had been badly beaten, and needed nursing, but once he understood that I had sent him into a trap, he didn't want me helping, didn't want to cooperate. He told me to go away and leave him, and once I was able to move him where he would be found by people who would help him... I did."
-She was silent for a time, and added, "But repenting of harm after you've caused it doesn't impress the Siathar. They saw what I did. Any wicked enough deed condemns one's soul to be eaten by- by the One you've met..." She choked her way past the words, still afraid to say the name. "...but for one like that, they saw fit to punish me in life as well. I think, I hope, that averting the danger of the figure in white will weigh against what I did in the judging of my soul by Ba'uk. But the living punishment I think I am required to endure."}}
-{{wst>pinkgothic|An-uxhwi shook his head. "Have they told you this?" he asked. "I maintain that gods of such magnitude would simply not care to punish you, even if they were to care enough to disapprove, when there are entire wars and enslavings that are left unchallenged."}}
-{{wst>shyriath|Evrith looked at An-uxhwi with an exhausted sort of bafflement. "They speak only to priests. Anyway, the punishment has been laid down; what better telling would there need to be? It was there from the moment I rescued my brother from his danger. They made sure I felt its first effects, and they put its continuation and end in the future where I could see it. Before it happened, there were many paths; afterward, I had a fate appointed to me."}}
-{{wst>pinkgothic|An-uxhwi crinkled ever so slightly - not in the manner of being chastened, but rather from a different kind of empathy than the one of minds touching each other. With softness, he said: "If you must ascribe intent to the gods without hearing it from their mouths or minds in person, it would be best to build a consistent narrative, rather than one optimised for your self-flagellation.
-Let me ask you this: If the Siathar wished you ill for what you considered doing with just one life, why would they entrust you with the fate of the world? And why would they at all grant you someone who loves you?"}}
-{{wst>shyriath|Even the most skilled of Oracles - and Evrith was far from the most skilled - had so broad of an attention span, only so many things she could witness and process at once. So wrapped up was she in her woes that she had been failing to anticipate the conversation ahead, and the end of An-uxhwi's question came upon her unawares. She couldn't say she hadn't known it //might// happen, but not now, not so soon...
-And the voice, the hated voice in her head that spoke in her own voice but used her brother's sort of words, the voice she could never silence, rose to fill her head with silent raging: //He doesn't know what he's getting into! You should not have him! You don't deserve him! You will ruin his life like you ruined Uruth's and your own, like you ruin everything!//
-She lifted her head to look at him with a mix of longing and fear that was painful to see. She tried to speak, but the clamor in her head seemed to render he tongue thick and unwilling to cooperate. "Anuwi..." she managed, but got no further.
-She became aware that An-uxhwi's face was blurring, and that her face was damp.}}
-{{wst>pinkgothic|An-uxhwi felt the shores of the calm river at his core fold in like an avalanche: Frustration, affection, concern, all meshing together in a hot mess. Why won't you answer the question? Why can you see so much, but not your own nobility? Why must you be this way, broken pieces of a demigod flinging themselves at trouble to appease imaginary forces? Why must you? Why? And he leant over and licked the tears from her muzzle cautiously, driven by some faint equivalent of parental distress - the tears should not be there, they were a sign something was wrong, and they had to go. It wasn't a conscious choice, just a deep urge manifesting itself.}}