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--- sessions:worldbuilding:2024-12-14 [2024/12/14 18:54] – created shyriath
+++ sessions:worldbuilding:2024-12-14 [2025/02/15 20:18] (current) – Formatting fix pinkgothic
@@ Line 48: / Line 48: @@
 Evrith withdrew her hand, and stared at the fire in silence.}}
+{{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.}}
+{{wst>shyriath|Evrith closed her eyes, but made no move to stop him, simply sitting still with her breath ragged. At last, she said, slowly and thickly, "Everyone I have ever cared for is gone. In one case chased away; in nearly all the others, dead. I fear the same will happen to you. Ynudh has already tried to take you from me."
+She shuddered violently, then opened her eyes, fixing him with a gaze full of horror. "Do you understand? He almost //took// you from me! In a thousand futures, he //did// take you from me! All the while I was trying to get you out of there - there was such a narrow path in a maze of futures made of your death, and to make it through I had to keep watching it happen!" Her shivering became more violent; she curled in on herself and rocked back and forth. "Your throat was cut, you were run through with a spear; and more than anything you were just... //dissolved// away into black mist - I watched it over and over again..."}}
+{{wst>pinkgothic|Gently and affectionately, he was pawing at her neck, nuzzling away more of the tears. "But we did make it through. I'm sorry you had to see all that; I'm deeply sorry I didn't handle it better than I did. But the Siathar did not prevent you from navigating that gauntlet. From what you say, it would have been easy for them to let me end - you say there were many more worlds where I could be gone. But I'm still here. We're both still here."}}
+{{wst>shyriath|"For now... but the sight lives in my nightmares. And it could still come true, we are still being chased. And Ynudh may not be the only one. How many servants does Dark-Eyes have to set on my trail?"
+She slowly leaned forward and buried her head into An-uxhwi's neck. "I thought of sending you away - driving you away, to keep you from what was coming. I could see that nothing less would convince you to go. But I couldn't make myself. I didn't really want you to go. And it would have hurt both of us."
+Evrith's words were drifting further away from the topic of the religious justification for her self-flagellating, though if anything this seemed to be calming her down - and least to a degree. But it was hard to escape the conclusion that, at least so far, she hadn't really been persuaded away from it.
+Over by the rest of their party, Shyriath, turning away from the nascent and involuted architectual discussion that had sprung up between the three xtauh - one of whom had never seen a permanent dwelling in her life and all of whom were speaking in a language he couldn't understand - looked over at An-uxhwi and Evrith. Though he could not hear what they were saying from this distance, he began watching them closely.}}
+{{wst>pinkgothic|"Remember," An-uxhwi said, gently. "That if it weren't for you, I would have perished in those mines. You have already gifted me so much life. If I am to die, I want you to know that I do it without regret. Do you understand? I don't seek it out and I will fight to live, certainly, but do not think you do me any injustice by taking me into danger. I want to be with you - and I want to help you succeed."}}
+{{wst>shyriath|Without lifting her head from his neck Evrith enfolded An-uxhwi in a tentative embrace which, given their relative sizes, was a somewhat //engulfing// feeling for An-uxhwi. There was a brief silence, and then she asked, "And should we succeed... what then? There are very few places we would be welcome. The takmar would not take us because I'm a witch. The Citadel would not take us, because you aren't. And most xtauh would not, especially if we came as a... a pair."
+There was another pause, and she added, in a slightly grating tone, "Even some members of our current group might have concerns about certain kinds of relationships between different kinds." She lifted her gaze slightly to glare at Shyriath over An-uxhwi's shoulder. Shyriath hurriedly looked away.}}
+{{wst>pinkgothic|At this, An-uxhwi glanced over to Shyriath and the others - the ragtag, oddly loyal band of misfits that they'd collected so far, their personal community - then smiled back at Evrith. "Let them have concerns, as long as they don't interfere. Though I must admit, in any case, I'm not worried about that now. Let us revisit the question when we have achieved your goal. I know it is your nature to worry about the future, but I think you're right to focus on the biggest obstacle." A pause. "I'll be there with you, wherever this journey takes you. You don't need to take it alone."}}
+{{wst>shyriath|She thought about bringing up how her journey was overwhelmingly likely to end. Aside from irregular bouts of illness and exhaustion and the results when she tried to teleport things, her condition was not intruding itself heavily yet, but it was only a matter of time. The fate appointed to her was still there. Their journey together, no matter how successful it was, was likely to be short.
+But not now. Just for a moment, they could take comfort in now.}}