I Pray I'm Not Awake
Phoebe Steadman
the Nightingale
Midwife

Age: 26 | Height: 5'9" | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Greatwood
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#1
Trigger Warning 
Phoebe
I've been very hopeful so far
Now for the first time I think we're going wrong
Hurry up and tell me this is all a dream
Or could we start again, please?

Phoebe stared at her ceiling blankly, her mind - usually whirring with worries, to-do lists, questions - eerily quiet, cheeks stained from tears long since dried. The bed beneath her was bare, cold, uncomfortable, the sheets crumpled in a ball and burning in the fireplace.

Time was irrelevant to her, it had been for awhile. Things had been going so well. Emmett was with her again. She was helping him turn the barn into a real home. She was going to have a baby. The baby. A choked sob bubbled up through sore vocal chords, dry and barely registering in her mind. They were gone. Gone. Lost after a sudden awakening in the middle of the night, consumed in pain and tears and blood. It had been so early, so soon, too soon, easily mistaken for a particularly bad menstrual cycle but she was a midwife and she had known. She had been carrying a life, a baby, her baby. The baby she knew she had always wanted, despite her youth, despite how unsteady everything seemed, the want to be a mother had always been the resounding chord to which she always returned. Emmett had begun to build a room for them. She had begun to really feel their presence, the nausea, the heartburn, the sleeplessness, and despite all of the discomfort she had been thrilled, elated, because her baby was the cause.

Now all that filled her was a profound emptiness.

She did not ask herself why. She knew why - and the why was that there was no why. She was young and healthy. She ate well. She had been a little stressed but nothing bad enough to harm anything. She was uninjured. Already she could hear her own voice in her mind, consoling her as she had numerous clients before. These things happen. There is no reason for it. It doesn't mean you can't have children. It's just a sad moment that will pass in time. How easily those words slipped through her lips before. How much she thought she could empathize with her clients before. She had been wrong. She had not in her life felt such a deep sadness, such a strong fury, such passionate self-hatred as she did now. How easy it was to console another when you knew not the depths of sorrow through which they walked. Never again. Never again.

Phoebe had long since run out of tears to cry. As the morning sun rose higher into the sky she did not move. The fire consuming the sheets and rags of evidence of her shame dying out with her hope that she was not awake. That this was all a dream, a nightmare, an illusion cast by Ludo or any other spirit if only to be cruel or because they could. But no. The shadows on the ceiling grew longer, her desire to rise remained unseen, and her ability to pretend that she was not existing in reality grew thin.


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#2
And then she was somewhere else entirely.

A field somewhere impossible, almost as if it were floating on a cloud. The sun was setting on one side and rising on the other in an impossible display of beauty that made the shadows stretch long in warm golden tones, the shadows a brilliant purple.

Though Frey couldn't be seen, they were there. They were everything. Warmth wrapped around the midwife like a weighted blanket, sinking into the shallow places in her now empty womb and filling her lungs with purpose and life.

It happens. A voice said. Frey's voice, echoing from everywhere all at once, but not loudly. No louder than a sigh. It is nature's way of testing. Of seeing if the environment is ready. You are a midwife, you know this. Matter of fact. Studious. Casual. But your emotions cloud that knowledge. Your hormones have no got the memo yet my little lemondrop, and so your heart hurts. Love complicates things too, I suppose. The world around Phoebe seemed to shrug.

You can rest here as long as you like.
Frey
Table image by Beth Myer!
Phoebe Steadman
the Nightingale
Midwife

Age: 26 | Height: 5'9" | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Greatwood
Level: 5 - Strg: 32 - Dext: 46 - Endr: 41 - Luck: 41 - Int:
PIM - Mythical - Dragon (Electricity) BRANBAST - Mythical - Sear Cat (Speech)
Played by: Grant Offline
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#3
Phoebe
I've been very hopeful so far
Now for the first time I think we're going wrong
Hurry up and tell me this is all a dream
Or could we start again, please?

The sudden change in atmosphere was enough to shock even Phoebe from her grief ridden stupor; the hollowness she felt suddenly filled with kaleidoscopic vibrancy, the world awash in warm tones and wrapping around her protectively, lovingly. A shuddering gasp parted her lips as she looked around wide-eyed at the impossibility of the place. How? Why? Yet as quickly as the questions came to mind she instinctively answered them. The feeling was not quite the same, yet the familiarity undeniable and distinct. "Frey." she whispered, her voice hoarse from the hours previous, having lost its gentle, soothing lilt for the time being.

It happens.

Her eyes squeezed closed, tears she thought long since dried rising and rolling down her cheeks. Thin arms wrapped around her torso, as if to hug herself but instead hugging the presence she felt flowing through and around her. Phoebe had never dared touch the deity, though many times they had done so to her, but now she clung to their comfort as if to life itself, wishing to hide in their ethereal embrace. To forget. But one never forgets such pain. It shaped you, it made you, but hurt all the same. "I know." she whispered quietly, bloodshot eyes opening again, captivated by the beauty that surrounded her, in stark contrast to the well of painful emotion that Frey's presence kept at bay. "But for once, knowing offers no comfort." she said, hardly above a whisper. Some truths took time to bear with grace. The mind and the heart only occassionally aligned, and the war they waged with each other could be ruthless.

The way the world seemed to shift slightly in a shrug, so terribly Frey of it, elicited a quiet mirthless laugh. Frey, a deity so interested in passion was equally the master of detatchment, duplicitous. She should have been thanking them for this comfort, falling over herself in gratefulness to be deemed worthy of such attention, but instead, while grief pushed her to selfishness, she wallowed in the warmth of their presence instead. "Have you ever felt such pain Frey? Such sadness?" she asked quietly. Some may have used such a question to bite, to attack, to hurt. But Phoebe held no such animosity, no desire to hurt or harm...she merely wondered, briefly, if Frey had ever felt as she did, or if this sort of grief was reserved to a more human condition. Frey seemed so beyond simple emotion, endless and constant, unshakeable in their resolve to be as they were always. Did they come because they knew or worried or...cared?

The offer to stay in this place as long as she wished felt a blessing of profound value. "What is this place?" she whispered, turning her face towards the rising sun, letting its blinding warmth consume her. The midwife's arms wrapped tighter around her middle, holding onto the presence as if it might slip away at any moment.


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#4
Phoebe's hands would feel covered, as would her eyelids as if she were being rocked lovingly to sleep beneath the weight of the ocean. The deity sighed and life around them bloomed and hushed into a soft and welcoming stillness. "Knowledge is overrated." Frey replied, shrugging and so making the entire world shrug. "What you feel is the only truth you need to worry about."

The world paused pregnantly, all life seeming to halt as Frey considered the question. "Yes." They replied simply. "In my own way. As you said, what we know and what we feel are not always aligned."

With a small smattering of laughter, Frey pulled away from Phoebe, but only so that they could look her in the eye. It was a strange sort of separation, for there wasn't any in that moment. Frey was just an extension of Phoebe, or perhaps the other way around, though now the god's kaleidoscopic gaze could firmly study the girl. "We all have our places." They said mildly. "Places out of time and away from the world." So saying the rising and setting suns seemed to glow with a hot ferocity and a breeze carried their heat as well as the scent of the sea.
Frey
Table image by Beth Myer!
Phoebe Steadman
the Nightingale
Midwife

Age: 26 | Height: 5'9" | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Greatwood
Level: 5 - Strg: 32 - Dext: 46 - Endr: 41 - Luck: 41 - Int:
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#5
Phoebe
I've been very hopeful so far
Now for the first time I think we're going wrong
Hurry up and tell me this is all a dream
Or could we start again, please?

Phoebe felt simultaneously weightless and grounded. The pressure around her was soothing, calming, and the only thing keeping her awake yet was the wish to continue to bask in it. Arms seemed to wrap around her, covering her hands and eyes, and she melted back into their embrace. Her fingers curled, in an attempt to intertwine hers with Frey’s, her head tilting back to press against the hand over her eyes. The reaction was instinctual, her very soul seeking shelter in the comfort the deity provided.

What you feel is the only truth you need to worry about. The truth of that statement weighed heavily on the shattered bits of her heart. What her mind knew was simple, acceptable, clinical. It left no room for hurt feelings or doubt; what had happened, happened, and meant very little in the grand scheme of things. But what her heart felt threatened to shatter the fragile fabric of her soul if she was not careful. Her lips curved downward slightly, a hard lump of emotion forming in her throat. It would take time and focus to heal this hurt. ”I am good at worrying.” she said quietly, chancing at humor in a sad attempt to lift herself back up from the depths her unsteady state threatened to cast her down into again. The sort of ‘worrying’ she was good at was not what Frey had meant, she knew that, but the play on words, trying to find the little pinpricks of light in the darkness as she was rocked in the deity’s arms helped.

The sudden stillness that overcame the whole place as she asked her question left her breathless, her eyes opening from the surprise of it. The emotion was palpable – the hesitation, the reserve; Phoebe had stepped up to a door that Frey would rather leave closed. It seemed even gods had tragedies they wished to bury away. That Frey had hurt like this, had been hurt like this – in their own way because it was fair to say a god and a mortal were not similar enough to be comparable – stung Phoebe to her very core. She had witnessed some of what Frey could do, the pain and torment they could cause. Once, she herself had been terrified of them, their first meeting having been initially traumatic. And in spite of all the ways one might misconstrue their actions to ill-will or pure chaos, which she had grown to learn was not the case if no cause was given, she could not bring herself to fathom any situation that called for them to be hurt like this, intentionally or not. Frey had worried about her when they didn’t need to. Frey had looked out for her when she had little to offer them. Frey had guided her and helped her grow, and now in her time of grieving Frey held her and soothed away her troubles.

Tears rose in her eyes, cresting and rolling down her cheeks, now falling for Frey’s hurts, not her own. ”I’m so sorry, Frey.” she whispered hoarsely, her words overflowing with the mix of empathy and sorrow she felt on their behalf. They did not need her empathy, surely, but it came, needed or not – but was not to be mistaken for pity. ”If only I could give you the comfort that you have given me.” But she had no magical two-sun world to whisk them away to, no ethereal ability to make them feel completely encased in soothing, loving care they could hide away in. All she had was the sincerity in her words and emotions.

At first she did not notice the separation. Bloodshot eyes blinked, trying to clear her gaze until her brain registered that Frey’s face was now above hers. A mop of dark hair, a masculine face far too perfect to be real – a little less boyish than the last time for some reason – but their eyes were always the same, a mix of shifting color, mesmerizing and hypnotic. The realization that this place was Frey’s, a realm intended for beings of higher power, humbled her immediately. ”Your home is so beautiful.” she said quietly, tearing her gaze away for a moment to look at it all, committing the place to memory. The warmth, the vibrancy – so very in tune with the deity that inhabited this place. Her gaze returned to Frey, the barest shadow of a smile ghosting across her lips. ”I am honored that you brought me here. I don’t know what I have done to deserve your attention but I will be forever grateful to you.” Frey didn’t have to do any of this. They didn’t have to grace her with their presence, welcome her with a warm embrace to their realm, guide her where she wavered or comfort her while she cried; and yet they did, which made it all the more meaningful and allowing affection to bloom even while she grieved.


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#6
"Yes. You are all good at some rather annoying things." Frey says mildly. "Instincts left over from a time when it served you well. It will be bred out of you soon enough. For now, you must adapt so that future generations will not have to feel this."

Despite their closeness, Frey was still a world away. An unknown entity wrapped around a form that was something that Phoebe could understand. But a god merely worked the construct into which they chose, the face and flesh Phoebe thought she saw, the sadness, it was all an echo of something else. Frey was a higher dimensional being, existing in a plane of reality that the girl—no human, truly—could understand. The Frey who was projected was just a shadow of what was, but it was all Phoebe's mind would let her see.

"Your sorrow is meaningless." Frey said, though not unkindly. "Comfort is meaningless too. It is in this way that knowledge is helpful. Do you cry when you spill your water, knowing that there is more to be had? No. You cry when you are unsure when you will drink again, and you lament your choices. But in a world of abundance, of resource or information, there is little room or need for comfort." But Phoebe's mind cannot handle the information that a god's can, and so these comparatively meager comforts are what Frey has on offer.

"Harmony is beautiful." Frey corrects, for that is what their world is. Unanimity. Harmony. Grace. Completion. A self sustaining circuit. A whole of many parts. "It is what you have yet to do, honeybee." They say, the small planetary sphere upon which they rest suddenly morphing and growing. Volcanoes which have lain dormant spew lava that encapsulates everything into a hardened shell of rock. It appears ugly at first, inhospitable. But upon closer inspection the scale of life has merely changed; the air is dense with small single-celled creatures and the ground beneath their feet is awash in bacteria and other signs of life.

The suns spin and time passes. Eventually roots break free and seas, and the rock is cracked and overgrown, encompassed by something much more fertile and life giving.

"Love is not our doing." Frey says, and their tone sounds almost like a revelation. A secret. "It is a thing done by Mort and we have forever been playing catch up to that change."
Frey
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Phoebe Steadman
the Nightingale
Midwife

Age: 26 | Height: 5'9" | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Greatwood
Level: 5 - Strg: 32 - Dext: 46 - Endr: 41 - Luck: 41 - Int:
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#7
Phoebe
I've been very hopeful so far
Now for the first time I think we're going wrong
Hurry up and tell me this is all a dream
Or could we start again, please?

The humor went unnoticed and Phoebe felt admonished for it by Frey's words. She lightly bit her lip, eyes closing briefly. "Bred?" she said in almost a whisper, eyes opening to look into Frey's hypnotic gaze again. Her brows were furrowed slightly. She understood what they meant she thought, simply that people would change over time as generations were born and died, but that was an awfully cold word for it. It made her think of dogs and fancy cats, not people. Perhaps to a god that was all humans were – fancy cats.

But she didn't get to think on it long, the deity moving on. Meaningless. It was a shock to her system no matter how not unkindly it was spoken. But as Frey explained, she felt for a moment that perhaps she grasped at the tendrils of knowledge. "No use crying over spilled milk." she recited quietly. Her mind was reaching, stretching, trying to understand and hold onto what they revealed to her with earnestness. Her unmistakable humanity perhaps put some of it out of her reach, some might be terribly beyond her, but the visage that she knew as Frey could at least rely on her attempting with all her being to understand.

Knowledge replacing sorrow and comfort? Her mind toyed with the idea...but could it be so simple? Was anything ever so simple? Surely they couldn’t be wholly without meaning – there had to be a reason for them to exist, there had to be a reason they were felt so keenly and deeply and universally. Did not sorrow balance joy? Comfort balance anguish?

"Find harmony?" she asked quietly. She would believe it. Phoebe knew she was a creature of sincere but strong emotion. She dove in heart first, mind second. If the two did not go together, she couldn't really consider herself harmonious, the scaled weighing too far on one side. But her eyes widened as the world began to spin and change before her very eyes. The destruction of the place shaking her, but so soon it morphed. Life sprang forth from the ashes, as if a Phoenix of lore. Enraptured, her eyes followed the movements of the tiny creatures that now surrounded them. Something clicked, if only in part, in her mind. This was where life started. Little. Simple. Vulnerable. She had seen this before. Perhaps not seen it so small but...this was how life grew. She had seen babies born far too early, so small and seemingly misshapen that they were unrecognizable as life. Under better circumstances though, they would have grown into what any would recognize as an infant child…and then that child would grow into something barely recognizable as the vulnerable few pound infant they had come into the world as.

A gentle hand reached out towards the tiny beacons of life, wishing to hold them close. Is this what her baby had looked like, just a little, squiggly circle of life? Was this how they all started and simply grew so complex? Brown eyes, still bloodshot from shed tears, looked at it all with wide-eyed and pure fascination. But then, even as she thought it, they did grow. They morphed and changed and adapted - no, evolved - into trees and grass and oceans and sunlight and all that she knew as a world. She looked at it all because it was fascinating. That so many things – that everything – starting as but one little…thing (she had not the words to describe what she saw in full) and grew and changed and despite all the things that could go wrong these delicate, vulnerable little things persisted in the face of all logic or odds and became so much more! Tears welled in her eyes now, not from meaningless sorrow, but as a way of release; for so impossible was what she looked upon that the glory that it even was was simultaneously incomprehensible and utterly undeniable.

Her breath caught at Frey's final words. Love came from...Mort? The god of death? That alone would have been enough to shake the young midwife to her core, already so off kilter from everything she had been feeling and just witnessed. Perhaps that was why Frey revealed this all to her now, because while the mind and heart were vulnerable they were most malleable to change. Phoebe remained silent for a time. She did not know how long, simply staring at the world, letting Frey's words take root within her, still clinging to their presence. But, time did not exist here did it? Frey had said so themselves. Something at the back of her mind giggled at the absurdity of it; clinging to a diving being, whose very existence was beyond her comprehension, being the last shred of familiarity to which she was now grounding herself.

"I am...certain I do not understand it all." she said quietly. She would not make the mistake she had with Ludo, and think that she understood...and somehow she felt that what Frey showed her was far more complex than anything Ludo had tried to show her. But life, she knew, required...specific conditions to exist and grow. It required...harmony in a way. Just the right amount of this and that, and without any one it would not form. That was what her remedies were intended for, to aid a woman's body in creating those conditions as a child grew within, or to balance the properties within a man's system so that he could beget the seed of life. Frey clearly had a better grasp of exactly how that all worked, but the ghost of the concept was there. To add something to the system...to throw off the balance so now life had to literally catch up to it...

"Is...is that why we call it being lovesick?" she asked quietly, testing a thought. "Mort created love...before we were ready...before we had developed a balance for it?" Lovesick, crazy in love...was it really almost like an illness because it was beyond their full comprehension? To feel something that had nothing to match it, nothing to keep it harmonious with everything else. Love was powerful and irrational and…she could think of nothing its equal. And when the body’s systems lost their balance…illness took hold (as was her current understanding of medicine and health).

In a way it made a semblance of sense. She had loved her baby. Loved them without knowing them, loved them for no discernable reason – and it was a love like a well so deep there was no bottom to it, a love that was boundless, instantaneous, irrational, and like nothing she had ever experienced before. There was no equivalent. And when she knew they no longer existed, that they would not continue to grow because her body had not been ready, she had nothing to fall back on. There was no emotion or knowledge she possessed that could anchor and reign in that love, and so she replaced with the next most powerful thing she did possess – anger. Hatred. Loathing. Love and hate were very close, she had heard, but not quite equivalent. However much she hated herself for what had happened would never harmonize with how much she had loved the little squiggly circle she had carried. Did that mean her anger, like sorrow and comfort, were meaningless, because they did not accomplish the task of balancing the love she felt? And then there was her grief…which now she thought to be separate, a mourning for all that would not be in the absence of her child – she mourned never knowing what they would have looked like or who they would have been or the things they would have done and experienced, not their death, per se. It was not that the water had spilled, but that she did not know when she would ever have water to drink again or what the water she had had would have tasted like. Was it actually meaningless or the side effect of the lack of harmony within her? Or was it the knowledge that Frey said would help in the face of meaningless emotion?

Was she even close to understanding? Or was her logic so infantile it was laughable or insulting in the face of the divine?

She wanted to understand – she so desperately wanted to know and grow into something more, something better, something and someone whole. And what did it mean to be whole if not to have found inner harmony? Unanimity. Grace. Completion. Phoebe tilted her face up, looking for the familiar kaleidoscopic gaze of Frey, feeling shaken, shattered, rebuilt, and…hopeful in the face of all she did not understand. ”What must I do to achieve it?” she asked innocently, knowing Frey was unlikely to give her an answer, but instead a starting point and general path to follow at best. If something so little as a squiggly circle could grow into something as magnificent as a tree or an ocean or a person, perhaps she was not so small and insignificant as to achieve the unattainable. If a squiggly circle could be a world, certainly she could be harmonious.


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#8
"Mmhm. And I don't just mean that as a bit of rhetoric either. There is a resonance in all things. A frequency. A balance that needs to be met across the micro as well as the macro scales of this world. It is what people think they are latching onto when they say they can hear the music of the forest, or the song of the sea. It isn't actually a sound, but a structure. A perfect structure. It is why no one says they hear harmony in chaos, or if they do they're just being poetic and probably trying to get laid."

Shrugging, had Frey a cigarette they would have taken a long and slow drag. Instead, they merely continued to exist and permit the midwife this strange and unsettling view into the life of a god. "No you don't, and you won't ever." They said gently. "Your minds were not made capable of understanding, but don't let that bother you. There are creatures who can see all the light spectrum in a way you cannot. This is a bit like that. Your mind can only do so much."

With a snort, Frey laughed heartily for a moment and the world around seemed to positively blossom with their mirth. "Who knows. You all come up with loads of words for things you don't understand." With a shrug, Frey paused trying to put it into words that Phoebe might understand. "Love is like an answer when you do not know the equation. A perfectly composed piece of music written for an instrument you do not possess, much less know how to play. In life your souls are not worthy of it. That is why you feel it tarnish, and it breaks and it hurts. Only in death can your soul understand. Only with Mort can you truly feel love as it was meant to be felt."

Eyeing the midwife, Frey tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and cupped her face with the other hand. Their currently-masculine features drew near,  eyes coloured with the proverbial spark of life falling across Phoebe's face like a tidal wave. "Live." Frey whispered. "It will all fall into place as it was always meant to. Life is messy and it is hard, but that does not mean you are doing something wrong. We never designed you to live flawlessly." Waving a hand across the strange landscape, flashes of evolution played themselves out in a dizzying sort of dance. "Change comes through hardship. Problems lead to progress. It might all sound like a bunch of nonsense, but not everything in life is as complicated as you all make it. Sometimes you just need to live."
Frey
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Phoebe Steadman
the Nightingale
Midwife

Age: 26 | Height: 5'9" | Race: Demi-god | Nationality: Outlander | Citizenship: Greatwood
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#9
Phoebe
I've been very hopeful so far
Now for the first time I think we're going wrong
Hurry up and tell me this is all a dream
Or could we start again, please?

Her mind was trying to wrap itself around these concepts as Frey's essence wrapped around and through her. Phoebe's brows furrowed together, staring at the looping circles of life blooming, dying and rebuilding as she listened silently to Frey's explanation. "A structure...like these...like these are the structure for individual peices of life?" she asked quietly, pointing to a single squiggly circle that eventually became two then four and continued to multiply until a small bird flew through the air around them. "There is a structure that holds this all in place...to keep it balanced." she said quietly, letting that bit of knowledge weigh on her mind for a moment. That it might be compared to sound seemed fitting. "So...in the same way that a perfect crystal glass can resonate a perfect tone...people think they can hear this structure resonate in a way?" It was an imperfect anecdote, because she understood that the structure itself did not make a sound but it might have some property that under certain conditions people mistook for sound.

Was it a divine structure? Or something that came before even the divine? Did something come before the divine? The questions that came from each answer made her head hurt and soul tired. So many things she didn't understand...But she would try. Frey was gracing her with knowledge beyond her understanding and she would not insult them by taking it with laziness.

That she could not possibly understand it all, and that Frey acknowledged and accepted that as part of her state as a human did help. She sighed and rubbed her eyes, sore from hours of shedding tears, nodding a little in acknowledgement of their words. "Is there anything we were made capable of that others are not?" she asked, genuinely curious. If she could not fully understand,  if there were...colors she couldn't even see...were humans possessing anything that made them...distinct? "I will still try to understand. I know I can't fully but...I feel blessed to even know a little...to have the opportunity to try to understand." Sometimes that was all one could do after all. Try. Fail. Try again. Rinse and repeat.

Frey's laughter, snort and all, was as beautiful as the life that bloomed in response to their mirth. She managed a smile herself, a hint of a real laugh escaping her lips as Frey's mirth seemed to settle into her bones, contagious and working to piece together pieces of her shattered heart. "We must seem so trivial to you with our silly phrases, with all you know and understand." she said softly, looking back out at all that had sprung into existence with Frey's laughter. It pleased her to have brought them some small, momentary amusement. Happiness maybe. In silence she listened to Frey describe love and its effect on the world, and she nodded. "Like telling someone who has only seen and smelled bread being told to make it." she said with some familiarity. Her mother had used that anecdote once. How could she be expected to know how to make bread if she only saw it? You couldn't. You'd just end up with a mess. At best a hard rock like thing that probably didn't taste great and then would turn you off to bread entirely. Or at least until you forgot how bad it tasted. "Why would Mort do that?" she asked quietly, looking over at Frey. It seemed...cruel to dangle something like that in front of them, knowing they couldn't attain it. "And...why are we not worthy? Is it...is it really so unattainable to love purely in life?" That it might not be threatened to break a little piece of her. Then what was the point of it? Then why did she feel it for her baby or for her family or for Emmett or anyone else if it wasn't right? If she wasn't worthy? Was it even love then or something else?

Frey tucked her hair back and placed their hand on her cheek. Her eyes briefly fluttered closed, leaning her head into their hand. When she opened her eyes again their face was so close, and their eyes locking her in a hypnotic gaze. Live. It sounded so simple, but she knew from the depths of her sorrow that it could indeed be very difficult. And Frey did not seem to disagree that it was difficult, in fact they seemed to promise it. "Not designed to live flawlessly...not designed to understand...not designed to know true love..." she said quietly. It all sounded so discouraging. "What were we designed to do then? What is the purpose of someone like me in keeping the harmony?" Harmony wasn't haphazard. Things didn't exist without reason if there was balance. What was that of a human then? What was hers? Just a midwife, a silly young girl trying to understand that which she could not in the face of a being that was infinite?

Or was it as simple as living? Her eyes closed again and her head tilted forward slightly, that should Frey not move their foreheads might actually touch. She was tired, her mind buzzing with questions and theories and ponderings to avoid thinking about that sadness which seemed to call Frey to her in the first place. Honeybee they had called her, and her mind seemed to whirr in response, abuzz, working, tireless but tiring. "I don't wish to disappoint you. I...want you to be proud." she whispered, an admission that slipped through her lips unbidden. She understood so little, and was not equipped to understand most of it. But Frey had been her first taste of this world, and quietly (not really quietly, rather bluntly actually) guiding her, helping her grow...and she wasn't certain it was enough, but the desire for them to be pleased with her efforts and successes was undeniable. Not in an unrealistic sense, everyone had the capacity to disappoint others sometimes, but on the whole. Not really parental, not quite a teacher or mentor...Frey's importance in her life in such a short time was of a capacity she did not have a good name for. It was perhaps irrational, powerful...she may have called it a form of love before though she had just been told she couldn't really understand what that was. They were so much more than a sex god as Killian had put it. There was so much more meaning, so much more purpose to what Frey did, to who Frey was - and it seemd so few had ever tried to see what all was there. Her eyes squeezed and a few tears escaped. If she were Frey, she would be so frustrated, angry even, that no one tried to see what more their was to them.


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#10
'Oh no." Frey replied with a dry laugh. "Even by the time they are at this stage they are still quite complex." Waving a hand through the air, for a moment it warbled with colour. Though there was no easy way to demonstrate the molecular soup that they were breathing in, colouring the clusters of particles was at least a gesture in that direction. "The fundamental building blocks are much, much tinier. If you imagine the smallest thing you can, and then the largest thing you can, still the scale is probably off." All this Frey said with a touch of pride in their voice.

At the mention of crystal and sound, the deity merely shrugged. It was an imperfect analogy and they'd not agree to it fully, but at least Phoebe was on the right track.

"Your capacity for deduction and higher thinking." Frey said. "As well as your capacity to lie and hate."  Uniqueness was not always positive, after all. "Complexity is what humanity does best. Complex emotions, complex rules, complex morality. You take what you see and you give it meaning. You complicate the world and then blame everyone but yourselves for the web you've tangled yourselves in." Frey yawned. "But this is what drives you all to be creative and innovative. It drives you to war and to grand gestures. It is your best and worst attribute."

Languidly Frey shrugged. "Silly? No. I understand how your minds work. It's cute, really, watching you all putter along."

Why would Mort do that? Turning towards Phoebe but continuing to play with her hair, Frey licked their lips. "I know your love affair has been brief, but haven't you enjoyed it? You see others in love. Most agree it is a nice thing. just because you aren't capable of the full deal while you're alive doesn't mean that a taste isn't worth it. "

"Yes. It is unattainable but...well. You aren't capable of knowing that until you die and experience it for yourself. You think you're capable of love, of all of it, and while you're alive that's good enough. And then you die and realize how much more there was, and that's good too." All this Frey said in a completely casual tone, as if they were merely discussing the weather and not the lofty metaphysics of creation.

Stroking her cheek again with their thumb, the deity smiled gently. "Like I said, it is your best and worst quality that you are even asking this." Frey said with a bit of a sigh. "The purpose is the harmony. That the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. " As Phoebe leaned forward rather than finding her forehead against Frey's, instead she would find herself wrapped up in their arms, her head pressed against their chest. "Proud? Me? How boring. I will be proud of you even in your darkest days, because no matter how you try, you will always be precisely how you have been made. Make yourself proud. That is a far more important goal. Who am I but a god? You are the one who has to live with yourself, to wake up in the morning and account for what you have done, to walk in your skin and bones." Frey cradled Phoebe closer, humming a low note deep in their chest.
Frey
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Phoebe Steadman
the Nightingale
Midwife

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#11
Phoebe
I've been very hopeful so far
Now for the first time I think we're going wrong
Hurry up and tell me this is all a dream
Or could we start again, please?

Phoebe's eyes widened, as even smaller particles were revealed within the squiggly circle. "Are there words for all of these things?" she asked, her held tilting slighty as she examined one little set, a few little circles attached to each other in a pattern. Some looked like it. Others had different patterns with different colored circles. "So...so these made up the other things...which make up everything else... but if you changed these around it would make something else, right?" Phoebe asked, pretending to move particles around to other clusters. "And...everything is made up of them?" Even her? She looked at her hands in near awe. To think, such little things coming together to make something as complex as her, working in perfect...

Harmony. Something clicked. Without harmony, there would literally be nothing. If those little particles were somehow messed up, or didnt align as intended, then everything she knew would not exist. That was why harmony was beautiful, because it was this harmonious balance of all these little bits that made the beautiful things.

Frey's description of humanity was equally unflattering and complimentary. Good and bad, some of their pitfalls arising from their strengths. She nodded without hesitation, agreeing with their assessment. People were complicated and complicating. That humans were unique in lying and hatred surprised her though. "Is there nothing you hate? Or lie about?" she asked. Hate wasn't an emotion she encountered often and she was an absolutely horrible liar. So that those were uniquely human was odd to her.

But they were all different she supposed. It might make more sense to someone else.

She glanced down thoughtfully as Frey reframed the concept of love for her. Her time with Emmett...the good parts...had been wonderful, had made her feel more deeply than she had before...and if the love she had felt for her child had been allowed to fully bloom she could only imagine how powerful it may have been. And really, what would life be without such emotion? How enjoyable would it be without the ability to feel that way? It seemed a sad existence. Even if it could get better, even if it was more, having some was better than none. "So, it is more of a mercy than anything to allow us a taste of it." she said quietly, before glancing up at Frey again.

The purpose was the harmony. The sum greater than the whole of its parts. She was just one little circle, but she contributed to making up something greater. Phoebe smiled a little. Even if she wasn't sure what that greater thing was, perhaps another thing she couldn't understand but Frey could, it was comforting to know that she was important in some little way. It was a way she had never thought of herself before. Phoebe, important? That was a new feeling.

But as her face pressed against Frey's chest, she nearly melted against them. The hum resonated through their chest and into her cheek in a soothing way, eyes half-lidded as she stared out at the tiny building blocks Frey had lit up for her. A light laugh escaped her lips as Frey called her boring for wanting to make them proud, feeling her heart swell again as they said they'd always be proud of her. In the moment it was just what she needed to hear, and coming from Frey - who did not make a habit of holding punches or saying things they did not mean - it made all the difference. "Who am I but a god, Frey says, like it's nothing special." she said shaking her head a little. It was very special, at least in her eyes. Frey was in many ways beyond comprehension, but as she hid in their arms they were more familiar than anything she had experienced since appearing in Caido. "Thank you, Frey. For everything...even if you think that everything is boring." she said quietly a small smile on her lips.


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#12
Frey shrugged. "There are, but your people will make up their own in time. Names are not important." The deity nodded in agreement, pleased that Phoebe seemed to be able to grasp these concepts. "Yes. The true building blocks are even smaller and infinitely more different than this. But you get the idea."

Stroking Phoebe's hair and seeming more interested in that than this line of questions, the deity shook their head. "Hate is such a mortal feeling." They said with a shrug. "Lie? No, I have no need of it. I can though if that's what you are asking."

"A mercy?" Frey shook their head. "Love is a gift." Though they could tell Phoebe's mind was trying to understand, it was simply past anything that her mind possibly could. And so, smoothing her hair, Frey enveloped the midwife completely. The serene world fell away leaving only the rising and setting suns and the eternal comfort that was Frey.

"Hush now." Frey soothed, their magic working deep within Phoebe to repair the physical parts of her that had been wounded due to the miscarriage. There was no need for her to wake up with discomfort after all.
Frey
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Phoebe Steadman
the Nightingale
Midwife

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#13
Phoebe
I've been very hopeful so far
Now for the first time I think we're going wrong
Hurry up and tell me this is all a dream
Or could we start again, please?

So simple, yet so complex. Tiny things, even smaller than what she saw now, making up all that was and would be in the world. It was fascinating, amazing, unreal but so logical. It made life all the more miraculous, that some balance was found and from it the creation of everything. But it was a big concept for her, a total shift in her world view. It would take her some time to fully grasp it, understand it, and be able to convey what she knew. Phoebe was certain she would never look at anything quite the same again.

But her hair was being petted and she was easy to distract. Once again her focus was on Frey. That they did not hate was somehow more difficult for her to understand than the world being made of tiny little clusters of circles. That they could lie but simply did not seemed characteristic of the god on the other hand. And love a gift, not a mercy…but could they not be one in the same? Wasn’t mercy itself a gift? Or did Mort give them love willingly, without the notion that there was anything in life for them to be merciful about? Her mind was stretching and reshaping, trying to absorb all that it simply could not. It was exhausting, an added layer on top of what she already felt.

So when Frey enveloped her once more, bidding her hush, she did so without hesitation. She was soothed and healed and at ease in a world that was the epitome of harmony perfected. The young midwife said no more, eyes closing further with each blink, not wanting to miss a second of the luxury that was peace. But she was human, and her mind, body, and soul at the limits of its stamina. Soon enough she was lulled to sleep in the Frey’s arms.


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