[SE] Can't Do It Alone

Aurelia

I never had a chance to be soft
I was always bloody knuckles and shards of glass

Aurelia's boots kicked through the sand as she jogged along. The sun set on a warm and sunny afternoon, turning the sky and the ocean beautiful shades of magenta. The wind in her face pelted away the sweat built up there from a day spent in the heat. She came to a stop, her breath ragged and heavy through her nostrils. Aurelia still wasn't quite back to the physical abilities she was used to. Turning, she found a nearby palm tree and sat down against it. With a sigh, she closed her eyes and rested her head back. She just needed a few minutes...


The world was dark and dank again. The rhythm of distant machines, the clamor of people, the growl of passing vehicles, it all flooded her senses. The smell of fuel filled the gray air. Aurelia glanced down at herself, dressed in the cloak she always wore when she was a child. Her hands were small, unscarred, yet to be calloused by a life of hard work...

"You shouldn't be here right now, this is too public," it was the low, angry voice of her father - something she didn't remember hearing often, so it stuck out to her - "I'm with my daughter, for god's sake! I told them I didn't want my family to see or hear anything-"

Aurelia peered her small face around the corner into the shadowy alley, where she saw the back of her father's head as he towered before a smaller, hooded figure. She could barely make out the rugged lines of the stranger's face; he was cloaked in shadows that were unnatural. His bright blue gaze flickered across her and she shrank back a little.

"It couldn't wait, Silas," the man said, addressing her father by his name. His rumbling voice was almost too quiet to hear but everything around Aurelia seemed to fade away, heightening her ability to focus on the conversation. "the council sent me for you. One of our own has been apprehended and things have gotten out of hand. They're worried. The Order might be compromised..."

The next exchange was too brief to process as everything moved quickly after that. The dark man disappeared in a blast of black shadows. One moment there, gone without a trace the next. Suddenly, Silas turned around and ushered her away, "Come on, Aurelia, we have to go home. Now."


Green eyes blinked open in bewilderment. "The hell?" she muttered, looking around. The sun was still in the sky, although lower than before, but... the air was different. Something didn't feel right.

There was a whisper of presence across the beach and her eyes flashed up to see a pair of small, scared eyes staring back at her. The child before her was wearing a light brown cloak that swam around her ankles and buttoned at her chest. It was hers, she realized, from all those years ago; from the strange dream she just had. She hazily remembered passing it down to her younger sister.

"Hey," she moved to stand up but a rush of blood to her head made her vision blur for a moment. She lifted her hand up to cup her face but, she recoiled when she saw that it was covered in slick, bright red blood. The girl turned and ran into a tunnel, the entrance of which Aurelia had not noticed before. "Hey! Wait!" She called after the kid. Another look at her hand and the blood had disappeared. "What!?"

Running after the girl, Aurelia ducked into the tunnel. The path was narrow and steep, too steep. Her foot slipped right out from under her before she could step back. A shocked yell escaped her lips involuntarily as she slid into the depths of the tunnel. She came to a skidding stop at the bottom of the tunnel, pressing her boots into the malleable soil to keep herself from kareening forward.

A cloud of dust billowed out around her, making her cough a few times to clear her throat. Narrowing her eyes against it, she made out an intricate system of tunnels all around her. Narrow and wide passages that seemed to lead in all directions. Faint light spilled into isolated patches on the sand from holes in the ceiling. Standing up, she looked back the way she came to see if it was possible to climb back out.

Before she could make a real assessment, however, the soft beat of feet against the sand caught her attention. Whirling around, she spotted that brown cloak disappear around a corner. "Hey, come back!" she called after it, stepping forward. The silence that followed was deafening. She could only hear the shallow breaths coming from her own lips. "Damn it!" she snapped and proceeded to follow the direction the girl had disappeared in. Her steps were quick and light, rounding the corner.

She spent several minutes like that, just barely unable to catch the girl. She got close several times, only for her to continue to slip away into another tunnel, another rocky corridor. She looked so familiar. Something tugged at Aurelia to follow her but, as she paused to catch her breath and looked around, there was a lurch in her gut. "Shit!" she seethed to herself, placing her hand on a nearby wall. "How did I get so far in?"

Melita

I wanted people to be afraid of hurting me

Melita

Eating fire is your ambition
to swallow the flame down

For once, the world was warm and the earth was grand, and she could settle herself upon the sands; indifferent to anything but the sun-kissed haze scintillating over her cheeks. A smile, a grin, erupted as she closed her eyes, and stretched out along the dunes, Fangorn at her side, tucked in along her hip, listening to the waves. Peace. Calm. Serene. Here she didn’t have to listen to the tirades of sailors, to the idiocy of her uncle, to the woes and strife sparking and winding its way through life after life. Here there were slight glimmers of tranquility, and they embedded, infused, into her veins, as if it was naught more than a dream –

And then the laughter started again; bright and effervescent, refined and tender, the sort of elegance one might find in a flower, in a bloom, in a copse, in a grove nestled with lilacs and lavender. Except Melita sighed, and strived to push past it, to not hear it, to not shatter and shudder beneath it, to remain chiseled into her rest and repose, to not let the miseries and agonies of another year cluster around her.

But louder and louder Clementine became, until Melita could nearly picture her twin running through meadows all over again – chasing butterflies, weaving rhapsodies, combining every essence of benevolence into one being. She’d been good and fair and kind and gone, and despite it all, the honeybee imagined her sister behind her eyes, not a cloud in the sky, just the twins of flames and flowers.

Except then it hastened, it beckoned, and so she rose, sitting up, head inclining over her shoulder, to see someone distinct and familiar racing towards Rae’s Fingers. Which was utterly bizarre, because not many but the smugglers and sailors themselves used the confines – she’d know – and by the yells, the calls, Aurelia was chasing after something.

Would she even understand how to use the tunnels? The youth doubted it; too new, too fresh, too inexperienced. While Melita had explored and assisted in destroying a monster within the depths, she figured the newcomer had done exactly none of those things, nor take a guide. There could be sinister things in those reaches. More fiends. More disasters.

Should she care? Fangorn rumbled and grumbled at her feet, and the youth rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she presided, grabbing hold of her sack resting in the sands, the quiver, and the staff in her hands. “But if you’re that dumb, honestly…” Her voice trailed off, picking over the rampaging stones and barreling footfalls of the other woman, listening, following, hastening. All the while, Clementine’s laughter glided before her, resounding and bounding off the walls, either leading or destroying (though her sister would’ve never committed the latter).

She huffed around a corner, irritated and annoyed that she had to do this at all, and cupped her hands together, manifesting a boisterous yell, a vicious roar meant to echo and reverberate throughout the surroundings. “Hey! You shouldn’t be in here!”

to be lit up from within, vein by vein
to be the sun

Aurelia

I never had a chance to be soft
I was always bloody knuckles and shards of glass

"You shouldn't be in here!" the voice came echoing through the tunnels, reverberating off of the rocks. It stunned Aurelia, who drew very still to try to hear from which direction it was echoing from. It was in that instance, that she knew whoever it was, was absolutely fucking right. What the hell had she gotten herself into? What was she even thinking, roaming around dark tunnels after...

"There's someone down here!" Aurelia shouted back, chest heaving. She allowed her voice to fade into the darkness, trying to decide whether she should go find who was calling her or... keep trying to find the little girl. At first, she did. She wound through a few more openings but, she didn't catch sight of the child again.

With a ragged sigh, she turned and tried to find her way through the tunnels, back in the direction she came. Fortunately, she had a stroke of luck. Upon rounding one of the many corners, she came face-to-face with a familiar woman. Wild hair and fierce eyes met her own.

"Melita? I didn't realize that was you," she paused to steady her breath and managed to explain between pants, "Sorry... I didn't know. I saw someone... they looked really familiar...like my sister..." she glanced back over her shoulder, "someone told me, it's possible-" A cough racked her body and she leaned against the wall. Once her breath was actually caught and she realized the irritation in Melita's features, she thought better of what she was about to say. "Nevermind.. I must be so tired that I'm seeing things."

I wanted people to be afraid of me

Melita

Eating fire is your ambition
to swallow the flame down

Melita waited, not something she was apt to do – but wandering deeper into the fathoms after someone who may not have the same predilection as returning to the entrance was foolish, even for her. Arms crossed over her chest, she sighed, eyes flickering briefly to the shadows tracing Clementine’s wake, watching as they flickered and bound from wall to wall, from cavern to cavern, an echo, a fringe, a laugh, before disappearing into the midst altogether. She elenchid her jaw and bit down on a number of sentiments and ruminations, permitting them to dissipate as Aurelia’s voice echoed back to her. Someone down there? Her eyes narrowed, and speculation coiled through her, advancing only a few steps, Fangorn at her heels.

And then the other woman reappeared further along the lane, and the tempestuous sheen to the honeybee remained, gaze a dangerous figment, until recollections pierced through the panting breaths, the feverish fervor of how and why she’d rampaged down into a world that she didn’t know.

Her stare softened, but not the rest of her, a cinder threatening to ignite, breathing softly, slowly, once more until the comprehension stirred too many other thoughts and emotions. “Ghosts. Sometimes Ludo plays tricks.” An easy estimation and assumption, given the prevalence and rise of its season. The duplicity had obviously worked. She could imagine the herald somewhere, cackling with glee. “I keep seeing my sister too.” A shrug, like it was nothing when it was everything, and the bountiful laughter had followed her everywhere and she wished it wouldn’t stop, that it never had.

But that wasn’t how the world had worked, and there was nothing she could do about it now.

Hands dropping down to her sides, contorting back over various weaponry, she turned, back towards the maze and labyrinth. “C’mon. We can go back. I know the way.” The youth had fought enough monsters in here – and had no intention of doing it again today.

to be lit up from within, vein by vein
to be the sun

Aurelia

I never had a chance to be soft
I was always bloody knuckles and shards of glass

Aurelia furrowed her brows at the mention of Ludo, this not being the first time Melita told her about the herald. She nodded curtly in understanding, as if that was totally not crazy. "Fun game..." she commented, every bit sarcastic. But she wouldn't question it, feeling a little too winded to anyway.

She straightened up, using the wall to push-pull herself up. She got a better look at Melita then, at the toughness in her demeanor. Nothing to give away that she was probably upset about seeing her sister, too. Aurelia's lips shifted in a thoughtful pout at Melita's casual shrug.

Wiping a line of sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, Aurelia followed slowly after Melita and her ever-present companion, Fangorn. He was admittedly starting to grow on her but, Aurelia wasn't so sure that Melita felt the same way about her. "I didn't know you had a sister. Did- Are you.. are you an outlander too? Is that how you lost her?" She swallowed a nervous knot in her throat and rambled on, "Sorry, you don't have to actually answer that. That's how I got separated from my sisters. So when I saw one of their.. ghosts run in here, and the governor told me that sometimes other people from the same worlds can end up here... I thought maybe she was real and I guess I got ahead of myself." There was a disappointed tune at the end of her words and her gaze fell to the ground.

Aurelia paused and glanced back the way they'd come, adding, "What is this place anyway?"

I wanted people to be afraid of me

Melita

Eating fire is your ambition
to swallow the flame down

“Could be worse,” she muttered, hands floating back over her weapons again as she turned back, as the bountiful giggles and chuckles, the beatific rhapsody started in her ears once more. A soft sigh floated and flickered form her lungs, coating the ash, the fire, the vitriol in her chest into something else entirely. Thereafter too, another voice blended within it, and every part of her ached and begged to turn around, to follow it as Aurelia had done with her spirits; to burst from the seams as her mother’s beautiful song reverberated along her heart. She knew it by rote and by refrain, every note precious and lovely, compelled to the back of her throat. The honeybee nearly hummed, and if she’d been by herself, perhaps she might have regaled and sung beside them, in the nestling of wildflowers, as they picked herbs, as they memorized the hues of butterflies and the measures of the wind. As they remembered and recalled bliss, before everything was gone, gone, gone.

But she moved forward, and Fangorn grumbled. Perhaps for comfort, she grabbed hold, lifted, and tucked him tight against her chest, listening to the hisses intertwine with the melody in her head. Aurelia was somewhere behind her, and the youth couldn’t look back, not right now, when thorns were sticking out of her heart. “I’m an Outlander.” And her jaw jutted outwards, as if her sedition towards the world might instill, might allow, her to not crack and break and fray. “But I lost them all before I came here.” And then not another word about it, seized by the knife in her ribs, by the taste of rancor on her tongue.

Around another pillar, another wall, as they circled back towards the entrance, as she strived to leave the spirits behind for now. But Aurelia continued, and Melita couldn’t, her gaze pinpointed to the floor, and then on the walls. She didn’t know anyone that hadn’t lost someone or something to this world or the last. “Sorry I yelled. That’s understandable.” She’d want to run after her sibling too, if she saw her, if she knew she could be here. She’d want to yield into her mother’s arms and cry the day away.

Another question, another inquiry, one she could handle in the murk. “This is Rae’s Fingers. We use it for smuggling, but there’s a lot of paths to purposefully confuse. I don’t know all of them.” Just the ones they’d used for destroying monsters; for demolition, for mayhem. Maybe that was all she was good for anyway. “We had to get rid of a lava octopus down here.”

to be lit up from within, vein by vein
to be the sun

Aurelia

I never had a chance to be soft
I was always bloody knuckles and shards of glass

"I'm sorry for that," she murmured.

As she looked back, the flicker of a small shadow and the distant bubbling of laughter made her stiffen. Her jawline clenched, the muscles there feathering shut, and she wrestled with the part of her that wanted to reach out to her sister. To hold her, tell her that everything would be alright, that she was still here. Only she wasn't still here, she was there, and she had to steady a shaky breath because that made her sadder than ever and that infuriated her.

Aurelia turned back to face Melita's back, stepping after her through the loose sands beneath them. They shifted beneath her weight and the beckoning of mischievous spirits persisted behind her but, she pressed on. "It's fine, don't worry about it. You were right, I shouldn't be down here. If you hadn't followed me down, I would've -without a doubt- gotten lost. I owe you one," she offered a half-smile, though Melita likely wouldn't see it.

She seemed keen on getting them out of the complex system of tunnels, steadfast, and... resistant to look Aurelia in the eyes. Aurelia peered around the side to try to see Melita's expression, hoping she wasn't upset. But, she straightened up as the other woman answered her question about where they were.

"I see," she nodded, brows furrowing thoughtfully as she glanced down the dark depths of a nearby passage. At the mention of a 'lava octopus' though, Aurelia's attentions snapped back to Melita, "Wait, you fought the lava. octopus?! Sunjata told me about that when I first met him. How in the hell did you all manage that?" She'd known beast-hunters in her old world but, she'd never been daring enough to try that line of work. She supposed she'd better start garnering an interest for it now, though...

I wanted people to be afraid of me

Melita

Eating fire is your ambition
to swallow the flame down

“I wasn’t strong enough.” And then a shrug of her shoulders, except it bit down and tore into her lungs, into her muscles, into her bones, a promise immersing between the inward scars and the lacerations down her spine, the puckered skin where she’d tried. Gods, she’d tried. But they’d been children and her hands hadn’t been calloused enough, even when her heart was seditious and rebellious, even when every singsong part of her soul had been enameled, coated, lacquered to become a belligerent part of their hell. They’d been innocent until they couldn’t be anymore, and little Clementine had paid the price, and her mother had sacrificed herself so they could be safe, so they could be free -

And how did Melita honor those rites?

The soft lullaby haunted her again, and one palm wiped away a tear threatening, brimming, brewing, a crack in the tough veneer, in the quaking mess of her life. Strong and formidable until she wasn’t, until there were just ghosts and phantoms in the corner of her eyes, in the harsh reminders that she’d erupted into the world because she’d had no other choice. That she was supposed to be better, and seemed to fail at those promises every day too. “It’s okay,” she presided back, swallowing away the abyss so it didn’t come through her tones, Fangorn clutched tighter, the vines snaking around her arms. Maybe the words were for herself and Aurelia. If they echoed and resounded enough, perhaps they’d be true. “You don’t owe me anything.” No debts. No favors.

She could feel the other woman surging up beside her, and on some challenging provocation, the youth’s limbs extended, stride and pace bestial, blistering, as they unwound and unwound, wandered and wandered. The lava octopus tale was far better than how she’d lost everyone, and the honeybee could tuck herself into that threshold, hide into the barbarity, rather than linger in failure after failure. “We went down a particular tunnel,” one emblazoned with warnings, with signs, with all the glyphs ensuring disaster, and like moths to flames, they’d all gone into its sanction. “And there it was. Likely had come from when the volcano erupted.” Eyes ahead, but her mind had already conjured the images back – with no ability to share them, not in the threshold of the caverns. “The team used a variety of things. Eloise had her illusions. Zeph had knives. Nate had his upgrades. Sunjata had his brass knuckles. I had my ice arrows.” There was a semblance of pride in the tone, for the bizarre collaboration they’d segmented, before it had all fallen apart thereafter.

to be lit up from within, vein by vein
to be the sun

Aurelia

maybe that's enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity
perhaps wisdom is realizing how small I am, and unwise

The anger ebbed away as Melita dismissed her sentiment of owing her for the - apparently, potentially live-saving - favor. She noticed her wipe her face quickly, briefly, just a fragment of how she probably really felt inside. Aurelia understood the sadness, understood not feeling like she was... enough for those that were lost. It was a heavy weight to carry. Strong enough, smart enough, didn't do enough; all of those things had crossed her mind.

Thoughts like that had been frequent in her youth, spurred on by the pain of watching her mother fade from the cancer. A vengeful fury that forever burned at the core of her soul for the fact that she couldn't avenge her father, no matter how hard she tried. It had pushed her away, away from everything she loved because she couldn't bear to watch it all slip through her fingers another time. She enveloped herself in her work so she didn't have to face that inevitable doom. She could just accept it when it eventually happened again.

And it had happened again, so she supposed it was time to really accept it...

In retrospect, she still felt the same way about those matters but, it had gotten easier to deal with the emotions wrought by them in the time that had passed. The years would wear on, and she could either move on with them - or stay lost in the past, with the ghosts of a life long-gone.

Melita suddenly adopted a stronger, broader body language as she carried on about the lava octopus incident. Aurelia could feel the pride coming off of her like an aura, and so she fell back into line behind the fiery girl, listening with a glint of awe in her eye.

She recognized all of the names, even Nate's. All except for one, Eloise. Was she the navigator they'd lost, that Jack had brought up once or twice? Aurelia wanted to ask, even parted her lips as the question formed against them, pressing outward. But she didn't let it leave her mouth, thinking better of it. Instead, something else came out, "That's good you were able to do that together and come out alright," it was a quiet compliment, not meant to boost ego but to acknowledge the dangerous feat, "In my home world, the wildlife was so aggressive and large.. so evolved to kill, that humans couldn't live on the surface. Not safely, anyway. So I'm used to living in places... like this, although maybe a bit more structural," her hand passed over the earthy, hardened wall as she passed it. It reminded her of the mines she worked in as a teenage girl.

"I had a few friends that hunted and gathered from the surface," she shook her head, emphasis on had, going on to say, "not many of them survived that career but, Torchline is nowhere near as... I don't know, terrifying? I know it's not a totally safe place, I don't think I'll ever be convinced that anywhere is truly safe. There's always something that could go wrong. But it's actually... really peaceful, in comparison," there was a wistful lilt in her voice, a softened expression that could only come from retaining a certain amount of fondness for this new place she .. might dare to call home. She'd never been able to really appreciate the beauty of her old world; she'd always been on the move. For once, she felt like she could sort of breathe.

"I know what it's like to feel like you're not enough," she said suddenly, looking back up at Melita, her voice darker, deeper, "I felt that way my who-ole life. It's been hard for me to understand what happened and, more than that, to adjust," she sighed, dust billowing through the heavy, dank air, "but I'm beginning to think that maybe, it's a kind of... opportunity. A chance to prove to myself that I am.. enough. And if I don't bust my ass to make this work, what else will I have?" she chuckled darkly at that.

and how far I have yet to go

Melita

Eating fire is your ambition
to swallow the flame down

Melita had strived not to live in the past, to not be shackled by her ghosts, by her wraiths, but gods some days were harder than others, especially when they whispered in her ear, when they spoke hushed lullabies from rote, from memory, from leagues of heavens and havens. They were only figments, only fractions of what she’d once had, and never would touch again. And maybe that was the harsher, blunter line of it - everything was a tease, a torment, ethers and vestiges of worlds she couldn’t return to.

They rounded another corner and Fangorn tucked himself into the crook of her shoulder, vines enveloping along the bristling muscles and the carefully arched mask. Her strides continued their brisk pace, and she didn’t glance behind to see if Aurelia was keeping up – expecting it, because she was doing all she could to evade the proposition, the notion, of completely falling apart in the middle of these damned caverns. The subject matter coinciding, gliding along, was easier than the previous ones, and she warred herself in their climate, stealing over the multitudes, the menace, the melancholy, fueled by the destruction, by the liberation, they’d liberated in these hollowed halls. She made no mention of the team immediately leaving three of them behind – tilting her head vaguely to indicate she was listening as Aurelia told a tale instead.

“You lived underground?” Her inquiry echoed off the stone, brow arching, not being able to process the notion of existing below everything else – but if the world had been as bad as the other woman said, it didn’t sound like there were many options. She didn’t want to give Aurelia false hope either though – while Torchline was better than most, there were plenty of other horrors. “There’s always something. But we don’t have monsters during LongNight. We don’t have cultists.” That she was aware of – she doubted the citizens here would take too kindly. “You take what you can get here.” Anywhere.

The honeybee didn’t expect the next round of words to hasten towards her; and instinct nearly honed in on her to bristle, to argue, to bluntly stride away, but she’d already said her piece. It was already left in the fringes, caught aloft and waved around. Melita had busted her ass at every opportunity. She trained. She grew. She challenged. She emerged.

And still, sometimes it wasn’t enough.

Then she’d rear her impudent, seditious little face towards the sun and dare it to try again.

So, she managed to twist her head over her shoulder, the slightest of smirks registering there. “We’ll see.”

to be lit up from within, vein by vein
to be the sun

Aurelia

maybe that's enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity
perhaps wisdom is realizing how small I am, and unwise

Aurelia followed Melita a little slower now, creating a more comfortable distance, relieving the pressure of her searching face. She watched as Fangorn nestled along her shoulder, watched his vines as they coiled. She could read the tension along the muscles beneath him, even through Melita's clothes and as they turned, she could see the flex of her shoulders and her arms, travelling up to her rigid jawline.

The line was only broken by a sudden, surprised question. A subtle grimace worked across Aurelia's own jaw, though, at the memories of living in that world. Or, more specifically, beneath it. "Yes, I did. But it wasn't so much a series of complex tunnels. We had entire cities beneath the surface, just like Haulani, and huge tunnels were used for traveling between places. Walls were built to hold everything up, to keep from collapsing. You didn't have to surface to get anywhere, and it was safer that way. When I was born, things'd been that way for so long that no one remembered any other way of living."

She let her gaze slide over the rocky texture of the walls, letting her hand fall away, as she listened to Melita's words about a long night and cultists. She wasn't sure what LongNight was, exactly, but by the sounds of it, it was bad. She murmured her agreement, though, about taking what you could get. "Mm. Yeah, I'm trying to. I plan on sticking with the Ark for as long as I can, at this point. I don't have.. anything else." And for Aurelia, that wasn't some deep, emotional feeling of loneliness. Though perhaps that was also true, her words were an actual reality. She had nothing without the Ark. Of course, she could carve out a different life if she had to but, something about these people she'd met... she wanted to stay, wanted to prove herself to them. Melita included.

We'll see.

Aurelia let the silence waft around them, listening to the echoes behind them - distant now, until they faded away, as if they had finally gone. She suddenly felt really grateful that Melita was there, because she really didn't know what would've happened otherwise. But she didn't bother her with more of that, sensing that this was hard for her too, and Aurelia was truly sorry for that. For inadvertently inflicting that pain.

A curious part of her lips interrupted the quiet, "Do you worship Ludo? You seem to know a lot about this stuff."

and how far I have yet to go

Melita

Eating fire is your ambition
to swallow the flame down

Tunnels below surfaces, walls upon walls, never breaking through to the clouds, to the sky, to the bolder riches of the air. Melita couldn’t imagine it – a child of the dust, of the dunes, of the sand, of the stone, wondering what it would be like to crawl her way through worlds like the one they wandered within presently, never knowing, never seeing, beyond the length of boulders or rock. Perhaps, if she’d never known anything else, it would’ve been a conceivable notion – but she’d been immersed in fire and scraped over nettles and thorns, and wouldn’t want to live amidst a wake of unrelenting voids. Not when she couldn’t set it all aflame. Not when she couldn’t bask in the sun. “And what do you think of this place now?” Beyond the thoughts of monsters and threats, to see something other than the wickedness, the terror, the tyranny – because gods, there were so many other wakes, so many other vestiges, so many other things to behold than the ghosts, the wraiths, the phantoms.

It was what she told herself, everytime the cruelty scraped down her skin.

Staying with the Ark, having nothing, chafed at the girl, and she wasn’t sure why. “You find your own family here,” buoyed form her instead, an impulsive reel – the way some clutched at stars, the way some grasped at potential, she had lingered and tried and forgot what it meant to take root until she’d found others striving to do the same.

And then silence while they walked, closer and closer to the exit, to the entrance, to the sparks of light and no monsters, no apparitions claiming them again. Fangorn loosened his grip, and she could feel him sliding down into the crook of her elbow, and the youth breathed, lightened, tried so desperately to cast the cloaks of specters off and away –

Not expecting the alteration in topics and subjects. Her eyes narrowed, and she glanced back over her shoulder, studying, scrutinizing, before deciding how best to navigate the inquiry. “Yes. I do.”

to be lit up from within, vein by vein
to be the sun

Aurelia

maybe that's enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity
perhaps wisdom is realizing how small I am, and unwise

Well, truthfully, Aurelia had only seen a fraction of Caido - and she had much to learn. So much. She almost felt born again, although under exceptionally cruel circumstances... eh, but, wasn't that life? No one is brought into these harsh worlds alone. There's comfort to be had in that.

"I wouldn't want to return to that life," she said firmly, and added, "I wouldn't belong there anymore, anyway, not after seeing just how different things can be."

Aurelia hummed out her agreement to Melita's statement about finding family. It certainly cropped up in the most unexpected of places, didn't it? Family, friends, new pursuits, another purpose. And Aurelia was trying to let go of the old to make room for the new, though that would always be easier said than done.

The fresh air of the open skies began to clear the dust from around them, and Aurelia breathed in a deep sigh. Though, she noted how her question about Ludo seemed to linger, to tense, in the air around them. When Melita gave her an odd, suspicious look over her shoulder in accompaniment with her curt answer, Aurelia's eyebrows raised in surprise.

"I'm not judging," she splayed her palms for a moment as if to say 'I mean no harm'.

"I've never been religious, didn't believe in it. The gods in my world didn't show up, like these ones do. If they had a hand in anything, it wasn't obvious. It was more reasonable, to me, to go through life without worshiping something that wasn't really there. So, I guess I'm just curious about what it's like when they are there," she paused, letting her explanation settle across the tension, "Has it been... I don't know, good? Following Ludo?"

and how far I have yet to go

Melita

Eating fire is your ambition
to swallow the flame down

No returning to the past – they couldn’t, were incapable, no escape, no means of evasion from where the Voice had brought them. Picked away from homelands, from destitute regions, or from utopian villas hadn’t really mattered. To find others of their ilk, of their family ties and tethers, was a monumental treasure itself; though sometimes Melita found herself not regarding it as warmly as she should’ve. They rounded more corners, more edges, while they conversed, while she stepped longer, while her limbs gained quick divisions. “I wouldn’t want to go back to mine either – one no longer exists, and the other was torture.” The Rift had been an actual hell – where she’d lost far more than she could have ever have imagined, too young, too weak, too fragile, the scars lining her back only some of the trauma inflicted.

But there she’d learned to persevere, to endure, to fortify, and perhaps that counted for something, in the end.

The glint of the light shown, and soon they were there, at the entrance, a sweeping gesture of familiarity and closure. She twisted her head back over her shoulder, past Fangorn, past the ramparts, and back to Aurelia’s features, noting the placating gesture. The other woman’s experiences sounded similar to a lot of other Outlanders – intriguing notions, when she’d known the walk and weight of cosmic beings since she’d been born, stretching her bones and limbs beneath clouds and light. “I have seen gods all my life. We had a deity of the Sun, and I would’ve followed him anywhere, had I been given the chance.” Had Helovia not been obliterated by a false paragon. Had they not all been so readily, damned lost.

So the semblances of Aurelia’s curiosity were understandable, and the youth didn’t provide judgment into those waltzes of perplexities either, hands going to her hips, weaponry still held in between grasps of flesh and wood. “Good, most of the time. But the gods are flawed, just like us.” A reminder, maybe to herself, maybe to anyone listening, that none of them were guiltless or infallible. There were always choices to be made, to be had. “Ludo once asked another to murder an Ascended.” And the Old Gods would always sneer, always bristle, always hate those from the other, newer goddess.

to be lit up from within, vein by vein
to be the sun