I'll Be There For You

phoebe Sleep and I shall soothe you, calm you, and annoint you "Well...I think they think I am stupid." she said with a sigh, looking down at him. Ludo was not as patient with her wrong conclusions as Safrin might have been. But she was determined to do better. "I only know tidbits of things, so what might seem obvious...apparently isn't to me." Briefly she wondered if she should tell him what the god had had said about his family, but quickly decided against it. It wouldn't help him. Not at this moment anyways. "But...everything is out of balance. The barrier...it cuts everything inside off from the gods Vi, Rae, and Mort. Interactions that need to happen aren't. And...there is some way to take the barrier down I suppose but...some Outlanders woke someone called the Voice who was trapped here and is the reason the barrier is up...to keep her and the ascended in." she said and frowned a little. "There is a plan to attack the Spire in the spring to try and take the barrier down...but if we do so while the Voice is awake..." She would be free. And all the suffering would have been for naught. "There are nuances I am missing...things I still don't understand...but...Long Night isn't the only thing that has gone off kilter."

Emmett had expected to hear Ludo's opinions on his late immediate family but it seemed instead Phoebe had been trusted with secrets of a much more celestial nature, things that he considered far away and not much to do with him. But it was a welcome reprieve from his sorrows so he listened and considered what she had to say. "Well...I dunno if I'd trust alla that. Ma always used to say if you only have one side of a story it's lopsided. Have ya spoken to The Voice? I don' know her, but she prolly has a different opinion of it all." He shrugged. Emmett did not see the Gods as fantastical beings but more a group of bickering friends who happened to control his world. He was sure that the things Phoebe described were probably a squabble, not the grand universe-changing series of events she told. But he couldn't disagree that this Longnight had been much more severe in his experience than the ones prior. "...I do hope they can fix whatever is up, though. We can't be havin' this much death every year. It'll destroy everyone." Emmett I'll buy you a horse my love, and honey you shall ride And all my delights shall be walking at your's side Will stop at every lil' house, and drink when where are dry Be truth to one another, get married by and by.

phoebe Sleep and I shall soothe you, calm you, and annoint you Phoebe shook her head a little. "Usually I would agree with you on that." she said quietly. "But...in this case I think it is closer to the truth. Just think about it, even you said this Long Night has been worse than usual. The only difference of significance is this Voice person is somehow awake." she said, stroking his hair to distract herself a little. "Besides...I don't think I should talk to her. Safrin told me the Voice would prey on my ignorance." she said with a quiet sigh. She knew just enough to be dangerous. "But I worry what will happen if we manage to destroy the spire and the barrier before she is resealed." Her lips pressed together. There was so much going on so far outside her scope of reason or ability, it was daunting. "But if the barrier doesn't come down...it'll only get worse. They can't even..." she stopped and shook her head. She didn't want to mention that the souls of his family hung in a state of limbo.

"Ludo, Safrin, Frey... you really gotta lotta God friends, huh?" Emmett asked with a little teasing smirk, the first smile he hadn't had to put effort in since he woke up. That Phoebe had met so many divine beings in her short time here made it seem like she'd decided it was her hobby. The thought made him laugh, Phoebe running from shrine to shrine for God dates. Her talk of bringing the barrier down seemed innocently ignorant to him. Since he was born Emmett had heard promises of the spire's destruction and the freeing of Caido, seen cocksure heroes storm off and never return. He was sure he'd never see the fall of the barrier in his life time. "I...wouldn' worry 'bout the barrier if I were you, Bee. We'll... know 'bout Longnight for next year and be ready. The rest of it really hasn' got anything to do with us. We don' need to worry ourselves with that." Emmett gathered all of his strength and leaned up on his good elbow to kiss just under Phoebe's chin. Emmett I'll buy you a horse my love, and honey you shall ride And all my delights shall be walking at your's side Will stop at every lil' house, and drink when where are dry Be truth to one another, get married by and by.

phoebe Sleep and I shall soothe you, calm you, and annoint you Her cheeks flushed a little, wondering if maybe it was some sort of faux pas to discuss god interactions with people amongst those native to Caido. "W-well...I didn't set out to. It's just sort of...happened that way. Frey I met at first on accident. It was...terrifying really, but they kept someone from hurting me so I went back to give them an offering as thanks...but I didn't realize that doing so could make them show up again...and then the told me to...ah...well that doesn't really matter I suppose." she said, turning bright red. Telling him that she had a sex quest from Frey, the deity of sexuality and sensuality? Yeah, that might not go well...or at least she assumed so. Maybe everything would become forced after and she didn't want that. "Safrin I went to apologize to. There is an Outlander named Bastien who...well he is a jerk and he insulted her and I was worried she might take her insult out on other people so...I apologized on his behalf. She was really quite nice...if any were my friends she would probably be the closest." She had been very friendly, on the verge of familial. Frey...well Frey thought she was boring. "And...well I already said Ludo probably thinks I am stupid." she said with a sigh. So...god friends? More like god acquaintances. At least he smiled a little. A real one this time. But as he turned to the topic of the spire and the barrier and...how it didn't affect any of them she frowned. It just wasn't true. It affected all of them. The important to the forgettable, the big to the small, the divine to the mundane - they were all affected by it. He kissed her chin and she smiled a little, looking at him sadly. "You're wrong, Emmett. It does affect us." she said quietly. She had wanted to avoid talking about what Ludo had said of his family, knowing it would only bring him more troubled emotions. But...he was so convinced that he somehow didn't matter, that his life was insignificant and boring, that it would continue to be. And maybe he never would be a famed hero, and she would never be anything but a midwife lost to time but...they still had souls, and they were as trapped as anyone. "Ludo is supposed to guide the dead to whatever the final resting place is for the soul. But the barrier...it's in the way. So everyone who has died here is just...waiting. Not in pain but not at peace either." she said quietly.

"Wow, tha's a lot. You've been busy." Emmett commented. He'd gone his 19 years without speaking to a single God. The news of this annoying Outlander who had started a church was beyond him but he nodded along anyway, not in the right state of mind to find out about it. Any important information would go in one side of his head and slide out the other. Phoebe insisted that the matters of the barrier and the Gods did in fact have a lot to do with them. He was dismissive until she mentioned souls. Immediately he understood the implication, that his own family were in limbo. But...he found himself unable to summon any kind of emotion about the fact, his heart too numbed by shock and everything else. "...Oh. Well...that's...bad. But what're you gonna do about it? Why haven' the Gods fixed it yet? It's their stuff." It seemed they weren't going to agree on the importance of all of this, not yet. Emmett's mind was too full of things concerned with the very mortal concerns of the farm and his body to think of matters of the universe. "But...hey. If you care about it, then I bet you'll sort it out. You're real resourceful, Bee." Emmett I'll buy you a horse my love, and honey you shall ride And all my delights shall be walking at your's side Will stop at every lil' house, and drink when where are dry Be truth to one another, get married by and by.

phoebe Sleep and I shall soothe you, calm you, and annoint you She wasn’t sure why but the way he said that felt more like an insult than an off-handed comment. Phoebe swallowed a lump in her throat with a frown, looking down at her lap but not at him. Her whole countenance and demeanor had fallen with her gaze. Had she been in a better emotional state herself, and better rested, it probably wouldn’t have hurt her feelings as much as it did, but now she couldn’t help the tears welling up in her eyes. ”O-oh…” she said quietly, her hurt obvious in her tone, even in that singular syllable. Ludo thought she was dumb. Frey thought she was vanilla. Emmett thought it was weird she had spoken to any of them. She brought some kind of bad luck to the Palmer’s obviously. Could she do anything right? ”If they could fix it I think they would have. Obviously it’s more complicated than that.” she said quietly, still not looking at him. ”And it isn’t just their thing. Its all connected. You don’t look at a field of crops and say well it’s the plant’s job to grow why does the farmer need to tend it?” she said as an example. It wasn’t so cut and dry as who had what responsibility, because they were all responsible in different ways. ”But I am just starting to learn about these deities. I didn’t even grow up somewhere where gods existed. I…don’t know yet what I am going to do.” she said quietly, only then daring to glance at him. ”And I can tell you don’t really care to help so…I don’t know.” By the end, her voice was hardly above a whisper. Phoebe merely shrugged at his final comment, feeling increasingly defeated and useless as the seconds passed. She couldn’t even comfort Emmett, what made her think she could help anyone else? She was just a stupid Outlander girl who didn’t know anything about anything, trying to understand things she had no business understanding. She was just in the way, causing more problems than she was fixing. ”I’ll shut up about it now though. I’m just being bothersome.”

Emmett had a lot of affection for Phoebe, he really did, but as he heard the hurt in her voice and saw the offence on her face...his initial reaction in the moment was to sigh. He was hurting, tired and at the moment entirely unconcerned with Gods. But he couldn't lose her, not now, and she had saved his life. He summoned all the effort he could and apologetically smiled. "Sorry, Bee. It's fine. I'm just...I'm in a weird mood right now, ya know? Hard t'think about all that stuff when I can' feel my arm. But if this is all important to you, then I'll make it important to me too...when I'm done healing." He felt that was fair enough. One could hardly be expected to care much about the interpersonal squabbles of Deities when their stomach had holes in it. Speaking of his healing...Emmett felt his eyes grow heavy and his pain become once again overpowering, pushing him closer to a necessary and rejuvenating sleep. "..Is uh...is it alright if I go back t'sleep for a bit? I...I can' focus properly on alla this." Emmett I'll buy you a horse my love, and honey you shall ride And all my delights shall be walking at your's side Will stop at every lil' house, and drink when where are dry Be truth to one another, get married by and by.

phoebe Sleep and I shall soothe you, calm you, and annoint you Oh yes. That sigh definitely made Phoebe feel better. Loads better. Nothing like an outward sign of exasperation to make a girl feel like they weren’t being a nuisance. Have you noted the sarcasm in the narrators writing tone yet? Because if you haven’t, you should now, if only because it was stated. Phoebe’s only reaction to the sighed was to lift a hand and roughly rub at the tears in her eyes. His apology was a surprise, and she chanced to look at him again. ”It’s okay…I’m just being selfish I guess. I haven’t really slept either.” she said quietly. It had been stupid of her to say anything at all, airing her concerns and worries to him while he was still healing and hurting. She really was as dumb as Ludo probably thought she was. She also held out little hope that he would make her worries important to him. Why would he? He was just trying to get her to stop having a pity party when she didn’t deserve one. The blonde nodded when he asked if he could sleep. ”Of course. Here, just drink this quick before you do. It will help with the pain.” she said, offering him a small cup of tea. It was something else she had snitched from the infirmary, and she had brewed it to be strong, covering the bitterness with a hint of honey.

Phoebe was clearly upset, but it wasn't something Emmett really knew how to fix. She was talking about things that really didn't matter to him when he had several broken bones and a likely concussion. The time for apologies was later when he could think straight. For the moment he just leaned forward to drink the tea she offered, wrinkling his nose at the taste. Still, it helped to relax him as the pain ebbed away from his body and he rested more against Phoebe, the room slowly fading away as his eyes forced themselves shut and he fell asleep. Emmett I'll buy you a horse my love, and honey you shall ride And all my delights shall be walking at your's side Will stop at every lil' house, and drink when where are dry Be truth to one another, get married by and by.