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Post by Deleted on Nov 23, 2016 4:31:48 GMT -6
While Lily just kind of let things flow, Guinevere tried quite a bit not t ‘read’ too much of the memories. She had learned that the deeper you dove, the harder it was to get out with your mind still in one piece. Well, mostly one piece, anyway.
The first thing that bubbled up was something that mentally reeked of the feeling of death – something not unfamiliar to Guinevere, and certainly something she didn’t want to look at for the sake of helping her friend. A linkage there would probably spill a few dozen grim deaths from Grimm into her mind, and that wouldn’t be conducive to that at all. Almost as if playing dodgeball with giant soap bubbles, Guinevere mentally sidestepped in the mental field of memories as it passed by.
Then came on some happier feelings – the bubbles were brighter, almost opalescent with a soft light streaking their surface. Guinevere took this time to ponder over Lily for a moment. Why bubbles of all things? For herself, they were Roses, and Azure they were half completed music scores. They at least made some sense if you knew the person. Perhaps they had been something different and this was just a fuzzy effect of Contagion. Bubble after bubble flew by, and Guinevere was getting rather content. She even thought she might have heard laughter from one of the bubbles.
Then there was a mental roar and a darkening of the whole place as she retorted to Guinevere’s statement. Mentally, she whisked away the bubble she sent her way. Guinevere would have none of that. She can’t be beautiful? Guinevere would show her.
Though Guinevere’s form wouldn’t be in Lily’s mind’s eye, she’d see a rose blossoming there, composed by a visual cacophony of color. Perhaps a bit dazzling, this was one of the multitudes of memory fragments of Guinevere in its raw form. Her teammates paged through and ‘wrote’ to them in a fashion when they were studying and doing homework, and the apparent disorder plagued Sepia. From this particular rose, a small petal, as white as snow, was plucked and brought ‘forward’ in a sense, as to sort of shift the picture for a moment.
Lily would be looking through Guinevere’s mental eyes now, as if she were rushing somewhere. Then, she might see something akin to herself there. She seemed a little less weathered and a lot better for wear. In the hospital room, outside this memory, Guinevere voiced “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” With another dive, Lily would come to a strange scene. A number of rose petals drifted and danced in and about tongues of flame extending from a pale white bonfire. “That’s you learning how to sew.” Half-recorded pictures, somehow a part of Guinevere’s memory, but through Lily’s eyes flashed with each flicker of the flame.
She hadn’t taken Lily as a fire type, but with the wilderness, it did make a bit of sense. Regardless, this was the first time Guinevere actually looked at the thing. She had not been expecting something like this, to say the least and was a bit transfixed by the glow and dance of the flame. She mentally shook her head to free herself from her daze after some silence, and Lily would have the idea that she did so. “That is you, and if you do not believe that is beautiful, then you need to camp more.” Because what camper was not enthralled by the beauty of a bonfire? “Yeah, a fire can be dangerous, but only so long as you feed it.”
The flame flickered like a candle in the wind and blew out. Rather than any sense of vertigo, Guinevere tugged the bubble Lily had just passed by her – the one from the Cathedral – along with the brightest, most opalescent one she could grab from those Lily had brought up. She could hear a couple screams from the darker bubble, but there were flickers of light in there on occasion. She brought both of them forward simultaneously so Lily would seem to be in both places of memory at once. “In which of these would you rather be?”
A mental image of that flame superimposed itself on both scenes, matching quite well the color of the bubbles in their initial form. “Which would you rather feed?”
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Post by Aegle Vitus on Nov 23, 2016 17:36:14 GMT -6
It was with uncharacteristic silence and restraint that Aegle listened to her friend speak, following her own outpouring of information at Lily's request. Even if she had been able to stay positive and perky and just generally act like herself throughout the trying precedings of the previous week, she wasn't entirely ignorant to the impact those precedings might have had. As much as other people might understandably expect her to be childish and oblivious, even she couldn't be entirely blind to the repercussions of the basilica tragedy. True, she had taken those events on the chin, just like she always did, but her emotions surrounding them remained complicated enough that she still wasn't entirely sure how to parse them. High on the list of those complicated emotions were those surrounding Lily. Aegle had not been the first to visit her friend, and her visit had not come as soon as it was allowed, by accident. Aegle had been waiting to be let into her friends room. She had been waiting to be allowed to see her friend, a friend who, for all Aegle's light hearted affectation, she had been deeply, almost fatally concerned about.
Aegle wore this fact plainly enough, just like she wore all her other feelings plainly on her sleeve, but her concern was mixed in with relief that Lily was evidently alive and uncertainty as to how to deal with her friend. For as much of an outsider as Lily might have seen herself as, Aegle honestly wasn't much better equipped for dealing with other people. Her genuine concern and affability had always been hampered by inexperience and insensitivity, and it was those two short comings which most hampered her right then. As Lily spoke, her words uncertain and faltering, Aegle was aware that her friend was hurting and how much of a toll the past week had to have taken on her, but was also powerless to do anything about it. She felt sure there was some magical combination of words and action which would balm Lily's hurt, but she didn't know what it was. She was helpless to behave in any way other than how she always did.
"I don't really know how friends talk." Aegle said absently, smile unwavering but eyes dropping to regard Lily's hand, still clutched in the linen swathed grip of her own. "I kinda feel like I ain't talkin' right, most of the time." she affected a slight shrug at this thought and, with mixed results, tried to stroke the back of Lily's hand with one of her own, while the other maintained her loose grip. "Not like I don't say words right or anythin' like that. I know I do that. More like I dunno what to say or I say the wrong stuff." Her grip, even when she squeezed, was remarkably loose, but she gave Lily's hand such a squeeze then. She was silent for a few moments after that, her emerald eyes still watching Lily's hand while her own ineffectually stroked and squeezed it. That silence said a lot more than any words, no matter how honest, could have possibly hoped to. With her usual open, honest and utterly transparent way, Aegle broadcast what she was feeling, rather than trying to explain it. And that feeling, as well as uncertain and even a little frustrated, was startlingly close to insecure.
"I got two other brothers, Arron and Vulcan," Aegle said abruptly, turning her attention back to Lily's face as all vestiges of self doubt and anxiety melted away, supplanted by a genuine brightness and openness upon her cherubic countenance. "And there's my Dad too. He's an engineer; S'worked on a lot of big stuff for Legion's army. I dunno what he does, exactly, but I guess ya need to be real smart to do it, cause he's real smart." She told Lily, with all the surety of youth.
"Vulcan too." Aegle continued after a short moment of thought. "He's my biggest brother." Hesitating, the orange haired girl cocked her head thoughtfully to one side, "Well, not 'biggest' biggest, that would be Arron, but 'oldest' biggest, ya know?" Shortly, her smile returned, and Aegle refocused her green eyed gaze on Lily.
"He builds robots." She chirped happily, displaying exactly as much comprehension for Vulcan's job description as she evidently possessed for her father's. Not that she was far off the mark on this point. Vulcan Vitus was well recognized and respected in the field of robotics, even among Legion's specialists.
"He built my brace for me. And the one before that. And he helped me build my Oupis. He's gonna help me build the next one too, soon as he figures out a way around the power limitations."
Falling silent again, Aegle visibly reordered her thoughts, and gradually recovered from the warm, prideful glow which had overcome her as she spoke about her smart and talented family, whose overall intelligence and talent she was only somewhat exaggerating.
"Arron's my 'biggest' big brother." She said finally, "He's like me. He ain't smart like Mom and Dad or Vulcan and Paeon." Grinning absently, Aegle's attention drifted away from Lily's face and took in the bandages which so thickly surrounded her own hands.
"He's always been real good with his hands though, and always been real strong too. I never knew him when he was a kid, but Vulcan always says how he was a real handful for Mom and Dad. Always gettin' into fights and doin' dumb stuff, just to prove he could." Gosh, who did that sound like?
"He's a great fighter too. Strong, quick and really, really tough." Aegle's gaze returned to Lily's, as if to assure the bed-bound faunus of this irrefutable fact. She spoke with something almost approaching awe, as if nothing was more fantastic than watching Arron fight someone.
"Y'ever heard of the Specialists?" She asked in an almost conspiratorial term. She was, naturally, referring to the elite soldiers of Legion's expansive military, a group of commando trained combatants who, appropriately enough, specialized in precision and solo operations with a degree of efficacy most hunting teams could not match. They were the epitome of strength, resilience and duty among Legion's citizenry, highly respected and renowned for the skill and bravery.
"Well Arron's one of 'em. He's fought dozens Grimm by himself, and ain't ever backed down from a fight. He knows how to use every weapon the army has and can even use some specialized hunter gear, and can beat most of the other specialists in an arm wrestle." How much of this was actually true, and how much was the fanciful emboldening of the truth by an obviously star-struck younger sister, was left up to Lily's discretion.
"He never let not bein' smart keep him from helpin' people."
Another silence followed this outburst, though this one felt less like the dutiful reordering of thoughts than it did like the necessary cool down for a sudden explosion of excitement. Slowly, Aegle's eyes refocused and she found herself staring into Lily's once again.
"I... Uh... Don't have any other family. No sisters or nothin'. My parents had me kinda late, ya know? Not really on purpose... So that's probably it. Don't think they want anymore after what happened with me. Paeon has a girlfriend though..." Her smile quirked uncertainly, and she plainly resisted the urge to rub the back of her neck or scratch the back of her head. "Uh... I dunno really what I would ask ya... Do ya know anything else 'bout me ya wanna know?"
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Post by Celia Abbott on Nov 23, 2016 21:07:40 GMT -6
She smiled sadly, hearing her Lily’s voice. It wasn’t sickly, nor weak, but it was...subdued. Quiet. Resigned. It broke her heart to see her friend in such a state, and even though she knew she could provide some comfort and something better than hospital food, she also knew that such was the extent of her abilities here. Her friend was hurt, and badly, Celia was no doctor. She was barely even a warrior. What could she hope to accomplish here that professionals could not? Why had she even come here - to mock her friend with her own gift of continued health? She idly noticed the other girl sleeping in the corner, connected to Lily by a ribbon for a purpose she could not immediately understand. Whatever it was, though, it seemed to be helping at least a bit. Lily was smiling now. Her eyes drifted away, and she clutched the small stuffed toy that sat in her lap.
"I really screwed up, huh?"
She pulled aside the chair next to Lily’s bed and sat down quietly, careful not to make the chair creak or groan against the floor as it moved. She was closer now, and could more clearly see her friend’s features. In a way Celia was reminded of her mother, on the cold nights she would stay up late and sit at the dinner table, sipping a deep red liquid from a glass and staring forlornly at a framed picture. Celia never saw what the picture was of, but she didn’t need to see it to know what it was.
It was her father.
Lily bore the signs not just of someone who had almost died, but of someone who had felt loss - the loss of something vital and precious, something that made them who they were. Her eyes wandered to the arm, and she had to repress a shudder as they met the twisted black vines of corrupted flesh that littered the appendage. The eye though...god, the eye. It was unsettling just to glance at it, to do any more would have likely put her into a panic attack. She didn’t dwell on the injury for long, but...she could swear she felt the crystal in her barrette pulsing as she turned her attention away.
Celia shook her head, but could not say any more. What could she possibly say here that hadn’t already been said? What comfort could she provide that someone else had not already given in far more generous amounts?
"How are things? Any news? How is Raven, and the rest of the students? Has the war begun yet?"
Celia smiled softly at her friend. Even as she lay in a hospital bed, body broken and spirit shattered, still she worried about others. She gently rested her hand on Lily’s leg, hoping the contact would not startle her, and spoke in a motherly whisper. “Everyone is fine, nothing else has happened. You just focus on getting rest, okay?” She understood the frustration of not being able to fight when it was known that she would be needed, but at the same time, she wouldn’t allow her friend to push herself. To do so would make her a hypocrite, but she would rather be a hypocrite with a living friend than an honest woman with a dead friend.
The flame clone cleared its throat, a puff of ethereal ember dancing away from its body with the sudden movement from stillness. It gestured to the pot it held, and Celia motioned it over and relinquished her chair. The clone sat, resting the pot in its lap, letting out a sigh at finally having a chance to sit and rest.
"I... I am happy to see you again, you've been taking good care of her?"
The question was directed at the clone, who perked up and tilted its head. It smiled, amused, and let out a gruff chuckle. “Yeah. Keepin’ her out of trouble.” Celia huffed in the corner in protest, and the clone just shook its head. It tapped the pot with a finger, resulting in a small *clink* noise, and Celia’s attention shifted. She fished a small wooden bowl and a metal spoon out of the small bag she carried, and waited for the clone to open up the pot and pour some of it into the bowl.
“I got the bowl from your campsite, I hope you don’t mind. I figured a touch of home might be nice.” With the spoon, she idly stirred the soup in the bowl as she continued. “It’s rabbit stew, with wild onions and potatoes. Mom used to make this for me and dad when we got sick. She always said ‘nothing heals the body like good food and lots of sleep.’ “ She stopped stirring and set the bowl down on a table beside Lily so it could cool from the constant heat the flame clone had it under. “I know it isn’t much, but…” The clone moved itself off the chair and onto the ground, still holding the pot in it’s lap, while Celia took the chair once again. “I hope it...at least helps. If only a little.”
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Post by lilywilde on Nov 28, 2016 0:53:06 GMT -6
----- Never stop Running ----- tag: --- // words: --- // notes: --- Guinevere
Lily stared at the twin flames held aloft by Guinevere. One of them dark, showing her corruption and the frenzy she'd entered. She raised a hand in her mind's eye to the memory, this was a part of her now. It was something she'd never forgive herself for, and something that would always lurk within her mind.
The second memory was easier to forget, as many good memories often were in a world full of turmoil and strife. It was day she had been left to die out in the wilderness.
She had been sick a lot before that, and had always been a sickly child. She was cold, alone, and waiting for death. She knew what happened to children like her who weren't fit for membership in the tribe. She knew it was because she was weaker than the others. The tribe would never acknowledge her as one of their own again, and she wouldn't ever find a new home. She was feverish, and cold. She had been alone for no more than twenty minutes before a grimm had cornered her in a cave. She whimpered, waiting for death, and called for her mother. Much to Lily's surprise, her mother came. As did her father. They had stolen away from the tribe with medicine, and food, and together the four of them, no, the three of them sat in that cave. They nursed Lily back to health, and soon after began her training in Aura and combat. Her mother strengthened Lily's body, and her father strengthened her Aura. After a certain point, Lily was no longer sick. She would get sick less and less as she grew more proficient in both of her training methods. She caught flashes of days with her parents. Saw herself grow older, and stronger. The memory ended with them all sitting around the campfire. It's flames shone within the flames that Guin was showing her. Flickering, almost warm in spite of the nature of Guinevere's semblance. She reached out and held both memories, as if weighing them in her mind.
"These are both a part of me," She said holding fixating on the warmer memory first. "Whether it's family, and the bonds that I have failed to protect, or," she refocused on the awful memory at the basilica "the people I've failed in my life. They are both in me. Fire is inherently destructive. It is not about what you feed it, but rather how closely you watch it, and care for it. You have to know that if I am fixated on the awful parts of myself, it is because I fear what will happen if those fires aren't cared for properly. I... I will acknowledge that there is good within me. However, there are horrible things within me too. These monstrous qualities must be held in check, lest they suffocate the flames of my goodness. So, it is not about which of them I feed. I must tend both of these fires. I can not forget that my consequences have actions. Every tragedy that I have been a part of has been partially my own foolhardy, careless fault." She looked down at the bed now, and saw the tattered ruins of the bed sheets. "Even in my sleep I am dangerous, and it is much easier to destroy than to repair." She said fully aware the both of the girls present had the ability to fix the sheets she had destroyed. "But... I will never stop trying to be better than my darker self, no matter how forlorn I may become. That is also my nature, and well, I have a promise to keep."
As her little speech concluded, she stared once more at happier memories of her mother, father, and her all seated around a campfire. Watching the crackling embers as they burned low. Her mother rested her head on her father's shoulder, and the two of them watched Lily as she stuck her face as close as she dared to the fire. She was young, still eight, and full of wonder. She was a girl who didn't care where in the world she was so long as her parents were there with her. She sighed and put the memories away after that. "It's nice to be reminded of the good in my life, but I can never forget the bad. It would be too disrespectful towards those who have fallen if I did."
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Aegle
"For what it's worth, I am a fan of the way you talk. Don't worry about talking right or anything around me. You talk honestly, directly. I never have to second guess your motive or wonder if you're holding back. It's nice, y'know?"
Lily listened to Aegle once again provide a short biography for the members of her family. It sounded like they were all incredibly accomplished. She didn't know hardly anything about robotics, and when Aegle mentioned Vulcan building them, she had to ask "What's an Oupis?"
Her further comments regarding her other brother, the Specialist Arron, made Lily smile. It was clear that she adored all of her family members talents, but his especially. Strangely as Aegle stroked Lily's hand, Lily didn't react at all. The only other person who had touched her without some desire to pull away present in Lily had been Solomon. She wasn't sure what it was, the two individuals couldn't be more different from each other. She squeezed Aegle's hand lightly saying "You sound like you really look up to your older brother..." Listening to all of that helped Lily. Somehow, hearing about a family that could stick together made Lily happier. She smiled weakly and asked "Why did he choose the life of a hunter? And for that matter, why did you? This is no easy life, and to be honest I've never met anyone with your drive. Where does it come from? How do you keep going no matter what happens?" She had to know. Was it born from a desire to help others? Or was there more to it than that? Where did she draw her strength from? She had a million more questions for the girl, but she knew that talking too rapidly was never super easy for Aegle to process. That was the one trait that Lily envied in Aegle more than any other. None could claim that Lily was anything but driven, but Aegle took it to another level. She wondered, would this orange haired girl be doubting herself right now had the same thing happened to her? She couldn't imagine her doing anything but charging ahead no matter what lay behind her, or in front of her. Lily aspired to be more like that, but she really didn't feel as if she had the strength.
She noticed then that the tears had dried up at long last, and decided to stop thinking along those lines before she began crying once more. Being able to focus on something other than her own misery was doing a world of good for Lily, but she knew that they would have to talk about the elephant in the room sooner or later. As one final question, one last gasp of that wretched thought pattern she asked in a weak, shaking voice. "D'ya think I did the right thing? I hurt a lot of people, but... I dunno, I think I'd do it again. She would have hurt Amber, and... well, I dunno." She still couldn't believe the message she'd been shown. Still couldn't believe that Solomon would associate with people like that. She didn't want to believe that the boy was anything but the brave young man that saved her. She yearned to talk to him when she returned to Vytal, and wondered if he'd come visit her in the hospital ward over there. "Figuring out what's the right thing isn't as easy as I thought it'd be."
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Celia
Lily reached for the pot of food as it was sat nearby absentmindedly. The handcuff holding her wrist to the bed rail clattered, and Lily felt it dig into her wrist once more.
"Ah... the nurses usually unlock them for food... They're afraid I'd run away again." She said sinking into the bed a little, her ears flattened, and she seemed to deflate a little bit. "I'm uhh... glad that everyone is alright." She said trying to get her mind off of her captivity. She wondered, not for the first time, if she would be arrested and dragged off campus to some dark jail cell. They certainly had no qualms about treating her like a prisoner in the hospitals. It was worse in legion, they hadn't even let anyone in to see her until her last day there, and the nurses and doctors lacked the personal touch that those at Vytal had. Celia's hand on Lily's leg was uncomfortable, but she didn't say anything. She didn't want to upset the girl. She fidgeted a little, and said "The uhh...Food smells really good." Every time she opened her mouth to speak, her voice lacked the normal energy that was characteristic of Lily's normal speech. She sighed, and looked away from her friend. In spite of Guin's connection stopping most of the bad feelings from taking control, she felt a tear roll down her cheek. She didn't deserve this kindness, not after what she'd done. When would the hammer fall? When would she be punished for what she'd done? So far nobody had even mentioned the atrocity she'd committed.
"I've got a million questions about what's been happening in this last week, but, well, I'm sure that you've got a lot for me as well. Ask anything you want, I uhh... I think it's best if people know the whole story." Her gaze fell on the eyes on her arm, and she shuddered. Each time she saw that monstrous sigil she winced. She felt connected to something darker now. She had always lived near the darkness, but now it was inside of her as well. It's foul tendrils digging ever deeper into her soul. She had no idea what sort of news regarding the truth of the basilica incident had circulated, but she feared the worst. She wondered if her face was plastered for all to see as a murderer, and shuddered at the thought. She couldn't imagine that anyone would have come see her at all if that were the case, but then she figured a few of her friends might still see her in spite of that.
She looked between Celia and her clone, neither seemed to regard Lily with anything but gentle open countenances. Their concern was genuine, and to the best of her knowledge, they weren't thinking about anything else. Perhaps they didn't know what Lily had done. She wouldn't be too surprised if that were the case. They had done a wretched job of keeping the young faunus informed about the outside world while she'd been in the hospital. The hospital staff in Legion had been particularly busy. A lot of people had been injured at the basilica, and she hadn't been back at Vytal long enough to really get a grip on things.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 28, 2016 1:54:10 GMT -6
Guinevere contemplated softly over the words Lily spoke looking at the two twinkling fires through her mind’s eye. She still was not inclined to pry at the memories, so just let them flicker for her. She liked campfires, and it had been a while since she had watched one for any length of time. She got a small smile in seeing the young Lily’s perspective of scooting into the fire. It almost reminded her of the way she acted around stage actors when she first went around the performance districts of Pinnacle. She jumped out a bit, and quickly. Lily’s perspective probably wouldn’t change, but Guinevere was dealing with a bit of mental whiplash now.
She noted the bedsheets’ state as she snapped out of her trance slightly. Yeah, those needed work, but Lily’s dreams would be a better place to work on it. Judging from the quantity of equipment in the room and hall on the way over, and the restraints, they were probably sedating her any chance they got. Her eyes moved up and glared at the door for a brief moment before looking down at Lily. Though she disagreed with the feeding fires thing, she would let that smolder. “Well, sometimes we need reminders of what we have that is good and what makes us fortunate – we can use and give those things we have in plenty to others.”
She shifted the blankets Lily was arranged under. “Speaking of this though, how have the nightmares been?” She asked the question almost as if knowing a bit more on the material – from experience, in some sense of the word. “I get them occasionally, too. Grimm minds leave close to the same mental scars as what you’ve got going on.” She tried to cover her tracks a little with the statement. “If you wanted to sleep on your own, I can be your…” She paused a moment. She didn’t want to mention an angel because of the cathedral incident, but didn’t have much of a childhood to really think about nightmares.
Then, a fuzzy thought popped into her head. “…your teddy bear, I suppose?” She had done similar things for some of the children at the Orphanage back while she was still there. Admittedly, for most it was just helping them block out bad memories and such for a bit more restful sleep when they needed it, and not coping with Void Dust or Grimm. “In the very least, I can help so you don’t well…” she trailed off, nodding towards the bloodied wrists and the torn sheets. She left it at this, waiting to see if Lily would like anything to do with the idea.
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Post by Aegle Vitus on Nov 29, 2016 3:11:44 GMT -6
"The Oupis? It's my weapon, obviously." Aegle answered enthusiastically, though she added quietly, "But I guess ya ain't seen it yet..."
Then her unconscious smile, seemingly unaffected by everything the two of them had been through in the past week, seemed to freeze on her face when Lily asked about her motivations for being a hunter. Her face was an honest one, as easy to read as an open book. Like everything else, Aegle didn't hold back when it came to her emotions, and she broadcast those emotions without shame or restraint. Which made it pretty obvious any time she didn't show the whole scope and breadth of what she felt. Swallowing, Aegle slowly lowered her eyes and looked at the hand she was holding. It struck her how delicate Lily's hands were, despite the fact that, much like Aegle, they served as her primary weapon. She didn't doubt there was strength in her fingers and a keen edge to her claws, having experienced both, but that knowledge was undermined somewhat by the fact that Lily's hand was nearly invisible beneath the thickly swathed bandages that covered Aegle's own hands. Nobody could accuse Aegle's hands of being delicate. Had she been a little less blunt and a little less direct in her mindset; Had she understood poetry or romance as more than just words some teacher had tried and failed to teach her, Aegle might have seen something poignant in her offensive, blunt instruments, the only weapons she was fit to wield, delicately surrounding Lily's. Aegle was not a poet, however, and she had never understood philosophy or metaphor any more than was necessary to spell them. She wasn't like Lily, who could see and appreciate things at more than just their face value, which was the very quality that let her like Sol when the rest of Legion wanted him dead. Aegle felt that distance though, that lack of comprehension coupled with an inability to articulate it. She'd felt it for much of her life. She'd never been smart like Vulcan and her parents, and she'd never commanded the seemingly effortless empathy which Paeon possessed. And, in terms of raw strength and athleticism, Aegle was to Arron what a match was to the Sun. In that, life had played the cruelest possible joke on her, to let her be born a blunt and direct instrument, only to wither and curdle like a grape too long on the vine.
Why did she want to become a huntress? Aegle naturally knew the answer, otherwise she'd never had decided to be one in the first place. Yet she didn't even know where to start with explaining it. She'd tried once before, a few years prior when she'd had to explain the idea to her family. Even then, her answer had been far from satisfactory, and it was only by practical appeal that Aegle had even won out in the end. Aegle's mind wasn't so capacious as to keep all these thoughts within it at once, but she tried to find an answer which would be satisfactory all the same. Not just to hear it out loud, but because she sensed that Lily really needed a reason. This was Aegle's first time on this side of the hospital gown and, insensitive as she was, she understood some glimmer of what it must have been like for her loved ones when they stood in her place. She understood the confused tension they'd worn, the half smiles and uncomfortable aversion to questions, and she didn't want to be like that. She wanted Lily to have a full answer and a complete answer, because that was what she most wanted. And Aegle would do anything to give her that.
"My family..." The orange haired girl began, and some of the lightness immediately left her tone, replaced by something like strained introspection, as it would be affected by someone who had never tried to be introspective before. "They're all such big people. They do big, important things. Dad works on all sorts of stuff, making things better and easier for people, and Mom helps people get better, cause she's the one workin' on the medicine that cures 'em. Vulcan builds things you wouldn't believe, stuff that makes my Oupis look like a toy. Then Paeon, he's gone and made himself a doctor. A surgeon even. He saves lives every day, fixing things that regular people can't fix. And Arron? He gets right out there and he fights the Grimm. He's so good at it they called him Special for it..." trailing off, Aegle gingerly and shakily turned Lily's hand over in her own, as if she might find her next line on the back. She regarded Lily's hand, held protectively in the wounded, bandaged up devastation of her own, and thought for a long moment about what she might say next. It needed to be important, and it needed to be impressive, and, for Lily's sake, it needed to be complete. Breathing in through her nose, then out through her mouth, Aegle's smile slowly melted away. It was replaced be an expression which was wholly unreadable, which was remarkable in itself.
"When I first got sick..." She began again, her voice quieter now. The issue of her sickness had never been as big a deal for her as everyone seemed to assume, but she knew talking about it could bother people. Lily had shown herself to be particularly affected during their first meeting, which Aegle had not forgotten. So, while she might not have minded talking about it, she still regarded talking about it the way she might regard starting a fist fight in public. True, it wasn't something that bothered her, but she knew it would bother everyone else.
"It started with me just tirin' out really fast. Nothing else. Just got tired easily. Everyone thought I had the flu, and kept on tellin' me I just needed to rest a lil' more, ya know? Drink lotsa fluids and junk. 'Cept I never did get any better, and it got so bein' tired were just a part of me, like it never really went away. At first no one noticed. Then I started gettin' weaker. Just a little at first, so I didn't really notice. Walkin' up stairs got harder and I couldn't kick the ball around as much. Still, I never told anyone, I just kept it all to myself. I dunno why I did. Guess I were just so used to everyone sayin' I needed to rest, and that I'd get better, and that I only had the flu, that I figured they would just say all that if I told 'em how I was feeling."
Aegle's face was blank as she spoke. Not blank with stoicism, like some stolid veteran recounting a war story, but blank like she was just telling a story, and not even a very interesting one. Her usually emotive face was locked with an utter absence of expression, as if she felt nothing for the events she was relating to her friend.
"I started bumpin' into things next. It got real hard to do anything with any sorta care. I'd trip walkin' down the stairs or bang into my desk insteada sittin' at it. But I didn't say anythin'. Kids started callin' me a clutz and makin' fun of me cause of how awful my hand writin' was and how I couldn't play sports, but I never said anythin'. Was just the way I was; I was just sick. I needed to rest. I'd get better."
"Then one day, I was chasin' after the other kids. They were all playin' tag and I wanted to play too. 'Cept I couldn't keep up. My legs wouldn't go and my feet kept on gettin' tangled up on each other, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make myself run."
Her expression slowly changed. Her eyebrows drew together in what was, for her at least, a look of the deepest concentration.
"Then I got dizzy. Everythin' started swirlin' around me and I felt cold and tingly all over. And like that, every little bit of strength went outta me, and I just stopped and fell over with my face in the dirt."
"Next thing I know, I'm in the hospital..." Aegle continued after a few quiet moments, as she relived the events in their retelling. Shaking her head abruptly, as if to dislodge something foul from where it had adhered to the side of her skull.
"They do some tests. They tell me I'm sick. They tell me I ain't gonna get better. They tell me its 'incurable' and call it 'degenerative', and tell me that I'm gonna get weaker, and weaker, and weaker and then... 'Cept they never do tell me what's gonna happen when I get too weak."
Aegle fell silent for a long while after that, and it was only the gentle, restless actions of her bandaged up hands which gave any life to h er otherwise motionless posture. When she did finally start talking again, it was without warning and without more ceremony that a quiet intake of breath.
"S'my heart." She told Lily, glancing at the faunus and then quickly averting her eyes again. "That's why I always felt so tired, and why I got dizzy and fell down and wound up in the hospital. All cause of my heart." She let that hang for a moment, drew a deep breath, then slowly and difficultly rolled her shoulders, still propped up on crutches.
"Hardest workin' muscle in the whole body, the heart is." She resumed finally, her voice quieter still, almost a whisper, as her hands clasped Lily's with the feeble amount of strength they possessed. "And mine was wearin' out."
"I was gonna die. Paeon told me so, when nobody else would. After I get too weak to sit up, and too weak to feed myself, and too weak to breathe, my heart is gonna give up, and I'll be dead."
Only then did the unreadable expression on Aegle's face become apparent. Not as stoicism or detachment, but uncertainty. Like her restless hands, and hunched posture and averted eyes, she wasn't sure what she was supposed to be doing with her face.
"I don't reckon ya know what it's like; Bein' told yer gonna die." She said quietly, without looking at Lily, her hands, or anything else for that matter, "Bein' told yer gonna die, and knowin' it's true. Not just cause ya trust who's tellin' ya, or because they're smarter 'n you, but because you can feel it, deep down inside. You can feel yourself dyin'."
"When they told me they might be able to fix me, they didn't know if any of it would work. It was all super experimental stuff, with hormones and surgeries and therapy, and none of it had been tested before. But you know what else they told me?" Looking at Lily, Aegle suddenly defied convention and did the most unlikely thing she could have possibly done. She smiled.
"They said it might kill me." Her smile grew wider, showing off what seemed like every tooth in her head. It was the sort of manic, almost lunatic smile she was best known for. One which conveyed not only the sincerest and deepest sort of pleasure, but also stood as a challenge to the world to try and make her feel otherwise.
"They let me pick; Can you imagine?" She told Lily, delightedly. "Said I could keep on the medicines and therapies I was on already, and maybe live to turn sixteen, or that I could let them try to cure me, and die before I was twelve." then, just as rapidly as it had appeared, Aegle's mirth dried up and her smile disappeared.
"And then, after all the hormones and all the surgeries and all the therapy, I was cured." she looked away from Lily again, but did not look at their hands. Instead, she looked down at herself and at her half-crooked body where it leaned over Lily's bedside.
"But then they told me what 'cured' meant. That it only meant I weren't gonna get any worse. All the damage that had already been done? I was stuck with that." Untangling one hand from the trio before her, Aegle pulled a fist and, with shaky but defiant resolve, thumped herself once on the left side of her chest, directly above her heart.
"All the damage." She repeated poignantly, without looking at Lily. Then she lowered her hand back to Lily's and squeezed it as tight as she could. Which, even after half a decade of tireless training, wasn't very hard at all.
Finally, and with a quiet sigh, Aegle regarded her friend again. This time she didn't smile. Instead, a watchful look slipped across her pale face as she evidently looked for something on Lily's.
"Vulcan has a masters in robotic engineering." She said quietly, reciting her brother's qualifications from memory, "He started as soon as he got done at Vytal and finished it when he was twenty six. Paeon has an md and phd in molecular medicine and is a licensed doctor. He was twenty seven before they let him look after a patient on his own. My mom got her phd in epidemiology when she was twenty six. Dad got his masters when he was twenty five, but didn't work on anything until he was twenty seven. Arron spent his whole time at Vytal training to become a hunter, where he learned how to use all common weapons, how to take stuff down solo and in a group, and was personally trained by some of the best hunters in Remnant. He was twenty two when the Specialists enlisted him." Following this regurgitation of information, information which Aegle evidently had memorized, the small girl paused and visibly collected herself.
"When they cured me, they figured I'd live to about twenty. Now, if I keep training and don't give myself a heart attack, they reckon I might make twenty four." She patted Lily's hand, as if this revelation might upset her.
"I ain't ever gonna be a big person. I ain't ever gonna cure nobody or design some important articulatin' hinge. I ain't ever gonna get some fancy degree so people gotta call me 'Doctor' or 'Professor' or 'Master'. I probably won't even make it to bein' a full blown huntress." She said all this with the utmost certainty, as if no possible alternative existed. Indeed, based on what she'd already told Lily, how could there be an alternative?
"But, ya know what? Since I've been at Vytal, I've been on three missions and fought in four tournaments. I've punched the sorta monsters that most people can't even run from. I've unearthed ancient weapons from before the shatterin'. I've fought a girl with explosive feet while a stadium full of people chanted my name. I've saved a girl from a bunch of guys that wanted to kill her and dragged people out of a collapsin' church. And I've met you." and then, if only because she couldn't help it, Aegle smiled broadly and reassuringly at her friend.
"And there ain't nothin' I'd rather do than more of that stuff, and stuff just like it."
Then, after a short silence, a faint redness rose up in Aegle's pale face, and her eyes dropped while her shoulders hunched.
"Anyway..." She said quietly, blushing openly. "That's why I wanna be a huntress..."
OOC:(Sorry for dropping the latter half of your post, Lily. I'm just not sure if you still would have asked your second question about doing the right thing after Aegle's very long winded answer... Will add on to this if you want.)
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Post by Solomon Moon on Nov 29, 2016 23:47:21 GMT -6
 ne would be challenged to do better to find a location that was so tangibly wrong as a hospital. Ostensibly a place of healing, it might surprise most to learn that the number of patients who expired under the direct supervision of the height of medical sciences, even in places of such profound resource as Vytal and Legion, was as high as 30% of annual deaths. One in three human beings living in the civilized world would breath their last breath while reclined in a public bed that had likely seen thousands of previous occupants. The only public institution that could even compete with such a number for receiving as many deceased or soon to be, is a graveyard. In essence, while most of the population would go to hospital at some point in their lives to be healed, a full third would go there simply to die. This did not even account for the number of fatalities directly caused by the medical profession, through negligence, malpractice, and simple bad luck. Sol had always thought that if he could manage to spin the kind of PR that made people regard hospitals as a place of healing and not one of a comfortable death, then he wouldn't need to wage war for a living. Personally the young lord detested the place. His feelings towards doctors and nurses and sterile tile were sour and caustic enough that if they could have been bottled he could have choked an army on the fumes alone and dissolved an entire battalion of Atlesian Knights. The reasons for this range from the general, that being a general mistrust for the scent of bleach when he could clearly make out bloodstains on the sheets, the unspoken wrongness on the edge of perception that seemed to coat the walls in a transparent suggestion of suffering and disease, and finally the sinister, grimly jaded light in the eyes of career medical professionals. To the very personal. Sol would never forget the hundreds of nights he'd spent suffering in a stranger's bed, surrounded by strangers, with a head full of strange drugs, while strange procedures were performed upon him. Two such visits had come immediately following the loss of an essential body part, and had necessitated weeks of agonizing rehabilitation and recovery. To say that he was uncomfortable in this place, would have been a profound understatement. To do his feelings justice would describe a hospital as matching the menace of a tangle of weeds that almost certainly hid a guerilla force waiting in ambush, while managing to look like a massive house whose washroom had abruptly decided to invade the remaining floor space with a blitzkrieg of tile, laminate wallpaper and oddly placed wash stations. It made him uneasy, anxiety bordering on paranoia, as if every tile, every curtain, and every insidious surgical mask concealed some vaguely defined but nonetheless horrible threat that pressed in on him from every side. It hardly helped that news of his part in the fiasco at St Ivy's had already traveled far enough that he could see, or perhaps simply imagine, the judgement in the eyes of every person he passed in the stinkingly clean halls on his way here. He'd put off visiting the hospital as long as he could manage, a feat that had come easily due to the extreme difficulty of relocating assets from Legion territory to Rift. Finalizing the mass exodus of his forces and his clansmen to foreign soil had taken a great deal of time. However it was not fear of reprisal from the Vytalian locals that had kept him at bay, he was well accustomed to enduring the bitter sentiments of those who frowned on his allegiances. Oddly enough it was the fact that he had taken so long to reach neutral soil in the first place, and the fact that he hadn't learned of Lily's condition until actually touching down in Vytal. Somehow, given that he had not even known that she'd been hurt in the chaos of the service, having been occupied with his own problems, showing up late felt like it would be a much greater insult than not showing up at all. He'd actually resolved two days prior to this moment that he would not visit the faunus, but forty eight hours longer of having no specific insight into her injuries nor her progress towards recovery had crushed that resolve into powder. He'd timed his visit to fall as close to the end of visiting hours as was reasonable, as it would allow him a excuse to escape should this turn out to be as bad an idea as he feared it was. It turned out to not be close enough, because he could not even see the doorway leading into Lily's room when he could already make out two distinct voices chatting inside. One he recognized, because the Aegle's unique pitch of a nail on a beltsander was impossible to mistake as anything else, while the other was completely novel to him. He could not make out Lily's quiet musical voice, not through a wall, and over the ambient noises of the hospital's normal operation. He felt as if a fishook had caught in his heart and was trying to reel him back and out of the building. The possibility of Aegle recognizing him was something that filled Sol with an icy dread. He did not fear that the puny fashion crime would harm him, but a confrontation of some nature seemed inevitable. Another hook seemed to urge him in the other direction, and in what could come to typify much of his life, when pulled in two directions he simply dug in his heels and stood his ground right where he was. A tactic common to the stubborn and stupid alike. It was with fresh images of the violent clash between himself and a pint sized pugelist exploding like fireworks in his tired mind that Sol planted himself beside the door, and waited. At least if the orange haired punk caught him out here, Lily wouldn't have to see them fight. Then once the dust had settled he would be able to visit with the faunus in unmolested privacy. And there he stood. Stock rigid as a statue, hands clasped behind his back, each donned in a fine leather glove that sprung from the flared sleeves of a service jacket, with his booted feet spread to shoulder width. Dark brown shoulder length hair fell before his single golden eye as he bowed his head and listened patiently as a rattlesnake to the conversation in the nearby room. His stiff and planar features were motionless and vaguely threatening in a reptilian manner, but there was an intense suggestion of bone deep fatigue across it all, and on the seldom instant when he would actually blink, for a moment he seemed to slumber deeply. By the time anyone happened across him, his broad back was slouching against the wall, his square chine pressed fully against his powerful chest, and a gentle hissing whistle accompanying his breaths. Solomon Moon, fast asleep on his feet. tag(s): @someone ━ words: 000 ━ notes: please keep it short made by ira of stf and ww |
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Post by Raven Clovis on Dec 2, 2016 4:53:06 GMT -6
Buddy you're a young man hard man,
Shoutin' in the street gonna take on the world some day!
 Raven tapped away impatiently on the tiled floors with his foot in a rhythmic pattern as he looked at the time pass by on his scroll. When he looked up, he saw another one of the guests coming out of the room where Lily was 'hospitalized' in. He swore to himself that person had to be in one of his classes. It was surprising how big of a circle this faunus girl had managed to gather since her arrival to the academy. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he had always known from the very start this girl... was special. He couldn't exactly point out what it was - whether it was the attention she got, or she just had this particular aura that she gave off, he couldn't tell. "You're the last one," A nurse came up to him, "She sure has a lot of friends. It makes me quite jealous, you know?" The boy looked up to the Nurse, who was by heads taller than he was. He was quite familiar with her since she was always the one who'd always treate his wounds after one of his 'reckless episodes' during combat classes - or on his daily day to day life in the academy, as she'd say. In few ways, she reminded him of his mother - though she never truly looked, or acted like one, but she did urge him to get into ones of those Anger Management classes that he seemed to desperately need in her eyes. Though by he wouldn't have entered by normal means by his own will, but through her endless nagging sessions (and perhaps with a letter of recommendation being sent to the head master) he finally entered. <"She's just that kind of person, I guess."> The boy shrugged, <"She just... has that particular aura that attracts people to her. Don't know what it is, but I guess that's what makes her so popular among people."> "That kind of person, huh? Never heard of you say something like that to anyone~." The nurse cooed, but after a brief pause, the woman leaned down, her face leaning in towards the boy with a rather playful grin painted across her features. In response, the boy couldn't help but jolt backwards from the faint smell of cigarettes. "Saaay, does somebody have a crush?"... A crush? Ridiculous. Raven told himself as he fiercely brushed her off from him, not even realizing how the tip of his ears became red from the embarassment. "I'm just joking with you, Raven. You really ought to know how to take a joke and smile at it!" She giggled, "Anyway, don't want to keep your lady friend waiting, I think she also asked for you in particular among people who she wanted to be visited by today, I think. It surprised me how you managed to make a friend for once. You're making me so proud~." <"... Sheesh, you really know how to get on my nerves, don't you?"> Raven gritted his teeth, <"Anyway, I heard what happened to her, and what went on in the Legion during that big funeral. Is she doing okay?"> "It's nothing too serious, but you know how it is with the policy around here. We have to keep our patient's records private." He couldn't help but click his tongue over what she had said to him. Though Raven liked to think that the both were on good terms, he should've known that the nurse would say something like this to him of all things from a professional standpoint. Though the brunette understood, he couldn't help but be frustrated not knowing what really happened to Lily, and who it was that made her like this. It especially angered him knowing that there wasn't any way to help her from his position. Just be there for her. He tried to tell himself, she'll eventually get better.
But regardless of what he told himself, the boy felt his anger churned through his veins, crying out for all sorts of bloody vengeance and murder. Even with those feelings, what would he do with them if he had no where else to direct it at? Raven never felt this angry since the time when Jackie was bullied by the kids in the neighborhood during the time when they were yet children. Upon being led into the room where Lily was hospitalized in, the mute's nostrils immediately managed picked up the nausiatingly familiar scent of medication and alcohol in the air. To be honest, Raven never liked hospitals. Not for the smell, but due to the memories it brought. It always reminded him of the time when he first woke up at a place like this. There she lay in the bedsheets with medical hooked and wired up to her as if she were a computer or some sorts. It made her look alien, almost foreign, but of all things... there was something different about her. Was it her eyes? Or was it because of all the painkilling medication that the doctors were injecting the girl with draining the color on her face? Raven tried not to look too surprised by it as he walked up to her, intending to treat her like he always had. With his scroll, he typed: <"You're looking well."> MADE BY VEL OF GS |
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Post by lilywilde on Dec 3, 2016 21:28:39 GMT -6
----- Never stop Running ----- tag: --- // words: --- // notes: --- Guinevere
Lily had just been about to respond to Guinevere's first statement, and brief flashes of time spent with all of the wonderful people she'd met since she came to vytal passed through her mind as she considered that point. However, Guinevere's next question concerning the nightmares made Lily consider those same people in a different light.
The dreams came back to her then. Vivid flashes of the destruction caused by the cult mingled with the disturbing scene played out at the blackened basilica. The dark unholy place that held those talking heads on spikes. The taunting that ensued, the woman she continued to see flashes of, and the red eye.
The pain in Lily's arm was greater when she thought about it, and she winced, suddenly feeling the space on her arm pulse. She let out a short whine of pain, before sucking in her breath sharply and looking down at the strange red mark that had appeared on her arm. She moved her right hand to cover the eye, and looked down as she considered the horrible dreams and said "They've uhh.. They've been really awful." She heard the echoing voices of her friends and loved ones proclaiming all of that ruin had been her fault, and she tried to block the images out of her mind.
"There were.. a lot of images. Of grimm, and of cultists." Of that woman.. "I just... It's really scary? Every time I've closed my eyes since I've gotten... this," she said, gesturing down to her arm, "Every time, it's hell. I see the horrors that the grimm would inflict upon the world, and.." And it's all my fault every time. She wanted to talk about more, about the girl who haunted her visions, about the specifics of the cultists who were sacrificing people to whatever dark god they worshipped, or to the grimm in some cases. She wanted to tell her about the creepy black church that looked to Lily like exactly the opposite of the basilica, but she couldn't bring herself to talk about any of it. At least, not verbally. She was flustered enough in that moment, that the possibility that Guinevere might see all of these images as they flashed through Lily's head didn't even cross her mind.
She brought her legs up to her chest, and assumed a mock fetal position. It was hindered by her arms being held in place by the guard rails on her bed. She let out a long, tired sigh, and her face grew dark. She looked then as if she were ten years older than she were. In the dim light of the sterile hospital room, the blackness under her eyes was well defined, and it was clear that Lily had been getting nothing resembling proper rest.
Turning to Guinevere, and staring at her directly in the eyes she said, "I have always suffered nightmares, and have always seen the grimm in my dreams, but this is somehow more real. It feels like I'm there, like I'm seeing scenes of a future that is lurking beyond the horizon. It scares me. I do not want this world to burn." Tears rolled down her face, and she shuddered, thinking of retruning to that place was less than fun. She pulled against the binds, as if getting free might somehow allow her to escape her dreams. She then deflated once more and said. "If... If you can help me stop the dreams for a little while, I'd love for you to be my... Teddy bear?" At the mention of that phrase, an ancient memory played through Lily's head. It was obscured, and she couldn't make out any faces. She recognized her mother's voice.
"Awwwh, look at her, all curled up on him."
"Yeah! I'm her teddy bear!" Came a young voice, much younger than her mother.
The short exchange was followed by the laughter of three voices. She could recognize her mother, and her father's laughter, and while the third voice was incredibly familiar to her, she just could not place it.
------
Aegle
As Aegle spoke, Lily listened patiently. At first, she was surprised by the volume of Aegle's speech, and then, she realized that the girl wasn't done talking yet. She could see the look on her face from time to time, and she recognized that puzzled expression as her friend doing her best to come up with something more to say. Aegle spoke first on her family. It was warm, and it was happy, and it was everything Lily thought someone speaking about their family should sound like.
And when she spoke of her illness, Lily reflexively squeezed Aegle's hand back. She smiled when Aegle smiled. As if it were obvious. Who would cling to a life that was failing when there was a chance she might get to live? Lily would have done exactly the same thing in that situation. She still said nothing, detecting that Aegle had more on her mind. When aegle talked about her only living to twenty four, she flinched visibly. She didn't want Aegle to only have such a short time left. Part of her refused to believe it, but she wouldn't argue. It was better than twenty at any rate. Life wasn't fair. Lily had learned that earlier than most, Aegle had too by the sounds of it. She waited until Aegle said all that Aegle would say, and then she waited a little while longer,just to be sure. When she finally did speak, she started with a preface.
"I'm sorry, you've shared lots with me and I'm gonna share a lot with you too. I know you don't do so great with lots of words all at once, but bear with me here." She took in a deep breath, and said softly, "You were wrong about one thing there, I do know exactly what it's like to be told that I would die soon." Her hand closed over her midriff, where her scar was. "It was the tribal elder, who had just exiled me from the tribe. I'm kinda your opposite, I was really sick a lot after I was born, and when I was younger. I always had to spend time with the tribes healers. It was always different stuff. After I was born, it was ear infections that almost took me. Mom said that she was always super worried." Her free hand, the one that wasn't clasped over her lower chest, tried to move as if to touch an ear, but it clattered half way there as the cuffs caught her. She shook her head, and continued as if nothing had happened. "After the ear infections, I was always sick with something or another. Colds, fevers, vomitting, pox, whatever it was, I had it. Sometimes I spread it to some other kids. People would get really mad at me for that, and eventually they wouldn't let the other kids play with me. There was only one boy..." She had to pause for a minute, she knew there was somone who played with her all the time, but she couldn't conjure his face. She continued after a moment of puzzling over that, "Mostly my parents tried to hide me when I was really bad, so I spent lots of time inside our tent with one of them while the other went out to do something. My dad was really smart, well, at least where I'm from. I doubt he was half as smart as your family. They all sound really impressive... He would go out and teach people about their Aura, and how to control it. My mom on the other hand was super strong. She was the best fighter in the tribe. Someone told me once that I was only allowed to stay 'caus my parents were so strong." She realized she was rambling, and for Aegle's sake, got back on topic. She could talk about village life for days and the different ways she was sick.
"I was never that strong when I was young, nor was my Aura much to speak of. I didn't even stop getting sick all the time until after... The village elder took me aside one day when both mom and dad were off, busy with their duties. He told me that I was old enough that I should be helping the tribe, but I only ever needed help. He said I was holding the tribe back, slowing them down, and draining resources, and that I was to be exiled. People who were exiled, they were never seen again. I cried, a lot. He took me, and dragged me off to a cave not far from where the tribe had been wandering that day. He told me then that it'd be best to just hide in the cave until the grimm found me. Said that I would be lucky to survive for an hour. Then he told me that grimm are attracted to bad emotions, so if I cried out really loud they'd come for me sooner. After that, he went to rejoin the rest of the tribe as they moved on from that area. I tried my best to stay positive. For over an hour I pictured my mom, or my dad, or.. or someone else coming through those doors and telling me things would be alright, but after an hour of that, I couldn't. Nobody was coming, and I knew that the next living creature I saw would be a grimm. I was right. S'how I got this," she said holding up her right hand showing a long slash that trailed over the back of her hand. One of only a few scars, but this one didn't bother her like the other one did. "My aura wasn't great back then, so I guess it didn't heal up really fast like most of my later wounds did. I tried to run, but they cornered me. When I closed my eyes, I was certain I would never open them again."
She paused then, reliving that old horror, but a weak smile spread across her face. "I was wrong though, when I opened my eyes again, my mom was there, her weapon buried deep in a grimm which was in the process of disappearing. My dad had another one impaled on his shield spike, and he threw it at the wall where it burst into mist. I didn't usually see my dad fight, but he could give the creatures of grimm hell when he wanted to. He was a big man with lotsa strength. Someone musta told them I was out there. I dunno why I think that, it's just the impression I had at the time." Her memory was fuzzy as to exactly why though, a fact that annoyed her enedlessly. There were lots of fuzzy moments scattered into her memory when she thought back on her family and her tribe.
"Anyway, things were mostly fine until I got both of my parents killed. Then I was alone again." She hurried past that first sentence, not entirely wanting to revisit all of that. "Being alone again was hard, but y'know, I managed for a while. Three years I managed alone. Then, one night, when I hadn't seen a grimm in days and thought I would be alright, I did something really dumb. I fell asleep in some ruins under the stars. I don't think I meant to fall asleep, but I did anyway. That was the mistake that proved my village elder right. I died that night." Her claws closed around her scar poking at the edges of the fibrous tissue with the sharp ends of her sharpened appendages, and she looked away from her friend. "A Nevermore, big nasty thing, found me up there. I was careless 'caus I hadn't seen any grimm at all and I was high up where I didn't think the standard barghest could reach me. When I woke up, it had already killed me. I had maybe one or two breaths left in my body." At that, her hand pulled suddenly away from her midriff, pulling with it the flimsy cloth of her hospital gown, and revealing the massive scar beneath that stretched from her sternum to her belly button. "Dying wasn't really all that bad thinking back on it. I hardly felt it. I just... I dunno, I just wanted to breathe and couldn't, and then I fell asleep. Nah, the part that really hurt was being brought back. I was lucky, Fiore and her team were there and showed up just after I had been impaled. She fixed me, but damn did it hurt. That happened just a few weeks before I came to Vytal, I couldn't have died more than two months ago. It seems like so long ago, and a lot has happened since I joined this school, but... well, dying has a funny way of making you think about what your life is, and where its going. I wouldn't have been the same person if you'd met me three months ago. But I've said enough, probably way more than enough. Sorry for talking so much." She said, aware that smoke was likely filling the room after exiting Aegle's ears. She waited after that, giving the girl as much time as she needed to process the overly long history the girl had just thrown her way. She suppressed the urge to cover her scar, and simply let Aegle look if she chose to.
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Aegle/Solomon
Several days after Lily had been returned to Vytal, after her initial meet and greets with friends and family, Lily had been more than happy to see her good friend Aegle once more. She hadn't seen the girl since her stint in the legion hospital days ago, and smiled warmly at her. They had been chatting for some time already, talking first about what had happened in the school recently, before moving towards classes that Lily had missed out on since the incident. Eventually, the topic of conversation began moving towards weaponry and Lily's lack there of. Aegle had spoken previously about her Oupis, but Lily had always remained weapon free. Lily had recently inquired about having her personal affects transferred from her hotel room back in legion over to her hospital room.
She had in front of her an array of different blue prints, notes on materials that could be used, and estimates on the rough cost of each component. She started off talking about the claw weapons.
"I'm most comfortable fighting with my claws as is, so I figured this would be a nice way to keep my fighting style in tact. Each finger fits in to a slot like this," she said pointing at base of the weapon where it would strap to her wrist, and each one of these little slots has two small triggers. The first trigger ejects the claw, and the second activates the anchor. Oh! Right! Each prong of the claws has two little.. uhm... whatcha call 'em? The tips of the claws can kinda fold out into a cross once I pull that trigger. Each of the claws has a string of razor wire attached, so I can use them to maneuver, even if I'm in my semblance state. One problem is, I dunno how I'm gonna get 'em to travel as fast as I do when I'm running at max speed." She went to scratch her head absentmindedly, but the cuffs restraining her got in the way once again. She shook her head in annoyance, but continued on to talk about her cloak.
"The cloak on the other hand is more of an idea I got from my dad. He used a big ole shield, and was really good with it. I can't really use one like he could, but I would really like to have something like that. I had the idea for it for a little while, but I've been having trouble getting ahold of enough of the material for it. This lily behind my ear is atually made of the stuff. Hold on a second, lemme see if I can..." She said focusing hard on the myomar fabric behind her ear that Solomon had gifted to her. It was in direct contact with her, so it wasn't impossible to let her aura flow into it, but she was far more accustomed channeling her energy through her hands. With considerable strain, she felt the connection she'd practiced forming, and she made the petals of the false flower do a small dance. She couldn't see the flower move, but she could feel it's movements, both through her aura and as it unsettled strands of hair that had tangled themselves in the flower. She let out an audible gasp as she cut the connection and smiled at Aegle. "I wanna make a cloak or a cape out of this stuff. It's gotta be big, and it's gotta be easily carried, so I figure that makes sense. With as fast as I am, I wanna be able to use my speed for something that matters. Bein' able to put myself between danger and my friends will be a lot more effective if I've got a big ole shield to put up too. This stuff is really nifty, it can shape itself depending on how you force your aura into it. I could do all sorts of cool stuff with a cloak made of it." Thinking about the cloak and the material it was made of, made her think about the boy who had crafted her decorative lily for her out of the same material. She would almost swear that she could smell the scent of cloves and smoke that clung to him wherever he went, but she knew that was just her thinking about the boy.
She was so excited about being able to talk about her weapon concepts, that she could hardly focus on the fact that she was talking way too much for the poor orange girl. Much of what she said had little room for the orange haired girl to provide feedback anyway, however when she had to take a deep breath for lack of breathing while talking at a mile a minute, she realized her faux pas and offered the girl an easy in. "Uhm, but hey, you mentioned that your brother built your Oupis yeah? What's that, how's it work? Do ya keep it with ya?"
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Raven
Lily couldn't help but offer a smile for Raven as he entered the door. It was a weak smile. Her mood had picked up considerably from the day's start. Friends and acquaintances had visited her all through the day. Still though, she wasn't doing so great. The red eye on her arm was still glaring angrily at all who passed through the door, and Lily could not help but feel her tainted soul weighing heavily upon her. Her half smile, sincere as it was, was quickly replaced by a grumpy Lily saying "You don't have to lie, I know I look terrible." She looked down at her hands, still shackled to the bed rails where she'd shredded sheet and mattress alike. The nightmares had been difficult to endure, and she was thankful that she could cling to wakefulness more easily here. Back in legion they'd sedated her and put her to sleep several times when she'd refuse to sleep of her own volition. She imagined that the people in Vytal would eventually be forced to do the same, but for now she was happy to be waking. She had only one brief spell of sleep since arriving at Vytal, but she'd arrived early in the morning. She looked her friend up and down, and let out a soft sigh, "But yeah, I'm just... I've been better. This whole ordeal has been very... tiring." The black bags under her eyes that were ever present seemed particularly bad today. They were deeper and darker than they had ever been since the pair had met. Her hair was disheveled, her skin was pasty and pallid, and her teeth hadn't been brushed properly in days. She imagined she was a proper wreck, and didn't love being seen like this by anyone, let alone by all of her friends in rapid succession. Not to mention the still healing vine-like wound that the woman calling herself St. Ash had left on her arm.
She found herself looking away from Raven as the thought of what she must look like entered her mind. He hadn't even seen the worst of her aesthetic changes. Her hands shook a little bit, what had happened to her once pure white aura was in her mind, even worse than the red eye emblazoned on her arm. That she could hide with proper fashion choices. The grey aura however would always hung over her like an axe waiting to fall.
She knew that to hide that aura would be pointless, so she let it flare up a bit. The light of despair bathed the two of them, and sapped any mirth that might have been in the gloomy little hospital room. The color was drained from the room as grey light shone on the two of them. Where once hope and peace would settle in through her aura's light, now only a sense of dread and general disease could be felt. "They... She... broke me. Broke me down to my very soul." She thought of people who had died in the wreckage of the basilica, the people she had killed and the blinding pain that had blunted anything except for the will to flee from Lily's mind. The desire to escape her pain had sent her crashing and careening into the walls and support structures of the once beautiful building. A few tears fell down her cheeks, and she willed her aura back down before she lost herself in the feedback loop of negativity that came when it was present. She took a deep breath and said in a flat tone. "If you have questions, ask them." She was still happy to see her friend, but she was eager to get the same questions that had been asked a dozen times by each and every visitor out of the way quickly, so that she could enjoy the company of her friend.
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Post by Celia Abbott on Dec 3, 2016 21:51:05 GMT -6
1244 WORDS BY MINNIE OF GS Have we...
It took her a moment to notice how her friend tensed at her touch. she hadn’t intended to cause her discomfort, this had been a visit meant to cheer up her friend in the only way she could - and it seemed she had failed fairly spectacularly already. She smiled, yes, but it was weak. Genuine, but pained. Her friend hurt and that was plainly obvious, but what could Celia do here? A bit of comfort could only go so far, and if the handcuffs that restrained Lily were any indication, her own gift would be more of a burden than a treat. She couldn’t even eat it comfortably, it would have to be fed to her, unless the hospital staff were willing to unlock the restraints momentarily - and Lily said they would, but still it seemed that she would not be able to at least enjoy the meal in peace.
"I'm uhh... glad that everyone is alright."
Celia nodded distractedly, unable to meet her friend’s eyes any longer. The resignation in Lily’s voice stung like a fire blazing beneath her skin.
"The uhh...Food smells really good."
Celia swallowed quietly. Even as Lily turned away, she still saw the tear that trailed down her cheek. The clone glanced up at its master, an intense gaze fixed on its features, and tilted its head towards Lily. The meaning was easy to interpret. ‘Say something. Anything.’ But no words came to her. Her hands clenched and her eyes closed as she did her best to suppress the painful tears that threatened to overflow. She knew only bits and pieces of the story, but she knew enough. Minette had done a relatively decent job of keeping her up to speed, despite how she had also been left in the dark. Having your boss go missing without explanation tends to raise some questions, after all. She knew, vaguely, what had happened. Only the people who were there really “knew” what happened, but she had been able to glean much from the scattering of news broadcasts and police reports Minette compiled.
At least, she knew enough to know Lily was involved. She didn’t know how, or why, or what truly happened, but something had happened there and had cause a great destruction and loss of life. For something like that to happen at a funeral service was a cruel irony at best, and a terrible tragedy at worst. The pieces had slid into place in her head as she read the reports and the lists of people who had been in attendance, Lily had been among them. She had not seen her leave school the day of, but she had been fairly certain that the eye, nor the veins, had been on her arm when last she saw her - and she had not been in such a state. Something had happened to her there, more than just the pain of witnessing others die in a catastrophe. She had a few ideas about what. Only one would have explained this.
The barrette thrummed heavily against her forehead, and she could hear it now more than feel it. It was painful, and cold, and unnatural. But it was just like the smooth, black sphere that Alice had given her. It beat with her own heart.
Ba-dum. Ba-dum.
"I've got a million questions about what's been happening in this last week, but, well, I'm sure that you've got a lot for me as well.”
She still couldn’t look up, her hands were still clenched. The beating of her heart and the dust in time wracked her body with ethereal waves of pain and negativity. It had never been this intense, even in her darkest hours. This was not a reaction to her, no - it was a reaction to Lily. Whatever had happened to her friend at the basilica, it had involved the same kind of wretched power that Celia herself had brought with her, only far, far worse. ‘I’m the worst,’ she thought to herself. ‘My friend lays here suffering from this, and I’m still thinking about using this...stuff.’ But she had to. She had to know what it would do, how it would feel. Alice had given it to her for a reason, and that reason, while certainly malicious, was not meant to kill her or even to turn her against the one who had given it to her. That had been made clear. Alice, and her aunt as well, saw value in her. They wanted her to do this, but she knew not why. The fear, the panic, turned to despair as she felt her body go limp in the chair. Her head slumped, and her eyes cast downward. The clone looked to her with worry, but she did not respond. She couldn’t.
“Ask anything you want, I uhh... I think it's best if people know the whole story."
She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. She did want to ask questions. She wanted to ask what happened. She wanted to ask how Lily had gotten hurt. Who was there. Where everyone was. Her lips quivered as the questions came to her mind in a torrent, and only built up more and more as they remained unasked. The pulse of the dust hammered at her skull in waves of ethereal pain, but she could only sit. “I…” As soon as she spoke, the questions disappeared. The pain began to fade into nothingness. Memories flashed through her mind, images of her mother, her father, her mentor, her best friend, all of them. Laughing, and joking, and…
'Together.'
“...I do have many questions. I want to ask you about so many things…” She folded her hands in her lap. her eyes shone with unshed tears, but her voice was even and quiet. “Everything is...unclear to me. It’s all so vague and confusing.” She stood slowly, and the clone looked to her questioningly, but she paid it no mind. “But that isn’t important. It doesn’t matter why it happened, or who is at fault, or even what this means in the end. There is...there is only one thing I want-” She stopped. She shook her head, and her gaze fixed on her friend as the tears finally began to fall. Her voice remained steady. “No. Something I need to say.”
The dust hummed idly now, as if it were amused by its keeper. “Lily…” Celia rested her hand against the frame of the bed, beside Lily’s hand. “Something is weighing heavily on you. I can see that. You don’t need to tell me everything, or even tell me anything. Just…” She closed her eyes, and her aura flared. Gentle morning warmth and cool evening mist mixed and mingled together into a calm storm of strange light and darkness around them. “Please know...please know that, no matter what, you are my friend.” Her eyes opened back up, and she smiled at Lily. “I will be there for you no matter what other people say, because I know you. You’re a good person. You would never intentionally do harm to anyone. You...you aren’t like m-”
‘No.’
A voice in her mind spoke.
‘Don’t say that. Don’t let those feelings out. This isn’t about you.’
The odd sensation caught her off guard, but she recovered as soon as she could manage. The silence hadn’t lasted long, but it was still longer than she would have liked.
“You aren’t a monster.”
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