2017-08-20: Partially Illuminated Disc
- Cutscene: Partially Illuminated Disc
- Cast: Catenna
- Where: Outskirts of Adlehyde
- Date: 20 August 2017
- Summary: In the depths of the Guardian Temple, Catenna experiences a lonely trial.
She could feel something there. A sensation she had heard in whispers.
And yet, as she laid a delicate hand atop the stone tablet and took it in hand - to save it for later, for her young friend - Catenna could hear only the edges of those whispers. That familiar hint of distant moonsong. Directed towards somewhere else. An epiphany for a companion.
One who followed another goddess. As Catenna slid the Medium into a pouch on her belt, she looked over again, towards Kourin. Reverence gave way to something else as she watched the errant follower of Althena take up the medium of the Moon, knowing that it was for her, set out for her in expectation.
A first step down a lonely path, she realized.
And yet.
Soon enough, the group of Caravan Kin turned away from that now-empty circle in the heart of the statue room - the room where Catenna had drawn on what wisdom she could, yet failed to find the right answer. One by one, the group of them moved on.
At the rear of the line, Catenna stopped in the doorway. Questions held her there like an anchor. For a moment she laid a hand on the doorframe. Then, letting the others walk on without her, she turned back towards that statue chamber.
The overwhelming resonance within it was gone now. The light of the place was beginning to dim. Before her eyes, the statues themselves began to slip from vision, simply fading away into the growing darkness. Twenty-four of them, slowly melting into transparency, then gone, leaving just two. The childlike statue of the human being, unformed and unfinished, slid to the wrong location by flawed humans who could not comprehend the impossible question - imperfect children who saw only their insignificant place in the narrowly-defined world of the comprehensible.
She couldn't feel a presence there. Catenna's footsteps rang eerily in her ears as she stepped slowly across the tile floor, each click of heels echoing off of an empty nothingness, soon lost in the ill-defined dimness of the room. A corner of her mind was peripherally aware that the door had slid closed behind her - that the CaraKin could not follow her here.
The empty room was hers, and the childlike statue's. Her hand slid to the Medium at her belt - traced across the stone face of it, over the familiar crest of the Moon.
But there was no hint of subtle presence - no familiar song. The silence could very well have crushed her.
"Have I done something to offend you," she called into the darkness, in the Zortroan tongue, as she moved to stand by the sole remaining statue, only a halo of subdued, blue-tinged light separating herself and it from the oppressive absence of illumination that had swallowed the room. Not even the walls or a ceiling could be seen anymore.
Nothing responded. Why would it?
The priestess laid her hands on the statue and bowed her head, her eyes a welter of emotions. "I have tried to do what you thought best," she murmured, the dark veil of her hair cascading to either side of her face. "To guide them as you would guide them. I have followed you all my life, as one born under the full moon... please, tell me where I have erred."
The words echoed, and then faded away, empty in the darkness. Catenna lifted her head once more, a quiet anguish in her eyes. Here of all places she should be able to hear the moonsong. After a lifetime of devotion, she should be able to hear it. "Please," she called out again, pleading, quiet anguish creeping into her voice. "Tell me what I'm supposed to do...!"
The empty room simply swallowed the plea. Only one set of ears heard it. Empty anticipation hung in the air. Moments passed.
Catenna slowly slid down to the foot of the statue. She dropped to her knees, eyes lifted and waiting for a voice that would never come, casting towards a door that would never open. The lighted circle was all that there was now. Merely herself, alone with the blank, unfeeling statue. She gazed up at it again, at the childlike thing, and found features familiar in it. The pale grey eyes of mother's favourite little moon-born daughter - the one who failed again and again. Failed her family, her people, her goddess - her friends.
Curling up at the statue's feet, she bunched her arms upon the podium and buried her face in them and began to weep.
She had a long time to do it. The emotions poured out of her, and then the oppressive silence set in again. The distant scent of her incense had long since faded. The moments turned to hours. The hours turned to days. The days turned to weeks. Nobody came back for her because of course they didn't. That is not what she deserves.
"You expect things that are beyond your right to expect," a quiet voice murmured through the endless night. After what seemed like a month of lying there, Catenna lifted her head, her eyes empty of anything but anguish.
In the night, a spark of blue shimmered distantly. Luminous butterfly wings parted to either side of a golden crescent. The woman perched there -- no, more than a woman. Something beyond human ken, but gazing down with simple dispassion at the pitiful figure sprawled in ruinous isolation at the foot of the statue which she could never understand.
"You see things so clearly sometimes, and yet of all of them, you are the most blind, comes that quiet, feminine voice, distant and with a subtle echo in her mind. "For while you see them viewing their world through their narrow vision, you see the least. You gaze on the shadow of things and call it what is the truth. You seek the light with all your heart. And yet...." She raised a hand and gestured towards the darkness - the lonely place where nothing but a broken woman remained.
"...You find ways to remain here."
Catenna lifted her head. The tearstains marring her cheeks were weeks old at this point, her eyes red and unable to shed any more tears. Unable to muster words, she cast a pitiful gaze up to the distant figure, silently pleading for something. Anything.
The shining entity lifted her chin a little. And then, favoured the wretch below with a faint smile.
"...All of your kind see only a crescent upon the true face of things," murmured the winged figure. "But you are what I have. Perhaps you can be forgiven for being as you are."
The subtle touch of moonsong resonated in Catenna's ears again - and she lifted her head to say something.
She couldn't - not before the light came up, washing the statue from her vision - the darkness. Everything.
The rest of the Caravan Kinship would find Catenna walking about five seconds behind them. She'd paused in the doorway and waited there for a couple of beats and then caught up with them as though nothing had happened.
She said nothing of it.