2018-03-11: Freedom's Lie
- Log: Freedom's Lie
- Cast: Ida Everstead-Rey, Riesenlied
- Where: Meribia Outskirts
- Date: 11th March 2018
- Summary: Riesenlied discovers Ida's camp, drawn by fossils and Malevolence. The two catch up from their last real meeting in Krosse...
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
The Furies--as Ida is increasingly thinking of her little band--made camp in the wilderness, in a little forest clearing that was already a little thicker with Malevolence than the surrounding countryside. Ida doesn't know what exactly happened here, but the remains of a burned-out campfire, scraps of leather, and bits of metal told a grim story as she staked the place out. Since then, she made the place into a proper campsite, with a firepit and some large stones and split logs to act as seats. A canvas tent sits a good distance from the fire.
The only one at camp right now is Ida. A kettle hangs over the fire, steam trickling from its spout. Ida sits on a large rock, watching it--and she's not bothering to disguise herself. This far from civilization, she doesn't feel any need whatsoever to hide what she is, and despite her fearsome appearance, she looks oddly pensive. Or perhaps she's just tired. Either way, that aura of anger and self-loathing and emptiness is hard to ignore.
Peacemaker sits on the ground beside her.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied has only barely spent a couple of days in Lunar, but she's already making some waves -- the rumours of a 'horned, winged beastwoman' trying to look for her missing tribe has circulated around some pubs and taverns, as well as severla guilds. But the Althenan Guard did post her bounty once more here...
...and such, it's with hesitation and some fear that she approaches, pulled here by the voices of the souls that have ever called out to her.
Whether Guardian, or Dragon, or other spirits within the Moon...
She's dressed differently now -- still Baskar, but in a white gown with light blue gradients and ephemeral gold highlights; her detached sleeves billow out like bird feathers, and she has a tiara at her forehead that resonates with a faintly blessed light.
"Ida...?" she asks gently.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida reaches out and plucks the teakettle off the fire. She sets it down on a flat rock outside the firepit proper, portions out tea leaves into a little metal cup, and adds boiling water and a pinch of sugar from a little tin. She lets the tea steep, leans back, and breathes in the notes of anger and betrayal that still linger in the clearing here. She can almost picture it, now. A dispute over money, perhaps, or a rivalry. An adventuring crew turned upon itself. Betrayal--
'Ida...?'
The young Hellion all but whips around at the voice. She knows it's not Rosa, or Garrett--she would've sensed them coming. She knows that voice all too well.
"...Riesenlied?" Ida whispers. Her voice is tight, tense. The sphere of Malevolent light around her heart flares against her ribs, shining through them, her flesh, and her shirt. "What the hell are you doing?"
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied jolts just a little, withering just for a moment as her horns visibly deflate; she wraps her arms around herself, the misshapen one over the gloved one. Her tattered, ragged wings tuck by her sides. "... I-- I just sensed..." She swallows. "I sensed Dragon Fossils... and I sensed you. I thought I would find you here, but..."
She hesitates, chewing her lip. "... I'm-- glad to see you again. Adjusting to everything here has been... strange." The bandages around her own head tell a story, likely from when Berserk nearly crushed her head with a singular palm grasped around it.
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida sighs. The sun in her heart pulses once more as she chokes down annoyance, frustration, anger--and a desperate sense of loneliness. Her face twists into a grimace, and when she breathes out again, a plume of Malevolence curls upwards from her lips, joining the Malevolence already saturating the clearing. "I don't know if I'm happy to see you," Ida says, which is the absolute truth. "I'm waiting for the others. You shouldn't be here when Garrett gets back, but..." Ida glances over to the fourth rock she set out in the event they ever got visitors.
"It's strange, here. I can look up and see home, and I miss it dearly, but at the same time, it's so /liberating/."
The star flares again, but this time, it does not burn.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied does feel her heart twist as Ida's emotions whorl around her, Malevolence washing lightly against her and threatening to wear her down with it. Compared to other people, Ida can clearly see the effect that it has on her -- it's much more withering and sapping. The gem around her neck shimmers just a little, reflecting the frustration and anger with a deep red tone.
"... I know, I'll be quick," Riesenlied agrees. "Liberating..." A pause. "You mentioned it before, in Krosse. How you've found your freedom."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
"I don't think they'll be here for a while, yet," Ida admits, "but best to be cautious. Especially since you handle this stuff about as well as you handle your liquor." Ida manages a weak little smile at her own grim joke. "I don't know if I have. It's /power/. It's power I've yet to explore, and it's /intoxicating/. As for freedom, I'm not sure, but as I was already trapped in a cage of my own despair, I don't think it much matters. Everyone thought I was mad, anyway. And if I can rid the world of people it would be better off without, well."
Ida rolls her shoulders, muscles flexing. "We've already marked one off the list." That pensive look comes back, even as she speaks. Riesenlied might not have caught what Ida told Berserk in his final moments, but it might explain why.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied can't help but muster a shy little smile, but she knows it's the truth. Ida knows the truth too. There's no sense in hiding it. "... you've... moved onward," she expresses carefully, as if still searching for the right words to say. Maybe there isn't a truly perfect set of words to say. "But you know firsthand that power is not everything."
She sighs softly as she leans down and sits against the grass. "I came from a society that espouses power as a means to social mobility. But it did not set those who climbed up the ladder free..." She pauses, not wanting to sound like she's giving a lecture. She looks pensive, thinking of Berserk again. "Even to the end, Berserk clung to his world view, after all."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
"I know," Ida says. It's a truth that haunts her, when she takes the time to think about it. Even now, there are beings out there far more powerful than she ever dreamed possible--the Lord of Calamity was proof of that. "The Fourth Method. Freedom's Lie. As long as anything is strong enough to exert control over you, you will never be truly free. It's a paradox." This sounds a lot more like the Ida Riesenlied first met than the one who was using the same Methods to try and justify why she'd turned. "Perfection is stasis. Stasis is undesirable, and ensures defeat."
"Kalve gave me the koan," Ida whispers, "but I still cannot figure it out. I don't feel any more at peace than I did before he taught me, much less before this happened. But I won't go back. I /chose/ this. I brought this upon myself. I will use it to kill the Trial Knight, or I will die trying."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied slumps just a little, as her wings droop further by her side. "True freedom is as much freefall as it is uplifting, Ida..." She shakes her head. "It is not their personal power that exerts control over us. It is the fear and anxiety that they inflict, aided by systems ingrained in our heritage... and it takes great courage to say otherwise."
She does reflect upon the Method for a moment. She has learnt some of the koans, but she has never been a student of it -- she can't, after all, utilise it at all. But the lessons are nonetheless useful to know. She bites her lip at the mention of the Trial Knight.
"... the teachings I've learnt are much less fanciful. But have you heard of the tale of the oaken tree and the bamboo...?"
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida never truly realized how ragged those wings had gotten. Riesenlied slumping over draws her eye to them, and something approaching concern crosses her features. They look... skeletal, and in an eerie way, they remind her of a certain thing she saw as a child--a set of similar wing-bones, extracted from the surrounding stone and mounted with painstaking care. "They can inflict far more than anxiety," Ida says, all but forcing herself to glance at Riesenlied's bandaged head. "As I'm sure you're well aware. I, on the other hand, have gotten sick of being beaten down. Time and time again--for /nothing/. Nothing more than a delaying action. It will do nothing to stave off Filgaia's decline, and it will do nothing to save your people. The planet rejects you. You and your lover may have gained personal exemptions, but thousands of your people will die simply because they didn't have your good fortune."
Anger surges up inside her. Frustration is quick to follow. "This world is cruel," Ida says, "and stupid. I will work my will on it until it is neither, and then I can finally die."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied's wings certainly have looked worse over time -- far worse than when she hid it with feathers, back in Adlehyde; and worse than even when she started to show them for real. The presence of tattered holes caused by high-powered ARMs -- a triplet of long, thin gashes caused by some beast's claw... even the bone is chipped or fractured in places, where they haven't simply fallen off.
"... an oaken tree and a bamboo tree both existed in a garden, in the midst of a great storm," Riesenlied speaks gently. "It was a great and raging hurricane, such that even the farmer's crops and fences were blown away."
There is a moment where she sucks her breath in, then says, "The oaken tree was thick and powerful. Its roots ran deep along the ground, and its trunk could withstand the battering of the hunter's dao, year after year."
"But... it resisted and resisted, and the storm took it to its breaking point. With a thunderous roar, it ripped in half, until it upheaved a great handful of soil with it."
She sighs softly.
"In contrast... the bamboo tree was whip-like and soft. Its roots ran shallow, and it was quick to mature. Our hunter's dao can easily carve it down. But no matter how much the storm threw at it... it simply whipped, and whirled -- moving with the flow of the winds as it raged in the night."
She tilts her head.
"Elder Farshid loved his stories and metaphors. And I think... what I take from that..." She looks up towards the skies for a moment. "Even if the world may be cruel... even if outside forces continue to conspire against us -- the Demon of Elru, my brethren, and Solaris all..."
She presses her lips together. "It does not mean that we live without meaning. It does not mean that it is not worth pursuing. They understand the value that Wayside represented for us all. It is as Odoryuk said to me. That... such boundaries can eventually be overcome."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida figured it was that story. Her governess told her a variant of it when she was young, and still frustrated with her elders' attempts to make a proper young lady out of her. The moral was simple. Stubbornness is never rewarded. Conviction is never rewarded. The only way to survive the world is to yield to it, no matter what it throws at you. Bend to it, constantly, or you will surely break.
Ida did not want to hear it again. Her lips twist in a grimace. She reaches down to pick up the tea, even though the cup is still hot enough to burn her hand. She grips it tightly, and the pain is...
Welcome.
"I am not you," Ida says. "I am not meant for civil society, much less your new world. I don't claim to understand the Method, but you're not even /trying/ to."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Perhaps a core difference in how Ida and Riesenlied perceive the world is the difference in the word 'yield'. She looks towards Ida with a quiet lowering of her head. "... accepting that there are forces pushing and pulling you in all directions... yet doing so to maintain your own integrity and identity. Collaboration, not compromise. Wayside is as much a fixture of that sentiment... a melting pot of different ideas, inspirations, and pains..."
She breathes in a little deeper, and quietly rises to her feet. "There is fluidity in the Method. As there is in any teaching's interpretation. It is what I simply choose to embrace."
She places a hand to her chest. "... I told Garrett that I will not fail him again. ... and I want to continue helping you as well, Ida. You probably do not wish it at all... and I can't fault you for that. But... I will try."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida lets go of the teacup, and sets it down. The palm of her hand is bright red with burns, and it /stings/, even as she forces her fingers to clench. The skin of her palm tightens and twists. Within moments, there is no sign of the burns at all. "Look at that," Ida says, looking down at her hand--it's not the strange, unsettling wonderment she felt when she first saw it, but it's something she can /do/ now, and it's hers. It's something that sets her apart.
Of course, she and Riesenlied seem to be talking past each other. "What identity is there," Ida says, "beyond that of a violent woman, forcibly civilized because we cannot have that in our precious garden? Beyond what I threw into the pyre at the Hollow, not realizing what I was doing?"
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied looks towards the palm of that hand for a moment, biting at her lip. She'd never want someone to hurt themselves... yet... when Ida's skin just-- twists, and reknits itself again...
It truly does remind her of Hyadean regeneration, she admits.
Ida speaks of identity -- that she is a violent woman forcibly civilized. That she cast it into the pyre...
Her lips press together as she thinks of her own time there. When she cast those feathers into the pyre, revealing her wings for what they are. Identity...
I wanted to be someone...
Anyone...
She bobs her head to one side. Being that little runt, scrabbling through the blizzard again... whimpering, begging, picking at scraps.
"I, too, wish to chase after the Trial Knight. But in the pursuit of vengeance against them... do be careful you do not trade one set of chains for another, after you've loosed the ones of your home," Riesenlied speaks.
She glances aside.
"I know all too well how that feels."
She starts to hear noises from the side, and draws her capelet a little closer around herself. "... be well, Ida. I hope Garrett and Rosaline will help you where we cannot, right now."
<Pose Tracker> Ida Everstead-Rey has posed.
Ida reaches down into one of her pockets, and pulls out what looks at first to be a small metal case. She holds it up, and it unfolds itself--it's not a case at all, but silvery metal fabric, which she drapes across her shoulders like a blanket. Ida snuggles up into the ARM Kalve gave her as though it could somehow replace him, and looks back at Riesenlied. "I can't make any promises," Ida whispers. "I'm going to play the hand that I've been given. I hope you and yours are well, especially the children." Words. Words that can do nothing to make up for all the awful things she said and thought about them--much less the things she tried to do about them. The star in her heart flares.
She smiles, though, at the mention of her companions. "Indeed," she says. "Please try to keep this place secret. We chose it because it was far enough away, and already Malevolent. I don't want to chase gawkers away."