2019-01-21: Heart to Heart
- Log: Heart to Heart
- Cast: Riesenlied, Avril Vent Fleur
- Where: The Fereshte
- Date: 21st January 2019
- Summary: Avril helps with an inspection of Riesenlied's Medium, which prompts them to discuss their nature...
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
It's been a few weeks since they all returned from Elru, and Avril has spent time in the Fereshte in her workshop as well as around in the ensuing time. But there was a rather octagonal-shaped elephant in the room outstanding -- or more precisely, Riesenlied's neck, and it's why on this particular day...
Riesenlied's moved to a small room set up as a clinic in the Fereshte with some dividers, more out of privacy than any need for medical equipment (though having them on hand certainly doesn't hurt). She's wearing a lower-necked top to let what has happened remain uncovered--
That the Medium rests half-buried, grafted in a sift of wiring, scales and deformed Hyadean flesh at the base of her neck, thrumming softly with the tune of the Ley.
There's a soft cough from Riesenlied as she pats at her forehead, looking a little further beyond. Noeline's probably not terribly far, with how much helicopter parenting (partnering?) she's been doing. She's currently seated next to a gurney, still in her wheelchair as she's been confined for the last few weeks save several physical therapy exercises.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
Avril had learned, after a fashion, what precisely had become of Riesenlied... and the Medium.
It had been grafted to her body, a union perhaps similar in scope to what Noeline had undergone, but far more barbaric in application. Looking at it now, seated across from Riesenlied, she can see the manner in which it has become permanently melded to her body. It's strange. Aside from disgust for the one who did this, she feels a sense of... guilty responsibility. Why is that? Her fingers slowly clasp with one another atop her lap. Atop the slowly shimmering Sea Medium.
"Does it cause you discomfort or pain?" she ventures, gazing upon the fused Life Medium. She hopes that it does not.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
It's difficult for Riesenlied to imagine how Noeline must've felt when she received the Medium into her, from what was unveiled to her as a setup by Duras Drum and perhaps other forces unknown. But now, perhaps she has a bit of an inkling...
"For... the first few weeks, after I'd regained my own sense of consciousness, everything felt foreign. From the way my legs were shaped, to the sensation of something... /something/, that Alhazred injected into me--"
A pause, as she glances aside.
"But... no... I can't say it's painful now," Riesenlied admits. A pause as she admits, "But I still feel that sense of..."
She flits her glance to Avril. She senses the Sea Medium as it softly shimmers, and the Life Medium thrums in response.
"I don't know how to express it. Rejection... but not quite. Like a fear..."
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
Avril lowers her gaze. "...I see. It must have been difficult for you." To awaken to a body that felt foreign and alien... Avril can't imagine it. It's true that she's endured a sense of disconnect from her past, from her memories, but at the very least she can say that she has always felt at home in her own skin.
"I am glad that it is not causing you pain. I..." She hesitates, as if uncertain of something. "I am sorry. For what has happened, and for what you have endured."
She is not the one who did it. She has had no hand in any of this. And yet...?
She can't shake that awful sense she's done something wrong.
That comment from Riesenlied though prompts her to lift her gaze, to regard the Hyadean again with mild confusion.
"Fear... from the Medium?"
She pauses.
"Or... the Guardian?"
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied shakes her head, letting out a mild exhausted breath as she puts on her best smile for Avril in turn. She laces her fingers together -- one hand gnarled and draconic, ending in talons, the other human.
"Please... don't. You-- and Rebecca, and Dean -- all sacrificed much to save me." She bites her lip. "And my brethren, too. I could sense you... back at the Gutter, when I was still in that form..."
She closes her eyes.
"That... you would do what needs be done."
A pause again as she tilts her head and murmurs, "I'm... uncertain. The Medium was rejective when I tried to use it before everything happened. It scorched me with the Ley... but--"
She lets out a more laborious breath.
"I was still able to use it, untrained as I am. I don't rightfully know. It may even be my own anxieties playing upon it."
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
There's no better word for the expression on her face but for a politely shaded sort of grimace. "All right," she acquiesces, still unable to entirely shake the sense that she might be partially -- at the very least -- responsible for what has transpired. She doesn't feel as if it's simply a matter of her not being in time to save or rescue Riesenlied. Something more... primal than that.
But even with the 'wall' cracked, she can't find her way in far enough to even retrieve a scrap of an answer.
"I'm simply glad we were able to rescue them. Before..."
Before everything came undone. From Solaris' bombing...? No. It hadn't only been that.
Her gaze shifts from Riesenlied's. She remembers that pledge. "...I am glad that what I felt might be necessary turned out not to be," she murmurs quietly, unfolding her hands to wrap her fingertips around the edge of her Medium. Its pulse quickens; perhaps in time with her own?
"I remember. It seemed so painful for you to use it. I had hoped that since Noeline appeared to not experience difficulty, you might be able to control it. ...However..."
Though, in the end, Riesenlied had managed a sort of control, hadn't she. Before she had been taken. And it wasn't a factor of it being unusable as much as...
Fear. A reaction out of fear, rather than an outright rejection. But who was the one who was afraid?
"Perhaps. It is not impossible." She glances away, as if in silent apology. "...I am afraid I know little, still, about how these Mediums may function. Perhaps once you have regained your strength... we might try it again? Together. I am no shaman, but I have been using this Medium nearly as long as I can remember," which is roughly about two years all told, "so I may be able to assist. Rebecca and Dean, as well."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied does catch note of that quiet grimace; the Tear shimmers very softly where it rests near the Medium, catching faint notes of guilt on its multifaceted surface. A longer pause, as she rests back on her seat.
There are many things she still doesn't know about Avril. Like her role as Queen of the Veruni. Like how Volsung responded to her.
But... she feels certain... that she would stand by her side.
"I remember. Being afraid of Odoryuk for so long. Ever since my time in that village, when I was so young," Riesenlied gently expresses... closing her eyes. "And I know well enough how fear can fester and take the shape of so many things."
Is it her fear alone? Or...
She lulls her head for a moment longer. "But I remember Odoryuk encouraging me, when we were trapped at the top of the Pleasing Gardens. Their words...."
She squints her eyes as she recollects. "That we can... eventually overcome such boundaries together, no matter how slowly."
There's a bashful look on Riesenlied's face as she nods to Avril's suggestion. "That's why I want to keep trying, with Noeline, with you, even if it may be painful to use... because I don't want to give up on that hope. So yes... I would like to."
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
There are a great many things that Avril still doesn't fully know about herself. Hence, why she has hired Lily and Leon to attempt -- if possible -- the retrieval of an item that may just hold the key to another missing piece of her past and identity. Perhaps, with the Mirror of de Soto, she might...
"I understand. At times, our fear becomes the foundation of the house that comprises our being. It is no longer to tease out the why or how, yet it continues to maintain its presence in our lives." She pauses. "Still, when it comes to the Mediums... I have thought on it myself, the difference between them."
Her fingertips again brush the edge of the Sea Medium, as if seeking its comfort, perhaps. "All I know is that the Original Artificial Mediums possess a profound link to the Guardians. ...Not 'greater than' the Mediums the Baskar made use of, but neither are they lesser, even if the link they provide appears to be less intimate." She pauses, as if considering how to phrase the next part. "Since they allow even those not of Filgaia to make use of their power, I have wondered how that link may have been forged... as well as what its precise nature might be." As well as how consensual that link might have been. True enough -- the Guardians have not to date voiced pain or protest over the Artificial Mediums. Yet, is it possible they might have not been willing, or is that but her own paranoia on the matter?
Especially with an object she appears to be able to intuitively control, if not understand how or why she can conduct the controlling.
Still. Odoryuk had guided Riesenlied down this path, hadn't he...
"...It may also be possible that the nature of the link is what is difficult. Baring one's heart to another can be painful and terrifying, particularly when there has been so much uncertitude prior." She pauses again, thinking on what it is she wishes to convey. "...Is it so different for a Guardian? To see into your heart, and for him to expose his own. It is akin to lovers, is it not?"
"If," she adds, "in the metaphorical rather than literal sense."
She concludes: "It is a terrifying process, particularly among those who have once been enemies. Of course, this is but speculation, but it may... not only be you, Riesenlied. Perhaps if we could speak to the Guardian..."
This may prove difficult, given the nature of what the Medium permits, and the rarity of shamans attuned to the Guardian of Life.
"...But then, perhaps trust is best won with care." She nods. "Yes. I will work with you, once you have regained some strength, and we will see what we can teach you." She smiles, a slight but no less earnest thing. "All right?"
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Despite technically being a Black Wolf, Riesenlied doesn't know about Avril's request of the Mirror. Maybe it's for the best, too, on both a practical level--
Riesenlied eeks and trips out of her cucco-shaped cardboard box as one of Elvis' soldiers go !! at her presence. "Who's there?!"
...and a moral level, as she has to further and further become part of the face of the Outreach.
Still... it doesn't mean she wants to be apart from the Wolves, who've become her close friends.
She listens to Avril's discussion of the original artificials. "In truth I... did not even know the difference, when I first laid sight upon the Medium in Nasrin's hands, so long ago."
She glances aside. "But... the Fereshte long used this Medium--" as she brushes a finger on the Medium grafted on her. "... maybe I am naive. But this Medium has been the hope of that tribe's village for a long time, in the tradition of its Heritor. Humans and now a Hyadean have used it... so maybe..."
Well, that's the most she can hope, at the very least. That there isn't anything untoward or coercing about the link to the Guardians...
She turns just a little red and maybe feels a bit jealous as Avril compares the link to that of lovers, before she remands herself.
"It is true. Not just Odoryuk... it must have been hard for Equites to even consider our plea, back at the Guardian Temple. To let us show him that there was more than just war amongst our people."
And of that difficulty...
"... I scarce hear Odoryuk's voice. I am tugged and pulled by the Ley, as you've seen before, but... his is not a voice I hear often."
She nods and smiles a bit warmer, holding her hand out. "I'd love that. To learn with Noeline, Dean, Rebecca, and you..."
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
"I had only learned at first such from Cyre and other shamans. Later, when I was able to hold a stone Medium myself, the difference became much clearer. They are sisters to one another but they are not one and the same. Each appears to have its own strengths. One, generally closer. One, more flexible. Then there are the Originals..."
Which appear to play by a distinctly different ruleset than even their Artificial kin, but one by which she has yet to fully comprehend.
There is much she doesn't know. And more that, perhaps, she only suspects may be so, based on what she has been able to glean from the few fragmented sources she has access to. That may be one reason why she speaks not to Riesenlied of her fears of a coercive element -- it may only be her worries of the nature of this bond.
More reasonable, perhaps, may be her thought that the connective element is heart-to-heart. The Guardians have not been quiet about their displeasure towards her previously. Why would they hesitate to do so now, if a grave injustice had been forced upon them? Indeed, the tradition of the Fereshte shamans speaks to a commensalism: if the link caused pain or discomfort, would the Life Guardian be silent generation after generation on the matter?
Yet, there still remains that lingering fragment of fear.
"Yes," she says, in spite of that nagging worry, speaking to the concern, "you may be correct. If it has been used for so long... and if the Guardians have yet to speak their discomfort."
It may indeed be nothing at all.
Instead, her other thought on the matter may be the more correct of the two.
Not a yoking of a Guardian to one's will... but a means to open and unite two hearts.
And, perhaps, others. She blinks, the pieces settling now into place. That feeling she has from the Mediums in close contact with one another. Moreover, that feeling during the battle against the draconic form Riesenlied had assumed. The Mediums /can/ speak to one another...
"...I suspect that connection may not be limited to between the Mediums and the Guardians either. Perhaps it might also link the hearts of other bearers. I... was able to reach out to you through it. Even now," she says, indicating towards the Medium she holds and its soft pulse that has synched with Riesenlied's own perfectly.
Her gaze drops down to it. "It is difficult to expose one's own heart, though. As much between one another as with the Guardians. Perhaps that is why I was never before able to..."
For she is a girl who only barely has begun to know her own heart.
There is much to learn in the teaching as with being taught. She lifts her gaze from the enigmatic object in her lap, and then, regarding Riesenlied, reaches out a hand to take hers.
"Yes. I feel as if we should be able to open our hearts to one another. That must be the way to unlocking their mysteries."
More than that apprehension -- which may arise from her unknown unknowns, the fear of who she was -- this feels more assured.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied scarce understands the nature of all the different Mediums, if she had to admit it. She wasn't exactly welcome amongst the Baskar until very recently when she reached out to Granny Halle... and even then, there's a lot that they all have to work through.
But the Originals...
She does wonder, herself. "I would... hope that Odoryuk would be forthcoming with me if I was causing him great pain," she ruefully says. "That neither of us were forcing ourselves to open our hearts to each other."
She bites her lip, closing her eyes. She thinks of her father for a moment.
"Because... that is not how communication or relationships should work..."
She listens as Avril talks about how she reached out to her... nodding quietly. "Bonds have... been there with me since the start of this adventure. The strange calls through the Ley which led me to you in the first place... my own bond with Noeline through our hearts..."
A pause. A little more tender, as she smiles further. She takes that hand as she holds on for a moment, nodding firmly.
"I know that it is difficult. But... I think you've done an admirable job. I feel closer to you than when we first met in that Temple, years ago. It isn't something that should be done overnight, nor is it something that one has to go through alone..."
She tilts her head.
"I'll be there with you, as will the others, as you have for me before."