2019-04-14: I'll Walk into the Sun
- Log: I'll Walk into the Sun
- Cast: Lunata Croze, Marivel Armitage
- Where: Luca
- Date: 14th April 2019
- Summary: Lunata writes a letter, but meets an unusual kindred spirit of the unliving kind...
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
LAST TIME IN YOU CONFESSED YOUR LOVE AND RAN AWAY LUNATA CROZE
Wait, you're not supposed to steal Fei's taglines, Lunata. Shame.
But it really is something of a great big turn in Lunata's life. The straw, as it were, had finally broken on the camel's back. She bid farewell to Jacqueline. She has plans to clean everything up in the Caravan Kinship. And currently...
The ex-waitress is seated at the Luca docks, facing the views of the ocean that dominate the city. She's quietly writing on sheafs of paper, using the closest thing to a writing utensil she was able to find.
The Orochi-Agito sits next to her. Marivel may be familiar with it, passed down through so much time. Much like it, she herself exudes the aura of undeath that should be unmistakable to a Crimson Noble such as Marivel.
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Her presence will be felt before it appears. Death is approaching Lunata and much like Lunata can sense its approach, she can pick out Lunata readily by aiming for the epiccenter of the aura and approaching it. She does not hurry, thuogh she does not lollygag either. She moves at a crisp, patient pace towards Lunata, moving with purpose and--perhaps intent.
"To think I would find you here," The Crimson Noble is unshrouded. She wears a black cape but her principle colors and blue and white otherwise, a dress surely not meant for combat. "Rephaim. How many souls must you consume ere you are satisfied? How many black butterflies must be pinned to the land? Is not one city of fools enough?"
She extends a hand slowly into the air, pauses, and then curls her fingers inward, her attention settling from Orochi towards Lunata.
She doesn't say anything for a moment before she finally speaks a strange but common phrase from her.
"I wonder. Are you an enemy of the world, young one?"
She doesn't advance or make any further aggressive action.
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
Lunata keeps writing. There is a tense, pensive expression on her face as she does; whatever she's writing has her quite absorbed, not the kind of flighty casual writing of some kind of grocery note to be certain.
But the presence appears.
She pauses... and doesn't turn around for a moment. Her lips thin for a moment as she quietly folds the letter away, into a... bottle? A bottle. One of those miraculously powerful Great Seas bottles, apparently.
Who puts a letter in a bottle?
Lunata gets up. She's found Spiran clothing -- a travelling yukata designed to see combat with, since she can't help it, skinny pants underneath ending in rugged boots; right now, though, she still apparently can't let go entirely, because she's got the Yggdrasil Alliance jacket with its odd tactical vibe and ruffed collar worn ontop.
"That's... that's one way to make an entrance?" Lunata mumbles. "What kind of question IS that?"
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel cocks her head to the left a bit, a faint crooked grin creeping up on her lips. "Tis best to put your all into what you are doing." Her eyes have settled on that Yggdrasil Alliance jacket. "What kind of lich sends a message away on a bottle, on a world they are not even from even."
She continues her approach though she doesn't draw a blade. Despite reading as 'undead', Marivel definitely has a soul. It's a strange one, perhaps, that has glued tiny tiny tiny pieces of other spirits attached to it, but she has one. Her body is not living, but she is not dead. She is not alive. She is neither.
"You seem to have misplaced your soul. Over the years I'd like to think I've gotten fairly good at understanding how humans function. Tis supposed to be inside you, no? Shall I help you look for it?"
She straightens up though at this point she can reach out and touch Lunata if she'd like. She doesn't do it though she does, at this point, come to a stop.
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
The Yggdrasil Alliance doesn't, technically, exist anymore. The Black Wolves went their own way, and though they still sometimes pop by as well as the other Drifters, Lunata's found herself as the primary mainstay on the ship itself.
Maybe it's another way in which she's clinging to the past.
"You're a pretty blunt person, aren't you?" Lunata finds herself grumbling as she scratches at her rather unruly white hair.
"That's right. I have no soul. I'm just a body... a remnant," she grumbles. "But."
She flits those eyes towards Marivel in turn as she says, "You're not quite living either... are you? But you... you still have a soul. You still have your 'self'."
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
"If you prefer, I can dither about and say nothing for aeons." Marivel says. "But we have fewer illusions 'tween us than most do, so why not be as plain as we'd like?" Marivel asks, though it's kind of rhetorical to be honest. She is who she is and she is not about to make an apology for it. She is hardly to blame for Lunata's current predicament either, though for that--at least--she does have some sympathy. To think she'd find so many dead people on the moon rather than on the actual dying planet. It's kind of funny when she thinks about it like that.
"Well nobody's perfect." Marivel says, her gaze not even glancing away in a casual sense. Well, she is near someone whose soul has been removed and placed elsewhere and something like that--something like that even Marivel knows to be wary about.
"I was born this way." Marivel says. "I wouldn't know what else to be. My people did not make more of us that often, particularly through the method 'I' was made, but I am a bit unlike the others. I still have my soul. The others lost theirs and to this day they remain, burning in the belly of the Soul Devourer."
She crosses her arms. "I would say I am living, though I am not alive by most definitions of the term. We seem to have differences of opinion on what constitutes being alive. Do we have the same understanding of what makes a soul?"
She gestures forward. "I'm curious. Do you know what it is you have lost? What is... a soul? You look like you have a unique identity to me, so perhaps there is more to it than that?"
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
Lunata lets out a faint breath, which is one of those little tics she's retained out of sheer force of habit and muscle memory; she turns around on the wharf mooring she's seated on and puts her elbows to her knees as she laces her fingers together.
"Before anything else. I'm Lunata Croze," Lunata stubbornly insists beforehand. "And I suppose. I do hate it when people talk in circles and say nothing in the end."
A pause, as Marivel talks about being born this way. That she doesn't know what being something else is like. She places a hand to the bottle for a moment.
"Well, it is timely that you asked. I was just writing down... everything that I now understand I've lost. Here," Lunata pats the cork of the bottle. "When I've come to realise I haven't been living in the last two years..."
Her eyes catch Marivel's.
"That I died, two years ago."
There is a pause, and Marivel and Lunata can sense a resonance from Orochi-Agito.
Then she appears--
The spectral lich, the rotten, impure princess of Hirasaka past. The once-shaman of Ge Ramtos. That was the name of the city, Marivel remembers. But her name...
All she is is Ge Ramda now.
She looks forlornly towards Marivel, the look of someone who hasn't seen each other for aeons.
"Ge Ramda... you can't come out here. You'll scare people," utters Lunata.
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel says, "Lunata Croze. Names have power. Very well, I shall give you mine: Marivel Armitage, last of my people...The Crimson Nobles, those who were so careless with their souls that I shall be, forevermore, alone. Alien in my own world. Soon they will not even be a myth nor a legend, they will be oblivion, gone from mind and without."
She looks to the side for a moment and is about to say more when there's a resonance from Orochi-Agito. Marivel thrusts out her hand with supernatural quickness but then stops upon seeing Ge Ramda.
She lowers her hand, stepping backwards. "You are..."
She lowers her head, hands curling into fists. There is an intense spike of rage from Marivel--
--and then it lingers, a moment, before dissipitating with the unclenching of her hands and a moment of time as if to cast that too away.
"...What have they done to you?" Marivel asks. "...Or...did you do this to yourself...? Atonement?"
She shakes her head. "You should not be dragging other children into this. Whatever your bargain, you should allow her an escape clause. Tis my people's duty, /my/ duty to watch over Filgaia, not yours." This is less her trying to talk around what she's trying to say and more saying things presuming the one is talking to knows what she is talking about. She is less disturbed by the appearance than she is the fate.
She looks back to Lunata for a long moment. "...I suppose tis not an end you would have asked for either. Still, your soul still exists in this realm. That which is removed can be returned and if the warmth is near, perhaps an ember will break off and spawn one anew."
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
Lunata is silent for a long moment.
She closes her eyes, as even she recognises that Marivel and Ge Ramda have a moment of recollection with each other. As they look at each other.
Ge Ramda looks eyelessly, the empty sockets of her eyes filled with forlornness that speaks beyond the gleam reflected upon one's eye.
The jingle of ancient regalia wavers around her. Her garb, a timeless bridal regalia, withering away about her form. Once resplendent, now... a reminder of what once was. And what not to be.
She does not speak. She cannot speak. She has no lungs to exhort breath, no throat nor tongue. She braces against herself tightly... then disappears in a low moan of sorrow.
"I was just a waitress," Lunata speaks up. "I'm not like you. I don't know the pain of being the only survivor left... that's a pain I can't possibly speak to. But..."
She lifts her head up to the skies, as the sun thrusts its last, pitiful rays over the horizon.
"I do know solitude. I do know the intensity of feeling alone in a crowd. Amongst friends. Friends who have since moved on... friends who have bright, burning souls full of purpose and energy, who fight for the future of the world. The intensity,"
She looks to Marivel again.
"The intensity... of being left behind."
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel's feels the hunger rising up within her, intensifying when Ge Ramda stares at her, growing ever sharper as she vanishes not with relief, but with sorrow. "She fought..." Marivel murmurs. "She fought so hard... and simply because her own hands were not enough, she is like this now. I care not whether someone is dead or alive, they are but little words for making people think smally."
She closes her eyes for a moment.
When she reopens them, that prior determination and focus has returned. The difference between sunset and night is meager, but it does help the Crismon Noble relax just a bit.
"...I was not expecting you to understand." She says. "I simply wished you to be aware of who I am so you are under no illusion just as I intend to discover who you are."
She steps forward to look at the sea. It has meaning for Marivel as well though she does not share it. "Why did you send 'your self' away in a bottle? Are you praying the sea will return it to you?"
Lunata talks about solitude. Of feeling alone in a crowd. Among friends. Yes, Marivel supposes, feelings such as that are hardly unique to her or to anyone.
"It sounds as if your friends have spirit to share. Why not borrow from them?"
She is quiet another moment before adding, "May I see her again? She left quickly."
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
Lunata is silent for a long moment.
She closes her eyes, as even she recognises that Marivel and Ge Ramda have a moment of recollection with each other. As they look at each other.
Ge Ramda looks eyelessly, the empty sockets of her eyes filled with forlornness that speaks beyond the gleam reflected upon one's eye.
The jingle of ancient regalia wavers around her. Her garb, a timeless bridal regalia, withering away about her form. Once resplendent, now... a reminder of what once was. And what not to be.
She does not speak. She cannot speak. She has no lungs to exhort breath, no throat nor tongue. She braces against herself tightly... then disappears in a low moan of sorrow.
"I was just a waitress," Lunata speaks up. "I'm not like you. I don't know the pain of being the only survivor left... that's a pain I can't possibly speak to. But..."
She lifts her head up to the skies, as the sun thrusts its last, pitiful rays over the horizon.
"I do know solitude. I do know the intensity of feeling alone in a crowd. Amongst friends. Friends who have since moved on... friends who have bright, burning souls full of purpose and energy, who fight for the future of the world. The intensity,"
She looks to Marivel again.
"The intensity... of being left behind."
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
Lunata peers towards Marivel's expression for a long moment, as she chews on her lip gently and mumbles, "That much is true. There are people who are 'alive' and yet do not 'live'. And those that are dead that make great strides, whether in the form of legacy, memory or..."
A pause as she sags her shoulders slowly.
"Marivel Armitage, huh..." Lunata murmurs. A pause. "No... I don't want it returned to me. I'm in the middle of letting go. The ocean is important to the people of Spira. I saw it. They let go of their dead to the oceans, in Sending..."
She closes her eyes.
"... I can't. I'm not like them. I can't keep pushing forward knowing there's nothing in the end but eternal damnation," she admits.
"There was once a time where I foolishly thought defeating Mother would return the life I wanted, between us. Me, Jay, Shalune..."
She has a really self-effacing chuckle at that.
"But Jay... she's a hero. When the call reached out to her, she embraced that wholesale. And now she's paving a path forward with like minded people. And when I stopped to really be aware of that I... that's when I realised. I am someone who died in her past."
Marivel asks if she can see Ge Ramda again, as she clutches a sphere. She concentrates for a moment. She lets out a grunt of exertion.
"... she seems reluctant. I feel deep shame, guilt... but... also a small bit of relief. Emotions too deep and old for me to comprehend. Give me a moment."
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
"Damnation! Surely you are not damned." Marivel says. "Who says you are eternally damned? What a way to think...! Even I don't consider myself damned. Alone, yes, and yes that is often very sad, but eternally damned?"
Marivel sits herself down and looks at the waters that way. "Though if you say so, perhaps it is true or close to it. Words are very powerful and if you say something and believe it, then that in of itself is a kind of magic. A magic that can be more powerful than any I or any sorcerer could wield."
She looks back to Lunata for a moment when she reveals her hopes for after Mother's defeat. "Ahh," She says. "Jacqueline Barber. I know of her. She is a kind soul, but she is not very aware. Not like you are."
She looks forward again. "Being a hero means you don't get to have the life you want. If Jacqueline Barber has embraced being a hero, then I suspect she knows not what a hero is, nor what she has embraced. Rather, from my own minute observations of her, I am not certain she knows what she is fighting for. To protect that which is in front of you? To save those within your reach? True, that is all part of being a good samaritan... But that should be the duty of everyone in this world. That should just be something people do. Not because they are heroes, but because of your bargain with one another: The bargain of working together to face that which you cannot face alone. That is what it is to be human. To be a person, even. I may be alone but even I have a 'team'. Comrades. People I can put some faith into."
She looks back to Lunata. "But you were already content with your life, is that so? Mother died, and you wished to be a little selfish but she wished to be ever more selfless, is that it?" 5rShe smiles. "Perhaps we are more kindred than I thought. I hardly blame you. Even great heroes must wish to lay their arms down. Even great heroes must wish to return home. To live their selfish little lives, their selfish little brilliant wonderful lives."
She smiles at the sea. "I love my home, for all its faults. For all the crimes done to it, even now Filgaia struggles to live for the sake of those that live upon it. Even though living on such a world is frequently treated as some blameless curse, as if we are not responsible for that which our ancestors have given us. It may not be our sin, it is certainly not our obsession, but it is our inheritance. You can run from it, but it will always be there."
She shakes her head. "I do not believe Jay embraces it as much as you think. She helps others because people are in front of her to help. It is not a strong vision, but it is a vision. It is a little illusion that helps her step forward. Perhaps now you are in the past, but if your old illusion no longer works--you may find a new one yet and within that world, you may find purpose and purpose...will draw your 'self' back to you...whether you wish it to or not."
She is quiet for a moment when Lunata reveals Ge Ramda is reluctant. Marivel laughs a little. "I gave her such a fright, hadn't I? I was careless with my words. She is not to blame, but she blames herself anyway, does she? Regrets are a finer chain than any slavemaster can forge. So long as her spirit exists, she may yet find the end she desires. Even in this form."
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
Lunata peers towards Marivel's expression for a long moment, as she chews on her lip gently and mumbles, "That much is true. There are people who are 'alive' and yet do not 'live'. And those that are dead that make great strides, whether in the form of legacy, memory or..."
A pause as she sags her shoulders slowly.
"Marivel Armitage, huh..." Lunata murmurs. A pause. "No... I don't want it returned to me. I'm in the middle of letting go. The ocean is important to the people of Spira. I saw it. They let go of their dead to the oceans, in Sending..."
She closes her eyes.
"... I can't. I'm not like them. I can't keep pushing forward knowing there's nothing in the end but eternal damnation," she admits.
"There was once a time where I foolishly thought defeating Mother would return the life I wanted, between us. Me, Jay, Shalune..."
She has a really self-effacing chuckle at that.
"But Jay... she's a hero. When the call reached out to her, she embraced that wholesale. And now she's paving a path forward with like minded people. And when I stopped to really be aware of that I... that's when I realised. I am someone who died in her past."
Marivel asks if she can see Ge Ramda again, as she clutches a sphere. She concentrates for a moment. She lets out a grunt of exertion.
"... she seems reluctant. I feel deep shame, guilt... but... also a small bit of relief. Emotions too deep and old for me to comprehend. Give me a moment."
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
"I don't think she's to blame," Lunata answers the topic of Ge Ramda first. "If anything, she seems even more exhausted and tired than I am. Because she has seen it all, as I have..."
She tucks her head down. "All the other souls trapped within Rephaim. The Wheel of Spirits. They reach me sometimes, with glimpses of their lives... their failures, mistakes. And like me, they only had so much time before they were all devoured within."
Thin bands of red, viscous energy start to stream out of her. As she grasps onto that Sphere and prepares to channel her out.
"Jacqueline Barber doesn't stop to think about petty terms like 'hero', honestly. She just... lives it. From Mother, to the Trial Knight, to Sin and now Odessa I... I don't even understand what she does anymore. The Kinship definitely isn't simple merchants anymore... I think she embodies it more than you give her credit."
Her lips press thinly.
"But the life I want doesn't exist anymore. A life where Metal Demons were just obscure myths meant to spook badly behaving children. A life where the hardest thing I ever had to do was to convince someone drunk they weren't a bowling ball eating a plate of sashimi."
She grimaces.
"I have no more illusions, Marivel... that's why I'm doing all of this. Because I feel there is an answer here. In this land of Spira."
The spectral lich emerges from out of her spine and back again; this time more deliberate, the image less faint -- a deliberate manifestation, not a shock to the system like the first time.
"I think there is an answer here... in this land suffused by death. Where souls linger and gather, and are shepherded to their final rest..."
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel says, "I don't give people credit from one or two meetings. If I did that, I would go bankrupt."
She thinks about how Lunata describes Jay. Is it true? Well maybe it is true. She certainly has seen others in a similar light. That's the funny thing about it, Ana, you weren't special at all. You were just special to Marivel. And to Luceid. And to your family. The rest of the world sees you as a hero but--
--
"I hate the term 'hero'." Marivel says. "There is such a thing as being too selfless. We cannot force a better world to come to pass, you see, we can do our part, and perhaps a bit more, but not much more--because the world is a weight that must be shared by the many, not the few...otherwise there is no saving this world, not anymore."
She looks to Lunata. "I don't think she's to blame either. I sensed the trap, then the spirit."
She stands herself up. "I'm afraid, though, that Metal Demons were never an obscure myth. They were always reality. The threats that would consume this world always existed. They still exist. And when those are dealt with, yet more yet come even beyond my sight."
She shakes her head slowly. "Tis not that the life you wanted has gone away, tis that the life you wanted never existed. So as it was for us."
She turns back to Lunata. "But... that is why we fought. Not for the sake of the lives we had, but so that we could have lives tommorow, so that one day, maybe, maybe our dreams could come true. We failed, but I'm still fighting for it. And you can too if you wish."
Lunata mentions having no illusions. She expects to find an answer here. Marivel is forced to concede, "There may yet be. Even I wonder if I may not find an answer or two here, in a realm so closely aligned to the dead. I trust you've seen the Moonflow, the Pyreflies... I wonder how you saw them." She considers. "But there's also the Farplane which I have yet to visit, but I cannot promise there will be anything for a non-native there."
She turns back to Lunata but finds herself looking towards the lich. She approaches the spectral construct and looks into her eyes.
"I'm sorry," Marivel tells the lich. "I promise..."
She steps forward and gives the lich a hug of all things. "I will find a way for you to rest. If it takes a thousand years or more, I will be searching." She then pulls back a bit and then even goes so far as to kiss her on her rotting cheek.
"So I know it's hard...but be brave, okay? You won't be fighting alone. It won't be so bad this time."
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
What Marivel says is true. But Lunata's rather biased about Jacqueline, and Marivel's lived long enough to know the kind of shine one takes when they're talking about someone they're clearly affectionate for. Especially the ways that affection can hurt someone so much.
"... I know that now. But maybe I wanted to live in such a time. Such a... simple, understandable time," Lunata murmurs. "When I don't have to get up at four in the morning because, now we're scrambling to chase after Jay going after a paramilitary organisation across the ocean."
Lunata's eyes shrink a little as she points out the life she wanted never existed.
Ge Ramda croons for a moment, as she lowers down towards Marivel's height; it's awkward, the way she's inexplicably tethered to Lunata and Orochi-Agito. But she manages.
Lunata swallows as she hears those words. A thousand years or more...
And Marivel gives her a kiss. The soft, sonorous moan just seems to echo further, as she reaches with one bony claw and-- very genteely, strokes the side of the Crimson Noble's hair.
"... hey," she finally speaks up, after a long and passing moment.
"Promise me one thing, then, if you've promised that to Ge Ramda."
She slumps as she grabs hold of the bottle... and finally tosses it into the now-dark waters of Luca. The bottle floats away ever so gently, washed upon the shores.
"If I do fail with what I want to do... and it may be likely, if no one's ever succeeded. if I just become the latest victim in the end and nothing comes of it..."
She looks to the katana and holds it up level to her eye.
"Promise me you'll keep some other poor schmuck who just wanted their mom to live or whatever from getting caught up in it... all over again..."
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
Marivel says, "Well, I could tell Jay that she needs not chase after Odessa. There are 'people on the case', after all. I have absolute faith in ARMS's ability to defeat Odessa though I suppose I cannot blame Jay for having doubts. To be honest, I doubt in her too. I am not certain she has what it takes to fight Odessa for these people are not like Mother. They are not like Mother at all. They are not like the Hyadeans. They are a far more dangerous creature than those you and Jay have found themselves accustomed to fighting. They are not Seraphs, or Nobles, or Elw."
"They are human." Marivel says. "Will Jacqueline Barber be willing to cut a man down not because he wishes for Filgaia's doom--but rather because they love Filgaia and want the best for it? Will she kill someone seeking to kill her because she thinks differently? I will say this, Matilda was being gentle with her. Cocytus, the leaders of Odessa, they will not be gentle. Or honorable."
"But." She says. "I suppose she will not listen to me. She will take her fate in her hands and maybe she'll even survive it. But if she doesn't change, she might as well not even bother. This is not a fight against some great Filgaian threat. This is a mortal threat for mortal soldiers. Jay need not make herself a conscript. Certainly, maybe even Sin would be a foe less dire than Odessa for her."
Is she being a little vicious here to encourage Lunata in some way? Maybe. Marivel does like making herself the 'bad guy' so others can challenge a cynical world with hope. It's far better to face that world from Marivel's lips than at the end of a spear at least.
"You're my friend," Marivel tells Ge Ramda. "Alright? I am proud of you for trying so hard." It's possible that challenge is mitigated by her attempts to be sweet to Ge Ramda. "I'm not going anywhere. Until the day you walk into the sun."
She gives another hug, this one tighter before, before pulling back and turning back to Lunata now that she's calling for her attention again.
"I know not what you want to do." Marivel says. "I'm still not certain whether I need to stop you or not. Are you an enemy of the world, Lunata Croze?"
She closes her eyes a moment and adds, "I can promise you this. With all my strength, I will fight for a world in which protecting someone close to you is no crime worthy of punishment. And if I must become a calamity," She does not say enemy of the world. "Then I will become a calamity to build that world. Any system that requires a sacrificial hero will have to stand against my claws."
"But..." Marivel says. "Until you become an enemy of the world, I shall not allow you to be defeated before you even make your move."
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
Lunata lets out a dry, hoarse laugh as she comes back full circle to that question. Is she an enemy of the world?
"I don't know, Marivel. I don't know the shape of what it is I have to do is," Lunata murmurs. "All I want is an end. I want rest. Much like Ge Ramda wants respite from it all. To just be able to fade away and not have to worry about punishment or torment... "
She closes her eyes.
And Ge Ramda quietly hugs her tighter, before Marivel pulls back. But then the lich does something a bit unusual--
Because she turns to Lunata to give her a quiet hug too.
This seems to take her a little by surprise.
She does listen to Marivel's advice about the dangers of Odessa and what it is Jay has to face. She wonders, genuinely, how she'll react to that.
She feels bitter for a moment when she thinks a better, more courageous Lunata Croze would stand by her side.
"... ... I'll be working with Yevon. I think the church knows something that can help me-- no, I /feel/ that they do. The fayth, the Aeons, the Sending. This is their custom. It's not a custom unlike Ge Ramda's ancient origins. They may know something."
She closes her eyes tighter as she squeezes Ge Ramda in turn.
"I'm doing this for her sake as much as mine," Lunata mumbles as she quietly reaches up to pat her at the shoulderbone. Her eyes finally flit open to Marivel.
"I'm ready to walk into the sun..."
<Pose Tracker> Marivel Armitage has posed.
"So long as you do not know," Marivel says, shaking her head "Then you are not an enemy of the world. To truly be an enemy of the world is to have boundless unshakeable conviction, someone who would neither desire quarter nor give it to those seeking to stop them. Like that K.K fellow who I heard so much about leading up to our trip to this world. They may be one yet."
She doesn't sound dissapointed or excited, not exactly thoughtful either. It's more like contemplating a math problem.
Perhaps more strength, more courage...would be knowing that you need not fight every battle set before you.
But Marivel does not have Red Skill: Read Minds, and while she has empathy--a lot of dark feelings are being discussed today, that kind of bitterness blends in well with the rest of it all.
"She's very sweet." She says of Ge Ramda. "Even now." She laughs a little, wondering--how she looks to those that knew her once upon a time. Ge Ramdos recognized her, but for a moment there--did she? And that's without knowing the rest of it, the dark truths Marivel accepted for your own selfish desires.
"At least you'll have each other." Marivel says after some thought. "According to the woman named Lulu, the 'Fayths' are repositories for souls. I doubt that would grant you peace, and I don't think the 'Sending' in of itself would work on you, but there should be some similar method. Souls are souls after all. Pyreflies may not work quite the same way, but it's made of the same components."
Lunata gives her pause.
She thinks she's ready to walk into the sun. Is that why she threw that bottle away?
Marivel looks towards the dark waters. "..."
"..."
"..."
Silence.
And then...
"Alright." She says. "When you walk into the sun, I shall see you off."