2019-04-15: I Accept The Yevon
- Log: I Accept The Yevon
- Cast: Lunata Croze, Seymour Guado
- Where: Luca
- Date: 15th April 2019
- Summary: Lunata comes to see Seymour again, and a meaningful conversation is had...
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
It is done, then.
Lunata's cleaned all her possible earthly possessions away from the Caravan Kinship. She's bid what she tentatively feels are solid, final feelings to Jacqueline and said her farewells. Shalune's going to be so angry at her about this and yet... and yet it's in a way a step better than just the constant and miserable stewing she's been stuck in for the past couple of months.
But Lunata's kind of accustomed to taking one step forward, two steps back.
She heard Seymour wanted to talk to her again, so she's off to find the Maester and his retinue once more...
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
Seymour Guado is, for a few days more at least, in Luca.
They have been busy days; he cleared a hotel out, which now -- instead of catering to the rich and powerful -- caters to the needs of the Yevonite Church. Hotel rooms are offices, supply rooms, and more. Yevon has set about the task of repairing the damage done to Luca, and guiding the reconstruction efforts. They are, in the grand scheme of things, small.
But Seymour has other, greater tasks to tend to, as well. The Maester of Yevon is in the suite turned into an office, looking out over the shore. When Lunata was spotted, someone brought word; when she neared, a Guado soldier guided her to the Maester's quarters.
When Lunie arrives, Seymour stands at the large window overlooking the city. His back is to her, his hands crossed behind him, and he speaks in the same calm, friendly tone as ever.
"Miss Lunata," she says. "I am glad you could come. I hope you've found the past few days restful."
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
Dang.
Lunata hasn't worked with an organisation that would just charter and clear a hotel out; the Carakin doesn't really do that, and the Yggdrassil's more likely to just tape gum together to make corrugated shacks if they need a forward operating base. And that's if they're lucky and Bart hasn't suggested using a Bart Missile as one.
She seems to have found some Spiran fare; a more travelling-sturdy yukata like the kinds Warrior Monks and other travelers would wear, though she's still wearing skinny pants and boots underneath and... has her fur-trimmed Yggdrassil Alliance tac-jacket slung ontop like an extremely modern haori. Somehow, it doesn't ruin the look that much.
"... in a way," Lunata murmurs. "But I was hoping I could find respite here in Spira..."
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
Seymour turns, when Lunata speaks. He's surprised at her new mode of dress, though he doesn't register it immediately. The Maester gives her a long look -- and then he nods, solely. "I think it depends upon the respite that you are seeking, Lunata..." Already with the more familiar forms of address. "Some would say Spira is not a peaceful land."
He lifts clawed fingers to his chin, and he looks thoughtful. "There is an unending cycle here: Sin comes, and cities are destroyed and people left dead. Many would say that it is not a peaceful place, because of that. A thousand years of an unceasing cycle of Calms and Sin's wrath..."
Seymour shakes his head. "But, there are other sorts of respite. Respite from other conflicts. Perhaps you will find that here, after all?"
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
"... at first glance, Spira is beautiful," Lunata muses quietly as she steps a bit closer, to find a window to glance out towards the city of Luca. "Its beaches are pristine, white; its oceans pure and teeming with life. There is wildlife and flora here beyond what I've ever thought possible to see."
A pause, as she closes her eyes. "But it's as you say. Sin comes and consumes. The people... the people are resilient. They find ways to share joy, in sportsmanship, in faith and custom and culture."
A longer pause. "But I know firsthand the fear within oneself when attack is only a stone's throw around the corner. There is a vicariousness to living one's life to the fullest because of that..."
She opens her eyes. "But... that is not the kind of respite I seek. What I seek is... beyond the physical."
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
"You're quite correct. The people here live in fear, even when they know joy," Seymour muses. "It is the very nature of Spira. But..."
Seymour trails off into silence.
Respite beyond the physical. He thinks he might know something about that, if only that it doesn't exist -- but that sort of grim, absolute, nihilistic thought is not one to share easily. He stares at Lunata after she finishes speaking. Then, he nods, and steps across the room.
He closes the door; these sorts of thoughts are ones to keep private from his guards.
"If I may ask, then... what troubles you?" he asks. "I can tell you what I know of Spira, and whether it offers what you may seek."
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
Lunata purses her lips as she looks back towards Seymour, as if to gauge him. Not cautiously and suspiciously, but there is a certain kind of care that is needed regardless. She watches him close the door.
"Spira... is a land of death."
She looks back towards the street outside.
"Like you say... Sin comes. An unending cycle of consumption and destruction, between Calms and disasters that have lasted a thousand years." She hesitates, but then says, "And the pyreflies are proof in plain sight. The souls of the unquiet dead are so common that they congregate in large amount and become Fiends... and-- it is like your assistant Krelian said."
She looks towards him.
"They come and go, but they have no place of rest. There aren't enough Summoners to Send them all to a place of respite." She hesitates... but then says, "I am both their opposite, yet also the same."
The sensation of undeath radiating from her body seems to emanate, just a bit.
"Just a body, without a soul, trying to find final respite..."
A pause.
"And I felt... something here. Perhaps Spira -- perhaps Yevon -- has an answer to that problem."
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
A land of death, Seymour muses.
He is reminded, in an instant -- and he needed no reminder -- of why he found her so interesting. He sensed something within her; perhaps more accurately, Anima sensed something within her, and communicated that very thought to him.
"Very, very astute, Lunata..." He says it only after she finishes. "Krelian spoke the truth--but I think, perhaps out of politeness..." Or perhaps, because he did not know the whole truth, but whether Seymour suspects that remains unsaid. "...he omitted something. You are correct, that the pyreflies gather, and form the Fiends. The souls of the restless dead, given to their basest impulses. And you..."
His eyes wien, and he /feels/ Anima rumbling with that awareness. A sense of kinship that Anima feels with her. "...You say you are a body, without a soul. And yet you stand before me...?"
He tilts his head. "We may have an answer, in what Krelian left unsaid." If there is horror and shock at what Lunata has revealed, it does not show. There is curiosity in Seymour's pale eyes... and, somehow, excitement too. "Have you heard of the Unsent?"
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
Lunata's not certain whether she's happy to have observed things that much or not; in a way, it feels like an incredibly natural thing to sense to her -- but she's always been gifted, or cursed, with spiritual sight unbecoming of a simple waitress. It was what led her to be briefly ostracised when she saw the Curry-Eating Ghost at Starfall Saloon, after all.
"Unsent?" Lunata asks, and answers the question at the same time, since her tone tips that she doesn't. "You mean like the... Fiends? Or something else?"
She furrows her brow. What Krelian said... Lunata quietly holds up her katana -- not in any violent gesture, but holding it level.
"I would like to hear... and in turn, I would explain to you my own circumstance. I have an intuition it may not be so divorced from each other..."
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
"An Unsent is a rare soul," Seymour says. "You see... some, when they die -- and are not Sent -- do not become Fiends. If they are not Sent, they cannot return to the Farplane. The afterlife, in our parlance. And those souls, instead, form a body of pyreflies... and return to a sort of life."
He tilts his head. "It sounds the opposite of what you describe -- and yet, perhaps, a mirror. A reflection. The way that things that stand opposite one another can be so alike."
He nods his head.
"Would you tell me more of your circumstances?" Seymour asks. "I confess... I am very interested, now."
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
Lunata's lips press very thinly at that news. To die and not be sent... to have unfinished business, gathered upon pyreflies. "You speak of... undeath..." A pause. "Perhaps there is no difference between a body without a soul, or a soul without a body. That much is true."
She furrows her brow. Why is the Maester so keen on matters like this?
No matter... she holds up the katana at her side gently -- holding it with both hands to be level to him.
"This weapon is a key to an ancient curse where I come from. 'Gilgal Rephaim', in its primitive language, or the 'Wheel of Spirits'. A curse that attracts the desperate and needy... and devours their souls in exchange for a wish. It has devoured hundreds, if not thousands of souls for a time longer than I can even trace back, and..."
She purses her lips.
"In my case... I wanted so dearly to save my mother's life. And I paid that price with my own."
She brushes her hand to her chest for a moment, where the scar still lingers.
"I died on that day... and my soul was claimed by the Wheel. And now I exist on borrowed time, until a day when those sands run out and... the Wheel will seek out its next victim."
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
"It may be the case." Seymour's reasons for knowing of undeath are, ultimately, somewhat mundane; after all, Guadosalam is both a center of life and death. He starts to consider one solution, but then Lunata says one thing that capture his attention and imagination; in a moment, his regard of her changes from 'interested' to, forever and fatefully, intertwined.
'I wanted so dearly to save my mother's life.'
Before that, Seymour's expression was interested yet clinical; even faced with Gilgal Rephaim, his interest was a scholarly sort. And yet, with those words, his eyes widen sharply for just a moment.
"I... see." He watches her hand, and then his eyes lift, to look up at Lunata. "You died... and you found no peace. And you gave that life up, so your mother might live..."
Anima rumbles in his mind.
"...And you would pass on from this world," he says. "And not let the Wheel claim another?"
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
Lunata sucks in a much more emotional breath; she readied herself for this talk, but speaking of such matters is still not easy for her. Even after all the relinquishing of matters she's done. Even after all that she's told herself.
If she notices the change in Seymour's reaction, she doesn't convey it, perhaps out of politeness... but she can't stop that lingering feeling that she felt something so similar.
"If I had expired, maybe I would have found peace. My soul, for my mother's. Yet I linger as I have since that day, two years ago or so..."
She lowers her head.
"To be punished in one's desire to save another is despicable, is it not? If it were at all possible, I would have all our souls -- the souls within the Wheel -- be saved. Sent, in your parlance, to their final rest."
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
"Those who have died should have the chance to pass on. To have your spirit maintained against your will..." Seymour shakes his head, once. There is a familiarity; he thinks of his own mother. He thinks of what he said before.
How two things that seem like opposites may, still, have much in common.
"...True peace, I think, can only be found in death. This world is a cruel place, Lunata. To deny someone that final peace... is the ultimate cruelty," he says, softly.
It is a truer statement, more reflective of his thoughts, than he intended. "Yes. I will help you. We may find ways to do so -- I do not know if a Sending will suffice. But perhaps, together... we can find a way to do so."
<Pose Tracker> Lunata Croze has posed.
Those who have died should have the chance to pass on.
Lunata reflects on that statement, of what she wrote in that letter before she passed it onto the seas of Spira...
Then she quietly nods.
True peace can only be found in death. It's a powerful statement, especially from someone like a Maester. What would the people say if they heard him say such a thing? Would they agree? She doesn't quite know the spirit of Spira's people... but she feels they might think so, on the topic of the departed.
"I agree," Lunata quietly adds. "There are people, living to their fullest with their spirits burning like the sun... and then there are ghosts, only living in the most generous read of the term."
She sighs softly, bowing her head.
"Thank you, Maester Seymour. ... I earnestly do not know either... but even if not, I would lend you my assistance where I can. It is the least I can do in turn."
She purses her lips.
She thinks of Jacqueline and Shalune for a moment. She wonders if she is being overly selfish. She doesn't know.
All she can do is try.
<Pose Tracker> Seymour Guado has posed.
There is a logical leap that Seymour dare not tell her. Not yet. Those innermost thoughts are something he still could not lend to others, for fear of what it might cost him. Some thoughts would trouble Yevon's faithful.
Some could break them.
"It is true," he says softly. "The ghosts of this world... we should help them move on." He looks at her, eyes locking onto hers. His expression is intense. "You have my word, Lunata. If there is a way to free you and the rest, we shall find it. And your assistance..."
His serious, intense expression becomes a smile again. "I welcome it. You will be welcome in my retinue -- and we will work to help Spira, and to free it from the curse it is gripped in."
[GROUP] Seymour Guado has invited you to join the Yevon! To accept, type +gjoin Yevon or Refuse using +grefuse Yevon.