2019-06-01: Spira Is Kind Of Weird
- Log: Spira Is Kind Of Weird
- Cast: Loren Voss, Lan Lilac
- Where: The Moonflow
- Date: June 1st, 2019
- Summary: Heading north, Loren and Lan stop by the banks of the Moonflow and have a talk about nothing in particular. But also a few very specific things in particular.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It's been there and back again: down to the beach to regroup with Lan and relay to her the general marching orders, collect their belongings, and head out once more. The more distance he can put between himself and Kilika, the better.
Particularly with recent news. He doubts they'll stop with just one town, and the closest place to Kilika is...
Yevon can probably handle it if it happens. He, however, would rather not be caught again.
But more important than the Guards' probable movements is their current orders. 'Aid Maester Seymour Guado's assistant, and thereby use the connections gained to seek out a possible ruin that would grant them passage back to Filgaia.' That about sums it up.
Loren's goal -- and thus also now Lan's -- is to reach Guadosalam.
There even is the promise of an actual bed, when they get there.
To do that, they will need to cross the Moonflow.
As usual, the weather is overcast once they reach the river. The sun is low in the sky; soon it will be evening, and eventually night.
The Pyreflies are thick in the air today, lighting the waters with their shimmer.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"Even if the village was pretty nice, it's good to be on the move again," Lan remarks as they approach the Moonflow. House arrest on the moon isn't as bad as in Solaris. For starters, Loren was the only one who couldn't really leave. She wonders if he might have started to understand how she'd felt that time...?
He probably didn't give it much thought at all. Oh well.
She'd been able to get them a decent enough set of supplies by trading and working with the locals over the last few weeks. While she'd seen a couple of people using something called 'spheres', Lan hasn't been able to get a lead on any yet. Apparently, they're quite precious. "Have you ever seen these things before?" she asks him, picking up the pace a little bit to get to the riverbank faster. "Shoopufs! I've never seen anything like them before, but they're normal here, I guess."
She lets her pack slide down off of her shoulders. It falls to the ground with a quiet thump, and Lan sits on it, stretching her legs out in front of her. Apparently she's happy enough to sit and watch the pyreflies until the 'ferry' returns.
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Technically speaking, he could go anywhere except leave the island, but... it amounts to the same thing in the end. She could have left Kilika and him behind if she'd chosen.
It's a little weird that she didn't, even taking the conditioning into account. But maybe that's a part of it.
In the end they'd smuggled themselves both out... and taken up camping in the wilderness outside Luca. It wasn't as if they had a lot of money -- or at least not enough to justify buying a room, even if the thing he most wants (and may get, in Guadosalam) is a bed.
Being frugal even if it meant suffering was probably worth it.
Though Lan's earned most of the money, hasn't she...
"That's what I heard. Instead of a proper boat, they use one of those." He remains standing, watching the riverbank for a moment. "...Those flowers are everywhere," he comments. "I suppose they like the water."
Silence, of a sort, settles in about them, the only sounds that of the river, the buzz of insects. Distantly, the birds of evening.
Loren, for his part, watches the shoopufs.
"Spira is kind of weird," he comments, making a masterful observation of the land in which they've landed.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
It was more like island arrest, really. But at least they got away! She's been as easygoing and cheerful as usual, despite the lack of beds; then again, beds are an unusual luxury for Lan in the first place. Even her loft back in Little Firelight had only had a straw mattress.
"It's kind of nice though! Boats are okay, but they can't steer themselves." She's traded out her pink and purple Filgaian clothing for something closer to what the locals wear, a high-necked halter in off-white with barkcloth shorts and a few colorful bits and bobs. (She kept her sandals and ribbon, of course.)
She's only been within shouting distance of the Moonflow up until now, but she knows a little bit about it. "I think they're called moonlilies," she says, leaning forward but not getting up just yet. Her feet are a little tired. "I wonder why the waiting souls like them so much?" She watches the pyreflies dance over the surface of the water. "They can't or won't leave for the afterlife before a Lunar shaman performs a special rite. Maybe they just gather here so they can be found more easily." Spira is definitely weird. Back home souls know how to move on by themselves!
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
It's not that he's really gotten used to not sleeping in a bed, but more that he's become resigned to it. Still -- it boils down to about the same thing:
Roughing it in Spira is just more of the usual for him, at this point. He's a Captain, he's coming up on his third year deployed as a part of Gebler.
Even if it doesn't always feel like that.
"It's not really steering itself, though," Loren pendantically points out. "There's someone directing it where to go. Though I guess at least one of those can't sink." There is a significant pause. "Unless it suddenly died, that is."
Dark!
That pleasantry aside, he at least does give her an honest 'huh' sound when she says they're called moonlilies. "Makes sense." Pause. "Though why does it have to be lilies..."
That flower may be ruined for him for life.
"Who knows?" he says, on the matter of the Pyreflies. He finally takes a seat, not that far off from her. "...Do you think they really are souls?" He'd normally have said 'no' if he hadn't... seen a few things for himself, since they'd arrived on the mainland. "I don't know what's worse. If they're not souls, what are they? But if they are, life's all screwed up here." He glances off towards the road and the slowly setting sun. "People can't even die right."
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"It's steering itself! What happens if the pilot falls asleep? The shoopuf doesn't just stop and wait, does it?" It actually might; Lan is not versed on how to operate large semi-aquatic mammals. But if the shoopuf dies... "I guess they're both piloting," she admits eventually.
She gives him a sideways glance when he grumbles about the name, but it takes her a moment to understand just who he's grumbling about. The matter of souls, though, is much more familiar ground. "I think so," she nods. "I mean... there's something to them. Though I guess I don't know if those are really the souls of the dead or if they just show up when people die. I didn't want to ask too many questions and make people more suspicious of me."
Could Lan... actually be learning how to be a decent agent?!
(Not really, it just seemed like common sense.)
"But since we're going to Guadosalam there's going to be plenty of Yevonites, right? I could probably find out there. Maybe we'll run into a summoner!"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
Loren's expression barely changes, but there's a hint of an 'I told you so' about his eyes, in the wake of a demonstration of a rather black bit of humor. But to his (slight) credit, he doesn't press the matter.
"Yeah. They show up when someone dies, or when a Fiend dies." Even the Meribus and Glenwood made more sense than this, by contrast. People stayed dead when they died, for example.
He's heard a rumor to the contrary.
"I'm still working out the specifics." He pauses when she says she's been being cautious, and nods. "Good plan. They already look at me funny," probably because he sticks out like a sore thumb (or at least scholar) wherever he goes, "so I guess I'll be counting on you. Still, I learned a few things." Enough to possibly keep him from putting his foot in it.
"Seems likely. After all, the guy we're working for,"
He's not about to tell Lan (yet, if ever) just who Krelian is. She doesn't need to know that.
"Is the Maester's aide. Maybe if you ask nicely," and here, he actually does smile though there's no way this one can be called a nice or kind -- sardonic is the best appellation -- smile, "you can ask the Maester."
This is, he's gathered, probably on the level of something seeking an audience with the current Pope.
...What was that guy called again? Inno... centus?
Tabitha would know. Here's hoping it never becomes important enough that he has to check in with her.
Then he asks the mother of all questions (maybe):
"Do you hear the Guardians out here?"
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
"Because you look funny. You're so pale!" she smiles. "But that's fine. If you weren't so pale, you wouldn't have freckles. So it evens out." Lan's a bit jealous. She'd be cute with freckles!
She still doesn't know exactly what the pyreflies are, but it's probably good to treat them with the same weight she does matters of the soul. As a shaman, it should be part of her job. "Oh, that's a good idea!" Lan beams. "You're so smart. I'll see if I can find some time to ask him when he's not busy!" Hopefully the Maester is a reasonable person. He's a religious leader so he's probably pretty calm, right? And if he's too busy maybe his aide can explain things to her instead.
Lan has no idea who Maester Seymour is, nevermind his totally not-a-spy aide.
But he asks her a strange (for him) question. Lan's eyebrows lift a scant few degrees. "Huh? The..." She blinks at him. --why would they speak to her--
--no, why wouldn't she be able to hear them--
Lan realizes she's been staring at nothing, the sudden moment of cognitive dissonance leaving her bereft. "...? Oh sorry, I spaced out for a second there. What did you say?"
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
The Truly Displeased face that Loren pulls here when she comments on his skin and his tragic freckle problem is one for the books. As if irritated, he looks away, staring off at the river.
Loren has, in fact, realized at this very moment that Lan doesn't know what a Maester is. He wonders if he should tell her.
But on the other hand, if she could talk to the Maester, she, someone who knows nothing would be less likely to give the game away than, well.
Himself.
No question about it.
He then asks her about the Guardians.
This question seems to give her some trouble. He watches her for a moment, shifts where he sits as if suddenly the ground had become uncomfortable, and glances away, rubbing at the side of his neck.
"...I was asking about what it was like when you talk to the Guardians," he says, altering the question he'd asked her a smidge. Maybe he can't inquire about now and how well that's working for her. But he can ask after a question he has.
Even if he's already sure about what the answer will be, and that it won't change the thing he'll need to do as soon as he can, once (if) he gets back to Filgaia.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Even Lan would have to admit - you can't spill a secret you don't know!
"Oh! Mm, I think it's different for a lot of people. Sometimes they appear to you, and you can speak to them and see them. It's never been like that for me. I get... well, feelings. Not words." It feels like that's not quite right, maybe? But it's how Rigdobrite has always communed with her. "Except for one time, but that was when the Guardians bestowed new mediums onto people. It was kind of a big deal." She'd been found lacking by her god, and had wept at the knowledge that she wasn't strong enough to save their world.
No, she reminds herself. Not strong enough yet.
"And I hear that other people see signs in nature, and some people never hear them at all." She wonders if he's thinking the mountain medium he'd been given, the one that he's been trying so hard to master. It's been kind of a sore subject for Loren for a while now.
She glances away for a moment. "Geez, where's the shoopuf? We could've swam across by now."
<Pose Tracker> Loren Voss has posed.
"Different, huh." It doesn't... answer the primary concern he has, unfortuantely. "What about shapes? Color?" He pauses. "Eyes?"
He doesn't think it's a Guardian. The ones he met in the temple had a different presence. Even the Medium -- as much as he is aware of the Guardian associated with it, which is 'not much above baseline human' -- doesn't have that sense of curiosity. And menace.
"It sounds like it's hard to tell if you're actually hearing a Guardian or not."
Until he'd actually heard them he hadn't thought they real.
His thoughts slide, partially, to the tablet in his bag, still. Every now and then, he wonders why he hasn't thrown it away.
The answer is always the same: because it's useful.
Because it may have helped to save his life. And Leah's.
Still, when he thinks about them -- putting him at their beck and call, rather than the other way around -- it rankles.
But even the Guardians are a secondary concern to the things he sees, from time to time.
When he's under stress, in fact.
"Hm?"
He rises to his feet there, stirred from such thoughts. Where is the shoopuf?
It doesn't take long to find it, or figure out what's happened.
"Oh. Looks like this one wandered off to eat some of the stuff by the bank. The rider's yelling at it. Maybe this one's not trained fully."
He glances down at Lan. "Boats also don't eat," he says, as if he's still trying to win this argument.
<Pose Tracker> Lan Lilac has posed.
Shapes and color, sure. But... "Eyes?" she asks, as if she's unsure. Mama hadn't really ever mentioned eyes. Neither had anybody else. "I don't know. Maybe? It's probably nothing to worry about." Even if she's wrong, it's no good to make him worry about stuff so far from home. "Basically, I think a fair amount of people who didn't train for it - the ones who were just chosen - probably thought they were crazy at first!"
She has a way of saying it that's almost reassuring. That's surely what's going on with Loren.
Lan follows his gaze to-- oh.
To her credit, Lan doesn't look particularly concerned about their ride. "Yeah but the people rowing it have to eat," she counters easily, and... leans down to take her shoes off?
Leaving them with her backpack, Lan moves down to the edge of the water and wades in up to her ankles. "C'mon, let's cool off! I dare you to touch a pyrefly."
Wait, is that really considered respecting the dead?!