2020-12-27: Our Oaths

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  • Log: Our Oaths
  • Cast: Seraph Boudicca, Seraph Harmaus
  • Where: Port Rosalia - The Docks
  • Date: December 27, 2020
  • Summary: Harmaus pays Boudicca a visit, perhaps when she least would rather it. Words are had between the two Seraphs, setting the stage for what lies in their shared future.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.

    Annie Klau runs the Gold Rose General Store, on the corner of the third street out from the cove, despite the constant pressure of the Consortium. She's been independent for forty years and alive for sixty; she's built and rebuilt and built again, and she's not about to let some corporate upstarts buy her out for their own convenience. She doesn't give a damn if her land would suit another purpose better; she was here first.

    Hers is one of a dozen stories of civilians caught in the middle, here in Port Rosalia, where the Seraph Boudicca has come to learn more about the impacts which left such wastelands to Celesti. None of those stories came to her directly, of course; now they are in Filgaia again, few mortals can sense her at all.

    Still, she has been here, and Annie can't quite explain why the panelling of her door was steadied as she was trying to hammer it back in, but that stubborn woman just counts herself lucky nothing went wrong when she was trying to do it on her own.

    Now the door to the general store is fixed, and jingles merrily every time it opens. Annie looks over to find no new customers at all, and turns to the dockworker Payl, where he's considering new cans for his pantry. "Those damn cats," she remarks. "They're getting in all the time, these days."

    "Aye," Payl agrees, a shrug of his shoulder, "but they good for th' rats."

    Annie scowls. "You'd better not have led rats back to my place, Payl."

    "Oh, aye. Have a good bit of trouble if I did that, like." He is totally unaffected.

    Unheard by either of them, Boudicca points out, finger raised: "Please do not worry, I am not..!" And her hand lowers, with a light sigh, "Oh, never mind..."

    She goes to look over the selection of dried fruits, instead. She even has the correct form of money to leave this time.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.

    There are benefits to having a spiritual corpus.
    There are detriments as well, to which Harmaus can attest. Oh yes -- even outside of Spira, there are detriments to a Seraph's natural form, chief among them the fact that only a smattering of mortals can see and interact with them...

    But today, his goals mean that not being seen suits him fine, quite fine indeed. He doesn't even have a need for his new body, which rests in a safe spot outside of Rosalia, absorbing the sunlight.

    Boudicca goes to check over the selection of dried fruits and something lands with a soft thud onto the floor aside her.

    A dead rat. As neatly as you please, the body rests upon the floorboards: the body shows no sign of violence done to it. It is simply as dead as dead can be.

    Boudicca will need to look upwards to sight the source.

    "Boudicca," Harmaus speaks, tail lashing. He is perched atop a shelf, invisible to the mortals in the store.

    "We meets again."

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.

    Thud, something falls to the ground. Boudicca looks down, only to find some pale mockery of the mortal conversation still going apace at the front of the store. And then she looks up --

    Boudicca isn't a cat, but maybe Annie's annoyance is more apt than she knows.

    Because there on the shelf is something distinctly not flour, in rough canvas bag. "Harmaus!" She exclaims, shock falling over her expression like a rat falling to earth. Shock can be coloured many ways, of course. In happiness, or fear, or...

    ... in this case...

    ... anger.

    Her gauntlets grip to fists, but the conversation still reaches her ears - something about how they've gotten a big shipment in, and Payl's been working overtime - and she knows what is at stake, here, if she strikes at her fellow Seraph. She's seen how worried Annie was, in private, over her recent repairs. If she had to fix her shop again, with no explanation to the source...

    And so that grip, with effort, relaxes, though her gaze grows no softer. "For what purpose do you come here?" She issues, instead, and her suspicion is infinite.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.

    Is the mind a plaything of the body, or the body a plaything of the mind?

    Whatever his shape, Harmaus does not need to eat, and would claim to feel no pull to hunt and chase after things that skitter in the liminal spaces of mortal settlements. Perhaps that is as he claims: rats are no stranger to the dockside city, and let it be said that the Seraph has a terrible, horrible sense of humor.

    But needless to say -- into the proceedings, the cat has brought a rat he has caught.

    "I is here to sees it," says the Seraph, tail twitching the twice upon his perch. "I hears it about in this town. Little things, little fixes. Little good-fortunes. And what does I find? Busy, busy -- a Seraph, with much promise, slavering after mortals. I thinks, I talks to it again, while I passing through."

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.

    'Seriously, don't tell me... just, like, say it isn't so... you aren't really hauling water around for these guys, are you?'

    No, this isn't the first time Boudicca's people have commented on the assistance she renders.

    Boudicca is less stumbling in her retort than the Beast ever was. "How you describe it says more about you than I. I love the determination of these people, no matter their tribulations. Thus I assist." Stately, tall, and carved from steel; she has no patience for his patent disregard.

    Of course, choosing humanity... it's a more complex decision than it might seem on the surface.

    Old crimes, and new...

    "They are worthy of this," Boudicca says, nonetheless, and if anything the words are a little spiteful. Some of her anger is new, but some - some of it is very old.

    With razor intendment, her words cut to her own intention: "And whereunto your passing, Harmaus?" Her interest in his destination is likely not incidental. Her gaze falls on him, and does not shift.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.

    "And what gains it? Self-satisfaction? It slows it down. It locks it in minutes. Its lifespan is eternal," Harmaus sighs, shaking his head, "and it matters about minutes." Thump, thump, goes the tail on the shelftop. To Boudicca it must be audible, but the mortals wouldn't hear a thing.

    Even if he shouted, they wouldn't hear.

    "Always, it matters about minutes. Remembers it?" the feline-shaped Seraph muses, squinting down at her. "I remembers."

    A pause, as he rises onto all fours, arching his back for the moment. "It tells me its secrets once. I keeps secret... for now."

    Is this... what passes for a threat?

    "Ah? It asks where goes I? I speaks it not. It tells others, yes? It is, eh... millstone in path?" muses Harmaus, standing atop the shelf. With a hop, he crosses to another and glances back at her over his shoulder. "I does as I must. Seeking secrets. Seeking truth! Blue Star hides much. Has lost much."

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.

    "Forever is mine to spend as I wish!" Boudicca snaps back, as Harmaus lays down that criticism. Their metaphysical silence is its own little blessing; surely she would be embarrassed, to be roused to such irritation in front of her charges, had they ears to hear.

    (Rather, Annie is busy telling Payl about what her niece is up to, unawares.)

    Private conversations happen in the strangest places for Seraphim. Perhaps this has always been true, whether in a rustic village or a general store.

    But Harmaus arches his back, makes that aside, and Boudicca's weight shifts back on a steel-clad heel. "I am not ashamed," she says, and the sudden drawbridge closing of her tone and tension in her brow speak to the horror which was so unveiled, two hundred years prior.

    She has gotten a little better at lying, but not terribly much.

    And she has no iron mask to hide her face, these days.

    Hop, goes Harmaus, and Boudicca's gaze follows. "And I would have it lose no more in your vainglory quest," she says, shoulders squared. "Know there are ever eyes upon you, Harmaus. What you seek, you shall not find." Briefly her eyes shutter, before they open again; breathe in, breathe out. "I am set in this."

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.

    "Tcha," the feline Seraph snarls, as if to underscore what he thinks on that mark. "Much could it accomplish. Much wastes it." The mortals, in the background, form to his thinking the perfect accompaniment to this debate:

    It's all nothing. It signifies nothing. It accomplishes nothing.

    They talk on, unawares of what is occuring amidst the shelves of merchandise.

    "Ah?" Boudicca may as well be a beseiged fortress: she closes her gates tightly and shouts from the battlements. "It tells others its secret?" Harmaus asks, and if he had been mortal perhaps the remark would have been joined with a raised eyebrow.

    He knows she has not. He has been watching mortals too long to miss their body language... and Seraphs learn well the language of the body.
    (Or is this the mind again being but a plaything of the body?)

    "What eyes watch me?" he asks of her. "Yours? Others, yet? So much trouble-making... but it matters me not."

    Those eyes of his are slits.

    "It is set?" he echoes, pitching his voice low.

    "I is set also. An oath, sworn I. By my true name, I swears it: Fembuel Caulaog. I seeks what Althena hides."

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.

    "I would not tell the likes of you!" Boudicca's voice rises, and luckily, it doesn't disturb the locals as Payl finally decides what he was looking for and makes his purchases.

    She would not tell him that she has; she would not tell him how hard the telling is, how much she fears they will look upon her differently in the aftermath. But evident on her face is the result of his framing: a secret. Something to be hidden away in shame. It pains her, as much as she tries to stern her face from it.

    (So, too, is there a denial; he asks a question, and she refuses him his answer. It is a particular communication, to one who seeks.)

    So, too, does she deny him the knowledge of who watches; but her eyes on his, perhaps the answer is still plain. They narrow, as Harmaus speaks his own name. It cannot be that he trusts her. Then...

    "You and I both," she says, finally. "My will is prevencioun. I cannot allow you to imperil mortality in your quest to uproot the one we came from." She shakes her head; her braids shake with her, about her body, settling behind her shoulders. "Althena acts in error, but ours is still to aid and shelter her children. I shall not abdicate this task in petulance."

    An extra lance of acid, to that last word. Boudicca says Harmaus's position says more about his ideals than her own; perhaps the opposite is also true.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.

    "Jaeja," murmurs the Seraph, gazing upon her intently. Her secret -- has she told others? She will not tell him that. Similarly, she'll deny him much of what he seeks after -- who is watching him other than her.

    What name she swore her own oath against him.

    He settles into a sit atop this shelf. His tail betrays his feelings here: it thuds now a steady rhythm against the top of the shelving, his agitation and anger given physical shape.

    "Ah," he says, staring at her steadily.

    "It tells me not."

    The tail continues its angry drumbeat against the wood.

    "Only that it yet stands in my path. As I thought. It seeks hinder me. Jaeja. It will not do. But... I will solve it." The drumbeat slows, fading into a side to side swish-swish. "If it seeks hinder me... then I returns favor. It is foolish, childish, and wrong. It seeks protection of lies. What it protects... I destroys."

    His gaze tilts, momentarily, off towards the mortal shopkeeper, still ignorant of what is transpiring among the shelves.

    For now, this is only a threat.

    "It remembers this. I remembers this."

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.

    Boudicca, whose heart can be so much larger on account of its metaphor, finds herself issuing Harmaus something akin to advice. "You may find, the truth... is a thing which burns." Why would their elders fear the churchmen? This she does not know, though she knows a little more than she did, months prior.

    If she were as goodhearted as Dean, or as dedicated to redemption as Ida, perhaps Boudicca would pursue that thought - reach out to him.

    Speak the word, 'Malak,' under which so much is buried. A legend which scarred them for so long. These stories - surely it is these stories which inspired such fear and secrecy. These stories she does not know, though now she has seen their title. This, she thinks, is Harmaus's element; his specialty. In another world, another life, perhaps they would help each other.

    And yet Boudicca knows how much he yearns for these deep things, and Boudicca still is angry. She has not forgiven him. Cannot forgive him, bound by oath and love and pain besides.

    She knows - and she does him no kindness.

    Because his gaze drifts to Annie, and she reads nothing good to the implication.

    "Remember, then, and go!" Her hand slashing the air in front of her, as if she could swat him away with the gesture. (She cannot. Cats find high places.) "Light such as yours is unwelcome in mortal halls, Harmaus. I am a century young no longer, and you shall not find my tongue unguarded for what you seek." It is sharp, certainly; she thinks she speaks true.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Harmaus has posed.

    "Then let it burn. I will burns in it," he replies, twitching his tail the once. "As long as it is truth."

    'Malak' is a word in which much has been buried. 'Malak' is a word which others would wish forgotten. Once, a long time ago, before Harmaus was even 'born'--

    Perhaps it is no surprise he happened upon secrets within secrets. Treachery within the church. Lies, misdeeds, and foulness bubbling up from beneath the land.

    Perhaps it is no surprise that what was foul becomes fair and fair becomes foul.
    Perhaps it is no surprise that a Seraph would take up the charge of the Lord of Calamity.

    And he looks then towards Annie and in a glance much is suggested of the actions he may opt to take.

    He rises then, arching his back before trotting away from her atop the shelf.

    "It minds its meddling," says Harmaus, before hopping again to a row away from her. "It minds it and those it minds is safe, yes? I has much doing before truth is free. It hinders me not."

    Another hop, taking him closer to the exterior walls of the store.

    "I has said what I comes to say. It remembers, and it minds its meddling."

    He vanishes from sight, then, slipping over the edge to perhaps leap to the floor. And after that...

    Walls are no barrier to a Seraph.