2021-12-13: Pinecone Boats
- Log: Pinecone Boats
- Cast: Avril Vent Fleur, Riesenlied
- Where: Sylvaland City - Kalkuricco Borough
- Date: December 13, 2021
- Summary: Riesenlied has much on her mind, in the aftermath of what had been at the Keqili Temple. Avril, fortunately, is a good listener.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
It's said that there are parts of this very part of Sylvaland that predate even the Day of Collapse. The houses, Avril has supposed. Perhaps some of the streets, where they haven't been dug up and replaced. Even at a glance it's hard, though, to determine which might be which -- certainly the newer buildings stand out, but to her eye, discerning which is old and which is merely 'built in the style of' is less certain.
But if she can be certain of anything, it is that the bridges are newer. Even the best of construction would eventually succumb to the elements, this close to the streams and waterways.
Even so, knowing that, as she leans over the bridge's railing -- just a little bridge, wooden construction, over what amounts to a very fast-moving creek -- she could pretend otherwise.
It looks old. It even feels old, to the touch.
Avril, gazing down upon the waters, seems to regard them for a moment before
dropping in a pair of pinecones into the water and turning to step quickly to the other side.
There is a game some of the children play with the water here, with sticks or leaves or even pinecones. She is wondering which one of her chosen vessels will cross the distance underneath the bridge first.
...Not all days spent atop an old picturesque bridge can be deep pensive days.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied is with Avril today, huddling up a little in her capelet and robes; even if Sylvaland isn't a terribly cold place, she tends to stick with warmer clothing even in more temperate climes, like some chill keeps persisting. She tilts her head a little, watching her drop the pinecone to the water; the way it bobs and floats along the water is appealing.
She looks pretty down today -- a little more worn and heavy, with the way her shoulders sag.
As Avril steps quickly to the other side, she moves at a much more slow pace, pushing her wheelchair up the little ramp of the bridge with effort. "A great many things end up on the water... to be carried where they may," she muses to herself.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
There but a few seconds more, the pinecones appear from under the bridge. Both have passed under at about the same time -- close enough that it would be difficult for Avril to make a firm call either way as to which were the victor.
"I wonder," she muses aloud to Riesenlied, "how often it is that there is no clear winner? I have even heard that these can be used as a means to tell one's fortune under particular bridges. Whichever should reach the other side first shall have their wishes granted. ...But I do not believe it is taken entirely seriously," she finishes.
"Would you like to try? I would not be opposed to finding another pair," she tells Riesenlied.
She is quiet, for the moment.
"I wonder what things the water has seen in its time," she replies. "Like the sea, it does not cease. It is not the same stream as it was moments before." Maybe there is something about such bridges that brings conversations towards such weightier matters, regardless...
"I wonder if Dean and Rebecca should like to try this game?"
...well, mostly.
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied also regards the two pinecones with some melancholy; she bobs her head for a moment, also not discerning any one of them in the lead.
"More... more often than one would like to think," Riesenlied answers, a little rueful. "Ambiguity, uncertainty... and even then, sometimes, what one considers a 'winner' is just something that was falsely written at the time..."
... she's in a kind of sad mood.
A pause, as Avril asks if she'd like to try. She has a faint smile. "Certainly... and... they would enjoy it, perhaps."
Avril asks what the water has seen in its time. "The Sielje scholars taught me of how water is lifted to the air by the sun, gathered by the clouds, and rains, perhaps to return to its origin. I wonder... what it is like to be bound to their duty, unquestioning, everlasting...?"
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
Avril glances sidelong, her gaze lingering on Riesenlied for seemingly a long moment, as if to thereby take her measure. "Falsely written," she echoes, her own gaze growing heavy-lidded as her attention again casts upon the stream.
The pinecones are gone, now, swirled away by the water towards a fate unknown. Perhaps they might find purchase elsewhere, far from here. Or perhaps not.
The world is often like that, Avril has found. Uncertain. Unsettled. Unknown.
And yet.
"I... already know that," Avril remarks, frowning faintly at the taste of those words. Whoever she had been, she had known that for fact. But this is not a matter she lingers on.
"I suppose... it would depend on whether or not they found the duty tiring. To see so many... to travel in a journey that never ends... There is something appealing about that to me."
But of course, as she has confessed to Rebecca already, there is a selfish part of her heart that wishes that she will never return to her duty as queen and that she will remain forever a migratory bird. What would it be to be the rain?
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied has a quiet smile at Avril, at that last part; even if the rest of her statements make her a little bit contemplative and ruminating. She bites her lip. "... I have been ... struggling, lately ... I find myself in greater states of anxiety and uncertainty than before."
She breathes a little as she watches the distant pinecones, the way the two wandered away from sight...
"Avril... do you... struggle with--" A pause. "Perhaps not, but... sometimes, I feel as if I am false. In my life, many pivotal points that have made me who I am, I did because... I wanted very much to embrace an identity someone else wanted me to have."
She hesitates. "I became involved with the Fereshte because my heart was in pain at the loss of the first friend I ever made. So much so that I adapted myself in her image."
A pause, as she kind of leans over to peer over the railing to look down at the water. "Later on, when I met father for the first time, I also became enamored with wanting to be the most useful I could be for him... and that led me down the dark path with Adlehyde years ago."
There's a sad smile as she looks at her own reflection. "Water itself is clear, always reflecting who stares at it. But sometimes... it can become awfully brackish and muddy. ... sometimes I wonder what of me is truly 'myself'."
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
She has been struggling lately, Riesenlied says. Avril's gaze softens.
Does she struggle with...?
"...Yes," Avril answers after a moment more. "I do."
She hesitates, glancing over at Riesenlied again. "It is not the same situation, but similar. I awoke knowing only my name and another's, and found myself to be instead the ruler of an entire people. This is what is expected of me. Indeed, it is my duty. Yet, as I am now, I am not who I once was." Slightly, she shakes her head. "Perhaps I may yet still become worthy of the title bestowed upon me, but as of yet... I fear I would make but a poor ruler. What is expected of me and who I now am are not the same. And yet, I must still become."
Even if 'she' might become also lost in the process of becoming.
"...At times, I feel, we become the person others expect of us. Perhaps that happened to the 'me of yesterday' as well. I have heard that she was cruel, that she was merciless... but I wonder whether that was who she truly was or instead, what she had been made to become."
And what she might again become.
"Do you.... hate it?" she asks of Riesenlied. "What you have become?"
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Avril has a thoughtful answer; not quite the same situation, but hers... to essentially wake up and find that who you were feels like -- a foreign being, a person that you're not... someone whose skin and identity and face you can never feel at home any longer.
The Hyadean feels a bit cowed, perhaps; embarrassed. "It is... difficult, in a way I cannot even imagine. To be told you have the responsibility of a whole people on your shoulder..."
And also... becoming the person others expect of them.
She hesitates for a moment, as Avril asks if she hates who she has become.
She twiddles her thumbs gently. "But I do not... hate it. ... Noeline reminded me that Wayside is not something I helped advocate and create falsely... I could not regret that in the slightest. Yet..."
"I... I more feel... weak, perhaps. Lily and the others often say I am a positive, optimistic, warm person whose moral compass they look towards, and sometimes I feel I do not live up to that... ... or when we were in that Temple with the Keqili, I am reminded..."
There's a sad smile. "I was never chosen by Odoryuk or the Fereshte. I made myself the Heritor, long after everyone was gone, out of a sense of lonesomeness... and then flinched when I realised the duty asked of a Heritor: to die, for the sake of the world."
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
It has been difficult, difficult in a way that Avril has only admitted to one other person. And even there, she has not fully voiced that small quiet fear slowly crystalizing within herself: that to attain what she hopes to achieve, to regain her memories, to reclaim her throne, to pull the Veruni people away from the path upon which they have found themselves... she as she now exists will cease. That she'll become subsubed into some greater whole.
That she, as she is now, is only the smaller part of two pieces.
"But," she says to Riesenlied, and she is smiling, her eyes sad, "Is that not also what you are fearing?"
"...You are the hope of the Hyadean people. Those who do not follow Odessa or have fallen in with others... they truly look to you. I am glad that you do not hate it."
She has clasped her hands together, her gaze on the distant bend within the district where the creek disappears.
"I think... we cannot control how others may see us," Avril says at last.
"After all... when I think about Rebecca. Or about Dean. ...I see them one way, and it brings me such strength to do so, even if it may not be the way they see themeselves. " She knows this is so -- she had spoken to Rebecca on this very topic. But it can only ever remain her own private counsel -- a way of cementing what they have become to one another.
"Perhaps they see me another way, and this supports them as well. Do you not think of the others similarly so?"
But there is more. In the temple of the Keqili...
"..."
And this is the moment in which Avril takes Riesenlied by her hands.
"The Guardians are not gone," she tells her. "If they did not wish you as Heritor... then would you not know that?"
She squeezes, gently.
"I much prefer a world where we have no need for sacrifices."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied pauses, perhaps, dwelling a little bit deeper on Avril's dilemma. It reminds her a little of how childhood days cannot go on forever... that was ever made clear in the Forest Temple. How such days cannot go on forever, replaced by the ever burdensome march of responsibility... and yet...
"That... that is true," Riesenlied quietly says, a bit bashful as Avril says she's the hope of the Hyadean people. ... she can't really rightfully think of herself in such a grandiose way, but... to the Tainted, at least...
"It is scary. But... at the same time, it is because it is so scary that it is important... is that not a little strange?"
They cannot control how people see us. When she thinks of Rebecca and Dean...
"... mm. No, that does carry a lot of sense ... and... perhaps, in better days, I would thank them for seeing me as a source of strength. As no doubt Dean and Rebecca might."
She looks a bit surprised, though, when Avril takes her hands.
If they did not wish her as Heritor... would they not know that?
"... ... I also..." she sounds a little shaken. "... I was very scared, when I knew. That that tear in the world was kept in check by sacrifice. I did not want to die. I did not want to leave the children, and the Tainted, and my friends, and dear Noeline behind. I felt so selfish for doing so..."
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
How she sees herself may not be the most important thing. Avril has made a study of history, when she can, and if there is one thing she has gleaned from her reading, it is not necessarily how even one's own actions result that matter as much as the way in which one is regarded. She has read of lost causes and heroic last stands -- those who committed to them failed, certainly, but they have not been forgotten. To become an 'icon', a beacon for the present and the future...
Does the world need such things? Must it have them? For now, it seems that it does.
"Perhaps that is a sign itself," Avril remarks. "If it were simply no matter to you... then you would not be Riesenlied. Is that not so?"
It is a funny thing -- to be a source of strength and yet be a little taken aback with the power one has over others. And no doubt, others -- were they the just sort -- would be similarly abashed should it be pointed out to them. Everyone affects the other, like ripples spreading out over the water into which a pinecone has been cast.
"Then I am glad for you being selfish," Avril tells her, smiling gently. "It would be a poor sort of world to be saved by your sacrifice, if you were not in it. ...Do you remember what it is that Dean always says?"
She pauses, as if to give Riesenlied time to recall it herself.
"Let us find another way. I am certain there must be one."
<Pose Tracker> Riesenlied has posed.
Riesenlied's eyes widen a little bit... then she smiles at those kind words, just as she's about to tear up. She wipes her eyes gently, using her unscaled hand, hiccuping a little. "... mm. ... to seek a new world," she whispers quietly. "Where we can all flourish..."
She giggles, shaking her head. "I thought I would never forget those words, so important to me."
A pause, as she squeezes Avril's hands in turn. "... thank you, for reminding me of that. And... whatever strength I can impart, in the times to come, with what you must do for the Veruni... let me be a bit of that strength too."
She reaches quietly -- with a little bit of difficulty, with the bend she has to do -- and picks up a pinecone, smiling. "... should we play another round?"
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
Sometimes, comes the voice unbidden from the depths of Avril's psyche, a sacrifice cannot be avoided.
Avril scarce pays it heed. Not in this moment. Not now, of all times. Let there be a price. But let it be a price willingly paid.
"I am glad to have reminded you," she tells Riesenlied, gently squeezing her hands. "I believe I will need your strength someday, when my time comes."
And then she slowly releases her grip, reliquishing again that brief gap of space between the two of them.
Shall they play another round?
Avril stoops, picking up another pinecone herself.
"Yes, let's," she says to Riesenlied, smiling.
This moment, too... she wants to remember it.