2022-06-24: Wildfireside Chat
- Log: 2022-06-24: Wildfireside Chat
- Cast: Ruth Pauling, Seraph Boudicca
- Where: Sylvara Great Woods
- Date: June 24, 2022
- Summary: Odessa's machinations seem poised to bring Sylvaland to its knees by setting its less defended villages ablaze with storms of lightning. One soul finds themselves combatting one of these recent blazes, while another struggles with their inability to deal with the fires directly. Both find themselves bonding over their struggles with the concepts of beasthood.
===========================<* Sylvara Great Woods *>============================ The central island of Sylvaland, Sylvara, is the heartland of the nation. That island is covered by the Great Woods: a massive expanse of woodlands that stretches out as far as the eye can see, and takes up nearly the entire island. While roads and railroads lead through the woods, these forests are renowned for mist that often hangs deep over there. It is well-known that mist can make these woods easy to get lost in. Traveling them on-foot is necessary, too: an ancient Elw Teleporter lay within the woods, and that is the surest way to travel to the Elw Teleporter network. The fact that these woods are so easy to become lost in has given them another name, handed down through the ages: "The Lost Woods." BGM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKnXURkR1ng
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
It's been a while since that visit to Quartly by ARMS, in which there was a surprising guest there at the same time by sheer coincidence. Some things happened since - most notably, when Ruth used the empathite radio to call in ARMS on the Fangs. That engagement did not go well. It was a terrible day for all involved, to put it bluntly.
It's been some time since that event... and parts of Sylvaland have been burning mysteriously under freak lightning storms. The kingdom's been putting a call out for any and all able-bodied Drifter types to help, and this early morning is but a snapshot of the tail end of one such event.
This particular village has since been abandoned to its fate, local soldiers having evacuated the people. Standing within the smoldering ruins is the silhouette of a fairly tall but rather over-dressed woman who has set down a Crest Graph, invoked to summon forth a light but sustained rain as the crackles of partially contained fires and thick clouds of smoke defy her attempts. There's no soul here to cry for help, no soul to run and give thanks.
She is once again contemplating the empathite radio in her hands after the fact. Should she tell them about the state this village is in, after what happened with the Fangs?
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Boudicca was occupied with Wind Seraph business at the time of the Fangs' attack, and perhaps that's for the best.
She is concerned by Sylvaland's mysterious fires, though -- Boudicca, the wind who feeds the flames, is a singularly unsuitable spirit to stopping them. Instead, she has been devoting her efforts to assisting with the evacuations, despite the fact that most people can't see her; whenever a mother cried out about having left behind her children's medications, she would soon find them in her bag, as if she'd simply not checked surely enough. Beloved pets are released from their cages to seek safety, and there are always more supplies lying around than the evacuees thought, as if someone thought to leave them another water skein or packet of trail mix.
She's a little hopeless at operating her own radio, so she's relying on Ida to let people know that she's out here, offering assistance.
When she comes back to this village, though -- it's trying to rain, but...
The story which is her skin can't help but prickle, approaching the smouldering wreck, and not just because she is of the wind and protests entering such a heated area.
"Ah..." Boudicca starts, when she sees a woman within the smoke -- Ruth, the image realises, after a hazy moment. "Ruth! Are you well?" The spirit calls, on her approach through the smoke and the embers. There's so much smoke here, she thinks; she worries.
(She floats above the ground, thank you, she would rather not have hot feet.)
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
There's that taste of worry in the air, the emotion louder thant he actual voice that has to compete against the rainfall and the crackling. Ruth's head perks up, her hood sliding off to reveal her head - with a distinct lack of horns. (Boudicca would have been able to tell well in advance, but the visual confirmation may be comfort unto itself: she's keeping her elf skin on.)
"I'm feeling," she replies, not meeting Boudicca's eyes. If she had the usual temperature sensitivity of normal people, she would hate standing where she is. The quality of air in this place she stands would speak to the folly, but sometimes what is lost can be its own boon.
She coughs twice. Lungs still demand their function be respected after all, but she seems more inconvenienced than in grave danger. None of the flames that are present are in position to leap forth and add her to their insatiable hunger.
"Are the others with you?" She asks. Try as she might, subconsciously, Boudicca will be able to see the familiar glow of empathite in one of her gloved hands.
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
She's feeling. How... comforting?
Boudicca is still kind of worried.
She doesn't have the temperature sensitivity of normal people, but she does feel the heat of fire -- more than normal people, even, perhaps. "I am sorry," she apologises, sincerely. "Would that I could clear the air, but my breeze would surely stoke the flames anew."
Boudicca shakes her own horned helm, then. "I am alone at present moment," she says. "I volunteered to come back to this place, to see if the flames yet had perished. You... mean to hasten the process, do you not..?" Her pale gaze drops to the Crest.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Sometimes, feeling anything is all one can ask for in their circumstances. (The lack of further descriptor beyond 'feeling' is worthy of worry.)
Ruth doesn't snap at Boudicca for her professed ineffectual ability to deal with quelling the flames. When she looks to see Boudicca's head turn downward to the Crest, there's a slow nod from Ruth as she kneels down in front of it.
"There's no one here." She comments, tone of voice more neutral and observational rather than mournful and melancholy. That's a good sign for her present stability, even if the distance in that tone is... well, discordant. Then there's the smile that follows, which is even moreso. "There's nothing more to do, is there, than invite the heavens to weep."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Boudicca isn't -- entirely sure how to progress, with Ruth. She wants to help her, certainly; she remembers her anger, still.
She settles on clasping her hands, loosely, in front of her. "I am... pleased to see you have such talent with the Crests," Boudicca tries, after a hesitant moment. Of course, Hellions can rend magicks all their own -- and perhaps that's precisely why Boudicca praises the alternative.
Boudicca doesn't, strictly speaking, cough -- but she does look distinctly unsettled about being in the mlddle of this burning wreck. "It is well that the rain will come here," she says. "Storms need not only be so destructive."
She frowns looking up to the raining sky. "Indeed... it is strange they are so terrifying, now. It is not the way of nature to strike again and again, as if with purpose."
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
It speaks to a great courage of kindness and fortitude alike that Boudicca would extend the hand of friendship and praise to someone who - by mortal standards - helped bring Zoara to its knees twice over... and is someone who lives an existence that is perpetually a threat to Boudicca's own.
Coming this close to her when a Hellion is three stray thoughts - at best - from unrestrained violence is a greater show of trust still, and with having to internalize Yvain's own confidence of her despite seeing with her own eyes what her very existence can turn a Seraph into... well.
That smile hasn't left, for what it's worth, as a hand lowers atop the laid Crest.
"I... don't have much of a range. There's four Crests... Muse, Geo, Wing, and Fray, each their own element. I don't have much skill outside of combinations that use Muse."
That fell powers of Malevolence and her own grasp of Crest Sorcery manage to align is coincidental, but not unwelcome. (In the sense that Malevolence is ever 'not unwelcome,' which... moving on.)
This statement aside, Boudicca speaks of how it is that it is strange how terrifying the weather is now, and how targeted it is. It's unnatural, and that gets another nod from Ruth as she draws her hand back from touching the Crest, bringing both her hands over her heart as the empathite radio peeks out from her hold. Its soft blue glow, a little beacon of potential from where there is ruin and chaos.
"I've been thinking about... this." She parts her right hand from her chest, holding the empathite radio up. "I remember that day in Quartly. Ida's fear, her caution." That smile. "...And when Marivel asked of me to go with ARMS... the way she smiled."
There's a bitter laugh. Bitter cough? Sweet cough? Some combination. It's good she's knelt down low to minimize further smoke exposure. She really shouldn't be standing where she is, but, her affliction has its form of health benefits depending on how one looks at it.
"There's... a question that's always there." An emotional landmine, going by the tensing in her left hand. "What did--"
She abruptly stops, the breath of a word about to be spoken but grabbed back and crammed down her throat as if the dam from a whole load of emotional bile. A breath is taken that, as has been the worrisome bit of body language from a biological standpoint, does not leave her.
"What did they see in me, to let me have... this?" There's a smile there. "...Would you have me bear this?"
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
"Muse is... occupied with water, is it not? Water is a fine element," Boudicca assures Ruth, with a gentle smile, even though she's getting closer to the jaws of death. "It is a fine element to invoke." She works closely with someone who is water twice over, in fact!
She considers the empathite radio, cradled in Ruth's hands. Their caution... of course, Boudicca was unsure, just the same. And the question --
Boudicca's hands lift, in their grasp, in front of her chest. "Ruth... you are not the first Hellion, I have met. This pain is something I have seen... but it is a thing which can be healed. Id..." Boudicca cuts herself off, with a little shake of her head, and starts again: "I would tell you that you are the not first person invited to ARMS, to help the people, despite the pages history has written. There were others, like you."
She doesn't entirely feel that she should tell Ida's story, for her. But perhaps she can say this much.
"You have come here, without thinking to call for aid, to quell the flames so that the people can return. For this reason, I would not see you relinquish the empathite in your hands. I... will not presume to tell you there is help here for you, though certainly I am here," she ventures, cautiously, "but I wish for you to be amongst others who wish to assist the world, Ruth. This can only benefit you, I feel. And, in turn, you may benefit the people."
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
'There were others, like you.'
The presence of Brad Evans in ARMS is well-publicized as an example, he who was one of the few to survive Slayheim's transformation into an island of salt and lingering ghosts. He who stands accused of having been the one who used the weapon of mass destruction in the first place.
Through Boudicca's appraisal of her person and her virtues, that smile doesn't leave - though almost certainly not for the continued appeal to her better nature to shed the ugly contradictory feelings that have taken root underneath the surface. There is help. She was there to see Summer saved from her own Malevolence-induced fate.
"I know what I'm wanted for." Ruth draws that hand back, but she never presses hard against the empathite radio piece to the point of breaking. "Odessa... the forces of Brionac are with them. The best of the best of the Congressional Knights. Those were who Death's Door stood against."
She has to switch which hand is holding the empathite a moment later, her right hand going to her left shoulder as the thought of it sends a twinge of pain there.
"The reason Siddim happened... it was a chance to be rid of one of them." Siddim Canyon, where her Domain had festered unnoticed for the better part of three years until it created a snowballing effect throughout northern Zoara and beyond. "Heath Exon. Said to be a master of invisibility or disguise... only had the word of intel he was there."
Boudicca may remember the atrocities that transpired from there. They need not be repeated. No reason can ever justify any of it, but those phantoms have been laid to rest decisively by Purification and proper funerary rites for those that suffer beyond death - and rest they shall. The written word will allow that grace.
"He escaped." It was all for even less than nothing. Ruth closes her eyes and goes still. 'It' has yet to escape her, even the faintest leak. This is a good sign, even if the sign has to come in the form of a pleasant smile that does not match.
"No one should have seen that heartless monster... I was... for anything but that." Self-deprecation can be viable regulatory junk food, in the moment. "...Boudicca, I'm... I..."
She laughs. That laugh echoes through the crackling fires and hissing smokes, and the pitter-patter percussion of a light rain that isn't there yet to quell it.
"I'm going to redeem a monster the same way the monster damned themselves!" Her eyes flare open, and Boudicca can see that dangerous, wild glean in her eyes in stating that... contradiction.
She hates who she was, but she keeps the rifle... and that Crest Sorcery couldn't have been picked up after the transformation. She has a practically instinctual sort sorcery available to her now, but yet she clings to that.
The exciting moment passes without further incident, beyond a single Malevolence-laced tear or two escaping her. That's how close the dam comes to bursting.
Maybe it's something she knew but could never put into words prior.
"Some days... it feels like the only way to not become a beast is to be one."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
Ruth knows her crimes. This is not the first time Boudicca has witnessed -- nor existed in -- that guilt; she listens to her tale of the Congressional Knights without turning away. Her brow creases, in sorrow; she does not interrupt.
Ruth shifts her grip on the radio. Boudicca sees this, as well.
No one... should see her as anything but a monster, Boudicca parses the statement.
Her hands pull closer to her chest as Ruth's eyes crash open -- palms pressing against the steel of her chestplate, rather than laced with each other. She is a Seraph, and Malevolence is a poison she cannot live with; that initial flinch response is difficult for her to suppress, even now she stands against Malevolence.
But, the way Ruth sums herself up...
Boudicca compels herself to step forward, a few inches above the embers of the ground. Slowly, well-telegraphed, she approaches Ruth -- and if she doesn't ward her off, she'll go so far as to put a hand on her shoulder.
(She'll content herself with standing closer by, if she does.)
"Ruth," Boudicca says, gently, "know you why I wear a dragon's horns atop my helm?" She pauses; either way, she goes on. "They echo the Black Dragon -- one of four holy figures of our land, unlike the Fell Dragons my people become. For centuries I occupied their statue, a holy relic to defend me from Malevolence. And so, I said... 'I must remain a monster - or I shall become a monster.' I was so frightened, of leaving my vessel..."
She shakes her head, hands pulling back to clasp at her heart. "It took an extreme event for me to leave such a fear behind... and it remains in my self-image still, as you see. So you see, Ruth, there are many Beasts in ARMS. No wonder Marivel has invited another."
She breathes out, with deliberation. "Redemption is a personal process. That the tools you used for evil may now be used for good means only that the woman holding them has shifted her perspective. I think... that is what wiser people than I would say, in this situation." Boudicca thinks, always, in these situations -- what would Dean say? What would Jacqueline say? What would Eleanor say? What would Ida say? What would Venetia say? What would Lanval say..?
"But... I hope you will not discard the radio you hold," Boudicca says, after another breath's pause. "I do not wish for the perfect to be the enemy of the good. That you wish to help... all things will progress from this desire."
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Boudicca may have seen in the past that Ruth makes an effort to avoid touching people with her hands - a reflex she will notice as the metaphorically amazonian Seraph approaches, giving no ground in her posture otherwise.
It is as such that her hand shies away from the shoulder Boudicca reaches out to touch, and from there she doesn't want to meet her eyes - and then Boudicca gives the rundown about the dragon's horns. (There's a shake of the head, allowing Boudicca to go on about the Black Dragon.)
When the hand pulls back, Ruth returns to putting her right hand there, but her gaze sees how those hands clasp at where Boudicca's heart would be too.
There are many Beasts in ARMS, is the point of it - and one to be set on their personal process of redemption. Marivel suggested the idea of it as a means of becoming someone worthy of kindness.
Amidst talk of perspectives shifting and the idea of taking tools of evil for sake of good, that this desire is that of a wish to help... there's a stinging in her head that her chest isn't ready to take.
Ruth has to force a smile again to keep it inside, but she does not clench the empathite tighter in her hand nor does she drop it, the overdressed former elf blinking a few times in an abortive attempt to actually look up she can't quite manage yet.
"My desire..." Ruth muses aloud. What is it that her heart really yearns for? K.K. asked her once that day and it's stuck with her. Even now, Marivel has been awaiting her answer for her 'truth,' and Ruth has far, far, far less time to answer that than she knows.
Besides, that kind of wandering thought is a red flag for 'within ten seconds of trying to eat someone's face' even among the Hellions with the strongest control of their faculties.
"I don't know if it's... as simple as 'good.'" Magilou spoke as much about that, which Ruth tried to rebuke on the highs of a lifestyle that was working out great until confronted with the truth of what she did to Summer...
And Elise.
And who knows how many other Hellions and Hellions-to-be now traversing Zoara.
But she can't stop being present for those in pain, anguish, fear, and all of that. She doesn't want to, even faced with that truth. As with all Hellions, there's something uglier there that gains ever greater power and influence when it is contradicted.
She starts to rise up, holding the radio close, making one last attempt to look Boudicca in the eyes and take in the sights of her majestic dragon horn helmet... and Boudicca will get the top of her eyes.
"I suppose there's... only one place left for me to see that desire."
<Pose Tracker> Seraph Boudicca has posed.
"Only one place..." Boudicca nods, and does, indeed, look Ruth in the eyes. Hers are grey-green, light as a cloud; perhaps she's wept too many tears.
"I pray you will not go alone."
But she can tell that Ruth is struggling; she can tell she doesn't have the social acumen to know what to say, just the same. So Boudicca dips her head, and takes a step back, to allow Ruth to reclaim her personal space. "I ought check on the evacuees... I will entrust the task of extinguishing these embers to you. Thank you for your help, Ruth... this is not something I could have done, for this village."
Boudicca smiles -- lingers, in case Ruth would like to say anything else -- but unless she asks her to stay, she'll turn to go.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Ruth's eyes - what was once her normal eyes - are gray. Though her Malevolence is hidden away in the way clever Hellions are able to escape notice of even the sharpest senses, Boudicca's experience with the more personable Hellions can let her catch a glimpse of that greater emotion that presses against the windows of the soul and wants to shatter those windows open with a brick so it can escape. (Figuratively.)
'I pray you will not go alone,' is Boudicca's heartfelt wish for her in that moment. The Furies' answer to their woes, though they had each other, nonetheless walked lonely paths into their Domains. Domains further corrupted and corrupting by the Anomalous Orb, and what it did to the three of them.
Boudicca says her part, gives the warmest smile Ruth thinks she's seen, but does not feel elated by it. She feels, instead, the absence of worry and concern in the air that tends to follow her. Ruth's eyes close as she takes in the environs that tickle at a traumatic nostalgia for a time of her life she has vocally rejected.
Just as she shifts her weight to bear the burden of the rifle that should be too heavy for her to wield now, on account of the accumulated wear and tear of nearly a decade and a half of constant fighting. She could follow Boudicca right now, chase her down, to the displaced and distraught. Another warm breeze goes through the area independent of Boudicca's sway (given her admissions of what her power can't let her help with), blowing up against Ruth's back as she kneels down to take hold of the Crest again.
There's a puddle down there, clear enough to show her face looking back at it. The face of the heartless monster who chose to be a 'curse' in the absence of being the 'blessing' she should have been. She hates that face and can't bear to look at it.
It's the most frightening face she knows.
She smiles at it anyway, as if mocking.
"I'll never know what you saw in... who I was." She murmurs as she holds the Crest Graph aloft in her right hand to renew the rain spell, and let herself just bask in it and wait for the rest to come back her way.
She'll hold it there, motionless like a statue as the conjured rain washes through her, other hand clutching the empathite radio tight in her grasp. Marivel needs her truth, soon. Ida, strangely both her greatest enemy over the last year and one of the handful who tried to be level with her as someone who's been where she's been in spite of the difference of age between them...
Whether she accepts it or not isn't what matters. She is who she is now, and it's been long time to make peace with what she knows she never will in the attempt to make sense of a life constantly pulled between mutually exclusive directions into a paradoxical caricature of mortal folly.
One that cannot and will not be denied existence.