2022-07-18: The Way Fate Works
- Log: The Way Fate Works
- Cast: Avril Vent Fleur, Eleanor Klein
- Where: Klein Central Ward
- Date: July 18, 2022
- Summary: Avril, having met Eleanor by chance, notices that something has changed about the young noblewoman.
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
In the end, it had worked out well in Honeysday. Dean, Rebecca, and the others had handled the monsters while Avril's group had retrieved the food (and then some) from the shrine. It was but a stopgap in the predations upon the beleagured farming village, but not one she regretted. Even a drop can help fill a bucket.
It seems like a saying she had heard, once.
But it had been during the dinner afterwards that she had realized she needed to be elsewhere. One of her visions, if not in so many words -- a sense that she had ought travel somewhere else.
It's just one of those little jokes of the world that the one whom she now seeks is also one who receives images directing them towards the path they had ought to take.
So she had traveled with her friends to Klein, after saying their goodbyes and leaving Honeysday behind.
In this, though, she had bid them leave her to speak to Eleanor in private, feeling that what she might say to the other woman would be for the two of them alone. And so, they had parted ways.
Of course, finding the Lady of Klein is an entirely different matter. Surely she might well be present in her family home, but approaching there will take Avril through much of the central ward first.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
It's funny, the way fate works out. Eleanor Klein was at home, earlier, but had a sudden urge to go out into the city, which she realized along the way was because she remembered this day. The particular arrangement of pigeons on the cobblestones; the placement of the sun in the sky. The guards on duty...
Yes. She knows today. Or at least, she knows a fragment of today, and as she walks out from the castle, her path soon comes upon--
"Ah!" It's less difficult to watch Avril today than it is some days; her strange sense of placement is something that doesn't bother her so much today, though she's used to putting up with it for her company. And so...
"It's nice to see you," Eleanor says to Avril, crossing the street to walk over to her.
Why is it important today...? Well, this is as far as the vision went, so she isn't sure!
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
And then as Avril turns about, there is Eleanor.
"Eleanor, it has been some time," she says, bowing slightly before her in greetings. "Have you been well?"
It occurs to her, almost as an afterthought, that perhaps Eleanor's visions had nudged her out here in much the same that Avril's own 'senses' have. How convenient, if that were the case -- perhaps it gives further weight to the odd and sometimes detached sense that Avril has of things -- of having nothing but the feeling that she ought to travel somewhere else to go on.
"...Something about you has changed, has it not?" She has pursed her lips as if in thought, regarding Eleanor with particular curiosity.
"It is as if you have... bloomed?"
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
"It has," Eleanor agrees, and smiles. "Yes!" she answers her. She has been well; Eleanor lifts her left hand, to show the new ring there, a diamond surrounded by six smaller in two lines. This is her main evidence. But then Avril notices something, looks at her curiously, and Eleanor makes a surprised expression.
"You can see it?" she wonders. Bloomed.... "Yes," she says, "I think that's one way to put it. ...Hmmm. It's not something I want to discuss in the open, though. There's a tea shop just down the way--we could get a table?"
"But you're right," she says. "Something has changed."
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
The ring says a lot by itself, doesn't it.
But it only confirms what Avril had already expected. Eleanor and Xiumei, they're now...
Avril is given to think back about a certain other ring, not entirely finished, left in a house in a particular village in Ignas. They had traveled so suddenly she had left it behind. ...Had she known somehow, even then, that this was the path down which her feelings would take her?
Someday, when she has the time, she will return to Ignas and finish the ring. And then...
She's right. Something has changed for Eleanor. But like many changes of significance, it's not something to be casually discussed on a city street. "Yes, I understand," she tells Eleanor, nodding. "Shall we, then? Let us discuss this over a cup of tea."
The shop in question does a lovely brew with jasmine -- just the thing for a day like this, Avril finds.
"I am sorry I have not come here before," she says, lifting her cup to her lips. "Perhaps I should bring Rebecca here another time."
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
It does!! Eleanor cannot read Avril's mind; she doesn't know what she's thinking. But if she did, she'd smile. Instead...
Shortly they are at the teahouse, and Eleanor smiles. "That sounds lovely," Eleanor says of bringing Rebecca here. "I don't often get out to this one; Clara gets a bit jealous of my taking tea elsewhere if it's so close as this..." Clara being one of her maids; Eleanor obviously uses their names.
"But," she says, "You had a question. ...I'd appreciate if you kept this quiet, but I trust you." Both to keep it quiet, and to say it at all. Eleanor's tea has a few citrus notes, a black tea with a bit of sugar.
"A nice cup is always the thing..." She pauses, and that's a little of a stalling tactic as she tries to sort out her own feelings. But, she figures it out.
"...I have some new powers and responsibilities. Ages ago, a circle of Sages sealed the power of Ganondorf, the King of Evil. Apparently I'm the successor to one of them. I met my predecessor... or his spirit, more accurately. And he explained."
"It turns out that the visions, the rituals, what I've experienced... it's connected. And that's a strange feeling to have."
"My seat is that of Light. ...I'm not sure yet how I'm going to square it with my other responsibilities, admittedly, but it's not something I can simply walk away from. So if you sense something different... It's that, I think. Though I'm surprised that you can tell at a glance. Few have senses like yours, I think."
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
"Oh, I see..." Avril says, her lips curving in a slight smile. "Does Clara make excellent tea herself, then? If it is even merely as fine as this..." She's lifted her cup, if only to inhale the aroma.
"I did. If you would rather not tell me," she starts to say, before it becomes clear that Eleanor would much rather proceed and explain what has happened.
Avril knows it isn't merely the ring. No, the transformation is everything to do with Eleanor's aura -- her overall feel. The power that radiates from her. Something has changed, shifting Eleanor further towards who or what she must become.
She remains silent, her gaze on Eleanor as the other considers and reconsiders how best to phrase what needs to be said. And then...
"Ganondorf... I have heard that name before, I believe," Avril says slowly, furrowing her brow. "Is he not...?"
And Eleanor is the inheritor of that power that sealed him away -- or at least a fraction thereof -- now come into her own. "Then... that would explain... what I had felt," she says, bowing her head. "So there shall be others to soon come into their powers as well?" Surely Eleanor is not the only one.
And it might... make her responsibilities as the heir to the seat of Klein somewhat awkward as well, it occurs to Avril.
"Though... I do not believe I am one of them," Avril says, after a moment's consideration. "My senses appear to be something different." The power of the Ice Queen, ruler of the Veruni, perhaps. The Ice Queen of yore had been fantastically powerful, a fact Avril knows because she can still tap into that power, delve her hands into the blackness of the abyss within herself and let a little more of what was yet be.
But she does not think that she had been a Sage then. Or would be one now.
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
"She does!" Eleanor answers brightly about Clara. "She's very precise about it; she tells me the water is very important." Eleanor, too, inhales the aroma of her tea. "...But this is lovely too," she decides. She has loyalty, but she does like to try a variety...
But Eleanor does explain; she could explain about the ring, and indeed she may, but...
"He operates with Odessa," Eleanor explains, "But you can be sure that he has his own agenda." She pauses, then--listening to Avril. Her question gets a nod. "One of my new responsibilities is to find the others, and help them to awaken like I have. That's a tall order, but..."
Yes. It might indeed make her responsibilities as heir awkward.
"I think you're right. I'm not sure if I'd be able to 'sense' if you were, but--well, your powers are so overwhelmingly 'Ice' that you wouldn't match one of the elements I'm looking for. They are... Shadow, Spirit, Light, Forest, Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind."
"...And I think you had... other responsibilities," she says delicately.
"...How do you do it?" she wonders. "Reconcile with a power like that."
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
"Yes... I myself recall that the temperature of the water for tea is quite important," Avril remarks, setting her own cup back down. "A tea such as your own can tolerate higher temperatures, but mine could not. The delicacy would become overwelmed by the heat." But without some heat in the first place, none of the flavor would unfold in the water in the first place.
Not properly, that is.
"With Odessa... perhaps that is how I have come to hear of him," Avril remarks, frowning. "No. I cannot see how he should come to share their agenda. Perhaps for a time... but I should think that Vinsfeld's goals would diverge from his, in time. One who seeks to 'right the world' against 'one who seeks power'..." Avril closes her eyes.
"There are some," Avril begins, "who say that ice and water are one and the same. It is true they stem from the same source, in a sense... but ice is more than frozen water. You would know it yourself, would you not? A practitioner calls forth not just the raw element... but the 'emotion' of that element."
Water and ice are night and day.
But this is likely not a role that Avril is destined to fill. She does not feel herself even any resonance towards Eleanor, and what's more...
"I do."
How does she reconcile it, though?
Avril smiles, and here this is no sweet or tender smile, but one that bares a fraction of what she conceals in her heart. "I might ask much the same of you. We... do as we must. That is all. Even... if we would wish otherwise. But I am not ungrateful."
"For this life. For the ones I have met, for the memories I shall always treasure."
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Eleanor finally takes a sip of her own, and then sets it down on the saucer. "Yes," she says. "...It's amazing how many things like that people have come to learn, over time. People talk about what we've lost... But what we still have is important, too."
Odessa, though... "I agree entirely. I suppose Vinsfeld will take what allies he can get.. but I do not doubt in the least that Ganondorf will turn on him in time."
"That's exactly right," the sorceress answers Avril of ice and water. "...Even in our Crests, they share the power of Muse, but Ice can only be unlocked by adding the power of Wing. And its 'feeling 'is... different. I spent a lot of time in the icy lands of Sielje; I know ice not so well as you perhaps, but better than most. And water I learned here in Klein."
Eleanor listens very carefully to that serious, important smile and the words that go with it. Just a fraction, and it is enough.
"...Yes," she says. "I don't yet know how I'll reconcile it... But I will do what I must."
She smiles, and this one is warm. "...Me, too. Our situations aren't the same... But I think we have a commonality in that much."
<Pose Tracker> Avril Vent Fleur has posed.
"Water, with wind," Avril observes, familiar enough with Crest sorcery though she may not use it herself. "That is an apt description of a winter storm." Ice is stability. Ice preserves. Ice holds at a remove. Ice is strength but also fragility.
But water is flow. Water erodes, washes away. Water provides but does not protect. Water has no foundation but cannot be contained.
"I command ice with my will, but I cannot move so much as a single drop of water," Avril summarizes. Not without altering the temperature and so transforming it from one state to another. The Ice Queen is powerful, yet also limited.
"I believe... you shall find your answer in time. It was such for me," Avril remarks, gesturing towards her chest. "And so it shall be for you. You are new to your position and its requirements. In time..."
There is always so little time for what is necessary, and yet, much time is required to transform anything into what is necessary.
"...in time you will find your path. Your friends shall see to it."
<Pose Tracker> Eleanor Klein has posed.
Eleanor in the same way is familiar with Symbology, and somewhat now with Spiran magical traditions. Even if she doesn't use them, her scholarly approach requires a certain diversity of subject. "Yes," Eleanor says. Ice... is all of those things. It is different from the ocean in its seemingly infinite depths, which supports and consumes by turns.
"That's certainly a strong evidential basis," Eleanor says of the difference in ice and water, when Avril mentions what she can and can't do. "I..."
Hm. "I can do more, than I could before."
But Avril... Yes. What she says...
"I think so too," Eleanor says. "So long as I keep sight of what else is important to me. ..I was told... that destiny will take as much from you as it can, if you do not decide for yourself what you will hang onto."
"...My friends, my family; these I will keep. I can have both. And with their help, I will."