2023-06-23: Range of Conversation Topics
- Log: Range of Conversation Topics
- Cast: Ruth Pauling, Hannah Curie
- Where: Klein Port Ward
- Date: June 23, 2023
- Summary: Ruth and Hannah run into each other at a firing range, and discuss current events, both recently passed and upcoming.
=============================<* Klein Port Ward *>============================== Gateway to the rest of Filgaia, bursting with goods from ports around the world, the Port Ward of Klein City has all the sights and scents one might expect of a region on the sea and populated by sailors. Occupying the least rocky terrain and the most favorable access to the coast in the area, it has capacity for many ships all at once, and is always abuzz with officials checking goods and manifests and trying to ensure that taxes, duties, and laws are properly observed in trade... though they are not always successful. Given the quantity of travel here, there are many inns and common houses and other businesses catering to those who come and go, and the sight of the Central Ward up at the top of the cliffs nearby can provide the sense that the whole ward is under a watchful eye. ...To the paranoid, anyway--for the most part, matters are smooth, though there's a significant local police force that seems to some to exist mostly to break up the fights between bored men and women of the sea on leave. It's said that the markets here have at least a little something from all over the world, though perhaps most popular are textiles: with the ocean so close to the cliffs, the ports grow quite chilly at night. BGM: Chrono Cross - Another Termina
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
It's approaching the evening hours of the day out in Klein. There's at least one prolific ARMs Meister who has made significant bank in the months following the fall of the Order of Ethos. His rates are reasonable for maintenance and upkeep of gunsmoke ARMs... which is good, because that's been an issue for many travelers since the Order dissolved.
Where he really makes his money, though, is off the land he inherited from his grandfather.
Land he has seen made into something approaching one of the better-developed dedicated firing ranges in the region based on some research of similar Zeboim-era structures. He doesn't have the materials or the means to fully reconstruct them, of course, but many of the same principles are there.
Ruth is one of the few who has managed to rent some time in the waning daylight hours, as local ordinance forbids this place from operating once the sun goes down. While she is well-known for her rifle, she still updates and replaces her sidearm from time to time.
Her presence here is just due dilligence for getting a feel for this new handgun's feel, weight, balance, and kick. Hearing protection has been applied in the form of specialized earmuffs, though the damage to her hearing has long since been done.
Eyes closed, Ruth doesn't look at all the part of what she harbors inside or what is always constantly running through her mind. She opens her eyes, raises her weapon, and snaps off two shots a ways off to a target that seems just beyond the intended reach of said weapon.
Only the lingering ache of her left shoulder follows.
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
Hannah's bread and butter, at least in terms of combat ability, is, sadly, that corrupted magic that she fears so much. However loathe she is to rely on it, it is still effective in dispatching a variety of threats. However, there are simply situations when using it is not the right choice for a situatiopn: hunting, for instance.
And so, she made sure to procure herself a gunsmoke ARM as soon as she was able once she set out on her own. In fact, she retrieved something quite special from a dig that she decided to hold onto: a Collapse-era repeating rifle, a Tyrfing NU-03, with the particular trait that it is highly accurate. She's taken great care to restore and maintain it, and is one of her most prized possessions.
She has only just discovered the firing range, and is taking the opportunity to get some practice in to keep her skills sharp. She gave a polite nod to Ruth when she saw her, and took up her own space, unwrapping the rifle and quickly doing some maintenance on it. She doesn't have the mechanical precision of a soldier field-stripping her weapon, but she works swiftly and confidently (and safely!) with it, putting it back together and then stepping up to her chosen booth.
She's got her own pair of ear muffs on, and she raises her rifle, takes aim, and... with several quick shots she hits several targets smack dab in the center. She lowers the rifle to scrutinize her work and nods, then turns to make some more adjustments.
The aura coming from her is... troubled. She's excited, of course, for the wedding, but there is something eating away at her thoughts, a troubling encounter she recently had that is haunting her thoughts even moreso than her usual woes.
Zephyr is perched nearbye, well out of the line of fire, and plenty far away from the rapport of gunfire. He doesn't look thrilled to be there, but also doesn't seem as skittish as one might suspect.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Ruth's always preferred to make her visits with as few people as possible alongside her. Some models of gunsmoke ARM sometimes set off a fight-or-flight that her Malevolence happily feeds into just from the familiarity of them from the final days of Celesti. It's one thing to have the martial discipline to be able to take precise aim with a firearm.
It's another when you have to keep your worst in check.
Ruth's keen eyes catch the feat of sharpshooting further down about the same time she feels the ambience of being troubled. Feeling it when she's present among others is not new, but...
...
"Was that one yours, Hannah?" Comes Ruth's voice as she herself steps away to visit Hannah while she's making a few more adjustments to her rifle. Ruth doesn't look at her head-on, but it's hard to escape a feeling of scrutiny. After all, to be in the gaze of Death's Door meant you were to be welcomed inside to the grave - and there was always as much vacancy as there were bullets in her grasp.
"Those were good shots," speaks one of the greatest of her generation.
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
Hannah has kept herself busy these past few days doing things to help out with the wedding, in whatever way she could. This has been one of the few rare moments she's really had to herself, and so she ended up here coincidentally at the same time as Ruth.
She tenses a little when she comes into Ruth's notice, though does her best to try and relax a little when she looks up to see Ruth standing there. She's still getting used to the other woman's presence, even after having made her peace with her recently.
She nods, then remember Ruth avoids eye contact and says, "Yes, it was." She pauses as Ruth compliments her shooting. She is very briefly torn on how to receive it--yes, it's a compliment, and from one of Filgaia's most (in)famous sharpshooters, but on the other hand, an implicit comparion between their skills is...
But there's a brief smile as she says, "Thank you", and then it fades again as she returns to her work. "Just found out about this place, and I haven't taken time to practice lately, and I had a free moment, so..." She glances around to see that they're alone and quietly confides, "Truth is she does most of the work, but I still gotta practice to take advantage of it."
"What brings you out this way?"
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
There aren't many higher honors that can be given in terms of sharpshooting beyond the Ruth Pauling says one's shooting is good, that's for sure.
She nods along at Hannah's assertions, but her body language remains as reserved as usual, beyond holstering her sidearm into the one all but sewn into her overcoat. Slow, deliberate, as if to get herself to come down from the beginnings of reliving another memory of Celesti.
"Getting a feel for a new ARM," Ruth responds. "Even with Odessa no longer a force, we've still been keeping ourselves sharp." Her right hand goes over her chest, a tinge of the despair that permeates her finding no escape beyond the tone of speaking word in the moment.
"The fighting never ends." As if words not spoken with pride, or even resignation, but that little touch of personal horror that could undermine the budding friendly rapport between them.
Ruth's eyes close for a bit as her fingers curl, keeping herself before speaking again.
"You were worried, weren't you. Is it about the wedding?"
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
Hannah does her bet to take the compliment at face value, even if it does feel a bit weird, considering the source.
She gives that new ARM a glance as Ruth holsters it, and then nods to her explanation. "That makes sense. I like keeping my skills sharp... Gives me another tool to avoid using my magic." She picks the rifle up and looks down the sight. "Well-placed shot can sometimes end a conflict right quick.... Least that's the hope."
She pauses, lowering her rifle as Ruth mentions the fighting never ending. She catches that tone underneath those words and looks--but not directly--to the older woman. It takes her a moment to process, but slowly she nods. When she speaks, her voice is subdued. "... I wager it doesn't, for some folks... I'm sorry." She knows that bit of sympathy can't possibly make up for Ruth's experiences, but it's the best she has to offer.
Ruth mentions worry, but Hannah shakes her head. "No, well, not really... It was... a bit surprising to hear there had been a previous wedding ceremony, but... I'm hopeful this one will go off without a hitch. It's just..."
She pauses, and then sets her rifle down. "Went on a dig recently. Saw somethin' that... unsettled me."
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
"...You're too kind," Ruth responds after an awkward stretch of time to Hannah's apology, hands clasping over one another. Things are a whole lot more peaceful than they have been as of late, mostly. (Far less so for those of Meribus and Glenwood, for those aware of a dangerous truth involving the nature of the Goddess on Lunar - which is to say, a fake!)
Whether the kindness is deserved, or is simply too late, is one of those darker questions one has to wrestle with on their own time, as Hannah segues into matters of what troubles her.
Something Hannah saw on a Dig. Where Hannah has lowered her rifle, Ruth doesn't take any sort of motion to move to take a seat. From one perspective, where Ruth stands, she stands between Hannah and the rest of the world in that moment.
"Where was it?" Ruth asks with a gentleness.
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
There's still a lot Hannah doesn't understand about Ruth or her particular situation, but she's doing her best to make a connection, regardless.
Hannah takes a seat, looking up to Ruth, or at least mostly, avoiding that eye contact. "I take a lot of jobs, but I also go to investigate strange goings on, just in case I turn up anything useful... I investigated a place called the Spitsbergen Nightmare. It was..."
She frowns for a moment, considering how to explain. "It was not unlike the Memory Maze, in that the space within was not... well-defined. It was deep underground, but at one point we walked upon a beach under a green sky."
She skips the part about the hands, for the moment.
She sighs, and the sense of unease within her grows stronger. "We were confronted, at one point, with... dopplegangers. Of ourselves. Mine were..." She looks away, and the unease grows stronger. "Not... wholly correct. They had features I didn't, and they... changed, as I watched."
She closes her eyes (which might be the biggest sign of trust she could extend to Ruth, although Zephyr IS still watching.) Quietly, she says, "... I... might have overreacted."
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
There's a small twitch in Ruth's right hand at mention of the Spitsbergen Nightmare. She nods along, and clarifies once Hannah further describes the strange landscapes beyond the mists blocked off by a conspicuous boulder.
"I know of the place." Spoken simply, with the trailing quiet of sympathy with mild discomfort about such a place existing. There's no explanation for what it is, what it's doing there, and what it means for the world around it, as Ruth picks up the scent of growing vulnerability and unease.
...
"Mine looked as I do right now before you." Which is to say, they still looked like elves. There's a smile there that doesn't belong with that thought, that little discordant bit of emotion on the surface that at least is keeping her Malevolence inside by doing so.
"They looked like monsters to me too." A form of self-deprecation that's always the equivalent of a nice stick of chewing gum for her, but she's not blind to how scared Hannah is to recount that.
Ruth's hands lower, still clasped, idly chancing a look into Hannah's closed eyes. She can barely hear the words about how Hannah overreacted.
"How did they change?" The Hellion asks, as if from a place of understanding and sympathy.
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
Hannah nods as Ruth says she knows of the place. "Then you know what it's like..." She, too, leaves the rest of what it was like unelaborated, then.
She looks to Ruth as she describes what she saw, and how she perceived them. She just nods to that. "Mine... well, they started looking like me, but the way they looked at me...." She shudders. "They knew. I could tell they knew. And they knew I knew that they knew, too. Might've just been my imagination running away with me, but..."
She doesn't say what it was that they knew.
"She hugs herself. It's a little chilly, and she hasn't repaired her cloak, but it's not that chilly, just yet. "One o' them had... slitted eyes, another hand fangs and a forked tongue, and the third had sharp, black nails... I couldn't... I couldn't bear to look at them, s-so I..."
She falls silent. Zephyr swoops down from his perch to land on Hannah's shoulder as a comforting presence. He keeps a wary eye on Ruth.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Hannah shares her fears of what she saw to her captive audience. Somewhere around the talk about the third having sharp, black nails, Ruth draws up her right hand and stares at it. It's gloved, and not at all interesting looking from the outside in. Ruth's hands are perfectly normal and fine. When she returns to the form that is now her true self, it's her ears and her hands that don't really change shape.
Zephyr swooping down to Hannah's shoulder and starting to give a look gets Ruth to looking back outside of the world in her own head (and actually getting the older woman to startle and lean back, at that, sudden red-tailed hawks can do that).
...
Ruth casts a weary eye around whoever's left at the range, but as it turns out - it is just those two, and they're the last 'group' for the day before the sun sets. There's no one else to sneak up on them. No greater horror waiting to pounce than the one who has positioned themselves as being Hannah's friend.
Silence passes for a short while, as Ruth once again lowers her hand away from her own gaze.
"Were they how you see yourself?"
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
Zephyr is doing his best to respect Hannah's wishes for friendliness with Ruth, but some protective instincts still run deep within him. Hannah doesn't really seem to notice how Ruth is started, and instead reaches up to carefully stroke under his beak. The gesture is really more for her than for Zephyr, though.
She finally shakes her head at Ruth's question. "No, not... not really, but..." There's another long pause, and the anguish within her is certainly not abating. "... if this corruption of my magic keeps going..."
She leaves that thought trail off.
"... I unleashed every bit of magic I could at them. That was stupid of me, all the time I put into holding it back, keeping it out, not wanting to hurt others, but I just got... so scared, an' I was weak, and rash, and..."
Her voice is trembling as she admits, "... I think I gave them what they wanted."
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
The older woman among them stands vigil while Hannah speaks further of her fears of what she did and what it could mean for her. The collective guilt at just unleashing everything she's worked so hard to contain. Ruth's hands clench as she lets her hair just sweep in front of her face.
The world around her feels like it's losing use for sight, sound, and scent before Hannah's radiating anguish and distress. The words and images that run through Ruth's conscious thought are ones she can never keep quiet, and there may be an imperceptible gesture or inaudible sound that might have Zephyr on edge.
"Hannah." Ruth's speaking of Hannah's name is quiet, as if unaware as to how loud her voice might carry in the real world around her in the moment. Her left hand, chancing pain in her left shoulder, goes over her chest as she feels the fabric of her gloves and the constriction of the Granasian rosary about her right forearm.
"Some time ago, I met with... someone who knew more about who I am now." Someone whose name has been revealed and shown to be someone else who has taken up the mantle of the 'Adversary of Man,' but that much is not important.
Ruth takes in a breath that doesn't leave.
"You're not a Hellion, but... I don't feel this is all that different." Tension runs through her. Each step she makes as she circles around where Hannah sits is careful and restrained. "What you have... it is scary."
Scary enough to even frighten a hardened war criminal of a decade and some change's worth of carnage behind her. If one includes her time as an Etone and what she did after, several years more - but those final years of Celesti speak for themselves.
"What's important isn't our natures." The former elf starts, as she takes a seat at last to be something more positionally on the level with Hannah. "However frightful or dangerous, we... can only be who we are."
Ruth remembers how much she rallied against the idea she could be called something like a 'daemon' or a 'Hellion,' all very unkind and monstrous terms for who she became, which... a lot of people would agree with, for how many Hellions do just give into their urges.
"It's what you do with your nature that defines you." A little smile, as if one born of some form of resignation. "I can hardly see the world beyond those in pain and fear. I'm... still wielding that ARM just like in Celesti." A legacy not to be proud of. A legacy of terror and death that accomplished nothing but further tragedy. That the Drifter community got a first-hand Malevolent Domain re-enactment of the butchering of the village at Siddim Canyon in 490 PC is unlikely to leave them anytime soon.
Ruth is the single reason that doorbells are much more popular throughout Zoara as opposed to knocking on doors. A shared thing of cultural trauma that is still ongoing.
"The person I was," and will always have to live with being, "could only sow fear and spill blood. All the skills I bear, creates more." Ruth's body language goes still while her gaze is on her rosary, keeping her fingers of her right hand up against her chest. "...Someone believed there was good in one who only sought suffering." There really isn't, is there? And yet.
"So I persist. With all the conviction I have, to be anything other than a heartless monster."
...
"The place you were in was dangerous. You and your friends might not have escaped without it." Ruth barely remembers how her own team escaped that one, from some time ago. They must have, since they're still here, but...
"IF that's not enough, then... hold your guilt as proof of your heart." Cherishing the guilt of continued sin, in her case, self-destructive circular logic. "Even if you can't see yourself in the mirror."
That would go a long way to explaining why Ruth's appearance is so disheveled and homely, come to think.
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
Zephyr is indeed keeping watch, though he does nothing more than to tilt his head a bit.
Ruth says Hannah isn't a Hellion, and the girl nods. "I got a chance to ask someone who was capable of purifying Malevolence, but... he confirmed that wasn't what I had." She doesn't make a sound when Ruth calls what she has scary, but she does draw her knees up to her chest, hugging them tight to herself.
It's something she feels far, far too keenly herself to bother disputing.
She doesn't turn her head fully to look at Ruth as she sits and talks, but she does turn her head just enough to turn her ear towards the older woman, to show that she's listening.
It's what they do with their natures... "I haven't been doing anything except trying to fix my magic, for the most part... I try not to get involved, staying away from people to keep them safe and... it's so hard. I hate it." She might not be a Hellion, but she has plenty of her own contradictions, regardless.
She looks to Ruth more fully when she mentions the person she was, what kind of skills she has, how someone thought she could do better... she seems to be considering something, but then glances a little away again. "Do you mind if I ask who that was?"
She sighs and nods. "I know. If Zephyr hadn't spurred me to action, then..." She considers her guilt and sighs. "I... I suppose..."
There's another glance as Ruth mentions mirrors, and some more consideration before she looks away again. "... You're in ARMS, right? Can... I ask why you joined them?"
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Ruth watches the way Hannah withdraws into herself, just how unhappy she is with keeping people away just to keep them safe, and... there's a part of her that echoes some of these sentiments that can't ever be silenced. Such is her lot - or perhaps, the lot of those found strong in ways they didn't ask for.
...
'Do you mind if I ask who that was?'
The one who merely looks the part of who she once was doesn't give a verbal answer. She starts to shake her head about a moment or two after it'd be too awkward to have a response at all, but there's that tension in her gloved hands feeling tighter. The tension does not pass, so much as sit still in the moment.
"They threatened your friend?" She asks of Zephyr spurring Hannah to action, not quite meeting the eyes of the hawk when she does, but asking this instead of answering is dodging the subject!!
...
'You're in ARMS, right?' A nod. And... the obvious inquiry, to which Ruth answers.
She remembers the answer she gave Marivel, Eleanor, and Venetia within Valeria Chapeau nearly a year ago. That little bitter laugh that helped her say the things that are hard for her to say without just letting all of it out, by an uneasy smile.
It passes.
"With all that happened between... Celesti, and now, I couldn't live with the idea of all of that being forgotten. The way Brionac kept the war they already won going under Vinsfeld..."
Ruth shakes her head. Odessa is history. She hasn't seen or heard anything of known Brionac operatives in some time.
"You might ask why I'm still here, if Odessa no longer is a threat." Ruth decides to head off that follow-up. The paused tension from her mind lingering on a prospective emotional landmine starts again. Her eyes close, head bowed.
As if on the verge of a profound, verbose set of qualifying logic that runs in circles...
"They trust me with their suffering." And a whole lot more - Eleanor and Marivel both consider her a dear friend in their own ways, and not just them. "Things might be peaceful now. I... don't have much of a place in that."
A bitter smile. "I won't be at Eleanor's wedding, for one. It's fine." It sounds entirely genuine, in fact, that it's fine!
"So I stay."
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
Hannah can see the first question she posed being deflected, and elects not to chase it down. But she asks a question in return... and Hannah shakes her head. "Not quite. He told me I needed to take action when they started advancing. I was... locked up in fear..."
Zephyr chirps softly to Hannah, and Hannah just nods a bit to herself--or perhaps to Zephyr. Softly, she says, "I'm okay."
She nods, as Ruth explains her motivations for first joining and then staying in ARMS. There is a flash of sympathy for when Ruth mentions there isn't a place for her in peace, but there's no apology this time. It just feels hollow to say to something so profound in scope. "I remember Eleanor blessed you with some magic in that fight..." Another sign of trust, there.
She's not sure how to take the news that Ruth won't attend--she's sure Eleanor would've invited her, but given how she's seen Ruth avoid eye contact much of the time... She can see why Ruth would avoid a large crowd.
"Eleanor asked me to join ARMS," she says, after a moment. "She wants to help me with my magic, devote ARMS' resources to it, but she says that I can help ARMS too, the same way that I joined in with the fight against Boomerang and Luceid..." Which might explain the previouus question.
Hannah rests her chin on her knees. "I haven't made up my mind yet. But until I do, I'm... I'm staying near Klein. For Eleanor."
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
"He did." Ruth says this less as a question, and more as an echo of the sentiment. She lifts her head as if to look into Zephyr directly, to gauge the red-tailed hawk, but regardless... the response is about the same. "He must be a very good friend to love you so."
Not even asking the obvious question.
...
Things segue along towards Hannah revealing she's been invited to join ARMS, and her reasons for wishing to help. One of Ruth's hands is still tense, balled up into a fist. She lowers it on the table, letting the other gently rest atop it. There's a smile again, but it's less of the 'disconcerting predatory grin' and more 'gentle, friendly.' It might not even be that forced.
"It's not a small thing to choose to fight. To hurt." Ruth speaks, knowing well how scared Hannah is about her power and maybe even losing herself to it.
"Even for those who only have but their ARMs, or swords, or Crests," as opposed to more fantastical, dangerous things like Ruth's Malevolence, or whatever's been going on with Hannah's sorcery. "But... I've never known Eleanor to make an offer she would regret*."
* There was that one time she told a certain jerkwad of a man about a town with a huge turn of fortune for the better catching fire. He knows who he is!! (Besides that, though, Ruth's correct.)
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
"He did," says Hannah, responding as if Ruth had asked it as a question. Maybe she's used to people questioning her on Zephyr's capabilities.
Zephyr, for his part, turns his head to look right at Ruth as she's considering him. He's even looking her right in the eyes--or at least, as much as he can given the arrangement of bird eyes. He's looking squarely at her face, in any case.
Hannah smiles, faintly, and reaches up to pet Zephyr's head. "Best friend a girl could ask for. We've been inseprable ever since I was little."
And they're linked in a way she didn't expect, but... she's still working on figuring that one out. She used to be a lot better at downplaying Zephyr's intelligence, but after five years on the road with almost nobody but him for companionship... she's fallen out of that habit.
"Yeah... I mean... I've done an awful lot of fightin' already, so..." She shrugs a little. "But maybe I don't haveta fight so much? I got other skills ARMS could find useful... I know how to work with ARMs, thanks to Miss Marivel, I still went to Sielje... well, I guess there's much better Crest Sorcerers than me. Eleanor finished her schooling, at least..."
There's an implication, there.
She's silent for a long moment, mulling something over in her head. Finally, she asks, "... Can I tell you something? But you have to promise not to tell Eleanor or anybody else until I'm ready."
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Ruth listens as Hannah feels around for the other ways she can contribute to ARMS. It's always been something Ruth herself has had to deal with. Even beyond having found friendship and (mostly) acceptance, it is unambiguous what it is precisely Ruth brings to the table. It's something she'll always be conflicted about. That conflict is both burden and strength.
"I didn't finish my schooling either," Ruth says, though that's hardly new information. Hannah's seen Ruth's Crests. They're competent, and even highly effective, but all of them draw from the Muse quadrant like a crutch.
...
5tHannah asks if Ruth can keep a secret. It wasn't that long ago that a young woman confided to Ruth about how she might be about to walk the path she does as a Hellion... and some time later after she took in even more Malevolence in a dreadful reunion that brought closure but no peace, her seeming eagerness to embrace it even with access to those that can purify her of it if she were willing. (She wasn't... yet. But it's her choice.)
...
Outwardly, through that internalized thinking, Ruth keeps still, one open hand over a clenched fist that's metaphysically holding the accumulated tension that wants to escape.
She nods, again.
"You would tell me," she muses aloud. Some great burden Hannah doesn't want shared, not even with a dear friend of hers she's reunited with...
"I'll listen." There is a moment in Ruth's composure that Hannah might see as reminiscent of someone once of priestly caliber, or... could have been. Even with the religious bauble around her right forearm, aspects of her about the furthest thing from 'holy' imaginable, and yet.
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
Ruth didn't finish her schooling. That much Hannah could have surmised, given what she saw of the other woman's crests. She nods. "I left, after the accident... I always told myself I'd go back, once I fixed things, but..." She closes her eyes and sighs. "That was five years ago."
She can't be much more than 20, now. That must have been a tumultuous time for her... and is the source of one of her biggest regrets surfacing now that she's thinking of it.
'You would tell me.' "I don't gotta, if you don't want." But Ruth finally accepts, and Hannah nods. She inhales deeply through her nose and then lets it out. "I'm thinking of not joining ARMS and going back to Sielje instead."
Not the... biggest secret in the world, but to Hannah, it feels like a keen betrayal of Eleanor. To leave her behind, again. "They got sorcerers, same as ARMS... Lettin' them study me might help make up for it if there's no scholarship money left. I just... I tried to talk to Eleanor about it but I chickened out. I don't want to leave her again, but..." And there's the anguish, at the thought of abandoning her friend a second time.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
There might be the expectation of Ruth balking at the idea that Hannah wouldn't take up the invitation to join ARMS, but if it brings Hannah relief... Ruth doesn't recoil in shock, nor betray any such feeling of dislike for the decision.
"...That's an opportunity I'll never have again, myself." Ruth looks off to the side. "My schooling to place in Verlkarung."
Verklarung was destroyed in light and fire by the Black Reaper at the end of the Celesti Civil War... an oligarchy-aligned city. That event is what spurred on the morale to defeat the Aquvy Union once and for all (of whom Ruth served).
Even saying this, Ruth has a gentle, understanding smile on her face. She holds that hunger that urges her to pry more of that anguish out of what-- who is before her, eyes once again closing.
"Eleanor's one of the kindest people I've ever met." Ruth shakes her head. "She... really is a blessing to those around her."
Elves are said to be such to those they are born to. Then there's Ruth, who does not need further elaboration.
"She'd be hurt more if you disappeared without telling her. Even then... she'd know where you are, wouldn't she."
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
"Oh..." Ruth's old school was destroyed. That's... a terrible loss, for a number of reasons. Both the personal, and the idealistic (she likes schools, as an institution.)
"I mean, I don't even know if they'll take me back, the way I left... Miss Marivel said she would look into it for me... But..." She glances to Ruth. "... I could give you some pointers sometime, if you wanted... Though I'll admit, I'm not familiar with the style used there." For... fairly obvious reasons.
"She is... she took me back, put me up, invited me to her wedding... She's always been like that, even back at Sielje."
But at the suggestion of leaving without telling her, she jerks upright so quickly Zephyr is startled and has to take flight for a moment. "What?! No! Nononono!" She gives an emphatic shake of her head before finishing with a final firm "No. I'm not making that mistake again. I'm telling her." And as Zephyr settles down onto her shoulder, her resolve crumbles. "... Just... maybe after the wedding. She's got a lt on her mind already, you know?"
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Ruth shakes her head at the offer of further tutelage. She doesn't voice it aloud, but it is remarkable to those 'in the know' that she's capable of utilizing a form of sorcery consciously when she has access to something else much like it that comes almost as easily as breathing, now.
Ruth looks more alert when Hannah is so shocked that she comes just shy of leaping from her seat, gaze looking upward to Zephyr starting to do a short flight loop before settling down again, but her gaze lingers on that bird's flightiness for some time, as Hannah makes her decision that she'll talk about it after the wedding.
"She will." Ruth won't be there for it, but there's... nothing there for her, in a time and place like that. Some aspects of her life are immutable regardless.
The last of the sunlight starts to fade, and it won't be long before someone has to come out to tell the two of them it's time to pack it up and head out, as the lawkeepers of Klein are especially on high alert prior to a high-profile wedding. (They don't need two strange lizard-people barging in and making a mess of things again, for one.)
"I'll be about Meria for the next few days, to keep watch." There's something implied in that. Ruth's eyesight is known to be quite good, and she is often assigned by ARMS to keep watch about various locales. After all... a lot of this started from Ruth watching Hannah restrain herself in dealing with ruffians.
There's an unspoken guarantee she'll see Hannah if she runs away.
<Pose Tracker> Hannah Curie has posed.
Hannah doesn't seem upset by the rejected offer of tutelage. She has admitted she's essentially a dropout (even if she kept up her studies independently.)
"Sorry for shouting, I just... I already hurt her once, I can't do that a second time. And I promised Miss Marivel, too..." She looks at the horizon and sighs. She got that very strict lecture about their operating hours when she arrived, so she stands up. This time, Zephyr switche poerches preemptively, almost as if he knew what Hannah was intending before she did it.
She moves to the table, finalizing her work and starting to pack away all of her tools. There's a soft, "There you go" said to... someone or something, before she starts rewrapping the rifle.
She looks over to Ruth as she starts to buckle her rifle into place over her bag, "Thanks for listening, Ruth... I really appreciate it. Um... When are you leaving? If you want... I could bring you a piece of cake from the reception? Either way, have a good watch in Meria."
Zephr takes his place on Hannah's shoulder as she waits for a reply.
<Pose Tracker> Ruth Pauling has posed.
Ruth returns to idly watching as Hannah gathers her feelings and calms down from the outburst. Ruth is taller, but seated as they both are in the moment, she doesn't quite... loom, the same way she instinctively tends to. It's a hard quality to put a finger on, but there's also no real daylight to cast dramatic shadows with in the moment.
But there is one last inquiry to be made, the most important of all.
Cake. Delicious, luxurious cake. The wedding reception of Klein is going to have such good cake.
"Soon," she answers, vaguely, but there's the offer to have a piece of cake. Her gaze tracks down towards her hands, to the one resting open and flat over the clenched fist, raising it up to look at her individual fingers as she feels the fabric of those gloves ever more keenly in the moment.
She shakes her head.
"I'll be gone before I can hear the wedding bells," she says, cryptically, but there's a smile there. A sad one. "It's kind you'd offer." She always has to talk herself into accepting a kindness. This doesn't appear to be one of them.
Ruth starts to rise up, gradually, a kink in her back and shoulder with disconcerting crackling noises, but... her back always feels too tight, like this. The weight she carries with that rifle can't possibly help. And yet, she carries it anyway.
Her hands, clasped with some effort, nods and bows her head to Hannah.
"I hope it's a wonderful day for you, too."