2024-01-27: Longing
- Cutscene: Longing
- Cast: Hannah Curie
- Where: On a hilltop near the Lahan Ruins
- Date: January 27, 2024
- Summary: Hannah reflects on a homecoming of sorts, but her thoughts of home inevitably turn elsewhere.
The gravitas Hannah had expected to feel, stepping through the rift into Ignas for the first time had been marred somewhat by the need to immediately flee a Kislevi army camp. Thankfully, with the assistance of Zephyr, she managed the task quite handily.
She climbed to the crest of a nearby hill and stood there, marveling at the new landscapes around her. She was no stranger to the wilderness: she had crisscrossed Aquvy so many times in so many different directions that she had seen and experienced much more of it than the typical person might. And yet, even for that sense of familiarity with the hills and fields around her, there was a distinct note of unfamiliarity, too.
Despite the fact that she had come from somewhere in the lands of Ignas... it wasn't home.
She had known, for quite some time, that she was a foundling. When she had been deemed old enough to comprehend the subject, when she had grown curious enough to ask about where other children in the orphanage had come from, and then to naturally wonder about herself, Miss Rochelle, Suzie, and Miss Marivel had sat down with her to tell her. She'd always been the curious sort, wanting to explore and find out about the world, and so naturally had always looked up to drifters. But finding out that Suzie and Miss Marivel in particular had a connection to her had inspired in her a lifelong admiration of them in particular.
There had been thoughts, of course, of what her 'real' family must be like, what type of home she might have had, where she might have grown up, what people she would have known. It was, perhaps, natural to have those thoughts, but in the end that's all they had been: thoughts. Idle curiosities.
She could have tried, once she struck out on her own, to find out more--not that it would have garnered her any answers, of course, knowing what she knew now--but the thought had never crossed her mind. Instead, her thoughts had been of Damzen, of the orphanage and Miss Rochelle, of Suzie and Miss Marivel, of the other orphanage kids.
And so it was even now.
She was, in some ways, closer to her origin than ever. She could meet someone on the street who was related to her, pass by a house or a dwelling she had been in once before but couldn't remember, and she might never know.
The wind picked up and Hannah shivered, pulling her denim jacket closed. She turned her head to face the direction the wind was headed, off to the east, and stared at the horizon.
Towards Aquvy. And a building that had been expanded time and again until it was an eclectic mix or styles, with furniture and interior decorations that didn't match yet somehow still went together in an odd, familiar way.
Towards home.
Despite the great need to find answers about where she had come from, to understand why her magic was the way that it was... Ignas wasn't where her heart longed to be.
Zephyr, perched on her shoulder, chirped, and Hannah nodded, reaching up to wipe something away from her eye.
"Me too," she said softly.
Hannah then turned and looked to the west, instead. "But for now, we got people countin' on us to be here, too." She thought for a moment, and then smiled. "But if you spot a memory cube, lemme know."
The hawk chirped happily and took off from her shoulder, tacking into the wind as Hannah descended down the hill in the direction of Adlehyde.