2018-03-04: Returning Traveller

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  • Cutscene: Returning Traveller
  • Cast: Avril Vent Fleur
  • Where: ???
  • Date: March 4th, 2018
  • Summary: Avril faces her wall. Takes place shortly after the events of My Way.

BGM: (Dark Souls 2 ~ Motoi Sakuraba - Queen of Drangleic) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i59xk7_-viY


She's been here before.

Countless, countless times.

When something almost makes itself remembered, when she feels she's on the precipice of an important recollection, when something is nearly, nearly grasped...
She stretches out her hand in desperation, only to impact to slide along a sheet of ice. No purchase to be had, no advance possible.

Naught to do but withdraw.

Yet, she has not given up striving against its decree upon her memory, not even now.

It continues to push her away. Impedes any attempt to as much as attempt to remember even the most fleeting recollections. What she can dredge up through the icy sea at the foot of the wall is by contrast spare: disconnected emotions and feelings alike. Impressions. No context to add color and depth. No sense of what they may have meant to her, once.

Against the great wall, even the woman she was seems buried and unrecoverable, lost to the eons.

The wall refuses her still.

Do not return.

Outright denial: here again, as it had the last time, the impression loud and clear. Then she had heeded it and left this place behind.

But she is always returning, she is always coming back.

Back to this place that rests nowhere but her own psyche.

Defiance, in its own way, is something that stretches in her down to the very roots of her self. Yes, she's certain of it: the person she was, she was also this way.

Before her stretches the glacial wall, frosted and well-rimed with ice. Coils of white and brilliant blue blot any view past a handful of inches -- she could stare into it all she wished, but would be able to see little but her own dulled reflection.

She slowly places her left hand against the wall.

Little has been afforded to her. But, little is still something. Something is better than nothing.
She had been reminded of it once again in the throes of that battle, before everything had gone wrong.
No, it was a simple prescription: start with the fundamentals. The basics, if you will. What experiences shape a person? What can be learned from what builds someone?

Do not return.

That pulse, once again.
She can only come back, even knowing with certainty what she knows.

Emotions tell a story. Feelings suggest a particular chain of events. She had felt shock, sinking her blade into Lady Harken’s chest not simply because of the act itself.
But the familiarity of the act. This had been done, this had been done, this had been done.
This she had done.

To a small degree, she has grasped who she was.
When she recovers her memory... then, what will become of her?

But a traveller must someday return.

In the end, everyone is always turning back.
She stretches her fingers against the wall. Presses. Pushes.

DO NOT RETURN.

There is nothing well that rests here.

But this I already know.

A hairline fracture spreads in the ice, racing the surface of the ancient glacier.
Her hand retreats as if stung, heavy breaths escaping from her one after the other.

Even only a crack...

It’s enough.

The pulse beats out its warning, echoing over and over:

do
not
return

      not
do         return

do     not     return
                       not
              do
return

DO NOT RETURN

Yes.
I understand.

The wall yet stands, the ice reaching for the sky. For now, just a crack.
...Eventually even this must melt away.

But I will return, someday. As myself.

She always keeps her promises.