2022-05-01: Promise You: Difference between revisions

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(Created page with "*'''Log: Promise You''' *'''Cast:''' Character :: Josephine Lovelace, Character :: Seraph Yvain *'''Where:''' Goddodin Village *'''Date:''' May 01, 2022 *'''Summary'''...")
 
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     "You got it," she tells Yvain, cocking the fingers of her left hand as if they were an ARM and he the target. "I'll give you one hell of a tale before I step off the stage. That's a promise."
     "You got it," she tells Yvain, cocking the fingers of her left hand as if they were an ARM and he the target. "I'll give you one hell of a tale before I step off the stage. That's a promise."
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Revision as of 01:29, 7 May 2022

  • Log: Promise You
  • Cast: Josephine Lovelace, Seraph Yvain
  • Where: Goddodin Village
  • Date: May 01, 2022
  • Summary: Josie has a thing or two she wants to ask of Yvain, in the end.

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

    As requests to talk with the guardian of a holy shrine of a goddess go, it may have been towards the bottom of the list.

    MOMENTS AGO

    Josie steps into the entrance of the shrine, shielding her eyes as she squints into the radiant heat. "Hey, Yvvie! Got a sec?"

    NOW

    The temperature difference back out in the village is palpable. The shrine must keep it gated, Josie figures, watching some of the villagers at work. If it weren't for the fact that it's actually nice here -- okay, Marze wasn't too bad, for a Filgaian town; it even was attached to one of the few extant Ignasian forests -- she could almost pretend she was back home.

    ...Home, as if she could ever actually go back.

    She has balanced herself on a ramshackle fence, smoking a cigarette with seemingly nary a care in the world.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Yvain has posed.

Definitely not the most reverent. Not even an offering! ...But it is good enough for the moment. The Seraph Yvain appears from within the temple in a column of flame, and inclines his head. "I've got a few."

NOW

It is nice here. Idyllic, even; the shrine's heat does not extend out into the village in general, though there may be some nice springs hidden in the ridge. It bustles, and... completely fails to see Yvain, as he steps out, in his usual fancy fire-themed attire rather than the robes of his office. he walks over, and leans on the fence in question, crossing his arms to look over at Josephine. "So," he says. "What's on your mind?"

It could be a lot of things. But it might be one thing.

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

    She turns her head towards him. "Didn't take you too long or none," Josie drawls, gesturing towards him with her cigarette-holding hand. "I ain't pullin' you from your duties and all, yeah?"

    She lapses into silence after, taking a thoughtful drag from her cigarette.

    "...You know what I am, right? Who I'm workin' with?" She looks over at him, as if to dare him to say something.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Yvain has posed.

"It's easy to move when you don't have to cross the distance." Teleporting is cheating! And he can do it, especially here. It's fine. As for his work, "No." It's a simple answer, but that's all it needs to be; there is much for him to do... but it doesn't seem that it'll be harmed for a few minutes away to talk with someone he specifically invited out here.

He pulls a pipe out of his robes, in the meantime, though he doesn't light it just yet. A smoke might not be a terrible plan out in the air... But ah. She wants to go for that, first.

"Hm. I know who you work with," he settles on answering. "That you're not a hero, like a few of those I invited here. It isn't a requirement."

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

    "...Heh, fair enough." Is it cheating if it's just something you're able to do?

    "I'd give you a light and all, but I figure, you've got it covered," Josie says, punctuating the statement with a lopsided grin.

    She waits for him to answer, her eyes on him the entire time.

    "Yeah? Heh. Well, ain't you the unconventional type... So, what's the plan? Gonna turn me back to the light with a few well-placed lessons? Or did you have something else in mind, there?" She's still smiling, if the sort of smile that won't meet her eyes.

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Yvain has posed.

"Thanks anyway," Yvain says, and indeed--he points his finger at the bowl and lights it in a moment, inhaling through the pipe and exhaling out. To an observer, Josie's just got a lot of smoke around her from that cigarette. It's fine. Totally fine.

...Also fine is his answer, apparently. Yvain turns to watch Josie, and for a moment he almost looks his age, considering her. "...No," he answers. "Your morality ultimately isn't my business. I've seen what happens when Seraphim try to dominate the world of the living and its people. It doesn't go well."

"Though if you're offering," he says, "I do have a few lessons to give." Wryly, he shakes his head.

"...No, I am aware that you are not on the side of the angels, as the Granasians would say. But you may be instrumental in securing the survival of this planet, all the same."

"What these kids are trying to do, to meet Althena... It may well be that important. And if it isn't, there are a hundred other threats poised to take out the world. And you can't get what you're after if the world burns before you do."

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

    "Well then." She's arched an eyebrow, looking him up and down as if to try to ascertain -- perhaps -- if he's being honest. "Ain't you a surprise for sore eyes, then, Yvvie. If the regular old way of thinking things held, it'd be be you holding my feet to the fire... literally." She grins, broadly. "Instead, I've got the angel tellin' me it ain't none of their business, and meanwhile, hell's own's tellin' me I've made my bed." She shrugs, slightly.

    "Still, ain't like I'm gonna keep the devil from his due... or however you put it."

    Josie glances Yvain's way again. "Oh, but you'd put me on the straight and narrow again if you had half a chance? You ain't the only one. Sorry, Yvvie. I'm gonna have to turn you down on that. I've got what needs finishing, and after that..." She shrugs.

    "Another's got a claim, and I'm figuring I'll let 'em collect. Won't right matter once I'm done."

    She's cryptic, perhaps deliberately so.

    "Anyway, I'm in for keeps. I ever tell you I knew our illustrious leader way on back? Some business's thicker than blood, or however the saying goes." It almost sounds, perhaps, like she's not talking to Yvain as much as she's talking to someone else -- someone who isn't here.

    "Is that right?"

    Yvain speaks of the shrines, and their real purpose.

    "I mean, you ain't wrong. If the world's toast, I've not much left I can do, right? So, why'd you ask me? Think I should give them kids a hand? Or're you still thinking you can turn me around right?"

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Yvain has posed.

"I've worked with pirates, fought noble knights. ...Worked with priests, fought bandits. People come and go. For the most part, which tyrant you favor doesn't make a lot of difference in the end." Which may sound cynical! But... on the other hand, "My responsibility to the world as a whole is bigger than how I think they should run it--it's to keep the world turning at all." He grins back.

"Hmmm. Not surprised." Then a beat, "It's your life, and your choice. Where you want to spend it, and how... That's not something I'd take away from a mortal if I could help it. And in your case, I can."

So he won't.

It's very cryptic, but as he said; it's not really his business. It's not that he doesn't like her, but they operate on different scales regardless. Her life is her own.

"Hmmm," he answers. "You didn't. That's interesting." He doesn't correct on the saying. But the shrines, and what the world is...

"...The pure of heart are not the only who are worthy. They have their role to play, to be sure--but I thought you would be, too."

"I don't expect to change your path. But seeing a Goddess in all her splendour, and partaking of the riches of Her holy city..."

"That might be an interesting adventure. And I'm interested myself in seeing where your story goes. ...So help them, if you feel like it. Or don't. You have already proven yourself in the Trial. What you do with that knowledge... that's up to you."

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

    To the world around her, she's just one woman having one hell of a smoke. It's definitely fine.

    "I remember you sayin'. Guess that sort of business rubbed off on you, eh? Still... Ain't you the open-minded one! Many's that'd see it their business to muck up my affairs." She shrugs. "Guess that's why I like you, Yvvie."

    Josie shakes her head. "Heh. It ain't the sort of tale one goes around telling lightly, right. But while maybe I ain't up in the inner circle, I got something them lot don't. And that's damn nearly dying for the cause. Or something close to it."

    She tilts her head to one side. "Huh. To hear most tell it, them what's pure are the only ones worthy of any and all of it," Josie remarks, exhaling smoke. "Dunno if you're just bein' pragmatic about it all, or what. ...So, that why you got me all up in this business? Or are you tryin' to save my soul, Yvvie?"

    She cracks a grin. "Ain't much of it worth saving, most'd say. Hell, I damn well think I agree! But them's the breaks." She finally tosses the cigarette aside and, propping her good hand against the fence, hops on down for the moment, stretching out her shoulders and back.

    "So, what, d'ya think I should head on to the other shrines, next? Get myself good and purified, or whatever the next best thing is?"

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Yvain has posed.

"Hmmm, just because I don't meddle?" he asks, and looks a little wry himself. "Once, maybe. But not today."

A 'story' is it... yes. It would seem that way. "A cause you'd die for is something most people can't boast. That's a conviction of its own." Pause. "...But no; the pure of heart aren't suited to all tasks that need doing." He exhales some smoke himself in the next breath, listening. Is it just pragmatic? He doesn't answer immediately. Instead he grins back at her for a moment, and then inclines his head.

"Oh, I'm still an idealist," he answers expansively, gesturing this time with the pipe. "I just take a longer view. Some things are mind to meddle in, and some things aren't. But I like seeing how it all unfolds, anyway."

"I think you wonder a lot about whether I'm here to save you. Suggests you might think there is a little of it there worth saving, after all. Or hope so."

"And maybe there is. I think in most people there's something worth preserving, whether they see it or not. And I think your perspective is one that is. ...The people who live on the road for their own reasons... I have a soft spot for those."

"So yes, I think you should try these other shrines. Take it as a challenge. You may die. Or you may gain the power you need for what you want to accomplish."

"...or maybe, just maybe, you'll find something else worth preserving."

"Whatever happens, I'm interested in hearing about it. So try and stop by before you cash in your final chips, and tell me how it went."

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

    "Sure as sure can be," she tells him, grinning brightly. "Like I said. Can't get my point or nothin' across to them that won't listen. Or know when to cut their losses," she sighs, shrugging. "The past is past, right?"

    Her expression turns a touch more pensive.

    "And it ain't never coming back."

    But there's still something that needs doing before she turns in, so to speak.

    "Heh. There's many that'd balk, the moment business turned ugly. Though I can't right say I'd be doin' anything for the good of the world, now!" She smiles, just a little. "But... sometimes two paths cross in the middle. Right?"

    Down on the ground again, Josie turns to face him. "A pragmatic idealist, then. I've known your like before, though hardly often. Now--"

    She stares at him for a moment, as if what he's just said has stunned her.

    "Now, hold on for one second, right," she says to him at last, folding her arms across her chest. "I know what I'm about, and I'm tired of you all thinking you see something different. I made my bed, as the saying goes. I ain't afraid of lying down in it."

    But she had still paused there for a moment, frustrated expression on her face now or no.

    "...So you're just a big softie. Is that it," she says, when he speaks of seeing things in others worth saving. She looks away, only to shake her head.

    Before she simply sighs and says, "...Fine, have it your way. Maybe I will give a shot. Who knows?" That grin of hers returns. "Call it the archaeological expedition of the century or what, right? Some of these places don't seem to have half-seen people in 'em in ages. Who knows what a girl could turn up?"

    However she tells herself the story, perhaps, one might say. Anything can be permitted, any road walked upon, as long as it speaks the proper tale, from start to finish.

    "You got it," she tells Yvain, cocking the fingers of her left hand as if they were an ARM and he the target. "I'll give you one hell of a tale before I step off the stage. That's a promise."

<Pose Tracker> Seraph Yvain has posed.

"So it is," Yvain agrees about the past. "And it never will come back."

"That's just so," Yvain agrees about paths crossing in the middle. He might've said more... but she cuts herself off, staring at him a moment, and he looks placidly at her in return. No defense, no 'sorry', and no insistence either. He just raises the possibility...and leaves it. That's all it is. Only after she lets it be does he look after her, as she shakes her head in turn. A big softie...

"That's all true," he says of the archaeological possibilities. "Some have never been sighted by someone who wasn't a Shepherd--and you're in no danger of turning into one of those, so it'l be all the more notable."

Whatever the story is told, however it's posed...

He grins back. "Good," he says. "That's what I wanted to hear."

...And that's perhaps all he'd actually ask. Because when it comes down to it, he doesn't have to say it, but...

There is at least one person here who he will add to the annals of his memory, if he and the world see another century. Regardless of how that story goes.

"I know that at the least, you won't balk at it being ugly."

<Pose Tracker> Josephine Lovelace has posed.

    That smile of Josie's is quite the bitter one. But with her history -- her past -- perhaps it's understandably so.

    He doesn't defend himself. But he doesn't apologize, either. He just meets her gaze calmly as she regards him as if he were a toad that found itself in her shoe -- a nuisance for her, yes, but not one that she could rightfully blame for being in her way. It's just in his nature.

    So she shakes her head and throws up her hands. She can't help but lose, sometimes.

    "Fair enough. It'd be a sorry state of things if I'm the one turning Shepherd, eh? And I don't suppose they'd be missed all that much if they've been lost so long."

    He doesn't think she'd balk about it being ugly, eh?

    "Right you are. I've my own list of woes I've seen before. Doubt that, whatever's in store, it'll be worse than what's been."

    Still, she lingers a moment, glancing upwards towards that blue sky, towards the great sphere that hangs in the heavens. Almost, she could swear she could see where 'home' would be, if that were a place that existed anymore.

    "Sometimes, I wonder who all this is for," is what she says, before she turns to go, glancing just once back at Yvain. "But I'll reckon I can guess your answer, there."

    Whether it's him or even the Trial Knight, she already knows, herself.