2023-11-15: That Place, in Black and White
- Cutscene: That Place, in Black and White
- Cast: Avril Vent Fleur
- Where: ???
- Date: November 15th, 2020
- Summary: Avril descends.
BGM: (Magic Sword - Empress) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsM5BKw2E3g
This is a path she cannot but walk alone. There is no one else who might be able to traverse this path after all: this road in the glittering monument that is 'herself' is open to no other.
To no other.
Is that right? ...Is that right? She can take the thought up in her hands but it slips away, as if she were attempting to scoop some precious thing from the waters of a frigid lake: she cannot hold it.
And so, once again, she lets the thought go and proceeds on the path in the dark.
Perhaps it is because it is the land called herself that each footstep finds solid ground, even when she cannot see a thing. She had thought, at first, that there must be some path she would need to discover. Or perhaps, some obstacle to overcome. At first she had been hesitant.
It had become easier, in time. But never easy. This path to the depths of the continent that is herself admits no light. Where she is going and what might await her, she cannot say.
Never has she cared for dark places, let alone ones as pitch-black as this. Not like a phobia, no -- more like an aversion. Or like a bad memory.
Yet, no choice remains to her, save to proceed through the darkness, to descend through that cleft in the world.
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, the tear that cleaves nearly her entire mind, her heart, her being in two.
Someone had spoken once of that division and what it might mean for her should it remain unaddressed. A part of her recoils from that old thing in the dark, but, ah, that thing is also her.
She doesn't want to go but she must go, to advance towards herself as if it were magnetic north. To dive deeper and deeper into the dark.
That man had said to her that it was necessary for her to reconcile with herself. It was necessary for their aid, and their aid the rest of them would require for what was to come. This is a path she must by necessity tread alone, but the road to the future cannot be walked in the same manner.
It must be, for her sake. It must be, for their sake. She has long since left the broken and shattered threshold behind.
All this time, she has been descending.
There is no great moment when it happens, save that one instant she walks in the dark and in the next, there is light. Here, in the heart of herself -- here, where nothing else may tread. Here and yet so far away stands a spire of ice that gleams as if caught by a phantom sun.
There is the place where 'herself' lies buried, and this she knows as easily as she draws breath.
Here in the depths, she will in time know her heart.
Even here, she has not faltered. Even now, she pauses not but proceeds on her steady path, onward towards the light.