Ari's Seeking (Noel ST)

Arionna
[Do you think the chat is onto us?]

Arionna
She had spent the previous night with Lavinia. It was a strange relationship they had now, one that was tentatively mentor and student, though Arionna resisted such tutelage while Lavinia struggled not to push her away. But they were growing together, whether Arionna wanted to believe it or not. Lavinia had been honest with her, she knew that much, and had told her blatantly that she believed in her, not just as a person, but as a person who could be something. Something beautiful, something devout, something akin to the Morrigan.

The event was going to stick with her, no matter where she went, and sit in the back of her mind while she tried to go about her normal activities.

Sundays were sometimes quiet because people often had religious services. Cafes were not as cramped, libraries weren't as full until the evening... it was, for the most part, enjoyable. Ari, for her part, had decided to venture out for more enjoyable things to read. Since the semester was over, she had plenty of free time.

So she stood in a bookstore, moving among the shelves casually, in search of something that had caught her eye. Anything really...she wasn't even seeking a particular subject this time.

Arionna
[perc + alert]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (6, 6, 8, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )

Untamed
The bookstore isn't where one goes to find crowds. There's still a woman behind the counter, bored and sneaking a glance at her phone every now and then. There are the few others who find themselves wandering the aisles with Arionna, but they are easily ignored and not currently in view. It's so quiet here she could imagine herself completely alone. Quiet and cold, in the graveyard of trees.

Because, this is a place of tree-memory. It has a distinct smell of old paper, and it wants silence.

Around a corner, there is a new smell -- something fresh. Pine needles and rot. It's almost as if the books are coming alive again. And she sees, on the placard (which usually tells which section of the bookstore you're in -- Self-Help, Religion, Fiction...) says "Forest".

Drifting through the air, small as dust motes (and they could be dismissed as such, if she were not quite so sharp)  a few tiny flakes of snow.

Arionna
And were it any other thing, she might have dismissed it.

But while Arionna was a wary creature, she was also a curious one. The scent of pine drifted in her nose; she inhaled even deeper, closed her eyes briefly even. She might have mistaken it for perfume, or some other scent, but no...it was unmistakable. The scent was real. The flakes were real..

Her fingers drifted along the spines of the books as she stepped along her aisle and turned to make her way towards the Forest aisle. Arionna inhales, and not just because of the scent, but because she's not even sure if she's dreaming anymore. And if she's dreaming...

Ari stops briefly to glance at the ground, to make certain she isn't stepping into another brea trap in her own head, and then she progresses into Forest. Not all dreams are bad Ari..

Untamed
Not all dreams are bad. Some are, though.

Stepping into the Forest aisle, Arionna finds that the carpeting has turned into springy pine-needle litter, the lights dim, the air colder than she remembers, fogging up with her breath. Books are twisted into strange shapes around her, caught halfway between tree and word, until she progressesand all semblance of civilization vanishes.

The woods sit in twilight, in silence like only the lonely places of the world can bring. Most of the time, such lonely places are not quiet -- they hum with the activity of a living organism, but right now it is as if every cell of this organism is holding its breath, watching, waiting. Some wait out the moment in fear, others because of the promise of scraps. The trees wait because that is the way of trees.

The air is icy cold, ground crunches underneath with a crust of snow. Whatever happened to spring? It isn't here, and never was.

Arionna finds herself on her back (and wasn't she walking before?) There is something heavy on top of her -- something alive and terribly fast, with a familiar scent. She's been here before. Somewhere like here. Only then, she got away.

These are the sensations that Arionna might have time to process before the cougar's fangs penetrate her eye sockets. She can see through her removed eyes still -- can watch her own bleeding face through his maw of teeth, until he closes his mouth, blotting out her sight.

The pain is, momentarily, the most excruciating that she has yet experienced, until it, along with the weight on her chest sublimates into the frigid air, leaving her to lie on the forest floor.

The trees are all she can hear, creaking in the wind.

Arionna
It's comfortingly surreal, at least in the beginning. The forest generally was. It felt like home most of the time, especially when the cold sank in. She shivered a little against it, but let out a soft sigh of relief. That didn't, of course, mean it wasn't worrisome. Wait, was she dreaming? Did she never leave the house? Fall asleep in the store?

No time for that. Move forward. Dreams had purpose after all, as your mother would say. Remember them. Write them down. They will whisper truths to you.

Maybe that's true. It it was, she would have to wonder at what point the dreams felt she needed such violence from her own to tell her something. She might wonder that later. Maybe.

But for now, as she lay on her back, uncertain of how exactly she found herself there, she felt pain. It was more intense than the bear trap, and that said something. Ari screamed. Her lungs expressed her pain with all their might and Ari just screamed.  She screamed until the lights went out, until she was alone.

Darkness.

Arionna lifted her hands, lightly pressing her palms against her eyes as if to question if that had just happened or maybe... maybe she was about to wake. Elijah had said her cougar was her guide. Something that helped her along her path, but now she felt betrayed. Why would she need that? In what way would that help her now?

She rolled on her side, pressing her palms into the ground to slowly push herself up. She's never felt more afraid. She can't see. The thing she relied on most was gone, and there was no one to help. Suddenly she had the desire to cry, to give up and accept it. Was that the purpose? To tell her to give up?

No.

Arionna has never given up. No matter what, she's always tried to live...just long enough.

Arionna
[perc +aware]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

Untamed
Something smiles. Arionna can feel it inside her chest as she rises, defiant. Apparently, something else inside her doesn't want her to give up either.

There is no one around to help, she thinks, but then -- she was just in a place with people, wasn't she?

And she can hear them now. Low, whispering.

"Is she okay?"

"Just ignore it. Probably just tired, come on."

People's disembodied voices surround her, some more compassionate than others. They can tell that something's not quite right, but they don't seem to realize that her eyes are bleeding. Nobody mentions what should be painfully obvious.

Elijah -- she has him in her thoughts. He said her cougar was her guide? Maybe it is. Maybe...

"Ari?"

It's his voice. She can smell the maleness of him. There is no sight to tell her anything else.

"What's up?"

He doesn't seem to notice either.

But Ari -- she can feel her own eyes. They're a piece of herself, and they are moving. The frozenness that she is feels like it is receding into the forest. If she wants them, she must claim them. If she is weak, she will not.

It is that simple. Life is a struggle, is it not?

Arionna
Somehow she had hoped, expected even, that she'd be completely alone. Completely. But no. She's not. She's not as alone as she had hoped, originally. She's accustom to being the odd one out, the one people comment on...and it doesn't phase her as much as the fact that no one seems to notice. Is she mad? Is it all in her head?

Her breathing grows shallow, labored as she attempts to come to grips, rather quickly, with the loss of her eyes, the blindness of people around her and...

Elijah? "I can't see." It's soft. A whine almost. But she has no time. They are still there.

Her eyes aren't gone. They're just somewhere else. She needs those. She could rely on someone else to help her, but she needs them now. Ari orients herself in the direction she can feel them moving, and she begins to run. "I have to find them." That's all she gives in return, all she says as she takes off, trying to use her own hands to steer her in their direction. That's what has always driven her. What she needs to continue. She wants to ask for help, just as he told her once, but there is no time.



Untamed
She leaves Elijah, and oh -- one can only imagine the poor lost puppy look he gives her in response. He also seems content to let her flee, in a rather un-Elijah-like fashion.

She runs. Blindly. And she is unused to blindness. Perhaps, given time, she might become accustomed to a lack of sight -- might fashion for herself a cane or learn to hear the shape of things, but this is not a thing that has happened yet.

In fear, like prey, she runs. Like a weak thing, she runs. A predator should know better, she thinks -- or is that her thought? Something else's?

Her strength is right there, and she denies it.

And the forest is not kind. It is no kinder than life. It shelters no weakness. Ari falls, her foot tangled in a root she didn't see, momentum carrying her no further than the ground, filling her nostrils with snow and dirt, knocking the wind out of her.

Arionna
[Life magic - sensing life, Correspondence - sensing spatial relations - Dif 3 +1 fast casting] -wp

Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (10) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Arionna
[extend] +1 dif

Dice: 1 d10 TN5 (10) ( success x 1 )

Arionna
It's the fear. The fear that has pushed her forward. The fear of losing something so important. But something tell her, reminds her that it's fear that defines who we are. The predator only becomes the prey when it is fearful. Predators, true predators, never run. They struggle, they limp, but they never run. They live or die. They take the life of the runners.

She sits on the ground momentarily, enough to get her breath back, then rises to her feet. Her lips tighten as she breathes in. The blood she can feel along her face. The blood she knows rests where her sight use to be, and it's this that she uses to speak out quickly to her gods. "Nomino ventum se apud me nunc circumdederunt me, et in terram oculi mei neque vestigium . Manibus vestris ut ambularetis ego vobiscum." It's the cold of her ski, the cold of her self that she sends out into the land and into the wind, asking it to carry her, and to guide her, lest she give in to her instinct to run.

Untamed
She speaks words of power, names the wind, calls out for help from without -- and something answers from within.

Arionna cannot see, but she can sense the presence of life about her with a clarity that rivals sight. The trees sway, there are animals here that she knew were there to begin with -- a rat tunneling away from the noise, an owl watching in the high branches, annoyed about the disturbance that cause the rat to hide.

It's not far to where the cougar, almost a beacon in the darkness (from how very much she wants to find him) has carried his prize. He stretches his limbs, looks at her, stares into her empty face, and turns to walk away again.

There is another behind her, approaching slowly. Human in form.

Arionna
She turns a little where she stands, almost looking over her shoulder, even if she can't see the one who approaches. Ari turns back to her game, shifts between the trees to take her away from her straight path. Diagonal, zig zags, never straight. She wonders if her follower is hunting her as she is hunting the cougar, or if he is someone she knows. But she presses forward, no longer running but following the feel of the puma, and her eyes.

But Ari keeps the presence of the other close to her mind, keeps her focus on him. The cougar has no need to run, so he won't, she thinks. But they will meet, because she will find him. He must sleep sometime. He must rest. And when he does...

But for now, the human. Hunter? Friend? Tourist? No. They are in a forest now, not the store. Anything here must be in the same world as she. Arionna drops her bag, pushes off her shoes from her feet and keeps walking, pressing her feet carefully into the ground. Who is stalking who, she wonders.

Untamed
She walks, this time being careful, this time using her brain and her skill and her will. She can 'see' the life around her as an echo, and it is everywhere. The trees are no longer a thing that stand in her way to trip her up.

There seems to be a break in the trees ahead of her, and that human-shaped creature still follows her. Whoever it is, they don't chase and they don't threaten, but they keep going.

With her shoes gone, she can feel the snow's cold cracks and the spines of pine needles. Perhaps she doesn't care about the discomfort. Perhaps it's a good thing that she decided to use another sense, because the pine litter and snow gives way to slick rock, and then?

There is a tug at her back. The human-shaped thing has her by the fabric of her dress, holding her.

"Stop. You will fall," says Lavinia from behind her. Her voice echoes as if from the depths of a chasm. The yawning thing she nearly lept into, devoid of life with which to see.

Arionna
The snow was a fascinating thing. It was cold, wet, and it hurt sometimes, but it kept you awake, aware. Your feet became your sensors, even if they felt half numb. She liked the pain of it, the reminder that she was exactly where she thought she was, and a reminder that this is her time.

She walked, ever mindful of the presence behind her, especially when it took hold of her clothing. Arionna stopped. She hadn't noticed it before...the chasm. She hadn't see the drop even with her senses. But now...now she saw it, in a manner of speaking. Arionna didn't move, except to give a look over her shoulder at the woman behind her. "How did you find me?" But it feels like an odd question, if only because Lavinia was not entirely normal. She was something else.

Her lips tightened, and she felt a momentary burst of defiance, but...

But there was a hole right there, and while she could thrash and cry, and yell about how Lavi can't tell her what to do...it was in her best interest not to. Arionna stepped back slowly, enough that she was not in so much danger anymore. "Did the cougar go in there?" Because she doesn't know. Did he? Did he leap in?

Untamed
How did you find me?

"I have always been here," comes the response.

Did the cougar go in there?

"No," she says, terse, and to the point, that. "He is beyond this cliff."

So much for finding her eyes, then. Not unless...

"Would you allow me to help you?"

Strange words. Not, 'Do you want help?' or 'I could help you.' but something else: would Arionna allow it?

Arionna
Allow.

She could see, enough, she knew. But somehow she had missed where the cougar went. A few months back her response would have been an immediate 'No.' She would have said it harshly, even stalked off to do it on her own, as she always has. But times have changed and now she hesitates, unsure of how she feels about it.

Lavinia has promised that she would help her. Train her well enough that she won't need Lavi anymore. Promised to help her find a closer path to The Morrigan. And she's said all this without lying. That much Ari knew. Lavinia hadn't lied to her. Elijah hadn't lied to her. There were two whole people in the world she could trust, mostly, because they had always been honest, or honest enough.

Her lips tighten, and she reminds herself that through all of this, she has to live. She can be defiant, she can struggle, she can even yell and scream at the people around her, but if she does it just because, she's hurting herself. Lavinia could have let her fall. She could have pushed her. She could have been quiet while Ari walked right in.

But she didn't. Isn't that the definition of someone you can trust? A person who, at your weakest, won't take advantage of you? Won't let you fall? All the others had turned away when she wasn't compliant. She didn't bend to their wishes; didn't do what they wanted, and they left. They didn't deserve her trust because they only wanted to be friends so long as she did what they wanted.

Lavinia...Elijah...

It wasn't about bending to them. They bent to her.

She turned slowly to face Lavinia and held out her hand slowly, palm up. "It's obvious I can't find him on my own. You've hunted worse creatures and lived. I'd like your assistance." Saying it was still hard. It was always hard. But at least she could say it now.

Untamed
"You're getting stronger," says Lavinia, and her hand comes up to hold Arionna's, slides down her arm, grasps her around the waist. Apparently, that's all that she needs to do to hold the young woman aloft.

Wings erupt from Lavinia's back, like the wings of a great black bird. It seems to complete her friend, in a strange way -- those wings fit, like they were always a part of her. And then?

Lavinia leaps.

And the dark place where there is no life to see does not drag her down.

It doesn't take Arionna either. Lavinia, once trusted, does not drop her.

To the angelic being, such a jump is like a hop over a puddle, but to Arionna it would have been death, that much is certain. Once on the other side, Lavinia lets her, gently, to the ground.

"Pride is a weakness," Lavinia says.

"And I suffer not the weak," says another voice, deep and dark.

Like that, Arionna's sight returns. From her eyes, under a cougar's mouth, she can see herself and a winged Lavinia side by side.

Arionna
She remembers, clearly, the first time she ever flew.

It was also the first time she could ever, truly, do magic. She had felt the wind at her wings, saw the world with the great, powerful eyes of the bird. She knew that this was what she had always wanted; to be a part of the world, not just as a human, but as everything. But flying... she longed to fly again.

Lavinia brought those memories back. And while she couldn't see as the bird did, and could only see through the eyes of her magic...and while she could not fly herself, she felt...

It felt wonderful again, even if it was only very brief.

It was a strange feeling to see herself from a third person. To act as if she were in control of some character not her own. Arionna knelt down slowly onto her knees. For her to give in, for her to really understand how much she needed someone else, she had to lose something so obvious and important to her. Something about that was telling.

"Pride...has it always been pride, Lavinia?" She lifts her head as if to look at her, but she can only see her across the way, from him. "I don't know how to not be proud. But..." Her face moves a little in the cougar's direction.

"Keep them then." She said, and it took effort to say it. She needed it, or did she? "Give them to The Morrigan." A devotion that Lavinia was trying to instill in her. Conviction to serve her goddess. Her lips tighten, thin out as she realizes what she's doing. But no... that's precisely it. She overcame herself when she lost what was most important. And to give it to the deity she's meant to serve...

Blood almost seems like such a ridiculously small gift to any god. "As my gift to her. My thanks."



Untamed
"You have come all of this way, but not for your eyes, have you? I think you see that now," says Lavinia, who strides up to the cougar, black-winged and elegant.

She takes Arionna's eyes from the ground, slides them onto a cord that she ties about her neck, like living jewels.

"In order to gain, you would suffer. To see, you must be blinded first. So be it. I accept your gift, that you might continue to grow in understanding."

The cougar pads over to Arionna's kneeling form, nuzzles her, marks her with his scent. It's a strange kind of cat-ritual. You are mine, he says, in body language. You are family. You are loved.

And oh -- the power courses through her. She feels the change come over her -- a bolt of raw strength infusing her soul.

"We will meet again."

The ground melts. Its coldness is replaced with warmth and the conformity of carpeting. The scent of pine needles leaves her, and the smell of dust and books returns. She is kneeling in between the stacks of books. And when she opens her eyes?

There is only the blackness of the deep forest.

"Is she okay?" someone says.

"Just ignore it. Probably just tired, come on," says someone else.

They don't see how powerful she is now.