[ACTION] BACKDATED TO THE LATTER HALF OF JULY 28TH obviously I win forever

[blessingone]

[The backyard of House 34 is perhaps one of the calmer and more beautiful holographic worlds in the rather chaotic mid-event Luceti. The rivers and cliffs of Fallingwater provide a wide view of the forest and town below as the water tumbles into graceful aqueducts that sweep across the lowest portions. Only a handful of eggbears and peepit chicks might ruin the atmosphere, but they are much too weak to give trouble to even to a first-level adventurer.

And even those who cannot defend themselves may not find themselves in danger. A bird stands on the edge of the river, about half as tall as a human, with a feather nearly as long as his tall neck on its head and a tail about as long as his height. Rather than being aggressive to any visitors, he attacks the holograms when they come near and quickly dispatches them, before returning to the river's edge. He's not a hologram, but the pet of the girl he is watching. So try not to kill him.

Said girl is sitting in the river, knees drawn up to her chest, her head down. She isn't moving or making a sound. She isn't really thinking about much, either. She doesn't really want to.]

[NOTE (Legendia Main Quest spoilers, I suppose): So, the thread hasn't finished due to my standard tagging rate, but it seems that Norma is going to have spilled the beans that Fenimore is going to be fatally wounded about a second or two after she gets back from Luceti. So she's not exactly taking it well. As such, she will be extremely moody and a bit short-tempered. And she might decide to refuse to talk to people for really irrational reasons. I mean, understandably. But this is to warn people that Fenimore may get angry or just clam up entirely for reasons that are not the fault of the taggers. So, yeah. Apologies in advance. I keep having to do this for Fenimore. She'll be at least acting like she's okay in a couple of days (by which I mean she was already doing so several days ago), though.]

Comments

[markofthewise]

Since when did I do stuff you asked me to?

[blessingone]

Start now by going away.

[markofthewise]

[Now he knows something's wrong.]

Hold that thought.

[He walks away, finds himself a nice large stone by the water, and then plops it in the water next to her. NOW he can sit down.]

Okay... What happened?

[blessingone]

[That, at least, gets her to move. For a moment, her head slips a little lower still, as a sort of facepalm without the palm. When he gets back, she lifts and turns her head just enough that her eyes are visible so that she can give him a look that is about one step removed from a glare.

She nearly says nothing happened, but changes her mind at the last second. Her eyes dart down to the left.] I don't want to talk about it.

[markofthewise]

[He frowns. Fenimore has always been a hard nut to get to open up, but he'd though by now that for this kind of thing they could, well, talk about things.]

That bad, huh?

[blessingone]

[She twists to face him, her arms unwrapping from her legs and her hands palm-up with curved fingers in a gesture of angry questioning of his reasons. Sort of щ(ﾟДﾟщ)]

Do you have to know everything about me? Maybe I just want to sit and...and... [brood] not have to think about...about stupid things!

[She recognizes that he's just asking her about it because he wants to help her by getting her to talk about it. But it feels better to yell at someone about it rather than having to deal with her real feelings about it.]

[markofthewise]

[She's upset, so he's going to let that pass. He'd never sought out to know everything about her. It just... happened.]

Weren't you thinking about them anyway?

[He doubts she was sitting down in the water, head bowed, and ignoring surrounding monsters so she could think about her next trip to the grocery store, after all.]

[blessingone]

I was trying not to think about anything until you came along.

[She hadn't done too badly at it, actually; thinking about nothing was something she picked up in her dungeon days. But she hadn't been completely successful.

She returns her arms to around her knees and stops looking at him, but she doesn't turn away from him entirely.] What do you care, anyway?

[markofthewise]

Do you really have to ask that?

[There's a twinge of offense in his tone there, because by now he thought it was obvious he valued their friendship. Even though he knows that this is Fenimore and she says things like this a lot when she's upset.]

Seriously, you don't have to tell me anything. I just thought you might want to talk about it. Or something else. [Something else would, at least, be better than sitting in a river.]

1/2

[blessingone]

[She feels a little guilt -- he really doesn't deserve that. But she has the unfortunate tendency to feel good hurting other people when she is upset. While that feeling isn't as strong as when she can blame the other person for the problem, it's still stronger than the guilt, if not by enough to make her continue in that vein.]

What good does talking about it do? It's already happened -- it's going to happen, and it's not even your world....

[blessingone]

[Her shoulders slump and some of the anger drains from her voice.] I'll be fine. I just...I can't pretend everything is okay right now.

[markofthewise]

[As tempting as it is to let her have this, talking about it like that just makes him all the more worried. Something is going to happen?]

Happen to you? [He has to know at least that.]

[blessingone]

[She doesn't answer immediately and, when she does continue, there isn't much energy in her voice.]

Someone else arrived here from my world. She's from.... [How do people talk about timeline issues?] She's not from the same time as I am. I guess you could say she's from the future. My future. [Except, she realizes, she doesn't really have one now.] Sort of.

[markofthewise]

[He's starting to get a sinking feeling about where this is going. He's not ready to come to the worst conclusion, but that 'sort of' is a damning two words.]

Sort of from your future?

[blessingone]

[...If Sokka were the one who was dead back in his world, would she want to know?

She doesn't know. She doesn't know what to tell him. She was about to find the words for it, but then that thought struck her. She wants to think only about herself and be selfish for a while, but....

She looks up and tries to adopt a more normal tone, but the energy is wrong. It sounds off and she's not looking at him.] Well, I don't really know her. We met once, but by the time she was talking about, we haven't met in a long time. So it's not really my future, right?

[markofthewise]

[He knows he's treading dangerously here. She doesn't want to tell him and he's trying not to outright demand to know what's going on. Chances are, he'll probably back off soon, too.]

That's not what you're upset about, though.

[blessingone]

...No.

[She looks down again, her voice quiet. She's in mid-debate over whether she should tell him, so it's sort of a race to see who will give in or back off first.]

If we stop now, you can keep thinking nothing's wrong. Maybe it's better that way. It's not something you'd want to hear. [She puts her hands on her forehead, her elbows on her knees.] I don't know.

[markofthewise]

[He thinks he already knows. And right now he's hoping to find out so it won't be as bad as it seems. With that weighing on him, there's really only one answer.]

Maybe I won't want to... but I think I need to.

1/3

[blessingone]

[She's silent for a while again, staring at the water.]

The last thing I remember from back home is being attacked by Orerines. They were trying to take Shirley. I stood back, but some of the others tried to stop them, and...it didn't matter to them, killing people who weren't human. ["I show the utmost consideration for my fellow human beings, but you aren't human, are you?" She had said it when she tried to explain to Sokka why she thought so differently about Orerines than Stella. This was the man she had been quoting. Her voice is growing louder.] And then, Shirley tried to stand in his way to save one and....

[blessingone]

[She takes a moment to breathe before continuing, quiet once more.] I didn't understand how it worked, when I first got here. How Luceti worked. I thought seeing Shirley here meant she hadn't been killed. I thought that I must have been unconscious when I was being taken here. I must have fainted.

[She shakes her head.] But now...now, when I think about it again, that movement when I blacked out wasn't falling. I was running.

[blessingone]

[She buries her face into her arms again.]

Shirley did survive. Things did get better. ...But not for me.

[markofthewise]

[Oh spirits. When she came here, it was just before...

All this time, she never knew. It was just like so many people he had come to know. There was no life after Luceti. Nothing to hope for. No home to go back to. His fists tightened and his jaw clenched. Dammit. This wasn't fair. Hadn't she gone through enough?]

Fenimore, I... [There's really no words, are there? An apology doesn't cover it.]

[blessingone]

You -- ? [She has to bite down on her lip, hard enough that she nearly breaks the skin, to stop herself from snaping "you what?" An instinctive lashing out at anything.

She buries her fingers into her hair, curling them into fists and pulling at it.] How am I supposed to deal with something like that? I could disappear any day and -- [She shakes hear head back and forth violently, eratically.] It's all stupid. I hate this! I hate it!

[markofthewise]

[It's like having a friend on death row. And there no real way to make it better. Her life is Luceti now, but for how long? The Malnosso are trying to send her home and-

Forget it. It's mostly because he's a friend and partly because of how he still sees 'little Fen', but he gets on his knees, soaking his pant legs, so he can pull her into a hug.]

I'm sorry, Fen. [It's all he's got.]

[blessingone]

[She freezes and stiffens at his touch. She doesn't return the gesture, her hands still in her hair and her eyes squeezed shut.]

D-don't -- I can't -- [Her voice catches in her throat and she shivers.] If you do that, I...I won't -- !

[If he tries to comfort her, she won't be able to keep herself under control. She won't be able to keep from crying. She's trying hard to keep from crying, trying to keep from accepting that she really is dead back home. Maybe repressing it wouldn't work forever and would be detrimental in the long run, but she's not really thinking long term.]