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 Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2012 7:23 pm
The stranger's words were impossible, but he could feel their honesty anyways. They made his skin crawl. Face twisting in a humorless smile, he said "Oh, isn't that moving a little fast? I don't just put out on a first date."
But his heart wasn't in it. What he really wanted to do was to run. He was trapped - if not by Ashoka, then by the stone (goddess?) itself. He could feel it pulling on him. So his smile soured at the ends. "Not much of a choice, then."
Meanwhile, the essence of the stone stirred. It's prey was near, and it slept lightly.
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Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2012 6:32 pm
"So?" she prompted, extending her hand further to offer the gem. "If you're going to take it, then take it." Or at least say no so that she could make him take it; it would be better if he agreed of his own accord, so she presented it as a choice, but she'd slap it on him if she had to.
It would happen one way or another, and ultimately that was all that mattered.
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Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2012 7:50 pm
He fixedly stared at the stone for a few moments as his heart pounded.
The goddess claimed him. He could feel it, and he resented it. He spent all this time, all these years running from - just to be caged by something else entirely? Caught like a rabbit in a hawk's claws? Is this what he'd come to, a puppet for an entity that didn't fully exist yet?
Impossible. He couldn't accept it! He could still run. His fists clenched as his mind raced. There was an entire sky full of stars he could flee too - even if the ship wasn't repaired, even if the stars were cold and strange, even if the universe could dissolve into emptiness...
(A huntress never allows a prey to escape. Though sightless and thoughtless, her essence instinctively reached out and pulled.)
...but maybe it was just a mistake. A misunderstanding. He and Asima could take it and analyze it, figure out what the hell was going on. No need to be hasty and take off after they'd just arrived. (And...would it really be so terrible? This death sounded peaceful. Calm. And this way he could say that it wasn't his fault.)
Slowly, Isaac reached out his hand and grasped the stone. It was warm. It almost seemed to pulse. He took it and rested it carefully in the palm of his hand. When he looked back up his expression was flat. "Why?" he asked. There were a lot of questions in his mind - why did it choose him, why was it only now it caught him, why Ashoka involved herself, why a supposed goddess was trapped in a stone. He wasn't picky at this point.
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Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2012 10:13 pm
"Why?" Ashoka shrugged, hopping off the edge of the fountain now that he'd taken the stone. There was a slight twinge, a shadow of guilt - no, the thought that she should feel bad about this. That was the proper, normal response, and one she didn't truly have. Isaac would have become a host, with or without her involvement. "You'll have to ask her. If anyone knows why, it's her."
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Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2012 1:12 pm
If he knew, Isaac would have felt a small streak of satisfaction at her thoughts. Instead, he just felt tired. He idly wondered if the pardess would stick around or if she'd abscond now that she'd apparently achieved her goal. He wasn't sure which he'd prefer.
Isaac returned his stony gaze to the gem. It scintillated in the sunlight. "Does she have a name?" he asked. "...kind of hard to talk to her without one."
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Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2012 9:36 pm
"She probably has lots of names," Ashoka said, her tone switching away from serious and back to cheerful, "But I don't know them. She'll talk to you soon enough, though. She'll tell you."
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Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 8:42 pm
The idea of a talking rock choosing to strike up a conversation with him was unsettling, so he pushed it to the back of his mind for now. "What, you can magic up my name and not hers? What makes her so special? Or am I just a chump?" he deadpanned.
Yeah, yeah, "goddess". But talking like this helped him almost feel normal. He slipped the rock into his pants pocket without a second thought.
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Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 9:02 pm
The pard blinked slowly at him, unphased. "She's not like you. She's only a fragment, a whisper of someone who died Ages past. Your past is yesterday, a year ago, ten years ago - hers is countless years ago, too far to see. I know what she is, and that is the important thing. That means more than any name a mortal has ever given her."
"Names mean nothing, unless they're True."
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Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2012 4:55 pm
"You can see my past," Isaac said in a flat tone. "You saw my past." This woman was a seer. Not a con artist who looked over a palm and recited some vague lines about a dark stranger, but one who could pick out the name of a complete stranger. One who carried god-ghosts who compelled his obedience. At this point he was willing to believe her claim. Forget the dead gods and True names for a moment. This? Was serious. (("This is THE. WORST. POSSIBLE. THING."))
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Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2012 8:20 pm
"A little always finds its way in," she said with a shrug. As far as reactions went, his wasn't bad at all. Some people got very mad about it, which was always annoying, because it wasn't like she could help it. Much.
"Anyway! If you need anything, come back here and someone will help you. I have to go, before..." She trailed off with a distant look. "Hn, no, too late. Anyway, still have to go. Bye, Isaac~!" Entirely too cheerful for someone who'd just given a man something that was going to kill him, Ashoka quite literally skipped away, delighting in the triumph of having been the first to find 'her' gem its host.
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Posted: Sun Feb 19, 2012 7:32 pm
And so Ashoka left him sitting on the fountain, boggling after her. It took a few minutes for all the information to percolate through his brain. The cool breeze and gurgling water helped.
In the span of a few minutes, a stranger had walked up, handed him some sort of rock he'd been compelled to take, claimed that he was going to be destroyed to awaken a dead goddess, and was able to read his past without his knowledge (unintentionally, it seemed). It made his head hurt like hell.
Isaac leaned over his knees, put his head in his hands, squeezed his eyes tight and groaned. He wanted to pretend that today had never happened...but the weight of the stone in his pocket prevented it. He needed to have the rock examined, which meant he needed to show it to Asima. The day wasn't over yet.
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