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 Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2014 4:25 pm
Afraid. Why had she said that to Ida? And Ida had picked up on it so quickly. Hvergelmir had never put the thought in those terms to herself before: she was afraid of how those memories made her feel. Like the person she was seeing was full grown, was somehow her destiny, or her true self -- and the person she was now wasn't real. Was just something transient, like a ghost. Everyone changed -- but it was different somehow to see it like a road carved out ahead. It made the present seem hollow. It made Laney feel like a cheap pretender to a fine legacy, a child in mother's makeup. Ida saw it differently. She took meaning from it. Hope. Maybe that was a way to look at it, instead. The promise that one could achieve. (What had that other Hvergelmir achieved? She didn't know. In her memories from that life, she was so often alone.) Hvergelmir started to scrub at a little of the tar with the cloth she'd torn from her dress, wondering if the water had had any effect on it at all. She smiled back at Ida. "The world could use more of that sort of person," she said. "And I think you can be. You just need to find that purpose you said you were missing, right? Then you just need a plan for how to go out and get it. "You can do anything," she promised. "What is it you want to do?"
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Posted: Mon Aug 25, 2014 1:25 pm
She could feel the tug as Hver tried to rub at the tar with her make-shift rag and it awakened pain as burned skin protested the treatment, making the eternal wince and shift as though to pull away. The action was never completed though.
"I have a purpose." Ida said firmly. She had had a purpose since her first upgrade when she had engraved it on her heart. Each day, each battle, had only etched the lines deeper, defining it further. "I decided a long time ago that I would fight to protect the people who can't protect themselves. Its why I didn't just give up and throw away my pen... And its why I joined my team. Before the Black Watch, we worked to find and teach those who were new to their powers. I still do that... even if I've been a little... distracted recently."
'Little' was an understatement... she could see the way she'd zombied through life and her duties since that night in the warehouse. There had just been so much pain, so much denial and anger... she was tired of it. Tonight had just been the last of the sequence and she was just fed up with all of it. She wanted to break through this shell of darkness and depression and feel the light again... she didn't feel like she was made to be so dour and angry. She wanted...
"I want to be free of this." She finally blurted out. Her hand clenched in its wrapping of tar and though tears gathered, Ida forced them down, finding that inner core of strength she had forgotten she had. "I want to be myself again. I told him once that he couldn't truly hurt me... that he could cut and break my body, but never what made me who I am, unless I let him... And here I've gone and let him in again."
A bark of a laugh broke from her, the sound half a sob. "He was so angry when he realized he couldn't touch me any more, and that I had denied every twisted little machination... Its ironic that he'll never know how very close he came. I want to be free of him, again. I want that perfect moment of clarity and release..."
Was it possible, to slough off all this hate and anger and despair? She'd done it once, like slipping off a heavy coat. Could she do it again? Maybe... maybe it wasn't as hard as she was making it out to be. Maybe if she just let go of it, left it here with the rest of the pain Ida had drawn out of her like poison... She could bury it here and go home free.
"Are you up for a little trip? There is something I feel like I need to do. Its something I remembered..." Ida said suddenly, giving a sheepish smile when she realized was probably impossible for the other woman to have followed her mental train of thought. "I can take you home, after that. This stuff isn't going to come off without a lot of effort and there is no sense sitting around here fussing with it. It feels a lot better now that its cooled down... I can get Shangri-La to look at it when I get back. He's a doctor, usually my go-to when I'm injured."
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Posted: Tue Aug 26, 2014 7:47 am
Hvergelmir watched as a change came over Ida. It was something slow, but sure, and it altered her with ever-increasing certainty as it did, like she was waking up from a long sleep. Sadness could be like that. You went away for a while, when you were in it. Then, one day, after hours or weeks or months of wondering in a deep gray fog, the sun rose again. You woke up. You remembered what normal felt like. You wondered at how strange it felt not to have been able to recall it before. That was the look Sailor Ida had. Hvergelmir envied her, a little. Whatever had clicked for her, she seemed to be in a different frame of mind now than she had been when they'd arrived here. Maybe she really had discovered, or rediscovered, some sense of purpose. Alois had died. But maybe at least it would be good for Sailor Ida -- she'd be able to let him go. "Lead the way," she said, smiling and rising to her feet.
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Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2014 7:20 am
Rising from beside the make-shift well, the eternal brushed her knees off in their striped stockings and took a last look about the wild garden she'd only barely started to tame. The flowers were already starting to bloom and they shouldn't have been ready for another few weeks. Its a shame she hadn't come here at a better time... once a week never felt like enough time to do this place the justice it really deserved.
Turning away, Ida set her face towards the Tower, the tree that soared stories above the rest and stood at the edge of the forest. Just exploring that one building could be the work of a life time... or more than one. Every time she came, new things appeared in her mind, new pieces of the past that had played out here.
"I feel like I should explain a little..." Ida said finally as she led the way, her fingers lightly fiddling with the compact that hung around her neck. "Ida is a unique sort of place. I've only ever been to Shangri-la, so I don't know really what other places are like, but I can't imagine that anywhere is quite like here."
Glancing over at the page, poor woman she had only just met and drug across the galaxy with him, Ida waved a smeared hand at the 'buildings' around them.
"From what I've explored and found, Ida is very much a plant-based world... Everything is made of plant material. I've found no metal anywhere and little stone. Its like... they grew everything to shape, or carved it maybe? Its hard to tell. But... I remember using something very like a computer and looking at patient records, so I know the technology was on par with what Earth has now. Its like they found some way to use plants the way we use wires and circuits. All the trees around us are homes and businesses. The place where I dug the well was an conservatory, I think... I remember all the gardens filled with plants from other worlds."
Ida's eyes fell to her hands, remembering things more recent.
"That place where we arrived, the grove of trees, was a graveyard. The trees are headstones... I don't know how, but they hold the genetic information of the person they stand for and somehow, you can read it. They used to glow when you touched them, like how the trees used to have leaves and the computers used to function. I don't know why they don't now."
Everything on Ida seemed like it should work just fine, but none of it did... the reason for that was a mystery she'd very much like to solve.
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Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 7:27 am
Hvergelmir looked around herself, marveling anew at the place. No rocks, no metal, almost no water -- for a place like this to have sustained human life, and to power technology a thousand years ago like what Earth was only finally using now... "That's amazing," she said, admiring the little glowing flowers underfoot with new respect. "To build a human civilization in these kinds of conditions -- to live so incredibly sustainably with so little in the way of what we've always considered to be our most vital resources..." There was hope for Earth, in this. Such hope. "I hope we rediscover that kind of technology among human civilization in time for Earth to benefit from it someday. It would really go a long way toward solving our environmental crisis." Hvergelmir smiled, thinking of the resolution she'd made -- to find other kinds of magic in the universe, other great powers that weren't meant for killing. "There's so much more for us than just war, you know. I really do believe that. It's us, as people, who take what we're given and only see one use we can put it to. But a place like this... Think of all you could do. All we could learn." She shook her head in pure amazement. "Computers made of plants...!"
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Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 9:16 am
The squire's obvious delight and excitement over the asteroid's former civilization warmed Ida in a deep way and her hands ceased their restless fidgeting, her shoulders losing tension. She had a sense of déjà vu, knowing somehow that she had done this before, many times. As the guardian of her planet, perhaps it had been part of her duties to entertain off-world guests... She already remembered showing someone the graveyard and the growing room.
"I think there was a power source, somewhere... Something that made all of this possible, that made the use of metal and electricity less efficient than what they learned to use." Ida said as she gestured with her hands. "I had a memory once of making something and I had this... Wand, for lack of a better word. It attached to the wall and when I touched it to the plant... It just grew incredibly fast and it followed as I guided it with the tool, taking the shape I wanted. Whatever the power source was, it's not working now. Things won't function when I try to use them."
She really wished they did... She very much wanted to access the computers, see what hidden treasure they held. She wanted to see the trees glow again and the doors move without forcing them open.
It didn't take long to reach the Tower, the Conservatory not far from it. The large front doors remained fully open as the first day Ida had come here. No reason to close them, really. Ida paced up the steps and set her feet to a path she had never walked, but that felt as familiar as the rest of this place. She had a flash of something that said there was a lift somewhere, but she knew it wouldn't function any better than the rest of it. So... Up the curving stairs it was, the ones that wrapped around the perimeter of the Tower and offered a slowly rotating and climbing view of the skeletal city around them.
Large, airy hallways greeted them as they climbed, lined with doors, and open, comfortable common areas. Were it daytime, light would stream in through large windows and colors muted by the darkness hinted towards rich and vibrant... What wasn't faded with age. Dried flowers sat on so many surfaces and Ida knew from experience that they crumbled to a touch. Everything here gave her a feeling of comfort, welcome, relaxation... Healing.
Gratefully, Ida broke off the climb before they got too far up. Her own quarters, she knew, were near the top, but there was no need to climb quite that many stairs. The doors she saw in her memory refused to move when she touched them and the senshi was forced to put her shoulder to them, muscling them apart on their slider tracks.
Inside, it was like stepping into her memory and she paused to look around, her eyes lighting on the central tree... And her heart dropped to see it barren and skeletal as the rest of the trees here. There were plants, almost like sconces, on the walls, but they gave a feeble light. Shazari LOL forgot it was night, not day.
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Posted: Thu Sep 04, 2014 10:17 am
As Laney, Hvergelmir had spent a bit of time jogging on a daily basis lately, if not very enthusiastically (despite her new jogging buddy's enthusiasm and encouragement). Still, she'd shown some improvement in the area of general stamina and heart health as a result. Laney could now run a few blocks at a stretch without feeling like she was going to die afterwards, or pitching a dramatic fit to Vanessa's amusement. She was on a much better path toward being a capable superhero now, if it came to fighting -- or at least being capable of running for her life. Even so, one look up at the stairs leading to the top of the Tower made her knees wobble with dread at the prospect of making the ascent to the top. Hvergelmir was sure she'd be made of jelly limbs by the time Ida brought them back to Earth. While she certainly enjoyed the view their climb offered, displayed to obvious advantage by the open-air construction of the staircase, it was a relief when Ida sidetracked them off their ascent and into one of the lower rooms. She wasn't sure what Ida expected to find there -- but whatever it was, judging by the look on her face, she'd come up short. "What's wrong?" Hvergelmir asked. Her voice sounded loud in her own ears no matter how quietly she spoke: all sounds seemed louder in an empty world.
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Posted: Tue Sep 09, 2014 8:52 pm
The eternal senshi started when Hver's voice called her out of her thoughts and she offered a weary smile to her.
"I'm sorry, I just... The tree isn't alive any more. I was hoping maybe it had made a come back like the rest of them, but I guess not. Its okay though... if we can find a sapling, that's what I was really after. It just kind of disappointed me, to see it like that rather than alive and blooming like I remember." She said as she turned away from the depressing sight and headed off to the side, passing work tables and stands of things she couldn't remember the use of to the wall of 'glass' globes embedded in the wall.
The honey colored material, like clear cabochons, dotted the wall like growths. Reaching, Ida touched one and was dismayed to see a long crack running over its surface. The seal was broken and the plant inside was dead... same as the ones beside it, above and below it... Feeling a little desperate when she realized this might be a fool's endeavor, Ida started to walk along the wall, inspecting the globes for signs that even just one of them survived. The more she thought about it, the more hopeless it felt... everything on the planet had died and was just starting to come back. How could anything have possibly survived all those years? She'd just been so sure of it, like somehow seeing it in her mind meant it had to be that way when everything around her screamed that nothing was the same after all this time.
Biting her lip, the senshi crouched to inspect the lower globes and then rose again, making her slow way down the wall. Some globes looked fine, but there was a lack of color to the sapling inside that worried her. Most inspections of those produced a hair line crack that she could barely see, but that had obviously compromised the sterile vacuum inside. It wasn't until she neared the end that she finally found one cabochon that had a slightly different color than the rest... a bit more rich in tone even in the half-light, and clear as glass, where the rest had some small bit of fogging from exposure.
Excitement and hope soared as Ida touched the dome, trying to find some way of opening it. How had they done it in the past? She suspected that, unfortunately, it was another thing controlled by that missing power source.
"Oh, thank god... I think I found one. I'm going to have to break it open though... Hopefully the plant inside doesn't shrivel up and die, if it isn't dead already after all this time." Ida called over her shoulder, studying the globe before she hauled back and jabbed her elbow into it. There was a cracking sound and the eternal did it again, watching as cracks spider webbed across the surface. Reaching, she dug her fingers into the weakened membrane and pried it open, the bits still clinging to each other like some odd plastic rather than shattering like glass would have. When she had peeled enough away, a small sapling was exposed, a pair of tiny pink leaves clinging to its solitary silver branching.
"Oh, its perfect..." Ida breathed as she reached in to pull it out, cupping the delicate plant in her hands. Some kind of cloth wrapped its roots, tied off with a purple string and the senshi avoided touching that part, her fingers instead grasping it lightly around the 'trunk'. "Alright, I've got what I need. Now we need to head back to the grove. This little one needs to be planted."
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Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2014 8:53 am
Hvergelmir looked at the tree Ida had indicated. It sat alone in the center of the room, pristine within a tall, glassy tube that rose up from the floor. She crossed to where it stood and lay her hands palm-flat on the glass, peering in. "Lives are not eternal," she observed absently. "Life is eternal. All living things die in their time. Trees live long lives, and take good care of us -- but perhaps this one deserved its rest, too. Perhaps it's had its fill of the sun, and wants to leave growth to the young. Is it only people and Mauvians that have starseeds? I wonder if anyone knows." She watched as Ida found a new sprout still living along the wall of dead globes. Hvergelmir was relieved when Ida managed to break it free and it still persisted with life. "Those sprouts." She followed Ida out, headed on the path back down and to the grove. "Are they the same as the big tree behind the glass? Is it the parent?"
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Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2014 1:07 pm
Hvergelmir's musings pulled Ida from her own, her eye lifting from the plant in her hands. She studied the other woman, though her thoughts were on other things.
"Do you ever wonder why they're called starseeds?" She said, jumping from the thought of a plant with a seed to the next logical thing to possess one. "They get reborn, much like the Hindu version of reincarnation, but what about when they have finished their cycles? If a starseed reaches the equivalent of moksha, are they released and thus become what their name promises... A star?"
It was an interesting thought to ponder. Did Ida have a starseed that lived through countless years only to reach full consciousness and become the world it is now? It would explain some of the feelings she got here, the sense of something greater than just rock and soil.
As they headed back down the stairs to retrace their steps to the landing point, Ida nodded answer to Hver's question and displayed the sapling for her.
"That tree is, or was, the mother tree. These are the same trees as the grove we landed in. The grove is one of Ida's graveyards. These trees are what Idans used as headstones and as such, had their ability to reproduce and spread bred out to a state that requires such precise conditions that it is highly unlikely to ever come about naturally."
The eternal gently ran her forefinger over one of the light pink leaves, admiring the valiant little plant.
"Idan Technology is based in plants and these are no exception. They are both lovely markers, but also living storage devices. In each free is the entire genetic code of the person they stand for, ready and available for others to see and study." Ida rolled her shoulders as they reached the base of the stair way and headed out, her feet finding a more direct route to the grove since they didn't need the well.
"The trees used to glow when you touched them and you could read the information they carried. Each person has their tree planted by friends or family, except for one. That was the stone ring I landed on when we got here, and that is where this little guy is going." She offered Hver a bright smile, though the light never made it to her eyes. Her eyes still held their shadows, echoed on her skin by tar. "I think... It's something I've been needing to do for a long time, but it's only recent events that have really brought it to my attention."
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Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2014 12:04 pm
Hvergelmir nodded, fascinated by Ida's musings on starseeds as much as by her practical information shared about the tree she was about to plant. The Cosmos squire hadn't really thought of framing her theories in religious terms. Not being a religious person, she tended to think attachments to religious frameworks were sentimental and needlessly limiting in scope -- but to be fair, sometimes, instead, they could provide a template to measure against. A possible narrative guideline. After all, all stories had some degree of basis in human experience -- religious stories especially. They'd be no use to human beings if they didn't. But what a thought -- to be reborn as a star. How strange to imagine. "The things your people did with nature are astounding," she said, seeing for the first time all that that tiny little pink sapling was capable of accomplishing. "And very beautiful." She didn't fully understand why Ida was planting this one tree now -- but it seemed important to her. Perhaps moving on from whatever was here would help Ida move on at home, too, with the death of Alois. Hvergelmir hoped so. "So then, if you could find another sapling like this one -- could you plant it in that tube? I assume without a grave to stand on, it could grow into a mother tree like the other one?"
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Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2014 6:02 pm
The eternal flushed at the compliment, her eyes on the sapling as she gently stroked its leaves.
"Thanks... they were very forward thinking people, always embracing new discoveries and advances. Scientists, sort of... its a weird sort of mix, because they were doctors too, I think." It really was a weird sort of thing to consider, because neither title seemed to fit what she felt through her memories. Idans were not Earthlings and things did not always align properly.
At the question, Ida tilted her head and considered what she remembered, letting her instincts lead the way to the answer.
"I think... yes. All the trees have the potential to reproduce from the roots like some Earth plants, but... I think even if I planted a tree in the tube, it wouldn't work. The... power source is missing. I also don't know how to run any of the... computers, or equipment, that it needs to make the right conditions inside of the tube. I remember what is supposed to happen, but... I'm not that Ida. I don't have the knowledge she had that would have let her cultivate offspring from the main tree." She shrugged loosely as they passed through the archway to the grove, waving a hand around them. "It doesn't really matter all that much, though. You could say I'm the last of my people, sort of... there is no one else here that will need a headstone, so I don't really need more of these kinds of trees. When I die, they'll bury me on earth and I'll have a stone marker, or whatever my family puts up for me..."
Which was... sort of a horrible thought. Once, it would have been like talking about anything you never really think will happen. Now? It was a very real thing to consider. How would her family find her, in the end? Would they even get a body back? It was hard to say... her team mates would probably make sure her body got back to her family and wasn't just left to be found in some alleyway somewhere. Such a morbid thought, and not something she really cared to dwell on right now. Now was supposed to be about rebirth and laying things to rest.
Well. Speaking of graves... The pair had made the long walk from the tower to the clear space they had landed in, the tar hand print dark against the stones laid into the ground. The whole area glowed softly in the night, lit from below by the flowers around their feet.
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Posted: Sat Sep 27, 2014 7:00 pm
Ida grew solemn as she approached the stone circle, stopping just before it to sink down on her knees. Memories teased at her, flitting to the fore of her mind and away again without revealing anything. She remembered this ceremony, sort of... it had been both a happy and sad occasion then. This time, hopefully, there would only be joy and release.
"If you don't mind, I'd like you to play witness for me. You don't have to do anything, its just a thing that's part of it..." Ida said over her shoulder to the knight she had dragged along to her planet and imposed her strange whims on. Her voice was distracted, almost absent minded as she reached for whatever it was that was calling her, drawing her to this moment. She could have almost sworn some sort of thread or energy was converging here, but there was nothing in her inner sense, nothing visible to her eyes or ears.
Setting the plant aside, the eternal senshi dug into the soft earth with her hands, senshi strength making it an easy feat without the trowel she remembered from another life. Dirt fell rich and black to a pile on the side, leaving a round depression some few inches deep, enough to encase the covered roots of the sapling she had brought with her. Reaching, Ida unwrapped the roots and held the plant lightly between her fingers in the hole as she began to push dirt back in around it. As she did so, she let her thoughts wander through the events that had led up to this, pushing them down her arms, through her hands, into the dirt of her homeworld.
A young man in black, coming to her store for flowers for a grave... The same man, wet from the rain, beside her as she walked home barefoot from the community garden... A week spent in another person's home, soothing a brow wet from sweat and a body wracked with withdrawl sickness... The first touch of lips and fingers and the later assertions that scars did not make her ugly... Singing together in a language she didn't speak. Memories of someone she had thought she knew, but one that had never really existed, because it was only half of a person, and half was not the whole.
A villian's accent asking her to trade for a man's life, a hand that plunged into her chest to touch the bright crystal of her soul... A girl she had known turned into a youma and her accusations that seeking pain in others was only because of his own lack... the fear and hate that had tried to twist from her true self into something lesser, dissolving like mist in the sunlight of the epiphany that she had the choice not to give in... Falling through a stage to a dark space and the pain of metal cutting through her hip... the plunge of a sword that merged two people she had once thought separate into one horrible, painful reality... So much pain and self-loathing, an attempt to save him even though she knew the truth, and the failure as knife took away the slender chance of redeption... She poured it all out of her, like lancing a cyst to drain the infection away.
Duty, heavy on her shoulders, but already half-accepted. Eden had given up her name, her life, her very self to become Ida... Orah could do that too. The name she would have to keep, for now. She did not have the luxury of wearing the title as uninhibited as she had in the past. The rest of it though... that went into the soil with each pat of dirt, right along with the grief and pain. Ida was who she was now, who she needed to be. Orah was someone of the past who was meant to grow up and tend a flower shop, find someone to love and give them children, grow old and die a matron. Ida would not have that life, and that was okay. Protecting the people of Earth, supporting her faction... that was the path she was choosing, had chosen a long time ago. This was just an affirmation of that. She would fight and defend and struggle until the day some lucky blow took her down, and then she would rest, returned to the cycle that had put her here to begin with.
When the hole was finally full and Ida has buried all she was leaving behind her, she sat back on her heels with her hands loosely in her lap. Old words bubbled up in her mind like little bits of incandescence and she shaped her lips around them, giving the life with her voice.
"I swear myself to Ida and to its people, to Earth and those who live there.
I renounce everything I was before to take on this guardian ship.
I pledge to protect and steward my charges with the time allotted to me in this life and beyond,
with every ounce of strength and wisdom I have in me.
Every breath I give to them, every beat of my heart will be in their service.
No obstacle will impede my path and no threat will turn my will.
I take the name of Ida for my own, though I will wear the old name still to safeguard my duty.
I am Sailor Ida, and I swear myself to this planet."
Some additions were made to account for the thousand years and the new things that had come into her life. Pledging to Ida was well and good, but Earth was where the war was fought.
The glow that came from all around seemed to intensify with every word, concentrated between the grass stems around the eternal where she knelt. By the end, it was not the flowers that glowed any more, but the soil itself, rippling outwards. Eyes closed as she focused on her memories, Ida didn't even notice, but when the last word fell from her lips, the light surged upwards and crawled across her skin, cloaking her in brightness that melted her outline into a fuzzy star come to earth.
Eyes flew wide as Ida felt a sudden surge through the connection to her planet, a connection she had only ever subconsciously known was there, and she made a small sound of surprise as she stared sightlessly. The power surged as the light did and the senshi cried out in something between pain and pleasure as it overwhelmed her entirely, throwing her mind into blank whiteness. She ceased to be for what felt like eons, all time suspended as some sense spread outwards, absorbed into something greater that she couldn't truly comprehend, but felt so very familiar. Somewhere behind her and far away, she felt something shatter, some barrier break as the power surged against and through it.
Back on Ida, some force exploded outwards from the glowing figure to bend the grass to the ground and set the bare branches to rustling dryly, but there was no damage to it, only some weird sense of pressure being released, rippling outwards from the point of origin in ever greater rings. Ida felt it as though it passed over her own skin and in some small part of her mind she sensed that it would eventually sweep across the entire tiny asteroid, touching everything.
When the light cleared, Ida knelt unharmed before a small tree that stood waist high, its slender branches covered in lovely pink leaves. She gasped for air as she knelt, dumbstruck, and all around them a soft sound started... growing louder but also... farther away. Ida watched as new leaves unfurled on the branches of the trees in her line of sight, flowers springing up through the grass that had not been there before. The sudden blooming spread outwards in the wake of the ripple of power, trees once bare now rich and green.
The asteroid was not the only change though... after a long moment, Ida finally shook herself back to full awareness and she started as she felt small things like grains of sand falling from her hair. She blinked down at bits of broken gold and purple glass scattered around her and she reached out for them curiously, freezing as her eyes caught a glow that crawled across the back of her hand and up her arm...
Some sort of black soot fell away as she moved, flaking from her skin to reveal the tracing of what might have been called henna on Earth, but something that glowed with a soft purple light.
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Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2014 11:52 am
Alone on the entirety of this beautiful world, Hvergelmir felt untouched by the great wash of power that swept the world with Sailor Ida's actions. She could see and feel it around her, like standing on the shore while a wave came in and soaked your ankles. Something momentous had happened, and now Ida was changed for it. She glowed, somewhat like Babylon had glowed. She felt the same, too -- her aura fresher, more keen to the senses. I renounce everything I was before to take on this guardian ship.It was a fearful idea, Ida's pledge. To serve was one thing. It could be beautiful -- devoting oneself heart and soul to something, fulfilling one's potential through perfect service. In some ways, she ached for that -- the precise, exquisite feeling of knowing your place in the world and rising to its occasion -- but life held so many ways to stumble in the attempt. Not all people, all things, were worth giving oneself to. And not all people were ready to give themselves wholly. Ida had been called upon to -- and now she answered, committed herself to it. Was she ready? Would she be happy, fulfilled, in a way she hadn't been with Alois? Hvergelmir wondered. Wondered and feared and hoped. In this moment, she wanted Ida to feel happy. She had made a great pledge. She didn't want the other girl to feel any linger doubts, as she had with her own small oath. She hoped, desperately, for Ida to be sure. To go forth with that certainty, that pride, in her heart. The asteroid had come back to life. Surely that alone was cause for Ida to feel happiness. "You've changed," Hvergelmir observed with quiet reverence when she was sure she was permitted to speak. "Was that always part of the ritual? How do you feel?"
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Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2014 7:08 pm
Dark brows drew together as Ida grasped her glowing hand in the other, rubbing the new marks with her thumb to smudge away the soot. Tar? Whatever had happened seemed to have burned it away, though the touch told her the sores from the hot tar were still very much there under the glow. The lines moved with her skin as she stretched it, shifting as though it truly were henna, but the way it glowed... she'd never seen anything like it. Turning her hand over, she wiggled her fingers and noted the symbol of Ida on her palm, the same symbol that decorated the case of her compact. Opening her mouth, the young woman attempted to start something and felt her voice catch, dry in her throat as she cleared it and tried again.
"This didn't happen last time..." She said as glanced up from her inspection of herself, a bit of worry in her eyes. "I mean... I said the pledge and planted the tree for the old Ida, everyone cheered, then we went and had a banquet to celebrate the passing of the guardianship. There was no... big explosion of light, and I didn't have any sort of... glow on me afterwards."
It was a bit disconcerting, but when Ida focused on herself, assessing for inward changes... what she felt was an unusual sort of... flow, between her and her planet. She was certain she'd felt it before, but it was more pronounced now, with a definite stream of energy into her and out again. It didn't feel... bad. If anything, it felt comforting, natural.
"I feel... okay, I guess? Better, maybe." Maybe less tired? More... peaceful? But that could maybe be attributed to her new mental state, rather than whatever this was. Stretching out her hand, she gasped softly as her eyes widened, sticking out the other hand with palms down.
"Oh, wow... can you feel that?" Ida said in surprise, gently moving her hands above the grass without touching anything. "Its so... warm. Is that...?"
A memory tickled at her and she frowned for a moment as she reached in her mind, pulling the information out of the depths as her face cleared again.
"I remember!" The young woman laughed, feeling giddy and overwhelmed with everything rushing at her in the last few minutes. "Its the radiation... that's the power source! Ida gave off radiation when it was at its full strength, and that is what the people used to power... everything. It wasn't strong enough when I first got here... that's why nothing worked..."
The glowing hand that had been hovering shifted to press against the newly sprouted tree and to her joy, a soft light spread across the bark, pooling in the lines and crevices to reveal shapes with the regularity of writing. It wasn't terribly bright, but it was a far shade closer to what she remembered than no light at all.
"I don't have any idea what happened, but... Ida is stronger. I can feel it. I can feel... I don't even know how to explain it. Everything! Its... gods, it so much to take in..." Was she babbling? Probably. Her mind refused to settle into coherent lines of thought, flitting from one thing to the next to the next, and her mouth seemed content to follow.
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