Welcome to Gaia! ::

Pendour nodded a little sadly. She understood. She wanted to help Caedus with whatever nightmares it was that were following him, but she knew if she used her magic now it might be counterproductive. If she ran out of energy and fell asleep again, he’d probably stay up even later watching over her and worrying.

His question wasn’t an easy one, and she looked down, examining the blades of grass at her feet. “The Negaverse is always in the city. You’ve been away from them for longer than I have, to know if there presence stops being a haunting thing, in time. If you’re talking about the things they did to me?”

She exhaled softly, ran a thumb just under her eye, feeling the bumps of the scar tissue.

“I learned to live with it. Time helped with that. I left my bed after awhile, then left my house. I learned to brush off the stares and take medicine for the nightmares. I started laughing again, making friends again.”

She picked one of the grass strands, wrapped it around her finger.

“But I’m still broken, still haunted. Things bring back the memories bad, sometimes,” she said, even quieter. “And I’m still missing an eye.”

“Thank you for the stone,” she said, again. “I appreciate it, really. More than you know.”

Although she saw the look in his eyes, and by their conversation, she knew he probably had some ideas of what was going on in her own head. He asked for advice, and she smiled softly when he said she didn’t have to answer if it upset her.

She wasn’t upset. They might be talking about serious things in the abstract, but the shadows, as he called them, seemed far away, softened by the gentle, sleepy haze she was in, and by the presence of someone who was quickly becoming a friend. Her voice was steady as she spoke.

“Therapy’s probably the only reason I’m doing as well as I am,” she said, and then paused, remembering that she was talking to an alien. “Um, that means talking to people who are specially trained in helping you process trauma. It’s a little hard because they don’t actually know about the Negaverse or a lot of the conflict, but I talk to friends, too, who I can be honest with.”

Not that her friends could sort her diagnoses out, but. That only mattered so much, really, in the scheme of things.

“There’s breathing techniques, grounding techniques, meditation. Um, medicine, like I said. There’s videos on a lot of that if you guys have Internet access.” If they didn’t, she might be able to bring out a laptop and a phone hotspot to show him.

“Although I don’t want to, um, promise miracles? I never had panic attacks a lot, but I still get them sometimes. I still have days when I hide in bed. So much less than I used to, but,” she shrugged.

Maybe you couldn’t bounce back from terrible things all the way. Maybe you just had to find a way to live, anyway.

"Yes, cats," said Pendour, although she didn't seem quite as enthused about the concept of cat videos as some other people might have been. "I'll bring some resources when I come back with the energy, okay? Not just online ones, either. I'll see if I can get some books, so maybe you can bring them back to the others who are still struggling with memories of the old war."

If there was a planet where there had been no real trauma for the last thousand years, that was an amazing thing. It seemed like Caedus had only seen so much of it, though, since whatever had happened a few years ago. If there were things he was missing and other people on his world that were struggling with their mental health, Pendour wanted to be able to do whatever she could to help them, too.

Although, with Caedus having been so kind to her, she thought that she wanted to help him, most of all. She smiled over at him now, even as she peeled herself slowly from the ground, getting to her feet.

Everything swayed, but only a little.

"I should probably get to bed before I fall asleep here again, but," her eyes were soft, "I'll be back. I promise. You don't have to deal with all this alone."

“I should be okay,” said Pendour, and she didn’t seem to be too unsteady on her feet. “I’ll call for a ride when I get to the road, and I should be able to send you a message once I get home.”

She took a step, and then another, and she didn’t fall. She turned back, then. “I’m glad I got to meet you, too, Caedus.”

She handed the blanket back to him, letting the chill of the night air wake her up a little more. Then, with a final soft smile, she started making her way down the hill and towards her bed.