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 Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2009 10:03 am
A bit startled, Iarla let Caoimhe's arm go once it was tugged away from him. Standing there awkwardly, he slowly slunk back in the seat next to Lethe, watching Caoimhe with concern. He turned his eyes to Lethe as she spoke about visions being a typical part of being a Fa'e. He sucked in a breath. Is this going to happen to me, too? he wondered, trying to stop his eyes from roving over Caoimhe again and her depleted features. It was as if she passed out... "Visions?" Iarla echoed, speaking mostly to Lethe now, as Caoimhe didn't seem to want to talk. As soon as Caoimhe muttered about how her visions concerned frogs, he winced. Somehow, he didn't believe it. What had Caoimhe seen?
He didn't have the heart to ask or question further. She had sarcastically said it was about frogs; he had to take that at face value, didn't he? What else could he do? "I've never had a vision before," he admitted quietly, looking between Lethe and Caoimhe slowly.
His brow creased with worry and pity at recalling Lethe's mention to her Guardian. And Lethe's Guardian is gone? What is all of this? What's going on? I didn't expect this at all. He looked pensive; lost in thought. These two aren't like Dusty. Each of them has secrets. Dusty felt much more open, and more brash. What things do all Fa'e keep hidden from each other?
Noticing Caoimhe's withdrawal, he had to check his worry as best he could. "Is there anything we can do to help?" he asked Caoimhe softly, knowing Lethe probably wouldn't phrase it as "help," as the River Fa'e and Caoimhe didn't seem to get along. Iarla knew also he would probably get an abrupt, defensive answer, but he had to ask anyway. And just as he asked it, he turned to Lethe, too. "And are you all right? Your Guardian..."
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Posted: Tue Apr 07, 2009 7:58 pm
"I'm fine," Lethe snapped without much thought, baring the edges of her teeth with the last word, and afterwards she paused and gave Iarla an apologetic look. And in the back of her mind, she knew she was being ridiculous -- that, even though she did not know her very well, Caoimhe was not the sort of person to fake an illness for attention. But the fact that the other girl naturally drew more attention and worry, even from Lethe herself, stung a little.
...At the same time, the attention she craved was not attention she wanted. She didn't need questions asked about her guardian right now: there was nothing anyone could do for her. She needed... she didn't know what she needed. A vision sounded rather good, actually.
"It's just," she said impulsively, slamming the edge of her transparent fists into the table-top, "This is the way it goes. We are born wet and crazy, and not knowing how to speak or walk or refer to ourselves in first person, if you are like me having been a thing your entire immortal life and not a person. And then we learn things, and we grow. We discover pockets of power, or memories, or something crazy happens to us -- l-like almost dying, or losing something very important, or something -- we do all that, and in return, our skin stretches and our mind deepens or some weird thing like that. I don't know why we don't grow in small, gradual stages like most humans, but that's the way it is. A-and you two don't know any more than I do."
She was only repeating what she had before, and she felt her face flush its unnatural, angry shade of purple-blue, but for once her own control on her emotions was slipping and that scared her more than anything else. "So how did you do it? Why makes you both better than me, that you can be older?"
She was still only a little girl, even if she was a little bit shorter than Caoihme. All attempts at being the Calm, Knowing One went out the window the moment she felt her eyes p***k with the beginning of tears; she did her best, cheeks scrunching and blinking rapidly, to keep them silently at bay. No doubt they would think very little of her, being so selfish, when Caoi was already suffering as it was and Iarla had nothing to do with her current state. She even seemed to slump under the weight of her own self-pity, limbs swimming more than usual in the oversized plastic of her raincoat.
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Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2009 12:20 pm
The rain continued to fall, and in its gray sheets, Caoimhe felt as though her own mood were being projected. Maybe Lethe's too. Only Iarla seemed to maintain a bubble of optimism, a little chasm of caring. Even his colors glowed brighter than her muddy browns and cloudy greens, even brighter than Lethe's big raincoat. How could he be so bright all the time?
Survivalism was Caoi's religion; she had a hard time caring about anyone else. She had a hard time remembering to care about self-discovery. She had a hard time remembering what it felt like to have friends. Not that she ever did. In her years since Aranorn, her memories swirled together, cast in an amber light. She remembered things as she wanted to, as she wished they had happened. There were other Enilef civilians imprisoned with her in the enemy camps of Aranorn, stolen and trapped and beaten. In her memory, she saw them as friends, as comrades, united by their common imprisonment. It was convenient to forgot the mocking, the alienation, the night that she awoke to a sharp rock being dragged across her throat by the small teen she shared a cell with in the rotting dirt and leaves. And that was friendship to her. A shared suffering -- that was friendship.
She lifted almond eyes to Lethe, swallowing down the bile that rose in her throat. Was this the curse of the Fa'e? To come together only to bring out the pain in each other's lives? Lifting a small hand, she waved away Iarla's question. She was fine. She didn't need to say so. These spasms came from time to time. Until this day, Caoimhe had been lucky enough to experience them alone, or simply in the presence of strangers. She would have blushed if she weren't so pale from the sickness swimming in her stomach.
As Lethe spoke again, Caoimhe felt grateful. Let someone else move the conversation. Let a clever person lead the way. Words were not her strong suit, especially when she was not feeling like her normal self. She watched the smaller girl speak, saw the emotion rush in, felt the table shake under the girl's bound wrists. The teen Fa'e hadn't noticed them before, probably because of the raincoat. She stared down at the ribbons, then back up to Lethe's moving lips.
The girl was eloquent, clearly smarter than Caoimhe. The Fa'e even admitted that to herself, though she'd never admit it to Lethe. In your typical team, Caoi would be the "muscle" of the operation. To an extent. Lethe spoke beyond her years, beyond Caoimhe's years. Could Caoimhe have been a thing in a past life too? Or was this frog princess thing true? And what of her accent? Mrs. Kates said the teen Fa'e sounded Irish once, but Gristla snorted and shook out her long mane. How had Caoimhe gotten an accent in the first place? Were you born with them? That didn't seem to make any sense. Rubbing the space between her shoulderblades, Caoimhe dropped her eyes back to the table.
"We're all in a shitty boat," she said at last, bitterness seeping into the cracks in her voice. "It's a shitty, tiny unmanned boat that nobody cares about -- except maybe us -- and we're all just in it and floating and going nowhere." She dropped a small hand on the table, hooked her stubby fingers through the wire latticework. Wrapping her other hand around her stomach, she thumbed at the knotted seashell belt that hung loosely at her waist. Caoimhe didn't choose anything. If she had, she wouldn't have been in Aranorn. Not ever. And she wouldn't be in Gaia and alone now. Her mouth set into a hard line. "Don't come at me looking for answers. I didn't try to get bigger. I got bigger because I had to. I got bigger so I could protect myself. There was no flash of light, no blinding beam from above. I went to bed one night, and in the morning, I was bigger. I looked different. Nothing special about it."
Breaking eye contact, she looked out into the rain again. Something swelled inside her, told her to run away. Maybe a nice jog in the pouring rain would be good for her. Her finger tips returned to her temples and rubbed in tiny circles. "You're crazy if you think we have any control in any of this, or that we somehow made this happen or chose to be what we are." She paused, and then muttered, "Whatever that is." Caoimhe would not admit to being any worse off than Lethe, but it was stupid to debate this. Caoimhe knew she was a freak, had known it for a long time. She had been found at the bottom of a lake in a goddamn bubble in a place where no one -- not ONE person -- looked remotely like her, or talked like her, or even knew what she was. There was no plan here, no intention. She was a mouse in a ******** wheel running circles for someone or something that she could not see.
What other answer was there?
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Posted: Wed Apr 08, 2009 4:15 pm
Now it was Iarla's turn to sit quietly, he too aware of the pattering of the rain outside on the window. It was all rather overwhelming - all this. Both Caoimhe and Lethe were struggling, but they didn't want help. He felt alienated, and very alone. He knew these two were Fa'e, but that information did little to comfort him - which was so strange, because it should have warmed him. Should have reminded him that these two were like him, like he was, that which he had always sought while in his other world.
People like him. Someone, something, like he was. He'd looked everywhere and there had been nothing. Then Gaia happened. Dusty happened. The world of Fa'e opened up before him, but something wasn't quite right. His eyes moved first over Lethe, and then Caoimhe; both of them staring off as if in their own worlds, thinking of something painful.
He took in a short, slow breath, trying to remain steady. His expression was one of pained thoughtfulness. "I...I don't know why I'm older," he said softly, and simply. He looked at Lethe. Thought she appeared in control, he felt that, below the surface, she might be ready to burst - whether that be into tears or something else, he didn't know, but it was all around him.
She was, of course, talking about growing. Where one night you are some age, and the next morning, older and maybe a little wiser than the night before. It was one of the things about him that had always been a mystery. Lethe talked of visions; of events that provoked these changes in age. He knew none of that. He nodded slowly to himself as Caoimhe stated the same thing in her own way. He sensed the raw memories behind her words. There was more to Lethe and Caoimhe than he could ever hope to know...and they would probably never tell him about it. What could he do? I feel like I ask myself that question all of the time, he thought bitterly. 'What can I do'? Since I can usually do nothing.
He respected the both of them immensely, and so he also respected their wishes. He did not prod Lethe further; she had said she was fine, and he again accepted it until he knew otherwise. But he watched her closely yet, still worried. The conversation moved like the hand on a clock: ticking by, each word precise, each word a tiny span of time that knew no peace.
"We're all in a shitty boat. It's a shitty, tiny unmanned boat that nobody cares about -- except maybe us -- and we're all just in it and floating and going nowhere."
He closed his eyes.
"You're crazy if you think we have any control in any of this, or that we somehow made this happen or chose to be what we are.
"...Whatever that is."
"I don't know what I am," he said quietly. "I have never met someone else like me before." His eyes opened slowly. "But we three are all similar to each other. They said I was a 'Fa'e.' I'm not sure I know what that truly is yet. Yet...I exist, named or unnamed. So do you. We have all run into each other, somehow, and we all understand each other on some basic level... That is more than what I had before, and I am thankful.
"If we are as they say, things out of legend that had other lives, we don't exist randomly." He had no idea what he was even saying. He didn't know if he truly believed he even was one of those things...
He bowed his head slightly. "Others believed in us. That gave us existence. I may not understand much of anything, but I won't give up my existence easily." He was speaking now almost to himself. "I could have been anything, if it's all true...but now I am who I am. Iarla. That is my name. I won't squander this life; belief brought me here. Therefore, I treasure it, no matter where my boat is taking me."
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