Welcome to Gaia! ::

She'd kept promising herself that she'd pare down her time as Joy, and spend more time as Elaine. There was a certain amount of baggage to being Joy, lately, that was even worse than the usual, already-bad baggage.

And here she was, not only disregarding this intention of hers, but disregarding it in a way that was almost specifically designed to make that baggage a little bit heavier. It was not like her - not like Elaine, anyway - to anticipate meeting anyone with a sort of fluttering anxious feeling, but here she was, turning it over in the sullenness of her own head, which she was careful to keep there as she felt the approach of an allied signature growing nearer to the appointed meeting place.

It was a little easier to sing out in a cheerful voice to the unknown knight, because it was not Odainsaker that she was nervous about meeting, but someone else entirely - some stranger, who perhaps would be hurt by what she was about to do. She'd told a few people of late that she was not willing to bargain with other people's lives to save one that she cared about, but she'd said nothing about bargaining with their comfort or their feelings. They'd live.

Well, sort of.

"Good evening!" she called out, as soon as she thought they might be within earshot. "I hope the weather where we're going is as nice as it is here."

Joy's experiences with Wonders had been largely water based up to this point, with the exception of Ekstrom's chill and forbidding fortress.

So it was with surprise - especially as she had been thinking about Nis - but also with pleasure that she found herself in such a strange place - utterly alien in a way that no other Wonder had yet been to her. She had a quick, evaluating eye, taking everything in with a series of rapid and curious glances in a way that suggested she was filing the scenery away for perusal in memory.

“Thank you again for this,” she said, her eye turning outwards, then, towards space: a vastness that felt paradoxically oppressive. Thank God, she thought, that if she had to do this, she had been made a Knight of the familiar Earth. “Is there anything I should know? Please do show me around if you like,” she added, aware that this was a pleasure for many people besides just herself. “I'm happy to walk and talk, if you do.”

Odainsaker referring to Neona's things caused in her a twinge of guilt, as she remembered imperiously telling Gouvernail that everything on the Garde no longer belonged to him, and was hers. It had not even been an actual staking of claim, which might have excused it - it had been a petulant little act of defiance. She had regretted it since.

The thought ran on as she was led along, although it was derailed by the arrival of Neona. The greeting was a pleasant, unforeseen moment - Joy having convinced herself by now that every ghost was at least capricious and at most aggressive, having had little exposure to any evidence to the contrary. It buoyed her flagging confidence.

"Actually," said Joy, stepping forward with as genuine a smile as she could muster, "your protege has been so kind as to invite me to speak to you, if you'll do me the honor. I want to understand my own Wonder's ancestor better, and I hoped that you'd be willing to let me ask you some things. And also because it would be a pleasure to get to know you."

She glanced apologetically at Odainsaker, a little embarrassed to have to shunt the Knight to the side of the conversation for a bit. It was a little rude, considering the favor she'd been given, but her attention was concentrated on Neona in as much respectful deference as could be managed by someone like Joy, who whom deference was an alien territory.

"I am - the Knight of Joyeuse Garde," she continued, still unable, even after all this time, to use the place as her name. Again, a glance at her more living host. "Joy, if you like. I'd be happy to talk to you with Odainsaker present - or alone - whatever makes you more comfortable."

This, again, with a twinge of guilt at this little slight to Odainsaker, which she hoped she could be forgiven for.

She settled in with another curious glance at her surroundings. She enjoyed this new hobby of space tourism she'd accidentally picked up, but all of it - no matter how charming - had a tendency to make her more grateful for the Garde.

Turning her attention fully to Neona, she offered up another smile. “Joy is so much easier,” she said. “And thank you again.”

She hesitated. “It is possible,” she said, “that at some point my questions might feel - invasive, or even hurtful. It's not my intention to be disrespectful or cause you pain, if I do. Please tell me, if I cross any lines. We don't need to talk about anything you don't want to.”

She paused, again. “I am glad we have our ancestors to help us in such an active way. Is it a comfort to you to see your mantle passed to someone after all this time? Your protege was very kind to me when I said that I was looking for help.”

“No,” she said immediately. “But that's no fault of my - of the previous Garde. He can only do so much for me. And what he can do, he does. But I think he and I both have a sort of - well. Not despair. Despair means you stop, I think. But I wouldn't say either of us is real optimistic that we're on the winning side, just because we're on the right one.”

She paused. “I know in your time, you had a choice. Well.” She thought of Nail, and all his blunt assessment of just how much choice he'd felt he had. “Sort of. But we don't. You know? And an army of conscripts is never the best way to win a war. Maybe those of us who reincarnate feel differently - maybe because they made the choice once, it feels less like being drafted. Do you think?” She asked, wrinkling her nose. “Or am I misunderstanding why you ask?”

She managed to refrain, barely, from arguing both with the posited group that saw and benefit in Chaos and with the irrelevance of whether she was capable of doing the job she'd been involuntarily drafted for.

Neither of these things had any bearing on why she was here. In a different, less hectic time, she might have enjoyed sitting there and discussing the nuances of their respective opinions.

But she was here for a more specific reason, and turned her focus to it, hesitating before she asked something that she knew might be painful to many, if not necessarily to Neona.

“it is very personal. Thank you for hearing me out. My understanding is that knights in your position have in some way - acclimated - whether it's the process that keeps you from the Cauldron or your own willpower. Maybe only those strong enough to endure are made to stay away from the Cauldron as you are. Forgive me. I don't think anyone can ever be entirely without some kind of yearning in them, but that could be my own ignorance. I will confess, and I am sorry for it,” she said, with a surge of honesty, “that I am asking you in part because the person I want to ask can't answer fully. And I know everyone is different - especially for something like this - but I am asking to maybe understand the shape of your existence better: do you long for things? Is there - do you crave anything, now that you're… like you are? Or are all your hopes just for - for peace and victory and that kind of thing?”

She paused, a certain vulnerable earnestness in her voice as she reiterated: “I want to understand your existence a little better than I do, as much as I can.”

It occurred to her, with a wretched moment of self-reproach, that if she wished to understand her existence, maybe she ought to spend more time on those differences of opinion. But it was easier to ask a stranger, like this, about something more fundamental.

This was, of course, the painful questioning that Joy had alluded to, and she listened with an earnest gravity, her eyes turned on Neona unwaveringly.

"I know that there are ways," she said, hesitating a great deal over what she was about to say, "to bring you that peace. For the current Knight of this Wonder to give you that peace, eventually. But you're right that the cost seems astronomical. I don't think I'd be brave enough," she added frankly.

After another hesitation, she continued: "Maybe with the present Odainsaker back, things will turn around for you. I don't know if the people will ever return - I don't think they can - but I know that over time, the Garde has changed quite a bit from what it once was. When I arrived it was so silent that my skin crawled. I couldn't imagine standing there, watching it fall into that silence over all those centuries. But it's almost an alive place now."

Almost.

"Birds - bees - I saw some deer, once. Maybe all those things are in store for Odainsaker, as well, and you can have the joy of watching them return. It's not quite - I know it's not the same. But it's something, I hope," she said, and to her unutterable shame she - who had always thought herself not much of a sentimental person - found herself welling up with tears, as she did far too often recently. It was no cure to loneliness.

She thought of promising her: if I can do this impossible thing, I will bring you a slice of pie. But she had already established that hope was crueler than anything else. Why would she inflict it on someone else, when it was already tormenting the one close to her?

"If there's anything I can do to help - please tell me. I'll be honest - I didn't much wanna be a Knight. I always thought of myself as more of a Lady, you know? But I don't mind putting myself into your service, if you want it. I'll send you letters - I'll see if I can find anyone that knew you then, if you like. Feel free to get in touch with me any time through your protege," she added. "And now, if you don't mind: please tell me anything you'd like to tell me. I want to listen to anything you have to say - things you might not feel you can talk about to anyone, if you can trust me with them - small or large. He has said," she continued, without clarifying who "he" was and without really needing to, "that he can't imagine talking - really talking - to anyone but me, because everyone else comes and goes. But sometimes, maybe it's easier to say things to someone who comes and goes than it is to say things to someone very close to you. You know?" And she smiled, here, a painful little smile of earnestness.

She knew from long experience that while the extending of a hand might not yield any touch, the gesture itself had power. So she reached out and closed her own hand over the space where Neona’s should have been, and gave her as bright a smile as she was capable of.

“I thought I'd have more to ask,” she said, “but you answered everything I needed to know before I could ask it. I'll check in with you - and ask whether the birds have come back yet, since I'm sure they will, in time. Maybe you can tell me about the birds,” she suggested, rising from her seat, “while we go look for Odainsaker? I don't know much about birds that don't come from Earth.”