Oblations

[Avis]

Avis gave a brief shake of her head.

"It feels right," she said, voice taught as finished the cut, "to commit my body to flame. Because while I am part of the Supernal, Daisy is not. So, born of the Lie she dies in the Lie. Is consumed in the Lie. Yet, the lie is shaped by the Supernal, and the fire is the symbol of the Crucible that will refine Daisy, and the Lie, into the Supernal. Into...me."

A thought process most would misunderstand, and consider one of her petty tyrannies. Yet it was her mind, her substance that was changing, and it was her mind that would do so. This action, even if rooted in a leap of imagination rather than logic, still held true to herself, the self much larger than the portion which bore a name, and through that she would approach a new Wisdom.

Except...her self wanted to acknowledge that this came about not just from something born from her own mind, conceived in some petty act, but instead born from the mingling of the influence of another. From the interactions with the other that continually informed the self, and through the self, informed the other.

Avis, bleeding arm still extended over the flame, offered the weapon to Star.

"Will you let your blood mingle with mine in the ash? So you know the phoenix is here because of us, rather than despite of us?"

[Star]

Not understanding doesn't matter.

That's a pretty common mistake. That if something isn't understood, that it must be wrong. And this? The words are arranged in an order that make sense. There's an explanation. And eventually, it'll be understood. Maybe just not right now. Because here's the thing. Some people change who they are like a set of clothes. New clothes, different posture, new words, and voila. But that's not a real, actual, deep, permanent change. We've talked about crucibles before.

So maybe that's where the understanding is getting snarled. Not why. How.

"Okay, yes. I mean, I will."

Fingers slowly took the card, reflexively testing the pliability of the sheet before eyes slid off of the reflections and into the flames. They say not to stare into the Abyss too long, but flames are the same way. White and yellow whorls and licks of flame turn into pale features. Pale features with sable, curly hair. Thin lips, a nose just a smidge too large, and dark, intense green eyes. It's the blood We mingled before. Spilled before.

The face that lives in the pulsing after-images of fire on the retina, fire on the Soul.

"I like it, it's a good ceremony." Soft words agreed with the symbolism, even if the thoughts behind the words still wrestled with understanding. The words are soft, slipping out from around a dull ache at the back of the throat. A hand pulls back a sleeve, baring a forearm that's longer but no thicker than the scarred, dripping one. Eyes flicked back over, looking at where she'd cut herself. Because Cutter Virginity here, yo. Self pierced ears don't count.

ow

Okay. That hurts? Like, seriously, double-yew tee eff. Lips thinned and firmed, and brows furrowed in concentration. Try again. Keep pushing and pulling. Ow, ow, ow. It's cold, and burning.

"Sorry." Mumbles. "I, uh, I've never done that."

Some people are Arrows. They see blood all the time. Maybe even their own. Some people aren't. And don't. And haven't.

"You, ummm, you said the ash? So I should wait for it to go out?"

We're bleeding now, together. Again.

[Avis]

"It will. In an hour. Once we've decided we've shed enough blood we can bandage ourselves, and then wait. Talk. Or sit. Then we take the ashes to the roof and commit them to the sky. A burial of air."

One that would let the ashes--that would let Daisy--journey into the beyond...

Quietly, that was what Avis contemplated. Letting her blood drip. Pattering and sizzling against flame and metal. Consumed and transformed.

The reek of blood hovered, pungent copper and brine, joined with the stench of smoke and settled into her lungs.

Eyes unseeing, flesh settling against bones like earth upon a bed of stone, the Warlock withdrew back into herself. Through herself. Past the center, beyond the depths of self and into the embrace of vacuity. An emptiness that enfolded everything, yet held on to nothing. And, within that Cavity, she found herself again, considering all that lay on the outside, and all that passed within. With: a word that did not exist in singularity, a word that demanded a relation built on the contrary. In. The Truth of self through opposition.

"I was wrong," Avis suddenly said, withdrawing her arm.

"What died wasn't me. It was the idea of me. So this wasn't a rebirth. This was a re...learning. Of Me."

Clumsily, she grasped for the first aid kit, her fingers numb from the elevation, and the blood loss from the cut.

"People are made of pieces. Pieces which define the others through their alternate positions. Through separateness. Through the spaces between and around each other. And wholeness is that relationship. That connection between the pieces that creates their meaning. That creates the self. So, Daisy, Akasha, Avis...they only exist with the others. So anyone that I pretend to be is just yet one more piece of my actual self. It just expands the possibilities. The pieces. Of me.

Or," she added, "that's what I think. What about you?"

[Star]

"I... ummm. I don't know."

Bluish eyes tore away from the brazier where the flames seared blood onto metal.

"I mean, I've thought that. Just a little different. Like a gemstone? With facets, instead of pieces. And when facets align, like a puzzle..." True blue. "But, I've thought other things, too. Like, about causality? Maybe we're just the impression, the imprint we leave on the people around us. Without... hmmm. Without motivation or intent, just the purity of effect."

Long fingers reached out, catching her wrist, skin sliding against skin over the sheen of blood.

There's so many Truths.

"But that was a long time ago."

A Primal, Wild Truth warmed skin, coagulated blood, stitched the slashes whole again. The fingers loosed, streaking crimson across mended flesh.

"I mean, isn't that impact part of the Lie? Or can we only measure it with, I don't know, with how it touches Souls. Our Souls. Someone elses."

It's a question, not a statement. Add a long sigh for punctuation.

"But lately, I've been thinking a lot about how we ask questions. Any question. The ummm, okay, don't laugh, but I've been calling it the 'Solve For X Paradigm', in my head. We get taught that we need to look at the evidence, then figure out the, uh, the unknown. But what if that's a Lie? What if that's what the Seers want? Because then all you have to do is control perception to control what answer a person comes up with, right? What's it really doing? Doesn't a right answer just... feel right? Our Souls know Truth. That's, ummm, that's kind of why I asked. If this felt right? And this isn't, you know, feels right," finger quotes, "In the hedonist sense. It's not being an apologist for doing whatever. It's just the idea that maybe we're getting kind of, sort of, trained? To ignore our intuition. Our own Souls, when they resonate with something True."

The gaze had returned to the brazier, and a hand wiped absently at drying blood on his arm.

"Sorry. Super tangent. I just was trying to explain why, why I don't know. And wonder about how to know. But I'm not you. So. I mean, if you need to think of...," Eyes looked up, with a sad smile. "...Death. As part of a, ummm. Evolution, transformation, maybe that's not wrong. Because it's part of you. It's part of Daisy, part of Avis, part of Akasha."

And that's okay, because that's a strength in itself. Not everyone can accept death.

"So, I guess my answer is," eyes flickered down to the brazier again, "Did this help?"

"Did this feel right?"

  -2 Mana for Healing Heart

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2016-01-12 23:00:19		Star rolls 5 to It's just a scratch! -1 contagion -2 targets (10 Again)		6, 1, 5, 9, 5		1 success

[Avis]

A hiss escaped between her teeth when his hand closed over her wound, and air hiss back in as his Will healed it. She brought her arm up, looking the sealed absence of the cut over, the smears of blood the only evidence that the cut had ever existed outside of her mind.

"It feels right, but I don't agree with you," she said, flipping the lid on the first aid kit and getting out some sanitizing wipes to clean the blood off of them both.

"Our souls," she began, grabbing Star's hand and sliding the cloth over it, "I can't say they don't know Truth. They found the way to the Supernal Realms for us. Obviously, they know it. But I still don't think it's that easy. I don't think it's enough to just say that we get in the way of our souls knowing that Truth. Because I don't think something instinctually understood is something that's truly known. I mean, that's part of what I re-discovered. Thatwe can't escape opposition. To know a Truth is to know its Lie. It's not enough for our Souls to know it, or for us to just accept what feels right. We have to engage with the Lie. We have to understand it just as well as we understand the Truth.

"...and that's part of why I do say this feels right," she explained, finally finishing cleaning her blood from his flesh. "I think, by throwing together this ritual, I brushed against the Lie. But it was only because I did that I better understand it. It's only because I went in search of an answering, in search of a solution, that I got closer to the Truth."

Because, while some people thought Honor meant never making mistakes, Avis didn't agree. A mistake could still be honorable, and, at least for her, it was only once she'd made a mistake that she felt closer to Enlightenment.

[Star]

Goofy grin time.

"Sorry." Eyes flicked down to their hands, and the bloody cloth in hers. "I just had this memory, of this thing I saw. Two gorillas were, like, grooming each other."

Picking nits, probably, but this is still a warm fuzzy.

"Well." His lower lip disappeared between teeth as the grin faded. "I think I explained it bad? But I definitely didn't mean in, like, a vacuum. Like we don't just know without, I dunno. Exploring. Asking questions? I mean, it's like that thing about not figuring out what you like, as much as figuring out what you don't like."

Maybe she'd never heard that. Because, mostly, it's about dating. We figured out what We like.

"So, sure, we do. We have to expose ourselves to Lies. And maybe the more we do that, the more the Truth will, hmmmm. Resonate? Feel right? But that's also what I meant by Solving For X, because we do do that in a vacuum. So, yeah, I never meant to, like, stop asking questions. Stop re-thinking and just wait for, Wham, a Feeling. If anything? I think I meant the opposite. I just, you know, sometimes it's hard to put an idea into words. Especially when you've never put that idea, those ideas, into words."

Curious eyes searched in the fens to see if those words had encompassed the idea better.

[Avis]

"Well, words are tricky, too," the Warlock agreed, eyes dropping to her own flesh as she set to work cleaning herself. "They always mean more than we intend them to. Take what you just said, for instance, about things inside a vacuum. By 'inside a vacuum', you meant without relation to other things, right? Like, without context. Which makes sense. In a way. But that's only one way to interpret a vacuum. 'Cause, in a way, that vacuum actually extends the possible context rather than eliminate it. If a vacuum is representing absence it's also representing the possibility of a presence. Which might seem like, quibbling, I guess, except that's what helped me understand my, uh, mistake just a few moments ago."

A shrug lifted the Warlock's trim shoulders. An expression that had seemingly survived the brush with figurative death.

"But, yeah, that aside, I think I understand what you mean. When we're looking at anything, and trying to decide what it means, there has to be understanding starting somewhere. It's impossible to just logic it all. Like, if you take that stupid ass ethics example, where a train might run over ten people, or crash and kill twenty, which do you choose? At the very beginning of that question, you have to make an assumption. An assumption about the meaning of what would be better. That's where the 'feeling' would come in, right?"

[Star]

Thank Towers that trains don't always run over people, yo.

"Yeah, words are, well, uh, just words." The mop bobbed in agreement. It always starts with meaning. Definitions. It's why, sometimes, words aren't enough. "And, totally, sometimes they're the thing that limits us."


A fingernail picked at dried blood flecks. Yep. That's going to need vacuuming.

"And sometimes we don't know... things... about ourselves until we're there. Until it's happening. Even if we get some hypothetical, they're just words. But are you saying, hmmmm, are you saying that we are the sum of our connections? With other people? Or everything. Like the potential for causality. What if, and I'm just going hypothetical here," a grin indicated the irony given the past statement, "What if we forget something?"

Or someone.

[Avis]

"I'm saying we're the sum of our differences," Avis explained, setting the cleaning cloth down, it's surface covered with the mixing of their blood.

"It's this," she said, grasping Stars hand and pressing the flesh together. "This touch, for whatever else it might do, it brings us into contact with something that is different. My hand, your hand, revealing that we are distinct beings, and from that distinction, from the understanding that you is not me and me is not you, we understand a better definition of me, and you. A definition that's more than if it was just me, or just you, because that definition would lack the insight we get when we interact with something that is different. For, in that difference, we better understand the shape, the limits, and the qualities of each other.

"So," she finished, "if we were to forget something, well, then we'd lose that understanding of difference. And, in that way, we'd lose clarity on our understanding of self just as we'd lose clarity on our understanding of what we forgot."

[Star]

"But, wouldn't that be half?"

Long fingers moved over the pale, wiry ones. It wasn't a caress, or even suggestive -- just an attempt to embrace the thought being expressed through tactile aid.

"Kind of like what you said about the idea of a vacuum being emptiness, but it also being the potential to be filled? I mean, similarities highlight differences and vice versa, no light without darkness blah blah, but differences aren't just, hmmm. I don't think looking at differences could be the whole story. Right?" The mop cocked and the neck craned, moving to look around their hands.

The closer you are, the less you see.

"It's like that old psychology thing. The faults we find the most in others, we possess? So maybe our Sameness also, you know, helps define us. I dunno. I'm fishing here, because I'm still, like, processing your Idea. It would just seem weird to just exist, or at least just look at, the contrasts. But I get what you're saying better now."

Now eyes raised away from the hands and met.

"What about... not just forgetting. Memories, you know. They're tricky? We kind of re-write them. Or we missed things."

Ten Truths. Time, time, time, see what's become of me.

"If we're losing clarity the further we get, maybe we should, or people should, I dunno. Go back and look at important things again?"