[OPEN] Interview With A Mage

[sulahnan]

WHO: Athessa and you!
WHAT: Talking to Magefriends about Magic and Abominations
WHEN: August; Post-Abomination, Pre-Modplot
WHERE: Around the Gallows
NOTES: none yet

i. colin

It's one of the days that sees Athessa helping out in the apothecary, which means busy hands but a mind free to wander. She's separating the buds from dried, woody stems to place each into jars for their individual uses when she speaks:

"I've been thinking a lot about what happened..."

ii. kostos

This isn't a conversation that is going to happen organically. After reading through some esoteric writings on magic in the library, she gives up for a time and stalks off to find Kostos.

"Oi," she calls to him, jogging to catch up with him. "Got a minute?"

iii. isaac

[ Some late night crystal call when Athessa's eyes get tired of reading ]

Isaac, can I pick your brain a bit?

iv. derrica

[ They've had their fair share of difficult conversations of late, and this one bodes no different. The kicker, of course, is that it's far more personal to Derrica than it is to Athessa, so when the latter seeks out the former, she comes bearing gifts. Little spiced cookies and coffee over ice - does Derrica drink coffee? ]

It's not spice cake, but the flavor is pretty close.

v. wildcard/bring out your mage

[ either hmu on disco or plurk and i'll make a starter for you or wildcard me, whichever! ]

Comments

[sulahnan]

Athessa turns to see that bright smile and finds herself reflecting it with delight and amusement at this comprehensive list.

"And here I thought I was clever for using a knife to see my reflection," she laughs. When she turns forward again, her hold on the mirror has shifted just enough that it reveals the reddish-purple line mottling her cheek, the wound healed over but still fresh and angry-looking. It gives Athessa pause, turns her expression contemplative for a moment before she reverses her hold on the mirror and offers it back to Lexie.

"Thanks."

[coquettish_trees]

But she doesn't take it.

"With whose eyes are you looking at yourself?"

[sulahnan]

"I don't know."

It's the most honest answer she can offer, because when she sees her own face in the glass she doesn't feel connected to it unless she makes an effort to assert: that's me. Is she looking through the eyes of a 16-year-old, surprised to see how little has changed? Is she looking through Yseult's eyes, seeing uncertainty and second-guessing in every minute expression?

She keeps holding the mirror out until it's clear that Lexie won't be taking that weight from her grasp, and she lets her hand fall to rest on her lap.

"Nobody's, I guess."

[coquettish_trees]

There is a long moment in which Alexandrie simply watches, and then she nods.

“It is yours then,” she says with a small tilt of her head at the mirror. “Until you know.”

[sulahnan]

Her head snaps up and she twists bodily to look at Lexie, book discarded, hand braced against the bench.

"What? No —" She tries to press the mirror back into the woman's hands, shaking her head. "I can't — it's...I mean just look at it. This isn't —"

Isn't what? Maybe it isn't so much of what it isn't, as what it is. The intricate gold filigree bordering the glass. It's too good for me. "I can't accept it."

[coquettish_trees]

"You may consider it leant," she says, entirely unwilling to accept it back, "if it should make you feel more at ease." And then she smiles, eyes brightening with mirth.

"Or work! I find nothing takes the shine from a gift quite like responsibility."

[sulahnan]

"Work," she echoes dully, and sits back. It feels like crumpling, though her posture doesn't actually change much. "Right."

Athessa heaves a breath and smiles, though it's colored with chagrin. Embarrassment at her own reaction in the face of Alexandrie's calm.

"Well if it's work then I guess I shouldn't have thanked you, huh? Wow, responsibility, thaaaanks."

Humor. It's her defense mechanism.

[coquettish_trees]

“Alas that beauty always carries such heavy responsibility,” she says with a rueful sigh.

A fighter’s eyes would likely see that scar with a conqueror’s pride, a spy’s with irritation that it must now be hidden, a hopeful lover’s... a bit differently.

[sulahnan]

On another day, in another circumstance, she'll look on it with the eyes of a fighter. Wear it like a badge of honor, the story carefully adjusted to captivate without revealing too much, the action embellished and the torture glossed over. On that day, maybe, Bastien and Lexie will be proud.

Today, however, she doesn't feel like a person. What she sees when she looks at herself isn't what anyone else sees. The only reason her reflection isn't whispering cries of selfish and unlovable at her is because she's making a conscious effort to douse those flames.

"Dunno how you do it, honestly."

[coquettish_trees]

"With an immensity of effort and a well-practiced mix of regard and disregard for the hearts of others," Alexandrie replies absently, leaning to examine Athessa with a critical eye and then carefully teasing a few pieces of hair from the braid forward on the side opposite where it lies to balance and soften the style. A smaller section on the braid side to then offset that.

[sulahnan]

"Sounds exhausting," she says.

Again, Athessa turns to facilitate Lexie's scrutiny and adjustments, content to be molded to her liking. With only a modicum hesitation, Athessa then leans against Lexie's leg, chin resting upon her knee. It's the sort of casual closeness she wouldn't think twice about expressing with Bastien, or Colin, or indeed Derrica (- perhaps she would think twice now -), but has never been her relationship to the Lady Asgard.

But that was before they saw in each other a similar anguish. Their masks are different, but the hurt is the same.

"If you need a break from that, I'm not stingy with my root stash."

[coquettish_trees]

There is something comforting about it: the weight of a body leaning against her leg, of a head on her knee, hair to smooth with fingers that only barely touch it. It is not the right body, the right head, the right hair, but it is the right holding and that is some small relief for bones that beg for it.

"I thank you. Although I would be a poor companion, I think," she replies ruefully. "I do not know for how long."

[sulahnan]

This comfort she's found isn't one she's hasty to twist away from to study Alexandrie's face, so the only movement is the tug of confusion on her face.

"Whaddya mean?"

[coquettish_trees]

It doesn't belong to anyone else, the silent thing. The way the space between them pushes and pulls, both movements aching, as exquisitely unforgiving as ocean tides. They are too far, they are too close, and the dance of it is only theirs. It is the stuff of nights, too fragile for the day, and she cannot say it into the sun, and the breeze, and the bees that float lazily from flower to flower. She cannot say it at all; there is not a single part of her from breath to lips that will allow it.

I loved him, she will say. I love him, she will not. Not even to someone who had watched her break under holding it.

Something else, then. Anything else.

"I am lonely," she decides on, a truth with a second safer reason to provide, "and it makes me insufferable."

[sulahnan]

Athessa lets out a soft, breathy laugh. Her first thoughts were oh no, and I was insufferable before I even knew I was lonely.

"Then you'd be in good company," she assures. "And if nothing else, there are kittens that sleep in my room."

[coquettish_trees]

Alexandrie's answering laugh is similar, mostly air.

"I am not sure if that is enticement to or ward against me," she replies. "I have never kept a pet, although I recall trying to entice the stable cat into being my friend when I was very young." She hums, half sigh. "They are too earnest for me, I think, especially when they are young. They give a sort of love it is difficult for me to receive. Ask for a sort that is difficult for me to give."

Less so, now, but to feel as she does and have something soft and warm and innocent curl itself on her as if it needs her, loves her, when her guard is already rendered less by the haze the smoke brings? She might weep, and she is so tired of weeping.

"I am sorry you are lonely."

[sulahnan]

It's the only love I'm suited for sings loud in her head and she has to move to press her cheek (the unscarred one) to Lexie's knee instead of her chin, lest her throat works against her when she swallows that thought down.

"I'm sorry, too." That Lexie is lonely, that she pulled such feelings from her on the road from Churneau, and that she herself feels such when all that was asked of her was friendship. Why can't that be enough? That should be more than enough.

"I won't push you," she says, taking a decisive breath as if to push everything bubbling to the surface back down. She rights herself, pulling away from the comfort of physical contact and returning her attention to the stack of books. "But the offer is open, any time. Which one of these were you looking for? I'm not likely to get through them all."

[coquettish_trees]

Her original quest had been entirely forgotten, and so for a moment she only furrows her brow slightly as she clicks back into place.

"The Lectures of First Enchanter Wenselus, I think, if that is not what you are currently reading." A pause, and then, "I will remember. Your offer."

After all, there may well soon be a time when she cannot be anything but broken, and the gentle haze of the drug and something that loves her with the uncomplicated love of soft fur and curious whiskers... it will be needed then.

[sulahnan]

It isn't the one she's been slogging through, so Athessa navigates through the stack to fetch good ol' Wenselus and hand his leathery binding up to Alexandrie.

"Lemme know if you find out anything interesting from it," A request made of equal measures doubt and hope. "I'll do the same."

Double the books in half the time.

[coquettish_trees]

"I shall; although I think perhaps our interests may differ slightly," she says, taking the offered book and setting it in her lap. "What is it you are looking for in these?"

[sulahnan]

"Knowledge, understanding, I dunno. It'd be nice to find out that there's been a way to stop abominations without killing anyone, but I reckon if there was, it'd be known." Unless the Chantry is suppressing that information to perpetuate cruelty of consequence.

[coquettish_trees]

"Then I shall take note of it, if I come to any such subject." She nods, stands, and holds the volume to her chest; a more delicate way to carry such things, if far less convenient than tucking it under her arm.

"Bonne chance, cherie," then, the tilted head and small smile that accompanies the words making it unclear whether the wish is for the research or for the matter of her heart.