futurology | un: sieglindesullivan / video

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un: sieglindesullivan / video

Greetings, Audentes. It is I, Sieglinde Sullivan- also known as the Green Witch. I am sure you are occupied with your own matters during this valuable personal time, but I must interrupt for three announcements, if you might lend me your ear.

The first is that Date Masamune, one lord of Oushuu, has been transferred to a different team. I know that not many of you have been with us since Chantes, but he was a valuable team member, and he will surely be missed.

[By her, perhaps most of all, but she manages to keep a straight face, hastily moving on.]

The second is that it has come to my attention some of our members come from worlds where literacy is not as prominent. Access to book learning is one of the most important aspects of an education, so I shall be using some of my time here in Oska to improve this situation. I am able to instruct in multiple languages, but I shall be focusing primarily on what many worlds call English, as I found it the most useful for communication during the period when our translators were defective. You may join open sessions in the castle library each day from an hour past noon.

On that note, thirdly, I need your assistance with one of those new pupils. As much as I prefer to work alone, I am afraid this issue deals with a delicate combination of spellcraft and science, and so I shall be opening up this project to others of like intellect hopefully differing experience. Graham, if you would like to say a few words?

[She reaches forward to turn her magitech brooch. revealing a certain rugged Huntsman. Said huntsman, for his part, was listening. Which explains why his first word seems more relevant to her second announcement than her third.] ...Pupil? [He's aware that means student, and feels as if he might have to explain to Sieglinde he can indeed read and write... though perhaps his handwriting leaves something to be desired...

That can be a conversation for another time, however. There's more important matters at hand to discuss now.]

Those of you present in Perdition's Rest might recall, I have been heartless for a long time. I've asked Sieglinde to help me try and find some kind of solution, though it occurred to me the secrecy didn't aide in finding a solution. [Talking to Koltira had reminded him of how much more he could do. He owed it to himself, and perhaps those who cared about him and wanted to connect to him better, to do all he could instead of asking Sieglinde to do it for him.] If you think you might be able to lend aide, or have any questions about my condition, I'm here to answer them. Even if there's no perfect solution, I'd ... I'd like to feel things, again.

[Feel things properly is perhaps the better way of putting it, but considering this is a great deal more than Graham tends to talk already, he nods and indicates that's all he has to say, and Sieglinde takes back the video.]

How anyone capable of lending a productive hand could deny such a sincere appeal I do not know. I have seen we have new recruits among us, so we look forward to hearing from you if you have experience with medical surgery, curses, or other magics.

Thank you.

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Your words mean more than enough, my friend.

( he means that. ALASTAIR was full of skilled healers, yet it was possible no one could fix what ailed him. a well meaning word meant a lot to him, just as much as strangers offering their expertise. )

Are you planning to attend this class? I have no doubt she will hold them even if I am her only pupil, I would welcome the company.

To hear you speak thus, I feel a mite less useless. If ever your spirits are low for this terrible ailment that bright-eyed Sieglinde seeks to solve, then know that in me you may seek company and encouragement, humble though such offerings may be.

[It seems to him that, lacking a heart at all, Graham cannot often swell with high spirits, and for this he feels pity in his breast.]

Indeed do I intend to submit myself to the Green Witch's tutelage. I never learned my letters in boyhood, placed as I was first in Chiron's care and then that of Lycomedes of Scyros, and to me it seemed a matter of little weight. Among this crew, however, such learning seems common enough, and I do begin to wonder if I have missed out. How irksome it is, too, to receive messages borne by no courier who might deliver its meaning to me!

They're not humble at all. ( he spent so much of the curse feeling isolated and that in turn made the vacancy of his heart seem amplified. in his time in ALASTAIR, he's learned much about overcoming his deficiencies. it's not always easy for him to make connections, yet the ones he's made are quite valuable to him. Achilles included — to call someone a friend is a very new luxury for him. )

I confess despite my recruitment into the class, I do know how to read and write, though I don't much remember when I learned it. ( it must have been in that fuzzy period where his parents were humans and his family was not a pack of wolves. between that and a curse he's at least capable, but apparently it quite cabable enough. ) I leave a bit to be desired in my penmanship, I'm told, so the lessons will suit me as well.

If you should ever need a note read to you in the meantime, let me know. ( he's not a courier, but he could do that easily. )

[Achilles too, for all that he wears his heart upon his sleeve, counts few among his close personal friends. There is Patroclus, of course, occupying a space that none else could nor ever would share, and there were Phoenix, Antilochus, Automedon, his cousin Ajax. Then too were there men whom he calls friends, for all one need do to forge the bonds of friendship is share in wine and feast, but whom he holds not so closely. Men like Odysseus, Agamemnon, Nestor, all of whom he respects in full and trusts in some capacity, but this was business more often than leisure. Here among this crew too he has gathered a handful of people whom he trusts and respects, and who have made lighter his heart before: among these is Graham.]

Is it your missing heart that tears these holes in your memory too?

[This he utters softly, solemnly, musing to himself more so than expecting an answer.]

For this favor I give my sincerest thanks. Perhaps there shall come the day when I need not bother you over such a matter as this, but until then I shall humbly rely upon you, far-shooting Graham. Moreover, in these lessons you shall find more company in my dear companion Patroclus, who too should like to learn letters.

No, simply youth, I imagine.

( very early years of life, most did not remember quite clearly. his first memories are of cold noses and warm fur, not hands and smooth skin. surely, he must have had parents as a boy, if only to teach him to speak... but he cannot remember them, not an inkling of them, and he supposes he's likely better off that way.

nothing to miss, nor to mourn. )

Patroclus. I ... I think I remember you mentioning him. ( mentioning in past tense, possibly. there's a slight question in Graham's tone, though frankly it could be hard to spot when his accent makes everything sound like an inquiry. ) I didn't realize he was here.

[He has likely spoken the name before, its syllables falling from his lips like a gentle rain, always sounding as a natural part of himself, and often in past tense although even then his companion dwelled still in his heart and waited there upon the Dardanian shore in the urn that they would soon share. Yet at present his lip curves into a gentle smile.]

He arrived on that day when burned the saloon wherein we lived as guests of Perdition's Rest. Through some oversight of the Fates, the same sort of oversight that has kept me here for the better part of a year, more time than ever I thought possible to have, my brother and dearest friend is with me once more with life in his limbs.

( yes, he can remember the fond and distant references to a man already gone. the idea of a dead man coming back to life thanks to being drawn up by ALASTAIR is not so strange to Graham, either, considering he's already experienced that quite personally. )

I do not know what sort of magic can restore life once it has been lost, yet this place has managed it more than once. I am glad you have him by your side again.

I hardly need say how my heart swells with joy to have by my side he whom I cherish best. But what is this you are saying? I knew not that Fortune has smiled upon more whose shades were already set to go down into the house of death.

[Among the countless lessons he has learned through his time among this crew, he now know that man truly can never comprehend all the machinations of Fate, this beast that forever bucks all yokes with which man may try to harness it.]

( it's not exactly the most fun means of conversation, but it's a fair enough question and not entirely a secret anymore, either. )

Afraid so. I speak from personal experience.

( he'd been dead and gone before he was recruited. perhaps it was ALASTAIR that had brought him back to begin with. )

[His countenance soon turns to solemnity, shifting as does the moon's face when in wane.]

How it grieves me to learn of a friend's passing, even as he stands before me. Yet so too am I all the gladder that Fate has drawn you to the house of ALASTAIR, that you might be spared from the house of death.

[There comes a pause, pregnant like the breath of the earth when turned by the plow.]

Although the end of mortality had not yet taken me when I found myself in this house, already my death knell had sounded when in retribution for my dear comrade I slew Hector, son of Priam - for with that last strike of my spear I did seal mine own fate too. Yet here I stand, so many moons later, and still I understand not why.

I suspect living men are more useful to ALASTAIR than dead ones.

( their technology was vast and their knowledge ran even further. they could pull individuals through time and world and space, grant magical abilities and items. was restoring life really a feat for an organization capable of influencing timelines? )

We are here not for the intentions of ALASTAIR, but despite the intentions of Fate. And no mortal hands - neither mine nor yours, nor those of the house of ALASTAIR - can overturn Fate but only delay when it falls.

[Of this he remains certain, despite all the twists and turns through which he has been thrown.]

I hope that is not true, Achilles. My time will come again some day, but I hope to have enough time here to feel prepared for it this time.

( if that's even possible, to make up for all his regrets. likely not, but he still intends to try. )

There once was a time when I would have accepted death with a heart draped in peace like a funeral pall, for I knew that upon the Acheron's far shore waited my dear friend, even if only a shade of the man he was in life. I knew that I would not long remain in the country of the living, and this thought was as a salve to my sore heart, wracked as I was with the loss of my beloved brother in arms.

Yet to stay in one another's company while still we have life in our limbs and breath upon our lips is surely the greater blessing...and it is one I fear to lose.

[The silence that hangs about him in the wake of this admission is thick with uncertainty for all that shall be left unfinished.]

Thus I sincerely wish that you have time enough to accomplish all that you wish ere you are claimed once more by the end of mortality, that you need not fear the day.

( once upon a time, he wouldn't have understood what it meant. to be ready for death, if not for the fear of losing time with someone he could never grow tired of. now he does, now he knows what it is like to feel not even decades could sate him, that there was no way to finally find himself content in the time he'd been granted with the person he loved.

and he already knows that he won't get that kind of time, a bitter truth but the truth all the same. would that really make facing death again easier, if she were already home?

yes. the answer is yes, though all the same he hopes not to face that day again any time soon. there's other things he wants to accomplish, and cold in the grave he will accomplish nothing. if he has another chance at living, he intends to make more of it than he had with the first. )

Thank you. I hope I might as well.

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