Logs:Of Hope and Heart (Or, Some Needed Clarity)

Of Hope and Heart (Or, Some Needed Clarity)
Dramatis Personae Damien, Joshua, Kavalam, Lucien, Scott, Sera
In Absentia	2024-07-28 "If you'd just take the proper time to tend to them well, how much brighter would your future be?" (washing off some tension.)
Location <FAE> Otherworld
The inky black pool is, currently, burping up a tarry bubble whose ominous glorp is entirely at odds with the intoxicatingly inviting perfume rising up from the surface. Kavalam is giving it a deeply suspicious look where he's crouched by the side of the water(?). "You are pulling on my leg, no? How do you wash hope. How do you wash courage. Those are not things you can scrub." It's hard to tell if Damien is joking or not; with full belly and some rest he's looking bright-eyed and bushy-winged again and the starlight in his deep dark eyes fairly glimmers with mirth. "You all believe in such ludicrous things like borders and money but this is too far? Of course they're real things, how else do you think they get so dingy and tarnished when life's pains batter them about? If you'd just take the proper time to tend to them well, how much brighter would your future be?" "... I guess it cannot hurt, anyway." A little of the skepticism is ebbing out of Kavalam's expression, and he straightens. He's half turning -- looking past Damien to the rest of their party at the other side of the glade. "And I think several here could use the dip." --- "Those myths are very overblown." Damien is saying this insistent and just the slightest bit miffed. The fruit he's holding out doesn't exactly resemble a passionfruit, but it's close enough to inspire the comparison. "Most of the food here won't bind you. It's really less the food itself and who is offering it to you that tends to engender those kinds of situations." Joshua's mouth has twisted to one side. "S'not that, I --"He's looking distrustfully at the fruit -- not the one Damien is holding, but the ones still left on the tree in front of them. Several are ripe, plump and speckled and hanging low on the branches, but a good deal more, still green and growing, have not decided to settle down -- the young fruits are chasing each other playfully around the trunk, swinging from branch to branch, or napping under the shade of the leaves. "... no idea if this is kosher." --- "-- not that I'd ever like to try our luck with the Hunt again," perhaps just the fact that Scott is capitalizing it in his inflection speaks to how much he respects this foe, sitting cross-legged by the minty-scented pools and staring into its depths, skimming the fingers of one hand along the crystal-clear surface, suddenly choosing his words very carefully, like he's afraid he might be disparaging some dear friend of Damien's, "-- I can't put my trust in luck. -- not in luck alone. This time, it felt like the road rose to meet us, but --" his brow pinches over the visor, now scraped (mostly) clean of its brittle green crust, and he flicks the water(?) off his fingertips and settles it back on the ground beside him. Damien is watching Scott with an extraordinarily earnest expression, like he is taking fascinated notes on the entire concept of Planning Ahead. "Luck, here, tends to favor those with strong hearts and clear purpose. By the Physicks of our world it is nigh-inevitable that the road would rise to meet those riding out on such a noble mission." This doesn't sound like he is arguing against Scott's concerns, but mulling them through. "I am afraid my home works hard to resist being catalogued and charted, but --" He is rustling his wings beside him, and reaches down to pluck -- with a very slight wince -- one of his long leafy feathers from a wing. He dips it in the water before handing it to Scott -- it is still very much a leaf, feather-shaped and sharp-tipped, but somehow at the same time also an elegant gold-nibbed fountain pen, lacquered in a deep ruby shade with a leaflike engraving etched into the nib. "If you find yourself needing to think through your next steps, this weapon may still serve you well." --- Perhaps somewhere in all the scrubbing Sera has lost a bit of her prudishness, but even with her hair mostly dry she's still wearing only her trousers and the sash belt for her tunic wrapped around her chest like a tube top. She's sitting in a patch of sun trying to braid her hair, though her hands have gone still, now, as if she cannot spare the attention while also keeping this new swell of emotions contained. "This whole misadventure started because I wanted him to come home." She tugs at the tress of hair that's still multicolored even with the petals unwoven. "I didn't understand then, he had no home to go back to. I'm glad he has you." Her power may be well in hand, but some of the sorrow slips out into her voice, instead. "I just wish he also had a better version of us." She finesses that sorrow into dark amusement. "Cajoling him to sing 'Found' with me is either going to be really cathartic or deeply cruel." "I don't think he does, yet," Damien muses, his brows pinched in as he peers up at the trees overhead. "But I'm certainly working on it." When he looks back to Sera it is with a tilt of his head, quizzical. His tone is mild but, still, quite pointed, and from a human the sheer overwhelming intensity of his mind would be unfathomable but after all this time in Otherworld perhaps she has had to get quite used to the complete and mercurial shifts of Fae emotion -- right now it is pinballing hot and cold between a fierce compassion and a staggering disdain, with nothing in between. "There are few enough of us there to grant your wishes, sapling." His too-long fingers turn up, tip elegantly outward to the swirling strawberry-cream water behind Sera. "The better self you want will have to come from your own heart." --- Lucien has not bothered with any pretense of modesty, but perhaps that is largely due to the fact everyone else has recently been sent off home. He's still in the minty-clear water, wings looking even more strange in the glimmering purple light. He shakes them off as he pulls himself out to sit on the crystal edge of the pool, pushing wet hair back off of his forehead. "-- I don't want to put my family in this kind of danger again." He's no longer hesitant in his agreement, here. "I am ready to listen." "Hah. Family. The family that took you for granted? Murdered you and left you alone to suffer? What more do you owe them? I didn't see any of those family with the ones who came searching for you when you went lost." Did Lucien think he was done? Damien is gesturing with a wing from one pool to the next, with a very, no time to waste kind of imperiousness. "Clean yourself properly of the grime that family has left on you, and maybe you'll be ready to learn."