Music for today:
Rok Nardin - The Cube
https://youtu.be/P4PAfxmm2C0
Chapter 505: Uncertainty
Late Morning - Early Fall : Year 39 : Poseidon, Draconic Continent
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*Kwoooom* With every breath she drew, the mana in the cavern responded—rising and sinking, shifting and breathing.
No matter how close you looked, you couldn't feel where her aura was or wasn't—you couldn't see where it flowed, nor feel where it gripped.
After waking, it was like her presence had vanished entirely, but in reality.. it wasn't actually gone.
It was merely.. ambient... Ebbing and flowing with a pattern no living being had ever possessed.
Or at least.. none but one...
"How.. are you so sure..?" Speaking so softly her voice blended with the air, the sharpness in Hera's eyes fell. "How can you say Delphi was wrong so confidently..."
"Because it's what she believed, Hera." Sinking my eyes into hers, my head rose, and my posture firmed. "If Delphi knew of omnipotence, she wouldn't have needed help to begin with... If she knew she couldn't be wrong, she wouldn't have let us keep going."
"So.. why is she hiding it from me..?" Speaking through a quiver, her look grew pleading.. her eyes dancing within mine. "Why is it I only feel anxiety and uncertainty when I try to ask that part of myself for an answer? Why don't I feel hope?!" Snapping closer to me, her eyes lit with anger.
But that anger only made my eyes soften. "If the only thing you could see in your future was death.. would you share it with your future self?" Lowering my head, I coiled around her, ducking beneath her wing before walking out of the shallows to give my dissolved scales and flesh a chance heal. "The more you know about what she saw and understand why she made the decisions she did.. the more likely you are to take a path she's already seen."
Turning as I sat, I found Hera still at the edge of the water, continuing to hold it back as if I was still beneath her.
"For the same reason I reincarnated myself with the mind of a human who had never known the touch of mana, Delphi had us take this path because it gave her..." I stuttered, catching my tongue. "...It gave you a mind that isn't bound by the same definition of impossibility that limited her foresight to those hopeless futures."
*Woom* Finally releasing her grip on it, the water rushed back into the shallows, violently splashing over her legs.
But she refused to move, or even turn her head.
"The more she exposes to you, the more you will think like her, and the more your definitions will match hers." She just.. listened... "You are not meant to become Delphi, Hera... She's meant to become you.. just as Nott was meant to become me."
Silence gripped the air the moment my words ceased.
Standing in the shallows, Hera stood like a statue, her mind racing, but I didn't interrupt her.
I merely.. waited...
...Waited until she was ready.
Though.. it didn't take long...
"If that's so..." Finally speaking, her wings settled into her side, and her tail—held up with stress—settled. "What do I do about the other echoes scattered around the world?"
With her eyes, as gentle as could be, finally landing on me, my mind froze like cogs locking up in a machine. "There are.. other fragments..?"
Sitting down within the shallows, she nodded gently.. briefly facing the aquifer again. "I.. think so... It's hard to describe..."
"Where are they?"
She just shook her head though. "I have no idea..." Her eyes moved slowly—her focus distantly drifting. "I can just 'feel' that they exist."
"Do you want to search for them..?"
Briefly pausing, her eyes stopped. "N..No, I.. don't think it's time yet..." Eventually turning her head and returning her eyes to me, a visible light returned to them. "Right..?"
A glimmer I was worried had been lost beneath the waterfall of clarity. "Yeah." A glimmer of ignorance... "We can't rush that..." -Absorbing other fragments too soon would risk rewriting her mind...-
The one she just had, had nearly did it on it's own. -If Delphi didn't purposefully withhold things from it, it would have been too much...-
But it was just evidence that this wasn't a matter we could rush. -We need to let her soul settle first...- To let her come to terms with her new self before risking change to what made her who she was. "I'm sure we will run into them when it's time."
Nodding, her growing acceptance of uncertainty started snuffing the rampaging questions and demands tainting her mind until only theories and understandings were left.
"R..Right..." Understanding that answers were only going to make the future harder to tread. "Th..Thanks..." Slowly turning, finally stepping out of the shallows of the aquifer, she walked toward me with her head hung as if to keep my eyes off hers. "I know I don't say it enough, but thank you... If it weren't for you, I.. wouldn't exist... In more ways than one..."
Feeling her usual warmth returning, a comforting wave of relief moved through me. "You know you don't have to thank me for that-"
"But I do..." Stopping right before me, she sat down, keeping her eyes on her paws. "When you first arrived here.. on Delphi.. you fell in love with her... This world, its life, its cultures.. they are what captured you... Even as a goddess, I was only the subject of your love because you knew Delphi could see through me... You knew I was her voice.. a window through which you could reach her... So, then..." Finally lifting her eyes, holding her snout just off mine, a new spark made itself visible. "In this life.. why 'me'..?"
A spark of doubt she had always held that I just.. never recognized...
"Was it something you just carved into your soul to make sure you helped me on that mountain? Because I was just a necessary piece of the future you saw?" A doubt at whether the warmth she had always seen in my eyes was love for her... "Or was it because deep down, you hoped that this day would come... That I would become more than her avatar..."
In this life, I had always carried a warmth when I looked at her.. but deep down, long before she knew of her past identities, she held doubt at whether it was truly aimed at her...
However, now.. now that she could see she was the target.. she wondered if that had always been the case... "Why did you fall in love with 'me'..?"
Was it because I merely saw Delphi in her silhouette, or because... "You.. understood me..." My eyes hastily moved off hers as the words left my maw. "Even before I reawakened my memories.. before I learned who 'you' once were.. I felt it..."
Pausing, the air in the cavern shifted.
"I fell in love with this world again from the moment I hatched... Even with a mind completely detached from the feelings and memories I held as Nott, this world captured me..." Tensing, my claws dug into the ground before slowly easing. "But it wasn't until I met you that I didn't feel like an outsider—that I felt like there was a place I could actually belong..."
In her, I saw a reflection of parts of myself that even I had never known... Feelings, understandings, and burdens that I instinctively assumed no one else could understand...
When in reality, there was one.
"You were the only one that could see through me... The only being that didn't look at me like something different from themselves..." Lifting my snout again, our eyes finally met. "To you I wasn't a monster, a child, or some unfathomable being... To you.. I was a peer... Someone that truly understood me at a time when I hardly understood myself.. and.. made me feel deserving of calling this world my home..."
Watching the ripples of mana within her eyes, my tongue got caught in my throat.
There was so much more I wanted to say, but.. I couldn't speak it. No words could formulate it without misunderstanding...
So I just.. kissed her.
It was a simple action.. a brief movement that only lasted an instant, but.. it told her what I wanted to say.
Her doubt and uncertainty just happened to spread to me after I did it.. questioning if it was the right thing to do before she lowered her head to do the same.. to kiss me again.. and again...
Until.. our uncertainties were dissolved within memory.. and we made our first step toward the future together...
...Tail coiled in tail...
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