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Nebula ([personal profile] furibund) wrote2023-09-21 03:20 pm

inbox: kenos

To say she was full of anger was like saying that the universe was full of stars.
So much anger.
I couldn’t add that to the list.
So I let go.
COMMUNION ✦ ACTION ✦ OTHERS


COMMUNION

Communion with Nebula is as much an oxymoron as she sometimes is. It's the feeling of soft snow, gentle and embracing with its touch. A snow that feels too easy to fall into, like one's own nature. In the opposite extreme there's a fire that's searing to the touch - a constant thrum of anger. In this space, it encompasses all of it, though it's embers now. Embers that are quick to catch and burn and die again. For those who see into it enough it's in moments when she's angry - but most notable when she feels weak, when she struggles, when she worries.


This burning sensation fights ever with the cool nature of the snow. As if the anger isn't nature here and the fire is becoming more malleable in its embrace. Ever lingering, but faltering under the softness of that snow -

The snow is ever gentle and embracing, but lacks the cold (it is warm, it is self). But there is something that twists and coils in the sensation that is cold and empty. Something not alive is ever present, silent and moving, but is overwhelmed by the rest. It is not focus nor is it the all of here, but a moving part.

When Nebula speaks here it lacks the husky, mechanical sound her voice does in person. It's softer, but not warmer. It's just as conflicted and in this voice you know that this realm, in her mind, is the place she finds most comfort. Is the place she's far more willing to be herself than anywhere else: It's freedom. But the rage can burn up quickly, taking flight into sky-covered landscape. It feels like anger is the quickest thing to cling to and accept and even in this shared space any other (positive) emotions are in conflict of understanding.
redsoil: (pic#16220818)

[personal profile] redsoil 2024-01-31 04:20 pm (UTC)(link)
You know... I serve now as the knife, so that others can remain guardians. I have known both lives.

[ What he cannot tell Nebula, he realizes, is what he became after he was a guardian.

( A monster. A slaughterer of women and children, for no reason other than that he was weak and frightened and shattered and left to mourn himself, unable to strike against the man who had ripped him apart and left him to rebuild himself. To not even be able to do it right, or completely. )

He does pull his hand back, but no offense is taken. Everything about her is harsh and beautiful, and her resolve pricks in the back of his eyes and against the swallow of his throat. This is what he looks for, in people. Hayame embodies it so thoroughly, the strength of a warrior and the steadfastness of someone with honor, but the ability to do what they must, for people.

He wishes he was still like those two women. ( That he could articulate his admiration for them. That he could tell them: you are like my sister, my best friend, whom was once my greatest ally, and be without the mournful truth, that even his sister had turned her back on him when he needed her most. ) ]


Then, I will be honest with you in a way that I am not honest with those who I have taught to expect the worst of me: my only target is Yima. Not the people of Highstorm. But, I will mourn their deaths as they happen in war, once the war is over. And I will honor their endings, only when we can rest among those who are depending on us to be their protectors. To not give up. Because it is not about how much we lost.

[ Until then, he cannot flinch. Will not flinch. ]

Thank you, Nebula. I may not be a guardian god anymore, but you remind me what it was, to be one.
redsoil: — PLEASE CREDIT! (Default)

[personal profile] redsoil 2024-02-06 08:25 pm (UTC)(link)
[ She says: until all I could be was the knife, and mentions someone who forged her into it. She says: it was the people, my family that showed her another way. And he thinks that his family, his sister, his people, showed him the opposite path that she followed to her freedom. He followed his to power, too afraid and too injured to allow himself to be vulnerable when all of his cries and pleas for help went unheard. Ignored. She says, that there is always a choice, and Set cannot help the quiet, helpless feeling within him that reminds him he is not a mortal life. He has no choice, but to be what he was made for. Isolated, lonely, wicked. ]

— I was soft once, too.

[ The words come out flat, unpolished and empty.

A hollowness in his gaze and a tremble in his mouth, the twitch of his curled fingers as dark claws form from nailbeds like a cat that's just flexed its claws in defense.

]


The actions of my own family taught me how useless it was, to resist the destiny assigned me. At the very least, I can flex that destiny far enough and hard enough to be of benefit to Meridian. I was made for this, and that's okay.

[ His own wife had given his brother the power to ruin him, and his sister had turned her back on him as if he were a home-wrecking harlot. In the blood and despair, he had hoped his all-seeing mother, the night sky herself, would sweep him into her arms and weep for him. And she had been silent, silent as the dark, until he pursued his sister — and then the tears came for her, and her alone.

What a lesson that had taught him. ]


War is a complex system, and it is not the domain of knives alone. It also does not last, but when it lives, it breathes like a living entity [ he draws a breath in to emphasize that ] — and entities like me, cannot be powerful and free. I hope you appreciate your freedom, Nebula. It suits you well.

[ Set seems to mean it, standing where he does and looking upon her with such a strange expression. Before he adds, quick and almost unwillingly. As if gleaning something from how she speaks and where he can draw an almost empathetic parallel. ]

Even with all of that: I miss my sister, too. I wanted to make up with her, for so long... we hurt each other so much.
Edited 2024-02-06 20:26 (UTC)
redsoil: (pic#16810984)

1/2

[personal profile] redsoil 2024-02-09 09:04 pm (UTC)(link)
[ nebula you literally just said you were ripped apart whenever you were soft ]
redsoil: (pic#16220800)

[personal profile] redsoil 2024-02-09 09:19 pm (UTC)(link)
— Gamora?

[ He hasn't heard that name in some time, but it is a name he has a passing familiarity with. ]

I knew a Gamora. She was here during the Iconoclast Oracle, and gone too soon despite her strength of will.

[ The rest, though... yeah, it reminds him a lot of him and his sister, as well. Isis and he had been inseparable once; best friends, trusted confidants. They were the most alike out of their quartet of siblings, hot-headed and passionate, sensitive and capable of the most destructive of feats without hesitation or mercy. Her husband had hurt him, and instead of looking upon him with sympathy ( or even pity, he was so desperate as to accept pity at that point — ), she blamed him. As if he was a common harlot.

So, he'd hunted her for millennia, and ripped apart every woman he came in contact with! Because every one of them reminded him of her in some way, and she needed to be punished for abandoning him. 8) 8( ]


Nebula, you... [ Another individual might apologize here, might tell her that she didn't deserve the pain she went through; the depersonalization and dissociation that she experiences echoes faintly within him, like an old numbness that he's now forgotten even exists. ( His body is a weapon, however he has to use it. Every inch of him designed for battles, to be used and wielded. Not for him, never for him. The only time it was ever his was when he held his wife, his son. And they were never truly his, he came to find out. )

"You are not made for this." Ah, and only if that were true.

The experience of a god ( for belief in him aside, he was one — ) was so different, especially Set's. Unborn, made in the image of rivalry and evil, wickedness and disorder, he struggled with a sensitive heart and a sweetness unbecoming of something so terrible, something made to give reason and shape to other things. The redheaded stepchild of the universe.

In Communion, he releases the sands. Blows them away to the ends of his mind so that they do not catch in her limbs and grind harshly at her, leaving instead the stillness of a dark, empty plane that ripples as if the surface of the water. ]


I will try to make a choice that helps us all. [ Not a good one, or the right one, just the one that does the most for Meridian and his allies. That helps them get home. ] I could use your advice, if you want to look over the weapon's design.