"Perhaps that's because they don't know the destination."[break][break]

The hour had grown unforgivably late. If she had someone to return home to, by now, they would have reached out to her. Any loved one awaiting her would have known to be concerned for her safety, though they'd never have guessed at the nature of the danger she experienced now.[break][break]

But of course there was no one waiting for her. BARNABY FINCH, for all he gave her the affection she craved, was consumed with his own endeavors tonight. Whether or not they included THEO BECKETT, she tried not to dwell upon for too long.[break][break]

No one existed who could warn her to depart and leave this room, and to stop asking questions she didn't want to know the answer to.[break][break]

Curiosity flickered in her bright emerald eyes, stronger than self-preservation.[break][break]

"Do you? Or are you stumbling blindly, too?"

[attr="class","ooc"] FERNANDO SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"Tales of following deities into the realm of the dead always warn you never to look behind you."[break][break]

The idea of Tapu Fini as their guide floating in the darkness somehow neither comforted nor horrified her. It had the terror of the unknown, but what was unknown was neither good nor evil. Simply unpredictable.[break][break]

She bit her lip, feeling as adrift in this conversation as any ferry parting the mists of the Border.[break][break]

"You must trust Tapu Fini a great deal, despite--" how she's tortured you "--everything she's done."[break][break]

She still wasn't sure she trusted Tapu Fini, despite all that the Guardian had done to prove its intentions to her.

[attr="class","ooc"] FERNANDO SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"I find it impossible to believe you predicted this," she said, shaking her head. "Not even you, I think, could have imagined all that's happened since you lost her."[break][break]

The reminder of his bravado calmed her, in a way. It reminded her he was fallible, and thus as capable of putting on a front as anyone else. There was nothing to be afraid of from him, of course. He didn't understand Tapu Fini so well as he thought he did.[break][break]

Or else why would she be standing here at all?[break][break]

"You couldn't have dreamed she'd have chosen me."

[attr="class","ooc"] FERNANDO SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"All right, then. Tell me. What is it she wants?"[break][break]

He didn't owe her any answers, and she hardly expected him to give them to her.[break][break]

If anything, he should be the one confronting her and playing the interrogator. He should have driven her out of his home, screamed at her for stealing his Avatarship, sworn revenge for all the violence she and her people had done to him.[break][break]

What was his manner of consistency, then? Nothing in him matched what she'd expected.[break][break]

"The man must be lonely," the amused voice of declan walsh carried back to her, triumphant and cruel.[break][break]

"She had a paragon of the League. Hoenn's greatest martyr. What a fickle deity she is," Elisabeth commented, staring at him, "to then choose someone marked for the region's ruin, after."

[attr="class","ooc"] FERNANDO SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

He knew nothing.[break][break]

He had to know nothing. All his confidence, all his arrogance and surety -- he truly knows nothing of her, Elisabeth thought, and when he left she resisted the urge to shout that discovery at him.[break][break]

"Don't you understand? She wants to torture you," all of her wanted to scream, fantasizing about slamming doors and shattering plates to force his notice. "Why else choose me? Why else be kind to a woman who only means your Ruination?"[break][break]

But like so many fights she'd known, this fantasy ended with nothing but indifference from the man who aggravated her most, and another deafening silence of her own creation.[break][break]

All of her suddenly felt a bone-wearying exhaustion, one that carried such heavy fatigue over her thoughts she scarcely could understand its weight. Facing Tapu Fini again, she held the resignation of someone who had given up arguing long before believing the fight had any chance of being won.[break][break]

"Balance," she echoed to it. Disbelief radiated through that single word with unmistakable scorn.

[attr="class","ooc"] FERNANDO SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

As swift and as sudden as the impulse of vengeance could be, it cut open wounds that festered: fertile ground left for grudges and resentment to rot.[break][break]

If she hadn't been so reckless, if she hadn't given herself over to emotion in her weakness, would she have known resentment so strongly?[break][break]

If she had been a woman capable of indifference, Wo-chien would have chosen another vessel to drink its fill. It had no use for those who turned their back on remorse, guilt, shame, and self-loathing.[break][break]

Vengeance was only the path to further suffering, as seen through its greedy ochre eyes.[break][break]

But when she looked into Tapu Fini's hypnotic stare, its desire shone differently.[break][break]

"Does that work on me?" she laughed softly, the pink mist curling around her with the comfort of a mother's embrace. "It doesn't feel the way I think it should. It doesn't..."[break][break]

Her voice trailed off, and her gaze bored through the wall where she knew its former Avatar had retreated in his solitude.[break][break]

"I don't know what you want, exactly," she murmured, a conversation only meant for the two of them. "But I won't serve you blindly, do you understand? I'm still myself."[break][break]

The memory of freya morningstar under Wo-chien's thrall haunted her still. That uncomfortable third-party perspective of her own Avatarship had been drawn in sharp relief, etched with permanent warning in the murals of her mind.[break][break]

"I'm still myself," she repeated, quieter this time. Until she couldn't tell who she was trying to convince anymore.

[attr="class","ooc"] FERNANDO SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]