queenofheartsrp | iv ⊰video-action⊱

iv ⊰video-action⊱

[Anyone who knows Fela knows very well how much she likes to sunbathe. Considering how little she sleeps at night, with her mind busy roaming the dreaming, her frequent habit of daytime naps is not so very strange. She can often be found near her house, laid out on the warm clay with the sun spilling over her face.

Today, however, there is ocean. She does not remember the last time she saw the ocean in the waking world, but she knows that its beauty is featured often in the sleeping fantasies of those she cares for. And it is beautiful. The water glitters beneath the full sun and the sand is silky beneath bare feet. She shields her eyes for a moment as she comes upon the dunes, looking out over the scene with eagerness, feeling the breeze kicked up by the tide as it sends her hair and her skirts fluttering.

She unties the long skirt from around her waist as she heads out across the sand in her top and simple colaless. The top, however, will not be lasting long. It is already quite revealing, covering only the barest essentials for polite company, and in its bright print had probably already been mistaken for a cloth bathing top already. She unties it without much care, making a pile of clothes that she weights down against the wind with the many colorful bracelets and necklaces she wears, as well as the beaded purse she keeps across her body.

She heads down to the water then, laying out in the wet sand where the tide can keep her cool and wet under the sun. She doesn't intend to go anywhere else today. Although there is one thing missing, which she calls to the vine to attend to:]

Mahalia? [She's rolled onto her stomach, wet hair spilling across her face. She pushes it off with a laugh. As she moves, the sun catches her skin and the water and she really is absolutely glowing.] Are you coming to join me?

[As the tide rolls back, it becomes a bit more obvious that it was not just the water glittering so brilliantly. The wild effects of the water have deemed that their visitor be gifted with scintillating scales, nearly translucent except for the sheen of colors that flash every time they catch the light. A rainbow of color overlaying already golden skin. But perhaps you will have to get a bit closer to see them in detail.]

It is lovely either way, but you know I would enjoy your company. Well, really, anyone is invited.

[She laughs again, wiggling her fingers in greeting at the mirror.]

[[ooc; is Vee blatantly abusing the fact that her PB is a sexy sexy swimsuit model? Yeah. Yeah she is.]]

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Hm.

[She hums softly, moving to watch the way the ship's bow parts the waters in frothing white ripples. She has not put much thought into what it might be useful for a military leader to know, would not come up with much from her limited memories, but... she does not mean to denigrate Sephiroth's position with a dismissal. It is of importance to her, and so Fela considers it. A leader who needed to move her men, quickly and efficiently. Always efficiently...

She brushes a long lock of hair out of her face, watching the water sparkle, and knowing that the light is being thrown up onto her strange scales as well. She wonders if the general would find it a vision or an inconvenience.]

Walking seems so much more familiar. [She has never been in a boat before, nor a car nor an airplane and perhaps her body knows it.] You must see so many wonderful places...

[As she suspected, the winds are favorable. Of course the Gardens would encourage a pleasant sailing trip. She steers the craft toward the village. She enjoys the sailing more than she has enjoyed any aspect of the beach previously, as it requires some focus and skill.

She listens to Fela, yet is silent for a few moments before responding. The sea air feels good on her face, the wind and a light spray of water.]

There was once a young woman here who I spoke to briefly before she disappeared. She said that my world must be beautiful, and I suppose that it is. I do travel a great deal, and I have seen much, from the southern jungles to the northern ice. I take in all I see, and it is of great interest to me. I wish to know and see everything.

Yet wherever I go, I find nothing more admirable than my men and my comrades.

[She turns to look at Sephiroth with a really very bright smile. So she does have her own sense of romanticism after all. Fela is happy to have seen it.]

I am sure they value your respect in kind.

[Perhaps she is not sure, but the woman does cut quite a figure, looks to her tasks and her values unwaveringly. Perhaps care and admiration made for a good leader. She would like to think so.]

[Perhaps her friends gave her a sense of honor and a sense of poetics, but her boundless curiosity is her own, as is her belief in her duty and her men. She fights for them, and that is why they follow her unwaveringly.]

They do. A leader and her men must trust and respect each other. No battle is fought alone.

[They draw ever closer to their destination, and she studies it curiously.] I suppose the village is unfamiliar to you. Or have you obtained memories of the place from your sister?

[She continues to smile, even if she looks down quietly. It's such a lovely sentiment to place upon such an ugly thing.]

She stayed there, with another of our sisters.

[It was a pleasant summer memory, something that would stay with a girl all through her life as a reminder of younger days. Fela was not precisely envious of it, but she recognized the poetry there.]

[To Sephiroth, war is natural, a fact of human life, and as she excels in it, she takes pleasure in the challenge--though a good leader fights in such a way that the loss of life is less, and not greater.]

Now you can see it for yourself.

Do you have many sisters? [There is a note of interest in her voice. Others' families make her curious, as she does not have one of her own.]

[She is happy to see, to feel the walkways under her own feet and in her own hands.]

I am told there are twelve of us siblings, who still live.

[There others are dead and she has to think then, to try to remember all the names.]

Six boys and six girls. I am the eldest.

[The ocean does seem to be stable, even this far out. She will have to go farther, alone, later.]

A large family, then. I have none. [Though there is something she knows that she is not meant to know, but she would not speak of that. It is not a family.]

[She took note of the fact that Fela said that she was told about her siblings.] Do you forget even your siblings? Or is it simply that you have been separated?

I do forget, but I also do not believe I have met many of them.

[She watches Sephiroth's face, wondering if she would like the large family. Or perhaps her soldiers do well enough, Fela does not know if such things can be compared, she has never been a soldier.

She smiles faintly.]

Our father is also a dreamchaser, he traveled much. We each have different mothers.

[Though she enjoys the company of her fellow SOLDIERs and finds them generally easier to relate to than ordinary citizens, Sephiroth has only felt a truly close connection to Angeal and Genesis. They feel related to her somehow, like brothers, although of course they are not.] That explains the large number of siblings. [Not that it would have been impossible otherwise, but that is a more likely explanation.]

And what is your mother like? Do you remember her? [The subject of fathers does not interest her as much.]

I do not remember her, I have been told she is dead.

[Despite the lack, she still shows a certain amount of sadness. Family was of great importance to her and a piece of it had been lost, just as her other siblings had been. It was a cruel world she lived in, everything she or her father touched would be hated by association, tainted by glitter and worthy of extermination. There was only one thing worse than to be a witch yourself, and that was to sympathize with them.

Her mother had died horribly and it is a blessing that she does not know the details of it.]

But there is a picture of her. The paintings are my father's, but Mahalia created them here. She has blonde hair, and a bright smile, bright blue eyes.

[She cannot, however, remember her name at the moment. She looks off over the water with a frown.]

[Sephiroth nods. She has no condolences to offer, because to her such words seem meaningless.] My mother is dead as well. She died when I was born. [She says this without any discernible emotion. It was made abundantly clear to her that her birth was the cause of her mother's death, but if she was supposed to feel responsible, she does not. Complications during childbirth are not uncommon.]

You are fortunate. I have never seen my mother's face. I know only that her name was Jenova. [And of what importance are names?]

[Fela agrees in that, at least. The condolences are rather meaningless, time cannot be altered. Still, her sadness sharpens a bit that Sephiroth is as calm and clinical in relating the maternal lack as in all else.]

I'm sure she was very beautiful.

[A compliment to Sephiroth really, but Fela does not watch the other woman's face to see if she understands it.]

Perhaps. I will never know. [She is sure he will not tell her if he has not already, giving her only the name, like a puzzle with no answer. She does not find the compliment in Fela's words. It is not that she has never been called beautiful, but she did not find it meaningful, much like words of condolence.]

I assume the sister that is with you does not deal in dreams as you do, if she remembers your world. What of your other siblings? It is inherited, in a way, is it not?

[She's quiet for a little while, considering family. Her mother whose face she can only see in painting, her father who is only a photograph on a wall, siblings just as distant. Mahalia says she can feel them, attached to them by threads that the sonando has obscured from Fela's senses.]

Mahalia and the others have power of their own, but it is different. The sonando chooses who it makes holy, others it simply keeps as slaves. But we are our father's children, if we choose to follow him, we are accepted.

[A path of smoke that few are aware enough to follow, that even few enough are brave enough to take.]

I am told that only one of my sisters has made that choice. Her name is... [What is it... She chews on her lip pensively, hoping it will come.] Luz. Her name is Luz. She and I are the oldest of the girls. And none of our brothers have followed, not fully.

[It is an interesting concept, most unlike anything she knows.] So there are other kinds of magic in your world.

Holy. There is some religious aspect to this practice? What do you mean by saying that it makes others slaves?

They do not wish for any magic at all, that is why there is war.

[Why her mother is dead for carrying a glittering child, why Fela had lived in fear, and why Mahalia was kept in the North; their entire family spread apart by the devastation.]

And dreams are hope in war, we take them with us wherever we travel. Some welcome us. [She shrugs, the others would Preventors, and there was little they liked to kill more than a Bohrre-na, because it still the peoples' hope.] We are chosen of the sonando, to others it is only a drug, and they consume it until all else is gone.

[She is thoughtful for a moment.] I can see how that would cause conflict. That is unfortunate.

In my world, magic is not so unusual, and not something anyone seeks to wipe out, but few people in my world have innate magical abilities. There is a substance known as Materia that allows us to manipulate the natural world.

I have a friend who says one must embrace one's dreams. [Other than paraphrasing Angeal, Sephiroth has little to say about dreams, moving on to the somewhat less abstract, if related, subject of the sonando.] Mako is similar in some ways. Those who cannot withstand it may sicken and die. It can bestow great strength upon those exposed to it, but it is also a poison.

[~~So many typos....~~ She finds it a strange comparison to make, really. Her first impulse is to reject it entirely, but Sephiroth takes the time to listen to her, and so she takes a moment to consider it.

She wonders how the mako chooses its worthy champions. Perhaps strength is all.]

Perhaps things would be improved, if magic could be touched by all.

[She doesn't know, really. She is willing to accept everyone, glittering or not, it would be preferable, in her eyes, if the world followed suit.]

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