2024-03-19: 1 - Faith and Betrayal
- Cutscene: Faith and Betrayal
- Cast: Elisa Kafim
- Where: Luna, Earth Orbit
- Date: March 19, 2024 (December 2, 0098)
- Summary: Elisa Kafim retreats from the Arctic to somewhere distant enough that she can think in peace. She comes to a decision.
A cloud of dark energy, dust, and green light bursts into being on the desolate plain. Out of it steps Elisa Kafim, still half-frozen, dressed in her deep black robes from where she'd been doing her Work not long ago, to test the Threshold Queen. To protect Yuliana.
...To speak, as it happened.
The gray, rocky ground stretches out far around her, into craters and hills, as she looks up from the dust towards the Earth, visible as a great blue orb cradled by white clouds.
Elisa is on the Moon, now. She stares down at the planet that has vexed her so. Here, without atmosphere and without air to unnecessarily fill her lungs and warmth to flush her skin, Elisa Kafim looks down on a planet full of life. Her lips curl as she looks, recalling the things that girl had said to her and to her wife.
"...Empress," she wonders, looking up from the Earth into the limitless expanse. "Have you created me only to betray me? ...To betray Our wife?" No one can hear, of course; there is no air to carry her words. The Void is not in this place.
Yuliana is not in this place.
Elisa shakes her head, then, and stretches, rolling her shoulders back and working off some of the ice that still clings to her body.
"To understand the 'mortal' world," she muses. "To understand this Earth..."
"I am not the first, to come to it from the outside." Thoughtfully, she turns, looking out over the Lunar surface.
"...Yes," Elisa decides. "I know what I must do next."
She takes another step, and another billowing cloud of darkness appears to envelop her. The step after that takes her to a balmy place, a secret island in the Orb archipelago, in front of a beautiful house.
Elisa does not knock. She steps up to the welcome mat and opens the door, raising her voice.
"Mother," she intones. "Father."
Elisa steps through, and closes the door behind her.
"...Let us speak."
There is much for them to discuss.
Continued in 2024-03-19: An Ancient Fear, A New Approach