2024-07-20: In Safety
- Log: In Safety
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Elisa Kafim
- Where: Silent Castle, Kaffeklubben Islandd
- OOC - IC Date: July 20, 0099
- Summary: New residents arrive at the Silent Castle, prepared to take shelter within its walls as part of the Calling. One has a chance to meet Yuliana and Elisa both briefly; the Kafims then have a talk...
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81RqEnvczV8 CHVRCHES - Lies
And with the invitation, they have come.
The Gao family, Fang and Long, their grandmother Meilei and their three daughters, Shufen, Xiulan and Yaling; Larisa and Zinaida Isakova, and their adopted son and daughter, Pavel and Anastasiya; Makara Mau, whose disabilities led them to fear capture for their anti-State journalism; Forte Foxglove, Salvacion, Borislav Xii, and Jadgit Singh, Cyber-Newtype escapees from various REA labs who fear for their continued safety despite Cathedra's efforts; and Soth, Sona, and Suchart, a trio of orphans who banded together only to be taken to the Castle for their own safety. (They've been placed under Makara's care, with the assistance of the Castle.)
It's Salvacion who calls out, seeing Yuliana's robes from behind down the hall. "Great Oracle--!" She cries, as she rushes up to meet her. She is a round Filipino woman, brown hair bobbed around her ears and soulful brown eyes; they look a little troubled, as Yuliana turns to face her, but mostly they're grateful. She grasps Yuliana's hands, when she pulls them from her handmuff clutching one in both of hers. "I -- I just got here," she explains, a touch breathlessly. "Oh, Oracle, it's wonderful! No-- no one could knock down -- get in here! It's really a big, a sturdy a, a Castle!"
Yuliana looks beside her, for a moment, before her endless eyes find hers -- and she smiles. "Please," she offers her, as she reaches out, to shift her grasp, clasping both Salvacion's hands between hers. They're only warm because of the fur muff and her medications, but that doesn't matter. "You are in my home... you may call me Yuliana. You are one of the rescued, are you not?" She knows; she sees the empty spaces, around her. She asks, anyway.
"Y--yes," Salvacion says, tears springing to her eyes. "When your people intercepted my transport, I -- oh, I'm so embarrassed, I fought them! But -- but I'm well now," she insists, shaking her head. "Except, except the doctors gave me drugs to make it better, and -- and the Calling said the drugs made me worse, but -- but I all fall apart now, oh, I'm sorry..." Her emotions are evidently labile, too, the way she tears up.
"Shh," Yuliana assures her, squeezing her hands gently. "They do it so often... with no care for us. How long did they take you, Salvacion?" For of course she's learned all the names of their new residents, already.
"I was - fourteen, so, um, nineteen -- twenty years," Salvacion trips over the timeline, glancing to the side as she thinks. "Y--yes, twenty by now, twenty."
"Amidst the One Year War," Yuliana says, quietly, her eyes narrowing. She's an early model, too, just like her... and so Yuliana slips her hands out from around Salvacion's, to wrap them around her, instead, embracing her tightly. "They broke you to bits," she says, because it's what they did to her. It is -- like empathy, anyway. "But you're safe now. You are happy to stay here?" She asks, pulling back, her hands on her shoulders.
"Yes! Yes, of course!" Salvacion says, her hands clasping in front of her, instead. "It feels so strange, but this must be what safety feels like... I don't hear them, any more. In my heart." And Yuliana watches her, assessing, for a moment, only to be surprised when Salvacion goes on: "It's such a relief! I-I never wanted it! All ripped, torn open! Felt them die and die and die and, why'd they do that? Just so the funnels worked? They weren't so much, there's other weapons, and when I shot them they screamed on the inside! The others didn't hear it, but I did! I always did!" She grasps the front of Yuliana's robes, her head hanging down; she's shorter than her, so she's quite effectively hidden by the motion. "I don't hear it any more," she says, her voice choking. "My tummy's all in knots, but it's quiet, now. Quiet."
Yuliana pats her back, quiet herself, for a moment, as she faces up to it. Another woman might have told her that being open wasn't just a curse, that there was good as well as evil in people's hearts. Another woman might have guided Salvacion to realise that reaching out to the feelings of others could help her heal instead of suffer. Another woman...
... isn't here. Yuliana is, and she says, "it will always be Silent, around me. You don't have to worry. When I leave, that intrusion will return to you... but in the Silent Castle, it ought be muted, even then." She keeps stroking her back, reassuringly. "It's all thanks to my wife's defensive mechanisms, protecting us, here. Our High Priestess. I know you see her less than you see me, but I expect you'll show deference to her, when you've occasion to speak. Yes?" Salvacion nods, and Yuliana smiles. "Good. Our High Priestess will keep us safe, so trust in her, Salvacion. She will always, always protect us."
Well, one of them, anyway.
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
Elisa has read their names. It is possible that she will remember them.
Elisa largely leaves the matter of welcoming the new arrival to others--Yuliana, for instance, who adores it so. Adores them? Well, one of those. Regardless, the High Priestess will keep them safe, and it is time now for safety.
Elisa sweeps into the room in her robes, stepping around the corner and regarding first Yuliana, with a smile, and then Salvacion with a thoughtful look.
"I see that you are settling in," Elisa says.
Did she hear them, down the hall?
"And already my Oracle's care finds you..."
Elisa's steps click along the stones. She is in heels.
"I am pleased to see you safe."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
It's Yuliana who hears Elisa, first, well-attuned to the click-click of her heels against the stone. (Salvacion looks surprised she didn't know she was coming, looking up to her when her Oracle does, too.) "Elya!" Yuliana chirps, releasing her fellow Cyber-Newtype to hurry over to her, throwing her arms and her tentacles around her in a great bear-hug. (If bears had tentacles. Can bears have tentacles? Questions for later.)
She turns, a hand still resting on Elisa's arm, to indicate Elisa to their new arrival with a warmer smile. "Have you yet met? This is our High Priestess... my darling wife, Elisa. Elya, this is Salvacion -- she's just now arrived. One of the rescued." She gestures, to her, still smiling. "She was just telling me her story, weren't you, dear?"
"Y--yes," Salvacion stammers, dipping her head. "It was -- was it this year? No, last year -- the doctors were running away from a, um, what was it? A Cathedra operation? Since -- since they were closing in. So they were moving us, again. Again and again. Lots of moving, the last year -- two years. Two years, moving all around." She's evidently having trouble pinning her thoughts down... in a way which seems similar to Yuliana's flighty thoughts, notably. "But your people found our transport, they -- they got me out, um -- I think I hurt some of them, b-but I didn't mean to. I -- I said sorry."
How awful it is when they use brainwashing.
"T-thank you very much for letting me stay," she adds, bowing at the waist. "I -- I don't want to interrupt, um -- I'll see you later, right?"
"Right," Yuliana assures her, smiling.
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
Bears can have tentacles if Elisa works a little bit and believes in herself.
It's actually pretty easy.
But Elisa smiles at Salvacion, showing the correct number of teeth. "Hello, Salvacion."
To be near Elisa is not always a reassuring experience, but she has no psychic aura of horror that can be detected; she's simply... not quite here, all the time. Hardly something that this woman would take trouble with, is it?
"I see," Elisa says, an puts on a sympathetic face. "It is well. We understand the risks, in rescuing others. To put oneself out into the world is to chance harm..."
"Those operatives who choose this know this." Nevermind the ones who don't choose it; they all choose it, right?
"You are welcome. Stay, and make a home. Be well, Salvacion."
She turns to Yuliana, after a nod to the woman who said she was leaving.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Elisa is unsettling -- unsettlingly perfect, with the correct number of teeth, no scars on her skin, and a gaze which never seems to properly settle on Salvacion. But in hushed tones they say she is a God walking amongst men, and so Salvacion understands well why Yuliana would insist she offer the proper respect.
It's not troubling at all; she's just overawed.
"Y--yes," she says, of course. "There's always a chance. Thank you for your wisdom, High Priestess. A--and thank you," she adds, again. "Thank you for inviting me to your home. B--be well!"
Salvacion hurries out; she'd hate to interrupt two wives reuniting, after all.
And when they're alone again, Yuliana drapes across her wife, reaching up to cup her cheek. "They're all filing in," she says, looking up to her, adoringly. "Our halls will be more lively, soon. Isn't it nice, Elya? They were all so desperate for our safety..."
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
"You are welcome."
Salvacion hurries out, and Elisa watches Yuliana, smiling down at her and leaning her cheek into Yuliana's hand. "Ah..."
"Yes," Elisa says. "This is well. They will be... interesting, to have around. And of course I can best assure their safety while they are here."
Pause.
"Provided that they stay within their limits. Only those I have selected can be allowed into the North Wing. I hope that they remember this."
"For their sake, too."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana smiles, feeling Elisa's cheek in her palm, and she lets her own weight sink in against her wife's chest. Her eyes drift trustingly, contentedly closed, for a moment, as her own cheek rests against Elisa's shoulder, and she feels her heart beat slow and steady.
"Yes," she murmurs, endless eyes blinking open to look up to her wife again. "We will impress upon them the importance of respecting their boundaries... they'll not encroach on your territory, zhenushka. Particularly at first, they may not understand..."
Her hand drops down, to Elisa's opposite shoulder, holding herself close to her wife. "That reminds me," she says, softly. "Is it time to offer myself, again...?" To her scrying-orb, kept in that ominous chamber in the North Wing.
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
Elisa holds onto Yuliana. She is aware that her heart beats rather faster. ...That's good. It should continue.
But Elisa inclines her head. "They may not," she agrees. "But the cold should remind them to avoid it. ...There are some who might be ideal, for that place. Some who could learn my ways."
"We shall see."
A pause, then. "No, not yet." She considers Yuliana for a moment. "Is there something you wish to discuss?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Yes," Yuliana agrees. "Some may suit you, zhenushka. Keep an eye on them... and see if any show promise." She sees no problem with offering their people to her wife; why would she?
Elisa knows how her heart ought to beat, after all.
Yuliana sighs, sinking deeper into her wife, nuzzling her nose into her neck. "All right," she says, obligingly, and of course she isn't relieved, because offering herself to her wife is no burden. She must just have not wanted to wander into the coldest part of the Castle, today. She lays a kiss at the base of her ear, nose tickling at the feathering there, and pulls back to look to her wife again.
"I was just thinking," she says, unsurprised that Elisa could tell, "how strange it is, Elya. Three years ago, I would have sooner slit her throat than invited her to my home... I believed them, when they told me who I was angry at." The REA, that is, redirecting her rage from her persecutors onto her fellow victims. "I still look at the spaces between someone like her and think -- it makes me angry," she says, her fingers tightening briefly in Elisa's robes. "So angry that it's there and I can't see it. But they are truly unfortunate people, forced to transgress on others that way... these days, I pity them." Is that better?
She sighs, and adds: "Our stories... aren't so different. I'm one, too... but I opened to a different realm. It was so hard to accept that..."
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
"They could go far," Elisa says. "Like Ingvar..." The first of her true apprentices. But then, they can go farther still than most of these likely can. All the same...
"We shall see."
But Elisa notices Yuliana's reaction. She will have to consider that, for later. For now, however, she smiles at the tickling feeling--not that she is tickled. Her body's impulses are too slow and deliberate for that.
But how strange? Elisa recalls that, of course. She recalls very well how Yuliana felt about such beings. "You did," she says. "It was even plausible. ...That is the nature of such pernicious things."
"It is so kind of you, to look past such anger." Not that it is bad to be angry, of course. "...Pity is a kindness, too. You give it so well."
A pause. "Yes. ...The same means were used, at least in large part. But with you, they found something greater than they realized. Something that, in time, would destroy them."
"Empathy..."
"Well, to see yourself in others is well and good. But do not forget how special you are."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana laughs, and says, "... it's strange that I've no head for it all, isn't it?"
Yuliana mustn't practice the Arts. Even the rituals made for her take so much out of her; she is too open to the Void, too vulnerable to its Power. That Devi could not fell Yuliana with the spells Elisa gave her does not mean she is immune to it -- only that Elisa's forethought is peerless, and the relationship more complex than a butcher would take it.
It's just a passing thought, of course; she is fickle, and moves quickly to the next.
It was plausible, Elisa says, and Yuliana nods, humming assent. Of course it was plausible -- how else would she believe it so readily? But Elisa praises her kindness, the kindness in her pity, and Yuliana smiles.
She does like to be (seen to be) kind.
The same means...
But she is greater than they were, and she nods, again, looking up to her wife. "There's no one else like me," she agrees, all too easily. "That's why they're so desperate to claim me... they say they wish to execute me, but they wouldn't, not really. Not unless it was in service of dissection... they've made those Psychoframe suits their aces in the hole, and so anyone seeking to usurp the others would desire me and my natural negation."
Her nose wrinkles, and she sniffs: "Not that they haven't tried to make technology to replace me, with those Psycho-Jammers and the like. They couldn't make more of me, so they just made a Mobile Suit to reach the same ends... tch, I'm really just a weapon, to them." She's bitter.
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
"...No," Elisa answers Yuliana. But she doesn't elaborate. Instead, she smiles. "Besides, this is another reason to have me, yes?"
She mustn't.
The same, and different. "Indeed," Elisa agrees with Yuliana and herself that her wife is unique. She is not so sure that Yuliana's conclusions are all accurate, of course; she is all too aware that some might find that the danger Yuliana represents outweighs the potential gain. ...But there is no sense in distressing her wife about it.
"They have," Elisa agrees. "...They do not understand."
"They are limited, small-minded. But we are not, my darling."
"No, we are not."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"No... of course not," Yuliana agrees, with just the briefest pause as she aligns Elisa's dismissal of the question with the fact that she raised it at all. That moment of unease fades, as she smiles. "I'm so lucky to have you, boyevaya podruga," she praises her eternal ally in all her battles, instead. "I couldn't do this alone."
Not like this, certainly.
Perhaps she needs to believe that she's too valuable to be killed; it was all the comfort she had, sometimes, that she was too special, too unique, too valuable to sacrifice. (It's why it hurt so much, when they decided to sacrifice her, anyway.) The thought of dying certainly distresses her... so why would Elisa torment her beloved wife so?
"They don't understand anything," Yuliana grouses, nosing her face in against Elisa's neck to hide it again. "Not like us. Not like us. I'm not just a weapon, am I? Not just some tool to be used..."
And does she realise what she's done, saying 'just', as if she's more than simply those awful things -- rather than not at all?
<Pose Tracker> Elisa Kafim has posed.
Elisa smiles. "I love you, my darling."
But Elisa will not crush all of Yuliana's illusions, certainly not here and now, today. Yuliana's mortality troubles her as well, troubles her greatly, for reasons beyond... Simple affection. Simple love.
Such a thing is anathema to her.
Elisa strokes Yuliana's hair. "You are not," Elisa says, and does not correct this either; does Yuliana notice it? Elisa does.
"We shall see your dreams realized. ...Not those of them that would only use you."
"Yes... we shall see."