3487/River of Reverie

River of Reverie
Date of Scene:	06 December 2015
Location:	A Quiet World
Synopsis:	Mizuki invites Riva over for a spot of conversation.
Cast of Characters:	183, Riva Banari
Tinyplot:	The Book of Unification

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Mizuki (183) has posed:
    The Mystical Waterway seems not to have changed at all since Riva last saw it.

    It has effectively been torn asunder and then rebuilt from the ground-up, and yet every nuance of the tiling on the ground is identical, all the holes on the roof of the artist's shack are in the same places, and of course, no damage at all has been done to the Crystalline Palace that so dominates the heart of the realm. Not only that, but things retain the same stagnant air as they possessed when people first arrived here, when Riva and the rest first met Sheep. So much has happened since then, and it seems almost wrong that all the 'people' in this city are still frozen in their statuesque forms, their lives eternally halted, their names - if indeed they ever had any to begin with - utterly lost to time.

    It is so painfully obvious when she arrives, even with the gingerly sound of waters churning through the rivers, that, without herself and Mizuki as visitors, this place would simply cease to exist. If human perception is the thing that gives landscapes like this memory and meaning, there is simply no one else to do so for this city. There is beauty in that, of course; that is in all likelihood the reason why Mizuki structured it this way. Though at the same time, there may well be some sadness in the knowledge that even the several others who have been here scarce ever consider its existence, now -- there were more pressing issues at the time and they can't be blamed for it, but still. Gone is whatever relevance to the others that this place might once have held, and with that loss of purpose, likewise is any chance of this place ever emerging from that status of emptiness forsaken. Though isn't the whole of Mizuki's world the same way? Indeed, if she had 'died' without ever entering the Multiverse, every location the group fought so hard to resurrect would simply have vanished with her, never known to another sentient being.

    It's these sorts of things that Mizuki contemplates as she sits on the side of one of the riverbanks, feet hanging over a stream so that they can almost touch the water, so that she can feel the spray of moisture from the surface whenever an errant wind passes by. Much more notably, though, she actually isn't wearing any shoes! That... seems a stark deviation from her norm, perhaps, when she usually takes such pains to be formal.

    She greets Riva with not a word, only gesturing to the stones beside her to ask that she sit. She'll probably give some more substantial greeting once they're both settled.

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva is normally 'energetic', even 'bouncy' when she deals with Mizuki's world. It's a never ending sequence of wonder and imagination there, and she often can't wait to see what's around the next corner.

But a place like this... Beyond the inherent background of lives frozen in time, there is a deep serenity that calms the mind and heart. It makes sense for Mizuki to come here to ponder things. It fits her mood.

Then again, one could say the same of most of Mizuki's world. But this place...

Perhaps some of the same thoughts of the nature of perception and existence might flit at the edges of Riva's own mind, but mostly her attention is upon Mizuki herself. As she threads her way towards the Lady of Dreams, Riva smiles, sitting down quietly next to Mizuki. On an impulse, she strips her own shoes off and sets them aside, dangling her own feet over the edge of the bank as well.

She doesn't say anything yet, just soaking in the presence of Mizuki and feeling the environment once more. She closes her eyes for a moment, inhaling deeply, like she is even trying to commit the scent of the faint spray of water to memory.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    When Riva sits down, Mizuki actually smiles. It's a very unusual sort of smile for her -- it's younger, pure, vibrant, and completely lacking in presumption (or as it has been more often lately, a facsimile thereof). It's the sort of smile a younger girl would share with someone who has just given them a gift that they had been waiting what felt like years to have, or who had just given them a compliment that compared them to some older adult whom they happen to respect a good deal. In fact, the gleam behind her eyes as she makes that smile, and some character of the roundness at the tops of her eyes, might just fool Riva into thinking that she -is- younger, if only for a moment, than she usually appears to be. Gone is the centuries-old witch who watches the stars from some high-placed vigil; here now is the person, simple and clean, free of all the mental barding and burdening that she thrusts upon herself.

    She kicks her legs somewhat, adding ever the more to that youthful image. It's only when she actually allows her posture to lean back, though, and balances her hands behind her as though she truly were some child relaxing casually on a riverbank, that Riva would likely begin to recognize that this is absolutely not her imagination. The typically formal poise of Mizuki has however suddenly completely vanished. In the blink of an eye, the dress crimson on black dress that she usually wears is gone in favor of something much more simple, maybe a sun-dress, and a headband with absolutely no frills or more ornate fixtures. For a moment, it might seem like she's looking at an entirely different person; but only for a moment. It all comes together fairly quickly after the initial few seconds of shock wear off.

    "You know," She says, voice soft and clear in a way that befits the more surreal atmospheric alterations that just took place, "Arthur and I have a lot more in common than you might think." She turns to make eye contact with Riva at this point, face flushing somewhat. "This... was probably already pretty obvious to you, but um. The facades. The shows we put on for people. I mean, in my case I don't think the 'creepy, ages-old witch' thing is -totally- fake, but." She averts her eyes a moment. "It's... not all that's there. Palora had to come from somewhere, right?" She leaves for a pause before adding, "But that was probably a lot more obvious to you than it was to me. What with, um... that slip up recently. The thing when I called Psyber a 'nerd'." And her cheeks just get more and more red as she goes on.

    It's almost scary!

Riva Banari has posed:
Watching Riva and Mizuki might cause a casual observer to wonder about the relation between the two. One is young at heart, theoretically immortal, and wears it on her sleeve. The other, ageless beyond reckoning, formal, but still has a trace of that young woman in there she lets out on rare occasions. And they're both sitting there kicking their feet over the water.

But there are no observers, other than the silent statues. They seem the type that can keep secrets, though.

Riva seems momentartily surprised to see Mizuki's expression when she smiles, causing her to blink for a moment, but she doesn't interrupt as Mizuki slowly and carefully reveals who is hiding under all the frills and formality. "Oh, Mizuki..." Riva replies. "There's nothing to be ashamed of. I'm just happy that you feel that comfortable, showing this side of yourself around me."

Riva dips a toe into the water. "We all make masks, and wear them around other people. It's like armor for the heart. For some people, that armor is very thick." She swirls that toe around the surface in meandering patterns as she talks. "I'd say it's an honor, but that's a little too formal for something shared between friends, right?" She reaches over and puts a hand on Mizuki's, squeezing it for a moment. "Thank you. It means a lot to me."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki jumps a little when Riva squeezes her hand. Even if she was comfortable enough to reveal more of her spiritual self, it seems that physical contact is, however unsurprisingly for someone who had scant human contact for three hundred and ninety-nine years, still a bit of a challenge. Still, she does her utmost to return the gesture with a soft squeeze of her own, though it's almost so faint that it can't be sensed at all. Once Riva allows her hand to naturally remove itself, Mizuki's immediately returns to the wrist of the opposite arm, locking itself around it for comfort's sake. And just in case Riva might be concerned about having breached some boundary, Mizuki is sure to give her a smile as soon as she possibly can. "It's okay," She says. "Just... still adjusting a bit."

    She allows for a few more moments of silence before she thinks of something else to say. "I didn't call you here because I wanted to talk about this, though, really. I did want to be able to talk with you more, um, directly, but I think the way I'm acting now is... really self-explanatory. I'm not ashamed of anything, so you don't really need to talk me through that. It's more like, I'm not really used to being able to talk this way. Between the obligation I've always felt to my older selves, and how I've always felt that I -needed- to talk that way for people to take any interest in my character, I guess I just... locked myself into place, mentally." Realizing how far she's gone into furthering the subject, though, her hands suddenly revolve around her in a wide, even spastic gesticulation. "A-Ah! But like I said, I don't wanna talk about that! Not really... but it probably helps explain a few things anyway."

    "The real reason I wanted you to come out here was because I'm nervous," She says. "My intuition is telling me that some very bad things are going to happen if we go further into the book." Making her expression faintly more determined, more serious, she adds, "But I want to anyway. Even if it's a risk to me. Maybe that's silly, but I feel like Shiori was close to figuring something out. She's left little breadcrumbs about her findings here and there, and I think this is the only way I'm going to be able to find out about them. I really don't want the others to worry for a while, though, okay? So just... look out for me, but please don't tell them that this might end up being another thing that puts my life on the line. Please. I'll trust you to know the right time to tell them, but not before then. Alright...?" She puts her index finger to her lips, 'shushing'.

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva nods, and doesn't impose further on Mizuki after that moment of support. She does, however, smile and brings a hand up to suppress a little giggle at the panicked response from Mizuki. "You've had a lot of time to think about this kind of thing. But I like you this way too. You don't have to be super formal and mysterious to be interesting to me." This time, she actually chuckles. "But yeah, it's okay."

The second subject, however, causes a haunted look to come over Riva's face. "You're sure about this, huh?" She says, looking away to look out over the water. "Back with the demon, I was worried..." She pauses. "I met Shiori again. I know all about the relationship you and she have, but..." She frowns for a moment. "I was worried that I had lost you. And she didn't care." Riva looks back to Mizuki. "If you really want to do this, we'll go forward, and I'll keep your secret, but...

She bites her lip, nervously, for a moment. "Please stay with us, okay?"

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    'Please stay with us,' She says. At that, Mizuki goes quiet a moment, going right back to kicking her legs and looking deep into the immaculate droplets of the Waterway's stream. She studies her reflection for a moment. "... we're both incredibly willful people, Riva. I think if she tried to wrest control of me, we would be pretty evenly matched." She gives that a moment to sink in before she looks up a bit happily and adds, "But that's why I'm confident that things would be fine. I could hold her off long enough for you guys to make the difference. So I think it would be fine, if she even tried that. But that's a big 'if'," She adds. "... sometimes I really wonder why she's doing what she's doing. I mean, why does she want to live again if she went to all this trouble just to erase herself? Did she renege, or something? Is she disappointed because it didn't succeed how she hoped it would?"

    She brushes her bangs to one side of her face. "I really don't know, but she doesn't seem like that sort of person. She seems to me like the sort of person who wouldn't try to go back on a choice that consequential, so I really do wonder. Maybe she's just doing this to train me? Like some sorta..." She widens her smile a moment. "I dunno, a really sadistic parent? ... it's strange, but I don't think she's doing what she's doing just to hurt me, or you, or anyone. I think she's doing what she's doing because she doesn't know what else she -can- do. Who knows, maybe this book is what it makes itself out to be? Maybe it's a test? Maybe she just wants to make sure that we're wise enough to inherit the world she left behind, or something. Maybe I'm just the essential narrative tether that ensures you guys will stay focused."

    In the end, she just sighs. "Maybe she is 'evil'. Maybe she did reconsider and now she wants her life back, but I think she's seen enough of you guys through my eyes to know that... you could give her another form to occupy, if you really wanted to. You could help her, so it would only be self-destructive for her to try to be me, specifically. I mean, she can't think that differently from me, so I know she must know these things that I'm saying. And that's what makes it all so inscrutable and weird. N-Not... that that's anywhere outside her norm." After uttering those words she falls silent for a while.

    "So maybe she doesn't want to live again," She says. "Maybe she just wants to be known. Maybe she just wants to have her own story, and this is her way of forcing one for herself. Or maybe... I'm just some auxiliary personality she made up, and I'll fade away once she's accomplished whatever she wants to accomplish. D-Don't worry, though! I really doubt that one, but..." She folds her hands at her waist, squeezing her hands closely together.

    "If she's anything like me, anything like me at all, she'll stop the second you show her something different. If you can prove to her that humans are worth saving, that humans and those like them will one day really, really change the fabric of time and space in some way she and I never could. If you can show her that humans really have the potential for anything, then maybe... maybe that -is- the test. Maybe that is why the book was written in the first place." Her expression straightens again, eventually. "Still, I could be wrong. And if I am... well..." She looks to Riva, locking eyes. "That's why we're having this conversation right now."

Riva Banari has posed:
"You got that right. I'm stubborn as hell!" She says, nodding and folding her arms to puff herself up a bit, affecting a stern and determined look... Which promptly deflates, sighing. "Well, when it's important, anyway. I'm usually a lazy derphead." There is a pause, then, and she shrugs. "I don't know what her motivations are. But to even try to do what she did..."

Riva looks down and pulls up her legs to her chest, hugging them there. "It hurt, watching her do those things. She knew exactly what she was doing. It was selfish, and cruel. Just like what she did to all those people, so long ago, in her own world."

She lets that sit there. "I don't... I don't understand her, I think. I don't think I know how someone can think doing that is all right."

Even the idea that she might fade away seems to cause Riva to jerk. "I can't allow that." She says, quietly. "Maybe it's just as cruel to her as she is to other people, but... She made her choice. She created you, and now you're part of my life, and I don't want to see you gone."

She looks down, then, resting her forehead against those knees. "Maybe I'm selfish too. I don't have any profound reasoning. I just like you. I know you, and I care about who you are. I want you to be happy."

She turns her head then to look over ot Mizuki. "And I'm happy to have the chance to help, but I can't help but wonder... What gives Shiori the right to do this? Why should we even /have/ to prove ourselves to her?" She sighs. "Humanity is what it is. There's good parts and there's bad parts. You can't have one without the other."

There's another pause, then, as she sighs. "Though someone who would do that to their world. Were they ever... really human at all?"

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki studies the water for some time. She nods her head in acknowledgment of Riva's words often enough to let her know that she's listening as intently as ever, but she seems somehow distracted, too. Like something is on the tip of her tongue, and that she can hardly contain herself while Riva finishes her thoughts. So perhaps it's out of politeness on her part that Riva finishes speaking in time for Mizuki's own sentiments to burst forth... or at least, for her mouth to open as though they were about to. It's in the instant that she's given the opportunity to speak that she seems to fall entirely silent, whatever she might have said squelched by some unseen force. Perhaps it's just hesitance on her part? Yes, maybe. She doesn't really want to own up to what she's about to say. And yet...

    And yet, she feels she must. "Riva," She says, her tone almost morose, her words perishingly quiet, "if I were in her position, I... I might've done the same thing." She's silent for another moment after those words fall from her lips, and her eyes break away from the surface of the water. "My soul is the same as hers. We aren't the same person, but we come from the same... base. The same framework. So, we have a lot of the same innate fascinations, goals, aspirations. So I know there must have been some express purpose or at least rationale for her doing what she did. It probably wouldn't justify it in your eyes or in anyone's, but she was in all likelihood just a we--." She winces. "A human. She was just a human. I don't have to fear death, so I can never know what I would've done if I had been born mortal. I would probably have very different perceptions of the world and very different fixations. Maybe they would've led me to do the same thing out of spite. Or maybe not, but..." She just shakes her head, unable to finish the thought.

    "Anyway," She tries to forge on, "she's human. I'm human. We're both... very, very human. We just come from a different, more primal side of humanity because we're more insular. We're concerned with transcending ourselves, and in order to do that, we have to better the whole of humanity. People don't advance on their own -- they do that through contact with other people, through comparison and contrast. So both of us know, we're not going to get anywhere unless we change humanity. -All- of humanity. Unless a whole world advances with us, we'll stagnate." She's silent a moment more to think. "So Shiori probably wants more than anything to better humanity, too. Because it's the ultimate selfishness. She wants to reshape the world in her image so that it can advance further and further in the direction of her perfection without her having to act toward it with any conscious effort anymore."

    "But that's the problem," She continues. "Because we're so far on the other side, we can never internalize things like 'courage' and 'justice' and 'succor'. We view them as tools of human progress, heuristics that guided people and made things more streamlined, more impressionable, more easily manageable. So we can't value them like you do, and like other people do. So since we can't understand them, we're fascinated by them. Since she can't understand humanity, she... made a book so that she could. I think it's just as much 'to understand' as it is 'to prove'. Though, yeah, she probably does fancy herself a good objective judge since she's had so long to think about stuff."

    "Anyway," Mizuki looks to Riva again with something of an awkward smile, "I... just don't want you to be under any illusions. If a good person is someone who always tries to be nice, and who always tries to do the 'right thing', then I'm not a good person. I care about people because, when I see someone crying, it hurts me, too. I... sort of hear the collective unconscious, mourning a blow against itself. But it isn't because I just want to do 'good'. You know...?" She looks away. "I'm sorry."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "-- oh," Mizuki's eyes shoot open again in some sort of epiphany. "I know how to say it. Shiori and I are the raw, unmitigated force of humanity's desire to change itself, to better itself. We're too 'big picture' to consider the lives of individual things, and if we thought we could make the world more how we wanted it to be, specifically... our lives wouldn't matter that much, either. So it's not even selfishness in the sense that we want to make it better for 'us', or to keep 'ourselves' alive, we just... want to color the world our way. And that's more important to us than anything else. But..." Mizuki kicks her feet a few times, softly. "Well, I guess you can see why... that force, without any limitations, can be bad. Like the Little Albert experiment, or the Stanford Prison experiment. It's... like that. There's no moral filter, and so something about humanity... changes. I don't think taking morality out of advancement makes it 'inhuman', but it creates a very... different precedent for things. I don't know if that's good or bad, in the end."

Riva Banari has posed:
This conversations is full of long pauses, but it's because both sides are saying a lot of important things that take time to digest. Despite this, Riva immediately replies, "Maybe you might. Hell, maybe /I/ might. I can't know what her life was like without experiencing it for ourselves, but we'll never know because we're not standing in that position. Shiori's time craziness isn't /that/ insane to make you recurse though that..." Riva pauses, looking up. "... I think."

She sighs, and then clonks her forehead into her knees. "I don't want to judge people. Arthur keeps pointing out the problems with that. Judging... Makes you close up. It makes you distant. Easier to hurt others, and be hurt by what you do to them less." She pauses, and clenches her teeth for a moment, before sighing. "I don't want to be like that, but it's hard, Mizuki, because it's clear and easy. I need... I need to remember that. Keep open. It's really hard to be like that out here in the Multiverse. You probably... Know that pretty well, don't you."

Riva gestures, then, waving a hand in her direction. "But do you really have to change all of humanity? People do little things all the time to change. And if you change, you affect other people just like they affect you. Could it be different here, since almost everything was made by you, though?" She ponders for a few seconds, humming a quiet theme. Mizuki will probably hear her singing a bit of the tune,

"I'm starting with the man in the mirror, I'm asking him to change his waaaays~..."

She chuckles then for a moment. "Michael Jackson. Now that was an influential human. Anyway..." Riva uncurls a bit, waving her legs over the bank of the water again. "So that's what it is, huh? It's kind of a... laboratory of the spirit. I wonder how this is going to affect you. Again, I'm kind of worried, but... I think in the end, it will be all right."

When Mizuki makes her confession, however, Riva scoots over and gives Mizuki another hug for a few seconds. "If that's what a good person is, Mizuki, then I don't think anyone is. Sometimes we all make decisions like that. As much as I want to forget, I know I've hurt people too, sometimes for my own benefit. No one's perfect... There's nothing to be sorry about. Not now."

"Change..." Riva ponders. "You really are pretty big picture. I guess a lot of our differences come from us coming from opposite sides of things. I've always been focused on the little things. I guess we've never really had the opportunity to walk a mile in the other's shoes." She chuckles. "Wouldn't that be crazy, if people could do that?"

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki has quite a lot less to say on the 'might have been' aspect, whether she would've done what Shiori did had she been in the same situation, because, in the end, it's rather a moot point. She knew that when she had said it, though she only attempted to draw the parallel because, after all, she has often contemplated doing unspeakable things as well. Things that would be even more broad in scale than what Shiori did. Perhaps her methods would be executed with 'humanitarian intent', but in the end, that's an incredibly shallow excuse for a Multiverse-wide genocide of certain personality traits. Or at least, it would persist in being so until the act was carried out; in the wake of the changes Mizuki would put into motion, no contest to her opinions would survive in the end. 'History would be written by the victor,' along with all potential futures.

    At the second thing, regarding the ease of blame, Mizuki can only sigh. "... not many people look at it this way, maybe, but. Blame is a useful heuristic like anything else. It gives people a motivation to expunge the individuals who would harm society either culturally or functionally to keep around. 'Hating' a sociopath, for example, gives people some more easily understood, emotional impetus to get rid of that person so that they can't just sit around and keep doing harm. Blame is like psychology's equivalent of a white blood cell, or to put it another way, like your nerves. Maybe it's not always good that your muscles hurt, or that your stomach hurts; pain incapacitates. Pain incapacitates, but without it, well. You've heard the stories of the children that eat their own tongues, I imagine." She pauses before adding, "So really, blame has its uses. It fails sometimes, but it is helpful - personally and societally beneficial - slightly more than half of the time. So it's retained."

    Then she comments on Mizuki's own world, and how it was an isolated microcosm -- but a successful one. Mizuki shakes her head faintly. "... I suppose not the whole of it, but you need to include enough of it that the spread of ideas will always stay fluid. There is a very good reason why I am four-hundred years old and I still act like I'm barely any older than you, Riva. It's because, for most of it, I didn't learn anything new. I stagnated. People, spirits, robots -- it doesn't matter. Any intelligent form of life cannot learn without some external input, but it's more than that. It has to be some contrasting, challenging, or even traumatizing input. It has to be controversial to you. That's why I want to include as broad a sample as possible: so that there will always be more flow of ideas. This is also why I don't think making a global 'hivemind' would be a very good idea. Once you get there, you just... stop. It doesn't work. Nature segregated itself into neatly-defined subsidiaries like this for a reason."

    When Riva starts singing, Mizuki just smiles. She listens for as long as she's able to go on without breaking down out of embarrassment or loss of breath (or both), rocking her legs along the riverbank, keeping her hands folded in her lap. When she says the name 'Michael Jackson', Mizuki seems to nod in recognition, but she doesn't make much more of it. Even less does she comment on it; she seems only to enjoy it as the non-sequitur that it is, and as a very needful, very appreciable tonal shift.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    All she has to say in the end is this: "Some days when I think these things, Riva... some days when I stop and think about how I and all humans are constantly at the risk of death, knowing tomorrow might be our last day, I wonder how we - they - could possibly hate eachother. The world is so cruel, so why don't we rally against it instead? ... because it doesn't have a face? Or because we know we can't? But that's a heuristic, too. If there ever came a day when we could change the face of things forever, would we even see that opportunity, or lose it for all our prior years of helplessness? Really, it's because I think that's what's happening now, the latter... it's because I think that's the way things are, that I try to show people that we have the strength to do as we will. If we just... let go of this petty, stupid war. If we all worked together, all of us - Confederates, Unionites, Syndicate members - would have everything we could ever dream of. And why don't we do that?" She squeezes her eyes closed.

    "... because of the same heuristics that allowed us to get that far. Because the mental utilities that delivered us to the precipice of salvation then hinder us. It's then that I have to wonder: are humans really the ones who will usurp the thrones of Truth and Reason so that they may do with those things what they will? Or are we just another stepping stone in some long, celestial pattern meant to give reality dominion over itself? I wish... so very much that I could say. But I can't. Like Mencius, or Plato, or whomever have you, I can only ask questions so that others can make their own answers from them. Unlike Mencius and Plato, however, I have no answers to give."

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva seems to sigh a bit at the response on blame and judgement. "I don't disagree about that. It's just... Sometimes people apply it in places that they shouldn't. Too much closes people up... In their minds and their hearts. That's all. Moderation is important, isn't it?" Riva chuckles for a moment. "That's what people keep telling me at the parties anyway~" She jokes.

It's at this point that she flops onto her back, folding her hands behind her head as she watches the distant ocean wall enclosing them. "That makes sense. You certainly wouldn't have developed the same way if your world never Unified. But it's too late now." She chuckles again. "Now you're stuck with us. And I sure as hell am not letting you go, to say nothing of Arthur and Psyber and the others."

Mizuki, ever the font of Deep Thoughts, causes Riva to go quiet for a little bit as she brings up an important question. "I think... It's more of a question of what people find important. You mentioned it before: You see the big picture. You were designed to do that from the ground up, if you'll pardon the phrase. Shiori set things up so you /had/ to look at it that way. The way I see it..."

Riva ponders. "We all want things. The peoblem is, we can't decide what the best way is to do that. Sometimes getting from point A to point B is really complicated and no one can really decide how best to do it. Everyone has ideas, but when those ideas affect other people, they have their own opinions."

And then she closes her eyes and sighs. "... And sometimes, people want things that are mutually exclusive. Sometimes, people are willing to hurt others to get what they want. And when those people have enough other people who will do what they say, it becomes a war. It's the nature of living people to want things. Even plants do things to get what they want. It's universal."

She opens her eyes, then, and waves a hand in the air. "As far as any grand purpose... Life is for living, I say. Everyone finds their own meaning out of it, and the journey is more important than the destination..."

And then her tone is somber. "Because even for immortals, every story eventually comes to an end."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Mizuki listens intently to Riva's responses. Her eyes almost seem to glaze over at several points in thought, but she never stops looking directly into Riva's eyes, nor nodding her head when some stronger point is made. Eventually, though, Riva arrives at the culmination of her discourse: 'People just have mutually exclusive aims'. Those aims clash, and when they clash, there is conflict. At that, Mizuki's eyes snap back into focus with reality, and a small, sad smile forms on her face. In an instant, she's come full circle, and she looks like she did when Riva first arrived. She looks like a little girl, or if one is willing to be far more romantic and kind, some sort of weeping angel. At the point when a moist gloss begins to form on the surface of her eyes in earnest, she can only softly whisper, "But that's... that's just it. If they could look that far into the future, they would see that they aren't mutually exclusive. I promise, Riva. I promise."

    Her eyes squeeze shut, and she does her utmost to keep her features from contorting any further in the direction of overt sadness. Without another word, she lets her head softly fall against Riva's shoulder. She reopens her eyes after a while, eyes entranced by the fish floating by in the ocean, tongue held spellbound by the weight of circumstance. It is a long, long time before Mizuki finally speaks again, and when she does, she again sounds as though she's become an entirely different person. Eventually, she points to some spot of the ocean as though she were a little girl sleepily marveling at the shape of animals behind the glass of an aquarium. In the lightest of voices, she says, "... do you see it?" Her finger has fixed on a familiar collection of hollowed corals, each of them shaped like houses. "That's the city of ocean dwellers we passed by when we came here. They came back after you all saved them. They're all so happy now." Eventually, though, her arm lowers. Her hands lock back together in her lap, and her eyes close again, softly.

    "... to tell the truth, Riva," Her words are still whispered as before, as if in the passage of secrets, "I... I don't really like words all that much, sometimes. I wish I could be more like you and the artist. I wish I could just make beautiful things for people. I get so tired of all these big ideas." She pauses, looking down at the river again. "If I had my way, all of you would just... come live here with me, and we would be a happy family. Everything would be the same forever. Maybe I would write a thousand books, just so we could live a thousand different lives where we were friends. Where everything would stay novel, new, exciting, fun..." She smiles faintly at the thought, if but for a moment. "But I know you wouldn't want that," She says. "This is... your world. And you don't want to leave. I just hope you can forgive me for getting a little... a little jealous sometimes."

    Another long, long silence reigns as the Waterway is slowly bathed in the amber light of evening. Schools of fish trace along the mystical sphere that so guards the city from incursions by water and the cyan stones along the sides of the river slowly dye tan, and orange, and gold. Amid all that, Mizuki never once lifts her head from Riva's shoulder.

    "Just promise me," She eventually says. "Just promise me that, if I ever can find a way to make everything okay, if I ever can find a way to make a perfect world where everyone can be happy, that you'll never leave. Please?" She doesn't make eye contact with Riva, but it's obvious enough that, by now, she's begun crying in earnest.

    "Were it only so easy as that," Echo her final, lightest, most ethereal words of the evening.

Riva Banari has posed:
Riva sits there quietly beside Mizuki, letting her work her way through her thoughts and emotions. The shift in her tone and posture, the whispered words go unanswered. There is nothing that needs to be said. It seems like to say something in that moment would shatter something beautiful, something tender, crystalline in its fragility. When Mizuki puts her head on Riva's shoulder, Riva puts her arm around her, an accepting warmth that gently keeps her close.

It will be okay. I am with you.

Such fundamental thoughts, communicated without words, a silent mutual consideration, a sharing of emotion and some tiny piece of the deep heartaches that build within the soul.

Finally, Mizuki speaks again, and Riva smiles, her eyes flicking towards the coral housing. Memories flit to the surface like moonlight on water. "I remember." She says quietly. "I'm glad."

Riva goes quiet again at the profound admission, the revelation of an all-too-human impulse behnd the mask, the aching loneliness that screams out into a void, desperately seeking some kind of solace. Riva does not move, staying with her as long as she wishes...

And when she requests that promise, Mizuki can feel Riva shake for a moment. There is a moment of silence, and then a rustle as Riva folds Mizuki into a hug completely, holding her closer as she replies,

"I promise, Mizuki. I'll stay with you forever."

A white lie, for solace. A tiny betrayal, for love. Soothing words pulled through torrents of emotion and earnest desires.

For in their heart of hearts, they both know that nothing is truly 'forever', and 'never' is such a long time.