Scene #8311: Teacher of the Gay Bullying Technique

Owner	Pose
Persephone Kore	Subtle threads of gravity and narrative, and maybe-probably an impromptu phone call or two, have drawn Evehime here. "Here" is the surface of my Pluto, green and beautiful. "Hey, Evie-G. I can't stop thinking about your fight with Miyamomo. Can you stop thinking about how I fought on Mars? Haha, I bet you can't! Anyway, come closer. I have something to teach you, if you'll let me." It would have been something like that! Every planet is 'in space', but Pluto is the one that feels like it most. It's "daytime", but the sky is black and the Sun is barely bigger than any other twinkling star. Eve might not notice if the weight of her body is like nothing to her, but gravity's weaker here too. That there's air and light and warmth at all is because of my grace, not that I can take all the credit! All around Eve's arrival point is a sparsely-wooded meadow, parted by a deep clear cool stream. The grass is a little too blue, the flowers a little too whimsical, the trees a little too big or too small, all of it arranged with an artist's eye and a subtle disregard for ecology and species, and all glowing with a subtle inner light. Yet, somehow, the artificiality of it makes it feel heartfelt and sincere, not cheap. Like a child's crayon drawing, maybe. Haha, yeah! That's exactly it. In the distance is a mountain, bigger than any on Earth. There is a hole in it clear through to the sky, so big that it's more hole than mountain, held in one piece only by shreds at the edges. It cannot possibly support its own weight. That's where I am! It's as obvious as 'down'. In the middle distance are a handful of people, sculpting and playing with the world. And closer is the sound of children's laughter. Three identical girls, maybe twelve or thirteen, chase each other though the meadows. They stop cold the instant they notice Eve. For anyone else, the cause of the halt might be dread. For them, it's wonder. After glancing at each other, they dart closer, long black hair streaming like a liquid behind them in the weak gravity. Then they crowd as close as they dare, starry-eyed and innocent. "Oh, whoa! Are you-" "Of course she is! She has to be, right?" "How'd you get so big?" "I heard Phony's waiting, but can you play with us?" "She can't."
Evehime Gevurah	It's not as if Evehime has anything more important to do. Which means that there are an infinite number of things that she could do which would be the most important thing in a million people's lives. And that whatever Persephone wants is probably more important. That any excuse to meet with her again would be worth the fleeting hours traded away for it; time that would blur together into voided nothing in her memory, rather than shine out like a star. Pluto is something that Evehime might have been able to handle on her own merits. It's an unknown if she expected the coordinates to actually take her anywhere nominally survivable. She probably expects Persephone would have no trouble either. And she does look awfully surprised, once she arrives in the luminous meadow. Dressed in something more theoretically casual than her usual, vaguely reminiscent of a half-worn yukata or a chivara, layered, black, sash-tied, and exposing torso wrappings, she stops to slip off her sandals, as if entering someone's home, but only to feel the grass under her feet, perhaps needing to know that it's real. Staring at the lake, Evehime draws in a deep breath of air --impossible, crisp, pure and vitalizing-- and allows her eyes to wander to the cored-out mountain. "No. I do not think I've stopped thinking about it at all." she says, to no one. It takes the triplets for her stare to finally fall back down. For her to hear, rather than simply absorb, the sound of laughter and the sight of play. She notices it by its absence. Her face tenses, just slightly, right beneath the eyes, at the innocent sound cut down by her presence. She knows well enough, by now, the effect she has on the less refined. There's a distance in the xenon blue of here eyes, both ingrained and intentionally defensive, willing only to observe the children like pleasant flowers. Up until they run up and speak to her. Evehime's lips part with the beginning of words nearly said; stunned, reflexive; before she realizes the reflex itself has left her. She can't remember what it was. What her words blurted from the heart should be. She settles for the faint outline of a smile instead. "Has the-- Has Persephone Kore spoken of me? I had no anticipation there would be others." she said. Her voice manages to tease the grass at her feet without the feeling of apparent of volume and pressure. "Why is it that she cannot play with you, little ones? You are hers, are you not?" A sound that sounds like the iceberg tip of a laughing breath comes out of her. "Hard work, consistency, and discipline." is her answer. No veggies involved. "Come. We will play along the way." Of course, Evehime isn't going to keep Phony waiting up there; she begins moving straight away. But something about the triplets reacting to her like 'an interesting adult' makes her feel lighter than the low gravity ever could. "What games do you play, here? In these fields. Amongst your family."
Persephone Kore	Now that the initial excitement's settled down to a simmering giddiness, the three girls' words flow together like a single stream. One starts talking the moment another stops, without needing time to process what her sister's said. "Yeah! She's talked about you sometimes!" "You're 'Evehime', right?" "Or is it Ms. Gevurah?" "Does she have a crush on you?" "It sounded like it." When Evehime speaks, though, they immediately fall to receptive quiet rather than try and babble over her. "Hard work." "Consistency." "Discipline." One counts on her fingers earnestly, with the other two helping tap them. "That's kind of like our names, isn't it?" "Hope." "Faith." "Charity!" "She can play. You can't," one of the three answers. They don't use their faces much, too used to talking on a different wavelength, so the reserved disappointment is only in her voice and her downturned eyes. "You're busy, right?" another says, hedging against hope. 'We will play along the way' sets them off like it's Christmas. The word 'frolic' has never been so apt. "Oh!!" "Yay!" "Thank you!!" As long as Eve keeps to a walking pace, their low-grav bounding and flowing can keep up. Two of them flank her to her right, holding hands, and one to her left. "Family..." "It's like a family, right?" "I guess so." "We don't meet much non-family." "We play catch, or tag, or shapes, and make pretty things." "Sometimes the older kids 'fight', but we don't." "Do you have shapes?" "The grown-ups said it's a new game." "You try to shape the world, at the same time as someone else, and see whose vision wins." "Or which one's prettiest." "Or just what it looks like, at the end." "It works like..." The two to Eve's right start pushing a new world out from their edges. One picks a dim, moss-thick forest, the other a bright golden-and-silvery desert. It overtakes the old world like an image transform, warping things into their new 'correct' shapes by some abstract method. It works in an aura of about twenty feet, but the terraformed earth remains so, so as they cavort after Evehime they paint the land with a wide brush each, spiraling around each other. Where their auras overlap, there's a kind of gently crackling metaphysical tension. They're evenly-matched: it turns into a moonlit driftwood-strewn silvery beach at the tension points, strangely gorgeous for having been no-one's pure artistic vision. "Like that," their third comments. "Want to play, Ms. Gevurah?"
Evehime Gevurah	"Evhime is my name." she replies to the triplets, at her own pace. "Gevurah is fine as well, though it would not come with 'Miss'." she explains. "I wish I could say the same. That I would have those I could speak of Persephone Kore with." There's just a brief lull in her back and forth responses at the last part. "I do not know. I had not thought to ask." Evehime admits. "I have no desire to take her away from you, if that is your concern." The amicable chitchat walk continues on past that speedbump. "Those are good names. Hope is what one needs to seek strength. Faith is what one needs to achieve it. Charity is what one must have when they do." Somehow, it doesn't sound even the slightest like adult pandering to innocent, childish pride. She genuinely likes them. "Families are ultimately arbitrary. They can be large and small, born from the same flesh or forged only by agreement between two people that they exist. If you feel that you would like them to be your family, then there is no need to seek a more specific word; you already are." Eager to meet Persephone again, but in no rush, intent on absorbing every moment, every iota of experience, from this tree-lit weightless walk at the edge of Sol's reach, Evehime muses on the question for some time, though not so long as to leave a child fretful and anxious. Attempting to hide nothing in her face, the way she considers all the possible meanings of 'shapes' before being willing to answer yes or no, or ask for a clarification, stands out as unique. "I may." Evehime concludes. "Please show me, so I may know." she says, directing the rare and coveted 'please' towards a gaggle of teenaged triplets, for ultimately very little reason. Evehime watches carefully. Where the edges of one world mix and bleed into the edges of another. Where the not-quite real emerges. She drinks deep of the desert's warm glow and the forest's scent of loam and rain, and realizes both are more faithful to her memory of deserts and forests than real deserts and forests are. She blinks, and it carries a sense of profound heaviness, as if it were where someone else would do so many times rapidly. A sound rises in her chest, and escapes in a strangely relaxed chuffing sound. Her shoulders bounce. "Have they taught you all to be this way? How could I expect any less from the family of Persephone Kore. What beautiful things you children play with." "Yes, I have shapes. Though I know only the rules of my home town." says Evehime, both half and fully true at the same time. Something complicated and scary and sad, effortlessly rendered sensible to youthful sensibilities. Even the truth is recreated, in miniature, as truer to true than facts ever are.
Evehime Gevurah	Evehime breathes deeply as she walks. She closes her eyes and tilts back her head to the glittering void of space, though her pace remains unerring. Her hands rise evenly from her sides, both exactly mirroring a perfect copy of the other's arc. Her fingers unfurl, her palms upturn, and then they tense halfway, as if suddenly gripped to bundles of invisible mesh, or the intersection of warp and weft on a loom. She drags the resistance as she walks, first gently, and then more firmly, as her muscles tense by degrees with each step. By sheer strength, she peels back the skin of the world, and pulls the threads of its inner workings. Her hands are brought close, and her fingers and thumbs moving over each other in steady succession, as if it were something so simple as cat's cradle by touch. In her wake, the air seems to strain in some undefinable way. Light hardens, and catches in string-thin rays. The scene sharpens, and becomes textured glass at its edges. A faint, creaking shiver passes through the world, like the ratchering tension of steel guitar strings. Subtle iridescence spills from the way she has walked, like spilled oil and cut diamonds. And there, as she walks, the stone surges from beneath the dirt. The lifeless shell of Pluto is brought from beneath the meadow and soars into the air in interlocking clusters, a little higher, a little bigger, with each step. The rock bleaches spray-weathered white, and the scent of salt exudes from its pores. Thick flowering grasses bloom over its top, and vines spill down its sides. Trees burst from its surfaces, with broadly spread branches and smooth, rippled black and white bark. They twist to face the sun from all odd angles, and spread long, weeping strings of fragrant pink flowers from golden leaves. The air up high tints blue-yellow, like an early sunset, and grows warm and a little thin. Each step she leaves behind, a rough-hewn white stair, worn smooth with age and use, lingers in place of a footprint. The angle of that remembered ascent is just so that she will arrive at the hole in the mountain on-level. Not-coincidentally.
Persephone Kore	Each of them smiles with their eyes as Evehime compliments their names, in turn. It's not in the same order they introduced themselves with. And yet, it doesn't feel insincere either. Then they fall back to babbling conversation as they keep up their little game. "Not anyone?" "If she left, we'd come with her." "If you're alone, you should come here instead." "We heard what Gevurah means! It's nice too." "Does 'Evehime' mean something special too?" They sponge up the praise greedily, too. "Not everyone can play shapes." "But everyone's special somehow!" "And the other ways are beautiful too." "We can play with those later!" When Eve creates the rock stair, they glance among each other, given marveling pause all over again. Then they all pour out their praise at once, the stream of words turned turbulent. "Evehime-" "amazing-" "not how we-" "how did you-" "just grabbed onto-" "doesn't feel like-" "you win-" "can I-" "play with us more!!" They keep that up for a good few moments, with the main thrusts being 'you're amazing', 'how are you doing that', and 'can I learn'. Aren't they precious? One of them follows behind Gevurah on the staircase; the other two simply fly alongside in meandering, corkscrewing paths. Under their influence, wildflowers of other colors sprout among the grass and vines; brave scraggly trees sprout from the sheer walls of white rock; the light becomes redder to tinge rose-gold, and the air warmer still like fresh laundry. Far below, other children and young adults can be glimpsed. One of them stands and stares, fidgeting with their sleeve. Another points up at Eve with a metal baseball bat, then turns to the other animatedly. They're too far away to hear the words exchanged. All the while, my gravity becomes steadily more intense, signaling an end to playtime. The triplets seem to know it, but they've tuckered themselves out anyway; their influence steadily fades, and they all follow behind on the staircase instead of soaring now. The mountain is covered in greenery, but underneath its original black stone can still be glimpsed- or maybe I made it that way. And the hole in it is not a cylinder, but a sphere: there is a hemispherical 'caldera' of perfectly smooth dark rock, shaded by the still-improbably-supported peak miles above. Rain has collected here, forming a perfectly-clear small pond at the caldera's center, and small tender plants encircle it to drink. Persephone sits by its edge, too, but not for the same reason! Ahahaha. I don't look back at you. But you can feel my attention on you anyway, can't you? You're wonderful to look at. Even in the ways of seeing you don't know yet. That's how I know you really are a special person, Evie-G. The triplets come up short at the caldera's edge. "You're here for her, aren't you?" "Will you play with us after?" "Pretty please promise." "You were so pretty!"
Evehime Gevurah	'Not anyone?' Evehime's gait slows, for the space of ten full steps. "No. Not as of right now." Then it speeds back up again. "Not for a long time. And not yet." She takes a deep breath, and regains her faint and stately smile as the triplets talk. "Perhaps that is so, but then you would miss the rest of your family. And if I took them all with myself, indeed, it would have been better to stay with you instead." The idea that Persephone explained Gevurah to them seems to please her considerably. Enough to figure out how to stir warmth into her voice; a note of it alongside the saintly patience. "Its meaning is hard to describe, as it derives from four ancient languages. In as far as it may be literal, it would mean 'living with absolute nobility and a certain home'." She deliberates but a moment. "I chose it myself." Of course she has no intent to correct anything the triplets do to her mountain stairs. In fact, all she says is "Remembrance is all the more pleasant for the colours it takes, when shared with good company." It takes her a while to come up with an answer to satisfy them, though. One that is simple enough to understand, pure enough to be true, and warm enough to convey her like of them. "I think it is much the same as yours. The rules we played by, at home, were different. I feel that you paint the shapes from your heart through your thoughts; your will flows into the world from your mind. We played the game by painting the shapes of our hearts through our hands; the will flows into the world through the fingertips. Contemplate the similarity in how describing a scene with words, and painting it with hands, may both evoke the same image in the imaginations of others." The Gevurah straightens her back as she enters some imperceptible horizon of Persephone's. Her steps pick up, becoming more difficult for the twins to follow, following the curvature of narrative space as if she means to accelerate by it. "I promise. I will play with you, and I will meet your brothers and sisters and other siblings. And perhaps we will play together too." As always, she has the impossible, scalding purity of 'someone who has never tried to lie in her life' about her words. As the triplets retreat, Evehime steps over the caldera's rim, and makes her way down to Persephone at a slightly more brisk pace, sliding gently and intentionally with each forward step in a sort of gentle winding zigzag, minimizing both wait and noise. It's so the pause isn't too great, nor too disruptive, before she arrives at the vry same pond, and say aloud "It is still unusual for me, to be called special, wonderful, to be looked at, rather than in action. Tell me, Persephone. Hesed. Kore. What is it that has captured your imagination? What pulls at your heart so, that you would invite someone such as I into the hearth of your family?"
Persephone Kore	"Painting instead of speaking..." "Can we do that?" "Even if we can't, thanks for showing us, Gevurah." It's maybe a surprise when they all burst into big dumb smiles when Evehime promises. Not the emotion itself, but that their serene faces smiled at all; and the irrepressible nakedness of that smile, held against their normal elegance. "Really?" "We'll go tell them!" "Thank you so much, Evehime!" "You're the best!" "Well, tied for best." Awwww. They sweep down the side of the mountain together, half-running and half-floating. And then it's just you and me! The shape of the spherical hole is clear from a distance, but as one nears the center, it might as well be flat. Its radius is measured in miles; so great that the wall of the opposite rim is fogged slightly blue by the air's scattering. Haha, but I bet you kind of love the exercise? Eve can see my smile reflected in the glass-smooth water's surface first. Then it's shown to her properly, but sideways, as Phony turns her head to the side and back to look up at Gevurah. Her hair spills over her shoulder. "I hate that it's unusual," she says warmly. "Aren't you beautiful, Evehime? Don't you dare say no! So you ought to hear it more." It takes her a few moments to answer that next question. Her smile dims to something contemplative. Her gaze returns to the pond. "Do I really have to list the reasons? You're wonderful and sweet. You have a vision to change what 'reality' means, just like us. I feel like I could stare at your heart forever." She purses her lips and looks halfway back over her shoulder. Sincerely: "Oh, and tell the triplets I can't say if I have a crush on you. Ahaha, there's definitely something there! But I don't like putting names to things before they're ready for names." "But... really, I'm lonely. The triplets are wonderful. Marc and Dylan are wonderful. All the others are wonderful. They're closer to being like me than almost anyone. But they're not really, are they? Like me." She pulls up her legs and crosses them, implicitly inviting Evehime to sit alongside her with her body language and my pressure. But her eyes stay on the beautiful pond. "You're lonely too, aren't you, Evie-G? So I want to teach you a new way of talking to people. And then I'll be less lonely, too. Because you'll be a little more like me then."
Evehime Gevurah	'tied for best.' That elicits a different, more wry, kind of smile from Evehime. Perhaps more amused. The distance certainly isn't difficult for Evehime to cross. Though she is deliberate at rest, speed is one of her many allies, on the level of an old friend. She isn't winded, but she is certainly a little more lively, by the time that she reaches Persephone, where she carefully clears a patch of ground with a sweet of her foot, and then kneels down. 'Aren't you beautiful, Evehime?' "Of course." she says, without argument. And yet, still, a sense of lacking weight. That it were true, but didn't quite bring her the joy it was supposed to. "Should I? What will it accomplish? Few would say so, with the limited words they are given in their lives, much less in the moments I would meet them. There is, to them, always much else to speak of first." 'Sweet' is what makes her look actively uncertain. "That, I have only - been named the opposite, for a long time." There is an audible hitch, where she erased the word 'ever', though it's hardly as if Persephone needs to hear it. "Can severity be sweet?" She chuffs again, a little louder, yet softer, this time, at the talk of crushes, but leaves it silent. Persephone knows full well, in that instant, that the woman behind her is experienced in all kinds of half-remembered love, just from the morass of feeling bubbling below the surface. She knows full well why Persephone wouldn't want to put a name to something like that. Or at least, she grips it by instinct and familiarity. 'You're lonely too, aren't you, Evie-G?' A long silence follows. Just the sound of Evehime's slow breathing, her eyes on her own reflection's. A storm of thoughts half-completed, feelings half-accepted, memories half-complete, crashes together so severely, so immensely, beneath the surface, that from outside; emotionally afar; it looks nothing but serene. Like the eye spot of Jupiter. A violent tempest that is reducible to mere geography only for its consistency and size. "I think I am." says Evehime, very normally. "I do not know how not to be." She thinks to look up from her reflection, but is held captive by her own gaze. "I have cared for others of the Multiverse little. I have driven them away. Some with intent, and others with feeling. I know this. I can control this. I am prepared to change this. And yet . . . to what end? What bridge could there ever be?" Her gaze has drifted minutely from her reflected eyes, to the markings adjacent. "Everything I ever cared for, which ever gave me meaning, is unknowably alien to them. They are so far away from me that even were I to try, the things that I wish to show them, share with them, are things they cannot even reach the first step towards. There can be no joy sparked between they and I. I cannot even describe to them why it is that I would care. Why it is important to me. I know full well, that I am . . ." Evehime takes in a deep, deep breath. "Too old. Too different. Too prideful. Too bereaved. Too set in my ways. Too much. For them. For all of them. Yet to change myself to meet them, even partway, would be to undo everything I have done. In growing able to share with them, I would unravel the things that meant enough to be worth sharing. I cannot build myself anew, all over again. I cannot decide to invent new passions, and a new identity. It is far too late. I already know too well, every measure of those." Finally, only then, does Evehime tear her gaze away, and look to Persephone again. "How will ways of speaking change any of this?"
Persephone Kore	Phony's smile widens just a little when Evehime sits next to her. Her eyes rest on the reflected Gevurah's, too. 'Can severity be sweet?' "Sometimes," Persephone says, and I mean it. "Especially in its limits. And are you always severe?" When the talk turns to loneliness, she reaches to lay her hand on Evehime's upper arm. Her gaze doesn't waver from the pond, and her expression falls further from 'thoughtful' to 'solemn', but there's a lot of warmth in the gesture. The way she breathes in, counts to five, and breathes out on contact with the tempest is restrained, barely-noticeable. I'm here for you, Evehime. I'm sorry you've had to feel that way. It's only at the very end, at that maybe-rhetorical question- but it isn't, is it? You'd better have more faith in me than that!- that she starts to smile again, if only faintly. That's a good sign, in itself. "I want to teach you a sweet severity. That's how." It takes her a moment to look up from the reflected Evehime to the real one. "You don't really want to kill anyone, do you? But it just happens, if you touch them too firmly. If it couldn't, you wouldn't be Gevurah. Isn't that how it is?" The hand finally withdraws from Evehime's arm. Phony leans back on her hands instead, in a way that conjures up a mental image of lovers talking while reclining on the beach. "Even though you went through a lot of trouble, on Mars, to make sure people couldn't die. Because sometimes the best way to make someone 'like Gevurah' is to touch them that firmly. That's true, too." Phony points up at the mountain's peak, three miles of void away, as if she were pointing out a pretty star. "But I can do that to someone, and they'll lose completely, but they won't even bleed. Because what I want matters more than that, and I don't want them to get hurt really. Wouldn't that help you? To teach people lessons as 'severely' as you want, without ever breaking them?" "And..." Persephone reclines again, her smile becoming serene and distant. Her eyes drift shut. "Yeah. You already understand them. And they really are that far away, I know. But you don't understand how they understand themselves. You haven't seen their hearts in their own terms. And once you do, I really think that'd help you change them, too?" She laughs softly at herself, tucking a bit of hair behind her ear. "... When I was a kid, I used to be awful. Right up until I understood people that way. Can you believe it? And then I loved them, and I had all the patience in the world for them. It really does help to get down on their level." A dimple forms in the water's surface. It makes the reflected Gevurah appear to slightly smile, too.
Evehime Gevurah	'And are you always severe?' Evehime thinks on this a while. "You know and understand much. More than I think you will, each time that I ask." she says. "You answer so quickly that I almost feel absurd in expecting contemplation." 'I'm sorry you've had to feel that way.' It's only felt. Not heard. But Evehime says it out loud anyways. "Do not be. It was the inevitable result of what I chose. Even if I had no means to see it when I did, I would never take that first choice back. A scar is proof of something's existence." She falls silent again, as Persephone gets to what she means to talk about. The fact that someone who radiates such an overwhelming presence of intensity can hold her peace so deeply, for so long, so effortlessly, is a sort of quiet gravitas in of itself. The way she listens without even the need for 'patience', without the exercise of 'restraint', or thinking of 'stillness', but simply embodying them, feels as if Persephone's audience of one has all the charge and weight of broadcasting to the whole world. She nods, once, at Persephone's assessment, finding it agreeable. She nods again, next, this time more slowly, with the reluctance of finding no good reason to disagree. When she points to the tip of the mountain, the Gevurah interjects in the empty space but once. "I remember your battle at Ares, and thinking it was a beautiful way to fight. The only way one who isn't a warrior, should. Of course I could never fight in that exact way. Never so selflessly, so serenely. But you understand correctly. My arts were refined to challenge God; to make stories out of, not to senselessly slaughter the weak ever more efficiently. The fact that if I were to share them fully, they could never be received . . . I could never say that it doesn't plague me." She looks off into the distance where Persephone discusses understanding. As if she could see the children through the side of the caldera. Her silence is shorter; equally as deep, but terminating quickly for the realization that she doesn't have the threads to tie up a conclusion, as abrupt as it is unprideful. It breaks with a single syllable of laughter, glimpsing her own reflection from her peripheral vision. She tries to match it with her real face. "From one terrible child to another, then. I cannot promise that understanding them will allow me to love them as you love them. Probably, we will remain different in that way. But I have decided, not long ago, that no matter how terrible an understanding it might be, I would brave the knowing of what it is within them, that makes them understand themselves as . . . so much less than they are. If that lack of understanding is my enemy, then it is already determined; I won't retreat from it."
Persephone Kore	Phony tilts her head back to laugh, her hair grazing against the dark stone. "Ahahaha. Someday, your expectations will catch up with me, you know! I just expect you to be perfect and amazing. And that's never let me down so far." The felt comment being answered doesn't surprise me. I do have to think about it, though! She sits up, slouching forward to rest her elbows on her legs and her face on her hands. "I don't wish you didn't choose it," she finally says. "I wish the inevitable thing wasn't inevitable. Even if they're silly, it's okay to wish for impossible things. Important, even. You know?" Otherwise, how could anyone have grasped this? How could you have grasped that? My reflection in the pond smiles back, too. And then, distorting with a hundred deceptive ripples, it seems to turn and wrap its arms around Evehime- even though the real Phony doesn't move. "Ahaha. I can't imagine you were ever terrible. Well- I can almost imagine it?" Phony stands up, finally, and the clack of her heel against the stone sends a ripple across the pond that clears all its playful illusions. "I don't want you to love them the way I love them," she says as she turns around. Her hair and clothes 'flutter' gracefully with the twisting motion, untethered by gravity. That's how she's meant to look, anyone could tell. "Wouldn't that be a shame? If we lost the special way you can love. I just want to give that love more chances to shine." clack. Persephone steps forward, and on the third step- clunk- her boot lands on your crossed knee. When I step up to stand on your lap, it ought to feel uncomfortable, right? But don't worry! I don't want it to, so it doesn't. That's the magic of it, Evie-G. I lean in and touch your brow, our faces close together. "I've never done this with someone who's already so real," I say, and I can't keep the smile from my face." "I'll have to get creative, okay? But I'm sure you don't mind." The world reorients itself ninety degrees, the ground gently rising to meet Evehime's back, with Persephone's hair now hanging down around her face to tickle Eve's cheeks. Or, rather- it's probably Evehime who moves rather than the entirety of Pluto, but without any sense that anything has acted on her. Does it really matter which? And then--
Persephone Kore	--You said you won't retreat from this, so don't! If 'not understanding' is your enemy, sight is your enemy. Shut your eyes. Hearing is your enemy, forget your ears. Touch is your enemy, let my hand against your face melt away. And I'm your ally- let me in. Let me in! Can't you feel me pulling at you, all around you? I know you're strong enough to open your heart completely. Are you doing it? There you go! Ahaha, great job~ There aren't any words for the things I need to teach you. So I'll teach you with feelings instead: This is a feeling like turning your back on the sun. This is a feeling like seeing the stars come out at night. This is a feeling like meditation, like sinking under the surface of water to see what's beneath. Quiet your own flame, and let yourself see the lesser lights. You are floating in outer space. You are standing at the bottom of the deep dark sea. You're nowhere. All around you are pinpricks of light. I'm right in front of you, almost too bright to look at, burning like the sun: but look behind you, down the mountain. Can't you see the kids playing, faint little ghost-lights? Weaving around themselves like fireflies? Can you feel their joys, their thoughts, their wants? Some people can curve the world with their hearts. Me, you, Hiromi: people can feel our wants on their skin. But look below the world. In secret, everyone's like that. And now the other part: I carve a heavy smoky warmth out of the world and pour it into you. Feel that sense at your fingers, when you grip creation. Touch the threads! But don't grasp them, this time: feel them pull away when you reach, moving already. This isn't cutting the world. But it isn't negotiating or even demanding, either. 'Kun Fa-Yakunu'. I felt Dr. Carpathia think that once, and she seemed embarrassed of it. But if I understand it right, it's true. The intent is just as real as the action for you now; the reaching is just a gesture that comes after. Why should it matter if you swing a sword? If you want it to cut, it will. If you don't, it won't. And then the crush of her gravity withdraws, and the bright, real world comes back, as if it were a dream. But my hand is still on your face, cupping your cheek tenderly. And that new warmth is still there. "Thanks for letting me show you, Evie-G." <3
Evehime Gevurah	Evehime takes Persephone's compliment in stride. More than that, she takes the assurance of confidence with a sort of serene grin. The subtle motions of her lips alone could light up a room. "I would expect as much from you." she says. "My chosen Hesed. The one I have deemed worthy as standing across from me." She falls silent again, just to let Persephone talk, but she needs no further quiet to contemplate an answer. Phony's words alone are enough for her to make up her mind. "Then perhaps even though I harbour no regret, no remorse, I will admit to . . . dissatisfaction. I am not satisfied with the ending. That it should be so abrupt, and so empty, and so . . . sad, after all of that. A tale of triumphs that ends without closure is a disappointing thing indeed." She turns from the waist, to stare directly into Persephone's eyes, forming a solid bridge over that companionable quiet of shared reflection. "It's a sad thing to find something perfect, and let no one touch it. Isn't it? More than your powers, your shapes, like the other children, you understood. Did you not? That its worth is only as much as the least it touches the souls of others. That if there are those who will forever be apart, without, then it was all for next to nothing." The moment breaks pleasantly, with Persephone's pleasant smile in the pond. The mock hug is enough to draw a syllable of laughter out of Evehime's chest. At ease, she runs a hand through her hair in thought, feeling the locks between her thumb and forefinger and brushing it aside. It's effortlessly ladylike, all of a sudden. A hint of the lifestyle she used to lead, before falling into reclusion. "I was always very determined. But not always so clear. There were things that I thought would weigh me down, which I denied with my utmost strength, before I eventually realized that they were worth such sacrifices. I fought things that I knew I wished for. Only by seizing them did I realize what it was to thrive. So, I was a manner of terrible child." "I don't know, if the way I would love them is worthy. Of you. Even of them." She blinks, and looks up-- eye level, really, when Persephone steps up on her thigh. "But I have chosen you, not consciously, but in my heart; this I know. I have chosen you because I feel your near-perfected understanding of 'love', and I know that it is only you who is fit to tell me. Only you have the right to be my reflection; opposite-same. So if that is what you will believe, I shall believe you. That is the way of the the three Paired Truths." Evehime closes her eyes. She stills her breathing. With great difficulty, her aura dims. It's like she's asleep. At perfect rest. But not a statue. Just a woman. Floating in the void. A red giant, vast and burning with intensity and beyond intensity, warping every inch of space it illuminates, shrinks down. Into something silent and blue and shining beautiful white. Fire compressed into a gleaming diamond. Heatless colourless light to see by. A radiance that is nearly gentle, like if the moon could shine its own light, glints from the threads that bend away in Persephone; it catches in them and glitters like morning frost, memorizing their shape, taking on their artful curves. Her thoughts are like sunbeams, bright and warm and cutting sharp paths through soft darkness, yet focused; intangibly soft, save for their tingling heat on the skin of mind.
Evehime Gevurah	¶I see. The art is to reflect the light inwards. To allow the dark to touch the surface, and to recognize it as not-dark, but as the space between us. Between souls. ¶See here how they warp without tensing; bend without breaking. See there how the little-lights catch in them too; how they weave them in such delicate patterns; so very beautiful, and yet they vanish in the heat, like snowflakes. ¶You love them because they are beautiful, in their own way. You have such great a heart as to behold the beauty of each and every passing snowflake as it falls. And you grasp them, without them melting; you push them away, to send them swirling skyward, or stilled against solidity, without touching them; with only the currents of air of your hands. With the dance of stars in the night. The grasp and pull and passing touch of orbit. The stars are the winter's snow to you, and gravity is your breath. ¶That is a beautiful art as well. That is a mastery of love. Evehime opens her eyes. Something in them seems a little brighter. Beyond just Persephone's reflection mirrored in her irises. A sense of motion. A tiny, restless wandering; one that calls into attention just how still her gaze always was. Her gaze moves because it wants to see. It travels, by little degrees, in that familiar way of wanting to catch every little detail; where instinct long ago failed, those eyes are now finally given a reason. She smiles, and this time it shows teeth. "I knew I had chosen well." she says.