Scene #8719: Burnwood Christmas Village

Owner	Pose
Xion	It has been nearly a decade since the fall of the superfactions, and the work of some conservationists whole life had culminated in the stewardship of the spaces they had left. The worst of the exclusion zones were still radioactive and exoenergetical threats to most forms of consciousness. The best of them, near the outskirts, could be used as defiantly cheerful christmas villages. The Burnwood Christmas Village, as the name suggested, was located at the outskirts of Njorun's scorched crater, a little slice of snow-blanketed christmas perfection missing only one thing: The branches and canopies of their trees. Cast in ash-black trunks and a thick white pile, the greyscale village is brightened by imported dark pine wreaths and the twinkling of gold-white Christmas lights. There's a larger festival going on in a square a block and a half the main road, but Xion reclines at the patio of a coffeeshop where the snow encroaches on a little propane heater halo-warmed two-table affair just outside the door. Sitting on a wooden stool at a high-top metal table, Xion nurses a peppermint cocoa and swishes through details on her phone. Today she dresses in the same black santa hat she wore to defend Christmas at Kale's party, tucked down over her ears for warmth, with a black wool coat and black turtleneck underneath, and a pair of black snow pants. She had remembered Madeleine's invitation prior, and had just finished inviting the huntress after settling down with her cocoa. >> Did you want to meet up? You can return my flask if you like. The cooordinates to where she is follows.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine steps lightly through the well-trammeled snow of Burnwood's streets, following the directions on her phone away from the main festivities. Even in her heavy winter boots she leaves no new footprints. Over her usual vinyl, leather, and chaimail she wears a puffy black winter coat, a white bobble hat, and a black-and-white striped scarf. There is a hint of a smile on her face already; the black-and-white of a woods in winter is instinctively comforting to the huntress. As Madeleine rounds a corner and spots Xion, that hint grows into a gentle curve on her lips and her step quickens. She waves briefly as she steps into the coffeehouse, and emerges not long after with a steaming mug of cinnamon-spice tea. "It's nice to see you again," she remarks as she sits across the table from the Nobody. "And for once under less... distracting circumstances. Overbearing psychics, nutcracker attacks; it's nice to get a break from it all, you know?" After pleasantries are exchanged, Madeleine wastes little time striking up a conversation with a direct question. "What do you think of Persephone? Now that she's out of, ah, earshot. At least as far as we know," she says with a wry smirk.
Xion	The barrier of December chill and propane halo heat is passed before Xion looks up to see Madeleine, flopped-folded hat and drooped white pom-pom bouncing as she does. Smiling, she tracks the huntress moving through the door with a little finger-wave and plucks a napkin to sweep the dampness off the other stool at her table. Joined, finally, at the table with a beverage of Madeleine's own, the noirette taps the side of her paper cocoa cup to her companion's mug beverage-side, joining in a slow sip. "Well it's plenty nice here already, maybe I'm just luckily placed." Xion suggests mildly, tone lightly witty. "You can't really get a good conversation if it's more than a few people, swinging at each other or not." The noirette muses openly, swaying her cup in hand just above the table and leaning over to hunched shoulders and deeper thoughts. "As for Persephone. . . I don't really know. The nutcracker wasn't too bad, usually the big days have annoying minigames to clear. Persephone -- I avoided her for a while but now I don't have to. And I can tell why people don't like her, but I think part of it is that she's not afraid at all to show off, and that threatens people? Does it threaten you?"
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"I think... I wouldn't say I don't like her. She hasn't made herself a threat to me yet, either. But I know that she could. In ways that..." The huntress trails off for a moment. "I've had bad things happen to me. Bad things, and very bad people. As much as I wish I could say they were behind me... those things leave a mark, you know? And so do the people. The mark one of them left, it's in the shape of a gentle embrace. So when she touches my mind like that, I don't know what to feel. I don't know if I can trust my instincts around her, and I always trust my instincts. She..." Another pause, longer this time. "Do you- I mean- Sapient Heuristics starts with children, right? What do you get when you can let someone just... decide what other people think, and you give that power to someone before they've learned right from wrong? Would she even listen if I asked her not to? There's an old episode of 'The Twilight Zone', it's an old Earth television show. It's got a little kid who can just... make things happen. If he wants Christmas, it snows, any time of year. And when he doesn't like someone, he sends them to 'the cornfield'. People who go there don't come back." "Do you think Persephone has a cornfield? What does she do with people who won't play along?"
Xion	"So, are you comfortable around her because you know she's really always dangerous, or. . ." Xion asks, taking a sip of her cocoa and sliding her gaze off of Madeleine and towards the gold-white chain of lights draped off the patio rail. The buzz of filiments and dodgy circuits buzzes in various frequencies across the melted-wet surface, and Xion rests her eyes there to focus on other aspects of the conversation. Her trailing off ends with a tilt of the head. "I'm sorry bad things have happened to you, wearing the coat of something good and worth letting in. That's the most difficult, isn't it? The poisons that ruin the taste of things that are good to eat?" Xion's hands join about her cocoa cup, and her eyes lift from railing to foot-trodden snow on the walk past. "There's plenty of powers that would force compliance. Plenty of ways of leaning, applying pressure. On the world, and people around you. I can make it snow around me," Xion sighs. "If I want it to. I can make plenty of things happen if I want it badly enough. I'm alive, because I wanted that for certain. So can you. So can most people, and the difference is how much they want it, and how much their ability makes their want go." Finally turning, looking, interested - and guilty, at her dissociation - Xion returns to Madeleine and takes a sip of cocoa. "I think that Persephone doesn't need a cornfield, but the farther you go down what-if about someone, the more you have to be careful you're not making them bear the sin of things that only hypothetically could happen. Holding people to everything they could be is how people interpret shadows into nightmares."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"I'm not comfortable around her because she's so insistent that I should be comfortable. I guess I'm a contrarian like that," Madeleine says with a chuckle. Xion's next words give the huntress pause. "...Yeah. There's a lot I'm not able to enjoy anymore, after what I've seen." She takes a few sips of her tea as Xion muses about the power of wanting. "Do you think... okay, so. I'm something called an Excrucian. Some of us have a power called the World-Breaker's Hand. It lets those who wield it just... erase things. Entirely. Poof, gone. Sent to the cornfield. But there's a limit. Something that's loved, that's cared for? It can resist the Hand. Not always, but often enough." Madeleine's voice breaks. "He- someone I knew had the Hand. And he used it on me. I was never able to stop him." She looks to Xion with tears brimming in her eyes. "What does that say about the strength of my wanting? The strength of my heart?"
Xion	Xion is not the same kind of stellar-object psychic as Persephone Kore, but, the object of her heart IS a shooting star, and, her desire spreads like a gravity, so, she can't help but wince, just a little. In sympathy. She pulls the feelings close, as familiar as to be her own. A cocoa-warmed hand lifts to a cool coat collar as the noirette's blue eyes lock onto Madeleine and see through her words the painted-picture of shared experential tragedy. Swallowing but still-dry voiced, Xion asks with mild rasp: "Not able to enjoy any more? Because... of something missing?" But the story continues. By the end, Xion closes her eyes, and nods. Her loose hand reaches out, a bit hesitatingly, to touch Madeleine on the shoulder and rest a warmed palm there. A hug might be too much, but-- "It says you wanted to live more than you were ready to go. Even if you're missing pieces... You kept everything precious you could hold onto, right? Every part of you wanted to keep going, didn't it?" Hesitatingly, her eyes flutter-blink open. "And not every gone-away place things are sent to is a cornfield."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine sets down her drink and crosses an arm over her chest to place her own hand over Xion's. A faint smile plays across her lips at the moment of physical contact, but it is fleeting. "Oh, he didn't try to kill me with the Hand. Just the bits and pieces he didn't like. He would erase my tongue, when it pleased him to silence me. Only happened a few times before I learned when not to speak and started keeping myself in line. If anything I was his accomplice as much as- as much as a victim." A pause. "I guess I did get out of there eventually, but. I regret the things I did to myself for him, the shapes I bent myself into. I'm like a piece of paper that's been creased too many times, and started to tear."
Xion	Sympathy remains in Xion, held pressed to shoulder through her palm. How could it not? The story is not hers, and the familiar house that she finds it in is still not the particular floor and room that is hers, but... She understands. "I hear you still have a tongue, but. . . is this the first voice, still? The one you've always had? Or are you on a second, a third..." Xion wonders, curious on a downward beat, every breath a gentle sigh. Noticing her cold lungs and dry mouth, the Nobody takes a sip of warm cocoa and exhales a light puff of sweet warmth instead. "'When you started keeping yourself in line'. The part when the change took. Try to define yourself in kind ways, Madeleine - if you have the power, that power, still. When you crease paper, it becomes this soft thing indistinguishable from a kind of cloth, and woven right, the proper fibers, isn't it more like wool or silk than something torn?" Looking over Madeleine, Xion makes a small show of checking over the huntress. "You don't seem torn to me. And I'm sure there's a way to stitch it, too. Threads and needles and every kind of patch. I've learned to do lots of patch-work, myself. Eventually, you start to make your own custom you, isn't that fun?" She asks. She hopes.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"I haven't really- Well, I guess- Taking up photography's been fun. That's something I do just for myself, although the money from the blog patrons is an encouragement. And... I've had a few friendships of my own volition, not just for the sake of necessity or strategy." Madeleine glances down at her mug, then back at Xion's eyes. "...maybe we can be friends? If that's not too much to ask. I mean, I hardly know you- oh geez, I've been talking only about myself! Hhhhow are you?"
Xion	"Oh." Xion pauses, short, a little confused. The disconnect startles her out of the moment of feeling-and-hearing, and her fingers curl, half-retreating from Madeleine's shoulder. "I meant, um--" She had thought some of the metaphor had been less figurative and more literal, but how to explain that? Where to even start? Lips pursed, the Nobody pauses, and tilts her head slowly, and then chews on the inside of her lip and exhales a 'mmh' of breath. "... It's okay." Xion gives away, and then is surprised again by the question of being friends. Eyes a little wide, she's saved by Madeleine's own awkwardness. Glancing away and taking a longer drink of her cocoa, Xion nods. "Mm, yeah, don't worry about it." The noirette plays off, her Santa pom flooping left and right more eagerly than she shakes her head. "Um---" Xion fails to have words better than a trailing-off tone for long seconds after the simple smalltalk question is laid on her. "I'm. . ." Each word is a dregs of pourover agony of dripping. Teasing something out about herself takes her so long that with a kind of blurting relief, she remembers a topic to dodge into: "Oh, didn't you want to ask me about medallions? The, um, thing I drew out of Jeanne." Whelmed, momentarily, with her own conversational deadfall, Xion's light slouch increases, her arms steadying against the table.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"Oh yeah, sure! Tell me about medallions. Oh, and while we're at it, you can have this back finally." Madeleine reaches into her jacket pocket and hands over the flask of chocolate syrup. It's nearly empty.
Xion	Xion accepts her flask back with much more smooth relief than the looming doom of simple small talk, her smile politely painted on. "Thanks for remembering." Tucking the flask away in her wool coat, she swishes the last of her cool cocoa in the bottom of her paper cup and tosses it back. She can explain medallions. Drawing out a flat and palmable textured puck, about as large as a good sized pin, she places the 'medallion' on the table. Immediately, it's clear that the medallion is 'Jeanne's', similarly to the idea that looking at Xion's sword gives you the impression you are looking at 'Xion('s)'. The front of the face is a black metal, a strong batwing and coils of thorned vines motif, with a crowned-and-winged heart at the top-left corner and a red jewel setting the bottomr right. The face, vibrantly, has a sort of dark crystal prism face that captures an image-in-multiple-angles of Jeanne d'Arc Alter. There's a little keychain that jingles off the back of it, silver. "This is, um, like a little part of them? Like a photograph, but, important. A locket, maybe. I can use them as a representation - a token of a connection, or a power, or something I've drawn into myself. For a bit, or for a while. Does that make sense? That's how it works for just about everyone, though sometimes the 'token' is a little different."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"How curious. May I?" Madeleine picks up the medallion to inspect it more closely, turning it over in her hands. "Interesting. Are they difficult to produce? How many do you have?"
Xion	"Oh, sure." Xion offers the medallion out, gesturing with an open palm on the table. "They're not going to get too far from me in any way that matters." The Nobody answers with confidence. In-hand, Jeanne's medallion is warm, like metal pulled from ashes. The backside setting features a scaled rough texture, smooth going only one direction. Xion continues to narrate. "I can keep a bunch of them, and I've found more. Some of them are easier to hold onto than others - ones I have affinity for, or just ones that fit in an empty spot of mine. I collect plenty of kinds of weapons, but the Medallion's power is... like a power of a bond, or a dream. Something I can swing, or ride, or live for a while before I have to give it back or share time with them again." Xion smiles. "Why? Seen something like this before too?"
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"The power of a bond... yes, I've seen the likes of this before. People like me, we're not really meant to fit into the world. But when we find a way to do so anyway, we can take things we care for and... bless them, almost. Awaken powers that lay dormant within them. Bring out the best in something, whether it's a sword, a friend, or a favorite restaurant. Call on it in an hour of need, that sort of thing." A pause for a sip of tea, then a glance down into the mug. "Well, I say 'we'. I was never very good at that sort of thing. I only had one such bond, and she... I can't reach her anymore, not since I was unified."
Xion	Xion tilts her head, and reaches out to clasp Madeleine's hand in hers, shifting from shoulder to palm easily. This, to the Nobody, at least feels right. "Okay." She begins. "Well, if you're looking for a friend, and you're missing a bond, you know the other way to find it is to explore it yourself, right? That place you're missing, that shape you're missing, if you match pieces to it, take a responsbility for it, I think you'll find it." A beat passes, and Xion smiles despite her earlier worries. "Maybe Phony can help with that, too. Though, it's scary to think that someone would have the answer for you, maybe taking control and ownership of that choice and borrowing the ability is moe your speed. Reconnecting with lost parts of yourself... Is a journey of becoming all over again, isn't it?" Settling back, the Nobody finally passes her gaze out into the winter village once more. "You can make more, if you want them. I think you're capable, if you found your voice again and again after losing it."