This post's authors have general content warnings that might apply to the current post.
A second ago she was at work in the temple of Erastil in Sothis, which was actually going pretty okay, all things considered. Now she's in a grassy field with a couple fruit trees and a table and chairs and some notebooks and pens.
This is unexpected and requires a ton of power and is therefore sort of inherently terrifying. And she's alone, and defenseless, and she doesn't know where Verita is.
She mills around in steadily increasing amounts of distress until Hagan appears, just as suddenly.
...she really should have thought about what she was going to say to them more. Uh.
"...you guys doing okay?"
He kisses her forehead. "You can go try to help them with whatever their problem is now, just be careful."
Eeee. Hug. "I'll be careful."
And she takes one of the paths and gets big again. "We should head a ways away in case one of you accidentally lies again."
"Mhmm. And he wants to stay with me forever and help look after the kids. So - we have to figure out the specifics, still. But I think it'll be good again."
...if Cecelia is like the rest of them, there is every possibility that she has never had a crush before. And they know that all of her previous experiences with men have been exponentially more horrible. So her standards here are, yeah, underground.
"That's good. Until the next time you have a horrible misunderstanding and something blows up."
" - I mean, it does give me some concerns about whether you're actually in love now or just, like, having your first experience being infatuated with someone? But actually we were trying to figure out whether we all shared some kind of - general attraction pattern, or whatever."
"Imrainai and me were talking about, uh, expecting that we'd never fall in love with anyone and nobody would ever fall in love with us, and how probably nobody would ever want to marry us. And then the one of us from hell came over and told us that she'd never wanted to kiss anyone before - things happened to her - and then she ended up with a crush on Alex. And Elizabeth volunteered that she'd kind of figured that she'd never like anyone, but then she ran into Connor and I guess now they're together. And - we were kind of wondering whether you had something, uh, similar."
"Ah. I - guess I sort of always figured I'd get married, because almost everyone does? I hoped that I would love whoever it was, but one can never really know that ahead of time. Before Rana stole me I expected that I would be married off when the Emperor was done with me. I have, in fact, never wanted to kiss anyone else. And now I'm in love with Rana. And when he kisses me it's very nice, even though it was never nice with anyone else.
"I don't know if that helps or not?"
"I guess so.
"How, uh, sure are you that you're in love with Rana and not, like - it seems like maybe if you wanted to kiss someone and had never wanted to kiss anyone else before, you might, like, get confused."
" - no, not really? Being in love isn't one specific thing. It's - feeling very safe with someone, and knowing you can trust them to be on your side, and being happy for their happiness, and knowing that they'll be happy for yours. It's wanting to comfort someone when they're hurting, and wanting to celebrate with them in their joy. Wanting to be with them forever. Wanting to be wanted back. And when you are, it's the security of knowing that you are important, that no matter what happens you won't be abandoned. You don't need all of those, and don't need any specific amount of them, because there is no line written on earth or in the heavens that divides true love from false. One is in love when one feels such things strongly enough to feel safe defining them as being in love. And I do.
"And - I suppose the more I had of that, the nicer it became when he kissed me. And I expect I shall grow more in love with him in the future, as he continues to prove himself more and more worthy of it, and that the more in love I am, the happier I will be at his side, and the happier I will be to touch him."
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
