abraxaslogs | All I can think about

When Julia returns from the crater, she first just collapses in bed for a few days. Her body may have been unconscious for awhile, so she's rested in body, but not in spirit, also she's not so sure any of them physically are fine after that too. The orchardists support her, bringing her food and drink, telling her they're grateful she and the others fixed the weather. She doesn't have the heart to say she doesn't even know how they did, if they did, but she accepts the thanks anyway because there's nothing she can think of to say.

It's difficult as the wave of emotions and memories hits her in waves. Not just in the crater, when it was the hardest and most painful, but the aftermath highlights the memories she'd very happily erased from her mind. While walking around Solvunn, she may pause and seem to be in pain, pressing a hand to her forehead and wavering a little. The last thing she wants to see is Reynard, but unfortunately, that's vivid in her mind right now. She brushes it off.

Julia is mostly fine though once she bounces back. She has a renewed sense of energy now that she knows that is the type of future they can change, or at least she believes so. They know it's possible, which means they don't need to walk the same path. That's what she remembers about foresight. She jumps right back into what she was doing before, which is fixing up her shrine and going to the second settlement to check on Endrborrin's shrine. It was ripped up despite help to the contrary by people over the course of the storm, so she is lovingly smoothing over the ground and grass, regrowing the flowers. Some flowers have been placed in tribute so she makes them more alive and vivid, hoping that the goddess may take these offerings as the best they can do for now.

She can be found in the second settlement at the shrine, surrounded in flowers and butterflies looping around her, Endrborrin still favoring her. She is meditating alone. She is much the same in the primary settlement at her smaller personal shrine that she made herself, but it's easy to stumble across her meditating or praying. Julia wonders why the Traders came to talk to her and not her goddess, but then again, it was a hallucination. For whatever reason, that's who her mind went to instead.

She puts flowers in her hair and wanders around the settlement, colorful butterflies hanging from the flowers to mark her as favored by the spring goddess. Julia sometimes seems troubled but other times she seems calm and at peace. The memories are hard but it could be worse. She is often seen helping where she can with the woodland and plants, her magical powers useful in helping return what was damaged by the storms back to life.

Julia now has permanent red eyes, which was very strange when she woke up, and she sometimes pauses in front of mirrors, looking closely at them. They won't go away.

Edited 2024-05-13 18:02 (UTC)

It's at her shrine that Zagreus finds her.

"Back to normal I see. Well, mostly." He had noticed those red eyes. Though why that of all things stayed, he couldn't guess. Then he pauses.

There's a lot that's happened. And a lot that Zagreus knew would be difficult for Julia, specifically. But rather than get into all that just yet, he holds out something towards her - a bottle of mead.

"Here. I wanted you to have this," he says. "My host family were helping me make it, before...well, before. But...this is to show my appreciation for you. And to say how grateful I am that you've given me the opportunity to get to know you, even though my family bring up difficult memories."

It takes Michael a few weeks to work out who he is from what he was during their shared dream. It's an unpleasant task. Michael is not one who's ever been uncertain of who he is or what his place in the world is. Thankfully there is no shortage of work to throw himself into. The days pass, and eight hundred years of another Michael fall away like shed feathers.

Eventually, though, life in Solvunn returns to what it was: slow days, and even slower nights. There are few people awake and active when the sky is at its darkest. He finds Julia along one of the paths leading into the Primary Settlement, seeing to the now routine task of relighting extinguished lanterns.

"Julia," he says, wearing his usual impassive expression. It's a friendly greeting by his standards. "Still keeping busy, I see."

She beat him to the lanterns, so he's going to have to come up with something else to keep himself occupied tonight.

Julia struggles more with her memories after all that happened, but she's one big struggle bus most of the time so it's nothing new. In many ways, she's grateful. For her, it was a classic 'be careful what you wish for' lesson that she is going to learn from and make certain not to follow the same path. Her fears were founded, okay, but she could still learn from them. Experiencing her own trauma all over again was not fun, but she'd done that before already, so in the end, she was more used to being mindfucked than everyone else.

She went back to normal life pretty easily because of that. She went back to Endrborrin's shrine to clean it up, it was looking really good again, those three weeks were not wasted. She fixed up her own shrine. She learned from Aloy as part of her hunting group. And she got back to her lantern lighting in the dead of night.

She turns to look at him, up a few feet on earth steps she made since she's so short otherwise, and smiles sincerely. It doesn't quite make it to her eyes, which are now a vivid red instead of their old hazel. At least one thing changed permanently when she got back, and Julia has no idea how she feels about it. "What else is an immortal to do, huh?" She comes down and offers him the light.

"How are you doing? How's the inn?"

Red eyes might alarm even those who aren't familiar with the many kinds of demon out there, but Michael isn't one of them. He's clued into more than the physical and there's nothing violent or threatening about her. She's the same Julia he knew before their shared dream. There's a minor change on his person, too, but his sleeves hide the tooth marks.

Michael doesn't match the smile, but that shouldn't be a surprise. Anyone who's had more than two conversations with him quickly realizes it's just how his face is. When he's not happy to see someone, he makes it very clear.

"I'm still here." It's not exactly an enthusiastic glad to be back, but he figures Julia can understand the sentiment. None of them are having an easy time of it, but they have little choice except to keeping moving. "Yourself?"

He approaches close enough to take the lamp off her hands, then opens one of the glass side panels to relight it.

"The inn is still standing. It needed repairs, as just about every other home in the Settlement did. A section of shingles peeled away from the roof, one of the windows shattered, some of the siding came loose. Others fared worse." Fixing it was less work than his decorating-undecorating tug of war with Gabriel, he thinks, though he finds himself missing those days regardless. Gabriel had been a brat, but he'd cared. "Carl is doing well. I think the locals took to feeding him while I was away."

The Solvunnites have decided her red eyes mean that she was blessed even more somehow, so it didn't put them off in the least, but it is strange for her to look in the mirror right then. Julia already checked to be certain her eyes still glow white when she uses her goddess abilities, so it's just one more strange thing to get used to around here.

She appreciates that it doesn't seem to phase him at all, but it's Michael. She's not sure anything can phase him.

"Same. Still here existing. It could've been a lot worse in my case, so I guess a part of me is relieved I didn't end up where I feared." Which was full out Dark Phoenix villain to the point someone would have to adamantium claws put her down. Not that she would blame them, but she did have really high concerns before this. Then again, it was less than a thousand years. Who knows if it went on longer.

Julia moves her earth steps down but stays atop a few so she's still on his level, not inclined to get to her tiny height when she doesn't have to. Talking with people a foot taller than her can be a pain. She nods as he explains what happened with the inn, putting a hand to her heart when he mentions Carl. "Oh good, I'm not surprised they did, but it's a relief."

Solvunn looks out for each other, especially their Summoned. "Is there anything I can do to help? I promised Gabriel I would, although that was mostly us joking about terrible decorating."

He'd have to agree that sounds like something the locals would say. Every move the Summoned make is a blessing or a message from the gods, even the mistakes they make.

There are things that can faze him, but she'll be happier if she never finds out what they are. Meeting his Father likely wouldn't go well.

"Should I ask what 'worse' would have been?"

Because he's asking. That word seems to mean different things to each of them. He remembers Julia once—not that long ago really, but they are all still carrying eight hundred years of memories even if the whole experience was fake—worried she'd grow jaded about mortal humans, given enough time. She hadn't gotten to the point of cruel pagan god so far as he remembers. Is that where she thinks she'd have ended up?

Lantern relit, he passes it back to her to return to its hook.

"No, I suppose it's not a surprise. Someone had to have been feeding him before Gabriel took ownership of the place." He does wonder a little where Carl came from. He's clearly not a native seabird. Was he a pet brought back from some voyage across the seas? "No one's staying at the moment, so there isn't much to be done apart from keeping it clean. You're welcome to take a look if you care to."

Maybe give him a few pointers on what humans do and don't find comforting. He's decorated the place according to his tastes, but well, he's not quite the intended clientele.

"I'm unsure if like ... worse for me would be petty and cruel or completely indifferent. Those are the two types of gods in my world, so. Old and bored or old and mean."

Eight hundred years doesn't make one old, especially not next to someone like him, but the years do pass and it did make her feel farther and farther away from the humans she wanted to help. It was probably her putting too much pressure on herself that started it. She was so afraid of what she could be that she ended up being something else twisting in a different way. She did want to punish humans, she was harder on them than most of the other gods. She was disdainful by the end, growing to hate them, so who knows where she might have been in another hundred years.

Julia does have a handle now on where she went wrong, and also that expecting perfection out of anyone, especially herself, is a really bad idea. It's difficult when she's the victim of gods gone wrong, so there is that driving her need to be better.

"Better doesn't have to be perfect, is what I'm trying to get into my head, as I start over."

She doesn't know if that is their inevitable future, although probably a version of that could happen. She and Michael for example will still be there in eight hundred years if they aren't sent back home for whatever reason. It's everyone else that will be a question mark. Julia sees it as a warning. One she's taking seriously.

She puts it up on its hook and lets the earth fall down so she doesn't keep disturbing it, instead making air steps for her to stay on his level, otherwise she'd barely go up to his shoulders on her flat feet. It only requires a simple twist of her fingers for a spell.

"Sure! I'd love to see what you did with it. Did you get rid of his hideous purchases? I did tell him they were silly." But it's Gabriel, that only made him happier. Julia knew him for a short time but she does still genuinely miss him, as a friend. She knows for Michael it's a lot more personal. She hopes it doesn't bother him to talk about Gabriel, even in mild passing.

Michael believes it's entirely possible to be both indifferent and cruel. Sometimes, they're one and the same. It calls to mind his Father: indifferent to His own angels, cruel to the humans that interested Him most because it entertained Him. His lack of interest in His own children was a cruelty in its own right. Why design them for worship and obedience only to leave them?

That's a painful question to which he might never have an answer, so he doesn't voice it.

"Better than someone in particular, or just better than that potential future version of yourself?"

She's right about this being a chance to start over. Informed as they are about what the future could hold, Michael doubts that it's fated to be that way. Those who were happy will push to realize it, but those who weren't will act to prevent it. That specific future has already been derailed because it's already impacting their actions.

He pauses beside her as she floats in the air to keep at eye level with him. Neat trick, very practical.

"I discarded some of what he'd brought in as 'decor'. Some of it I had to remove, for practical reasons. He never did give much thought to what would be an inconvenience if ever he couldn't snap his fingers to fix it." Carpeted bathrooms. Carpeted bathrooms, Julia. "I left one room as he'd left it, so he can't say I've erased all the work he ever put into it if he ever returns."

He kept the awful name, too. Maybe he's a little nostalgic for their creative process now that Gabriel's not here to push back on his decisions. There is regret, too, that he'll never know what the final outcome would have been for them beyond the inn.

"Now or later?"

How fast is Julia in the air? Michael can be there in the blink of an eye.

"Better than that version of myself and also how they were. It's hard to know, because they're thousands of years older than we were, so I have more time to go down the wrong path. But all I can do is try again from this point." Julia isn't what one would call an optimist. She would say realist borderlining on pessimist. She's been through a lot in her relatively short life so she's already starting from a more morally gray place.

"Though you'd know better than me, being billions of years old. I wasn't born to it, you were." So she assumes that angels have a different perception of time and change than the average pagan god. "I mean, I assume you aren't the exact same person you were when you were first created." That would be nuts to never change in all that time. Michael does seem very settled into who he is now, so there was a journey somewhere in there.

It's a bit sentimental to keep one room as Gabriel wanted it, and Julia thinks that's very sweet. She won't tease him about it though, Michael probably doesn't want attention brought to it. It's hard enough losing a sibling. She does secretly hope some day he'd come back. Not everyone wanted to go home.

"Oh we can go now if you want. I can blip my way there." She doesn't fly but she can teleport. She says blip because that is what it looks like, she can be there and then gone. She's gotten pretty good at it, even if sometimes for long distances it's her blipping multiple times over a space of time.

He gives a nod. It probably is harder to adapt to eternity for humans, who really weren't built for it. Angels have programming to rely on. A set of codes to fall back on that tell them what to do, what to think, and an elder archangel or two to direct them.

Then again, the human soul is effectively immortal. Given a soft place to rest in Heaven, they rarely seem to change much. Maybe it's all about the environment. The real world is harsher than the comforting warmth of fond memories.

"I'd say I'm more informed now."

In terms of personality, Michael doesn't believe he's changed all that much since his creation. What's changed is how he looks back on his early life, now that he knows the truth of what his Father and at least one of his closest siblings were really like. It's impossible to think of family and see it with the same fondness he once did. It changes how he looks ahead to the future, too. There is no working towards a joy that never existed.

He's never given much thought to whether or not Gabriel wanted to go home, but if he did, he'd have to guess not. Gabriel's simply dead back there, just like Michael himself. That thought brings him something akin to comfort, the thought that his job is finally over, but he doubts Gabriel would feel the same. He'd always been a glutton for new experiences. He'd want to keep living.

"Now, then."

They might as well. This section of the lamp network is relit, so they'd have to find something else to do anyway.

There's a flutter and a rush of air and then Michael is at the Tertiary Settlement, standing on the porch outside a home built out of stone and wood siding. It's obviously a former family home. One of the larger ones for the Tertiary Settlement, as larger families often try to set up in the Primary. Perhaps that's why it was abandoned in the first place.

"I would hope so after all that time!" Informed, that is. Michael seems wise to her, and his constant calm seems pretty natural for someone who has been through so much time and experience. She does wonder if he was different when he was younger or if that's her humanity shining through, to assume people ever had to be one way before they 'grew up' so to speak. Probably not. Michael seems like he's probably always been Michael.

Julia's gotten much better at teleporting so she only has to blip a few times before she's there, and that's mostly to make certain she knows exactly where she's going. She hasn't had enough experience to have a natural sense of if she's accidentally appearing inside of someone's house, so that's an in-progress learning experience. Still, she is there only fifteen seconds or so later, appearing all of a sudden rather than it being wings. A blink instead of flutter.

She would have a better chance of seeing all of it in the daylight so there's not much she can see right now, but it looks nice if still a bit abandoned. "I like it, it's got character." It has that rustic feel like all of Solvunn but she thinks the plants and flowers could use a little livening up.

"Okay so sell me the pitch. How many rooms, do you have mints for the pillows?" Her tone is teasing.

Michael has indeed always been Michael, but any memories she's kept of him from their shared dream-future might inform her as to what he was like before the burden of running Heaven and then losing his family fell on him. Despite his chronically serious attitude, there was a point when he was friendly, even warm.

There's only one person in Abraxas who could speak to that truth now, though, and he might not even remember it that way, so Julia will likely never know. It was thousand of years ago anyway.

Fifteen seconds is prompt enough not to trigger a talking to for keeping him waiting. Michael does raise his eyebrows oh so slightly at her though. Are mints really the first point of inquiry? His inherited memories of hotels and motels are mostly from Dean's perspective—largely roadside dumps not fancy enough for putting little welcome gifts on the pillow to signify the room was freshly cleaned. No guarantee the room had been cleaned at all, either.

"No mints, unless you care to find me a local supplier. Gabriel was a proponent of eating a full meal in bed before a guest slept there, to make it feel 'homey and lived-in'. I put a stop to that."

He may not be human, but come on. Crumbs in the bed? Unpleasant.

Michael opens the front door and waves her in ahead of him so his height won't block her view. The inside has the same rustic cabin up north feel as the outside, with wood floors and wall panels. The small foyer gives onto what used to be the living room. It's now a small greeting and dining area, with a trio of small round tables and chairs. Carl, head tucked under a wing as he naps, perches atop the antlers of a taxidermy moose head mounted on the far wall.

"Formerly six rooms, now four: two on this floor, two above. There are few visitors here, so I decided space was a higher priority than capacity."

In Solvunn

no subject

shows up late with cold starbucks

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

In Horizon

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject