The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 470 - Copperized Memories & Challenging Moments: Re-lived
The air felt thick with essence, a sensation that did not bother ’herself’ despite its density. Elua er Goltbred’s body was quite different, smaller and lighter than Qatrand’s own, with lean and strong muscles that hid themselves underneath the layers of softening fat and healthy springy skin. Her mind, too, was different... but the emotion of it was immediately, intimately familiar. Enough to forget for just a few seconds that they were different people.
Sharp and constant ’longing’, an *ache* that had become so integrated into daily existence that it barely registered as acknowledged pain anymore. Just the permanent state of being separated from something essential, for reasons that felt imperative to her. But still, a name repeated like an echo bouncing throughout the walls of her spirit like a ringing tinnitus... a mantra and promise present in every moment of awareness.
’Qat’.
The girl she ’was’ hoped the girl she *is* was safe, doing well in all her endeavors, and that none of these distractions she engaged in actually prevented her from thinking of her beloved for long... if at all. Needing to feel and remember the missing connection even as she needed to dull it.
All the while, ’she’ was looking down at a dark blue lake far below. But nearly everything else was pure white. Edited intentionally to be incomplete. To hide the details of this little world from Qatrand, keeping focus on the things necessary to show the wedding itself.
The swordswoman’s spirit inside the spiritual memory knew this was going to be reported in her letters as being for a reason. If she had to guess, it was merely so that the ’surprise’ of seeing it all for herself the first time would be retained - despite such details as the color of sky, cloud, and even the dimensions of their bedroom being written down to read and imagine.
Even the small thoughts her mint-drop held in these ’present’ moments had details removed, if they gave away anything too specific about what the rest of the place looked like. But that was all she had removed from them. They were still quite powerful and detailed in all other respects.
’She went overboard. In so many ways.’
From turning back and seeing Nohre approach, walking on empty white space, in the dress that ’she’ had made with the rapid thoughts of the process. To the feel of manipulating Gaseous essence to make their slow-falling method of travel. And even such perfect Adhesion on a fluid surface that made her own attempts to walk up solid walls look like a creature scrambling up glass!
Raising the altar, tearing away the illusion of the cliff just to reveal the mass ritual illusion of ’witnesses’ within it... Qat experienced the whole ceremony through Elua’s eyes and body. Foreign physical energy movements inside and familiar spiritual sense outside all at once made it a very new experience. Every movement and chosen word was filtered through a cascade of ancient knowledge, structured unlike the many new, wild connections that always seemed to be forming for the younger soul.
An attenuating outer shell of a layer to all those ’old’ thoughts - comprised of the Goltbred girl’s best estimation of Qatrand gil Yecine’s opinion on anything and everything - was mildly distressing to the person herself to experience. Considering that it *felt* like it was a brighter and more consistent lodestar than she actually considered herself to be. Yet, she also could not deny accuracy of impressions obtained through this unique decision making process... proving that as *rose-tinted* as the glasses her wife ’wore’ may be...
’It means nothing if the entire object, the entire person you are looking at is all but the same color. Maybe I’m just not used to how her view of me distorts or mutes the vibrancy of everything else?’
The rain and mountain metaphor made more sense from this perspective, buoyed by a truer faith in millennia of observation and hard-won understanding about what made love endure. And behind it, ’her’... El’s own belief that what she had already given to the accepting swordswoman in less than ten years was not at all enough. That there was still an eternity to give and receive, if only her beloved could wait that long with her.
Qat knew she would. But also now knew she needed to tell her spouse that more often when she returned, since she was sure that the girl would never believe any assurance that she had done plenty. Her busy, scheming, mischievous artisan of an heiress always had to push a little more, a little further.
Which is exactly what she seemed to be doing ’today’.
Redirected essence, thanks to meticulously prepared rituals activating, channeled Silver through its proper intended Element. Rather than the superior energy of it scattering wildly in a thumping ripple against absolutely everything that held essence at all. At the same time was a spiritual presence, massive and more playful than the reincarnator herself. Utterly impossible to ignore - but the wary brunette she currently was somehow did it anyway.
Her mint-drop cataloging the Divinity and their theatrical flair as *excessive* made the thin stream of ’Qat’ infecting the memory amused. The whole thing seemed on observation as a short game between entities who understood each other’s motivations. However, when the comment about El letting herself be a child hit, it firmed that watcher of the memory into taking it all more seriously than they were. Her spirit rallied its Anchor back to reality, providing a clearer separation right before the reddish-blonde seemed to try and speak *for* Qat.
And the swordswoman was very, very displeased that someone else just attempted to use her deepest, true, but *weakest* thoughts about the heiress in order to put her wife on the defensive. When a powerful being began to speak the name Uvraneht aloud, there was fury that did not belong to the memory of El mixed in. Feeling the power lash out, forcefully severing the ’mere’ Avatar’s connection to the realm mid-word... the swordswoman experienced the sense of destruction with the same kind of catharsis as her wife.
Breaking containment fields. Hundreds of carefully crafted sigils, the result of weeks of testing and work. Consumed only to prove that some things should not be touched without asking. And that sharp sting of possessiveness belonged both to the person who had been given the name by her first life’s parents... as well as the only person alive in the new era who had been gifted the knowledge personally.
It was petty jealousy, but Qatrand did not want to share what she had specially been given even with beings who might know everything. Brief, irrational, and if it had been felt by the person who had recorded this memory? - very well might have been cause to be smothered with kisses for an hour or more.
At least, that was what the edited in ’note’ of impressions from the reincarnator suggested, as it overlaid the end of this main section of the wedding.
