The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 513 - While Young Yecine Are Made To Sleep...
"Give me those and lay down before you pass out."
Extracting the thick bundles of letters from Rezzue’s arms after the woman had dug into her belongings to retrieve them, Elua quickly locked them in safe Adhesion behind herself while pushing the woman into an open healing formation. This time she would stay, rest, and get better - not run free to chat about becoming a ’more effective wife’... or to tell her more about Navuill er Yecine than the brunette ever wanted to know about the cousin-in-law.
"Sleep. They’ll be fine. You’ll be fine."
Patting the red-haired woman’s knee, an action El herself found only comforting from very certain people, she noted how quickly it doused any ’anxiety’ in her spirit. Overall, the heiress had not regretted ’failing’ to turn on the barrier that would have kept the cultivator laying still in this quarantine infirmary - as the schemer knew well that seeing how people moved about when they thought they were free to act was as telling as anything they spoke about with her.
"Please... don’t hate them? For what their father-"
Slightly fed up with where *that* conversation starter seemed to be going, a hand ran over the control sigils near the bed. Activating the ritual that would send the hostage-patient into a forced, but peaceful enough coma. It was unpleasant and unhelpful to a spiritualist when people screamed and barked things due to their pain, after all.
A mortal diagnostician may find aid in being told where it hurts... but a cultivator with a good enough spiritual sense and training to trace the flows of physical energy could get all that same information easily. As long as they couldn’t fight back - which most people did instinctively.
"I am quite capable of judging people for their own isolated state of being, thank you very much. If I’m going to dislike them for anything... it’s for dropping the supplies that they were entrusted with."
Fortunately for them, she did downgrade the punishment for that... away from ’no mercy’ toward ’bring the loss up frequently’. Plans for how to needle them with that failure of duty, of their first delivery mission gone wrong, of course took a backseat to the rising desire to stow away somewhere quiet and read the letters that her precious gem had sent. But she knew that could easily devour her for many, many hours as she tended to reread each six times and meditate on it for at least five minutes.
Settling for the middle of this very room where she could at least maintain a glancing spiritual sense on her patients, she searched for the most recent letter. To learn exactly what Qat thought about sending her half-siblings here. Within it talked of Anper’s release, more about this Ouras cult that she assumed would make sense after catching up with other letters, and of course plenty of lines of love.
/ I miss you. I wish I could have brought them myself. Your father painted quite a picture with his words, but not as much as the gift you sent back. Updating the illusory training tool with how you currently look was thoughtful. Thank you, my love. When I can actually find the time to visit and pull it away from Onya, it is nice to see you as you are. It makes me happy, no matter how rough the real distance between us is. /
Letting out a sigh, she wished Qatrand would be as kind. She’d also sent a prototype of a device much like the one Zyris had used during the wedding ceremony for Nohre and Fusand. With it, her beloved swordswoman could have taken plenty of visual recordings of herself and sent it back this time. It very much seemed to be missing from any of their belongings - and she would know, since it had some fairly easily traced materials.
’Maybe I shouldn’t have stressed that they should be taken to show off as much muscle as possible...?’
/ ...I’m especially glad that I can now wake from dreams where I’ve hugged you tight and feel ever more like that can somehow reach you. That I’m not just dreaming of the past or future, but can fully mix in the present you with the affection I want to share. That I wish you and the fragment inside me to know I have.
- Always, Your Fortress /
Looking over at the deeply sleeping siblings, who held a few of the softened by youth facial features which Qat also possessed at the time they first met eleven years ago... the fact that they were passed along by a man who she fully believed could never learn to share such sweet and vulnerable words was a sad thing. As sad as the fact that, if the truth had not come out or the plot had not failed, these two may have turned into a copy of the same stilted individual.
Luckily, as events interconnected and evolved, so too did the people involved in them change. For the most part. To her, Anper had nearly always been ’noisier’ than the rest of the people she’d met on the continent. Part of that was his Danger Astralism, which was constantly trying to suck in bits of all Intent in the surroundings. For a cloud-type spirit as sensitive as hers, that was a bit more of an annoyance than for others.
But the other part... his failures, his hate - learned or twisted by those around him or not? Elua did not have it in her to be the kind of person who could patiently adjust the man’s sensibilities, when he meant nothing to her personally beyond how he hurt Qat. Her few warnings had already gone unheeded thanks to being the perfect, manipulative, feminine ’witch’ daughter of his enemy.
People who did not believe they had problems could rarely be helped. People who believed their problems were all traceable to the lives of others *definitely* could not, in her experience. Because of this, she could barely keep herself from defaulting right to the simplicity of solutions to most ancient matters... which was also often the appropriate approach within the field of medicine.
"Excising diseased tissue that will never be cured and is only sapping strength and adding complications is such an efficient solution. Yet, people and their interactions are not so easy to deal with. Especially with the world as it is now. Killing can bring more pain and hate than it solved. Maybe it always could, but people were always angry and fighting back then, so it was hard to tell which ones coming after me was ’made’ into a villain."
Sighing after her monologue, the reincarnator returned to reading the missives. Some more technical than the others - but every word was a labor of love. Every goal that of an altruist without any of the taint that could have potentially remained marring that wonderful inner glow she’d seen into the moment they met. El often still wasn’t entirely sure she was a partner reciprocating her part of things well enough.
Even if she loved her husband-wife more than anyone ever could, or will, or *would* if she had her say in things... there was yet some constant worry about which problems to directly solve and which to let Qat grow from. Which selfishnesses to personally indulge and which the mint eyed cultivator might only regret letting the young woman accept. The distractions and distance of the Exclave were growing thin...
And she was sure that was why her mistakes had begun to accumulate.
"...Started a what now?"
Her voice mumbled in the silent room, before reading the line over again.
/ Your mother started a new Guild. I’ve given her permission and land for an official building in this territory. I don’t think I’ll tell you the name or what their mascot has become in this letter. I know you’ll get all of them at once, and I will probably spill it in a successive one... but right now... I feel in the mood to leave you waiting a bit. I think I’ll also keep- /
"I should go hop into the Gateway right now and steal that photographing tool back. No, wait, if I’m doing that I should just steal her. Who would I use as a third?"
Grumbling for a moment, imagining how unlikely her threat was to be enacted but *still* planning every part of it, the brunette eventually read all of the remaining lines in this letter for the first out of sixth time.
/ -keep the images I took. Maybe even erase them. For some reason when I started to imagine you fawning at still images, I felt utterly jealous. Especially after how much you once insisted on not making any more visible copies of me for yourself. I’m the one who deserves your eyes, not any kind of representation of me.
- Yours As You Are Mine, Qat /
It had been some time since her heart thumped, her spirit *hngg’d*, and she began to question the full value and opportunity cost of *every* single one of her life choices - past and present. Pressing her fingers to her lips, El stumbled toward one of the quarantine beds and subjected herself to all its confinement. It would never stop her from truly getting out, but the restraint... was *helpful* to her bitterly, gleeful heart!
’Maybe next time I’ll send back something that just removes the illusion of me entirely. Mini-Elua is different enough from full size me, but I’m starting to kind of hate that copy.’
The possessive lover simply couldn’t let her pure, precious partner *outdo* her in any sort of dark-hearted regard... and the continent was very, very lucky that she believed so solidly in the utter fidelity of the blonde swordswoman. No one wanted a Bloodless Windstorm to be the daughter of the Bloody Duelist.
