Twists of Fate (Solo)

[Talya]

I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfill our destiny, but our fate is sealed. - Paulo Coelho

Timestamp: Summer 81, 515 AV

She would be the one to do it, she could feel it in her bones. Within the hollowed places of the morrow, against the grain of ivory. It seeped into her muscles, the tendons and ligaments that bound them. She could feel it in the way they ached. The way they groaned as moisture slipped into the air, collection of the morning's dew off the grass, and remnants blown over from the not so distant bay. She could hear its crashing, hear its roar, just a loudly as the ringing bells that circulated her mind. They seemed a memory, but they were no more than an aggravating haze within her ears, or perhaps, a signal that she had happened onto something, that for once, was a truth among so many lies. For the world was filled with them, and she found that as she aged, it became all the more difficult to sift through them all. To know which way to look first, and where to begin, as they all kept on piling up all around her to the point where she felt as though she were being buried by them. To the point where she felt like she was choking; drowning within them as they enveloped her. As she fell again, only to find a cushion at the bottom, waiting for her. A cushion of thoughts she could not categorize. Could not place on either side of the fence, as one or the other.

Talya sighed as she sat out on the grass, looking out over the world. She could see the sun upon the horizon, peaking out over what looked to be a more rural district of the city. She breathed deep, in through her nose and out through the mouth, as its golden veil blanketed the earth, and the thought that she would be the one to find the truth and the lies of all things came to her once again. Or rather, what was right, and what was wrong. Not in the way of opinion, but actuality, which she supposed, was all that really mattered, even if your heart and your mind didn't always agree with what was found, or what was said. The thought, she found, was melancholic, and brought a frown to her face, as everything she had known, and everything she had ever grown up experiencing, was that Rhysol was good, even if you couldn't always see that he served powers greater than your individual self. Such was the way of fate. Such, was the way of destiny. It was a cruel mistress; a loveless entanglement that followed you through life, until the moment you left it, and it abandoned you as easily as a leaf did its tree during the fall.

Talya sighed again. It was not a pleasant thought. She didn't often like to think of her destiny, nor even her fate because of it. But sometimes, she found, that she had to. Sometimes, she wondered how much their hands played a part. Sometimes, she wondered how much her own did. She pulled her legs into her chest, bending them at the knee. She raised her hands from her side, and set the elbows against the twisted knob of bone below. The rest of her arm leaned over the side of her limb, but she raised them a little higher, so that she could see her outstretched fingers. Her nails, and the dirt that had formed a thin layer of crust behind them. She blinked, as she turned them over slowly. How much could they do? How much of a role did they, or any other part of herself, truly play within the grand scheme of her fate? Her ultimate quest to find the validity in what was either considered good, or evil before she dropped dead? How much free will did she really have? How much of a free will did anyone truly experience? For the gods... they made everyone didn't they? And the strings they tied to their toys, left them little more than puppets.

Didn't it?

[Talya]

For how many of the strings would the gods snip themselves? How many would they allow to sever? Grow so old that they simply, snapped from the pressure? Again, Talya found that she sighed as she wrapped her arms around her knees, and curled up as though she appeared as young as her age. As though she were little more than a child locked up in their room, after the sun had gone down, terrified of the dark. That was the true horror of it all- she felt as though she were at liberty in so many ways, devoid of shackles, and able to formulate her own thoughts. Able to say that today she wanted to sleep in a little, or today she wanted to read a book, or today she wanted to take the long way through town, and turn left instead of right around the bend. That was what was the most haunting- the gods concealed it so well, that you couldn't so much as sense their presence around you any more, any more than you could sense it within yourself. You couldn't tell that your decisions did not matter; that none of you did, for no matter how much you delayed, or how much you veered from your path, no matter how far you went, you would always find yourself to be intersecting it again; right back where you started from.

No. No, that couldn't be true. Talya shook her head. That wasn't quite it, precisely. The gods couldn't watch over you, all of that time, could they? Surely, there were far many people, and far to many sentient races and creatures to allow for that. Surely, man and its counterparts had far more say of all things that she had been led to believe. Yes, that had to be right, because she could always choose what she wanted to eat, just as she could choose what to study, or what to be in regards to society; her occupation. She could stretch a single moment within the confines of time, by doing nothing. She could make it drip as languidly as molasses in the hottest months, just as she could force it to speed up, if only she found a way to entertain herself- by taking part in one of the few hobbies she had given herself a chance to get to know, and to love. Or at least grow to like, as love was as strange as it was strong, and it was a rather complicated thing. A thing Talya wasn't entirely sure she understood on anything more than an intellectual level, after all, she had betrayed Reik all those years ago, hadn't she? When she had lived back in Ravok, and he, in many ways had set her upon her death. Forced her to ask more questions, and begin to understand her own purpose- her own destiny, the beginnings of the thread of her fate.

Perhaps that was why Reik was dead now. Perhaps, that is why he had to have perished- because he had completed his destiny, and it was his fate. It was foreseen- his life was supposed to be cut short, as his sole purpose was to set her on her own quest, and with that now done... there was no more use for him. This too, was a depressing thought, and forced the Ethaefal to wring her hands, before nervously running her sweaty palms through her jet black hair, making it more than a little greasy as she shuddered, and then forced herself into a single-person hug once again. She realized then that there could be endless strings of destiny, endless amounts of roads to take, but at the end, there was always, just a single thing waiting. Your one fate, and once it was found, it could not be unfound, any more than it could be renewed, and your cycle begun again. At least, not in this life. Perhaps, she thought, that was why she had been through so many, just to get to this point. The place she found herself now. Perhaps, part of why her memories of them were so fragmented, was because she wasn't supposed to remember. Because that would be cheating, because somehow, her old destinies, and her old fates, somehow tied into the present one.

[Talya]

Talya wasn't sure she liked that either. She wanted to feel as though she could choose her path. Could choose her own fate, as much as the little thing she called destiny, which she considered to be whatever it was that pushed her toward some distant place in the future, while her fate was that ending place. That time and that place when she knew the truth- what she had been searching for all these years, since the death of Reik. Or at least, the abduction of him. She supposed he could still be alive, seeing as she had only seen him get taken away, but it was extremely doubtful, even to her, that he wouldn't have been tortured, and then killed for the difference within his thoughts, within his actions, and his overall ways. The Ebonstryfe she knew, weren't exactly the most forgiving kind of folk, any more than she thought, even Lord Rhysol was known to be. But for whatever reason, she didn't necessarily think that this trait made him a "bad" god, for she had seen it in humans too, and she supposed even the "good" gods could be the same- most people didn't take lightly to being betrayed, and in many ways, it scarred them, and twisted them into darker orders, at least temporarily, until the memory of the hurt was torn asunder, or simply, forgotten.

In any case, although she felt as though it were going to be a rather long journey, which took her through many dark roads, and into dark alleys, as it twisted and turned and forced her around corners as much as it forced her to cut through them, Talya couldn't say that she wasn't excited to make the trip. Move through life towards it end, toward the completion of her quest, the moment when she discovered the nature of her fate, and the answer to all of life's little questions, (if not a vast number of them), before she ultimately died, only to be born again into yet another one of her many lives. She was afraid though, of what that meant, to end, only to begin again. To forget all she had learned, as she doubt she would be swept back into good graces, and returned to the world, remembering even, just a little of what had come before. Even if she set eyes upon another of her kind- even if she learned of them and what they could do, she doubt it would be enough to incite anything. She doubt it would create enough of a spark to bring anything back of her, and of course, there was no way to leave anything behind for her to find. For even a book, by her own hand and her own name, would seem foreign and exotic.

The knowledge hurt, just as the circulation of all of her questions did. Knowing that she would hardly know anything until the end. She sighed, and balled herself up even more tightly, setting her face against her legs. Locking out the light. Locking out the world, and all of its many stimulations. Her eyes ached now, just as her head did. Her temples throbbed dully, while her closed eyelids twitched, making the skin upon her forehead, and around her eyes skip and jump. Until finally, they began to feel a little damp, and then rather wet, as she sobbed into her knees, her entire body trembling, as she lost herself within a deeper portion of her troubled soul.

OOCSorry if this is a bit redundant and/or sloppy. My brain is kind of fried.