Solo ... Before the Storm

[Wanda Endust]

[Continued from The Calm...]
[Maiden District] The Endust Residence Wanda's Apartment
83 Winter 513AV
Around the 4th bell

In. Out.

Deep breaths.

In. Out.

Emptiness.

Wanda sat cross-legged on the floor of the apartment. Her apartment, now. The thought gave her an odd sensation of finality -- and rightly so.

As much as she would like to simply sit and pause her reeling mind, she could not. There were too many things to do. Too many things that needed arranged. There was a whole future she needed to sketch out.

But did she really need to?

Perhaps not. She wasn't in the habit of planning out her life. Was that something people did when they found themselves suddenly (or not so suddenly, depending upon your vantage point) on their own? Was it really going to be any more different now than it had been for the last few seasons of her mother's life? She'd touched on the same thought not long ago.

Of course it would be different. How could it not be? A person can't just exit the world without changing it somehow, she reasoned. Could they? What happened to a person after they died? Wanda felt as if she'd heard something about the topic before, but couldn't quite conjure up the memory. It was never a topic she'd been too interested in.

Of course the body stayed behind. Was it an empty shell now? Or, gods forbid, what if the person was still trapped in the body without a conscious voice? What if death wasn't the soul leaving the body, but simply the soul losing control over the body? The thought was absurd.

Either way, the guards had already stopped by to take her mother to Li Mauta. Too late to do anything about it now.

What was she on about? Right, a plan. Most successful people in life seemed to have one. And Wanda did want to be successful. The words of her mother's letter suddenly came to mind: "No matter what you do, be the best you can be."

Be the best. Rather broad, but it was as good a start as any.

What to do was the tricky part. The obvious path -- and perhaps the easiest -- was to keep doing what she was doing. That wouldn't be so bad. She might not love her job but she did love the art of massage, and it payed rather well to boot.

But did it really matter what she ended up doing? The letter had said "No matter what you do". Did that also mean "It doesn't matter what you do"?

Why was Wanda analyzing the letter anyway? Wasn't this her own life? This was about what Wanda wanted, not what her mother wanted her to want. It wasn't even about what her mother had wanted for her. What did Wanda want to do with her life?

[Wanda Endust]

Wanda drew a controlled breath in through her nose, and out again from her mouth.

She was getting sidetracked. Her father had taught her to meditate years ago. Of course, he'd been using it as a means to teach her control on a more magic-based level. She would sit for bells simply talking to herself either out loud or, when her mother became irritated, she would ramble in her own mind. That style wasn't particularly conducive to what she was trying to do now. She'd been trying to clear her mind in order to get a better perspective on things, one that wasn't clouded with emotions and tears and sadness and fear.

That was another thing her mother had written. "Don't let fear hold you back from anything. Ever. That's my last request."

At this point, she was torn between honoring her mother's words and curling up into a ball. On one hand, the world was a big place. As difficult as it was for her to comprehend, Syliras was only a blip on the face of Mizahar. A fairly large, bustling hub of a blip, but still a blip. And now Wanda was a lonely blip in the Syliras-blip on the world. Nothing was constant anymore. The only person she had was herself.

In some ways, that was a wonderful thing. There was no longer the pressure, the constant nagging at the back of her mind that came with having to devote a part of your life to another entity. Yet it worked both ways. She was alone. There was no one for her to rely on.

No, that wasn't entirely true. She had herself to rely on. And, really, is't that the only person anyone can really rely on?

Then, of course, there was the other hand. Wanda might need to focus on what she wanted for herself, but that didn't mean she had to completely write off anything her mother had to say. "Don't let fear hold you back from anything." As far as Wanda could tell, it was solid advice. More than that, it was her mother's final wish. Did that mean she was honor-bound to follow it? It sure felt like it.

The tricky part came from actually putting the concept of fearlessness into practice. If she could prevent fear from burdening her, wouldn't she have done so already?

Then again, her mother wasn't asking her to be fearless. She was asking Wanda to put aside her fear and chase her dreams.

In. Out.

Right, focus.

She needed to figure out where she would go from here.

[Wanda Endust]

Really, if she was supposed to be clearing her thoughts, she wasn't doing a very good job of it. Wanda was trying to see things from a less-emotional point of view, yet perhaps it was too soon. She could still feel the tumult of emotions in her body.

Suppress them. For all the world, she wished it were possible to hypnotize herself into feeling calmer emotions. If only.

Yet perhaps she could? Not in the literal sense, but the magic did require a certain force of will and strength of mind.

She visualized shrinking her sphere of influence inward, directing it towards her own consciousness. There was no need for her to activate Djed -- this was all imaginary, of course. And yet it seemed to work, tugging herself back onto the path she needed to follow, rather than dilly-dallying on her fleeting thoughts or brewing emotions.

Calm. Tranquil. Focus.

Wanda pictured a vast expanse of sea, totally still, reflecting a cloudless blue sky. There was no breeze to disturb it, no wave upon its surface. It was glass. Into this scene, she visualized a single black line, impeccably straight, and laid it down across the vast expanse of water.

One foot in front of the other, an imaginary Wanda walked this imaginary line.

Balance. Control. Focus.

Right, now she could get down to business. What was it that she wanted? In her mind's eye, Wanda peered down at the sedate waters beneath her, as if they were a looking glass, and tried to picture her future in Syliras. She would keep working at the Soothing Waters. She would marry a knight and have children. She would move into the Roshin District.

Except she could see none of those things happening. As she stared into the sea's clarity, nothing came to her -- Wanda couldn't see a future for herself here.

[Wanda Endust]

But what did she see? This was taking a far heavier kind of introspection than she'd imagined. Wanda was still only a kid, she wasn't afraid to admit that. She might've been thrust into the role of an adult, but she wasn't prepared for it. She didn't even want it.

Yet she had it, whether she liked it or not. And what did adults do? They made plans. They figured things out.

How could someone really plan for the future, though? She couldn't predict how things would turn. Perhaps she didn't even want to try and control the path she was on. If something were destined to happen, it would happen. There was nothing she could do to prevent that.

The vision of the calm waters remained, still empty.

Slowly, bit by bit, a new feeling nudged its way into Wanda consciousness. It wasn't loneliness, it wasn't trepidation, it wasn't worry, it wasn't frustration. It was a strange kind of elation. A force, giving her a sensation of... floating. It rose into her core, an odd focal point that suddenly drew Wanda's concentration.

It was power. Not simply the power of healing that she was familiar with, or even the power of djed. It was the promise of dizzying power -- a kind of complete mastery over body and mind.

Not strength, but control.

The feeling confused Wanda. To her knowledge, she'd never lusted for any kind of might. But as she peered into the depths of the imaginary sea, the sensation grew stronger. Was this what she wanted for her future -- was this what she envisioned for her future?

Wanda's eyes snapped open and were met by the soft darkness of the room, shattering what vestige of focus she had been so desperately clinging to. The scene in her mind's eye was gone, leaving her with only the echo of what she'd discovered.

Power.

By her own admission, Wanda was still so young. There would be plenty of time to figure out what the vision meant. In this moment, all she knew was that a life confined to Syliras was not what she wanted for herself. There was nothing left for her here that she truly wished to pursue.

She would leave.

[Orion Michaels]

Waaaaanda +1 Philosophy +2 Meditation lore : Moving on after death: A difficult path Using Calming Words and Imagery to Suppress Emotion Nothing Left in Syliras Notes Thanks for the thread, Wanda. Let me know if you have any questions, and please edit your request in the grading queue to show this has been graded. Thanks!