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The Beach, Saturday Evening

The water was cold this time of year and Yeul knew better than to walk in it deliberately, though, as she walked along the edge of the waterline, carefully stepping around rocks, it did not bother her when, now and again, she misjudged where the water would reach and her boots got dampened.

There was nothing in particular Yeul was thinking about as she walked. It had just seemed like a nice night and she had wanted to be outside.

If she were another person, with another life, she might have said she had felt a little restless, but Yeul was only, could only, be herself, and simply acceded to the whim of her mood without acknowledging anything further about it.

The water was nice, tonight.

[Open, sure!]

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Elsa was still a little jumpy after the prank that the books had played on her in the library, and so she'd decided that a quiet walk outside would help to calm her frayed nerves. She'd meant to just take a lap around the park, but it was so quiet out that she decided not to hurry back to the dorms, and her wandering had led her, eventually, down to the beach.

She had mixed feelings about the beach, and while a view of the ocean usually did little to calm her, tonight, looking out at waves toward a horizon that stretched on forever into the dark seemed to be doing the trick just fine. The stars out above the water weren't swallowed up by the lights of town out here, and as she walked, she could almost pretend that she was back home, listening to the waves from her bedroom window.

The water was nice tonight, and Elsa gave a small, pleasant nod of her head to the other girl as she noticed they were both wandering the same shoreline. She recognized her from class, though they had never really stopped to chat.

"It's a beautiful evening, isn't it?"

Tonight seemed like a good night for following little whims. If they had never stopped to chat, why not let this be the moment to change that?

Change was generally to be avoided, as far as Yeul was concerned, but small talk with a semi-stranger did not seem very much like change to her.

It was hard to see her smile, given that the only illumination came from the light of the stars, and what the water chose to reflect, but she was smiling slightly.

"Yes," Yeul agreed easily. She thought about saying that it was a good night to be alone, as well, but neither of them were alone now and it might give the other girl the wrong impression. Yeul did not mind her company. "The stars are lovely."

That seemed much safer.

"They are," Elsa agreed, looking up toward the stars with a little smile of her own. "I've been told that stars like that aren't often as visible as they are right now, in this day and age. There's too much light swallowing them away, and something else, a sort of haze that settles in around bigger cities."

She looked toward the Causeway, toward Baltimore, and nodded a little. She could see what people meant, she thought, though she had never spent much time trying to stargaze in large modern cities at night.

"People always think of darkness, when it comes to being blind," Yeul says mildly, looking out over the water, rather than following Elsa's gaze. "But light blinds just as thoroughly and as easily."

"Sometimes, people can see things a little more clearly when something or another is left in the dark," Elsa noted thoughtfully, looking back toward Yeul again. "They're not distracted by the overwhelming light shining in, and there's more opportunity to see the little things that were always right there from the start."

Yeul nodded.

"Yes," she agreed. "Would it be rude to ask if you were looking for something in the dark?"

"Given the direction the conversation was headed, I don't think it's rude at all," Elsa replied, looking back out toward the water thoughtfully. "Tonight, I think I was just looking for a little peace of mind. There's something about this evening that's oddly compelling. The cool and the calm. The stars over the water. There's always something to look for in the dark, but tonight's something seemed a little more attainable than it usually does."

She didn't think she could ever just reach into the dark and pull out courage, snuff out fear. But one night's calm? That, she thought, was realistic.

"That sounds lovely," Yeul replies. "I had not thought of tonight being especially fruitful, in the attempt to find something, but I suppose that since I am out here..."

She smiled slightly.

"Perhaps I did know, without knowing."

"You found a lovely view of the stars, if nothing else," Elsa offered, smiling out toward the water. "So perhaps you did."

And then, on a whim, she glanced back in Yeul's direction.

"I don't usually walk out this way alone. I'm glad I decided to. What brings you out this way, if you aren't looking for something in the dark? Habit? A whim?"

Yeul shook her head slightly.

"A whim, I suppose," she said, toying with one of the beads on her necklace as she smiled, a bit vaguely. "The ocean is familiar."

Though comforting would not be the word she would use.

Well, then they had that in common, at least. For somewhat different reasons, granted.

"It's one of the few things familiar about this place to me as well," Elsa noted, looking out toward the water. Sure, Fandom's architecture was vaguely reminiscent of something from her own era, but even if the time was closer to something familiar, it was all still so very foreign, not Arendelle at all. "I wonder if other people would agree. No matter what's behind us on the island or where we came from before, if we knew the ocean, the ocean is going to feel the same."

The waves continued rolling in, one after another, like a heartbeat pounding its rhythm against the shore.

"There are differences in oceans," Yeul said, not to be contrary, but rather to add to it, "but there are more things alike than unlike in oceans, I've found. Everything comes back to--"

Her vision hit abruptly and her eyes flared with light, the irises turning into tiny hourglasses as she staggered and went to her knees. The rocks of the beach bit into her skin, but Yeul didn't notice, all of her attention was on what only she could see, as she clamped her hands over her eyes.

(This was what she existed to do.)

Noel and Serah, talked to her and Caius (but another her and Caius, not her and Caius) and then they were in Academia, no, in Augusta Tower, and there they got trapped, caught for eternity, except no. Time changed, history changed before but after it happened and it never had happened but it had and the changes reverberated down Yeul's lives, shifting, changing, making her See them as it happened, a confused and tangled warren of past/present/future all tied into one.

And then, as abruptly as it had come, the vision faded away, taking part of this life with her, and her eyes turned green again.

Yeul pulled her hands away from her eyes and breathed carefully. She was still dizzy. It was too soon to move more than that.

Her knees hurt.

Edited 2014-11-30 01:38 (UTC)

"Yeul?"

It was possibly the first time Elsa had ever said the other girl's name. It was a shame that there was so much worry as she did so, kneeling by her side, torn between reaching to help her and holding back, terrified that she would hurt her more.

Reaching to help won out, and her arm was around Yeul's shoulder by the time the girl was coming back around, even if she was shaking as she did so. Maybe it was the cold, or fear for Yeul's safety. She could be shaking for one of many reasons, naturally.

"Yeul, are you okay?"

Yeul did not even notice the shaking.

She blinked, dazed, and weak, the way she always felt after a vision. In a way, that was comforting, because it was familiar.

(But she missed Caius, here and now.)

"It's... passed," Yeul said, since she would not say she was okay. "I am sorry for startling you."

"That's not something you need to apologize for," Elsa replied, her tone now something somewhere between concerned and relieved. Yeul was awake and talking, now. That was probably a good sign. "I can't imagine it's something you meant to do. Does this happen often? Is there anything I can do to help?"

That was... far too difficult a question for her right now. Yeul parsed it, and then had to go back and re-parse it all over again.

She could feel the echoes of her other selves. Some of them had died, with this vision. Some of them had never existed.

And others had come into existence. Death begat life.

"Help me sit?" she requested, settling on the very most basic of responses that might make Elsa feel like she was helping.

"Of course," Elsa agreed, bracing herself a little more and putting a little more weight behind the arm that was around Yeul's shoulder. "Easy, here..."

What now? She really had no idea, except that Yeul had asked for help sitting up, and Elsa was going to give her that much.

"Don't worry about explaining until you've gotten your bearings back," she said, finally. "Just... take things easy, okay?"

Elsa, asking Yeul to take it easy was like asking water to be wet.

It really rather was, wasn't it?

Helping Yeul to sit was made a bit more awkward than it had to be, because one of her hips didn't quite bend as easily, the same way, as the other did, but when they managed to get her seated, Yeul smiled at Elsa, rather wearily, but genuinely all the same.

"Thank you," she said. "I appreciate your help. This was... not expected."

And yet, it had been, at the same time.

"I can't imagine it was," Elsa replied softly, easing back a little now that Yeul was sitting up, but keeping a hand outstretched toward her back in case she needed it. "It would be an odd night to go for a walk if you thought this was going to happen."

Not that it would have stopped Yeul, granted.

"Would you like help getting to the clinic? Or back to the dorms?"

Worse things than this had not stopped Yeul from doing what she wanted. That much was true.

"I would rather stay here for a while longer," she said quietly, and then admitted, "I am not certain I would manage the walk quite yet. It will pass. It always does."

The weakness and the dizziness still lingered, even as the press of all her other lives began to fade.

"This is... I suppose," she said, knowing that Elsa likely deserved some sort of explanation, "what my 'destiny' is, from Karla's class."

They could stay here. Elsa would even shift her weight a little more, and take a seat on the sand beside Yeul, concern about sand in her dress be damned.

"You seem very resigned to it," she observed, gently. "Does this sort of thing happen often?"

Yeul hesitated, not sure what to tell someone who was, mostly, a stranger.

"Yes," she said, after a moment. "It does happen often and I have endured it for... a very long time. This is a reaction from a gift I was given, once."

Elsa wondered, not for the first time, if it could really be considered a gift if it came with a price.

"I'm sorry," she offered, because she couldn't presume to know whether the gift was worth the price or not, and she wasn't certain it was her place to ask, "that this is a part of that gift."

"There is nothing for you to be sorry for," Yeul said softly. "It is the way it is meant to be."

Elsa was quiet for a moment before softly venturing, "Is it worth it? The price of the gift that you were given?"

The best way to know, she figured, was to ask. And if Yeul didn't want to answer, Elsa wouldn't pressure her to do so.

"I don't remember," Yeul admitted, watching the ocean waves rock against the shore and then peel away from it, only to repeat the movement all over again. "It has been so long that now it is simply the way things are."

"It seems like those with gifts that came with prices often aren't sure of their worth," Elsa noted, sighing and contenting herself to watch the water. "I wonder why that is."

"Not all gifts can be given without prices," Yeul said quietly. "And, if there is a price for the person who is given the gift to pay--what is the price to the one who gave it?"

"Or those nearby, who might be affected by it," Elsa supplied. "I suppose sometimes, the only different between a gift and a curse is perspective."

Painfully true, that.

"And intent," Yeul replied. "A gift that hurts that was given as a gift is still a gift. Intent does not always mean much, and if it hurts, the intent to do good doesn't erase that. The recipient might feel that it is a curse, but if given with good intentions, it is still a gift."

"Maybe a poorly thought-out gift, but a gift all the same," Elsa replied, nodding faintly. "It's a shame that the damage is still the same. I imagine it would be harder to resent a gift that manifested itself as a curse, no matter what pain it caused."

Yeul glanced over at Elsa.

"I have found that there is no point to resenting a gift," she said. "That makes no one feel better, not even yourself."

"No?" Elsa hesitated for a moment and then, tentatively, asked, "What should you do with a gift that causes pain, then?"

"Well..."

She picked up one of the rocks in the sand, turning it over in her hand, her fingers trailing along the rough edges.

"Does it hurt only the person who has it?" Yeul asked. "Or does it hurt others?"

"... What if the answer is both?"

Very much both.

Yeul tilted her head slightly, eyes focused on her rock.

"Does it have to cause pain?" she asked. "Or is that all that's known about it?"

"It doesn't have to," Elsa admitted. "It can do some very beautiful things, as well. But... perhaps the trade-off isn't worth it, if there are people getting hurt."

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The Beach, Saturday Evening

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