un: shadowheart | text

[tocastashadow]

I'm looking for a healer. A professional, mind, not an overconfident buffoon with an ice-pick.

There must be medical techniques in other worlds that don't exist in mine.

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[tocastashadow]

'Interesting' is certainly the word I'd use. [To think, she all too easily could have found herself making the journey to Baldur's Gate alone. No githyanki zaith'isk and subsequent confrontation with Vlaakith herself, no scrounging in abandoned forges for infernal iron and ending up in a phase spider's nest, no kidnapped Dukes, no monster hunters on their tail, no threat of imminently blowing up, none of it.

And no one to help her during the inevitable attacks from goblins or undead, no one to share the long nights with around the campfire. No one to sit with her when she reached her lowest point. How differently might things have gone if she'd walked into the Shadowfell alone?]

I never thought I'd feel this way, but I miss the people I was traveling with. Back home.

[anciently]

[ At that, Aerith's expression softens. It's a knowing look, and a sympathetic one. ]

Know what you mean. I have some people here with me from back home, but...not all of them. Maybe that's greedy. [ Red, Barret, Tifa, Cait, Cid...and her mom. She knows - believes - she'll see them all someday (most of them, at least), but...it's been too long. ] What're they like? The people back home.

[ It helps to talk about them, at least in Aerith's experience. In the end, everyone is a story, after all. Telling those stories keeps them close. ]

[tocastashadow]

Now that's a question that could fill a book. It's quite the disparate group, given that we were brought together by circumstances rather than choice. On the whole they're insufferable, oftentimes. Stubborn. Loud.

[One of the few nice things about being here is that she no longer has to listen to the incessant grinding sound of Lae'zel sharpening her sword at every hour of the night and day. But she finds herself missing even Lae'zel, awful noises and all.]

Some of them are the sort of person I wouldn't trust with anything more important than a copper piece, others have all the common sense of a glob of mud. Some of them are the best people I've ever known.

[Perhaps that doesn't mean much, given that, in a way, they're the only people she's ever known, but she struggles to imagine anyone as righteous as Wyll or as big-hearted – metaphorically – as Karlach.]

But once you've saved someone's life and they've saved yours, none of that seems to matter very much, I've found.

[anciently]

Know what you mean. [ Aerith laughs lightly as Shadowheart's description of her group easily elicits memories - loud, fun, chaotic - of her own companions. ] No matter how the personalities clash, once you've been through certain things, you're pretty much bonded forever. Whether you like it or not, I guess.

[ Shadowheart had said "insufferable," after all. ]

Well, if one of them shows up, you have to introduce me, 'kay? Now that you've told me a little about them, I need to see how the reality holds up to the story.

[ There's another grin at that, and she links her hands behind her back. ]

...I should probably get going, but - seriously, stay in touch, alright? I'm not going to forget about helping you. So, if I learn anything, I'll reach out right away.