Welcome Home Part II [closed]

[Cassandra]

((OOC Note: This is a continuation of a previous thread located here in the Archives: http://www.mooncalfstudios.com/pathofth ... 14&t=16837 - It takes place during that time.))

Somewhere outside of the Sanctum's Sanctorum, there was a muted thump as a book fell over on its shelf.

Inside the Sanctorum, the only book was a scratched, beaten volume bound in the thickest leather, clutched to the midsection of a fragile, terrified girl in a ragged dress. The girl - Cassandra - stared over its edge at a figure mirroring her huddle in the opposite corner of the front of the room. Keara Aithne had scrambled a hasty retreat to its safety after Cassandra tried speaking with her. Finding her voice had been taken after a long stay in the Shadow Realm, she'd forced memories of several months' stay in the Shadow Realm through a telepathic conduit into the unprepared woman's mind. Recoiling at such a massive input of emotion and information, the deluge came to Keara's mind like a physical blow. Now, they stared at each other across the beds of Bluehearts and Scarlet Ammania like two terrified deer trying to figure out which one was the wolf in a hide jacket.

Opening her mouth a couple more times, Cassandra tried in vain to speak normally. Instead of words, however, all that would come out of her mouth was the same repetitive, distorted electronic screech that she'd managed the first time. Exasperated, she focused her thoughts, intent on pushing one word at a time through the door into Keara's reeling mind.

"SORRY."

She winced. Too loud. Focusing again, she eased the words out carefully.

"Apologize. Returned. Finally. Something...wrong. Unsure. Frightened. Apologize."

[Keara Aithne]

She stared at the creature, wondering which of the two of them was the most pitiful. It was difficult to tell and she half suspected it was her. She was supposed to be stronger than this. She was supposed to be improving. Just the memory, tangible that it may have been, was enough to bring her to her knees and have her cowering in the corner. That place had damaged her beyond repair and it was this thought that allowed her to sympathise more with the woman before her.

It was looking at her. Studying her perhaps and trying to work out what to send her next. When the voice echoed in her mind it was an almost welcome relief. For now at least she was to be spared another assault of visions. The female was sorry. Sorry for what? The string of words that followed cleared it up. She had not meant to harm Keara in what she did, had not meant to tear her down into shared darkness.

"Okay it is. Recovered I am," she replied in a steadier voice than she should have been capable of

The emotional mask she wore was in place once more and now that the shock had worn off, she was more prepared for what might come. Keeping her thoughts and feelings hidden only helped to protect Keara, it was something she learned long ago. What she had all but forgotten was how to remove the mask, so that she might better put others at ease.

"You too recover shall. That place good for our kind is not. Know that I do. Here I am not for you to hurt. Here I am for to see if of help I can be. Do you a name have by which call you I might?"

Of course the woman had a name, she just hadn't given it yet and this wasn't the first time Keara had asked. The poor thing seemed to be struggling to find her words as it was, but that didn't mean that she didn't know just who and what she was. The realm affected them all differently but she was hopeful that it had not taken the woman's identity from her along with her sanity. One was more easily restored than the other and yet in that moment she couldn't be sure which of the two it was.

[Cassandra]

The girl sent what she thought of as her name, but much more went through. If she'd dwelled on the idea a moment longer, she might have foreseen it herself: names are fundamental things. Ancient (and not-so-ancient) cultures thought them to hold power, and small wonder - a person's entire essence boiled down to a single word. While all that she meant to send through was the same thing she'd written at the top of every school paper since Kindergarten, it was accompanied by images, concepts, memories that she'd not thought to strip the three simple syllables of.

***

She was curled up in a warm, overstuffed armchair discovering Little House on the Prairie. The smell of freshly-cut grass hung in the air. "Cassandra!" called her mother, through the open window, trying to encourage her pale daughter out into some daylight. The girl turned the page.

***

She could taste the blood in her mouth, trickling from a broken lip, dark crimson on her fingertips. The noonday sun silhouetted three larger girls looming over her as she lay cast to the ground. "Cass-aaaann-dra! Cass-aaaan-dra! Can't run, can't fight, Cass-aaaan-dra!" they mocked her, singsong voices cutting at her ears.

***

The pencil snapped between her fingers, and she threw the pieces over her shoulder in frustration. She slammed her hand open-palmed against the textbook in front of her. "Come on, Cassandra..." she muttered to herself, steeling her nerves for another try at the problem it posed.

***

Sweat, pain, self-consciousness. Fear of judgment, or a lack of discretion. Naivete cracking, and disenchantment filling in its cracks. "Nnngh...oh, Cass," grunted her partner, much more lost in the act than she could possibly be. She avoided them for the rest of the year.

***

She couldn't decide if that lump in her throat was her heart, or some other vital part of her body trying to make a break for it. Hopefully it wasn't her lunch.

"Speaking next," announced the matronly woman behind the podium, "your Salutatorian, Cassandra!" She swallowed hard, pushing down the nervousness, and strode across the stage to shake the woman's hand.

***

"Cassandra. Four books and one CD-ROM," said the librarian, setting the special orders down on the circulation desk with a thump. The girl pushed a newly-minted Harper Rock library card across the desk toward her.

***

She floated in midair, unable - and unwilling - to take control of her own body from the being inhabiting it. Her lips were forming words she hadn't crafted, spoken to the man in front of her, calling him, "Jonah. Killer. Turned of the Broken Huntress, the Unstrung Bow, Survivor." The words were far off, though - in her head, she only heard the Voice, at once both strong as tempered steel and unmistakably feminine. "Cassandra," it called. "Cassandra..."

***

She pushed toward the exit with all her might, hope growing in her alien and pure, desperate to BE once again. She wouldn't lose any more of herself here, and she still held on to the greater part of her sanity, armored in a mantra of simple identity she repeated over and over to herself. "Cassandra. Cassandra. Cassandra..."

***

Cassandra clapped one hand over her mouth as this last, brief memory slipped out, though it was well-established there wasn't anything resembling speech to be issued from her lips anytime soon. She winced apologetically at Keara.

[Keara Aithne]

The fact that she hadn't tried to get to her feet was a blessing as the second wave of memories hit her. Wave after wave of moments that once more were not her own. Some confused her. Others were more familiar. She could understand violence, though the beings hitting her were just girls themselves. That sort of thing didn't happen when she was young, but then she rarely saw any but her family at that time. The memories continued and Keara clutched at her head as the name repeated over and over. Nerves, fear, excitement; she was living Cassandra's greatest hits, something she could have done without. She didn't want these memories, they were not her own and as the last one passed before her eyes she hoped that she'd be able to choose to forget them. That her mind would think them inconsequential and scrub them from her brain.

Deanna had been wrong to lead her here. This woman seemed beyond her help and she obviously required someone with a firmer grip on reality than she herself had. How was she going to help this being come back to life when she was still struggling with that process herself. Years it had taken her already to come as far as she had, though her time in the realm had been considerably longer than Cassandra's. Knowing the name wasn't going to help any. The woman needed to learn to keep her thoughts to herself. To stop invading Keara's mind.

"Stop you must for that to do Cassandra. Enjoy I do not through the eyes of another to see. Your memories your own are. Private. Ask I would if understand you do but fear I do that you more memories my way shall send. Words. Or thoughts. Thoughts acceptable are. Like when apologised you did. Need you do not for in full sentences to speak."

A part of Keara wanted to give up on the woman. She wasn't her family. She wasn't her friend. But something told her that she needed to be here, that she was supposed to be here. It was the sort of feeling that a person gets when fate has had a guided hand in bringing someone to you, or you to them. Keara believed in fate and in a higher power and so the other side of her won out and she stayed, but she dared not move.

Her hands rested on her knees now and she watched Cassandra wondering what she might say, or do, or send her next. Had she the power to reciprocate in any way she might have sent her something back out of spite. Not that Keara was innately spiteful, she would have done it only to show how intrusive the experience was. A voice in her mind was one thing, she could handle that, but memories that came to her as if they were her own were not something she neither enjoyed or desired.

[Cassandra]

Cassandra clenched her fists, a frustrated sound rattling deep in her throat. (Some distant, analytical part of her mind took dim notice of that - vocalizations worked, but not words. Something about the vocal cords...?) She wasn't trying to do this! She just...she tried pushing the words out, and everything else seemed to fall out with them. Her whole life, she couldn't have cared less about a single other being, and suddenly she would have been less frustrated if she'd lost a limb.

Actually...that happened once. Twice. At least. And she was.

Forcing her hands to relax, the girl slowly rose to her feet in a deliberate show of restraint. She held her hands at her sides, taking two deep breaths and focusing her mind. She'd tried taking a martial-arts class a couple of years ago - a grand failure as she stumbled over her own limbs again and again. The only thing she really took away from it was the calming exercises they taught. What her body couldn't handle, her mind was more than equipped to. And, as she reminded herself now, that was no less true today.

"Unintentional. Can't...control," she forced out, one word at a time. Even with an intellect enhanced by whatever process caused her vampirism, she struggled with the work required to express each of them. Her natural inclination, as an intellectual, was toward the verbose. Instead of just saying what was on her mind, she had to reduce an entire statement down to one word, then strip it of all personal meaning, all images, all feelings, everything. At last, after all that, she had to...whatever this new thing was. If she were still human, each word would have taken forever. Even with her new abilities, it was an Atlasian task. She'd slip again.

Cassandra sighed deeply. "Maybe. Best...go. For now. Don't want...again. Need. Control."

[Keara Aithne]

Looking up at the woman through her lashes, she watched and waited, her own body still curled up against the wall. Cassandra was struggling to find her voice and Keara knew it. To some extent she had almost had the opposite issue upon her return. Cassandra seemed perfectly capable of understanding what was going on around her and wanted to connect with Keara. Upon Keara's return from that place, she had struggled to connect with the world and maintain any real focus on what was going on around her. Her words however had not been in short supply; they had crossed her lips as a wave of consciousness. In that she said too much and generally what she said had little to do with the situation in which she found herself. That or the meaning was lost in metaphors and her broken speech pattern. It was no wonder she'd been summarily dismissed by the rest of the elders as being less than useless.

The woman likely needed time. Time to find the control she sought. Time to re-adjust to the world around her. Time to just be. At least she wouldn't need to sire anyone to learn the technologies of the day, as she hadn't been gone all that long. Keara had every faith that with a little time and a little practice that the female would be find herself once more.

Pushing herself up from the floor, having come to the conclusion that it might now be safe to do so, Keara nodded to the woman.

"Control good is Cassandra. Need you do for control over your abilities once more to gain. Visit I shall. If like agreeable that idea is. For to see how progressing you are. Meditation try you should. Helpful I myself that do find. Meditate several times a day I do."

With that Keara began to take her leave. She didn't mind coming to visit once a month, once a week even if Cassandra found it useful. It wasn't like she had much of anything going on in her life that would keep her away or pre-occupied. She was a little frustrated by the fact that she really hadn't done much but get the woman out of the tree, though from Deanna had told her of her observations, that in itself was in fact progress, and so she would have to be contented with that.

[Cassandra]

It was more than a month before their next visit, and Cassandra spent her time working hard. Working hard at her new abilities, her new impairments, and ways around both. Long nights became pretty commonplace for the girl, long tapers on the sill of the fountain burned down to pools of dripping wax. Hours upon hours of research, experimentation – these she was familiar with. Moreso research than experimentation, but she was no stranger to either.

What she spent more time on, though, was Keara’s advice. Every evening when she woke up, Cassandra came directly to the Sanctorum and spent hours beneath the thick-limbed tree. Cross-legged, eyes closed, with her hands resting in her lap, she wasn’t sure if she was doing the exercises how they were supposed to be done, but she knew they worked for her. So much so that she began repeating the exercise before she went to bed in the morning.

The next time that Keara entered the Sanctum, Cassandra was in the tree again – this time, however, she was sitting calmly on one of the lower-hanging branches instead of huddling between them. Her tattered clothing had been exchanged for a plain, sturdy dress, hacked at an odd angle from one hip down to the opposite ankle, over a pair of pants. She held a small silver tablet in her hands, which she was watching intently. Every once in a while, a smile would break across the girl’s face, brushing aside the darkness that had accumulated there for a brief moment.

Cassandra leaned her head against the rough bark of the tree, taking a deep breath and mentally going through the process of stripping memories from a series of words. It was a deceptively complex process, and from what she’d learned, she might be struggling with it more than others would. Something about the way the power worked, her trauma in the Shadow Realm, and the way she encoded memories.

She’d likely never have heard the Ancient Shadow approaching anyway, but other faculties might have alerted her had she not been so engrossed in the practiced repetition that had become her new cause.

[Keara Aithne]

Time had passed but Keara had not forgotten the strange woman her sister had found in the tree. She had promised to come and see her and hoped for her sake that she was making some progress. Keara knew enough of this kind of thing to not expect progress to happen overnight and had waited for at least one full cycle moon of the moon before visiting her again. The building in which she dwelt was not many blocks from her own asylum and so she did not need to go far this night. Circling around the place, she once more found Cassandra in the tree, her tree, or so Keara suspected. This was obviously a place that the woman felt safe in.

"Greetings," she called out as soon as the female was in view.

She took in the female's appearance and all at once noted a dramatic improvement. Both her clothing and her countenance had changed for the better since she'd seen her last. There had been very little change in her own life but she didn't mind that. She had a comfortable routine of fighting and resting and spent most of her nights in the darker underbelly of the city.

"Well you look," she commented. "Better that is. Hope I do that you your voice perhaps have found since saw you last I did. Or control over your powers you have gained."

The woman didn't smile at Cassandra, it wasn't her way, but she appeared relaxed and willing to engage her in conversation. Of course behind the usual mask, Keara was prepared to be bombarded with thoughts that were not her own; not that one could do much to protect their mental state from such an intrusion. Simply put she had made sure to clear and strengthen her mind for the encounter. This time, unlike the last, she was at least prepared and ready for what might come.

[Cassandra]

Cassandra looked up from the tablet, resting her arms in her lap. Half-smiling wryly, she tilted her head back and opened her mouth as if to sing the first note of some dramatic opus. Instead, the same distorted electronic cacophony came out. She closed her mouth and shook her head in the negative.

"No. Same." The words were two of a small vocabulary that she'd practiced with extensively, repeating enough times that they could be broadcast memories attached, without requiring extensive focus or too much time preparing. They weren't quite reflexive, but she wasn't afraid of the individual words.

The girl hopped down from the low-hanging branch, tucking her book - still chained to her wrist - under one arm. Lifting the tablet, her finger swept and tapped at its screen a few times before turning it around to display to Keara. A browser window was pulled up, blank page refreshing once every second or two. Cassandra's brow wrinkled for the barest of seconds, and words appeared on the page.

"Unfortunately, the process is taking much longer than expected," the tablet displayed in clear, readable font. She waited to make sure the Ancient had enough time to read the words, then it cleared and filled with new ones, repeating this process when it was clear those were understood as well. "Fortunately, I was able to put this together in the meantime. I've been using my technokinesis for far longer than whatever this new form of telepathy is. I've set up a system by which I can submit a simple form elsewhere on a private server, and this page will refresh when it detects new"

Cassandra paused, watching the woman hesitantly, and then shook her head. The screen went blank. "It doesn't really matter. What I mean to say, is that I can use this to talk while I'm learning to keep the other power in check. Of course, it isn't a permanent solution, I can't very well go around holding up a tablet like some sort of virtual homeless person, but it does provide a temporary stopgap so that I can express what needs be said in the meantime."

The words on the tablet were much more verbose - oddly so, because Keara had been in Cassandra's mind. The words tumbling around the girl's head in those memories were much more contemporary, relaxed, and concise. Something about these ones seemed to match the image the girl was projecting, more than the girl the those glimpses revealed.

[Keara Aithne]

Keara nodded to the woman as she approached and readily accepted the fact that she needed to read the screen to see what Cassandra was thinking. It was a 21st Century solution, that even a few decades ago would likely have been best achieved through pen and paper. When she began to describe what it was she was actually doing, sending the words to a server and having the page refresh, Keara simply nodded again. While she was older than most, the technology of this era was no longer a mystery to her, in fact she was quite adept at it, so she understood every word of what the woman was displaying.

"Glad I am that medium you found have for to communicate. That less evasive is, than images into the mind of another to send. Even if able you have not been for your voice to find, able you have been for your words to channel. That an important first step is. Makes that does communicating with you much easier. Your memories your own are. And strange it is for the memories of another in your own mind to have. Sensation indescribable is."

Although Keara had no direct bond to this woman, at least none that she was aware of, she was I her own way happy for her. To see her beginning to make sense of the world around her once more and making the effort to connect in a more efficient way, it was impossible not feel proud of her in some small measure. There were those that would have simply shrunk into a depression and perhaps faded away, but Cassandra was stronger than that. She had a goal and she was working towards it, even if there was no end in sight as yet. She seemed an entirely different person to the creature she'd found sheltering in the tree a month or so ago.

"Feeding too you are. Yes? Neglect your thirst you cannot. Suspect I do that this the case is not, for weak as such you do not seem. But regardless, asked I have the question."

If she wasn't feeding and being careful about it, there was a good chance she'd earn herself a trip back into the accursed realm, and Keara didn't want to see that happening. Not when she seemed to be getting her life back on track. Keara had it easier than most, being a shadow and easier still from the day she learned to lure a human and boost her own blood. Of course she still drank from the vein. There was no substitute for her to the liquid as nature intended. A little every day and no bodies to have to hide. It was definitely a perk of their situation that Hollywood was not aware of. With a little self control and regulation, they didn't actually need to kill at all. Not unless the person stumbled upon the secret of what they were. But that wasn't something she was going to worry about in regards to Cassandra, not unless the woman hinted in some way that there a need for that was.