[A few days had passed since Emet-Selch's return to his mirror, since- everything immediately afterward. But it would take more time than this to settle him, to grow at all accustomed to all that had happened, both in Aefenglom, and at home. A lifetime to settle his thoughts, to reminisce, to accept.
To live, apparently. In this strange world far from home, he was permitted life, permitted thoughts that weren't gradually drifting away from him, one by one as he let his consciousness fade into that aetherial sea. Interrupted from his slow dissipation, he was here; and yet, despite being denied his retirement, he found he didn't mind. Tired as he remained, there was no rush.
Bringing up Irhya's name in his watch, Emet-Selch just looks at it for a long time, staring at the blank field below without typing anything at all. Where could he even start? It felt like lifetimes ago now that they had argued, had reconciled of sorts, in a pattern that continued. And while he didn't regret it, exactly (in the same way that he didn't regret any of the Rejoinings, anything that he'd done), it called up a mentality that he had a harder time reaching. Even when they were on better terms, there had always been an undercurrent of resentment from him, of grief that he could barely contain. There had always been distance. As yet, that was perhaps still there, but all of that fear and anger, that lack of forgiveness, that tendency towards spite- it felt, not foreign, but not something he could call to mind quite so readily.
What was left in its wake, he couldn't tell. But that was all the more reason to talk to her. To... find some sort of answer.
Irhya wasn't the Warrior of Light that he had helped, but- the Emet-Selch of her world would have done the same, he's certain. He knows himself, if nothing else; he would've entrusted the world to her, to the humanity she'd successfully championed for. The Ascian... still didn't like them. He still had a measure of distrust for them, disdain, even, but--
--but it hadn't been the time for them to perish. It was... their world now, to live and die with such transience; the star was theirs to guide from that moment forward. And he could rest. His work unfinished, his people lost, but- their time was over. It had been over for so long, lost from the start, for all that he'd never been able to see it.
What Emet-Selch actually ends up sending is extremely brief. A non-sequitur, a comment that consists of only a handful of letters, swiftly typed, for all that he had taken so long to consider his words to start.]
text; mid october
To live, apparently. In this strange world far from home, he was permitted life, permitted thoughts that weren't gradually drifting away from him, one by one as he let his consciousness fade into that aetherial sea. Interrupted from his slow dissipation, he was here; and yet, despite being denied his retirement, he found he didn't mind. Tired as he remained, there was no rush.
Bringing up Irhya's name in his watch, Emet-Selch just looks at it for a long time, staring at the blank field below without typing anything at all. Where could he even start? It felt like lifetimes ago now that they had argued, had reconciled of sorts, in a pattern that continued. And while he didn't regret it, exactly (in the same way that he didn't regret any of the Rejoinings, anything that he'd done), it called up a mentality that he had a harder time reaching. Even when they were on better terms, there had always been an undercurrent of resentment from him, of grief that he could barely contain. There had always been distance. As yet, that was perhaps still there, but all of that fear and anger, that lack of forgiveness, that tendency towards spite- it felt, not foreign, but not something he could call to mind quite so readily.
What was left in its wake, he couldn't tell. But that was all the more reason to talk to her. To... find some sort of answer.
Irhya wasn't the Warrior of Light that he had helped, but- the Emet-Selch of her world would have done the same, he's certain. He knows himself, if nothing else; he would've entrusted the world to her, to the humanity she'd successfully championed for. The Ascian... still didn't like them. He still had a measure of distrust for them, disdain, even, but--
--but it hadn't been the time for them to perish. It was... their world now, to live and die with such transience; the star was theirs to guide from that moment forward. And he could rest. His work unfinished, his people lost, but- their time was over. It had been over for so long, lost from the start, for all that he'd never been able to see it.
What Emet-Selch actually ends up sending is extremely brief. A non-sequitur, a comment that consists of only a handful of letters, swiftly typed, for all that he had taken so long to consider his words to start.]
You were right.
[How utterly cryptic.]