[Sothis withstood the torrent of memories as stoically as a cliff-face withstood the crashing of the tide. Her expression didn't shift, and neither did her gaze waver from Rin, though her fingers tightened fractionally around her shard - the only outward sign of emotion, and what that emotion was...
It irritated her how she sympathised. Sothis was no stranger to partings - it defined her now. The progenitor who had breathed life into a dying world, who had presided over a flourishing civilisation, who had thought she had found staunch allies and friends in the Agarthans... only to be stabbed brutally in the back, only to raze everything she had built, to end the voracious greed that had gripped the Agarthans to the point of self-destruction. A new beginning, she had thought tiredly back then, extending her hand to the little ones that had stepped out of the ashes. I will be more careful this time, she had thought stupidly.
Look how all that turned out.
That bitter remembrance soured the warmth the Meridian harmonisation had brought her. Briefly, she wondered - why am I bothering? - whether the world was returned or remade meant nothing to her. Her home had vanished beneath the waves of Time and will never return to her outside of her memories. Even if it was remade, she will want nothing to do with the humans ever again. She has been burned twice now, she'd be a fool to extend her hand and scorch it thrice.
Really, it all came back to Byleth. She closed her hand completely over her shard, concealing it from view.]
...it worked. Now, allow me to return the favour.
[She pulled her cloak across her body once more to conceal her shard's location, and when she let it drop, she worked Byleth's glove off her hand. Once it was free, she lifted her thumb to her mouth, easily cutting the pad of it with a sharp canine. When Rin holds out her shard, Sothis will squeeze out the required drops of blood and...
It was like descending into a sea of stars - vast voids, bottomless, with no surface to swim for. Nothing but endless stars sweeping past, each a flicker of memory: civilisations both ancient and modern, an indistinct figure standing before a crowd of devotees, a flash of a knife and an arc of blood edging a scream: "YOU TOOK... EVERYTHING THAT I LOVED-!"
Underpinning it all was an aimless grief and sadness and rage - an acknowledgement that rebuilding from scratch won't address the fatal flaw of humanity. She had rebuilt the world once already, and for what? For what? For what? She cannot remake the world every time the humans destroy her and themselves. She cannot reset to zero and rebuild and love again and have her heart shattered against the rocks of betrayed hopes. No. Let the old world resume, let it heave out its last, laboured breaths and wink out into oblivion, becoming nothing but stardust strewn across the cosmos.
(But quieter, softer, barely heard beneath it, was: and because the old world will make Byleth happy, the only human who has not betrayed me yet.)
This intense, contradictory furious apathy will fade, eventually. The sea of stars will part, pulling further back until it was a phantom veil of a night sky, filling Rin with a calm resolve - a balm after the hurricane that was Sothis's wild, ancient rage.]
i am so sorry for this
It irritated her how she sympathised. Sothis was no stranger to partings - it defined her now. The progenitor who had breathed life into a dying world, who had presided over a flourishing civilisation, who had thought she had found staunch allies and friends in the Agarthans... only to be stabbed brutally in the back, only to raze everything she had built, to end the voracious greed that had gripped the Agarthans to the point of self-destruction. A new beginning, she had thought tiredly back then, extending her hand to the little ones that had stepped out of the ashes. I will be more careful this time, she had thought stupidly.
Look how all that turned out.
That bitter remembrance soured the warmth the Meridian harmonisation had brought her. Briefly, she wondered - why am I bothering? - whether the world was returned or remade meant nothing to her. Her home had vanished beneath the waves of Time and will never return to her outside of her memories. Even if it was remade, she will want nothing to do with the humans ever again. She has been burned twice now, she'd be a fool to extend her hand and scorch it thrice.
Really, it all came back to Byleth. She closed her hand completely over her shard, concealing it from view.]
...it worked. Now, allow me to return the favour.
[She pulled her cloak across her body once more to conceal her shard's location, and when she let it drop, she worked Byleth's glove off her hand. Once it was free, she lifted her thumb to her mouth, easily cutting the pad of it with a sharp canine. When Rin holds out her shard, Sothis will squeeze out the required drops of blood and...
It was like descending into a sea of stars - vast voids, bottomless, with no surface to swim for. Nothing but endless stars sweeping past, each a flicker of memory: civilisations both ancient and modern, an indistinct figure standing before a crowd of devotees, a flash of a knife and an arc of blood edging a scream: "YOU TOOK... EVERYTHING THAT I LOVED-!"
Underpinning it all was an aimless grief and sadness and rage - an acknowledgement that rebuilding from scratch won't address the fatal flaw of humanity. She had rebuilt the world once already, and for what? For what? For what? She cannot remake the world every time the humans destroy her and themselves. She cannot reset to zero and rebuild and love again and have her heart shattered against the rocks of betrayed hopes. No. Let the old world resume, let it heave out its last, laboured breaths and wink out into oblivion, becoming nothing but stardust strewn across the cosmos.
(But quieter, softer, barely heard beneath it, was: and because the old world will make Byleth happy, the only human who has not betrayed me yet.)
This intense, contradictory furious apathy will fade, eventually. The sea of stars will part, pulling further back until it was a phantom veil of a night sky, filling Rin with a calm resolve - a balm after the hurricane that was Sothis's wild, ancient rage.]