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Jane Murphy - connie (she/her)
Jane took to her part of the chore wheel without much fussing since she'd started on with the Children of the Tree. After her time with the Protocol, scrubbing pots and pans and prepping food for cooking was positively meditative, and even more so after a night of being called in to the hospital due to a public disturbance. Even though things seemingly weren't as bad as expected, the expectation had been stressful enough. And so she happily plowed through the dishes.
But then they were done, and as she dried off her hands, she looked around and pondered what to do next..
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]
The problem with settling on a name overnight is that nobody knows what to call you. Lesja has gotten over that be wearing a 'hello my name is' sticker on her under armor thermal.
Oleksandra Vasylovna (she/her)
Lesja / Olesja
Efficient stuff in a trans friendly community. So, armed with that, she hauls a large basket of laundry into the common room. Answering that question in a very Acanthus way.
She just pulls out one end of a big white bedsheet, and waits for Jane to literally pick up on it.
"Wanna talk?" Timing.
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her)
Her enhanced vision picks up on Lesja's arrival and quickly scans the name sticker. It doesn't take long for her to metaphorically pick up on it, and the quick-footed woman was literally picking up on it in almost the blink of an eye. She smiles, "Sure." She's a well-practiced hand helping with the laundry. "In Ukrainian, if you'd prefer, even."
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]
Jane has just won a ton of points, it's obvious. Lesja adopts her mother tongue immediately. "How did you pick up the language of The Country?" That seems a good place to start.
She waits for Jane to take the other end of the sheet so they can shake it sorted, come together to meet the corners, and finish folding it on up.
There are a lot of sheets to fold.
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her)
She switches to it with ease, and working to match her regional accent, "One of my implants allows me to speak almost everything." She smiled and takes the other end, shakes, meets.. it takes a bit, but she gets into a rhythm with it, "I wish I had it sooner, it would've made difficult situations much easier in the past. Might have saved lives."
She shakes her head as she starts with the next sheet. "But the people I worked for, they weren't that concerned about saving."
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]
She seems only very mildly disappointed that the knowledge isn't inherent. "Handy upgrade to have. All of my software was in my head, back when I had it. Inside my mind, properly."
She finishes the hand folding and tosses the finished sheet down. A second sheet comes out to follow it, and she once more just assumes Jane will help out.
"Do you miss it, ever? The orders, the expectations, the absence of doubts? That last one may just be me."
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her)
Jane just keeps helping, with a certain eagerness for the opportunity to be useful. "All the time. I don't miss who was giving the orders." Clearly not, as the mere thought of them causes a slight scowl.
"But I miss knowing what's to be done and being able to just go do it." She sighs, her tempo with help slowing a bit as she thinks it over. "The reason why I jump into working in an ER after watching people just heal stuff? It's because there's a job to do, an urgency, and in my work.. literal algorithms for everything."
"Patient presents these signs? Engage in this set of actions."
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]
"Parameters of operation dictating and ensuring optimal action even in suboptimal circumstances with an eye towards individual agent accountability and inner self-dependence," she quotes from a book she burned, nodding her head. She looks a little sad about it all.
"You don't have to justify healing with your hands to me. I am an Adept of Space, and I am folding bedsheets so we can talk face to face, mirror our gestures, and develop personal intimacy. There are all sorts of reasons not to do something extraordinary when simple suffices."
She steps forward again in their little laundry dance. Corners meet. And fold, fold, fold, fold.
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her)
To the quotation, Jane snorted. "All those books sound the same in any language." Folding as they talked. Then ready for the next.
"I'd like to think that if I could do magic, I'd still do most things the 'old fashioned way'." She smirked and nodded, "There's lot of value in a journey that's missed if you just take a portal everywhere, yeah?" From the way she looked at Lesja, she seemed to be asking this as an actual question to an Adept of Space from someone who would not know.
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]
"Technically? I am also standing in a wheat field in Myrne, Ukraine at the moment. I could even bring you if you wanted to see it. I'm almost always at least also in Myrne. But that does not preclude me from also being with you here in Philadelphia. Or impede travel on either end of the co-location." It's unnecessary, but she takes a few steps this way and that while finishing up the final perfunctory foldovers before adding the sheet to the pile. Another is pulled out and the process resumes. She takes her corners, she waits for Jane to find her own again.
"All in all, I agree with you. I've only ever ... I mean, that I can remember, anyway? Cast one spell for purely selfish reasons. And it's not even my spell. It's the one keeping me a woman right-- well." A thoughtful pause. "It's the one keeping me female right now. In this-- looking like this. It's a spell." She shrugs.
"But, yeah. I mean. My power is a responsibility. I try to use it that way. It makes sense for me to be two places at once. It makes me safer, more effective. For reasons that are unimportant right now. So I do that. But I don't-- like, if I wanted to go to Cancun for vacation, and time was no object, I'd absolutely just book the flight and live like the rest of you for a while."
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her)
Jane takes a fair bit of time to absorb the concept of being in two places at the same time, especially while folding laundry with someone else. "It doesn't get confusing, I hope? I have to wonder what would happen if, while we were talking, someone came walking up to you in Myrne and started talking." Jane gets her corners and gets them paired up.
"Pretty cool spells, though. My ability to appear otherwise is significantly more limited. It would be nice if I could be more improvisational with my shifting."
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]
"Of course it does," Lesja assures Jane with a smile, as though she's confident that must be a comfort to the other woman. "Everyone's life is confusing, I think. Especially mine. The more I learn to think like someone who can be in two places at once while also being a spirit at the same time? The harder it is to think like someone who can't. Honestly, my life becomes more confusing the more I live it. Behind every answer, two questions."
"I try to explain it like this. Earlier today you weren't here. Now you are here. You're still the same you in both places, more or less. If you concentrate, you can remember what you were doing earlier. Where you were. It's the same with me." She steps in once the sheet is straightened up to take in the met corners and finish up the folding far more quickly than she had been moving prior. A little too quickly, but she's wanting to get to a point.
Once her hands are empty, she bends down and scoops up air with her two hands. Only when she lifts her hands back up, they're full of hard, dirty snow. She starts packing it right there inside of the lodge, getting bits of ice and water everywhere. She takes a bite of it and then holds it out to Jane with a nod. Snow. A little black dirt.
"I remembered where I left my snow just now. It's like that." Very, very sort of.
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her)
Jane reaches for the bit of snow she's holding out. She smiles a bit just looking at it, "Interesting. If I were to be in two places at once, I'm not sure where I'd be 'remembering' to be. You're in Myrne because it's your home?"
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]
"Ah. Yes," Lesja allows in a manner that also means 'but also no'. "I had a vision once. Was shown a vision. I suppose. Of a farm house at the end of a wheat field near a river. I had a family there. This was-- this was some years ago, now. Back in my old life." Lesja wipes her hands off on her cargo pants once the snowball is handed over. It is cold. It is wet. It is, indeed, just snow from across the planet.
"So when my old life began to crumble apart, I searched for that home. And that field. It happened to be in Myrne. I was born and grew up in Odessya. Along the Black Sea? My father was a general in the Soviet military. Spent a lot of time between Sevastapol, Moscow, and Leningra-- Saint Petersburg. As a kid. Myrne is nothing special. It's a dying village full of old men and tired women. It needed someone like me, so we settled there."
"I'm ... a very rare sort of Magus. We're called Tears. Tears of the Martyr's Tree. We heal the land. Tend to the spirits. Make it possible for humans to do the right thing, rather than forcing them to do it. Or doing it for them. To borrow from your prior question, we're a group of mages who walk everywhere whenever we can. Soft hands. Usually. A bit... aloof, maybe. But we mean well."
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her)
Despite being simply snow from across the planet, Jane was still transfixed on it for a moment, feeling it in her hand, wiggling her fingers. Her body heat quickly melts it, though. Jane then listens to her with full attention. She nods along at the idea of healing the land. "That's a good way to be. Healing, I mean. But about tending to the spirits, what does that mean?"
She raised an eyebrow as she asked about the spirits. "Sorry, I was raised in a kind of speaking-in-tongues Pentecostal family, everything I was taught about spirits was 'if it's not an angel, it's a demon'."
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]
"Orthodox." Lesja explains, likely of her own religious upbringing. "I suppose... technically I am still. Orthodox. God and I stopped seeing eye to eye some time ago, however." She watches Jane's fascination with the snow, her smile softening by degrees. It's a genuinely tender thing near the end, there. "Would you like to see it? You can. I feel like I'm teasing you by just giving you a snowball. Sharing my magic with the lodge is part of what I'm supposed to do. To help you see the wonder. So, it's the opposite of a bother to me. It's a gift."
"It'll be easier to explain in Myrne. Doing so here is taxing."
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her)
"Sure!" She nods a bit excitedly, "I've never been to Ukraine before." She looks around, "Do I just take your hand, or..?"
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]
"Are your thermal tolerances good to -10c? If not, you may want to grab a jacket for the walk back to the barn, but yes. Just take my hand when you're ready." Lesja holds out her hand, palm up. It's the hand of a woman who owns a farm and carries a rifle about it.
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her)
"Considering the dermal armor weave, I would probably be fine, but just in case..." Jane goes to go fetch her jacket and soon returns. She takes a deep breath and then takes her hand!
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]
"Dermal armor weave? You have subdermal plates? See. That's practical. That's just practical!" Lesja sees nothing at all wrong with dermal armor weaves. Sounds great.
Hand taken, she gives Jane's a grounding squeeze. "It may be easier for you if you shut your eyes. You can not. But it may be less jarring."
If she does? When he opens them again, she'll be in Myrne. If she doesn't, she will get to see the place become briefly two places at once. The one overlaying the other, and the pair of women standing astride the two locations like globestriding colossi. Then the Lodge fades away, and the sounds, sights, smells, and cold of a Ukraine early morning settles in around them both.
It's quiet. It's dark. The ground underfoot is icy-snowy-furrowed and fallow ground. Turned under soil awaits the thaw. But for now, all that there is to hear is the wind and the crackling of ice crystals as the gusts shift them bout between the furrows of the fields.
To the east, a pink-orange blur of a city stains the horizon. To the west, a dark ripple of mountains marks the start of Moldova. South? A flat, black line of ocean. And here, on the rising belly of the country, Myrne rests in its sheltered valley, nestled between the hills and the plains.
It is vast and brittle and beautiful. And once Jane has had a moment to soak it in, Lesja notes aside ot her. "You can have your hand back if you want. You're here now. Or I can keep holding it, too. I'm happy to keep doing so. The house and barn are this way."
She starts off to a cluster of out buildings and lights perhaps a quarter to a third of a mile away. They're built low, save for the silos. The weather slides over this place like a skipping stone on water. Who knows how long a farm has been hiding here, behind the hills, shielded from the wind.
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her)
She tries to fit an answer in before taking her hand, "I think they said it was some sort of kevlar and carbon nanofiber weaved under my skin. Beneath that, my muscles are ultra-high density and also reinforced with additional weaving. Then there's the Archangel System..."
She doesn't finish the sentence when she grabs Lesja's hand. Through it, Jane wouldn't dream of closing her eyes, and she lets herself experience the transition between places with all her enhanced senses. Upon arriving, she looks around after her right eye twitches a bit, "Woah, okay.. took a second for the connection to kick back in. Totally different satellites here."
Her implant reset to the satellites, she takes a deep breath and lets go of her hand. "That's incredible! This is amazing, I'm really here." She gets to following her friend.
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]
Lesja slides her hnds back into her pockets and nods aside to Jane, ticking her head at the vague blotch of lights some distance off. She leans down to grab her rifle and slings it back over her shoulder. A duffel full of other useful gear is picked up and put on her shoulder. One trick to always having what you need is keeping a duffel full of useful things around you at all times. Nice for when you want to reach into some place else and pull out Just The Thing(tm).
"You asked about spirits." A pause. How to explain. "So. There is this world, the world you see. And many, many other worlds, too. Sort of overlapping one another. One of these planes is called the Shadow. It's a reflection of this world that you and I are in right now. But it's defined not by the laws of materialism, right? But buy laws of resonance and emotion and thought. You would never think to talk to your toster to get it to work better, I don't think? Whereas I ask my coffee maker do a good job every morning, because I know there's a spirit in there. Well. Not you do, too. But you get my point."
"Look around you! The ground, the sky, the wind, the fallow wheat, the ermine in the fields. All of it has a spirit. And all of that spirit ties back to me. Through my connection to this place, as its Martyr's Tear. I am the mother's love for this place. In essence."
"So. While we walk, pick a thing. And I'll introduce you to it. You can chat with it. If you and it hit it off, I'll even let you keep it as a familiar if you like. So. You might want to think about a weakness you have or a little shortcoming you'd like to cover for, and maybe we can find you a friend from Myrne who can help you cover for it."
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her
"Ahhh.." Her explanation has Jane continuing to nod, "Makes me think of this show, details not too important, but these kids find glasses that let them see these veiled people who they can't see without the glasses." She walks along with Lesja, "They get scared of these spirit people and hire a supposed occultist to help cast them away, it doesn't go well for them. But.. the idea of an overlapping 'Shadow' world, I can kind of get that."
At the prompting to do so, she indeed looks around at all she can. "For a weakness I have, I'm not sure what would cover for anxiety about whether or not I'm 'worthy' of--" she gestures to herself head to toe, "--what I have, and what I can do. Whether I'm doing enough good with it to make up for.." A catch in her voice, "..what I used to do."
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]
When the topic wends back around to past trauma and being worthy of this thing or that, Lesja's head turns just enough to keep Jane in her peripheral vision. Never look directly at another soldier who's in their feels and trying not to be. It's a politeness rule. "If you want to talk about it more, you can have my hand again. It helps me to feel grounded where I am, when I am, with whom I am being present. Your mileage may vary. I've started offering it more. I think it's good for people."
Simple as that.
"If you want to cure a sense of unworthiness, I found that a puppy works well. I have one now, a gift. You can try meeting him and seeing if you don't just need a puppy. I'm afraid you've caught me at an odd time of weirdly low self-esteem. This, all of this, is what I'm trying to do about who I used to be. And what I used to do. And I think maybe we did some of the same things to people who didn't deserve it. And that we shouldn't be alone in that. Especially when we're together in person. There's no point. You can see right through to som of my hurt. And I can see right through to some of yours. So when you want to? I'll be here to share that hurt with you. Not because it's my job, either. But because I know."
"What things would make a person worthy of what you have? What qualities do you lack that would make this condition of yours deserved?" They keep walking, and the ground keeps disappearing behind them, but as is the way with walking at night in the cold over flat fields, the distance just seems to go on and on. They're getting there, however. By and by.
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her)
She does take her hand, along with a deep breath. "Thank you. At the time, I thought I was taking people to safety. Like a guardian angel, I show up when someone's taken you hostage, get you out, and heal you on the way home." She shook her head and bit her lip as she tries to find a way to say it that can actually be spoken.
"It was a lie, and I'm told that makes me not guilty of what I did, but I didn't exactly ask any questions even when things were getting kind of obvious. I lied to myself because I liked having my enhancements and I basically had to be smacked in the face with the truth to be willing to see it."
After telling her story, she gets to the last question. "I feel that someone like me is responsible to jump in and actually protect and rescue people. My toughness, my strength, my speed, speaking every language, cloaking, all of that. I can go into danger no other medic can, and get people out. It just feels like someone who can do what others can't when it needs to be done... should." She looked down for a moment, then to Lesja, "If you know any puppies that can help me be brave enough to face the truth from the start, that should work."
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]
Lesja gives the hand a firm squeeze when it's offered out again. This is not a casual or meaningless holding of hands. It's something of a pledge of solidarity, in the moment.
"At the time, I thought I was protecting something greater than myself from the worst things I had ever known. I still think I am doing that, it's just that I now receive credible evidence periodically that this is actually the case." Lesja's smile tightens as she looks off to the dark horizon with a short, nasal sigh. Another regret gone out into the night, unexplained.
"It sounds like someone looking to do good with her talents might benefit from help from a spirit that can help her manage and uncover information about clients and contacts. Think for you rationally while you are responding by instinct. It may be projecting, but I found a spirit of Information and Energy to be most useful. They're clever, can be terribly subtle, and typically don't trouble anyone's magical sensibilities since spirits are technically ubiquitous. Literally everywhere, all the time."
"The village choir of Myrne has information spirits in the wires and walls, if you think that sounds good?" She then notes confidently after a few more steps, "My Pupyat is such a puppy. He is very smart, and very brave, and very playful. And he will like you very much, I am certain, because I like you just fine. And he's a much better being than I am."
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her) — 01/19/2023 11:10 PM
She squeezes back and listens, "The evidence of actually doing good really does make a difference; it's helping me get back to feeling things again, feeling something good, anyway." She smiles to Lesja, it's a genuine smile; not that her other smiles were 'fake', but there's a deeper warmth to this one. "So is this." A beat as she remembers she's holding someone's hand as she says this, "Uhh, I mean.. seeing magic and learning about it and how things really are."
"And Information spirits, you say? Seems like a perfect match for someone like me, I come with my own wires."
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]
Lesja never registers anything unusual in saying that while holding her hand. That was expressly the reason she offered it to Jane in the first place. She even said as much! She goes so far as to smile back at Jane, pleased, when she says 'this is helping'. She keeps doing it, even when the ammendment is given. She nods her eager agreement, "This is the first time I've tried something like this and I feel like it's actually going well? I don't make friends easily. I didn't used to, in any case. I think it helps that there are people I am determined to befriend. You. Phyx."
"So if this all seems a little targeted and maybe planned and maybe a little ... I don't know? Forced? It's because I planned it all and targeted you and don't know what to do to make people like me and trust me. So I just. I tell them about myself, and if they're still around afterwards, I call it progress."
The barn is definitely barnshaped now, and visible behind the glare of its spot lights. Only a few hundred meters more, now. The building actually looks closer with each step now, a relief to the senses out in this flat, cold, black.
"You do? Then for sure I want to do this for you. If someone short circuits your internal wiring, your little friend may be able to undo it for you, even. Mine even regulated an irregular heart rhythm for me once. Little zot to the atrium." She knocks her knuckles against her breastbone with a grin.
"Do you mind if I transform into a spirit? It also makes it easier to do this for you. You can keep holding my hand, it just may feel ... different. But not bad! It won't be bad, I promise."
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her)
"It's alright. I've been in worse ambushes." She was feeling comfortable enough with her to make that sort of joke and keep her smile, "You did a good job, to be honest. This has gone pretty naturally, though I admit I'm not the best judge there."
While they close in on the barn, she nods to Lesja, "That's perfectly fine. Especially if it'll make it easier. More to see and learn about, besides." She nods, "I also don't mind if you to use your.." she waves her hand in front of her eyes, wiggling her fingers to act out the 'magic' of it, "..Sight on me. I'm not bashful about how I was modified. At least not with friends."
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]
"I did?" Lesja looks over to Jane with a genuinely pleased smile. "Thank you! Genuinely. Any feedback you have on how to not be a complete ... I don't know. Wreck? Around people? Honestly, hugely appreciated. I've sort of lost the script on my humanity, to a degree." Whether or not Jane's in any place to judge is secondary to the fact that she thinks it's going well.
When permission is given, Lesja's physical body starts to just burn away into a blue-white fire that gives no heat. Her body is replaced with the exact same body, only now it's translucent and shimmering with light and static and signal noise. Just a roil of informtion scroll roiling around inside of her like a lava lamp of web traffic. The hand in Jane's is no longer warm and callused, it is cool and sparkling electric.
Once the transformation is complete, a glowing ball of blue-white energy materializes in the air next to Lesja's head. It bobs there as a blue plasma tendril licks out of its corpus and licks slowly down Lesja's face and cheek, briefly illuminating her teeth in a black light glow.
"Myrne," she explains, settling a hand on her chest. As though reintroducing herself. A gesture up to the little spirit near her head. "Oontz-Oontz. My familiar. Oontz Oontz, this is my new friend Jane." The little spirit glimmers brighter like a disco ball for a moment. That was probably hello.
"I don't like scrutinizing people casually. You are not a curiosity to me, you are a whole and realized person. If I scrutinize you it will be to know you better, or to fix something wrong with you. Not to allay a personal curiosity about your material or mystical composition." She gives her hand another squeeze, "Could I ask you to please not encourage me to treat you as anything less than a gift? I don't want to accidentally ever take you for granted, and I do it so easily sometimes."
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her)
"If I can come up with some feedback, I'll let you know. I'm sure Phyx will have plenty to say if you let him," She says with a chuckle. Then, as she sees Lesja become a spirit, her eyes widen just a bit, but then narrow as she tries to see her more clearly, before returning to a regular gaze. "My... wowow. It's getting to feel as though it is simpler to try to imagine things that aren't possible." She whistles.
Upon introduction, she nods to Oontz-Oontz and waves with her other hand, "Hello, nice to meet you." And as Lesja gives her stance on scrutiny and her request, she nods, "I will do my best." And she squeezes back.
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]:
"He sure would, wouldn't he." Lesja smiles broadly at the mention of the man, and since she's having unguarded friend time in the whole of herself in the safest place she knows, her normal filters are down. And the crush she doesn't know she has there makes a brief and obvious appearance in her grin. "He just doesn't shut up. Ever. Which is sort of relaxing for me, since it's nice to say maybe four words and then not have to talk again for a while."
"He told me he's thick as a wall of lard, though. About these things. So." She adds with a glance back to Jane, "I have no idea what that even means, I'll be honest with you. But in context I think it means he's not real talented with people."
All that done, Lesja reaches the barn door and lifts up the bar arm to slide it out of its fixture. The doors then swing open, letting out a wall of heat. She ushers Jane in before it all pours out into the night, ducking in after and pulling the door shut behind them to bar the doors from the inside this time.
It's a working barn, though the animals are mostly to one side with a built out enclosure and warming pen outside of the barn proper. Goats and sheep mill about in the enclosure, though a good many are lying down asleep, curled up near the heaters.
The scent is not terrible, though it is very much a barn. There's a healthy richness to ruminant shit that's tended to in proper order. It means these animals are doted upon, really, for the barn to smell that fresh.
"Okay. Let's see who is around."
Lesja who is Myrne, closes her eyes for a span of moments, and that's all it takes. She opens them again and assures Jane, "Someone's coming." She explains while they wait, "When I transform like this? I take on the role of the king of the local court, here. I'm the top spirit, basically. In this little town, anyway. So when I'm like this, the little ones come running when I ask nicely."
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her):
"Most of us, from our Program, are kind of socially weird." She shrugs with a kind of wincing smile, "I know that for me, it all started like normal Army life and over the years the 'normal' world kind of disappeared. And the messed up thing is I can't be sure if it was part of the program or if I'd just started feeling less like 'normal' people and thus stayed home or on duty."
She rubbed her forehead for a moment, "But uhh, sorry.. Phyx. He is a very energetic and enthusiastic man, he loves making things; if you want to be one of his favorite people, ask him to make you something. Anything." The scent of the barn didn't bother the experienced paramedic, though she did seem curious about the animals.
"I see.." She says, seeming to put together the pieces of the information given to her, "This is why you called yourself Myrne just now; you act as the spirit of the entire area?"
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]:
"How long were you in for? I was a commisisoned officer in the Soviet, then Russian military. Intelligence services. I was eventually given the counter espionage desk in Saint Petersburg and transitioned out of field work. After Euro Maidan, I joined up as a regular again. Under a new identity. Led a company in Donbas in 2014. I'm back in the homeguard in this identity. I feel like I've always had a rifle on my shoulder, though. Long as I can remember, the rifle and the boots."
She lacks the depth of experience to realize she should be sounding a lot less okay with that than she does. Or perhaps received a good deal of therapy to be so blase about it all.
"Am. I am the spirit of Myrne. When I'm Myrne. And when I'm not, they mostly recognize I'll be back in a while and so not to get out of sorts. The shadow has a balance to it. And if that balance is upset, those imbalances amplify into this reality. Spirits just are. They don't really do evil and good. So it's important to find balance and counterbalance. If a place is going to have spirit of fire, it had better have spirits of water about, or soon everything is going ot be on fire. Obviously I'm oversimplifying things b--"
And just like that, there's a second spirit present. Manifested right there in front of Jane and Lesja. It has a similar look to Oontz-Oontz, save that rather than being an amorphous blob of energy, it looks like a scintillating spiky spinning ... asterisk. Kind of? With one bar twirling about in all directions, but decidedly ... looking like an asterisk all the same.
Lesja reaches out a hand again to briefly touch Jane's elbow. When the touch is done, Jane can see not only the two spirits manifested, but slowly and by and by all the little motes and hiding little spirits in twilight. And she can understand them now, too. Like when the spinning asterisk says.
>_ Query?
It's not immediately obvious how she's understanding that, of course.
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her):
“10 years. Almost all of it in the Protocol; they grabbed me as soon as I finished my medic training for a 'Special Leadership Course'. Before I knew it, I was in special operations training, and waking up in a hospital bed after going in for a blood test." She paused before letting herself disclose it, "I'm under a different identity as well, to hide from my former unit."
Myrne's explanation is helping expand her thinking on the spirits, "So, you'd say it's morally similar to a state of nature? How a lion isn't evil for hunting an antelope, that's just how it eats and lives? And with this balance, I take it there's a kind of ecology at play?"
That she understands this asterisk isn't too astonishing for her, it's expected with her translator on board. She attempts to respond to the asterisk in spoken Structured Query Language, SELECTing to ask for the being's identity and making her own introduction through an INSERT INTO query that added her name as a known individual.
Jane Murphy - connie (she/her):
@Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]
Emet (She/Her) [Sig,Lesja,&c]:
Jane is shown a screen of code designed to make a cursor spin. /
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