Alone Together

[Lief]

Master Aotirr​

The Crystal Gardens​

Aurum​

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The journey from Teth to Aurum had not been kind on her.

Master Aotirr sat within the Crystal Gardens, nestled away within the heart of Azar City on Aurum, and continued to recuperate. She was not a stupid woman, she did not hide behind rose tinted glasses... She knew that she was going to die, sooner than she would have liked. Each day her situation became worse, and since they had come to this new world she had barely found the strength to make it part way across the City, much less into the Jungles beyond or Force forbid offworld.

A gentle cough had set in during the past few days. It shook her core, rattling against her ribcage and leaving the woman breathy and exhausted. The Gardens were one of the few places she felt at least a modicum of strength and vitality; the crystals which sang through the Force peeled years off her condition, shifted the weight from her limbs, and left the air a little easier to handle.

Most days now she spent in solid meditation, lost within the throws of the Force she did all that she could to better the Order she had spent her life serving in some way or another from afar. A boon had washed over the City since then, a general vigor endowed upon its people who felt particularly more willful and happy.

It wasn't much, but it was all she had.

Along the same vein, her focus had remained on monitoring the comings and goings of strangers. Her ability to sense had never waned, and even now she could feel the myriad of souls go about their daily lives within the white-stone City they called home.

This was not the way she had wanted to go, waiting for death to take her... Yet even if she wanted to go down fighting, even if she had wanted to find a more fitting end, she would never have been able to make it happen. She simply did not have the energy anymore.

So it was that when a curious, anxiety-ridden presence was felt in her immediate vicinity Aotirr took it as a blessing from the Force itself.

Somebody to talk to. Somebody to pass knowledge to before the end crept up.

"Don't be shy," she remarked, to whomever it was, "I could use the company."

Lifeless, blind eyes turned in the direction of the stranger, a motherly smile upon her lips though she did not even know if it was friend or foe who had approached.

 

[Ryiah Tenriem]

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Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dLFEaaNzR8​

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To an outside observer, Ryiah's body language may well have been taken to have been a display of confidence, security and self-assurance. However, it would only take one person to look past the outer-layer of her being to cause her act to crumble to pieces, leaving her raw and exposed to whomever wove their way past the instinctive defenses. Beneath it all, there was the ever present ocean of anxiety, pain and self-directed mistrust. After all, Ryiah knew that she was broken, that she had shattered under the tender care of servitude, trapped in a nightmare not of her creation and left holding everything together by sheer will alone and a single phrase that she uttered to herself every night: "I am broken, a tool crafted from shards, but, I am my own tool."

Dressed in her usual outfit of loosely hanging robes settled atop a simple, low necked tunic and a pair of baggy trousers tucked into combat boots. Gently clutched to her chest, protected from anything that may have damaged it, was a genuine book. Disliking the custom of using datapads and flimsiplast to write and read, Ryiah had dedicated time to both recording her own thoughts in a journal made of leather and carefully pressed pages but also recording written passages, stories and published works from the datapad, the very same one that was currently left atop the bed in her quarters, into separate books. Compared to the cold, unfeeling metal and electronics that made the datapad, the feeling of paper being steadily worn away beneath your fingers, the sound of ink on paper, the smell of leather and the weight each book carried was something that served to sooth her thoughts when they got too bad.

Stopping at the edge of the Crystal Gardens, having chosen to once more seclude herself away from the noise and overwhelming presence that accompanied the other members of the Order wherever they went, Ryiah hesitated as she was met with the sight of a woman she had never met in person before but knew off from the files made readily available to her and her fellow Journeyers and other students: Master Aotirr, Headmistress of Qigong Kesh - the Temple of Force Skills.

Turning to leave, Ryiah was halted by the woman's voice, taken aback momentarily by the warmth that was present in her voice and the accompanying smile. However, in the end, it was not that warmth that drew her in, she had been fooled and tricked many a time by false warmth after all, but, instead, cold curiosity - she was honest enough with herself to admit that perhaps that curiosity, or rather it's subject, did not make her a good person. She knew of the Master's illness, had heard rumours, and here she was confronted with the chance to ask her questions, to satiate her curiosity. Here she was, confronted with a chance she couldn't allow herself to miss.

Reaching out through the Force, even as she strode ever close, Aotirr would feel as what might amount to a heavy gaze examined her. "Body deteriorating: atrophying muscles as well as weakened bones. Steady, constant and, yet, held at bay by the Force. So, Viral? Or something inflicted through the Force? But not benign, the speed of deterioration is too quick for that. It's too active, too fast, to be a simple benign infliction making it an active one. Just to give a brief guess, one that worsens the longer you are afflicted?"

At this point, Ryiah was perhaps only meters away from the Master when she caught herself, a small blush overtaking pale, almost porcelain, cheeks. "Ah, please do forgive me Master. I did not mean any offense. It's just that, well, how could I miss out on the chance to ask you this? I humbly apologise."

[member="Asha Hex"]​

 

[Lief]

Sat there as she was, Aotirr could not help but feel as though she had somehow transformed into a display at a museum. A piece of finely crafted art, a fragment of history to be stared upon in awe, analyzed in an attempt to better understand it, and though it was an odd experience she did not mind.

The voice was a welcome change, it accompanied the singing of the crystals and allowed the woman to focus on something else for a time. Even if the words themselves were critical of her condition, even if all she was listening to was a prognosis of her own state.

"The Force does miraculous things, if you allow it, my dear," she stated at some point during, when the girl - for the voice made her sound feminine - queried over the origin of her disease, "It can slow most maladies, regardless of their point of origin, suspend your body in a way that holds off the effects of deterioration. Though it is only delaying the inevitable."

Blind eyes followed the direction of the voice, as she folded her hands in her lap and continued her silence. Her voice had already begun to rasp toward the end of her interjection, and she figured it was best to conserve her strength where she could. She could feel this strangers eyes upon her, the scrutiny and intrigue.

Must have been a younger member of the Order, then. Someone new to their flock. An aspiring healer, no less.

"I am in constant agony," she managed to respond, though for now she left the how of it out of the equation and patted the ground at her side instead. "I'm not going anywhere yet, though," her frail voice added, "You needn't rush. My name is Aotirr, and you are?"

[member="Ryiah Tenriem"]

 

[Ryiah Tenriem]

Stepping forwards as Aotirr had gestured, Ryiah lowered herself to the ground next to the older woman with a small grunt as still healing wounds were pulled sharply. Rather than immediately reply to the Je'daii Master's inquiry after her name, Ryiah instead studied her features. The rasp that had formed within Aotirr's voice towards the end spoke clearly to how much energy she was expanding to even talk, let along for extended periods of time. Staring at the woman with that knowledge, with a sense of understand as to how weakened her illness had left her, caused a pang of emotion to pierce through Ryiah's chest. It was not pity or disgust or anything number of emotions that Ryiah suspected the Master would be use to. Instead, awe was inspired within Ryiah's heart.

"If it would be easier for you Master Aotirr," a small, ultimately unseen, smile quirked at her lips as Ryiah turned to stare out across the Crystal Gardens, taking in their beauty along with the quiet strength of the woman at her side, using them as soothing balms, "we could speak through the Force? I have no desire to watch you strain yourself. As for who I am... Ryiah Tenriem, at your service."

Silently going back to her observations of the Garden, Ryiah had to admit herself surprised by how quickly the Je'daii Master had managed to soothe her mind with her presence alone. Unlike with other members of the Je'daii Order, sitting in her presence did not inspire the voices of doubt and self-hatred to raise up within her, voices which pointed out how different she was, how broken she was compared to her peer, and leered at her for daring to believe that she could fit in and find a home among the Order. No, instead, Aotirr's presence served to halt such thoughts entirely. If Ryiah was to hazard a guess, it would be due to the fact that here was someone broken just like her, albeit in a different way, and yet they were able to stand strong with their shoulders back, metaphorically, while she let the weight of it all crush her. Here was someone who she could look towards to show her how to act, not someone to point out her differences.

"Is there nothing that can help?" Her own voice caught Ryiah of guard as it broke the gentle quiet that had settled between the pair. While she had been thinking it, she had not quite meant to voice it. Hissing a curse towards herself in the privacy of her mind at her idicoy, the Echani sighed audible as she decided that she might as well press forward with that line of thought. "To help with the agony, that is? Or is this something you are forced to go through? With no escape? If you'll forgive me being so rude once more, Master."

[member="Asha Hex"]​