Welcome to the family

JP with Omni and Bandorchu

When Voah returned from her solitude, she saw that Wim had been taken care of and put into a tent to rest and Alexis was taking watch. Tarmen and Gonyaul weren't in her immediate sight but she assumed they had gone for a rest as well.

She went over to Alexis and sat down. The mountain air in the shadows of the fort was brisk and Voah held her arms crossed, warming herself next to the fire.

"Gatana... There is so much I want to say to you, but I... can't find the words..." she stopped to collect herself.

"I look up to you and... I don't want to let you down. I trust you with my life... and I want you to be able to trust me... but I know that lately..." she chuckled and sighed.

"I'm just so messed up..." she swallowed.

"This entourage that has formed... I think you are its mother... a strange group to be sure, but you are all accepting of each other... and I... want to be able to be a part of that..."

Alexis for a moment didn’t really know what to say. Mother? That was a bit too big a role for her to fill, she felt. Regardless, she looked at the now more morose Arbiter and thought how to answer her.

“I daresay…”
she started.
“We are all a little messed up.”

She chuckled a bit.

“Given that, you’ll fit right in.”

There was more that Voah thought she had to say but now she was pretty sure that Alexis understood what she was getting at and it would just be aimless babble. This group would have a form immunity from her duty.

Alexis response was the best she could’ve hoped for and it turned Voah’s look of uncertainty to a hopeful smile on her face.

It seemed to have been the right answer to give, as Alexis saw the smile return to Voah’s face. It should feel more strange to talk to an esteemed Arbiter like that, but Alexis realized she had stopped seeing her like this since they had fought side by side on Sentinel Island.

“Are you feeling a bit better now? Freaking mould giving you a rest?”

She looked away abashedly for a moment before returning her eyes to Alexis.

“Better…” she laughed at herself.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be better… I feel like a part of me is broken… The whispers and headaches come and go… but we found that some of the food keeps it at bay for a while… they delve into your fears and make you irrationally paranoid… It was bad enough to set me off but… in the end, that’s… me. The worst of me, I’m embarrassed to say.”

She paused, thinking.

“And lately I don’t know how to… handle… all these things I’ve been discovering… about Arcadia, about the people I have met, about myself… I’m not asking you for answers, just feels better somehow to admit it… I’m not accustomed to feeling so… lost... I’m terrified but at the same time it’s liberating.”

“Good. ‘Cause I sure as ifrinn don’t have the answers.”

Alexis chuckled a bit and shook her head.

“I don’t think any of us realized what we were getting ourselves into when we came here. And now look at us, reeling with every new thing Arcadia throws our way.”

Her gaze wandered to the wagon where Gonyaul was resting. He got it right.

“… like children again, so much to learn.”

Voah saw Alexis’ gaze shift to the wagon. She nodded as she listened, really thinking it over. It was like they had to unlearn what they had known.

“You know what it means… to have a code, a duty. I have mine, but I cannot obey. It would destroy this group… it would destroy me... I don’t have to tell you how I feel about Gonyaul… Gods, I’m going to stop talking now…” She sighed.

“Do you happen to have writing materials on hand?”

While she was pretty sure her code would be the death of her sooner rather than later, she had never felt it would destroy her. In fact it was a part of her so integral, that she could not give up on it, even if she thought she should. Alexis couldn’t imagine what Voah had to deal with if she felt this way about her duty.

She silently nodded and fetched her notebook and a charcoal pencil from her pack. That book had seen surprisingly frequent and varied use. She oughta thank Wim for it when she got the chance.

“Oh! I don’t want to ruin your personal notebook.” Voah said, a little shocked that Alexis was so willing to just hand it over. Then again, maybe it didn’t have any kind of personal information like a diary or journal at all.

“I was thinking more along the lines of… correspondence. But if you don’t have any that’s fine.. I just wanted to… write some things down… while they are fresh.”

All of Voah’s possessions had been left behind in Aquilo or lost in the ruins. She would just have to keep it in her head for now.