2022-03-01 Desperately Seeking Wendy

Desperately Seeking Wendy

Participants: Wendy

Storyteller: Bernadette

Location: Wendy's Inner Soulscape

Date and Time: Sometime in late February to early March

Summary: Wendy's Seeking and a surprise at the end.

---<Bernadette>---------------

Bugs gotta crawl, birds gotta fly, mages need to sleep. It happens. It has been an exhausting few days, lots of parties, lots of drinking. The next morning tends to be an issue.

Wendy awakes on something cold and hard, rather than warm and soft. Uncovered and in her PJs, or well if she sleeps in the nude, a wee bit exposed.

A dias of sorts, underneath a grey and cloudy sky, the stone she lays on is rough hewn marble, but smoothed down in places by the tred of footsteps, but those areas are narrow. Seemingly thousands of years of travel, but only ever one person at a time, or else single file.

Snow whips around piling in drifts outside the dias in near white out conditions, giving only glimpses of mountains and dark forest beyond. Kept away from the dias not by a roof, but by the fire burning in a breass brazier at the center, crackling away with warmth.

There are five censers, spread equadistant around the dias, all unlit. And at its center sits a man, bundled up and obscured in the robes of a traveller, poking at the embers and sticks of the fire with another stick as he sits cross legged before it.

---

---<Wendy>---------------

The evening called for pink Hello Kitty pajamas, and a simple LA Rams t-shirt. It was an odd, iff ecclectic choice of sleeping clothes, but hey, that's what she wore to bed.

As she wakes up, Wendy glances about, blinking as her jaw drops and opens as she looks at the conditions outside. Clearly, she's not at her place. She's somewhere else all together. The Umbra? No, she hasn't had enough power to step sideways. So where could she be?

Squinting for a few moments, she stretches her arms in the air and easily gets up, barefoot. She looks around, quietly taking in her surroundings, and it isn't that long until she spies the man in the middle.

Deciding to approach, she goes slowly and cautiously before offering a warm, if unsure smile. "Um, hello!" she says, trying to sound positive. "What is this place? Do you know where we are?" she asks curiously.

---

---<Bernadette>--------------- "The only place that matters." The man states, in a voice low and raspy. His clothing worn, stained from the road, he doesn't look up to the approaching Wendy. "But it is not I, who you are here for."

There his hand waves outwards, pointing up through the mountains, to what appears to be a distant pagoda, glimpses of it sometimes visible through the near white out of the driving blizzard.

Having done that, he hmmms once as he pokes the fire once more with his stick. "Remember, it is all you have."

---

---<Wendy>---------------

"I'm supposed to go out there?!?" There's a blink for a few moments and she nosewrinkles, pursing her lips as she bites on her lower lip.

Here they are in the comfort of the hearth, and she has to go outside to face the cold off to a distant pagoda. This can't be real, right? The snow outside won't hurt, right? If she gets frost bite, her limbs won't need to be amputated, right?

Hrmming for a few moments, she goes through the spells she's practiced in her head. Is there anything that can help her in this case.

Then it hits her! Staring at the hearth, she beams brightly and starts to sway from side to side. Each hand forms a different mudra, as she starts calling to the spirits, hoping that she'll be graced with a little fire elemental to keep warm as she earnestly begins her dance.

---

---<Bernadette>---------------

Mind is mind. Body is body. Fire is fire. Fire in body through the mind. Wendy can feel it, drawing into her, settling in her chest, warming her, the fire. Right there.

---

---<Wendy>---------------

Ooooh. Toasty. Feeling a bit more confident, or at least, thinking she can handle things now, she looks towards the old man once more. "Is there anything that I have to worry about out there? Other than the weather, of course."

---

---<Bernadette>--------------- "Only that wich is not real." The man answers, still not looking up, he prods again at the fire. It sparks a little lower.

Outside the protection of the fire, the wind still whips and the snow swirls along with it.

---

---<Wendy>---------------

"That which is not real." Perhaps it's good advice considering where she is...

With a friendly bow of respect to the old man, she smiles, "THen I shall get on my way. If I have to go to that pagoda, then I should be off!" Wendy says with a warm smile, "And hopefully you will stay safe and warm." she tells him before she trudges out into the snow.

Or at least tries to.

---

---<Bernadette>--------------- You step out into the snow, and it immediately blows over you. Filled with chill and the icy stabs of wind and precipitation. The fire in your chest keeps you warm, but it does not keep one /comfortable/. There are no paths here, no footsteps of roads to follow, and the snow quickly makes vision all but impossible. It is hard to know where one is going and there are no landmarks to help you along the way. You go in blind.

The walking seems to go on for hours, time also seems to dredge away into nothing, there is only the next footstep placed into a field of seemingly nothing but light.

After an eternity, however, you can feel something new. Warmth, coming off from a crevace in a half seen mountain wall you can barely make out to your left.

---

---<Wendy>---------------

As she steps outside and is hit with that immediate chill, she lets out a yelp. "FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK it's COOOOOOLD!" Brr, it's cold out there.

Her bare feet crunch in the snow as she walks and she winces, trying to see, but alas, it's completely white out.

Closing her eyes, she pauses to calm herself. "If I can't use my eyes, then..."

And she picks a random direction, now relying on her other senses to make sure she isn't going to be in danger.

It's a long while, and it's uncomfortable, so she grits her teeth the entire time. That sudden respite of warmth causes her to open her eyes.

Wendy squints as she tries to look in the distance and sems to get reenergized to keep pushing forward.

---

---<Bernadette>--------------- As Wendy gets close to the crevace, she can see in it. A golden field of flowers, a sunny day, bright and clear in the valley that lays beyond that bit of rock, warm and idyllic. She can see a pair of people, peadants, smiling in their korean farmer garb, talking along the side of the road that leads inwards.

---

---<Wendy>---------------

Oomph! Cronch crunch cronch! Her feet, now numb from all the snow she was walking through starts to feel the warmth. It's then that she can see people in the distance.

As she moves from season into another, she rushes towards the Korean farmers off in the distance. "Anyohasseyeo!" she calls out with a friendly wave. Will they hear her?

---

<<DAMAGE: 1B to Wendy>>

---<Bernadette>--------------- The figures are there, and then they are not, they drift away as well as the valley as the determination sets into Wendy's heart, as she turns away from the false happiness of a simple life of accepting ones place, with the determination to move forwards.

It leaves her alone and in the bitter cold again, warmed only by that fire near her heart.

You trudge onwards. Seconds turn into hours, hours turn into... you are sure it has been days. Even the warmth is not quite enough. It is cold. It is so cold, and your feet are sore when you can feel them at all.

Wendy almost trips upon it as she comes upon it. A pit that stretches outwards. It is a foul thing, the edges smooth like glass and curving inwards towards an ever increasing darkness at its center.

Wendy can see it for what it is immediately. If she were to go into the whole, she would be obliterated, all of this would be over. There would only be peace and rest. It is not the cleanest way to the end of the road... but it may be the quickest.

---

---<Wendy>---------------

Oomph! Her arms flail a little as she winces, almost tripping into the massive pit of nothingness. Her eyes widen as she takes in her surroundings, and glances about.

Is there a way around it? How big is it? Could she jump over it? There's a brief moment when she looks into the abyss itself, but before it can stare back, she shakes her head.

"No, gotta keep on going until I get to that pagoda." she says firmly and resolutely, as if reminding herself of what she's here for, no matter how fatigued she may be.

---

<<DAMAGE: 2B to Wendy>>

---<Bernadette>--------------- Wendy pulls herself away from that temptation of the easy end, the acceptance of meaninglessness, and she begins to scramble around the edges of the crater. It is slow going and rough ground, again it seems to take forever. That there will be no end. An eternity passes before Wendy slips once and rolls her ankle on the rocks. Another eternity passes after that, pain now a constant companion.

It hurts.

It is cold.

It is wet.

The fire keeps her alive, still buried in her chest. But it hurts, it is cold.

Eventually, Wendy finds another. For she finds Wendy. She looks down at her, at the lip of the crater, cool and aloof, staring and watching. And she speaks in her voice, the voice of Wendy.

"Why do you choose this? Why do you insist on the path of suffering?"

---

---<Wendy>---------------

Wince. Wince. It hurts. Oh God, it hurts.

Why is she doing this? Her answer is simple. She starts humming to the tune of Jesus Christ Superstar.

After a few moments, she looks back towards herself.

"Redemptive suffering. Remember, Catholic school?" There's a chuckle as she's not really a practicing Catholic anymore. "I'm weak." a beat. "You're weak." another beat. "We're weak. Through all this..." and she winces once more.

"We're atoning. This isn't our first life. We've done a lot of fucked up shit. THe only way to get stronger, is to atone, to get rid of our past sins, so we can become stronger." she explains.

---

---<Bernadette>---------------

Wendy stands there, for long moments, still like a statue, still like the dead. Wendy can see it happen, as Wendy stands there, she gets older, her skin wrinkling, her hair going white. Wounds appear on her, from swords, from betrayels, from broken hearts and failures alike. Age and pain overwhelm her and she falters. Wendy's body crumpling into a moldering pile of rot, and then dust. Blown away on the whipping wind, merging with the snow, into nothingness.

Behind her, barely visible, the outline of a pagoda. Looming now, casting it's shadow over her.

---

---<Wendy>---------------

Gross. Groddy. When her doppelganger does an imitation of the melting nazis from the Last Crusade, she shakes it off and just nosewrinkles.

Smacking her lips, as if trying to get any gross taste of her lips, she sees it. Her eyes widen and she grins. "Fuck! It's close!" and she does what she can to get over the massive pit, beyond the now blown away remains of Wendy-but-not-Wendy.

---

---<Bernadette>--------------- Wendy presses onwards, scrambling up. Rocks scrabble and fall around her as she rushes past her own mortality. It is looming now, the pagoda. You press onwards, through the snow, through the pain...

... and step forwards, onto a dias of rough marble. There is a smooth path there, but it is small, the stone worn by thousands of footsteps, but only ever one at a time or in single file. The wind and snow whip around, but the chill is held off by a fire set in a large brazier at the center. Five censures stand equadistant around the dias, unlit. Before the fire sits a man, hidden in a bundle of travellers robes, stained and worn.

He pokes at the sticks of the fire with one of his own, causing it to spark and burn more even. Looking up he gazes upon Wendy. "You are not here for me..."

"...do you know who you are here for?"

---

---<Wendy>---------------

With a trail of blood behind her, her feet cracked from the cold, and eventually, she's back where she started from.

Blink. Blink. There's a moment of confusion. Did she just go in some weird ass mobius strip type journey? It's entirely possible.

Still, Wendy hrmms for a few momennts and then responds thoughtfully. "Myself. To get better. To get stronger. To bleed away my weakness."

---

---<Bernadette>--------------- There is a nod from the man, and then a moment of just silence, nothing but the whipping of the wind, and the sound of the stick poking the fire.

Then slowly, The Duke of Loyalty and War rises, his flaming stick in his hand as he removes it from the fire, walking around to the censors, he lights them one by one, and Wendy knows them for what they are.

Humility.

Tutelage

Journey

Fear

He pauses before the last censor, seemingly waiting there as he looks back to Wendy.

"There is but one step to enlightenment, it is the idiot's step, and it stretches to the horizon. Do you begin to see now?"

He pauses.

"All you have is your fire. That part in you that burns. Everything else is nothing but illusion. There is no ending to your dance, no point to get to. There is only the dance itself, and the fire that burns in you that makes you do it."

---

---<Wendy>---------------

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

The Dory theme is hummed, as she listens and nods in agreement. "Just keep dancing." Wendy says rather matter of factly. "To connect and tell the stories of our ancestors to those here and now." WIth that, she bows her head towards her avatar.

---

---<Bernadette>---------------

"You wield the flame that burns inside of you Wendy, and the weilder of that flame burns her desire into the world as she chooses, and she burns /herself/ into a greater forms still. In this she is not shaped by the world, but becomes its shaper." The Duke nods there then, and he stares at the last censor. "You must never bank your fire, never let it be smothered, and grow it with the certainty of your actions. Do you understand?"

---

---<Wendy>---------------

Looking towards the brazier in the center of the marble dais, Wendy then peers up at the imposing shape of her avatar.

"Yes sir." And she bows low, a perfect 90 degree angle to show utmost respect for her elder/avatar.

---

---<Bernadette>--------------- The Duke pauses for just a second. "I wonder what shape you shall choose."

With those words, he thrusts the flaming stick into the final censor, and Wendy knows it for what it is.

SACRIFICE

You awaken, in your bed, at home. It is just before dawn, the first pink rays of light heading over the LA skyline. It is warm, another balmy spring day for SoCal. Your ankle throbs for a moment, you had slept on it wrong, and likely it will have a bit of a crink in it all day. You are a bit thirsty as the birds chirp away outside your window, all is well enough in the world.

---

---<Wendy>---------------

The next day... a baby appears in a basket at her front door.

Wendy yawns as she goes towards the door, as something was compelling her. It was only then that she sees a wee babe in the tiny basket.

Blink. Blink. Is she still dreaming? Is she really awake?

It's then that she leans down and sees that the baby is swaddled up, with only the symbol of the Verbena inside. She whines, "WHAT. THE. FUCK." Ahhh, the benefits of being a mage.

Welcome to Motherhood, Wendy Kim. You've learned the ragey side of Mother Nature, now it's time to learn the MOTHERING side of Mother Nature.

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