closed 🪶 so many birds of so many feathers

[garudas]

Who: Benedikta Harman & Others.
Status: Closed.
Where: The Roost.
What: Benedikta tries to fix up the chocobo stables that she broke last month, and she also gets a new visitor through the rifts.
Warnings: None for now.

Comments

[serendipitously]

[ She reaches in absently to pull out a few plumes, glancing at them with an idle sort of curiosity. ]

I like to pretend no world is terrible most of the time. [ There's a small quirk of a her lips there, maybe she's just trying to kid, maybe not. ]

What can I say, I have a talent for arriving at places during the best times. [ 'best' obviously meaning worst. ] Believe it or not but I was once dragged to a nexus dimension because it's riveting times meant it needed a cleanup crew. [ And for some reason she keeps getting seen as cleanup crew material. ]

[garudas]

[Benedikta snorts at that.]

Oftentimes, I wonder if it is the same for this world. Alas, never any shortage of cleaning up to be done around here.

[Whether it's gryphons or other locals or riftfarers, several vacations sound nice right about now.]

So, you say you have traveled through several rifts and portals? A common thing in your world?

[serendipitously]

At least you can never claim to be bored then? Even if bored might be preferable at times.

[ Because sometimes people just...want a vacation. Although she's become rather convinced that she just will never get a decent vacation without interruptions. ]

More common than you'd probably expect. Not for everyone, but people in my particular circle have strange luck with it.

[garudas]

Some of us on this crew have something of a vested interest in the rifts myself.

[For Reasons.]

Does it require some form of special magic to travel through them? In your own world.

[serendipitously]

I'd be curious to know why, but I also know that could be personal.

[ And she's not always in the business of prying too much too quickly. Always. ]

Yes and no. There's actually a few different ways to do it. A few mutants have abilities to teleport through realities, though that's rare. The Timebreakers used technology to open their portals. The Captain Britain Corps utilize magic.

[garudas]

[It isn't all that personal. Not anymore, but she also will not sour the mood with it. Besides, she is far more interested in what Betsy has to say about these rifts and portals and travelling through them... even if she does throw a bunch of words at her that she doesn't understand.]

And do they have ways to close said portals as well? Surely if one can open them, they can close them, too...

[serendipitously]

They do. I know a few of them. [ She hesitates for a moment, debating with herself on just how much she wants to say about herself. Eventually she settles on there being very little reason to not just be direct. ]

My family has a connection with it to some extent, though I'm not sure how much that would translate to here. I take it you've been trying to find ways to close these?

[garudas]

[She stops what she's doing, nearly dropping the feathers that she's holding when Betsy so easily figures her out.]

... Trying to find a way to control them.

[A soft clearing of her throat.

Yes. Closing them completely would be ideal and it is her end goal. She's not sure how many people would understand her want to do so, and how many more would try to stop her if they ever found out that she intended to trap them all here if it meant that she and her loved ones would be safe.]

They are unpredictable, and I wish to stop living in fear of being pulled through them. I've no intentions of returning to my world.

[serendipitously]

It's exhausting. [ She realizes after a few seconds of silence that she's left that as a very incomplete thought. ] Not having control of something. Living in fear of being taken somewhere else or having something taken from you.

[ So she can understand the desire. The last few years of her life have felt like nothing more than a state of living in constant fear of being taken off to some other place or having those she loved snatched away from her. Though she does hesitate at that last bit the other woman says, enough to blink a few times. ]

You'd rather stay here?

[garudas]

I would.

[She fidgets with a feather in her hands, running her fingers along the spine to straighten it out as she takes a moment to figure out how to answer.]

There is not much for me to return to, and even if there was, my world is far less desirable than this one. [A bitterness edges into her voice.] There are no kings to rule over me, nor are there games of men to play for them. I can choose how I live my own life here. And I have.

[There are some days where she finds herself still learning how to do so, but she's getting better at it!]

[serendipitously]

Try not to judge my writing too harshly, my brother was always the academic between us.

[ Said with a small shrug and a smile that quickly falters at what's said next. ]

I'm sorry to hear that, about your world I mean. [ Her own back stiffens and she gives a look that's much more akin to understanding than sympathy. ] If this place really is free from games men play, I may want to stay here myself. [ Though she'd feel...guilty for leaving behind her own duties. But a place where she could just be herself, free from even the subtle manipulations of her own brothers? Well, it might be nice. ]