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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Carnifex" data-source="post: 1209342" data-attributes="member: 227">And here's the post of the little existential crisis Melisande was suffering when Klavius turned up and led them off from the beholderkin..."An angel!" Transfixed by the otherworldly (yet somehow profoundly familiar) beauty of the divine emissary that climbed the slope toward her, Melisande forgot all about the Beholder, Wyshira and their imprisonment. She stopped in mid-slink (for as difficult as it was to slink away in terrain like this, with a dozen eyes on you, she had indeed been trying) and stood frozen in wonder while the bright-robed entity approached in a flutter of reflected sunlight. Down to her very fingertips she was abuzz with wild energy. An immense bubble of pent emotion was rising to the surface: years upon tender years of hurt and exclusion finally released by the discovery of rightness and belonging; her deep blue blood was resonating as if a chord of harmony had been struck by the being's presence--a chord of kinship. She feared she might shatter like a crystal glass. All of which had the effect of making her desperately shy. Even as her friends emerged from the cave (which would have surprised her a good deal had she been paying attention) she could do nothing but stare in dumb wonder at Klavius. She could think of nothing at all to say, and even if she had tried to speak words would have come out in a torrent of laughing sobs, like the gushing of a young bride reunited with a soldier husband she never thought she'd see again. Utterly ignoring the Beholder and everything else, she floated along down the gully drinking in Klavius' musical voice, her eyes wide as blue saucers. She hardly felt the rocks beneath her feet. Yet Klavius paid her no special attention. She felt like a dog must feel whose master has forgotten to pat her on the head upon his return. Absurdly, she wanted to tug on his sleeve and inform him that she was blue. This had to mean something! Perhaps--perhaps she was unworthy. There lingered no doubt in her heart now that she was, as she had suspected, an aasimar but what she had done with her life so far might not live up to the expectations of her divine kin. She had engineered a two-headed toad all by herself. She tried to walk to Naseria, but without all kinds of help (from shadow-demons, mute druids, pig-headed mercenaries et al.) she never would have made it. She'd burned a chapel of Gilamesh! Didn't that count for something? As Klavius finished explaining about the Wave Hawk errant and his personal damnation, Mel was only half listening, busy tallying the good deeds and chicken-brained errors of her short life, and coming up in the red. She hung back in shamed silence, that temporarily dispelled loneliness coming back in painful waves. I have a gift, but also a burden. Time to stop dragging it along like a club foot. Time to stop worrying about survival and start worrying about valour. Maybe we'll meet again someday, Klavius, she thought, unwilling to address him aloud, and hopefully on more equal terms. </blockquote>

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