who is the lamb and who is the knife?

[vliste_staba]

Nexus regulars may have seen Deet here and there over the late Fall and the Winter. She's small and a little shy, but very distinctive, especially to human eyes. A girl with green-tinted skin, hair the color of undyed linen, wings like a dragonfly's, and less than two and a half feet tall. Most people assume she's a faery, and she doesn't mind that.

She's never seen without the sprouting wooden staff she carries, and the floor-length black feather cloak on her shoulders, both gifts from the Fallen Angels. They make her feel secure, particularly the cloak. Right now, she's crouched beside a pond, peering at a group of tadpoles milling in the water. Some have legs budding, and she's fascinated to watch this metamorphosis, slow but fast enough to be visible.

Around her, some of the cattails are tinted dark violet, a wash of purple energy that seems to surge and then recede again as the reeds quiver in the wind.

"When someone starts to change," she says, "they never know what they'll really look like when they've finished, do they?"

Sitting back on her heels, she tilts her head to watch the Darkening flux and retreat across the cattails. "And when someone has power, it's hard to decide what to do with it. If you thought there was even a small chance you could save your world from something terrible, what would you sacrifice for it? Would you become another person to do it?"

Comments

[vliste_staba]

Her ears swivel back at the idea of a gelfling on a spaceship. It's a shock, actually, to hear that others have been as far from Thra as she is now. Surely that can't be good for a gelfling or for the planet itself...but Deet has special circumstances to consider, which is why she lingers here. Maybe this Kira did, too?

Although the Doctor doesn't seem entirely certain, himself.

"I didn't say I thought he was our entire universe," she corrects him mildly. "He's not. He has no right to the power he's taken. But to make no decision and let someone or something else handle it is making a decision in itself."

"The Sanctuary Tree called me, and that matters. Even if It only called me because I was the closest one to call. I have a quest and it isn't finished. I'm not sure yet how to go about that, is all."

[not_the_question]

The Doctor is looking around at the violet colours. And then back to her. Somehow they're connected. But he doesn't ask about that. "That is a decision, yes, but it doesn't mean that he will have any say in the resolution."

The quest part catches his attention. "A quest? I'm very good with quests. Tell me about it."

[vliste_staba]

"I suppose not," she says. "But I can't know one way or another, from where I sit. There's a prophecy, too...that gelfling can stop the Emperor and the Darkening. It's not exactly clear on how. Or when."

"All I know for certain is I can't stay here and do nothing until I die."

"One of the nurlocs had attacked me. It wasn't her fault, it was the Darkening, but my wing was hurt, and I was trying to find my way home on foot. And I came upon the Sanctuary Tree, in Its grotto. It explained that the nurloc had gone mad because of the Darkening...It said the Great Trees of Thra had kept the Darkening at bay for as long as they could, but were beginning to be overrun. And that the gelfling needed to be warned."

"Then It dreamfasted with me, and showed me the Darkening, animals hurting, plants dying, Mother Aughra crying, and...myself."

[not_the_question]

He tilts his head, considering it. "And do you think you are this chosen one?"

The Doctor isn't so sure. If his memory is serving him right, which maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. Time Travel does odd things to one's memory.

[vliste_staba]

"I don't think there's a chosen one," she shakes her head vehemently. "I think it has to be all of us. I want to do my part, and I have something the others don't."

"Our kind is supposed to be closest to Thra, of all the creatures that live there. I'm not sure why that is, but...we haven't done right by the others. If it has to be fixed by gelfling hand or else by none, it's because we allowed the mess to happen in the first place."

"Anyway, I promised the Sanctuary Tree I would do whatever I could to defeat the Darkening."

[not_the_question]

Okay. The Doctor can accept that. He wasn't sure he had the whole story, only the bits he could get Kira to tell him. And that was... a very long time ago now. He could make some guesses about what she might be able to do. But the Nexus has always been strange. "What d0 you have that the others don't?"