[Temple of All Gods] Midnight Meanderings (Open)

[Rhuryc]

"It's a bit too hard to look at things from someone else's perspective. Not in full, anyway, but I can understand that, I think. It's not that I don't care about what makes everything work, it's just something I don't believe is in my ability to comprehend. That's the sort of stuff deities deal with, ideas that are too complex for humans to understand." He bobbed his head, considering. "It's like a cat trying to figure out blacksmithing. Unless that cat gained some kind of divine inspiration, or was somehow put on the same level as the smith, than that cat is otherwise incapable of figuring out how to make a horseshoe."

He paused just long enough for Jilitse to take a hold of the conversation and stir it into a new direction. As before he was taken by surprise, but by now he was accustom to the sudden change and thus, his responses were clearer, and proved to actually have a degree of thought behind them.

"My god? Huh. Never really thought about it like that, but. Tyveth teaches honor, valor, chivalry, truth. And justice. All of that is good in theory, but of all the deities I don't believe any of them demonstrate unrealistic ideals held in practicality. As for what he's like?" He grinned and gave a shrug. As an afterthought he began to rub his neck, the craned focus of staring back at Jilitse wearing on his muscles. "I suppose you'd have to ask his friends."

"You really are curious, huh?" Rhuryc thought he felt his eyes cross. If anything this seemed to be a test in his own philosophies. Maybe he was dreaming. "He's just a god I agree with. That's as far as that relationship goes - I doubt he even so much as knows I exist. If he, himself, showed up to talk to me? I'd probably punch him just to confirm it." A grin spread itself across his lips as he finished, wondering how it was the seemingly stoic and rather peculiarly involved Jilitse would take that.

"Ah," He switched the subject himself, something finally donning on himself. "Are you feeling well, miss? No offense but you look a little ill."

[Jilitse]

"It would seem so." And then she stood up and carefully slid, no, glided to Rhuryc's side. She was standing a feet or two away when she said, "I guess, after all that, you deserve to know, at the very least, what I am." She was close enough for the human to realize the eerie resemblance to a corpse. An undead, in the temple? Almost unheard of! "I am a nuit, Rhuryc. A reanimated corpse." She sat, ever so slowly, a distance away from him. "You can say I am ill, but it is less of the physical kind. That, despite my rotting flesh." The nuit said, matter-of-factly. Suddenly, her words might hold a better meaning for the human. How she talked in odd words and spoke of ethereal notions, how she was able to sit still or keep herself from blinking her eyes, how she gave off the aura of not belonging in this world. Perhaps, looking back, Rhuryc might even find sense in what she had told him so far.

"I hope you are not too stunned," she flatly hoped, reaching out to Rhuryc's shoulders, scooting soundlessly near him. She laid a cold hand there and capitalized on what could possibly be Rhuryc's few moments of shock. "But, do not fear me," she mumbled, and found the thought of being feared ridiculous. "I do not desire anything from you but to talk, and so far I've learned a lot of things." She did not bother to elaborate the many ways she had been analyzing Rhuryc's unnecessary gestures, his way of speech, his very words. No, it would be too impolite if Jilitse would go on about how she wanted to conclude that Rhuryc was beyond logic's help. Human reason had its own different flow, Jil knew. She removed her hand, just in case the human would be too spooked out. "It had not been easy staying in Syliras, for many people think of us as if we carry the plague. I do not blame them, however. The human mind usually fears that which it has no ability to comprehend, as if it was automatically programmed to either venerate or hate that which it does not understand." Jil had returned to being a still figure, her lips moving as she continued to speak , "Just as some people are born color blind, nuits have lost the ability to recognize and empathize with the subtle feelings of living persons. It is really hard when you don't have a clue, and even harder when the pulsers start throwing stones at you." She recalled her first day in the City, and was grateful for Stitch's help that time.

"I suppose you're the one who will have questions for me, now?" She smiled, but was still looking ahead, as if Rhuryc wasn't beside her.

[Rhuryc]

Hah! Rhuryc almost cheered. His countenance was not in possession of shock, but rather relief. Everything made sense. The ill look, the queer behavior - far too particular to just be foreign - the seeming never yielding supply of questions. Rhuryc was, in the simplest terms, giddy. At once his posture changed. He followed the nuit with his eyes as she moved and leaned in when she sat down. His vision scanned her body with a reckless thirst to satisfy this new-found curiosity, to solve this new dilemma set before him. So strange she was. A reanimated corpse? His mind was not so driven to the impossibilities of such a scenario, but rather the possibilities. When she touched his shoulder he appeared almost completely unaware. Perhaps she would consume his soul before she left. Perhaps not. Whatever the situation, Rhuryc did not care, it was his turn to ask questions.

"Huh." The first sound to leave his lips was one of a scientist whom had just solved a problem long in the solving. "Stunned? Maybe, but you don't have to worry, I'm not going to chuck a rock at you. Unless you deserve it." His head bobbed in an almost silly agreement with his words. "Do you age? Do you remember your life before this one? You mentioned some kind of issue with gods, did they do this to you or was some mortal magic involved? Is what killed you still present? No, that wouldn't," He paused, his eyes almost glazing over as he considered what lay within the realm of reality. He seemed content with asking the nuit questions in his own way, bereft of forethought and random in selection.

"Do you need to eat? Drink? What about travel, do you get tired? Do you still feel emotion, outside sensations?" Rhuryc blinked, perhaps realizing he had not even given her time to respond yet.

[Jilitse]

The answer came, methodological, as if it was a lecture repeated to a student. "Nuits do not age, but our bodies wither away with time, as Leth intended corpses to return to the earth. When that time comes, we would need to find new bodies." She passed over the details, for switching bodies was not a very good topic to pore on in the dead of the night. Luckily, Rhuryc had his own string of questions, so Jil set to answer the next ones. "We have no need for sustenance as humans do, we neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep. We are as strong as our bodies last." The Nuit decided to leave discussing her race for some other time, so she turned her head to Rhuryc and smiled before continuing, "I became a Nuit because I volunteered to be one. I fell in love and vowed to stay with him, death never parting us." It was unemotional, but it was close to the truth. "But when you've lived long enough, you'd know that as time tests your true feelings, it will also mud your intentions, after a while, immortality and eternity will dull your senses, so much so that even saying the word 'love' is a hard thing for me to say. I think I know what the word stands for, but from my perspective... oh well, you're a human, and it would be really difficult for you to see through my eyes."

Jilitse continued their discussion about their personal gods, "You can look at my dilemma from two ends, one is to see my purpose in life as the need to help Priskil in order to avenge the love of her life, the God of Doors and Travel, Aquiras. To do so I will have to go against Sagallius." The hate was brimming at the edges, her voice a little pointed, but she lacked the face to go along with it. "At the other end of the line, I am to defeat one of the greatest mages Alahea had seen, in order to bring peace to the person who was once special to me." She added thoughtfully, pressing a finger on her lips, "Still is, I suppose. I can somehow see the pattern from afar, how we emulate the gods despite ourselves." There were resemblances between the mission Priskil needs to carry out and her own journey, Jilitse thought. But maybe that was her own imagination.

"If my theory is right, as I am searching for hope, which is what Priskil stands for, you are searching for..." she recalled his words, "honor, valor, chivalry, and truth. It will come to a point where you will realize that you are most closest to the god you are attached to, not because you chose to, but because your life dictated it so."

[Rhuryc]

Rhuryc quirked a brow. Those answers were satisfactory to a point - he felt his curiosity satiated for the time at least - but that last bit he felt a particular disassociation with. As Jilitse spoke of her lover and subsequent revenge, to calm his rage or whatever deeper reason remained, the man could not help but frown. Not for pity or sympathy, but for the tenacity in which the goal was pursued. He felt no kinship in the goals or the intentions; sure, he figured he was far from understanding the thoughts of what was probably a centuries old being long separated from humanity, but that in no way made his perspective void. Especially in regards to his own station.

"Sounds more like revenge to me," Rhuryc spoke, bluntly, his thick baritone calm and focused. "If you mimic the gods the actions are all your own. And don't discount me just because I'm human. I don't mean any offense by it, Jilitse, but you assume a great deal and words like those can impact a person in no small way. I'm not sure if this how you speak to everyone, or if the temple has some strange affect on words, but if someone heard such talk from one such as yourself." The man paused, his shoulders slouching as he released a long, drawn out breath. "Just to say watch whose head you fill with ideas like that. Some fool might just be so inclined to chase them." Was he such a fool? Maybe. Rhuryc had long since given up the desire for life to bestow any sort of blessing upon him.

Gently, the man leaned his head against the back of the pew and stared upward, his gaze following the patterns on the ceiling with idle intentions. Too much for one night he believed. And to think, all he had wanted was a quiet evening to think. "I follow Tyveth because I believe what he stands for matters most, my path is the one I choose." His vision flicked to the Nuit. "I wish you well on yours."

[Jilitse]

Jilitse met Rhuryc's eyes for the last time. Hers gleamed appreciation, for the stranger bestowed upon her the gift of unraveling the knots in her mind. It all rested with a choice, Rhuryc was right. The day she barged into Mashaen's office, was both a beginning and end to her faith - and it was a choice, her choice. She had decided that she would not sit and wait while Drainira and Sagallius exist, while they bind the whole world in their manipulative puppet strings. It would take a great leap of faith to do it, but nonetheless, a Nuit like Jilitse has nothing to lose and everything to live for. Perhaps, like Rhuryc, she would soon follow a god (for her case, a goddess). In a few years time, hopefully sooner, maybe the Priskil will provide her the help she so desperately needed.

"It is a pleasure to have a meaningful conversation for once," Jilitse commented, "You have bestowed upon me answers only a human's mind can see clearly, and although I may not agree on one or two points, you have tilted my otherwise looping ruminations."

"That is not to say I will take back any of the words I said. Just as you have given me bread to eat, metaphorically speaking, of course, I believe I have shared with you parts of my insight. They may not amount to anything at the moment, but know full well that if you do not wish to waste time on making a decision, then you should follow Tyveth, and follow him now. Seek him out," she advised, "whether it would be within these walls or beyond is up to you."

Jilitse stood up and took dainty steps away from Rhuryc. She cast a short glance towards him over her shoulders, taking in his face. She then slipped quietly away into the night, shadow returning to shadow.

[Rhuryc]

Rhuryc kept himself as he was. With his eyes locked on the ceiling of the temple he listened to the Nuit and her speculations. She continued as he imagined she would, speaking until she completed each thought. Such a strange being. Undead, huh? His mind worked over the information she bestowed to him, gods, nuits, all part of some greater plan that Rhuryc felt he had no such part in. Best to keep it that way. For the longest time after her departure the young man remained still, his arms draped over the back of the pew in some strange, uncouth form of meditation. Finally, silence. A few more minutes, maybe, than he would leave. He had to work in the morning, after all.

"Did you hear that, Tyveth?" His thick baritone echoed across the inner temple walls. "I'm supposed to seek you out." Rhuryc chuckled, knowing full well that Jilitise had long since departed and he was, indeed, alone.

"It'd be easier if you just came to me, you know." The resulting silence was deafening.

[Leviathan]

Thread Award! Rhuryc Exp +3 Observation, +3 Interrogation, +3 Philosophy, +1 Meditation Lore Knowledge of Nuits (Minor) Jilitse Exp +1 Stealth, +1 Observation, +3 Interrogation, +4 Philosophy, +2 Storytelling Lore Prying for Answers Additional Comments Nice writing guys. If you have any questions or comments about me or my grading, feel free to PM me and we can work out a solution to any possible problems. Until next time, May the force be with you!