The Question (Solo)

[Maya Frostfawn]

Timestamp: Summer 4, 523 AV Maya had asked herself the same question many times before, but no matter how many times she had posed it, she had never arrived at an answer. She wasn't sure when what she called the "second shift" had happened, or at least, when she had first noticed it had taken place after her initial change in body, from life to walking a narrow and hated path between worlds. When her emotions, her feelings, what some might argue was the essence of each and every being, had not dulled precisely, but when she had turned her back on them and walked steadily away, gaining distance with each passing year. Until, at times, they seemed so far off she couldn't touch them no matter how long and how hard she stretched out her fingers and reached for them. Until she could barely taste them, barely remember what they had been like to experience she had grown so distant from them. So... detached... like everything she experienced, or rather, should have been experiencing was being experienced by someone else and she was simply watching a play they had put on. Like everything she experienced was happening to the body whose strings she was pulling like a master of puppets, as opposed to herself, the form hidden, lost somewhere within its protective shell. Although she wasn't sure when this had happened to her, or even why it had happened to her, she often thought it had something to do with the nuit's change and body, and their steady, continual shifts if they intended to remain alive. Like... with each change in form, she became less and less like the person she once was, the Frostfawn she had begun her life as back in Avanthal and more and more like a living shadow, dwelling inside the skin she had sewn around herself until it rotted away and ceased to be of use. A sign, many felt, of how unnatural her kind was. How unnatural she was. Maya shifted in her seat, blinked to break her focus on the distant wall as she began pulling on the thread she didn't wish to lose just yet. If only she tugged a little harder, perhaps it'd begin to unravel. Why had she grown so distant? To the point where everything seemed like just a fond memory, fading in her old age? Why was it so bloody hard to remember? And why... She had forgotten why. Nothing phased the nuit now. She hadn't been surprised in quite some time, and as she tugged at the thread, she couldn't help but feel it had to do with the bodies. But what about the bodies and how could she prove it? How could she prove something as complex as this? She would need so many bodies, all of the time in the world she had, and... people who could communicate with her. Would willingly do so until her work was done. But the bodies... so many bodies, so hard to come by. Like everything else in this... life. She considered that although her kind lived inside another's shell, they weren't truly them, just, a small piece of them, and the pieces that were left behind were the things that gave them life and character--the need to eat and to drink, to drift off to sleep, to breathe, to have a functioning set of organs in order to maintain life. It all had to be connected somehow, didn't it? Or was she simply overthinking things again? It certainly wouldn't be the first time... or the last.

[Maya Frostfawn]

No, it definitely had to do with the jump from one poor, deceased soul to the next, she was certain. She could feel it in her bones, the depths of her rotting soul. With each passing year, as she lost a piece of herself, she grew further and further from the place where it had all begun, and she grew further and further from the person she had once been. There must have been something missing in the connection between nuit and their choice of body. A severance between mind and soul; they were only pulling strings. That had to be it... or... maybe they weren't truly the ones pulling the strings. Maybe, they only thought they were. During that first shift from their original body to the first suit they stole... she could barely remember that now... maybe something had died then. The thing that made Maya, Maya. Whatever that nameless thing was... maybe it was gone and she could never get it back, and in signing away her original body, she had signed away her very self. Maybe all of her kind did when they went from their first body to the next, to unnaturally suspend their lives and meet some goal or goals only they could name. Maybe they weren't in charge at all, or entirely in charge, and it was the body's way of fighting back. Or perhaps that was insanity, a thread she should simply let drop. Perhaps trying to find the answer was insanity too. And she should let it drop; she flicked some dirt from beneath her nail onto the floor, adding to the tiny piles that had begun to form over the past few days. Maybe, she would never know why she was the way she was now, maybe it was impossible to find the answer she sought, but she desperately wished to continue seeking it, and searching through only the depths of her mind couldn't be the way to find the answer. She needed bodies... and what better way to find them than in Sunberth's darkest corners? She smiled... this was simply a thread she couldn't stop pulling.

[Maya Frostfawn]

XP Award! Name: Maya Frostfawn XP Award: +2 Philosophy Lore: Asking Questions: Pulling on a Thread Nuit: Why Are They Emotionally Distant? Notes: A short little thread.