From: Jeff Huo (jeff@spundreams.net.nospam) Subject: Re: IC: Wolves Glen Pub Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.storyteller Date: 2000-10-28 20:39:51 PST In article <20001028173901.01904.00000320@nso-fn.aol.com>, malada2@aol.com says... > Jeff Huo writes: > > >"What went wrong?" Mirabelle laughs crudely. "Oh, her and Stalks > >and a few others tried to save the World, that's what." > > > One can't tell whether it's Pearl's kind words or Alan's gentle probes (or, far more realistically, a combination of both) but Mirabelle, while no less arrogant, bitter or crazed than she was before, is starting to talk a lot more than a prisoner really should... To Mirabelle's credit, she's not a Ahroun. She's not a Brujah. She's not one of the Empire's elite --she's a Toymaker turned soldier, if she can be believed...one crazed with Bedlam and weakened by battle wounds and just recently thumped over the head with the hilt of a sword...this isn't the movies. Even seeming villians have limits to endurance and strength. And Mirabelle was probably long beyond any reasonable limits of such before she came to the Pub and tried to gut Stalks for no apparent reason..... > Pearl's eyebrows raise. "Really? From the way you act it sounds > like she either succeeded or failed miserably. But then, I think saving > the world is a _good thing, don't you?" "Why?" Mirabelle spits. "Who says the world was worth saving?" She hesitates for a second, as if she was trying to make one last effort to keep her mouth shut, to keep her emotions bottled up.. and fails, her words tumbling out like a dam bursting. "We broke our curse --the curse that has stalked us for a thousand years -- broke the chains of Banality and lived in a world reborn. A world where we Fae were acescendant, triumphant, once again Lord and Master of Creation. Can you imagine it? Can you imagine a world without Banality? Where anything that one Willed could happen? No more Paradox. No more Banality. No limit to what one could dream and make happen. What would you give for that world?" she sobs. "A world where mine and my people broke free of our curse --the curse that bound us for ages. Broken free of the curse of Leanhaun --broken of the fear of Death, released from the fear that we would not be reborn when we died --what would you give for that world, if you were one of us?" "Woudl you die for it? Would you kill for it? What if it was the only world you ever knew?" "Why should I care," Mirabelle half-spits, half-pleads, almost now perhaps less talking to Pearl...and perhaps more to the Universe at large, "that six billion people must be fed screaming to eternal pain and suffering to make that world happen? Why should I care that the world be destroyed and burned before it can rise from the ashes? Why should I care about mortal humans and Garou that I have never known, why should I care if in a hundred neighboring dimentions the Winter triumphs to feed our one Spring? Why is it my responsibility to care?" "I know who you are," Mirabelle accuses, this time directly to Pearl. "You're Pearl Cares-about-things, Child of Gaia. You somehow decided that stopping genocide was your business. You somehow decided that it was your duty to stop us from feeding the entire Garou race to the Winter as the price for our Summer. You somehow decided that you couldn't just abandon your friends and your entire race to horrors unending. You somehow decided it wasn't -right- or -just- that we should sap off the life force of entire populations of Universes to take care of ourselves --why couldn't you just leave well enough alone?" "I hate you, Pearl Cares-about-things! I hate you, Stalks Hidden! I hate those others of you who helped them! I hate you with every inch of my soul! We had made a world perfect for us, and you had to come take it away! So what if we built our Heaven upon the pain and suffering and eternal torment of billions? So what if the price of our joy was the eternal torment of Gaia? WHO THE HELL WERE YOU TO JUDGE?!?" Mirabelle shrudders with sheer fury, anger at her impotence, despair. > >> She rummages in her backpack. "I have some nice tea that might > >> soothe you, would you like some?" > > > >"Why not?" Mirabelle laughs. "That's how we first met, bitch." > > > > "Is that so?" Pearl replies as she examines her herbal med-kit. > "Does Chamomille tea sound good?" Then a thought occurs to Mirabelle. Something that gives her strength. She looks right into Leigh's eyes, for the first time realizing that Leigh himself is a Fae...perhaps seeing in Leigh one last hope. "Look at me, Sidhe Knight!" she cries out, with passion. "I am Lady Mirabelle Llydewyen Sonachi ap Leanhaun --of -Leanhaun- yet free of the Curse! You can see this in me, surely --I carry not it's taint. Look at me! I am not half-damned like you --I no longer have that abased human half that we once carried when we were the damned half-race known as Changelings. I am Fae --True Fae-- I fear not Death, for Banality no longer holds us --we Sidhe are broken free now of the curse that damned us to no return after death!" "We broke the Winter! We healed the Sundering! We brought Arcadia back upon the Earth! We brought back the Eternal Summer! Look at me --tell me that I lie! Tell me one other way that I could become so different from you --that I could be everything that you secretly hunger for --a True Fae, Changeling no longer. The Price was paid, the Wyrm was gorged, Arcadia is reborn, -we- are reborn!" "This is the world Christina and Stalks and Pearl and others would take away from us --just because they thought that feeding billions upon billions to the Dark was too high a price to pay for our world Reborn." She then twists her lips slightly...and now she's using some kind of trick noone in the Pub has seen before. Some kind of new Art that has arisen in her world. Some way by which she can speak with Leigh and Leigh alone...and partway through the swirl of Glamour surrounds her. > -Pearl > Mahri, we'll need a teapot and some hot water -Mirabelle ap Leanhaun Think of what I offer, fellow Knight. Then ask me if the price is too high.