It seems Taravangian is no longer getting smart/dumb days. He is divided always.
Ooh, maybe Cultivation is also on Nohadon's side of freedom of movement. 16 (or, the remaining) planets with gods, living in harmony. Hopefully not Discord.
Missing shards? Valor, we don't have much on, but the other one... Whimsy? For whimsical purposes?
Oh maybe he'll do the smart/compassionate thing on purpose? Or at random? Could end up being essentially a noninterference, if he's just doing whatever.
And we're not even seeing Shallan and crew next part!
Tamyra learns something about @clementineike that turns her understanding of her family upside down, neither of them are really happy about any of it
Water surges over Clementine's head. For a second, she inhales sharply, surprised, because only a moment ago she was standing on a small cliff near the lagoon. This is definitely not the lagoon. Water hits her nose, and she splutters to the surface. "What the fuck?!" She manages to say, then sinks under again, fighting against the current. Her fingers still clutch the stems of flowers; her quest for them is the whole reason she's out and about rather than tucked into her ruined shelter. When she surfaces again, coughing hard to get the water from her lungs, relieved her attunement will help her breath if she let's it, she only has a moment to process the looming shape of a cliff before she finds herself crashing into it. Her attunement flares to life, a desperate attempt at stopping the collision course. It pushes hard against the wall. It lessens the blow, but only some. She sees the water surge up and splashes over the nearest inhabit on the beach before her vision wavers.
— ⋆ ✯ ⋆ —
Tamyra has mainly stayed away from the lagoon - she hasn't really voiced it before, but the place had scared her. A whole new place popped into existence where nothing has been before? People turned into trees? She wanted as little with that place as she possibly could. But after a while she couldn't keep away. She still kept her distance from the side of the lagoon with the tree people, though.
She didn't see Clementine on the shore or when she fell in, she only noticed the woman struggling - didn't even realize it was her, she just saw somebody sputtering and gasping for her and then thrown back against the cliff. And her first instinct was to leave it all to fate. She didn't recognize the person, which meant it wasn't her friend, which could have been the one to prompt immediate action. But then she could hear her friends' voice - Frank and Aurélie, too good for this world, prompting her to get it together and go help,a dn cursing them in her head she headed into the water.
She recognized the woman when she got near and fighting against the current and the crashing waves she manuvered herself behind Clementine. "Hey, are you awake? Can you hear me? Don't move around too much, I will get you out, just hold on."
— ⋆ ✯ ⋆ —
A foggy voice reaches Clementine's ears. The only voice more familiar is her mother's. She blinks, eyes stinging, body heavy. "Who..." Clementine stops. It's too much retort to lie. Her eyes close, and she goes still with a breathy: "Mkay."
Someone is fighting the waves for her. Tamyra is. She considers yanking herself away and submitting to whatever fate awaits her. But there's no peace in that. "I can... I can help..." If only her attunement would obey for once. Clementine hates being helpless, and even less when Tamyra is the one saving her. The water pushes, stronger than she expects. Her attunement responds for once when her hand lifts, air pushing them further from the cliffs jagged edges. "Where's the shore?" Her eyes sting too much to see, and she blinks rapidly to expel what she can, head twisting left and right.
— ⋆ ✯ ⋆ —
"I'd appreciate any help so I'm not the only one doing the work here," Tamyra mumbled, though she honestly didn't think Clementine could pull it off. If she could she would have helped herself already, wouldn't she? But then it kicked in, the two of them getting pushed from the cliffs and alright, so maybe this would be easier than what Tamyra assumed it would go like. And at least this time there was no crazy fan-friend to make things worse. (Unless it was somehow a crazy plan the woman got pulled into, but Tamyra didn't want to consider that as an option.)
"It's in the direction we're going right now, obviously, stop twisting and fidgeting, it's making it harder for me to get towards it. I'm not dragging you further into the ocean, don't worry. I don't have a death wish." Whether that sounded reassuring or not, Tamyra didn't really care, she just focused on getting both of them out of the water now. Why did she somehow always end up pulling people out of the water? "We're almost there, hold on. I think you should be able to reach the bottom with your feet. Can you walk or are you hurt?"
— ⋆ ✯ ⋆ —
One inhale, one exhale. No panicking. Help, Tamyra tells her, and Clementine frowns. "I'm trying. It's harder than it looks. Why didn't they give me a water attunement instead?" It would certainly be more useful than her air which does nothing more than keep Tamyra's voice above the crashing waves. No panicking, she reminds herself, and picks up some of her own weight, trying to help drag them both to shore.
She gives a laugh. Then splutters as a wave smacks her in the face. "Well--" Cough. "I didn't think you were the type to rescue people either--" She coughs again, pushing her hair out of her face, the wet tendrils sticking to her forehead. Shore. Right. She strains, legs straightening, and feels her toes brush the sand. A jerky nod, and this time, she's helping more, a hand on Tamyra's arm as they manage one step at a time up the shore."-- so I wasn't sure if I was hallucinating. I'm... uh, I'm fine. I think." She's tired, and her skin stings on her forehead where a cut is slowly bleeding.
When they reach the sand, Clementine keeps walking until the water is several feet away and collapses on her knees. A twist, and she's laying back on the sand with a wince. "I thought the beach was safer than the jungle," she says, pressing a hand against her forehead to stem the blood. Because she must look a sight, she explains:"It's a flesh-wound. Head wounds always bleed a lot. Are you, uh... " Her thoughts are sluggish, and her free hand reaches absently for the chain on her neck. "Are you okay?"
— ⋆ ✯ ⋆ —
"Not everyone can get the coolest power on the island," Tamyra shrugged, her voice casual instead of with an intention to snap, even if it might come like that. There wasn't any rhyme or reason behind who got what, as far as they knew. "And shouldn't air keep you breathing underwater at all times anyway?" She let out a huff. "And just so you know, I am definitely the type to rescue people." Not necessarily everyone and definitely not happily, but Clementine doesn't need to know that, especially when her words feel more like an insult than anything else.
But it doesn't matter. They were walking now and once the woman hit the sand, Tamyra just planned on leaving. The danger has passed and its not like they were friends, nothing more to say. "Yeah, the day the lagoon appeared, vines dragged people into the jungle from the beach, so no place is safe here anymore," she said, her words getting more and more absentminded as the sentence went on, her eyes focusing onto the ring hanging from the chain around Clementine's neck.
It looked familiar, but she couldn't realize why. It was probably just a famous ring from a movie or something and that is why it looked so familiar, but still something was... and then Clementing reached for it and it twisted and Tam got to see it from a different angle and it all hit her suddenly, as if she was hit on the head with a bat. It wasn't a famous ring, but it was wellknown to her. She froze completely, nothearing anything anymore.
"Where-- where did you get that?" she stuttered unsure how she even got the words out in the first place. "Did you-- jesus fucking christ, is this island going to be full of thieves now? First Mallory, now you? Mallory at least did it without others knowing, and you just flaunt your catch in front of people who can realize what you did? This is why you were so weird about recognizing me, weren't you? You knew you stole from my dad and didn't think the consequences would catch up to you here of all places!"
— ⋆ ✯ ⋆ —
"I don't use my attunement. Uh, not on purpose." If anything, it uses her. Clementine can shove it into a box and that's the extent of her talent with this air attunement of hers. "Hm." Her eyes close momentarily, trying to add rescuer to the list of things she knows about Tamyra. It's a puzzle piece that doesn't fit. She toys with her necklace, thinking, not relishing the idea of giving up safety so soon after finding it.
Tamyra's stutter has her blinking, puzzled. "What?" She squints at Tamyra, sitting up in the sand to frown at her. "I'm not a thief," she says, indigantly, clutching the chain. The ring bounces against her chest. The fucking ring. Clementine is so used to grabbing it for comfort, she's forgotten that, here, it's recognizable to all of one person. "I didn't steal from anyone. So knock that out of your head." Her words are heated, blood pumping furiously in her veins. "This is..." She hesitates now, mouth closing tightly, lips a mere thin line. She's never told anyone about who Tamyra is to her. No, it's a secret buried so deep that she struggles to find the words to explain it.
"I didn't steal it from him. He gave it to me." A pause as she sucks in a breath and climbs to her feet. It's not something she can say while sitting down, while vulnerable. "He gave it to me when my daughter was born. He thought it was important that his-- that I-- uh."
Her fingers ball around the collar of her shirt. The ring is cool against her fingers. At this rate, Tamyra will think Clementine slept with their dad. Gross. "He thought it was important that if I didn't have his name, or any part of his life, I deserved this one thing from my father." Stiffly, she holds the chain out to show the ring. "Look at the birthstones. Yours, and mine."
— ⋆ ✯ ⋆ —
Clementine claimed to not be a thief, but really, did she think Tamyra was this big of an idiot? The ring was right there. Her eyes were throwing daggers and she gave an ugly look to the woman, which made her pause, made her change the story, but really, it only proved her stealing the ring even more because her father wouldn't have cheated with this woman. His father loved her mom, they were happy together. The one couple that Tamyra never questioned, never wondered how it could work. They just did. And now Clementine is claiming to have been sleeping with him? And even birthing him another child? Made absolutely no sense.
But the woman didn't stop, and her words led to not the explanation of an affair, but...
"No," Tamyra said without taking the time to think about it, barely even giving a chance for Clementine to finish her own words. "You're lying. You're-- you really think I will believe this bullshit? That my dad-- what? He cheated on mama? No, he would never do that. They loved each other, more than anything." Tamyra was shaking - out of rage, out of indignation, and a tiny bit out of fear because the ring looked familiar, yes, but it also looked different, new. The other woman was right, it had two birthstones on it. Ruby and topaz. Not just the ruby like when she was still back on the island.
"Did you alter the ring?" she asked, desperately grabbing onto any other option, any other possibility that could have happened except for the truth. "You did, didn't you? You stole it and than altered it so you wouldn't be caught." It had to be the truth, it had to be. What this woman was saying... Her being Tamyra's... No, that just couldn't be. It just couldn't.
— ⋆ ✯ ⋆ —
No matter what she says, Tamyra won't agree with her. Clementine purses her lips, struggling to find words. To find proof. "I, uh... I imagined this moment for so long, and I never thought I'd have to prove it to you. Do you think I want to be related to you?" Her entire life has been building to this conversation, and it's not going the way she thought. She'd thought there would be more... anger on her part. All the churning messes inside her, and she can't find the words for any of them.
"No, I didn't alter the ring, how would I even do that?" she demands, throwing out her hands. "What benefit would I have in pretending to be something else? On this island, of all places! I'm not some fan-girl interested in... in clout!"
Clementine shakes the chain at her, the ring bouncing with each movement. Something cold traces down her cheek. For a frightening seconds, she thinks it's a tear. But, no, it's just water. She inhales sharply, irritated, and flings the necklace at her. "Here, hold it if you're so concerned."
Another deep inhale, and then she says, "I didn't even know my father, not the way you knew him. If you want proof... like some secret only his family would know, I don't have it because I am the secret. I was born in 1988. My mom thought that I'd, uh, be her ticket into something good, and my dad - our dad - I don't know what he thought."
— ⋆ ✯ ⋆ —
"That just makes-- absolutely no sense!" Tamyra shook her head, still trying to grasp into any straws she could that would prove all of this, this ridiculous, horrible, highly plausible story to be true. "Everyone thinks I'm dead outside of the island. How could you have imagined this moment for so long? Get your-- your stories straight at least, if you want to lie to me about something like this."But her voice got weaker and weaker as she spoke, her brain telling her over and over again that it was possible. The existence of the ring itself proved it all could have been true.
And the woman, Clementine, her possible-but-no-it-couldn't-be sister kept talking and her arguments made sense, what could she possibly gain by claiming to be her sister? It's not like she was going around the island, trying to get somewhere with this information even. And the anger with which she threw the necklace at her - Tamyra caught it without thinking, the familiar feel of the ring in her hand all but new at the same time - being way too recognizable for her.
And then her brain short circuited again, Tamyra's knees giving up and buckling under her, dropping down into the sand next to Clementine, one hand still clutching onto the ring, while her other hand reached up to clutch the necklace she got from her parents. "1988, but that-- can't be, I was still-- That was five years before--How could he--" She couldn't form coherent sentences, couldn't even think straight."He was with mama... things were good. More than-- more than good." Not that any of this happening after she disappeared would have made it any better, but at least she could have put some logic behind it. Somehow. Maybe. Not really. But still. While she was still alive!
"This can't be. This just-- it cannot be. He couldn't have-- you couldn't be-- No!" she wasn't sure who she was trying to convince, herself or Clem, but she didn't have the mind to figure it out. Things were falling apart, that was all she could focus on.
— ⋆ ✯ ⋆ —
Clementine arches her brows. It isn't a mercy to leave Tamyra grasping for the straw that'll make this whole thing go away. "I'm not lying," she says firmly.
"I've... Well, I didn't imagine I was talking to you when I thought about it. I... I, uh, I don't know what I thought. That someone would hear it." That her words would be important enough for anyone to hear at all. Her neck feels bare without it; it's been a constant these last few years. One of the few the island - or life, it seems, given her mother, father, and even daughter never were - granted her.
Sympathy wells like small buds of grass beneath frost. She's known her place in the family tree for so long, but Tamyra has not. It's hard to watch someone's word crack. Like all things, she swallows back her own emotions and finds something calm. "I don't know. I don't have those answers. He never told me why, and I never cared to ask. But he didn't love my mom. It wasn't... love for her. It wasn't lack of love for you. He certainly didn't want me. Didn't seem didn't care much until you were gone."
A pause follows. A grimace crosses her face, but she stays still beside Tamyra in the sand, neither moving to comfort nor leaving entirely. She tries another route. "I don't want anything from you. I didn't before this place, and I don't here. You don't have to worry about, uh, well, people knowing who I am." And maybe it's for the best nobody knows. "But I'm not going anywhere. I won't hide so you feel better. I've done that enough for your ghost."
— ⋆ ✯ ⋆ —
And of course Clementine has a logical, acceptable, more than believable answer to the one illogical thing Tamyra tried to grasp onto, which only sent her further down the spiral that she was in.
Her world was turning upside down in a way she never in a million years saw it coming. Not before she got to the island and certainly not after she got here. Her parents were perfect, in her eyes. Tamyra didn't understand romance, didn't think she was actually capable doing a committed relationship, didn't really understand other people, but her parents were the sole exception to it. They made sense. They were good for each other, with each other. They were her parents, for fuck's sake, of course they'd make it work, not make the same mistakes others did.
Except, apparently, they did. Her father did. While things were still good, still more than good at home. (or at least as far as Tamyra knew.)
She wanted to scream, to yell at her father, to demand an explanation, but he wasn't here. Clementine was. And she was still talking, half of which Tamyra barely even caught. Until the last of his words. Didn't seem didn't care much until you were gone.
It's not how Clementine meant it. Maybe if Tamyra actually taken the time to think the sentence through, she would have realized how sad it all was. But all she could hear was her father moving on from Tamyra and found himself another daughter. Tamyra wanted to cry, but instead she just shut her eyes, forced herself to breathe. She could not cry in front of Clementine. She was already visibly falling apart, crying would have been too much.
"It's your problem that you felt the need to hide from somebody whom you thought was dead all these years. Do not fucking put that on me," she snapped, annoyed, finding something to grasp onto, even if it was stupid and small. "And good thing you don't want anything from me, because I sure as hell don't want anything from you. This-- you-- fuck it's like a really bad nightmare."
— ⋆ ✯ ⋆ —
Clementine expected a lot of things, but not quite this. Disbelief, and anger. Like she had something to do with their paths converging then or now. It makes her heart thump unevenly as annoyance simmers beneath her skin.
"I've always hid this. You're not an exception just because you're my sister." And she flinches, mouth agape. Sister, yes, that's right. It's what they are, even if she's never once uttered the word.
Her skin prickles with unease, and she fights the urge to fidget, replacing it with a stillness akin to statues. "I was told not to talk about it. Like I was some dirty secret." A petty part of her hopes her parents will hear this conversation on their death beds. She hopes it'll hurt them the way it hurts Clementine and Tamyra.
They'll only ever be united in the pain their parents inflicted. The simmering in her chest sinks like an anchor. "A bad nightmare," she agrees, stiffly, fingers dipping into the hot sand. Go, go, her thoughts say, but Clementine hesitates. Longs to tell her that their father would pick Tamyra in a heartbeat. That there's no universe in which Clementine wins. But she doesn't, because sitting here, silent, is salt in an open wound. It's safer to say: "I don't want this either."
— ⋆ ✯ ⋆ —
"I am not your sister," Tamyra snapped automatically, her voice turning sharp for a moment before she could feel herself deflate again. "No matter what biology would say, and honestly, part of me is still more than skeptical about this entire situation, about you," she wasn't, she really wasn't. The more time passed, the more she could see her dad in the woman in front of her, the more she believed, but she still couldn't just admit it. "No matter what, you're not my sister. You're a nobody, as far as I am concerned."
She just nodded at her statement that she was some kind of dirty secret. A horrible, life shattering, dirty secret - Tamyra in that moment couldn't even think about how it must have felt for Clementine for her entire life, she just wished all of it would have remained a secret, at least from her. She could have just remained in the dark.
She looked down at the ring in her hands. It was familiar, something she new, something she would have clung to even just a couple of days ago - but not like this. Not with this change, not with this new knowledge. No, the ring, and along with it so much of her memories of her father, the person she's always looked up to, has been tainted.
She threw it to Clementine. "Take it, I don't want this. I don't want anything from you or from him that would just remind me of all of this. Your presence is already enough for that. So just-- keep to your promise and leave me alone from now on."
— ⋆ ✯ ⋆ —
Clementine inhales for patience, but Tamyra's words have her exhale come out as a surprised, unamused snort. "I'll be a nobody whether we're related or not. I can't change that." An uncomfortable pause. She scrunched her nose and corrects: "Either of those things." As if Tamyra cares that Clementine can't stop being her sister or a nobody.
No part of her wants to watch the emotions across Tamyra's face. She ducks her chin, much of the same way she did when they first met on these shores. Maybe it's the same one she made when they met all those years ago, too.
Something hits her. Clementine flinches, fingers shooting out to catch the necklace before it can fall in the sand. Her hand twitches, drawing it close to her chest. "If that's what you want. I can't hide. There's nowhere to do that here. But no one will here it from me. I don't want you either."
As Tamyra walks away though, disappointment wells in Clementine. She wonders if a small part of her did want her. Wanted the only family member who hadn't denied her until now. She scrunches her face and climbs to her feet, hurrying away. Now there's no one left to tell. She's finally free. And yet she's never felt less so.
Since they found the lagoon and Madi stumbled onto Angie turned into a tree, she hasn’t really left the lagoon unless it was absolutely necessary, and even then she didn’t do it in good conscience.
She didn’t do too much, mostly just hung around, talked to Angie (apologized over and over again profoundly) and spent a lot of time thinking (more like spiraling, really). And at some point, even Madi wasn’t really sure when, she has sat down onto the ground and ended up dozing off.
She wasn’t sure how she slept, but she woke up to approaching footsteps, jumping up to at least a sitting potition - she was half lying against Angie, which only really made her feel even more guilty. Her partner was a tree now and yet she couldn’t even find it in herself to doze off fully onto the ground...
Madi was rubbing the sleep off of her eyes as she looked around to find the source of the footsteps - she didn’t think it was anything from the jungle (or maybe she would have welcomed anything coming straight from the jungle for her, really), but still, she tensed up when she saw Libby. They didn’t really have a lot of great interactions before, and it made Madi tense around the woman.
“Hello, I-- was just dozing off, sorry. Are you coming here to-- you know, see somebody?” She winced. If the people on the beach had lost ones among the tree people, people who have spent decades in the jungle probably lost people to the trees as well. “Sorry, that was, you know, a stupid question. I can leave. Leave you to yourself, if you want to be alone.”
