Sometimes there are Gods in your Brain.
-
Nehl felt as though her body was being torn in half, starting right at the center of her mind. Narathix lives there, or at least part of Her does as it was explained to Nehl. But now, as it stands, there is a stranger in there!
Now, prior to this Nehl thought that she'd had a pretty good handle on sharing a part of her mind with a God, but the presence of Diollea was proving to test her resolve. For starters, He was heavy in the same way His light made it difficult for Him to be looked at in the waking world, the energy He expelled was nearly impossible to withstand, and if Nehl had to put a number to it she would say He took up 10x as much space as Narathix did. In short, she had never felt as powerless and vulernable as she did right now in all of her mortal and immortal life. There is nowhere to escape to when what you want to escape is taking place in the back of your mind, oh yeah and also you're unconscious. Nehl could only watch the two Gods settle their differences. If all goes well, this would be her last hurt. Right? The scene that was painted for this discussion was supremely dull and starkly contradictory to the feelings stirring inside of her. There was no doubt in her that this was entirely for her sake, and Diolleas doing. Narathix never had much tact. It looked like an office space, a small room with a long table that sat between Diollea and Narathix. If Nehl didn't know any better, she would mistake this meeting for a business transaction in some fashion. Diollea, as Nehl perceived Him, was as large as He always is, and He took up a considerable portion of her field of view. He sat with his arms folded over his chest, and though she couldn't see his face she could tell he was staring daggers directly into Her. The short curls on his head seemed to emulate his feelings, they licked out as if they were angry flames. Almost like the beams of light from the sun itself, like when a child draws it. Compared to him Narathix was small, and She looked kind of afraid. Sunk back into Her seat, wringing Her tail in Her hands. She had the appearance of a plulean, only modified with a mouth with which to speak. Nehl always wondered why She would need that in a mindscape of all places, but She did she guesses. Her plumage presented as a bouquet of all different sorts of flowers, from the top of Her head down to the tip of Her tail. Nehl always joked that it looked like the floral section of a craft store. Yes, if she didn't know any better, this would just be a perfectly mortal Cardali and a perfectly mortal Plulean having a casual business conversation. She couldn't help but wonder what it would have looked like if her wellbeing were not being cared after. When Diollea spoke, she could hear it all over her head and she felt it in her core. She could admit to herself that He was absolutely terrifying, and she could sort of kind of see why Squish presented the way that he did. Imagine having to tell this guy you've failed whatever task he gave you. Probably not ideal. "Who do you think you are?" Despite the projection, Nehl still recognized it the calm voice He usually used. It calmed her nerves, but not by much. He did not wait for a response, he unfolded his arms and placed His hands on the table. "I need to know what gives you the right." Nehl needed to know, too. "It was only a small favor." Cat that ate the canary indeed; Narathix shrunk back from whatever sour face the response elicited from Diollea. Nehl didn't need to see it. Ever the diplomat, Diollea adjusted His posture so that it no longer looked like He was going to eat Her. He sat back and crossed His left leg over His right. "I only needed her help to find Cruxis. He wasn't answering me, you know, she knows her way around the colonies better than I do..." She trailed off, trying to look around Diollea to get a glance at Nehl. Diollea purposefully shifted in a way that block Her. "And this excuses your behavior?" "I never did anything but observe!" Nehl was ready to object, but before she could interject Diollea held a hand up, a motion that seemed to shut Narathix up as well. "Certainly you know me better than to imply that I would make any form of baseless accusation." His voice held steady, but Nehl could feel His agitation rising. He turned briefly and gave her a sort of apologetic smile that mostly confused her. Then he seemed to pull something seemingly out of thin air. It kind of looked like a little ball of light. Nehl's voice lodged itself in her throat, she wanted to ask, but she already knew what it was. Before long, one of the little balls of light started to project into the air. It was a memory. And suddenly she understood why it was an apologetic smile. She could feel it all. - Nehl felt like he was moving in slow motion when she woke up, she could still smell the smoke and ash from the forest that burned down around her an indeterminate amount of time ago. She would have worried about the smoke filling her lungs if not for the burning feeling that radiated from her chest. To distract herself from the pain, she tried to blink the grogginess from her eyes, Gods it'd felt like she'd been asleep for eons. If not for the fresh smell of burned plant life she might have believed that she did. Finally she sat up and looked around the assess the damage around her. If there was anything alive here, then it was doing a damn good job at hiding itself from her -- It was all gone. The entire generation forest in smolders. Before she was able to really take it all in and process it, a booming presence seemed to take over all of her senses.
“Forgive me, it has been quite sometime since I’d even seen one of yours in the flesh.. Let alone put one together.”
Immediately, Nehl recognized her as the Goddess that the planet she sat on was named for. The planet she’d just finished letting down big time. Guilt started to grip at her, and it had claws.
“You can make it right Nehl! You can help me fix all this damage caused by your people!” Nehl remembered this day crystal clear, but she did not remember the anger that started to pool itself in her gut, or the resentment that joined it the more urgent She sounded.
-
“Nothing?” Diolleas voice snapped Nehl out of reliving the memory, the pain was gone but the resentment did not go anywhere. It must be how she feels now. She didn’t feel bad about accepting Diollea’s help anymore, that is for certain. “You took advantage of her guilt from day one.” Nartahix said nothing, seeming to focus Her attention on the other memories that floated in the air. “You’re a predator, you’re vindictive.”
“No it wasn’t supposed to sound like that.”
“No?”
“No!”
He leaned onto the table again and swiped at the balls of light, it appeared to Nehl like He was shuffling through for something very specific. Maybe she should have been more concerned about his ability to recall her memories, but she was still reeling from the guilt pushed upon her by Narathix to focus on that. She never noticed how much She played into it.
Narathix really was using her has nothing more than a puppet, and she felt sort of ashamed having let herself be toyed with so easily.
“No?” Ye repeats and Nehl could feel the resentment burning in her chest quickly be replaced with anger. His anger.
From her perspective, it looked as though he was giving Her an opportunity to better explain Herself, but He was getting increasingly angry. It was almost unbearable.
Narathix looked at him, hopeless, looking for a way out of the mess that she’d made. Irritated, Diollea clicked His tongue and pulled out the memory he’d been looking for, letting it project itself as he did the last one. Strangely, this one was new to Nehl.
-
Nehl was laying flat on her back, staring up at the night sky lit up by the stars and bioluminescent plant life. She had been laying in this position for so long, she couldn’t put a time to it but it certainly has been the calmest she’s been in a very long time.
“What do you think you’re doing? Hm?” Nehl was shaken from her bliss by the voice that boomed from within her. “Do you think he’s just going to fall back into your lap? Do you even care about the pain he must be in? The pain that I’m in?”
She was right. How could she just be sitting back relaxing while her family suffered in this way? Guilt started to settle in her stomach. So what if she’d already had plans to hitch a ride back to the colonies, here she was doing nothing when she could have been making a plan or figuring out where she’s gonna go from there. She should not be relaxing right now.
“How could I have brought back someone so useless and selfish?”
Nehl imagined the unpleasant expression Narathix might have had as She spat this venom out to her. She winced as a migraine began to throb, she noted that yes she’d been feeling a lot of those lately. Tears formed in her eyes. How could she have been so selfish?
-
Nehl was crying when Diollea broke the memory again, he was standing with His hands slammed onto the table. It took her a moment to get her breath between her own grief and His anger.
“You are nothing but a pest. Do you know that? Do you understand?”
Narathix flinched away from Him. “I was upset! I made it go away. I helped her forget it happened..”
“You hid it from her to curry her favor.” If this wasn’t some weird mindscape table it would have splintered under His grasp.
“She was so sad.. I needed her to be happy.. She would be more effecient if she was happy. So I made it go away. She was happy again.”
That was likely not what he had wanted to hear from her. In an instant the table between them was gone, and it kind of looked like the room around them was beginning to buckle. Nehl did not have the time to quantify the betrayal of Narathix having hid a memory from her before Diolleas anger flooded out any other emotion she could possibly feel. It burned red hot and she briefly wondered if it was possible to lose consciousness from her subconscious. Gods, she wished that she could.
As Diolleas closed the space between the two of them, Nehl could pick up the bits of fear that came from Narathix. She looked so small compared to Him. He was so angry.
“Worst than a parasite, I would say.” He seized Her, digging his nails deep wherever He grabbed Her from, Nehl would speculate that from the way She screamed when He did. Lords above, did she scream.
“I am very good at handling parasites. Don’t you worry about it.”
Nehl would have to take his word for it because that is when His anger overtook her and everything went black.