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Developmentals || Accepting!
⚔️ CROSSED SWORDS — do you have any skills that you are absolutely grateful you have and that mean a lot to you? how do you usually use these skills? would they come in handy if someone you cared about was in trouble?
Fariah has many skills. Being born into the Imperial family, one must have a plethora of abilities and skills to use in a multitude of applications. From the political to the diplomatic, from the military to the mundane. Many aspects of a life built for many facets of life. One that is constantly overlooked, however, is one that defines not just herself but the lifestyle of her people as well; Sailing. Her father always made sure she had a healthy knowledge and teachings of swimming and sailing, from his mouth and knowledge alone as it was taught to him by his father and his father's father. It's an endemic part of her peoples, sailing, as that is the main mode of transportation of goods and people between the isles, a fine fishing industry to bolster the most basic needs of the populace. A road can crumble and fall, but the waterways are eternal. Sidhe are born on the water, it's said, and they'll live and die there too. All good Imperials know this, both the necessity and the adage. All good Imperials know the mechanics on how to not only make a makeshift dinghy in times of need if they have the materials needed, but also how to rig and work one to get from Point A to Point B easily enough. Water is as daunting as the greatest expanses of land, and just as bleak as any wasteland in the far reaches between. Knowing how to tame and use this element is key to survival. It may not do much on the mainland, unless one is stranded with nothing but water to their name. The element of change, on an expansive lake or down boiling rapids. At least she knows how to find solid ground and not succumb to the cold depths' maw.
🔮 CRYSTAL BALL — what is a core memory from your childhood that you think defines you today?
One may think that tragedy and violence are all she would remember. And a lot of that is true, being such a recent and fresh scar in her memory and career. But while it can define a person in how they handle such things, it is neither of these things that she would say she remembers most. Go far back. Back to the basics, when she was barely a pup capable of being away from her mother's arms. The littlest Crown Princess, recently debuted with heavy clothing and jewelry that made her fuss until it was taken off so she could run awkwardly and play with the other children in her life. Barely a care, the tutors not yet picked. Still young enough to be a child with child worries, but old enough to remember. She remembers the warmth of her mother's hand around hers, the bright beaming smile of her father as his great arms are open in joy to his tiny pup, not yet tall enough to really be considered a full person yet. The embrace as he lifts her to see the great bronze statue of the first of their lineage. The first Ariad, the warlord incarnate, purported son of the war goddess Katya herself. A man once so terrible his ferocity was the only thing that could unite the warring clans and ethnicities of the Three and Ten under one family. The way the sunlight glints off the metal as his eternal fiery eyes lay the scrutiny upon the empire that springs at his feet. His reminder, his legacy, not just in the bloodline that gazes up in awe at the thought of following his footsteps into the annals of history, but in the people below sprawled before him. How must he be proud to look upon the world from Devas and know how eternal his legacy has become. Does his mother shine and beam in pride, knowing her own legacy has been instrumental in this place of the world? Trauma and bloodshed are experiences, but only the remembrance of knowing where you came from and seeing the unknown of where you go to is what really defines you.
🏹 BOW AND ARROW — if there's something from your past that you'd give anything to go back in time and redo, what is it?
Time is such a fickle thing, events are meant to happen. Ripples in a timeline cause crucial key events, in one way or another. She could go back in time and stop Turyl from ever being inducted into the Imperial Guard. She could warn people when he was made captain of what was to come. But in the absence of her personal retribution, the ripples still shift. She harkens back to those awful days now, but knows deep inside even if she'd been privy to his ideals. Knew he had been gathering those of similar mindset to him for his rank and discipline. Knew he did not feel the closeness of the hivemind to the people around him and that was what drove him to madness to begin with. Knew how to use it anyway. She knows if she had stopped him, something else would have happened. Something worse would have happened. Maybe Turyl wasn't the most terrible thing the universe could have given her. Maybe it knew that even through the torture and the bruising and the pleading, she could survive this instead of what could have been. The Empire came dangerously close to collapse and ruin, they all still suffered together. But if he had been stopped? Maybe it would have already ceased to exist. For her millions, she can weather the shadows and the rifts and the chasms in her memory. The flashes of the wounds left that have since healed on a physical level but still leave emotional scars. She can handle this, in the knowledge that it's still not the worst it could have been. And so on some selfish level, she would change that. But on a pragmatic level, she would not change a thing. For them.
@red-man-of-mustache
