Video: UN - Runeseeker (Misfire, CW: See below)

[onerthes]

[The feed kicks on by accident. The visual is choppy, and it's pretty obvious that the omni is being used as a flashlight in the distance. There's some floating mushrooms not far away, and it kind of looks like someone had been harvesting them for whatever reason. In the gloom, the image flashes a sort of ghostly pale from the bone moon overhead, and the whole thing has a shaky quality, almost like the hand that was gripping it wasn't entirely steady.]

No... no no no no no NO!

[The voice is obviously Vira-Lorr's. There's an unmistakable quality of distress in her voice, but is it fear, is it anguish or is it anger? It's really hard to tell from the way she screams. The camera angle shifts and it flutters, shaking as the light pours out to illuminate the trees nearby. A flash. Something moved. Or did it? It looked like the smallest hint of darkness shifting. Maybe an ankle disappearing behind a set of trees. The camera didn't have time to get a proper view, not before it began jerkily running to the cascading sound of crushing autumn leaves.]

Come back! PLEASE!

[The camera feed waved back and forth, searching behind the tree. Trying to find something. Anything. But no, nobody was there.]

I'm sorry... I didn't... want this.

[The feed cuts.]

(OOC: Fair warning. Talk of harm that came to a child is almost certain in this thread if a character asks her what she thought she saw. Emotional Distress and Hallucinations are also possible. Also, coming neaar her physically risks encountering Floater Mushrooms that can cause paralysis, which she's currently harvesting, but action tags are fine.)

Comments

[onerthes]

I don't know. She didn't really want to die, but I don't know if she wanted to live as she did. Her last words had more to do with wanting to belong.

[the_obedient_servant]

...I think I understand what that's like.

[onerthes]

I think you've always been someone who could understand some of what she went through. Not necessarily all, but at least some of the things.

Part of the problem was that, in some ways... she was already dead when we met her. We were in some ways encountering the last gasps of her mind, and the living element of her power.

[the_obedient_servant]

The people of my village treated me like a demon as well. When I was alive, I wanted to prove them wrong, prove that they were all the real demons, and I fantasized about righteously killing every single one of them. In the end, I confirmed their worst nightmares about me, and I became the monster they saw me as.

Dead children get no say in who they become. They're always defined by the pain they left behind.

[onerthes]

... [She sighed. Yeah, that admission matched up with the snippets she'd gathered.] And you have agency here, choice, but it changes nothing of that past. And that past is ... alarmingly similar to hers, though I think he emotional reaction was different on some level.

And in death, she had no real control. It was the glimmers of her memory, not something we could truly fault or blame.

[the_obedient_servant]

I am a worse person than most. It's only natural her reaction differs.

[...]

Did she want revenge?

[onerthes]

...

[There was a sound in the back of her throat like she wanted to argue with that first one. She really did. She didn't. Not this time, but she didn't want nothing to be said.]

Your situations aren't entirely equivalent. You are your own person, as was she, whatever similarities.

...

And yes, I think at times she did. Not always. But you could see the wrath in her countenance, bubbling in the memories of her life. She had a lot of resentment over her situation, but it didn't come out often.