----------------------------------------------
THE THIRSTY MINNOW - PHOEBE'S ROOM - LATE NIGHT
----------------------------------------------
Phoebe steps into the bathroom, exhausted, struggling with sleep. The visions of Cavro still haunting her. Sighing, she takes a handful of water from the bucket and cups it into her hands, splashing it upon her face. Then stares into the mirror, looking into her mismatched eyes.
Phoebe stares, wanting not to think about the badger. She growls at herself. "Stupid... stupid... it's not even the same. He was an... elemental. Not even real. Not even aware. Just a fire... thing."
Narrator: A voice echoes from within Phoebe's head, "Not even real... not even real. Just a thief. A Thief!"
Aelia 's face appears in the mirror, overlaying Phoebe's reflection, the only exception being her eyes, one normal, the other is Phoebe's own mismatched eye. "You're nothing... thief. You stole all that gold... you stole my job away from me! Stole my friends! Now you're a murderer too..."
Phoebe growls, snapping at the mirror, Aelia's face mirroring her every move in an unnatural anger for the deer, "Shut up! Y-you... you've never spoken to me before... you're not even awake? I've... I've been protecting us! Protecting you!"
Aelia laughs, and as she moves, Phoebe's body, or rather, Aelia's body? mimicks the reflection, forcing the wolf to be the mirror in turn. "Protecting?! You don't actually believe that do you? Everything you do is for Yourself. You're selfish. And you're afraid. Cause you're not real, and you know it."
Phoebe snorts, shaking off the movements to try and back away, but her position holds fast. Her face shifts to become one of panic as she struggles for control. "N-no! I'm real! I... I think! I feel! I... I... s-stop this Aelia! Stop this! We... we can work together!"
Aelia leans forward, or rather, Phoebe leans forward, closer to the mirror. "You saw it yourself. Cavro and that thing... they can't coexist. And neither can we. You're nothing. You're just a curse. But... I know how to cure it now. How to cure you."
Phoebe is the mirror now, trapped behind the cold glass, unable to move or speak, only to watch in horror as her body moves without her. It's a familiar feeling, looking outside from Aelia's eyes, but this time she's watching herself, the wolf, with no control or freewill, only silent, unblinking horror.
Aelia pulls out a knife, eerily similar to the one that the other Cavro had begun to forge. She gives a predatory grin through the wolf's mouth and lifts the knife up towards the miscolored eye. "Just got to cut out the infection..."
Phoebe continues to pound at the glass, screaming in silence as Aelia plunges the knife into her eye. As the eye bleeds out, Phoebe looks down at her hands, watching them turn black and sooty, cracking apart in a grim redux of Cavro's fate. The ashes being to break off, crumbling away into the nothingness within the mirror.
Aelia laughs in an unnatural cackle, "You know the truth! There can only be one of us! No coexistance! Only one of us can live a real life, and I'm choosing me!" She leans in close as the last embers of Phoebe fade away. "Just like you would do if you had the choice. Shame that you don't."
Phoebe breaks apart into ashes, fading into nothingness, not even real...
----------------------------------------------
RESPITE FALLS - A RANDOM ROOFTOP - LATE NIGHT
----------------------------------------------
Phoebe awakes with a start. She quickly reaches up with a hand, feeling her face, gently touching her eye. She pants, catching her breath as she takes a moment to take in her surrounding. The roof she'd climbed onto late that night, too afraid to return to the Thirsty Minnow after everything that had happened at the Forge. She'd apparently finally fallen asleep, only to be confronted with... that...
Phoebe sighs, rubbing the sleepiness from her eyes before rising up, looking out over the darkened town. "Fuck... fuck this... all of this..." She sighs again, mumbling to herself. "Only one of us, eh?"
Phoebe sits back into the alcove she's hidden in and watches the moon overhead, a mournful howl echoing over Respite that night.
----------------------------------------------
RESPITE STREETS - PRE-DAWN
----------------------------------------------
Melia is walking around, looking this way and that. Something has the elemental a bit spooked as she has finally dared venture back into town. It's not the darkness, darkness is safe, darkness is when nature rests.
Phoebe drops down off the roof she's spent the night, landing rather adeptly despite her lack of any quality sleep. She sighs, having checked for people who might be watching, yet somehow completely missing Melia, her back facing the elemental.
Melia yelps and jumps a good couple of feet into the air: "G-gyah! No flying skunks, please!" She then lands back down and turns around: "Oh. You're not her. Sorry! Come to think of it, not sure if she even can fly."
Phoebe staggers forward at the sound of someone crying out behind her, reaching for a knife which is not in its proper place, she spins, instead holding her claws out as a threat, "S-Stay back, err, You! What do you want?!"
Melia blinks and leans back: "Er, pudding? Actually, peace in Respite would be good too, but... sorry, hi."
Phoebe is cautious, glancing around in case of an ambush, but as this... lizard? seems to be as oblivious as she says, Phoebe slowly eases off, lowering her hands, but her eyes keep darting despite the tired look behind them. "Err... hi. Hi."
Melia tilts her head: "Sorry, did I wake you up? You look tired. Are you on the run from a skunk too?"
Phoebe shakes her head, "No? Ugh, hell, for all I know, yeah I might be on the run from a skunk too." She sighs, "Sorry. Had a bad day. And a worse night. Not a lot of sleep, and some... nightmares." She glances at her hand, as if expecting those cracks to start appearing any second now.
Melia looks at Phoebe's hand, then back to Phoebe. "Aww. Nightmares are no fun... not that I really know, but from what I've been told. Kind of a side effect of not really sleeping like a lot of critters do."
Phoebe glances back up from her hand, eyeing Melia more carefully, "Yeah... I guess... wait, what do you mean? Everyone sleeps."
Melia shakes her head: "Yeah, you'd think that but it's... well it's an elemental thing I guess, or so I've understood. Not really met other elementals." She shrugs, a bit of glowing greenness falling off of her frills as she does.
Phoebe stumbles backward again at the green glow, falling backward and scrambling away from Melia into the alley she'd dropped into. "E-elemental!? N-no! Get back!"
Melia is taken aback: "S-sorry! I didn't mean to... wait, mean to what? I'm confused."
Phoebe seems more afraid of what she will do to Melia than what Melia could possibly do to her. "You're... the other one. Like Cavro. Stay away from me... otherwise you might... you'll..." She trails off, blinking back tears in her eyes.
Melia tilts her head, not daring to go forward: "I'll... what? I don't understand. And um... other one?" She pauses, then opens her eyes: "Oh, right! There was another presence like me I've occasionally felt."
Phoebe shakes her head, "Was. Yeah. Not anymore..." She clutches her head between her hands. "Only one can survive."
Melia tilts her head the other way, her frills swaying to some unseen wind: "Huh? Something happen?"
Phoebe glances around the alley, then slumps forward, sitting upon the ground. She stares silently at the wall across from her, debating with herself. "That other elemental... he's gone. Magic like that can't survive, stealing someone else's life."
Melia hums, frowning: "S-stealing...?" She steps closer as her mind races: "Stealing magic... no wait, stealing life? Life can not be stolen, everyone has their own life essence."
Phoebe snorts, "I'm proof that's a lie. I'm just living on borrowed time. I'm barely even real..."
Melia hums: "I thought that, living inside Tarbin's body."
Phoebe turns back towards Melia, now curious. She pulls her legs up towards her body and wraps her arms around the knees. "...Inside? Just like..." She shakes her head. "Are you going to die like the other elemental?"
Melia tilts her head: "I don't plan on any of that. The skunk tried to drain me, but I put a stop to that."
Phoebe breaths out a sigh, "I tried... I really did. I wanted them to reconcile, Cavro, the real one, and the elemental that shared his likeness. If they could work together, then maybe there was hope... for me. But he couldn't. He died. Cracked apart like he didn't even exist." She looks down at her body again and shudders.
Melia shrugs: "I vanished once. I sort of got better. If he... cracked apart?" She pauses, humming: "Actually, I don't know how this stuff really works. But if you're talking about another elemental like me, I don't think he's gone."
Phoebe hesitates, "I watched him die... break apart into ash. And I don't think it'd work like that for me... for us. Me and Aelia." She watches Melia very carefully. "Aelia... is also in here. Asleep. I'm the trespasser in her body."
Melia tilts her head, crossing her arms: "Trespasser... huh. If Tarbin was any less nice than he is, he'd probably have called me that." She then shrugs, smiles and puffs into a cloud of green glittery smoke.
Phoebe starts again at the sudden disappearance of the elemental before her eyes once again. She rises quickly, starting to panic once again, breathing heavily. "W-what?! No! Not again!"
Narrator: The cloud of green Flow drifts towards Phoebe and behind her, swirling visibly and curiously.
Phoebe steps back, bumping into the building wall behind her as she watches the green smoke surround her. Fear slowly gives way to curiosity of her own. She moves her hand up into the cloud, watching it cautiously.
Melia appears as the cloud vanishes, grabbing Phoebe into a tight hug from the side: "You looked like you need a hug! So you get one!"
Phoebe attempts to flail as the elemental suddenly reappears next to and around her, "G-gah! Wh-what? Why? Why a hug?"
Melia shrugs, but doesn't really let go: "You needed one. So why not? Things are better with hugs."
Phoebe struggles for a moment more, but the Elementals hug is surprisingly tight, and also fairly cozy, and Phoebe eventually gives up, "Maybe I did need one... hell if I know..." She lowers her head down, ears dipping back. "You... are still alive, eh?"
Melia grins: "I've been called a life elemental before, so it's sorta my thing."
Phoebe sighs, "I still don't know what the hell I am."
Melia lets go of the hug and smiles: "Well, we can try to find out, right?" She touches her hand upon Phoebe's chest: "You're warm. And afraid."
Phoebe starts to pull back again, but resists, bracing herself as Melia's hand rests upon her. "Well... yeah. I guess?"
Melia 's smile wavers just slightly: "I mean... I can't tell what you and... Aelie, was it? Are, but... if I managed to both not be Erika, and eventually become my own being outside Tarbin... anything's possible, right?"
Phoebe sighs, "I just... I don't... I don't want to die." She shivers, feeling so vulnerable, "I only woke up a few months ago. I... I am afraid. Afraid that Aelia will just get rid of me as soon as she's able."
Melia hums, taking Phoebe's hands in her own: "She won't. Tarbin had every chance to shun me, and he didn't. We got to believe people are better than that."
Phoebe frowns, feeling the warmth of Melia's hands. She glances down at the ground, "Wh-what if I'm not better than that? What if I would have done it if given the chance?"
Melia considers this, then looks at Phoebe: "Would you?"
Phoebe closes her eyes, "I've thought about it a lot... an awful lot..."
Melia hums: "There has to be a better way..." She feels her Flow into Phoebe again, if nothing else, at least calming her down and doing away with the current tired feeling.
Phoebe relaxes, feeling as if she's freshly woken from a deep, calming sleep. "I... I want a better way. I thought, maybe Cavro and the elemental taking his look... if they could live together, work together, then maybe there was hope. Maybe me and Aelia could too? But then he died..."
Melia smiles: "For what it's worth... I do occasionally work with Erika, the one I supposedly 'took the look of'. She's fun, though we agreed we work with plant life in different ways."
Phoebe nods, barely breaking a smile. "I'm still scared... but I feel a little better, I guess. So... what about Cavro? Or... the elemental Cavro?"
Melia smiles: "I'm sure he's still around. Just got to find him..." She blinks. "S-shit. Find him before that skunk does, if what she said is right and we share our... start." Suddenly the elemental is back on worry mode, if for different reasons.
Phoebe raises an eyebrow, "And... who is this 'skunk', hm?"
Melia frowns, her expression darkening: "Some witch... dark purple magic, smelled older than she looked, long robes... called herself... actually I didn't catch her name, but she claimed I was her magic, that she was going to get it back... it started hurting so I stopped her. Violently."
Phoebe hms, considering this. "Sometimes... all you can do is fight to protect yourself. I don't know much else, honestly. Violence is... all I know, sometimes."
Melia shakes her head rapidly: "I don't like violence. At all. But I had to. Get her removed from my thicket."
Phoebe looks at Melia a moment, quietly. "What do I call you? You have a name, right?"
Melia blinks several times: "Oh! Silly me. You can call me Melia. I'm an elemental though I guess you already knew that."
Phoebe nods, sighing, "Melia, then... I... I'm not a good person. I've done a lot to hurt others... even if not exactly physically. I... I ran here to hide out. And Aelia didn't get much choice."
Melia considers Phoebe, then smiles: "Good is just a matter of perspective." She lifts her hand back to Phoebe's chest: "And you don't feel all that bad to me, anyway."
Phoebe glances aside, "I don't... I know a lot of it was wrong, but I... I don't know. Do I... do I deserve to be destroyed?"
Melia gives Phoebe a sharp look: "No one ever does. Ever."
Phoebe sets her jaw in response to Melia's words and nods. "I... alright. Yes."
Melia looks at Phoebe: "No matter how weird our origins, no one deserves to have their life taken away like that. I didn't, and you don't." She looks towards the sun peeking over the horizon: "If you need me, I want to be there. To help, to talk, to hug, whatever."
Phoebe turns, slowly at first, then more quickly as she hugs Melia back tightly. "D-damn't..."
Melia hugs tightly: "There has to be a way. And we can find it, one lost being with another."
Phoebe just as quickly releases the hug, sighing. "I... I gotta write a note to Aelia too... I... I owe her an apology. A few of them, actually."
Melia smiles: "It's a start." She pauses: "Er, letter? She's... you, but like not you? I mean, it's not the weirdest I've seen or even been, just trying to figure out the logistics."
Phoebe nods, "It's... I don't know. When I'm here, she's asleep. She doesn't see or hear anything. When she's here... I can see everything she sees. I... I leave her notes. But just details about the days that pass, where we are, who we've talked to..."
Melia tilts her head: "Huh. That does sound awfully inconvenient... I guess things would be better if you could somehow communicate both ways."
Phoebe nods. "Maybe... I can think of a lot of ways things could be better..." She glances towards the sun and swears, "Shit... Ninell... I owe him an explanation too..."
Melia tilts her head: "Who's Ninell? I don't think I've met or healed anyone with that name..."
Phoebe coughs, blushing beneath her fur, "Uh, a newcomer. He just arrived in town, looking for stuff out west?"
Melia nods: "Oh, okay. Makes sense why I haven't met him then. So, dare I ask what's up with you and him, then? Something complicated with your situation, or did you just miss a meeting?"
Phoebe bites her lip. "Complicated. He's... ugh. Just really... really... really..." She trails off quietly, leading into a whisper, "...hot."
Melia blinks, then nods: "Aahh, hot to touch, like the forge. That makes things difficult, yes."
Phoebe blinks back, "N-no, I... just think I like him. I don't know if he likes me, or... hell, I might not even be here next time he comes to town, and it'll just be more of him and Aelia and THAT awkwardness."
Melia frowns slightly: "That does sound pretty, well, awkward." She hums: "Not sure how to help there, since while I was in Tarbin he could hear me all the time... and I him, of course."
Phoebe sighs, shaking her head, "Just... one thing at a time. I don't know if you can help me, or how, but just focus on this other stuff and let me worry about Ninell, alright?"
Melia shrugs with a smile: "Can do! I don't really have any romantic experience anyway." She pauses, looking at Phoebe: "Hmm... I wonder...?"
Phoebe cocks her head, "Eh? Wonder what?"
Melia hums, crouching down to encourage a small plant growing in the alley to face the sun and grow bigger: "You and Aelia share a body, but I imagine not much of a bond if this is as recent as you say. But we all have life essence... what if instead of trying to 'fix' and severe that bond, one was able to make it stronger?"
Phoebe: "Wouldn't that... I don't know... be making this more of a problem?"
Melia looks up though her magic continues to flow into the small flower: "Would it? I don't know. But if you were more... with each other, more aware, wouldn't it ease the problems you've described?"
Phoebe watches the flower grow, scratching her head. "I... don't know. I guess so? I... I want to try. I'm willing to try anything. But... maybe only after we make sure Aelia knows as well. So that we're not fighting each other over ourselves."
Melia nods, smiling: "Makes sense. And it was... just a thought, anyway, after feeling what your life Flow feels like. It's hard to put to words, but there's perhaps potential."
Phoebe sighs, "I guess I'm sorta committed. I'm trusting you, Melia. Which is hard for me. I don't like trusting anyone."
Melia smiles: "I promise you, I will do my utmostest. It's like, more than the least I can do? Something like that."
Phoebe shakes her head, "I don't have much choice other than to take it." She folds her arms and hrmps, a lot of her gruff exterior and bristly defenses back in place after all her vulnerability and fear. A sign that she's at least feeling a bit more herself. "You and Erika... you said you started as part of her? Guess it sorta shows."
Melia giggles, then blinks: "What do you mean? You met her?"
Phoebe sighs, "I guess... we're friends? It kinda came out of nowhere, and she probably has no clue what she's even signed up for."
Melia hums: "Sounds about right. She's very friendly, and since I was... sort of made of her essence I think, that makes me friendly? Although I hate to think that I'm just some shard of Erika when I'm so much more."
Phoebe instantly shakes her head, that thought clearly bothering her just as much as it might bother Melia, "No! No, no... just like me. Whatever I am..."
Melia smiles: "Whatever you are, you are YOU. Don't you let anyone tell you otherwise."
Phoebe takes a deep breath, "Thanks... Melia. Thanks for all of whatever this is. That nightmare..." She shudders. "I need to talk with Cavro about what happened. I need to do right by Aelia. I need to explain things to Ninell... I just... need to do better, I guess."
Melia smiles: "We all eventually manage that." She glances aside, towards the forge: "...and I need to see if I can find the other elemental and warn him. This might get bad yet, before it gets better..."
Phoebe nods, "If you need it, you have my knife." She pats her side, "Err... once I get a new knife."
Melia nods, then gives a low chuckle: "I don't have a knife to lose, at least."
Phoebe: "And, I'll try to explain this to Aelia too. She's... a better person than I am. She'll help you selflessly, if you need it."
Melia: "You don't seem all that bad yourself, for all you keep saying you are."
Phoebe glances away awkwardly, "Ah, well, maybe not." She shrugs. "I guess... I need to get back to the bar. Sleeping on rooftops..."
Melia smiles: "Sounds like a plan. I guess I will see you later, hopefully."
Phoebe nods, giving a tentative smile back. "Hopefully. If not, I'll probably see you at least, even if it's Aelia in charge."
Melia nods slowly: "Yeah... sounds weird, but works. Be, eh, seeing you."
Phoebe dusts herself off for a moment, then peers back and forth down the street outside the alley. "Yeah, you too. You too." She gives Melia a half wave before stepping out and starting to make her way back to the Minnow, glancing back at the Elemental every few steps, almost to purely ensure she's actually real and not another weird dream.
Melia looks at Phoebe go with a warm smile, then eventually starts making her own way towards the Forge...