IC CONTACT

[adlantisag]

username: ADLANTISAG

✉ ☏ 📷

⇐ navigation

Comments

[strictdiscipline]

[Individually, the duration of time passed between message receipt and reply, and the gravely tone to Kida's voice would be of no concern. In tandem, they throw up the smallest of red flags, leaving Riza to pause before replying, brows knitting together.

It's an indirect approach she takes though. If it's something that wants to be shared, it'll spill forth in due time.]

Do you miss it very much?

[adlantisag]

Did Pearl tell you?

[ She hasn't really asked. She herself hasn't told very many yet, not quite ready to open it back up. She probably won't ever tell more than a handful of people. But she trusts Riza--one of the first people she'd met here to ask after her home.

She wouldn't be upset with the Gem for speaking out; far from it. It was a hard experience, especially for someone who hadn't dealt with such large-scale human destruction before. ]

About what we saw?

[strictdiscipline]

[Tell her...? Even without the words that follow, Riza's lack of knowledge shows in the furrow of her brow and the small cant of her head.]

I haven't spoken to Pearl in some time. [The concern in her voice deepens, grows sharper.] Why? What happened?

[adlantisag]

[ She inhales. ]

ALASTAIR let me--let us--see the past.

[ Exhales. ]

I saw the death of Atlantis.

[ She doesn't need to say anything else. It's all in the way her voice cracks. ]

Riza, I had only...snatches of memory. I was an infant, all those centuries ago! But I saw it this time, truly saw it...

[strictdiscipline]

How.....?

[It's less a fully-formed word than it is a disbelieving exhale. To revisit the past is a task beyond anything she can imagine, even with all her newfound knowledge of homunculi and magic and giant constructions of metal termed 'robots'.

Questions swirl through her mind, but none of them ring quite so loudly as:]

Were you able to stop it, this time?

[(She doesn't fully understand the type of visit this was meant to be.)]

[adlantisag]

[ She opens her mouth to answer the first question, only to be cut off by the second.

Were you able to stop it?

She grits her teeth, ducks her head, though Riza can't see. Her friend can only hear the hitch in her voice when she answers. ]

No, I could not. We could not speak, could not touch. As if we were ghosts.

[ She swallows thickly, fending off the emotion. ]

But I learned--I learned why my city fell. I learned how. I just...

[ She wishes the answer could have been different. ]

I wish I could erase this knowledge, Riza. I find myself haunted, I dream of it, I cannot cease--thinking--constantly--

[ Her voice shakes and so she cuts herself off. ]

Forgive me, Riza. It is difficult to speak of it, still.