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[princess_of_ida]

Three for the gleam of a jewel or a smile.



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[seaboard]

[Her brows lift, then keeps thinking. ]

What about earth? Stone or dirt or field?

[princess_of_ida]

They don't contain thalergy. They're not alive.

[Sorry babe. Rocks were just rocks.]

[seaboard]

[ That definitely isn't the same. ]

For us they are, but that is neither here nor there, I suppose.

...

I wonder how coral should feel to you? It is like stone, but it grows like plants or animals do.

[princess_of_ida]

Three things are necessary for life: body, soul, and thalergy. If one is missing, then life can't exist.

[Planets, as a whole, were alive because of all the microbial life in it, but she thought that might be beyond Gilia.]

Coral is alive. It grows like bone.

[seaboard]

[ She nods again, more silence in her thoughtfullness. ]

That's how we compare it, yes. [ She presses her lips together. ] Could you take the - the thalergy so to speak, of one being, and put it into another?

[princess_of_ida]

Not in a pleasant way. [She paused before sighing.] The only theorem I know to do that with only benefits myself.

[seaboard]

[ So not any time soon then.]

... the hills and the trees and the fields and the rocks are alive, the ore stones and the cliffs, too. You've talked to them, even.

[princess_of_ida]

[She's a necromancer! She deals with dead things.]

I'm not following.

[seaboard]

[ She smiles a little. The explanation simple, but happy: ]

Sweeney.

[princess_of_ida]

He is an extension of a planet's soul, like a herald before its corruption in death. He is not the same as a rock I pick up or a handful of dirt.

Planets are alive.

[She knew because she's killed plenty of them.]

[seaboard]

[ More frowning, more thinking with all of her little braincells. Ianthe has more knowledge then her and her younger sibling's whole education put together, and if she is going to work out how to help Sweeney, Ianthe would no doubt have wisdom in it.

Though for right now, she is stumped in trying to explain it, so she goes quiet as ever. ]

Perhaps that is the difference, then, where much we have the same in understanding. Those two things are the same, for me. The handful of dirt the farmer takes is as sacred and alive as my Holy Father.

[princess_of_ida]

[The Sea-Father was also a herald-like extension of a planet's soul, but Ianthe knew to keep that to herself.]

Hm. When a person sweats, do you take that to be tiny parts of their soul or is it just sweat?

[There was no chiding in her tone. Ianthe was trying to work out how to explain in a way Gilia might understand.]

[seaboard]

No, but also... well, yes? I think that is why I do not grasp what you mean.

[ The tricky part, really. ] All beings, in all parts, are made of the Land-Mother. Sometimes yes, one drop is not much of anything, but that does not not make it part of that, if that makes sense? That is why we have the terms of them, Lesser, Middling and Greater Spirits.

[princess_of_ida]

But sweat, when it leaves the body, is no longer alive. It's just becomes a resource to be used by that which does live.

Rocks, dirt... those are like sweat for the planet. A planet has a soul, it has a body, it has thalergy. It is alive.

[seaboard]

[ She - shakes her head. No, that did not seem right. ] But if it did not have all those things, it would be nothing at all?

A mountain is a mountain yes, by it is still only made up of grains of dirt. The sea is vast, but it is only drops of water and salt. Individually, and alone, yes, they may mean little, a pebble spirit is only a pebble, it can do no more than be amongst the pebbles, it is true.

But if there spark was not present, how would the whole of the sea or the whole of the mountain or the whole of the planet be anything at all? They are nothing but those parts.

[princess_of_ida]

It would still exist if it was missing one of the three, but it wouldn't be alive. A soul combined with a body but lacking thalergy is what we call a revenant.

[Ianthe paused in thought, thinking of how to phrase things.]

The whole is more than the sum of is parts. It's only when combined together do those matter. Like the human body. It's only flesh, blood, and bone. Individually they are nothing but tools and resources. Combined they create something capable of holding a soul, capable of being infuses with thalergy.

It's ok that our people have different views on what constitutes life. They're close enough, and I've dealt with planetary souls before.

[seaboard]

Ah. I suppose - well you see that is not scholarly debate, that way, not for us. It is quite hard for it to be a question when you have talked to the soul of a mountain and to the spirit of the flower that grows upon it. [ The differences, she can live with, strange as they are to hear, to imagine a world that -

.... Well it seems so empty, what Ianthe describes. ] ... I wish you could see it, it would be easier than explaining it. I must sound half-mad, I am sure, you are ever so patient with me. [ She presses a kiss to her skin, wherever she can reach from curled up beside and on her. The old familiar habit of reassuring that she did not seek to outwit or outsmart Ianthe, that she saw her as far more clever. ] Things can be born entirely of Aether - Spirit essence, and form physical manifestation for themselves. It can be shaped in many ways, too. Some are places, some are ideas, some never have bodies at all.

[princess_of_ida]

It's not half-mad; it's just different. That doesn't make it wrong. I imagine your planet is in another galaxy than the Empire, so far away that one must travel by the River to reach it.

[Ianthe stroked Gilia's hair, comfortable and enjoying the conversation as it engaged her mind. This was so much nicer than she thought it'd be.]

Lia, have you encountered any spirits here aside from the Sea-Father and Sweeney?

[seaboard]

[ She has to pause and then - shiver, as the memory comes back, and quietly: ]

Only the All-Sight, when I brushed against it. I could not be certain, but it felt like a Death Spirit.

[princess_of_ida]

I wish I could confirm one way or another about that but there was too much Void... residue clinging to it. Just interacting with it woke up my monster almost to far to recover from.

[She sighed.]

I'm... susceptible to the Void.

[seaboard]

... Is that what happened ah... that... day? When I found you in your work?

[princess_of_ida]

No, that was pure frustration over hitting a wall in my very important research and a subsequent emotional temper tantrum. No Void involved.

I'm... usual better at controlling that. It was only the second time I transformed.

[She wouldn't apologize for it. Her weirdly filtered memories of what happened didn't indicate it was unpleasant for Gilia.]

[seaboard]

[ It definitely was not unpleasant, but she was still unpacking just how much she had enjoyed to go bringing that up yet. ]

The rage is potent, that way, it is what brought about my own the first time.

[ but that was unpleasant, all told. So best not to linger. ]

What makes you say that you are susceptible to the void?

[princess_of_ida]

My first research project here had been the Void. It got its hooks in me over me regularly exposing myself to its influence over a few month's time. It began to drive me insane. In fact, the night we met was my last evening of sanity before I really fell into the Void Crazies.

It became an obsession and I couldn't stop. Much like a drug addiction. Eventually I popped and my monster rampaged. It broke me free from the Void's grip but I still feel it's call.

[seaboard]

I... I remember that. The awful day you were covered in blood.

[ The moment Gilia herself realized something was... terribly wrong with this place. ]

Is there something I may do to help you manage it?