This Void Inside... [Complete]

[ruin_of_ruatha]

Who: Lessa (ruin_of_ruatha) and Pit (spunky_seraph)
What: Lessa wanders the market, steeped in her usual depression, and Pit notices.
Where: The Market, possibly a side-street later.
When: Day 64, Midday

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[spunky_seraph]

Pit was perched atop a building, people-watching.

It was the closest he had to his home above the clouds, when he'd watch humans far below in scrying-pools. Here, he could only sit on rooftops.

He didn't much like being in the streets below - too crowded, too noisy. It made him nervous. So instead he sat up here, and watched.

His watching brought him to one woman. She was clearly one of the many off-worlders, from her dress and her manners.

She seemed... lost. Confused. Pit fluttered his wings a little in dismay before jumping off the roof and floating gently to the ground.

"Excuse me, miss?" he said. "Are you alright?"

[ruin_of_ruatha]

Lessa's dark eyes barely registered the angel who landed next to her. "Sorry," She said automatically, curving past him, "I didn't intend to bump into you."

She rubbed her dark-rimmed eyes. The lack of sleep was apparent on the middle-twenties woman. She might have been pretty once, if she got a decent night's sleep and whatever haunted her eyes and soul was banished. She clutched her leathery jacket, its embroidered dragon blazing in the sun's light. Of any dragon color, the Queen's was one of the only not lost during the Long Interval, but even it seemed brassier than gold.

She shook her head, a waterfall of dark black hair cascading down.

Where was Ramoth? She reached out for her weyrmate, and like always, found nothing.

[spunky_seraph]

He frowned. "Miss, you didn't bump into me - I asked if you were alright. Would you hold a moment?" Very gently, he took her by the arm. "You seem ill."

[ruin_of_ruatha]

Lessa seemed to actually pay attention. "I'm sorry - I didn't see you. I'm not ill..." She trailed off. She blinked and actually looked at him. "I'm homesick, much like you. I'm missing part of me. A void inside me that won't, and can't, be filled here. There's a darkness I wish to fall into and it takes everything I've learned to keep myself here, where I can feel things. It's so tempting to just fall away..."

The darkness around her seemed to cloud her further.

[ruin_of_ruatha]

Lessa nodded at Pit's comment. Zeus sounded like Kylara, who, luckily, had stopped her pursuit of F'lar. "Ah, a herdbeast," Lessa said. "Sorry, the language here is very different from mine at home." She smiled lightly and bit into the mango, delighting in its wonderful flavor.

She shivered again, surrounded by all the green, but if Thread fell, which it apparently didn't here she reminded herself, she could always run inside. A pity the city would be ill protected if it did.

"Thank you," Lessa murmured. "It was kind of you to do this."

[spunky_seraph]

"Yeah, a herdbeast!" he said, "That's exactly what they are."

At her thanks, he shrugged. "It was no problem at all. My pleasure, really. If you ever want to talk to me... I'm not always here, but I'm around. And you can find me with the journals real easy."

He fluttered his wings. "You should meet my friends, too! Some of 'em are kinda... weird," he said, thinking of Hiruma, "But most of them are really nice."

[ruin_of_ruatha]

Lessa smiled faintly. "I might sometime." It might help her to keep from being so... useless. She'd even forgotten to attend the jungle thing, she'd lost track of time inside her thoughts. "Thanks for all..." she gestured, the idea of keeping so much green around intrigued her. "This. It would be nice to learn to do all this, if I'm going to be here a while."

It seemed to Lessa that as she took up things, the ache and temptation seemed less of a burden, even less now that Pit knew of it and understood her loss.

[spunky_seraph]

"Sure keeps me occupied," he said. "Fighting the good fight, teaching and all that. If... if it wasn't for that I can't hear Palutena's voice, I'd almost call it an adventure," he said.