Just Close Your Eyes For A Moment Of Truth

[Erynies Adrasteia]

After watching TV with Katarina (there was no musical number this time, something she finds both disappointing and relieving at the same time somehow) Ryn finds her room too suffocating upon entering. So instead she finds her way down the Ghostroads and to what she's come to think of as her real place of residence. As much as she can conceive of having one anyway. It's dark here already as well, the sounds of Yosemite's nighttime wildlife and the smell of trees, tinged with shots of pine sap. She closes her eyes, breathing in the wild air and breaks into a dead sprint. She's hidden it well enough, she's in control of her body after all and besides, being near Katarina does things to her that distracts her. But she knows she's restless. Feels it in the itching under her nails and the buzzing tingle of her teeth. She needs to hunt. And a deer isn't going to cut it.

She needs the crack of bone and the warm swell of blood spilling from the wicked. To lay waste to those deserving of it. Being around humans makes it worse. Most of them are merely annoying but they still cluster and... nest for lack of a better term and in their cities the rot accumulates, hidden out of sight but pervasive. Especially that 'City of Angels' and it rankles her more than it should that it's where Katarina lived. Wants to return to, she imagines. She deserves someplace better. Maybe she can make it that way...

She runs up the trunk of a tree, catches a low branch and pulls herself onto it, leaping to catch another and swing herself into the air. She relishes the weightlessness of the moment before grasping the side of a tree to slow her fall with nails raking down the bark. Feet kick off the trunk and she somersaults to the ground. There's no fully cleansing a human city. But it would make her feel better to try. She doubts Katarina would see it that way. And that is what really bugs her like a splinter driven deep beneath the skin. She doesn't need her to approve, but despite everything Katarina still can't seem to even see the less bloody parts of her without wreathing it in familiar trappings of a mere human changed. A loud crack disturbs the subdued sounds of the night and Ryn blinks at her fist sunk an inch into the side of a tree. It looks familiar and she recognizes it, her eyes finding the soil-filled hollow near the roots.

Dirt and leaves and thrown away by the handful until her fingers close around the buried sphere. The dirt falls away from it, pristine and perfectly clean in her dirty hand, the light almost pulsing, in tune with the fire in her eyes being fed by the bellows of her breaths. Her thumb slides across the smooth surface and reveals the reflection of two lightning-blue embers staring into it's depths...

[Erynies Adrasteia]

'Want' is one of the oldest kinds of magic there is. So much so that long ago enough of it gathered and coalesced into a perfect sphere. Legends and stories might tell of such things granting wishes but this magic doesn't thrive on fulfillment. But if the longing is strong enough, such as years of having build worlds in their own minds, even mortal men can weave a corner of their world into one of their own choosing. But a God?

With a smooth sleight of hand, Ryn transitions the sphere to balance perfectly on the tip of one fingernail. She can feel it thrumming in response to her. She should crush it. This is a power that once would have swallowed nations in flames, set gods against each other and caused the heavens to tremble. Now it enthralls cartoonists and gathers dust in a basement. Have all things fallen so far? Has she? She can't get Katarina out of her head, so there's that. She's pretended to be what Katarina thinks she is. Human. And it's eating away at her that she's lieing. That, when she's really honest with herself, revealing even a fraction of herself scared Katarina. She wants her to understand. Understand so that when she runs screaming from the truth then at least Ryn knows. She hopes she wouldn't, that somehow she'd accept the monster. But she doesn't have the words.

On top of her finger the orb ripples and the hairs on Ryn's arms stand on end. There's a thrumming in the air that cuts right through her and fills her chest. Something is horribly, horribly... She lets out a breath and it quivers in her throat with a strange harmony.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

The air around her seems to swell into ethereal notes and the pressure inside her chest finds it's way out in the form of a shaky but oddly harmonious voice.

♪♫ "Could I get that right? Could I just shine a spotlight on my innermost feelings like it's no big deal? Words expressing whatever you like."♫♪

She grasps the shining orb again and finds herself spinning around it, coming to rest at a cliff and a bright moon shining down on her

♪♫"You'd presume with all my mastery, to pursue flights of fancy? Easy. Who am I kidding, that's never been a part of me.
Old and divine, a creature from bygone times.
Rash and unstoppable, too irresponsible, I can't help it.
Sometimes I peek through a keyhole and see people happy, I admit."♪♫

She steps over the edge and slides down the incline of rocks and the occasional tree without missing a beat, falling into a run that takes her down to and alongside a foaming river.

♪♫"It mi~ight, be time to change my paradigm.
If only I could let go of my zeal.
My hate replaced with total faith,
I'm fiercely free and really real.
Seen in kind.
How would that feel?"♪♫

Falling into a merely swift and slowing pace her eyes follow the river down it's path.

♪♫"This all makes me so uncomfortable. I want to let go, be vulnerable.
Who am I kidding, I've never met that side of me.
In my defense, the truth has a consequence.
I won't watch the whole thing spin out of control if I have the cha~ance."♪♫

♪♫"It mi~ight, be time to change my paradigm
If I can only let go of my zeal.
My hate replaced with total faith,
I'm fiercely free and really real.
Seen in kind.
How would that feel?"♪♫

She leaps out into the river, her feet finding rocks just above and below the water, each footfall kicking off in time with the music until she's crossed the river and lands in a flourish that takes her to the ground in a spinning motion, legs folded underneath her. She seems to slow for a moment, clutching the clothes above her chest, her eyes flickering.

♪♫"I ne-ver thought I would want to be together
Could this be real?
Or will it unravel?
Be careful what you start
Make one mistake and blow it all apart.
Or worse
Break my own heart."♪♫

♪♫"Who am I kidding? I've never found that part of me.
It might
Be time to change my paradigm
If only I could let go of my zeal."♪♫

She rises, a handful of pebbles in one hand that crack and her underhanded throw looses naught but dust and little pieces into the air

♪♫"It's ni~i~ice
To dream that I could change my mind.
Deep down I~I know, I will never let go.
My scorn is staked, I cannot change, repeated habit all that's real."♪♫

She blows her hand clean of the stone dust still clinging to her palm and clenches her fist, her muscles tense but not showing a single tremble, unlike her voice.

♪♫"Seen in kind."♪♫
"How would that feel?"

[Narrator]

As Ryn's song comes to an end the orb's magic pulses and grows with the Deva's desire to express herself and rather than create a pocket of altered reality like it had for the cartoonists, it spreads. Across trees and birds, leaves that sway to an unheard rhythm, wildlife running, hopping and flying to the beat of their own hearts. Maybe that's where it would have stopped, encompassing the wilds that Ryn has come to think of as 'hers' and creating a pocket of reality where song and dance come easy, where feelings are forced to the surface for want of a way to express them.

And then the magic reaches the tree that harbors the Ghostroad within it's gnarled roots and it spills out into the winding paths that encircle the world. Of course, the place it reaches first is the heart of all paths. The House and it's drab concrete halls. Most people don't even feel anything wrong other than a vague change in the air but they don't think it odd for those around them to break into song. For reality itself to heighten in response and bend with the music, roads to be magically clear of cars as a group of agents (conveniently already dressed in matching suits) burst onto the street outside the House. Those more attuned or vigilant take note, but for now the only response from the Directorate is to cut all communication lest this cognito-hazard drag any well-kept secrets from them, leaving the magic to fill offices and labs, archives and armories and the hearts of the people within.

[Erynies Adrasteia]

Ryn, unaware of the reach of what she's wrought, collects herself. The burning in her chest has not subsided from letting it spill out of her in song, but she's hopeful. It worked. The magic gave her the words she cannot find herself. She wants to go find Katarina right away and makes her way back towards the ghostroad. The itching in her teeth and claws hasn't gone away but for once something else feels more important...