Conversation Space: The Ultimax

[powersthatbe]

You feel as if you've stepped through a door.

Comments

0. The Fool

[powersthatare]

In a seemingly endless tropical sea, with a warm, merry sun overhead, is a single small island, just enough for two palm trees to have a hammock slung between them. In the sand beside the hammock is a coconut, cut crosswise to have a “lid” of shell on top of it, and inside is a sweet-tasting milky beverage - a dulce de leche chocolate-coconut cocktail. The sand around the island is spotted with dog tracks, but there’s no sign of an actual dog.

[For your Traveler's initial introduction to Synodiporia with the Fool, please go here.]

Re: 0. The Fool

[otomechapilot]

Sara dresses in black for this: her divesuit uniform.

She just looks at her Marked palm and asks, “Would you like condolences for Tower?”

Re: 0. The Fool

[powersthatare]

The reply is very slow and very faint; and it is, of course, a negation.

Nonetheless, the latch on the nearest door clicks, faintly.

Re: 0. The Fool

[otomechapilot]

Welp.

Sara steps through, into what she assumes will be a tropical idyll.

"I don't... know what to say," she says, honestly.

Re: 0. The Fool

[powersthatare]

"Good," Orlea says, in his approving croak.

They're still on an island, that much is the same, but it's sodden, marshy, with tall reeds encircling them, and trickles of muddy grey water rolling through depressions on their glorified sandbank.

[otomechapilot]

She... is less surprised that this place has changed for the worse then she likes.

"...his idiom touched yours, didn't it?" Sara says quietly. "The lightning bolt of revelation and the new eyes to see."

[powersthatare]

"We were not unconnected," he admits.

[otomechapilot]

Sara nods. That very Foolish idea she had earlier is...

...she doesn't know when the right time to bring it up is. But it's not now.

"I think... I think we need a new beginning for the Arcana now more than ever," she sighs. "If not with you in the lead, after Questing Country, then I wonder who."

[powersthatare]

"I am not alone in representing beginnings," Orlea observes - the rare definitive statement.

[otomechapilot]

Sara considers that.

"...I can't even begin to ask how to help Judgement get better from, uh, flipping out," she says, thinking very hard. "And then there's Felicia -Fortune, I mean..."

She looks down. "I would have preferred you," she says. "Obviously. But that's not an option anymore, not this round, is it?"

[powersthatare]

"What is an option?" Orlea asks, tilting his head curiously.

[otomechapilot]

“I have a terrible idea,” she says, proudly. “And I’m not sure how... horrible it would sound to ask, or if it’s too soon or too much to ask, but it is a place to start and hey, dumb question, right?”

She sighs. “I’m... curious. Could someone who touches Tower handle Revelation, while someone else handles Ruin and another takes care of Revolution, at least until you or someone wins and can give it back? Has any Arcana ever tried? This sounds new, and - and upsetting, but the world needs Tower’s meanings...”

[powersthatare]

He stares at her a long time without a response - ten seconds, say, but what's the difference between ten seconds and infinity.

"It has been tried," he admits at last. "To act with moderation, tradition, hope. We are all careful. We are all bound by rules. But we cannot be balanced, and disastrous. Hide-bound, and revolutionary. And the strain of shouldering such a burden undivided... I cannot say what it would do."

[otomechapilot]

That is a long time for an Arcana to think.

Sara nods, her face falling.

“All of you try,” she echoes. “But if you’re contradictory... Fortune might say that all bets are off,” she says.

“...is there no one who might be able to guess?” Sara wonders.

[powersthatare]

"I said nothing of guessing."

[otomechapilot]

“And your nothing speaks louder than words,” Sara says. “I guess that having a Designated Rebel will warp everyone less than making you all concordat opposition - but I don’t know. I can’t know. This has never happened before, has it?”

[powersthatare]

"Everything that happens, happens only once, or not at all," he says, shaking his head.

After Leonardo's Dungeon Rescue

[howexciting]

Leonardo knows that asking his 'patron' Arcana for anything - answers, help, advice - is an absolute waste of time. In this particular chess game, he is playing Black, because the option Not To Play has already been taken off the metaphorical table. And so he sits directly on the sand, with his arms tucked around his knees, watching the ocean horizon languidly. He won't move or act or even imitate breathing until his patron does first.

And that might be 'til sunset, but hey... Leonardo's got all the time in the World.