Day 01 - Home

Aionios's soldiers didn't know, any more than maybe, perhaps, instinctively, what home was. Rather, they didn't have a home, in the traditional sense. And of course, there was no grand issue with that, if one considered that traditional definitions only need apply in a downrooted traditional society. If one wasn't determined to critique the issues with Aionios besides those instigatorily introduced by the Consuls, then one might not mind that picket fences were less than pipedreams.

To an outsider's lens, Taion received home in the form of two mentor, even parental, figures, and she naturally maintained Lambda as the place where she belonged; where she found shelter, guidance, and the tools to iteratively reframe her judgements.

Guidance, perhaps a form of intellectual shelter, would encompass this last quite neatly, but in itself, the concept of ever learning and improving was foremost.

Taion's framework didn't allow for one of her mentors to die, and certainly not at her own hands.

Lambda refused to stop being Lambda without Nimue. Time refused to stop, rewind, reroute at the behest of the compass in Isurd's hand.

Reframe. Pivot, even. But home yet proved elusive.

When you turn eighteen, you strike out on your own, don't you? No matter what's come before, in an ideal world, you are granted that freedom.

You are granted new definitions. New solaces. New griefs, most certainly.

Of course it takes quite a while for Taion to warm up to Lanz; for her to see in him any sort of graspable stability. No familiarity. Intellectual shelter? Not hardly. And none of Ouroboros had rigid homes.

But a Defender was a Defender no matter their Colony. A challenge for Taion remained a reckoning.

Lanz's laugh became musical. His shoving shoulders became comfort.

Taion, containing multitudes, embraced what it was to reroot.