Gaze

On a clear day, you can see forever. That's what everyone always says. Wind Blades receive that not-so-wisdom in particular from humans, Driver and not alike, because it seems to fit in-pocket with their powers, but not all Wind Blades are so attuned to the nature of it. And it's something about flat planes, and points of convergence along the horizon, and the dome shape of a human (or Blade, for that matter) eye's retina, but that's not really all that important. Because the thing is...there isn't really anything to see, on Alrest. Do you know what I mean?

Haze has never been to Uraya. In there, the concavernous place of the great whale's stomach, it might be quite useful to be able to see without impediment. She doesn't often go places without Lady Lora, but, why, she'd never dream of going there without her Driver. Such beautiful colors to the landscape, a masterful painting by the Architect himself beyond anything she could ever stitch into a talisman's most descriptive embroidery.

So she's heard, of course, and she believes it beyond the faintest glimmer of doubt, but she almost feels that it would be the most gratifying to forget everything - everything, everything, everything - and see the entire place anew, without any inborn expectations of what the image should be, only what it is, it is, it is.

"We've now explored every corner of this noble Titan," she'd proclaimed proudly when they'd gotten up to the Titan's Roar, high above all the rest of Gormott, and looked down upon Melnath's glorious greenery-packed plains, exhibiting that quality more in the abstract than the actual because the traditional definitions of "glorious" or "noble" do not necessarily extend to teeming life, carnivores prancing and pouncing through a biome almost uncategorizable in its cavalier simplicity.

Even before that so treasured ascent, she'd been gleeful in her exclamation that "I couldn't be happier that we found this place!" (whereat, wherein, whereupon the place was the Hoary Weld). Finding, not specifically discovering, can connote any phase in exploratory time, and so we might assume that Haze would be just as happy (but no more, mind you) on any subsequent trips - or rather, had been on every one previous.

Is it about the posession? Is it about the initiation? Is it about being accepted without caveat to walk in a hallowed - or not so, and then back again by the same token - place that others are silently, implicitly sharing with you?

I'm sure I seem rather scattered, relating all this to you now, and certainly Haze so often feels much of the same, but as I gust down and in to a point with her, her thoughts are these: yes, we have seen all of it, but not truly, not to the fullest extent possible - we have seen that it is glorious, and never mind the "traditional" definition, but we have not seen it again, and again, and again. I only want to see it for the first time because I have seen it once. By the time I am gone from this world, I will have seen it only enough times less one. For the last is always the most important.

So then. In a clear resonance, you can see forever. You can see the extent of your life with your Driver, and your shared dreams, goals, ambitions; the ways you hope to connect with them and the very fact that there are others you have not yet seen, and may never discover until your very last breath at their side. Haze is living her first incarnation with a Driver that she has connected with from the very first touch of her Core, and yes, there's nothing to see there, per se, in particular...but she wants it all over again, right from the beginning, just because she's had it once.

"Everything alright there, Haze?"

That's the other part about there being nothing to see on Alrest. The main part, really, that I (or perhaps Haze, if I can blame her) forgot to mention: it's mostly clouds. There isn't much chance of missing the trees for the forest when you're looking at your current resident Titan itself, but if you turn outward, you will surely become lost in the ever-so-slight drudgery.

Haze stands now on the railed outcropping of Loftin Nature Preserve, peering out over the clouds and getting stewed into all these jumbled-up thoughts, and Lora's voice is so low and comfortable that she almost doesn't notice it. That's another way to experience it, after all. Subconsciously? Without having to think? Oh, it's wonderful. Like stumbling in by accident - your eyes still see, without you having to tell them to look. They don't see all the same details, but your gaze picks up new intricacies that your thoughts wouldn't have bothered to stop on.

She turns to the side, now, letting her pants rustle through the disturbance, and finds Lora's patient, expectant face there just as beautiful as she'd imagined it. "Yes, Lady Lora, I am fine. I was just...looking."

With a lusty sigh, Lora settles her own hands grasped onto the railing, and her forearms flex with the motion. "I've missed just looking with you, Haze," she admits. "We haven't spent any time together, just you and me - real time, I mean, not just sitting next to each other at the campfire nights - in so long."

"Oh, I don't mind," says Haze gaily. She fidgets her fingers at the stitches of her sleeves as she does it; she lies, that is. If you tunnel your vision, you stop caring about what others have and the jealousy that they may inspire, offhand. By always looking out at the Cloud Sea and telling herself that it's all a wash out there, she's coalesced together her mental lot in here as the lesser one, as the one who will never be a savior, as the one who is too weak to really matter.

"I do," Lora presses. Do you? Haze thinks, and almost bites her tongue in her immediate self-afflected anger. "It's...really tough, having two Blades. It's not like either of you would enjoy it if I counted and timed the battles I spent with each of you, and made sure to switch off perfectly evenly. I certainly wouldn't. It'd be..."

"Unnatural," Haze supplies. On a clear day, you can see forever, and all that stuffy math makes things no clearer, not in the least. You've got to take advantage of your vision when it comes to you. You can't force it.

It's then twice as beautiful when Lora seems to catch onto that very thought: "I suppose the easiest thing I can do, right now while we're still fighting this war, is to make sure I make the most of the moments I do have with just you, naturally. Right?"

Without waiting for any real answer (and she'd have waited on Jin's every word, of that much Haze is sure, and she isn't even sure she wants to keep the ire from rearing in this quiet moment), Lora continues, "Here, why don't you give me your hand?"

"M-my hand?" It's cliché to stutter, but maybe that's okay for this particular viewing of the scenery, of the scene.

Lora is woefully nonchalant, and Haze suspects as sure as a chef's knife is sharp that she's forcing it. Or faking it, if there's a difference there, and there probably is - see the stutter for proof. "Sure. I'll admit, I don't know all that much about cooties, and whatever it is girls think they get from guys," and her eyes crinkle up something fierce even as Haze notes to herself, eyes roving over all summoned-up body language, that it's now this dialogue of the exchange that feels most forced, "but I'd never say no to holding a pretty girl's hand."

She doesn't tack on another "Right?" because she knows that Haze is hearing, seeing, feeling, tasting, all but smelling the righteous preimage, impact, afterimage of it all. Of course she's right. It may be a holdover of insecurity that that's how Lora always goads a captive audience into subtle agreement, but when she doesn't say it...well, that's just when she's being cocky. And Haze doesn't mind that in the least.

She's forgotten what she was looking at, and her gaze has wandered and all, and she thinks hastily back to all she's gleaned from Minoth about telling a story well and carrying a conversation with coherent points (introduction, evidence or anecdote, conclusion), but Lora's snatched up her hand and looks almost like she's about to hold it to her cheek, she's so uncharacteristically adoring, that of course Haze immediately forgets about all of that too.

With her hand in Lora's, confident and strong even if it's a little sweaty, Haze can swear she sees an entire future, an entire forever laid out so perfect, and perfect in its imperfections and all, all, all, and then it all falls into place. You can't dice it all up into petty chunks, and you can't let your eyes glaze over to make a washing mockery of it all; you just have to take what comes as fully as you can.

She wants this moment again, of course she does, but more than that she wants the next one in context, and the next, and the next, and the next. Maybe they'll go to Uraya eventually, and maybe Jin will be there or maybe he won't, and both the trip and the fact of it or its lack will become part of their story, and it doesn't all have to make sense, but it'll be wasted if they strip out the implications or double down on them too blindly.

What's Haze gazing at now? There's a peculiar little nick in the wooden post, almost sword-shaped but not quite, and she thinks with a thrill that she knows for certain that she didn't leave it, because she'd never been to this exact spot before and she doesn't care, she doesn't care, she doesn't care what any prior incarnation might have done because it wouldn't have been with Lora.

Lora. Lora...Lora! Silly Haze, you're daydreaming again, and even if it's valuable introspection that doesn't change the fact that you're wasting this moment, this right here and this right now. There isn't anything to see on Alrest unless you are ready to accept that there is everything to see on Alrest. Do you know what I mean?

She cracks a crooked grin, unsure of what else to say. Is there anything? Both gesture at once with the shared grasp to indicate their individual confusion, and Lora smiles herself, suddenly bashful. Too much thinking again, eh? So Haze wriggles out of her thoughts and into her lady's arms without another second's dawdling.