abyssianmelody | [Chapter 03 - SCENE] Remind Me Again Why I'm Here?

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[Chapter 03 - SCENE] Remind Me Again Why I'm Here?

Who: Noishe, Raine Sage
Where: Zao Ruins
When: Right now? ^^;
Warnings: Scary ruins-obsessed lady within ruins.

Noishe groaned, his ears lowering as the golden sun burned him with its rays. It was so hot here...why did he come to this desert, anyway? So what if he didn't have a sense of direction? It wasn't as if he wanted to consort with humans often in their towns, where the Score-dependent idiots would stare at him all day, every day. He was an arshis. Hadn't they ever seen one before? It wasn't as if they were extin- The beast paused. By now, he could very well be the last one. With a soft whine, he padded on through the sea of sand, trying to ignore those chains of thoughts. ...But what if he was the last? Half of him taunted, unwilling to back down and let the thoughts dissipate. He growled softly. 'Shut up!' He yelled at that half. The arshis had always been told to let go of the past, and he agreed it would help...if he just could do so.

An abrupt stop was made when Noishe noticed some sort of architecture suddenly around him. Part of it was rock-like, but some...was it...ruins? Curious, and suddenly forgetting the oppressive heat from above, he stepped forward to examine the scattered things around him. What was this from? Maybe...for some reason, it could have connections to his home? Noishe knew it was just wistful thinking, however much he desperately wanted to believe ti was something more.

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The ruins otaku was also in the area coincidentally, as she furiously took notes on several of the things she saw in Zao Ruins that she hadn't had the opportunity to view before in Keterburg. After all, the climates were entirely opposite, and this sort of trip could only be made once in a lifetime! However, the well-educated individual knew when to take a break, and sighed as she sat down, finally worn out from all of her fangirling. Noticing the sound of padded footsteps, Raine stood up and looked around frantically; she made sure to stay away from any monsters she could encounter, but when she saw Noishe, she tilted her head for a bit.

"Could it be...?" She wondered, her eyes beginning to glisten with Round 7 of that day. "A SACRED BEAST?!"

The sacred beast noticed the freaky look in her eyes and shrank back. "Oh, boy." He wished now maybe he wouldn't be recognized as a sacred beast. Even though she had spoken only one statement...this woman, he decided, was scary. Scarier than the people who frothed at the mouth.

"Err...no. I'm not. Of...of course I'm not..." The arshis stuttered. He soon realized that his speaking likely would not help his case. He took another step back, only to find himself pressed against a pillar.

"The fact that you can talk is proof enough that you're a sacred beast~" Raine squealed, forcing herself to slowly approach the animal in front of her. "MARVELOUS~" She sighed, falling in love with the idea of a new discovery. "You must hold a Sorceror's Item as proof of your pact with Yulia over several thousands of years ago! This is simply wonderful! How long have you lived? Where are the rest of your kind? Is this your indigenous habitat? What have you been eating?"

Now this psycho was...interogating,/i> him! Yes, the band around his ankle was a Sorceror's Ring, but... Somehow, Noishe had a sense that this woman would not be fun to deal with if he didn't reply.
"Y-yes...that is...I'm only twenty-six; I, uh...don't know, this is n-I've..." He stumbled over all the questions, so fast were they posed to him. The crazy lady was slowly getting closer and the arshis wished he was not backed up against a pillar right now... He would so deal with Score fanatics than this any day!

"How wonderful~" Raine's eyes literally sparkled with stars as she moved closer and closer to Noishe. However, she stopped a few steps away from him, noticing how he was cowering; minding her manner, she sighed, and turned around. "I didn't mean to scare you, little one. It's just my first time seeing a sacred beast of the arshish variet." She explained, going back to the writing she was attempting to decipher. "Don't you have a home, though? You might want to get back to it before some paocher comes along and hunts you down, you know."

Noishe stared. Well, her attitude changed quickly enough. At least she seemed polite enough once she noticed how freakish she was... "It's...okay." He finally replied to her sort of apology. "I've not had...many dealings with humans." What else could he say? he didn't want to explain to her, accuse her of her kind destroying his...home...

The woman's last two statements saddened him. He would be at home if he could, except now it was gone... Let a poacher, whatever that was, try to hunt him. Noishe could get away, or even scare any hunter off. But, home...he missed it. The arshis even missed the pups--annoying as boisterous as they were--that always bit his tail and ran between his legs, tripping him.

"Well, sacred beasts such as you tend to stay away in isolation, after all; cheagles in the Cheagle Forest, and other such instances." Raine responded, continuing to make notes on the hieroglyphics she was studying. "The Order of Lorelei may have ties with you, but they don't tend to do much... I wouldn't be surprised if they were involved somehow in poaching or distribution of sacred beasts as pets. They're not as pious these days as their historical past may have indicated..."

She was right for the first. Noishe had stayed away from humans, usually. But that was when he had a home... And...pets? "Pets? Why would they make us such slaves like that?" He growled. He would be no pet. He was a wild arshis! Not a human slave...and he wouldn't become one. At least Crazy-Woman was nice to him? She wouldn't do that, the beast did not think. She was a good human...?

"In this world, people want fame and money. They succumb to their greed; you'd be right to be suspicious of people, with who and what they've become: drunken with power and might. The other beasts they claim to have dominion over, sadly enough, and sacred beasts have special abilities and powers that scientists would absolutely love to attempt to find a way to harvest." Raine sighed. "I myself am not for such inhumane practices."

To be honest, Noishe didn't know how exactly to respond to that. Well, people must have been bad to destroy his home. And sacred beats like himself having special powers? Hardly. Only the Sorcerer's Ring let him talk. Nothing else. What, were humans jealous that Noishe could speak two tongues? Well, he supposed they should be. The woman again gave him reason to believe her, though...that she wasn't bad. Or was she tricking him...? He'd have ot be on his guard.

"If you humans hadn't destroyed my home, then I wouldn't have to worry about any of that." The arshis sighed in turn.

"True enough, but it's also true that not all humans are like that." Raine commented. "Only a handful of humans destroyed your home, and a handful of humans would have done anything to help prevent that, while the majority of humans went about their own lives not in either camp."

"I don't know how many did it." He admitted in response. "I didn't see them, but...I know it was humans! They disregarded their own kind, too. Humans died when Home was destroyed, as well." There were some humans that did not care either way? He wouldn't have imagined that...but surely there were not too varied shades of gray in the grayscale spectrum? Humans had to be mostly good or mostly bad. (Noishe wanted to believe of humans the latter.) But...he'd seen other arshis that were not good or bad, more gray... If his kind was like that, how did that reflect to humankind?

But humans followed the Score. The Score dictated their lives. Perhaps it didn't allow shades of gray. Maybe only white or black hearts were of the Score followers. Humans weren't at all like sacred beasts. They were called "beasts," a word that could be spoken with such hatred; Surely, though, humans were more deserving of that name?

"I don't blame you." Raine put down her book, sitting down on a boulder a fair distance from Noishe as to not startle him. Taking a deep breath, she couldn't believe she was able to talk with an arshis; such an opportunity didn't come to a researcher in a lifetime! A soft smile emerged from her expression. "Humans are incredibly selfish, hurting themselves and others regardless of species. You have every right to hate humans." Noishe's cynical view of things seemed to mirror her own, as her own mother had abandoned her at the orphanage... shaking her head, she looked at the rest of the ruins. "These ruins are proof of the mistakes humans have made in the past, and we'll continue making mistakes."

The researcher was curious, for sure. The way she was talking...it didn't suggest that she liked her kind, either. Why was that? Noishe could not resist but ask quietly, "Why do you hate them in the way you do?"

'Mistakes...' The arshis closed his eyes. Many mistakes had been made, even in the little he realized that he knew. Was Home a mistake, then? Maybe it was...a blemish, a scar on the face of the world. A tribute to mistake and folly? His kind were not blameless for everything, either, yet...they never caused wide-scale destruction...

If it were anybody else, Raine would've been slightly miffed at the invasive question, but since it was a cute arshis, she sighed, forgiving him. Brushing a few of her bangs away from her eyes, she took a look at Noishe. "I was abandoned as a child. If my own parent couldn't be bothered to look out for me, I refuse to trust another human so easily." She simply stated. "Not that I share this fact with anybody else. You can't rely on others to take care of you; you have to take care of yourself. Victimizing yourself won't get you anywhere".

Abandoned...? Noishe felt a sudden wave of remorse for this human. Abandoned by her own parents? That was so horrible... But it was a valid reason, he supposed, that she would distrust her own kind. His left ear twitched. "You can't rely on others all the time, no, but...you can't live alone your whole life..." His pack... Though he was a sort of loner at times, he still always had his pack until Home was destroyed... "And why share this with me, then, if you haven't with anyone else?"

"Because you're not human, right?" Raine chuckled. Getting up, she took another look at the ancient hieroglyphs. "People only want to hear sob stories so that they can feel pity for others. I refuse to accept pity. I research the past so that I can ensure that our current generation won't make the same mistakes we've made in the past, after all. And so that there won't be anybody who has to end up like me." She explained.

"If I was human, I'd have to kill myself." Noishe mumbled. "But even if you research, there might still be other to end up like you." What could one person do to change the world, anyway? She might seem cynical, but she seemed hopeful as well, even if she might not want to admit it... "But are you sure you could do something?" The arshis finally decided to take a few brave steps towards the human, and then another few more. Eventually, he came to sit almost at her side.

"If I died, I wouldn't be able to tell that person how much I hated them, or show them just how successful I was able to become without them." She stated in a matter of fact tone. "Even if I can't do anything, I refuse to add onto the problem. Everybody has a right to live until it's taken away from them, and mine... well, I'm not going to depend on somebody like that to give me meaning."

"I don't mean that humans should kill themselves..." Noishe blinked. Who was the "that person" that the woman mentioned? He shrugged it off. "I'm sorry. You probably can make a difference if you try hard enough." The world was surely not that big, was it? Everyone has a right to live...that was true. Yet some humans didn't seem to understand that, especially since they judged the inhabitants of his home island as not fit to live.

"What will you depend upon to give you meaning?" The question came without thinking, and he somewhat regretted it. It was not his place to ask...

"Myself. You can only count on yourself and trust yourself. And part of that is knowing your limits and attaining help when necessary, but blind trust isn't something I'm going to hand out with impunity." She responded.

Giving out a yawn, Raine closed the book she was using to decipher the hieroglyphs. It was getting late, after all. "I'm going to go and set up camp somewhere, and continue my research later on. What are your plans?" She asked, turning to Noishe.

The arshis nodded to her answer. Still, Noishe sat in thought. Slowly wagging his tail, he finally glanced up at the researcher. "I don't know." He admitted. He had no immediate plans, but... "All I know is that eventually, I want to find out what exactly happened to my home. I don't know anything else, though." Why was she asking...? A curious glint entered his eyes.

"Hmm, you'll need help with that." Raine commented aloud. Would she be willing to help him? Would she be able to help him? It wasn't every day that one got to meet an arshis. But leaving him by himself would have been dangerous, too. "What I'm trying to say is... are you traveling alone? That's dangerous, and there are some things you can't do by yourself." Of course, there's also the issue of what the sacred beast could do for her. She wasn't about to sell him off or anything, but he could indeed help her with research on various subjects, right? This opportunity was something she didn't wish to pass up, but that depended on gaining the arshis' trust.

"Of course I might when I have no idea what to do now..." Noishe muttered. "And as for traveling alone...yes. I have been for years." His tail flicked to the right. "And there are plenty of things I can't do. Some things require hands, which I obviously don't have...though it's never stopped me form trying!" A gleam of mischief entered his eyes and he grinned as best as his kind could. "But why so worried?"

"I have a proposal." Raine decided to cut to the chase. "Why don't we travel together?" It was a valid question. She could use the arshis' knowledge about varous subjects to help her own research, in exhange for helping it with whatever it needed.

"..." The arshis took a few moments to consider what it might mean if he agreed. She seemed nice enough, if not crazy... If the things she said about other humans were true, it might be safer for him to travel with a trusted human, not to mention it could give him a voice to other humans in asking what happened to home... "All right. I know that it could help me, and I'm guessing, since you're a researcher..." He sighed. "You would likely want me to be able to study, wouldn't you?"

"Well, I won't lie; you do rather fascinate me. But I won't force you into anything you wouldn't want, either, or purposely inflict physical harm onto you." She explained. "You won't have to, but you also have knowledge that most humans don't have, right? I could definitely use that as well, and that doesn't involve harming you."

"You treat me like I'm wise..." Noishe commented. "I'm afraid I would disappoint you with that. I know things about my kind, but nothing else. Of humans, I know only what I've seen of them..." Which, frankly, was not much. He had mostly closed his mind to them and traveled alone for years, hopelessly. It was because of his lack of knowledge that the arshis went into the desert--what he had felt was one of the stupidest mistakes of his life.

A tiny thought appeared in his mind, however, that he latched onto. Perhaps it was fate and a blessing that he met this woman? She could surely help...

"Well, regardless, it's up to you." Raine simply responded, as she took out a bag of food she bought from Chesedonia, considering she couldn't cook. "You want a piece?" She asked, holding out a piece of fruit.

Noishe was not very appreciative of fruit, though it's not as if he hated it, either. He merely preferred meat. However, he felt almost like he'd be rude to his traveling companion if he didn't accept. He reached out and grabbed it between his teeth, chewing and then swallowing. "Thank you."

'My traveling companion?' The arshis asked himself. He supposed that that was his decision. "I suppose...if we traveled together it would be worth it...for both of us. I accept. Thank you..." Noishe paused. The name of this woman was unknown to him. "What should I call you?"

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[Chapter 03 - SCENE] Remind Me Again Why I'm Here?

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My icons fail...

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[OOC: Sorry for uber lateness D: I'm not dead...yet.]

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sorry for the late @_@

It's all right! ^^