"Yes. I see now how the pieces fit together. Forgive me; I would have told you, had I realized sooner. We might have met first on less sensitive ground." Ducking in chagrin, she seeks eye contact with Kayla before she claps her hands in front of her bust and bows. She does not rise again, at first.

  "You have my apologies, Kayla. There will be no more sacrifices, no more fear of the shadows. Rahim, my salvation, your Lampkeeper, has reached the end of his long struggle. But your people have suffered for the magic that saved my life. I am in your debt, we both discover now." In the ensuing silence, it doesn't take the woman that long to realize the most positive response is a blank stare and a sword still sheathed.  Her cringe deepens.

  "A full answer, then. I suppose I look more like the singer.  I'll explain from her perspective then.  This realm called La to its heart, and she found the Lampkeeper there.  He said he would sacrifice her, to keep his beloved alive, and as many of the people here as it took.  But his power could only keep her soul from departing, not return her to life." She lowers her head again; it is an awful thing.

  "The singer was stronger than anyone he had ever sacrificed, enough to take that restless spirit into her own, because the fuel it burned answers to her as a goddess.  She and the beloved... are me.  There is nothing to sacrifice for.  La gave Iesha new life—hers.  And it was enough to end the ritual."
This message was last edited by the player at 19:49, Tue 15 Dec 2020.

Rashana remained quiet, letting the silence say what she had only been preparing to, when the strange La-but-not-La provided more information. That was enough to at least shed some light on things. Her eye darted between Etu and the Lampkeeper briefly, digesting the words. "So, La simply stumbled upon your ritual, and in trying to make a sacrifice of her, things didn't go as planned? Meaning you fully intended to make a sacrifice of her." She assessed with a sharp gaze in the Lampkeeper's direction.

She turned her eye back to Alyeda. "And you... are somehow both La and the woman he was killing all of those people to keep... alive doesn't seem to be the right word, does it? And now here you are, acting nothing like our La, trying to pacify what's clearly no small number of deaths for your sake. It's not my place to say whether or not this world will just forgive that. But what is my concern is what you have done with... to... La."

"I can't tell how much of you is the La we know, and how much is... whoever else you appear to be. Is this what she wanted? Is she okay with this? How much was she hiding from us, and just how welcome are you, in there?" She prompted, then raised a finger. "I don't want to hear from you. I want to hear from her. If you've done anything to her, I won't let you keep walking around pretending to be her."  She didn't make any violent moves, turning a glance briefly over to Laila. "Can your light illuminate the details, Laila, or tell us how La feels about all of this?"

For all that was being said, Laila could not shake the feeling of being an outsider looking in. This Alyeda was a stranger born of a stranger, and Rashana was speaking for the memory of woman who had barely left a trace of herself in Laila’s own memories. That this all came on the back of Kayla’s silence only made things all the worse. There was no certainty here, no steady ground where she might plant her feet and trust the cause she stood for. Only the doubts of a friend and a being formed wholly from unanswered questions.

How good of Rashana then to invite her back into the conversation.

Laila considered those questions – considered Rashana herself – before reaching out to lightly place a hand upon her shoulder. Her eyes became as two thin disks of gold, and a heartbeat later so too did Rashana’s, imbued with that same sunlit sight. They stayed like that for a breath and then another. Only then did that radiance fade, and in its absence it was hard not to think their eyes somehow darker than before,

“No sign of possession, curse or other foreign magic,” Laila announced with a certain hesitation. Then almost apologetically, “And if she lies, then I’m afraid I cannot sense that either.”

Her fingers traced the slightest of circles on Rashana’s shoulder. “I do not think there is a Bire La to ask, Rashana. Only this Alyeda.”

  The woman's response is... perhaps not as expected, when the light finally shines. "It is true! You live!" something gives within Alyeda and she nearly loses her feet. The Lampkeeper's movements are inhumanly fast to catch her, but her weight never quite settles on his arm.

  At this point, tears have burst from her eyes. Relieved ones, for all of three heartbeats, until the memories finish catching up. Her hands drift toward her mouth and eventually cover it while her elation turns. To guilt. "I... I thought you... You're really her. I thought I killed you."
This message was last edited by the player at 23:35, Tue 15 Dec 2020.

"Undying."

Etu suggested, when Rashana grasped for words to describe that liminal state. A joke perhaps?  It was impossible to say, for the word was delivered without inflection. More husk than human, she would know better than any the answer.  While she had only been bound for two days, already it had been an eternity.

She turned slowly towards Alyeda as Laila's gaze burned golden and bright, her hooded eyes ponderous.

"You promised me answers and a scholar without peer. Yet so far, all that has come is suspicion and mystery and fear. Why do they name you changed? You speak of ritual and sacrifice, these are words I understand, but their end point is still clouded to me. We have passed between realms, was the first but a dream?  Who was its master, who was the dreamer? Are you not the same who promised me if I but left my prison?"
This message was last edited by the player at 20:56, Sat 19 Dec 2020.

Kayla shudders. "The ritual you describe...it is an abomination. It is foul, corrupt. To take so many lives..."

Rahim just stares silently. He is slightly hunched, as though braced for a blow, or expecting to deliver one.

Etu turned her shrouded gaze onto Alyeda and the Lampkeeper.

"What?"

There was anger in her voice, raw and scratched.

"Heartsblood or soulstuff?"

She gripped the staff tightly, the twisted black metal that bore the name Anaya's Breath. It had once been her badge of office, rank and title both.  The black miasma of death about her flared, and those standing near could feel a searing heat as a cloud of stinging black sand began to whip around her.

"Which was claimed, and whose will claimed it?"

Alvatter gradually came out of his shock and listened to the strangely broken and haphazard exchange that was occurring between the others. He rubbed at his temples as he attempted to sort the information that he was gaining. He felt like he was developing a headache and took a seat once more.

"Life and love and laughter, and all the things that keep a memory breathing," Rahim says softly. "I took them all, to fuel the furnace. But before you speak curses on my name, child, ask yourself - would you have done any different, if you had the power? If you could save the one you loved more than life itself, what price would you call too great? If you could save the people you protected, but only by becoming their nightmare so that they would close ranks to fight against you rather than each other, would you call that a sacrifice you couldn't make?"

"Yes" Alvatter responded without thinking.

"I would do differently. I cannot say that I have ever truly loved another person but I have loved in my own way. I have already made difficult choices about who and what to save, what to abandon, and what to keep for the future. We all have, back in Irohn."

He then gestured loosely to Bire Alyeda.

"But this. What you've done here. You can be dressed it up anyway you desire it, present any moral argument you want but the reality is that you chose her life over the lives of innocents and for that you have a debt that to pay. One that I ensure you will be paid in full."

He then turned to Etu.

"I am the scholar. My name is Alvatter. If you truly are a survivor of Irohn then I welcome you but I apologize as you find us in a precarious situation. I ask for your patience while we sort out what is to happen next. Then I will gladly answer any questions you may have to the best of my abilities."

Then he focused on Bire Alyeda herself.

"Since you've been instrumental in these events I want to hear what you intend for Rashim now that you've merged with his beloved. If you intend to shelter him then I believe we will be at odds in this."
This message was last edited by the player at 06:11, Sat 26 Dec 2020.

Laila's words brought a heavy pause to Rashana. It seemed less like anger, and more like pain, to anyone with an eye for such things. Her head lowered, but she was quiet, for a moment. La wasn't... she was gone? How much like her was it to be gone, really - she had been ever elusive, and even trying to take note of her when she could, Rashana had failed her here, to keep up with her in a dangerous place.

All the pain of Laila's loss, and her return, echoed all over again, all the self-blaming anxiety too. She knew La had come along. Why hadn't she kept her closer to hand? She was distracted from those thoughts, though, but the murmuring of the unusual new arrival in quesion. Words that were seemingly addressed to no one present -- addressed to...?

Through her distress and fog, the realization was like a miracle, somewhere between her keen mind and some impossible insight open to supernatural possibilities, or perhaps simply wishful thinking... Alyeda's words were addressed to La, and as her ears could sense, it didn't feel like a duplicitous utterance. The relief in it felt, seemed genuine and true? Then La really was still there? She couldn't say, couldn't know for certain, but at the least, she felt that she understood as well as Alyeda did, in the moment. More, she understood the relief she felt.

It was enough. Enough that Rashana decided that she could relent. There could be time enough to learn the truth, and she didn't want things to come to bloodshed here.

With an uncharacteristic elegance, the artisan stood, her voice softer as she moved toward Alyeda with hand extended. Her posture communicated perfectly her gentle intent to Rashim in such an obvious way that it was certainly understood, and as she reached Alyeda, her hand settled upon her shoulder. She spoke with a softer, more gentle tone, then. Almost like a different person, herself, or, perhaps just one who had found an entirely different perspective on matters in moments.

"Alyeda. I can tell this wasn't your fault. And... it seems like you can still sense La, somehow? She's not... lost?" She asked, leaning to look her in the eye.

She exhaled, then glanced up, to Rashim, to Etu, and to Alvatter as well, then stood fully again.  That gracefulness and social finesse was still there, like she was some other person entirely from the Rashana they knew, full of insight and understanding and navigating the situation's complexities with courtly finesse...

"To be more clear, I believe Alvatter and I are in agreement that we aren't strictly talking about life-for-life punishment. On one hand, I feel like there's been death on such a scale that would not be enough to balance what you've done, Rashim. For you, and for Alyeda... your story is tragic, and you have done terrible things... and terrible things do have a price. Are you prepared to make right what you've done?"

---
So yeah, Rashana has Intelligence. Though I'm also kind of channeling a Grace Miracle here for social grace and understanding. Don't expect her words to solve everything, mind, but do expect them to be angled toward a de-escalation of the situation. It's not aimed so much at being 'diplomancy' as it is 'miraculously navigating a supernaturally complicated situation and trying to find a clear route through it' and because these conclusions felt a little off from her usual perspective, the idea of Grace giving her a different perspective to approach it from as a miracle made some sense to me.

Etu's gaze had locked on Rahim, sparing barely a glance for Alvatter when he answered her questions.  She spoke so quietly as to be almost unheard, for her words were revelation for herself and no one else.

"So you were not the instrument of my divine punishment at all, merely another slaver imposing your will upon those you found helpless."

She hissed, and Rashana could feel the black miasma about Etu resisting her efforts to bring a peaceable solution, a stubborn knot of anger and rage that could not be smoothed over.  Yet even as she felt that will resist her own, the iron barriers that Etu was fashioning about herself softened and relented.  She was not submitting to Rashana's grace, but neither was she striving against it.  She drove the butt of Anaya's Breath into the ground, and the aura about her lessened.

"I am not to be your judge nor jury then, for my crimes were no better than your own, despite my ignorance.  I will relent to the decision these others make as to your fate, and pass no judgement over you for what you have done to me. From what you have taken of me, draining my dry until I am thus.  You are not forgiven, but the will which decides your fate will not be mine."

She took several steps back, the black sand about her relenting as it fell slowly to the ground.

"You have my eternal patience, Scholar Alvatter."

And there was only the merest hint of a threat to her voice. Rashana could still feel that knot of anger, but like a ship turning with the wind and the tide, it had turned to be in harmony with her will.

  The torrent of questions and accusations had cut Alyeda's relief short, anyway, and there is more evidence in it to answer Rashana's questions. None of what fills in behind the vanishing relief is fear. Her attention sharpens, but her caution isn't wary, and her posture actually relaxes as she and Rahim are crowded. She looks composed, efficient unto strict, as though she were about to open a board meeting. She looks the way La had, when she was addressing other (?) ordinary survivors. But La would never have directed that demeanor at an Inheritor.

  Thank you, Rashana. You want details; I can see the uncertainty. I will try to answer ev—"

  But the Waker has more to say to Rahim, and she pauses again. When she does resume her response, it's with an apologetic smile at Rashana before she proceeds to have no time at all to answer those questions. Her words fly out in a stream to make an auctioneer sit up. "I'm sorry, everyone. I will not be able to maintain the pace you demand, when your demands are so complex and profound. I wish we could have remained allies, but it seems you are not collectively interested in that, as you are not interested in knowing what, exactly, you are so angry about. I know you won't believe me, but I do this with a heart heavy unto breaking." The woman turns then, just her head and just a little, enough to indicate the Lampkeeper without taking her eyes off anyone.

  "Rahim, please take me to the gate, as quickly as you brought us here."
This message was last edited by the player at 02:47, Wed 30 Dec 2020.

"Wait"

"Just wait Bire."

He sighs.

"I don't intend to mean that we aren't interested in the truth, the full truth of what happened here. Just that we find ourselves blindsided and concerned. Much has transpired in little time. Tempers are high."

He looked to the others sympathetically.

"Please. Stay here. Let us speak of this under peaceful terms. You have my word that I will listen as impartially as I can and we can reach some sort of agreement on what to do next."

He then looked to Rashim, the Lampkeeper.

"I extend to your an armistice. I will do everything in my power to see that you are treated well as we sort through all this."
This message was last edited by the player at 01:33, Mon 28 Dec 2020.

Rahim hesitates, looking to Alyeda for confirmation, before slowly nodding. "An armistice suffices for me, if my love wishes it so. And, for what it is worth, I am sorry. I spoke in haste and anger; my long vigil has left me with a shorter temper than I once had, it would seem."

  Alyeda hesitates, stiff and silent like a carved statue except for her eyes seeking out the others' each in turn.  It's something she sees the second time she gets to Laila that apparently convinces her; tension bleeds slowly out of her torso, and she lets her weight settle onto her heels again.  "Then yes.  Irohn's survival may yet need all of us.  Is this the appropriate place?"

  She raises a hand to gesture broadly about the sitting room, and there is a short wake behind her movements that leaves colors more precise than they ought to be.  "This is a refuge for someone.  We have brought fear in; perhaps we should take it out again?"

Etu nodded from with her cowl, appearing to accept the consensus the others had reached.

"Yes, refuge is needed. Does one call to you, Alyeda who was La?  Or have you all in this way also been cast out? Given time, I will create my own. Yet the expenditure of power behind such a thing would be great, and much is needed before I am truly ready."

She drew closer, her presence a palpable heat upon those around her, as if a furnace burned within her shriveled flesh.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:48, Thu 31 Dec 2020.

"I would prefer that. If you truly wish to converse with that...monster, do it elsewhere than my sitting room." Kayla's voice is stiff, as is her posture.

  "Someone will need to represent the Flowers in their garden, "Alyeda gently points out in response. "I can come alone, later, if that's better for you. But I told you—I live at your people's expense, one way or the other. I am in your debt."

  The way she says the word, it stokes the dimmest embers of ambition to life. 'And how a goddess can pay,' it whispers quite beside her own voice.  Between her influence and the confidence of the Sun's Aegis, the one "mere" mortal in the room at last gives a subtle nod.  Alyeda gives Rahim's hand a gentle squeeze; the world blurs around them in an eddy of passage-through with no coherent feeling of direction.  And then the entire group stands at the edge of the compound.  The Lampkeeper and the Riddle arrive with their feet just outside the line of the walls without being outside the group, and she holds the last lamp, its light still pulsing in time with Laila's heart.

  "You should have this back.  La took it, thinking she might need protection from the nightmare under your dream, but she preserved the magic inside.  It might even still bar Rahim despite my caveat, once you hang it back up.  Ah, if you still feel the need, when we're finished here."  She holds it out to Kayla by its hanging-hook.  Her attention briefly rounds the participants she actually knows, then she sets her shoulders squarely.

  "Song Zhiao Fan wrote, in Where Leaves May Fall, 'Vengeance is a fire that burns the furnace down'," she began, quoting the Dreamers' most famous contributor to Irohn's literary canon.  "I have pulled the splinter out, here, but the wound is still infected.  What kind of further violence will clean it?  Whose suffering will bring peace to those who grieve?"
This message was last edited by the player at 20:14, Fri 01 Jan 2021.

Watching this all play out, Rashana's conclusions had confirmation from Alyeda's words, but under the tension of the moment, it was easier to let the others converse for a moment, as she tried to sort out what, exactly, she thought of the matter. When Alyeda simply... moved them all, Rashana tensed slightly, her guard raised as her eyes focused on that, particularly as she noted Kayla had been brought along.

"You know, magicking people around without asking them is not exactly..." She exhaled. "Whoever you are, now, you've lost a lot of your subtlety. Maybe too much of it."  Rashana shook her head, and looked to Kayla. "Whatever the circumstances, I trust that Rahim will trouble this Garden no longer. And I think we all wanted to help you. Circumstances are... complicated, now, but that is still true enough."

Rashana exhaled, smiled briefly at Laila, then looked back to Alyeda. "Out of respect for La, I'm willing to give you a chance. She was reclusive and quiet, but I could relate to that. You... don't seem like her, anymore. Even if part of her is still there, it's not the same for me. I don't want suffering or vengeance. I just want... " She exhaled, heavily, unable to find the precise words - or maybe just not knowing how to finish the thought, at all.

Rashana folded her arms, in a closed and guarded posture, and exhaled a heavy breath. "I'm... just tired, now. I don't know how I can feel so exhausted. I haven't done anything. I haven't even processed you at all." She said, with a glance aside to Etu. "I'm sorry about that, by the way. I'm just... dealing with a lot right now." Her arms uncrossed, but her hands fumbled together, and a flexible, multi-armed tool formed in her hand instinctively, of pale shimmering light, which she kept restlessly adjusting into different configurations.

"I... I have questions about what both of you intend to do in the Nexus, when we return. The people of Irohn depend on us for guidance, depended on La, but you aren't exactly her anymore, and you have been through so much." She looked to each of them in turn at that... then to Rahim. "...And I don't trust him at all - I'd say it's nothing personal, but actions have consequences, and that includes whether or not someone thinks you're trustworthy. Maybe you have no more reason for killing people, but you did, and on a grand scale. That's all. I don't want him dead, I just don't want anyone else to get hurt right now."

Rashana's free hand came up and pressed into her face with a heavy breath. "... I don't know how to handle it all, right now, when so little of it actually makes any rational sense. I don't think I can deal with asking those questions and taking the answers right now."

She lowered her hand, and started moving - walking away from the gathered group, along the wall some ten feet, before she leaned herself against it, and slid down, a faintly-shimmering bench forming underneath her as she tipped her head back against the wall. She was definitely still in earshot, but clearly trying to remove herself for the moment.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:18, Fri 01 Jan 2021.

Etu drew in a raspy breath, her hooded gaze unmoving from Rashana as the Maker addressed her.

"I am here as an instrument neither for the infliction of suffering or the administer of vengeance."

She said at last, her voice a groan in the wind.

"I was wrath, and in truth I am wrath, but none here are the wellspring from which that emotion pours. Not even him, though he touched near enough to it with his actions against me. No, not against me.  That appears to suggest intent."

Her eyes were not visible beneath her cowl, but the weight of her gaze had drifted upon Rahim, then fell.

"That which fills and sustains me is directed at one, and one only.  Myself. I am here to atone for the crimes that I committed upon the souls of our brothers, sisters, and others under Anaya's will. I had thought myself merely a fashioner of tools, binding unthinking and unfeeling souls to flesh to fashion the labor that gave fruit to paradise. Long did I labor, confident in my pride, attaching chain after ghostly chain about the necks of my fellows. For the sin of this hubris, I will be doomed for a thousand lifetimes. There is no hope of redemption, but at least within the multitude of eons that stretch out before me I may endeavor to undue that which I have wrought."

Her staff hummed with power as she spoke.

"I will find those who have paid the price for my hubris, and I will liberate them from the chains I placed there. I cannot restore them to the wheel, but I may at the very least give them the choice. I will give unto them what life I can, though such has never been my domain. I will build for them a fortress of the mind and the soul, a bastion where they will be protected from any such as I who may come from now until the end of time. Much is needed, much will be needed, jade, diamond, gold, silver, and fleece. It will be a great working, but it will only be the first step of thousands in the journey of my penance."
This message was last edited by the player at 01:51, Sat 02 Jan 2021.

  Alyeda's teeth squeak from how tightly she clenches them during Etu's explanation, though the stiff posture had been there from almost the moment Rashana began speaking. Her intake of breath is quick and full-volume, a sound to hold her place while she decides the last of her words.

  "We were told their souls had already returned to Amaya—that the Restless were little more than automata despite the macabre sourcing." Her voice is tight in the way of bowstrings, and it sounds near to its maximum draw. "It little matters now. I will explain to the Intermediaries once I have a draft policy ready for curtailing their use in the temples. But the doctrinal scandal will be extreme."

  Her voice rises. It makes her sound even less subtly angry, but it does make obvious that she wants the distant tinker to hear. "—and it would be terribly unlike La to accept enough authority to resolve that. They will have to find their own way through. Although, it was like her to magically present herself as Amaya to direct their decisions anyway. She just thought she was dreaming it, found the nightly blasphemies frightening, and wanted them to stop. Rashana!  That's when you understood her." The hardness is abruptly gone from her voice. The last that precise tone spoke, the voice belonged to La, and it was offering the Lampkeeper safety from his threat against her. Now, it speaks of La, but she is hardly the point.

  "She was comfortable and familiar to you when she was frightened, and when she could not see her own worth. She imagined the lot of you were quite as far above her, spiritually, as she was above an ant. I want everyone to consider that, please, when you have quiet time. Whatever you thought about La, it regarded someone just as confused by her new reality as the rest of you. But while you had the honor of position to reassure you it must, at least, be a good reality, La could not imagine herself more than a Servant. A servant ended the threat to the people of the garden by rescuing a whore while the nobles drank tea. Meditate on that also, please. Except Rashana. Sweet girl, you think too little of yourself already.  Remember that the woman holding the Remnant government together almost single-handedly admired your wisdom."  Finished for the moment, she releases the breath that was holding her posture so proud and shuffles back a footstep.  It's a minimal relaxation, just on the edge of the spotlight, but she seems markedly smaller now that she isn't projecting.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:08, Sat 02 Jan 2021.

"You spoke, Scholar, about making choices," Rahim says softly in the silence that follows on Bire Alyeda's words. "You said that you needed to make choices, about what to sacrifice on the altar to save the rest. What would you call someone who for fear of what would be thought of him refused to make such a choice, if not a coward and betrayer?" He smiles, more than a little sad. "That was what I was given. The chance to kill some, so that others might live, and be known for all my days as a monster - or to do nothing, remain a beloved god of my people, and watch them wither and die."

His voice is deep and sorrowful as he continues. "So yes, Rashana was it? Yes. I killed. I killed more than I could ever atone for. There is no place for me in the halls of heroes, I have made my peace with that. But then, who among us can truly say that she would never kill, no matter the cost of staying her hand?"

Alvatter bit back a quick retort, his mind soothed by a foreign force that seemed to be present among the group. Instead he straightened, rising to his full but ultimately unimpressive height and meet eyes with Rashim the Lampkeeper.

"If it's all the same to you perhaps we table philosophical debate and instead focus on the full details of this decision you made and the events that lead up to it. We've established that you killed others to preserve someone, someone how has melded with Bire La to become Bire Alyeda. You also attest that these actions were done to preserve the denizens of this realm. Please. Explain it to us so that we might truly understand."

As Rashana tried to extricate herself, the attention, the address, and the focus followed her. She tensed a little where she was now seated, and she listened as Etu answered the question she had raised. In all honesty, whatever assurances she had ever heard regarding the use of the bodies of the dead, the practice had always felt uncomfortable to the engineer. Using people as a part in that way, even just the fleshy automaton of a formerly inhabited body, had never felt truly comfortable to her. So, it wasn't as much of a shock for her, to learn that it really wasn't a thing that was just okay. "... Perhaps there was no way to know it was like that, before. But you know now, and..." She nodded her head. "I have never felt at ease with the practice, myself. There will be resistance, but, we are revered to a point..." She seemed uncomfortable admitting that. "Though, I do not know how well new arrivals will be able to win the favor of the people, even announced as an Inheritor. Perhaps some who knew you survived the chaos." Rashana seemed, at least, to approve of Etu's plan.

The burden of having to watch over the people seemed like a weight for her, in the moment. Something seemed like it was pressing her down into her seat, at least. Alyeda seemed to agree smoothly with that approach, though. As easily as La would, if she were to propose it, Rashana realized. As she spoke about how La would appear as Amaya to guide the decisions of the government, there was a soft sigh from the artisan. "... La... had a great many hidden talents. I had only been realizing slowly what she was capable of. I had wanted to tell her, ask her. Help her understand what kind of potential she had. I didn't really know how I was going to approach her about it, when the time came."

She exhaled, her head lowering slightly as Alyeda continued, elaborating on how small La thought she was. Her assumption about how reassured they must've been by their positions made her tense a little. Of how a servant had saved the garden while the nobles drank tea.

"...La acted without understanding the situation. Without consulting those who were involved, or who could've helped her. We weren't just drinking tea, we were consulting the locals before we meddled in their affairs. We're outsiders here, we were trying to understand the situation before we did anything carelessly. For all of her acting as a servant, as our companion, in this, she acted on her own without concern for her own safety, the position of the garden and its inhabitants, or concern for... us." She shook her head gently. "I don't understand why she did that, it wasn't like her." She glanced up at Alyeda uncertainly. "... Though, I'm not upset with her. Just... confused about why she did it, and sad that it ended the way it did. She's here, but not here, and I'm not really completely sure what that means, or how to feel about it." La's presence would recognize some of that pain - it was similar to how Rashana had seemed upon the loss of Laila and the realization that they couldn't go back for her.

There was a quiet breath as Alyeda went on to address her directly, then. She let the moment linger as she mulled over words, a response. She just took a couple of soft breaths, before speaking in a quiet tone. "... Alyeda. Please don't try to tell us how we should feel about things. I just need some space and time to..." She hesitated with her lips parted, unsure what word to fill the gap with. She settled on lightly shaking her head and closing them.

She looked briefly up to Alvatter, her features a little pale and her eyes slightly wet, as he addressed Rashim. She gave a small, subtle nod, as he asked for more understanding, quietly trying to yield the floor. She slowly got to her feet, bench vanishing and her eye watched for an opportunity to slip away, if only behind the wall, up a tree, or past some brush.

-----
If Rashana can find an opportunity to take some cover and get out of view, she aims to use A Prowling Power's stealth to try and duck out of people's sight. She's not going anywhere, just wants to shed the attention, which would be automatic unless she does something to draw attention to herself, prompting a spirit save. I figure an opportunity won't exist until the conversation actually moves away from her directly, though.