[75][action/voiced]

[silversnowfall]

[It feels like she's been locked in that research room forever. Almost worse than legislative paperwork, turning five small piles of books about various worlds into something that might be useful. Synthesizing data, in a way that felt adventurously real at first before the familiar tedium of it all set in again. And there was more, left undone. There was always more.

Regardless, it will be a while before she attempts another mission. Even one that seems suited to her set of skills. Unlike so many others who go away on missions, Nephry walks herself toward home without difficulty. Thinking to surprise most of her housemates, she stops at the flower shop for something decorative and colorful. Anything to erase the lines of letters from behind her closed eyelids.

Once she does get home, however, there are some orders of business to address.]

Those of you who name your home as a planet called 'Earth': are you aware of just how many different worlds there are that share that name? That share most of a history, often an entire history save for one significant event? It was quite interesting. [Dull hours of reading aside.] Even more interesting that it doesn't seem to be true of most if not all of the other worlds represented here - there is only one Auldrant, for example.

[And now, the heavier news.]

When I returned a short while ago, I...I found Anise's room empty. It appears she has gone home.

Comments

[greenjacketed]

[ always terrible. but badajoz had been different -- sieges always were. the utter horror that followed the breach and the retribution taken for days and days of dying in the ditches? blood ran in the streets. civilians weren't safe.

badajoz had been hell. but he'd climbed those defences with a wild and wicked pride. ]

Aye. Terrible all around, ma'am.

[silversnowfall]

Then perhaps war is not the best dividing point to use, if you're comparing two potentially different incidences of the same world.

[greenjacketed]

Not sure I know what else to compare. Other than who's king.

[silversnowfall]

Is there anyone else here that you know is from your world?

[greenjacketed]

Two. A brother and a sister, though I've a few years on them. [ ... ] Perhaps others, a few decades behind. An Admiral and a pirate. Even people from long after me seem to have enough what matches up.

[silversnowfall]

Are they your brother and your sister? Or two people you met in your home and found again here?

[greenjacketed]

I have no brothers or sisters -- [ that i know of. ] They're each other's brother and sister. Nor have I met them, but they come straight from the same damned war.

[silversnowfall]

Then I wonder what this world considers so significant about that war.

[greenjacketed]

It's a big'un. Against tyranny, if you can believe it.

[ after all, didn't they all say that? ]

[silversnowfall]

I've yet to hear of a war that didn't claim to be against tyranny in some way.

[Outside of her own world, that is. Wars determined by the planet's memory are insidious in their differences.]

[greenjacketed]

A man crowned himself emperor. I trust it fits the definition of the word.