Scene Listing || Scene Schedule || Scene Schedule RSS
Owner Pose
Tamamo     Tamamo has been ordering about the maids. That is, of course, something maids are usually there for, and the rearrangement of furniture is not outside normal housekeeping duties. She's also been sending them on errands. Without giving them a chance to wordlessly put it on Rook's tab, she gives them pattern-pressed pieces of gold that are not quite coins, along with exacting instructions.

    The differences from before the sun goddess's arrival begin at the door. Paper strips sporting her by-now familiar calligraphy decorate it on all sides, together with thin, pure white, braided ropes. As might easily be guessed, and just as easily confirmed, these aren't purely decorative, though it goes unanswered as to why they're so assymetrical. You could even call the placement 'messy,' though that would belittle the likely intentional obfuscation it represents. Touching the door, more so than approaching it, reinforces the compulsion to feel something mysterious, something otherworldly, something that explicitly defies comprehension, this compulsion effectively being the 'greeting' component of the wards placed here, like a warning sign composed of emotionally evocative art, but in magical, self-demonstrative form.

    This is Lilian's mansion. This is Tamamo's room in the mansion. Tamamo has invited Lilian to speak with her. There is, of course, no real obstacle set between Lilian and simply walking into what is still, ostensibly, one of her guest rooms.

    The inside of the room is unrecognizable. Paper screens stand upright to divide the space, forming a corridor forwards onto a slightly raised, mat floor placed atop the existing floor. Whatever is past those screens can't be easily determined in the light of what at first seem to be relatively bright candles, but on closer examination are free-floating flames arranged about the space, slightly drifting on a non-existent wind.

    Straight ahead of the door, after the few inches to get up onto the new floor and further ahead, is where Tamamo no Mae sits. Though kneeling in that formal (and terribly uncomfortable for anyone just trying it) style, the cloth-draped platform there at the back of the space that she sits on puts her chin just above eye-level. She's flanked by greenery in the form of a modest, miniature forest, if any bonsai collection could be called modest, and has a tea set by her.

    She looks at Lilian, and smiles.
Lilian Rook     It's only partly out of politeness that Lilian hasn't really visited Tamamo's room since she managed to spin the right bullshit to put her up in her house. The first few days could be attributed to that. The next few to some kind of non-existent shyness. After that, it's the negative effort aversion of someone who has never had a compelling reason to visit someone else's room in their life. According to Lilian, the few rooms in which people actually live are all in different wings of the house, which would reinforce the idea, though that much is slightly odd. This area of the house is perfectly quiet once the maids aren't around, but the others always seem too noisy at night.

    So, turning up *inside* it for the first time, Lilian-in-something-vaguely-almost-approaching-casual-wear spends quite a while being taken aback by the miraculous, and yet somehow stealthy, transformation. Between trying to make out the tangle of hanging talismans, peering at the magical flames, and trying to mentally envision how she got this many tall folding screens through the door, Lilian forgets to actually address Tamamo at first, doing little circuits near the door. A couple dozen questions all vie for the position of being the first formed into words, until the one that shakes out first, like a loose marble, is "Where's the bed?"

    No, seriously, there was a huge bed in here. There was plenty of huge furniture, but that one gets her first. "-and, are those yours?" she asks, clearly indicating the bonsai. "I mean, obviously they're *yours*, but did you just find some or . . . actually never mind. I'm just . . . Impressed. There's a totally different energy in here. I didn't quite expect it to *this* extent." Though she struggles to find the right words, just a bit, there's no hint of forced politeness in Lilian's voice. There might be if she found her own space forcefully redecorated like this, but instead, she sounds caught up in the surprise.

    Of course she immediately tries kneeling down the same way. After several restless attempts at it, she gives up and lets her sitting position sink into a 'W'. It makes the seating difference even more stark, but she bravely puts forth "Was there something you wanted to talk about?"
Tamamo     "My, for your first words to be a wish to examine my bed, someone might read more deeply into such a request, no?" Tamamo covers her mouth when she very quietly laughs, indicates more by the narrowing of her eyes and shaking of her shoulders than any sound. However much of that was in jest, she moves on before too long. She did call on Lilian for a purpose.

    "I spoke before, did I not, of powers no human, so I had thought, could exercise? Foremost, powers that could not be studied, nor reduced to formulary. King Gilgamesh spoke of True Magic and True Magicians, and this is one such area, but I am more familiar with another. A god must have an Authority, a domain of that which is within their power, as an intrinsic part of their being. An Authority cannot be gained through study. It can be stolen, but..." Tamamo gives an expression of distaste, that only subtly inflects her speech, "making a mortal enemy of the divine is only the first step along that path."

    She continues, expression smoothing, "And you asked of any relation to your own, unique ability, yes? I would speak of this, for there is are relations, both between the domain of your ability and one of mine, and between that ability and True Magic. The latter may prove a fruitless connection, a false parallel, drawn by assuming too much of differing worlds. The former, however... may be usefully considered. Perhaps."

    Tamamo pauses long enough to take a sip of her tea, then sit it back down again, a slowness in her motions inherent to the grace she maintains no matter the cost to convenience. Her calm is unhurried.

    "Tell me, Lilian, what you think of Fate, as a descendant of seers." The setting sun behind her does not shine directly, but flies over the half-obscuring screens to light up the ceiling and the patterns painted across the array of paper screens that line this audience chamber.
Lilian Rook     Lilian looks as if, for an instant, she has something prepared to say at Tamamo initially pulling her chain. She finds out as soon as she's opened her mouth that she doesn't, and slowly closes it. Her face turns a little pink, though she succeeds in struggling down the urge to explain.

    Besides, the subject Tamamo is really after, it seems, is suddenly a very serious one. The other night, on the topic of the Association, she'd asked almost incidentally, out of a desire to fill in the gaps between the primary dots in her plans for the organization. There always seems to be yet more history --more special terms and workings-- in anything relating to that place, endlessly specific, but applicable as universal rules. It'd seemed a good idea at the time.

    Now, Tamamo is asking her about Fate, and from the instant her surprised, slightly embarrased smile, slips just a hair, it becomes obvious it isn't a subject she likes very much.

    "That word means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Humans are very good at finding patterns in things; they're supposed to be. Sometimes they help predict what might happen next, other times they're just something that appeared in retrospect. Most of what people think of as Fate is something striking them as meaningful in the moment, and looking back and seeing what they feel lead up to it, or what made them deserve it."

    "When it comes to actually looking at the future . . . It's not simple. And I don't think it should be. There are infinite possibilities stemming from any moment, but no given moment contains all possibilities. Furthermore, that infinite number shrinks infinitely the closer it is, and multiplies infinitely the further away it grows. At the same time, only a few of them will ever be 'real', and out of those, 'you' will only experience one of them."

    "I don't . . . care for the word; because when people aren't using it romantically, they're using it ignorantly. They use it like determinism, but whispered and mysterious. Arguments about whether a prophecy can be inevitable, or by being told it, it becomes self-fulfilling. Whether people have any choice in it, even if they actively try to evade it. There *are* events, interactions, out there, floating out in the spaces we haven't arrived yet, so huge, overlapping so many possibilities, pulling everyone in like a vortex, but the attitude about things being decided before they've even begun, and only being there for the ride . . . I don't agree with it."
Tamamo     Tamamo listens, sitting upright, still and straight, but there is still the impression in her expression that she is closely attentive. Something in those golden eyes. She speaks only when Lilian has finished, "It is a murky vision, is it not? To describe something so few can see, and even they through a fog, or by looking down to a reflection of the sky at the bottommost reaches of a well. It is a wonder to no one, then, that there should be some as would suggest the word itself to have no use."

    After only a brief pause, she continues, "There are those that can see into the future, and in so doing, see the fortune and destiny of those involved. To know, to not suspect, but to /know/ the future, to peer into it even as through a keyhole in a torchlit cave, is to look upon Fate. And do you recall, also, my gift to the young god, Arthur Lowell? I called it a Divine Blessing, and he called it a 'roll-fixer.' He was not wrong. It was a method, through my own Authority, to change one's Fortune."

    With a touch of excitement, as one about to show a pupil the single, unifying theory for all they've been taught, "Do you see, then, the truth that must be? Fate must exist, for the future can be seen. And though seers can only see what comes, unable to change their visions, others can pray. When a god answers, Fortune is granted." The last word comes out beneath shining eyes, clear emphasis in her voice. "Or taken. Fate is changed." Again, strength in her voice. "The threads of it can be seen, taken, rewoven just so... oh, it is not the easiest thing, but it can be done. One merely needs the ability to reach into the future."

    Her smile becomes a touch coy. "As She did, when you made your wish upon that fragment."
Lilian Rook     "Murky isn't quite the word *I'd* use." says Lilian, more thoughtfully than she clearly cares to be. "Some people do. I'd . . . probably default to 'complicated'. Something doesn't have to be unclear to be hard to make sense of. Too much clarity, and too much detail, can be just as bad, if not worse. People don't act when there isn't enough; they act in the wrong way when there's too much."

    She makes a noise at the mention of Arthur. It is a noise. There's little else that could be said about it. She doesn't voice anything. Tamamo is clearly leading up to something, and it's the most directly excited she's seen her be about something so far. Intrinsically enthusiastic, rather than in a courtly or touristy way.

    The broadest weight of it hits her all at once. Her sitting posture leans backwards towards her heels. The corner of her lower lip is drawn under a tooth in protest of speaking. She takes several moments to process through it, even closing her eyes to do it, not wanting to seize upon one specific piece of information, but try to absorb it all. To grasp it all at once, without letting anything slip through her fingers and have to be learned bit by bit later.

    "Actively changing the future . . . I imagine it must be immeasurably more difficult, but simpler at the same time. If you know where someone is going, you can change their destination. If you choose their course, then you know exactly where they'll end up. That has to be more convenient than trying to guess everything they'd do under nothing but their own power and the whim of the universe. But still though . . ."

    Finally, she opens her eyes, her lip twisted in a bit of an open pout. "Are you trying to tell me that now I'm 'fated' to do something specific?"
Tamamo     "Oh, no, not at all." Tamamo says, followed by, "You have already done as She foresaw." She keeps that neutral expression a few moments longer, looking down at Lilian's pout, before again her shoulders shake in only just-politely-hidden mirth. It's not, perhaps, perfectly polite, but she is a goddess in her own shrine. That would explain her occasional shift to a more imperious tone.

    "And do you see the method? The path of greatest ease is also that of greatest simplicity, but with deftness, lightly touching a thousand places, rather than changing just the one. A misplaced step in the mud. A bird's cry on the wind. The fall of cast lots. A rising wave that lifts the ship. It need not be rolled dice for humans to call it 'luck.' These are the easily-shifted threads, and if you can view the tapestry, you can see how they draw the future."

    The traces of her earlier excitement slowly fade. Her tea, somehow, is still warm. "I had never expected that I might meet a human to come so close to grasping the future, nor to seeing the threads of Fate as I do. It has been," her voice is smooth, curious, almost conspiratorial, "a greatly interesting matter."
Lilian Rook     Ostensibly relaxing her pouty attitude after not being told that she has some divinely ordained destiny to do this or that now, Lilian still makes something halfway between a contemplative hum and an overly familiar groan, a little too quiet to be either.

    "I'm . . . familiar with how people are in that regard. Being told, in plain words, will make someone change everything about themselves, their behaviours, their beliefs. For all the little things that might as well be background noise though, the ones that they'd never be able to pick out even if they tried, yes. Nobody divines meaning in every flap of every butterfly's wings. I suppose masking it that way would be infinitely more reliable, though then it's a matter of making a great many simple and easy changes following an impossibly convoluted design." She pauses. "Well, convoluted for most of us, I suppose."

    Finally, she lets herself laugh, albeit only shortly. "Well it's not as if I ever expected to meet you either; or anything like you. I feel like I don't see it all that well yet, but that's something where I have to patiently wait for age and experience to hand me some of it, right? The twentieth year is where most of it starts. Normally, the bulk of special ability doesn't arrive until then; it's practical-- what you'd call Magecraft-- before then, and Human Origin Refinement, and history, and study, and trying to absorb this and that from the elders, and making the proper debut in society. I was faster in a regard or two. Call it selfishness."

    Lilian sighs. "You could call a lot of things that, if you felt less than charitable. Honestly, I don't know, and it's probably not possible to tell, if I just want things 'more' than other people, or if other people . . . Mmm, I just don't see a reason not to be selfish, you know? So I guess the far off future and how it'll affect all these other people would naturally be the last bit to fall into place."

    "I was pretty much resigned to being outdone in that regard, and leaning on what I'm good at, but you're really just the perfect opportunity to try and have that as well. I apologize in advance for any trouble I cause you in the future, but I can't help but want to have everything, so I'd like to surpass the others at 'fate' as well." Lilian smiles. "That, and how good you are at getting people to do what you want without anything over them."