Humanity, Delfeir vs. Saturos, with a twist

[Delfeir]

There are many things that many people could state, discuss, or argue about the concept of humanity. People seemed to live in various states of humanity, and some could easily shift to either extreme – some might devolve as it were into killers, psychopaths, deviants. Others might serve to better humanity as a whole beyond their own individual sphere, becoming almost saintly through acts of kindness or charity. Discussions about what made up humanity and whether or not these examples were more or less human than the average person have abounded throughout Weyard for as long as they had held the capacity for intelligent thought.

Could one argue, then, that one of the greatest villains the world had ever known was no longer human? He had committed many crimes, and though many were not nearly as heinous as some of the atrocities that humans practiced, his were certainly the most epic in scope and scale. He had not acted against a single person, or a small group... no, they claimed he was acting to further his own selfish gains against the entire world. Every single man, woman, and child in existence during that time period had been his victims, purportedly, and suffered at the hands of his manipulations. The end result would have benefitted him, yes... but no doubt it would have benefitted all of Weyard at the same time. There needed to be an arbiter of justice, a bastion of humanity upholding the world... he had merely sought to be it, seeing no other suitable individual for the job.

And for that, he his crimes had labelled him as less than human. His punishment had been extreme... one might even say that if his actions hadn't culled his humanity, the actions taken against him had. His body destroyed... his soul removed from the cycle of death and rebirth, cursed to linger pointlessly and in the pain of physical disassociation for all eternity... his very name stricken from the annals of history and a title left in its place used to scare little children at their bedtime for hundreds and thousands of years after...

Had he not suffered enough? He thought so, which was why he walked the world once more. His purpose was questionable, but he had vague ideas forming in his mind about his plans and ultimate motives. Perhaps they would be the same as the last time he walked Weyard... perhaps not. The questions of humanity continued to echo in the corners of Alex's mind as he walked through the streets of Imil, nonetheless.

This had been his home. This was where he was born, where he had lived, grown up, worked, socialised, romanticised... vanished from. He had stopped being welcome here long before his end, and he had been all too happy to cut the tie and begin his journey, searching for his future. He was probably not welcome here now... but people no longer knew him.

Anyone who remembered him had lived on and died long, long ago. Even if, somehow, somebody did remember him for who he was here... he no longer wore the same face. His form had been shifted from that of an Imilian to a Proxian, and if anything, he was more in danger of being identified and accused of the crimes of the man who owned the face he wore. Nobody knew him as Alex anymore. He didn't truly exist... to them.

But then, they said he was not human anymore, that he had forsaken all that that entailed. Were they right? Were they wrong? And if he did lack his humanity, did that mean he lacked what it meant to exist as a human? So many philosophical questions, and they were starting to cloud his focus. He batted the air lightly as if it was his mind, and the light snowfall in the air of Imil was the fog that clouded his thoughts. The snow gave way before him before continuing to fall, but Alex cleared his mind nonetheless. He was here to see what had become of his home, in part... but he was also here to see the Mercury Lighthouse. The place he had guarded in his youth. The place that was nothing but an icon, now that it's power had been diverted to a mortal figure...

Perhaps he could be that mortal figure now.

Perhaps not.

((OOC: Satty, you're up! Hope I didn't ramble on too long, but this battle is set to be more of wits and philosophical debate than actual fighting, no doubt.))

[Mithos]

Off to the left, through the stirring drifts of snow, Alex would vaguely see the outline of a figure dance.

The wind blew in gusts with the sweep of his great wings, snow spun in whirlwinds and kicked up by his feet. The sound of laughter like chiming bells carried, almost suffocated by the falling flakes, and seemed to come and go with the wind.
His white robes mingled with the falling snow, his wings merely a dense wave. It was his long blonde hair and his blue eyes that shone through the storm, and the crystal he always wore that caught the light.

He was a man escaping the world, lost in a play of his own devising. He often disappeared like this, much to the consternation of his Clansmen. Saturos the Flower had no roots, but drifted here and there where the winds of his fancy took him, seeing the world from a million different places. As he danced through the snow, kicking up glittering ice crystals that slowly drifted to earth in his wake, he sang in the ancient Solian tongue:

Ashante meereera, clamin tuno vei.
Weluveeu tayhesu, gliine aso dai.
Artyennie othesae~

His dance carried him closer and closer to his companion in the storm, the man who he hadn't seen yet.

[Delfeir]

So focused on his own thoughts was Alex that he scarcely noticed the dancing figure until he was almost upon him. Even then, it was only a lucky glimmer of light reflecting through the snow from the crystal the man wore that pierced through the haze and caught the Mercurian's attention. He stopped for a moment, looking through the veil to watch the man, almost immediately noticing the features that made him stand out from what would otherwise be a normal human. Even without the wings, the man's appearance seemed somewhat... pronounced. Different. Otherworldly.

Alex had little experience with the people of this time. He had seen and learnt through the eyes of Delfeir for some time before he had finally crafted the body into a host more to his liking, and he knew as such that people were not normally like this. Humans were still humans - as amusing as the thought was given his earlier thread of contemplation - and so any anomalies like an angel walking amongst men was still something inexplicable to him. That, and there was something different about the man's aura... he could sense powerful Psynergy within the man, but a kind that felt very different to anything he was used to.

His curiosity got the best of him, and he stayed in the position, merely watching for a few seconds before he spoke up. "You there... what are you... doing?" He almost didn't need to add the final word - the question still would have been a valid one to him.

((OOC: Think I might put up the music I decided on for Alex for anyone who's reading.))

[Mithos]

Saturos paused mid-leap, one foot planted awkwardly in the ground, wings outspread, as he strained to look through the snow to the person who was speaking to him. "Me? What am I doing?" he blinked, and a slow smile spread over his features. "I'm trying to remember."
He slowly let himself down, folding his wings at his side. "I read in my diaries of a woman from not long ago, who loved to play in the frozen drifts of Tundaria. She always loved the winter, more than any other season... I think she had fallen in love with the ice, and the crystal, and the sunshine. I thought I'd play in the snow, and try to remember what she was like." He pirouetted gracefully in the snow. "Her name was Tristia."

Leaning forward, he shook snow off his wings with a gentle flap and peered into the stranger's eyes. "What are you doing? And don't I know you from somewhere...?"

[Delfeir]

((OOC: I can't help but get my mental picture of Flower!Satty as Mithos, now. Damnit!))

Alex peered back, blue eyes meeting blue. "Memories are powerful things. Everything that happens to us leaves an imprint and effects who we are as people forever after. But you're saying you can't remember this person? Someone who was apparently important enough to write about in your diary?" He folded his arms. "That's unfortunate."

He continued to eye the winged man, taking in the features as best as he could through the thin haze of snow. Something... seemed to look familiar about the man. Although as a whole he was completely unrecognisable, a few small features seemed to stick out in his eyes, waking memories of his own. A descendant of someone he'd known, perhaps?

"I very much doubt that you know me." Alex smiled. "As for what I'm doing here... I'm remembering."

[Mithos]

Saturos fell lightly into step beside the stranger.
"But, I wonder, if the memory has been lost, does the imprint still remain? Though I can't remember this woman directly, did her words and actions have a impact on who I am?" he was troubled. "Did she effectively not exist at all? Is there still some traces of her in my perception?"
"Oh, I also found out I had been raising her son for the best twelve years or so; she died in childbirth." He gave a wry smile. "The world's funny like that, isn't it?"

He walked on for a few steps, kicking snow into the air ahead of him. To some it would be a grotesque sight, a grown man over six feet tall acting and talking like a child.
"It's strange, I've only just met you, but I'm talking like I've known you for a long time. But then," he paused, considering, then broke into a brilliant smile again. "I'm often like that."

[Delfeir]

Alex thought on the questions that the angel provided him with. "If you were to commit a crime, for example, and kill a man... losing the memory of that crime will not restore the man to life. And even if you cannot remember it, no doubt the effects of your action will linger in your consciousness. Whatever drove you to commit that action, whatever desperation or need you had within yourself to do this... that cannot be taken away."

He smiled faintly. "So this Tristia person may be gone, and she may even be forgotten... but your soul doesn't forget. Your humanity will remember her actions and you will forever continue to act as if you had known her, in the ways that she shaped you. So, too, will her son, through your actions... and the way she has shaped your actions." Alex wondered quietly if that meant Saturos had been the father, but something in the mannerisms of him seemed to suggest that he wasn't. Whether that was a fault of memory or not was questionable, but still.

"And perhaps it is better to forget. Because I haven't forgotten everything I've done, and it hasn't all been the best of things a man could do." He caught himself before he revealed more details, but he absently wondered why he was so freely talking and divulging details to the angel.

"It is curious, but perhaps that's just a facet of your nature that you've forgotten. Because I very, very much doubt that you know me." Despite that, Alex continued to study him as they walked. A faint, annoying noise was echoing through the halls of his memories as he did, but he still couldn't place where from.

[Mithos]

Saturos kicked at the snow, rather petulantly. "That's possible... that's what we've done shapes who we are, even without us knowing it." There was a pause. "They say that I've lived for two thousand years," he confessed. "Even if I can't remember it, do my actions still hang on me today? Am I bearing the weight of all those years? I don't know... I can't know, one way or the other."
"Maybe I, too, have done some things I may have regretted," he said, looking sideways at Alex. Already he was not as lighthearted as he had been.
He smiled then. "Thank you, though. It's comforting to know that she's still present, even after she's dead... it's too easy to think people simply cease to exist after they die; that the world doesn't remember them."

[Delfeir]

Alex had to keep from gritting his teeth. The points that the angel was speaking were almost identical to the ones that Alex had been pondering before this chance encounter, and once more the uncertainties were dredged up.

"Do we still bear the weight of our actions? I don't know. But then... maybe I do. No doubt in the same way that Tristia shapes you, you too shape the world around you, whether or not you remember it. And for those who have lived for two thousand years... perhaps you have influenced much, for better or worse."

He frowned. "Perhaps you are blessed in that you don't remember it. In that you don't know what you did. You are able to live without the uncertainty of the actions you have already performed. You may be uncertain of what they are... but you need not stew endlessly, pondering in hindsight whether or not it was the right thing to do."

Alex folded his arms, sighing heavily and closing his eyes for a moment. "You're welcome. I am fairly confident, though, that they still exist in some part after they die. Even if people forget... the world does not forget." His curiosity was continuing to gnaw at him as he pondered once more this angel. He had lived for two thousand years... that was, as far as Alex could tell, as far back as his original life and death had occurred. He had known no angels, though... so why was that familiarity bugging him so much?

It had be asked. "Tell me, angel... what is your name?"

[Mithos]

The angel spun in the snow, drawing his wings inward to speed his momentum before leaping and gently gliding to a stop, keeping in time with his companion the whole time. "But... if we are shaped by the impact people have on us, are our actions really completely our fault?"
"And those faults," he said, skipping ahead and walking backwards to look his companion in the eye, "if we can't remember them, what's to stop us from repeating them again? I can't learn from my mistakes, I could be repeating them again and again without even knowing it," he paused, eyes melancholic. "You, who learns from his mistakes, can be sure to correct them and to not repeat them. A child who falls will get up again and again until he doesn't fall anymore; what if he never learns?"
His voice was blue brushed on the snow-strewn wind.

His companion's question struck him, and like a bell his laughter chimed against the wind. The blue was washed away.
"Myuu, I thought I was more recognizable than that. So much for all the fame being a Leader accords," he said, smiling. "I'm Saturos; who're you?"

[Delfeir]

"Is the lesson really lost when the memory is, though? How much of it is actual conscious recognition, and how much of it is imprinted into ourselves beyond what we can identify by thinking and remembering?" Alex smirked. "These are the hard questions, angel, and we may never know the answers no matter how long and hard we strive to make sense of them. Keep in mind, too, that just because people remember... does not mean we always learn from those mistakes. People continue to make the same mistakes time and time again throughout their life in some cases. I would not let bother you so much."

Alex smiled... but the smile faded at the next words. Saturos. Saturos. It couldn't be... there had to be some mistake. But it matched. Two thousand years old, and the recognisable features were gradually swimming into focus and clicking into place from memories he'd long since put aside. Somehow, some way... Saturos had returned. How appropriate that he was an angel now... yet this was not the same person he'd known and worked with... and even used and cast aside.

"How is this even possible...?" Alex muttered, almost without realising that he'd said it. He just stared blankly at Saturos, wondering about the implications of this reunion. He didn't answer the question just yet - he barely even realised it had been asked.

[Mithos]

He looked at his companion plaintively. "If it makes no difference... then if someday I learn who I used to be, will it change who I am? If I ever regain my memories, will I become a different person? Am I truly the sum of all my past, or am I merely a fragment of sunshine, living only as it casts across the earth?"

He blinked at the muttered words, seemingly unrelated to the present conversation. "How is what possible?"

[Delfeir]

Alex didn't answer any further speculations about self, either because he didn't know or he no longer was focusing on the answer. Instead he simply stared at the angel, eyes narrowed and face showing concern and confusion.

"I knew a Saturos, once. Two thousand years ago, in fact... before he was killed by the Legendary Heroes in the era of... Kraden." There was a pause before that last word, as if he really had trouble saying it. "He died shortly before I was cast out of Weyard. Yet here you stand... I can see elements of him in you, and you share the same name. You were alive in the same age. Now there's no doubt that I'm seeing an angel."