Forums » Sci-Fi Roleplay » Travellers (Semi-Open RP between Tara and Catrin)

Catrin felt like she was crying, but was surprised not to feel the wetness on her cheeks. Until she realized the fur was probably keeping them away from her skin.

When Tara was finished, she rubbed her eyes and breathed in and out to compose herself. “That was … lovely.” She sipped some of the wine and smiled at Tara. “I was right – you have a lovely voice,” she announced with a wink.

Tara smiled, "Thanks, Catrin. I'll take that as a real compliment from you, considering how far you've travelled. You must have heard better voice than mine by miles."

"Never!" The AI declared, "In all the thousands of years I've been online, I've never heard a better voice than your's Mistress, I doubt anyone from anyuniverse anywhere could match you."

Tara giggled, looking embarrassed at the high praise, "You were on a warship for most of theose thousands of years, all the singing you heard was bawdy songs and drunk soldiers."

"And none of them could sing as well as you." The AI insisted.

Catrin gave Tara a slightly wry smile. “I'm not one to compare too much. I just know that I'd really love to remember this song as long as I'm able, to be able to take it with me when I'll be leaving this universe.”

"Wow..." Tara said, smiling, "That sounds wonderful. Imagine that, a tiny piece of me, even if it's just a memory, going to another universe."

"Just don't try to figure out a way to travel between universes too, Mistress." The AI said, "Ir's hard enough to keep yu out of trouble in this one."

"It'd be an invaluable academic opportunity." Tara said.

"I'd finish studying this universe before you tried to go pick apart another one." The AI said, "It'll make publishing your findings easier."

Catrin, a little surprised, tilted her head. “I'm sure that tens of thousands of worlds can keep you occupied better than different universes. At least you have colleagues here, scientists who pick up where you leave or can complement your research by researching the biology of the... um, what do you call them? Ah, indigenous sapients. Out there, you'd be alone and without technology.”

She smiled. “What do we do next? More wine?”

Tara nodded, "I suppose you're right. As for what we do now... wine sounds good..." Then she smiled slyly, "Since I've sang a song, maybe you could entertain us with one of your own?"

Catrin cheerily smiled back at Tara. “Oh, I'm not shy to sing.” She lifted her glass to her lips, drank some mode of the delicious wine, rested her glass on the edge of her chair and stood up, trying to pick a song... and then she had it.

She opened her mouth and started with a light, cheery tone, adding words to the melody after a moment. Quick words and cheerful tone in an unknown language. Not as melodic as Hight Terelain, but with an inner rhythm that was catchy to the listener.

Halfway through the song, it changed from light and happy to something darker, and it grew slower, only to bloom into slower, happy interlude... and then shift abruptly into sudden grief. The end sounded most poetic, and very melancholic.

Catrin took a deep breath after she finished singing and took back her wine, taking a sip. “It was a song about a goddess and a mortal man. They had an affair and unexpectedly fell in deep love while being aware that he'll die of old age in what will be a mere eyeblink to her. Then his king called for him to fight in a distant war and he left, fearing he'll never return and see his loved one again. But he did, and she was heavy with a child. They made peace with the fact that she'll stay young and healthy while he will wither, and prepared a home for their baby. But she died at childbirth, and the child with her. The end leaves us with the man being content that it's he who has to wait to see his family in afterlife, and not she. But he'll never be entirely happy again.”

She finished the wine in a single gulp.

Tara had listened to the whole thing with an enraptured expression, when it was finally done, and Catrin had finished explaining she said, "How sad... but beautiful in its own way." She smiled, "But it was a lovely song, and you have a beautiful voice."

"Indeed." The AI said with a nod, "It was well chosen, even poignant, considering the company."

Tara nodded, "Yes. My people have tales similar to that, normally it isn't a goddess involved, unless maybe it is Tara-Menil, but there are a lot of legends about immortals, or at least Ageless people, Terelains like myself, the long-lived Dragons, or even one of the lost Elder Races like the Cerendiel or the Fae, falling in love with someone doomed to die. Tales like that are... bittersweet, mostly cautionary."

"It is... frowned upon, for a Terelain to fall in love with a Younger Race, not due to any prejudice, or at least not anything overt, but because such unions only end in heartbreak when the mortal lover dies." The AI said, "Some Terelains who do succumb to such love affairs end up becoming afflicted with Eternity Shock, what's known in psychological circles as Immortal Depressive Syndrome."

Catrin bowed slightly, accepting the compliments. She gave out a bitter laugh when the AI mentioned the Eternity shock. On her way to get some more of the same wine, she shrugged a little. “One gets used to it. My first husband died quite young, in a battle. He was just 44.”

Tara frowned, "I'm sorry, Catrin." She said sincerely, "I've seen it happen, and it is always a terrible thing."

"You must be strong, to have borne such loss... especially many times over, as you em to have implied." The AI said softly, "It is the honest hope of the Terelains that one day they can defeat Death altogether. That was the promise of the Prophecy of The Exalted One... but even after it came to pass and the power of the Ancients was restored and Aerin was healed, it seems that Death was one wound that could not be made right."

Catrin, waiting for her wine, smiled at Tara, and nodded towards the AI. “Thank you. But... it was to be expected. Of course, it was difficult, but...” she shrugged again and realized that if felt sort of awkward in this body – surely they must have better gestures. “... well, you enjoy what you're able, when you can. I find that it's better to have and lose than not to have at all.

Whereas you seem to be prone to fixing life into stillness. To be fair, the idea of being with someone for eternity is a novel one to me.

I've never considered death to be a wound that must be healed. But I suppose that depends on what you think goes on after death. And it makes me wonder – why not focus on coming to terms with death rather than on trying to fight the inevitable? It's extremely rare for ageless beings to exist, most places' physics don't allow it. Even so, everyone and everything dies eventually.”

Her wine ready now, she took at and sat back down.

"Because Terelains believe that Death is a wound in the universe, literally. Something entirely unnatural, a thing to overcome, the ultimate form of The Corruption." The AI said, "They believe that when the universe was created by the Primordials aligned with Time that it was created to be a perfect fulfillment of Her vision, and that that vision did not contain Death. It was only through the intervention of the Primordials under Chaos that The Corruption was created; a sickness woven into the hearts of the Elder Gods of the universe, tasked to complete creation after the Primordials withdrew from it. Through the influence of the Corruption, some Elder Gods, like the Old Ones, were driven insane and perverted the very fabric of the Universe."

"It is therefore part of the blood-oath Father Terel swore himself and all his Children to, that we do all that we can to fight the Corruption and reverse it... and see that Time's will is done." Tara said, "It will be our ultimate vengeance upon the Old Ones for the murder of Mother Tara. If her's was the First Death, than what is more fitting in retaliation than the death of Death?"

"For Terelains, the only 'natural' death possible is the ending of the universe itself, at its appointed time." The AI said, "Perhaps it is because of their Ageless nature that they believe this; if they do not fade and wither and die without outside influences, then surely this must be the same for all things? Perhaps it is a futile goal, but is it not better to try to achieve such an impossibility, than to not try at all?"

Catrin, rather amazed, raised her eyebrows. “Oh. Well, if you really believe so, then I won't discuss it further, unless you want to. Who knows, maybe you are the one universe where death isn't supposed to exist,” she said neutrally.

The AI's tail flicked into a Terelain shrug, "It may just be a load of myth, misinterpretation and philosophical excuse-making, but how will we know that Death is impossible to overcome if we don't try?"

Tara chuckled, "My species is all about long-term goals. There are research projects whose short-term goals are things like improving FTL speeds or making better ship hulls, but whose ultimate stated goals are things like allowing the Terelain species to transcend physical reality, travel between galaxies, and even prevent or escape the End of the Universe itself." She 'shrugged', "Still, we've got a hundred trillion years to figure it out, so there's no real rush."

“Oh. Well, if you think like this, no wonder you suffer from Eternity Shocks and Immortal Depressive Syndromes. Eh... maybe it's a way for you to deal with the length of your lives. The few ageless species I've encountered who have existed long enough for the agelessness to have become remarkable ended up self-destructing. Well, what you're doing certainly provides variety to the mix,” she said with a sympathetic smile, then she looked into her glass.

Tara laughed, "Yes, well, when you live for an eternity, a hundred trillion years doesn't seem that long... or it does, until you've lived it and think 'damn, I should have had a Plan B' when you watch the last star explode and all of reality starts collapsing around you."

"So, Terelains are thinking up their Plan B in case Time doesn't come back and says 'nice job for helping my creation guys, here's a free lift to the next universe I've thought up'." The AI said, "And i we have our way, Agelessness will become the 'in' thing in this universe and we'll all figure out a way to stop, or run away from, the end of the universe anyway." The AI grinned, "Maybe you can pop back in a few trillion years and see how we got on?"

Catrin looked up and smiled. “Okay, first of all, how do you shrug? Like this?” she asked, repeating the tail gesture she thought the AI and Tara both did when expressing mild indifference.

“The thing is, how do you know something wonderful isn't waiting for you when you die? Perhaps it's the whole point of a life. You think you've made the best choice, but you'll never know. I, for one, actually hope to be dead in a few trillion years,” she commented with a wink at the AI, then grinned back. “But I think that my third glass of wine still tastes the same, and a breakdown because of some fictional lovers of Tara's or existential philosophising is hardly an excuse. Where is our variety?” she asked jokingly.

"It's nice to have the option available." Tara said, "After all, how do we know that the Afterlife won't be destroyed when this universe is?"

"As for you wine, Miss Catrin, it might help that you don't input the exact same commands each time you create some." The AI said, "Regardless, I am now altering the processor's programming so that the chemical composition of the wine is altered to a greater extent, this should alter the taste to your satisfaction."

"Oh, and yes, that's how Terelains shrug." Tara said, replicating the action for emphasis, "of course, the more obvious the action, the more powerful the emotion displayed."

Catrin 'shrugged', deciding not to comment any more for now. It would probably ruin the 'party'.

She smiled at the AI. “Well, I thought the point was to slightly change each new glass, or flask, even of the same kind. So that we can claim to be tasting the results of your minor alterations as an excuse for us to get drunk,” she explained slyly. Then she 'shrugged' again, trying to make it mild. What a useful gesture! Hopefully she hadn't distorted it to some obscenity. “Nevertheless, I think the wine was excellent.”

Tara drained the last of her glass and went back over to the processor and created more wine, "I spend decades at a time cut off from the galactic meta-civilisation, so I made doubly certain that all of the food and wine the processors make are of excellent quality." She laughed, "Even though I love my job, I'd probably go made without a drop of the good stuff. Don't get me wrong, some of the drink on the planet's I've visited are lovely, but there's nothing like a little taste of home on a long voyage."

"Indeed, Mistress. I trust you will enjoy yourself further, I've completed calibrations to the processor's programming." The AI said, sipping from its virtual wine glass.

Tara took her newly filled glass and sipped it warily, "Hmm... not bad."