Meditations in Miteyose
Jun. 7th, 2012 03:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwebSelf-assigned, no word limit. Something to prepare for upcoming games.
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I used to have a meditation room for things like this, back in my manor. I do believe I prefer this, though. It's unusual to think that you're as safe out here in the wilderness as you are back at your home. That would...mmm, not be the case where I matured.
“I wouldn't exactly call this wilderness,” Belle responded wryly to the voice in her head, “but it is a nice park. And frankly, your home dimension sucked goats. I suppose that should be expected from a place that openly acknowledges itself as 'Hell', though. Hell is not usually a tourist hotspot. Well...not a voluntary one at least. I imagine it gets tourists, and they get plenty hot.”
Dragonfly gave a wicked chuckle, as well as the mental sensation Belle had come to associate with the physical gesture of shaking a finger. Ah ah, Belle. You know better than that.
“Doesn't mean I can't snark.”
I'm coming to believe that nothing does.
Belle grinned and let her automatic response die unspoken. Dragonfly could sense it anyways, and they had come out here to try and get some work done. The well of power that had been Mistress Dragonfly's and was now Belle's was there – Dragonfly had shown Belle how to find it, how to feel it within her, but the rest was proving difficult.
You have to forge your own connections with the power, Dragonfly had told her. It's the same power I used, but you are not me. You don't fight like I did, you don't think like I do, and you won't use this power of ours the same way I did. You can't even touch it the same way I did – you don't have the paths and channels I forged to draw on it. I can show you where it is, and I can teach you how to make those connections and what you might do with them, but until you can draw on that energy through your own channels, rather than the shadows of mine, you'll always struggle with it.
And apparently the way Aris devils made those connections, at least before they learned their Names and could really come to grips with themselves, was to meditate somewhere safe, secure, and free of both distraction and threat and sort of...stare intently at the energy until it did something. That was a terrible way to describe it, but Belle didn't even begin to have the words to describe the sort of dreamlike, semi-lucid hyperfocus Dragonfly had shown her would be necessary to create the mental and spiritual channels and connections she would need. It would be difficult – Aris devils who made it this far usually had several years' training in the meditative techniques needed and had established at least some basic connections with their abilities first. But Belle had the advantage of prior experience, in a way, and secondhand knowledge of just what sort of power she was trying to connect to, if not how she would go about using it.
And at least she didn't have to worry about establishing a secure fortress before trancing herself so that she didn't get attacked and killed while she was vulnerable. Really, Dragonfly's home dimension had been just a shitty place to grow up.
So Belle had taken some time off from Rana's classes and hiked herself to Miteyose Park, two hour's bus ride away from Central and a half-hour's hike away from the bus stop on top of that. She had a small pack of field supplies, enough food for about three days and a purifier canteen Sara had let her borrow for the trip. She had to get a grip on this; trying to tap Dragonfly's power directly, beyond the trickles of it that flowed through her body naturally, was intensely difficult and tended to cause her nasty headaches. Even then, she couldn't do it well; when she could call up Dragonfly's power she could rarely do much with it beyond radiating it uncontrollably, which didn't last past Rana clamping down spell-dampers on her and smacking her soundly across the mouth. Trying to take on this Advanced Course Hell that dear old sensei kept threatening with nothing more than her hammer and some minor improvements in her physical conditioning wasn't an option.
“So...what do you think of this spot, huh?” Belle asked. She was at the edge of a clearing in the woods, along the edge of one of the cliffs than ran alongside the Miteyose River. The clearing was centered on the large boulder which had caused it in the first place, warmed under the sun and with a clear view of the forests around and beneath it.
As good as we're likely to find, Dragonfly agreed. Let us set up camp and commence. There is much to do and little time to do it in.
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I used to have a meditation room for things like this, back in my manor. I do believe I prefer this, though. It's unusual to think that you're as safe out here in the wilderness as you are back at your home. That would...mmm, not be the case where I matured.
“I wouldn't exactly call this wilderness,” Belle responded wryly to the voice in her head, “but it is a nice park. And frankly, your home dimension sucked goats. I suppose that should be expected from a place that openly acknowledges itself as 'Hell', though. Hell is not usually a tourist hotspot. Well...not a voluntary one at least. I imagine it gets tourists, and they get plenty hot.”
Dragonfly gave a wicked chuckle, as well as the mental sensation Belle had come to associate with the physical gesture of shaking a finger. Ah ah, Belle. You know better than that.
“Doesn't mean I can't snark.”
I'm coming to believe that nothing does.
Belle grinned and let her automatic response die unspoken. Dragonfly could sense it anyways, and they had come out here to try and get some work done. The well of power that had been Mistress Dragonfly's and was now Belle's was there – Dragonfly had shown Belle how to find it, how to feel it within her, but the rest was proving difficult.
You have to forge your own connections with the power, Dragonfly had told her. It's the same power I used, but you are not me. You don't fight like I did, you don't think like I do, and you won't use this power of ours the same way I did. You can't even touch it the same way I did – you don't have the paths and channels I forged to draw on it. I can show you where it is, and I can teach you how to make those connections and what you might do with them, but until you can draw on that energy through your own channels, rather than the shadows of mine, you'll always struggle with it.
And apparently the way Aris devils made those connections, at least before they learned their Names and could really come to grips with themselves, was to meditate somewhere safe, secure, and free of both distraction and threat and sort of...stare intently at the energy until it did something. That was a terrible way to describe it, but Belle didn't even begin to have the words to describe the sort of dreamlike, semi-lucid hyperfocus Dragonfly had shown her would be necessary to create the mental and spiritual channels and connections she would need. It would be difficult – Aris devils who made it this far usually had several years' training in the meditative techniques needed and had established at least some basic connections with their abilities first. But Belle had the advantage of prior experience, in a way, and secondhand knowledge of just what sort of power she was trying to connect to, if not how she would go about using it.
And at least she didn't have to worry about establishing a secure fortress before trancing herself so that she didn't get attacked and killed while she was vulnerable. Really, Dragonfly's home dimension had been just a shitty place to grow up.
So Belle had taken some time off from Rana's classes and hiked herself to Miteyose Park, two hour's bus ride away from Central and a half-hour's hike away from the bus stop on top of that. She had a small pack of field supplies, enough food for about three days and a purifier canteen Sara had let her borrow for the trip. She had to get a grip on this; trying to tap Dragonfly's power directly, beyond the trickles of it that flowed through her body naturally, was intensely difficult and tended to cause her nasty headaches. Even then, she couldn't do it well; when she could call up Dragonfly's power she could rarely do much with it beyond radiating it uncontrollably, which didn't last past Rana clamping down spell-dampers on her and smacking her soundly across the mouth. Trying to take on this Advanced Course Hell that dear old sensei kept threatening with nothing more than her hammer and some minor improvements in her physical conditioning wasn't an option.
“So...what do you think of this spot, huh?” Belle asked. She was at the edge of a clearing in the woods, along the edge of one of the cliffs than ran alongside the Miteyose River. The clearing was centered on the large boulder which had caused it in the first place, warmed under the sun and with a clear view of the forests around and beneath it.
As good as we're likely to find, Dragonfly agreed. Let us set up camp and commence. There is much to do and little time to do it in.
