You open your mouth and a hoarse sound without words escapes from it. The Lady smiles softly, gently, and you notice for the first time that what you took for very light blonde hair is sunlight, trapped in...silver? Tarnished silver...
"Take your time," it encourages, gently. "Time is strange, here outside of the world."
"We're in the Dreaming Sea?" you ask, confused, and she laughs brightly.
"That's a new name," the Lady tells out. "I do think I like it. Like a sea...yes, I think we are. So there's time, for you to say what you're feeling. Here."
You get.
You get scooped.
You get scooped up like a doll and carried to a mossy log, and there you are sat, before your new friend(?) sits next to you and stretches its wing around you. The feathers are warm, and soft, and safe. The Everlasting Lady waits, patiently, sometimes rubbing gentle circles around the back of your hand with its thumb. Saying what you're feeling is almost as bad as the feelings are, but with time, your courage equals it. Eventually.
Damn the way your voice shakes, though. "...I'm terrified," you admit. "I've already...I've let down so many people already. Hurt more, just trying to help the ones I haven't failed yet. Everyone else has lost something I never had in the first place and it feels like...it...like if I stretch my hand out to comfort them they'll shatter. Like I don't have the right. But I want to help. I want to be a good friend." You swallow. "...So they'll like me."
Your conversation partner trills a sigh, saying words in a language you don't understand, and rests its head atop yours. You've been shorter than everyone you've met so far but you are much shorter than the Lady; Jill is shorter than the Lady. "You got dealt a pretty bad hand, little flower. Once more the world has reverted to chaos, whose one and only law is that wasps lay their eggs in living things...but some things stay true. If someone only values you for what you can do for them, that person isn't a good friend. Do you like Jill because she's useful?"
Oh hey Jill's a woman, now you don't have to ask -
"I said it so you'd stop feeling too awkward to ask and end up never asking," the Lady comments.
"...Are you reading my mind?"
"Not exactly. Now answer," here the Lady pokes your nose again, grinning playfully, "my question." You give the matter thought. Long, hard thought, and the process of thinking it through claws back the tears that have been trying to spill from your eyes. At last, you shake your head, and you are rewarded with a soft smile. The Lady gently ruffles your hair. "Have a little faith in her then. Maybe as the two of you get to know each other better, it might turn out you're not good friends for each other. It can always go wrong, you know. But...what if it doesn't? Fear is an old friend to the living, but it has a nasty habit of insisting that it's right all the time. Hope gets its own back too, you know."
You nod. Take in a shaky breath. Let it out. Breathe in. Out. Close your eyes. "...Why talk to me? I'm no one. I haven't done anything to...to talk to a god."
"Not a god," the Lady repeats. "And if you keep on that track this'll be our last talk until it's time for you to come live here with me, Orchid. But..." It looks away, out at the waterfall. "You're right, in that you haven't done anything very special, but the funny thing about that is...I've never asked anyone to do anything special to 'deserve' to talk to me. I talk to everyone. Often our first talks are like this, when someone has experienced death for the first time, and they need a friend. Often the ones close to them are grieving too, and they feel like their pain is a burden on people who have burdens enough, so I come to them. As I've come to you."
You open your mouth. Shut it.
Open it again: "But why?"
"A long time ago, a man who thought he would die alone experienced a manifestation, and when he lived he told everyone about his beautiful friend, whom he called Stella, and he said she was a god, and that she loved him, and would love them too." The Lady turns her head to look at you again, rueful and playful at the same time. "I was made to be a friend. And when I became enough of a person to decide for myself what I wanted to be...it felt nice. And now I gather those who need to depart, and I give them a home, for as long as they should want it. Sometimes they're angry at me. They wanted me to be the god they imagined and not the friend that I am, or to save their life, or...well, or. But I never said to anyone that I could or would or will do those things. I can be a friend. I can't be a savior."
"Could you have stopped Impact?" you ask, your voice small, and scared.
"Little flower, Impact was inevitable. I'm not even sure if a real god could have stopped it. The ones I hang out with would have, if they could." Guilt flashes across the Lady's face, and she looks away. "...We'll speak again. Try not to yell when you wake up. It's traditional for me to give a gift, when I first have this talk with someone, but circumstances being what they are...I'm sorry. I can't reach into Domus right now without getting refracted, not until things calm down. So I'm going to have to leave it in your body."
"...To be cut out???"
She laughs, surprised, and flashes that reassuring, glorious smile at you again. "No, no little flower, nothing like that. It's just that it'll have to draw on, well, you, to work. Shoddy gift-giving on my part, but...well." She leans in, and presses a warm kiss to your forehead. "Tell you what. When things are calmer, and you've decided who you want to be, I'll get you a better one. Good luck."
You wake, feeling more rested than you have in your life...
The Everlasting Lady knows you better than you know yourself. Pick 1 and gain it; this is her gift to you
[ ] Somewhere in this city is a person wearing your face and speaking with your voice. You know where it is.
[ ] You know, as if remembering, of a lab where refractions like the statues were studied. You have a master key in your mind.
[ ] You will never be happy if you can't be safe; you can send people to sleep with a touch, and a bit of blood loss.
[ ] One day you will fly with your own wings. Today, they have just started growing in.
