T. A. Star
patreon
37 - Mind Mender
🕑 Added 2024-07-10 00:00:05 +0000 UTC
“Phoenix, you can’t ever accept that lie,” Everin said sternly to her, “Trickster cannot be trusted. Even when she tells the truth, sometimes, it is misdirection and only intended to make you fall prey to the trick. The best thing you can do is forget everything she said.”
She looked back towards Uriel, “But if she marked you–”
“It’s not worth the price, Princess,” Uriel said with a sad smile, “I agree with Everin. Forget everything she said.”
Phoenix thought about arguing, then wondered if, by doing so, she would be playing into whatever alternate goal the Trickster had. The endless spiraling of wondering. The only truth was that she would never know what that particular goddess was truly trying to accomplish.
She gave a heavy sigh and nodded, “Fine. I’ll refuse her offer.”
They all heard the goddess’ voice fill the room once again as she simply gave a disapproving tsk and said, “Pity.”
“Waste of Aetherius, in my opinion,” Everin muttered, “Such a petty use.”
Phoenix chuckled at that, remembering the Avatar’s distaste for their frugality. She turned back to Uriel and asked, “Now, what were you wanting to tell me before Trickster so rudely interrupted?”
The cinderen glanced towards the rainbow voxen, then at the empty seat where the goddess had been sitting moments ago, before finally shaking his head, “I’ll tell you later. You’re going to be late for your appointment with Priest Jacob if we don’t leave soon.”
“Oh, shoot,” she said, glancing over to the weird celestial clock hanging in the air near the moon alcove, “We better go get the others and portal over. You and Daze were gonna go visit the temple of the Parent while Saiya checked in with the Traveler, right?”
“Yeah,” the mage confirmed, then turned again towards Everin and said, “Rayna mentioned stopping by Rebel’s temple, too, since we’d all be in the temple district. Looks like you left an impression.”
“I’ll stay here and play with the kitty!” Presley announced happily from beside her.
Phoenix and Uriel both stared at the little girl for a beat of silence before breaking out into laughter.
“Of course, Bliss would somehow end up here,” Phoenix managed to say, “It’s where the best spoiling cook lives now.”
Phoenix sat on the plush couch covered in a variety of differently shaped pillows. Pillows of every color were strewn about all over this particular room. She had just finished explaining her latest craziness to Priest Jacob who sat in a chair across from her. The bald cinderen had recently reached Emerald himself as many of the older Sapphire Casters had during this prolonged blood moon.
As a mind mender, she wasn’t entirely sure what kind of powers he had, but with an aura free of Monster Seed usage, she worried about what that said for the number of challenges this blood moon had provided for him as well. How many people like her came to him broken and in need of mending?
He gave a small smile as he said, “I never thought I’d ever ask this to anyone, but how do you feel about getting personally approached by so many deities?”
“At first I felt… unworthy?” she said, uncertain of the right word, “Like, I was nobody. I mean, sure, I was a Wayfarer from another reality, but I was also just a clueless girl who didn’t even last a few days without dying.”
“But you don’t feel that way now?”
“Oh, I still feel pretty clueless,” she said with a laugh, and Jacob joined her.
“It’s okay to not know everything, Phoenix. I’ve lived in this reality my whole life and still don’t know a lot of things.”
“I know,” she said with a nod, “I’m not feeling as lost as I did at first, at least.”
“What about that first part,” the mender asked, “Do you still feel ‘unworthy’?”
She gave a shrug and admitted, “A bit but at least now I know they’re just doing it because of my talent rather than some grand expectation. That was actually a relief. Now it’s just getting annoying that they keep popping up whenever they feel like it.”
“Why is that annoying?”
“Because it…” she stared down at the pillow in her lap that she liked to hold during these sessions as she searched for the explanation, “It makes me feel like they’re just using me like some kind of… tool. Just a handy lock-pick to open reality doors.”
“But you said ‘no’ this time. A tool doesn’t get to do that,” Jacob noted.
That caused her to grin a bit, “I guess not. Looks like I’ve upgraded to a disobedient pet?”
The healer chuckled and shook his head, “You’re not a pet either, Phoenix.”
She rolled her eyes, “I feel like you have to say that as a mind mender.”
He laughed, “Just like you, I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to. That includes saying that you are a brilliant, generous, and kind young woman who has struggled through a lot of difficult and unique situations and come out the other side all the stronger for it.”
“Pretty sure I come out weaker when I lose progress on my abilities ‘cause I died again,” she remarked.
The cinderen shook his head again but was still smiling as he said, “I’m glad to see your sense of humor hasn’t suffered either.”
She laughed, “Sometimes I feel like I laugh just to keep from crying.”
“A lot of us do,” the priest admitted, “Sometimes it’s what keeps us from drowning in our sorrows. I’m sure with all the loss lately, you’ve witnessed a variety of ways people are trying to cope with their grief.”
She nodded, falling silent. Her mind wandered to the memorial and the tears, laughter, and anger that were on display.
After the silence stretched for a while, Jacob prompted, “Was there anything else you wanted to talk about today? You seem to have a handle on how to deal with gods now.”
The Wayfarer gave a short laugh, “Ha. Just bark instead of bite the bait?”
He chuckled, “I believe you did well this time, honestly. You didn’t just listen to what Trickster had to offer but asked your friends for advice and then decided for yourself if it was a risk you were willing to take. Doing that alone, whether you said yes or no, shows a great amount of growth to me.”
“How so?” she asked in confusion.
Jacob smiled gently, “Because one of the hardest things we can do sometimes is ask for help.”
Saiya was feeling more frustrated than normal today. After helping get Phoenix back to sleep and waking up much too abruptly, she just wanted to spoil herself with a nice nap stretched out in the sun… but this was Tulim.
It was overcast, and even when the sun did shine, it was still cold. She missed the sun and sand. She wasn’t attached to Epa Toivo specifically, but she missed the warmth of it. At least this morning, she had woken up warm.
Patricia’s news and feelings hadn’t been pleasant, and the odd vibes she had been getting from Uriel made it seem like she hadn’t gotten the full story of what happened with Phoenix and the Trickster showing up.
The pair had given the rest of the party the rundown as they had made their way to the temple district before splitting up and the weird mixture of fear and guilt coming off the Mage was nagging at her mind. He made her so… frustrated!
She had hoped the trip to the temple of the Traveler would be a nice distraction from her current mood. There was no quest for her, though. Not even new reading materials for her to take at the moment. Instead, she was told by the attending priest to simply focus on helping her party members with their journeys.
This seemed far out of her league, however. She was just starting this path as a mind mender, and two of her teammates were currently seeing one of the foremost experts in the field.
Even Dazien felt like a challenge when she looked at the situation he was in. Of those two “expert level cases,” he was getting adopted into the noble family of one while having been the partner of the other for years. Not to mention his history before that as an orphaned gemite. The only thing keeping the Defender from becoming Priest Jacob’s patient at this point was an extremely traumatic event, such as prolonged captivity or coming back from the dead.
That only left her sister and she was too biased to properly guide that person in that capacity. Not to mention that Rayna was one of the most grounded people she had ever met.
Saiya found herself wandering from the Traveler’s temple over to that of the Mender where she knew Phoenix was still at for the moment. She made her way up the floors till she found the corner room where her friend was currently talking with the mind mender, and she wondered if Phoenix would ever want to talk with her like that. Ask her for guidance…
She shook her head and tried to sit in one of the armed chairs in the hall beside the door but quickly gave up, not liking how tiny and uncomfortable they were for her tails.
As the door opened and Phoenix was saying goodbye, she was surprised by how casual Priest Jacob appeared. He wasn’t a wizened old man dressed in full priest robes of the mender. Instead, he looked no different than a random person on the street. Casual clothes, casual posture, relaxed and welcoming smile, like he had all the time in the world.
“I’ll see you in a couple of weeks, alright? Oh, hello there,” the priest said as he spotted her, “A lovely voxen wearing the sigil of the Traveler? You must be Saiya.”
She nodded and returned his smile, “I see Phoenix talks to you about me?”
He chuckled and reassured her, “Only good things.”
“And that one time where you fell into the lake and I thought you got hit with some kind of shrinking spell,” the Wayfarer teased. Phoenix seemed to be in a much better mood already from the two-hour session the pair had just finished.
“I count humor as a good thing,” Jacob clarified, causing both of them to chuckle.
“Are you ready to go meet up with the others?” Phoenix asked her.
“Actually, if Priest Jacob could spare a few minutes?” she asked hesitantly, “I just have a few questions about being a mind mender.”
“I think I can spare a few,” the cinderen replied with another smile, “I was about to get some lunch soon anyways. Want to come in real quick?”
Saiya nodded and entered the room a bit cautiously, surprised by the explosion of pillows everywhere.
“Feel free to sit wherever –floor included– or stand if you’d prefer,” the priest stated as he closed the door.
“I’m only going to be a few minutes, so standing is fine,” she replied.
“Alright,” Jacob replied, moving past her and further into the room as he leaned against the arm of one of the plush chairs but didn’t sit in it. “So, what do you want to talk about exactly?”
“How do you get people like Uriel and Phoenix to open up to you?” she asked bluntly, carefully watching his reactions and emotions though she quickly realized that the Emerald Caster was letting her get everything as he smiled brightly.
“I listen,” he replied simply, “I observe. I don’t think of it as trying to get them to confide in me at all.”
She scrunched her nose in annoyance, “I do that.”
He laughed, “Saiya, do you mind if I ask you a more personal question?”
“That’s fine,” the voxen said hesitantly.
“When was the last time you spoke with a mind mender like myself?”
“What?” she asked in confusion, “I haven’t. I don’t need it. I read a few books about how to cope with things. My traumas happened so long ago, I’ve learned to move past them already.”
“I see…” the priest replied, his smile dimming a bit, “I’m curious. You’ve been a Healer for quite a while now. If someone got struck with an attack, your response is to heal them, right?”
“Of course.”
“Do you tell Dazien not to shield the others from harm since you can just heal any of the damage after it happens?”
“No, there’s no reason not to prevent injuries before they happen.”
“Well, is there a reason not to go see a mind mender before you think you need it?”
“If there’s nothing to mend, then why spend the time?”
“The mind isn’t like the body. You can’t see what damage has been done to it. To continue the analogy, the effects are like an invisible Bane and slowly eat away at a person’s personality until there’s little resemblance to what they were before. Seeing a mind mender regularly can help detect the Bane earlier and hopefully lessen the damage it does.”
She fell silent at that, mulling over the idea. Thinking back to her original question, she asked, “Are you suggesting that they don’t open up to me because I need to see a mind mender?”
Jacob chuckled, “No, I don’t believe it’s really a matter of trust in you that’s an issue, Saiya. They both trust you with their lives and more of their secrets than most.”
“Then why don’t they talk to me like they talk to you? Does Uriel still keep secrets from you?”
“It’s not appropriate for me to answer that. Divulging what I know of them would be a breach of trust that I would never do.”
Saiya found herself feeling frustrated once more at the lack of answers. It felt like no matter how much she searched, she could never find a clear path forward with her friends.
“The best advice I could give you is to simply be patient. I hear you’re pretty good at that.”
“There are limits,” she said in a rare grumble.
Jacob chuckled, raised an eyebrow, and asked, “Are there?”
She frowned in thought, the question reminding her of a passage she had read recently from one of her new books from the Traveler’s clergy, “I read that limitations are something we impose upon ourselves. We cultivate our abilities by pushing beyond those boundaries. So, in theory, we are all limitless unless we stop ourselves.”
The priest nodded, “Sound theory,” then he smiled, “I guess you’ll want to try pushing those boundaries then?”
Saiya nodded, lost in her new idea: Maybe a little push is all he needs…
