vivala | 03: In Like A Lion

01: Pancake Week (Elysium)
Much as she despises the Orthodox Church, there was one tradition, Natalia thinks, with which she can truck, and that is the week before Lent being Pancake Week.

She has a small Ether stove and a little chalk sign: IT'S PANCAKE WEEK! Deliver a pancake! Ask me how!, with a small list of fillings, and a drawing of a penguin carrying a pancake wrapped around little herrings and a pleased expression.

Although, the ability to deliver a pancake, still warm, without breaking it, is a hell of a statement for a shipping company to make...

02: To Dance As The Queen Does
Once more, Natalia listens to distantly piped jazz and taps the rhythm carefully, gathering Ether, ice swirling in her hands as she moves to the beat.

And, once again, as her mind fills with other things, the spell breaks, sending little bits of powder snow all across the improvised dance floor, to evaporate.

She hums in annoyance. Of course, by now, surely someone would hear soft or hard jazz and come to investigate.

03: Unfurling Inner Lotus
While much of her time is given to maintaining her front or honing her marksmanship and spellcraft, time must be given to conditioning her body.

This is risky, because unlike the other forms of training, to do it she must engage her energies at their fullest. This is less a risk of her being hurt-- no more than usual-- but rather a risk of discovery; for no one notices a girl with black hair and black eyes, but a girl with blue stars shining in her eyes? Now that has been seen once or twice, to say nothing about how it might touch on the senses of those sensitive to Ether.

But it's the only way to make sure she's training to her utmost, and so utmost she must go-- keeping up with others, never mind the Empire, demands it.

Thus it is that someone as apparently light as Natalia Koutolika is now lifting sacks of shot that are obviously as heavy as she is, and tossing them some distance, besides.

04: Special Deliveries

This was the spot. Natalia stood on the deck of the Humboldt in the little shelter the rocks of the island made, and waited to make contact.

As much as she wanted to recover and utilize larger ships, even ships that might be better suited to the line (intentionally), ships like the little sea sloop were too useful for Penguin Logistics' other purpose: smuggling packages, people, and information.

Was her chronometer wrong? She kept a weather eye out. Who is meeting her? And for what?

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All three of Link's wooing accomplishments do sound great, but sadly, they're a bit beyond the scope of Aira's reality. Well, two of them are. She does have a tiny house now that she could hand over. Or maybe the forces of darkness are next, if the Empire counts, but no way is she sleeping that long until she's dead.

Anyway! Aira has experienced Nat's icy affliction firsthand, but she really doesn't know or understand the whole deal. So she shouldn't be speaking with any authority, for multiple reasons, but...

"No one worth dating is gonna be scared of little ice. If you're honest and upfront about it, then it'll be fine!"

"While this is true, there's limits, not least my own comfort." While her heart has hurt less as time has gone on, it's still an ever-present threat-- at least to her.

Link's puzzled frown intensifies.

Normally, this is the point where people will helpfully explain at length to Link, while he just helpfully nods his head every now and then. But instead Natalia keeps talking like he already knows, and...is he going to have to actually use words to ask?!

As a last-ditch effort before resorting to that, Link leans very obviously into Natalia's field of vision. And stares.

Explanation, please.

Aira finds herself looking between the two of them again. It does sort of feel like she's smack in the middle of a comedy routine, but she doesn't want to hurt Natalia's feelings by making light of the topic—inscrutable as those feelings can seem to her.

"Um. Do you want to talk about it? Mr. Link looks pretty lost, if you feel like filling him in a little."

Natalia breathes in. "The short of it is this: my heart must remain frozen. The form this takes, it turns out, may be varied, but..."

She forms an aster out of Ice Ether. "If I become hot-headed, or angry, or sorrowful, or joyful-- I have few options. I may express it in my ice and movements. I may suppress the emotion. Or i express it openly, and my heart and body begin to freeze."

Link's not an expressive person either; he doesn't tend to wear his emotions visibly on his face. But someone who knows him well, someone who can read small micro-expressions and the minutiae of his body language can tell that this explanation upsets him.

Natalia can't...feel things? Not without turning to ice?

"You're cursed?" he says softly.

Aira folds her arms and briefly glances away. No doubt that there's some sadness and a bit of guilt showing on her face, and she doesn't want either of them looking too hard.

Is that really what it is? A curse? She'll have to do better with helping Nat find some kind of cure—somehow.

"It's not all bad. Without it, I wouldn't have survived Bluvink, and I'm getting better at controlling it all."

She looks away from Link's gaze, now. "But-- if by 'curse', you mean 'I cannot fully control or be rid of it myself', then yes."

That sounded very much like a curse to Link. Even if Natalia thought it wasn't all bad.

Link falls silent for a long moment, before speaking.

"...Can we help?"

"Yeah."

Aira snaps herself out of her own funk, and she steps up behind Nat to affectionately cuff her shoulder again.

"You just have to ask! You know that, right?"

"I know. I just... I don't know where I would begin. Or. What I would be like if it were removed from me." She looks at her hands. "Will I be recognizable as myself without it?"

"...You'd still be you," Link says. "Even if you change."

Link knows this, from personal experience. He's never had a frozen heart - but he did lose all of his memories. He'd had the same thoughts, the same worries.

And as he'd regained fragments of his memories, when he'd been able to talk to Zelda...he'd learned that he had changed. Significantly. He wasn't the same as he'd been, before the Calamity.

But he wasn't a completely different person either. He wasn't unrecognisable.

Aira gives her shoulder a warm squeeze this time.

"Of course you would. But, I mean, I get why you're conflicted."

Aira has changed a lot about herself over the past several months—before she arrived in Esthere, and after. There's no denying that the effort has made her a much better person.

"... Change can definitely be a good thing. Trust me."

"I..." She pauses, shakes her head. Looks to each of them in turn as she speaks, reaches a hand out. "Thank you. Both of you. I... Truly, do not know where to begin with untangling it, or I would tell you where to start. I've made some progress by looking at stuff in the Vault on curses, but... Those are all directed towards others applying maledictions to you. And... If there's one thing I am sure of now, it's--

"I did this to myself, somehow."

"...You don't remember?"

Had Natalia also lost her memories?

Aira really isn't sure what she means, despite hanging on her words. Idly, she's shifted to giving Nat's shoulders a little massage. Hopefully that isn't too distracting, but it functions vaguely as a wordless "you're welcome."

But yes, she's as curious as Link is, and so waits quietly for Nat to answer.

Natalia closed her eyes. Breathed. How many times has she spoken these words now? Too many. Not nearly enough. "It's not that I don't remember. I remember the moment, all too clearly, but... Do you remember exactly what you did, the last time you were so lost in anger and grief that all you wanted was to do anything to stop the pain?"

Her eyes don't focus in the here and now. "In that way, I... Did something. And when next I woke, my heart was ice."

The last time Link was lost in anger and grief? Well, he spent who knows how long riding around on the Light Dragon's forehead, sobbing into the fur on her forehead. Then when he couldn't stand to do that anymore, he went and fought every single lynel he knew about. Then waited for the next blood moon, and did it all over again.

But that was...not exactly what Natalia did.

"...You cursed you," Link says slowly. Thinking about what exactly that must mean.

03: In Like A Lion

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