#containyourmainposure

questions for the mun, regarding the muse.

12. What about your muse amuses you?

Definitely his tendency to get into “trouble”, though admittedly, much of that is due to me sending memes and stuff, but it is always so amusing to see him stumble headfirst into a situation that is uncomfortable for him in a comical sense.

“It depends on the size of the olive, I would think,” Mikazuki turned to examine the dish in her hand. “But I am afraid that I do not know very much about them.” The bard’s voice wandered over them, and he only turned half an ear toward it. Other distractions abounded--a crying child, a ghost whispering on the street corner, the unending babble of vendors and customers alike. Somehow, the very air felt painful, but he merely rested his hand upon the hilt of his blade, thumb rubbing at the wrappings. Seeing her face, however, he spoke up once more in offer of a distraction.

“Ah! Greetings, Leah! I hope you’ve been well.”

He is, in complete honesty, baffled when the post moogle finds him in the wastes of Dravania and stuffs the letter into his hand before huffing and puffing back to wherever it came from. He recognized the ink, the sweeping script, and the mere sight of it brought peace to his ever-burning heart. She was alive. Of course, he had not a single doubt about it--he would know if she passed. Her presence was a soothing song in the back of his mind. Or perhaps a bright star against the night black backdrop of his darkness, a flower in the sea of metallic gold. And how he worried for her, ever did he worry about her, his ears open in search of any news that could be of use for her. 

“Hold.” 

Relief blossomed in his breast--he had also not known that the delivery moogles could make it this far. The creature looked as if it wanted to groan, turning back and forth as if searching for danger.

“The dragons shall not touch you. Stay, whilst I reply. It will only take a moment.”

It was not a question. With a flourish, he wrote his letter in return.

Leonora listened quietly and attentively to all that Sceada spoke. She neither smiled nor frowned. Only her eyes held in them a glow of warmth, knowing full well the words that would follow.

“My dear,” she said softly, “you need not worry about insulting me. I am not a woman who places limits on love, but rather would see it grow in all directions. No, I have other concerns…”

Here, she let out a deep sigh and gazed upon him wearily. It was not a look of sheer unhappiness; it was an old resignation to the truth. This moment had been building for months.

“Though you profess such a grand love for me,” she said, “how can you claim to know me? Sceada, you are a good man with a kind heart, but long have you seen me as a woman of pure and whole goodness–a woman of kindness, of love, and nothing else. We know each other emotionally, but what do you know about me intellectually? About my thoughts, and the details of my life?”

She shook hear head, drawing her hands behind her back. Where she could not articulate her concerns, they were written in creases upon her brow.

“I have felt that you fell in love with me too quickly. That you fell in love with me before you knew who I am within, past the smiles and flowers and laughs. I have never revealed to you the great sadness welling in my heart, nor intimated to you certain details of my life–because I wanted you to know me first. I wanted your love of me to be true and whole, rather than premature.”

She twitched her shoulders.

“My love of you will never change. I am a free loving woman, a poly-amorous woman when I am not asked for exclusivity. It is rare when I consent to it, or desire it, because of such cases as this. But I must implore you to question why you fell so passionately in love with me before you knew very much about who I am. I implore you to consider that maybe you fell in love with an idea of me, and I should like for you to consider if that isn’t what you have done to other lovers in your life.”

Another sigh. She leaned against the wall, cradling herself in her arms. The weight of her feelings spread silently over her mind, crushing the echoes of her thoughts slowly, steadily before they could assume the expression of words. For a moment, she stood there with them, her eyes searching the ceiling beams for the right thing to say. Something that wasn’t so hopeless or painful.

Then, it came to her.

“If you and Maria know each other in a capacity that is unique to any other relationship,” she whispered, “then you may be in love with Maria the person. And if that is the case, I would suggest that you cast away Leonora the ideal, and went to Maria’s side. I should like to meet her, too, eventually.”

Her reaction, though entirely understandable and probably even to an extent expected, frightens him.

Her words, clear and true as they were, stir up a fear in him, the very same fear he had felt before. The fear he felt when he first learned of her leaving, the fear he felt too when a friendship precious to him was on the verge of breaking apart:

The fear of losing her.

And it shows on his countenance. His breathing is heavier than usual, and his sapphire eyes opened wider than ordinarily, not to mention his fingers, which have clenched to fists grasping fiercely at his robe. He wants desperately to say something, wants to defend himself - but he stays silent. He... he had to listen her, had to let her speak. For he knows... this conversation was inevitable.

But that does not change how much her words hurt.

“how can you claim to know me?”

“We know each other emotionally, but what do you know about me intellectually? About my thoughts, and the details of my life?”

He cannot deny the truth behind these words, cannot deny that he did not know Leonora as well as he’d wish to. He had often wanted to change that, but never dared to ask. ‘I will wait until she is ready to tell me’, he had always thought, but what was intended as understanding and respect had been naught but passiveness and perceived indifference. Truly, he was a fool...

“I implore you to consider that maybe you fell in love with an idea of me, and I should like for you to consider if that isn’t what you have done to other lovers in your life.”

Was this what the goddess had spoken of, what she had meant when she questioned the honesty of his feelings, when she spoke of how easily he seemed to love? Did he truly only feel love for others because they made him feel as if he held a worth after all?

He does not want to believe this, does not want to consider it true. And yet still, it seemed ever so logical, and the rational side of him knew this. Whether it was true or not, that did not matter right now; it had appeared thus either way. Perhaps it was truly as the deity had told him: Until he understood himself, until he valued himself, how could he truly love another...?

“I would suggest that you cast away Leonora the ideal, and went to Maria’s side.“

It is with these final words she offers him that the Burmecian finally snaps out of his melancholy, and loosens the grip of his hands just like the icy grip of fear had lessened. Yes... rationally speaking, that would likely be for the best, would spare him this predicament he believed himself stuck in. If he stayed with Maria and forgot about Leonora, then he would not have to feel guilty for loving another, for there’d no longer be another. It would be simple, logical, rational.

But I cannot do that.

Once upon a time, many weeks and months now, more than a year even, someone had told him to live true to what he felt. That he should not deny his own feelings, that he had the right to speak upon them, to act according to them. A certain someone that had shown him that he too deserved to be loved - and he has not forgotten that. No, he had never forgotten these words Leonora herself offered him.

And now, he would hold true to them. Even if it might cause him and Leonora further hardship, further pain.

Because sometimes... pain was neccessary.

“Leonora...” His voice is calm and soft as he speaks, much like it had been in days past when things had seemed easier between the two of them. “I... I cannot deny the truth in your words, and I will not insult you by trying.”

“You are right... I do not know much of you, not as much as I would want too, nor as much as I ought to. I know precious little of your life, of the challenges you face, of the worries you hold nor of your hopes. And if you look at how little I know... it is only logical that one’d conclude that all I loved... was but an image, an ideal. I... I understand that.”

A heavy sigh passed his lips, as he paused for a moment. Turning around so that he could divert his gaze to the window, he hesitated a moment, trying to summon the strength he’d need to speak the words that laid on his heart, that defied what logic and reason dictated.

“Before you left... I was not certain of my feelings, wasn’t certain if what I felt was truly honest - and so I hesitated, did not say the words I wanted to say that day, shortly before you left without a word. And when I finally felt capable of speaking true to my heart, you had already left.”

“When you were gone... the ideal, the image of you was all I had left to remember, all I had to hold onto. I did not have the luxury of getting to know the real you before you left... and while I know that I have to blame my own passivity in never asking you about all these facets of you, can you honestly say that you ever tried to tell me either?”

Turning around once more, he now looked at her once more, his eyes no longer misted by fear but instead open and clear - and filled with a silent determination.”

“It is true I do not know much about you, and that I was too comfortable in our shared emotion to change that, but I ask you... What do you know of me, of my life? There is so much I never managed to tell you, so much you never asked... - can you truly claim that you did not love naught but the image of me? That you saw me for who I am?”

The words that now were on his tongue were heavy and he could practically feel himself choking on them. He tried to swallow, to gulp it down, but both the words and the heavy feeling remained - and so there was only one thing he could do about them: He had to speak them.

Even if he might come to regret them later.

“Didn’t you love an ideal of me just as I loved one of you? Was your affection not towards what you thought me to be, what you thought I could be? Or did... did that love... did it...”

Okay, I've been thinking a lot about this as of lately, especially since I noticed a shift in how I write my little Burmecian, so I wanted to put it down and share these thoughts with you all.

First, let me start with the situation as it has been for a long time now. A bit over half a year ago, if you'd have asked me whether Sceada fancied someone I would have given you a look in the general direction of "You seriously didn't see it? Are you puilling my leg?", because his admiration and devotion to Leonora were so apparent. He loved spending time with her, he thrived in her presence and actively sought to improve himself for her. He also opened up more, and quite frankly, it was already a relationship but for them calling it one. The ideas for cute things were plenty, and there was no shortage of situations where you couldn't help but look at it and go awwww.

But that was back then.

By now we've reached the point that - not counting dreams, au prompts and the like - Sceada has not seen Leonora for half a year. The most he has from her is a handful of letters, one particular one he even always carries in a pocket near his heart. He does not get to show her his affection for her, and what he regrets even more, is that he is also denied the possibility of finally telling her what he could not back then. When Leonora, already aware that her time had been unjustly limited, asked him how he truly felt, and he did not dare speak the words deep in his heart. He didn't get to tell her "I love you", all because he was afraid he might overstep a line there, or that maybe what he felt was only what he believed to be love, but was in truth not the real deal - how would he have known, after all? The emotion is still all so new and unfamiliar to him! And now he fears he may never get to tell her...

But you know what pains him the most? That he does not even know, why she had to leave. Sure, she told him she was looking for a "Cure" - but to what? And for whom? To this day he still doesn't know that she has been cursed, and it is indeed a bit doubtful if he'll learn that fact in time. All he knows is that Leonora left - and didn't really tell him why.

Now, mind you, this has not changed the fact that he still loves her, and thinks of her often. He does. And he cares about her, deeply. Enough so to risk getting stabbed by a Tonberry just to get a small present back that it stole from him, or to plea for a pirate to leave him the papers he held, solely because her letter was among them. No, there is no doubt, he still loves her, and he misses her.

But he also misses affection as such, and that brings us to the present day.

With her haing been gone for half a year already he not only realised how much he missed her presence, but also how much he missed the general feeling of affection, both given and received. And to an extent it appears he has grown to compensate this.

In the past two months I have noticed Sceada being affectionate towards others more often, even going so far as to kiss them. Also, he has become even more caring, wishing to help all those he holds dear. In some cases this means he became a better friend - in others that he may even become more than that. And in other cases they led to a lot of awkwardness.

To be honest, at first I considered dismissing those, or at least several of them as being non-canon. That they were just from prompts and thus to an extent part of AUs. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense that he would compensate in this manner. That he would seek affection by showing affection to those he liked being around. That he may sometimes overstep boundaries because of that, because hey, that's part of learning and he is still very new to the whole relationship game. But they help shape his understanding of love. And help him find his own identity in that regard.

So yes, I'll consider these interactions - save for those very obviously AU, like when he tried to calm down Brii and in turn lost an eye - canon to him. And that slowly opens a new door, one that means that maybe, just maybe, he is actually starting to become polyamorous to an extent - or as we'd say pertaining to roleplaying, Multiship friendly.

And I don't know about you guys... But I feel a bit proud of him for that, and how much he has grown in that time.

Now, that doesn't mean he has stopped loving Leonora, no. He still loves her deeply. But it means he may love others too - and that brings me to another point actually that hasn't changed.

Despite everything that he has gotten into, to this very day, Sceada is still canonically... a virgin.

That is not saying he will stay that way or lacks interest in such things. Okay, maybe a bit of the later, yeah. But it's not something he'd never consider, rather it's... well... He does not believe anyone would ever want him. This is rooted in how he was treated as a kid, and also how he sees sex and intimacy as such: As something that should be between lovers.

Well... I heard something about a certain lady pirate having a mind to show him otherwise potentially... depending on how this goes on with him strapped to her bed. We'll see. And chances are very high he'll be "persuaded" into action by nature in the (former?) Crested Fantasia group verse with Amina...

-gives grandpa huggles- ;;;