Welcome to the Arztenritter

[baldrshand]

Who: Ethlyn + anyone interested in healing + anyone else
Where: A clinic near the edge of town
What: Arztenritter healing brigade training! Feel free to put up your own toplevels too.
Warnings: None


The Willow Clinic wasn't the one nearest the center of town in Aldrip--more towards the fields, and crucially, near a horse paddock as well. It was where Ethlyn had found employment as one of the clinic's standing healers and where she'd first proposed the idea of what she now liked to call the Arztenritter--"doctor-knight" in old Jugdrali--who could ride out all over town and beyond it in case of emergency medical needs.

After starting on the idea with people she already knew and putting up flyers around town for a general interest-and-training day, Ethlyn made her way to the clinic bright and early in the morning to get things set up for a day of medical and horsemanship training combined.

Comments

[oracledriven]

I can't blame you, there. It seems like it'd be pretty hard for most people to believe. If I didn't know so much of my own world, I would've doubted it, too.

[But the difference between this place and Pulse is like night and day. And as for Nova Chrysalia? He's had plenty of time to explore the whole world. Plenty of time to watch it crumble, one rock at a time. Another world is the only explanation that would make any sense.]

Where I come from, the sky is usually too gray to see the stars. But I've seen other places that don't look too different. No purple seas, though. [He shoots her a brief flash of grin.]

[baldrshand]

[Too gray to see the stars. That sounds impossibly bleak, impossibly sad. Noel did say when they met that his world had almost been destroyed long before he was born. Now it sounds like an old, sick person, grey and withered and waiting to die.

But he probably doesn't want to hear that, and he's joking about her purple seas remark, so she returns the grin.]

It sounds like you were quite well-traveled even before you were brought here, though. How do you know both a dying world and a living one?

[All right, that's still very nosy, but she's curious.]

[oracledriven]

[Noel has taken note of Ethlyn's insightfulness, her way with questions...something about them seems to cut to the core of things, like she knows just what to ask in order to get the best information. It probably serves her well -- but it means he has to talk about some tough stuff, if he doesn't want to be cagey about things. And he doesn't, not anymore.]

It's...kind of a long story. [There's an apologetic note to his voice and expression; he's not dismissing the question, he's warning her in advance that this is gonna get weird.] The disaster that happened in my world...it wasn't supposed to happen at all. Someone was messing with time. Someone who knew what the future was supposed to be like. So I went back in time to stop them from changing things. To change the future.

[That's still simplifying things quite a bit, and taking away some subtle distinctions and details...but it's close enough, he wagers.] So-- that's how. It was all the same world, just...before and after it ended.

[baldrshand]

[If he were to ask Ethlyn about it, she would just say that she's nosy and there isn't much more to it than that. But she's intrigued by Noel. He's a young man who's struggled in life... struggled more than she has, for a certainty. And yet he's still so empathetic and willing to get his hands dirty helping others. She admires that.

Of course, it doesn't make his story any less outlandish-sounding. Not that she doubts him. She's heard about time travel enough now that she can believe it to be real.]

Oh... [She tries to imagine that--going back to the days when Loptous ruled Jugdral, and into the future, and the present, all in one lifetime. It isn't easy to picture.] It must be so bewildering, to see all your world's history within your own lifetime... upsetting.

Why did this person even desire such a thing?

[oracledriven]

[Another complicated question -- this one, Noel's not sure he's ready to answer. He's had a long, long time to contemplate Caius's motives. His care for Yeul, his desire to free her from a cursed existence...and Noel nearly followed down the same path, spending years waiting to kill Lightning just for the chance to see her again. It hits a little close to home, thinking about it. Talking about it.

He offers a little smile, but it's somewhat strained under the pressure of those things. "Personal stuff," he would have told Serah. Of course, she already knew all of that.]

That's a way longer story than I think we have time for. Are you always this curious about other people?

[Despite the bluntness, he doesn't sound like he minds too much. He's mostly curious.]