#Horaia (OC)

[tired-reader-writer]

Enabled NY @insert-clever-username-1133 here is the AU lore I have come up with for Liminal: The Unstraying.

Put under the cut because I have a suspicion it will get long.

Geduldh as an eldritch goddess of decay right alongside earth, winter, etc. Geduldh being powerful.

In the AU lore, if Ewigeliebe hadn't gone bananas and constantly tried to reduce everything to white sand out of jealousy, dead things would decay and “return to the earth” and in turn enrich it, enrich her. Underground, caves, and such are frequently associated with death and the afterlife in many of our religions and myths, what if the same applied to Geduldh? Or would've applied, if not for Ewigeliebe. Maybe the soul still ascends to the heights but the body returns to her warm embrace, maybe she's supposed to have both. They're her descendants after all. The all-mother.

Let's take a look at Aztec cosmology for instance.

So there were two earthly entities (Coatlicue and Cipactli) both of whom were characterized as ever hungering Lovecraftian horrors. Coatlicue was said to she “feed on corpses, as the earth consumes all that dies”, a goddess of also war and childbirth I believe. On the other hand, Cipactli represented the earth floating in the primeval waters— no idea how the two were related to one another but a source did mention Coatlicue as having originally been a priestess not a goddess so who knows really— who ate anything the four sun gods made because there was no land and so their creations kept falling into the primordial ocean. They had to kill the thing and make it into the earth (even then Cipactli wasn't really dead, so had to be sated with blood sacrifices so it won't go all murder-happy on the rest of the population). Also Cipactli was described as “always hungry, every joint on its body was adorned with an extra mouth”.

Heck, even outside of Aztec cosmology if we look at say Demeter, she's still fucking terrifying? Like, she can withhold her blessings so that nothing would grow? Her sulking/grief over Persephone nearly killed the world? WINTER EXISTS BECAUSE SHE REFUSES TO LET ANYTHING GROW????

And Persephone herself, even if it's debatable whether she actually was a nature goddess or not (sources vary), is still like. Both a nymph and a fuck-off terrifying queen of the underworld.

I'm not sure if it's canon but while fics invoke Geduldh's name in euphemisms to mean passivity... Sure, canon Geduldh may be like that, but what if she was allowed to be angry? The thought that earth goddesses are supposed to be all demure and passive is kinda laughable.

She's compassionate and wants to embrace her children in death but she can't and that makes her fucking angry. And perhaps Geduldh's all-encompassing acceptance is an offshoot of her father's all-devouring hunger/loneliness. She is her father's daughter, after all, and it would be fun if she was more like him than anybody else.

Darkness and earth could be very plausibly linked too, in my opinion, like so:

“Never fear the darkness, Bran. The strongest trees are rooted in the dark places of the earth. Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother's milk. Darkness will make you strong.”

and

“The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”

Also earthquakes are terrifying, let me tell ya, and I haven't even experienced a big one.

On the topic of earthquakes— Remember that Mycenaean Greece's Poseidon was more an earth/underworld god with the “earth-shaker” epithet than a sea god and Hades didn't exist in that era and Zeus wasn't the most important god back then— Poseidon the earth-shaker was.

And on the topic of passivity, it actually made me think of Cinderella, and how Cinderella to me is a tale of an abuse victim persevering and escaping her abusive situation. She remains kind and polite bc you know abusers, they don't take well to being talked back to or anything like that, they see any sign of discontent, they bring down their boot on you ever harder. I know this because I'm in an abusive household at the bottom of the totem pole 🥲 People have talked about and analyzed the Cinderella story from this angle far better than I have, and I hope y'all come across such analyses eventually. I'm not too physically well to do an in-depth dive into this one unfortunately.

Geduldh is trapped in an abusive marriage. Her family doesn't cast Ewigeliebe out or kill him because they (it was the God of Darkness in particular I think) want living things. How does Geduldh feel about any of it? Of her body being used like that? Unclear in canon. But what if in the AU, she's angry?

It's not that she doesn't want children or living beings, far from it, it's just that she wants a say in how Yurgenschmidt is governed. She is also associated with compassion if I recall correctly, and noble society... is the opposite of compassionate.

And to add to the fucked up cake we have... The goddess of Chaos. If I remember correctly she desired the God of Darkness but couldn't obtain him but what if. What if she had a fucked up Petyr Baelish thing going on, like he saw Sansa Stark as the daughter he could've had with Catelyn but also desiring Sansa to be his, same dynamic between the Chaos Goddess and Geduldh, the child most like the God of Darkness.

All of that cumulates in Geduldh making a divine messenger in the form of a Devouring child born mysteriously fatherless in the Adalgisa Palace. Well, twins. But Horaia's is a whole nother thing not many will be stoked to learn about since they're an OC and I've already posted about their backstory on tumblr before, so we're skipping over it.

Bonus round: Geduldh's Monster.

Not the backstory, but the Vibes™ Horaia, especially civil war era Horaia, is supposed to give:

The vibe of blood vessels being exposed and pulsating, even on armor and clothes, like they're a part of Horaia's body itself. Not literal blood vessels but like. Looks close enough to be Creepy™. The armor is them and they're the beast the monster the killing machine on the battlefield, it's just another of the roles they play. Horaia already feels like they're acting out roles in hopes of not sticking out as inhuman among noble society (it's naaaaasty) so this time, why not lean into a role they'll fear out of spite? (In the sense of “oh you preach cruelty to me? you want cruelty? FINE I'LL GIVE YOU CRUELTY.”)

Like Hector who spooks his son because he was wearing a war helmet and it symbolizing how war makes monsters out of them all? Somewhat like that but entirely voluntarily.

Horaia, touching the face of her betrothed Ferdinand, the one whose hand in marriage they won in ditter after Magdalena ditched him (not out of romantic love, it's entirely platonic, both Ferdinand and Horaia in this AU being aroace, but a deep desperate sense of friendship, codependency, attachment, and duty), asking him “If I become something unforgivable, would you still love me?” and afterwards accepting Geduldh's (+chaos') blessings into their body to become That™. Corrosive, devouring magic, if you know the Shadow from Fate/Stay Night: Heaven's Feel? Yeah, that. The same effect that thing has on pretty much everything.

A drawing of Horaia as Zent, disheveled and bitter and resigned, to close this post off.

[innerchorus]

Definitely not satisfied w how this came out, he looks... off, and I'll just draw smth new another day, redo it properly, but here's what I managed to eke out!

A drawing I drew before of my shiny new OC! Horaia for Ascendance of a Bookworm.

I like it, he looks older but still not quite fully filled out, I guess? The hair too, I can just imagine it in motion! And speaking of hair, holy shit the purple hair on Horaia looks so good, so silky (honestly I'm always really impressed with how you draw hair/hairstyles), but that downcast expression... 😟

[jeweled-blue-eyes]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F8WXWxEJR85UOHWfZmQibhU1LUu0gzT2JEH8LnSG8r0/edit?usp=drivesdk

A lil... smth.

It took me ages to realize that Mishmash was not in fact the name of a new oc of yours that I might have overlooked in my notifs. I should have just scrolled down to the bottom.

Horaia seems like a character that'll go straight to my heart. I'd put her on the same shelf as Ai and Jennette (in my mind). Damaged children who became liars playing a role since they were young and deceiving everyone around them, possibly even themselves. They need to appear harmless and naive but they also need to be in control always, they need to be loved and deep down there is something very wrong with them, my beloveds <3. It's also a combination of another trope adore: weak but skilled. It's a shame that common isekais don't know how to handle the trope and turn their MCs into a stupid child genius. I'm not sure if Horaia's desires are mutually compatible. How can you feel in control when others will belittle you at any given chance and give you the feeling you don't amount to anything? Will they truly leave her alone if she appears weak or will she not become a target because she gives off the impression that she's an easy prey?

I've read your oc post a few times (the other one you linked) but I think I lacked context because I understood next to nothing. You made me a bit more curious about Ascendence of the Bookworm and I want to give the novel a try once I've finished the other two I'm currently reading. Do you know a site where I can read the novel? Are there multiple different fan translations? And would you reccommend the official translation? I tend to be a bit wary, because I've heard that official publishers (like Seven Seas) tend to censor controversial themes and cut entire paragraphs of descriptive prose and dialogue.

[tired-reader-writer]

Progress on the WIP of my Ascendance of a Bookworm OC. Actually, the drawing had been sitting for a while because I... kinda forgot to upload it. I was distracted with other fandom stuff. I haven't done the inserted gemstones on the cloak yet, who knows when I'll get to that, but for the moment have this. I'm pretty proud of it.

[tired-reader-writer]

Finally managed to sketch up rough designs for Elnora, my Ascendance of a Bookworm OC!

(I haven't been able to do full-effort pieces for a while, never had the energy, I'm grateful my energy reserves were just enough to manage this much, honestly)

No cloak in her Royal Academy design because I have yet to decide where I'll put her yet. Current tentative candidates are Ahrensbach or Werkestock. Or Frenbeltag.

I tried to give her this sort of dead-eye Owl Stare™ that makes her smile look a liiiitle unsettling but oops, my brain was scrambling big time by the time I finished her young child version so... uh... just imagine it's there.

[tired-reader-writer]

I finally got some concrete details nailed down for my Ascendance of a Bookworm OC and the AU she's in, the AU features queerplatonic aroace-ish Ferdinand/OC with Myne as their adoptive daughter born in Werkestock, and Benno as a broke-ass Werkestock merchant due to the economy being wrecked by the civil war.

I'll put it under the cut:

Horaia was born in the Adalgisa Palace as one half of a twin set— the other half being a boy that looked just like her. Due to their mother having given birth to twins, their mana level was lower than was expected of the offspring of the flowers there, and so to compensate for the lower quality feystone her brother would produce, and because she too didn't have quite enough mana to be considered up to snuff to be either a collateral royal or a flower, it was decided that she would be raised as a seed and her feystone be shipped together with her brother's.

She recovered memories of her past life during this childhood in the Palace, or was supposed to, but due to being exposed to trug constantly her head was a mess and that affected the memory recovery process— she doesn't remember in the sense that Myne does, rather it's... fragmented. Hazy. Something familiar deep down on a gut instinct level but doesn't know why. She craves for things she doesn't know the name or shape of, the clack-clack-clack of the keyboard as she typed, even if she can't remember what a keyboard or a laptop is. Her instincts, reflexes, her morality, they're influenced by her past life but she doesn't know for sure where these instincts or moral compass are coming from. She'd do or say something and then be like “wait why'd I do that”. Though that level of awareness would only come after she's away from the Palace, while being stuck inside it and constantly inhaling trug her ability to tell whether she is [REDACTED] or Novem is severely compromised, and so she... floats through the days as [REDACTED] rather than the child she is supposed to be. As I'm assuming the Adalgisa Seeds are raised communally (if that's not the case in canon I'll just say this is an AU thing) “Novem” has the opportunity to... befriend? develop a potentially codependent dynamic? with Quinta, the boy taking solace in the “imaginary world” and “made-up stories” Novem would tell.

Things get spicy when the girl's twin, the other half of the singular “Novem”, somehow ropes the girl half into killing him and absorbing his feystone. Granted, the children didn't know for sure it would work, just that if they're gonna die anyways there's nothing to lose anymore and if he is to die then he wanted it to be by his sister's hand. So... she did. While her mental capabilities were hella compromised under trug. And somehow took her brother's feystone and swallowed it whole, basically cannibalizing her twin brother. The stone was actually absorbed into her, and the consequence of that was...

Well.

A surge of mana, his blending with hers, almost enough to kill her spontaneously, and... and inherited memories.

They won't be whole, of course. This was a very crude way of pulling this off, and in the end the girl is unable to tell who died and who survived— whether this current consciousness is the one that killed or the one that was killed taking dominance in the subsequent fever, whether she was the one who reincarnated or her brother was. Hell of an identity crisis.

Eventually Aub Ahrensbach, Gieselfried, takes her out of the villa just as Quinta (Ferdinand) was by Aub Ehrenfest, Adelbert. The reasoning I haven't pinned down yet, but the tentative one I have so far is that because she displayed the abilities beyond what an seed of Adalgisa should possess (I doubt they were taught or educated, seeing as they're supposed to be products, born to die, born to be export feystones). She is baptized as the first wife's (who is from Drewenchel) daughter.

Though Gieselfried likely thought he was bringing a son home only to realize that nope, that a girl my dude.

Horaia's gender identity shenanigans (and by the Seven does she got gender identity shenanigans) will be explored later perhaps in another post. For now though I'll just use she/her.

Horaia and Ferdinand reunite as first years in the Royal Academy, and whoopsie-doopsie their codependency might've ratcheted up to an eleven. Basing this on my own experiences as a child stuck inside a... shitty family and household with no escape in sight, the thing that gave me solace was stories. My grandmother's stories about her time spent in Russia, stories found in books, stories found in myths and comics and all that bullshit. It was a bit like escapism. I asked my grandma to tell me about her time in Russia again and again because it gave me comfort— that was the base inspiration for the early dynamic between Ferdinand (or rather, Quinta) and Horaia (or Novem) back when they were still stuck in the Adalgisa Palace, just Quinta taking comfort in the picture Novem's stories painted. And then they both escaped (as outlined above) and... well. Ten-year-old Ferdie isn't gonna be as much of a callous hard-ass shutting everyone out as thoroughly or harshly as his adult self, and so... well. They end up latching onto each other al la Ducky Syndrome™ and it's only reinforced by the time they spent together year-round at the Royal Academy without going home.

(The original plan was for her to be an archnoble not an archduke candidate so that she could more easily marry into Ehrenfest without being vetoed by Sylvester's parents for fear of Ferdinand obtaining a better match than their son so I made her take the scholar and knight courses because it made sense for her character— someone who's really interested in the scholarly pursuits like history and magic but loves moving her body loves being athletic to some degree both from the influences of her past life where she wanted to be a writer and historian and played volleyball in high school and while ditter isn't volleyball it's the closest thing to athletes they got in the academy but then I overhauled the AU and now Ferdinand is the one marrying into Ahrensbach to an archduke candidate so uh I accidentally made Horaia take three courses???? Whoops. But it makes sense for her character so I'm not gonna change it, even if it makes her a little OP. Yolo, booyah! )

Oh yes.

She is a ditter-head.

Dunkelfelger loooooves her.

“Wanna ditter?” “FUCK YES LET'S DITTER”

It's to the point Dunk wanted both her and Ferdinand in the duchy, and so they wrestled two betrothals: Ferdinand to Magdalena, Horaia to Werdekraft buuuuut we all know what Magdalena did so Ferdinand's betrothal was cut off.

And since one of the reasons why Horaia accepted marriage into Dunk was because Ferdinand's safety would be guaranteed and she can keep an eye on him better (remember, codependent ), she declares groom-taking ditter on Ehrenfest and wins, securing a betrothal to Ferdinand instead.

Groom-taking because Ferdinand consented.

Again, codependent.

And that's how Ferdinand marries into Ahrensbach.

They decide to go check on Werkestock because the place is in shambles and y'know, doesn't the Temple help w that??

So they go to the Temple (mostly Horaia's idea tbh) and help around with filling the land w mana via chalices or whatever

And accidentally stumble upon Werkestock's Foundation whoops dunno what its consequence is yet but it happened

Somewhere along the line Myne regains her memories and is going on a paper/craft/food rampage as one does, which catches Horaia's attention when she's downtown under disguise as a young man.

Don't ask. Or do. I did say she's got some gender identity shenanigans going on here.

So Myne gets adopted! This time willingly (Horaia convinced and explained stuff to her, this is relevant to the AU's themes and shit but my brain is starting to shut down so it'll have to be a topic for another day) and without the contract that bars her family from treating her as theirs. They regularly meet up in secret.

Much of Horaia and Myne's bond would be built on the fact that they make each other feel... a little less alone, if that makes sense. Less alone in their grief, less alone in the yearning for a home you can never go back to, less alone in having to cope with the dissonance between your previous world and this one. Solace in the fact that, despite how they most likely didn't grow up in the same society (Horaia is unlikely to have been Japanese, even if I have yet to decide where she's from) there's still someone who knows. What has become utterly meaningless in Yurgenschmidt isn't so worthless or meaningless to each other. A lot of “Well this matters. To me.” bouncing back and forth between each other. Someone who can at least partially understand what Myne is on about and how she differs from Yurgenschmidt nobility's paradigms, where she's coming from, and attempt to bridge the gap.

They're also horrid little gremlins undoing each other's domestication and enabling each other's nonsense, much to Ferdinand's vast dismay.

Meanwhile Ehrenfest may or may not be imploding. You tell me.

Little things about Horaia's past life:

She wanted to become a novelist and a historian. Has a lot of Feels™ about both of her interests.

Had a totally healthy (lying) appreciation for libraries.

She was younger than Urano Motosu when she died.

She submitted one of her drafts/manuscripts to a publisher, but died before she got a response back.

She feels that her writing and the story style she does probably wouldn't be appreciated in Yurgenschmidt and that... bothers her more than she'd admit.

Horaia is Ahrensbach's current Knight Commander.

Myne is also on the aroace spectrum in this AU. Fight me bro (don't actually, I just got out of another fight on this matter and I'm tired okay?)

Myne's noble name in this AU is something different, I'm liking “Enheduanna” a priestess and the first known author in Earth history iirc, but we'll see if I find another one I like.

And here we have a sample writing thing from Horaia's POV while stuck in Adalgisa Palace :3

[tired-reader-writer]

@ship-of-skitties Ask and ye shall receive.

More thoughts swirling in my head regarding my OC Horaia and the AU she's written into.

I realized that the draft was getting inordinately long as I'm in the process of typing this damn thing (it's been more than half an hour of nonstop typing as of the moment I'm retroactively acting this paragraph and readmore in the draft, send help) so I'll put the rest under the cut:

I have talked before of how Horaia had been more yearning than person her whole entire life (until she got her memories back in full that is, and even then it's not as though the longing disappeared entirely it just... settled. more on that elaborated here), right? It's a huge component of her character concept. That emptiness. That disconnect from the rest of the world. The amorphous ineffable sort of want. The hollow in her heart. The sheer loneliness from the secure sort of knowledge that nobody in this world can understand her fully.

“God occupies me as a shapeless hunger.”

And y'know what said hunger/longing/yearning/want/loneliness reminded me of?

The God of Darkness.

His story is basically that he'd been alone for so long, aching for companionship that'd break this loneliness, until he met the Goddess of Light and had a bunch of kids with her, and even though I don't think this was stated explicitly I have to wonder if his desire to see more life be brought forth from Ewigeliebe and Geduldh's union was in part fuelled by the memory of said loneliness. Anything to lift it. Anything to expel it. It's not enough, never enough, he must simply try to make the world less empty just so maybe the silent void won't drive him to despair.

An all-consuming sort of want, if you will.

Just like a black hole.

It's also said that the reason Royal Academy students gotta wear predominantly black clothes is a reference to the God of Darkness, represents and symbolizes the desire to consume any and all knowledge like darkness itself— though I can't seem to find a direct reference of this on the English wiki. I saw it in the light novels, I swear I fucking saw it.

Anyways, kid Horaia. She hears about the story of the gods and latches real hard on the God of Darkness's story in particular because the shaking crying little animal part of her psyche (the one constantly clawing at the back of her throat, desperate to scream out loud, the manifestation of this nameless grief for things she won't ever get back) relates to him. The darkness, the all-consuming, the black hole— a gravitational phenomenon so strong it devours everything and lets nothing escape its grasp.

So at night, she prays.

Or more like desperately pleads to the God of Darkness for answers, girl's not doing okay.

She asks:

What do you do with this hunger? What do you do with this desire? This emptiness, the hollow in your heart?

She asks:

What do you do with this desolation? What do you do with this loneliness, this grief of solitude?

And there is no answer but the silence from the dark of the room but she thinks she feels the weight of a gaze, a heaviness in the air, almost solid enough to cut through.

Maybe.

Some of you who has read one of the two drabbles I put forth may remember Myne's mulling on the subject of monsters, how Horaia had labelled herself one with something like pride.

Monere to monstrum to monster.

To admonish, to warn, to advise.

Portent, sign, divine omen.

Monster, monster, monster.

Aka girl keeps receiving warnings and visions in her dreams a la Hildegard von Bingen and becomes an omen in of itself because well what else is she gonna become? Carrier of divine will, one who communicates the gods' desires to the earth. Like Myne (Enheduanna) the Saint who carries the will of mortals to the divine in order to retrieve blessings and protections from them Horaia is almost a Prophet by the gods' design.

Schlaftraum is her patron deity for reasons I've stated before (though I'd be more than willing to say them again if y'all so wish) but the God of Darkness is also among those she honors the most.

On that note it does trip me up that Schlaftraum is Ewigeliebe's subordinate and not the God of Darkness's, like, the dream/sleep thing is already close enough to the divine domain of night, I always have to do a double take whenever I remember that the God of Dreams isn't a subordinate of the God of Darkness whose cloak symbolizes the night sky but oh well. It's fine. It's fucking fine. Don't think too much about it, argh!

Where was I going with this? Oh, yeah, Horaia's intimate bond with the divine, with the God of Darkness in particular.

Maybe she encounters the shrines on the Academy grounds. Maybe the first shrine she finds is of the Dark God.

Maybe it's the only shrine she frequents to pray to, because he's the only deity among the Seven that she really feels a solid connection to until she's pushed to do otherwise. Maybe. The details still aren't ironed out, I'm just chucking pasta at the wall to see what sticks for now.

Either way though, let me jump onto a tangent regarding her Gender Identity Shenanigans™ and how that intertwines with her affinity to the God of Darkness: y'know how the husbands are often compared to the Dark God and their (first) wives the Light Goddess?

Yeahhhh no. The labels got flipped with Horaia and Ferdinand. Because of course they did. I will not elaborate for now bc my brain is starting to fry with all this typing when will I be free aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Myne is also dragged into this bullshit dynamic bc of course, she's most affiliated with Mestionora and while adoptive daughter isn't quite the same a one and only grandchild it could plausibly be stretched as similar, ey?

Myne-as-Mestionora may or may not guide Horaia-as-God-of-Darkness to the Wisdom to take over Yurgenschmidt—

Like I said. Still stamping details out. I originally hadn't planned for Horaia to potentially become Zent? But ah well let's just roll with it I'm not in control of the damn AU anymore.

My thoughts are becoming jumbled and I couldn't really find a way to incorporate this seamlessly so here it is as a bonus:

Horaia pleading, I cannot bear this world a moment longer.

And the God of Darkness replying, Then, child, make another.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

On that note, the God of Darkness and Goddess of Light are said to be the “progenitor of all gods” but the only deities acknowledged to be theirs are the four seasonal deities sooooo what's up with that, but it isn't quite relevant to our discussion so I'll set my theological confusion aside for now.

[tired-reader-writer]

Liminal AU. Horaia and Georgine. Brilliant girls silently screaming at the world, Look at me, look at me, listen to me, don't set me aside, don't forget me. Self recognition through the other (derogatory) (at least at first) (who knows what'll happen next? Georgine might even turn into a lopsided sort of mentor figure if things turn out a certain way) (or maybe they won't). Each resenting the world albeit for different reasons.

Georgine, the once-heiress who was pushed out of the race forcibly via a marriage outside her homeland, Horaia who was about to walk the same path (though Gieselfried and his Drewenchel 1st wife never truly considered Horaia a viable heir but that's a story for another day) via a betrothal to the Dunkelfelger heir, only to go “SIKE bitches!” and obtains herself an Ehrenfest groom instead via the sacred ditter, and steadily gaining political support as Knight Commander and caretaker of former Werkestock, Georgine looking at her stepdaughter and seeing a warped reflection of herself. I wonder what she'd feel about that.

[tired-reader-writer]

Wrote a lil smth for the AU, this time from Myne's perspective as she contemplates about her noble mother Horaia.

[tired-reader-writer]

...what if I were to make Elnora cannibalize her dead twin brother by swallowing his feystone whole and it leads to some odd effects

[tired-reader-writer]

Somebody help me decide which duchy I should make my AoB OC Elnora (info provided here) be a part of 😭😭😭😭

[tired-reader-writer]

A rough sketch design of Liminal AU Ferdinand's wife (Horaia) and husband-in-law (Laciel)! Horaia was formerly of Ahrensbach (actually a seed of Adalgisa, long story) and Laciel was from Dunkelfelger. Horaia is now Aub Neuenheim (former Werkestock, part of the agreement of them becoming Aub Neuenheim was for them to take a Dunkelfelger groom because, well, Werkestock was supposed to be split up between Ahrensbach and Dunkelfelger) thanks to Magdalena advocating for them— they have an oddly friendly dynamic with her.

And here's a partially rendered illustration of Horaia!

[tired-reader-writer]

pspsps post-adalgisa, does horaia remember pre-reincarnation stuff properly? or is that still fragmented?

Things do start coming back more and more clearly after she's been away from trug exposure for a while, but it's a gradual process! In the original plan before I overhauled things (the original plan where Horaia married into Ehrenfest and entered the Temple by Ferdinand's side) she had to enter the jureve for an unspecified reason (maybe she got critically injured or poisoned) and the memory regaining process was sped up and completed in that timeframe she was comatose due to Schlaftraum's interference. Schlaftraum is like, kinda sorta Horaia's patron deity due to her attitude towards dreams (they are no less real). She has a bit of a crisis after she wakes up, but also... the thrashing, screaming, terrified part of her psyche that she's been masking all this time... settles. Makes a home in her bones, still thrumming softly but no longer clawing and screeching to get out.

She wakes up a new person, or perhaps restores who she's always been.

[tired-reader-writer]

I'm now having OC Feels™

[tired-reader-writer]

A lil smth for my OC and AU (tentatively named Liminal AU for now until I find a better title):

[tired-reader-writer]

...suddenly realizing that Horaia is technically a Chosen One™.