#verritana sylidros

[sparatus]

Alone, betrayal, midnight for Calvetana and Verritana yes I’m aware it’s going to hurt

oh you cunt

[oc asks: not-so-nice edition]

oops oops oops this has to go under a cut i got Emotional™

alone: How does your OC deal with loneliness? Have they ever been completely alone before? How do they act when there's no one around to see them?

calvetana is used to being alone. she's out on the ocean for long hours, sometimes with a full crew on a large ship, sometimes just a couple on her little personal boat. doesn't mean she likes it, of course - she likes her men well enough, and some of them she considers family in their own right, but they're not her virian, they're not her girls or her sister or any of her many grandkids (well, okay, one of them is, but when they're working ziphian is just another subordinate, and she's just his captain and vzgliy, and he understands that). she loves her men, as much as any captain does, but when she's out at sea, she still longs for a warm hearth and her favorite chair next to virian's and a downy chick fighting to climb into her lap.

with such a big family, though, and so many mariners around her and looking up to her, she's very rarely truly alone. she doesn't like to think about what it would be like, especially because in her mind, to be well and truly alone would be to lose verritana, her twin, who's been there since the very beginning and knows her as completely as any turian can. virian was her childhood best friend, and he comes close to verri in her heart, but the sylidros twins used to claim they were two halves of one whole - to calvetana, no matter who else is still alive with her on that day, losing her twin will be the day she's left alone on the wrong side of the veil.

now, on the flip side, verritana herself - she agrees, there'll be no loss quite as bad as losing her sister, and neither one wants to think about how white in the face they're both becoming these days, how stiff their joints are in the morning and how hard it's getting to recall the old days, but she suspects her outliving cal will be worse than the other way around. you see, cal at least still has her virian, still has the husband who's made her so happy for so many years and still patiently waits every day for the sea to bring his wife safely home. verri, though... well. her jaxiter says she just hasn't been the same since kana died.

she still has her boys, sure, and jaxiter's husband, and their whole brood. and there's the animals, of course, she helped birth half the herd, and smoky's been coming in to keep her company now. but her barcidia... bari brought a certain light to the house, a life and joy that just isn't there anymore. it's amazing, she'll tell you, how the big farmhouse can be nearly full yet still feel so very empty.

very quietly, if you ask a certain way, jaxiter will admit he thinks he knows which sister will outlive the other. he's not looking forward to how much emptier the farmhouse is going to feel, but he can hear his kadnön talking to kana's spirit when she thinks nobody else is around. he just wants her to be at peace.

betrayal: Has your OC ever been betrayed by someone they thought they could trust? Has your OC ever betrayed someone who trusted them?

thankfully, neither sister has really had to deal with too much untrustworthiness in their lines of work, other than the occasional sketchy government official, but calvetana insists they're not to be trusted in the first place, so that might not count. verritana doesn't deal with others too much, being more focused on the animals than on anything social, and bari (and then jaxiter) was the one who did all the talking anyway. calvetana, meanwhile, had the benefit of learning her trade at her mother senvia's hip, and senvia candirinus didn't take any shit. the candirinuses are old sea-blood in tiirtias, anyway, and nobody wanted to take their chances with them or their very sharp, very well-aimed harpoons.

midnight: What keeps your OC up at night? Do they have nightmares? Fears? Anxieties? What do they do in the small hours of the morning when they should be sleeping?

herders and fishers in tiirtias both play a major role in keeping the island fed, and both twins have had their fair share of guilt and fear and anxiety about whether or not their loved ones will have enough food to survive the winter. calvetana especially has fought with guilt about giving her daughters and grandchildren starvation snacks - marrow cakes heavy with extra bits to keep their bellies full all day, stuffed hooves to gnaw their way through so they'll be distracted until dinner. her husband is a neurologist, sure, and the empire won't let them starve, and there's always imports to lean on when the prey isn't running well, and the empire is communist, they won't be left to die. but there's a matter of pride to it, something shameful in her mind she can't shake. what kind of vzgliy does it make her, what kind of fisher, what kind of mother, that she can't give her family all the food they want without having to worry about whether or not there'll be enough for dinner later? she knows it's not fully rational, and spirits know virian has never complained an ounce when they've had to go to market or ask family or neighbors for food to spare, but it still makes her heart heavy with shame and keeps her up at night during the lean times.

verritana has slightly more pressing worries. she fears for her sister, going out on the open sea every day, especially during storm season. the blizzards coming off the xiy mnesi are famously violent and dangerous, and verritana lives in terror of the day the sea claims her sister once and for all. it gets worse when her grandsons start joining her on the boat, even just for day trips. she also worries for her own brood, when they go out hunting in the barrens, especially after ierian's accident with the zotrū'dūruu. bari was her calming goat, a lot of nights.

and of course, there's the dead, the countless spirits of the lost ranging all about them, etched permanently into tiirtias's landscape as firmly as the rocks and the permafrost. the tundra remembers the war, and the old clans are the keepers of that memory. but the dead won't bother you, really, if you know how to talk to them.