idolpro | Aradia's Heart Game

[ aradia

oh my fucking god.

are all the books on the top shelves about her furbies. ]

[ Yes. ]

[ well ok

duly noted as this is a fact about aradia zrael and if she ever needs to get her a gift this makes it easy.

anyway, Around the World in Eighty Days is a classic and that's a solid choice so she wants to look at that one, especially since it seems like this is all also metaphor. ]

[ Whether it's a metaphor or not, the contents are no different from any other standard copy of the book, though you do feel a distinct comfort in skimming it, an importance in holding it in your hands. It's one of her favorites. ]

Lovely choice.

[ Next, then—well, she wants to be able to understand as well as she can. So she selects part of the volumes of "Memory" to see what's in there. ]

[ Some of them seem to supplement the readings all around the walls, being treatises on magic or science, but others are more miscellaneous, like the dietary preferences of people in Imeeji, or the specific rate that Doodleman’s fingernails grow at, or the exact circumference of Lucifel’s nipples . . .

…Well…!

The shelf otherwise appears to be literally a log of her every memory, both pre-Imeeji and during. ]

[ goodness.

well. that's a lot.

that also is a level of detail that feels a little invasive (furi: she does not want to encounter any further detail about Lucifel's nips), so uh... let's look at "Love." ]

[ This is a whole shelf’s worth of volumes, but like with the other topics as you pore through one you find all of the information easy enough to at least consume, taking far less time than the amount would imply, in no small part due to the contents. More than a book on love, each one is composed of various ruminations on the subject:

For example—how is one meant to define that word, “love?”

Aradia has—you have examined countless volumes of text on the matter yourself, and come away with nearly as many questions as answers. These far more than the others, the writing at all times either too short or too long or disjointed or winding. No time has been taken to organize these findings at all.

To love someone—when one loves another, is it equivalent to the love for one’s favorite book, or favored drink? Is the love between family distinct from what is shared between lovers? Between lovers, is there some distinction between that affection offered to an individual, and to their self? And what of the love your younger siblings have displayed, or the love your mother’s familiar explained to you?

loving platonically and loving erotically and loving to death and killing to love and the affection of mercy and the love between god and attendant and the love of god and the love for god and love as god and loving as a witch as a woman loving a familiar as a man as a familiar and loving to construct and construction from love,

Really, you just don’t know.

But as many of your readings would have it, there are essentially four schools of thought:

Fondness¹ is an affection born from familiarity. A love brought forth purely by chance but no less strong for it, growing ever greater with time. A man made comparison to family—parent and child, pets and owners, and the like—a strong foundation, and a desire to protect. Further,

adoration² is an affection born from commonality. Your mother’s wife once said to you that “love,” so she saw it, was built upon constructive desire—to achieve with another, to work together towards a goal that both or all can share. It stands to reason that one would know it, then—when that hope is born, to achieve for another’s sake.

Yearning³ is an affection born from desire. This one -

Before you came to organize them, it was this one that you first put a name to. The warmth that churns your core at just a glance, the desire to see and feel more, to commit every aspect to precious memory, as natural as breathing—that too is affection.

But.

Care is an affection born from …

What is it? There doesn’t seem to be an answer, only that it persists perpetually—alone, with neither bias nor distinction nor condition.

That is ideal, isn’t it? That the love of a witch⁴ be solely this agape. That you in your love strive to this alone.

Putting that aside, there are passages that seem edited out with correction fluid, but it’s done so thickly you could probably scratch it off. ]

[ 1 - Storge
2 - Philia
3 - Eros
4 - Goddess ]

[ ah yes the four loves she knows that one, good shit

honestly, well—this gives her a lot to chew on, because until recently, she would have said that perhaps she felt solely agape and storge, but she has been proven... quite wrong. but it was in part due to her not wanting to deal with how to organize them in her life, how to heal a thing that had been damaged.

she scratches at the correction fluid with her thumbnail. ]

[ But, you—so the notes continue—you can no longer be satisfied by the act of giving love alone. You can no longer be satisfied by this affection that feeds itself.

Your stomach lurches.

It hurts.

Each indulgence feels so good that it hurts. ]

[ thinking—and then, with another scribble on a scrap of paper:

An important part of love is that it's shared, in my view, so if others want to indulge you—perhaps, if since you love them, accepting that is an act of love as well. Just a thought.

I know a similar feeling, though.

And, well—she looks up at the ceiling thoughtfully, and... regrets it, immediately.

She's feeling a bit better, though, so maybe she'll go investigate back downstairs—the way she didn't go. ]

The library’s ceiling is a big dome, made out of glass. It was cut really carefully to make sure it would fit in the panes. Isn’t it pretty?

When you look up at it, you can see something else, too—it’s a little translucent, but there’s a figure[¹] there in the light. It’s big¹ enough that it would probably cover the whole dome if you could see it properly, but it’s a little hard to do that: it just stays there quietly, sparkling in every color of the rainbow. [ While it has no apparent eyes or, indeed, sensory organs to speak of, being rather an amoeba-ish conglomerate of circles, ] It looks down on you gently, and your heart fills with warmth.

This is someone that you have been loved² by for a very long time. This is someone that you have loved [³] for a very long time. When he watches over you like this, you feel like you can relax.

[ You know. Totally some information that you definitely asked for, that definitely applies to you. ]

[ 1 - “Truly did the great sage write that the face of Yog-Sothoth, the face of God, is the face of the heavens itself; He and the vastness of space are the same, and the turning, interlocked circles of the spheres are the orderly progression of His thoughts, some moving fast and others slowly, even as turn the bands of the astrolabe to mark the motions of the wandering stars. He is seen only by His face; body He has none, for His body is the universe, yet not the very matter of creation but the measurements of angles and distances between, for He is composed of no tangible thing and can only be perceived as a shimmering array of changing colors such as may be seen on the shell of a beetle or the wing of a dragonfly beneath the sun.

A gate is opened when he appears, and his face of flashing colored spheres, all overlapping and turning one within another at varying rates, is the gate, and the key, and the way.” ]

1 - Do you know what a cilium is?

It’s okay if you don’t! Well, the cells inside living things have organs too, don’t they? Those are called “organelles!” Just like your organs do, they can help cells work, and a cilium is one of those! There are a lot of different kinds of cilia that do lots of different things, like help with senses, or body symmetry, or help cells communicate.

[ 2 - Looked at

3 - Dreamed of]

[ it's so beautiful, like what looking into the face of God might look like, hard to look away from, and aaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

ah yes her heart is filled with warmth¹

1 - screaming²
2 - incandescent fury, but in like, a loving way

okay. okay, she just needs to... close her eyes, deep breaths, count to ten, look down at her feet, and—get the hell out of this room. downstairs. back downstairs. ]

[ yeah let's just slide back on down there ]

Aradia's Heart Game - Session 3

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