(no subject)

[adogshonor.livejournal.com]

Characters: Ovelia, Gabranth
Progress: Happening
Summary: Church is visited, worlds are explored.
Location: Orbonne Monastery
Date: Going way back to midday January 21st
Warnings: Likely none



Their journey had been shorter than he’d expected.  The curious device he’d been given days prior had shown the monastery was close to Lindblum, true, but he’d imagined the journey lasting longer, especially on foot.  It wasn’t made any quicker by him stopping constantly to check and fret over the girl he was shepherding, worried frown on his face or in his voice.

When they’d finally reached the monastery, Gabranth was unsure if the happy sigh she’d released was drawn out at the sight of it, or the idea that he might finally quit worrying over her.  She had hid her exasperation well enough, certainly better than Larsa did when Gabranth became too overprotective, but even he had grown annoyed with himself over his vexing anxiety.  She wasn’t a child, after all.  He was escorting her, not her nanny.

 It didn’t take long for them to get settled into the monastery.  A moogle had met them at entry, asking them a few listless questions until it discovered Ovelia apparently used to live in the grand church, then the Judge had been mobbed away as researchers and moogles crowded around the princess and prodded at her for information.

He’d spent the next couple of hours keeping an eye on the princess and perusing the shelves, fingers glancing over the spines of the books.  All of them were obviously well aged, but they were kept well-- a condition Gabranth was unsure would keep if some of the more eager scholars didn’t moderate themselves.

He’d pulled the princess away from the small mob when she’d started to look henpecked, and was soon lead up the stairs and through a curtained doorway to a larger room.  The tall statue standing in front of the indoor balcony caught his eye immediately, and the calmness it seemed to instill in his companion hinted heavily at it being a religious symbol.

He closed the curtains to the protest of several of the people who’d followed after them, and wordlessly turned back ‘round to look at the princess and the symbol she was so pensively gazing at.

Comments

[ersatz-princess.livejournal.com]

She was thankful to him for prying her away from the priests and scholars, and she hoped it showed in the small smile she offered to him as she stepped into the room where he was waiting. She could hear them chatting at her back and would rather not thank him aloud until they had departed. Her eyes fell on Ajora's mark, carved large into the stone of the adjacent wall, and she breathed another sigh of relief. Even knowing what she did about the saint, even with the lonely memories trapped inside these very walls, God's presence strengthened her.

The journey had been thankfully less difficult than she had anticipated, but she doubted she could have undertaken it on her own. The creatures here were stranger, but no less dangerous than the ones back home, and she hadn't seen a chocobo stable anywhere in the place they had come from. She was happy to have arrived, but slightly uneasy at the destination - Orbonne held many memories, few of them good and many of them tainted.

"I grew up here, you know," she remarked as she strolled leisurely to the nearest bookshelf. Her fingers grazed their spines, drawing lines in the dust. She had read some of these, but they weren't the tomes she was looking for.

Silently, she withdrew three books from the adjacent shelf and brought them to the nearby table, skimming the contents for what she was looking for. Pity Simon was nowhere to be found - if she had seen him, she would have asked.

[adogshonor.livejournal.com]

He regarded the symbol with an awed curiosity. Religion had never been one of Gabranth’s strong points, but he had a healthy respect for those who could keep their faith through the cruelties that plagued the world--all worlds--and he was quick to notice and appreciate the strength it seemed to inspire in the gentle woman. Gabranth tried his best not to judge a book by its cover, but flowing dresses like hers and pretty delicate features did not lend itself well to the idea of strength (the only women who’d helped kick his ass all wore tight miniskirts and catsuits and armored one pieces), so he was still impressed with how she’d managed to keep his pace on the journey here without a single complaint.

The helmet had come off shortly after the curtain closed, and he was frowning pensively at the statue directly in front of the plateau when she spoke and drew his attention away from the statue, and beginning inner monologue on the merits of religion, and to her. He willed the frown away.

“You grew up in a monastery, but you’re not a priest?”

He was frowning again when he bent over the table from the other side, looking at the upside down books with an apprehensive moue.

He was still unsure if he wanted to believe her story, or that he was even in another world himself. This could still all be a dream. An admittedly very, very long dream, and the most detailed one he’d ever had.