metaverses | {Everything I was told my whole life was a lie

i. look at this stuff, isn't it neat?

OTA

Once she's had an explanation of what's going on from Yennefer and Jaskier, Ciri has time to get as settled as she can. And next? Well, it's adventure time! A new world! A new city! There are hundreds of things to explore and she wants to see and hear and touch and experience them all.

There's a good chance you could find her just about anywhere in town. Seriously. That ice cream shop with the weird flavors? She wants to try them all. The mall? Absolutely. She needs new clothes! The library, it's huge and she definitely got lost inside it once or twice- she's almost certain that staircase went somewhere else moments ago! The musem with weird and maybe-mystical, maybe-fake relics has her wearing a look of awe the entire time she wanders through it. And any shop that looks like it has something to do with magic is definitely catching her eye.

ii. wildcard

OTA

Hit me with anything that feels right in your heart! Ciri is literally going to try to check out anything remotely interesting in Sunset Falls.

Between one coughing, drowning breath and the next, Pavetta finds herself somewhere else, falling bonelessly and uncoordinatedly down on streets she most assuredly doesn’t know. The last thing she remembers is… a ship. Duny. Their argument. Falling overboard. Drowning. Dying. She’s dead. She’s supposed to be dead. But she very plainly isn’t. No, she’s coughing and breathless but breathing, her dress sodden and clinging to her skin. Breathing,, her heart pounding in her chest. Two things that would be quite absent if she were dead.

Cirilla. At least Cirilla is safe from Duny and his machinations. Safe with Calanthe. No one will keep her daughter safer than her mother will. The Lioness of Cintra will see that no harm comes to her granddaughter. That makes her breathe a little bit easier. Just a bit.

Drawing herself to her feet, she gathers herself. Pavetta isn’t her mother. She’s quiet where Calanthe is forceful, preferring books and music to swords and battle. But she can be every inch as commanding when circumstances call for it. And they do, now. She needs information, to discover where it is she’s found herself. How they’d brought her here.

It takes her no time at all to realise that she does not belong, standing out painfully in her sodden gown in a style that doesn’t resemble any clothes she’s seen here in this place. And she would like to be dry.

Her attention is drawn instead by the library. Clothing can wait. Books have always a love of hers, and what better way to learn of this world? She doesn’t know what it is that she’s looking for, her fingertips trailing along the spines as she peruses the book shelves, but perhaps she’ll know it when she sees it.

She takes her time. So much so that her gown is well on the way to drying before she’s chosen a single book.

The library. That’s the best place for information, no matter where she’s ended up. And at least she’s gotten a decent enough explanation of what’s happening from Yennefer and Jaskier. Not that it makes sense, but she’s stopped trying to make sense of her life by now. Every time she thinks she knows what’s going on, a new curve is thrown into the road and she’s lucky to not go careening off a mountain’s ledge for it.

She browses idly through the aisles of books, row after row, not seeking anything in particular just yet, just browsing. Seeing what’s on offer. There are so many different sections, and she isn’t entirely certain what some of it means but surely at least some of it is genuine history and not simply an oral tale put to parchment.

She turns down another aisle, but she isn’t prepared for what she sees when she does. A gasp escapes her and she stands there, feet rooted to the spot, mouth slightly agape as she stares at what appears to be her mother at the other end of the row.

Pavetta hears the gasp and turns, a book of fairy tales in her hand. She is about to ask what's wrong when she sees her, really truly sees the girl, and goes still in shock. She knows those eyes. Those are her eyes. And she knows that face. She's seen her, before.

She had looked up, from her young daughter lying in her bed... to see this girl. As surely as she had been standing in the room with them. And she knows. Had known then, deep in her heart, who she was. And her heart aches.

Her hand covers her mouth. "Cirilla?"

She sees her, but Ciri isn't sure she can believe her. Is she real? Another vision of some kind? It wouldn't be the first time, after all. And how would her mother know it was her?

Despite her caution, Ciri finds herself slowly walking down the aisle. "Mother...?" she whispers, her voice shaky, her features soft, wary, scared, and hopeful all at once.

Pavetta chokes back a sob at that softly whispered 'mother...?' and then she is rushing down the aisle, the book of fairy tales falling from her hand forgotten as she rushes to embrace her daughter. "Oh my darling Cirilla," she murmurs, tears trickling down her cheeks.

"How...?" she breathes out, still staring at her as though she's seen a ghost. And. Well- she has, hasn't she? And it wouldn't be the first time.

She halts the woman before she snatches her up in a hug, hands on her shoulders to keep her at just that tiny bit of distance. "How do I know you're real?" she asks, her eyes swimming with unspilled tears as she tries to take in every inch of her.

Between the natural history exhibits of an ancient rhinoceros with two heads and freakishly realistic wax sculptures of heavy-browed men in furs hunting on a life-sized diorama of the Pleistocene grasslands, smoke-like wisps of green light flashed. All in the span of a blink, the light flickered in the shadows, and from nothing, a young woman came stumbling out onto the main floor.

Disoriented, the girl stumbled forward with boots making heavy footfalls on the marble tiles before she found her balance. Lurching forward, she caught herself with her hands on her knees before her face introduced itself to the ground.

"Shit," She shook her silvery-blond head, shaking loose more flyaway hair from her already mussed queue.

A snarling wolf's head dangled from around her neck to match the roaring cat emblazoned on the sword's pommel strapped to her back. Bright green eyes darted around the room as she straightened up and took in her current location. Not even noticing her doppelganger in miniature at first as she huffed in annoyance.

"Dammit, am I still in the city?"

Ciri is enamored by the displays in the museum. History in live form. Well. Almost.

She’s lingering at one of the informational plaques when a light flashes from the edge of her periphery. She lets out a soft gasp and spins to face the intruder. A portal? Maybe, she didn’t quite catch her tumble out of wherever she’d come from.

“Are you—” the rest of her words are gone like smoke on the wind when she takes the older woman in. “That… medallion. Where did you get it?” She can’t quite take her eyes off of it.

Ciri looks up and freezes at what she sees standing between the exhibits of dead men and forgotten creatures. Green catches green in a locked stare where too many questions were as good as giving ground.

"I..." Ciri was at a loss, she didn't know what to do — only she did. Lie, lie and run. Any world where something might seem familiar or safe could be a trap.

"My name is Falka," She said as she unconsciously reached her medallion, "It was a gift."

Her eyes.

Now that Ciri has taken a second to look anywhere but at the medallion the other woman is clutching close, she can’t ignore it. We have the same eyes…

Does it mean anything?
What doesn’t these days?
How many pieces of her past, her heritage, has she already proven blind to, how much more might she discover as time draws ever-forward?

“Is that… Redanian?” She’s certain she recalls the name for legends long past from before she was born. But if she was right… if Redania registered as familiar to her, perhaps it means at least she’s from the same world.

"No," Ciri says too sharply and too quickly to invite an argument as she takes too long a stride between where she landed and deeper into the forest of ancient bones. After taking hurried steps into the shadow of a complete Anglosaurus exhibit, she turned and asked as she fiddled with the sigil around her neck.

"What is your mother's name?"

Don't let it be Cirilla, don't let Eredin be right that she had a child with the elder blood and doomed another innocent life to weigh the world's fate on such small hands.

The reaction is sharp, enough to startle her, but it doesn’t deter her from following her movements with her eyes. Determined not to let her roam too far away.

“My… my mother? Do you have cause to think you would know her?” She frowns slightly, but it’s pure curiosity driving her at the moment. What if she did? Maybe this… Falka has some answers no one else seems to have.

"Your mother's name, girl"

Ciri pushed off from the plinth that carried the weight of a two-headed tyrannosaurus rex and rounded on her possible doppelganger — her daughter? Oh, gods, please don't let Eredin's campaign be true. The worlds don't need another silver-haired herald.

"Tell me now and tell me true."

Her chin lifts, a clear defiance at the demands being made of her as much as a statement of not being afraid of her. Ciri would rather not… scream and collapse an entire building but she knows she could, at least, defend herself if she has to.

“My mother’s name was Pavetta Fiona Elen. Daughter of The Lioness of Cintra. House of Raven.”

Ciri froze when she wanted to run, as her sword lowered and the muggy thoughts of Eredin's blank promises and threats clouded her mind. She'll not abandon you.

— You always were an unruly child. I adored that about you

"My mother is-" Ciri's sword lowers as she shakes, "My mother is—"

"Yennefer, Vesemir, I—

My name is Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon"

Ciri ducked her head and screamed.

“That. Isn’t. Possi—” her words are cut short as that scream rings through the room, and it feels like it’s ringing inside of her head. Everything around them shakes violently, falls to the floor, shatters to pieces, and all Ciri knows is she has to stop her.

“STOP!” She screams, and it echoes against the matching one reverberating around them, but she doesn’t want to meet destruction with more of the same. Instead she tries to reach into the few sparse lessons Yennefer had given her, focus her Chaos and do… something. Anything to just make her stop screaming.

She wrenches one hand to the side— if she could use a little telekinesis to just knock the wind from her, it would be enough, but Ciri knows she isn’t trained well, she can’t control any of this, so all she can do is try and hope it works.

"STOP"

The Chaos churns as it does; an unknowable sea, a tempestuous current. Ciri severed her sword and her connection to the other world.

"Ciri—"

The wild haired, green eyed girl almost ounced on her doppelganger. She caged her hands around her and whispered

"This is dangerous, we have to talk—run"

In this moment, feeling even more out of her depth than usual, she doesn’t hesitate to listen to the instruction. She knows when she needs to heed to the more experienced.

She keeps one hand wrapped tightly in the older woman’s and runs as fast as she can, out of the building. Ciri isn’t sure how long or how far they need to go, but she’s not letting this mirror out of her sight.

{Everything I was told my whole life was a lie

{There will be a new world in the morning » Sunset Falls » OTA

i. Library (as I wing the hell out of this as best I can rn)

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i. the museum (oh hey)

hey there~

YEEEEEAAAH

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