Preliminating Antiquity
Even before the main event would occur, the girls first needed to complete their trial run. Even that would require some digilent practice and preparation.
“So how does it feel to suddenly be good at something you didn’t know you’ve been good at?” “Oh come on, Drew, you know you it’s a lot more complicated than that. It’s like an episode of mass amnesia in anything that had to do with me, and suddenly everyone remembers this one really big thing. Don’t worry, that’s about as impossible from my world as this world.” “Except, this is your world too. That’s why you have such a history to work with.” “That’s the part that’s blowing my mind the most right now. Xwyhr said I should get comfortable with both my lives, because both of them were an important part of me.. and yet now I figure out just how right she actually was.” “Supposedly, you’ve been pressuring yourself to do technology your whole life, when your real passion was in fine arts. That might even be as true here as it is there. Don’t forget, I’m well versed into being pressured into doing something without passion.. even while having enough talent for it. I didn’t want to run a company, though I hear I do a reasonably good job at it. In the process though, I make sure to invest time for both my needed talents and my wanted passions. I would heartily recommend the same. Your talents in multiple variants of technology.. robotics, machinery, cybernetics.. having such an expansive experience and talent would really take you places. I expect your variant of the same in your other life would be much of the same deal, too. However, you shouldn’t neglect your passions, it’s smart to take your own time to invest into such a thing too. I’ll see if I can acquire some basic supplies to help you with such self discovery, too.. something for artistic expression in addition to all of the musical performances we’re already working towards. I’ll just slip in such requisitions along with all of the random personal projects I’ve funded for myself.” Drew took a moment to indicate his private workroom again to Rosa as they muddled over some of the initial plans they had developed for all of the musical requirements. Rosa was already getting quite embarrassed at all of the personal attention.
“Come on, you shouldn’t waste business money on my own personal pursuits.” “I waste business money on MY own personal pursuits already, I fail to see how this is any different. Besides, I think of it as funding employee development. You’re already learning music for the profit of the business, think about how much value you could bring if you learn artistic design, too? I could have you make promotional banners or such, no one on site is capable of the same, your own sister is the closest we have to someone with design skills, and hers are a touch more in fashions and textiles. I hear she’s been overwhelming Tristine with exploring fashion options for wardrobes of all female staff, too, so your sister would probably be all over an opportunity to realize her own personal passions if we actually had more commercial avenues with which to achieve it.” “I guess, if that’s just how things work in this world.” Rosa shrugged, realizing Drew was already convinced on the subject. Now she has both Xwyhr and Drew pressing herself to discover her own personal happiness and putting some considerable value in the process. Drew however had only just begun.
“Honestly, I can’t see why you shouldn’t realize your passions in both. There, you might live in a school, but that’s all the more reason to learn, right? … or.. relearn.. or whatever. If you’ve been ignoring your passions there too, then it’s prime time to dive in. Your next visit, you should go figure out how the fine arts actually work there too. So far, you’re going to need to anyway, to explore options of reasonable instruments to learn. Just.. you might want to not stop at just a sense of obligation, you should learn all of this for yourself, too. Don’t just dabble in singing and whatever instrument you’re going to need for all of this, explore a bunch of instruments you might like, even ones you’ll not need. Then look into drawing or whatever other fine arts appeal to you. Considering how you move with holos, I think you could even do dancing.. if that actually appealed to you. Theater arts, for all we know, could be your thing too, and that’s really handy sometimes in business presentations. Literature.. I guess you didn’t value much initially.. so it might not have as much passion for you.. but there is only one way to be certain.” Drew himself wasn’t especially familiar with the fine arts himself, so realizing what sorts of creative pursuits this could include remained a bit beyond him. What was not beyond him was finding cause to encourage Rosa into delving into the process for herself.
In the end, Rosa was forced to accept the wisdom of her closest friends. It wouldn’t even be just friends, she knew that Sophie would be all too encouraging upon the same subject as well.. having apparently been the cause for that originally. It was fortunate she had developed a basic ability in reading, because now she would have to learn how to read a musical score. She didn’t even know how the other world represented musical scores. However, she was also determined to not be alone in all of this process. Everything here was stuff she had never realized about herself, stuff she was only now coming to realize. She was determined to share this opportunity with Kori.. or specifically Axln. This dusk, she wanted to uncover Axln’s side of this whole ordeal, so that Axln could also profit from such self-discovery opportunities.
Even so, both Kori and Rosa devoted themselves to learning what they would need to know to properly research Ruixsi music in what time remained before dusk. Kori wasn’t exactly the most musically versed individual, so most of the process involved actually listening to a vast selection of different music. Tristine worked with her too, discussing critical components like amplifiers and the sort of stage machinations that would be required to make a good performance work. Rosa meanwhile spent a lot of her time actually practicing her own singing, her sister attentively at her side as her artistic side was expressed. Rosa’s work otherwise involved considerable research in Aestrean instruments, a list she would have to cross compare when coming to a decision on which instrument she wanted to learn for her two performances. At one point, she even caught Drew sort of just standing in the hallway, listening to her sing.. instead of actually getting work done. Sophie was also occasionally stopping to simply enjoy the music, and even some of the generic staff just slowed down as they made their way past. Rosa honestly hadn’t even done anything important with this newly discovered talent of her’s.. and yet she was already appreciating her own ability. This was honestly something quite fun.
Eventually, dusk arrived, and the two settled in for some suspended slumber before switching worlds. The very first thing Lyun wanted to do was to test out her own singing. She even noticed her voice broke on a few distinct notes, wasn’t quite as skilled at carrying a tune, and fumbled with how it presented pronunciation. In fact, if she tried to sing with an Aestean accent, it was actually a lot better, even if she wasn’t quite as good as Rosa. All signs of talent without practice. What remained mind-blowing for her was that she might possibly be better in her otherworldly accent than in this world’s version at this point. Was she honestly going to need more practice as Lyun than as Rosa? Actually, considering the stamina required for singing, that might realistically be inevitable. Even so, she wasn’t just working with a human advantage here, this was going to take a lot of work.
“Cool, singing. I’ve got to say, that’s a new one, Lyun. Then again, really, you aren’t that bad.” “Xwyhr, when did you get here?” “Two songs ago, if I must be so honest. Is my sister around?” “Yeah, she’s just in the other room, doing some research. Why, does Jhez have some more unexpected time free or something?” “Oh, actually no. We have a test coming up, he’s probably working on getting it all set up for us.” “If you have a test, shouldn’t you be studying?” “Ah, I’ll study later. The dusk is still fresh, not like I should study all dusk long. But I was hoping to press her for details on what might have happened this dawn, I never got the chance for that.” “It seems Axln had a lovely time investigating the deep reaches of history.. to then later have reality distract her in the final moments of their time together as she discovered what sort of stuff I was up to. Then I had her spend the rest of the time basically doing nothing while I got some work done, letting her supposedly relax.. though it seems that only made her tense. Thanks to that, she’s come up with this grand idea of putting on a musical performance to try and inspire a lot of societal interest for our little world history project.” “Is that why you’re practicing singing.” “One of the reasons, yeah. The rest is.. kinda personal.” “Personal is good, I like personal. As long as you’re doing this for you too, that’s fine.” “Yeah, yeah, I know. Exploring passions, that sort of thing.” Xwyhr was a bit perplexed at Lyun’s statement, but let it pass. First, she wanted to see how her sister was actually doing, not just hear about it. Lyun decided to follow along too, curious at what sort of scheme the girl would cook up this time.
“I’m not interrupting, am I?” “Oh, this? It’s fine, probably a dead end anyway. I was trying to figure out if there was a good way to look up personal details on oneself.” “What? Why in the world would there be private records taken about the lives of another person, that sounds creepy.” “That might explain why I’ve come up with nothing.. and might be another difference between this side and the other. I’m surprised that the foundry at least wouldn’t be so controlling.” “If it doesn’t have anything to do with instrumentation, it doesn’t matter. So yeah, if you wanted very distinct records on instruments, they probably have a gallery.” “Makes sense, I guess. Now though.. I have no idea what I could do.” “By the divine, are you still trying to tackle something on your own? Is there anything you might want help with, or are you not open to the idea of asking for help? I swear, after all of this, you’re still being so devoted to simply working unless someone else is there to distract you.” Xwyhr actually started to lose her mask at this, Axln’s actions starting to really frustrate her. Was her sister really this hopeless?
“Help? Actually, that worked with Tristine and Sophie, surprisingly enough. Xwyhr, we discovered that Lyun here actually had a bit of a hidden life on the other side, a life that was then left unremembered by everyone. However, we found records that hinted at what sort of life this other aspect of her might have had, and it’s.. it’s already changed a lot of things.” “Ah, that might explain the singing then. So Lyun was quite the singer? That’s something I would love to experience more of once she’s had some time to adjust to it. But I guess then you’re wondering if you’ve got the same thing going on then? Well, I’m glad you decided to open up your concerns to your sister, because I’m glad to tell you that there is a really easy solution. Our culture is very founded in matters like journals or diaries, stuff a person keeps to track all of the things they’ve done in their life. No one else gets to see that sort of stuff, except family of the deceased, at least. Which then just so happens that, after learning about Yhzia passing away, I managed to request her own collection and had gone over it. Quite honestly, the most confusing part then was just how often you were actually mentioned in everything, even though neither of us were supposed to know she had a twin. You especially showed up a lot in her light-capture picture gallery.” “Wait, there are photos? I mean, yeah, light-…” “Yup. Yhzia was pretty handy capturing that sort of stuff, even if most of her sights were just architectural.” Axln was stunned at Xwyhr’s sudden response, spoken as if it was the simplest thing in the world. Lyun was the only one to pick up that Xwyhr had that same playful mask back on, a glint of inspiration surging at this sudden development. Lyun however was surprised that Axln was already on this project at all, she was herself pondering a decent enough solution to this dilemma.. and had herself not realized the potential offered by such private records.
“Quite honestly, I knew that’s why you would get along well with my teacher, and why you would love that fair too. Says you were quite the history guru, the whole thing being sort of your thing. The two of you actually loved to adventure together, possibly a part of being twins. Most of our family sort of took our own ambitions individually, but I guess being twins made for a great opportunity to do things with others. However, at a point, suddenly you slipped out of the pictures, to be replaced by Lyun. I honestly had to look up why.. and it seemed you two had a falling out when it came to exactly the sorts of places you wanted to explore. Yhzia loved civilized developments, buildings and all that snuff, while you instead were more into adventuring the wild untapped remnants of history. Diving into the unknown, if you weren’t just diving into our history. The world, even Celesi history, that was always your thing. However, after things went sour with Yhzia, you started slowing down with such personal ambitions and started becoming a lot more.. serious. You took the whole ambition in knowing history and just turned it into just simply.. knowing. No more fun and games, discovery was only about working with information, wasn’t even about exploring anymore. Even Yhzia felt you were getting pretty distant at that point, it was like you were discarding a family heritage.” Xwyhr’s voice faintly broke at some of the later statements, traces of emotion leaking past the mask. However, she managed to discreetly compose herself before continuing.
“So, if you have suddenly gained the ambition to realize your own personal passions, I’m proud to let you know I’ve been on that for a while now. I suspect.. I’ve been working on this for longer than we might have remembered.. but all of my other work would have been left at my house. I was really mostly just curious to figure out if there was any accuracy to such stuff, but when I learned it might actually be all true.. I really had to try to fix it. Don’t give up on your passions, and really.. don’t give up on your family. I already lost one sister, I don’t want to lose another.” “Wait, so the passions I had lost…” “Yeah, you technically forgot them long before you.. forgot them.” Xwyhr wiped away a few tears that had begun to escape there, Axln not even noticing as she started putting everything together. A respect for history.. that made too much sense. It was something she had started surging into even as Kori, with a pursuit of conduit history. This sense of wild adventure, well, that’s not surprising either, though she would have expected it to be more of a cause to the company she had kept. Sophie was all about wilderness, and Fiona was ever eager to tap into the unknown. However.. it wasn’t as if she had ever really complained that much about such ventures either. Actually, they were always a lot of fun.. for the most part at least. Quite rightfully though, they were stuff she always found to be frivolous and unproductive, especially compared to important things like researching technology.
It seemed her life as Axln had panned out in something of the same way, just with a lot less reason to aspire into technology and a lot more of a cause in exploring. Such was possibly why Axln had aspired much more to such ventures than she had as Kori. The foundation of such was then nestled completely in matters of family. Ah, so then, when Axln had suddenly felt isolated by such factors.. when such stuff had betrayed her, she then felt a reversal which inspired a need to apply her skills to anything else. That was also familiar to her, humanity’s spite having generally inspired a similar reaction. So.. past Axln had grown distant, isolating herself from family, and just went at everything alone. That.. that even sounded really lonely. She couldn’t even imagine struggling without having a single person with her. Clearly, said past Axln was outright destroying herself by keeping herself so isolated. What Axln didn’t realize was that this was also why Xwyhr has been encouraging not only Axln’s happiness, but also the forging of lasting friendships. Even present-day Axln had a habit of just taking up everything without anyone else’s help, a bad habit formed from before their memories.
Lyun was pretty much silently grumbling at this point. So.. Xwyhr’s schemes had been building upon Axln’s passions and ambitions, having realized that fact a long time ago, leaving Lyun herself to be left behind as no one was going to share this sort of thing with her. At least being told of Xwyhr’s speculation would have been some immense help, she could have looked into matters a long time ago. Lyun outright then blamed Xwyhr for her scrambled circumstances, someone who could have addressed it way earlier. Instead, she had everything dropped on her at once. Still, hearing that there could be photos about this sort of thing around really did inspire her.. stuff which Sophie might have kept in her house stashed safely away. She was honestly curious to see what else such photos might tell about her past as Rosa.. but maybe she knew enough for now at least.. it might be best to turn such a thing into something far more gradual.
“And.. I killed the room. Wow, thanks guys.” “Hey, if you had shared anything about this sooner, we wouldn’t be so overwhelmed.” “Ah, well, no one asked. Can’t teach someone to ask for help if you don’t have something to ask about, right? Well, no, really.. I thought you both already knew.” “How would either of us know if you kept all of Yhzia’s stuff for yourself?” “Because you didn’t even ask for Yhzia’s stuff? Because you knew she had passed on long before I did, so I was pretty certain you had looked over everything a long time ago. With Axln being Yhzia’s sister.. why exactly didn’t you bother with that anyway?” “Mostly because we sort of stopped staying in one place for long enough to make that even an option. Also, because I was too busy to remember that might even be an option. Back then, Axln actually being Yhzia’s twin sister didn’t even feel real.” “Ah, because you never took time to relax. Probably should have expected that, actually. Oh well, my bad.” Xwyhr didn’t even sound remorseful to Lyun’s pleas, not even a touch of genuine guilt. Lyun could hear the unspoken passage of blame, nesting that this was exactly what they had done wrong. Lyun wanted to refute such.. but couldn’t even find the words to express such denial.
“Well, actually, all things considered, you might actually be capable of helping us with something else as well. You’ve taken me around the academy frequently, showing me the sights everywhere, you seem quite versed at where everything here is. As a result, I’ve got some quality access to people who are well versed in history.” “Actually, you found him long before I found you.. but I guess.. yeah.” “Maybe then, you could help Lyun find a good outlet for her own curiosities? We know she’s got an untapped interest in music, but it might extend to some additional creative expressions in any artistic form.” “Ah, yeah, I get what you mean. I can provide you with the exact divisions you’re going to want to look into, but getting you into such stuff would be a bit beyond me. However, if you could get Jhez to recommend Lyun to any of them.. I’m certain that would start something. You might want to simply start with music, even specifically singing, as it would be the easiest to get a referral for. Prove a case, get your head in the door, you’ll possibly find all the right doors echoing the first.” “Oh, well, that helps. Still, that doesn’t do much for my own part of the same plan. I don’t even know how to DJ at all.” “Deahjeh-.. what?” “… or even that word. The idea was to support her musical efforts with a controlled accompaniment of …” “Oh! A music mixer! By the divine, your sister has got you covered! Music mixers are all the flare in dance parties, which are quite the big deal with students feeling burned out by their courses. As an important contact in matters of organizing parties, I in turn know all of the other important contacts for the same. My word, the people I could introduce you to that could then teach you a thing or too.” Axln was starting to realize that a certain societal factor managed to really persist between both cultures. However, she was mildly concerned that the English use of mixer in this context might have.. slightly.. been lost in translation. Then again, it might also be a bit.. too close. These were student parties that were being discussed, it really wasn’t that different.
Quite unexpectedly, Xwyhr had effectively provided them with some considerable direction in everything they needed to further their musical goals. Not only that, but it seemed that she had even been working to address Axln’s question long before it was even asked, leaving everything progressing surprisingly smoothly.
Luminaeris 