isleofavalon | It's only a model

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It's only a model

🧙 WHO: Morgan and Aerith
⚔️️ WHAT: A trip around town in pleasant company
🕒 WHEN: Jan. 18 (prior to the tournament)
🗺️ WHERE: Camelot! Camelot! Camelot!
⚠️ WARNINGS: ???

Noon and sunny -- and cold, but Morgan didn't notice such things, between his coat and his general refusal to acknowledge temperature as a thing. Leaning up against a lamppost, arms behind his head, he did his absolute best to look for Aerith... because he knew perfectly well that if he didn't, and probably even despite his efforts, she could walk straight up to him without him ever registering it.

Nine much-more-perceptive heads peered out of one of his outer pockets, as Typhon maintained a far more effective watch.

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She smiled, peering over the top of her cup. "You make it sound like you were expecting to be disappointed." Although Aerith seemed to be teasing him, considering what she'd known of him so far he didn't seem the type to be particularly pessimistic.

Setting it down and keeping her hands about it, she found herself looking outside thoughtfully. "What is it that you do when you're not taking girls out for hot cocoa, hmm?"

"Branch of my family owns and operates a tavern, where things like hot cocoa and cider are treats. Loyalty demands I say nothing else can measure up..." And honestly, this didn't, but it was very good nonetheless. So he had to take another sip, and enjoy, and miss the comforts of home a little.

But he had no secrets in his employment except for one he didn't even realize he was keeping unnecessarily here, he'd spent so long avoiding talking about it. "I take a shift there every so often, give them a night off. For business, I own and manage a comic book publisher. And by profession, I'm a martial artist."

Hopefully she knew what all of that meant!

"Ahhh, so that's what it is..."

Aerith rested on those words for a bit thoughtfully. A tavern, so something like Tifa's back home. She'd have to introduce them at some point. They'd probably get along pretty well.

Mouth resting along the rim of her cup, she hung onto his explanation thoughtfully. "Comic books, a tavern, and a martial artist. I know someone here who you'd get along with. I mean, she's from home. A good friend of mine." Almost like a sister, really. The closest Aerith felt she really could come, considering she'd never had a sibling.

"Oh, you'll have to introduce me at some point," Morgan said, inadvertently echoing her thoughts. "And that's really lucky for you, to have a friend come here with you. Ish." Two fingers flickered up and down, finger-quoting the word, since he doubted they actually plunged into the lake together.

"I will!"

Rubbing her hands together after she put her hot cocoa down, Aerith nodded in agreement. "I'm not sure how long she's been here, but we reunited completely by chance. Admittedly when I first arrived, I had fully expected to not find any of my friends here." Maybe she would have preferred it that way? The company was nice, but there was no doubt that being away from home was hard.

"I'll consider it good fortune! Especially considering not very many people probably have the same experience."

"I know of one or two, I think? I..."

Morgan smirked at himself, dropping his head to his hand. Give him a moment to take a sip, because this still sounded zany every time he said it. "I have a daughter here. Or rather a daughter from an alternate universe where the Morgan Knight there married one of his-slash-my best friends. So that's totally a thing that can happen."

"That's..."

Confusing. Convoluted. A little strange, but fascinating. She didn't even consider that Tifa could have represented some other kind of history or something that Aerith had yet to experience. But hearing Morgan's explanation did mean it was possible to meet with someone or encounter something that otherwise she might not have been able to (barring Lifestream involvement).

"Huh," Aerith began before she continued, a light smile drawing its way into her mouth. "Well, might not be directly your blood, but she is in a way. I'm glad you have family here, even if it's not from the home or the world you're familiar with."

"Believe it or not, it's not the weirdest alternate-universe shenanigan I've seen, so." His not-daughter seemed somewhat more irritated at the situation, probably because he was fifteen or twenty years younger than the dad she knew and that was pretty damn confusing. Then he grinned. "And pretty much all of those shenanigans prove I have amazing taste in girls, so I'm proud to be continuing their fine traditions."

His wink was shameless, but the sparkle in his eyes said clearly that none of what he was saying should be taken seriously.

She aired a laugh, though a bit brief. Amazing taste in girls. Subjective at the very least. Maybe it simply meant that he had a type. It almost made her wonder what a future her might look for in a partner. Almost being the keyword there. For all Aerith was about living in the moment and experiencing adventure, partners and other such things weren't ever something she kept terribly close.

Why do so, after all?

"Doesn't that kind of mean you're going to marry this particular person in the future?" Aerith thumbed at her chin curiously. "Well, I guess it's possible you won't, but it sounds like it's potentially possible. I'm not sure how I'd react to meeting someone related to a future me. Or how I'd react to meeting a future me at all."

A quick, wry smile. "For that to be true, I'd have had to marry Carolyn a couple years ago. And also she wouldn't have to be married already."

Okay, the second part wasn't technically true; considering she was married to two other people, Morgan could've probably joined in without her complaining too much. But for the purpose of the future they're discussing, that hadn't happened.

"I've met future mes. They annoyed me. One was pure evil. I prefer to be the me that's me."

So then he was saying that it was entirely possible, at least for him, for there to be multiple versions of a person. Perhaps that meant there was a version of her who had taken a completely different pathway than the one she was on at present.

"To be fair, they're all you," Aerith pointed out with a coy smile. "Just because they made different choices than you specifically doesn't mean they're aren't still you. Still, it all sounds complicated to me. I've never met another me. I can't even imagine what another me would be like."

But then, it was hard to picture herself in any other way than... simply being herself as she was.

See, Aerith understood something he kept trying to tell other people. They are all him, even the unfathomably evil one.

"The idea of two Aeriths is more than my poor heart can handle anyway, so maybe that's for the best." Back to lighter territory! "Of course, I don't know your deep inner workings, but so far you seem like someone who'd take any twist of circumstances well."

"I don't think I could handle more than one of me either!" But there was humour in it. If only because she could be a reckless handful and chances were multiple Aeriths would be... troublesome. Or like an army of cheerful optimism. People would have been bound to get tired of it.

As he continued, her head tipped and she sat on his assessment for several long moments. "Hm... I think so. I try to? There's a lot that happens that we don't have control over, so you kind of have to take it in stride. Or, at least you have to try. But that's what friends are for, too. I wouldn't be as strong without mine."

Morgan nodded absolutely vigorous agreement with that statement. If not for his friends, well... let's not think about that. "You got that one person who your life would be absolutely, totally different without?"

That one person?

Aerith had to think on that one. Not really just one person, really. But she immediately thought of Elmyra. If it weren't for her... Aerith wasn't sure where she would have ended up. Cloud and Tifa... and the others, she hadn't known any of them for particularly long, but intuition and other things ~~Cetra abilities~~ made her think they were integral parts of her life as well.

"Why limit it to just one?" she asked gently, knowing very well that Zack continued to linger in her thoughts as well. After all, just meeting him had changed her in more than one way. He had encouraged her to follow her dreams, after all. To stop hiding herself and to be more adventurous.

"I have many people in my life who have made it what it is today."

"Well, in my case, mostly because he was first. If I hadn't met him, I wouldn't have met all the other people who made my life what it is."

It had been quite a coincidence too -- or perhaps not, because ultimately he would have met Stephen anyway. His parents were old friends of Morgan's parents, and his mother in particular had been the one to arrange for his care when the older Knights passed. But meeting the other guy in a drag race had really shaped their friendship, and it likely would have been quite different had it fallen out another way.

"That's definitely not to say a bunch of other people didn't have their effect, but I can point to that one moment and say, 'that. That right there is where my entire life changed to take the course it did.' Even more so than some other huge events."

"Oh, I see..."

So that was what he was getting at. She suspected it might have been a little more different for her, so easily defined by where she came from and what she was. Being the last of her kind was bound to do that, though.

"In that case, my mom, probably." Because if it weren't for Ifalna, Aerith wouldn't have been at all. That seemed pretty pivotal. If Ifalna hadn't been a Cetra, then Aerith's childhood, the people she'd met, the experiences she'd had... none of those things would have happened. "Everything started with her. I wouldn't be anything I am now if it weren't for her."

Morgan snorted a laugh, one hand going up to his mouth to hold more back before he could embarrass himself further. "Hey, that hardly seems fair! No one doesn't have their entire life shaped by the whole being born thing!"

Of course, Morgan figured for sure she meant what a powerful influence her mother had been on her, not the literal factor of being born. But the way she'd put it, that twist was easy to take.

"'Course my sister would probably have something to say just because she took after Dad in werewolfism, so that's a heck of a thing to shape your life."

"Well, it's not really about being born..."

Although she supposed he was right. Kind of unfair to use that to her advantage. Maybe he wouldn't have thought that if he knew well enough just how being born had most certainly impacted everything that she had been involved in and who she was. What she was. It really always came down to the 'what.'

When he talked about his sister, she got the impression that if she ever did choose to speak up about being a Cetra, he'd understand. Probably more than most people did. "Werewolfism," she echoed thoughtfully. "So she turns into a... werewolf, then. Do you do that, too?"

She had no idea. He was, and had been, very close to people who were far more alien than a Cetra.

"Not I. I'm what's called Kin, like my mom. We just carry the lineage. If I ever had a kid with a werewolf or another kin, there'd be a slight chance that kid would be a werewolf, or Kin themselves. Assuming Gaia didn't do something really weird and just shove the spiritual half of the werewolfism into a kid who wouldn't otherwise have the chance, as She sometimes does."

That was a lot of information all at once and most of it, she didn't understand a lick of. Instead of trying to conquer the mountain of the unknown, it was better to take a step at a time and gradually process all of it. If she even could. There was always something that would be foreign to her. Part of the thing about whole new worlds and what not.

"What's a Kin?" she decided was an appropriate beginning point. "I would have thought you were just another... human? Human. By looking at you."

He'd tried to boil it down simply, but he'd dwelt in this knowledge for so long he didn't have a good perspective on where simple was any more. But Morgan wasn't the sort to mind questions.

So, how to put it more clearly. He mused on that for a moment.

"So there's two parts to being a werewolf. Physical, and spiritual. Kin just have the physical parts, which alone barely do anything." Let's skip the concept of the Delirium for now, that'll just muddy things ever further. "But they can pass that part on, if they have a kid with someone else with the physical component. So they're how werewolves keep their generations going."

If she wasn't what she was, she might have found that complicated. Maybe it was easier to understand what came with being a werewolf than trying to explain what came with being a Cetra. (Or maybe it was simply that being a Cetra wasn't the most well-known thing.)

"I get it," she replied with a slow nod. "I'm going to guess there's really no way to tell if kids will have the whole package then. Unless both parents have the physical component, I guess. Otherwise, it's just kind of like a gamble. You and your sister ever have any sibling rivalry over that? Maybe not. I don't know what it's like to have a sibling."

Ha ha, wow. What the hell had he been thinking, letting the conversation flow down this path straight to one of the few regrets in his life he could never, ever put right? Morgan blinked, because he knew he couldn't hide his hesitation or response, then shrugged lazily.

"We were separated when our parents died, because of that difference. Our lives ended up taking very different paths. She took after Dad as a werewolf, I took after mom as a mage."

All true, and hiding the further truth of his own idiocy. Maybe someday he'd tell her. Now was NOT the time.

"Oh," Aerith began, easily picking up on the tension that came with. The implication there was likely that they might have been at odds with one another. "I'm sorry to hear that..."

As someone with no siblings, it seemed like a shame not to be on positive terms with them.

"Well, I guess sometimes that happens. Not everything really goes the way we might envision them to. Hopefully knowing some of us here makes up for that." But she knew better than to think the spot of a sister so easily substituted.

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