01: video

[baldrshand]

Hello all! For those of you who haven't yet met me, I'm Ethlyn.

I've started working in one of the clinics here, and it's both familiar and not... and it's become clear to me that the places we all come from are far more different than I could have imagined.

So I'd like to ask you about how medicine is in your homelands. Where I'm from, we use magic to heal wounds cleanly and quickly, but we don't always know what causes illness and infirmity. How are things for you--do you use magic to heal, or do you have to rely on technique?

As well as that--who else is a healer themselves? (And: can you ride?)

Comments

[twelfthsong]

Give it another several thousand years and I’m sure someone will invent a tin can with wings in your world at the very least.

[ Apparently he’s still bitter about the description. ]

Mostly safe. There’s the odd occasion when you get pulled out of the time vortex and you have a bit of a nasty crash landing into a T-Rex’s stomach but you’ll get coughed out eventually. Yes and yes, although it’s a little more like surfing than sailing.

[baldrshand]

If they do, at least I know I can climb aboard a ship of time to see it.

[as... unbelievable as that sounds. really she isn't sure she believes it yet.]

So it can go on the surface, beneath it--and get caught in maelstroms. That's very dynamic for something I had been used to thinking you could only travel through in one direction at all.

[twelfthsong]

[ To be fair, he's doing himself no favours in being convincing. ]

As long as you stop calling time machines "tin cans with wings on them" you might find someone gracious enough to let you on theirs.

[ We swear that's the last mention of that particular description. ]

That's because time is a completely nebulous thing. One direction — which is usually forward for most — is one way, but most people don't have the means to go through it other ways. Some people might also argue that the function of time isn't a matter of its construct but how it's experienced in their thoughts and memories. But that's a completely different topic altogether.

[baldrshand]

My sincerest apologies. Someone described airplanes to me that way, and I've little enough experience with such advanced machinery that I have a limited imagination in that area.

[she may casually mention tin cans in totally in-context and relevant ways in future, though. to see if he twitches.]

Well, that is a very new way of thinking for me. I've known many to sigh over the inability to change the past or admonish others for excessive regret or vengefulness because of that. So this is rather like being told that actually the sky can go underneath the ground if you have the right tools...

[twelfthsong]

I can draw you something instead and you'll absolutely see it doesn't look anything like that description.

[ Do it because he probably will. ]

It takes some getting used to like anything else new. But traveling through time and being an observer and not interfering with too much is a bit of a fine line.

[ He, unfortunately, interferes with it inadvertently often and frequently. ]

[baldrshand]

[There's a long pause before her next reply.]

You have that power, and you don't interfere?

[She can think of any number of things in Jugdral that could and should have happened differently. What happened to her isn't even at the top of the list.]

[twelfthsong]

Most of the time.

Disturbing fixed points in time or history can be disastrous, as you might imagine. Someone that is meant to die because it's tied to some larger event will have huge ripple effects if that weren't the case.

[ He's saved people before. The owner of this face, for example, had been one, but he hadn't been a key player in the history of events. ]

But sometimes people mysteriously disappear and no one else is the wiser.

[ As ominous as this sounds, his mind trails off to Nefertiti who hadn't had any desire to return back to the life she had lived. ]

[baldrshand]

To be honest? This is the first time I'm imagining it. At least as a real possibility instead of wishful thinking.

[what does this mean for her. what does this mean for her and her husband. what does this mean for her family, her brother, her father, her children, her old comrades that she meant to rescue....]

Are you talking of destiny? That some things are simply meant to be, no matter what our struggles?

[twelfthsong]

[ There have been few people he's met in his travels that are not wishful or regretful about something, including himself. But he is often a hypocrite, breaking his own rules because of the tender hearts that beat in his chest. This version of himself will be better at though, surely. ]

Time Lords don't particularly like frilly terms like destiny or fate, but yes. You're speaking like fate is something you've thought about a fair amount.

[baldrshand]

[There's a lengthy pause as Ethlyn considers how to reply. Back on Jugdral, she really didn't think much about it at all... until she met her own.

But she doesn't want to say that here. So instead she'll hark back to what she has thought of so much recently--when her brother and husband lost their dear friend to callous stupidity.]

I was thinking that I don't really like it. I've lost people I care for in war, losses that could have--should have--been avoided. I'm not sure what sits worse, the idea that they had to die for some greater reason, or that it wouldn't matter to the world if they vanished.

[twelfthsong]

[ There's a little bit of time before his reply comes. He's never had a problem being blunt with his delivery of words, but this almost feels as if Ehtlyn is speaking from a place of experience and considering everything he had just gone through with Clara, he's less inclined to be an ass about it. ]

Unfortunately those things happen in war. It doesn't make it any less tragic, but it's the consequence we "accept" as a result. The world as an inanimate planet doesn't care but the people left behind do. At least the ones that died mattered to someone at all.