genessia | [Video] Look, even more people to help!

You are? Wonderful! If you're a miracle-worker, that'd be best. But if not...well, what are you? Oh, I'm Ted, by the way. Right now a great deal of us are suffering from some sensory malfunction or another. Sadly I've lost a great deal of nerve, in the visceral sense.

Miracles are hard. No I just turn, twist, tweak things to make it all work. Miracles get noticed, I don't want that. I don't know how I can make the sensory- sensory problem better...

Oh. I am Cole- a spirit. Mostly. I think. I was a spirit and I still am but I'm also human? What are you?

Haha, I think we're all a little of both Cole. Amphibians of being: flesh and spirit. The soul animating the body, and all that.

Don't I know the difficulty of miracles! I've been praying for one for some time. Hasn't taken yet, but persistence pays, or so I hope.

'Cole'...strange name; I don't see much black in you. Well, if miracles are beyond your power--and one can hardly blame for that--, what is? Surely you've been given a talent or two.

[Cole took a minute to reply, confused. He wished Solas was here to help explain the spirit business.]

It's strange? Black? It's not my name. Well it is now. But it wasn't before! It was a mage's name, but it's mine now.

Talent? Like, mmm, like the way I help people? I see people's hurts, their memories, feelings that ball up in their chest and eat away at them. I see less now. But I know I can ask, what miracle have you hoped for?

What was your name before? [Spiritual names must sound wonderful. Then he said something that seemed much less wonderful.]

Hold on. You're not telling me the mage was--is...possessed, are you? [He'd talk about miracles later once the shock wore off.]

No! No, I didn't possess the mage! He was starving, alone, in the dark. I came through to help him. I couldn't. He died.

[The hat shook back and forth violently as he fought again with that particular memory. He never forgot it anymore. Being 'human' was troublesome.]

No, I am me, not him. I became him in shape, shape only. I was.. Compassion and then Cole and then me who is Cole.

What was the barrier you came through of? [Even anxious, he's still curious. But he's still disturbed to think a spirit, even one named "compassion", is manipulating the body of another]

Can you leave his body? What would happen to you if you did?

I- I don't understand. This is my body, mine, my own. It's odd, Solas said, he said I was unique? I wasn't even real. Not for a long time... But I am real now. I am me, and only me. There's no body to leave, it's mine...

[Cole's voice rose and fell, cracked and stuttered, while he spoke, clearly agitated.]

Oh, so...Cole is dead and buried and your form is like his, then? An assumption, and not a...compulsion?

Dead. Alone. Abandoned. Yes, Cole, the Cole I became, is gone. He was done away with, erased, so he could escape. [Anger crept into his tone momentarily. The templar would not forget Cole but Cole couldn't forget him either.]

Assumption...? I look like him. Look like him and that's all. I was a ghost, then I wasn't real. I was a demon, I changed. They thought I was a mage, but no- a spirit.

And what will its help cost? How many lives will this demon later claim? [He didn't like that memory. He wanted to help her too, she had so much pain that she hid so well...]

I became... Less of what I really am, was, that's how I am also human.

[Quiet on the line for a while, mainly trying to make sense of all that. Ghost, spirit, demon, all with the form of a man, with varying degrees of reality for each. That kind of metaphysical taxonomy was beyond him. Might be nice to change topics anyway; this one was one of some anxiety for him.]

"So, ah, Compassion is your name, then, and also what you like to help with?"

[It really would be better if Solas was here. He was good at explaining, Cole was not.]

Compassion, Cole, either yes. I help with pain, any pain. Pain they can't face, don't want to feel to face it. Pain that makes everything harder. I make them smile or- or I make it so they do not regret what they wish to do in the moment. Anything helps.

Not all of it is fixed, it's just easier.

[Calling him the name of the dead man he looks like is pretty morbid. On the other hand it's much easier to say. He'll use both.]

Ah, I see. We might be as odds then; I've often thought that this world rather needs more heartbreak and sorrow. If I but knew how to give it. Then again, there are doubtless some hard things we'll have to do. Hurting the ones we love and all that. I'll be sure to keep you in mind for that sort.

As for the miracle...well, I should like people to have the truth, I guess you could say. Salvation and the beatifying power thereof.

You want people to hurt but... for them to be happy too? To make them happy with truth but hurt with- with other things? [Cole felt unsettled. He didn't understand and was saddened that anyone would have the desire to purposefully bring more sorrow into the world. Worlds. There was so much already.]

You remind me of another. A friend fearing failure he brought on the world. He wants truth, he wants the world to be like he remembered. What truth do you want others to see? Many things can be different and true.

Heh, truth, I find, is often like that to fallen creatures as we are. It will lead to happiness, true joy, but not at first. It usually has to destroy a lesser happiness, typically built on falsehood, to start. Like childbearing, really, though a mother could tell you more about that.

People here are...very satisfied with themselves, I find. I've seen very many things here, but broken hearts and contrite spirits...not often enough. And without those two things; without sorrow, without knowledge of sin, especially one's own, people will never have true joy.

[He considers] He wanted the past? I'm not sure how much truth there is in that. Truer than the future, I suppose, which has never happened. I suppose it'd be more accurate to say I want...eternity. All time sort of bundled into the present. Moments pass through us like a sieve, but if we could be solid...

Haha, sorry I'm probably sounding very strange. Doubtless one named "compassion" might not see much use in the gift of sorrow.

But how can you know. [Cole lowered his arms so he could look more directly at the phone.]

Most of the time, I can know, I can feel their pain. They hide it, they smile and work and they don't talk when they should, when they want to. I can't feel as much anymore but I still feel! I know there are those that hurt here. They carry old hurts and new hurts.

[He shook his head again, distressed.] I don't understand. Everyone feels sorrow. He feels sorrow for what he must do to bring it all back. She feels sorrow for what he's done and what he will do.

Hmm? Know what? A question of epistemology?

Well, that's one kind of sadness. The one from without, I mean. That's common. But the one from within; feeling sorrow for who one is, as distinct and woefully separate from who they ought to be. The kind that leads to repentance and breaks pride...that kind's all too rare. Sorrow would be the seed for that, then, but it's one that, if it exists, I can't detect.

Know they do not feel that? Either the sorrow I spoke of or the sadness you speak of. That kind of sadness is hard to fix. [Cole sounded like how a kicked puppy looked.]

Why use sorrow to heal? You can not help without it? There are more ways to help than to cause harm.

Hmm, you think being privy to its fruits would be something of a rarity? I'd have to disagree; I've been here for some time, and...I haven't seen anyone find the Way. It's really too tragic; you'd think a brand new world might have some spiritual revolution to go with it. Alas. Well, yes, it is hard to fix, but it does set one towards the cure. It's often the only way to know one needs a cure at all. That's what I mean; the feeling is one thing, unpleasant as it is, but the knowledge at its root is vital. Without that...I doubt there can be any reconciliation.

Hah, I thought Compassion wouldn't like it. Suppose that's natural. I'm not saying kindness isn't the truth, but...it's a tyrannical truth. It's usurped all its brothers and sisters, at least in this world, and now stands alone. In that way it's become quite intolerable. Did you never find such an occurrence in your world? One or two singular truths ruling at the expense of all the others?

[Cole took a while to process all that and when it all finally clicked, he let out a low sound of distress, looking even more wilted and sad than usual. He was about to reply when the camera was snatched from his hands in a blur of movement. The voice from offscreen earlier decided to announce her appearance!]

[OOC: Alleyana Lavellan has grabbed the phone and will answer this pose. She is momma bear.]

[The face that came on-screen now was scarred and worn, with a nose that had been broken a half-dozen times and never set quite right. Her eyes were a cold, dark blue, and there was a lot of steel grey in her hair.]

"'My cult is better than your cult'," Alleyana said with a sneer that did nothing for her appearance, "I've heard it a thousand times. You want to break people down, make them hate themselves, and then then lead them on the path to spiritual enlightenment? And you're the only one who sees it, of course, who Knows the Truth? What do you think you are, some kind of holy prophet? Give me a break."

"Hah, I wouldn't recommend it; your countenance looks like it's taken enough breaks as it is. What's your name?" [It wasn't said like a wisecrack; these things just came out.]

[Alleyana just stared for a moment, thoroughly unimpressed.]

Irrelevant. I'm not here to make small-talk. You were extolling spiritual self-loathing at a spirit of compassion. Flog yourself with your own self-righteous beliefs all you want; tell yourself you're the only one who sees 'the Way'; pat yourself on the back all day long. I don't care. But you're going to leave Cole out of it.

"Goodness, if one's name is small-talk, the big-talk must be very large indeed. Whatever am I to call you? What's your relation to a...spirit of compassion, anyway?"

I am his friend, though you will find little of what he embodies within me.

Case in point,

[Alleyana hung up.]

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