Mara x Pilar, 8th of Calistril

There was a wedding going on in town. One of the Heroes of Sandpoint, Synovia, was marrying that nice, foreign guard. Manny or something. Mara knew she wasn't going. If her mother had been around, perhaps she would've gone with her, but since Mara was effectively alone, there wasn't much point. She didn't know this Synovia, and from what she could figure out, the woman wasn't going to be joining in their mission to put a stop to the giants. And maybe... Well, maybe it was all too happy. Her parents had died so recently. How could anyone bear to smile? How dare anyone? Didn't they know what had even happened to her? Flames flared up around Mara as her grief surged to the fore. The heat snapped Mara out of her thoughts, and seeing the flames beginning to coalesce in the room Vrinn had so kindly provided her, she focused. The giants. She was going out tomorrow with all the rest of them, to kill the giants. All the giants that were responsible.  As she thought, Mara brought all her to will to bear against the sparks trying to find purchase somewhere. Ramming them together in front of her, she formed a tiny pinky-tip sized pea of bright blue fire. Sweat beading down her brow, she moved it slowly through the air to one of the candles that had been provided. Slowly, so slowly, she placed it at the candle's wick. It caught flame as the intense heat from the flames melted the wax around it. Soon enough, the bead of fire had been expended and the candle was a puddle on the small table. Mara glared at it. That's what she would do to all the giants responsible. She'd turn them into little scorched puddles. However, until then, she needed to control herself. Grimacing, she got up, and dressed in her clothes, the only ones that had survived the fire. She had an extra set now, but they didn't feel right. They felt too bright. Like they didn't understand that life couldn't be that bright anymore. Mara shook her head. She needed to go find Miro, get him to help her control herself. She couldn't be endangering the people around her.  Looking down at her numbed sister, sitting on the bed across from her own, she bent down and kissed her on the forehead. "You may not be able to talk right now, but don't worry. I'll take care of everything. I'll avenge our parents, and when I'm done, you'll be all better." She stepped out of the room, descending the stairs quickly and running into town.  Avoiding the wedding entirely, and heading only to Chopper's Isle where the construction was going on, the dark thoughts began to again bubble up to the surface. How could people be dancing and laughing? How could they shed their tears of joy? Anger and grief once again warring within, manifested on the outside. Except, this time there was nobody around to endanger. She fed the power, built it up, and then shot it out in an explosive burst behind her. Launching into the air, she issued a steady blast of flame from her feet, maintaining her height. From up here, she could see the white frivolity of the wedding. Tearing her gaze away, Mara launched herself towards the island, covered in men and women building something real, something lasting. As she landed, Mara looked around for Miro, someone who was accustomed to wielding true power. Instead, she saw a horse woman directing the laborers. A horse woman. She had sheets of paper and books, and a few writing utensils floating in slow orbit around her. When she needed one, it would seem to just always be there in front of her. Mara approached, stomping forwards and putting her hands on her hips. "Excuse me, where is Miro? He promised he would control me." Mara frowned. That wasn't right. "No, hold on now. He promised he would help me control myself. Damn it. Where is he?" she demanded once again of the strange creature.

The centaur carried herself with both pride and a certain high-strung readiness as though at any moment she could bound away. Her ebony hair was pulled tight into a bun, pierced with a spare quill and her tail was likewise bound up. Though she wore little more than a vest against the chill, she didn't seem terribly put out by the cold air whipping around them on Chopper's Isle. Large equine ears swiveled towards the sound of Mara even as Pilar shifted her eyes curiously towards her. "Miro?," she said rolling her the 'R' in his name. "He has gone to the marriage of his dear friend and I do not expect him to be return until the celebration has finished," she proclaimed, eyes shifting between the work being done and Mara. Every 'r' sounded like a serious of bubbles or a bird call, the centaur's tongue seeming to caress every consonant in her strange accent.  "If you are un estudianté, " she began cautiously turned fully towards Mara, "I wish he had told me so that I could have put on his class schedule that I now will need to create." She said the last with a bit of firmness that suggested Miro would hear of this request and acquiesce to it whether he wanted to her not. She held aloft a foreleg in thought and dirt dripped from the black hoof like water. Indeed, the other 3 hooves seemed to blend into the earth as if it were a shallow pool of water instead of sediment and stone.  Pilar did not like surprises. She peered down at Mara and examined her, analyzing every piece of her and taking it in. As she assessed, books flew into the packs at either side of her equine body and were replaced with other books. Her gaze never broke with Mara's even as books on architecture, building codes and carpentry disappeared in lieu of books on pedagogy, basics to wizardry, and something called "The Quintessential Halfing: A guide to the Golarion's Unflappable Folk". Placing the hoof down, the centaur inhaled deeply with eyes closed and opened them with a renewed look. " Pues,"  she said calmly and kindly, "I can suggest a few practices that my research implies will be of assistance. First, have you tried meditation?"

Mara squints at the books floating around Pilar, noting that she did no fancy incantations or swishy gestures. "I don't think that book'll help you out." She points at the wizardry text. "I explained this to Miro, it's not like, y'know, that. It's more like this." She gesticulates a bit limply, thrust her open palm forwards and stretching her finger. "He said I should use my words to explain instead of demonstrating. Except it's a lot harder." She furrows her brow in frustration. "I've never tried meditation. What is it anyway? Just, like, sittin' around? Thinkin' about... things?"  Shaking her head, Mara cuts her hand through the air in front of her. "I don't need to be sittin'. I need to control my emotions, and then nobody unnecessary will get hurt. Damn it, no, nobody needs to get hurt unnecessarily. I don't have words like Karin." She looks angrily at Pilar. "Well? How do I do it?"

"First, you calm your sassy self!" Pilar exclaimed with a stop of her forehoof. Color rose in her cheeks behind her glasses and tan skin. She put a small hand to her mouth and cleared her throat. "I don't like being yelled at," she said calmly.  Pilar's book of wizardy floated back to her pack and another book on magical theory and sorcery replaced it. "Now, it would seem you have innate magical ability and I admit, I have not studied that kind of magia  very much..." As she spoke, she opened the book to a bookmark as she reared on her hindlegs, the earth rushed up underneath knees and she rested on it as earth rushed up underneath hindlegs and she laid down on the elevated platform, her eyes not disappearing from the book. "You must have someone in your distant family with power strong enough to travel through blood..." Her ears relaxed as she read..."What kind of magic are you inclined to," came her distant sounding voice from behind the book. "Could it be arcane? Perhaps a powerful magia conductor  in you family line..."

"Well, I don't know. When I went to the academy when I was young, he said I ain't a wizard. I don't do things like that, like those types. It's more of a, well. thing I've had since I was young. I was always able to start little fires, candles and such. I never heard any stories about magic in the blood. Not in the Seedharrows' blood anyway..." She trails off there. The heat of the air begins to rise as she thinks on it more. Mara shakes her head, trying to clear it. "I do fire. I make a lot of it, and I can't make it go away. It reacts to me, so when I get angry or sad, everything gets all burning. How do I fix it? Why would it be in your books, but not the academy's?" She crosses her arms over her chest as the temperature continues to rise, slowly but steadily.

"Why would it be in my book?" The centaur gave a lilting laugh. "Because! I am an academic!" Pilar proclaimed proudly with a grin. "With books, there is nothing that I cannot know, cannot learn, cannot master ." Shutting the book, she takes another deep and grounding breath. "Meditation is the center of all things requiring wisdom. Sit, sit." A small stool made of raise stone erupts from the ground, the sound like a great brick scraping against stone.  "Sit and close your eyes. Feel the earth beneath you...Feel the solidness of ground, the depth, the stability. Slow each breath to the rate of a moss growing on a stone..." She's silent for a few moments as she breathes, guiding Mara. "Once you feel stable...once you feel a solid as granite, you know you have control."

Mara cocks an eyebrow at the horse woman, but sits on the stool. She closes her eyes and follows the instructions as best she can. Wriggling her toes and feeling the ground beneath them. She digs her feet into the soil of the cursed isle, setting up her foundation. She slows her breath, slowly drawing deeply in, and blowing out heavily. Expanding her lungs as much as she could, puffing out her chest, then letting it out. She frowned, eyes still closed. This didn't feel like moss on some rock. This felt like... like bellows, feeding a forge fire. She expanded her lungs again, as much as she could take, then contracted squeezed in on herself. After several more repetitions, she didn't feel like she was growing more stable. She felt she was feeding the flame of her rage within her. It needed to be hot enough to melt the old Mara, so a new one could be shaped. After a few more repetitions, she felt it was enough to consume her entirely, and she opened her eyes, to be met with a ball of flame surrounding her on all sides, with no windows or gaps for her to see through. She squealed and the ball lost coherency and began to crackle and rampage and consume everything immediately around her.

Pilar's eyes open and with an exclamation of  " Antepasados!", she she rose to her feet and as she did so the earth came up around Mara and her flames. Darkness engulfed Mara and the cold earth began to seemingly collapse on her, smothering the air the fire was hungrily consuming to grow.

As the flames wither and shrink against the wall of earth, Mara screams. The walls catching fire, closing in on her, no path to freedom. Panic invades her mind, taking over all her decision making processes. She screams again louder, no words able to form, as fire begins to form despite the rapidly diminishing air within the prison. It exploded out of her, pouring out of her hands and eyes and feet and everywhere. The flames varied wildly in color as images flashed in front of Mara's vision, of her father being crushed, her mother burning, her sister and herself trapped with no way out. With no air left to suck in, she couldn't continue with her screams but she still tried, nothing else able to make its way into her thoughts, no rationale able to assert control again.

Pilar could sense even if she couldn't feel the very obvious flames. Her mind was buzzing with thoughts, fears. Breathe. Centering herself, she stomped her foot and a pillar of earth shot the baked earthern marble containing Mara 300 hundred feet in the air like a cue made of granite hitting a giant billiard ball. The hard cell made of clay and stone fell away exposing Mara to the sky at the apex of the climb.

Mara got slammed against the ground as suddenly something latched onto the house, pulling it up into the sky. The burning walls fell away after a few seconds and nothing was holding Mara down anymore. She couldn't see the dragon anywhere nearby, but she could feel herself beginning to slow and stop. Twisting, all she could see below were the ruins of the house below, and a woman on a horse. Karin? Mother? They were so far below, she was beginning to fall... She screamed once more, instinctively thrusting her hands below her, feeling something within flow out of them. Her momentum ceased as fire exploded out from her palms. She whipped her head back and forth, trying to find the dragon in case it came back for her.

Pilar looked up at the flying girl, still breathing slowly, forcing herself to be breath and be calm. "You are like me," she said in a voice that surprised her with how small it was. She recalled her tribe, full of wisdom-master, those connected to the natural world so much so that they embodied whole elements. Messengers, she remember them being called, messengers from the essence of existence. Like her. "YOU ARE LIKE ME!" she shouted. "You are a messenger from the flames!" Pilar felt...Her feelings were innumerable and unclear. Since she had left, no, since she was taken from her tribe she had not met another like her. However, seeing this girl, uncontrolled though she was, tapping into the passion and fury of the universe - it was unreal.

"What are you saying?" Mara calls back. Of course she was like them, they were all related. More importantly, where was the dragon? Wait. The dragon? Wasn't the dragon dead? Mara shook her head. This had all happened before, and now she was stupidly using her powers again. People got all weird when she did. She cut back on the flow of flame a bit, allowing her to slowly descend, until she alighted once more in front of Pilar. Scratching her head, Mara said, "Um, I'm real sorry about that. I get a bit... I don't like tight spaces." She shuffles her feet a bit, embarrassed that she lost control once more. Wasn't that why she was here to begin with? "Uh. Are you sure that meditation is the best way to control myself?"

Pilar observed Mara carefully. "Perhaps not, air compliments fire...I am thinking meditation is not for you." She raised her foreleg. "Your element is the passion of the world, the energy to make change, the power to destroy that which exists..." She put her leg down and shook her head. "My element is the patience of the world, the choice to create or sustain...For me, meditation provides the path to stability... I-" A moment of silence passed  where only the wind whispered and the sound of the sea surrounding Chopper Isle gurgled and sighed. The sounds of construction which had stopped during the brief row, slowly began to resume. Pilar adjusted her glasses which stayed on her face by pinching the bridge of her nose gently. 

Mara sits down once more, looking up to the centaur still. "So, if not meditation what do I do? If earth is patience and fire is passion, I have to be passionate? Get angry and sad and be all emotional? But that's when I can't control it! That just makes it happen! Why can't I have a nicer one like you, something that can help people? Why in the Hells did I get stuck with this destroy power? Why me?" Tears beginning to run down her face as her voice rose higher and louder. Her increasingly shrill demands accompanied by an outpouring of heat from her small form. "Why do you get to save people while I can only hurt them?"

"Oh,no. No, no!" Pilar knelt down on her forelegs, gingerly reaching out to Mara but pulling away realizing the intimacy. "Passion is...necessary to pave the way for creation. If the seasonal fires do not clear away the dead brush, turning death into potential, then there would not be the fantastic flowers in the years following." "In order to create, something must be destroyed. In order to create, someone must have energy, drive, passion."  Pilar gesticulated emphatically. "You must learn to embrace your fires...I..." Her eyes shifted from left to right as she searched for the right words. Embracing fire. She sighed. "I don't know but I will learn! I will research the literature and I will find what you need, Mara. I promise."

Mara stares at Pilar, trying to form the words she wanted to say. Instead she leaned forwards and hugged Pilar tightly around the waist. Mara's flesh was feverishly hot to the touch but not quite enough to burn. She sobbed against the centaur. 

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