shiftingwinds | [7rings] catchall for grace

I wouldn't call that selfish. It's not like you asked to be cursed.

Still, it was a self-serving wish.

I guess. Is that really such a bad thing, though?

Well, no, not necessarily... it's just not as selfless as coming here for my brother's sake or something like that.

I'm sure your brother wouldn't mind you coming for that too, though.

...no, I think no matter what the reason was, he'd be mad at me for coming here. He'd tell me I should have just let him handle it.

... He's really protective of you, huh?

He is.

[ hmmm ]

I wonder what that's like. I never had a sibling, so I can't imagine... I think it'd drive me a little crazy, though.

He cares a lot... I know that much. [...] I'm lucky that he cares. But sometimes he crosses the line.

...but that's family, right?

[ ... ]

I don't know. It was just me and my parents, and I left a long time ago. They weren't really the overprotective kind.

Oh...

[she left her parents behind, huh... that must have been tough.]

I'm sorry. [...] But it was your choice to leave...?

The train came, and... I didn't want to be there anymore.

[ she blinks and shrugs ]

Well, I'm way better off now. Life before was so boring.

...that's good. I'm glad you found somewhere you'd rather be.

Yeah. Wasn't it sort of the same for you and reaching godhood?

[her face falls at that]

...I thought it was.

[ oh. hm. concern? ]

Was it... not?

...ahaha, it turned out that it wasn't. My brother ascended naturally, but my ascension was a sham - it even fooled me. My brother planned it all, and I wouldn't have known if it wasn't for the memories we saw here a few weeks ago.

[crossing the line, indeed!]

So I'm going to have to figure out what to do about that, once I go back.

A sham?

[ she tilts her head a little, baffled ]

How do you even fake that? A godly ascension?

It's unthinkable, right? That's why I never questioned it, and why nobody else did, either. It shouldn't have been possible.

[she sighs.]

But each individual is born with a certain fate. To try and keep that monster away from me, to fool it, he found someone who was born on the same day as me, who had the same character in their name as me, and swapped our fates. I ascended, and that person was tormented in my place.

[...]

But then that creature found me again anyway... I know my brother did it because he cares, but - it's not like I wanted that to happen. That thing was my problem to deal with.

...ahaha, sorry. It's just... hard... to hear people refer to me as a god now that I know.

[ hm. this is a lot, and grace looks a little uncomfortable, but she does put a hand on shi's arm while she's talking in some kind of measure of... comfort, maybe ]

It's okay. I mean, not what your brother did, but... Even if the reason for your ascension was fake, you've still been a god for a while, right? That part was real. You don't have to take it away from yourself out of guilt or anything. You didn't know.

There's a lot of things I didn't know. But... now that I know them, I can do something about it.

[she smiles faintly]

...thanks for saying that, Grace.

[ she waves off her thanks ]

... Well, if it helps, Greed said we're not limited to keeping the same wish we came here for, or even from wishing for more than one thing. Something about layers?

Mm, I heard something like that too. [that's why she was talking about her original wish with "was" rather than "is"!] So there's a chance to put it right if I make it to the end of this - I'm grateful for that.

It'd be nice to have some kind of perk for going through all of this, right?

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