Onwards

[Anastasia]

She's perhaps 15 to 20 years old. It's hard to tell, her hair long enough to reach her back, even tied bad. For a time there is nothing but silence between the two of you.

"Stranger, do you think...that either of us will see Mertion soon?" The woman asks, voice very soft spoken, almost missed amid the slightest burbling of the water.

[Nephrite]

"Is that where your journey takes you?" Moore asks, equally as quietly, as if he doesn't want to disturb the sanctity of this place.

A soft smile follows. "If it's where you need to go, then yes, you'll get there. But sometimes, where we think we need to go isn't where we need to be, I've found."

[Anastasia]

"It's the next step. I have someone important to me who went to Chronias," The woman's voice stays quiet, "I believe she's waiting for me there." Her head stays bowed, silent after your last words.

"...The struggle of if it is merely a long tilling through rocky soil or if it is a dead path that I follow," she replies after several quiet moments. "My baby girl's up there. They say she was taken there because she was so young."

[Nephrite]

Moore turns his eyes from the woman to the pond in silence.

"It's a long way up." Moore says, after a while. "Do you feel like you lost part of yourself, and that's what you're trying to be part of again?"

[Anastasia]

"Any mother would." The woman replies without hesitation. "What of your troubles, stranger? For I've found quiet words with another offer wisdom to contemplated amid Solania's paths."

[Nephrite]

"I'm trying to find part of me, too." Moore says as he turns to give the woman his attention. "I ran afoul of something that required a drastic solution, and... it permanently scarred me, I suppose. I'm trying to heal that scar, or at least... make it less."

[Anastasia]

The woman turns - she's closer to 20, you can tell now. "It's not something normal to have come this far." It's not said like a question, simply a quiet statement.

[Nephrite]

Moore smiles and laughs quietly. "I'm not very normal myself, I suppose." A breath in and then out again. "I think the same could be said of us both."

[Anastasia]

"It hardly normal to see a pixie here," The woman agrees, rising and taking her shepard's crook.

[Nephrite]

"It's... a long story." Moore admits. "But I'm here to try and find myself... but perhaps it isn't so incorrect as to say 'find something I lost,' too."

A breath and out again. "Perhaps I can't find what I've lost at all... but that doesn't mean I can't still become a better, stronger person, even with the scars."

[Anastasia]

"I wish I could tell you," The woman says, "But the answers aren't ours to give."

[Nephrite]

"You're right." Moore says. "But... if I were to give you an opinion? Don't spend your life trying to reclaim what you've lost. You have an eternity to see her again, but only one life of your own."

[Anastasia]

"..."

Silence is your answer. A long silence, stretching until, "It's been so long and I've done so much since I began my climb." Her voice is quiet, eyes cast upward. "And yet in recent times Chronias has become so radiant. I've done so much...so much....is it not about me, stranger?"

[Nephrite]

Moore offers a smile in response to the silence.

"You've become a better person for being here. I think you deserve to enjoy that life for your own sake." He says, looking up as well. "You have an unbeatable soul to have not lost yourself in despair and to have climbed so far. If -you- want to keep climbing, then keep climbing. But... I think your daughter would want you to focus on yourself, and love yourself."

[Anastasia]

"I want to keep climbing," The woman says, then smiles to you. "May your pay lead you on, stranger."