Stena

Stena was in something of a daze as she and Vyne tried to clean up. Her breakthrough had left her body, clothing, cushion, and blanket covered in the same vile substance produced when anyone broke through. But she also learned firsthand that the rumors she had heard about the Sky Realm were true - the impurities pushed out when breaking through to the Sky Realm were on a different level entirely.

"This is all getting torched." Vyne chuckled to himself, as he gathered up the nice cushion and blanket that had been in the center of the room.

"It really does smell awful. I'm sorry." Stena said weakly. "I didn't realize…if I had known, I would have asked for the rooms downstairs."

Vyne quickly shunted the ruined materials into a storage item, which unfortunately did nothing for the smell hanging in the room. "Don't apologize, Stena. I had my suspicions that you were close, and with the addition of a sleep-cleared head…well, let's say I was hopeful." He grinned conspiratorially, a look that she had never seen on his face before, ever, and added, "And between us, I commissioned some new furniture for this room a while ago but needed a reason to bring it in. So, thank you."

Stena decided she'd take that face value and try not to think too hard about it anymore. Whether or not he was telling the truth didn't matter; he was trying to cheer her up. She offered Vyne a shaky smile. "Well, you're welcome then."

"Now. You need to get properly cleaned up." Vyne said, flexing his Qi. There was a burst of a floral scent as he created a flowery platform of wood, covered in flowers, hovering in the air beside her. Unfortunately, the new lovely scent of the flowers was almost immediately overrun by the stench of the gunk.

"Can you get up there yourself? I'd like to use it to carry you to the baths so you don't track the impurities around." Vyne said.

"I can manage that." Stena said, fighting the urge to shake off the gunk clinging to her clothing and skin. Thinking about it made her skin crawl, so she did her best to put the feeling of it out of mind as she clambered up onto the little floating platform of wood. It bore her weight better than she had expected it to, barely even lilting to a side as she got situated on it.

"Off we go."

As Vyne walked through the dark hallways, neither spoke. Stena almost felt like she had blinked and they had arrived at a new section of rooms. Vyne's floating platform moved ahead of him, carrying Stena into a large bathroom carved out of the stone of the mountainside that the compound was built into.

"This bath is mostly stone with some protection Arrays. You don't need to worry about getting anything in here dirty as we typically clean it with dragonfire. Any impurities left behind will be burned away." Vyne explained. "As for the amenities, they're all pretty standard bath things, so I imagine you'll manage fine. There's also several changes of clothing in that shack, there." He motioned to a small wooden shack that looked like a changing room.

"It's mostly just plain robes, but they'll cover you well enough. It's still early, so I'll contact Vale and ask him to bring a change of clothing for you with them when they come for training."

"Thank you," was all Stena could respond with.

"Of course. Just pulse your Qi a few times if you need anything. Otherwise, just take a bit, relax, and clean up." Stena watched as his eyes shifted to the side. "And maybe test out your Domain if you're feeling up to it. Just carefully, alright?"

"Right." Stena blinked. She hadn't exactly forgotten about it, but…well, no, she had entirely forgotten about unlocking her Domain.

Vyne smiled pleasantly, as was normal for him, as he offered her a slight bow. Something that seemed wrong for an Elder to do, but she supposed was fitting enough for a host to a guest. "Enjoy your bath."

"Thank you, Elder Vyne." Stena said earnestly, bowing deeply.

"Just Vyne, Stena." The Elder said as he walked away.

That left Stena still floating awkwardly on the wooden platform, bent weirdly at the waist in her seated position. She took a deep breath - which she regretted immediately - and scrambled off the flowerbed.

Mechanically, Stena closed the door to the large bath cavern, stripped off her ruined clothing, and left it by the door. As ever, the clothing soiled by impurities would likely need to be incinerated, and she had no way to do that herself. Then she wandered toward the bath and found the Arrays designed for rinsing. There was a hole in the angled stone floor that had a grate over it, so she was glad that the impurities wouldn't gather in a gutter like they would have at home.

She set about rinsing off her body. When she had reached the Earth Realm, the gunk on her body had rinsed off easily enough. It clung to her, but the water did help push it off. The impurities from the Sky Realm breakthrough continued to prove they were a different beast when she found that she needed to scrub them away.

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Admittedly, she wasn't sure if it was because they had solidified in the time it took her to reach the bath or if they were always that stubborn, but the black tar-like substance basically needed to be clawed off in some spots, as if it was part of her body. Stena appreciated that her mind was still locked in a daze as she didn't need to think too hard about the work of what amounted to tearing off bits of a nasty second skin.

How did she just accidentally break through into the Sky Realm? She supposed doing it accidentally wasn't unheard of, especially given Vyne's laid-back acceptance of what she had done, but when her mothers had talked about it, it had sounded like a big deal. Like something she would have had to prepare for and then make the distinct choice to take the step into the trial of it.

Instead, she just…did it.

Vyne's words, 'Like mother, like daughter' echoed in her head. She supposed that she had heard enough stories at this point of Emery blindly forging ahead in situations where she probably shouldn't, regularly taking dodgy leaps of faith - especially with Avuri - before they had all the details.

She couldn't deny that this seemed very much like something Emery would have done. Looking back on her experience, she figured there were multiple points where she could have simply stopped concentrating so hard on her Cultivation and let it go. At the time, it would have felt like giving into the frustrations, but looking at it now, it might have been the prudent thing to do.

Not that it mattered anymore. She had taken the step forward and was now a genuine Sky Realm Cultivator. Even with the warm water flowing over her, she felt a shiver run up her back. She really did it. She took a step that she honestly had been worried she'd never reach, despite all of the signs telling her otherwise.

Stena couldn't help but let out a sigh as she sloughed off the last bit of the gunk that she could find. Taking a few moments to put the whole situation out of mind, she examined herself to be sure she was free of all the impurities before standing and walking over to the already filled and steaming hot bath. While her body was resilient to the heat and unlikely to get burned, even by scalding hot water, the heat of it felt lovely on the skin, and she slipped into the water.

The bath was, like everything else in the room, carved out of solid stone. The Elders, or whoever had put the place together, had filled in cracks with some kind of filler to stop the bath from leaking, and had scoured the stone to the point of noticeable smoothness. The edge of the bath was even gently curved, creating a comfortable seat to lounge in, the water reaching up to around her neck and shoulders.

The bath at the compound ran a bit hotter than the one at her home, which was pleasant. She felt the heat loosening her tense muscles, even more than she was used to. Although, she also had to admit that being entirely alone in the bath could have contributed as well, because that was something that almost never happened at home. The few times Stena had managed to relax entirely solo in the bath, it had been because she waited until the middle of the night to go bathe.

And even then she still ran into people sometimes. More than once, she had heard her mothers in the bath and had decided to just let them be.

But here, she let out a loud sigh as she sunk into the water, uncaring in the empty room.

She almost felt like dozing in the water, despite not really being all that tired. It was simply comfortable. But her mind kept wandering.

Predominantly, she wasn't sure how she had felt about her trial. Avuri had said that Emery's was very combat forward, while her own had been focused pretty heavily on her connection with the family she abandoned and her new one with them, but both were very central to who they were, or at least conflicts they dealt with internally.

Stena wasn't sure how to feel about being confronted by her feelings in such a straightforward way. She had expected the inferiority complex that always haunted her to show up, but she hadn't expected the entire ordeal to revolve entirely around her feelings. Much less the deep seated fear of abandonment that still made no sense to her.

Even in the steamy bath, she could feel her mouth go dry at the thought of it. She had known, at least subconsciously, that she was terrified of her family abandoning her. But at the same time, it was a fear she kept dead and buried for two reasons; the first being that she couldn't allow herself to dwell on it, because that fear, even in passing, felt so all-consuming that she was worried it would break her entirely.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, she knew deep down that the fear was entirely unfounded. Even if her siblings had somehow come to the conclusion to abandon her - which she truly didn't think would ever happen - she simply couldn't fathom her mothers doing so.

Stena supposed that, in the end, irrational fears like that were irrational for exactly that reason. But what bothered her more about it was that she couldn't figure out where the fear had come from. It had been a passing thought during the visions, but Stena couldn't remember ever being abandoned as a child or anything of the sort that would lead to her greatest fear being abandonment of all things.

She sighed again and dipped under the water. It didn't really matter. The rationale for it, or where it came from, at least. But Stena did resolve to herself, underneath the bath water, that she wouldn't let her worries and fears rule her so much anymore. Whether there was some kind of genuine power in overcoming the trial that gave her a literal sort of inner strength to face her fears now, she wasn't sure, but she had never felt her own resolve so strongly before.

She knew that, when she found the time in the next few days, she would pull her parents aside and talk to them about all of it. She wasn't sure they would be as helpful as talking to Vyne had been, given his position as an outsider to the family, but she was positive that her mothers deserved to know and that they would support her in whatever she did from here.

As she broke back through the surface of the water, her thoughts turned to her siblings. Stena suspected that Cierra knew about the way Stena felt, even though she had never said anything. Her mothers had both promised not to tell Cierra either, and she believed they'd keep that promise.

But she also knew Cierra, and her sister knew her just as well. Stena had little doubt that in all their years together, Cierra could piece it all together as they got older. The defeated expressions, uncomfortable quiet moments, and sulking over the years probably led Cierra right to the answer, once she was old enough to understand it. Stena was pretty sure she could see the sadness and pity in Cierra's face enough times that it seemed logical that she'd put it together.

Stena dragged her wet fingers over her face and groaned. Telling her parents about all this would be easy compared to having a real, genuine heart to heart with her sister.

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