The Academy: phyr; close my eyes, ignore the smoke...

The quintessential art of self-destruction,
You left behind the will to believe in nothing.

Gaia feels the cool earth calling her, the way it wraps and sways beneath her feet. She lifts her head, looking out into the shadows of her glade, she sees reminiscent ghosts drifting off towards the strange pathway she rarely ventures. Yet golden pyreflies lead chase and she follows, drifting down the spiraling deer trails of the uncanny wood—here she finds herself weaving through and coming out before a cool pond. She stares at it’s surface, and the pyreflies dance across it with a strange humming noise. She steps upon the surface and walks across, the water rippling and her feet never once getting wet. She approaches the marbled steps where ivy overgrows, walking up and sighing as the academy fills her vision.

Thick webs of ivy and earth tangled around the cold marble, and bowls of fire light; water drips and lighting humbles the distance; this is a place where all elements are found. Gaia drifts to the interior of the land, looking around the pale stone and pillars; idly thinking about its creators. But it is her shard which deters her, it screams, “mother, guardians…” it cries to her. The wretched thing shakes and burns her, she flinches but once, “I am not your mother,” she sneers, and the thing cuts her off, “but you are! You are mother!” she grits her teeth, “I am, Gaia, not mother.” The thing shakes and grows silent, in her side it burns and suddenly stops.

It is ignoring her, and she ignores it. However a keen eye renders as she fixates upon the man, and silently she approaches, noting him as the student, who, had come recently to her. She clears her throat, “Tell me what it is you expect to learn that you have not.” She asks coyly, a Parisian twist in her voice.

E L E M M I R E
earth-mother;