16224/Finding Balance in the Kismet

Finding Balance in the Kismet
Date of Scene:	31 October 2023
Location:	Enchanted Forest
Synopsis:	Jinx gets a new purpose, and a new outfit.
Cast of Characters:	Donna Troy, Jinx

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Donna Troy has posed:
    It had, after all, been two days. The journey through fractured reality had taken its toll in blood, and even with the expert healing of the Amazon healers it seemed like a good idea to take an extra day of rest and recuperation before setting out. On the morning of the third day, horses had been made ready for Troia and Jinx to go on the next stage of the journey. Jinx was to go deep into the Enchanted Forest of the Themyscira to find the Naos Pantheion, the oldest temple. Built, if Amazon lore is correct, by Gaia herself, in the long distant Golden Age.

    Jinx's horse is well-behaved, obviously a mount picked for her calm nature, and ideal for someone without much experience in riding. Donna, it turns out, has a horse of her own, and the pair had greeted each other as old friends. She's never brought her horse to America, but maybe the reason she prefers motorbikes to cars is it feels closer to riding a horse. Saddle bags are filled with rations for a few days, and Donna, who has been to the temple twice already in her short (by Amazon terms) life, is a good choice of guide.

    The pair had been accompanied from the palace by a small group of the forest rangers, a little extra security as the forest is supposed to be dangerous, but they'd left the two behind some distance back. It was now early afternoon when Donna brings her mount to a halt, and calls to Jinx to do the same. The reason why is obvious enough -- they're heading into some very dense forest, where riding is going to be impractical.

    "It's more than that," Donna explains as she checks over the horses and gives the both water. "Some journeys are just better on foot." She glances into the denser forest ahead, then back to Jinx. "Are you feeling okay about all this? No concerns?"

Jinx has posed:
Jinx hasn't slept that soundly ... ever. For the first time in her life she was in a place where no one was out to get her. No reputation had followed her. There was zero change H.I.V.E. had any grip on this land what so ever. She went out like a light despite the celebrations going on simply because both Diana and Donna were in the palace at the same time.

It's unlike Jinx to skip the party but when checked on she was demonstrating the ability to fall asleep in the most awkward way. Sheets half kicked off, body just on the edge of the bed yet somehow not tumbling off. What surprised her was how they brought breakfast to her when she woke up - and offered her a miniature water fall to shower under. And somehow some of the Amazons were still partying from the night before.

Jinx understood the need to surrender her clothes. Firstly they were covered in her blood but secondly they were sliced to bits. She loved that jacket and those jeans but there are limits. She could mourn them later if they had to be sacrificed. Turning up outside wearing the provided 'adventuring' clothes of the Amazons, it's clear she has never worn anything of its like before.

The horse, too, is not a creature she's ever met before. When it starts sniffing her she pauses awkwardly and then smiles. Since Troia and her horse are 'chatting' she gives it a go too. "Yeah. You know I'm a complete horse noob. So cut me some slack and I promise not to ask you to do any crazy shit. Deal?" She offers a fist which the horse nose boops. Excitedly she looks to Troia and says, "Troia! this horse just did a fistbump!"

Her butt is practically numb, dead, devoid of good feels by the time Troia calls for them to stop. She awkwardly slides off the beast of burden and does an awkward dance trying to stretch her legs out and find feeling once more. "Yeah. Sure. No offence to the horses but I'm better on my feet anyway."

Donna knows that if you give Jinx time and space to decompress, take away the stress, that big bold exterior wall she puts up with harsh speech and strong opinions simply fades away. Very few of the Titans have seen it but somehow Donna has seen it more than once now. Today is no different.

"Yeah - it's kinda weird but I like the idea of learning things from someone who knows what they're talking about. I only ever learnt my magic from this HIVE witch who hated me. She was definitely a prisoner rather than a recruit. So I never really got a proper education in how to do this stuff. Mostly I just do what feels right at the time. That or read some books."

A canteen is removed from the travel pack and she takes a long drink from the animal bladder turned water vessel. The strange survivalist bent of HIVE does aid her out here in the forest. It is a very foreign forest though. "Worst case scenario I don't learn anything new and I'm back to square one. Been there before. And we've had a nice trip out to a temple in an enchanted forest. Can't really complain much about that."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "I wouldn't expect lessons of that type here, though who knows," Donna says. She takes a heavy waterskin and pack from her horse, clearly intending to do the large part of the carrying for the pair of them, and spends a little time fussing over her horse before leaving the two mounts to fend for themselves. Apparently she's confident they won't wander too far, because she doesn't tie them up.

    "You could spend a little time with the priestesses and the sorcerers here before we leave if you need a bit more direct instruction," she says as she leads the way into the dense forest. There's little of the cliched hacking through underbrush -- Donna seems to have a good eye for finding paths, and it's obvious she's very used to wilderness survival. She seems more at home here than she does in a city, really. "I mean... I don't know. This isn't exactly precedented. But learning things direct from the gods tends to be more about revelation and inspiration than it is about direct instruction. In fact I would be inclined not to trust a god who gives direct instruction too far. They're probably up to something. Helping us find our own path is more their style, normally."

    Even at this time of year, Themyscira is pretty warm and sunny. It doesn't take long to realize why Diana had nicknamed it 'Paradise Island'. The air is fresh and clean, and even under the dense canopy of trees, shafts of bright sunlight make the forest feel warm and welcoming. It would be easy to be lulled into relaxing, but Donna never seems to relax here. From time to time she stops, waving Jinx into silence, to stand and listen intently for a while. Apart from birds and a few small animals moving heard but unseen in the undergrowth, there's no sign of anything else around though. Nothing that appears to threaten them.

    "I'm not sure how much longer this will take," Donna says after the pair have been walking half an hour or so. "It's not exactly a fixed route. I'm partly navigating by instinct here. The paths this deep in the forest are rarely the same twice." She glances back at Jinx, head tilted curiously. "So. What do you think of Themyscira? You haven't really said much. Most people comment a lot more."

Jinx has posed:
"I'll take what I can get. It'd be nice to just know I'm on the right path for a change. It's so hard to trust myself, trust what other people say. Also - it's pretty weird to think that I might get instruction from a goddess. I grew up in Christian London you know. The only god there is the all mighty and he never answers prayers."

She stops short of saying she begged. She begged until she cried and that was the night she decided she would bite and claw and fight for what's hers. That was also the weekend when she had her first magical moment.

If there were any goddess that could get through to Jinx it's the one they walk upon, the one they breath within, the one who seems to have no agenda at all but to promise life and love. There's a big part of her that thinks they're just headed to some old ruins and nothing miraculous will happen at all. She's Jinx, she hardly deserves anything more than some fresh air.

"Might do. If I have something interesting to explore or work on. It'd be interesting to just be around other magic nerds for a bit while practicing anyway. I'm used to doing it all alone. Could be good for my ego," she says with a flash of a grin to Donna.

In the moments when they pause and wait for the wildlife to pass, Jinx's fingers linger on the bark of the trees and she could swear she can feel their heart beat with her own, pulsing down their thick trunks and in to the Earth below.

She has been uncharacteristically quiet. One might even think she's enjoying herself. May be that 'mysterious sorceress' idea when they arrived on the island sounded appealing to her. "Hmm? You want a review for your homeland Princess?" Another flashy grin.

"Not gunna lie to you Troia. It's ace. I've never felt so at peace. May be it's in part because of where we're going but I bet it's mostly because we're so far away from all the shit in the real world. I can kinda park it and just.... be." She turns around and squints a moment at the forest, "We have been going a little in a circle. We should probably be going ..." she points through some leaning trees, "... that way."

Donna Troy has posed:
    "Caitlin's Catholic," Donna says. "She had quite a bit of trouble dealing with the whole concept of our gods when she first came here. She found it a lot easier when I suggested to her she think of them not as gods but as /theoi/. " Donna grins a little. "It's not that it doesn't mean the same thing, but sometimes it's easier to understand something when you've got a word for it that has fewer associations in your mind. We don't see our gods the way Christians see theirs. Ours didn't create the universe, they inhabit it just as we do. They are wise and powerful, but they're also people, with emotions and wants of their own. Sometimes they even make mistakes. I find the idea of a god who is somehow perfect and never makes mistakes pretty weird myself. Monkeys are smarter than sheep, but they make mistakes. Humans are smarter than monkeys, but they make mistakes. It seems to me really obvious that gods are going to make mistakes too."

    When Jinx suggest they take a different path, Donna grins at her and gives a little shrug. "Sometimes going in circles is the right thing to do when finding a path in the Enchanted Forest. It's the straight lines you've really got to watch out for." Nevertheless, she seems to take Jinx's advice, and veers path in the direction Jinx had indicated.

    "When we're back from this, I'll introduce you to Magala, "Donna says. "Spend a day or two with her. She's the island's chief sorceress. She may come as a bit of a surprise to you if you were expecting all Amazons to be conventionally beautiful, but I'm ninety-nine percent sure she's a Neanderthal. Probably gorgeous by Neanderthal standards. She's... she's a bit of a loner really, but she's always been a friend to me. When I was growing up here I would visit her in her cottage in the wilderness when I was off on my wandering and she was always happy for me to be around. I didn't exactly have a lot of friends. Themyscira /is/ a very peaceful and happy place, but being the only child in paradise has its own downsides. She always treated me like an adult."

    Donna pushes through some heavy branches and holds them aside, smiling back at Jinx and nodding her ahead. There's a clear path beyond the branches. "This looks likely to me," she says. "Good call, Jinx. I'm glad you like Themyscira. And no, not asking for reviews. I'll love this land whatever anyone else says. But for years when I arrived in America, Themyscira was unknown to the world. I couldn't ever tell even my closest friends where I came from. Couldn't tell them about the land I love so much. So now that I can bring friends here from time to time, it makes me happy to know they like it."

Jinx has posed:
Jinx shrugs her shoulders, "I'm as much fine with no gods as gods who like drinking beer and tossing lightning bolts about. That I understand. What's the point of a god who wants nothing to do with you. Besides which, better to help ourselves than rely on divine intervention."

The idea of straight lines versus circles has Jinx's mind wander. An enchanted forest is by its very nature magical. So perhaps traveling through it is an act of magic and Donna has been doing a spell.

"In magic a straight line is a matter of perspective. Never quite got the hang of that though. Curves work better. They're more natural to me for some reason." She motions to the bent trees, "Besides which this isn't straight either." She smiles.

"She sounds interesting. I don't think I've ever met a Neanderthal before. But then until today I'd only met one Amazon. So, odds are I'll keep meeting strange and interesting people. Some of whom I will have to put in the dust."

She passes by Donna and out in to the clear path. It looks as though it was cultivated. Those seeking it were meant to find it. She looks back the way they came and sees only thick forest beyond. A little nod is given as she seems convinced of her theory. How they got here. That reminds her of what Donna said about Caitlin's journey out here. It makes a lot of sense to her now.

"When we get back may be I can stay awake long enough to join in the party next time." Then again simply having such a deep and comfortable sleep is hard to pass up on too. Sometimes the best relaxation is doing nothing at all.

Donna Troy has posed:
    The path is wide enough and clear, so Donna falls in beside Jinx as they follow it. "I've come this way twice before," she says. "It's not trip you do lightly. The first time was when I became an Amazon. The Amazons were originally chosen by the five goddesses who's idea this whole thing was. They picked the souls of women from past history who they deemed ideal, and granted them a new life as an Amazon. More recently the Well of Souls has opened up again and we've been getting new Amazons. That's quite a big thing, because it hasn't happened for a couple of thousand years. New souls chosen by the goddesses to become Amazons. For me it was different. I wasn't chosen by the goddesses and reborn as an Amazon. I was adopted. So... coming here, making a pilgrimage like this, to seek the favor of the goddesses, that was my way of becoming an Amazon. Caitlin did the same thing.

    "That first time... what I was told was that if I was deemed worthy, I would find the temple. If I was not deemed worthy, I would not. It took me three days. I had to fight my way there through many different challenges. I arrived bloody, exhausted, barely able to put one foot in front of the other. And Hera was there waiting for me. She told me I had done well and could go home now. I was puzzled for a long time by that, because Hera isn't even one of the five founders. Caitlin... she had a very different experience once she arrived."

    "The second time I took this journey was last year. That was... a personal matter. Something I had to try to understand. I got there in a few hours. Nothing challenged me. Every step I took was the right step. The whole journey was easy. Easier even than this. The route here isn't a matter of geography, it's a matter of meaning. This path..." she gestures at the easy, almost manicured path through the forest at their feet. "This tells me you're meant to be going there. You're in the right place at last, Jinx."

Jinx has posed:
The urge to turn back around the moment that Donna says she's in the right place at last is immense. "Yeah.." she comments on the matter of the journey, "That'd be right. How it'd feel. How it does feel. I was never that good at magic until I realised it was pointless to try and will your way on to things. You have to do it in concert; a duet."

"You walk the path but the path also walks you. You hike the forest but the forest embraces or shuns you. That kinda crap," she flicks a wrist and then pauses by a tree. Her fingers stroke over a carving in its bark. "Tyche.." she looks down at the ground and sees the stones formed in the shape of the evil eye.

Jinx pauses in her step and then lowers her foot back down not advancing. She crouches down and stares at the symbol; but a monicker of bad luck, a curse, but also the symbol of protection from such bad luck.

"When I was a teenager I tried doing xematiasma to cast off the bad luck. I tried it several times. I figured eventually that the bad luck was me, not something afflicting me. But since I've been hanging out with the Titans I keep finding myself in bad luck situations where I seem to be making a difference. Making things better instead of worse. It's not my bad luck to be there but someones good luck that I turned up; sometimes as simple as who I turned up with."

She unties the hiking sandals and sets them aside. Her toes curl in to the soil and she lifts up her chin, "I am afraid when my eyes are open." She shuts them and yawns as she steps across the threshold. As she opens her eyes again she looks back - there is no evil eye upon the ground, no Mati, no signature of Tyche in the tree trunk.

She presses her lips in to a thin line of bemusedly and then states flatly to Donna, "I'm not losing it, I swear."

Donna Troy has posed:
"Perhaps the difference between good luck and bad luck is much the same," Donna comments. "A matter of how it is used. Something that needs to happen in concert with the world, not forced."

    The clearing isn't large, but it doesn't need to be. The temple standing in the middle is small, rustic, with rough stonework that lacks the grandeur of scale or architecture of the great temples in Themyscira city. It resembles Greek temples in general style, but it is simple and unadorned. It is also, unquestionably, ancient. Plants wind around the columns and through cracks in the stones as if there is no separation between the natural world and the construction of stone. As if the temple is not man-made at all, but is the bones of the Earth.

    The sun is high in the sky, a late-morning sun when it should be late afternoon. The air is warm and comforting, and there is a silence so perfect that it is like no other silence; as if there had always been some background noise so universal that one is unaware of it until the grating din is finally silenced. Every stress, every worry, every fear seems utterly distant here. The idea that anything could disturb this sense of peace, this sense of belonging, seems absurd.

    The silence lasts only a few moments after the pair step into the clearing before it gives way to soft noises of the forest, the distant sound of birds and insects and the gentle wind blowing through the trees.

    Donna pauses for a few moments until the forest sounds resume, then steps into the clearing, leading the way to the old stones that make a short flight of steps up to the doorway into the temple. The interior is dim and shadowed, but welcoming. At the foot of the steps Donna unslings her waterskin and offers it to Jinx. "I will wait here," she says. "If you'd like to take a rest before stepping in, do so. It's not going anywhere. But if you feel ready, then go on in."

    It's tempting, the idea of just taking a break there in that clearing. In a place of such peace and contentment, where you cannot but feel like you truly are where you belong. Yet the temple awaits.

    Donna rests a hand on Jinx's arm. "Jinx... whatever you experience in there. What you hear, if you hear words, what you feel, what you sense -- it's for you. It's going to be very personal. You should feel no obligation to tell anyone what happens, okay?"

Jinx has posed:
[ Training Hard - https://youtu.be/4ByX1M23DDE ]

Jinx accepts the water and takes another long drink. The warmth does pull out the sweat. The airy light clothes of Themyscira help a great deal too. "Nah. I'm good." She slings the waterskin over her shoulder and looks in to the darkness.

"Very funny Troia. I've seen the Matrix. If you want to wear snap on sunglasses and a long leather trenchcoat I'm not going to stop you." She smirks and then looks up at the blue skies above. "I've come this far. I need to at least try and see this through."

She can feel the importance of this temple. The stillness of this space is unlike any she has felt before. This place holds the attention of a powerful presence. Presumably that of Gaia herself. She ducks her head and steps inside the temple.

There's nothing in particular Jinx was expecting. That deep seated feeling of unworthiness of love and care and consideration meant she was prepared for nothing to be here at all. But what she finds is a small pile of stone tablets and carved in to them are strange glyphs.

At least, that's what they look like at first. As she sits turns them up this way and that she realises they are iconographic representations of physical motions and movements. Some of which she recognises from the magic she already does. Some she does not recognise at all.

Thin empty plinths frame the space. Jinx rests each tablet upon one and walks from pattern to pattern. She looks at one that has served her very well for quite some time. The ability to seize up her enemies for a short time to make her escape.

She concentrates and holds out her hands. With a snap she brings her hands together. Pink magic leaps from her hands and in to the stone tablet. It swirls around and then flings back at her - not so much angrily but more like a slap on the back of the knuckles. Wrong. She got it wrong.

Jinx paces back a few and turns to look at the tablet again. "I thought I understood this." She holds out her hands again and repeats the magic. Again it is flung back at her. Wrong. Jinx feels that stubbornness inside of her. She sets the waterskin aside and begins to adjust her posture and her arm position as she repeats the spell again and again. Wrong wrong wrong. Again she is wrong.

Pacing in annoyance, she turns to a different tablet and a magic she is unfamiliar with. She tries to copy it, drawing her hands up in an arc and then thrust them forward. Her magic flings out to the tablet and then bounces back to her once more. Wrong.

Time passes as she moves from tablet to tablet trying to mimic what is shown. After some time she sits down on the middle of the temple, sweaty and tired and feeling a tinge of defeat. Did she come all this way to fail? is she not ready yet?

Laying down she stares up at the ceiling of the temple. There she sees two figures in opposition of each other and between them they hold a set of scales. Inspired she rises up once more and copies the two ceiling stick figures. Nothing happens as she performs the motions of the first, then the second. She repeats it; it feels nice - like doing yoga.

As she repeats it she feels a pressure building up inside of her that seems to flow about, rocking from side to side; only half of it feels familiar. Like ying and yang, good and bad luck, it is a balance. She slows down her motions and focuses on that balance; exaggerating one movement over the other. It is out of the corner of her eye she sees that the tablets of the other magics themselves have shifted, changed. She -was- doing it wrong. She was starting wrong. She was unbalanced.

Jinx has posed:
"Sunnova..." She looks down at her hands, glowing, throbbing from the blood pumping to her finger tips. There's an ease to her movements now that she is balanced. This is kismet, this is tyche, this is fortuna.. so many names through human history for the same thing. A balance of fate is the path you can walk down without stumbling.

Returning back to the first tablet, she steadies herself and her mind. She balances the good and bad, the lucky and unlucky, and pushes out her hands. With a clap her magic shoots out to the tablet and it swirls around once more. Then the room shudders as the magic echos through the room and its hidden chambers.

Jinx feels the shiver rush up her legs and through her whole body. Such a powerful spell - she's never done magic that 'loud' before.

Jinx has lost track of time as she moves through the forms presented to her. One after another she dances through the room like a magical martial artist. The wind swirls, fire leaps from her hands, moisture in the air solidifies; the very ground itself reshapes. And these are just the magics she knows well.

It is in this time that she collapses to the ground once more. She aches all over; she is glistening with sweat and a strange feeling of personal accomplishment. A happy smile spreads over her face as she stares up at the mural on the ceiling. In all her action she had not looked up again - but shaking the temple again and again shook loose the vines. The mural is far more elaborate than she realised - the constellations stare down at her in a glowing map of pink magic showing a complicated and advanced link between all the components she has been practicing.

In the blink of an eye the magic has faded. An impression dances behind her eyelids and she tries her best to commit it to memory. A hint, a path, a journey that she must take to master her magic. It might take her a life time - or three.

Donna Troy has posed:
    How long had it been? It felt like a long time. Many hours. Longer? When Jinx finally steps out of the temple, blinking in the sunlight, the sun seems to have barely moved in the sky.

    Donna is there, across the clearing close to the line of trees. Around her are signs she has been camping a while, so perhaps it is the next day now. Her bedroll is on the ground, and and the gear they'd carried there is hanging from sticks planted in the earth, protecting them perhaps from the dampness of the morning dew as it soaks into the ground. A pelt is hung drying from a simply-crafted rack, and she sits tending a fire lit below the overhanging branches of a tree, a rabbit cooking over the flames. The scent brings a sudden realization to Jinx that she's very, very hungry. There is a flash of white from behind Donna, and a shape moving -- a white hart? Everything is too bright to Jinx's eyes in those first few moments out in the sun again to be sure, and by the time her vision has adjusted, it has vanished into the trees. Perhaps in some way connected to the stag they'd seen in Pathstow? No -- this feels different, somehow.

    An owl hoots somewhere in the trees, and Donna looks up, seeing Jinx. She gives the pink-haired sorceress a wide smile and gestures to her to join her by the fire, where a blanket is spread across the floor to sit on. "All done?" she asks. Her eyes pass up and down Jinx's form, and she grins slightly. "You must be. I see you've even had time to change your clothes."

Jinx has posed:
Jinx figures she must look like a right mess as she steps out of the temple. It's disorienting with the bright light. Not to mention that Donna seems to have made a proper campsite, hunted, skinned, cooked, and who knows what else. The flash of light and what she thinks might have been the deer, or a hart perhaps, is gone. Her eyes track where it disappeared in to the forest so fast. Portents and all that.

"Hardly. I'm just getting started." Followed by a very confused look at the mention of a change of clothes. She looks down over herself. The unfamiliar white gown with golden pauldrons and bracers. The green gems embedded in to the chest of the white gown. Not to mention the tall golden boots. It has a distinctly Themysciran style to it yet most certainly not the clothes the Amazons wear.

"I.. uh.." She's completely lost track of what she was going to say to Donna as she turns this way and that. Tummy rumbling though she is lured by the swansong of cooked meat hitting her nostrils. "... I am starving." She sits down on the blanket in the unfamiliar clothes and accepts food. Her waterskin is empty at this point. "Oooh so good," she remarks on the food.

As her hunger becomes sated she slows down and regains some composure. "How long was I in there?" She senses perhaps far longer than she realised. "I. Well it was. Enlightening. Yes. That's the word. I have a lot I need to work on. A LOT. But I feel like for the first time in my life I could really get good at something. I could master this magic. With hard work and practice and. I guess.. purpose."

Donna Troy has posed:
    It's simple enough food; the rabbit is dressed with some olive oil and rubbed with salt and few herbs, and there's some flatbread still warm from the fire to go with it and a bottle of golden wine to wash it all down with. Somehow it may be the best food Jinx has ever eaten though. Perhaps the satisfaction of finally feeling that she has a real purpose in her life is what makes it taste so good.

    "A little over twenty four hours," Donna tells Jinx after a quick glance up at the sun. It's funny -- Jinx knows Donna has her T-Com with her and they display the exact time, but somehow Donna just seems to belong in this wilderness, and that she instinctively turns to the height of the sun in the sky to tell the time rather than an item of technology seems to make a whole lot of sense.

    "The best answer never come too quickly," Donna says. "There is a reward in achieving, and when you truly know who you are, every step you take that brings you closer to being who you can be doesn't just reward you by bringing you closer, but enriches you by being *yours*."

    Donna laughs suddenly and shakes her head. She gives Jinx a slightly rueful grin. "Sorry, I think I just sounded like I was a very expensive brand of fortune cookie for a moment there. But it's still true."

    "It's funny. In one respect, until last year I never knew who I was. I was not born an Amazon. Not born on this island. I didn't know where I was from originally, who my parents were. What my destiny might have been had I not ended up on these shores and been adopted by the queen. I made up stories. Tried... tried to guess, based on nothing, who I might really be. When I told my mother, at sixteen years old, that I wanted to follow my sister's footsteps and explore the world beyond these shores, it was because I knew that's the world I had originally come from. I was an outsider, so I had to see the outside to understand myself."

    "Then, these last few years, I started picking up little hints of the truth, and finally last year learned things about my past I had never known before. Why I was here, where I had come from. And the funny thing is?"

    Donna finishes eating a bit of rabbit, and licks the grease from her fingers before continuing. "What I really learned through all of that is that I'd known who I was all along. I am an Amazon. A warrior who fights to make the world better for everyone, who will stand up for those who's own strength is not enough. Who will not fight out of anger or hate, but out of compassion and need. I /believe/ in that, Jinx. I always have. It doesn't matter that it wasn't what I was born into, it's /me/. And every time I train with my sisters who have literally thousands of years more experience in being an Amazon than I do... yes, there are days when it frustrates me. Nobody is perfect. But most of the time, I remember that in every way I am not good enough /yet/, I am seeing a way I can improve. Something I can get really good at. I think we all have a purpose, and that purpose is to be who we really are. Many go through their lives never discovering who they are. I am glad that you have."

Jinx has posed:
Jinx can't help but look up to the sky with Donna as if that would yield answers to her as well. It doesn't. "Hm. I wouldn't say I know who I am. But I understand how my magic works better now and I know all the steps I need to take to get better at it."

She keeps glancing at the forest edges wondering if the hart will come back. Or may be that hootie owl. But if that really were a harbinger of Gaia then revealing itself would spoil the victory of her own hard work yielding results. She understands that too.

"I meant by purpose is that I need one to utilise this magic and it ain't going to be world domination. So I might as well stick around with the Titans and put some good back in the world. I've been tipping the scales the wrong way since I was a teenager. I have to find a balance in my life not just out here in the forest."

There's something about the way she sits and talks. A confidence and calm about her she doesn't normally have. She's picked up that weird otherworldliness that so many sorcerers seem to have that suggests she's been let in on one of the big secrets of the universe not meant for everyone else.

As if just to prove it to herself, she plants a hand on to the ground. Small flowers bloom in twirling motions about her hand before shooting off out through the trees. Her lips twitch at the edges at the success of the magic. It takes a few moments but the two horses come wandering in through the trees in to the clearing.

"It's been a day. I thought they might be lonely." There's an almost cheeky little grin on her at this little success. Did she really want the horses or did she want to prove to herself that she could call them here. Or may be she feels the success of having animals trust her enough to follow a trail of flowers like when the one cat in a house chooses your lap over everyone else's.

Jinx has posed:
It's not exactly a straight path through the forest but it is the fastest one back to the main road leading to the city. There's no brush cutting, no branches too low, no thorny grasses. It is a pleasant walk and then ride with the horses. There's a serenity Jinx is carrying with her - high on her encounter with the divine majesty of Gaia - and it permeates from her.

The rangers who rejoin them for the final leg must have picked up on it as they quietly whisper amongst themselves. It's not every day you witness the birth of a new sorceress from neonate to journey woman. She is on the road to greatness; a future she cannot even begin to fathom yet. It's the kind of destiny that is only born in Themyscira, a special magical place where miracles can still happen.

Jinx sidles her horse up to Donna's. "Troia..." she says as they pass under the archway back in to the city. "...thank you for believing in me." Written on Jinx's face is hope and motivation.

[ The Shade - Metric - https://youtu.be/laVWyQnIicU ]