#hermes created meteion to get the answer he wanted but she was so much more than that

[haunted-xander]

Upon your return, I will gift you a beautiful flower

[delta-chan]

Hydaelyn didn't find the answers for Hermes, she found them to sate her own curiosity along with the goal of using it to help society at large. Her novel perspective was useful as Ancients typically didn't stray too far from their comfort zones. This is what caused the whole problem with not wanting to move on from their losses--stagnation. They took everything for granted. Because live was organized and had a set pattern, they weren't ready for losses that seemed arbitrary or unfair. They're used to buffers where they can prepare to accept a loss with the understanding that it comes once a decision is reached.

(If you do the converging questlines in Elpis, you find that the WoL comes to serve the same function as Venat--helping a group of ancients confront and memorialize and unexpected loss with their novel perspective. This is how the Nymeia lily came to be.)

Hermes is a foil to Venat. He did not care to look to others around him for their perspectives, as Venat did. He had an extreme aversion to death that he didn't know others had even though there were people struggling with coming to terms with it all around him. One researcher says that while he's capable and amiable enough, he doesn't really talk to anyone. He keeps to himself. Even within his own community, he doesn't broaden his perspective and works off of assumptions based on his own catastrophizing.

Because of this, he treats Etheirys as a baseline for a "bad society". And while the Ancients are definitely not on the right track in many respects, it is this assumption that the answers he gets are going to be "better" that sets him up to fall. He sends Meteion into space on the assumption that she'll be embraced in a place that's full of love and care for their fellow beings. This is not what was there--and the conclusion he reached was the polar opposite of understanding, a feeling that became the malicious desire to see everything die over time. He dies not understanding, steadfast in his ideals. Life isn't worth it. He's too far gone to understand the answers, and the only way he ever will is to reach the depths of the lifestream and be wiped completely clean.

Hydaelyn's conclusion is an extension of her goals as Venat--to give people a wider perspective and help them know there's more to life than the ways they've set themselves in, the things they're used to. She didn't want to teach people the way she did. She says as much to you--there was no honor in it. But it had to be done. People had to learn to live lives that deprived them of complete stability--they had to suffer to experience true joy.

Fandaniel's conclusion was an extension of his goals as Hermes--to know the answers of what gives people's lives meaning. He could not accept these answers as they were not what he was looking for, no matter where he looked--whether it be in the heavens or on earth. Because he won't dismiss them either way, he fixates on the dire nature of Meteion's report and as he reincarnates comes to the conclusion is that if you're doomed to suffer and die, then it's best to die because nothing else matters.

Meteion sits in the middle--she was so overwhelmed by the negativity she encountered that she created a feedback loop and made things worse--she was so sensitive that she had no choice, and in the end it was all she fixated on. She couldn't look anywhere else because what she was wouldn't let her. She traversed countless planets--and even those that were barren save for traces, she could have found answers. Even the necropolis she considers a completely hopeless place is full of reminders of life, of joy. Apartments with a bar downstairs. A communal plaza with a sculpture in the center. Mailboxes where the people who lived there would send and receive mail.

It takes the WoL sharing their experiences with her for her to reach a complete understanding of suffering giving meaning to joy, but she does. She swings from almost completely idealistic and innocent, to mature and utterly nihilistic in the most negative way possible, to mature but full of wonder and appreciation as she rights her wrongs and exits the story, hoping that eventually the soul that was once called Hermes comes to understand.

[ladyramora]

Peculiarity

Endwalker Spoilers below the cut ↓↓↓

Ship: Hermes/WoL, Hermes/"Azem's Familiar"

Characters: Hermes, Warrior of Light AKA "Azem's Familiar", Meteion

Hermes' POV

Set in Elpis before much happens, "Azem's Familiar" spending some time there and getting to know a certain Chief Overseer.

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The first word that comes to mind when meeting Azem's familiar is… peculiar. Yes, most peculiar. Hermes cannot help but wonder what was going through Azem's mind as they were working on the concept for this particular familiar. He cannot help but admire the design, strange and particular as they were.

That the venerable Emet Selch had seen fit to fill this familiar with his own aether was yet another oddity that Hermes puzzles over, but such that is less interesting to him than the idea, the thought that niggled at him. Was this familiar more advanced than even Meteion and her sisters that Hermes had toiled over tirelessly for what he needed them to do?

What, then, was this Azem capable of? To be able to create something so, something so… eye catching and interesting that Hermes found himself distracted from his work just by stray thoughts of the peculiar, puzzling familiar. His worries seemed lesser, somehow, looking upon that face and meeting that clear —and dare he say confident? — gaze.

It is when the familiar — with Meteion cheerfully in tow — stretches their hand out to him with a sticky, syrup coated apple sat on their palm on a square of wax paper that Hermes stares.

Stares at them hard with Meteion's joyful chirping in the background — "Syrup apples! Hermes' favorite! It's delicious! I want to eat it, I want to have some, too~" — at the red syrup smeared on the familiar's face, the sticky sheen on their lips. The apple held by the stick in their other hand that had clearly been bitten, consumed. Eaten off of.

Hermes grasps their shoulders, his eyes wide and wild. A little manic in the glee that every researcher felt in the face of a fascinating discovery, no matter of your position. Even the Chief Overseer of Elpis could feel such a surge of excitement in the face of such a uniquely talented specimen.

"You can eat?" He asks with awe, looking them over admiringly as his hands squeezed into a surprising bit of muscle. Erm, hmm… Azem certainly had modeled their familiar somewhat after themselves, had they not?

The familiar blinks at him, apples held carefully away from them both so the sticky syrup did not drip or catch on his robes or hair, or themselves.

They nod, and Hermes cannot fight the intrigued smile that stretches across his face. There was no denying his interest was wholly, entirely piqued. "Just how did Azem do it?" Hermes murmurs, his fingers kneading mindlessly at the muscles in their arms as he examines them from every-which-way, every angle as if that would give him the answer to this new, amazing question. "I must ask them. Or, perhaps you can tell me?" Hermes gazes at them with bright, curious eyes.

The familiar opens their mouth, seeming almost… flustered. Feather-ruffled, as Meteion was wont to get on occasion. Ahh, perhaps he asked too much of them. Would Azem, peculiar person that they themselves were, have informed them of every facet of their own creation as Hermes would have? He did not rightly know.

Hermes pauses, realizing how close he had become to the familiar. So close that they nearly embraced. He need only wrap his arms around them for it to be so, as in this moment they nearly brushed against each other robe to robe. "A.. ah!" Hermes stumbled back in realization of his own impropriety, muttering, "my apologies!" and accidentally smacks the hand holding the apple they had brought him. It falls from their hand — all of them watching, aghast — to plop to ground, rolling damningly in the dirt.

Meteion's eyes have gone wide and dewy, her feathers fluffed out in dismay with her hands covering her gasping mouth. "Oh no, Hermes' apple!" She cries, so very forlorn that Hermes felt instantly contrite.

The familiar frowns down at it, too, their own eyebrows furrowed. Those clear, confident eyes troubled for a moment as they look between the ruined treat and Hermes' distraught expression. Hermes watches in real time as they puzzle it out, quite swiftly — they truly were so intelligent, so very unique! — as they look to him and hold out the apple they had already bitten. Theirs, offered to him. To replace what he had lost in his own foolishness.

Ah…

It was… such a thoughtless, but thoughtful, kind gesture. So very human.

Hermes stares at it, dumbfounded. His hand reaching for it out of polite habit to accept something offered before his reason catches up, and he blurts, "For me? But… it is yours? I could not possibly..."

They tilt their head, their gaze steady on him. Then, they smile, and Hermes feels his face fill with warmth as well as his chest, an overall fuzzy feeling blooming in his breast as they nod, gesturing to him with the apple held carefully in their fingers.

"Oh," Hermes says, strangely a little breathless. "...Thank you," he adds as Meteion cheers in the background, hopping on her taloned feet and raising her arms up. "Oh… Ohh! So… nice," she says, "so very kind to… to…"

Share, yes. That was the world she must be looking for. And so Hermes voices the thought aloud, helping her along to learn.

"Share!" Meteion chirps happily, clasping her hands together and beaming. "Yes! Hermes feels… warm! Happy! Hermes is... happy!" His entelechy says brightly, ever so helpfully.

It only makes Hermes all the more flustered. His heart beating suddenly faster as his cheeks burned.

He clears his throat, but does not correct her. Her words were true, after all. He was warm, happy. Touched by the gesture.

Instead he reaches for the offered apple in earnest, their fingers brushing as the familiar hands it off to him still with that calm smile. That point of contact sends a tingle up Hermes' arm from his fingers that has him shivering and very nearly dropping this one, too.

With the apple in hand, Hermes gulps. Saliva filling his mouth in memory of the delectable sweetness of his favorite treat. His eyes flickering between the sticky apple in his fingers and the confident, watchful gaze of Azem's familiar. The cheerful chattering of Meteion in the background nonsensical to Hermes' reddening ears as he looks at the indents of their teeth, the chunks already taken out of the apple, the sticky sheen of red on the familiar's lips.

"Ah…" Hermes clears his throat, and raises the apple to his lips, twirling the stick to bite from the other side.

Meteion hops happily at his feet, swishing back and forth in glee as she beams up at him. "Hermes loves apples! We made Hermes happy," she says, looking to the familiar with an exclamation of their name.

Yet another oddity, that name. Not everyone named their familiars as Hermes did. And now, he supposed, as Azem did. Most often they were simply called "familiar" or even a number added to it, along with their creator's name to keep track of whom the creation belonged to.

"Come on, come on," Meteion insists, reaching out to grasp the hand of Azem's familiar, calling their name with plain affection. "Let us go get you another one! You barely had a bite! Ohh, ohhh! I want to have one, too!"

Hermes smiles helplessly. Oh, dear. His dear Meteion was obviously smitten. It was not so surprising, if Hermes thought on it. This was the first familiar that had bonded with her in this way, the first one not to ignore her offer of friendship in lieu of whatever task or duty they were set to perform. They were unique, Azem's familiar. So very… very odd. Hermes could not blame Meteion for being so attached to them already. In fact, Hermes too…

"You cannot eat, Meteion," Hermes says, distractedly. Shaking his head. What was he thinking? Foolishness, surely. His gaze catching, lingering on the apple in his hands. Fingers twisting to twirl the stick and watch the apple spin in his fingers.

Glancing up only to find that he had been left behind in his musings. He raises the apple again to his lips for another bite, pausing only as he realizes he had bitten from the wrong side. His mouth where the familiar's had been, where their teeth had sunk in, traces of their saliva no doubt lingering on the broken flesh of the apple.

An indirect kiss.

Hermes swallows hard around the apple in his mouth, licking at his sticky lips and shaking his head hard as he sighed, "Foolishness." Yet he continues to eat from that side, cheeks and ears burning until all that is left is the apple core on the stick. The core he discards, the stick…. he pockets. He keeps it.

Why? Why does he feel the urge to keep it?

"What am I doing," he mutters to no one and nothing, and goes to wash his sticky fingers.

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[Part 2]

❤️

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[Part 3]

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