Cassiopeia Sonelios's Questionnaire

She can see why people have reasons to be where they are in the moment, though Cassiopeia is still trying to find a place that she really connects to. Miami is often hotter than she'd prefer but seeing as she was raised here, part of her feels bound to stay. There's always a looming fear that she'd feel homesick if she left, and with each step she takes towards cementing her position in the community she runs the risk of getting too far to turn away. People ask why she's a barista when she has a degree and two majors, and why she only lives in an apartment if her savings are enough for a house. Her answer is usually a shrug or that she likes where she is at the moment.

Her apartment is a moderate size, filled with mismatched items of all the hobbies she's dabbled in: art, music, dice, textiles, flower arranging, video games, books, woodworking, newspaper clippings, DIY makeup, jewelry kits, and so much more that one would describe the living room as cluttered. She's got a system to the chaos, and often it discourages people from visiting her place. There is a reason for this; at some point someone she loved ended up trying to rummage through her things to find whatever secrets they could. A careless mess of objects strewn across the floor were devastating enough, but to think someone so close to her could this easily break her trust? 

Everyone has secrets.

For Cassiopeia, it's all hidden in her bookshelves. Some of those mythology books are truly as thick as they look, but some covers are just there to conceal all that she holds close to her heart.

No one has the right to pry it open.

Working as a barista is far from sustainable, especially considering the usual debt that a university student falls into. However, Cassiopeia is fortunate enough to be in somewhat of a better position. She never mentions what exactly her larger source of income is, only that both of her parents are dead and she is the sole inheritor. People around her, presumptious as they are, have begun to think the worst of her situation no matter how naturally she tries to divert the conversations. Even if she thinks she's kept them at arms-length, it never deters them from trying to find out. Maybe they just want to be successful too, not knowing how frugal she is.

Cassiopeia puts aside some of her money each month to spend on her hobbies, though she's so sparing with her materials that she often doesn't need to use it. Makeup might be her biggest expense from the sheer amount of products she'd need, since she experiments with her looks whenever she has the time. 

She's seen darkness.

It might be the only thing she sees because she tends to stay in the shadows and observe quietly. Primed for the worst, she feels so much distrust towards people around her that she finds the need to be quite distinct from anyone else just so she wouldn't emulate them. Cassiopeia loses herself in myths and stories that she's read a thousand times because all their complexity has been put into words. There is no lie in a book that she knows from cover to cover. She knows the beginning and the end, she knows the inevitable tragedies and what has led to it. She's seen it all play out before her eyes and she wishes people could just see the same looming storm as she has this whole time.

Maybe she doesn't need to be an oracle to put her observations to good use, but it's the first thing that comes to mind when asked. 

And by "darkness" she really means the absence of light, the absence of happiness, absence of knowledge, absence of all warmth each time she helplessly watches someone fall into the pits of despair.

In taking a major in Psychology, she had originally planned to study further to become a therapist, but if she can take a shortcut towards it, she will. At least with the help of magic, she could more easily help people see the truth of their situations, right?

She wants to tell people what their fate would be if they continued on their maladaptive paths, and she wants them to believe her. Really, she just wants to be heard, but she's told herself time and time again that she is heard, just not heeded. Oracles go insane after a while and therapists need therapy, though that's a risk she's willing to take---if anything she'd be more blissfully ignorant once she's seen so many visions that she can't perceive reality anymore.

She wants to know so much that she'll end up knowing nothing at all.

Cassiopeia saw a shooting star.

It was a brief blink in the sky, a bright line in the night that flashed by as she happened to look up. 

She's always been enamoured with the little miracles; 11:11, dandelion seeds, birthday candles, and shooting stars - anything to make a wish that may just come true. Yet in all the transience of such a rare occurrence she completely forgot to make a wish. She found herself staring wistfully at the sky instead, at all the stars that have made themselves visible to her once she cared to look close enough. 

If anything, she hadn't made a wish in years. Somehow all the magic in the world that she believed to exist was laid forgotten somewhere in the storm, and there was something so tragic in the way she suddenly noticed how dimly the embers of hope flickered in people's eyes. It all used to be so magnificently blinding.

- Delphyrion:

An eccentric scientist that stumbled upon the cafe Cassiopeia works at. There's something admirable in the way they present themselves as one who doesn't stare too deeply into the darkness of the world as much as they try to make out what's in it. They're on the search for knowledge, but they never dwell too long on what they don't know. They completely disregard the complexities of being human - something Cassiopeia desperately tries to wrap her head around - and they focus on what they can control. Around them she doesn't need to be something; she just needs to listen and that's all they expect from her. It's like she can shut off her brain for a while as they mumble away about alchemical concepts and everything will still be well once she returns.

- Siopilós: 

A mysteriously wordless figure that haunts Cassiopeia on her most delirious nights. They stand before her draped in a cloak dark as obsidian, face ever-shifting as though she were dreaming. Yet in her dreams the face is connected to a name that she's never heard before; she barely knows any Greek but somehow she knows this is the word for “silence”. In a way they’re familiar, like a friend she never had. They shouldn't be a threat to her, but she can’t help but feel unsettled anyway. She has an inkling that they know far too much about Cassiopeia and people around her - perhaps more than Cassiopeia does - yet she knows nothing of this masked individual. It scares her, all the horrible things they could do with this information. 

- Celeste:

Cassiopeia's coworker, who Delphyrion takes for a challenge because he's an undergrad in the science field. It's a bit vexing because Delphyrion has a Master's degree (even if they themselves forget that most of the time), though they're just joking around as always. Besides that, she doesn't know much about Celeste; she's never cared enough to ask, and he's not the most talkative either. He sometimes gives her these weird looks, as if she's casting magic in the middle of the cafe (she really doesn't). For that, he's pretty rude, but at least he's a diligent worker. Any words they've exchanged have purely been for work.

Cassiopeia's childhood was quite unremarkable; she went to school, she had friends, she happened to read Percy Jackson and developed a fixation on mythology. She was always the airheaded kid, stuck in daydreams of magic's existence. She used to hold onto her jade pendant to wish for the sun to come out during field trips, and when the sun did come out she'd go running to her classmates and claiming that she was a sorceror. They didn't believe her but they played along anyway. 

...She may have created a cult in primary school.

Her parents were quite distraught that she'd basically created a new religion among the children, but mostly they'd just be doing silly things like dancing around a cup of cold coffee to make the environment warmer. It worked (because physical activity warms up the body, but we don't need to ruin her dreams). 

She doesn't like to mention her parents or their untimely ends, so the most she'll say about that is that they died when she was 13; quite the unlucky number. At the time she thought she just hadn't wished hard enough for them to come back, or for things between them to get better. Then she stopped wishing completely because she didn't want to be disappointed if they didn't come true.

Cassiopeia has never been in love. She is curious about relationships, it's just that she also doesn't want to go through the stages of dating around and what-ifs and situationships - if she were in one, she'd want it to be meaningful and homely. All her crushes have just been superficial happenstances that faded just as suddenly as they appeared. It didn't feel real or based on the right reasons. She also doesn't have that distinct courage to act on them in the moment, no matter how frazzled she becomes at the hands of her own feelings. Maybe if she actually tried, she would've eventually been close enough with someone to fall in love with them, but she's also wary of showing that much vulnerability towards any person in particular. 

Even her friends know next to nothing about her inner workings, and considering how communication is one of the cores of a loving relationship...

Part of her also has the notion that all these intense emotions are bound to disappear even if she's going out with someone. Yes, they made her very giddy and hyperaware to the point of overstimulation. Yes, looking retrospectively is always interesting because it feels like she was put under a spell. But what if that's the only part she likes about a relationship? What if she wants to jump ship right at the first lull? What if she can't handle the responsibilities? What if she isn't doing enough?

She's fine just going with the flow for now. Maybe she'll meet someone who she wants to ask out.

If it were meant to be, it'd happen eventually.

Being known.

Cassiopeia doesn't talk much about her personal life because she's wary of people knowing about her vulnerabilities. What reason would one have for wanting to know something like that? Blackmail. Rejection. 

She's been lied to enough times to become hyperaware that everyone keeps at least some part of themselves concealed, but the more they make themselves seen, the more they risk revealing everything. And as much as she refuses to fight against any disaster that happens, citing fate and magic, she'll still take precautions. She'd rather stay fully in the darkness. 

She keeps everyone at an arm's length; people can confide in her as much as they want but they shouldn't expect her to open up in return. More so, she's aware of the dastardly consequences of someone leaving with whatever they've learnt about her - and they will leave. Cassiopeia knows this through 23 years of experiencing numerous instances where people have tried to pry into her life. They assume that she thinks and acts the same way they do. They fail to understand that the more they try, the further she'd sink away - if anything, this has gone on for so long that it's instinctual. She could be watching a movie beside someone on a couch, and by the end of it she would be on the other end of it and neither would even have noticed how far she'd inched away. She calls it her self-imposed boundaries, but she knows the issues are rooted a lot deeper than in one's personal space. 

Sometimes she does wish to be heard and to be closer but something almost sickening - a twisted sense that she'd be selfish by considering it - is bound to stop her every time. But if other people can do whatever they wanted, why couldn't she?

Her ambition is indeed to erase darkness - by then she tells herself she'd no longer have a reason to hide. Whether she'll actually open up in the end is up for debate.

Her characters.

Perhaps not the first thing that most people would think of when asked about "possessions", but intellectual property is very much under that same umbrella. At least it can't really be stolen as much as it's plagiarized, and at that point Cassiopeia wouldn't even care because this isn't something she wants to hide or gatekeep. After all no one is trying to rummage through her things or pry something out of her. No one is going to hurt her with her own characters. They're only going off of what she's already given out as public information in the age of the Internet. Once they take that character concept, they're effectively making their own character, while Cassiopeia's version is bound to evolve by itself as well. 

One reason why Cassiopeia loves Mythology and TTPRGs is all the character-creation that goes on behind it. She could take tropes from mythological figures and apply it to her own playstyle, and if she were to speak or act in any unconventional way, it would be under the specific character's name and personality. Cassiopeia effectively places herself at a distance from the characters that she immerses into all the different universes, allowing her to release some of that pent-up tension from her day-to-day life. 

She sprinkles a bit of herself and people she knew onto all of their characterizations. While they don't completely reflect all the problems she has, it still comforts her to know that eventually these characters would develop into their own people who she could still relate to. As their reactions to situations gradually change, they help her process her own struggles and hypothetical consequences to her actions in real life. 

Cassiopeia is a bit of a hypocrite.

Maybe a little more than a bit, maybe even more than a little. 

It doesn't take passing out in her café to learn this either: if she believed in magic solely to explain the problems in her life, she wouldn't have seen any point in fixing anything. Except she does try (this is evident on her role in contracts), and she cares a lot more than she tries to let on. And when there's no one around her needing that sort of care, she inevitably feels a strange emptiness that she refuses to explain. In other words she has no friends that she can actually consider herself close to nowadays, and as much as she fears the prerequisites of closeness, this has been eating away at her. 

She's disappointed that her biggest problems always revolve around other people (or the lack of people). She's supposed to be her own person, is she not?

Cassiopeia wakes up like any other person and lies in bed for a while. She doesn't tend to fall back asleep but she'll be replaying the events of a dream or previous day, as if all the memory encoding in her sleep hasn't been enough. It's more like she roleplays her own memories and tweaks little things here and there, until she's been awake for half an hour. 

That's why she doesn't tend to drink coffee - in fact she hadn't drank coffee before when she first worked as a barista. The images in her head are enough to snap her out of the morning haze, and she'll get out of bed to prepare breakfast and go on with her day. 

Don't be mistaken; she's very much not a morning person, gods forbid anyone bother her before she's eaten breakfast. Her shifts usually start at noon, and she would rather rot in bed than have to take anything earlier. 

Cassiopeia has always been experimenting with makeup, but she hasn't really thought about the outfit she'd wear. Nowadays with contracts going on, she aims for a more practical look with actual pockets. Maybe she'd wear a long flowy dress with fabric that glittered like stars or caught the light in dual tones. However, high heels will forever remain an enigma. She's never gone to an occasion requiring her to look "best" in any way - this was a choice, she's been invited to parties during her time at university. There's no particular reason for it other than getting weird vibes from the people asking her.

She might pull out the jewelry drawer at last, which has been collecting dust for years because she had no reason to wear jewelry as a barista. If anything she likes to keep her valuables hidden and present as another random face in the crowd. As a child she was told that she had to wear nice clothes and makeup as a form of "respect" for others and that she'd never get a boyfriend if she didn't, which had already deterred her from the very idea of dressing up for anyone. (If someone were to love her based on her appearances, she'd run away the first chance she gets.) Now that she has more agency over herself to decide that everything she does will be for her own enjoyment, she might actually find herself enjoying dresses more. She's sure she'll be comfortable to some extent if she's the one choosing what to wear. What special place would she go to, is the real question.

Cassiopeia doesn't have a plan for her birthday yet. She just goes about it like any normal day: work, go home, rest. Honestly she doesn't see much meaning in the day, and the last time she celebrated it was on her 13th birthday. Of course she misses the happy atmosphere, but she can live without it. She's gone 11 years without any mention of it anyway.

Or rather, she does tell people if they ask, but she'll give a date that's a few days off in case they try to use it to access her bank. No one has really wished her a happy birthday even if she remembers theirs every year. Adults don't seem to celebrate often anyway, though it would've been nice to be acknowledged every now and then. It's not like she'd hate anyone for forgetting.

Well, if she wanted to do something fun, why would she wait for her birthday to fulfill it? Statistically people are most likely to die on that day. It's strange, but it's also laced with so many superstitions that she'd rather just avoid all the customs and celebrate on another day.

It's not much of a regret, as much as it's a foreboding feeling that she'd regret this somewhere down the line. Could be tomorrow, could be years later, but Cassiopeia is somewhat concerned that she's just... never known how to love someone. It's been a long time since she's seen her family - not that they were great examples - and anytime she feels even a jolt of realization, she wonders...

She doesn't need it, she can live without it, but it's an age-old tale that people have written in books. And before books, there must've been stories illustrated in millions of words and gestures what Cassiopeia only gets to see from an outsider's perspective. All in all it's the fear of missing out that plagues her dreams. She's not going to do well if she forces an encounter, and even if something comes out of it she'd probably end up being more avoidant than anyone could handle. Such is the life of a trickster. Now that she can remember her dreams, she suddenly recalls why they're a double edged sword.

...Sword?

She also remembers that one summer. She wonders if that was just a dream. She wonders if one day all of this will just be a dream to her. She doesn't want to forget again.

Maybe she regrets... Forgetting.

Maybe she has loved before. Probably has. Thank the gods she doesn't have to admit it out loud. There's no one here to admit it to.

It comes to her in her dreams. 

Or rather, that's the only way she could coherently explain it. The experiences are too extraordinary for her to put into words, and really, does one need an explanation for everything in their life? Mythology was conceived to make sense of phenomena, and Cassiopeia loves reading about it, but it feels like she'd lose the transcendent feeling if she spoke it aloud. 

She likes to think that the gods love her.

Cassiopeia is loved.

Not because she knows how to talk, not because she's fascinated with magic, not because she's got an easygoing relationship with fate and where it'll take her next; they love her for who she is, and they watch her with great interest. She still has to work for it of course. It's her way of proving her worth so the deities might just share a little bit of their power in deep curiosity for what she's going to do with it next. 

Oh, are gods separate from harbingers?

Either way, immortals cherish their little sharp-tongued humans. She's sure they want to spell her ruin too - Apollo seems livid that she even tried to make an oracle vessel of her own - but just outright killing her would be too anticlimactic. That just means she can do whatever she wants as of now. 

Cassiopeia's education was centred around mythology.

That doesn't answer the question, does it - she's spent her whole life looking up at the stars. She's a dreamer, a wisher, an idealist turned realist who jumps into life with rose-coloured lenses, knowing fully well she's wearing spectral spectacles to envision the world as a perfect little place to achieve her ambitions. It doesn't change no matter how many losses she goes through, and in that regard, she hasn't become more or less spiritual.

She just goes along with the flow of time and reality - there could be one god, many gods, aliens, writers, angels, demons, everything that anyone could ever imagine in that little head of theirs. There could be none - which, probably means she's already gone insane. And she'll happily accept either, knowing it doesn't really matter because it doesn't change the fact that this world is weird and she doesn't have to wrack her brains trying to understand it. Putting it to words would just lose the magic. 

This world is weird and she's actively trying to change it into something that's just as weird. 

In the end, she believes... in herself.

Up is down and left is right and right is wrong and death is life and-

I knew there were liars in this world. They make up the foundations of our crooked systems - none of us would be where we are if not for the endless rigging at the hands of those who were born a bit luckier. I'm part of that privilege - I'm generally the one to pay for things. That one Contract where we were sent to a sanctioned country? Yeah - but it didn't mean I wasn't taken advantage of. Some part of me thinks the others did the math wrong just so I'd pay more (even though I was already covering most of the cost) but I don't want to believe it.

Does it conflict with my worldview? Hardly. Things are dark out here and it doesn't get any better. I hate that it confirms everything I've ever feared.