starswing | The Future Past III; Laurent and Miriel

Laurent: M-Mother?!
Miriel: My dearest son. Seeing you unharmed fills me with joyous sensations.
Laurent: Mother! Oh, Mother! I can't believe I have finally found you! After your disappearance, I scoured the battlefields but never located your body. I always believed you were alive!
Miriel: Oh... Yes, about that...
Laurent: Perhaps there really is such a thing as miracles!
Miriel: Erm... Well. Laurent, you may wish to gird yourself for what I am about to tell you. I should have told you from the outset, but... I am not your mother. I am not even from your world.
Laurent: Egads, Mother. If you've taken up humorous banter, your sense of it is appalling.
Miriel: I am not joking. I come from another world entirely. An "Outrealm." So while I am your mother, I am not YOUR mother, if you follow. It's fascinating. Tragic... but fascinating.
Laurent: Take that back. My mother would never speak baseless nonsense!
Miriel: Indeed she would not. I suppose I would harbor my own suspicions if I did not know better. But I do, ergo my nonsense is not baseless, ergo it is not nonsense.
Laurent: Then my real mother is... She's really gone.
Miriel: I'm sorry. I do regret the brief dose of elation I seem to have misadministered. I hope I have not crushed all your hopes under the weight of this latest one.
Laurent: ... No. Perhaps it is best I let my mother go. Dreaming she lives on is just that-- a dream. A useless fallacy. She would want me to move on. Thank you for waking me up. You know, this does still feel like a reunion, in a roundabout way.
Miriel: Thank you, Laurent. Against better reasoning, I feel much the same. Now, allow me to join my talents with yours on your real mother's behalf. She would want you to be safe during your most momentous of battles.
Laurent: Thank you, Mother. I have always longed to fight at your side. How strange that a crossing between worlds helped realize that wish.
Miriel: It is most curious indeed.
Laurent: I would very much like to study these other worlds-- Outrealms, you called them? Once I have set Grima's terror to an end, I shall set to work.
Miriel: Only my son could think about research amidst a crisis like this. And how I admire you for it! A thirst for knowledge proves how alive we truly are.
Laurent: Then may my thirst never be slaked.