auroraexpress | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who: Everyone
When: Day 20, evening
Where: The train and surrounding terrain

[So after all the earlier excitement.... dramatic organ music starts to play through the cars. There's no obvious source. It's just... There? All around you for a while, before fading.

Of course before the music fades there's more things going on. A mist seeps up from the earth outside the train and within the train simply seems to form like it's produced by invisible fog machines. As the mist grows into a thick fog, you can hear eerie noises. Distant wolf howls, the screech of a fox that sounds like human screaming, owls hooting hauntingly, the leathery flap of bat wings, and other, less identifiable noises of the night, strange and otherworldly.

If you go out in it, breathe it in, the mist will chill you. Make you desire... Touch.

The need to hold another person is an almost growing compulsion, but it can be fought.

However things that are harder to avoid are the flowers, night blooming wisteria in white and purple seems to have grown from nowhere in the train cars, hanging down to brush the heads of passengers with sweet scented blossoms, and the floors of the train and ground around it have become endless beds of gently glowing moonflowers.

The only places the fog and flowers don't reach are team cabins.

Effects:

Mist:

Cold that cannot be dispelled without touch, a desire to touch others.

Wisteria:

Purple blossoms cause an empathetic bond with the next person you touch.

White blossoms cause arousal and a mild to powerful aphrodisiac effect.

Moonflowers:

Share memories or thoughts with the next person you touch.

By morning the mist and flowers will vanish.]

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[He catches her arm automatically to steady her, even as he reels with the scene from her perspective--

It's a garden party in a noble's estate, beautiful and extravagant. Jusis is quite young, but he's facing older, distinguished looking men and women who fawn over him with false smiles and calculating eyes, calling him Lord Jusis as they praise him emptily.

He escapes, eventually, and when he's out of sight he can still hear their conversation. "Ugh. How annoying, having to flatter a common bastard makes my tea bitter."

"He's only a spare in case something happens to Lord Rufus, where does he get off showing his face in front of real nobility? It makes me sick."

"Well just bear with it, it's not as if you can afford to offend a great house, Baron."

"Shut up! Anyway..."

The conversation continues unpleasantly but Jusis has already walked out of earshot, leaving the party and the garden, traversing hallway after hallway of too-rich opulence and polished floors that reflect like mirrors. Eventually he comes out into the sunlight again, in a place that smells like horses, and enters a stables. The stable hands greet him respectfully but with genuine enthusiasm, and he spends the rest of the memory helping with horses.]

...Oh, this sort of thing again.

[He lets go of her rather hastily, even if the brief contact helped dispel the chill.]

I meant to find you in any case.

Edited 2019-04-20 02:43 (UTC)

...What vultures.

[She has to take a moment for her eyes to refocus and for her to parse who it is. She does flush a little when she recognizes him. Oh. Right. Yesterday.]

Ah, has this happened before? What was that?

[He snorts, not disagreeing, but crosses his arms over himself after, to ward off the chill.]

Last time it was glitter that made you share memories. It seems you had some troubles of your own, but before that...

[He clenches his jaw a moment and then says with curt awkwardness.]

My apologies for my behavior. I was crude and out of line.

...[She regards him for a moment, digesting that. When she said he hadn't got a teaspoon's worth of social acumen, she meant it, and he's not proving her wrong, but...

...she doesn't think he's insincere, either, even before taking her own behavior into account.]

It is unnecessary. I was being petty and spiteful...there's nothing to be gained by either one of us taking all the blame.

And no worth in dismissing my own behavior.

[But if she won't accept the apology and dismisses it as unnecessary he will drop it. He's sincere but he's also pretty awkward and abrupt and he won't insist on an apology that isn't wanted.]

But very well.

That was...the rules of etiquette are different where I'm from. It is not meant to be a dismissal. [she's just hiding behind manners because she's ashamed of herself, Jusis, it's okay.]

I see.

[An awkward pause because now he's not sure what to say or how to say it. It's not like he wants to try to be a rude dick when he was just trying to apologize for being a rude dick.]

I suppose I still have much to learn.

I believe...that most of us do.

[She shuffles a little awkwardly, and brushes some wisteria out of her hair...purple, of course. Was this growing so low before? Hm, no matter.]

I can't really fault you for not knowing the rules of etiquette from a completely different world.

I suppose.

[He's not going to argue he just doesn't know. What to say. And it's cold and hard to see much past Naeva.

It's a shame he's not good at dealing with people like his brother, the silence is just awkward now.]

...Have I offended you?

[The cold doesn't bother her, she's dead, but he looks cold, so clearly what she needs to do is take her jacket off and drape it over his shoulders, right? If that means some touch that's coincidental.]

[Well with all that touching she's just going to get some emotions from him!! Offended is not among them. Really confused and awkward and unsure are all there though.]

No, of course not. What are you doing?

[On her end, there's confusion, and concern, and a sort of awkward sense of displacement, the rules are different and she doesn't know how to cope.]

You seemed cold? The temperature cannot concern me, so...

[Oh jeez these aren't his feelings. He's kind of alarmed, pulling back but awkwardly unsure what to do with her coat.]

Cannot..?

The cold doesn't really effect me.

[Because she's, y'know, dead.]

[He doesn't know??]

...I see.

[Not really but whatever the jacket is a nice gesture at least. It seems like a peace offering even if it doesn't do much against the supernatural chill.]

Don't worry too much about it.

[She is fighting an overwhelming urge to pat him on the head. She doesn't think he'd appreciate it.]

[Hard to say with him. He's just going to pull the coat tighter in a vain hope it'll work. He's definitely discombobulated but he's got his resting bitch face back.]

I wasn't.

...You really aren't used to dealing with human people, are you?

[Would it help if she was a horse, Jusis? She doesn't have that form back yet.]

I interact with people fine.

[He's just abrupt and rude but some people don't mind it for various reasons.]

But I'll admit small talk has never been my forte.

You just seem like you'd be more comfortable if I was a horse.

[She's not really judging. Horses are great.]

....I do prefer horses to most people but I'm not sure how I'd feel about you as a horse.

...That sounded better in my head, I promise.

[She. She can't resist it anymore.

Head....pat....

At least the memory this time is short and just adorable. She's flopped out in a spooky-ass meadow somewhere, clearly much younger, and just...surrounded by forest creatures. Dark, demonic-looking horses (she thinks they're cute), spooky-ass stag and deer, wolves, bears, foxes and--is that a fucking chimera?--all manner of predatory creatures, serpents coiled up on top of the mammals to stay warm. Bunnies, which...well they're bunnies they never really look spooky. Boars. All of them are coming over to talk to her, give her news of the goings on in the forest...it's not speech, but he'll get a definite clear impression of what fox gossip is like. ]

[What the heck. He looks, and feels, kind of stunned by the headpat. Not sure if he should be offended? But also kind of wistful because he really has always been affection starved. So he feels half patronized and half embarrassed and another half weirdly flipfloppy. Don't mind that that's three halves.]

...You're good with animals. I suppose that makes sense.

I'm closer to them than I am to human, anyway.

[...Ruffling his hair a little bit, then! Playful. Affectionate.

That loneliness,that starvation, she's familiar with it. He reminds her of her best friend, so she can't help but feel a little more warmly to him.]

[The embarrassment overcomes the rest finally, and though his heart is now weirdly achey and lonely, he ducks away from the head pats. It's too much, he feels treated like a child which is both nice and awful, makes him feel patronized but paid attention to. And the whole empathy bond makes him very freaked out, feeling far too vulnerable even as he tries to distance himself from all emotions while at the same time wanting more warmth.]

What are you, anyway?

[A far too blunt question.]