(no subject)

[hot_mess_express]

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.]

Comments

[voreaciously]

[Oh...this is like.

This is like home now. Everything looks right with the growth here. Technology twined with nature, not against it but in functional harmony with it.

She can be found eyeing and touching the flowers with gentle and open fondness, or standing in the mists, but she is frowning, perhaps confused. It is difficult to tell with her eyes hidden away.

((ooc: all effects are a heck yes))]

[desirestruth]

[Naeva's arm-deep in flowers for different reasons, but at least she doesn't plow headlong into 80H. She has a bandage over her cheek (what did she do yesterday) but she's otherwise fine, just with an armload of moonflowers and purple wisteria.]

They're beautiful, aren't they?

[voreaciously]

[why is your face...

also oh no naeva.]

Yes, but...[man, she will just out with it.

She bows, deeply.]

I was very rude to you.

[desirestruth]

[naeva made mistakes.

She starts a little, and then huffs a faint laugh, reaching out to tuck a purple wisteria into 80H's hair.]

It is alright. I'm not upset with you.

[voreaciously]

[She's still bowing so that catches her by surprise and she rises, slightly.]

Still, I must apologise.

[desirestruth]

It's alright, truly.

[Unfortunately for them both, she decides to pat 80H's shoulder, and.

There is fondness. She doesn't really know 80H very well, and she has no desire or reason to pry into her psyche. She is concerned about the stiffness in manner, about the small dropped bits and pieces but, well, they all have their suffering. And so Naeva leaves it at a surface fondness, curiousity, friendliness. The problem is Naeva's surface levels are intense, a shock directly to the system, far stronger than regular human emotion.

And there's a deeper layer, too, lined with iron control. Sorrow and loneliness and fear, for the places and people she's loved, for all that she's lost, for the uncertainty of their precarious present and dangerous future. She has seen so much suffering. When will it be enough? But she must carry it all, lock it under iron will and hold it deep, as a constant weight and reminder to drown the last layer of--

hunger. Deep and dark and primal. Everything with a pulse, everything that smells of blood, everything and everyone with their life energy taken so much for granted. She fed just this morning, she fed yesterday, it's only a dull crackle right now, but it never goes away, will never go away, and if she ever loses control Naeva knows exactly what she'll become.

Not a jot of that shows in Naeva's tone or expression, only a soft gentle understanding. If yesterday was the Malice's infection, then truly it is no one's fault but their enemy's.]

[voreaciously]

[80H is not averse to contact, in fact, she quite likes it so goes a little pink at Naeva's shoulder touch, but that is when something else that feels...so familiar and yet so different happens.

Her feelings churn tumultuously beneath a frozen ocean. At times there is perfect calm. Blankness. Denial and discipline. But mostly it is a storm of--

Loneliness.

So profound that you can see, you can feel, you can taste the absence of something that should be there and is not, and the flavour of nothingness has never been so bitter, so acrid. Something is missing why is it missing why was she left here alone why did she ever have anything only to lose it did she even have it was it ever real why why why please come back if she's done something she's sorry why aren't you here why isn't she there how can she do anything anymore she needs you she needs you SHE NEEDS YOU SHE DOESN'T WANT. THIS--

Self-disgust.

She does not have anything because she is worthless filth. Worse than vile. She is disgusting and poison and everything she touches, everything she has ever touched she has ruined. Every. Single. Time. She cannot help touching even if she knows she should burn herself away.

There is something like loud, unintelligle static on this bond. Like there should be more things here, maybe, but you cannot conceive what no matter how you try.

And then it resumes.

Do not let anyone in. (But there are flickers of concern for people not herself) Do not trust in anyone, but trust them to be themselves. Make no friends, make no family. A team is only a means to an end-- Bonds only mean...the discipline returns, and everything is neat. Orderly.

No. She is not hurt. She is fine. Everything is fine. She will fulfill her objectives, nothing more, nothing less.]

Do not.

[Her voice shudders and she swats Naeva's hand away, more afraid than anything else, as if breaking the link now can undo what is already done.]

[desirestruth]

[Naeva is silent for a few moments, almost contemplatively so. She takes no offense at the swat--in this situation, she'd have done no different, she thinks--but seems to stare somewhere a little above 80H's head.

Oh, that loneliness is so familiar she might choke on it. Oh, that bitterness and hatred are like acid in her throat. Oh, what a despairing, dizzying mix of familiar and startling, painfully new. And in her gaze there is an emotion unguarded, a deep sorrow a century old, no pity but genuine pain, before Naeva's control snaps into place.

She doesn't speak, still, simply steps back, and picks up a moonflower. Much like with Crow, she understands that this fear cannot be quelled with words.

So she takes the moonflower and holds it, in an open palm, and holds the other hand steadily out to 80H, so she need not touch the moonflower herself. A one-way exchange.]

...A secret for a secret.

[It is an offer. Insurance. An understanding that there must be a tangible collateral.]

[voreaciously]

[She wears masks, but she's never thought nor cared to do it to assuage others, most of the time. It isn't as if she's had many people in her life that she needed to do that for.

But she schools herself into one after a few moments. It's nearly hard to believe she could have ever hit moments ago with how placid she looks, now.

She blinks, unseen, at the offering.]

Why would you do that? It is unnecessary.

[She is a terrible person, she does not resist out of kindness, even if she realises that Naeva is being surprisingly kind in doing so? Why? Why would she?]

[desirestruth]

...Because I was alone, too.

[A hundred years. A hundred years and neither the few friends nor her brother nor anyone could touch the gaping hole that was fighting to hold together breaking-apart magic that hated her for being her mother's daughter, for being the blood that broke it to begin with.

none of them could touch the decades were none of them were there.]

And I have tasted enough sorrow in my life, that I would give you some assurance that there is nothing to fear, if I could.

[voreaciously]

I am fine.

[She hears Naeva, but she cannot listen to her. Cannot imagine, cannot sympathise, cannot draw closer.]

I am always fine.

[She has to be.]

So you do not need to give me anything.

[desirestruth]

Is this what fine looks like to you?

[She wants so badly to force it, to shake her, to yell until she understands, it doesn't have to be like this

but

much like the east wind and the sun, she knows howling will never get her anywhere.]

I ask you only to understand I do not mean you...harm.

[nihilmancy]

[She isn't touching the flowers yet, but she is drifting slightly above the ground, leaning in sometimes to breath in the scent of them.]

Hah, it's like a dream.

[voreaciously]

Something like that, yes perhaps...

[...she is dreaming. She is taking the evening train to town to do some weekend shopping. If she closes her eyes, she can see it.]

[nihilmancy]

[Unfortunately, she brushes up against her and-

It is a dark place, shot through with veins of dim light. The vast tunnels stretch on as far as the eye can see, walls and floors and ceiling of hard grey and black and dark blue stone, cool and damp.

She keeps walking. She's small and tired, but she keeps walking. Because if she stops, she will surely die. Her small bloody hand occasionally touches the wall for support. Her breath is coming in labored gasps. She needs to escape, but how? Where is the exit?

She can feel a power flowing through her, a current of magical energy- it's something she's never felt before, and she's not sure if it's exhausting her, or energizing her, but it brings with it a tingling feeling in her hands and feet, and a steady hum all through her body. The power is sinking in deeper and deeper.

Eventually, somehow, the tunnel stops, and she finds herself in a cave with beautiful crystalline stalactites and slalagmites, softly glowing with a blue light, curtains of moss on the floor to comfort her raw feet, and a clean clear river of subterranean water. Is it water? It sparkles and glows so strangely. She walks over, though, because she is so thirsty. She takes a drink, and her vision goes white. The next thing she hears is a woman's soft alto voice murmuring to her; "Come, open your eyes, child. There is nothing to fear. Wake up."]

[ruinatings]

Find something interesting?

[In a hallway, Rufus is delicately stepping around flowers. They look like trouble as far as he's concerned.]

[voreaciously]

[Her posture is always perfect but upon seeing Rufus she stands to. She likes and respects Rufus a bit.]

Oh, good day, my lord! I hope it finds you well and in good health. Ah, yes, I am very fond of all these flowers, actually.

[ruinatings]

No need for formalities.

[He folds his arms, looking down at the flowers.]

These specifically, or are you a gardening enthusiast in general?

[voreaciously]

Both, but it was difficult not to be. I am more used to plants being everywhere than not. There normally would not be this many flowers were people needed to walk, but flowers hanging from the ceilings was quite a common sight in trains.

[ruinatings]

Would that not be difficult to maintain?

[voreaciously]

The maintenance of them in public spaces and facilities is a government occupation. Those who can afford to hire privately to do so in their own homes, if they do not do so themselves. In many places, much of it is connected and originates with municipal jurisdiction.

[ruinatings]

I see... It sounds like an interesting society to live in. Beautiful, at the very least.

[But it also sounds really expensive to do, and Rufus can't help thinking about it from the position of a ruler. Would he have spent that much on flowers...? No. No he would not. But he's not going to say so. He's too polite.]

[voreaciously]

It is, but many places around the world are similar. How and what they cultivate may be different, but more places do than not.

[which is why being in such sterile environments is so bloody weird to her.]

[ruinatings]

The world I'm from is quite unlike you describe. I must admit I'd fine it interesting to study how such different values develop.

[voreaciously]

[NO, RUFUS, YOU KNOW NOT WHAT YOU SAY--]

My world is flush with magic, so the foundation of many institutions and sectors are built upon and around that. Not everything, of course, but it is keeping everyone alive, so it would be remiss for it not to form a large basis of daily life.