(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

[desirestruth]

[She sighs, and shifts her stance to put the basket down, tipping it to spill the wisteria out. She has to put the moonflowers back in...let's hope neither of them bumps into each other.]

You really were born without shame. Amazing. A medical marvel.

[bad_crowmance]

Thank you, thank you. I think I'm pretty amazing too.

[desirestruth]

Well, we'll certainly never need to worry about you having a low self-esteem.

[She's going to heft the basket to head in with it, gesturing for him to follow if he wants to keep talking. Also because it's fuckin' freezing outside.]

[bad_crowmance]

That's how you know I've been replaced with a fake.

[ He follows along with Naeva, taking great pains not to touch her. ]

[desirestruth]

I'd say that seems unlikely, but given everything else that keeps happening here, doppelgangers don't seem that farfetched.

[It's a good plan, crow, but unfortunately I, the player, am an asshole, and the cold's just gonna keep increasing.

It's just one of her memories. How bad could it be?]

[bad_crowmance]

[ "How bad" indeed.

Crow shivers slightly but he's still not fuckin engaging with the touching. ]

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if it happened some day.

[desirestruth]

I'll be sure to check before I punch you in the face, if it does.

[Just. Serenely putting that out there. But, she'll get to the greenhouse, and find a worktable and some gloves so she can start getting the seeds out of the moonflowers.

...why would she want to plant those?]

[bad_crowmance]

....Why are you planting those?

[desirestruth]

...If you put them in a jar, you can't touch them, and it'll be a natural lamp.

[That's a pretty good reason, but she looks away before he sees the sad look on her face...

Think, Crow. Who might she really want to see memories of hers?]

I'm not sure they'll even retain the effect, but I'll have to fence them off until we know.

[bad_crowmance]

[ It's when the sad look passes her face that he realizes. Oh.

Oh. ]

Well! It's probably good to find out, anyway. Though uh, I wouldn't replant those purple ones.

[desirestruth]

Wasn't planning on it. I can just buy regular wisteria with sparks, I think.

[Look at all these things we're not talking about!]

[bad_crowmance]

[ We're gonna keep not talking about them, too. ]

Or maybe roses instead.

[desirestruth]

I planted those already. Maybe I can breed more colors.

[Roses are safe. Roses won't betray her. This is safe.]

[bad_crowmance]

I'd suggest more flowers but it's really not my strong point.

[ Which is probably unsurprising. ]

[desirestruth]

It's nice that you've tried anyway, though--Ahh!

[She turns to go get a different tool, but her heels catch on something on the ground, slipping out from under her. Here we goooo.]

[bad_crowmance]

Whoa--!

[ He reaches out to grab her, to catch her so she doesn't fall and twist something horribly. Sure it can be healed, but that doesn't make it any less unpleasant. ]

[desirestruth]

[And in the end, Crow, you may have been right. Caring did doom you.

The rain hasn't stopped in hours. Everything hurts, every bone, every joint, every limb, the cold seeping into even her dead flesh. The upside of it is it washes away the blood on her, cleans out her still-poisoned wounds, drains the color out of her torn and muddy dress, but it makes the digging nearly unbearable.

But it cannot wait. The shrouded husk of her mother's body sits, only mildly damp, under the shade of the tree planted for Lucrezia dos Martos' oldest son, the lost prince, the brother Naeva had never met. But Naeva is soaked, digging, digging, digging, always digging. She couldn't find a shovel, so she digs through the mud with her hands.

She's vaguely aware she is not alone, that the whole of her people have trickled into the ruined palace, have come into the courtyard, have come to watch her. No one moves a muscle to help. And who would? Here, Naeva buries the monster and tyrant that doomed them. Here, she buries a cruel, paranoid women who'd performed countless unspeakable deeds of magic, as much a monster as the Emperor she'd warred against.

Here she buries a corpse and the fading memories of her mother before the curse ruined her mind. Of when Lucrezia still recognized her own children.

She doesn't know how long it takes. She doesn't think about it. Her mind plays out everything in a cold, numb greyness. But when she rises from the grave, a dry, warm fur cloak is wrapped around her shoulders by her handmaid, a tall winged woman with dark hair. On her other side, a pale young man with serpentine eyes steps forward with a crown, wrought in ivy and delicate black stone, ominous and spiky.

"The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen." His voice rasps, as though he struggles to speak the words, a formality to recognize what the magic of the Black Forest already knew. Naeva takes the crown in her muddy, torn fingers, numbly sets the unbearable weight on her head. It's rained so much, even she doesn't know if the wetness on her cheeks are tears.

None of that matters now. She has broken her own heart and buried it with the rest.

She turns to the handmaid, dimly remembering her chief duty is as a courier, and finds somewhere in the distance past a memory of her own voice, throat creaking as she forces it to work.

"...Send word to the Empire. The war ends today."

In the present, Naeva grabs onto Crow's arm, catching her weight on him to find her balance again. It takes her a couple seconds, and she braces herself for teasing, for her gracelessness and whatever embarrassing memory he's surely seen now.]

...Well, that's embarrassing. Thank you.

1/2

[bad_crowmance]

[ It's the middle of a Trial, the newest task set before them to execute their "King" in order to save the "people." But they'd already decided they weren't going to execute her, his teammate-- what's her name again? Oh well, it doesn't seem important. She stated that she could survive being bled out, so they'd decided that's what they would do instead. They were hoping it would be enough to satisfy the terms of the trial.

She and Hlasoh are having a back-and-forth with each other, with Hlasoh crying and offering to do it. Her tears set off ???'s tears, and they're both a sobbing, broken mess. For his part, Crow's back is in blinding pain from the twenty lashes he'd received from the previous round for a choice he hadn't even really wanted to make-- but betraying his teammates in a game would set a bad precedent, wouldn't it? So he'd let it be.

Anyway. He's in pain and the crying is grating on his last nerve. Crying is uncomfortable! All these feelings are uncomfortable! So he decides to take matters into his own hands-- avoid the spine and brain and ??? can survive-- and he runs her through with a sword.

There. Maybe now the crying will stop. He'd done it so neither of them have to worry about it.

But then Hlasoh goes and does it anyway and it was all for nothing, honestly, how annoying! ]

[bad_crowmance]

[ Crow blinks rapidly a few times before he shakes his head. ]

Have you considered more practical shoes?

[desirestruth]

[Oh. That's what happened.

All she can really think is 'it's a good thing Lucien wasn't there', really.]

...Aesthetics are a moral imperative, Crow.

[She dusts herself off, and watches him for a second, and sighs.] May as well make fun of me and get it out of your system now.

[bad_crowmance]

Look, I'm not going to argue with that. But please consider the importance of mixing practicality with aesthetic. Functional and fashionable! It's important! ....Anyway, I've already teased you for the shoes.

[desirestruth]

These are practical, the stilletos are steel, I can put them through a man's flesh.

[UH. JESUS, NAEVA.]

[bad_crowmance]

Yes, but how often do you have a need to stomp someone to death with your heels?

[desirestruth]

...Do you want me to honestly answer that?

[Hint, it's not never.]

[bad_crowmance]

....Actually, yes.