thisavrou_log | points to spinal chord on brain diagram [open]

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points to spinal chord on brain diagram [open]

Who: Chara and YOU
When: 11/23 - 11/24
Where: Literally all around Avagi this child is wandering in a disoriented post-fight daze
What: Chara fought in a trial. Chara got a prize. No one is happy with this.
Warnings: Emotional distress probable, in addition to the usual Chara warnings.

The temples began to sing.

They emerged bloodied and ragged along the edges, one hand clasped around the rust-brown stains fringing every tear in their clothing. One side of their hair has become uneven where a hank of it was roughly and sloppily cut away mid-combat. They limp. Their eyes are glazed with hunger, with emptiness, with exhaustion. Their motions are stiff and automatic. Whenever someone draws near to them, they flinch and hold ready, a blade of red steel gleaming in their hand. A smile tears over their features in a blaze of forced and painted-on glee.

They emerged from the Trial of Life victorious, in a manner of speaking - in a very loose manner of speaking. They emerged from the Trial of Life, having not died or fled, and thus are eligible for something of a prize.

That is when the temples began to sing.

They ignite with a soft blue glow, ethereal, illuminating their surroundings in a cool sweep of runic light. The light takes root inside them, nestling like a seed in the center of their chest; not patience-blue, not integrity-blue, and certainly not determination-red, but something else entirely. It aches in solemn acknowledgment of itself. The child's eyes squeeze shut. The blood has begun to hammer in their ears anew, as if rejuvenated enough to feel like it ought to redouble its efforts to spill out from their torn veins.

The hum pressing across their ears has begun to vibrate in their bones.

As they cross through the portal's bridge of light back to Avagi, the whispers and fragments of other people's thoughts begin to trail after them, silver-tinted specters of other people's thoughts.

[Chara scored the empathy reward for their participation in the Trial of Life, meaning that, to quote the info post: others stay inside their body, but gain a sense of those around them. This manifests not as telepathic knowledge of their thoughts, but an empathic resonance—ghost-vision showing their emotions in stark clarity.]

[This more or less gives them the ability to know and feel anything your character is experiencing emotionally so that's you know fantastic. Feel free to tag in with prose or brackets; I'll match you! Let me know here or over at arrpee if you want a closed starter or something more specific!]

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[It's difficult to discern the minutiae of her confusion, but it still waylays her train of thought - and theirs. All told, her control is impressive. Perhaps she's simply had enough time to adjust to the frequent divergences down someone else's life, someone else's mental pathways, to have grown adept at navigating away from it.]

Half-glass. [They frown, a dark crease dimpling their forehead.] In...what way?

[They despise asking questions, generally.]

[Somehow, for her, they don't terribly seem to mind.]

We were... fighting a group of people. Their ship was made entirely of glass—except it was almost living, alive. There was an Ingress... [Here, she gives a single-handed gesture—the universal something-or-other.] ...hiccup.

Our ship merged with theirs—and our crew was glassed. Think I had it better than others—it only had about half my face, and part of my body, and my body was still functioning. [How, she hadn't stopped to question. When your body turns to unbroken glass, you didn't go poking around until it did.] Watched someone shatter in a hallway.

[Glass. Literal glass. They'd thought, stupidly, for a moment, that it was an expression, a manner of speaking, referring to...they didn't know. Something to do with alcohol? Something to do with...drinking?]

[But, no. She'd turned into glass.]

That sounds like an especially abrupt manner of death.

[And they don't sound much bothered about that. It's said...absently, like someone voicing simple, scientific interest.]

It was—but not in the way you'd think. People said they could still feel it. Wouldn't wish it on anyone.

[There was no point in sugar-coating it. Chara wouldn't thank her for it, and as they had reminded her, already had plenty of personal experience in the field of death. But it was up to her how to treat the subject.

A creature with ten arms—five on each side of its befinned body—gently macerates a fruit in a bowl, sweat pouring off of him. A clock behind him reminds the competitors that there's a mere five minutes remaining. The judges look on expectantly.

Shepard blinks, frowns, and refocuses, mentally shuffling through her thoughts for the last one—death, as it turned out. Not a bad subject, per say—but one that they had already explored quite a bit. So, with barely a beat missed, she flips the topic completely. If there's any warning, it comes only in the form of a new wave of curiosity.]

Have you ever thought about what you would want to be, if you could choose any job in the world? ["For when you grow up" is rejected outright from use.] Got a career path in mind?

[A thoughtful hum, as they consider it. Death by glass, by shattering, does not sound like necessarily the most unpleasant way to go, but certainly it came with its disadvantages - namely in its means of limiting how best one could fight back. Most manners of death allow for at least the reassuring illusion that one can resist it, that one can struggle, that one can refuse to go gently.]

[Not that it would, in most cases, make much of a difference.]

[She's getting better at advancing her thoughts around the mental diversions inflicted upon her. There's barely any hesitation anymore.]

[They laugh, a faint little stutter of sound that's too clipped to be the disarming, defusing thing they can't quite manage to convert it into.]

I think that's a little too optimistic a possibility for me to indulge. [Which is to say: no, they've not given it much thought at all.]

Why do you ask? Was it always your dream to be a security company head on a world far removed from your own?

[Shepard laughs—a sharp, sudden sound, almost a bark. The amusement is painted bright orange across her forebrain, as she considers her own life's story.]

No, no. No dreams, beyond "join the Alliance military"—and I squared that away the day I hit eighteen. Everything else has just been the cherry on top.

[Taking another drink from her mug, she stares at the liquid, then the steam, then Chara.]

Just something I've been thinking about. [The connecting thoughts rolls through her mind as she talks: for contentment. For happiness. It's a large-scale thought, suddenly focused with laser precision on Chara, clear interest in their... well, everything writ so large for a flash of a second as to be borderline intimidating in its unabashed honesty.]There's a difference between taking jobs out of necessity, and doing something you'd actually like.

I'm fairly certain that my eventual future involves flowers.

[Aw, what a nice answer.]

[Except there's more. Of course there is, with them. It's a cruelty, to dispel an otherwise calm, quiet conversation with their morbidity, but it slips out the moment it marks their mind in golden neon. It's safe to say they have almost no impulse control, just as a rule.]

They looked very pretty, over my grave.

[There's a sound—an exhale, and a smile that spreads in its wake. Chara, Chara, Chara.]

Floristry, maybe.

You could specialize in the dearly departed.

[I'd be too tempted to eat them, they almost retort, but bite it back, just in time. If she can make light of death, she might be able to make light of their method of death, but...]

[No one needs to know that. Not really.]

And of the not-so-dearly?

Well, them too. Everyone likes flowers.

[beat;]

And all fertilizer needs ash, right?

Speaking on behalf of the fertilized community, I take offense to that.

[Ha ha. One day she'll get sick of their macabre humor, and then where will they be?]

[(Only there wasn't a moment of hesitation in her. There wasn't even the static hiccup of confusion that comes with a fresh vision of another world. It doesn't make sense.)]

[(Does it?)]

On the bright side, it worked—you really bloomed.

[If it had been anyone else, she would have nudged them. As it was Chara, she merely winks. Flower jokes and dark humor! It may have been avoiding the issues, but when had trying to pry Chara—or anychild—open like a particularly stubborn bivalve done anyone any good?

When there was no hurry, why not have fun?]

Even more reason to go into the field.

[The subtle urge to snap that those are awful and she should be ashamed swells up in their throat, a reflexive, knee-jerk dismissal born from a stubborn insistence that their sense of humor should always be regarded to be just as morbid as the rest of them.]

Narcissee that you can still discern the bright side.

[The always were fond of the story of Narcissus, after all.]

Renowned for it—and I know a budding specialist when I see one.

You're pollen my leg.

[Their grin straddles the line between "devilish" and "amused" - which, unbeknownst to them, lands very squarely in the realm of "mischievous" and is a perfectly acceptable thing for most children to be.]

I don't tend to waste my breath on flowery language—you're only growing to hear the truth out of me.

[Despite the incessant backbeat buzz and flash of intergalactic memories sleeting by, she keeps it going with barely a breath missed—expression mock-stoic to compliment theirs.]

I suppose I ought to put my foot down.

[A moment, as they contemplate that, as if they might actually be considering throwing in the towel.]

[ha ha yeah right]

On the gas petal, anyway.

[There's a scoff of a laugh, mind flashing with nothing but amusement and joy—wrapped around a little nugget of pride.

Pride in them.]

Well, I haven't botany complaints about that. You've got a rosy future ahead of you.

So: what kind of floral arrangements are you going to focus on first? Something a lily special?

Edited 2018-01-22 08:28 (UTC)

[That's their single call to fame, in many ways - being unable and unwilling to let things go, to a truly ridiculous extent, unless something else waylays them. Until a flare of gold-tinted pride worms its way into the center of them, reflected from someone else's head.]

[Their smile stutters, and the rhythm is lost.]

...yes. Yes, of course. [Scrambling for some kind of joke to make, and unable to locate one, they can do nothing but look away.] I was thinking oleander.

[Even behind the fog, it's not hard to see the hesitation, the stumble. Damn.

But even as she mentally chides herself, she continues the conversation in its floral nature, still bouncing the ball as long as Chara is willing to pass it back and forth.]

I'm told it's widespread—easy to find in your average garden, if not without a little danger.

[beat;]

'Danger florist'. Now there's a career.

All florists are dangerous by trade, [says Chara, noncommittal.] Most flowers will kill upon consumption. Or worse.

[What's worse than death? Well, they can think of a few things. Mostly they thought it sounded appropriately dramatic, but anyone who's contracted the runs from eating the wrong plant can probably say that death would be considerably more dignified.]

Hmm. [What's worse than death? Plenty, if you thought about it for half a second. Plenty of things would make you beg for death. Death would practically be a pro.] Maybe that's a good thing. Imagine you'd like a little excitement in your nine-to-five.

[Leaning back against the cushions, she stares into her mug as she drinks, brushing off a flash of memory about a plant's roots cracking into the molten soil, spreading. Plants.]

Y'know, I fought a plant once. [It seemed decades ago, lifetimes past.] Sentient. It was less about not eating it, and more about it not... ['eating you' would be the apt lampshading of the statement, here, but the reality was... different. Shepard flips a hand in the air, frowning at her lack of verbosity as she finishes:] ...releasing spores into your system and claiming you as a slave.

[beat;]

Not bouquet-friendly.

How funny. So did I.

[Said plant happened to be the reincarnated, SOULless abomination of their own brother, created by a mixture of pure Determination and good intentions gone horribly wrong as he warred against the utter meaninglessness of his own protracted, unwanted existence.]

I can't say spores were present, however.

[There's an internal squeeze as they mention another undoubtably terrible—for lack of a better term—dead end. Why they should have had to endure countless tragedies, in so many different and ridiculous shapes and forms, is frankly maddening. For a moment, there is an irresistible urge to reach out, ruffle Chara's hair—something, anything to show them that she's thinking of them, empathizing, reaching out to connect—but the touch would be for her benefit, not theirs.

But, if what Chara was saying before was true (and why wouldn't it be?), perhaps there was another way.

Shepard settles back into the cushions, closes her eyes—and thinks loudly. In shades of sky-blue empathy, warm orange care, a ring of peach-tinted protection, laced with something unnameable. Something that was, when drawn, heart-shaped.

It said, "You've really been through the wringer. I know what that's like. I'll do my best to make sure it doesn't happen again."

It said, "You didn't deserve it then, and you don't deserve anything more now. You deserve every kindness."

It said, "I'll look out for you, as long as I'm alive to do so."

Something that was, when spoken, love.]

[Thoughts roaring like a hurricane, ripcording over and across in strands of vibrating gold. It itches their shoulders, jerks their head downward, tightens their stomach in a knot of iron.]

[Why is she like this?]

[They were just...talking. There was nothing about this that would imply that they - that they would have led her along this path, wound her in and around their fingers in spools of spider's thread, coaxed her into their pitch-dark heart and made her love them.]

[What did they do? What did they do to her?]

...stop.

[Fragile words, trembling like broken glass. Stop what, Chara? Speak up, Chara. No one can understand you when you're upset, Chara.]

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points to spinal chord on brain diagram [open]

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