(OPEN) I Was Deep In a Dream and I Didn't Know It

[erbier]

CHARACTERS: Ilde & You
WHERE: Station 72
WHEN: Pick a day.
SUMMARY: Just Ilde things, here for the rest of downtime, whatever you want to do with it.
WARNINGS: Will update if needed.

EARTH I.

Ilde lives in the garden. She is the barefoot girl in the white dress, always somewhere amongst the tiers of the Circle Garden. She speaks to the plants, she waters them, and there are even several plots that she has tilled in herself, visiting the slowly sprouting tendrils every day to be certain of their progress. She does not sleep any longer, but she can be found resting amongst the plants as well, tucked out of sight behind a frond, or up on the highest tiers of the garden where few bother to trek. Solitary and quiet, on most days all one might pick up from her as she works is the repetition of a poem,

( Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide,
And wash the Body whence the Life has died,
And lay me, shrouded in the living Leaf,
By some not unfrequented Garden-side... )

EARTH II.

She has many broken eggs to visit in the Nesting Deck these days. Some of them known to her since she first awoke with her own brood, others who came and went in the span of their stay on Concordia, and so many more that she will never know. She tries not to linger over it excessively, does not make it the majority of her hours to stand in the great aerie and pine. She can do nothing for them, all she can do is wait. Sometimes she brings flowers from the garden and other trappings; ribbons and braids, little tokens, but mostly she sits with the pods. Murmurs to them too softly to hear, recites poems, sometimes sings.

And sometimes, she goes back to her own pod and returns the connection to the port at the base of her skull. Preventative medicine, she hopes, so that she will not slip back beneath the dark waves herself. The coma, falling out of sync with the symbiote, was far too vulnerable. Too cold. Too lonely. And there were hosts depending on her yet to be here, to be watching; wide awake.

AIR I. -- Ambient

She can be found drowsing in the circle gardens, never quite completely unconscious. She comes from a world of walking shadows who hunt and feast on unwary humans, she does not like to be completely off her guard. She will, however, lie out in the grass and listen to something that is not quite music, arrhythmic chiming and instrumentation that twines with natural sounds such as birds or water or wind. Those who who know her well know this is the kind of noise she favors.

Lying with her eyes closed, and the her hands folded neatly across her stomach, she will daydream. Filling the gardens with psychic fantasies: birds and creatures she has seen, either in books or memories or Concordia's menagerie, raindrops, rainbows, clouds in soft colors that stir at the touch of a gentle wind. Her visions move with the music, everything fluid in its shapes and its colors, just like her odd music. You can watch, but should you choose to tap in alongside her daydreaming you too can feel the wet of the rain, see the many colorful birds taking shelter in the leaves of the garden...

AIR II. -- Opera; Basing off of The Magic Flute, but not literally that because...alien multiverse.

She had been introduced to the concept of the opera in Concordia. The grandness of it all was very foreign to her, there was no theater such as others knew it in the burned world... However, she found the basic concept accessible enough: the tale told through song. She found the idea of different voices representing different characters novel and interesting. She is much more attentive to the opera than she is to the more ambient music, sitting up and alert as she picks apart the words.

"The Queen of the Night has just told her daughter that she must kill the high priest... He is unworthy." [ X ]

There is an eagerness in her voice as she explains the story, there is a familiar fairy tale aspect to the theming of it, but it also has something more arcane and complex, some alchemical logic just under the surface that delights her.

AIR III.

She likes to weave things together. It is busy work for her hands, mindless work when she just wants to sit in peace and do nothing, think little. She has always spent a vast amount of her time simply doing nothing, being calm, breathing slowly. It was how she had survived her time in the palace of the mad Godking. She would hide away in the garden, sit in the dirt, and recite her poem. It was an ancient ballad, written long before the world was scorched, and the little book of verses had been from Dreus's own collection of things saved before the fire flooded everything; he himself had taught her to read it. Its words filled her mind, and kept thoughts out.

Her woven totems are made from all manner of junk and scrap she finds around the Station, string and strips of cloth in different colors and textures, wire and tubing. She doesn't take the task terribly seriously, and thus doesn't see much need to find fine materials. Sometimes they are simple braids, marked with beads and bobbles. Sometimes they are elaborate webs which she makes by looping strings round and around some other object she's found. It keeps her peaceful, and if asked she will say,

"The weaving makes me think of all of us."

And how they are connected.

WATER I.

In the burned world where Ilde Vilmaine had been born, there was little water remaining. What water was left was hidden deep underground, the wet luscious temptation that lured fools into the darkness where they would be beset upon by all kinds of monsters, not just the shape-shifter shadows who stalked the aboveground, but also all kind of mythical beasts whispered of in tales. It was all she had been able to think about, when she had first seen the Station's pool. How beautiful and yet how unsightly its opulence was. It had awoken a fear she had never known before, the thought of drowning in its still, perfect waters. Strangled to death by its vengeful nature. The fire in her quenched. Some absurd alchemical symbolism that she struggled to rationalize, or perhaps it was some equally absurd fairytale of a spirit who filled its pool with souls. (Was it so absurd in a land like hers, with magic and flesh-hungry umbra?)

She stills of those things when she looks upon the water, sloshing gently in the confines of the pool, but the emotion is gone. She had surrendered it, allowed it to be supplanted with memories that were not her own. When she enters the water, the vast expense of black is what she thinks of, and that is how her mind stays as she swims.

There are many reasons she prefers to swim alone, and that is merely one. The other is her vast displeasure at having the deep ugly twist of scarring that goes from around one shoulder, all the way across her back, down around a thigh, ogled while in her suit.

WATER II. -- First come, First Serve

She goes in, and she does not come up.

FIRE I. -- Wildcard Physical Training

She is always looking for someone to spar with, and she has been taught very well not to pull punches. She has a preference for weapons, but she'll put down her knives if you prefer to fight empty-handed.

She also very much enjoys competition at the range.

She will play agility games as well. She doesn't know much about sports, but will play if you explain the rules.

FIRE II. -- Serious Business Psychic Training. Please See OOC

Ilde is a Rho, and this is right for her. Her mind -- its strength, and its creativity -- is her jewel. Her symbiote feeds on the immaterial, drinking deep from the black well of her memories, all the ugliness and terror that she has suffered in her short life, and it inflicts those emotions on to others. She no longer likes to sleep, in part, from her many nightmares, but they make a valuable weapon in the waking world.

She has been practicing a trick, with this grisly imagination of hers: summoning the God who burned her world here, for all to see, and for all to know. So that she will be understood, when she tells the others about the place she has come from.

It cannot be done imperfectly, it will not satisfy her. It will not make her believe that they truly know what it felt like, and so she has been building him in her mind, layer upon layer. Even the smell must be true; the sickly sweet stench of his madness. She has practiced on other hosts, once or twice, but after all the strain she had put herself through on Concordia, she is ready.

One must consent to her vision, connection to her memories is a vital component. Memory sets the stage, but can build her little more than a scarecrow. Perhaps intimidating at a glance, but hollow inside and smelling of rot. Only her symbiote can make the terror real.

Real enough, for a moment, just long enough to truly know him, as she had known him...

Dreus Fenn has the stature of a goliath. A mountain of a man who had always appeared before her in nothing more than his loose knee-length trousers and a sash around his waste. The mere sight of him is aggressive, like he has the strength to crush every part of a man with this bare hands: he does, she has seen him do it. His sweat slicked skin shines with a twisted inner light, displacing the world in a hallucinogenic halo around him. His eyes from within his close shaven head have an unnerving intensity before he is even near, as if he slices inside of your thoughts, razor sharp so that the sting of it takes a moment to become aware of, and then burgeons stridently through the temples.

It is a mere insect bite compared to his nearness, the asphyxiating heat that radiates from his body is infernal, like being boiled alive. It is oppressive, an overbearing shock to the system: low oxygen, overheating organs, it initiates a helpless drowsiness. The cloying scent of him -- sickness and overripe fruit and large sharply perfumed flowers -- curdles the stomach, both caustic and candied.

But beneath the heat is the soothing sweet touch of his undiluted magic. He seeps of it, a power that he cannot fully contain inside of his body and so it permeates the air like a drug, only consciously identifiable by a slightly strange taste in the air. Like ozone, an odd humidity, cool and bright just at the back of the tongue. It warps things around him, make them more beautiful, ethereal and shimmering from within the depths of a perpetual heat stroke. He balances you there, dizzy and suffering but given just enough succor to accept. He dazzles, he fulfills, he gives strength where strength fails. A distracting counterbalance to how his corrupting flames blaze, spoiling meat and hearts.

And then he speaks. Deep as thunder, his voice hypnotic whether he speaks in a carefully soothing rhythm or in a maddened frenzy. His orations echo from every direction, filling every crevice, and once heard... Will never be forgotten. Like a coiled snake, it waits in the darkness for you to be unsuspecting that it remains. He speaks in a cadence that seduces, an unnatural charisma that exudes from his deep sonorous voice. The richness of his tone evades all resistance, his words and the images behind them echoing in the depths of the subconscious. They ring there, resonating so perfectly, pitched just so.

His eyes are fixated with their hateful, irascible, heat, their manic intent, and they make it impossible not to listen fully...

"Bow down."

Comments

[erbier]

[ She is increasingly familiar with the way that turn of phrase works, but it is still not one native to her own language. She hesitates for a moment, letting the Consensus parse the underlying meaning for her. Her total cultural void is one of several reasons she is more at ease with the Hive than most, she needs its knowledge to communicate with the others... ]

Becoming a member of the Nest has changed everything.

[ An agreement, although she never uses profanity, so it may not sound quite so compliant. ]

It has been near to 90 days, since I became a Host. It has been difficult... to adjust, to how much everything I have ever known has changed.

[ Almost 3 months. It has felt so much longer. ]

[wille]

[ To say something has changed everything is a big statement. Her father's death changed her, killed the girl she once was and left her building on her own wreckage. Meeting Kaji changed everything, dug out the corners she was ashamed and afraid of and set it all alight. Learning the truth about the world and her own part in its destruction changed everything too. But the Nest? Maybe she will look back on this moment and see how much being here has changed her, too.

Gradually and then suddenly. Like madness. ]

What do you mean? How has it changed you?

[ Her eyes are set on Ilde, unyielding. ]

[erbier]

My place in the world was different. I was faultless, because Dreus believed me to be. I was the only one in the world who made green things grow. I was special, to him, and he was our god. This gave me purpose, as I waited to die, with him, with our world.

I did not know there were many worlds beyond on our own, and it did not matter, really, I would have had no power to reach them. Being powerless, and not aspiring to challenge the Godking, was the greatest virtue. All that is gone now.

[ She waves a hand of dismissal. It has taken many days, many painful confessions to Cathaway, to Angel, to reach a place where she can release all that. The weight of Dreus's love for her, the guilt of leaving him and their destiny. She has a new destiny now that she somehow must shape into a form that she can suffer. ]

I thought, when I first came, that I needed to be lead, to be faithful to something as I was once faithful to him, but independence has come upon me instead. I am no longer powerless to choose, and so I do.

[wille]

[ Like a father, she thinks, though she would be hard pressed to describe her own with such adoration. That doesn't mean it isn't true. Fourteen years now she has slaved away to kill every single remainder of the monsters that took him away from her because then her debt would be fully paid and she would be free, only a path chosen defines you, too. She was and is and forever will be her father's daughter. He is inescapable and even now she's still trying to find a way back.

Does that mean she's powerless? The thought incites the anger in her, an old and well-thumbed sentiment easily stored away. ]

You were never powerless to choose. You only believed it, so it became true.

[ Causa sui. We are who we think we are, therefore. We play the role of ourselves. Misato shrugs. ]

But here you are. What's it like, realizing finally that you're free?

[erbier]

[ To Ilde, this is wrong. There had been no choices, at least none of any meaning. All that had ever been in front of her was live or die, and when dying was an unacceptable outcome, you were left with only path to take. That wasn't a choice, and in a way to consider it as much feels deeply inadequate to her. ]

Survival isn't a choice.

[ Not a philosophical theory, it is a statement of fact from her. ]

Even now. [ She brushes a length of hair back from her ear, ] Which is comforting, in a way, when I am overwhelmed with how little I know and how far I have yet to go.

[ It had been comforting, in a way, to know what the future held. To know she would die, and with her all life in their world. It was simple, concrete. The vast amorphous unknown of the universe she must now face was not so easy to understand... and all she can do in the face of it is try to be strong. To hope that all of her little choices now will see her on the path to survival later. ]

[wille]

[ Survival is, and will always be, a choice. She knows that she should have died at fourteen if her hatred hadn't kept her grasping desperately for life, unwilling to let go. She should have died on the operating table. Should have died in the many, many wars that followed. She should have died in the explosion at Matsushiro and she should have graciously accepted her fate than sign her soul away for this existence here, this almost-life.

But who is she kidding? Misato lets Ilde's statement stand. ]

What happens when you've outlived us all? What then?

[ It's a question she asks of herself when sleep eludes her. As someone wiser than her once said, she who will always pull the trigger is the one who will live long enough to be consumed by her regrets. ]

[erbier]

I think that depends upon so many things.

[ There's a day dream there, where she has accomplished all she has set her heart towards... Where she has all the power she will ever need. Greater even than Dreus was. All things set into the motion she prefers, and then like any true queen of peace, no matter how terrible, she would make her garden grow.

She shares none of this with Misato. Just the faintest of smiles. ]

[wille]

Like what?

[ Never one to let ambiguity linger, despite how much of it surrounds her. ]

[erbier]

[ She looks at Misato, staring in to her more than anything else, eerie in her peacefulness. ]

I can't see the future, [ She demurs, all softness. ] I do not know what the pieces might look like.

[ Only the picture at the end. A crown of flowers, clothed in smoke, bejeweled in flames... ]

[wille]

[ Beware the meek ones, as they say. Beware the ones that don't bark. ]

Fine. Keep it to yourself.

[ Misato stretches her arms one after the other in front of her, letting out an accomplished huff once done. ]

Shall we call it a day? We can take it up again later if you want. Now, I'm hungry.

[erbier]

Certainly. Shall I accompany you?

[ She's curious to see what a woman like Misato considers food, really. ]

[wille]

[ She doesn't even hide the suspicion from her face, giving Ilde a momentary pause before shrugging. The smile comes a second too late. ]

Sure. I don't mind company for lunch.

[ But Misato doesn't wait before moving on, navigating the hallways with better ease now that she has begun to memorize its illogical layout. She spares a glance over her shoulder only once she has reached the storage room. ]

What you feel like?

[erbier]

[ This is an easy curiosity to confess to, ]

I prefer fresh food, my world was quite deprived, it still seems like a luxury. I do not care for the things some of the other prepare.

[ Microwaves................. ]

[wille]

[ That earns a somewhat apologetic look from her, as she climbs onto the counter with all the grace of an overgrown hippopotamus and reaches for two cups of instant noodles with alien writing on them. At least, one of them shows something that might(?) be a neon-green space turkey. ]

Well, my world was pretty deprived when I was young, but I guess I just got used to it.

[ Different coping methods and all. Kaji went so far as to grow his own food, that silly man. ]

You're gonna have to prepare your own food in that case. Trust me, you don't want me anywhere near it.