[mission: hyrypia] i am not there; i do not sleep

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: New Hosts & EVERYONE
WHERE: Station 72; Hyrypia - The Graze
WHEN: DAY :019 - DAY :020
SUMMARY: Somewhere deep in the void between multiverses, a fresh clutch of Hosts hatches; down on the planet Hyrypia, a Host is laid to rest.
WARNINGS: Mentions of character death, funerary services. Will update as necessary. Need a warning added? PM this account please!

STATION 72
DAY :019

NEW HATCHES
YOU WAKE UP and the universe with you in it is suddenly different. --No. That's not right. You're you, the universe is as it's always been, and there's no suddenly about it. It's been a while, hasn't it? It feels like waking up from a very deep, extended sleep or coming up from the darkness of some wine dark sea. Nothing is different and yet everything is.

Here you are, a small miracle of the multiverse: lying in a small, faintly hexagonal chamber with a gentle white light emanating from the surrounding walls. If you were injured during your escape, those injuries have been healed. If you were anxious or frightened or distraught, those feelings have been calmed. There's something peaceful about waking up here - like you belong. That feeling persists even as you find the tube running from the base of your neck to the compartment's rear wall.

But once the tube's disconnected? Things get loud. A wave of emotion fills that peaceful void - fear, uncertainty, relief, a sense of purpose or loneliness or anxiety. A matching dread. An easy comfort. Maybe some of these emotions are yours, but they can't all be. After the initial sensory overload, the mental buzz elongates: stretches out into a murmur like the sound of a party happening behind a nearby closed door.

You can sit up - barely -, and shift out of the pod. There’s a ladder at your feet and a little cubby just before it with anything you brought with you as well as a set of crisp, loose-fitting white clothes; while your injuries are healed, whatever you’re wearing is in the exact state it was before. Maybe it's time for a change? Drop down the ladder to the floor of the Nesting Deck and you’ll find you’re not alone. There are a handful of you here, somehow intimately familiar to each other.

Welcome to Station 72. Beyond this room it's quiet and still, feeling for all the world like a shell for some vast dark thing.

Eventually, a sensation manifests out of the black. It says:


PREPARE YOURSELF
THE VOICE IN YOUR HEAD is sound and sensation: a warm shaft of sunlight through smoky glass - a gauzy curtain twitching in some summer breeze. It says or feels like:

( Come meet with me, won't you? )

Where exactly this meeting is supposed to occur isn't immediately clear, but head in the direction that seems correct and eventually Station 72 gets you where you're meant to be: a circular briefing room with tiered seating, empty now, before a woman with a sheet of graying hair and something focused in her expression. It's been some time since she's spoken with a young host - since she's done one of this briefings. Apparently she's feeling something like her usual self. She smiles and it's very warm.

"Welcome to Station 72. Unfortunately, you won't be here long but we'd like to answer as many of your questions as we're able before you leave this place."

[ooc note: please see here for the catch-all briefing thread]


THE STATION
WITH A LITTLE UNDER 24 HOURS before it's time to make the trip to Hyrypia, this is as good an opportunity as you're going to get to familiarize yourself with Station 72 before you leave it. There's plenty to see, but a distinct lack of people to make conversation with. It's lonely and quiet and there's a sensation of dust gathering even where there is none. Maybe studying the briefing files on your databank is the most proactive distraction, but if not? Well there's plenty of places to get lost...

In the simulated morning, a strange archaic ship has arrived on the Hangar. Its very alien pilots unload two heavy trunks, then dole out a series of kits to the new hosts. One of them - the pale female alien who her calls herself Rhan - cheerfully announces, "Get changes and buckle in. I'm afraid we've some grim business ahead of us today. Funerals, you know. But chin up, my darlings. One uncomfortable day and then we'll leave the matter behind us. --Oh, but do be gentle with the others. I suspect they might be tender for a few days yet."

You leave the Station. If you're lucky, you might one day make it back.

HYRYPIA - THE GRAZE
DAY :020

THE FUNERAL PROCESSION
A SHIP DESCENDS from the iron colored sky early in the morning on Day :020. Before it even pierces the planet's atmosphere, its cargo should be obvious to the other Carbauschians: a new batch of Hosts, freshly hatched and just in time for the grim festivities.

The idea is simple: that they are part of a mourning delegation, only here to briefly oversee Lavellan's funerary rites. Luckily (...) there's plenty of comatose Hosts lying in the tents to trade places with the newcomers.

Better get to know your new friends quickly - there's plenty to be brought up to speed on (such as, uh, the recent death of one of the elder Hosts), and likely enough work to be done that the new spare hands are welcome. Or maybe the state of nothing-like-faux mourning is a good excuse for some alone time on a strange new alien planet. You're all so very, very far from home.


BURIAL RITES
THE FUNERAL has been arranged to the Hosts' precise specifications. Each and every single request they've made has been met, carried out by two soft-spoken, contrite Hyrypian servants who had come to them not long after their return from the hunt. Perhaps because the members of the other envoys are unsure whether it's permitted or welcome to attend, the site of the funerary pyre is hardly full to bursting with onlookers. Or maybe the burning of corpses goes against some obscure tradition. Or maybe some of the minor envoys simply don't care much and think the Carbasuchians are best left to their grief alone. Still, while it's hardly the entire encampment in attendance a notable selection of diplomats and their respective entourages and several of their Hyrypian hosts have turned out for the ceremony. It seems the Descendants in particular have turned out in some force, including the very hunter saved by Lavellan's quick thinking.

When the time comes for the rites to proceed, it's left to the Hosts to light the fire and say their farewells to their fallen comrade - the first and hopefully last to be lost in this strange land.


A SOMBER CELEBRATION
ASH SCENT HANGS HEAVY STILL over the encampment. Or maybe that's simply the perception - after all, the breeze still blows in from over the Great Flat. Surely it's just a memory of the smell which lingers, as circumstantial as the mournful note the wind sighs as it cuts across the Graze and into the tangled Finger Maze.

However, matters of the universe don't pause for the tragedy of the loss of an envoy - and there is so much riding on this Pilgrimage. To their credit, the Hyrypians have done all they can to provide for the Carbauschians in their time of grief (including a visit from the Matron Bassita herself, pale and full of sympathy and apologies), and as evening falls what clearly was meant to be a carousing party to celebrate a successful hunt and completion of the Pilgrimage's first stage has been considerably tempered.

The drinks still flow; the food is still plentiful, rich and lavishly spiced - but the music being played is soft and careful and of the hundreds of small technomanced insect lights the drift over the encampment tonight, a considerably portion of them are dedicated to lingering around the charred skeleton of the funeral pyre as a sober acknowledgement of what has come to pass.

Give it a few hours and maybe the mood will lighten slightly. On the other hand, there's nothing like an uncomfortably close tragedy to bring people together - and as Rhan suggests, maybe now's exactly the right time to ask a few pointed questions. Or to get hammered with new friends. Or to take a nice long walk while everyone else is consumed by the muted festivities.

---

((OOC Notes: This log covers the hatch, the arrival of new Hosts on Hyrypia, the funeral of Lavellan and the supremely awkward dinner party meant to wrap the first stage of the Pilgrimage. Feel free to make your own logs and posts additional to this if you care to. You can find a more detailed overview of the host hatching process HERE and additional setting information about the Station HERE. Please be sure to review the MISSION: HYRYPIA ooc information if you're brand new to the game. If you have any questions, please hit up either the mission's question thread, the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages!))

NAVIGATION • GAME CALENDAR • MISSION: HYRYPIA • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[skaikru]

( about herself. yikes.

her fingers twitch absently, like she's debating pulling away — drawing back in on herself physically and emotionally. but that feels cowardly and wrong, leaving just because the prompted conversation was leaning a little too close to personal. they lived in a world of personal. )

I'm not that interesting. ( ha. ) I was born on a space station, kind of like the one we all came down from, but older. My mother was the Chief Medical Officer on board, and my father was the Senior Environmental Engineer.

( those are the bare bones that make up the skeletons in her closet. it seems so simple when recited in a flat, practiced tone. distant and far off, like it's been twenty years since the ark. it's only really been a few months. clarke shifts from kneeling to sitting with her legs crossed, elbows on her knees shoulders hunched. )

He's dead now.

[shiro2hero]

I'm sorry.

[He breathes the apology out. Before she even begins speaking. It feels necessary. She's offering to be a distraction and he shouldn't dig fingers into any wounds. Doesn't have a right to.]

[He'd lean away from her, just a bit, if he had it in him. If she needed to go, he wouldn't stop her. Couldn't, really. But she speaks again, and the relief he feels is measured by guilt.]

I've... never met someone born in space. Ask me a year ago, I'd have said you were lucky.

[There's real admiration there, under the strain. Even now, after everything that's happened. As far from earth and a normal life as he is, space is still something reverent.]

Clarke, I... I'm sorry. [Another apology. But no less sincere than the first.]

[skaikru]

( shiro apologizes, and clarke pushes through those whispered regrets in some vain hope that continuing to speak would ease the guilt creasing his face and thoughts. but that doesn't seem to do the trick. he's distant and apologizing again, and she can't for the life of her figure out why. it shows on her features, confusion pinched around the corners of tight lips, and a sharp shake of the head. )

Don't be.

( it's old news. it's been over a year. he didn't kill her father, and that hurt has long since been concealed and dubbed healed. pity, even genuine, doesn't sit well in her ribcage.

doubling back to being called lucky, clarke is quiet as she chews on that sentiment. luck was surviving the nuclear apocalypse, in surviving on a dying space station; in being the daughter of two very notable figures on board and arguably blind to the suffering of others until later in her life. luck was surviving for as long as they all had on the ground, too. )

Do you know Bellamy Blake? Or John Murphy?

[shiro2hero]

[Because what else do you say? When someone says their parent is dead? What are you supposed to say when someone tells you those kinds of things? Because it makes him think of Pidge. Of what she stands to lose out here.]

[And that old ache starts up again.]

Yeah. Both of them.

[One better than the other. Because one of them is linked closely in his mind. They're connected. He owes Bellamy for a lot of things, as they stand now.]

Bellamy... he's. Part of the same [And the word still sticks in his throat. Feels alien and wrong sliding out.] brood as me.

He's done a lot.

[skaikru]

( does that make the two of them tangentially linked as well? beyond the constant tug and pull of the nest, owing bellamy blake is like a cementing agent. there's a flutter in her chest when clarke attempts a quick count of all the things bellamy's done, for his people, for his sister, for her — supported her, saved her, killed for her, almost died for her — and loses count after seven.

there's a hum of an agreement, however. a lot, that sounds just like him. )

The three of us, we're all from the same place. ( in case that wasn't immediately obvious given how they've casually gravitated around each other since her arrival. but they're talking just to talk, it's alright to repeat the facts. ) But I never met them until we landed on the ground.

( being broodmates, she expects shiro already knows a bit about that story, if not the entire saga of skaikru's misadventures throughout the earth. but this seems like an easy way to provide context, to place herself in bellamy's memories. )

[shiro2hero]

[Maybe it would make more sense then, the way his broodmate kept throwing himself into the fray surrounding the monster lurking in Shiro's brain. The perception of it, anyway. It's the symbiote, it's the thing, the dubious "gift" it gives him, but it's easier, safer, to think of it as some monster.]

[... something apart from himself.]

He... I remember. He was really glad to see you.

[Glad, and a little guilty. One way they were alike -- glad to see faces from home, people they would do anything for, but guilty for feeling it at the same time.]

But he didn't talk much about where he was from. Not to me.

[skaikru]

( it'd been a shared tangle of exultation, guilt, a strange cousin of grief when she'd bodily crashed into bellamy in the doorway of the naerstone house. relief, that the darkling had been telling the truth, that she wasn't alone, that he was safe. contrition for the fact neither of them was home, that the rest of their people weren't here with them either. despite what bellamy and murphy professed about conquering the city of light, it still felt like leaving loved ones to the wolves.

clarke's lips press tightly, rigid. she chooses her next words very carefully. )

It doesn't all make for very easy conversation. ( salts the wounds homesickness and regret have carved. ) I'm sure he'd tell you if you asked.

[shiro2hero]

[It's something he understands. All too well. Seeing Pidge's face, hearing her voice. Knowing someone so vitally important to him was alive, was all right. Was still somewhere he could reach... The teammate like the little sister he'd never had.]

[And still. She shouldn't have to be here. She shouldn't be faced with the things that go through peoples' heads here. She had her own battle to fight -- her own mission.]

It's... fine. I get it. [And like her feelings of relief, it's something he understands too. Things that happened are never easy conversation. Not for anyone here.] If he wants to.

I usually don't -- don't want to push. You know?

[skaikru]

( she doesn't know. he's talking to the girl who forced the image of brain scans onto one of her broodmate's in an effort to force them to acknowledge their symbiotic connection, and who's spent the last few hours allowing her grief and anger to float around her in a cloud to dissuade them from acting recklessly and becoming the next body they burnt; who'd pushed at the edges of another broodmate to question his grip on sanity, and who pushed her friends apart when they'd been snapping at each other's exposed throats. not to even begin to tally up the situations back on earth she'd had to physically extricate herself from.

case being, clarke griffin pushes. away, against, into, out of. she pushes almost everything and everyone in her life but thinks it quite admirable that shiro does not. )

Yeah, I know. But it's alright to be curious.

( while she doesn't want to betray any of the secrets bellamy's kept to himself, if shiro really wanted to know the details of their life back home, in this moment of vulnerability clarke would likely tell him any of her own. which is just as good a reason as any to squeeze his fingers one last time before withdrawing her hands to her own lap; to smile weakly, to gently push — )

Tell me something about you.

[shiro2hero]

[Curiosity shouldn't come at someone else's expense. Not to him. Because when people push him, when they press too hard, he frays at the edges. It's too dangerous. If he hurt someone here, then everyone could feel it. And that can't happen.]

[He shakes his head, slightly.]

If they want to tell me. I'll listen.

[Like with Murphy. Before they left on the march proper. He hadn't wanted to push. Hadn't wanted to dig in, because of how on edge the man had seemed.]

[What she does here is different. He shakes his head again, this time in bemusement. Some kind of soft exasperation at his own expense.]

I was... I was a pilot. If you can believe that.

[skaikru]

( color her intuitive, but clarke can put pilot and the sweeping sensation of flying he'd pressed into her mind their first meeting together. there's a minimal, tight smile — a joke between tired friends; two people who need a reason to laugh instead of cry, and find the slightest humor in the smaller things.

and though she still doesn't quite understand the bulk of importance behind his aircraft, she remembers the name. )

The Black Lion, right? Tell me more about it.

[shiro2hero]

[It works. It works like her talking about trees worked. Something, anything, to latch onto instead of what else is on and in his mind right now. And this, of all things, is the best thing she ever could have asked.]

[His expression doesn't turn into a smile exactly, but it's close. While the churning thoughts begin to settle. It's not easy. It's possible. A whole world of difference.]

It's -- Not like anything I've ever flown before. Or anything else in the universe. It's alive. In a way...

[But it still needed a pilot. All of the Lions did. He has to focus -- it's probably easier to show Clarke than to tell her. So he does. Picturing that first moment sliding into the cockpit. Hands on the controls, the screens all lit in that weird light. Feeling... something else humming through your bones.]

[Lighter than air, more ancient than anything.]

... nothing else like it.

[skaikru]

( ah, perfect.

the shift is tangible, like a breath of relief being exhaled simultaneously. she'd hit the right conversational current to steer shiro into waters he could lose himself in without any real danger of drowning, and for the first time it feels like she's truly helped. a band in clarke's shoulders snaps, allowing her posture to relax. she's leaning forward, engaged; elbows rested on her knees and chin perched on folded knuckles. and when shiro offers vivid pictures of his lion, of the solace and completion that had radiated through his bones with the hum of the engine kicking to life, it feels... nice.

nice enough to momentarily overshadow their shared grief, without feeling forced. clarke closes her eyes for a moment, breathes again. she can smell hydrazine fumes and smoke, but those details are sharper — something her own memory has served to fill in the blanks. )

That sounds pretty special. ( a soft-spoken observation; an unnecessary addendum. she doesn't need to tell him that the black lion is special. ) And you flew all over the universe, right? You saw trees on a bunch of different planets.