[open] ability testing

[shri]

CHARACTERS: Lakshmi Bai & YOU
WHERE: Hyrypia - Anywhere you feel like.
WHEN: DAY :016 - DAY :0
SUMMARY: Lakshmi is testing out her symbiotic abilities on some suspecting/willing test subjects/unknowing ppl. Also, backdated to hell.
WARNINGS/OTHER: Nothingness. Also Lakshmi's extra everything? Didn't talk to her the first time and still want to join in? No problems. Come get some sweet, sweet extra emotions. If there is a particular emotion you would like to have your character go through, please let me know.

I. I NEED NOISE.

Her testing isn't direct on anyone to begin with - simply she wants to try it without comment. To that she takes anyone who said they might wish to be part of it and see it for themselves, measuring it for herself. She cannot be sure with a host exactly, the way they all bleed through each other's bandages. So she instead looks to mix it between them. Not to engage directly with oh, a group of gossiping staff, a set of seconds drinking and talking about the results of the hunting races, whoever seems a good and unknowing target, as she sets herself near to them with a Host to accompany her, she gets to sit next to her.

Knows that what she'll need in particular is a host to limit any conversation she has with another, when she slips to the deep waters of that cool dark nothingness.

( Ready? )

II. I NEED THE CRACK OF A WHIP.

Once she can be sure of it, sure it's weight, it's flex, how it feels in her own skin to take all that is outside of her and push it out - it's then that she finds another host to know the exactness of how it feels. How it flows, of how it might react on those nearest to her. To peel away those bandages and let it drip, drip, drip.

So in the privacy of a tent, she settles herself in a the set of her skirts and the push back of her veil

"You're quite sure you want to... feel this?"

Last chance, jump from the ship, that way she can be sure she is ever a summer fire racing across empty grass fields, consumptive, she never leaves much else behind her but ash. Even animals knew to flee that.

III. I NEED BLOOD IN THE CUT.

After a few tries, she no longer is half so unsure, she turns it out to what it is, a tool. She steps out, she finds oh, groups of Seconds, whispering servants, drunk off duty guards, she fills herself with easy laughter and like a spiked drink, she finds them to give it to them a laughing word to build a picture of herself of someone, removed, perhaps, not inclined to touch, not liking to discuss herself or her group, but well - she is clever, isn't she? Always likely to make others laugh.

Now she knows her timing, though, now she knows to step herself out of any conversation before it wears off, to put herself back to the confines of the tents. It's there she sits, like this - where she so normally fire, now she sits a empty wine dark sea. Cool, removed, it takes and gives nothing back.

To find her then however, she is not idle, she is only a process of movements. A series of calculations that come without merit. Instead: she has taken out her knives. Lays them out by length, a stair case set of longest to shortest. Of their ceremonial blade, hers - Sir Bors, what remained of her husband's shamsher melded together as one - a shorter woman's knife for cutting thread and snapping away unwanted snags.

It's there, she begins to sharpen them. Because they must be sharp, is the only burgeoning thought of soon to be her own emotion again. But for now: it is only that they must be sharp. Tools have only purpose, after all.

Comments

[shri]

She nods, and lets her eyes close, her hands settle into her lap in front of her, fingers curled loosely in. She is new to the ways of the nest, to having her mind be watched by others in such a way, to be shared, but not to the act of this: of knowing her own corners. Such had Vishnubhatt taught a young queen who was powerless in the face of so much to hold fast to what was the only sure thing given to her in life.

A tool she uses now to know if not exactly what she's doing, then the difference in herself, were she draws in on a long low note that is carried in her chest. A memory of a statue, and a state of calm. Absolute and formed as part of each other. Shiva the destroyer, comes the knowledge with the memory, and to her, she finds that same place within herself.

Not perhaps that the fires ever goes out, but simply that it can be easy in its own light. Once she has, her eyes open again and her smile is for once, not edged, not sharp, but calm. A flat glass to catch that light by. "Well then, tell me when you begin to feel it."

And into the flame she reaches, warm and safe, into the memory of sitting at the foot of that statue, the benevolent smile looking down her, the mouth that forms names, one after another and she reaches further, into a pleasant calm. A feeling of more than anything else, safety. Of faith in that fact. She feels, in that moment and rolling out of her as she forms the feeling of the symbiote around her then rolling out to give to him, glad and at peace.

[shiro2hero]

It's hard not to feel a little apprehensive when you start something like this. When you're warned there could be a reaction, a side effect. Being at the mercy of whatever emotion she decided to lay on him. But at the same time, he feels he owes her. Feels he should at least make the attempt to bridge the gap he created here.

A deep breath. As she speaks. Focusing on her, on that steadying, centering feeling of intangible controls under his hands.

"Yes, ma'am."

He's always been held at the ready. At attention. Watching for trouble, watching for people to pull out of the fire, or ready to plan. Changing those plans in a heartbeat, or clinging to a standard practically impossible for him to meet. It's a constant state of tension in the back of his mind. Smoothed over in the constant tilt and turn of the stars he holds between himself and everyone else.

He lets them part, here. Curtains made of endless sparks. Half-formed hands drifting to accept this thing of hers. He half expects the emotional intrusion to rouse the monster lurking back there, caged and defensive. But it does no such thing.

If anything, it feels... quieter, now. Than it ever has before.

"I think... it's coming."

[shri]

The contentment rolls in a series of snatched moments. Of sitting in the temple, arranging an offering plate before a statue, the feeling of henna being dotted onto her hands, the warm set of hands on her shoulder against aching muscles from extensive training.

It's oil filling a burner, it overflows out of her - and with it, she is full, and with it, she sinks. Her hand catching her her side as she sprawled - a breathless content laugh - less than a giggle, more than a rumble, works its way up her throat - soft and easy. "I think so too." It is not her, not strictly as she is now, with the hard flat edges smoothed, she becomes like she might have been once - when her spine had the ability to bend.

[shiro2hero]

The feeling of something coiled. Something huge and unsteady calming by slow degrees -- a massive animal taking its place at the foot of a stair or a quiet hollow. The monster calmed. He can't help but think of the Lion. Seated in the depths of the Castle, quiet and waiting.

It's the most at ease he's felt in ... a long time. More than he can recall. It's so simple to hold that picture in his mind. So easy to feel others slip in with it. His brain drifting. Limbs feeling loose.

Like the tension has been stolen out in exhales.