[HATCH LOG] IS ANYONE THERE?

[onemind]

CHARACTERS: All
WHERE: Station 72
WHEN: Day :150
SUMMARY: Today is the day you wake up.
WARNINGS: None; will edit if necessary.

A MOMENT AGO it seemed like you willingly took the hand of someone beckoning to safety.


NOW YOU WAKE UP in one of many chambers of Station 72’s nesting deck. If you had wounds, they’re (mostly) gone; if you had doubts they are - for the split second between dreaming and waking - gently reassured. This is correct. This is right. You’re safe here. The only question is what here is exactly.

The compartment you find yourself in is small, though gently padded for comfort with enough elbow and head -room to not be wholly claustrophobic. Still, it’s difficult to re-orient yourself; the best way to get to the chamber’s built in ladder and down to the smooth, polished white floor of the nesting is to simply roll over onto your belly and go out feet first.

First thing’s first though: get rid of that tube running from the rear wall of the chamber to the base of your skull. The moment you’ve done that, there’s the sensation like a rubber band popping - a string in your hand being jerked. The headache that punches in falls like the heavy end of a hammer - not serious, but surprisingly abrupt - as a of combination confusion, resolve, anxiety, certainty, delight, and fear and expectation finds you. In fades after a moment, churning to a low dull pressure and a faint hum. It’s feels like standing outside the door of a small party, sounds muffled and incomprehensible. Some pieces rise and swell above the others then fall again. Strain your ears and realize you’re hearing nothing at all.

On the plus side, you’re not hooked into the compartment anymore. Slide out and onto the ladder, though not too fast or you’ll miss the small cubicle built into the wall near the mouth of the chamber. In the cubicle are all the things you brought with you, every small piece you own of the home you left behind. There’s a neatly folded pair of something like white pajamas there as well. They’re definitely in your size, though you have the option not to wear them since you’re still in the clothes you left home in. Granted, for some of you that might not exactly be a blessing. Your clothes haven’t exactly been laundered or repaired, so best hope you didn’t bleed or sweat on them too much during your escape.

Sliding free from the chamber pod and stepping out onto the ladder, you’ll find yourself in an open space. The room is broad and pale and clean, its sloping walls featuring dozens and dozens of holes like the one you just wiggled out of. There are more ladders and a few other people climbing down, or stareing, or already down on the nesting deck’s floor but the sixteen - seventeen, including yourself - people present would hardly fill even a sixth of the room’s available accommodations.

The noise is louder when you near any of the others. It’s as if you've entered the party yourself. Identifiable now is the low wash of feelings, a hum of emotions that only serves to make the slight headache worsen. They feel genuine. They feel like they could belong to you. Still, that pressure in your head doesn't worry you --Shouldn't it worry you? Does worrying - about the headache, about the world and people you left behind, or the strange place you’re in now, the odd collection of people you’re with and the fact that you feel strangely drawn to five or six of them - make the headache better? Or worse?

If you manage to push the sound aside and listen with your true ears, you'd notice you can't hear anything besides this small group of fellow hosts: their footsteps, their oddly sharp breathing. There’s no sound of traffic, no wind in the trees, no birds, no hum of a ship. Only circulating air and silence.

You may not know what a brood is, but finding yours is easy. There are minds among these strangers that call to yours, their voices louder than the rest, their feelings sharper. The nearer to you they are, the more comfortable you feel. Is that strange? You don't know them, but you do. There are few answers to be found on the nesting deck.

Eventually you will have no choice but to head out of the room. There’s only one way out that you can see: up through a spiraling hallway that arches overhead. When it opens again the space seems slightly less alien. There are doorways of a kind lining the walls and each one opens to a small, nearly normal room. There are no doors, so it's easy to see all the rooms are vacant. In seventeen of them there are items neatly stacked on the bed. Most are hygiene supplies. Some of them - a toothbrush, comb, razor - may be familiar to you. Others less so. There's a flat horizontal ledge beside the bed with a small light and a single drawer. Another table, apparently built into the wall, sits across the room with a chair. A mirror is on the desk; it’s slightly mundane and not quite to the Station’s style.

This room is yours for the moment. It doesn't mean someone won't want to trade - or take. Beyond this life support deck stretches the rest of Station 72. It is quiet and and twisting and perfectly inert.

At its most familiar, the Station is merely a still, empty ship with broad chambers and gently mottled light. At its worst, it’s an Escher painting of strange angles and bizarre platforms that seems grown as much as built. There are many ways to many places and while it seems all doors and passages open to you, there’s an unshakeable feeling that the space doesn’t quite match up - that there’s even more to the Station which you can’t yet see. Don’t get lost!




For now, you reach the floor of the nesting deck. When you do, something blooms in your mind. A voice, disturbingly lacking any identifying traits but warm and comfortable like sweetened milk, says:

( ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬...There you are...▬▬▬..Welcome to Station 72 ▬▬. )

If you follow the thread of that voice, you’ll eventually find your way either to Cathaway on the bridge or The Prince in the training wing.

---

((OOC Notes: Welcome to Station 72! Feel free to check out the SETTINGS page for more information about the Station. If you have any questions about the setting itself, feel free to ask them there; otherwise, please direct all questions to either the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages.

Prince’s top level should be live in the evening! Keep an eye out for it if you want him to give your character the introduction spiel instead of Cathaway.

Happy hatchday, everyone! :) ))

NAVIGATION • SETTING • FAQ • MOD CONTACT • GLOSSARY

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

Comments

[erbier]

[ The lack of the natural world here disturbs Ilde, deeply. It is too quiet and too sterile. It feels as if there is nowhere to hide, nowhere to tuck herself away. It plucks at a deep anxiety inside of her: childhood spent running, spent hiding, spent scavenging. Even the little jingle of Cathaway's bracelet does little to soothe her, though she wishes that it would. It makes her think of the chimes in her trees.

She longs for her trees.

Until all of this she had not cried since she was a child, and now it almost feels as if she has somehow lost control, as if she is now crawling on the razor's edge between shattering outward and collapsing in on herself. Her voice is hoarse when she responds to Cathaway, ]

I will go mad.

[polyphonos]

[A shivering moment, and then Cathaway does slow - the narrow line of her shoulders changes tack to so she is oriented directly to the doorway and the girl in it. She stops then, the flats of her feet planted comfortably. As far as women go, Cathaway is slight and small. Her wrists seem very slim when she extends her hands out to the girl, palms up and the curl of her fingers exceedingly gentle.]

Comes to us, child. You'll break this heart with such a face.

[Her smile is gentle, gratifying. She wishes it to be comforting to the young woman and her grief. Even at her most cruel, she would hate to witness the suffering of so young a creature as this one.]

[erbier]

[ She knows the gesture. She may even have a memory or two of it, not necessarily with her mother but some other older woman who felt much the way that Cathaway did: so moved by the suffering of one so young. Ilde does not see herself that way, as so young. She has lived a life time, has courted death over and over again.

The moments that had brought her to this position had only been yet another dance with his claws. He loved her, much like her mad king did, and both were delighted with her resilience, would cherish her deeply when she finally fell. She would be an angel then, pure and untouched. Unless somehow this symbiote inside of her broke that contract. She cannot reflect on whether or not she has done something evil in accepting it, not now. There's too much else inside of her mind.

She hesitates, not used to comfort, but she lets her agony guide her towards the other woman. ]

Why is it so stark here. It is as if nothing lives here at all.

[polyphonos]

[She shifts forward by degrees, then steps - no need to make the young host cross all the distance herself -, but once she's within arm's reach Cathaway is sure to drawn up so that the younger woman can be allowed to take her hands if she likes. It's rude to touch without asking, without having received express permission. She knows this and has grown to be careful because the benefits of permission outweigh those of simply forcing someone to see.]

Simply put, you just can't see it. [Patiently told, like she's speaking to a child.] The Station lives as you or we do, but you must be well connected to know it. You can't touch or hear it yet, but that will change with time.

[A very long time, but that isn't the thing to tell anyone in agony even if there's truth to it. Instead Cathaway gentles further, clicks her tongue.]

If that doesn't relieve you, there are gardens too. We know many young hosts prefer green things that grow more [a hum] traditionally.

[erbier]

[ The longing shows on Ilde's face as openly as if she were truly but a child. She grasps Cathaway's hand, not for comfort but for assurance that what she says is true. ]

The garden is where I belong.

[ Her desire is an intense one, her imaginings of the secret place beneath Dreus's palace vibrant with sight and smell: fresh turned soil, ripe fruit, bright flowers. ]

It will be quiet there.

[polyphonos]

[Their hands meet and the hum of the link between them - frenetic and broken, start stop and half formed - evens into a steady, pulsing note. It sings. Their skin sings. There is a gentleness, an easiness, an intimacy there; it's sweet and warm, solid and sure. Touch is the easiest approach to this. She flexes into the space it provides, breathing deep and feeling the sensation - the cellular, the ash and melting flesh taste of the - of the girl's hand in hers. Cathaway huffs out a breath. Her fingers curl gently around Ilde's hand.]

Would you like us to show you the way there?

[erbier]

[ The only human being -- and to call him that was a slight -- she has ever felt such closeness with is her King, her God. His touch sparked her as well, but that had been his magic. His burning spirit which was destined to consume all that lived. This is different, it lacks the physical gravity and instead is weighty in a strange emotional capacity, like slipping into someone else's dream, contaminating it with her own.]

Yes. [ A practicality, she must answer that question first but there is room for others as they walk. ] Nothing of this is familiar to me. What sort of world is this?

[ A world of science, not of magic. ]

[polyphonos]

We will tell you as simply as we're able. Patience, child.

[Cathaway's fingers close by a scant degree or two around Ilde's hands. It's a gentle, thrumming touch and through it she can reach the bond of their mind. From that vantage, she can pick it open - a weave undone, a pattern unraveled until it gives way to the pieces knit to make it. All the threads - Ilde's sorrow and Cathaway's certainty, the loneliness and fear, the pleasure in the touching - unwind. They become straight lines, easily traced, and she does so now: letting Ilde slip into her as much as she does the reverse.

There, in the mind: a picture of the circle gardens with their fine trees, their dark clinging moss and bright clover. There are a hundred flowers there of all design. Grass and stones and living things. A tree flowers. Another is heavy with some strange alien fruit. In her (in their) mind, Cathaway draws a path from where they stand now to where the garden lays. She needs no words because it's not a matter of telling, it's a matter of showing - of teaching - of giving Ilde what she needs in the way she knows to do it. When that is finished, she reels them back here to where the bridge hums bone quiet around them.

Her hands tighten. The takes Ilde's thoughts with her as her mind finds the Station's systems. It's like opening a door and bringing Ilde with her. Beyond it sits a hundred blinking lights and a coiled heat of something alive and breathing. The Station sings, a low warbling note in the big black dark of a hundred thousand different spaces. It curls in her chest and Ilde's chest and expands- expands- expands--

Cathaway gently closes the mental link between them and the Station. She re-knits the pattern of their own link and her grip on Ilde's hands softens once more. She removes them with a tender delicacy, quiet and aching.]

There. Plain as day.

[erbier]

[ There is a part of Ilde that wishes to recoil from all of this. She is repulsed by the closeness of it, and yet... It is like sinking in to a warm bath, wrapped around by water at every angle but still within herself. She knows that sensation, of falling into Dreus's philosophy and words and allowing it wrap her up, but still remaining Ilde. She sees something of that in Cathaway, the give and take of Hive with Self. It could be tolerable, if she developed some fortitude for the overwhelming thrum of it all. With the older woman there to keep her from drowning... Ilde lets herself slip into it deeper.

The circle gardens mingle with the secret underground place where Ilde had tended her plants. One open and airy, lit from all around as if it might be outdoors, the other dark and constrained, a wild dungeon housing greenery which smelled so fragrantly of dirt.

The Station's core is harder for her to understand on her own. Its mechanical nature beyond all of her experiences, contextless to her in the consensus of the others. Like a heart and lungs? Like a dragon? Like a sun? All of things, a dynamo of power pulsing at a center, just like Dreus had been...

Ilde is dazed when it all fades away, but not perturbed. There was something pretty there, in the depths of all their thoughts swirling together, something lovely in the chaos. ]

Nothing is plain, [ she murmurs ] but this is where I am planted.

[ She remembers: She may live amongst them. Somewhere new, to begin again at the end of her own world. A seed replanted elsewhere to thrive. ]

[polyphonos]

[The echo of the connection, of her, of their minds slipped together, leaves her simultaneously empty and wanting, and pleasantly warm. There is the desire to reach for her again, to touch Ilde's soft face with her hands in the place of peeling open the mental link between them - but just as she's been careful to draw the latter thin, Cathaway forces her hands to stay themselves. Her heart opens for the girl or her mind does, and she wishes the sentiment of it to carry in a way that is meaningful.

Yes, this is where she is planted and here is where she will grow. There is potential here, the promise of buds yet unbloomed. Cathaway would like very much to see Ilde fully realized - at least in part because the flourishing of a young host satisfying her own well being in turn. A delicate ecology and its growth, she thinks. The thought is humorous in context.]

We're sorry we can't ease your mind further, but believe us that in time we think you will find something familiar here.

[erbier]

[ The honesty of Cathaway's irony does not trouble her at all. It makes sense to Ilde, of course it does. One benefited from the thriving of the garden in more ways than one, some practical, some spiritual. She feels Cathaway's warmth, her grace and her strength and is utterly fascinated by it all. She has never met a woman like her before.

The women of the scorched world were beaten down and tired, starving. Unless they were witches, scrabbling against something evil let loose inside their souls... It was as true as it was Dreus's delusion. Perhaps he had made it so with the toxic contamination his magic spread upon the world, a smog of madness and cruelty.

It is unlike her, but Ilde takes Cathaway's hands herself and puts them her cheeks. ]

You do not writhe with evil.

[ When the witches shed their false skins they could barely contain their ugliness, the chaos and hate bubbling away inside of them. Ilde fears it deeply, that by accepting the symbiote she has consigned her soul to such a fate. ]

Will I be like you one day?

[ She has never looked up to anyone before, perhaps this tender age of hers is exactly the right moment. ]

[polyphonos]

[A flicker of surprise for the boldness of the moment Ilde takes her hands. It's a pleasant note of shock, fluttering. Cathaway knows she is off-putting to most, that the connection of the Nest is wrongly viewed as a degeneration; it's very rare to find a young host so eager, rarer still for someone to ask a question like the one she girl does.

Her hands are soft across Ilde's cheeks. She brushes her thumbs under her eyes, fond for the enthusiasm - the curiosity - the open sense of want to be found in the girl. It's invigorating.]

Inevitably, yes. But with practice and dedication, you can develop more quickly if you like.

[All hosts would come to the Nest if they lived long enough. What that means, she can't entirely say - Cathaway still has room to grow herself; she could be closer still to the mind of it - but she knows it's true.]

[erbier]

[ It is not right to say that Ilde is without fear for all of this, but she still quivers inside with excitement, but also restraint. Witches were too eager, they took the route that was easiest and darkest, she fears what it would mean to develop more quickly. Could she retain her purity through such a bargain?

Or would her dedication keep her whole? There's still so much to know, but she feels as if Cathaway will not mislead her on her path. As trustworthy as an angel. ]

I can learn.

[ A promise, not a question. ]

[polyphonos]

[She smiles, and it's an expression of true delight - warmth like a sunny patch of grass, a cool breath of air, a gentle exhale. Cathaway pats the girls cheeks, fond, and then gently draws her hands out from under Ilde's fingers and from her face. The charms at her wrists jingle: a 'x' shape, a small animal, a perfect flat disk, a diamond with a crossbar inlay.]

Good.

[That she's happy to hear it goes unspoken, but not unfelt. That much vibrates through mental link, a sure persistent hum.]

But that's enough for today, we think. It won't do to push yourself from the start. Go find the gardens, my dear. Take some time to center yourself.

[erbier]

[ She could cry with gratitude, and her button nose turns red across the bridge with the restraint, but she smiles tremulously and she nods. ]