mental link | early day :006

[nirsighted]

[It's late in the evening - or technically very early in the morning when not so people are at least considering sleep -and somewhere, something goes quiet. Very, very quiet. A pressure that was there a moment ago is now gone, snipped away like a cut line. It's a sensation with some growing familiarity: the distinct odd moment of being unbalanced that comes from a host sliding into a coma. It's happened twice already in the last few days, and now a third. Maybe there's something in the air of Concordia that doesn't agree with you?

In an echo of Castor earlier brood's experience with Jessica, the sensation of something missing sticks with Adara brood for a few lingering moments. But the pang quickly evens out, fading to a dull uneasy tingle at the back of the mind.

--Or would, if it weren't for the bolt of anxiety that follows. It's loud, frenetic. Panic sweat on skin. A pliable stick bent too far and cracked across the knee. It punches through the mental link connecting every host, rattling high and sharp, and is tangible like copper taste on molar teeth.

It makes sleeping, uh... difficult.]

( Stop that. )


((ooc: /hacks another limb off Adara. Hi friends! Ares has dropped and will be going into a coma; on day 007, Nirad will be taking a trip back to the Station to transport all our comatose friends home and pick up some new faces. Until then everyone please hug Adara brood and just...don't stop...))

Comments

rolls up a million years late with starbucks

[circumspector]

( Ares. )

[ No, no, no, no, not again -

The screen she's holding burns out of her fingers, and it's a race, she forces herself to disconnect even as the wires burn out of what she's holding. Dropping it and kicking it away from herself where she's standing in the Bearings, the case smoking off the small bit of machinery -- another frippery, another nonsense thing she's bought just because so at least it's not important.

There is tears leaking down her face. Why them? This wasn't fair. There was so few of them left. Just the three of them now. Her chest hurts all over again. She can hear the rage from the others, the hurt, Aoba and his strange other voice roaring for destruction, Petre's burning and fire and sulfuric aftertaste of hurt. The residual pain left over from Parker that never seems to quite fade.

She flings her machines from her, hand pressed to her chest, sinking into her fingers. They'll need her to be calm, she knows that. She has to look after that. But for that first split second, it just hurts. Clutching at her clothes like she could tear this pain out of herself like something physical.

Stop it. At the rest of the hive, at herself, at everything. Just, just stop it. Stop it hurting. Stop taking this from her. It's taking bits out of her. Touching her right now is a bad idea, the buzz and hum sparking off her as she stands there, trying to will her calm into place. Hard to manage it. ]

[nirsighted]

[Stop it. The shapes of the thought like the edge of a blunted knife sawing away at something tender. All the sinew shreds, viciously slow, and it aches and it takes until the pain becomes something both numb and too tender. He can taste it in his mouth - a slicker copper tang on his tongue and a feverish sweat at the back of his neck; can she? Does she feel it?

Of course she does. It buzzes. It burns. It smells like ozone in the summer over a jet dark sea.]

[circumspector]

[ The pain echoes back, and she knows that smell -- she knows that smell better, she knows -- to be burning. It leaves her groundless, drifting far out of herself as she shuts her eyes tightly. Sway of some far off thing, a distance breeze in the treetops, that seems safer than remaining in the body that hurts her in some intangible way.

Clutches at herself like she means to pull the pained part out with her nails, remake them like talons, tear herself to bits, see what's left after - not much, now. Not much. She feels her body rebel again, like she wants to heave that burning taste out of herself. It will taste chemical coming back up her throat, it always does because it is was every emotion tastes like and she --

-- swallows, she can feel the curl of destruction under her fingertips. Shuts her eyes tighter, scrunched up nose in the effort of concentration. Latches onto the numbness, curling around it sharply with a sobering deep breath. ]

[nirsighted]

[Numb. Be unfeeling. Be a pit, the dark hole at the edge of the universe that devours all life and light. If he thinks about it hard enough, if he thinks about the shape of her and a hundred other would be hosts at the other end of the links drawn from his mind, he can pretend they create some vast chamber of darkness. They are a net drawn to catch the universe, he tells himself. Nets don't feel things when they're broken; they just wait to be mended.

Do you know how to tie a knot? He does. He can make so many knots. Do you want to learn, Angel?]

[circumspector]

[ She is not darkness, she knows, but that does not mean she can't help but want it. Used to being the threads perhaps instead and she grasps onto the fraying ends of where this has snapped, holding them up to him.

Yes, show her, please, show her. ]

[nirsighted]

[So he does: ten, twenty, thirty combinations of rope arrangements. Some knots are squared. Some knots slip free. Some knots are made to tug against and other are made to hold. Some knots are meant to contain and others are meant to draw in a thing. Some are built on top of each other, working on combination to create some greater piece of equipment. All of them are useful. It's so nice to be useful, isn't it? He's hungry for it. He can taste the want for that in his mouth like some remote, sweet fruit.

Slide your line through the hook eye, then repeat. Enter the line from the same direction and form a double loop along the hook eye. Wrap the end around the standing line. Do it four times, winding round and round and round. Be careful not to catch your fingers on the pieces that are sharp. Pass the end through the double loop. Lick your fingers. Touch the line. Pull it tight. Tighter--]

[circumspector]

[ she follows along, quick as she can, tying and retying, making as many mistakes for as many knots as she makes. Her hands are not used for working, her mind is though, and in a way, it is easy, and in another, it is not at all. Cuts herself on sharp pieces anyway, but it hardly matters, she is already wounded, licking her fingers and tastes the blood copper on her tongue.

In that way - he is useful - he is guiding. Doesn't stop even when she gets herself knotted up as much as anything else ( and that maybe, might be the point, she can't be sure ). There's a neediness of him, then, that isn't quite normal perhaps, that she wants of his skills, his calmness, his approval of what she makes with his attention. Looks up to him after each little movement to make sure she is not making too much of a mess of it. ]

[nirsighted]

[He doesn't need her to be good at the work because, well, it isn't really work. It's just nonsense. Habitual. His hands are her hands and they tangle the rope together. Tie knots into line and into cord and into thread and eventually, the frenetic quality of the action dims in favor of the compulsive quiet of practice. The result isn't important. He forgets them immediately. The action - or the thought of doing, if they're speaking technically - is the part that soothes.

Eventually, some innumerable knots later (he doesn't count), the sensation of action begins to trickle off. A hand forms a knot and the knot becomes a drop of water that slides along the bow of a ship and slips back into the wide, wide ocean where it belongs.]

[circumspector]

[ She hovers there, watching the net slip into the waters, and to her, she might as well be standing there, hanging over the edge of the ship. A want to press her hands into the water.

Thinks, the skeletons of ancient beasts wash up on the shores of Pandora. Thinks, I watched survivors fight and defeat a pirate Captain called Flynt. His ship was painted with dragons. Thinks, only soft of the sound of water lapping as a ship breaks the waves. Thinks... a lot of things but none of them are relevant, all darting things around. Says then, instead, much, much calmer, and little by little where her fingers are curled tightly like grips against herself, against the mythical boat, uncurls with a slipping calm. ]

( I've never really been to the sea. )

[nirsighted]

[He doesn't say That's sad, but the sentiment is there in the loveliness of the water, the reassuringly real chop of the water as it smacks against the side of the little boat. The sky is massive above them, peppered with color streaked clouds and slow pinwheeling sea birds. The water is dark and pleasantly so - deep enough to consume anything unwanted.]

[circumspector]

[ It seems at times when being part of something of such a large multitude, to live in the memories of others of the hive than inside her own, as easy as the shift of reality to her. One she bends where she is standing. Live inside of the expanse he gives her like it might be her own, lets his experiences give life to where it's dull otherwise.

It's ... nice. Calm, removed from the loss she's otherwise feeling. ]

( May I stay like this for awhile? )

[ stuck where it's safe in the numbness of his memories, away from others, drifting in this small boat. Confusing as it'll be for anyone else that steps into the corner of the common area she'll claim for herself, we've this illusion in, but she wants to be selfish, right now. ]

[nirsighted]

[The ship rises and falls, rises and falls in rhythm and the sea finds them in turn - a constant, steady lull. There is some sense of living here, the facsimile of sea creatures like fish swimming in great sweeping schools, and that's pleasant. Comfortable. He imagines himself as a fish, one of many, and in the presence of like minds like Angel's it's easier to do than when it's just him. Or when it's just him and Carata.

If you want to seems to be the sensation, the implication. She can do whatever she likes.]

[circumspector]

[ Her fingers trail in the water, letting his mind feed the textures, bends the light around in her, comfort in the twisting of it. Takes a second on it, letting it the light glimmer on the water. Now that she has it, like she does all things, locks it away in draw, labels it Nir, labels it The Sea. Lets them be the same thing and that way she can pull it up whenever she likes.

A thank you then, but not so directly that, an offer. If he wants, in her room, whenever he so wishes. There will be the sea he has given her. Called up as real as a mind can lie to itself about almost anything, real as he'll let her have of his thoughts and memories. The least she can do, really. ]