redmarsshit | redshift: tdm #5

redshift: tdm #5

Redshift: Welcome to the v͖͕̺̲̘̱̜͎o̴̦̣̠̦̘̹͞i̯̖d̛̪̬͈̱̦̝͍̕.

▶ Click here to read what characters will experience when arriving in Anchor.

▶ All TDM threads can be considered game canon, and current players are welcome to either top-level on the TDM so prospective players can tag them, or use the prompts for logs or network posts on the communities. All threads on the TDM can be used for Activity Check.

a. don't be a sap.

Good morning, October 25th! Whether you're a confused new arrival or a current resident, you probably had some plans for today, right? Grab breakfast, visit a friend, pick some fruit, explore a new part of the massive city.

Well. Too bad. Because, as every single bot in the city will be telling you the moment you show your face, it's GOOP FESTIVAL DAY! What? You've never heard of it? Preposterous, everyone knows about the Goop Festival, it's one of the most anticipated holidays in Anchor! Haven't you been preparing for this for a week now?

The Goop Festival is a harvest celebration, in particular, a celebration of the sap-producing trees that grow wild in the Park, thick around the edges of the south side of the lake. The bots have been hard at work setting up the festival grounds in the shade of the trees in the balmy fall temperatures. There are spiles tapped into trees with buckets placed underneath that are already half-full of a thick, viscous, amber-colored sap. The bots have also set up troughs of shaved ice with long sticks nearby, with which they will demonstrate for excited residents (you are excited, right?) how to cool the sap in the ice and wrap it around the stick to make it a sort of taffy candy. That's not the only sweet surprise waiting, either.

A long table set up in the grass is loaded down with all sorts of delicious sap-related goodies, ranging from cupcakes with thick globs of sap-flavored frosting to sap-flavored jerky to sap sugar candies, and just about anything else you can imagine. There are a wide variety of offerings that would taste good coated, flavored, or glazed with the sap, which tastes sort of like a caramelized toffee. Another table is laid out that has row upon row of cups, each half-full of the sap, heated lightly to a thinner consistency and served similarly to hot chocolate - at least, if hot chocolate gave you a floaty, happy, hazy sort of feeling. Everything made with this sap does, actually, with the cups of pure sap having a stronger effect and items with less sap content having barely any effect at all.

Does this not sound like your cup of weird tree sap? Too bad. This is the GOOP FESTIVAL, and everything is shut down for this lovely paid vacation day. Spa? Locked down. Kitchens? Locked. Bar? Nope, totally shut down and the server bots are all down at the park. VR Gaming? Too bad, the computers are all shut down. Even roaming the halls and trying to stay out of the way won't help much...be prepared to be dragged down to the park to participate in this mandatory festival! Isn't it exciting?

b. familiar ground.

Every year in Anchor near the end of October, there's a very strange interaction between the protective dome over the city and seasonal radiation surges that happen in the wastelands. Some complicated combination of refraction and reflection means that for the last few days of the month, residents will experience some of the more benign effects of the red shift inside the city.

Did we say benign? Because while there may not be any dangerous radiation to melt your skin off, there are some mind-bending dangers. Characters experiencing the shift will find the world becomes distorted, warped, impossible to navigate; they are enveloped in auditory and visual hallucinations, and can become so disoriented that they can't even recognize people they've known for years. And characters will find that the citywide shift brings in slivers of other universes, little slices of places characters have never seen before...or places so familiar they make the heart beat hard with joy or fear.

And just like in the wastelands, the things that show up in these shifts are all too real. Characters may find themselves walking through a door into a scene straight from home, or from someone else's home. Whether it's a favorite place to share with a new friend, or the nightmare landscape you almost died in, complete with the monster that almost killed you, be careful. Everything you experience here is real, and if you die in the shift, you die for real.

Of course, the city has its own safety measures in place - residents experiencing the hallucinations and appearances of items and places from other worlds may find themselves locked down in the room they're in, trapped with the otherworldly effects of the shift.

c. the virus.

A few weeks ago, people in Anchor started getting a case of the sniffles. While some of the earliest cases might be clearing up, there are still a few people suffering, or people freshly infected by those who were sick earlier, including some of the new arrivals who may not even be feeling it yet.

Which may make the cause of some unexpected 'glitches' around the city a little unclear. Residents who are feeling the effects of the illness, or who are infected but not showing symptoms yet (or anymore) will find that their access to certain parts of the city are restricted. Suddenly, automatic doors aren't opening for them, as if they were ghosts, particularly when they try to access anything that may facilitate transmission of the virus. Suddenly, only some of the residents of the city will find they can't get into half of the MedBay, or the spa, the kitchens, the VR or games rooms, the bar...anywhere people gather or eat or sit close together.

Residents may put together that it's related to the illness some of them have been experiencing over the past few weeks, but it might take a while, since these safety and security measures are affecting people who are showing no symptoms yet. Be prepared for a few days of paranoia while seemingly perfectly healthy people are locked out of common areas. What does the computer know that residents don't? Are these people security risks? Is it a system glitch? What could be going on?

c. the network.

Need to get hold of someone, call for help, ask the city at large a question? Need to warn a friend not to leave their apartment unless they want to be forcibly press-ganged into the Goop Festival? Maybe you need to hold your sat phone up to whatever crazy thing you're seeing and send out a recording to double-check if your eyes are deceiving you and what you're looking at is real?

Whatever the reason, the network is going strong, so feel free to include a post to it in your top-levels.

Mod Note: The "familiar ground" prompt will be active between October 29th and October 31st; "the virus" prompt will be active until the next introductory mingle, which will be kicking off the second part of the illness plot.

Navigation.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

No, it's Ami all right.

Just as the panicked question leaves his mouth, the girl's form blurs for a split second, and she's Ami again, looking just as startled as he is.

She actually glances the other way at first - is there someone else in here, too? But no, it's just the two of them. Confused, she looks back to Reynir, only to find him looking right back at her.

Her heart drops into her stomach. Oh, no. It's her that scared him, isn't it? Just like with Cole. Is Reynir seeing something she can't, too? She holds both hands up, trying to calm him down. "Reynir, it's me! Ami! I - please don't run away!"

Reynir is watching this time when it happens. He sees the way she shifts, like an illusion in fog, and then is the girl he recognizes again. Witnessing the transition doesn't make it make sense, though. Doesn't make it any less frightening. That... creature is Ami, or inside her, or beneath her in some way.

And yet, unless she's a really good actress, Ami is just as confused as he is. She turns around like there's going to be someone else nearby her. Like she doesn't even know. But can he trust that? Onni was always telling him his mental defenses were weak, that he needed to guard himself more in dreams, that spirits might trick him. He looks at Ami, but now, not in the eyes. She is almost certainly not a kade, but... better safe than sorry.

"You- weren't. You weren't you, just now. You- had horns and... grey skin, and your eyes... your eyes were just... white."

He shudders; the image of it is burned into his memory now, even if Ami is back to looking like her normal self. Reynir isn't running away any further, but he isn't coming any closer, either. His stance makes it look like he might bolt at the slightest sign of danger.

It's clear that something must have happened - Reynir's still so scared that he won't even look her in the eye. But then he describes what he saw, his voice tinged with horror, and as soon as he says horns Ami's breath catches in her chest. She knows what he saw. She turns her hands over, looks at her palms - and they're grey.

"No."

Frantic, she grabs at her horns, and there they are. And she has too much hair, and her eyes will be yellow - (they are, if Reynir were looking at them) - but her outfit stays the same this time, still just Ami's PJ's.

"No no no no no!" she exclaims, each one with increasing panic. "It's not supposed to - not like this! It's too soon!"

Too soon, too sudden, she's not ready, she thought she'd have more time - Why won't he look at her? Is she really that hideous?

"D-don't look at me," she says, quietly.

Reynir doesn't have to bolt, it turns out. Ami beats him to it.

She turns, and the wall of Sollux's room is just gone, giving way to a familiar hallway - Recollé High School, the second floor, lined with lockers, but empty of people. And she runs. The exit is this way. She doesn't care where she ends up, she just needs to get out. She doesn't belong here - the other students knew that. Human school is no place for a freaky alien.

It all goes downhill so quickly.

If Onni were here, Reynir is sure he would tell him that he's being foolish. That that whole display - Ami's distraught shock, her transformation, her flight - was just a ruse to lure him somewhere, catch him off his guard. But he just can't bring himself to think that Ami is a malevolent spirit. He doesn't feel it, in his guts. And Reynir trusts his intuition. Especially here, in dreams.

So he doesn't consider it or hesitate to think out what his plan might be. When Ami runs away, he tears after her, long legs eating up the distance quickly. He doesn't pause even when the world shifts around them. He is used to these changes in scenery, in dreams, and barely spares a glance for the strange corridor. Just enough to confirm no obvious threats nearby.

"Ami, wait-!"

Reynir has no idea what is going on or why she sometimes looked like a human, and sometimes so alien. But he thinks that Ami seems like she understands. And like maybe it is a source of embarrassment or even shame for her. He hadn't meant to make her upset over her appearance. That is so not him. He'd reacted like she was a threat, forgetting how delightfully unusual the people in this place are, and now he regrets it.

"Ami, I'm sorry! Please, stop running!"

Ami does not stop running.

She barely slows down at the front doors, bursting outside into the parking lot. And while it was pretty clearly daytime from indoors, now it's almost pitch dark, lit only by the orange streetlights in the parking lot and the headlights of passing cars. There's no moon in the sky, no stars, not even clouds, just - darkness.

(The day James first saw her eyes.)

But soon, the dark suburbs give way to something that, once again, could have been plucked from another world (and perhaps was). Streetlights become trees, asphalt becomes soft earth. It's a forest, spacious and brightly lit, with the leafy canopy far, far overhead. Between the trees grow huge, colorful flowers, or mushrooms taller than a grown man. Forest animals peer out at the two runners curiously, but without fear, and some even run alongside them for a few seconds before veering off to do friendly animal things.

It's Bosuma, full of color and light and the smells and sounds of life. This is where -

She doesn't exactly stop running, so much as stumble into a memory where she wasn't. Without really coming up on it, they've arrived at a large campsite in a spacious clearing. Several tents are set up around a cookpit, and a stream burbles happily nearby. The signs of habitation are all over - people's belongings, food dishes, and everything. All that's missing are the people.

At first it's unclear where Ami actually went, but the rustling of one of the tents soon gives her away. She was trying to get outside, but something on her head has gotten caught on the tent flap, and now she's stuck.

"Owww ow ow ow ow-!"

Reynir has no idea what he is going to say or do when he actually catches up to Ami; all he knows is that he shouldn't let her out of his sight. He can't assume that she knows anything about navigating the dreamspace, and there could be dangers here. Malevolent spirits, and other monsters, and he isn't going to let her face them alone if they come. So he follows after her, even as the world keeps shifting around them. The forest may be different in the details, but it reminds him of his own world - much moreso than that weird room with the bees or the school.

For one heart-stopping moment he thinks he's lost her entirely when he comes upon the campsite. Then, he hears her voice, reacting to pain, and he comes over quickly, to see her caught on the tent. Her horn has gotten hooked into the material of the tent. She looks... more like herself, now. Apart from the horns and - he sees in a moment - her eyes are a different color. At least they aren't totally empty, like before.

"Here, let me -"

He has a better angle to see the problem and she's all twisted up. Reynir reaches over and, after about a minute's fussing and pulling and twisting, has gotten her disentangled. Once he does, he realizes maybe it would have been smart to say something before he did and quickly blurts:

"Ami, please, just wait. It could be dangerous here, I don't think you should run off on your own."

He's still here? Ami's surprised, but... she doesn't refuse his help. She doesn't protest or say anything, just sits still and quietly lets him get her horn loose like a good little sheep. The time it takes gives her a chance to calm down, at least.

Once she's freed, he seems worried that she's going to take off again, but there's no danger of that. Ami does come the rest of the way out of the tent (mainly so she won't get stuck again), but then she just sits on the ground directly outside it, meeting Reynir's eyes only briefly before looking away at a nonspecific point on the ground.

"... You don't think I'm dangerous?" she asks. It's a genuine question. She knows she isn't, but given how he reacted at first, she's honestly kind of surprised he followed her.

Reynir does not answer right away. He wants to be honest, and an honest answer is more complex than a simple 'yes' or 'no'. But his actions speak louder than the words that are yet to come, when he settles down onto the ground in front of Ami, legs crossed. He isn't bracing himself to run away or put distance between them, anymore.

Hands moving over his knees, Reynir admits:

"I'm not sure. I don't think you want to be dangerous. Sometimes... people end up dangerous without being able to choose anything different, and it's not their fault. It - scared me a lot, when you first changed, but I can tell now it wasn't something you were doing on purpose. So - I don't know. But I'm not leaving, even if you maybe are a bit dangerous."

Then, because he is curious and because he wants to give Ami a conversational out, in case she's in need of one, he looks around and asks:

"Where is this? Another memory of yours?"

Ah. Well, she appreciates his honesty. And the fact that he's not bailing on her, that is also really nice of him. She nods, looking around the campsite. "Yeah," she says. "This is Bosuma. It's a couple hours west of my hometown."

Man, where does she even start? She could try to explain what she was doing here, but it's long and involved and there's so, so much context he would need before it would even begin to resemble a coherent narrative. There's hardly anything she can say here that wouldn't amplify the weird factor by orders of magnitude.

After a moment, though, she hits upon something that kind of works. At least enough to explain why the memory exists, and why they're here.

"I was on a camping trip out here a few months ago. This is... the day my horns came in."

Reynir absorbs that, quietly. He can tell from how long she takes deciding where to start that there's a complicated history here - whether with the place in general or the time in her life she was here or the specific incident this memory comes from.

Then she mentions it being the day her horns came in, and his eyes widen.

"So you knew about them. Before the dream, you - have had horns?"

He's frowning, but there isn't any fear in the way he says it. Gradually, curiosity is replacing caution.

"Did you have horns at the party and you were covering them up and I just - didn't notice?"

He can't remember what sort of a hairdo she'd had, could he really have been so dense he didn't even notice something like that? Perhaps she'd concealed her appearance in other ways. Certainly there's no doubt that before this dream, she'd known about the horns in some way.

Reluctantly, apologetically, rubbing at the back of his neck with awkwardness, Reynir asks:

"You're... not human, are you?"

Better than just coming out and asking 'what are you' anyway.

"No, no, I didn't then," Ami says quickly, to his question about the party. She's thought about using her hair to cover them up before, but at the party all she had were her usual pigtails. "I don't now. Um, outside of dreamland, anyway."

She's not... totally sure of that, though? Ami gently pokes one of the horns, and it certainly feels like it's really growing out of her skull. It's worrying, because she's still not sure she is asleep. If you grow horns in the dream, do you grow horns for real?

But when he asks if she's not human, her face falls, and she goes quiet for a moment. It's really strange to be asked that. Obviously, it's a question she's going to be fielding a lot in the future, but ... this is the first time she's been asked so directly, and it hurts a little more than she thought it would.

"It's ... complicated."

Everything is complicated, she's begun to realize lately. Her world, her life, even the fundamentals of what and who she is... it's all stupidly complicated, and it'd be hard to explain even if she fully understood it herself. But she has to try.

"I'm human right now," she says. "But there's, like... a part of me that wasn't always. And because of that, I'm not going to be human forever."

She's struggling to find the right words. It doesn't help that Reynir's from, what, two thousand years ago? So he certainly wouldn't have any context for a magical smartphone app, or a reality-altering corporation, or what aliens are, or even her go-to Spaceballs joke. Finally, she shrugs and gives up. It's going to sound stupid and crazy no matter how she says it, so she might as well get it over with.

"The short version is, I'm slowly turning into a troll."

Reynir is listening intently; he's never heard of someone looking quite so different inside of the dreamspace, but he knows that small changes occur. His own outfit looks just slightly different; he knows how Lalli and Onni both look in the dreamspace. If she has had horns at some point, if that's a part of how she sees herself (for better or worse) he can see it coming back in a dream - perhaps intermittently, which is why it had startled both of them when the change happened.

But why horns? Why that strange shade of skin and eyes and the rest of it?

He frowns but remains quiet when she says she was originally something not human but became one. He's never heard of this happening - except maybe in myths, and honestly usually it went the opposite way even there. But she is telling him, and so he waits. It's clear that either she's confused about the situation, or doesn't want to tell him all of it, or is just having a hard time finding the right words.

When she finally finds them, and says she is becoming a troll, it's like the bottom has dropped out of his stomach. All his worst fears crystallized in that instant. And since this space operates a little differently than the dreamspace he's used to, that intense reaction has consequences.

The space around them, those pleasant, bright, vibrant, life-filled woods vanish, along with the campsite and all other traces of Ami's memory. And they find themselves in one of Reynir's. He recognizes the inside of the vehicle right away; he'd spent so much time in there that he think he would know it from smell and feel even in the dark. But a moment later he hears the sounds of the battle raging outside and he knows. He knows where this is.

Because he's sitting where he'd been sitting there, and he can feel the mask on his face, and Tuuri is beside him, and just seeing her again paralyzes Reynir for a moment. She looks just like he remembered; he hadn't seen her up close after this night, only talked to her through that barrier or glimpsed her outside while he stayed in the vehicle. But she's there with her cute hair and round face and she looks so scared, but not scared enough-

Reynir turns and sees Ami standing there, remembers Ami, remembers this is a dream, sees the floor of the vehicle starting to buckle just under where Ami is standing. Kitty is hissing angrily and any second a troll is going to burst through, right where Ami is. Reynir acts without thinking. He'd been frozen into inaction the first time, but there's no changing the past - he doesn't know what harm might be done in the present. Reynir launches himself out of his seat and tackles Ami out of the way, pushing her back just as there's a wrenching noise and that awful thing bursts up through the floor. Reynir is looking the opposite way but he hears it, and besides, the memory is burned into his mind so strongly that he doesn't need to look to remember exactly what happened.

He hears a horrible, jagged sort of sob and only realizes a second later that he'd made that sound. This was it. The moment that Tuuri had died and not him, even though it should have been him. He should be thinking about continuing to keep Ami safe or getting out of here or what she said about becoming a troll, but he can't think. He covers his face in his hands completely, hearing the door to the vehicle bursting open just seconds too late, the sound of Lalli's light feet and then the horrible crack of the rifle going off, the wet flump of the troll's body hitting the floor.

And then - a stillness, a silence, one that hadn't been in the memory itself. The sound of the battle and the sound of Lalli and Tuuri vanish and there's no one here, now, except Ami, and him, and from the small gurgling of blood from a wound, that dead troll as well.

It happens so fast.

A split-second of horror crosses Reynir's face, and all at once they're somewhere else. Somewhere dark and close, with the sound of gunfire and explosions all around, and she thinks she can smell smoke.

With these eyes, she can see clearly in the dark. But she almost can't believe it. This isn't Ami's memory... but the woman sitting next to Reynir is unmistakable.

It's Tuuri Hotakainen.

A kitten is dashing around between Ami's feet, puffed up and squeaking loudly, and she feels the floor shift beneath her... Reynir reacts before she can, slamming into her and knocking her to the ground, and not a moment too soon. Wood and metal splinters, and something comes through.

She scrambles back from the breach, pressing herself against the wall, too panicked even to scream. Reynir may have his back turned, but Ami can't look away. It's hideous - long and lumpy and bony and gristly and slithery and glistening with some unidentifiable fluid and the whole room smells like rotting fish and for one terrible heartbeat time seems to stop...

She isn't sure what happens next. But it happens so fast. Chaos, a flurry of spindly limbs and a too-flexible spine, it lunges, but not at her or Reynir - then suddenly the door slams open, and the CRACK of a single gunshot reverberates through the enclosed space -

and it's over.

The abomination slumps to the ground, and behind it, silhouetted in the flickering light from outside, Lalli Hotakainen lowers his rifle.

He doesn't see Ami, either. He doesn't see Reynir, or the monster he just killed, or the cat. Only Tuuri, clutching a bloody wound on her shoulder.

Then he's gone. They're all gone, except Ami and Reynir and and the corpse of the monster. It's dark again, eerily quiet.

Ami doesn't move for a long time, staring at the corpse, half-expecting it to get up again. Her lungs begin to burn, and she realizes she isn't breathing, yet it's hard to start again, almost as if she's forgotten how it works. Finally, though, she manages a loud gasp for air, breaking the silence. Her mouth makes a few attempts at shaping words, but none actually form.

Reynir knows this is a dream, a memory. That the danger is gone now, if it ever existed at all. But it is also one of his worst memories, and one that he has tried so hard to bury as deep as he could and avoid ever revisiting. He feels as paralyzed now as he had, then. There is also a horrible, slithering guilt. He'd gotten Ami out of the way. Could he have gotten Tuuri out of the way, back then? Could he have saved her if he'd just been a bit quicker, a bit braver?

He registers then that Ami is gasping, and it sinks in through his own shock and grief that she must be confused and terrified. Croakily, Reynir asks:

"Are you hurt?"

Reynir moves away from her, turning to face the interior of the vehicle - that gaping hole in the floor, and the dread troll, and the blood, and the terrible weight of knowing what happened after. He feels remembered panic and grief surging through him, like a physical thing.

"This- is my memory. I'm sorry."

He had never meant to drag her somewhere like this. To make her see something so awful and terrifying that must be beyond her comprehension...

Now that she's breathing, and time's moving (sort of), Ami makes the effort to sort of... peel herself off the wall, though she doesn't try to stand or move away from it. Why did her friends have to disappear, and not the foul-smelling dead thing? She can't take her eyes off it, even to acknowledge Reynir's question, though she does shake her head, barely.

"I - I'm okay," she says, between heavy breaths.

It's hard to process any of this, but her brain gradually releases her from the grip of the fight-or-flight reflex, and information starts to filter through. It doesn't occur to her why he'd apologize for having a memory - they just happen sometimes, there's nothing he can do about that.

"You're..." She swallows with difficulty. "You're from their world. Lalli and Onni's." There's no overt judgment, just a statement of fact she hadn't realized until now.

"... What is it?" she asks. But she's afraid she might already know.

Reynir turns to look over at Ami for a moment - so she had met Lalli and Onni, but not talked to them or spent enough time with them to know he was connected to them in any way. It's confusing but only for a moment. He supposes he hasn't mentioned either of them, as well. Just one of those funny coincidences.

Except nothing feels all that funny, now.

None of Reynir's usual bouncy energy is there in him, right now. He stands there, still and quiet, arms loose at his sides, staring at the dead troll, the hole in the floor. The more the fear fades, the more room it leaves for guilt and grief. It had been so close. It could have happened differently - should have.

"It's a troll."

Reynir doesn't know how much Ami might know. He sighs, all wavery and heavy, and adds:

"Something that used to be human. Their souls are still trapped in there. I'm a mage so. I can hear them. They just... scream, mostly."

Oh no. Oh no.

In that moment, all the pieces come together. The Rash isn't quite like a zombie virus - Onni told her that, when they first met. It's more like the G-virus, mutating people into horrible nightmare monsters and trapping their souls so that all they can do is scream forever...

And the end result is a troll. Like that one.

Ami covers her mouth with both hands, horrified. No wonder Reynir was scared of her. No wonder Lalli got mad when she joked about them. Her situation's not the same, but when she casually says "troll" in conversation, this is what they see.

"Oh, God," she whispers. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't know..."

She finally manages to tear her eyes away, and looks up to the spot Tuuri occupied a moment ago.

"Was..."

No, no no no. It's a stupid question, she knows it is. It's not going to lead anywhere good. But she has to ask. She doesn't want to believe the alternative. There has to be some hope...

"... Was Tuuri okay?"

Reynir sees Ami's horror, and the despair inside him gets a bit blacker. He assumes she is covering her mouth in horror because she has just seen, for the first time, the last stage in the transformation she herself is undergoing. It might not be happening in the way that it happens in Reynir's world, but he still thinks this is happening to her.

He is so horrified over having re-watched that scene that it doesn't occur to him, at first, that Ami has no way of knowing Tuuri's name. Because the question she asks is heart-breaking, and Reynir immediately hangs his head, eyes closing against the pain of it.

"No." His voice breaks on that one, awful syllable. "She wasn't."

He slumps back against the wall of the vehicle, a little surprised himself when his legs give out and he slides all the way down to the floor. At least that means he can rest his head against his knees.

"She got infected. We weren't sure for a few days, but. She did."

It should have been him. It shouldn't have been her. It was like a mistake - there shouldn't be a world where Tuuri dying was something that really happened. It should have been him.

"She killed herself. As soon as she knew. Before she could start to change."

She hadn't even said goodbye to him.

And that's how Tuuri died.

Ami sits very still for a while, as the heaviness of it sinks in. In a way, that's the best possible scenario, isn't it? She'd caught an incurable disease. She knew it was fatal. Worse than fatal. They all knew, as soon as they saw her clutching that wound. From that moment, Tuuri was doomed. There was nothing anyone could do for her.

She's seen the trope in zombie movies, of course. Someone gets bit, maybe tries to hide it for a while, starts to turn, begs another survivor to kill them while they're still human... But no. Tuuri's too smart for that, and too kind. She couldn't put everyone else at risk by denying her fate. She couldn't force Lalli to put a bullet in her brain. She was doomed, but she still had one choice... and to her, it was no choice at all.

Her eyes blur with tears, and she doesn't bother to wipe them away. She looks to Reynir, crumpled up against the wall, his face hidden between his knees. After a moment, she scoots over to him, wraps her skinny arms around his shoulders and squeezes. She gets a faceful of hair in the process, but who cares.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs, red tears flowing freely into red hair. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

The arms around his shoulders are enough of a surprise that Reynir raises his head. It isn't that he hasn't got friends, far from it. But the friends he'd made on the expedition aren't really the hugging type, and his friends back in his village... well he couldn't talk to them about this. They wouldn't like it, and what's more, they wouldn't understand. They'd never been to the Silent World or heard the things Reynir can hear.

So getting that kind of immediate comfort in the form of a hug is unexpected. And when he looks up he notices she's crying. Hard not to, when the tears themselves are tinted red. That's a whole new mystery, but it'll just go in the pile with the grey skin and yellow eyes and the rest of it.

"You're crying."

It's only then that it occurs to him that Ami had asked about Tuuri, but he hadn't mentioned her by name. The only conclusion he can draw is that she knew Tuuri was related to Lalli, or possibly what she looked like from a picture or something. So he asks:

"Did Onni or Lalli tell you about her?"

It's only when Reynir points out she's crying that she realizes he's not. Belatedly, she remembers that yellow eyes mean red tears, and she pulls one arm back to wipe them away. It's dark, maybe he didn't notice... She keeps her other arm around him, though, until he asks who told her about Tuuri.

Ami tenses a bit, draws back from the hug. "Ah. Shoot. I didn't mean..."

She shouldn't have mentioned Tuuri by name. But... she couldn't help it. Tuuri might have forgotten about Retrospec a while ago, but Ami still considers her a friend, and finding out she suffered such a terrible fate, even in another life... it's a shock.

At this point, though, it'd be pointless to try and lie. Reynir could just ask Onni or Lalli for confirmation, and then she'd be screwed. She sighs, then shakes her head gently.

"No. They didn't. It's..."

How does she tell him? About Recollé, about Retrospec, what she really is, how she knows Tuuri, and Lalli, and Majima, and what that means for all of them?

"... It's really complicated."

He definitely did notice, but that'll be a question for another time. Right now, there's too much else going on to focus on any one detail - even such a peculiar one as that. Because Ami's answer was not at all what he expected. He just wanted to know which of his friend she'd met, or if she knows them both. He hadn't expected neither was a possibility, because how else could she know Tuuri.

She's not from his world. Reynir knows that. She knows way too much about video games for that to be possible.

When she merely says it is complicated, as if hoping he'll just accept that as an answer, the corner of Reynir's mouth turns down a little in a small frown.

"Please, tell me." A little urgency has come into his voice. Reynir is an easy-going guy, for the most part. But he can be stubborn, and he's not a big fan of being underestimated or talked down to. And Tuuri is a sore spot, for him. He's not about to just let it go.

"Simplify it if you need to, but I can deal with complicated. I want to know."

She didn't really think he would take that non-answer for an answer, of course. It's more like a disclaimer. But he says he wants to know, so... she'll try.

She pauses for a few seconds, clearing her mind a little and pondering where she should start. She's got an idea what she might be able to do. This dream space, or whatever, that they're in... she's remembered something like it before. Obviously, you can revisit your memories here - so maybe, like Aradia did, she can sort of... control the memories and do it deliberately?

Ami closes her eyes, and the scene changes around them.

It resolves to a classy nightclub, warm and warmly lit, with a disco ball spinning slowly overhead. The dead troll vanishes, its rotten stink replaced by a faint scent that subtly evokes bourbon without shouting it. Instead of a frozen, deathly quiet, the room is filled with music, revelry, and laughter.

It may not look much like the parties Reynir's grown up with, but it's unmistakably a party. At this particular moment, most of the fifteen-odd guests - including Ami, and Reynir beside her - are gathered around the center table, where the birthday girl faces down a cake topped with twenty-one candles. It's Tuuri, alive and well, her smile lighting up the room as always.

"Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday to you!
Happy birthday, dear Tuuri!
Happy birthday to you!"

Tuuri blows out the candles, and a cheer goes up. Ami - appearing fully human again - neither sings nor cheers. She did both at the real party, and this time she's content to watch the others, a bittersweet smile tugging at her lips.

Reynir just... stares.

He doesn't know where this is. He doesn't know how it's possible. This can't be Keuruu. He doesn't think it is Mora, either. It's not anywhere in the Silent World that they had been during their journey. So what is this place, and how is Tuuri there, and how does Ami know her, and what is even happening?

But all of that confusion is background static. Mostly he just stares at the happy face of his friend. He looks at her like he'd never thought he would see her again. Which, to be fair, is exactly what's true. He watches her grinning as the people around her sing, and then blowing out the candles on her birthday cake.

He wishes Onni were here, to see her again one last time. He wishes Tuuri were in the Anchor. He wishes she hadn't died.

"How... is this possible?" Reynir's whisper is only just audible over the chatting and music of the club, bare and heartbroken.

Edited 2019-11-27 02:17 (UTC)

The party goes on around them. Tuuri reminds everyone that to get cake, they have to at least try and say "happy birthday" in Finnish. The bunched-up guests begin to spread out, eating and drinking and making merry. But for now, Ami and Reynir remain where they are, as unseen watchers.

"There's a world," Ami begins, "where the souls of the dead are given a second life."

Her voice is soft, but clear and even-toned. Storytelling comes naturally to her, for whatever reason. Maybe that's something she inherited from her past self.

"In your world, Tuuri died. In my world, she was reborn."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

cw suicide mention

cw suicide mention

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject