lifeaftr | Islander meeting!

Entry tags:

Islander meeting!

Who: Everyone!
What: An information gathering meeting, mingle log style!
When: 13th as advertised Here!
Where: Big tent, islet 4 (sorry Ardyn!)
Warnings: Keep an eye on subject lines for warnings!

[The tent is a good place to have this. It's sheltered at least. Shion has collected strawberries and also water. He hopes that people will turn up, there's a lot to discuss. About this place, how they are here and how to leave. But also surviving here. Helping each other make the most of being here.

They had done such things in the Tower and it was a good way to get things organised. He knows he has questions and he thinks other people probably do as well. If it's anything like the Tower then people all have different bits of information that will fit together eventually.

He greats people as they enter and will encourage anyone who looks less than certain to enter and offer them strawberries.]

((OOC: So I'll put up a subthread for mingling before the meeting, then discussion points can be posted as a reply to this main thread. I'll do a few for things Shion will bring up but feel free to post your own points as well! Tag around, do breakout threads, discuss all the things. Don't worry if things go off topic. Have fun!)

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Shion blinked at Tim, him too? He writes it down, Castle in the Mist. Sol Raveh. A war.

"How long were you there roughly?"

Because 'too long' could mean anything, really.

God, he doesn't know. He has to count, slowly, tracing back the days in his mind.

"Couple months. Three? Four?" He scratches at the rough beard that's begun to darken the lower half of his face. He keeps forgetting to shave, reaching that standard-issue unkemptness typical for people who have sunk into a dissociative haze for a couple weeks, or maybe who have been grappling with island survival. "My memory's not too great, so I can't say exactly."

Three or four. Shion writes that down as well. Three or four months was long enough. Enough to effect someone.

"That's alright, don't worry about it." He smiled, "Did... did you escape there? I mean... I know you ended up here but did you manage to escape the Castle in the Mist first, or were you trapped there and then trapped here?"

"Trapped there, and trapped here." He shrugs. No big, right? "People came and went all the time, so I guess it wasn't much of a shocker."

He's leaving out the part where he was stabbed to death. And also the part where it was a small child who stabbed him. And also the part where he is living with said child now, and also the part where he was both willing and grateful for the fact that they were responsible for his death.

It's complicated okay.

"Whatever pulled you here pulled you from there..." Perhaps that was the fate of those who disappeared, pulled to another world. He knew in the Tower people who disappeared ended up on their dead worlds, their soul slipped from Zo's grasp, sometimes they came back. But some people never came back, had anyone been pulled into another world?

"Is there anyone else from there here?"

"You'd have to ask for yourself." That's an evasive answer, and it's pretty transparent that such is the case - but he's not about to go treading on anyone's cover story. How many people does this make, who came from Sol Raveh before ending up here? Four, or five total - but some have gone, now, and some aren't supposed to be familiar with it at all.

Shion's free to ask, but Tim won't be the one to trip and tear away the curtain, if he can help it.

Shion nodded, "Well I have asked about different worlds. I guess the people who are happy to tell me will speak up."

It makes him wonder why people might not want others to know where they were before. It might be that they dislike speaking about it and Tim fears that Shion will bring it up to them, upsetting them. It might be ... well he's not sure. But he drops it anyways.

"There you go." He nods, his expression one of utter neutrality. He can play the avoidance game for as long as he needs to. He's good at that. He's good at lying when it's required of him, and he's even better at lying when it isn't. "Probably best to hear it straight from the horse's mouth anyway."

Assuming this kid...knows what horses are. Or what the metaphor means. Fuck if he knows.

He's read enough books. He knows metaphors. He puts a question mark next to the question in his book.

"Thank you Tim."

Information on other places is always good, escaping here is one thing but Shion wants to make sure that those who wish to go back to their original worlds get to do so, and don't just get stolen into yet another place.

He hums his acknowledgment, but doesn’t offer anything else. He needs a smoke. Again. His lungs are already killing him, and he’s due to make everything that much harder for himself.

“Like I said. Wasn’t there long.”

"Long enough though." Being stolen from your own world was a bad thing, no matter how long you were in another place.

"You were one of the first to arrive here, weren't you?"

Him and Lup along with Kidwun and Ed but he had no idea who the latter two were, he had forgotten to ask Lup if they were still here, probably. They weren't on the list of the disappeared.

"Showed up in August with all the rest, yeah. Got the lecture about how it'd been a long time since the Storyteller had to deal with this many people, so I guess we kinda were the first in a while."

He has no idea who in that original group is even left, largely because he's pretty sure he didn't even meet everyone in it. He keeps to himself. It's just how he is.

First in a while. Which might mean that others had been brought here before them. Or that this island once had people native to it. This world was not dead or destroyed.

"Did they seem surprised to see you?" He believed that the Story Teller had little to do with their being here, but all information was good information when compared to no information.

"I dunno if 'surprised' is the word I'd use. 'Annoyed,' maybe." It's hard to tell with gods and allegedly divine entities. They probably don't experience emotion in the same way that mortal people do, or something along those lines.

He shrugs loosely. His fingertips are itching to slide a cigarette from his tin, but seeing as he's...kind of indoors, that'd probably be pretty rude. Especially with kids about.

"We definitely haven't made it easy for them, tramping in and outta their temple."

Or something. Shion knows very little about gods. Ruana was the closest he had as an example and she had definitely shown emotion. Amusement, hatred, anger.

"They were annoyed? Do they not like us using their temple?"

“I think it’s kinda like having to convert your house into a hotel overnight. Which, you know. I wouldn’t be real happy about either. I think that’s the reason they gave us those shacks over on the islets and stuff - so we’d quit sticking around on their lawn.”

Not that it’s wkeked. People still use the temple as their own base of operations, Tim himself included.

"I guess." So not only was the Story Teller not responsible for them ending up here they were also inconvenienced by it. The islanders were just as lost as those that had used Dog Keeper's hotel.

"So it would be better for them if we found a way to leave as well."

“Probably. I dunno. That’s not how these kinds of places tend to work,” says Tim, shrugging one shoulder. He’s about as concerned over this as he is anything else that isn’t an immediate priority - which is to say, not very. Survival on a day to day basis takes precedence. No one in Sol figured out how to get home despite years in that Castle; what chance do they have here?

“People only seem to leave when it’s not their choice.”

"We did." Shion stared at him, his gaze intense. "Me and Aster. Everyone in the Tower. We..." Breathing, words in order despite how they wanted to pour out of his mouth and make no sense.

"Our worlds were destroyed, we... what we thought were our bodies were actually just wire and glamour and we were there for years. But... we got out. Everyone... Almost everyone..." Three true deaths for hundreds of restored worlds. He wishes there had been none but the less naive part of him knows that the cost was very low.

Another breath, "People can leave places like this." Sure he and Aster were now stuck here instead but that didn't negate the fact that they had escaped that place. Their worlds were restored. "We will do it again." It could be taken as naive optimism, but his eyes are hard, determined.

“No offense, but I don’t think that should come at the expense of this place,” says Tim, opening a hand to gesture at the tent - and, by extension, the rest of the archipelago. “Maybe that would’ve been possible there, but we’re not the only ones in this world. Unless you think it’s worth whatever that might do to the Jormun, or whoever’s left on Ai’tuoh.”

It’s delivered more like a warning than an admonishment, but the point still stands. Shion might have high hopes for what’s possible, but Tim’s done being the thing that leaves destruction in his wake.

Shion is silent for a long moment when Tim speaks. He hadn't for a moment thought about destroying this world, just escaping it. The Jormun and Ai'Tuoh had been here before any of those brought from other worlds. "I didn't say that..."

He wouldn't... But then again he hadn't exactly shown himself to be someone who cared about others. Not since coming here. After all he had tried to burn Ai'Tuoh, why would Tim think he wouldn't destroy a whole world in order to escape it?

A person who would cause such destruction and not care about others. Was that what he was becoming? Reno had warned him, warned him about becoming like Hojo. Warned him to keep an eye on the line and not to cross it. And it was true, he hadn't thought about what everyone leaving would mean. If this place would survive whatever upheaval they caused. Hadn't thought about the cost and when had he become that person? A person that didn't care about others? About what effect their actions had on others?

"I... sorry."

He was breathing too fast, his thoughts were too fast. There wasn't enough air in the tent and he had to leave. Tim was right. Tim was kind and thought about others and Shion?

Shion didn't. He turned to flee the tent, better that than to panic in the middle of all these people.

Uh, okay, then.

He’ll be honest here: he’s not real sure what line he crossed and when, not is he remotely sure how to fix it. It didn’t go over well, that’s the primary takeaway here. Guess asking people to consider the consequences is a little too much reality at the moment.

He can’t fix that. He probably shouldn’t, either, if all it takes is a reminder of the bigger picture to send someone flying off the deep end. Yeah. Best not.

Great.

Just great.

Did a real good job screwing that one up on top of everything else.

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Islander meeting!

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cw: panic

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