lifeaftr | Exploration Event: Neverwere

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Exploration Event: Neverwere

EXPLORATION EVENT: NEVERWERE

Who: Everyone!
What: Your wildest dreams come true!
When: May 15th to May 18th
Where: Ziziphus, those still on Ensō...and Mu
Warnings: Mark as needed!

Then Know That My Life Was Just a Killer Dream
You can find most of the information you need in the OOC info post! In the meantime, feel free to use this log as a catch-all for your dream worlds, as well as detailing your efforts to free one another. Whether they're on Ziziphus or Ensō at the time of the dreams' capture, your character is free to access as many dreams as you like, as the interlocking mental landscape allows for that sort of crossing over apropos of nothing. And time, of course, is very fluid in dreams - many days, months, and years can transpire in a matter of mere minutes.

Will you fight your way free from Ziziphus's vines or Mu's thrall, or are you content to die in your sleep?

Remember to let us know if your character dies during this event!

Event Timeline

[ ♆ ] May 15th: The vines make their move, ensnaring characters in ideal fantasy worlds
[ ♆ ] May 17th: The Storyteller will make contact with those they can, as well as issue information and a potential solution
[ ♆ ] May 18th: Those that have not freed themselves from the vines or from Mu will suffer a death

LOGS ● OOC ● STORIES ● MAIN NAVIGATION

( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

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[ They dutifully crouch to inspect this new arrival in their (?) house. (It feels natural, too, that they would live together. They are wanderers, after all.)

For a moment, their own memories take hold. In the shell's spiral curve they see the mounds, feel the weight of the dead, hear the laughing voice of a shaman who knows much more than they.

...What a strange world this is.

They turn their head to smile (it feels strange on their face) at the Drifter. This is a happy dream; they won't disrupt it yet. ]

Oh, a friend |

[ Using the sprite the way the Drifter uses it comes easily to them. Though they lack a voice, even in this ideal world, it feels somewhat natural to write words in the air this way. ]

Are they hungry |

[ What do snails in this place even eat? ]

Edited 2018-05-15 14:28 (UTC)

[A friend indeed!! The Drifter is delighted with this, as evidenced by the cupping day of their eyes into obsidian crescents. They hold up one gloved, slightly pointed finger in a gesture that’s usually universal in meaning: one minute. In a few seconds, they’ve extricated a small packet from wherever they may have kept it beneath their cloak.]

[The unwrap one small pink candy and offer it to their fellow drifter eagerly, already opening another for the snail’s benefit.]

[Snails adore candy. They’re assured of this.]

More candy |
I see |

[ They're so busy concentrating on the snail that they're slow to notice being offered the candy, but when they do - they give the Drifter another smile, a little tilt of their head, and accept it gratefully.

They look at it, then tuck it beneath their cloak. Eating in dreams is strange, and they don't feel hungry anyway. ]

Are you having some too ? | [ It's only fair. ]

[Something about the question arrests them, for a moment. It feels wrong. It feels like they ought to be...more concerned about who sees them engage in the act of eating, for some reason. Why would they feel concerned about a thing like that? It's not until they reach up to tug down their mantle that the gesture freezes midway through.]

[That's...absurd. People here don't mind their face. So why does it feel anathema to expose it?]

[A faint frown puckers the skin between their eyes. They lose themself in thought. And decide that, for the moment, maybe they're not quite hungry. The response still comes too late. Far too late, as if they had to think about this.]

not now

[ It hurts a little, to see that hesitation. That wrongness - or, well, that rightness, perhaps. The reality of their memories, fighting back.

The truth is rarely a pleasant thing. The Knight watches them for a second, considering (hesitation), before they make a gesture at their own exposed mouth (strange), their chest- ]

are you |

feeling well ? |

[ It's a seemingly innocuous question about a piece of candy. They could be asking about a stomachache, for all the Drifter knows, or even if this candy doesn't agree with them.

But the Knight is thinking of something far more serious. They are glad for the mask. With eyes that show emotion, they might give away more of their feelings about it. ]

[The answer should be yes. And with the Guardian here...where are they? They ought to be here. They ought to be around, somewhere. And yet, the thought of them cuts deeper than any hard light blade, a reminder of something, a memory of something, the stains of pink ichor spattering the rainy moors of the south - ]

[The Drifter shakes their head to clear it, and answers:]

fine
where is guardian

[ A moment of hesitation - they don't know who that is. The Drifter has never talked about that person to them (they don't know much about the Drifter's past at all, except their terrible sickness, their unwillingness to be touched, hinting at the dark edges of something much greater). ]

your friend ? |

[ They glance around. No, nobody's here except the two of them, they think. ]

not here |

we can go find them |

if you want ? |

[Why would anyone...this is their house. Their house. The Drifter moved, just as anyone who's lived here has, but the hesitation in the issuing of the query is enough to elicit a pause, a confused pinching of the stripe of blue skin peeking out from underneath their helm.]

this is their house

[So...they should be here. Somewhere. Perhaps they're out and about, though where they would be, the Drifter...cannot think.]

[~~Looking for something.~~]

[Yes. No. Why would they be? There's nothing to look for. There's nothing wrong.]

maybe protecting something |
guardians protect |

[ The Drifter is a traveler; it shows in the name. Someone called the 'Guardian', then, must have that kind of purpose, surely? It seems like a title, rather than a more ordinary sort of name, like the people who they've come to know during their time here. ]

go and find ? |

[ This makes logical sense to the Knight, though it seems to be causing the Drifter some issues, figuring out where their friend is. They are not sure why. Dreams are strange. ]

[This doesn't make any sense. Why are they talking as if they have no idea who the Guardian is? Everyone here knows them. They've lived here longer than the Drifter has. They've lived here as long as they can remember. As long as...]

there is nothing to

[The sentence is swiftly deleted before they can complete it. It doesn't make sense. None of it makes sense.]

don't you remember

[ The Knight hesitates. Their memory is fine, they think. But the dream's memory is not theirs.

This world is not theirs.

They lift their hands to their face, slowly, removing the mask they have (that they've always had, the dream says). It shouldn't be possible, but in this second skin, it comes off easily. They have a face, something capable of making expressions.

They turn the half-mask over in their hands, for a moment, before they shake their head, raising it to meet the Drifter's eyes with their own; white hair puffs out a little.

Their eyes are like the Drifter's, too, just bigger; pure black, with not much shine to them. ]

cannot |

not my memories |

yours |

[ They look sad. And that, in itself, is odd; they can feel this second mask over their own, changing to make the expression. A small taste of what it might have been like, to be something other.

It's a dream they wouldn't mind staying in, if they didn't know such things were dangerous. ]

[Memories.]

[That doesn't seem right. What about this has to do with memory?]

what memories

[There's something on the precipice of their mind, the lip of a realization that does not want to spill over. Something they can hold back or allow to leak into the rest of them like an opened wound, a warm coil of heat out across their front, like a spray of pink.]

[Trace their friend's face in their mind. Pale floss of hair falling in untidy tufts, dark eyes round and glistening in the internal lights.]

[The sickly sweet scent of rot has begun to seep in beneath the cracks in the door.]

don't you remember ? |

[ They turn the question back on the Drifter, as much as it hurts to do so. Dreams are full of pain, of light; this is nothing new to them.

(They can feel their 'eyes' burn; that has never happened before. They raise a cautious hand, wondering if something has burned away in the Drifter's semi-realisation, and find its opposite.

They're not sure why there's - it's tears, isn't it? - that wetness there, or what to do with it; it feels alien to them, a way of expressing their feelings they have never had. But they can't seem to figure out why it's happening, or how to stop.)

That sickly smell catches their attention. They remember the tentacles, the island bursting to life, dragging people away. (but more viscerally they remember husks, orange light, that rotting smell of things long dead being pushed past their limits) ]

this is a world you wanted |

i think ? |

[ To be happy. To not be sick, to have everyone and everything they want around them.

It's a little alien to the Knight, they have to admit. But it clearly means much to the Drifter, who once had more that they later lost. ]

[Don't you remember.]

[They remember coming here. They remember someone who was kind, who welcomed them into their home, despite...were they injured, when they came? They must have been. There was something wrong with them, something that dizzied them and tipped them to the ground, vomiting bright pink. A gut-wrench of nausea and pain fuzzing up through their lungs - ]

[That didn't happen.]

[That didn't happen.]

[There's something glistening at the corners of their friend's eyes. It takes them a moment to recognize it for what it is.]

was any of it real

[ They don't know how to answer that. There's so little they know about the Drifter, about this person they've come to care for very much.

Instead of using the words that have been granted to them, they step close, hands folding over the Drifter's own. (For a moment they stand still, almost shocked by how easy it is to do this. Their hands are almost the same size.

They had wondered what it would be like. To grow up. To stand tall as their sibling did.

This dream had given them some measure of it, too. It's a bitter thing to realise.

They've had dreams that hurt, dreams that destroyed them over and over. The echoes of others' pain and sacrifice. Never before have they had a dream that brings happiness.) ]

not sure |

this is yours |

[ They close their eyes for a moment (they're still not sure what these tears are, what to do about them, are they supposed to be falling like this?) before blinking rapidly, chasing away that blurriness.

They mimic something they've seen before, gently turning over the Drifter's hand (unwilling to let go of it), tracing letters in their palm.

Sorry.

The Drifter deserves to be happy, to be free from pain. Somewhere, perhaps, things had gone right.

But this wasn't it, was it? Doomed to be trapped inside a dream, inside your own head. That wasn't a fate anyone deserved.

That is what the Knight believes, the heart of their conviction.

They just wish it didn't hurt so much. ]

[This is yours.]

[The Drifter does not operate under delusion. They do not labor under false impressions. They take the pieces of the situation at hand, every piece, and they gel them into something they can use for their own benefit. Even when dying, spitting up clots of their own blood fizzling with static as it spatters to the ground, they labored resolutely forward.]

[The house jags and shivers like a stuttered projection. The snail is gone, leaving a shiny smear across the floor. The smell of rot sharpens, and an old pain flowers and takes root in their lungs.]

[In the end, even a fantasy could not hold them, because they do not bury themself in falsity.]

[The longer they look at them, this other drifter, the more the mosaic fragments of them begin to make less and less sense. A helmet instead of a porcelain-smooth, masklike face. Empty, shadowy pits of an unblinking stare that the Drifter remembers finding familiar instead of unsettling. Smaller, insectoid, small hands sketching shapes in the dirt.]

[A vine unspools from the underside of the table. Another curves around the right angles of a crate.]

a lie

[Was that all that final image was? Clear water, shimmering, reflecting a sun's warming rays? Did it matter? Did it really ever - ?]

[They bow their head. It would be too easy to grieve the loss of something they never had, and so they do not bother. The fall of their shoulders, the lowering of their chin, the slitting of their eyes shut - every vein of it communicates shame.]

[The world is splitting apart, and this time, it is in their best interest to let it happen.]

[ The dream is falling apart around them both. It's an unpleasant feeling, seeing everything rot and fall to pieces; it's more invasive, more sickening, than the comforting acceptance of darkness.

They don't understand that shame, that withdrawal. Though they don't understand what it is to dream of an ideal world, it's clearly something that the Drifter wants. Why be ashamed of it, they don't know.

They are still tall, for a little while; though as the dream breaks, they look entirely different from a fellow drifter, someone who belongs in the Drifter's world.

They know the Drifter prefers not to be touched, tries not to let others see their face, rejects being cared for in their constant sickness (not wanting to infect others is only fair). But it seems desperately lonely, especially now.

And it's only a dream, regardless. Holding them, standing close to their height, isn't something they could do in the waking world.

They stand still, considering these facts, and take advantage of the dream to put their arms around their friend. Just for a little while. ]

[The longer they look, the more apparent it is that the Knight's appearance is, in fact, deeply unfamiliar. Even the taller, slender triangle of their horned face with its curved, tapering horns, though more reminiscent of them in actuality, is nothing like the Knight they're starting to remember.]

[The word fuzzes with bright pink static, bleeding black into the corners. The thin lines of Judgment's single staring eye set in its rhombus, leaking trails of neon flame, peers out from the rapidly emptying blackness.]

[There are arms falling around them, and they let it happen, as the dream hemorrhages away, as the stench thickens, and the set of arms becomes thick coils of vines looped around their arms, their chest, their neck.]

[There is hardly any pressure as they shrug them away, except for the familiar constrictions around their chest, that familiar invisible hand that squeezes at their lungs.]

[ They remember vines, crawling across the island, tangling everything. It doesn't take long for those same vines to separate them from their friend, no matter how much they struggle to cut them away (they have a sword, even without the dream's influence, but it doesn't matter here).

It's strangling, suffocating - despite lacking breath, it still hurts. They've come to dislike plants. This doesn't help their outlook.

Jolting awake suddenly is a relief. They scramble free from the vines, slashing frantically in their panic, looking for the Drifter in the waking world. Once they find them, those vines tangling them are getting cut away with very little hesitation.

THIS ISLAND IS BAD AND TERRIBLE. ]

[The Drifter would be cutting their way free with more alacrity, if the fatigue had not settled so thoroughly into their bones. Their breaths are even more pained and rasping than usual. Half-sunken into the texture of the vines that so hungrily cocooned them before, they can only paw feebly at them until the familiar blur of the Knight's nail cuts silver streaks across their vision.]

[For once, they can accept the help gracefully. At least as gracefully as they are able. It's possible they simply do not have the wherewithal for anything but the adrenalinzed burst to simply get out of the clutches of the vines and the horrible sensation of their rotten plant-matter draped across their shoulders.]

[They're already coughing spurts of bright pink as they scramble free.]

[Their stint in the dream world has done them any favors.]

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Exploration Event: Neverwere

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