and our broken virgin realities

[allmydiredreams]

For the past couple of days, Babel has been MIA. She's actually been holed up in her room, trying to figure out, dispute, come to terms with certain painting given to her at the Carnival. The only conclusion she came to was the one she'd suspected, but hoped wasn't true. She's learned that hope is a futile, frail thing at best, over the

Comments

[allmydiredreams]

Babel doesn't so much see 'Piper' as sense 'empath: unhappy, conflicted, worried', and she doesn't turn to look at Piper, just closes her eyes and falters for half a second before continuing to walk to the gates. "Small error," she says, "just fixing. He'll be right as rain in no time."

A few more steps, then another pause, this time an automatic bodily shake, like someone with a deep, deep chill. Something in Babel is trying to shake off the dissociation, the ache everywhere from the vibrations through her, though it's not going to work. "They take and then they disappear and the shift comes back around."

She turns to stare at Piper for a moment, not recognizing her at all; it's more to put a face to the emotional identity-impression than anything, to record this girl so she'll be remembered even after her body is crushed under the fallen buildings or unraveled by the fog or riddled with bullets or wasted with disease or any of the other number of apocalypses Babel has seen and will see again and again. And then she's back to walking toward the gate, this part of her recording finished.

[savesomelight]

Piper is getting so tired of bad things happening to her friends. It's stressing her out something fierce. "What?" She asks and then shakes her head. It's not important and, anyway, Tay promised that they'd get Mattie out, if that's what Babel's talking about and... Yeah, anyway.

"I don't understand," she says, trotting after her. "Did something happen?"

She pauses, her steps faltering. "Was it the carnival?"

[allmydiredreams]

"It's going to," Babel replies, though she shows no other sign of knowing Piper's still there. "All of it, down in flames." She doesn't really know how it will end, but it's not as if she's coherent enough to say so.

She mutters for a moment, under her breath, though eventually the muttering rises into audibility. "...half-seen mystics and hidden fingers reaching in to pry open the heart--show the real--want the flesh in the mind..." She trails off, pressing her hands to the gates for a moment, letting them wander over the barrier. Then she opens the gates and walks out. She's going to keep walking until something stops her, and that is all she consciously knows. Walking and recording. There is so much of this city to remember before it's gone.