001] outline of a man against the night [holo]

[sibreden]

He doesn't sleep much, these days. Most nights he spends in drafting letters, some of which are necessary, some of which will never be sent; or in reading them, going over accounts and complaints until his eyes swim; or in pacing -- like a tethered dog, he can only go so far in any direction, but it keeps him from thinking. Sometimes he finds

Comments

[ visual ]

[hercandleguides]

Leila is probably not anyone's idea of a decent welcome wagon (she's socially deft enough, but it takes effort), but she sympathizes with these people who've landed in Taxon even if her own reaction is not quite what it should be. She switches her tablet on to visual and gives this stranger a quick once-over, guessing he is probably not from an era equivalent to her own.

"I'm afraid your aunt probably isn't here," she says, carefully, "you're in a city called Taxon."

Re: [ visual ]

[sibreden]

He recoils a little, from what might as well be a disembodied voice, but settles again almost at once. He's so tired that he might as well be dreaming, and the distraction, however weird, is not unwelcome. "So much the better; I'm not anxious for her company. Who's brought me here, then?"

[ visual ]

[hercandleguides]

Her tone is polite, not really overtly friendly, but cordial all the same. Leila's got a talent for assembling information into something coherent (even if she can't do as much with what she's got regarding Taxon as she'd like), so she supposes it's right that she hand it out to the other new arrivals.

"I'll warn you that this is the opposite of reassuring."

She waits a beat and continues.

"The individuals who brought us here have yet to make their identities known. We're brought in and unleashed on the city, which seems to have been cobbled together from an assortment of cultures, and that's all. Amenities and necessities can be found from the hatches--oh, and there's an item nearby. It's a tablet. You'll want that, it's how we're communicating right now."

Re: [ visual ]

[sibreden]

Mordred is quiet for a minute, absorbing this. Much of it might as well be gibberish, but he does recognize an instruction when he hears one, however tactfully phrased. It takes him only a moment to locate something reasonably described as a "tablet"; he moves to pick it up, and then, as he gets a good look at it, jerks his hand back as though stung.

"--Christ. It moves--"

[visual]

[lanterncast]

"Wouldn't it be just like this place to be our families fucking with us?" Judith is bitter, and sitting in what appears to be a motel room from the sixties--not that the era will matter to this particular new arrival, she's willing to bet.

"But you've probably already heard all about that not being the case. Welcome to Taxon, beware of small objects."

Re: [visual]

[sibreden]

He was not expecting to be accosted again so soon, let alone quite so bluntly; he looks up, startled, before remembering the witchy thing on the pedestal. "So I do," he says after a minute, a trifle sourly. "This one is trouble enough."

[visual]

[lanterncast]

"Well, we're stuck, I recommend sucking it up and coping as fast as you can. We're also being held at the whims of a bunch of--you know what, imagine them as cruel, stupid, ugly kids, that's close enough. Oh, they'll fuck with you enough to make it feel just like home, I figure."

Judith is rarely this blunt, even in her rage, but this isn't rage at all. Rage would be easier to deal with: she could kill something, break someone, smash her knuckles open to bone on concrete. This is frustration, and she can't fix it.

"I'm Judith," she adds, abruptly.

Re: [visual]

[sibreden]

"Mordred," he says, brevity for brevity. The frustration, at least, is acutely familiar; he's been living with its close cousin for better than a year, and he looks at her in the tablet display with something approaching friendliness. "What are they?"

What, not who; he thinks he has a fair idea of the answer, now.

[ visual ]

[dieneidio]

"Not your aunt, babe, not by half." Enfys pauses, scrubbing her hand through her loose hair and pausing in the act of removing her boots, "Well, not unless things are getting weirder around here, and they're already pretty weird-"

Re: [ visual ]

[sibreden]

Abruptly Mordred laughs. What else, really, is there to do? He's exhausted and desperate and lost and possibly mad, and now there's a scantily-clad girl being chipper at him in miniature. He leans on the railing of the platform, from which he has not yet had a chance to descend, and waits for the hysteria to subside.

[ visual ]

[dieneidio]

"Breathe," she advises, unaffected. "Not too deep and not too fast or you'll make yourself hyperventilate."

Re: [ visual ]

[sibreden]

And oh, God, she sounds like his sister; she's like widowed Lynet in her sharpness, like lost Ragnell in her kindly common sense, and that nearly tilts him over the edge into tears. But he gets a breath, as she says, and lets it go slowly, and then another. "Your pardon," he says at last. "I've not-- I'm overtired." By about six months.

[voice]

[trainedprat]

[Arthur still hasn't figured out how these UNGODLY devices work, hence the rather unconventional mode of address]

I highly doubt this has anything to do with your aunt.

Re: [voice]

[sibreden]

(Later they can bond over their shared distrust of things with buttons! Or not, most likely.)

By now he's almost getting used to being addressed out of the ether; the fact that there is, when he looks, no picture is actually less alarming. "Well, that would be a mercy. We shall see."

[voice]

[trainedprat]

Your aunt must be a force to be reckoned with indeed.

[Well, considering Mordred seems to think it's possible that she could be responsible for something as monumentally messed-up as Taxon.]

Re: [voice]

[sibreden]

"She certainly likes to think so," dryly. "Were she responsible I imagine she'd be here in person to gloat."