[The Rules.
Caveats.
Such as they are.
This will be mostly freeform. I may ask for a flavor roll, now and again, but we're doing this chill-style. If you aren't comfortable with that, let me know.
If you have any questions, or want your character to try anything, anything at all - even if it seems kind of strange, don't hesitate to ask.
All things are possible.
Maybe.]
Alexander Brandt[Just because]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
katabasisHe is at Pike Place Market. He is in Seattle. He is dreaming, and he knows that he is dreaming. He has known he is dreaming for quite some time. Pike Place Market is Pike Place Market as he has not seen it before in his dream. It is empty, as it gets some nights: cobble-stones and litter, maybe some angular junkie huddled up beneath a blanket by a cart of cans, or some drab and shaking woman going through the trashcans one after the other after the other deliberately, slowly, reddened rough-raw knuckles searching for anything to eat or anything that can be turned into money or anything at all, and it is very dangerous just a couple of streets over, Tourism-center, but an ugliness beneath. That is all accurate. That is all something he has seen before: the neon signs in some of the shops that actually have shops; the labyrinthine curl of open buildings, emptied out and hollowed of tables, waiting for another day and another market.
He is at Pike Place Market but the difference is that Pike Place Market is cold. Often has he seen snow on the mountains across the bay, often has he seen clouds rolling over the mountains like Heaven's coming boiling out've the sky ready to descend a black shadow on the bay and on the city and it brings out the crazies the storm it always brings them out but he has never seen the snow lying on Pike Place Market as it lies on Pike Place Market in his dream. The snow is thick and his boots are becoming iced over. When he moves, the ice cracks and the sound it makes is a child's sob or a crow call or no. That is the sound of his girlfriend, remember her? That is the gasp-sound she made, she was moved to make, just before he walked in and saw what she was doing with another detective, another friend on the force, an ally; that little sound, and it should be difficult to remember, but it isn't, it isn't.
He is dreaming and he knows he is dreaming. He knows he does not have to wake up early today because he does not have work. He knows he has nothing to do at all when he wakes up. Too new, still, to have many friends. A couple of guys are going to a bar, and maybe he'll go to. Or wasn't he going to go hiking? He was probably going to go hiking, but it's warm in bed, even though it's cold in his dream.
Cold, cold, cold.
Alexander BrandtLike so many parts of the city that are full of life and light during the day, Pike Place Market is another part of the city that takes off its makeup when it sleeps. A flickering street light spreads jaundiced yellow light across the showy ground. Dark shadows hiding people getting up to things that most normal people wouldn’t even think about, in their cosy, warm, comfortable lives.
But the snow is different, here. It’s new, fresh, with no trails of footprints bar the ones he’s leaving as he slowly walks through the market. The sound of... No, not that sound. That was another time, another life. But the thought still lingers, the pain still fresh. Alexander hadn’t stayed long after walking in on... them. That night, he’d just turned and walked out. Ignoring Sara’s shouts, he’s gotten back onto his bike and driven... He can’t really remember where. Some little two-street town in the mountains, where the sound of breaking snow...
Alexander screams out in frustration, kicking at a pile of snow that had gathered near an overturned bin. He sits on the bin and looks down at the ground, watching the loose powder swirl around in the breeze.
He may know this is a dream, but some things are still very real. And with his subconscious apparently wanting to prod at fresh wounds, he’s not in any kind of mood to be sociable.
The cold will do. He shivers.
katabasisHe shivers, and the ice begins to rim his boots again. The ice crawls up his boots, and reaches the laces. Time has passed in the dream (None has passed for the Dreamer), and the ice is up to his ankles. He can watch it un-fold, can feel it through his skin and all the way into his bones. Now there is a wind; the wind is bracing, but it has voices in it. The voices wish to tell him something, but they can't quite manage. They try, though, they try and they try, and what is that he hears now? That is the sound of his own frustrated scream; it blows back at him.
Pike Place Market has grown darker as the ice creeps up his feet and legs, as a little snow-devil plays between his boots, snowflakes frisking like they're auditioning for Fantasia. Behind him, there is the sound of heavy footsteps.
And he knows, of course, that the footsteps belong to the man without a face. Who is the man without a face? We will see, won't we. With the footsteps comes a taste in the back of his throat, something metallic, something like he'd bitten on his tongue, the copper-sweet slick of - well, what? Blood, maybe, but less iron in it. It isn't blood, but it's similar.
Alexander BrandtSitting there, staring down, the flare of anger has passed. Numbness has returned, and his mind is empty. Curious, if anything, at the way the ice is growing over his boots, starting up towards his legs. A quiet, distant, logical part of him wonders why it’s not melting from his body heat. But then this is all a dream, isn’t it. And it’s not like anything here can hurt him, really. He tries to brush his feet together, to work off the spreading ice.
The wind blows up, though, bringing flecks of ice along with it to scour his exposed skin. He pulls the hood of his jacket up to protect his face and neck from the stinging pain. He tucks his hands under his arms to keep them warm. But the voices, the echoed scream, in the wind pull his attention up from the ground and into the swirling snow – flakes seemingly falling in stop-motion as the failing street light flickers.
How he knows there’s someone behind him, he doesn’t know. Maybe it’s a quirk of the dream. Maybe it’s the hairs on his neck standing up, just before something happens. Maybe maybe maybe. Either way, there’s someone (something?) there. He spits on the ground to check for blood, and runs his tongue around his gums. Whatever he finds, he’ll turn to meet the newcomer.
katabasis[Let's see.]
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 3, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )
Alexander Brandt[WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
katabasisHe turns. And what he sees is terrible.
The man without a face is there of course. The shape of him is familiar and if he were to describe this dream or the man without a face to a therapist they might draw a connection to his father and how he never really and anyway maybe it's something else. Maybe it doesn't matter at all what it is or what it means. The man without a face is there of course, but that is not the terrible thing. The man without a face is walking briskly toward him (and getting no closer), and behind the man without a face there is a woman with a gun. The woman is as white as the snow so she is hard to see at first but her mouth is as red as blood would be if it dripped on the slow and when Alexander's eyes meet the woman's eyes there is a flash of recognition
and he feels that, too, in his bones, like a cry, like the sound Sarah was making, like realizing that sound was for somebody else, like
he feels that recognition, he feels that look, and
then she changes on him.
The dream changes on him. Pike Place Market is nothing but snow; nothing but storm. Nothing but storm and snow and he's in the heart of it; somewhere in the snow and storm is a moving -- person, and he sees its shadow, and it is
absolutely terrifying. Though he is stalwart enough not to run;
(part of him wants to wake up, very badly)
"Why won't you help me?" That voice; it's in his ear, a young-voice sound.
But then the wind claws it away, sorrow, sorrow.
You're going to die today.
Alexander Brandt
There’s an old photo album that Alexander’s mother has, and it remembers happier days. An old Polaroid of a smoky bar in Germany, showing his mother and father with their mutual friends: when they met. The two of them looking happy on their wedding day. A photo of the home in Seattle, with his dad huddling under a black raincoat against one of the regular downpours that the city is well known for.
It is this photo that comes first comes to mind when Alexander turns and sees the man, but the resemblance ends with the shape. Alexander tries to check, see if it is his father coming to see him but... there is just no face to see. Is it blank skin? Blackness and shadow? Whatever it is defies his attempts to focus and really see. There is only a feeling of this being wrong. This is not normal.
But the woman comes into view, as fleeting glimpses through the snow. It’s hard to know which he sees first – the crimson mouth (wasn’t there that corny film about vampires on the motel TV on the drive down..?), or the weapon. It’s certainly the gun that gets his attention though. The strangeness of the whole situation (thisisjustadreamthisisjustadream), the man he can’t seem to focus on, and now this. He reaches inside his jacket for his weapon, crouching while he does. As he draws...
Everything changes. All he can see is white, as the snow blanks out everything else in the market. In the world, even. The wind pushes at him, pulling his now-open jacket tails back behind him. He’s shivering more, although whether that’s from the cold or the near-terror is hard to decide. He stays crouched, aiming his pistol towards where the man and the woman were coming from. Where his thinks they were coming from, anyway. It’s hard to tell one direction from another, but he’s fairly sure there were over there...
“Why won’t you help me?” someone asks. Who, though? There’s nobody else here. Is that a fragment from the radio that he left playing in the background when he fell asleep on the couch? Help who? "Who's there?" he shouts into the storm.
This is a dream. I can’t die here. Holding his pistol in one hand, he reaches under his jacket and pinches himself. Wakeupwakeupwakeup...
Alexander Brandt[WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
katabasis[Mystery.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
katabasisWho's there? Alex shouts. The response is anguished. He can taste it in his mouth again. Meadowsweet and candlesmoke; it pops on his tongue like fizzy bubbles, holds itself in his mind like -- but no, it's gone. Just the anguish: a response he cannot quite make-out. A name, maybe.
And then he pinches himself. That doesn't always work. But Alexander, he is willful. He wakes up in his bed. The time is something towards noon. The blinds or the curtains -- they're askew, and light's slanting inward, rippling across the floor or the corner of his bed or the wall, and his feet are very cold.
In fact, he cannot feel his feet at first. They're colder than ice. They warm eventually, of course. It was just a dream.
He has some messages on his phone waiting for him. If he's the kind of guy who has an e-mail or joins lists or checks facebook, there's nothing on facebook but maybe there's something in his e-mail.
Isn't it a nice day?
It is a nice day; the weather is cooperating, warm and the sky like a flake of heartbreak gorgeousness.
Alexander BrandtThe voice? The wind again? However the response comes, is slides just out of reach as he tries to concentrate on it. He’s still none-the-wiser as he wakes himself from the dream. The transition back to normality is abrupt. One moment he’s staring into the storm, trying to work out who’s calling him while fighting back the terror that the strange man and woman conjured up in him. The next?
He stares up at the ceiling of his living room, hands gripped hard on the seat and the back of the couch that he’s lying on. His heart’s pounding away in his chest and... . Why the hell are my feet cold? Must have been lying in a draft or something. But the windows and doors are all closed. Maybe some of the insulation has come loose somewhere, he’d check on that later.
He spends a couple of minutes sat on the couch, massaging life and heat back into his feet. The radio is still playing away quietly in the background – the news has come on, with a report about an increase in white collar crime in the city. Alexander is really paying that much attention, though – it really is just background noise. He massages a crick out of his shoulder. A new bed is due to be delivered in a couple of days, so the couch is the next best place to sleep at the moment. It’s just a little too short to lie out properly, though, and he keeps waking up with a stiff neck.
The numbness in his feet slowly gives way to pins and needles, which then fade away as he walks to the bathroom. Having taken care of that, he takes a minute to get the wet laundry out of the washing machine and load it into the dryer. His phone is blinking away on a shelf, so he dials up his voicemail service while he sorts out some coffee.
“Hi Mr Brandt, this is Mary Jo from the realtor company. I’m just calling to make sure that you’ve settled in ok. If you have any problems with the apartment, just give me a call on 720-383-9187.”
*delete* The old coffee filter gets thrown in the trash and a new one dropped into the machine. He’s rinsing and refilling the jug as the next message plays.
“Hi Alexander, it’s John Howard from scheduling. We need you to head over to the station on 16th tomorrow, as your partner’s called in sick. Give me a call back if there’s a problem”.
*delete* The percolator starts bubbling away as it boils the water and turns it into coffee. Alexander walks over to a calendar on the fridge and scribbles a note about the shift change.
“Hi Alex. It’s Sara. Listen...”
This message doesn’t even get a chance to get started. Alexander’s pulled the back off the phone, pulled the battery out and thrown both onto the couch before it could get any further. He stands looking at them while the percolator gurgles to a climax and then goes silent.
Pouring a cup of coffee, he heads out on the balcony and looks out on The Rockies. "Fuck," he mutters to nobody in particular. Leaning forward, elbows on the railings, he sips the coffee and thinks of nothing.
He’ll probably head out in a while. Maybe go hiking in the foothills. Maybe ride out to the plains and really open the bike up and lose himself in the speed.
In a while.
katabasisThe dream dissolves.
But not as completely as they are wont to do. He will remember the terror for a while. This unsettled feeling, behind his collar-bone, in his shoulder muscles. He will remember something wanting help, too. And feel in the air around him a certain urgency, the equivalent of being in a haunted house - isn't it? Feeling things, or getting the impression of feeling things, which have no logical inspiration. Urgency, although there is nothing to do today.
Urgency, settling on his day like a fine dust.
You are going to die today.
He can taste ill-luck, but that is ridiculous, isn't it?
Alexander BrandtTime passes, as he leans watching the mountains. The sun is out, the few clouds there are in the sky are skimming way about the mountain tops. He goes to take a last drink of coffee from the mug, but finds that it’s gone cold. He heads back inside and sets the mug in the sink to clean later.
Alexander has a look around the apartment as he decides what he’s going to do with the day. Things around here are reasonably in order – still a few boxes in the bedroom to sort out, but there’s nothing urgent in them. It seems like forever since he really got out on the bike – the last time was probably back in Seattle, before... before the 1,300 mile drive down in a rented truck with most of his belongings.
Decision made. Alexander changes into his bike leathers, grabs his helmet and heads out to the garage. The phone stays in pieces on the sofa. His keys and wallet come with him, though. Along with an odd feeling that something is going to happen.
But, then, Alexander has never been one for superstition. So he pulls out of the apartment block and accelerates away. Through town – even if the traffic’s bad, he can still weave through it – and out onto the 287 will do nicely. Once he gets out of the city, where the houses and cross streets start to thin out, he starts to put on speed and skirts the speed limit.
Alexander Brandt[Per/Awa]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
katabasisNothing goes right for Alex. The mug he sets on the sink he somehow sets on the edge, just - just a little unbalanced. And it drops into the sink, and it breaks. When he looks at one of the boxes containing some of his stuff, he is just in time to see the edge buckle, to hear things rattle inside it, and then for the small box tower to topple. He stubs his toe. No: he doesn't stub his toe. He picks up a splinter from his hardwood floor. Or maybe there is no hardwood floor, and it is stubbing his toe. Ow.
But the sky is so lovely, so achingly lovely.
Alexander has never been one for superstition. The traffic is bad. He seems to catch every red light until he's out of the city. When he puts on speed, it feels glorious for a moment. It feels like glory, on the wind that he makes. He is reminded of his dream again, perhaps -- the buffet of it, the cacophony of it, after the man without a face, a woman, something, what happened again? Why won't you help me.
There is a curve. And then: How did he not notice it?
There is an owl on the road in front of him. Owl in daylight, a strange thing anyway. It has a wing, trailing behind it. Is hopping, hopping, and it will not be getting out of his way, and he just has the wit and the control to swerve around it. But that's when he hits a patch of -- ice, maybe? Yes, sure, ice. And hears a pop, as a tire goes right across a nail.
As the nail tears into rubber.
Look at the world, Alexander. Alexander, Alexander. The wind kicks up sharp; and he can see a pattern. He can see it laid-out, bright-shaped: he can see the darkness coming for him, always the gloom-thorn path, always the hard way.
Ill-luck, Alex. Unlucky.
Alexander BrandtOne accident – the mug - is life, and gets shrugged off. Two – the box of glassware topping over – is annoying. After stubbing his toe, on top of the lousy mood that Sara seems to have brought about without even realising and the strange feeling of wrong , Alexander is starting to get angry. Not at anything or anyone, except maybe the universe. But he’s not the spiritual kind, either. So it’s just general-purpose anger, ready to lash out at anything that becomes a handy target.
But things don’t get any better once he’s out. The traffic, the red lights... The idiot drivers who seem incapable of using their mirrors before swerving between lanes, nearly knocking him off. He’s never gotten to the point of road rage – getting off and laying into somebody – but it’s getting close.
It almost seems too good to be true when he can finally open the bike up. A few minutes of leaving all the aggravation behind, when...
It all happens so fast, as these things tend to. One moment, he’s easing the bike around a bend and starting to put on speed again. The next, is all a jumble of images and sounds. The owl on the road. An owl? What the hell? The screech of rubber as he swings around it. Then the moments of weightlessness as the bike skids over something slippery and catches a nail. He comes away from the bike, rolling along the road and, judging by the state of the helmet when he takes it off, bangs his head several times on the way.
Alexander lies still for a moment, making sure nothing feels broken, before he sits up. The helmet comes off, and he looks back up the road. The anger from earlier has faded into a dim resignation that the day just isn’t going to get any better.
He gingerly gets up – nothing broken, but plenty painful – and walks back along the road, limping to start with until his leg muscles relax again. He loosens his jacket – with the sun bearing down from the breathtakingly clear sky, he’s starting to get quite warm. The bike is lying on its side on the road, safe where it is for the moment. He carries on past the black ice. Ice? In this weather? And back to the injured owl.
Assuming it's still there, he'll kneel down at the side of the road, near to the poor thing, and take a look.
Alexander Brandt[Per+Alert.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
katabasisThe owl is still there. Wing-dragging, feathers-so-fine. And he can taste it again, that anguish; that flower-sap something, on his tongue, replacing -- well. The taste of coffee, perhaps, which had chased the ozone out've his dream, chased off morning breath. The owl is still there, but it makes a grating sound of alarm when Alexander kneels near it. Turns its head around. Not all the way around, as they are said to do. Just: around, feathers rumpled, ruffling, and
he can see, while he looks a the owl, the owl's fate, twisting and twining with his own. What does that look like to Alexander? Perhaps he experiences is as a gut-hunch and an intuitive leap of the imagination -- or perhaps the dark-gloom pattern he saw earlier, just before and just after the accident sent him bruising across pavement and winter-spare weed, just as the nail tore apart his bike's front wheel (and thank god for his helmet), maybe he sees that again, but he sees it interlaced with brightness.
The owl's not going to die, but then it hops, it hops: and yes, the owl is going to -- something bad is going to --
Maybe it's the adrenaline that makes Alexander so alert. He can feel the rumble of a truck speeding down the lonely road before he can see it. He can feel it through the asphalt and it will not take him by surprise, although surprising, the truck is not on the road exactly: it is on the of the road. Someone who has started to sleep while driving, what, maybe it's a 48-hour day, and only half an hour until home, so why stop to take a nap.
The truck is going to hit him. The truck is going to hit the owl. The owl has hopped nearer into the path that the truck will inevitably take.
Alexander, and all that delicious adrenaline-sharped alertness. He also notices something else, although: What is it? He won't know.
He'll just notice: a rent, a thin - line - in the air. Like a hair, floating and suspended.
A crack. A fissure. A break-down, reality. Probability.
Alexander BrandtAlexander crouches, watching the owl. The poor thing is obviously scared, maybe after having been hit by a passing truck. Although that still doesn’t explain why it’s in the middle of nowhere, during the day. Do you get owls that are awake during the day on the plains? Who the hell knows? He certainly doesn’t. A glove is pulled off, and he holds the hand out towards the poor, battered creature. “Hey, fella. What happened to you?” he asks it.
Then what he does know is that... he’s concussed? He must be. He’s seeing a pattern, that has no right to be there. Strands of dark and light, woven together. Reaching out towards him, the owl, the bike, the ice, the road, a rock... The pattern shifts, from moment to moment. It ties things together, then lets them go. Nothing is fixed, nothing is definite.
It. Doesn’t. Make. Sense. It has to be a hallucination. Something bounced badly inside his head.
The feeling... no, the certainty that something is going to happen is something that he just knows. The logical part of his mind, sped up on adrenaline, is screaming that this doesn’t make sense. How can you know that? You need to get to a doctor! But that part gets pushed to one side by the more primal, survival instinct as Alexander feels the vibration in the road. The truck is speeding towards them, driver blissfully unaware of the man and owl that he’s moment away from running over.
The pattern, though, carries on shifting. The truck catches a rock, and shifts to the right and misses them. A wheel catches the patch of ice and the whole truck jack-knives across the road.
There may be hope that he’ll wake up, but he’s really not willing to take that particular chance. Grabbing at the owl, he runs towards the far side of the road – trying to get out of the path of the 18 wheels heading towards them. The rent does get a moment’s notice, but the truck is the much bigger, heavier issue.
Alexander Brandt[Dex+Ath]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 3, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Alexander Brandt[Str]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5) ( fail )
katabasisHe is deft enough to grab the owl, to clamber to his feet, aching from his recent tumble -- oh, Alexander. What will you look like in the shower? Just bruises, superficial, just bruises and more bruises, maybe, it is all aches in his muscles, soreness which will fade over the following days. He is deft enough to grab the owl, to run.
The owl makes a sound. The sound is hideous: it's worse than nails on a chalkboard, it is frightened, frightened -- and it slashes at him with its beak. He's trying to hold it and instead he's dropping it, tripping over it bones-go-crack-CRACK, and Alexander is rolling right back toward the truck.
The truck which is passing, but if he hits it
He'll still die
The owl -- it fell under; didn't it? It did, and Alexander is falling, too
And then
nothing is moving at all. Except for Alexander. Not the truck. Not the clouds. Not the feather-pulped owl (or maybe it survived?). Not the wind. Nothing moves at all.
Alexander Brandt
Tick
Was grabbing the owl the sensible thing to do? Maybe not, but Alexander wasn’t exactly thinking sensibly at the time. He just wanted to save the owl from being crushed. Help me. And he was so close to getting them both to safety. Only the owl was frantic too, scratching and digging its beak into Alexander’s arm in its own frenzied terror.
Tock
If only it had realised that he’s been trying to save it.
Tick
Instead the poor thing goes under the wheels of the truck. There’s the sound of the owl’s body being broken. And Alexander is rolling back, towards the enormous wheels thundering inches away from his head. A gap in the wheels passes, and he sees the next set heading right towards him. The noise is unbearable. He tenses, closes his eyes, waiting for that moment when it would all be over.
...
Only it isn’t. The silence is almost deafening after the roar of the engine, of the tyres on the road, and the screeching of the owl. Alexander had never really considered there to be an afterlife before, but was this it? He can't really remember that much about what the religions had to say about what happens after death.
But he's fairly sure none of them mention having a rock digging into his back.
He opens his eyes a crack. Then wide open, looking up at the tyre print of one of the truck’s wheels a couple of feet from him. The truck couldn’t have stopped. Could it? Alexander rolls himself out owowowow and sits up on the road for the second time in the past few minutes. The world is silent, and nothing moves. Dust is frozen in the air. Weeds along the road are bent over, as if waiting for the wind to release them.
Am I dead?
katabasisIs he dead?
That is an excellent question. One which there seems to be no answer to. Time continues to be stopped. And nothing, well, nothing continues to move. Maybe that is what happened. Maybe this is what happens. You get hit by a truck. You don't have to remember what happens when you are hit by a truck. The world just stops for you. There is no flash-reel of your life, unspooling: There is just that one moment
that one moment, so still, so complete in its stillness
and maybe that lasts forever.
Alexander BrandtCertain things in the universe are definite. Gravity sucks. Time passes.
Only it isn’t.
Alexander stands and looks around some more. Not a thing moves. Some little flying thing is caught mid-flight. He pokes it: it moves a little, then stays where it is again, apparently lifeless. He kicks a rock from the side of the road: it arcs a couple of metres through the air before it slows to a stop.
I don’t understand.
Not something he’s any particular stranger to saying, but this particular situation is much stranger than most. He’s at a complete loss as to what’s happening. This just doesn’t happen.
He walks around the back of the truck – just in case it starts moving again – and looks underneath it. Partly out of guilt, to see what happened to the owl. Partly to see where that strange black thing went. Maybe that’s what caused it? Some kind of... weird science thing? Has one of those big experiments that gets mentioned in the news, where they’re looking for such-and-such a particle, gone wrong?
He would try calling someone to see what would happen, but his phone is miles away. The driver might have one, but trying to get into a possibly-temporarily-frozen-hurtling-truck doesn’t seem like the best of ideas.
Maybe it was that thing that Alexander saw before it all went strange. The truck would probably be where it was. Maybe things would get back to normal further away from it? But, then, he isn’t going to be going anywhere on the bike with its trashed wheel.
Then a thought comes to him. Why aren’t I frozen like everything else?
Alexander Brandt[Per+Alert.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 4, 6, 7, 7, 8) ( success x 1 )
katabasisAround the back of the truck, then.
He scans the horizon, doesn't he? But the clouds aren't moving, so how far does this effect go for? Are they moving, and he just can't tell because they haven't moved where he is? Not yet? He can see little gravel-shards, stones, grass, things kicked up by the truck's wheels floating motionless on their way back down to earth, and when he stoops to look underneath the truck and find the smooshed-owl with the broken wing - and perhaps that fissure, that crack, that thing he saw (what happened to the patterns? The dark and the bright? Has he wondered? Does he wonder?) -
This is what he sees. The owl: yes. The owl's pieces, but as his gaze skims past them: the owls feathers move.
He barely notices, but notice he does. Barely, barely: barely is still something. The owl coming together again: re-shifted, re-made, no - no no. Not even re-shifted and re-made, but not hit. Rewind, see: just for the owl. A rewind, until it is an owl whole again, and this would be a disturbing smear of a thing to watch in reverse, to watch happen slowly piece-by-piece, so perhaps it is good that Alexander barely notices. That he misses some of it.
Why isn't he frozen like everything else?
He can't really see the fineness like-a-hair-caught-and-still that he saw before the truck stopped, everything stopped; but he judges that it must be somewhere within the back of the truck, that the truck has ridden right over it, so - maybe it was blown away, if it's not now WITHIN the truck.
Maybe.
He hears something else, though: shiverling thing, in his bones. Why won't you help me? Do something! Do, something!
That urgency; that urgency is back.
Alexander BrandtDo the clouds move? Does the sun move through the sky, as the planet continues its eternal dance with its star? Have the stars stalled in their journey through the cosmos? Black holes frozen in their endless consumption of matter and energy? Assuming he even thinks to ask the questions, the answer remains the same. I don’t know. How can he know? He’s just an ordinary man who... is injured? Hallucinating? Having a nervous breakdown? Tripping on something? Still dreaming? He pinches himself again – you never know.
The pattern of light and dark is, for the moment, forgotten. Maybe out of sight, out of mind. More that Alexander is just trying to sort out what he can see and touch right here, right in this apparently endless now. Given time, it’ll come back into his thoughts. Maybe to be written off as a head injury again. But the owl and its strange... what, passage back through time? That’s... yet another thing he just doesn’t understand.
Turning slowly on the spot, he calls out. Shouting, “Hello!”, “Anybody there?”, “Help!” until he gets hoarse. No answer? He’s not sure he really expected one.
Alexander reaches out to the back of the truck, towards the door catch. If it’s inside the truck, maybe he can get a closer look. As he touches the handle, he shivers as if back in the snowstorm. The voice, someone he knows? He looks around again, trying to figure out where it came from.
“Who are you? Where are you?” he shouts.
Alexander Brandt[Stam]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 6, 6) ( success x 2 )
Alexander Brandt[And a little Wits]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 10) ( success x 1 )
katabasisHe calls. He calls and he calls and he calls and his throat aches and he loses his voice but he calls a long time before that. He feels -- feels, more than sees -- a sharping up of that urgency; follow it with sorrow. Sorrow, and a sense of something just out of reach. He does not know that voice.
But he knows that voice. He knows that voice in his heart of hearts. That is how it reacts on him, that voice; that voice, and that sense of -
His hand is on the handle.
Time starts.
The truck yanks itself forward; perhaps his grip is such that his fingers break. Perhaps he, just barely, has time enough to let go; perhaps he only breaks one finger, instead of three. What of guitar-playing, Alexander? What of music?
Everything is loud, noisy, with Time-started again, and the owl
The owl was somewhere else, having come back together in such a way; it survives, do you see that? It survives, but only for now.
Alexander Brandt
Sorrow, follows urgency, follows a need for... what? Someone he doesn’t know, doesn’t recognise, but somehow feels as though he’s known the voice all his life. Is this how schizophrenia feels? Having a voice sat on your shoulder? But... don’t those voices tell you to do stuff?
Tock
Time restarts, the pendulum again measuring and cutting away second after second. 0 to 40 in the instant it takes Alexander to grab the handle, and there’s a cracking of bone. A cry of pain and he shields his hand against himself. Turning away from the truck, and the cloud of dust it’s towing with it, he closes his eyes until everything settles a little. Coughing and spitting away grit, he takes a look at his left hand. The middle finger is at a strange angle, and he can’t bend it.
Talking quietly, to himself or to the voice, he says hoarsely, “I don’t know who you are. How can I help if I don’t know where you are?”
The truck swerves back to onto the road as the driver wakes up, oblivious to the events of the past few... seconds? Minutes? Who knew time could be so subjective.
Alexander Brandt[Per+Alert - Ohgodohgodohgod...]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )
katabasis[Hmm. NPC Mystery.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 4, 4, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
katabasisThe truck backs up immediately and so quickly and so quickly and then Alexander feels it this time for a split-second as the truck -- no. That isn't what happens. The truck leaves. Gravel hits Alexander in the eye. He is still ill-lucked, still unlucky; can't he still taste the unluck? The owl screeches and hobbles away, and there is not another driver on the road. At least there's that.
Hey.
Hey.
Hey. There it is. That faint fissure, that crack. And he can hear something coming from it, too. A quiet sussuration, as of leaves rattling in a rain.
There is no rain; there is no wind.
He hears it though. And another voice, too. Sweet and high; it hooks at his heart and calls him by name.
Alexander Brandt[WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Alexander Brandt[WP again, because dice rolls are fun!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 3, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Alexander BrandtThose days when you just wish you could wake up in bed – or on the couch – and try again? Today is so past that stage. If there was any belief in signs and portents, it would be back to Seattle to pick another random city to run away to. But, then, Alexander survives and carries on. Not like he has a lot of choice, it’s just what he does.
The owl survives, too. Alexander doesn’t know how much the poor little critter remembers, but decides to leave well alone. The scratches on his arms and clothes are reminder enough at its earlier displeasure. He has no intention of finding out that it does remember everything, and is even more annoyed.
The fracture is back. Or maybe it was always, and will always be, there. The other pattern, the play of light and dark arcing between everything, isn’t. Does that mean the two are separate? Wait, what does he mean separate? This still isn’t real, right? But if it’s not real, why the hell does he hurt so much? The bumps, bruises, scratches, claw marks, bite marks, broken finger all feel very real. But what happened with the truck, with everything freezing? That’s just...
The syrupy sweet voice calls to him, tempting him, calling him. It’s almost too much to resist. Almost. He takes a few steps towards the crack, towards the whispering, to get a closer look. He takes a walk around it – checking for more traffic before walking on the road again. There’s an urge to reach out and touch it touch me come to me be with me. Holding back, Alexander instead grabs a rock from the ground and tosses it towards the crack.
What’s the worst that can happen. That’s a dangerous thing to ask today.
katabasis[NEXT TIME, on Denver Mage...]
Alexander Brandt[Dex+Ath]
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8) ( success x 1 )
SerafÃneSera: Perception plus ze awareness
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1
SerafÃneSera: Staminas
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )
ill-luck[Mystery roll.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
ill-luckPerhaps Alexander's day is about to take a turn for the better. Perhaps Alexander's day is going to live-up to the promise of that frigid blue gorgeous sky up above and its scattering, smattering of pale clouds. Perhaps Alexander's day cannot get any worse, but then, he has not actually been hit by a truck, and the way he's lingering in this place of ill-luck, of mal-fortune, investigating strange things that might be better left un-investigated, let's just say getting hit by a truck is not yet off the table.
This is: a sparse stretch of road -- empty, emptying, not flat because the Rockies are right there, solemn sentinels all dressed in white all cold and cold and cold.
Perhaps Alexander's day is about to take a turn for the better. There is a hair-thin crack in the air, suspended there, un-moving, like a filament of hair except hair would be blown away, hair wouldn't gleam occasionally quite like that, wouldn't feel like a break. And he throws a rock at it.
He almost misses the fissure in the air over the street. Maybe because the finger of one hand is broken and even if he's using his other hand that kind of thing distracts one. Maybe because he just survived something very strange, because he went rolling off've his motorcycle. Alexander just isn't tip-top. Almost misses it.
But he doesn't miss it. The rock hits the crack and never hits the ground again. What rock? The owl hobbles on, making a keening noise.
Meanwhile, somewhere nearby, Serafíne…
SerafÃneThis lonely road this azure sky this strange stretch of land no one should ever really remember to remember, which Alexander is likely never to forget and there is a fork there is always a fork this is what happens with roads: they cross. There are boundaries. There are choices to be made and the choices open up up up and branch out endlessly fractal, fractally endless, and every river leads eventually to the sea.
The pick-up truck where Natalee sleeps is parked over a rise and down a gully; it is not visible from here and the road on which it is parked is gravel and dirt; rutted, half-forgotten except remembered by those who know it to be a choice they can make: just here.
So Sera's walking and out here she's wearing her Doc Martens, beaten and wellworn, not her usual ridiculous heels, so she is not even five and a half-feet tall, a slight figure cresting a slight rise and just a tiny bit surreal; nothing quite like the surreality of Alexandar down below now - awakening, see? - and perhaps hardly noticeable to him but oh, she can taste that wildness on her tongue, against the back of her throat, the ozone promise of it, and she doesn't quite believe her senses, except she always sort of does, even if right now tequila and the remnants of that mushroom tea she-and-Natalee drank hours ago to welcome the dawn or what the fuck ever that star was, rising in the east are unspooling through her body like whoa.
So, what Sera sees among other things is Seattle Alexander, who works security in the city, and a wrecked motorcycle and a wounded owl and - and - and -
Sera licks her dry lips. She's wearing denim shorts over fishnets, a black cotton halter top as if it weren't fucking winter, which is printed with a skull and a school and an alligator, because why the fuck not, and a flannel tied around her waist, and a blanket slung over her shoulders like a refugee from Woodstock, Original Recipe.
She sees all'a that shit unfolding beneath her, and she bites her tongue.
Hard. The sharp burst of pain incisive as a knife through her skull. A burst of brilliance.
[Prime 1. Watch Ze Weaving. Difficulty: 4; -1 specialty focus.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Alexander BrandtAs bad days go, today is certainly ranking up there. Maybe not quite number one yet: that honour goes... well, thankfully everything else that’s going on distracts Alexander from that. Perhaps he should be thankful for that small mercy, even if he is going to be black and blue for the next week recovering.
The rock he throws sails through the air and... disappears. No clatter and skitter as it lands back on the road and bounces away to the side. No explosion, no cloud of dust. Just... Nothing. That doesn’t happen. But is any of this meant to happen to a nice boy from Seattle? Did he just happen to be walking past as Chance stuck a pin in a map somewhere and decided who was going to wake up? Or is this part of some big plan of the universe.
Such philosophical questions have never really struck Alexander much in the past. Life and the universe simple are, and the only purpose in life is to survive and, if you’re lucky, make it a better place when you leave it.
Which doesn’t really help explain just what the hell is going on here. The crack floats in the air, calling to him. That too-sweet call of his name sounding just wrong enough to damped down Alexander’s usual sense of curiosity. He just has a feeling that this is... well, wrong. He back away, looking towards the owl. The keening could be from the poor thing’s injuries, or it could be picking up on the fissure. Or there could be some new calamity just waiting to prove that things can, indeed, get worse. He does, however, ask again warily: “Who are you?” To the fissure. To the other voice. To whoever will answer.
ill-luck[Wise guys.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 4, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
ill-luck[Dmg]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5) ( fail )
Alexander Brandt[Per+Aware. Huh, what was that?]
Alexander Brandt[With dice..]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 7, 7) ( success x 2 )
SerafÃneWits: Sera!
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (5, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )
ill-luck[Oh, the voice.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 4 )
ill-luckThe fissure-crack sound of rainwhisper hssh hush hush it pauses like a break in the cloudsnow of an old fashioned television when tv snow used to be a thing and then hisses further like the rain's getting harder where-ever that crack leads (?), and then that syrupy sweet voice that seems to know his name although he can't remember it saying his name just that it said something that seemed to be his name says
[alexander] i'm the answer you know i'm the answer you don't know i'm trapped here i've never seen anything like this before but i can see you and i know your name somehow isn't that strange i think it is strange [alexander], do you know my name, what are you standing on, you look so different than i expected and i'm rambling but i'm a little scared and...
that's what it says, and there is something very
very, very, very appealing
(magnetic: come closer)
about the voice.
Alexander Brandt[WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 9) ( success x 1 )
ill-luckA rock very similar to the one that Alexander threw at the fissure, which did not fall to earth, hits Alexander in the forehead. Did it fall from the sky; did it get thrown from - ?
Either way, it didn't actually do any damage.
SerafÃneOne of the oh-so-many things that Alexander feels is Sera though how can he know it is her; or even quite get that she's there cresting a rise and sliding down the slope and then scrambling her way back up to the berm. Just movement in his periphery that could perhaps be as surreal as everything else here: the fissure in the sky, the thrown-back rock. The whole of it on a lonely road in a strange place bounded by the teeth of the Rockies to the west.
That lick of sensation, see, that buffets against his senses is gut-wrenching, right? all instinct-not-thought, back-of-the-gritting-teeth, this visceral twist of - yeah, and fascinating; thralling, enthralling, this catch of the breath to go with the twist of the gut; and she is also, see: thresholds, porticos, doorways. She is the point of becoming where the old is lost and the new is not-yet-defined enough to have begun. She is the place-between, just on the verge of -
- like he is now. Here and now. On the verge of so fucking much, the universe a cresting wave all around him and here's a girl at the edge of his senses, sliding up and down and up again those little rises, see? like she's cresting some fucking wave, this plaid picnic-blanket sort of thing held around her shoulders and flying out behind her a bit like a cape because these are the plains, the high plains, and the wind is always, always,
always.
"Hey. Hey." Girl on the road now; maybe he remembers her from the night before, or the night before that. She's certainly distinctive. Striking; aquiline features and close-set eyes and the sort of face and style you cannot quite forget. Long blond curls all windwhipped except from her right temple all the way back to her neck, where everything from a sidepart down has been shaved back to a soft, downy fringe.
She's smiling. She's watching him. "Seattle Alexander. Did you open the fucking Gauntlet? Jesus Christ."
She has a bottle of something in her hand.
"You're gonna be okay, you know that?" God, she's lovely. "You just have to ride this through. I'm gonna give you a hand."
Alexander BrandtThat voice, so sweet that it’s so hard to resist. Calling. Familiar? No, that was the other voice, the one that seems to have fallen silent. But it would be so easy to take a step towards the fissure, then another. Keep walking towards it until whatever happens... happens. But there’s still that slight, nagging feeling of wrong – the feeling of hairs standing up on the back of his neck that keeps Alexander back. Not retreating, but not advancing either.
The sweet voice speaks again, though, answers that aren’t. Vague sentences that don’t actually explain much. It knows him, but he doesn’t recognise it at all. Has it been watching him? Wait, it? What the hell is it? Are we now thinking that what’s going on now is real?
“Ow, fuck!” The rock certainly felt real.
He steps back a little, looking around for the source of the rock. The fissure? The owl? “I don’t know you. I’ve never heard you before, and I have no idea how you know my name. And you still haven’t answered my question: Who. Are. You?” Each of those last three words getting louder, almost shouting as much as his hoarse voice allow.
Is that a little of the earlier anger coming back, at someone apparently playing games with him? This is really not the day to try it.
He starts at the new voice, almost reluctant to turn away that voice, so hard to resist. But the sensation, the resonance that preceded it was so familiar. Only a night of two ago he felt the same, bring life and atmosphere into an otherwise dying night. Only this time it’s so much stronger that it’s almost hard to imagine it ever being absent. He sees Sera standing, watching. Emotions play over his face as he looks at her. Somewhere between anger, panic, pain, and plain old desperation he says quietly, “I don’t understand.”
SerafÃne"'Course you don't - " Sera's inhaling now. She's gained the berm and the scramble is gone; she's just on her feet now; all surreal and stoned and the brilliant sky and these deep rich shadows; tracers like everything is edged in firecrackers, like there's the possibility of combustion just born and folded into everywhere, everywhen, everything, infecting her vision, and this little shrug beneath the picnic blanket, rather narrow shoulders in a rather sundering, surrendering gesture.
And she's walking toward him carefully because she can see the threads of magic all coruscant around him; can see his scrabbling injuries too. Can see the keening owl with its broken wing and her path and Alexander and his pain and his panic and his desperation and she's careful of the owl and she's careful of him too, her voice soothing, her eyes steady even as she sinks to a crouch beside the wounded bird, a handful of feet from the man who has - who is - cursing himself. "No one every really does, and some of us never fucking figure it out."
And Sera, she makes this sort of nictating noise in the back of her throat; this crooning to touch the keening, this quiet lick of look-at-me though it isn't for Alexander, not right now, it's for that wounded, keening bird. A song-beneath-her-breath and a song-beneath-her-skin and Alexander can hear one and feel the other as she settles balanced on her haunches, the diamonds of her fishnets pulling taut over her thighs.
"That's okay, too. Why don't you tell me what they're saying?"
And still humming see, keening on her own beneath her breath, crooning to that bird, she clarifies,
"The people you're talking to right now? I can't fucking hear them. I know fuck-all about things on the other side."
[Mind 2: Soothe the owl. Coincidental. Difficulty 5. -1 for specialty focus; -1 for practiced.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (6, 6, 7) ( success x 3 )
ill-luckAs Serafíne crouches beside the owl, the owl - initially, at least - makes this sharp, hideous crack-cry, like perhaps that's the sound which lets the Devil out've the underworld, hobby thing, tries to puff up and look very large indeed, but then Sera's humming seems to be working, music soothes the savage beast, hm? and it calms down, lidding its eyes, and if a bird's inexpressive features could express - well perhaps it is tired. It stops trying to get where-ever it is trying to get.
ill-luckThe fate-lines, the possibility-patterns, the shining, shining things Alexander was seeing earlier? He is aware of them again, and of a change around the owl's fate -- things seem to be looking up for it. Twice-saved, it'd seem.
From the fissure, just rain, rain, rain, no voices at all, not right now; it's as if a breath is being held, for fear that on the release everything will disappear. Somebody, something, an It, a She, a He?, is just ... There. Nearby. But keeping silent...
Alexander BrandtAlexander watches, edging around to keep the fissure, the owl and Sera in view. Too much strangeness to really trust in someone he’s only briefly met. How can she know what’s going on, though? How... can she seem to calm down the owl with so little effort? Just good with animals? Or is there even more going on now that there was before?
He keeps the fissure between him and Sera. Not much of a barrier in case anything much happens, but it’s about all there is in the middle of nowhere. The roulette ball of emotions running over his face seems to land on “wary” for a few seconds before bounding on again.
“You... can’t hear them? “ He sighs, then turns away muttering to himself. “Oh god, that’s it, I’ve really lost it. I’m hearing voices.” He swings back round, voice almost toneless, almost at the point of giving up. “What does it matter what they say? None of this is real.” Alexander’s shoulders sag and he sinks to the ground, hugging his legs. Chin propped on his knees, he just stares at the road.
ill-luck[Voice.]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
Alexander Brandt[WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (1, 5, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
ill-luckHey I'm still here the voice says I'm still here are you really just going to sit down you're sitting right I can't see you please come here and look I just want to see what it's like over there too;
once again the voice is compelling, more compelling indeed than before, enough so that Alexander may well find himself beginning to stand;
but he resists the urge from-without to Go Go Go See About That Fissure
SerafÃne"You're waking up," Sera says very simply. She is still settled on her haunches on the shoulder of the road, and the owl is no longer keening, no longer trying to scrabble away, and her eyes are sunset eyes, just now, the gleam of the sun across a failing blue horizon as she lifts her chin and glances sharply up at him. Edged see, and keen but and fucked up but really rather calm. Smiling.
On the verge -
"Everything's real if you Will it to be. You're fucking magic."
And see, Sera is not a lover-of-animals. There are no collections of living things fucked away in her home; not even a single ferret and her only occasional pet is a threadbare stuffed bunny that is only ever alive in her dreams but see her hands sort-of-hover over the wounded bird and she drops her eyes from Alexander long enough to focus on it; scattered, scattering; and oh god the way the light splits itself and splits itself and splits itself into infinity. Sera does not believe in molecules but she does believe in everything; the strangely knotted connections. She believes in light and she believes in touch and she believes in her body and also in her soul or whatever you fucking call it. The thing inside her skin, that was meant to burn.
"So'm I."
Here is her Will, that a broken wing be healed.
[Life 3: Heal. Vulgar Without Witnesses. Difficulty: 7. -1 for taking time.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 7) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
ill-luck[Owl wits what?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (1, 5, 7) ( fail )
ill-luckThe owl is calm in Serafíne's presence; is calm, but is still, after all, an animal. A bird. And it is far, far from its den, and as Serafíne Wills (Wills!) the owl's wing healed, bones re-smoothed, fractures un-cracked, flesh un-bruised, whole again broken ages ago and not a problem, it blinks at her as if it doesn't quite know what's going on, chirrups questioningly, keeps its beak open and hophophops away, already holding its wings spread as if it is going to menace something, as if it hasn't realized yet that it can fly. Still: the wing does mend. The owl just hasn't realized it. Overbalances talons wiggle in the air and it clicks again then starts picking at its wing for mites. Startles. Leaps into the road.
Alexander Brandt[Per+Alert}
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 2, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 1 )
Alexander BrandtAlexander stands, attention almost elsewhere. Still resigned, still feeling like he’s losing himself in whatever it is going on here. He takes a step towards the fissure that maybe only he sees, drawn by a voice that only he hears. Pleading, begging. Desperate too? His vision flashes again for a moment, yet more sparks of light and dark arcing between Sera, the owl, him. Images of the owl flying off, dying in Sera’s lap.. Images flashing through his mind as connections are made and lost. Scared, frustrated, angry, he screams out as he covers his hands to try to blank out what he’s seeing.
Maybe they fade, maybe they don’t. But Alexander hears the chirrups from the owl which, minutes ago, had been dead. He looks up and watches it hop along the ground, not knowing what to believe any more. Too much is happening, too quickly. Maybe with a little warning that this was coming, Alexander could cope with it a little better. Or at least with fewer injuries. But, as it stands, his life as he knows it is coming apart at the seams. If he believed in anything, other than the “real” world, perhaps the idea of magic, or miracles, would have come a little more easily.
So his voice is empty of emotion again when he replies to Sera. “I’m hearing voices that you can’t, and you tell me that’s magic? I watch a bird that was dead, come back to life and hop away. I see... things. Things I don’t understand, things that can’t be there. And you want to tell me that’s not madness?” He looks into the fissure again. If none of this is real, then none of this can hurt him.
He closes his eyes and steps forward to join Alice down the rabbit hole. All his has ever really known, cared about, a lifetime ago in Seattle. His sanity questionable. If it’s all a hallucination, nothing will happen. If it’s not... Does he really have anything else to lose?
Alexander Brandt[Per+Aware]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
SerafÃnePerception Plus Awareness.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 1, 2, 4, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
SerafÃneIntelligence Plus Enigmas.
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 8) ( success x 1 )
ill-luckNone of this is real, so none of this can hurt him. Oh, come closer, come closer, Alexander, be beguiled, come, come ...
This is the worst luck he's had yet. He takes one wrong step, and something in his ankle goes (pop!), and then he is almost upon the fissure. It's not big enough to really step into, but if he went up on his tiptoes (ow, ow, throb, throb), he could look into it. He can touch it, certainly.
...He can feel Others, on the other side, a thrill of Anticipation, of Strangeness at work. And a Storm.
Ceaseless.
SerafÃne"No. No. Stop!" And Sera is urgent suddenly, this whip-crack of command in her voice; this need-to-be-heard and she was already rising as the bird with a no-longer-broken-wing talon-walked away but now she's all motion. Drops the picnic blanket she was using as a shawl or a coat and it drifts out behind her on the tarmac and she is running, flat-out-running toward him, the horizon all along, her head pounding, her blood pounding, her voice pounding, dusty boots pounding on the pavement -
- see, Stop, all arresting and then that launch of her body. Open-armed, running fast enough that she might as well be flying and she is aiming to throw her arms around Seattle Alexander's neck and her small and rather cold frame against his and to rise up brow to brow, close enough that he can smell the tequila and grape hummus, the tamales and mushroom tea, the humanity and decay on her breath and feel the bright flash of chill and then the deeper warmth on the exposed skin of her brow and stop,
and stop,
and remember.
"I'm here." Brow to brow, if he allows it. If he does not dodge or deflect. She's on her tip-toes and reaching and also pulling him down but also: eye to eye, her own dilated from the drugs she has ingested throughout the day, and also from this proximity; from the way she is cast in his shadow. "You're here, too. See? We're both here and we're real. Everything's fucking real, can't you taste it? Isn't it all brighter now? Doesn't it feel like the sky is scissoring open and you're remembering everything you thought you never new?"
Sera's voice is absolutely shot through with wonder; with awe. With brilliance. She's almost crooning to him.
"That thing. That thing that's calling you, that's real, too. It's on the other side or where the fuck ever and if you go there you'll go and you won't come back."
SerafÃneMind 2. Coincidental! Difficulty: 5.
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
Alexander Brandt[Per+Aware, WTF?]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 7) ( success x 1 )
Alexander BrandtThe voice (voices now?) call to him, pleading, coaxing. He’s so close, almost there... As he stumbles. Cursing, almost falling to the side, he stops for a moment. Sparing his left leg, taking all of his weight on his right. Are Fate and Chance toying with him? Dangling him over the abyss, just to snatch him back before the rope breaks? Eyes open, now, he looks at the fissure. Just above, close enough to reach out and touch... Close enough to look through..?
“Stop!” comes the call from nearby. The word alone registers, but would it be enough on its own to cause Alexander to pause? To take a breath and hear what follows? Academic, as Sera bends reality to her will and subdues Alexander’s for just a moment. Long enough to get closer... But not as close as she wants. There’s a feeling of... something having just happened. Something strange, yet more going on beyond his comprehension. Somethingsomethingsomething...
So as Sera approaches, he turns to her. Whether the something came from her, or the fracture, or somewhere else he doesn’t know. But he does know that, right now, she’s as close as he cares to let anyone get. So arms out, he catches her shoulders and keeps the distance between them. Still close enough for the sensations... alcohol, thresholds, wonder. He does look into her eyes as she speaks, though. From the heart.
And she’ll see tears coming right back at her. No sobs, no crying – everything is still too numb for that. But he’s breaking. Broken. She explains what happens if he does step through. And it almost appeals more than anything. Alexander takes a deep, ragged break and replies to her, “I don’t know who I am any more. I’m losing myself, and I’m scared.” Another deep breath as he looks back at the fissure. Would anyone really be bothered if he did disappear?
SerafÃneSo: so, Sera does not throw her arms around Alexander's neck; he catches her by the shoulders instead, arrests all that forward momentum before she makes the contact she seeks and he can feel the kinetic energy, the potential inherent in her body. But for all that it's not hard for him to stop her. He's a cop; he has more than half-a-foot on her and she's actually rather small, sharp-shouldered and spare-bored.
And Sera sees the tears in his eyes and Sera cries at the drop of a goddamned pin and suddenly, immediately, there are answering tears in her own, but Sera's tears spring not from despair but from that aching wonder with which she desperately wishes to infuse him.
Jesus Christ this world.
So: there he is, reflected in her eyes, and he's scared and he doesn't know who he is anymore and here she is, his hands on her shoulders, her heart pounding, each breath short and bright and cold and sharp, and her body is shaking with excess adrenaline that has poured itself into her already-altered blood and that tremor is especially pronounced in her hands - an impression of a gold ring and a leather cuff - as she reaches over his arms to cup his face, her ring fingers skimming the line of his jaw, her thumbs settling with a remarkable gentleness over his cheekbones.
"That's okay," she assures him, and she's smiling now. Smiling and crying and expressive and on the verge of laughter that has a pronounced edge of giddiness to it because he's new. He's brand new. He's just waking up. He's just being born.
"That's okay," and she's all conviction. "No one fucking knows who they are. Every fucks that up, even the Sleepers, I don't fucking know and I have worlds inside me, I have oceans, I have goddamned storms but you -
- you, you're opening your eyes. You've been Sleeping for so long that it's hard and it's painful and it's wild and everything you thought was wrong and that's okay.
"There's nothing wrong with being scared. There's nothing wrong with any of it. Let yourself be scared.
"Let yourself be."
Smiling.
SerafÃneMind 2 / Life 2. Hope's Birth Variant: find the wonder / anchor it in the body. Here's the beating of my heart / here's yours. Coincidental? (Difficulty: 5 -1 (resonance - enthralling, darling.)
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )
Alexander BrandtSince that night in Seattle, Alexander has shut himself off. Coped. Because that’s all he knew how to do. Day after day, dealing with the heartbreak, the embarrassment, fencing off the anger to avoid lashing out at people. All kept inside, hidden away. Frozen. Only these things weren’t as dormant as he he’d have liked to think. Things build up on these unstable foundations, until that one last straw...
And what a straw. Life has pulled the curtains back and opened the windows on his closed and sheltered life. Not out of cruelty or kindness – but just because it was time for the seed to sprout. For Alexander’s Avatar to rouse from its slumber.
So here he is, sharing tears with a woman he barely knows, on opposite sides of the mirror. One cold and frozen, the other hot and full of life. Winter and summer. Alexander pulls away for a moment as Sera reaches for his jaw, but then relaxes and allows her to touch him. It’s the first time he’s let anyone touch him in some time, the risk of letting anyone get close a little too high.
Sera speaks of people not knowing who they are and it rings so true. For years his life has lacked a direction, until he found the police. Others wait their whole lives to discover who they are, who they want to be. He listens in silence. There’s nothing really to say. Just knowing that he’s not alone right now, and that someone else understands, is enough.
Again, Sera bends reality a little and shares the feeling of wonder. Alexander’s eyes close as the feelings pass over him and through him. Enough to remember that the feeling exist. Enough to melt the ice a little. There is a sob this time, as he lets go a little. He stands there, leaning a little on Sera for support, for... an amount of time. That seems to get frozen, too, in the moment. Long enough for Alexander to... if not feel good, at least pull himself back together for a little while longer.
A haggard breath in, then, and he opens his eyes again. He rubs a hand across his eyes and asks, “If I’m not going mad, then what is that?” He nods towards the fracture. “And...” She tells of storms within her. Something about a dream, a voice. Lost in it a storm? “They were asking for help. The voices. One from that thing. The other one I dreamt about, but have heard her since. I don’t know who she is. I think I’ve lose her.”
Alexander Brandt[..lost her]
ill-luckThat hair-line crack which Alexander sees doesn't disappear; no, no, of course it doesn't - not completely. It's a break. But it gets harder for him to see, thins out as he indicates it, ghost-fade, ghost-fade, gone with a sound like a kiss, or a bubble popping.
SerafÃne"Fuck if I know," Sera replies, turning to glance over her shoulder at the position he indicates, where the fissure appeared. She never saw it; just the coalescent energies all bright around it, but she's letting him go and glancing over her shoulder and just accepting it. Turning back to him, " - that's not my kind of magic. Maybe Leonhard knows -the guy from the other night? Liechetenstein? But the woman you dreamed about, you haven't lost her. You've woken up to her.
"She'll be back. You'll hear her again. It's hard to know, though, how soon it'll be. Or how long, but she's inside you.
"She always will be." This quick curve of her mouth. Bitter and sweet. "Even if you don't remember."
Then her gaze ticks down his body. Taking stock of his cuts and his bruises, his fracture finger, his wounds.
"You're hurt. I'll heal you.
"Give me your hand."
Hand out, palm up.
She's going to heal him, Sera.
SerafÃneLife 3: Vulgar Without Witnesses. Difficulty: 7 -1 (taking time); -1 (Spending Quint)
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
SerafÃneExtending! Difficulty +1, spending another quint though so final dif is 6.
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
SerafÃneParadox!
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
SerafÃneParadox!
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 8) ( success x 1 )
SerafÃneStamina!
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5) ( fail )
SerafÃneStamina!
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )
Alexander BrandtAlexander watches as the fracture fades away into nothing. Oblivion more than a step away, but – for now, anyway – no longer a temptation. He doesn’t really understand what it was, where it came from, or who the voices were. And it seems to be outside Sera’s area of expertise. But, well, maybe he can find another way to figure out just what’s happened today. That small, female voice asking for help? That will stick with him. Maybe he’ll hear her again, maybe he won’t. But just maybe he’ll try to find her and help her in some way.
Sera heals him. Not without, still, some scepticism that anything will happen but hey – it’s not the weirdest of things to have happened today. His broken finger pulls itself back into position, whatever went pop in his ankle feel like it’s gone back to where it was supposed to be. He tests his weight gingerly, putting more and more weight on it until he’s happy it’s not going to give way again. He still feels battered and bruised under his leathers, but he’s certainly grateful for what she’s done.
Looking back at the bike, though... That’s going to be a long walk into town. “I don’t supposed to can fix tyres too, can you?” He walks over to the bike and pulls it upright, wincing at the damage to the bodywork. “Or have a phone for a tow truck? How did you end up here, anyway?”1
Alexander Brandt[Wits+Alert]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
ill-luckA car! A car is coming!
ill-luckThe owl is still in the road, although on the side of the road. Perhaps this car is not going to hit it.
SerafÃne"I came out with a friend of mine for a hike with a thermos of mushroom tea and a cooler full of tamales. Then we were gonna fool around and watch the stars come out.
"Her name's Natalee. I think her truck's this way. C'mon.
"I'm sure we can dig my phone out of her gear. Ooh, and we can call Hawksley. He's fucking smart, maybe he'll know what that shit in the road was."
Alexander Brandt"Watching the stars come out sounds like a pretty good plan." Hell, anything with company at the moment sounds like a pretty good plan. So he starts pushing the bike in the direction she points, walking along side her. Far enough apart to avoid bumping into each other.
Alexander spots another car approacheing, a cloud of dust being towed along the highway. The owl sits at the side of the road, seemingly stoned and oblivious to the approaching vehicle. Remembering the last time, he curses quietly. Kicking the stand for the bike and leaving it, hopefully safely, off the side of the road, he jogs over to the owl. If it stays calm, to try picking it up again. If not, to scare it into taking flight.
Alexander Brandt[Cha+Aware-as-Emp]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
ill-luckThat owl. That owl has had many things happen to it today and it is still very very confused about those things. There is a car coming, and it doesn't seem to notice or to comprehend, but Alexander has an investment in the owl. Serafíne can feel the moment when Reality's drawn its fists back to slug her, hit her, beat her down, how dare she go against Reality, how dare she stand against it and say what has happened will not stay Happened, that what is broken should mend, how dare she, and she feels it in her face, and her nose bleeds a little as Alexander approaches the owl, crooning, the calm wide-eyed owl which clicks its beak at him, and the car is there, there it is a Nissan, and the driver sees a young man scooping an owl up, and the owl moving a little restively in his grip, trying to get comfortable, and it always feels like a precious thing, holding a wild animal, a wild animal that lets you hold it, and
and that is how Alexander and Serafíne walk back to find Natalee, who is still sleeping in the back of her truck. And it is time to get away, certainly, because Alexander's Working might have attracted other attentions, mightn't it? Natalee is muggy-eyed and fuzzy-headed and she offers Alexander a swig of tequila and perhaps by then Alexander has set the owl down somewhere and if he did oh how the owl looked after him and Serafíne, as if perplexed, perplexed, what happened? Or perhaps he keeps it, and Natalee coos over the adorable widdle birdy, and
nothing whispers, not right now. That sense Alexander has of ill-luck, of doom, it grows less, diminishes although it does not disappear entirely, and he will continue to have minor bad luck for the rest of the day, bad luck that gets slighter and slighter, until it's night and time again to fall asleep.
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