acatalepsy_logs | [OPEN] Well. That Didn't Go Quite As Planned

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[OPEN] Well. That Didn't Go Quite As Planned

Who: EVERYONE
Where: The Temple of Beginnings
When: Immediately After The End.
Rating: PG-13, may vary by thread
What: You fall, you pick yourself back up and you move on. Or at least, you try.

Fished Out Of Water
One minute, you are witnessing the fabric of an entire world implode as it is literally ripped apart by powers unknown. The next, that tell-tale twist somewhere beneath your sternum, before you are bodily YANKED away from Akvos, away from the ocean and the Queen and the King and the Princess.

And land back on (mostly) solid, dry ground.

Welcome back to the Temple of Beginnings. Don't worry, there's no hurry for you to get back up just yet.

Hey, Howya Doin'?
Once you do get back up, now is the time to be taking stock of the situation - yours, your friends, and even those new merfolk neighbours (who may need a hand getting their fins back into the water). There is also the missing members of the Circle to consider: people who disappeared on the journey to Akvos, and those who never made it back..

(There's also that small matter with a certain 'witchess-san' that may be a cause for concern to some more than others.)

Whatever the case, it's a lot to process right now. Take the time you have, because you don't know if it'll be enough for what you need.

[[ OOC: Here's an open post for threads reacting to the end of the Akvos world hop. Feel free to use the above prompts, and/or make your own! ]]

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[Konoha's soft, sad voice is convincing in a way that others haven't been. Perhaps because it speaks to what she's feeling herself. She turns and begins wading back to the shore.]

...I don't know if I want to go back. Not to that temple. Not to the circle.

[Despite being glad that Sheryl is coming out of the cold lake, beginning to shrug out of the thick cardigan A4 had "made" for her in preparation of trying to warm the other woman back up, Konoah can't... be glad.

She's a bit afraid she won't ever be the same sort of glad again, after what they've seen.]

... We don't have anywhere else. I thought I got home, in that "rift"... but it wasn't real.

[It had been a cruel trick, showing them glimpses of worlds they might never see again. Maybe Mikuni was back there... now that he had disappeared. Was gone. But there was no way to know... was there?]

You're not going to just camp out here are you?

[As she gets out of the water, dripping from the waist down, Sheryl is realizing

god, she really is freezing. The numbing sensation is already starting to fade and now she's just cold. This was a mistake.] That's a cruel thing to have shown you. I'm sorry.

[She didn't get the Frontier, or even the Galaxy. She just got a bunch of giant space bugs. Sending her home, only to take it away...]

I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm not exactly suited for roughing it in the wild, but being in the temple just makes me feel sick.

I wish Korra was here. She could make me a fire.

[Konoha is ready when Sheryl gets out, already stepping forward to offer her cardigan as a makeshift towel. The other woman might come from a world without the sort of sickness she was used to, but Konoha knows how a chill can become something far worse.]

There's nothing for you to be sorry about...

[It wasn't her fault. She's not sure whose fault it was anyway. Who to blame for all that death that couldn't be written off as an accident, as unavoidable.]

Korra doesn't have to be here... I can make a fire.

[It wasn't just Mikuni. A lot of people had gone, hadn't they? ... Hopefully home.

Hopefully.]

[She's not ready for the cardigan to be offered, and she looks up. For a second there it looks like she's going to turn it down, but then she wraps the garment around her shoulders. It is cold.

Granted, it's her waist and below that's wet, but she doesn't want to get this nice knitted sweater wet! That'd just be sad.] It's just sad that you had to go through that.

[She gives Konoha a tired looking smile at the offer to make a fire.] I'm sure you can, but Korra was the Avatar. She could shoot fire out of her fingertips, and I don't think either of us can do that.

[Okay yeah, she's shivering now. She huddles a little closer to the tall jinba.] ...what a mess.

[Cardigans can be dried, Sheryl! Influenza cannot, so Konoha shakes her head and plucks at the shoulder of the garment.]

Just use it as a towel, okay... ? I don't want you to get sick, so you can use my hide to wrap afterwards.

[... and it's also a good way to not think about how painful it had been, to be given glimpses and figments of home and her parents only to have it ripped away.]

It won't take long at all, though it's not, um-

[It reminds her that the last time they'd been here... hadn't she been swimming with Korra's polar bear dog? And Mako? And he was gone, too, and she has to stop a moment in order to try and control her voice.]

It's not hard...

Konoha, more than anything right now, I think I want your hide to stay on you where it belongs. [She says, a weary joke through chattering teeth as she... gives in and starts toweling off her lower half.

Man, that was a really bad idea, in retrospect. At least she's no longer dripping.

She does catch the hitch in Konoha's voice-- or rather, the pause to prevent one-- and just rests a hand on her flank, right below her human body starts. It's a wordless gesture.

She misses them too.] Maybe you can teach me? I don't have a lot of skills for a place like this.

My hide... ?

[Not having expected any sort of joke, even a tired one such as that, Konoha actually thinks she's misheard for a minute there, just blinking a bit in confusion before she gets it... and tries to laugh, managing a small smile for a moment before it fades.]

Just take this, okay... ?

[As her boss was fond of saying... Throw a jinba out into the snow naked and they'll make it down the mountain, but a human won't make it out the cave. ... She doesn't get cold easily, is the point, so she undoes the cord holding the bear pelt about her waist and hands it over, retying the cord to keep her shirt closed.

It's warm- body heat warm.]

And I'll teach you how to make a fire.

[Ordinarily, she'd fight a little harder. She's Sheryl Nome. She doesn't need someone's pity.

But this isn't pity, it's kindness from a friend, and she's not got the fire in her to resist. She wraps the hide around her shoulders; it's warm and it smells like her friend.

This is probably the first time she's ever worn anything that could be accurately described as a pelt.

It's not too much later that a fire has been made and Sheryl is huddling close to it, her dress off and laid next to the fire on the grass to dry off.] You made that look easy. Perhaps not "shoot fire from your hands" easy, but easy enough.

[Coming from Konoha, it can only be kindness. And selfishly, just a little... it's also something for her. Taking care of others... what else can she do in this place, so far from her home and all she'd ever known? What else is there to feel useful, in the wake of Akvos and all she'd not done?]

It's even easier if you have your own flint and tinder box... I'll keep an eye out.

[Circling a bit behind Sheryl, Konoha finally eases down to her knees and then her side, shifting a bit clumsily closer to the other woman. Not because she's cold... but because she misses home. Misses sleeping beside other people, misses embraces and warmth from things beyond fire.]

... Not that we've really gone anywhere that has the kinds of things I'd know how to make use of.

At least you have those skills. It's useful. All I can do is sing at people.

[Which is feeling really inadequate at this point.

She shifts a little backward, starting to lean back against Konoha's flank. She pauses, halfway there, looking over at the other woman.] Is it okay if I--? It won't be uncomfortable for you or anything?

I like your singing.

[Not just because it sounded nice, or she thought the words were pretty. If someone was singing... it kind of felt that things couldn’t be that bad. Even if she knows that’s naive, perhaps foolish.

But when Sheryl stops, Konoha can’t help but look disappointed- until she realizes she’s just checking, not actually pulling back from contact.]

Oh, no- Not at all! I mean... I’d prefer if you did. ... I miss that kind of thing. To be honest. A lot of people here really don’t like touching, do they...

[She misses sleeping next to her parents. The girls from her village leaning against her flanks. A pat on the withers from her coworkers.

Just being touched. Being warm.]

All right. I just wanted to be sure. [Sheryl says, continuing to lean back until she's against Konoha's side. She adjusts the bear hide around her shoulders, since the cardigan is drying off by the fire next to her dress.] You're warm.

I'm a very good singer. There aren't many better than me in the whole galaxy. [She closes her eyes.] But it's not very good for closing ominous rifts or defending palaces, is it? That damn witch could've at least given me a useful power. [There's frustration in her voice. She exhales.]

Did I tell you about my boyfriend? From home. I did, right? I wish he was here.

[It’s a comforting weight- another person. A reminder that you’re alive... even if other people weren’t. Warm, and safe feeling... just for a while. Beneath Sheryl’s shoulders, Konoha’s large, main set of lungs expand and contract along with her breathing, slow and even, just a half second behind the auxiliary set in her human chest.]

... no, I guess not. Mine isn’t much use to save anyone like that either. I could... I could stop them from starving. But.

[But not save them. Not protect them. Not keep the children they’d promised would be safe alive... and her eyes press painfully closed at the memory, the fire flickering through her lids.]

The one who used to be a kabuki actor? Yeah...

[Could he have helped? Could Gonta? ... No. Gonta wouldn’t be more useful than her, would he? Even as strong as he was... what were any one of them against a world collapsing?]

[She feels the expanse and contraction of those lungs behind her, and for a second wonders how that even works, to have two sets of lungs, but she doesn't linger too long on it.] Yours is still useful, Konoha. People can't enjoy a song very much when they're starving.

[She leans a little more firmly against her now that she's settling in. The fire crackles.]

I thought I saw him die, once. During a battle, his plane-- [right, she won't know what that is]-- his ship, it was destroyed, while I was watching.

He was okay in the end, but I'll never forget how that felt. Like my heart was torn out of my chest and all color in the world went with it.

[All she can do is hum in something like agreement. Her power was useful, more so than not. She believed that. She's seen people starving. ... It just hadn't been useful in Akvos... Not when it really mattered.

Konoha forces herself to open her eyes again, listening in silence to Sheryl's words. Plane. Ships in the stars that flew. That could be destroyed.]

... I know it must be awful, to lose someone. To have to watch it happen.

[She's glad for the other woman, that in her case, it had been a fleeting grief. In her own life, despite living with the knowledge of violence and slavery forced upon her race for decades... She's been personally fortunate.]

My parents were killed, but I... I was really young, I don't really remember. No one... No one I loved like that has ever died.

[Not...]

Not like that.

[Horrifically.]

It was a hard couple of minutes, that's for sure. [Underselling it a little. She wiggles her toes, stretching them out near the crackling fire. She knows what it's like, to not know your parents growing up. It's something the two of them have in common.

She turns to her side a little so that she's facing Konoha's human half.]

We were... under attack. The colony fleet was being attacked by giant insects, called Vajra. We'd entered their territory, and so they were defending themselves. Whenever there was an attack, everyone had to go to the shelters-- like we were, down beneath the palace.

Hundreds of people died in the attacks, but it wasn't ever like that. I don't think I can even wrap my head around it yet.

[Now that they've been to Akvos, huddled together in the shelters beneath the castle, Konoha can imagine better what Sheryl talks about. Giant bugs, even... She can kind of believe that, it's sort of like the story of Tawara Todo, he defeated a giant centipede...

But her expression falls as the thoughts inevitably lead back to Akvos. To stop the tremble in her lip she bites in, fingers knitting together before she forces herself to separate them, latching instead onto her forelegs.]

... Do you think they're really all dead? Every single one of them?

I don't know. [It's honest, if tired.] Everyone who went into the rift wound up somewhere else, right? That dream world... maybe they all went there, too.

But probably not.

[A long breath.] We should probably... think of them as gone. It might be better for our hearts, in the end. We can't be let down that way.

[She hadn't thought about that. Could they be in the rift the same way they'd been? She'd been able to see her parents, even if it had been just an illusion... but there had been terrifying things within those dreams as well...

So was it even a relief, to think they might be alive but stuck in there?

Despite her attempts to not do this again, not cry outside the privacy of her room in the Temple... Konoha has to pull a hand from her foreleg to wipe aggressively at her eyes, trying to stop the tears before they come.]

Y- Yeah, you're probably right... I mean... Their world is gone, I guess...

[Something she'd never had to conceive of. A whole world... Gone.]

[She can hear that shakiness in Konoha's voice, the telltale tremble of tears. It's something that she feels a lot of herself.

She stands, sort of. She winds up sitting as far up as she can on Konoha's side, right above her horse foreleg. It's close enough that she can wrap her arms around Konoha's human half from behind in a gentle embrace.]

Edited 2019-01-27 03:31 (UTC)

[Oh.

Konoha can't help herself, not anymore, a small hiccup giving away that she's started to cry, given freedom to release it by the comfort of Sheryl's embrace.]

I'm sorry-

[Her hands move to hold the other girl's arms, tears hot on her cheeks even as she closes her eyes to try and banish the thoughts- the Rift, the destruction of Akvos, the babes she had held in her arms...]

I've never seen people die like that before-

[Accidents, illness, sure, but. That...]

[Sheryl lets Konoha hold her arms, lets the jinba's strong grip take hold of her as she weeps, pressing her face to the back of the other woman's shoulder and trying not to cry in kind. It's difficult, and there is perhaps a little dampness on Konoha's skin right where it meets Sheryl's eyes.

She doesn't shush her. She doesn't say it'll be okay. This is a time for grieving, after all, and who knows if it will ever be the same?]

I haven't, either... it was awful. It doesn't seem fair.

Do you think-

[She'd tried not to think about it. Tried not to imagine for fear that her ignorance of such matters, magic and all this... dimensional travel... would mean she couldn't even begin to understand, but.

Her fingers tighten just a bit on Sheryl's arms, afraid to let go.]

Do you think it's because we did something wrong... ? Or- Because we went there in the first place... ?

[A soft intake of breath. It's something she, too, had been worried about. Had feared.]

I don't... think so? The king had been plotting all that time, hadn't he? Things were already getting worse when we got there. If we'd never been there, he'd have tried to do the same thing.

So I don't think we had anything to do with it. [She doesn't sound sure, though.]</small

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