HEARTGAME DRESS REHEARSAL

[finalbows]

thank u rah u hero

tracking sheet
 

[ ..somewhere in the pasture, Angel Devil falls down.
His clothes have twisted away into bone-white rags, leaving a body covered over with only thick swathes of red fur, and downy feathers. His long tail is curled into a tense arc, banded fur standing on end.

The air wavers like he’s a heat mirage, not a man. He’s boiling away with absolutely stupid amounts of arcane power… and, most frighteningly, he does not seem in control of the fact that it is there and being brought to bear. It’s impossible to get any closer to him.


When he speaks, it’s quite timid. ]

Ah,
I thought… I had a little more time.

[ (and in a blinding flash of light, there is the sound of something breaking.) ]

~KRRSHHK~

[any observers will see, strangely see-through and superimposed on the scene, some kind of vast tree, illusionary roots twisting over and around to frame a door.  the door itself is wrought of opaque stained glass in blacks and whites and greys; a stylized rendition of Angie in that strangely ragged, feathered form, curled in on himself, eyes closed.  Angie himself is nowhere to be seen. ]

instead, a shadow . . . steps into view from behind the door.  for a moment it looks like nothing so much as a second genome – then it turns, gaining features and definition with the movement.  The monkey tail separates into three plumes; a ponytail unfurls into wings that lift up from the sides of the head.  

Teleute(?) is here, dressed in her customary black, but there is colour in her skin, and her hair and eyes are blue.  she’s frowning.]

. . . well.  This is the least I can do before I go, in exchange for the safe harbor.

[she lifts her head, nodding to any observers, and gestures at the door.]

You’ll want to head in there now if you don’t wish to lose your flockmate, I think.  Even the false-death of this place won’t be much help to him, if his soul is left to finish pulling itself apart.

My sisters and I can maintain the way into and out of it for you, but we were not made to knit such wounds by ourselves.  Have a care.

Comments

[finalbows]

"Give me sunsets. The ocean. Or give me architecture! Or... some kind of thing....you just can't see in the pasture."

[wants_the_phd]

[She thinks about it for a moment, and then another.]

[Then she turns and starts leading the way back down the path.]

This way.

[finalbows]

[ reluctantly-- he fears, if he leaves this spot behind, he shan't be able to reflect on it again-- he stands up, wobbles with a bit of stiffness, then follows. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[She leaves the trail that already exists and starts picking her way through terrain that gets increasingly more stony. There are no real indicators of where they're going, but she travels with confidence that implies she knows exactly what they're looking for.]

[...And that thing appears to be a huge, ancient, lichen-encrusted boulder. --Or more specifically, the hollow underneath. It seems like a stream might have been here, eons ago, that tunneled its way through the sandstone holding the boulder up, leaving a cave behind.]

[Azdaja slips inside. Follow?]

[finalbows]

[ head Definitley bobbing around at the increasingly unfamiliar environment.

...he strays a moment to pet the lichen.

then he follows. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[It's important to appreciate lichen. It's probably several hundred years old, and has survived things that neither of them ever could.]

[The tunnel is as winding as you might expect a dry stream bed to be. Though it was probably no more than a trickle at the peak of its life, it has managed to excavate a tunnel large enough for even angie to move through comfortably. Rocks have fallen from the ceiling at some point in the distant past, and they supply some jagged contrast to the smooth water-worn walls. ]

[As they go deeper into the tunnel, the light from the cave mouth gets farther away. And yet, his eyes seem to have no trouble adjusting. It's almost pitch black, but it may as well be illuminated by a full moon's worth of visibility. You were born to be in places like this.]

[They follow the trail, twisting and turning, descending ever deeper into the welcoming earth. The passage becomes narrower, the ceiling lower, until they have to crouch to continue.]

[They finally get to what would be a dead end... except for a small hole, just big enough to crawl through. Despite everything, bright, sunset-warm light pours in, and the breeze that beckons them from the other side is fresh.]

[Azdaja gets on all fours and wriggles through the hole, then disappears. It seems as if, to access this holy place, Mother Pulmungt herself has requested that you humble yourself, first.]

1/2

[finalbows]

[ I don't wanna crawl around in the diiiiiiiiiirt ]

2/2

[finalbows]

[ weh.

you're lucky the most aesthetic-minded fragment of his soul is, at its root, far more envious of the world external himself than internal.

crawls. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[It's possible that the fact you weren't able to see this coming it what makes it so overwhelming, once your eyes adjust back to bright sunset light.]

[You're standing on the floor of a deep chasm. The walls are smooth and windswept and banded with natural colors, each one representing a single eon of time, and now all exposed at once as if cut open like a cake. The sky, far up above, looks like a jagged stripe of light across the ceiling. ...And across the floor. Because that dried up stream never really dried up, it just found another path to this same destination. But it flows so slowly that what's here may as well be standing water, completely placid and mirror smooth. The water at the bottom of the fissure perfectly reflects the walls and sky, making the canyon look like two independent walls of stone floating in a void of sunset light.]

[Basically it's like Antelope Canyon if the floor were a mirror.]

1/?

[finalbows]

2/?

[finalbows]

3/?

[finalbows]

4/?

[finalbows]

5/5

[finalbows]

[ there are no words. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[Azdaja's not saying anything, either. What is there to even say?]

[Thee water is only about a centimeter deep, so when she slowly starts walking through it as she explores the canyon, little ripples spread out from each footstep, making the reflected sky twinkle and shimmer. She sets a hand on the smooth wall, wondering how many millions of years it took to build up just the amount of stone in one handspan's worth of height.]

[She touches it reverently, for this is a holy place. A cathedral built by the natural world in worship of water, wind, light, and time. It's easy to feel small in this place. In comparison to this canyon, they are just tiny flashes in the pan -- they're born, live vibrantly, and disappear, all in the same instant.]



[...but in that one, vanishingly brief moment, we witness the world in all her vast and aching glory,

and we are changed forever.]

[finalbows]

[ by the end of their journey through the canyon,

she is once again alone... yet not.


they walk not only the expanse of that man's soul; but the infinite eons of the worlds they had both touched.

her mask of the aesthete now feels "complete," somehow. ]

1/2

[wants_the_phd]

[that's cool. Because the rest of her feels hollow and bittersweet.]

[This canyon they're in isn't a reproduction from her memories. It's one built entirely of her imagination, based on images she's seen in the archives. She's never actually had a chance to visit it real life, and it seems increasingly unlikely she ever will. This reproduction in his soul is probably the closest she'll ever get, so admittedly she does linger here for a while after his shade wanders off.]

[It's just like the feeling that came with the tenderness mask. Love, with a side of heartache. It's hard to say goodbye, isn't it. Even when you're the one who has to leave. And especially when your experiences still seem so incomplete. The world is so big, and you have so much love in your heart that you'd need an eternity to pour it all out. But that little flash is all you get. It's the greatest injustice that the world has made herself so achingly beautiful and yet there's never enough time to love her the way she deserves.]



[she sits in silence for a long, long time.]

[wants_the_phd]

[Eventually, she take the fact that the scenery hasn't disintegrated around her as a sign that she still has work to do.]

[so she sighs,
and she wipes her eyes,
and she retraces her steps back from whence she came.]

[We are going all the way back to where we first saw Ginryu, to see if he's still there.]

[finalbows]

[ the dragon remains, though the landscape hasn't gone unscathed. with the departure of that fragment of angie that had set himself as its master, it's grown even more restless in its mysterious search, tearing at the dirt, sand, and brambles. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[She approaches him from upwind to give him plenty of warning of her presence.]

[Staying a respectful distance away, she dips her head in polite supplication.]

Greetings.

May I assist you?

[finalbows]

[ the nova dragon tosses its head, agitated, scratches again at the dry earth--

stops. scents deep of the air, then its gaze grows fixed, right on her. or her bag. hard to tell.


takes slow, prowling steps. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[Oh.]

[Making no sudden moves, she smoothly removes the bag and sets it on the ground at her feet. She opens it wide to make the contents accessible, and then walks backward away from it.]

[finalbows]

[ the point of its long horn is still so, so precariously close to her, as it levels its head near the bag...

then rears back, and shakes its head like trying to rid itself of a fly.
no.
that's still not it. ]

[wants_the_phd]

[Man. If only she had any idea what this dragon represented metaphorically, maybe she'd have a better shot at getting it what it needed.]

[She starts smelling the air, herself, taking deep breaths and really concentrating to see if she can pick out notes of mist or rot or... SOMETHING. She's also going to (again, keeping a respectful distance) go investigate some of the areas that have already been torn up, to see if she can get a clue.]

1/2

[finalbows]

[ okay. Let's think.

Eighteen masks.

She's handled (in one way or another) his Guilt, satiated his Aesthetics, coaxed his Servitude into Rebellion, offered him back his Tenderness, woke his Perseverance, turned him away from his submission to Fate to accept Kinship, sundered the King that ruled him.....

...in herself, she's held fast to his Cruelty, his Desire, his affectations as a Rose. What's left?

Resignation?
Eternity?
An End?

...could you call those all the same thing?

And, one might suppose, there are those blank black and white masks. ]