ph_logs | April Showers Bring Strange Flowers [OTA and one closed]

April Showers Bring Strange Flowers [OTA and one closed]

Who: "Theodor Gorlash," the butterflies, and you!
What: Getting to know the island and its inhabitants, finding oneself in the more literal sense
When: April general
Where: Downtown general/Paradesium
Warnings: To be listed in individual threads, likely to contain heavy discussions of various mental health topics

Strange Signals For a Small Desert Town [Closed, for Cecil]

In the middle of the night, that strange voice makes its way into Cecil's head yet again. That's quite rude of it, considering that at this time, more people are trying to sleep than not. There's an appropriate hour and an inappropriate hour for psychic communications!

Find... her. Find... her. The scion-to-be carries the spores. Find... me. Find... me. The worm waits alone. Dark. Strange.

A Fiddle of Sinews, a Flute of Bone [OTA, Empty Pockets]

He hasn't an instrument of his own, but Theodor wonders if perhaps he might find one on loan in the lovely little place where music wafts out like the alluring smell of freshly-baked bread. In the manner of a hungry stray cat, he makes his way though the door and settles in a corner (not in a chair, just a corner, sitting in a manner that is oddly feline and rather ill-befitting the frame of an old man). He scans the place with yellow, lamplike eyes, taking everything in.

A List of Things, Strings, Wings [OTA, Northwest Hollow]

After managing to scrounge up a bit of paper and charcoal, Theodor has settled in the quieter parts of Northwest Hollow, and is attempting to sketch the flowers and butterflies of the area. He's quite good at capturing their likenesses, however, the edges of his drawings seem to have a tendency to melt into faces, bearing exaggerated expressions of laughter, terror, and sorrow. It's probably intentional.

If anyone walks by, he's going to look up and acknowledge them, while his hand will keep scratching out designs independently. One of the aforementioned butterflies will keep its eyes on the page, as it perches on his shoulder.

Hum Dum Dee Dum, Hum Dum Dee Dum, Time For Something Sweet [OTA, Oak and Iron]

Speaking of the smell of baking bread, he's gotten quite hungry, and it suddenly occurs to him that he can't remember the last time he had a nice cup of tea or a strawberry tart. He makes his way to the Oak and Iron, and sits down at the first open spot that's just a little too close to someone else's seat to make ignoring conversation entirely feasible.

"So tell me... what's a good blend of tea around here, in your opinion? I imagine it's hard to find Greenmote Gunpowder around here."

Wildcard: PM me on Discord (redheadednimbus) if you have other ideas!

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Ari Tayrey does a lot of walking these days, especially around the quieter section of Northwest Hollow, close by to where she lives. Usually she'll greet anyone she passes, to be neighborly, but when she sees the old man further along the path, intent on drawing something, the young lieutenant stops for a moment.

There's something familiar about the figure. As if she's seen him before. He's hard to place - and then she has it. He's that confused man out of the Village. That's enough to make her approach. She probably wouldn't have, if she'd recognised his face from the ship, but by the time he had arrived there she was long past seeking out new arrivals and trying to sway them. She'd focused on action instead.

'Peace and prosperity!' she calls out as she draws near, not wanting to get too close without drawing attention to herself. She's in bright blue coveralls, a large backpack slung over one shoulder.

He beams at her.

"Piece o' prosperity to ya! Lovely day, isn't it?"

That doesn't sound quite right, but she absolutely appreciates the effort.

'It is! Warm and bright enough.' Having spent her life in artificial environments, Tayrey doesn't take comfort in nature the way many of the others do, but even she can appreciate a pleasantly sunny day. 'What are you drawing?' she asks.

"I'm drawing whatever my hands think my eyes are telling them to draw. And occasionally taking a break to tell the bees what a good job they're doing. Have you ever talked to a bee? They're incredibly relatable. More orderly than I'd like, but rife with anxiety! And they love pillows!"

Now she looks quite bewildered. 'No, I can't say I've ever talked to any... insects,' she replies cautiously. 'But I didn't live planetside, before all this. I'm a spacer.' As if that might be the only reason she has never attempted to talk with bees.

'I wanted to say that I'm glad you got out. That you escaped that place and you're free. Nobody deserves to be trapped,' she says earnestly, trying to pull some logic back to the conversation.

"That place..." His eyes suddenly widen.

"You... you remember! You remember where I was before I was here! Do you... do you know who I am, perchance?"

She shakes her head, faint sorrow in her eyes. 'No, not a name - only a number, and that certainly isn't who you are,' she tells him firmly.

It's earned him a lot of grace. Tayrey was horrified when she realised that the reason her weak amnesiac cover story had worked when she'd visited Peter through a time rift was because the Village could do precisely that. Take memories from people, make them forget themselves.

She might be all efficiency and practicality, but Tayrey isn't going to let herself lose patience with a torture victim for things they can't help. 'Do you remember anything all about home?' she asks, her voice softening.

"Bits and pieces. I can remember my home, highlands to the north and swamps to the south. I remember the two skies, and all the stars they contained. I remember the feeling of stretching my wings in the space between worlds, and setting foot on a familiar-yet-unfamiliar planet for the first time. I remember loving the people around me so terribly that it hurt. There are so many things, close enough to taste but too far away to grasp."

There's a lot here to intrigue her, plenty of language that she's not sure whether to take for literal statement or metaphor, because you never can tell, in places like these.

'The stars are wonderful,' she tells him, because that's something she can say and have it be real and genuine and true, regardless of the details.

'I think you'll be able to grasp all these things deeper, in time,' Tayrey adds, ever the optimist. 'It sounds like you were a spacer, flying between the worlds. I was the first to set foot on a planet, once. I'll never forget that. Your two skies - the same sky, from different perspectives?' she queries.

“Well, it’s part of the same atmosphere, but its composition differs significantly depending on where you’re located. During the day, they look more alike, though the southern skies tend to have more cloud cover. At night, on the other hand… at night the northern skies burn pink and gold, and the southern skies turn deep blue and sea foam green.”

She considers this a moment, and then nods. It would mean some atmospheric peculiarities, but it's entirely possible, from planetside. Pronounced aurora effects. Airglow. 'It sounds beautiful,' she tells him. 'Something I'd have loved to fly through. If you hold to that - to your good memories of home - then maybe others will come back to you.

"Oh, I'm quite sure they will. I know they're here, adrift on the air, but I'm impatient. Do you know what it's like to be terribly impatient, Lieutenant?"

She doesn't like to think of herself as an impatient person, even if she's been accused of it. She prefers efficient. No wasted time.

'I know what it is to want something badly and turn all my efforts towards it,' she says instead. 'Some people take that for impatience.'

"Oh. Oh no, no, no. That's very different. Determination, now, that's something particularly remarkable."

Despite his still being a frail old man, there's something about his energy that suddenly feels... different, somehow?

"People like you... they grow. They grow and grow. They move mountains. They mount movements. A person who's determined enough can persuade the world itself to change."

'I never thought it was remarkable,' says Tayrey quietly. 'Not until I saw how quick others are to give up, or to... persuade themselves that the terrible things that happen to them are somehow their fault, or worse, are what they deserve. Or want.' The ship. The Village. Tayrey didn't bend, didn't compromise her principles, didn't ever give up on loving liberty and longing for it.

She's more damaged than most now, as a result, but she doesn't regret anything except her own emotional weaknesses.

'I think you have to stand strong for what you value. Even when it hurts. But I'm glad this place isn't so demanding. I'm glad we got out, and we can change this place for the better, yes?'

"Absolutely!" He's back to beaming, that moment of heavy intensity given way to sunshine.

"And I look forward to seeing how you change it. This place... it cries out for change. For hope. For all the stubbornness you can offer, Lieutenant, even as the world bids you to bend and break and just leave things be."

He strokes his beard, thinking.

"Though, speaking of things that bid you to bend and break... whatever do you suppose became of old Kev? Do you think there's a shade of him out there, projecting his stubbornness onto things? Or do you think the last traces of his soul were gobbled up when hell broke loose under the Green Dome?" Because he's suddenly remembering, and he's suddenly wondering.

'I'll do my best,' she assures him firmly, and her smile is smaller but no less genuine. 'Although I could certainly do with some help. Others who want to bring hope to this place too, and free its people from the walls that surround them.' Help would be nice. Or at least a lack of opposition.

Then she shakes her head, looking regretful. 'I don't think I ever met Kev,' she tell him. She wasn't present at the meal where the man was given his moniker, and it seems people thought better of sharing the joke with her, given that her own attempts to decline her captor his unearned title, for very similar reasons, had been almost completely ignored. And in the Green Dome? All Tayrey remembers from the end is blind panic, terror that she was again trapped in a crowded room with absolutely no warning, and Pratt's strong arms carrying her away as her hands bled from her frantic attempts to force open the door.

'I'd like to believe,' she goes on to say, 'that every person who was ever trapped by that djinn and used as fuel is free now.' All of them, no exceptions, even the ones who hurt her horrifically. 'But I know that's optimistic. Far more likely that most of them are dead, really. Still, death is a mercy, compared to what awaited them otherwise.' Something Tayrey had weighed up and calculated long ago.

"So... would you say you're one for freedom at any cost, Lieutenant?"

His expression doesn't reveal much of what he's thinking, aside from a general curiosity.

'Liberty is my highest value,' she answers. If there had ever been any doubt about that, those competing priorities that also mattered, her recent experiences had absolutely crystallised that liberty had to come first.

'Except you have to understand that when I say that I don't only mean my personal liberty. I mean the freedom of all people to act as they please. So long as that doesn't infringe on the rights of others.'

“And what do you do when two freedoms butt heads, Lieutenant? How do you decide who gets the baby? Or do you saw the child in half and call it a day?”

There’s an odd air of authority about him, like he’s interviewing her, or demanding an after-action report.

Despite what she sees as unnecessarily gruesome imagery, Tayrey responds to the question with the brisk professionalism that its tone invites.

'That's why I mentioned rights. Your freedom to swing your fist ends where my face and its rights begin, yes? If you're imagining a more complex situation, you'll have to give specifics.'

“Okay! Let’s say you’ve got a bit of property, and you keep it nice, and you’ve got some delicate plants and bits o’ pottery and what not that you really don’t want disturbed. Plus, movement at odd hours sera off the security. Well, turns out these kids from the housing estate over don’t have a good way of getting from one place to anoter, ‘cept through a good, honest Tradeliner’s yard. Either yours or your neighbor’s, and let’s assume you’re about equally wealthy and well-off, save for your neighbor doesn’t keep their yard quite as neatly. How do you solve such a conundrum, Lieutenant?”

Tayrey is somewhat bewildered that this would be considered a difficult ethical question by anyone.

'They take the long way around, unless they have consent to walk across either person's property. Trespassing doesn't become allowable because the alternative is inconvenient. Their liberty to walk wherever they like ends where it hits someone else's property rights. That aside, I don't have stronger property rights than my neighbour because I keep my property nicer - or if it were larger or more expensive or any of that. Rights aren't dependent on social status.'

“Ah, but that’s the hitch, Lieutenant. All the property belongs to someone. There’s not a good way around, save for the roads, and the laws say those are reserved for vehicles. Now, no one really enforces those laws, but you still run into the problem of pedestrians in the roadway. Do they not have a reasonable expectation of safe travel? Do the drivers have an obligation to worry about pedestrians in the road, on top of everything else? Whose freedoms take priority?” Certainly, it’s not the most earth-shattering question, but it’s a question nonetheless, and one that probes at what Lt. Tayray considers most sacred.

She frowns.

'This is a situation too far outside my cultural context for me to judge,' she admits. 'It all sounds bizarre to me. Property without an accessway off it, roads - groundcar roads? With unenforced laws about them? All I can say is that in my sector we'd never have such a muddled situation. Nobody would buy a property without a legitimate way to leave it, and pedestrians use walkways and accessways. Groundcars are for travelling longer distances. I know you mean it as a thought experiment but there are too many alien hidden premises in it for me to have a sensible answer.'

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April Showers Bring Strange Flowers [OTA and one closed]

A List of Things, Strings, Wings

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cw: mention of child harm (parable)

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cw: discussion of civic/political issues

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