Who: Fever, Helena, and those threading with them What:January non-event things. When: All month. Where: Across the isle. Warning(s): To be noted in threads individually
Cleaning the apartment is a simple thing, if boring. Put things where they go, wipe away dust and dirt, make sure nothing's been tracked in. It should be an easy task to do, and there should be more time left in the day. But a headache's been growing on her since halfway through, and when done, lying down with her eyes closed feels like the only thing she can do.
Fever knows what it is, when she takes her medicine and waits for it to start working. It's everything, it's the dregs of nightmare and the pain that's a constant bruise and that horrible fucking music from Merrymeet, it's not having enough of other people's problems to solve, it's that same wild urge that she had around Artemy that if she cracked open her ribs, everything would make more sense.
Spring. Maybe things will be better when spring comes. She thinks about it - about new grass, warmer winds, caterpillars hatching from eggs, fueling themselves for what will come next. It's the one spot in her head that doesn't feel mixed up or too disjointed to sort out. If one could bottle this collection of feelings, it would be the best poison ever crafted.
It isn't spoken that she needs him, but it resonates, vibrations across a mycelium, asking even as she would chastise herself for being too much. Even just to talk to, even just to sit in the same room for a bit.
And sure enough, he’s there, slipping into her house in between the blinking of moments, seated as if he’s been settled there for an hour already, cross-legged and reclining, with his cane propped up beside him.
“Where do you want to start?” he asks. He doesn’t need an icebreaker- they’ve already been having this conversation wordlessly, between Fever and herself. That’s why he’s here.
"There's not enough breathing room," she replies, falling into a cadence she's long since grown used to, between him and her, between one of her hands and the other. "But there's too much space at the same time. Ordinarily, I'd go to him, ask if I could stop pretending to be a person for a bit, but..."
He's still not back. That's a wound that will scar.
“What stops you from doing that yourself? Is there not enough to tether yourself to, between the lack of space and those distant walls?”
Because he’ll happily go with her into that place beyond personhood if she needs company, but he knows the importance of having what you need ready to cobble together a person’s face again afterwards.
"I don't know where everything goes in the space between."
Boxes. Chests. Specimen jars. Bottles that still hold homemade poison. Flowers. Dust and cobwebs fit to rival an abandoned shrine. Fragments of others, bright and shining, warm to the touch.
"And some of this seems just like...junk. Stuff to be thrown out."
“There are always other thing to deal with.” It’s not a chastisement; it’s an observation.
“You’ve been growing a lot. You’ve always grown so beautifully, but now someone’s broken the pot you were sitting in and your roots are spilling every which way.”
Retrieving the box from his hands, she's gentle as she wipes away the dust, setting that one aside with all the care one would handle a jewel box.
"How do we get me planted in the earth, then? I'm clearly not going to fit back in a pot anymore, unless it's quite big."
The box she lifts up is the size of a filing drawer, dark, labeled Barrier, and she steps out into the space to look for the right shelf to put it on. This one's got to stay in her eyeline, since it's a project in progress, but not in a place to trip on.
"The soil is underfoot, and you're no delicate thing. You'll dig your roots in, and find your footing... unless you want a gardener's help, that is. From what I understand, you've already started testing the earth. Tasting it. Tastes like dirt, I imagine."
"I'm trying, because the other option is withering. Drying up from the lack of nutrients."
Planting things with Cèsar taught her that much, at least. Offloading the box, she comes to another, prying it open to look at the contents. A large cloud of smoke rises out, and keeps coming, coming, heavy and choking, making her cough through it as she tries to seal it back up.
Troublesome thing. Leave it alone, it'll fill every space.
As she struggles with the cloud, the Dreams box murmurs to him. Winds on the steppe, the drip of water in isolation, profound silence that eats everything, feet on the staircase going down. Gunfire, the cries of a battle. If there is kindness, something softer in this box, it isn't audible over the keening. Her dreams have always been an uneasy place.
But, wait a moment. Wait, and things clear, to hold the sound of a guitar. Of people laughing all together, the popping of logs in a campfire, the faint screeching of her wyvern. Dreams, mixed and assorted.
Fever finally wrangles the cloud down, closing the box and tossing it away from her in a huff. Junk pile, that one.
"That one needs to be sorted, but it'll make an even bigger mess."
something something the author is depressed and this is a mood
"Sort of the nature of things, isn't it? You can't proper take the feelings out of the box sometimes unless you rip them out crying and screaming. Then you feel a pleasant sort of tidiness, once your head is pounding and your cheeks are raw and you know you've made a scene. Much better an idea than keeping that box shuttered forcibly until everything inside of it rots."
It was what made the soil so rich to begin with. Things broken down, changed, left as fuel and nutrients, where madness might find purchase and drink deep. Earth in her throat, her mouth.
Sitting down on the floor, crosslegged, the box in her lap. Reaching for one of her knives - it's the Figment Blade that answers this time, and she brings down the edge to try and cut through the seal that secures this box. No dice - the weapon's temperamental as it is, and today is a day where it wants to be nothing more than a beautiful paperweight. No cutting edge.
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home.
Fever knows what it is, when she takes her medicine and waits for it to start working. It's everything, it's the dregs of nightmare and the pain that's a constant bruise and that horrible fucking music from Merrymeet, it's not having enough of other people's problems to solve, it's that same wild urge that she had around Artemy that if she cracked open her ribs, everything would make more sense.
Spring. Maybe things will be better when spring comes. She thinks about it - about new grass, warmer winds, caterpillars hatching from eggs, fueling themselves for what will come next. It's the one spot in her head that doesn't feel mixed up or too disjointed to sort out. If one could bottle this collection of feelings, it would be the best poison ever crafted.
It isn't spoken that she needs him, but it resonates, vibrations across a mycelium, asking even as she would chastise herself for being too much. Even just to talk to, even just to sit in the same room for a bit.
no subject
“Where do you want to start?” he asks. He doesn’t need an icebreaker- they’ve already been having this conversation wordlessly, between Fever and herself. That’s why he’s here.
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He's still not back. That's a wound that will scar.
"It's all a mess."
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Because he’ll happily go with her into that place beyond personhood if she needs company, but he knows the importance of having what you need ready to cobble together a person’s face again afterwards.
no subject
Boxes. Chests. Specimen jars. Bottles that still hold homemade poison. Flowers. Dust and cobwebs fit to rival an abandoned shrine. Fragments of others, bright and shining, warm to the touch.
"And some of this seems just like...junk. Stuff to be thrown out."
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When her eyes open, she knows she won't be in quite the same apartment.
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Then there’s the version of events where his skin and hers peels away and they both crumble into a tangle of fibers.
Then there’s the one where the room falls away, like a storm of butterflies, and they’re somewhere else, a star scape full of boxes.
All of these things happen, and none of them do. It’s all in her head, she’s in her head, he’s in her head, he is her.
He picks up a small, dusty box, full of dreams and paperclips inscribed with the name “Phil.”
“I didn’t realize how much you’d brought in!”
no subject
"It piled up before I realized. I had other things to deal with."
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“You’ve been growing a lot. You’ve always grown so beautifully, but now someone’s broken the pot you were sitting in and your roots are spilling every which way.”
no subject
"How do we get me planted in the earth, then? I'm clearly not going to fit back in a pot anymore, unless it's quite big."
The box she lifts up is the size of a filing drawer, dark, labeled Barrier, and she steps out into the space to look for the right shelf to put it on. This one's got to stay in her eyeline, since it's a project in progress, but not in a place to trip on.
no subject
no subject
Planting things with Cèsar taught her that much, at least. Offloading the box, she comes to another, prying it open to look at the contents. A large cloud of smoke rises out, and keeps coming, coming, heavy and choking, making her cough through it as she tries to seal it back up.
Troublesome thing. Leave it alone, it'll fill every space.
no subject
He picks up a box marked Dreams and puts an ear to it, curious.
no subject
But, wait a moment. Wait, and things clear, to hold the sound of a guitar. Of people laughing all together, the popping of logs in a campfire, the faint screeching of her wyvern. Dreams, mixed and assorted.
Fever finally wrangles the cloud down, closing the box and tossing it away from her in a huff. Junk pile, that one.
"That one needs to be sorted, but it'll make an even bigger mess."
something something the author is depressed and this is a mood
no subject
It was what made the soil so rich to begin with. Things broken down, changed, left as fuel and nutrients, where madness might find purchase and drink deep. Earth in her throat, her mouth.
Sitting down on the floor, crosslegged, the box in her lap. Reaching for one of her knives - it's the Figment Blade that answers this time, and she brings down the edge to try and cut through the seal that secures this box. No dice - the weapon's temperamental as it is, and today is a day where it wants to be nothing more than a beautiful paperweight. No cutting edge.
Fine then, if it wanted to be like that.
"What if I blow this one up?"