[Nexus] Outside XXIX

[Earl of Purple]

Road Outside Inside

The young lady won't stop Lotsa Heart leaving, though perhaps the talking horse will notice something odd about her- in particular, her skin is slightly grey, and looks as though it's dying. But she seems fine, and otherwise healthy.

[Reinholdt]

[Outside Inside]

Her eyebrows narrows, "I don't know! I'm not her! I got three persons in my head but neither of them are Libra. I didn't even know of her until Harnel told me about her. I don't want to be her either. I just want to be a person, not the puppet monster she was."

[Outside Inside]

"But you knew about me. Puppet?" That's an interesting notion.

[Shadowcaller]

[Outside Inside]

"Yes, I kind of checked through Harnel's memories and there you were. It wasn't too hard to figure out Libra had created you." Hannah explains. "And yes, Libra was a puppet to some sort of entity called a 'Oni'. The same thing that created me. It's what give us all these powers see? I refuse to be some kind of puppet to it though. I like to be my own person."

[Gullara]

[Road Outside Inside]

Presumably a bit after the horse leaves, or maybe even immediately after, someone else is walking down the road. The person in question is a slender, even a bit wiry, young woman. What stands out immediately is her bright, orange-red hair cut in a pixie cut. Her skin in lightly tanned and freckled, and her eyes are a dark amber. It's not immediately apparent, but her canines are a good bit longer than you'd expect of a human. The woman wears a long, off white dress that barely even shows her ankles, though it is sleeveless.

She glances at the wagon, a bit of curiosity evident in her expression. What could this be about? She moves closer. "Heya. What's going on?"

[Reinholdt]

[Outside Inside]

"And you're going to be your own person by going around and granting wishes exactly like Libra did?" Harnel asks as he keeps walking.

[Shadowcaller]

[Outside Inside]

"I felt sorry for you. That's why I'm here, the wish thing... well, I haven't granted anything since I was 'born'. No one wants anything but I still like to improve someones life. Harnel, Wenomir and Kate are happy with their lives though, but you aren't. That's why I came to you see? To help you make your life better somehow." Hannah explains. "Unless you like to do everything on your own as well?" She raises an eyebrow.

[Earl of Purple]

Road Outside Inside 2

Or in a separate timeline altogether as I don't know if the horse will press the issue after my last post.

The young lady, aged about eighteen and wearing a ragged dress reaching her ankles smiles. Her hair is long, and black, and her green eyes are flecked with red. "Oh, could you please help me, milady? My cart has broken down and my horse run off." Oddly, the cart seems to have been in its current location for quite some time; there's no rut leading up to where it lies despite the cart looking rather heavily loaded and the soil being damp and pliable. One of the front wheels of the cart has shattered on a rock, which now is the only thing keeping that corner of the cart off the ground. The rock's large enough to be easily seen and therefore avoided, and it rests on the ground rather than being half-buried, and that begs the question of why somebody didn't just move it off the road.

[Reinholdt]

[Outside Inside]

"And what could you possibly give me to improve my life when you've already denied the one thing I want?" Harnel asks Hannah, gesticulating.

[Shadowcaller]

[Outside Inside]

"I-" Hannah hesitates, why were things always so hard? Couldn't people ask for things and be happy with them? "Uh, what if I gave you another Cessie? Still the same, just not Harnel's wife."

[Reinholdt]

[Outside Inside]

Harnel pauses.
"You... could do that?"
That's... on one hand it wouldn't be Cessie. On the other hand, he'd be the biggest hypocrite ever if he expected Cessie to love the almost Harnel and he couldn't love an almost Cessie.

Would it be an almost love? A shadow of a relationship for shadows of people?

[Gullara]

[Road Outside Inside 2]

Oops, forgot to mention that she wears a necklace. Hanging from it is a pearly white stone in the shape of a fat teardrop. It's not obvious in the daylight, but it glows faintly.

The woman seems to be ignorant to any oddness with the situation, or at the very least unconcerned. "Oh, yikes. That sucks. Anything you need in there? I could probably carry a few things." She goes to peek at the contents of the wagon.

[Earl of Purple]

Road Outside Inside 2

The cart is full of large, heavy-looking boxes and crates. "Oh, no. It's not what's in the cart that's important. I had a bag of jewels hidden in the horse's harness- the cart's a decoy for bandits. The horse ran off into that forest, and I don't want to go in there alone. Could you help me go look for it? I don't think it's gone far." The young lady approaches slightly. The newcomer might notice the greyish cast to the skin, as though it's rotting now- she's too close to hide it. Nor can she hide a faint smell of decay that hangs around her.

[Gullara]

[Road Outside Inside 2]

Oops, she probably could have smelled that from a mile away. Clearly the wind was just going in the wrong direction.

"Ooooh, I gotcha. W-" She stops suddenly and sniffs the air in the woman's general direction. Unconsciously, she raises her shoulders and ducks her head a little. She almost goes as far as to take a step back, but she catches herself. "Uh, you smell kinda funny." Like death, and it's anything but faint.

[Earl of Purple]

Road Outside Inside 2 (and aboveside Underside)

Oops, didn't realise she had keen scent abilities.

"My father works as a butcher, that's probably what it is." Butchers smell more of blood than she does, but she didn't say she worked alongside him.

But the young lady is headed towards the forest now, and turns back to say "Are you coming?" She also looks rather nervous; it's quite a forbidding forest.

Incidentally, there's several skinless corpses of various ages stashed away within that forest, and I intended them to be surprises. Wasn't expecting a keen-nose-person.

[Lex-Kat]

Road Outside Inside 2

Or in a separate timeline altogether as I don't know if the horse will press the issue after my last post.

Nope. The horse walks degectedly back into the oblivion from whence it came. Once again no more.

[Gullara]

Phew, I was hoping I wasn't snatching the scene away from you without your character being completely gone. *waves at Lex*

[Road Outside Inside]

Oops, I should really be better at mentioning these details. <.< Her hearing is fairly keen as well, though not quite to the degree of her sense of smell.

Then that makes two of them that are nervous. She does follow though, if a bit hesitantly. "Uh, what's your name by the way? I'm Kitty." She sniffs the air a couple more times. Maybe the scent wasn't coming from the woman after all. It could have just been picked up from the woods. That makes Kitty feel a little better. There was probably just some animal's kill that had to be abandoned. Strange nothing else went after it though...

[happyturtle]

Melody's Island

Oh, uh. Melody releases the hug and backs away. His name is Richard.

She turns around. He's that really nice indian boy that had the measels last year.

"I think I remember him. He seemed awfully shy. No wonder he didn't follow. If you pushed him away, he's probably devastated and thinks he did something wrong." Happy says. "How much do you like him?"

[Shadowcaller]

[Outside Inside]

"I could, yeah. But would you really want to? Think about it, we got something in common here. We were both created by this oni." Hannah tells Harvil.

"From what I gathered from Harnel, Libra got angry and created you to work as his foil by giving him a bad reputation and at the same time share all his interest. I got a question for you though, do you want to be that? Do you want to be a puppet dancing on her strings even now that she's dead?" Hannah asks.

[Reinholdt]

[Outside Inside]

"I couldn't care less about the other Harnel or what he thinks I am meant to be. He's wrong. The idea that my very existence is to make his life more difficult is both degrading and spiteful and proves in so many ways why I'm the better Harnel in the first place."

"Give me Cessie." Harnel declares. He's got no reason whatsoever to give Harnel a bad name if he's got the one prize he cares for.

[Rebonack]

[Adventure!]

The arrow pulled out of the poor guy has a pretty unimpressive tip. Looks like low-quality iron? Whoever made the thing wasn't terribly skilled at smithing. Or maybe they just didn't know how to forge proper steel?

One of those things.

And there do appear to be some tracks!

There's an obvious trail of trampled grass leading away from the road.

And some blood here and there, too!

Following the trail shouldn't be difficult.

Sadei is poking at the horse. Poor horsey...

[Shadowcaller]

[Outside Inside]

"But I checked his memories... oh, whatever! It would be mean to just do what she did though. Create an exact copy with only a few differences. I don't want to be mean to Harnel's wife either. There should be some easy way to tell them apart so they don't ruin each others life." Hannah replies.

[Reinholdt]

[Outside Inside]

"Make it so she's not pregnant then." Harnel says without much hesitation at all. If he's to have children with Cessie, he wants it to be his and not theirs.

[Shadowcaller]

[Outside Inside]

"That's not enough, she will get un-pregnant soon enough won't she? I mean something more permanent. I'm trying to be nice here, which also mean you'd have to win her love yourself. She won't remember any Harnel but since she did fall in love with the other Harnel and you claim to be better then him, that shouldn't be a problem should it?" She replies.

[Reinholdt]

[Outside Inside]

"Why would I want to change perfection? Wouldn't the fact that she doesn't remember the last few years be enough?" Since Hannah seems to be taking those away.

[Shadowcaller]

[Outside Inside]

"Yeah, but others wouldn't notice that right? What if one of her friends assume it's her and start to talk to her? It might cause a whole lot of trouble." Hannah points out.

[Reinholdt]

[Outside Inside]

"How in the world would other people not notice a two year gap in memory?"

[Shadowcaller]

[Outside Inside]

"I meant from a distance!" Hannah exclaims in a defensive tone. "I want people notice they are different persons from a distance... that's what I mean." She clarifies. Man, this was hard.

[Reinholdt]

[Outside Inside]

"But you just said that her friends walked up and talked to her. I mean, short of making her a bi-sexual actual dragon with shapechanging abilities, she's at least going to look like Cessie. And that seems so far from Cessie, it becomes not Cessie. That's pretty unavoidable if you're trying to create a Cessie." Harnel does not understand why this is a difficult concept!

[OrchestraHc]

Adventure!

Alfred moves from his investigation to Sir Correl. "Sir, I found the path the bandits took." He doesn't want to interupt the knight but this is kinda important.

[Shadowcaller]

Adventure!

"Great work Alfred, we need to set out after these villains immediately, there is no telling what hideous deeds they subject this fair maiden to at this very moment!" Sir Correl exclaims, getting up from the ground. "Where did they go? Could you tell how many they were from the tracks? Horses perhaps?" He/she asks his brave squire.

It suddenly feels like I'm writing a batman comic

[Outside Inside]

"Okay... bi-sexual shapeshifting dragon... you do know that's going to make it harder for you right? Even if you do get the luxury of meeting her first. I'm going to make a whole alternative universe where she will arrive from actually." She sounds strangely excited about this idea.