GLoG 89

[ThePhantom]

[Lakeside]

"Don't people only use boats because they have to?" Brinika asks. "If I make a bridge, people won't have to use boats."

"Some people use boats for fun. I did it a couple of times when GLoG first came to this camp. But I thank you for your thoughtfulness."

Marley waves at the boathouse as he talks.

[Morty]

[Lakeside]

"But boats are scary," Brinika says, her ears twitching. "They float and toss you around and they're all wobbly."

[Outside Ironoak Cabin]

Reelshka is sitting under an umbrella, letting Tuskfang get some fresh air and sun - only half of him is goblin, after all. The baby is currently trying to gum on his own toes, without much success.

[ThePhantom]

[Lakeside]

"But boats are scary," Brinika says, her ears twitching. "They float and toss you around and they're all wobbly."

[Outside Ironoak Cabin]

Reelshka is sitting under an umbrella, letting Tuskfang get some fresh air and sun - only half of him is goblin, after all. The baby is currently trying to gum on his own toes, without much success.

"Well, I am bigger than you, so I would have easier time. Plus I know how to swim in case of something happening."

Marley thinks for a bit, tapping his cane on the ground.

"Would you like some help practicing? I think I might have a way to do that."

[Morty]

[Lakeside]

"I don't know," Brinika says uncertainly. "I'd have to ask my mom or Aunt Reelshka." She's rather reluctant to get near water.

[ThePhantom]

Lakeside

As she stands on the shore of the lake. Oh well, Marley nods at this statement.

"That's fair. I wouldn't want to get you yelled at later."

[Morty]

[Lakeside]

"Do you like using boats, Mr. Marley?" Brinika asks. As she speaks, her lifelike spider toy scurries up to the top of her head and peers at Marley, clicking its mandibles.

[ThePhantom]

Lakeside

"Well, a boat is easier than swimming for me. So, yes, I like using boats, Brinika."

Marley reaches up to adjust his hat to help it sit on his head better. Good thing that he doesn't mind spiders, otherwise there might have been an issue with her toy.

[Morty]

[Lakeside]

Brinika notices where her toy just went and reaches out to stroke it. The spider is around the size of a tree frog.

"Do you like my spider? I got him on Thanksmas. I call him Fuzzles. He looks just like a real one."

[ThePhantom]

Lakeside

"Well, he's not what I would call cute, but Fuzzles seems like a good toy."

Most humans are not fond of spiders after all. Marley thinks about holding out his hand for Fuzzles but doesn't do so.

[Morty]

[Lakeside]

"Really? But he's fuzzy and has beady little eyes," Brinika says, stroking her spider some more. Turns out goblins have a bit different standards when it comes to cuteness.

[Rebonack]

[Somewhere Incomprehensibly Distant, and Yet Near]

She stood alone.

Alone. Alien. Displaced in time to an era as wrong to her as the others no doubt felt about her. And yet she still stood. She had faced down the King himself at his strongest, when his burning heart was dissolving him from within. He had died in a cataclysm of radiant death while she was battered and broken, yet she endured. She still stood.

She stood alone.

But standing alone was all she ever needed, for she was a legion unto herself.

Without mother, without father, without a name of her own save for epitaphs whispered in her wake, without any connection to the world she carved our her own place in a hostile time where the very air itself worked to annihilate her. But carve out a place she did. And she reveled in the destruction she wrought.

There were others who weren't fond of her tastes in decorating. Chief among them the young Prince and his allies who saw her as a challenge to be overcome. Those were pitched battles, epic in scope. Some lost, some won. But regardless of outcome, she always endured. But in the end it wasn't another titan that struck her down. It was the little ones. The humans with their champions of steel and sword and burning light. It was an inglorious defeat, really. If it could even be called a defeat. A weapon meant to cast its target adrift in space and time. To render the afflicted someone else's problem.

It was an awful feeling, to have one's self ripped away atom by atom and cast to the winds of an unseeing, uncaring Cosmos. But as she felt herself being eroded by that horrible nothingness that ate away her magnificent body, something did see.

Something acted.

[The Forest]

A star was born in the middle of a clearing, a three foot wide lamp of incandescent light and howling wind that begin spitting out matter in all directions, spraying the surrounding glade with a hurricane of rocks, soil, water, and bits of twisted metal. The anomaly slowly shrunk as it disgorged its cargo indiscriminately, gradually contracting until at last there was nothing more than a brilliant pin-prick that vanished with a WHUMP! of displaced air.

And deposited a naked human woman rather unceremoniously on a bed of moss, alive, breathing, and wholly unconscious. Her hair was ruddy and disheveled, a muddy red shot through with brown and black. Aside from her violent arrival the only thing odd about her would be her strangely ivory complexion, almost as if her flesh were made of some sort of pliable bone rather than simple skin.

It would seem the Nexus has gained another Castaway.

[Morty]

[The Forest]

As it happens, Reelshka was taking her son out for a stroll through the woods. Tuskfang stares at everything around him, makes noises and tries to grab things. Then, however, his mother spots an unconscious figure lying on the forest floor. She approaches cautiously, two indistinct shapes of spirits forming behind her protectively.

[Rebonack]

[The Forest]

Conscious thought tickled at the edge of her mind, vague, half-formed memories. The battle. The weapon. What she had been sure would be her death.

She felt exposed. Small. Diminished. Less.

The choir of voices in harmony, the legion that was her self, was smaller. Vastly smaller. Whatever the horrible weapon had been, that devouring hole in the sky itself, had left her ravaged. Crippled. There was no telling how much of herself had been eradicated. At least not until she could open her eyes and gain her bearings. Just just had to stand up...

Her body, however, seemed to have other ideas. An attempt to move was met with pain and a hissing intake of breath. With that breath she expected the familiar sensation of caustic, toxic gas burning at her insides as she struggled to neutralize it, but instead...

Instead she tasted only clean air.

How long had it been since she last tasted clean air?

With a groan and some effort she pushed herself upright, rubbing her hands over herself. She felt... soft. Weak. What had that awful weapon done to her? The sensation of alien feelings only grew when she finally opened her vibrantly orange eyes. No... no this was wrong. This couldn't be right. She was one of those things. One of those soft, mewling, scurrying, poison-breathing things.

"What did it do to me!" she shrieked as she began tugging at her own pliable flesh. "What did that thing do to my beautiful body?"

In her hysterics the woman hadn't noticed Reelshka yet.

[Morty]

[The Forest]

Reelshka stops, cautiously, and the baby in her arms begins to cry, startled by the woman's shriek. The two spirit-shapes step forward to protect her. As the goblin woman tries to calm down her son, she says to the woman:

"Calm down. You're in no danger here."

[Rebonack]

[The Forest]

Then a voice.

A voice not at all her own.

If she had been thinking the strangeness of talking would have already struck her. There hadn't ever been a need to talk. She was legion. She had only her self and others. And communing with others was pointless. They weren't her. But, caught up as she was in the moment, the alien actions taken by her alien body seemed natural and she didn't think to question them.

She hissed through her teeth at the tiny, mewling thing that was glubbing at her. She had seen the humans up close before when she was small, when she was scattered across ten thousand bodies. But this creature wasn't a human. It was something altogether different. It was an unknown. And she knew well enough that the unknown was dangerous.

Quite in spite of the creature's insistence to the contrary.

It was strange that she understood it, but she didn't question this, either.

"There's always danger. Even if it's just the poisoned air eroding us from the inside," she said. It felt like the right thing to say, even if she couldn't feel the poison eating her anymore. "I'm human. And you aren't. Why?"

[Morty]

[The Forest]

"Because my father was a goblin, and my mother as well," Reelshka says, a bit tersely. Tuskfang doesn't seem interested in calming down. "How did you get here?"

[Rebonack]

[The Forest]

Mother and father.

She knows what those words mean, somehow, in a vague sense. Creatures that communed without being one. Things giving rise to more things. Discordant, without unity. Alone in themselves. She had tried to grasp the idea of absolute aloneness, the idea of a single voice railing against the uncaring Cosmos rather than a choir in harmony. But the idea was just so... alien. She imagined that they must be perpetually lonely without the fellowship of a vast self.

Maybe that's why they huddled together for protection.

They couldn't hold fellowship with themselves, so the held fellowship with others.

Wrong. Perverse. Alien. Unnatural.

And yet...

Wasn't that what she was doing even now, by speaking to this other?

"Banished. I was banished. And diminished. And..." she paused, looking over her own disgusting, soft flesh. She felt almost compelled to rip it off in hopes of finding something right under it. "And changed."

[Morty]

[The Forest]

Reelshka's expression softens a bit. Tuskfang, as if picking up his mother's mood, calms down somewhat. Looks like she was hurled into the Nexus rather violently, so she can be forgiven some less than friendly behaviour.

"I'm sorry. But if you need help adjusting to what happened to you, and I think you do, you might be in the right place."

[Rebonack]

[The Forest]

Being social with others hasn't ever been high on her list of priorities. Others are a source of danger. Or a source of food. Never a source of fellowship. Fellowship only came from herself. But... her self seems so quiet, now. She can still hear the choir, but it's dulled and muddled and blended together. Her voices sound more like a voice. And that disturbs her deeply.

"You did nothing wrong. You weren't the others that did this to me," she replies, her face contorting as if it hadn't the slightest idea how to properly represent the emotions roiling inside her. Help from an other... she should be shunning this, but again, she didn't question it. Not as much as she should have. Slowly she gathered herself to her feet, shaky and unsure. Her balance was all wrong. This body's shape had a few superficial resemblances to her own, but it was wrong. Alien. It felt sluggish and congealed, like a metastasized tumor that refused to heed her song of self. It moved when she willed it, but it didn't move as she willed it.

This frightened her.

Terrified her.

Would she be trapped in this body?

Would she be a prisoner as it rotted out from under her?

Would she simply... stop being?

"I feel wrong. This body is wrong. I want to be right again."

[Morty]

[The Forest]

"We'll see what we can do," Reelshka says patiently. "But this forest is no place to talk. Why don't you follow me?" Whoever this woman is, she needs help, and they might be able to provide it in the campsite. If she proves dangerous, the spirit charm ought to be able to keep her in check.

[Rebonack]

[The Forest ==> The Campsite]

She didn't look dangerous. Just confused and dismayed. And naked. That wasn't precluding any kind of weird magical powers, of course. One never knows with the Nexus...

After a moment's hesitation the woman began to follow. Because... forests were no place to talk? There were specific places to talk? This puzzled her. No doubt there were many rules for talking with others she didn't know about. After all, she hadn't ever done it before. As she walked she winced every now and again from stones or sticks poking her in the soles of her soft, fleshy feet. It was just another reminder of how wrong this frail body was.

A bubble of gnawing anxiety began welling up inside her. This body was so fragile, what if it were destroyed? There would be nothing left of her. As far as she knew she was the last fragment of herself in the vast, uncaring Cosmos. She would be gone. Extinct. The feeling of exposure and vulnerability grew all the more pronounced with each biting step.

She did her best to banish the rebellious thoughts and focus on something else.

"That other," she began, pointing at the small mewling thing the larger other thing was carrying. "Did you make her with... the help of another? She's only half-you?"

[Morty]

[The Forest ==> The Campsite]

"He," Reelshka corrects gently. "But yes. This is my son, and I "made" him with the help of his father," she explains with a slight smile. Made him, indeed. "But I haven't even introduced myself. I'm Reelshka. Do you have a name?" An odd way of phrasing that, but at this point she suspects the strange woman doesn't remember her name, if she has one.

[Rebonack]

[The Forest ==> The Campsite]

Dimorphic sexes were another thing on a long list of things that she had trouble understanding. She understood though, in a vague and nebulous fashion, that two different others would come together to make a new other. It seemed better to her to just take an other's lifesong and use what verses of it one could. But maybe these things couldn't do that? Maybe that's why they were so congealed and calcified, so cut off from each other.

"He," she repeated the word aloud. "And... you couldn't just make more of yourself? You had to make an other?"

This was important.

If they had to partake in this perversity then that was somehow less offensive. Less an affront to nature. It was just a new nature that she had never encountered before finding herself displaced in time. The world changed. She knew that. She had watched it change for so long before falling into her long slumber.

Then a question. How was she to answer a question like that?

"I... am me. I never needed a name. But if I must fellowship with others then... I need one... yes?"

A name.

A thing that others would call her self. Something that was her and not any other. Something that made her unique in this alien, hostile world of things and poisoned air. Her voice, her lifesong, her choir, it rose up in her mind and briefly crystallized the muddled haze into clarity. A name. Her name.

"Choir. I am Choir."

[Morty]

[The Forest ==> The Campsite]

"Yes, we do. We have no other way of making more of us," Reelshka says, deciding not to add that she and Pathfinder rather enjoyed the first stages of Tuskfang's "creation". It's not really the time for education on this topic. "Choir it is, then. Let's see if someone can take a look at you." She directs her steps towards the infirmary.

[Rebonack]

[The Infirmary]

Well of course making more of one's self is pleasurable. Even if it's only half of one's self. Giving a species a carrot to encourage them to reproduce is a good way to make sure they don't go extinct.

Also, it might be a good idea to get her some clothing. Unless no one would mind her wandering around naked? That'll probably confuse her, too. But she has already reserved herself to the fact that there's a great deal about fellowshiping with others that she doesn't understand. Though in spite of this she watches everything curiously. She has, of course, seen the homes of tiny others before. In those times when her self was scattered across many smaller bodies she had seen them, devoured them, was killed by them. But they were others. She didn't fellowship with others.

Unlike now.

Would she be trapped like this, forced to make others that were only half her so that at least some part of her self would survive?

It was a horrifying idea.

"Will looking at me help to make me right again?" she asked. She curiously poked at a random object with a long, slender finger. They were so much more sensitive than those of her old body, but so much more fragile, too.

[Morty]

[The Infirmary]

"Let's hope so," Reelshka says as she looks around. "Anyone here?" she asks the infirmary at large.

[Recaiden]

[Infirmary]

"What is needed?"

A toy car of moderate size rolls through an interior doorway. It is covered in many sorts of tools and machinery: cameras, saws, robotic arms, a small vacuum cleaner, a laser pointer, and a set of speakers from which the voice comes. It turns and approaches Choir, and cameras swivel to inspect her.

[Rebonack]

[The Infirmary]

The woman Reelshka brought in isn't particularly remarkable aside from a somewhat odd ivory-ish skin tone. Aside from that she appears to be a normal human. She also appears to be naked. Someone might want to give her an outfit or something.

She looked at the tiny jeep.

It is rather tiny.

And covered with things.

A tiny jeep covered with things. That talks. Somehow.

Now she's confused. Her experience fellowshipping with others is fairly tentative and doesn't include talking tiny jeeps. After staring at the machine is silence for what felt like an awkward amount of time she finally decided to simply try repeating her problem to it. Maybe that would help somehow?

"This body is wrong. I want to be right again."

[Recaiden]

[Infirmary]

How interesting. The skin tone is odd, not matching any recorded variation, but minor (and major) cosmetic differences are not usual here. The speech pattern is not common Nexusian.

"Preliminary examinations suggest that the body is in working order. Do you perhaps mean that it is not your customary body?"

The jeep wheels away, then closer. One of its arms unfolds and produces a stethocsope, which is draped over a microphone and then held up towards Choir's chest to listen to her breathing.

"Reelshka, would you kindly fetch the patient some clothing, if she wishes to wear them after being examined?"

[Zefir]

[Infirmary]

Just befor Reelshka can react, there i Andy. The young man in his labcoat hand over some of the standart patient clothes you may know from hospital. He doesn't say something for now, just takes a seat and watches the little car doing his work.