therookery | crystal; fighting evil by ___

FORM: sending crystal
SENDER: Abella
RECIPIENT: the whole gremlin collection
NOTES: Likely discussion of a battle royale, potential discussion of possession/monstrosities.

Good evening, Riftwatch.

( There's the sound of wind in the background - it's not too hard to tell she's outside. Some might be able to guess she's up on the ramparts, exposed to the harsher winds lashing in from across the sea.

She isn't looking at the sea, though. Her gaze is on those two moons. If she lets her focus drift it's almost like that leering smile stretches across them, before she comes back to herself.

Despite all that, she sounds warm and upbeat. )

I've been thinking a lot about time. How it passes, specifically, in our worlds back home. I've tried to do some reading in the library and looking for older communications on the network, but there's so much and I don't really know where to start or what names to look for.

When I got here, I left a situation where myself and some others were on a countdown, and... I know it's naive to hope they'd arrive here too, when even one person getting here seems like it would require so many variables coming together. Getting multiple people from the same world would be remote, let alone ones that know each other.

( Unless there's some factor about that first person that would be shared by people they know that might increase the likelihood? She sips the glorified vinegar masquerading as wine - sad new rifter budget, etc - and pushes logical enquiry out of her mind, for now. )

The point is that with how unlikely them coming here is, I'm stuck on how time works. I need to at least try to figure out if it's been weeks for them, or if maybe a month here is just a half hour, back home.

( Or something. Anything, really. )

If anyone knows, I'd really appreciate it.

( Abella tries to inject a little upbeat energy in at the end, like it can mask all the worry and everything else. )

Unless anyone else has turned up talking about a real jerk of a moon. If that sounds familiar, send them my way.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

How does time work? Simply put: unreliably. Nobody knows.

There doesn’t seem to be a correlation between how fast or slow it passes, or doesn’t. The former Provost Stark and I were from the same world, and he originally came from a time several years before mine — but it’s not like he got pulled into a rift to Thedas and vanished one day. He was still around, in my experience of the world. Indications are that life and existence goes on in some form; there might still be another you, back where you came from.

( chiming in here, specifically, to support this point: )

I've reason to think so. I arrived in Thedas at a certain point in my life; during the course of my time here, I eventually experienced ... an extreme acquisition of memories, from a life that had continued without me. I remember experiences that my body has not been through. They were confirmed, in a manner of speaking, by the eventual arrival of someone who I knew through those memories, at an age and time impossible to align with my own.

( It’s not a negative reflection on Petrana; the doctor’s message hit Abella so hard that she took a moment to vomit over the ramparts.

Mercifully, this was not recorded. The only potential indication is that she sounds worse for wear. )

This would be so fascinating if it wasn’t so fucked up.

( She swooshes some of the vinegar-wine in her mouth and spits it out. That is audible over the crystal. )

Who arrived here? If it’s, uh, okay to ask.

My younger daughter. She arrived a woman grown, from a future no version of myself will know; I remember her birth, her early childhood, but I, physically, never experienced it.

She is and is not my own; I am and am not the woman who mothered her. If I had not been certain, already, of the truth of those memories, ( a nightmare she might have convinced herself had been no more than that, ) then for her to exist at all would have proven them.

The fade is a thing that is touched, typically, by minds and not hands. We have— dreamed ourselves into being. A path diverged.

Edited 2024-08-20 00:39 (UTC)

( Unfortunately for Abella, for Petrana, for anyone who encounters this audio, this time the crystal does catch the vomit sounds. It’s over the ramparts and onto the rocks, so at least there’s no victims beyond the audio (and Abella herself).

She’s leaning against the cold stone, gasping for breath. Looking to the crystal wrapped in a white-knuckle grip, she makes an unhappy sound. )

I’m sorry.

( That was gross, and she rinses her mouth with the bad wine again. )

That shouldn’t have been the final straw, I don’t know what about that made it so much worse.

Alll-Mer, what a mess. ( Not the walkway or her clothing, at least. That’s a blessing. She’s talking about the revelation and her circumstances, though, so maybe not that much of a blessing. Cleaning up vomit would be a lot easier than processing all of this. )

You always hear that “a dream come true” is a good thing. This feels so huge and… it’s just a force of reality, now? But from dreams?

( petrana sets her crystal down until it sounds like speaking, again, presuming that abella would enjoy the audience as little as she wishes to listen.

if she seems cold, it's by choice; a self-protective armour. the dispassionate recounting of things immense, emotional: she is little willing to discuss them, certainly publicly, any other way. it is useful to volunteer the information. it is not a conversation she is equipped to have in a way other than offering information. )

That is the nature of the fade. It is, in essence, irrelevant how time functions: it seems, based on the experiences we have documented here, that in a very real sense you never left your world.

( In this instance, the steadiness is vastly preferable. An accompaniment to the cold stone wall and brisk breeze in helping her regulate herself, settle her breathing.

A caressing soul, ever striving for connection and so often feeling too much. This was grounding. )

This isn’t my first time getting dragged into a mess by a dream. I— I wonder if that might have been not-really-me, either.

( Quiet, a few moments, just breathing. )

How do you cope with it?

It is not the same for me as it is for you.

( she says it gently, but it is a closed door. )

What has been of use to me will not aid you.

( As much as she can logically recognise the gentleness in how the boundary is set, appreciated the need for a boundary, she’d be lying if she said it wasn’t that bit painful to recognise. Not because of the boundary, and only because she so wants to find something to help her navigate this.

Then again, maybe it’s her own kind of answer. Dignity, poise, control. Helping, operating with compassion, but not allowing despair the chance to get purchase.

Not that Abella knows this person. She could be totally off mark. )

This is why I like engineering. There’s rules and formulas. If you stick to the formula, it follows a logical course.

( There’s no manual for troubleshooting this. She has a diagnosis for the root cause, and that’s just made it more difficult. )

There’s two of me?

( She feels a sudden spike of fear. )

There are doppelgangers, at home, what if— what if they sensed the change? If one of those took my place, instead, she could hurt them.

I don’t know if this is more or less distressing to you, but I do feel fairly confident in saying it would be you. Genuinely, properly you; not a doppelganger, not some nefarious clone, not an imposter. Tony Stark was still himself, all those years at home.

( If anything, they’re the copies here in Thedas, but. He’ll avoid triggering that particular existential crisis if he can. )

( she was on the verge of an existential crisis during Termina, this is a whole new level. )

Can you tell me about the Tony Stark you knew at home, and the one you knew here? Did they… grow and change in the same ways?

We’re getting into nature versus nurture debates at that point. Why do you ask? Still worried that there’s some fundamental difference, some core replacement which occurred?

crystal; fighting evil by ____light

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