therookery | crystal; fighting evil by ___

Entry tags:

crystal; fighting evil by ____light

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.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Hey, so. I've got some relevant facts, and I have some stuff I can't prove but that's supported by observation. You want both or just the former?

[Her tone is quiet, sympathetic but not condescending. It's not like she can't relate.]

I’ll take both. I appreciate the transparency.

( They’re both science people. It’s comforting to have that commonality and the point of reference, right now.

She has another sip of the wine and kisses her teeth. It’s bad.
And the Provost sounds sympathetic. That might also be bad. )

Am I going to wish I’d found better wine, by the end of this?

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.

Maybe. Dunno what your tolerance for the existential is.

So to start with the fact part. I've had people I know come and go, here. None of our timelines matched exactly. A couple from my future, but longer in the future than the time I'd experienced passing here. One from a little way back in what was past for me. [She exhales.] I've been here twice, and remember both times, but we have rifters — who appear a second time with no memory of being here before. For me, it felt like about a year passed between the first time I came, and the second, in my home world; it had been longer than that in Thedas. And we have rifters who don't vanish, but receive new memories of home. The amount of memory, as far as I've been told, doesn't correspond in any particular way to how long they've been in Thedas.

So I think it's safe to say there's no reliable link between the time you experience here and what's happening where you're from. I'm sorry, that's got to be a bit frustrating. First time I was here, I was also under the gun for a time-sensitive problem at home and I know that can eat at you.

( There’s a long pause. Predictable enough, she might thing, but she’s wiping away the tears that had spilled down her cheeks with the heel of her hand.

She feels a wave of nausea settle cold and heavy in her gut. )

Fuck.

( It’s possible that she covered that she’s crying well enough, although it’s obvious she’s upset. )

What was your time-sensitive problem?

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.

( 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)

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. )

( 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?

( 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?

( 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.

[Whether not Cosima has clocked that Abella is crying, there's still clearly sympathy in her tone.]

Um, first time I was here, I'd been working on a cure for a terminal genetic illness. Here in Thedas, spirit healing was keeping my condition stable, but I wasn't the only member of my family with it and spirit healing isn't, uh, a thing where I'm from.

[She doesn't know enough about Abella's world to know if there's any kind of magic there, but it's not important to press for now.]

Came back cured, the second time. I remember finding the cure, at home, too. I'd be lying if I said that wasn't a major relief.

[Even with what she knows, and what she suspects ... she still believes there's a world where her sisters exist and where they have a cure now. It matters.]

( 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. )

That’s right, you mentioned it before.

( She should have remembered. She isn’t even sure what spirit healing is, yet, or at least can’t remember right now. That’s a tangent she’ll step over for now, as much for the sake of her own strained mental alacrity as for Cosima’s patience. )

Do you have any memory of the times between you being here? I mean, not of home, but of… existing separate from that? Someone else said we’re like a separate form of ourselves that’s been dreamed into being, so… do you remember?

[ ness has no help to offer as far as timeline issues, but— ]

Do you need cleaning? I can help.

[ you know. the vomit. ]

You should try and forget your life before this.

Oh.

( This is not the most dignified she’s ever felt. )

It’s really just the outside of the curtain wall. In the dark with this wind, it’s not worth it.

( Safety brain! And yet. )

I don’t suppose you have any mouthwash?

Edited 2024-08-20 02:53 (UTC)

[ opens mouth. closes mouth. thinks about it a little more whille nina looks at what prestidigitation can do. ]

Not mouthwash, no. Are you squeamish about magic?

( You know, it’s a slap in the face. That doesn’t meant she can’t appreciate the candour.

It actually gets a quiet laugh out of her. )

I think I’ll need some time to come to grips with that suggestion.

( Hey, she’s been asking what people do to cope. And… someone told her. )

Is that what you’ve done? I mean… all the things from before are what’ve made us who we are.

Not if you aren’t going to use it to try to pull my arms off or set me on fire. That kind of stuff really hurts.

[ what. the fuck. ]

I was just going to say I might be able to magic your teeth clean, is all. I haven't tried, but it could work, I think.

No, not at first. But it makes it easier. And maybe forget's not the right word. But the more time you spend wondering what the people you left behind are doing or how much time has passed for them, the harder it will be to accept that's not your life anymore.

( Things were real bad back home. Just really, really bad. )

I'm... interested.

( Curiosity about a cool thing is almost overriding how much she wants her mouth to stop feeling disgusting, even. )

Are there risks if it goes wrong?

There shouldn't be. It's just a cantrip, really, a little charm. it can't hurt anything. Worst thing it'll do is not work.

I use it to avoid having to do actual tedious cleaning. It's very useful.

That all makes a lot of sense. I just...

( she exhales. At a certain point it seems stupid to try to talk around it. )

we were in a very dangerous situation, with a very strict deadline. It's hard not to feel guilty that I get to be here and they don't.

'Cantrip.' I'm not familiar.

( A brief pause, and Abella chuckles quietly. )

It's making me think of 'caltrops', and those would definitely be risky to clean your teeth with. So long as it's not one of those, I'm game.

Life's not fair.

Besides, they don't know you're gone. But maybe one of them will come through a rift someday. You never know.

Cal—no!

[ she's trying to make a FRIEND why would she try to throw caltrops at your teeth!!! ]

It's a little spell, uses barely any effort. There are spells that draw on your energy reserves and tire you out and spells that you can do all day, like... running a long distance versus walking across a room. A cantrip is like walking.

Do you want to come to me or the other way around? Whichever's easier for you is fine by me.

That sounds very helpful, honestly.

Would you be alright coming here? I'm hoping to stay in the fresh air as long as I can.

( Typically she's eager to be the helper and go to people. With all the revelations, she's allowing herself the space and the cold. It's the closest she can feel to Oldegård.)

Certainly, I'll be there in a moment! Who should I be looking for?

[ the faint rustling noises coming through the crystal indicate ness is not waiting for an answer to get moving. ]

No. [Not unkind, but definitive.] In my subjective experience... I was home, came through a rift the first time, lived years in Thedas. Went to bed here one night. Then nothing at all until I'm coming through my second rift. It didn't feel like I'd been asleep, even. I don't know if your world has general anesthesia, but like that. As if I'd just been transported directly from a few years earlier to the year I came back through again, plus some new bonus memories from my home world.

I've not experienced it. Ether seems a miraculous discovery, though. The losses in the Second Great War would be even higher without it, that much seems certain.

( They aren't here to talk about science. It would be a welcome distraction, honestly. )

So... if you came back, it doesn't seem like rifters just stop existing when we disappear. And yet, if we disappear-- it sounds like electricity power on and off. It's still there, just not in use, so the bulbs don't light up.

I've done some studies with the Fade, though I'm still far from an expert. I want to be clear that I'm moving into theory, here, a bit. But I know I'm not the only one who thinks the most likely thing is that the Fade touches people's minds. Not only in Thedas, but in other worlds. Independent of chronology, clearly. And your original self is still where you were.

People in Thedas have reported encountering people who have died, in the Fade. Some cultures here think the Fade is a place souls move through on their way to some other afterlife. Other think they stay there. Evidence suggests to me that, at least as a rifter, my memories of my time in Thedas before lingered in the Fade somehow. So this second time, it drew not only my memories from home, but also from my first time in Thedas. That said, I suspect my body ... I don't think it's continuous. Haven't found a good way to test it, but I vanished last time. And I came back well, even though in Thedas I hadn't been cured of the disease I cured at home.

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?

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