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[longwillows]

reach out?

the smell of fresh water in dry desert air. the feeling of cautious curiosity. a place as dangerous as it is resplendent.

c

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post-mirrorselves | cracks a bottle over your inbox

[pointedlook]

[ His walk back to the brownstone he shared with Freddie and Sharon ends up mostly uneventful. The moon above still shone an eerie crimson, the odd shuffle-walk of Hosts echoing off the walls of alleys. But, he doesn't catch a single glimpse of his reflection the entire way. There are moments, of course, where he feels the shift of it in the shadows; it doesn't make an appearance and seems quieter in a way it hadn't before.

And while he doesn't think it's over, exactly, he does feel lighter than he has in some time.

So, he had turned down Kalmiya's worried request for him to stick close by–his emotions had already been a jumble and even if he believed she'd be sturdy enough to lean on, he'd needed space to clear his head. To review how everything had gone down and sort through it all. In the quiet of the apartment, it's easy to do just that, the mental exercise of categorizing how he felt back into the boxes they belonged in. At some point, he drops off to sleep, the past few weeks all catching up at once.

What he failed to account for, of course, is that he hasn't had a dose of Somnacin in nearly two months. Plenty of time for his body to flush the aftereffects; natural dreams creep back in, something he hasn't experienced in years.

It means he isn't ready for the distorted memory of the Proclus job to dredge itself up, the embrace of sleep giving way to the image of a hallway, wood stained in a rich, dark color, the lines along the walls imitating the dividers found on shoji screens. Overhead, the lights give off a gold-yellow glow, the glass and metal shaped like traditional Japanese lanterns. All the lighting is turned down low–shadowy, intimate.

He passes a side table with a jade vase containing a single arch of an orchid stem in it and hooks two fingers into the carved handhold on the sliding door to his room. Once he steps in, the lights slowly flare on, stopping at a dim but see-able brightness. Crossing the room, he steps out onto the small balcony, hands tightly curled around the railing as he stares sightlessly into the churning water below, reviewing how the rest of the job would go. Cobb should be rappelling down the side of the building already, where he'll head in through the kitchens to make his way back up to the dining room with the safe.

Behind him, he hears the softest click of a heel on the lacquered floor and before he has a chance to turn, a lotion-soft hand curves over his mouth.

"Dear Arthur, it's such a shame to meet you like this," Mal purrs by his ear, the cold muzzle of her gun nestled at the small of his back. Turning slightly, he can see her out of the corner of his eye; her reddish-brown curls are perfect, the blue of her eyes is empty, malevolent. She gives him a knife thin smile and nudges him forward with the gun. When he looks down, the rail has disappeared, the sharp toes of his dress shoes jutting over the edge of the balcony floor. His pulse spikes when he sees the jagged rocks below that make up the shoreline, the crash of night-blackened waves against them.

"About ten stories, I think," she comments, peeking over the ledge. "Do give Dom my regards, won't you?"

Her query is whispered, pressed to his cheek like a goodbye kiss before she lets him go, his footing giving way and the wind rushing past his face. Momentum has him turning and his last view is Mal, darkly beautiful as he falls and falls and–

–jerks awake, a cold sweat covering every inch of him. Throwing the blankets off, he presses his face into his hands and curls in on himself, the hammer of his pulse making him tremble all over. Without even meaning to, he tugs on the corded familiarity of his tether with Kalmiya, the solid warmth of it keeping him from falling to pieces. ]

🍾🍾🍾

[longwillows]

[Most of Kalmiya's dreams are those lost in the space between sleep and waking. The colorful chaos of the mind sorting whatever it's been given into wherever it needs to go, with no conscious memory of the process on Kalmiya's part. Most nights are functionally dreamless, for all she retains of them in the morning.

This means there's more than enough room for something else—more active, more troubling—to assert itself into the activity of her subconscious. One more thing to process, one more thing to put away. Though its source is unclear, that doesn't matter. Once her mind has it, it latches on as if it's her own.

And suddenly she's somewhere else. Someone else.

At first there's no recognition of anything strange. They're in the middle of a job and there are a lot of moving parts to keep track of, so she takes a moment to take stock of them, meticulous as always. This place she's never been (she hasn't, has she?) is exactly as expected, and the other players are in motion.

What takes her out of it, heralded by the classically deadly tap of approaching high heels, is the hand that clasps over her mouth—no, not her mouth. Because if this were her, she could get out. As easily as breathing, she could disappear from any deadly grasp like a shimmering specter; even in dreams, led by instinct, all she ever does is run. But she doesn't, and the voice—

Dear Arthur, it says. Kalmiya feels her heart, her own heart, drop into her stomach. There's too little context to understand what she's seeing and too little control over her own dreams to do anything but play the idle observer on this ride through Arthur's pain, sculpted into its current form by both memory and fearful imagination. She recognizes the woman, though. It would be hard not to now. She sits in it from Arthur's perspective, her own conscious feeling like it's beating against a stone wall, as his dead best friend sends him straight into the hungry teeth of the rocky shore.

She can't step in. She can't stop it. But as Arthur teeters over the edge and succumbs to gravity's inevitable pull, there is the distinct sense that someone reaches out, some invisible force stretching towards him just a fraction of a second too late, and—

What Kalmiya grabs onto is not the hand of her dear falling friend, but the other end of their Tether, electrified by the shock and panic of Arthur's sudden awakening. She holds tightly to it even as her own heart races and she shivers at the phantom clamminess of her dear Tether's cold sweat. The dream has woken her abruptly too, so it takes her a beat to find her own body and mind outside of the connection, deep breaths anchoring her bit by bit to her own form. Even in reorienting her being, she doesn't let go of the cord held taut between their hearts.

Once she finds some semblance of steadiness, her voice comes with clear concern and breathless insistence across the Murmur, accompanied by the solid feeling of weight settling next to him on the bed. Not close enough to touch, but close enough to let him feel her presence, bringing with it the faraway scent of guava and jasmine.] Arthur—?

I'm here. You're here. It was just a dream.

[pointedlook]

[ Sick and shaking, his breathing is shallow, the taste of panic lodged in the back of his throat. There's a change in weight that he feels aware of, the familiar impression of Kalmiya's perfume soaking into his lungs with every sharp inhale. For a few moments, he lets himself tilt in her direction across the tether, focuses on taking deeper lungfuls of sweet floral and fruit. Out of the tether, he stares at the rumple of sheets; they look nothing like a rocky shoreline or the pitch dark pull of the ocean at night.

Between those two grounding senses, he can feel the chaotic spin of his thoughts start to slow.

And then immediately climb, as Kalmiya reassures him it was a dream. Letting out a wounded noise, he uncurls himself and reaches for the side table almost instinctively, fingers coming in contact with the red acrylic die. Hands still trembling, he's careful as he rolls it thrice in succession, the weighted plastic making a soft click sound against the tabletop. Three white pips stare back at him for each result and he lets out a breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding, eyes burning from the flood of emotion.

Releasing the die, he flops onto his pillow, pressing the heels of his palms against his closed eyes. ]

It's never just a dream. [ He finally says, a little hysterically. Like this, with the dream hovering so close in memory, with his eyes squeezed shut, he thinks he can still feel the warmth of Mal's palm against his cheek as she told him she missed him. That they needed to wake up. Blinked away tears on either side track down from the corners of his eyes towards his temples. Stupid, he was stupid for not listening to Kalmiya earlier. ]

You were right. I shouldn't have—can I—[ Swallowing, he tries again, thoughts jumbled and voice raw. ]—is that invite still open?

dream memory share w/a side of trauma & a glass of tl;dr

[merged]

[ It is not the first bite she's taken of the evening, nor will it be the last, and just like the others, it sends her mind reeling into memory, dragging Kalmiya with her.

The elevator doors slide open with a soft ding, spilling its dim light into the long hotel hallway. Something about it feels so old to the nine-year-old in her pale winter coat, her long dark hair hanging heavy past her waist. She moves forward, urged on by a stern woman at her side with tight lips that do nothing to hide the vicious words that could slip from them, her thin, bony fingers resting at her waist. One step behind, the girl's mother walks like a ghost, present only in body.

Others fill the corridor as they approach a massive painting on the wall. Everyone wears black, mourning garb. This is a funeral, but the dearly departed still stands among them, her purple school uniform peeking out from beneath her winter coat. The stern woman stops in front of the painting. It depicts a woman bound to a pyre, flames licking at her. She shoves the child forward in a sharp motion, slipping into the faux-sweet falsetto she always uses with her younger sister.

"You may go now, Dahlia. We fight the sin, not the sinner." There is something so awful in that voice, something holy and violent at once, that a sharp panic surges through the child.

The painting swings open, and in that instant, she understands. She turns to her mother, shouts for her, reaches, but Dahlia does nothing as her daughter is dragged away, hands hanging limply at her side.

The chamber beyond is crowded. Everyone wears the same black, but there's a feverishness here that feels like hunger. An excitement. No one even glances at the child with pity. In the center of the room, a brazier glares, far too large for any domestic purpose, its coals a fierce white-red. Countless candles stand in staggered rows, some melted down from repeated use. Chains dangle from the ceiling, suspending a circular metal seal rimmed with two sets of shackles.

A man with wide shoulders lifts the child without ceremony as the woman, their priestess, slips on a purple robe stitched in gold. He pins the girl to the cold seal and snaps the shackles around her wrists and ankles. She shrieks. She sobs. Her small body strains against unyielding metal, back arching.

The now-robed woman gestures, and the man guides the seal toward the brazier, the metal groaning as the heat touches it. The child's cries warp as the heat begins to lick at her, from thin and watery to wild, raw, and worn—already threatening to die on her. No one blinks. Over the burning and sobbing, the woman in robes speaks, shouting above the child's screams as the acrid scent of burning wool and hair fills the room.

"Weep not for the demon, once again locked in mortal battle!" Joy lights her face as she sweeps her arms wide, a priestess in her element, guiding her flock the way she believes God intended. "Praise God for our clarity!" she cries, and the flock repeats her in a choir that cannot drown out the child's ragged screams. "Praise the innocent for their sacrifice!"

The fire consumes more than just her clothing, her hair, and her flesh. It eats away at every good thought, every bad thought. Every desperate wish. Burns every word away except one: why.

When the pain shifts, when the agony turns to something distant, something inside her gives way. The feeling is like a cracking, like the brittle snap of bone. It is as if every thing she had been, every tenderness and every fear, splinters and pours out through the seams of her skull. The metal chain that holds the seal creaks as if in response, and then it snaps with a violent, metallic scream.

The seal swings. The brazier tilts. And the room erupts with chaos.

Finally, they scream.

It's not the first time this memory has replayed tonight, yet still she sits rigid, spine straight, her skin pale as spilled milk. The hand clutching her fork trembles until she sets it down with a soft clink. Her wide, bright-blue eyes lift to meet Kalmiya's. The tether between them thrums almost violently, carrying echoes of the memory—of fear, pain, and a terrible, simmering rage that always lingers just beneath her surface. ]

[longwillows]

[Kalmiya has fared well enough with the food and drink, at least in the sense that she has not yet been overwhelmed by memories that don't belong to her. She is good at reminding herself of where she is and who she is, even in circumstances as strange as these, even when her senses are assailed left and right by the psychic effects of the coerced consumption.

This, however, resonates with her in a way most unpleasant. It may be writ in a different style, but it is an undeniably familiar song. Its awful notes vibrate in the marrow of her bones and make the roots of her teeth ache, that horrible discordant hymn of zealotry—of faith turned to delusion and violence, pointless bloodletting as worship for forces unseen and uncaring.

It is painful enough in its basic rhythm. The melody overlaid, the sense of being this child, is in agonizing harmony with so many of her own memories. In no space is it identical—there is a malice to this cruelty that sets it apart from Kalmiya's own song—but every cry of fear, every horrible lick of flame, every hot lash of rage is felt as if it is her own, and it is not only by the nature of the tether or the curse of the food.

Sweat is dripping down the sides of her face by the time the memory passes, her own eyes wide in the whelm of the trance. Her chest feels hot in a way too familiar and yet far away, a holy spark snuffed by Sleep's reach in the waking world—one she hasn't had to fear catching for months now, but to which she reacts by second nature. It's different from the raw chemical reality of fire; there is something profound about this heat, pure energy that does not conflagrate but burns nonetheless where it blooms behind her ribs and at her end of the thrumming tether.

She meets Sharon's gaze as if pulled by gravity, stark white light flickering faintly in the folds of her irises. The boundary where her own pain ends and Sharon's begins has been lost to her perception, though it doesn't matter in this moment where they are both at risk of burning.

Instinctively she reaches for the hand which has discarded the fork. Curls her fingers over the gap between thumb and index finger until their palms are pressed together. Too cognizant of the clamminess that meets the unnatural heat beneath her own skin, Kalmiya holds on tight as she keeps her eyes locked on Sharon's. She says nothing, but it drifts along the tether in echo of the action that accompanies it:

Breathe. In, hold, and out. In, hold, and out, in a steadiness borne of years of managing this exact pain. This unbearable, primal anger.]

[merged]

[ Her heart pounds like an ancient drum, so loud the din of the banquet fades beneath it. Heat crawls up her neck, blooming across her cheeks and ears, and once again she silently thanks the mask for hiding most of her expression.

She doesn't return the hold right away, but she doesn't pull back either. Sharon sits rooted in her seat, unable to look anywhere else. It's only that quiet reminder thrumming along their tether that helps her drag in a breath. It takes a single beat for her to match Kalmiya's rhythm. In, hold, and out. Hot tears slip down her face, skirting the edges of her mask before pattering onto the table. In, hold, and out. Her hand finally moves, fingers curling around Kalmiya's with a near frantic kind of need, clinging to the steadiness offered.

She recognizes the echo of Kalmiya's emotions rising through their connection, like the tether between them unfurled into something vast and exposed. In, hold, and out. And yet, no matter what Kalmiya endured beneath the heel of zealotry, the last thing Sharon ever wanted was to bury her beneath even more nightmares. Some things were never meant to be held in the mind at all, and burning like that is one of them. ]

I'm sorry. [ She forces the words out, voice thin and trembling, lips pressed so tightly together that the color drains from them. In, hold, and out. She's fighting to shove everything back into its box—the fear, the shame, the low simmering rage, and the dark, curling smoke that still clings to the memory as if it had happened merely hours ago instead of decades. ]

Sometime through October after their Tether is reestablished

[sculptedash]

[It's vague and hard to make out but with some effort a voice can heard whispering across tethered connection between Kalmiya and Ash. It's a low gravely voice that certainly isn't something Ash could mimic.]

I am shadow cast and the light beyond. Your very breath and the choices you make are my gifts...

for (former) Tethers

[longwillows]

[It comes within the day of waking from the dream (at least, to those who have not already found some communication with her one way or another.) Not immediately, though. She needs time to collect herself before she can search the Murmur for the threads of those she recognizes, a task much more difficult when all she has to work with is snapped ends and searing loneliness where her tethers used to be.

It's not exactly a text message, but it's quite different from how Kalmiya usually conducts conversation over the Murmur. It's a more distant permutation of her voice—the way one might imagine it as they read a letter or note she wrote, not wrong, but a few steps removed from pure reality.]

hey
are you guys all right?
sorry if you felt any of that
if you didn't feel much then there's no need to worry. i just


made Sleep a little mad at me! but i'm not dead so it could be a lot worse

[The distance afforded to this message also means it's kept far away from any of the emotions associated with it.]

[dethangel]

[Of course Kalmiya is the first person Toki's going to contact when he gets his shit together. She's one of his Tethers, one of his best friends here, and even if he can't feel the Tether anymore, he doesn't care. It counts.

So he's a little surprised when he reaches out for Kalmiya and she's already there.]

Oh, fuck, I was just about to call you! What... what was all that? Sleep did that? [Like he'd suspected, underneath it all.] Are you okay?

[Because she doesn't sound okay. She doesn't sound like much at all. And where she's avoiding emotions, he's not, concern and fear, lingering misery, and a white-hot rage simmering at the edges that he's not even sure of the specifics of.]

[longwillows]

[Oh, Toki. Her heart aches at the tremor of the connection, impossible not to feel even without a tether reinforcing the contact they've made through the Murmur. Though it's not subtle, it's strange how muted it feels now compared to before.

After a moment, the strange static padding in the connection ebbs. There's the sense of a door cracking open for a peek. And through the gap in the door, the slow but persistent bleed of the wound Sleep left in her being, the sickly flow of loneliness and fear, staunched only by the tentative restoration of a few tethers. She speaks directly to Toki, an uncharacteristic weariness keeping the usual bounce out of her voice.] I've been better, but I'll survive.

[She will. She always does.]

She punished me. For being a blight upon her garden.

[sculptedash]

[Ash had spent her first couple months here avoiding basically any attempts to tether. The ones she had gained had mostly been by accident, Kalmiya's had been the first one to form through an act that she knew would would create one.

While the experiences she had gained through them had mostly been positive, it left Ash worried that the other shoe was waiting to drop.

She hadn't expected that other shoe to be a the tether with Kalmiya of all people to snap.

When the message arrives she's a little surprised it comes the way that it does. It certainly seemed like the shoe that hadn't dropped was definitely on the other foot.

So for the moment she decides to meet Kalmiya where she's at and responds in a similar way. Except there's a sharp angry undercurrent that can be felt through the murmur. Hot and bubbling rage that her friend had been hurt.]

I think the better question is are you alright?

[longwillows]

[Like this, the trepidation and uncertainty that Kalmiya feels reaching out to Ash can be kept away from the easily-stained fabric of the Murmur. She adores Ash, but she can think of many ways that someone in her position could misunderstand what happened when their tether snapped. Ash's self-confidence, her faith in her relationships, are both so tentative. It would be easy to assume that Kalmiya had simply abandoned her, as so many others have.

But Kalmiya doesn't know. It seemed like some of the others had gotten glimpses or impressions of her exchanges with One and Sleep. She can't be sure how much Ash saw or how much she knows. And she hates the idea that her recklessness could have left Ash feeling abandoned yet again.

The anger would be cause for concern on its own, but alongside Ash's query, it releases some of the tension Kalmiya was holding about this exchange. More likely it's anger for her, and not at her.

Despite the distance she holds herself at from the Murmur, the subtle cooling sensation of relief trickles through.]

not particularly, to be truthful
that was the worst pain i've ever felt
but i'm quite tough. i'll heal

[aeviternitas]

[ The Forsaken's reply doesn't come immediately. The message finds him in dreams, the way some people swear they can recall entire conversations that happened while they were in a coma. When he wakes, he isn't sure he didn't just dream it, to the point he can almost imagine parchment in his hand, ink scrawled and long dried. He imagines her handwriting to be one of cheery, rounded loops, with something delicate and graceful in the tailing flourish of each word.

But he reaches for the thread of her message and finds it, and supposes perhaps he didn't imagine it, after all. But if he did— it is, perhaps, worth it to reach out regardless. He doesn't fault her for breaking tethers, but he gets the distinct sensation that isn't precisely what happened. His memory of it is strange: a sudden and abrupt void where something easy, joyful, and gently encouraging had been. He thinks there was something before, a moment of fear so brief he might have imagined it.

In the Murmur, he sits like a doll broken and left, forgotten, limbs limp and head bowed. A mire surrounds him, tugs at him, exhaustion so deep the word seems not enough. Even so, he answers her. The half-veil that connects him to the network between Vessels at least obscures most of the depth of the circles beneath his eyes, and the broken blood vessels that leave speckles like paint spatter across his cheeks. His words are a slow, hoarse scrape, barely above a whisper. ]

So breaking that connection... that was Sleep?

[longwillows]

[This is one that Kalmiya had not necessarily expected to be answered. Their moment of connection in the dreams was intimate—special to her, certainly, but she cannot claim any certainty that he feels the same way in retrospect. The circumstances of their coupling, while not extenuating, were admittedly unusual.

She is pleasantly surprised to receive a response, though the state he's in as his appearance is projected through the Murmur is less enthusing. While she knows he is not the only one ailing in the wake of the dream, that brings little relief.

There's a reluctance to connect more deeply and potentially subject him to further pain on her part, but it feels callous to speak so distantly when his response is so revealing. So after a moment, there is the sense of weight next to the Forsaken, and along the weave of the Murmur she can be seen sitting next to him, masked and unusually heavy in presence. Her shape is still humanlike, but the shadows play along her features in a way that leaves their details difficult to discern.

Her voice sounds further away than the impression of physical presence she has given. But it's truer than the degrees of removal she'd taken in her initial message—somber, sad.] Yes. To teach me a lesson.

I had many of them to break. [And every single one left a terrible pain once lost.]

[pointedlook]

[ When he wakes from the dream, the sour note of worry sticking to the back of his throat, he immediately goes to roll his totem, hands trembling even as the three white pips stare back at him in neat succession. With that out of the way, he takes a deep breath, feeling out along the tethers and getting an accounting.

Even without checking this way, though, he knows something's missing. Someone is missing—the rustle of a forest is silent, the sweet-floral scent he'd gotten used to is gone. Thinking back, he remembers the sear of pain, something that had felt like it burned off all his nerve endings at once. And then, nothing.

Pushing himself out of the chair he'd apparently fallen asleep in, he goes looking for Sharon, nearly running right into her in the adjoining hallway. ]

Kalmiya—I don't know if she's—[ Christ, get a grip. ]—I was gonna go check.

[ The invitation to come along is silent but there. He knows they're close. ]

[merged]

[ There's barely a heartbeat between waking and the moment Sharon realizes one of her tethers is just... gone. Severed. Not just that awful instant in the dream. The terror of it hits strange and sharp, and she doesn't waste time, boots shoved on without socks, coat thrown hastily over yesterday's crumpled outfit. She looks like hell, lip split, bruises crawling up her throat in ugly shades of blue and brown, but the pain is a blip in comparison to the fear.

Fear that only sharpens when she spots Arthur's expression. The moment her gaze lands on his, that fragile thread of hope she hadn't realized she was clinging to snaps. It's all over his face—he's reaching for the same tether, and he's coming up empty-handed. The realization guts her. Fuck, no. Please. Her voice fails her, but her wide, raw blue eyes speak for her, and then she's out the front door with bootlaces still trailing loose behind her. ]

[sorte]

[ aventurine doesn't respond initially. even seeing and hearing her explain to megumi doesn't make him reach out. Of course she can't tell, she can't figure out without their connections what he's thinking or feeling. He never asks her if she's all right, never even gives a hint of his presence (but she will feel once or twice, a bubble in the brook in response to her distance and her plights, a pain and sting of fear and sense of abandonment, of betrayal and confusion, and of misplaced anger and bitterness.) It isn't even easy to tell if it's directed at her or anyone else. That would at least give it some sense rather than feeling like an oozing blistering pool speaking slowly across the ground to consume everything in it's wake.

But give it another day or two and, sometime during sundowning on the second or third day since they woke from that nightmare, she'll feel a brush against her shoulder, like a little bird coming to land with a reply to letter that by now might have been expected to go forever unanswered. ]

well, look at you, warrior queen, ruffling the feathers of the unflappable reigning empress.

was it worth it? or are we having regrets?

[ the 'we' is emphasized. ]

[longwillows]

[Kalmiya likes Aventurine. But he holds his cards close to his chest—which, truthfully, is part of the reason she likes him. She respects the art of obfuscation and the stance that trust and vulnerability must be earned.

Still, it has left her in a bit of an ugly position in the wake of losing the tether he entrusted her with. However much or little he felt during the process, there are few contexts in which the loss could be for positive reasons. And she is not oblivious to the sticky sourness that occasionally oozes through the Murmur where she can feel it, of a color just familiar enough that she can tell the source is Aventurine.

If he's angry at her, she can't blame him. While she couldn't have foreseen the extent of the punishment, her recklessness damaged something precious given to her in a moment of mutual understanding.

Her answer is as if carried upon a breeze. Easy to brush off, were one so inclined, but transparent in substance—genuine despite how removed it is from the messy mire of Kalmiya's emotions.]

i regret that anyone else might have been hurt as a result of my actions
but i don't regret defying her. i learned a lot
and if it brings One closer to defying her too, then it was worth it

but i can't speak for everyone
so what do you think? do we have regrets?

["We," indeed.]

[vocalistyodels]

[Cooper doesn't reach out to anyone, it's not his way. Not in a long time that is. His waking from the dream is already unpleasant having been killed by that beast. He been blown up in the dream before with Jayce and yet that hadn't left the same feeling like this had.

Waking is a miserable affair and no doubt the effects will last for some time, but there's something else there too. Like something is missing, even if he doesn't quite know what. The answer comes later, a familiar feeling across the murmur, one he knew first before they tethered in the dream. That's what it was.]

Weren't sure if it was my untimely demise or something else, guess that explains it.

[Cooper's usual lilt is there in his voice, but he does sound more worn. No doubt Kalmiya understands the feeling in her own way.]

Poked the bear and the bear poked back did it, Sunshine? Got some guts messing with our kindly host.

[longwillows]

[Untimely demise. It seems like everyone who died in that dream woke up worse for wear in some way. Some distant part of her wants to ask after the matter, but it's true that she shares in the exhaustion, and she doesn't have the energy to examine those circumstances from a broader perspective right now.

It's a little hard to tell whether he finds her actions impressive or foolish. She's leaning impressive, judging by the nickname, but the fatigue blanketing the connection obscures the nuances, and Cooper wasn't exactly the easiest to get a deeper look at even in the short time they were tethered.

She gives him the courtesy of answering more directly, at least, rather than maintaining the distant approach of her initial message. While the usual playful bob of her voice is subdued with sadness, there's still a casual easiness to the way she answers.] She pissed me off. I don't kneel for anyone.

[A beat.] Well, not like that, anyway.

[deathstealer]

[ Though not a master of mind magic, Ranni had, indeed, felt the severing of one of her tethers. It had been very new, barely established, and yet the cutting of the cord had been... impactful.

It had provided her a first-hand account of what the severing of tethers would feel like; academically interesting, but unpleasant to experience. She had thought Kaylmiya dead, at least until her message comes through the Murmur.

Ever a fan of formal messaging, Ranni responds in kind. Her reply is tinged only the barest amount of winter's chill, reserved and unemotional. She assumes this is Kalmiya's current wish: to not experience or share in many emotions at this present moment. ]

I, too, spoke with her,
yet our fates were very different.

[ Sleep had welcomed her almost as a sister, had touched her with affection, had even braided her hair and spoke of her goals. Ranni had come to understand the god in a whole new light; still, she does not welcome these manipulations. ]

I am pleased to recieve news of thee;
I had thought thee dead.
To have made Sleep so angry as to sever your tethers--
was that thy goal?

[longwillows]

[Ranni's reception, though clinical, is welcome. Kalmiya would find no comfort in seeing the normally composed woman shaken by something like this. The emotional distance of its delivery does not give Kalmiya any pause in regards to the sincerity of the message; if Ranni says she's pleased to hear from her, then she has no reason to doubt that sentiment.

She is curious to know what Ranni spoke of with Sleep, but first, the matter at hand.]

no, i would never be so careless with something that precious
i might have acted differently if i had known the punishment would hurt others too
i didn't even intend to meet with her. i was only trying to connect with One
but she's more possessive of him than i realized

[So possessive that even something as simple as a dance was perceived as a threat. As a sign of blight to her garden, and the most precious bloom therein.]

[armwriostle]

[Imagine trying to settle into this place and you feel something and not understand why the hell you felt what you did???

Then you get contacted by someone out of the blue while you're trying to acclimate? It's already an exciting time for a guy, you know.]

Uh.
Not to be rude or anything, but...
Who is this?

And perhaps you can explain a little more?

somewhere in the first week of oct event idk

[pointedlook]

[ Their first week back in the shell of Manhattan has been–interesting. Arthur's no stranger to coming home after weeks and months of being away, which is the precise feeling he's been getting over the past few days. While Sleep's dream had been one night, seemingly, it had felt longer than that. A disorienting thing for him to experience without the influence of Somnacin running through his veins. So much of Sleep's dream had felt like being plugged into the PASIV and running a job, down to the escalating hostility of her ghost-like projections as he made more and more changes.

Except unlike dreamshare, things that happened in the dream could follow someone into the waking world. Like it did to Kalmiya, after her altercation with Sleep. If he focuses, he can still feel the sear of pain running rampant along his nerves, vibrating uncomfortably along his bones. She had been the first person he and Sharon had checked on, unsettled by the happenings in the dream alongside the gaping emptiness they'd both found upon waking.

Thankfully, she had been in one piece, physically. And seemed to be mostly herself, otherwise. The blend of dreaming and waking had unsettled him, though, especially since she hadn't been able to give an affirmative that would assuage his worries that she wasn't still dreaming.

Reflecting on all of that has brought him here, to Kalmiya's odd little apartment full of near-alien plants.

Currently, he's settled on the floor amidst a small pile of cushions, watching her daub paint onto a canvas board. She's sitting cross-legged on another set of cushions, a fold-up easel propped up in front of her, the wood end of a second paintbrush pressed between her lips like a cigarette holder. The way she works is unlike the last painter he'd observed–Eames, in his more permanent studio located in Florence. But, he supposes their reasons are different. Kalmiya is clearly driven by emotion, working it out on the blank white and filling in bold strokes, harsh texture, as raw as a fresh wound. Eames had been methodical, fine brushwork and glazes in layers, sometimes looking like he'd barely done anything at all. Hours later, he'd sweep a wash over the whole thing and the image would begin clicking together; a magician making a coin appear, optical magic made out of light and color.

Either way, it's fascinating to see what paints she chooses and where they get placed. Enough that he hasn't disturbed her all that much, content to watch as she translates her thoughts to the end of a brush. Eventually, she gets to the end of whatever she wanted to put on the canvas for now, leaning her weight back with an analytical kind of look. ]

Finally get that blue to cooperate?

[longwillows]

[It would likely be wiser to spend this time preparing for the danger that awaits wherever Two's fragment is hidden. She could be honing her martial prowess, experimenting with her shapeshifting, or trying to control her ability to phase through physical space. She could be doing any number of things that are more appropriate preparation for a mission, because it's not a question of whether she's going to go or not. She'll go because she needs to act—needs to fight—in whatever way she can. This world has not given her magic with which she can aid others in rebuilding. It has spoken to the violence in her heart and given it form. What else is she to do with that form if she wants to right this world and someday return home?

But her mind and heart have been ill at ease since her confrontation with Sleep. No matter how much she grasps for her tethers, they all feel too frail in her hands, set into the too-large recesses where the bonds initially grew. Some have recovered more than others. However, she's been reluctant to make wholehearted attempts at returning most of them to their former strength, knowing now the kind of profound intimacy she would be asking for—and the risk she'd be putting them all at again just by living in defiance of Sleep's claim.

It has left her feeling tumultuous. Uncertain. And she cannot hope to control her body if her mind runs so wild. So this is preparation in its own way, even if it feels trivial as she sits back from the canvas to appraise its whole.

It began with a single deep pit of black, so consistent and thick that the void became her canvas. Atop it, narrow trails of swirling gold, their whimsical curls broken wherever her touch became too light for the brush's tip. Then she ventured into the deep but rich darks in her palette, building in thin sweeps atop the black as if trying to find her way to the colors they're meant to be. Sitting in the hush with Arthur, hearing the faint mechanics of his physical form set against the ever-present thrum of life from the building's plants, she eventually found her way to quick blocky strokes of earthy green. Clusters of little globs of purple. A flat, unyielding expanse of dark cherry along one edge of the canvas. Little spatters from a brush laden in different colors, leaving no two specks the same hue as she flicked them sparsely into the black spaces that remained.

Truthfully, she had been working on something different when Arthur came calling, a series of violent and ragged things that lay on and around the desk in various states of completion, slashes of pitch and smears of red impasto as thick as viscera. They aren't hidden, as it wasn't a matter of discomfort to work on them in his presence. But she paints what she feels. And those feelings sit much further away when Arthur is near.

Hence the new canvas and the fussy blue she's been trying to unify everything with, strokes that soften the edges of each shape and set the whole piece somewhere between calmness and melancholy. She extracts the second brush from her mouth and sighs.] I think so. It's a lovely color, but it didn't take as well to reconstitution as some of the other paints.

[Difficult to work with. But its uneven graininess gives those edges a more transient quality in the end.]