odd little alucine

[affodell]

It's never previously occurred to Cayra to put a door across an alucine boundary, but now that she's encountered it in practice it makes sense. It makes it visually obvious and it lets you lock it if you want. This door wasn't locked, and it looked like it led to a public bathroom, not a bar, from the signage, so she's still confused. Still, it's a good idea. She twists open the glass vial pendant around her neck and bends her head to the little blue lily inside to make a note of it; as an afterthought she tries to send it off to her antheomancer-chatcircle, anything to have a decent conversation, but it doesn't go. Her flower doesn't look wilting, but she can put it back in the garden and get a fresher one for the vial later. At least her personal files look okay. She closes up the vial again, giving the flower a touch of antheomancy for its health, and finds a bathroom inside the bar that dominates this little alucine.

And then she emerges into the bar. It doesn't seem to be staffed. Or stocked. Why wasn't it locked?

Hello, anybody here?

with Flynn (ErinFlight)

with Harry (andaisq)

Due to some icon rearrangement errors, some of Flynn's tags appear with an incorrect icon. The correct face for this thread is Rosario Dawson's.

Comments

[midst_of_threads]

"Why were you traveling through this alucine?"

[affodell]

"I was on my way home. I went to visit a tephramancer who's very good at controlling her vice and got advice about becoming an automancer."

[midst_of_threads]

"Maybe I should try to find an older weaver to talk to, even if they're probably insane by now. I-"
Flynn pauses and looks around,
"The threads are acting strange. I haven't called them, but they're gathering."

[affodell]

"If... they start acting on their own... I can't necessarily stop them. Let's go in the room in case that helps contain them. But I don't see anything." Cayra opens the nearest door.

[midst_of_threads]

The threads close in before Cayra can take a single step.

They are elsewhere.

Humans minds were not built to comprehend this place. Before their minds impose a false order, there is an instant of pure, terrible chaos. That instant holds an eternity of horror and of a longing for something that can never quite be named.

The chaos vanishes, replaced with artificial sensation. Threads, thousands, billions, an infinite number, surround Cayra and Flynn. The two women have no form here, but their minds provide an illusion of location. They feel themselves to be in the center of a swarm.

Carya’s magic hangs around her, a thin shield against this place. Flynn has no such protection.

’We know you’

[affodell]

"Flynn what's going on."

[midst_of_threads]

"They're beautiful. I never realized how beautiful they were before. Can you see them?"

[affodell]

"I can see them but how pretty they are is not the thing to focus on right now!"

[midst_of_threads]

'You reached for us'

The threads speak not in words, but in bursts of memory and sensation. Here is Flynn reaching out to understand the threads. Here are the hundreds of weavers who did not.

[affodell]

"Can you understand me?" Cayra wonders softly.

[midst_of_threads]

'You are distant'
'Your magic separates you from us'

[affodell]

Cayra takes that as a yes, regardless. "Can you stop altering her?"

[midst_of_threads]

'We will not'
'She is becoming closer to us'

Flynn does not react to the conversation. Her eyes are vacant and the vices have almost completely overtaken her.

[affodell]

"She never wanted you to change her."

[midst_of_threads]

'We do not understand'

[affodell]

"She - had her own personality. Now it's different because you keep poking it. She asked me to stop her from doing things that she wouldn't have wanted to do, before, because she didn't know how to directly stop you."

[midst_of_threads]

'No'
'She is becoming like us'

[affodell]

"Why do you want her to be like you?"

[midst_of_threads]

Flynn turns her head towards Cayra though her eyes stay unfocused and distant, "The threads can not think. They are alive without a mind and so I must think for them."

[affodell]

"And what will they do with you?"

[midst_of_threads]

"Through me and the others they can know their own existence. They can desire and dream. They want this to never end."

[affodell]

"If they can just grab you like this without waiting for you to try to do weaving why isn't that what they usually do?"

[midst_of_threads]

'Too far away' the threads say through an image of a dark void full of distant lights. Some lights shine more brightly than others and the threads can reach out to those with great difficulty. When a light, a mind, uses the threads it is pulled closer in and the threads can reach it more easily.

Then, for the first time, one light reaches back towards the threads, trying to understand. The distance vanishes and they pull it, and bright light next to it, in.

[affodell]

"Why are the things you make so polite and - and nice?"

[midst_of_threads]

"They aren't always. At home there are monsters. But the threads love creating life."