week 1. | even in the great abyss, it's the year of the optimist !

[faa]

[ Freddie's voice comes across the Murmur as he dons his mask, its long black beak and brilliant feathers an isolated face of a Cedar Waxwing eclipsing his own, even if he doesn't recognize it as such. That voice, recognizable to the right audience as from New York but not the city they currently inhabit, naturally falls into the cadence of an in-flight announcement without his awareness of the way he defaults to the familiar. ]

Hey. For those who don't know me, I'm Freddie, I live on the Upper West Side. Before I was a pilot, I was actually in physics. ...I'm sure everyone's noticed the voids popping up around here. If any of you have fallen into them or seen inside of them, let me know what you found. Or any other observations, if anyone's gotten close to them. How they behave, how big they are, whether they carry sound, whether their size and placement are consistent. I'm not Einstein or anything but I want to try to gather what information I can. Thanks.

Comments

[merged]

Being inside them is nauseating. I walked into one on accident, and it felt like I was—shit, I don't know, being drained? By the time I managed to get out, I felt like I'd just pushed myself for days. The ground was weird and sticky, and there were these... things on the wall.

They remind me of something back home, actually—the... voids or whatever we're calling them. It's like we've gotten access to a separate layer of reality.

[faa]

[ Sharon's observations would be very useful for characterizing these things—but they're immediately eclipsed by something far more innate and emotional, a kneejerk reaction of sharp alarm that travels through the tether like a sudden jolt of electricity along a wire. ]

Jesus, are you okay? You didn't get hurt or anything?

[merged]

[ His alarm pulls something warm from her, as if she were placing her hand on the tether between them. ]

I'm okay, promise. It was mostly just exhausting and overwhelming, and it made me sick to my stomach. I don't think we should spend much time in these places if we can help it. God knows what'll happen if they close and a Vessel is still inside. [ She's inclined to believe they'd be trapped there. ]

[faa]

[ Freddie settles, if only somewhat, as she explains further; the silent assurance through the shared tether that she's fine does help with that. ]

Why do you say 'close'? Did you see that happen somewhere?

[ He supposes, theoretically, that if they're appearing sporadically, they could just as easily vanish like that. It's a chilling thought, just vanishing into a sinkhole in the middle of spacetime. ]

[merged]

Not see, but I know there was one around West 86th that wasn't there today. Bella seems to pick up on where they are before the lights even start to flicker. She gets weird, like she doesn't want to go forward. [ Her Nightmare, Belladonna, she means. ] Didn't have that issue today.

[faa]

Flower's been doing the same thing.

[ The mare, thank God, doesn't seem to be as skittish and unpredictable as some of the other horses he's seen and heard people talk about are, but he still isn't thrilled—isn't thrilled meaning is terrified—when her ears prick and her neck stiffens, in equal parts because of the prospective danger and because of what a massively tall fifteen-hundred-pound animal might do if it's afraid. He decided when he took his first fall, within a matter of hours of getting on a horse's back for the first time, that he'd had quite enough of riding for the rest of his life, but opting out of this doesn't really seem to be an option. ]

Animals know when there's danger, that's why they get to high ground before a tsunami. I'm inclined to listen. She doesn't really get worked up for no reason.

[merged]

These spooky things sure come in handy, don't they? [ Warm and affectionate. She's growing attached to Belladonna. ] They should be able to help us avoid them unless one opens up beneath our feet or something.

[faa]

They should. I don't know about Shadow, though. He doesn't react to a lot of that kind of stuff. Probably because it's just normal to him. We need to make sure he's closed into the stoop any time we're not out with him. I don't want him wandering around and falling into one of them and he's not great about listening to commands.

[ Probably on account of his brain mostly being fried. Oddly, Freddie's mostly endeared by the dog's strange behavior and cluelessness at this point. ]

[merged]

Have you gotten him to listen to any commands, Freddie? [ Teasingly amused. ]

[faa]

Well, he's— He understands when I want him to come onto the stoop so I can close the gate. He comes to me for a treat. It's not words but it's a command!

[ That the dog listens to maybe seventy percent of the time. At least he's no longer terrified of Freddie, more just a little reserved, and slightly moreso around Sharon. ]

And he barks when something's coming. Dogs back in the old days, that was all they were expected to do. You're applying modern standards to him. Look at him. He has brain fungus, Sharon. He's doing his best.

[merged]

[ The softest of clapping, teasing rather than cruelly mocking. Shadow has come a long way since Freddie first found him—and her—but even Sharon knows he'll never be... good. He's a Host. She dreads the moment Sleep triggers something in him.

Sharon won't hesitate to put Shadow down the very moment he attempts to take a chunk out of Freddie if she's around. ]

I don't know if he has much of a brain left; he might very well be all fungus up in there.

[faa]

I mean... It's probably 50-50. He has some thoughts, they're just not ones I understand. [ It's just... deafeningly loud mental television static. ] But he has, like, feelings. Impulses. I could tell he was afraid up on that roof. He knew enough to think I was going to hurt him.

[merged]

[ MM ]

And what does he feel now? Does he even like to be around us?

freddie lavoie: pissfingers apologist

[faa]

I mean— I wouldn't say like, but he feels safe around us. He understands who feeds him. [ But that makes it sound purely transactional, which it's not. ] He's loyal. He understands that he's with us. That's why he barks when he sees something. That instinct's still intact.

[merged]

[ Shadow feels safe with them, but Sharon isn't entirely certain she feels safe around Shadow. He's never bitten her, never gotten too aggressive, but facts are facts—Shadow's a Host. ]

Won't lie, I sometimes worry what'll happen if he... snaps. Goes all Cujo on us because of Sleep. [ He's loyal, but would that loyalty remain if Sleep were to wiggle in. Press upon those fungal parts of his brain. Turn him against Freddie. The thought has scared her more than once. ]

[faa]

[ It's a valid fear to have, and Freddie knows it—he still remembers, vividly, what happened with the blood moon, how quickly Shadow's docile and timid personality had pivoted into something almost rabid, an entirely different animal bent to Sleep's will like a puppet.

It had hurt, oddly. Even knowing what he knew about the dog's susceptibility to her going in. He'd felt betrayed. ...Rejected. ]

It's a fair worry. That's why he sleeps outside, right. Just in case. But I think he's more valuable to use than no dog at all. We can't constantly be looking out the window, so he keeps watch for us. And we know when she's going to... do something with Hosts. There's the blood moon. And I feel him change, through the tether. [ Beat. ] You have to know, Sharon, that I would never deliberately keep you in a dangerous situation. And if things do go south, I'm ready to do what it takes.

[merged]

[ He can feel when Shadow changes. That sends a shiver down her spine. ] I—I know, Freddie. [ She knows he'd never do it deliberately, and... ] Frankly, I'm more worried about you.

[ He adores Shadow. He loves that dog, despite its... issues. A loss like that could be a major blow to his mental health. ]

[faa]

You don't need to be. I promise.

[ He's not sure if he believes that when he says it, maybe because of the ambiguity of her worry. Interpreted in a very literal and immediate way, there's some risk that comes with associating with this animal at all, necessary to benefit from the reward of a watchdog. But isn't that the case with pretty much any guard dog? It's always rottweilers and pit bulls and shit you hear about attacking someone, the dogs that are good at guarding, not like, labradoodles. In this case, it's just Sleep's influence, not genetics—it's clear that he was a golden retriever, once upon a time, the kind of dog that, based on Freddie's limited knowledge of the different kinds of dogs, seems more likely to welcome strangers into a home and try to get them to play fetch than to guard the homestead.

But the collapse of society did something to him. It made him fearful, wary, his trust now something to be earned. And he trusts them and only them. Anything else is worth barking at now, and that is very useful with all of the other Hosts crawling around here, both animal and ex-human.

As for the other things, though... her worry is probably warranted. He can feel himself constantly teetering on the precipice of doing something again, every time he feels hungry when he logically knows he shouldn't, every time his mouth burns and itches with the craving for more food than he needs, every time he catches a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror and notes that the intermittent, wavering cessation of his prior habits hasn't done shit to get his weight under control, like he's just doomed to be like this forever now. Every time he sticks his finger in the morning and his fasting comes back humiliatingly, disgustingly high. There's danger there, and she's aware of it. ]

[potentialman]

I don't...remember where it was, that I stumbled into one.

[ Megumi's trying very hard to just sound normally bashful and not like "hello I cannot remember where my PTSD-induced breakdown took place." ]

But my abilities usually make it easy to see through darkness. It was still like being blinded, so I don't think that it's even that it's dark in the voids. It's so empty that light and darkness don't apply.

[faa]

[ A vacuum. That is priceless information, thank you, Megumi.

But, also, he's immediately concerned, just as he was when Sharon told him the same thing, and there's a sharp sting of alarm through the forming tether between them. ]

How are you feeling now? Okay?

[potentialman]

Okay now, yeah.

[ Or what normally passes for it. ]

But I'd say Sakurazuka-san's description is an excellent one. It felt like actively having the hope drained out of you.

[faa]

What about your energy? Did you feel any fatigue? Or was it just a psychological thing?

[potentialman]

I think so, but to be honest, the psychological thing kind of weighed out everything else. And...that may just be because it echoed past experiences.

So I don't think I'm in the strongest position to offer an objective assessment of the whole thing.

(private)

[faa]

Past experiences? Jesus.

[ It's a gentle probe, one that leaves room for Megumi to brush off or divert if he so chooses. But if he's interested in elaborating, explaining what he means by that, Freddie feels he's made it clear that the door is open and he's willing to hear it. ]

(private)

[potentialman]

[ It isn't something Megumi likes talking about, but he realizes it is also a bit of an elephant in the room -- the fact that he'd dropped off radar right around the time the last group of new arrivals showed up, a time when he's usually made a point of paying attention and trying to get information disseminated. Add that to the new scars when he'd finally reared his head again (most people had the tact not to ask, but he knows they're...a bit obvious), and he's pretty sure he's given off a vibe of "something Went Down" to the people in that zone between the ones who don't really know him enough to notice and the ones who know him well enough to be aware of the entire mess.

And dirty laundry does get aired out in this place unwillingly, sometimes, so maybe he should take the chance to get ahead of the narrative. ]

I was possessed. It...kind of felt like that did.

[faa]

Possessed, [ he echoes, taking a moment to process that. He doesn't doubt that it's still impossible in his own world, that the stories are simply the Catholic mind's attempt at being creative, conjuring up the scariest thing imaginable to it. Religious horror like that has always been more funny to him than scary.

But everyone here comes from a different world. Humans were kept as pets by aliens in the universe Ivan and Till came from, and there are others, like Sharon, whose worlds and lives were seemingly the same one he came here from until some critical point of divergence, like what happened in her town, what happened to her father. It's not impossible that Megumi is coming from a similar situation; if anything, that's just sort of what he assumes. The kid has been nothing but honest and understated until now; there's no reason to assume he would suddenly make shit up. ]

Like, by demons? Like, Catholic priest exorcism possession.

[potentialman]

We call them cursed spirits, and you need a sorcerer to exorcise them, not a priest. But it's that kind of general idea, yeah.

[ Their traditions are more in the vein of esoteric Buddhism. ]

[hallowedly]

Good morning! ( Seishirou, it's clearly not morning — ) I'm afraid they're not a particularly exemplary experience.

Cold, dark. But... cosmically. Not like a cave. There's no glimmer of light or hope anywhere. I'm afraid I'd already undertaken a considerable amount of effort in all instances, so this might be entirely coincidental — but I was wiped out, throughout.

[faa]

[ Seishirou's cheer is oddly discordant with the situation he's describing and the situation they're in, but Freddie's able to write it off as coping easily enough. There was plenty of laughing and cracking jokes in the various desert shitholes he was assigned to.

That's two people who have described a complete absence of light, and three who have described somatic effects. ]

What do you mean by 'wiped out'?

[hallowedly]

Like throwing up after a hard run and going back into the marathon.

[faa]

[ He says that like he's not talking to a fat person who very obviously is not running any marathons—something something experiences are not universal. But Freddie does, actually, know that feeling from basic training some ten years ago—and he does remember throwing up during one such run uphill in the Alabama heat, in addition to recalling by association the way his legs wobbled unsteadily beneath him the way they would later do moments before blacking out in his first month in Iraq, no longer able to support the weight of his six foot tall body even in its much leaner active duty state. God, that was horrible. He cringes a little imagining it again. ]

So fatigue? Nausea?

[hallowedly]

And complete mental lethargy. Yes.

[faa]

Did you feel disoriented with the lethargy? Was it hard to discern where you were in space? Or were you just tired? Sluggish?

[hallowedly]

It might be for animals, but I'm still a physician. When I say lethargic, I mean specifically that. And only that.

You're hoping to identify a pattern?

[faa]

I am. If we can characterize these things, it might give us a better idea of what, exactly, we have showing up here. And maybe how we got here. Right now, it's sounding an awful lot like a vaccum, or a black hole.

[ Beat. He pivots as Seishirou's initial comment finally registers: ]

Wait, you're a veterinarian?

[ Damn, people from all walks of life have ended up in this place. ]

[fatedfinality]

Don't they say that experience is the best teacher there is? Why not get out there and jump into one yourself and find out.

[faa]

Yeah, hard pass. I forgot my gym shoes.

[fatedfinality]

Oh, what a shame. I think I may have a pair you can borrow though if you're up for it.

[faa]

You happen to wear a men's 11, by chance?

wow hey thanks for never sending this dreamwidth???

[fatedfinality]

Well, wouldn't you know it! That's just my size.

[ It is not. He is a troll. ]