aftr_stories | [MU] - DECEMBER STORYTELLING / MEMORY SHARE

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[MU] - DECEMBER STORYTELLING / MEMORY SHARE

Something is wrong.

This may not very well be obvious, at first. The Storyteller is not present to put forth yet another diatribe, informative or apologetic, and the backdrop of guttering flame and sandy campfire is as present as ever...albeit briefly.

Those who tell their stories will start to notice something...odd taking place. Indeed, no matter how they intend to begin their tale, the land of Mu will immediately start to warp to accommodate it, or something utterly unlike it, until storytellers and listeners alike may find themselves in an exact recreation of a seemingly random memory, in the most stark and painstaking of detail. There is no altering the memory, nor is there any preventing it once it's begun to play - you will simply have to witness memories that are not your own this go around.

Furthermore, stories that take place in worlds other than LifeAftr will be, frankly, inevitable. Those memories, too, will be recreated, to be relived by the teller and lived by the listener.

It is time, once more, for you to tell a story...with a slight twist! This is, in fact, our first player plot, as provided by Dragon! The initial setting will be familiar for oldcomers, and newcomers will recognize it from the introduction they received in their dreams.

Yet for this Storytelling only, people can imagine whatever stories they wish, from both their homes and their time on LifeAftr, as long as they don't mind the fact that others will be reliving those stories in the form of an impromptu memory share.

Even those who prefer not to voice their stories aloud are not safe this time around. If the memory is recalled in essence, Mu will shift to accommodate it in full.

There is, however, a benefit to this: those who venture memories to be relived will receive both a befuddled apology from the Storyteller, who will assert that this was most definitely not meant to happen (they're the Storyteller, not the Rememberer!), as well as a tired promise that the relived memories will be worth two offerings each, as if in compensation.

Not that it counts for much, probably.

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It's a really weird feeling to remember, not because it's technically maybe Lup's, at the moment, but just for the rareness of it: respect, for an adult. Not trust, at this point, but this was one of Taako's earliest inklings of what an adult could be. She's just an eccentric old elf lady with maybe a barely kept in check hoarding problem and gracefully eclectic speech patterns, that shouldn't strike him as something particularly aspirational, but there they are. This is the first time Taako really started to believe in the future, as something that might be different from what he's known so far. Not just being cared for, though that's its own novelty, but the idea that he could do this, might have this. Freedom and stability both at once, breathing room, an actual life. What a concept.

There are tears in his eyes, and wow, what a lot of self pitying crap, good ol' Taako, saddest about himself. But it's not all sad, is it? That really happened, and even when he forgot the specifics he didn't lose sight of--something. The potential for things to be other than they are. So why's remembering this make him wish his dumb hat were big enough to hide in more than he already is? He sniffs, and tries to make it sound haughty instead of grossly emotional. "What a little snitch."

Lup is transfixed too, fondness and just a little sadness mixing bittersweetly. She remembers her own budding optimism, a surety in the future and in herself that she doesn't think she knew before. Wanting to stay, for once, wanting to earn someone's pride, caring about someone's happiness, a cause outside of the tightly knit bubble of herself and her brother. She owes her aunt so much. And it's sad, for sure, because this didn't last, and isn't that just the story of her whole damn life. She's sad that they didn't get more than a couple of months with her. But there are no tears in her eyes, because Lup feels sure that she'd have been proud of them, and no moment of it was wasted.

And when she notices who's watching this beside her, she couldn't be more glad. She carelessly ducks under the barrier of his dumb hat to lean her head on his shoulder. There, now he can't escape. "Says the little thief." God, he's always been the worst. For both their sakes, she makes an effort to recall more, reaches for details she hasn't thought of in a century. The way their aunt's wrinkled face scrunched up in concentration when she let them in on the art of telling the doneness of a turkey by the smell and meat resistance alone. Little Taako's face is an adorable mirror of hers, eyes closed as he commits the smell to memory, while little Lup is busy watching the way the dropping fat is making the flames lunge upwards. It's not like they got to keep any pictures of her, so this is... it's a lot.

"Hey, do you remember that book she had, with the like, star charts and stuff? Did you play connect-the-dots with that, or was that on me?" She honestly doesn't know, but seeing all this is just sparking more and more inconsequential little moments buried in the passage of time. And maybe digging them up will help keep this going for a bit longer.

Taako is just as transfixed; escaping is the last thing on his mind, staring into a past which is heartbreakingly nostalgic and, like all pasts, unattainable. He drapes an arm around Lup's shoulders and squeezes, so he won't have to say anything to express a gratitude that is probably inexpressible even for people who aren't Taako. What would that even be like? Thank you for having a reservoir of un-fucked-with memories. Thbbbppt. This is probably the only unprompted good thing the Storyteller has ever done for him, and it was an accident.

"Trick question, it was both of us, obviously," he says, full of fond humour and without any hesitation or searching, now that he's had just a little help with the recollection. And, not gonna lie, it feels good to remember something she doesn't, for once. "Those were better constellations than the real ones anyway. No wonder we wound up at the Institute, we were a coupla lil prodigies."

If it's possible to feel any more joyful and glad and full of affection than this, wrapped up in a comfortable huddle with her brother and looking at some of the best times of her life, Lup can't imagine how. His addition, easy and prompt, helps too by like, a lot. She lets her gaze drift from the sight of her aunt for just a moment to glance up at his smile, curling an arm around his waist to squeeze him back.

"I know, right?" she snickers as she watches the turkey come out of the oven, surrounded by three sets of big eager eyes. "Can you imagine if she'd been there, seeing us up on that stage? Her kids the chief arcanists on a mission to the fucking stars?"

There's something...unnerving, but not wholly unpleasantly so? Just very foreign, perhaps? About being described as one of anyone's 'kids.' Even though that's definitely what he was, because that's how life works. It just doesn't feel like a label he's ever inhabited comfortably. It's weird. Sounds fake. But Lup saying it out loud helps it feel less so.

"Yeah, she'd have been real proud. Still would have said it was bullshit, but at least we were getting the recognition we deserved." Which is another weird concept, someone else thinking about what they deserve, but that's real and definitely not fake. "She wouldn't have thought it was bullshit by the end. It wasn't a vanity mission for long," he says, his rambling uncommonly sober. Lup absorbed more of her thoughts on doing pointless good just to be doing it than he ever did; pragmatism about the cost of a space program while people on the ground are broke as hell was more his inherited purview. Neither of these outlooks is very tenable on its own.

Oh boy she definitely wasn't afraid to speak her mind, that's another thing that stuck with Lup. She'd have really mixed that ceremony up, her own speech would've been tame by comparison, and there's a lump in her throat at the thought that feels like grief but so much fondness too.

But that is pretty fucking sobering for sure. They hadn't been on the ground when their original plane was consumed, but they've been around for enough apocalypses to know exactly how that went down. Lup is silent for a bit as she can't help considering it, the terror and helplessness spreading like wildfire across an entire planet. And all the seven of them could ever do in the end was run, just like they did on that first flight. It was probably for the best she wasn't there.

"We're gonna get them all back," she says, quietly but determined, and she squeezes him again though it's for her own comfort too. "All the planes that were lost." Not that that will bring their aunt back. The memory is starting to lose coherence and Lup tries her best to recall more details. "There was another book, I must have read it like a hundred times? About like, somebody who spent a couple years travelling the whole continent and all the weirdass people she met." Weird, how she's thinking about that now. She frowns a little. "Is that why you joined, though? Vanity?"

Oh no, absolutely not, or at least not entirely; Taako joined for so many, so very Taako reasons. Because why not, because Lup had her heart set on it, because he has to do something, up and coming arcanist like himself, there's probably a guidance counselor somewhere he owes it to, whatever. Mostly Lup, though, but he has sense enough not to say that. It's a little late to correct his younger self's lack of individualistic direction. And it's not like that hadn't turned out to be the correct course. Shit, what if he had developed a little more and gone into something else, that--that doesn't even. He refuses to think about it. Fuck all of that, up one side and down the other, in their aunt's words. He hopes none of that horror made it onto his face.

And anyway, that wasn't what he meant in the first place. Not his vanity; society's, as a whole? Or something like that. "Nah, like. We were all kind of full of it, gonna go to the stars in a big shiny ship, looks great on a front page but you know she'd have," he swallows, "a few suggestions on what should have been done with all that funding, you know she would have." Lup probably better so than he does--resources and scarcity he gets, but the humane element is still Lup's bag, did he inherit anything worthwhile? It's sad those planes got eaten, but he didn't think to comfort Lup about it, didn't think of it at all, even dancing around the specter of the Hunger as he had been. Hey actually, fuck that too. "I don't remember that book, what color was it?"

He's got a point. Like, a really good point. And she hadn't thought about that at all, but maybe she should have. Maybe she should've realized what their aunt would have had to say about it, that day on the stage, the way Taako does now. She shifts a little against his shoulder, like she's uncomfortable, even though she's anything but.

"I wanna say red? With like, silver lettering? Pretty big too. I don't think you were into it, though. Nah, you were always carrying around a lil purple one, right? That was a whole thing for a while there."

And then, because she feels like she needs to be honest, while the image of their aunt is disappearing for a second time, "I- I guess I just didn't think there was anybody worth worrying about, back on our old world?" Wow that sounds bad, and it's just wild to think about, knowing what she does now after a hundred years. "Like, I just-- I just wanted to see what else was out there. I thought there had to be more than what we were given." Pretty selfish, pretty-- he's right, she would've had something to say about it for sure.

She doesn't take her eyes off the fading woman and the two delighted children, grinning from comically huge ear to ear with full bellies and the happiness of a very good day.

Listen, now is not the time to call out any of Taako's security objects or other weird childhood hoarding and thieving habits, memory subject matter to the contrary. There's gotta be a statute of limitations less than a hundred years on that kind of business. Besides, it seems like maybe he's opened up a whole nother can of worms in their aunt's name, that maybe he needs to try and put a lid on.

"I mean, you weren't wrong," he says, and there's a coldness in it that isn't directed at her, still a little chilly towards a world that was more indifferent than anything else. Their aunt would have blew raspberries at the IPRE and had compassion for anyone and everyone on the world they wanted off of so badly, but understanding her values doesn't mean Taako has to share them a hundred percent.

"We did deserve more," he says fiercely, "And we did technically find it, I guess." That, he sounds less sure of, shrugging gently, not to shift her. "New one isn't so bad," he hazards, which is as close to wrestling with the idea of fate as he's going to get. Which is to say, not very. "Not this new one, I mean. Stank Island doesn't count."

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[MU] - DECEMBER STORYTELLING / MEMORY SHARE

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