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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Immediately, Lup feels wrong in this memory. There's a faint buzzing bleeding from the undefined edges of it, something that's making her skin crawl, making her feel like she's being crowded out. She ignores it, of course, because fuck whatever's trying to get rid of her here. Though the scene hardly seems worth fighting for, it's bleak and bitter and lonely and she almost doesn't recognize it, if it weren't for the boy crouched resentfully by the campfire.

It sends a cold shiver down her spine. Her gaze shifts around almost fearfully, trying to spot the girl she knows was there too, but it's no use. There's no place for her here. Lup doesn't exist in this one. And this is all he had, for years. A whole past that was just this, colorless and hazy, half missing. Bare survival, nobody to share the work and the food and the laughs with, every meaningless blur of a person a threat with nobody at his back. A hollow void where a response to his words should be, so he has to laugh at his own joke. She's so horrified and so fucking angry all over again on his behalf. This isn't something anyone should have to live with, real or fake, and least of all Taako.

And it's still like this. This is still what his memories look like? She's been back for months, at his side every day, they've been reminiscing in the quiet hours of the night, maybe a little awkwardly at times but they've been working on it, dammit. What does she have to do, to earn her place here back? Something she shouldn't have to earn in the first place! She's real, and he knows, why isn't that fucking enough. It's not on him, she'll never blame him for it, but there are tears in her eyes anyway, for the lonely brother and the lost sister.

"That's, that's not what happened, Taako," she says and her voice is soft but she can't quite keep the hurt out of it. "I was there."

He really, really wishes she hadn't seen that. He knows he isn't being blamed, because that would be stupid, Lup's better than that because she's better than all of them, that's kind of her thing, but he ducks his head and pins his ears in guilt anyway. It's been such a recurring sore spot, though it's not like he's going to, like he's just gonna up and forget her again or something, it was never a leak in his mind so much as someone just gutting the plumbing wholesale. But the little missteps that show he's working from a damaged record still hurt and throw them out of sync and he hates it, bitterly and pointlessly.

"I know," he says, and his voice is just as soft because he's forcing it to be, even though part of him wants to wail instead, curled protectively around his own crossed arms. "This wasn't--I didn't pick this," in just, so many ways. He meets her eyes pleadingly. "I know you were there," he insists, but it's not her he has to convince.

Of course he knows, of course. It's, it's so fucking stupid to still get upset over this, like she's the one who got completely fucking screwed in all this. Well, she kinda did too, but in other ways. At least nobody ever just, ripped a huge chunk of who she was away without her even realizing it, an entire past rewritten so impossibly, so horrifically that even having the real memories back can't quite heal it. This is something that's never really gonna be okay and she hates it, deeply and helplessly, because she couldn't protect him from it.

And he looks so lost in all of it. Both the boy keeping to himself in a world where every single person is an enemy at worst or forgettable at best, and her brother standing in the incomplete mess of what's supposed to be his past. Maybe she can't change what happened while she was gone, but she can for damn sure change what's happening here. She looks at him, lips pressing together as she swallows her own pointless hurt, and then she smiles. "I was there, and I said..."

"They're gonna eat your dirt when we make it big!" the girl crows as she joins the memory balancing two armfuls of freshly washed bowls and plates. Just barely peeking over the stacks of her work, she shoots a suspicious glare the way of whoever had talked to Taako, then sets down her burden next to the pot and drapes over her brother's head to grab the spoon from him. "Lemme see that, did you put more cumin in it this time?"

Edited 2018-01-14 16:59 (UTC)

It's disorienting as all get out having someone tinker with his remembering of something in real time. He can't say it's not raising any wholly unnecessary warning flags. But hey, it's Lup. And besides, seeing more of this lost (because the past is always irretrievable, no voidfish required) existence, rough and at times outright grueling but never lonely... Well, it's so many things. Painfully nostalgic, and also just painful. But, a kind of nourishing. Taako can relax his defensive huddle and let the ache of tension ease out of his ears and shoulders.

He can smile at this scene, crooked and grateful, for how much he loves seeing the both of them this way. Knobbly and scabby and less than elegant, lean life exacerbated by bones they haven't grown into yet, zero inkling of the hundred-plus years of BULLSHIT to come. He doesn't let himself be warmed by it long, as it devolves into a well-worn argument about Lup's impulsiveness when it comes to seasoning, her tone-deafness when it comes to catering to your audience, nothing he feels compelled not to talk over, even if he nothing less than treasures it.

"Kind of a shaky start, but this is, when you think about it-- this is one of the rabbit's better fuckups, anyway? Which isn't saying that much. Y'know, if we could just run through more memories like this, maybe I wouldn't be so-- maybe it would. Help." He sighs, irritated by his own lingering unease with the subject of his split memories. "Probably gotta upgrade our package for that amenity. Wouldn't want to garbage up dreamland with all that mess anyway."

She's really fucking relieved she was able to shape the memory like this, like she still has a place here after all, can still reach him and make things better. That counts for a lot. And it's good to see her younger self at his side, where she belongs, where she's always been. Clambering over him trying to steal whatever cooking implement or ingredient they never had enough of, badgering him into new ideas and clever substitutions with her teasing because she knew, deep down, he was always gonna be the better cook. Not that she ever admitted that to anyone, even to herself, and the heated argument is testament to that.

As reassuring as it is to have taken back her place in his memories, it's even better to watch him relax, to see the fondness and remembering in his smile. Now he's at home in the recollection of their childhood, their thriving and growing in tandem, the heights they would end up pushing each other to made all the more amazing for these meager beginnings. Did he, in, in his other memories, did he do all of that on his own? Or did he never think to reach for higher ambitions than caravan cook, did he never realize how brilliant he could be? There's fury churning in her stomach at the thought, at the self-deprecation still fucking tainting his words, outrage clenching her fists and she has to force it down because there's no outlet for it here. She reaches up to entwine her fingers in his hair instead, fiddles with a strand of it at his temple like it was out of place and she's fixing it.

"Taako, it's okay, I swear." Like she didn't literally just make him feel like shit for the messed up memory herself, being hurt, letting him see it. She's got to do better than that. "There's nothing wrong with you, you're not-- not less because of it. Not less my brother, not less yourself. Okay?" Turns out there's kind of a lot of hair needs fixing and she keeps doing that, no matter how hard it is to see through the tears in her eyes. "I'm-- I'm not the same that I was either. But we still fit together. You can see that, right?"

Some of those statements are incredibly bold, but he is content not to argue, to let himself be comforted by her fussing at his hair, just the tiniest ear-flick of disagreement before both settle. It would be a stupid argument anyway, what does it even mean to be less yourself? That's not a thing. Philosophy is for the kind of people who buy books of aphorisms. If you're into that, he's got a broom to sell you, all parts recently replaced.

"'Course I can, dummy. How well do you think I'd be doing on this surprise vacay if you weren't here to do all the boring stuff, like networking and bird-murder? But look at us, we're crushing it." Goofs aside, he thinks he took that to heart? Then as now, he wouldn't have done so well without her, that's just the truth. He shouldn't think of it like remembering being a different person; he remembers being the same person but sorely weakened, like his legs were cut out from under him. "What do you mean, you're not the same?"

She's glad for the lack of argument on this one, for the reassurance that they're not really out of sync and that he knows it. She kinda maybe needed to hear him agree more than she thought. Though the example he's using for them depending on each other isn't really, that's not what she meant and also he's kinda selling himself short again? He did pretty dang well without her, without even remembering her, especially in the past year. Found his family again, retrieved the relics one after the other, kicked a whole bunch of asses. He'd probably crush it here, too.

Not that getting down about that would be at all in the spirit of the current mood, and she does manage to chuckle and smile at his goof. Rolling her eyes dramatically to blink the tears away also serves as a great cover for suddenly not really feeling like answering his question sincerely. "Oh that was-- obviously I was fuckin with you to get you to agree? I'm clearly still every bit as rad as I ever was." See, they're on a roll with the goofs here, it's all good. "And I think you'd do pretty well actually, doofus. I'm proud of you."

Taako narrows his eyes, but doesn't call her out on her 'goof' bullshit just yet. She did some penance in the form of saying a true thing--Lup IS radness eternal, thanks-- and it's not really in the immediate vibe of this convo to pursue it anyway, much as he enjoys the occasional loving callout. It's so rare to get to be the one holding the receipts.

So instead he lets some of that doubt uncoil, a very deliberate rejection of all the tension and unsurety in him, a conscious, unusually mindful decision to Just Stop for fuckin once in his life. Courtesy of Lup, his usual apotropaic for all those things, but still a victory nonetheless, right? They're both gonna Stop. Just like that first night on the beach. There's a million things here he takes issue with-- her deflection, what the absolute fuck he might have done to be proud of, etc-- But not right now. Is that an act of willpower or cowardice? Eh.

"Yeah, you're right. We're rad as hell, in any plane," he says this grudgingly, like he's losing an argument, or maybe lamenting their lot in life, being so goddamn cool and capable. But this is important, so he meets her eyes directly and works real hard on not saying some dumb shit instead of the real shit. "I guess what I was trying to say is that I'm...Look, that one got away from me, I wasn't fishing for, for some kind of pep talk. I meant thanks for fixing it, the memory. It helps."

Wow, can't believe she got away with that, hella nailed it. She mirrors the easing of his tension gladly, tries to let go of her own bullshit hangups and her simmering fury as much as possible. Looks like her reassurance finally stuck, he's finally letting her be proud of him for like, one minute, dang. They are crushing it, because they're both the best, just categorically, and individually. Together they're fuckin unstoppable.

But she can tell he's trying to say more than that, to just be... grateful, and her kinda fake smile softens with affection, becomes something real. "Good." She quits her fussing at his hair and lets her hand drop to this shoulder, turning back to the fading memory. Whatever dumb squabble is already forgotten, now the kids are huddling and chattering while they're stealing the best bits out of the soup before anyone notices and takes away all the fruits of their hard labor.

"And you're right, the rabbit kinda did us a solid here? This is some hallmark shit." As heartwarming as two dirt-poor orphans scraping by on skill and spite can be, which, turns out, is very.

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[MU] - DECEMBER STORYTELLING / MEMORY SHARE

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