[MU] - DECEMBER STORYTELLING / MEMORY SHARE

[lifeaftr_mods]

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.

Comments

Obligatory Childhood Trauma [Canon] (cw for eye horror, body horror, and suicidal ideation)

[onegreeneye]

Late at night, at the edge of a towering mountain, a small boy clambers down a rocky cliff face. The craggy surface digs into his hands, catches the edges of his threadbare kimono, but he doesn’t stop or even slow down. Not until he drops to the forest floor.

He kneels, shaking, and lifts a small object in his hands - an egg, pulsing with a soft golden light from inside. But its shell is cracked, the light flickering, and the boy stares down at it in abject horror.

“...What should I do? What should I...” His voice comes out in a shaky whisper. His breath catches, and he looks up, searching his surroundings desperately for something, or someone. “Suguro. Suguro!”

His call goes unanswered, and he starts walking, cradling the egg in his hands. The light within starts to dim, and he moves faster - then slows to a stop when he catches sight of something up ahead. A large deer stands among the trees ahead, its fur peppered with grasses and weeds that seem to grow from the creature itself, its eyes locked on Ginko.

It takes him a moment to catch his breath before he speaks up. “...Mountain god. Y-you’re alive... Please-- tell me what to do!”

He takes another step toward the deer, but it turns away, and starts to walk back into the trees. Ginko gasps and speeds up, trying to catch up to it.

“Wait-- hey! You know everything, right?! I’ll do anything!” He’s running now, stumbling over roots and stones, his voice desperate as he chases after the retreating mountain god. “If you can fix this, I don’t care what happens to me!”

No sooner does he finish that sentiment than the ground seems to vanish from under his feet.

And he falls.



The space Ginko wakes up in has no sky, and, if it weren’t for the surface holding him up, seemingly no ground. It’s wide open, dark, and featureless - except for the river. A pulsing, constantly-flowing stream of light, countless particles of something golden and gleaming, winding through the darkness.

He rises to his feet, carefully, still cradling the dying god-egg in his hands. The light vein. He knows what it is, though he’s never stood so close to it.

As he stands in that dark space, he slowly realizes he’s not alone. Some distance away stands the old god, the deer covered in grasses, its hooves submerged in the glowing stream. Ginko watches helplessly as the mountain god wades slowly into the light, deeper and deeper until its head is submerged, vanishing completely in the harsh golden-green glow.

“Wait-- please…” It’s too late, and he knows it. But he stays where he is, and his gaze rises slowly to the only other thing on the other side - a ring of pale, flickering lights, these ones larger than those in the river, evenly spaced but for a single, rather prominent gap.

Ginko watches as another bright light rises from the river, where the mountain god had disappeared, coiling and swimming through the air until it settles into the empty space in the ring.

And then he understands.

The god’s life enters the stream. The stream feeds into the ring.

The ring can create a new god.

No living thing that enters the stream will return.

He takes a step forward, then another. Closer and closer to the deadly light that will save the mountain--

Ginko cries out in pain and drops to his knees, right at the edge of the river. He clasps a hand over the space where his left eye should be, over the impenetrable shadow held in the empty socket, choking out a protest one word at a time as blood slides between his fingers. “Stop--! Why do you always get in my way...?”

Once he stops moving forward, the pain recedes. He lifts his head, looking slowly up - to a pair of faintly luminous white hands, suspended, bodiless, in front of him, their flesh separating just behind the wrists into a mass of squirming tendrils. The constructed hands simply hang in the air, gently cupped, the same way Ginko had been carrying the egg before he moved it to just one hand.

The hands reach out, and Ginko reaches up in turn, depositing the egg into their hold. With the egg cradled in one hand, the other gestures, gently, over Ginko’s shoulder, back the way he came.

Then those hands dissolve, and the egg with them, and that mass of light swirls away to join the ring.

Ginko stands in place, stunned, disbelieving - then a distant voice calls his name.

Just like that, he’s back in the woods.