[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

[ungrieved]

Call him curious. Call him morbid. Call him whatever you want. He preys on memory, gorges himself on it, feeds on it. And this - this is ripe for the taking, right here. This is a feast, is what it is. An arsenal of confused misery and physical agony and exhaustion and then...

The spurt of envy that colored his veins the first time they met - that frosts over, rime creeping up through to his heart and wrapping his throat in a ghastly claw. The gabble of formless radio chatter. The tramp of something oddly militant on the horizon. A chorus of rising screams.

Your mother gave it to me, says the man Gabe can recognize as his father, immediate and without question.

This - normal?

This isn't normal.

He didn't even know his mother. He didn't even know her.

Gabe tries for a laugh, hard and mocking. Something else curls up in his stomach instead, like the lump of pain that caught itself there in the tangled, snarled loop of his intestines and set him crying and crying and crying and crying. He's trying not to laugh, and he isn't laughing. Something else is happening instead.

Something
Something else.

Something that scrapes up against his throat like shards of glass.

"This was home."

[thermalwind]

Silence.

Keith watches him across the flames of the fire like a hawk sighting movement below them. He’d thought there would be scorn or mockery. It takes him a moment to realize what part might be referred to. “Never knew her. Dad I haven’t seen in years. Been on my own ever since.” Until Shiro. Until the rest of team Voltron.

He could reach out to them whenever he wanted while he sought who he is. He glances about the space around them. “Sorry a I hurt you when I dragged you to the other side of the island. Even if my head was being screwed with. Wasn’t right.”

[ungrieved]

The apology barely registers. That's not the important thing here. Does Keith really think that's important? That hardly matters, compared to this. Compared to this world, this life.

He turns his stare on Keith, his eyes flashing.

"You lied." He jabs one finger out to sweep at the fire, to indicate the memory that's since faded. "That wasn't normal."

[thermalwind]

Anger rises up so thick that he nearly chokes on it. His personal thoughts and worries exposed like this makes it too easy to want to snarl and dig his heels in. “No. I didn’t!” He snaps. “I only told you I gather intell! I didn’t tell you anything else and you didn’t ask!” Normal. What the hell about him came across as- his temper frays and he leans forward.

“Look at me! What about me says I’m ‘normal’?? I carry a sword. I scan for threats no matter where I go and I’m wearing combat armor. What did you think my life was like?” He has to hear this one.

[ungrieved]

“You got to live,” Gabe snarls, because god forbid he admit to making completely unfounded assumptions about other people’s lives so he can construct a justification for the utterly baseless envy he won’t acknowledge that he has.

“You had parents who could stand to look at you!”

This is all very rational.

[thermalwind]

“Do you know that?” His voice is like ice, cold and sharp. “Because let’s remember I never met my mom.” He needs to put the breaks on this before his temper snaps and he loses it. He breathes in and holds it for a second. Get a grip.

“Look. You thought I was something I’m not. That’s fine. We’re both alive right now. Focus on that.” It’s an attempt at pulling this back from the edge. He’s not sure what his mom was thinking when it came to him. One day he really wants to ask her to her face. That is not a thought he needs to turn over in his head right now.

He rakes a hand through his dark hair and points a finger at Gabe. “Don’t waste what you have.”

Cw ableism

[ungrieved]

“What I have?” His expression breaks. What he has is - it’s nothing! He saw the memories this world sought to recreate, and what were they? His all-too-brief life, his suffering, his premature death, and then the fantastical delusions of his batshit mother!

What does he have?

“You have no idea,” growls Gabe, “what it is I have.”

And whether or not he should be fucking grateful for it.

[thermalwind]

"You just said I got to live. What do you think you're doing right now?" He leans back and forces his anger down. It isn't going to help anything. "You seem pretty alive and capable of choosing what you do next to me."

So long as they don't go back to the subject of his absent mother, who may or may not be alive to ask what and why, he'll be fine. Keith pops his shoulder. "So. What do you want to do next?"

[ungrieved]

Silence.
Silence.
Silence.

He loses the steely thread of his expression, lets it brighten and soften and ease into something almost conspiratorial. Look at him, being friendly. Hell even do Keith one better.

He’ll make him an offer.

“You wanna see what I do have?”

[thermalwind]

Keith draws back with a grimace. "I've seen enough of the past." His own. Someone else's. No one here is a member of Voltron the only people in the world he's comfortable with baring his soul to. Not that he's a cuddly feely sort of person. "But...come on. I'm serious. What do you want to see or do in this world? Got anything you want to learn how to do?"

The smile rackets up a hair of worry like anything out of the usual between them. It's usually his temper fraying and odd remarks traded back and forth. ...so far.

[ungrieved]

“So am I.” His grin is sharklike, once again snapping back like a rubber band to that familiar predatory bent. “Why don’t I show you? Why don’t you see for yourself? You’re in such a big hurry to judge me for everything, right?”

How about he proves just how off the mark they both were?

[thermalwind]

His eyes narrow. Here they go again. It's enough to make him miss Lance. "I'm not judging you. I really don't care what you do or decide to do." Provided it doesn't cause bodily harm to someone else. Then he'll step in.

"I'm just sick of this measuring contest you want to do. I don't want to do it. I wasn't even planning on telling that much about what happened in that base!"

[ungrieved]

Sorry, Keith. No dice. Gabe isn't used to being told no, and once he has an idea set in mind...

Well, it's not difficult to pull it back to the forefront. See why he is the way he is; why he can look at a boy whose life was imperfect, whose family was fractured, whose childhood was a confused muddle, who had to fight and nearly die from exhaustion with the effort to reclaim some memory of his past, and still hate him for that - still envy him with every inch of his being.

It's easy.

So he lets the story spin itself.

[thermalwind]

The pieces fall heavily into place with grim finality. The way this guy has behaved and the odd behavior about living in someone's head. He's already dead. Keith's hands are curled tight into fists on his thighs by the time its over. Several things are clear as he looks away, the images of the caring parents locked in his mind. "They cared. They tried to get you help."

It's all he feels like saying. What else can he say?

[ungrieved]

They cared.

Past tense. They cared, when he was still living. For eighteen months, before they decided he'd be better off forgotten. Shove him under the bed, smother him in the crib, bury him beneath the bedcovers, and maybe that music box will stop tinkling its sweet chime into his mother's ears while she pretends he lived long enough to look the way he does now.

"They cared enough to try and forget that I ever happened." The words should be triumphant, that final nail slammed through the coffin; instead, they're bitter. Afraid.

"They cared enough to never remember me again."

[thermalwind]

How do you exist is rude. Even he knows that. Keith leans forward to make sure Gabe is forced to look into his eyes. “That doesn’t explain why you’re physically around my age.” He’s climbing the age ladder towards nineteen. If the person he’s staring at, flought on Monsun, and gave a knife to died that early.

How is his appearance and articulate responses even possible.

[ungrieved]

“Because I never went away.” He spreads his arms wide with a broad grin, both a boast and a surrender; a challenge and a taunt. “Because they couldn’t leave me behind, so I never left. They tried - tried to forget me! And no one could!”

There’s a sense of undeniable victory as he says it, crowing it like it’s the biggest accomplishment in the world. It might as well be - he didn’t have any others to his name.

[thermalwind]

Tonight is about horrifying revelations. His eyes widen as all the strange commentary on Monsun is put into a brand new perspective. He’d found it odd at the time. It had bothered him the way anything strange would. But now...

“That’s what you meant... you thought I was trying to forget you.” He hadn’t understood. He’d gone over to the other side with one objective, get people stuck there out. He’d acted with only saving others in mind.

[ungrieved]

“You thought you could get rid of me, like everyone else!” Putting aside that the assumption makes no sense, that it’s behind them both, that Keith’s actions clearly indicated his desire to help. But then, so had Dad’s. He’d just wanted to save his dear, dear wife, at the expense of everyone else!

“You can’t. No one can!” He’s vindictive, victorious. He’s practically screaming it. “I’m more alive than anyone here!”

[thermalwind]

His temper rouses like a fire that has been fed enough dry branches to spread. Keith leans towards him his voice raising a hair. “I went over there to bring you back! I wasn’t trying to get rid of anyone. That side of the island messes with people’s heads. Even messed up I knew I’d do what I set out to do. I was a good choice to go in and get people to safety.”

He settles back into a more comfortable position as his anger ebbs again. “Of course you’re alive. That’s not going to change here unless something nasty gets to you before anyone else can save you.” He’s pegged Gabe as someone who has no idea how to function. He’ll step between him and danger no matter how weird or dangerous he feels.

[ungrieved]

“What’s the worst anything else can do to me?” He sounds downright incredulous as he says it. Not like there’s anything worse you can be than dead. Dead, and alive on a technicality, alive on a metaphor and someone else’s instability.

Alive on a latte and a prayer. Right, Dad?

[thermalwind]

“Do you really want to find out?” He grabs a stick and stirs up the fire. Sparks rise into the air and die out not far from the flames. This place has a literal god and maybe more beings like that. “You haven’t had much experience being alive.” Living is full of pain. His own memory of the trials of the Marmora should be a warning to that fact.

“There’s a lot that you haven’t dealt with before.”

[ungrieved]

He’s well acquainted with pain, thank you. It’s what has defined him for years upon years. There’s no escaping it - death is central to his story, even if he is more alive now than ever before. Than ever before.

“I’ve had more than you think.” He smirks at that one. “I’ve been around.”

In his mother’s head, in his father’s denial. In his sister’s resentment, and the doctors who wouldn’t listen.

[thermalwind]

“In what way? Haunting other people?” It’s not the same. He studies him and comes to a decision. “You never told me your name.” He can’t keep labeling him as That Weirdo for the rest of their time here. Well, he could but a lot of the people he’s seen and met could be listed under that. He crosses his arms over his chest.

[ungrieved]

“You never guessed.” Because that’s not generally how introductions work, Gabe, unless you happen to be little imps in fairy tales who spin straw into gold.

He’s not family, after all. He didn’t try to forget the name. Even Mom couldn’t remember, when the time came and it all came trickling back. He hasn’t heard it spoken aloud since -

Since he truly lived.

“I think I’ll keep you guessing.”