[MU] - FEELING LIKE A GHOST (PART II)

[lifeaftr_mods]

"No, no...no!"

The Storyteller's voice cuts through the inkdrop-dark, frantic and scrambling. A distant blot of campfire gutters in the far distance - far from where you are. The disorientation of the week preceding this one has translated into Mu, and everything is hopelessly out of place. The Storyteller sounds muffled, clearly addressing someone or something else, their voice cushioned by the uniform, void-like night.

"Stop it. Stop it! I wasn't gone for very long at all. You can't behave for two weeks? You have to make it all...all...wrong? I can't keep this up - not with what I've had to do since returning - !"

Gradually, however, the shadowy campsite solidifies into being. Or...a semblance of it does, in any case. Four glistening pyres rear out from the shadows, each glowing a different color. The strange material that domes them almost resembles worked steel, forming different patterns against their multicolored backdrops.

[ ♆ ] The first glows a deep crimson, kicking scarlet embers into the dream-night air. Its pit sphere portrays a crowd of people in silhouette, heads bowed in genuflection - paying homage to some looping, many-coiled shape in the sky above.

[ ♆ ] The second glows a deep orange. Its pit sphere is worked into the shape of a looming mountain, with what might be some sort of village or ruin sprawled at its base.

[ ♆ ] The third's flames are a rich green. Its designs are most abstract; the starburst patterns that swirl across the metallic composition of its fire pit sphere could be explosions, maybe...or something else entirely.

[ ♆ ] The fourth pyre is one bearing host to golden flames, amber sparks sprayed out from behind the shape of a set of scales nestled among a flurry of birdlike shapes.

Beside each pyre is heaped a pile of sticks, colored to correspond to their respective flames. The Storyteller sounds agitated when they manage to speak again:

"Will you let them at least make the choice I left to gave them?" When there is no response, they sigh. "If you can hear me...I can't make it clearer than that, at the moment. Pick one. Pick one, quickly, and try to get out before it decides to make things worse! Just add a stick to whichever one looks best to you!"

Unfortunately, whether you abstain from voting or make your choice, that's not all there is to this night...



Tonight's Storytelling, further warped by Mu's capricious nature, will likely feel familiar to those of you who were with us in December of the year prior. Only this time, you don't get much choice in what kind of story you're telling...or, indeed, any choice in the matter at all. As you wake by the Storytelling campfire, Mu shifts to form three separate events from your character's present - which is to say, within one full year of their current canonpoint - 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.

---

While the initial setting will be familiar for oldcomers, and newcomers will recognize it from the introduction they received in their dreams, things will be far more similar to the memory share that occurred in December. All memories must be from within one year of your character's canonpoint. For questions, please refer to our OOC event post!

Even those who prefer not to voice their stories aloud are not safe this time around. The memory does not need to be willingly recalled in essence in order for Mu will shift to accommodate it in full.

Just like the last time this happened, all memories will be worth two offerings each, as if in compensation. So at least there's that!

Comments

[barberian]

(Perhaps she doesn't know them well enough to be able to spot their turmoil, but the extended pause certainly hints at it. Yasha feels a little badly. She doesn't wish to complicate matters for the Drifter, not if they're having to relive something upsetting.)

Oh, (is all she says.

For a moment she is silent, unsure of what to say. Eventually, she folds her arms loose across her chest, clears her throat.)

Why did I see your memory like this?

[hyperlit]

land of dreams has done this before

[They are truly the worst person to ask questions, because their explanations are as laconic and blunt as they are, and often verging on the incomprehensible due to the sheer lack of context they bother to disclose. But she did ask, and the Drifter is one of the few people who does not terribly mind, per se, that others have seen the tenor of their memories. Nothing about them is a secret.]

in the storyteller's absence

[barberian]

(Sort of, huh.

Yasha waits for a moment for a little more exposition, but nothing comes. It's kinda like getting an answer to your question but in such complex words that you have to go find a dictionary in order to understood what you've been told.)

... Oh, (she says after a beat, like she totally gets it.)

Will it happen to me too? (She doesn't like the idea of that at all. Her memories are her own, not for sharing.) How do I stop it?

[hyperlit]

[The Drifter is not adept at words, it is true; they are far more skillful at taking in what needs doing and then doing it, committing to action and forward momentum and motion and energy, what little they still have.]

maybe
maybe not

doubt it

[It is, technically, an answer.]

how do you stop a dream

[barberian]

... You wake yourself up.

(If that's even possible. She sounds very resigned. Yasha supposes she won't have a choice in what other people end up seeing either. If they only saw memories of her time on the road with the rest of her crew she wouldn't really mind, but...)

If you see something of mine, will you tell me you did?

[hyperlit]

[They're not managed to do a thing like that before, see. They've been woken up, forcibly, but they cannot be certain that this was done in the shape of a dream or a hallucination - or if it was reality. Judgment impaled them on its tendrils, and crushed them into jelly, and they woke because there was nowhere else to go.]

[But they cannot know if they were ever truly asleep, either.]

ok

[That is a simple enough request. They can manage that.]

no control over what is seen

[barberian]

Okay.

(In response to all that has been said. If something does happen she definitely wants to know about it. Even if simply to provide context? Some of her memories could be... upsetting, or give somebody the wrong idea.)

Do things like this happen often...?

[hyperlit]

happened once before

[Though it was not precisely the same. Different memories. Different thoughts. But the playback was the same - the representation of thoughts in full, active recreation of what it felt like to be there.]

[barberian]

Well... let's hope this is the last time, then.

(She smiles. It's a bit awkward looking??)

Did you know that person from home?

[hyperlit]

[They do, at least, recognize it as a smile. Strained and odd as the expression might be, it is definitely identifiable as a smile, regardless. The Drifter blinks, once, the sole indication of the fact that they must actually take a moment or two to process this.]

yes
they were

[A friend? No...that sounds far too familiar to describe what they were. They were...they were something the Drifter cannot put a name to, exactly.]

important

[barberian]

(She nods, understanding.)

Where did you come from?

(She really knows so little of the other people that share this island with her... she's starting to realise that she has much more to explore than just her surroundings.)

[hyperlit]

buried time

[That is, in fact, the name of the land they ended up in last. They would not exactly call it home, because a drifter does not have a home, by design. But it was the last place they stayed, and it was the last place in which they died, and...]

[It was the place they stayed the longest, if only because that is where their body will rot.]

the last place i was

[barberian]

'Buried time'.

(That doesn't make any sense to her. That's the name of a place? It sounds like some kind of fancy... bar. Or something.)

What kind of place is that?

[hyperlit]

[There's that barrier again: their difficulty with words. How to describe the place, with their vocabulary being as blunted as it is? The Drifter considers it silently for a moment, then finally crouches to sketch at the dream-sand with the tip of a gloved finger. Whether it is a nail or a claw that tapers their fingertip to a sharp point, it's impossible to say, but it makes for a very good stylus.]

[They draw a careful rhombus in the sand.]

pieces of an older world
desolate
torn apart by war and poison and plague

[They indicate each point at the diamond, drawing a line outward, a branching circle to denote additional territory, as they label each corner.]

mountains to the north
crystal forest to the west
lake to the east
barren hills to the south

[barberian]

(Oh, they are drawing it for her. Yasha crouches a little to watch their progress, following the point of their fingertip in the sand. She's always been admiring of people who can draw clearly enough to convey information to others.

And unfortunately, war and poison and plague make more sense to her. Her gaze rests on the circle to the north for a moment before she points at the middle of the shape.)

Where in here were you?

[hyperlit]

everywhere

[That answer is an easy one. They had no place, really, no home; nomads seldom do.]

[(Even that is not strictly true, now, is it?)]

a drifter wanders
recovers the things that others have left to rot

forgotten knowledge
lost technology
broken history

[barberian]

... I wander, too.

(She can relate to that part of the story very easily.)

Do you pass it on? Or do you keep it for yourself?

[hyperlit]

both

[They carry that which they can use. They return that which they cannot to those who might...make better use of it. The Drifter reaches for something hidden beneath their cloak, emerging with a strange, cylindrical weapon.]

taken from the bones of enemies

[barberian]

(she is d&d and what is this?

Yasha looks at it for a long moment, trying to figure it out, because it doesn't really look like a weapon to her at all. Hmm, how should she react to this...? She's probably mucking up the impressiveness of the reveal. Quick, say something.)

... Very nice.

[hyperlit]

[The Drifter seems content with this, at least, even if the weapon's technology might...baffle her. They hide it away again with a nod.]

if we do not recover old history
it will never be remembered

[barberian]

(nailed it

She nods, minutely disappointed that the artifact is hidden away as swiftly as it were taken out. She would have liked to look at it a little more, even though that would have given away her confusion over it.)

Are there many left to remember it?

[hyperlit]

some
the more time that passes the more is lost
a drifter recovers what can be remembered

[It is an occupation as much as it is a lifestyle - nomadic, and lonely, but...what they have chosen for themself.]

[barberian]

How does one become a drifter?

(Do you select it yourself, or are you chosen? Though, of course, part of being a drifter in general goes hand in hand with listening to nobody but yourself sometimes, so Yasha will find it hard to believe if it's the latter.)

[hyperlit]

[It's a good question. It is not as if one just...sets out and signs up for it.]

they become a wanderer
they exist untethered
nomads who find old history and see it remembered
carry weapons and travel alone

[The style is all generally the same - cloak and sword, and a means of covering one's face. It seems to trace back to some foundation of culture, a conglomerate of different races whose influence bled into one another over time.]

[But they have, of course, no idea how best to communicate that.]

[barberian]

I could do that.

(She just sort of says it, like she's musing aloud. Yasha does all of those things, really, except perhaps the old history bit, she's yet to discover any of that. Turns out they have a lot in common, the Drifter and her. She almost entirely observes the style too, save the covering of her face.)

But... (she pauses, trying to think of how exactly to word this.) I have people, now, who do not like it when I wander.