[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

[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.

[hyperlit]

attachments
every drifter's worst foe

[...not really, exactly. It sounds dramatic, but it only means that one starts to settle, and one stops being a drifter.]

friends?

[barberian]

(She understand what they mean by it.)

Yes.

I am not used to having friends.

(Sometimes Yasha thinks she must be very bad at it, but nobody has ever said anything to her, so...)

[hyperlit]

[buddy if that ain't the goDDAMN MOOD OF THE CENTURY]

[The Drifter tugs at their mantle again; a nervous tic they've not realized or recognized as such. Friends used to be such a loaded term, one that for certain meant a future of grief and unresolved debt. And yet, without realizing it, they've begun to think it and say it, and now there is no turning back.]

nor am i

[barberian]

(There's an understanding, here. Yasha is silently grateful for it, because it is hard to explain that she doesn't necessarily need connections, that she isn't always around when people need her. She has no one place that she wants to be or stay. She likes to go everywhere, be everywhere. She likes to see new things.)

... I think that we have much in common, (she says, haltingly; her mouth twitches a little, just at the corner.)

[hyperlit]

[This is...]

[It's perhaps not the best thing to have in common. Drifting. Loneliness. But the Guardian had been the same, even if they'd had something of a home, something of a community. The Drifter had been the imposition there, and there was no helping that.]

a drifter like me

[barberian]

(Maybe not, but Yasha won't begrudge a commonality. After all, she's unlikely to change, so she may as well lean into it.)

Something like that. (Is it the same, if she continues to go out and return to more or less the same place? Or, rather: the same people. Home for Yasha is people, now.)

I'm glad you understand.

[hyperlit]

[It's not the general reaction they get. There's no...struggle to understand, or insistence that they change. A calm response, an expression of something almost like gratitude, that they have something in common.]

[They have no practiced answer to that sort of thing.]

me too

[barberian]

(Yasha isn't one to push for such an answer. An unrehearsed one is just as fine.

She holds the silence for a beat, then folds her arms slowly across her chest.) Thank you for explaining the memory that I saw, I... know that it was not my business.

[hyperlit]

it simply was

[They're not...bothered, particularly. They don't really have much reason to be.]

could not control it

[barberian]

I know.

(They didn't have to expound though, so she is grateful. Yasha stands there for a moment, then says, a little lamely,) I... should go.

(she kind of wants to get back inside and away from everybody else, maybe that will keep people from seeing her memories) See you later.

[hyperlit]

[The break does not bother them, either - they are often direct to a fault, ending conversations as soon as they have deemed them to be over. They dwell in the vicinity of this memory because of its significance, and yet...]

[They're not certain where they ought to go, or what to do, just yet.]

[They're willing to let someone pass them by.]

ok