epidemiology | EVENT ★ BACK TO THE FUTURE

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EVENT ★ BACK TO THE FUTURE

BENDED TIME

As outlined in the OOC post, things start to slow down and grow quiet in Oska for a few days as the bugs crawl away and slowly disappear. But then the cocoons hatch. Fully grown temporal insects claw their way out of them, each about the size and temperament of raging bulls.

They come out far more aggressive and eager to fight, are are willing to take on anything that moves with jaws and claws alike. Except, of course, another insect — when two of them encounter each other, they enter into a mating dance and then slip away into another dimension, leaving behind only the temporary ghosts of years gone by. If you can’t find a way to pierce that thick shell to take one down, better find another one to pair it off with instead. Just try not to get bit while leading them around and find yourself suddenly 5 years old again.

The insects aren’t the only thing going on in Oska, though. As it turns out, unicorns really hate this adult form of the temporal insects, and will start kicking their way out of their stalls in the stables to get at the insects in an attempt to impale or trample them. According to Uruz they’re gallant warriors, but not always quite cut out to take on a bug, and can easily get themselves hurt or killed. She would really appreciate recruits taking a moment to recapture any stray unicorns they may come across and leading them back to the stables. Try to avoid any insects on the way, or you’ll find yourself suddenly fighting insect and irate unicorn, which is no one’s idea of a good time.

The lake is getting more active, too. All the fighting has woken up something in the depths of it. Dark red tentacles sometimes creep up onto shore — and don’t worry, this time they don’t belong to a sea goddess. The tentacles don’t attack unless attacked, and can in fact be quite agreeable. Nodes along the length of them act as primitive eyes, which see well enough to interact with anyone nearby. They’re also all a little peckish. Toss a tentacle a bit of food and watch it curl around and ingest it using tiny mouths on the underside. It might even be willing to play a few rounds of fetch or slap a bug into the sky for you if you put it in a good mood with a morsel of food.

The senior ALASTAIR members can be seen out and about and doing their part, too. Uruz and Dagny fight as a team, centaur and elf, sometimes fighting back to back and sometimes as mount and rider. They’ll stop and lend a hand, but the cats are a little less generous. Cherenkov and Crowley fight inseparably and use magic and science in deadly combination to ward off and destroy the bugs, but can usually only be seen darting on their way from one place to another. They have a lot of magitek to repair in the destructive wake of the insects. Pomarr, neither as senior nor as invested in actively picking off the bugs, offers shelter near a tentacle-free portion of the lake, calling down storms to toss away bugs for her and anyone in the vicinity.

OOC NOTES

This log spans a week ICly. Characters will find themselves beginning to understand each other again as the bugs first vanish, as the effects of the cats’ work on the magitek pays off. The translation problem will be completely fixed by the time the cocoons hatch. All of the bugs will have been killed or shipped off by the sixth day, leaving the last day before their departure to the next mission blissfully relaxing. Any temporally misplaced recruits will be back to normal by the last day, as well.

A reminder to anyone still texting: the texting feature of magitek jewelry operates based on thought! There are no physical keyboards, recruits merely think the message that they’d like to send to another recruit.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She snorts, straightening so she can toss her hair proudly.

"I, bitten? Ha!" She's playing up her own pride in the face of his delight. "Between my spear and my fire I am more than a match for any insect. They should be glad I am not biting them."

An irritated Shhhh! comes from the other side of the bookcase. Serene grimaces in the direction of her unseen chastiser before raising a brow at him.

"Can I lure you away from the books?"

The invisible admonishment cracks Evan's grin wider. "Perhaps that's for the best, before we end up summarily ejected anyways."

He turns, alongside her amongst the stacks, and offers her an arm.

"I don't strictly advise trying to chew on one of the bugs yourself -- dietary predilections aside," he adds, recalling in a quick burst her particular fondness for eating things with carapaces. Oh, how could he have misplaced that bit of trivia? "It likely has some odd side effects all its own. Have you perhaps noticed an unusual profusion of small children amongst our teammates here?"

"You've grown up to be a gentleman!" She laughs, but weaves her arm through his as they head for the exit.

He is different from the man she spoke to a few days ago, now that she looks again. There's something in the tone of his voice, something in the way he holds his shoulders... perhaps he's no longer a mere student back home.

As for his question, she shrugs. "I'd assumed that the teams who had been with ALASTAIR for longer had settled and begun making families. These children by and large look old enough to have begun their apprenticeships."

She points with the point of her spear to a child in the corridor as they step out of the library. "I was younger than that the first time I picked up a sword. Ahh, it was hard, but children have the advantage of malleability."

Wholly aside from the fact that Evan doesn't necessarily agree with Serene's proposed age range for reasonable employment, Evan grimaces lightly. "Really, can you imagine trying to raise a family in a place like this? Either you bring a baby along on missions, or you're stuck at the castle with your co-parent gone on life-threatening missions every three months out of four. I suppose perhaps other teams have more predictable, more, ah, child-friendly duty arrangements, but the Audentes..." He shakes his head. "Although I suppose I never asked if they have special dispensation for recruits who decide to settle down.

"No, this is wholly aside from that, and from ALASTAIR's alarming propensity for snatching children from their own homeworlds." Something that upset him then, and something that upsets him more now, when even twenty-year-olds seem half like infants themselves. He glances away from the child she's pointed out and back to her as he elaborates. "I'm sure you've seen what happens when the bugs gnaw on the corridors too much. A very similar thing happens to the people they gnaw on, although those of us who have been shifted by and large appear more stable than the distortions that happen to inanimate objects."

Edited 2016-09-04 22:41 (UTC)

"Or the children are raised in Oska by the organisation when their parents are working." She points out. "A boarding school of sorts to teach and tend those too young to fight."

His elaboration makes that speculation of hers a moot point. She hums, nodding to herself as she considers the truth in his words, then shoots him a look. "Do you think you will stay like this? How old are you then?"

"You know, I have been thinking about that," he muses aloud. His grin sinks back to simply a slightly closed-off smile, his eyes narrow a little with the contemplation. He takes a moment to consider how he's going to explain what he's hypothesized. "I don't think I'll last. I think I'm as much a temporal figment as the flashes of time around an object that had been chewed.

"From my perspective, my life carried on as if I'd been sent home what I think is the moment I was bitten. That makes me a possibility, maybe a probability, but not a certainty -- and certainly not something that will linger after this effect wears off, which I'm almost certain it will. It's vanishingly unlikely that I was actually sent home by a bug bite, in any case.

"If I'm wrong... either I'll stay here as I am, or I'll go back to the life I remember living up until now." Here he laughs, there being a sharp-edged magnanimity to his engagement with the topic. "If I'm right, I won't be around any longer to care either way."

The corridor passes them by at the pace of Serene's long legs. Evan is not certain where they're going, but he is not averse to wandering with her. "As for how old I am... I recall we talked briefly about my lifespan prospects, so I hope I don't shock you. I passed my hundred and fiftieth birthday, oh, maybe ten years ago."

"A hundred and fif- no, a hundred and sixty?" She drags them both to a halt at that and stares down at him again, pulling her arm from his so she can stroke his cheek with her fingertips. He feels as youthful as he looks and she shakes her head, smiling with disbelief. "Really?! And you still look this young! I thought I'd long passed the time in my life where I'd meet people seven times my age."

Yet her smile softens and fades as the implications of his age sink in. One hundred and sixty... even if they'd remained in ALASTAIR together she'd likely have been dead for half his life. That's a sobering thought.

"And you might be disappearing soon?" Her voice is soft with her sympathy for what she can only imagine is half a lifetime of grief; she brushes his cheek with her fingertips again before withdrawing her hand from his bubble. "Then may I ask you about what it has been like to live so long?"

She touches his cheek twice and it feels so strange; it's been a long time since he's allowed himself to get close enough to someone new that they'd feel free enough to simply touch him like that. He considers the sensation before he considers her words, the texture and the weight of the interaction.

His grin returns in a moment when she makes that ask, though he knows it appears contrary to the sympathy that's positively radiating from her. "You just did," he points out pedantically, a tease. "Of course you can ask. I'll even answer, although that's a question with all kinds of sweeping answers that would take more time than I suspect I'll have among these halls."

He offers her his arm again, trying to encourage her to leave behind that dire expression. There is a deep trepidation in him about delving too deep into the more serious answers to that question, but there are plenty of more superficial ones that might satisfy. He remembers her being abrupt; perhaps she'll be satisfied with anecdotes. "Come on, you can show me where my room used to be while you think of a more specific query." Another little tease, this one a touch more pointed.

He's trying to pull her back into their pleasant stroll of just a few moments ago, yet in her she's now conscious of the gap between them, even if he still appears to be near her in age. Now she's aware, he does feel older, though right now she's unsure if that's just her trying to find physical proofs of his words.

She shoots him a smile and takes his arm again before they start to stride once more.

"We have to go up several more flights of stairs," she tells him, angling their walk in the direction of the staircase. "You swapped your original room for one high enough to get a good view. Do you remember that?"

She's navigating using her peripheral vision, for her gaze is resting intently on him. He's still in the prime of his youth from all appearances. Will he live to a thousand?

Will he remember her then? She flushes and looks away.

"I can't believe that you remembered my name after all these... Mercy, not just years but over a century." She thinks upon what they shared together - the nights curled together, her blowouts and his retreats, their flirting and thread of tension that lies between them, that briefly acknowledged mutual attraction. "What do you remember of me?"

"I remember the view," he admits thoughtfully, to her first point, as he takes his long moments to digest her second. She's staring, and it doesn't bother him, exactly, but when she goes from that intense stare to looking away again it's clear that the admission has shifted her opinion of him more than he'd thought it would. Perhaps his recollection of her had been unkindly callous; perhaps he should have been gentler bringing up his age.

They arrive at one of the stairwells, which removes them from the eyeless gaze of the suits of armour in the hallway. He squeezes her hand subtly with his arm as they begin to mount the stairs.

"I've always had a good memory," he demurs, but adds, "but you'd also be surprised how much youth plays a role in what gets remembered. Firsts always get drawn in with a harder line... and ALASTAIR held so many firsts for me." He offers her a smile. "What do I remember of you? Hmm..."

A little grin plays on his lips. "I remember that you like to hear nice things about yourself." He doesn't resist the urge to tease her a little, even if he does shortly move on to a response more in line with the spirit of the question. "I remember someone of forceful opinions, someone full of life and energy. I remember somebody with a challenging past, with a lot of conflict inside herself. I remember an incredibly capable person who always wanted to involve herself and take charge. I remember someone who at first intimidated me, and then went out of her way to become a good friend."

He flashes her a little grin, a wry thing, bright and testing behind the understated quality of it. "I remember a woman who had something of a thing for a kid who didn't know what to do with the attention."

For all that he's lampshaded her perfectly healthy ego, she still feels warm that he possesses such a vivid and vivacious impression of her.

She glances at him at that tease, smiling half bashful and half smug. For a moment she stares at him once more, weighing up the likelihood that his original self might remember what transpired between them.

But where's the fun in cowardice? She takes the risk of honesty.

"Did you regret not working out what to do with me?" She keeps her voice low, for others are walking down the stairs past them as they wind up and up. "I spent many a night back home regretting that I had overburdened you with my personality enough that you were frozen by me. Phrynos wasn't half as comfortable as you were to curl around, nor was he mammal enough to find me attractive."

Looking away again she laughs at herself. "It's been two years since I've been around people who don't find my flat and bald face completely offputting! Even had I not found your personality so charming I would have carried a fondness for you just for being the last person to admire me!"

There's a smug sort of satisfaction in the way she begins to glow at the complements. They're all true enough; he hasn't embellished his memories, although he has left out some of the more ferociously unpleasant impressions he'd been left with. Time has smoothed those edges for him, after all, and he's known for years that they might simply have been a matter of having been young and easy to startle.

When she asks her question, he laughs. He shakes his head as they mount the stairs, seeing her game of turning back his complementary soliloquy on him. "I'm sure I wasn't the last person to admire. Hmm, do I regret how things turned out?"

It's a serious question and for a long stretch of moments he considers it in that same serious light. He has regrets from his time at ALASTAIR, no doubt about that. But is she one of them? In truth? "When I went back home, yes, for a time I did. It was a confusing regret, as I never could work out what I should have done differently."

But then he gives her a sidelong look, wry and full of humor. "You would have steamrollered me, though. Serene, the kid that I was -- if I'm remembering you at all correctly, and if I'm remembering him at all correctly, I suspect you would have quickly grown exasperated, had we managed anything more involved than that friendship. You're a force, to be sure."

"I wouldn't have grown exasperated!" She immediately protests, earning a glance from a stranger as they turn off the stairs onto his corridor. "Mercy, Evan, I had a good enough handle on your personality by the time I'd known you for several weeks. I like gentler lovers; it's nice to have someone to cherish and to be mindful of. I only argue when I'm with people as fiery as I am."

She frowns fiercely for a moment and then shrugs, dismissing her own annoyance, for in truth she would rather have a flirting friendship than to risk everything going sour. She points ahead of them as they turn onto his corridor.

"Your door is the third on the left... but do you have a key?" That's a far more pressing concern than debating her theoretical romantic life with someone old enough to be her grandfather's grandfather.

Evan, on the other hand, has very little to lose, and he's becoming increasingly intrigued by the direction the conversation is going in. He looks at her as she frowns, examining her expression with close interest, though he takes a moment's break from such consideration to hum and pat his pockets.

"No such luck." Whatever swapped him into the state he's in now, it was not so kind as to furnish him with a key. "Well, we shall hope that I left my door unlocked last time I was there."

But, having decided that's beside the point, he turns relentlessly back to the conversation she'd tried to put down. "You know, I did wonder for years afterwards if I'd somehow exaggerated in my memory the degree of interest you had shown." He grins at her. "A handjob in a shared tent is one thing, but I was never sure if you'd been angling for more. You sound positively sweet on my old self."

She reaches in around him and pushes the door open, slipping past into his former room. The view is a pleasant one indeed and she walks through to the window, talking over her shoulder while she recovers her own poise.

"What can I say? You had much for me to be sweet on. You were competent, generous, patient and attentive." She fiddles with the window latches and throws them open to the breeze. "And your fire, ahh, you are such a tease with that fire. Had we not argued so sharply so recently before, I would have caught your jaw and kissed you after you let me light your fingers on fire. Did you realise how moved I was by the time I kissed my flame to your pulse point?"

She's a sight, up against the window's light, as much as the view. Oh, all of these visions from the past... they draw out layer upon complex layer of reminiscing, of regret and interest and nostalgia. He watches her between moments of looking around his old room.

So strange. It feels like it should be dusty, but it looks as if he was here yesterday. He takes in a deep lungful of the Oska air, which is shockingly fresh. Had he forgotten the flavour of the little pocket dimension's breezes? Can he smell the lake from afar?

Her words make him pull a wry grin, even as he looks out the window with slitted eyes. "I didn't," he admits openly. "I had no idea. It took a lot of thinking back over that afternoon and dissecting that moment for me to even consider... which in retrospect, a bit foolish of me, given." He turns to her, to look fully at her again rather than out at the blue above them. "For that, I'm sorry. I never meant to tease you, not in that way."

She finally looks over her shoulder at that, shooting him a warm smile. "There is no need to apologise, my friend. I enjoyed sharing the moment immensely, for who else could appreciate a mastery over fire? Ahh, I had wanted to show off my fire again to you so I could impress you with how far my control has grown, but instead I simply pushed myself in a panic and fainted on top of you."

She pushes herself away from the window, having regained her composure, and gestures for him to stop staring at her and go take her place.

"Come and look at the view and see if it is what you remember it to be, then let us talk of deeper subjects. I remember how worried you were about your mortality when we bathed together in the lake. If I can, I would like to bring words of reassurance from the future to the past."

He takes the invitation smoothly, ambling to the window and taking a place there, crossing his arms on the sill and leaning into the breeze that pulls inward to tickle at their hair and stir the still air in the room. He sighs deeply of that breeze before he turns his head just enough to direct that smile at her again.

"Ahh," he breathes as an echo of that sigh. "Looking for wisdom from the figment? I shouldn't tell you anything; I should keep my lips sealed to ensure my own future existence."

He chuckles, closed-mouthed, not half as serious as his tone may sound. The exchange is so interesting to him: she really believes she has a bead on his younger self, doesn't she? And she might, even; he perhaps recalls that younger self only a little better than he recalls any of the other people he's known here. He remembers that conversation by the lake, but in fact he remembers how it ended better than he remembers how he had felt during it.

"Refresh my memory," he asks, thoughtful. "What exactly was I worried about? Some things I had concerns about at that age did come to pass; I'm not sure how much you want to be the bearer of that news."

She glances at him and looks away with a shrug, dimly disappointed that he doesn't remember. That had been a moving conversation, one where she'd felt that she'd grown close to him, for all the embarrassment at the end.

"What I know of you, or the person you are when you are young, is that you find the uncertainty upsetting. Even if you know your fears will come to pass you will at least have time to prepare yourself from the blow."

Ahh, but it has been over a century for him, hasn't it? She looks up at the tower and hopes so very keenly that he is just a brief ghost passing through, for she misses his off-balance self already.

"You had no idea how long you would live or how many friends you would lose on the way. The thought of losing your loved ones and still being young haunted you." It's daunting to imagine, but if he looks as if he's five years older when he's lived two lifetimes how old will he grow to be? She twists her upper body and props her chin on her elbow, staring at him once again with great interest.

"It must have been hard when your friends began aging while you still looked as young as you do now. Ahh... there is nothing I can do to help you with what you are, but I still wish to protect your tender feelings. I am sorry I was in your life so briefly."

The assumption that she makes catches him by surprise, and he props himself up a little straighter. Oh, but of course -- he still looks so young, doesn't he? That would be the logical thought, wouldn't it? But how long that must imply his lifespan will carry on...

The glance he gives her is bright and rich with both new understanding and an understated pleasure. That last feels a bit disingenuous in the face of her clear ache, but it's nice to realize he hasn't overestimated her esteem of him, and in fact that he might have underestimated it a little. "That's hardly a thing to apologize for."

He turns a little too, propping himself on the windowsill once more to meet her intense gaze. "In any case, no, I was spared that particular agony. Actually for a good few years I was left wondering if I'd dodged the lifespan question altogether. I age at the same rate as your average human, more or less, you see." He watches her intently, reading her reactions with increasing interest. "I grew up, I got old. I even died, after a fashion. Twice now. It makes things a little easier, I think, than having to Lazarus Long my way through the world... and I have to admit, it leaves me with a much deeper appreciation of living in a young body." He flashes a briefly mischievous smile.

Her eyes widen in interest as she stares at him, her mind quickly reordering her assumptions. One hundred and sixty years old, and he looks to be just a few years older than her...

"This must be... your third life? And you have died twice before seventy? I am assuming that you pass on the average here." She shakes her head in mild disbelief as she imagines being reborn even at the age she is now.

"Ahh! I do not think I could stand going through childhood and adolescence twice more. Did you have to present yourself as an orphan or were you able to find other not-humen to pose as your family? At least a phoenix does not have to hide its true nature."

The mythical comparison makes his lips quirk. It's one that's been made before, and it feels a bit odd in a world where he's not sure if phoenixes actually ever existed, but it's a thought he's had himself. "Third life, yes. Thankfully, I'm no phoenix in the proper sense. When I come back... well, I owe that to my mother, too; when I die, in order to come back I have to rebuild my body myself."

He looks out the window again, considering the view that he'd so coveted back when he'd first chosen this room. The memory is returning, and he wonders how he'd ever forgotten. "The first time I died, it took me a number of years to perfect the art of returning to corporeality. Thankfully it means I get to choose what age I come back as." He turns to her again, inclines his head in a kind of wry sheepishness. "I have not yet chosen to subject myself to puberty again. I remember it being unpleasant enough the first time around."

She touches him again, this time wrapping her long fingers around his wrist and squeezing him to feel the bones under his skin, stroking round to feel his tendons and then his pulse.

"You feel as human as I." She doesn't let go after confirming that; apart from the hug she hasn't touched him in two years. Right now his pulse is slower than hers and she hoods her eyes as her focus drifts to counting its rhythm rather than staring back at him.

"This will be a comfort to the boy I know, I am sure. Would you tell me... no, I might not remember the details, will you write a letter to your young self telling him how you rebuilt yourself? I am sure he will rest all the better knowing that if he dies here he will be able to rebuild himself without wasting years as the rest of us age." She can't deny that her motives are completely altruistic in this particular situation.

"Hmm." Two years is perhaps a more significant drop in the bucket than the better part of two hundred; he's long since forgotten the specifics of her touch too much to miss it. On the flipside of that, it's quite a thing to discover anew. He finds himself distracted by the intimate, exploratory quality of her fingers. No one in quite some time has seen him in the way that these people who knew his young self seem to see him... Serene in particular.

He pulls his eyes back up to her face, though the hooded quality of her gaze is not much less provocative. He feels his attention sharpening in a particular way, though he's not such a slave to his interests that he's wholly distracted from her question.

After all, it is a pertinent one, and an intriguing proposition. "Hmmmmm," he repeats, drawing the syllable out longer as he attends to the idea. "I suppose I could have that impact, even as a figment. Perhaps..."

He chuckles. "I had assumed I'd simply carry on throughout these halls to entertain my own nostalgia, for however long I exist here. But you're right; I could save myself a great deal of casting-about with a few pointed words of good advice." His eyes drift down to where she's got a grip on his wrist again. Now, is that advice he wants to leave his younger self, too? Would he even take it?

Or perhaps she's the one he should leave advice to? When he looks up again, it's with a speculative gleam in his eye.

She meets his gaze and her smile deepens as she recognises his stare. There's that taut string of interest glimmering between them, the one that she recognises from the glances his younger self gives her. She lets go of his wrist and nods.

"I have never hidden that I can be a selfish woman. Let me keep you for a while and remind you of all the worries that you could assuage for my favourite friend."

She breaks their gaze and glances about Evan's room, knowing that he'll have a stack of papers and notebooks hidden about somewhere here.

"Would you keep your writing tools in those desk drawers? I have no idea how long you will continue to keep existing, so it is foolish to put off our most important task..." She glances back to him again, shooting him a deeper smile. "No matter how fun it is to stare at and to touch you."

She's never been one for ignoring the elephants.

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