EVENT: ARIMA ▒ APRIL 22-23

[ataraxites]

CHARACTERS: Ensemble production!
LOCATION: Arima Mining Colony
WARNINGS: Potential for gambling, drugs, violence, sex work.
SUMMARY: Passengers departing for and arriving by shuttle at the Arima Mining Colony.
NOTES: Covers April 22-23. IC event start commences post-Gunnery announcement. Divided by locations; players are free to indicate which day, and to begin new subthreads wherever they'd like! April 24-26 log here.

You step off of the shuttles into one of the bustling, heavily-guarded docks buried deep within the rock of an asteroid. Everyone seems too wrapped up in their own business to pay much mind to the group pouring out with you, and the mechanical sounds of takeoff, landing, and regular maintenance fill the air with clinks and whirs. As you begin to explore the colony, you find dingy and worn streets filled with a ruckus that's easy to get lost in: pushy merchants, booming, scratchy voices coming from inebriated patrons, and the scurrying footsteps of opportunistic thieves darting through the crowds. The colony no longer seems to profit off its mines, but this waystation for undesirables does have a taste for myriad forms of entertainment.

Comments

[morgoth]

[ She turned in his arms, elegantly agile, the ship's railing pressed against her back. Jessamine assessed him, hands smoothing up his chest (and it's as though she's eager for touch, starved for it, for sensation), her slim fingers finally latticing together behind his neck. ]

Emily. [ The name stuck in her throat, soft and low. She seemed to force herself straight, though he could feel that she wanted only to curl in on herself. Instead, she seemed to settle for the middle ground; kissed the corner of his mouth, lightly, the wind making their dark hair mingle about them, and tucked her face near his neck, cheek on his shoulder. As if it were the last safe place in the world for her. ]

Tell me about her. Everything you remember. I could... sense... but never see.

[vindictam]

[ he gives it back, his palm flat to her back as he runs it up and then back down. Intent on warming her almost, even if the sun is bright here. ]

She is stronger than both of us. [ his smile is soft, head tilting back so she could fit against his side easier. ] Still a difficult child, but it has kept her spirit her own. [ then softer, sadder than that. ] She dreams of you, always. Thinks of you first.

[morgoth]

Good. [ The one exhaled word is savagely relieved to hear that Emily's stronger; but hadn't Jessamine always been cool to her daughter, desperate to cultivate the strength in her that she herself had lacked, in the early years? ] She'll need that strength.

But I hate that I'll have become a ghost that haunts her. The shadow, the heavy current, the astigmatism in the lense...

[vindictam]

[ He doesn't have the heart to tell her, it is not just her daughter she haunts. The entire Empire had fallen under the shadow of Jessamine's death. Something had changed, in everything that day. He had not realised until he saw it for himself. The grief and fear that prevailed in equal measure. ]

Your love will. [ he absently touched her, fingers trailing and curling about her as she pressed against him. Emily might, one day, move on. He knew he never would. ] She will remember that. [ maybe, if the fear of that death didn't grip her first. ]