EVENT: MELPOMENE ▒ THE CORRIDORS

[ataraxites]

CHARACTERS: Ensemble production!
LOCATION: Corridors in the belly of the Tranquility
WARNINGS: Creepiness, paranoia, disturbing imagery, violence.
SUMMARY: Characters head out into the corridors in the hopes of rescuing their lost and begin to experience strange and harrowing phenomena.
NOTES: Open to all! Covers Stages One & Two of the plot, June 22 onwards.

The hallways stretch on into a deep darkness ahead of you. You've been out here before, or heard of what happens to those who do — it'd be enough to make anyone turn back. But there are people lost out there that have called for your help, and you're prepared to do what you have to to save them. Aren't you?

Comments

[fullmoon]

Yeah—we have to live apart. We didn't always, but people started burning us alive.

[ He doesn't smile—largely because they're lost in the dark and he's only so optimistic about the situation—but he does raise his eyebrows, wry and more cavalier than he would be if he were willing to talk about the other thing. Witch hunters are distant history. Werewolf hunters not so much. At least no one can tell just by looking at him. ]

No one here seems to mind. [ Not an argument, just an observation. He'd feel like a hypocrite trying to convince anyone else to stop hiding. He chooses a bar (pipe? who knows) on the corridor wall to tie his string around, with more brute force than finesse: he doesn't know any fancy knots, but he ties it multiple times to be sure it will stay. ]

[prehendere]

We had that, in our world. Only they weren't magical. Mostly it was used as a way to eradicate anyone different, anyone who was a problem. [He sounds a little sad at that, thinking about how history has a troubling way of being cyclical.]

No, they don't. [He will agree with that. Except his parents drilled it into him very young that it was a thing to keep hidden because people will mock/hurt/abuse him and he has spent most of his life up until very recently making sure to keep to himself because of the inevitable rejection. Internalization does funny things to even the smartest of people and while the denizens of the Tranquility don't have a problem with the unusual, Hank still loathes his particular attributes.]

[fullmoon]

[ Remus frowns, too; it must mean something about the human condition, that there would be witch-burnings without any witches, and nothing good. Nothing he wants to dwell on when he's already putting effort into staying positive. He settles into dark amusement instead, smirking a little in the dark while he gives the string a few forceful tugs to make sure his knots will hold.

They will. He starts down the corridor with a beckoning nod of his head, meanwhile deliberating how honest he'd like to be and what his other options are, anyway. He likes Hank. If they make it out of the corridors alive he plans to bother him often enough that he'll probably have to come up with something eventually. There aren't any sick aunts for him to visit on a spaceship, so— ]

I'm ill. Chronically, I mean. Wizarding thing. It's nothing contagious [ usually ] and I manage it, but when people at home find out, they're— [ He cuts off with a mild shrug more fitting for they're insensitive than they're terrified. He doesn't want to get into it. He skips to the point: ] I don't want everyone here to know, either.

[ Which is a long way of trying to say he understands, but just saying so, I understand—it's trite and cheap. And if in the name of moral support he just analogized Hank's rad natural form to his curse/disease... Sorry, Hank. ]

Did you always know it was a mutation?

[prehendere]

[It's comforting nonetheless, the second time in his life he's commiserated abnormalities with someone (and let's face it, at certain times he may very well agree with that analogy.) He nods in promise of confidentiality, cementing it with - ] I won't tell anyone.

[There's a pause at the question, remembering the time his father had ended up sobbingly confessing that it was his fault Hank had ended up deformed - had he been drunk? He wasn't the type of man to drink often - until his mother had shooed him away. She hadn't done anything to refute that view, merely smoothed it over in her timid way, and then they'd all continued living their lives. Sometimes he couldn't help but notice the absence of siblings and wonder.]

More or less. My parents thought it was the result of radiation poisoning - Dad was at risk, where he worked - which...that's one type of mutation. I realised there could be other reasons once I was old enough, but it was only until Charles came along that I really started to believe it was wider-scale evolution. Naturally occurring. [As opposed to one erroneous incident.] And then I saw enough blood samples to prove it. It's like they say, sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees.