EVENT: BIA ▒ STERN

[ataraxites]

CHARACTERS: Ensemble production!
LOCATION: The stern areas of the ship
WARNINGS: Disturbing imagery, violence, psychological trauma, gore, etc.
SUMMARY: Characters have to fight to find their way back to each other from being increasingly isolated and plagued by their deepest fears and most hopeful dreams.
NOTES: May 27 onwards.

An echoing boom comes from deep in the middle of the ship, shakes its way through the trees and waters of the Oxygen Gardens, down into the maze of walkways and mechanics that make up the Engineering Complex. A sense of danger rolls through with it, enough to make you pause in your work, set down tools or supplies, ignore the thrumming pain in your head to find out what. Trapped far away from the comforts of beds and kitchens and slow approaching necessity of gravcouches, you only have each other to turn to. But soon that grows difficult, turnings leading you off path, door slamming shut behind you. In the increasing isolation panic swells like an infection up through your mind-- but then soothes. You find your way into an unexpected comfort, the company of a long-gone friend, an old home filled with happy memories. You linger, drift into contentment, and yet it still can't calm one deep nagging doubt: you aren't safe where you've found yourself.

Comments

[judex]

Sebastian.

[ He doesn't open his eyes. That's more of a compliment than an insult. He trusts Sebastian enough not to keep an eye on him—an ear, maybe, tipping his head to point one in his friend's direction, but not an eye. ]

How's your head?

[shinywhitearmor]

[The level of trust Fenris put in him was touching. He knew his friend well enough to realise that he wouldn't do that to just anyone, let himself be in the slightest vulnerable.

But he frowned at Fenris' comment,] My head? Aching. Yours as well?

[judex]

[ Fenris nods, then does something—a very small pinchy something—with his eyebrows to indicate that he regrets that decision. He opens his eyes as an afterthought, and looks Sebastian over with the same cursory care he would use checking for wounds after a fight. ]

I don't understand any of this.

[ The headaches, the bleeding. What people are saying on the network about membranes and presences. ]

[shinywhitearmor]

[He recognized that pained expression, mostly because his own matched it, and he carefully sat down on the ground next to Fenris.]

All I know is that my head has been hurting since it started. [The rest? That is beyond him. He barely understands the network, after all.]