quietmounds | (no subject)

[Doesn't know because he's still not looking!! ]

Okay, so we're in dream you've made of someone's else's memory of an actual event?

When is this? Or...how long ago? From your perspective.

[ It's Renko who laughs this time. Definitely at you. ]

What 'actual event' are we talking about, here? Think about this logically for a second, won't you? The 'constellations' are just patterns of the stars as we see them from the surface of the earth. But none of those stars have any meaningful interactions outside of that. Even if you do assume that some sort of supernatural power beyond your understanding exists, in order to believe that the constellations mean anything you'd have to accept that Earth, a perfectly unremarkable planet in a perfectly unremarkable solar system, was somehow the central focal point from which derived a power that could move the stars themselves. Most of which, I'd like to remind you, are many times larger than the Earth, and so far away that their distance is measure in lightyears! Lightyears, as in 'the distance that light can travel in a year.' And since Polaris is 433.8 lightyears away, that means the version of it we're looking at is already hundreds of years old. You aren't seriously suggesting that you can shrug all that off with 'it's magic, don't worry about it,' are you?

[Turns around to huff at her]

Obviously none of that is news, but you... she-- said 'it already happened'. So did something happen, or not?

[ She's staring right at Kaito now, her gaze intense and her voice low and urgent. ]

You're not getting it. I told you to think about it logically, so think about it logically. Occam's Razor, Kaito! What's more likely: that a demon took you inside of a dream of a memory of that time when the Big Dipper was actually a dragon that ate the North Star? Or that you stupidly wandered out alone with an obvious psychopath who drugged the hell out of you, and you're hallucinating all of this, probably while she gets ready to murder you?

[ Yukari laughs at that, of course, looking over her shoulder at Kaito, grinning obnoxiously. ]

Ooooh, she's got you there.

[makes a sort of sour face]

If I'm hallucinating all of this, I'm still hallucinating you as an obvious psychopath who is getting ready to murder me.

Anyway, that wouldn't explain how you managed to drug me, why I would hallucinate you making out with a strange woman, or what your motivation for pretending to be a demon is when you could more easily drug and murder people without adopting a complicated persona of someone who likes to both talk to and eat people.

The simplest answer to the question of 'how could something that defies everything I know about about the universe be possible' at this point is 'maybe I never knew much about the universe'.

Edited 2017-05-27 00:23 (UTC)

[ Honestly now Yukari is just laughing harder. Just laughing so hard she kind of flops back on the grass, barely propping herself up enough to see Kaito's face. ]

Actually, isn't this about the right speed for a repressed teenager's delusion? Don't worry, don't worry, it's all perfectly natural.

[ Renko, meanwhile, is still sitting on Yukari's lap, but is ignoring her entirely. ]

You're talking about throwing all human knowledge out the window because it doesn't match up with your perceptions of a strange event. This is Newtonian physics we're talking about, here. And it isn't some abstract concept that has nothing to do with you, like, oh, that's all in outer space, that has nothing to do with me. If you accept that this is real, you're accepting that gravity, Newton's laws, math itself is all just a debunked theory. Have you seriously thought about what that means?

[What do I even???]

Is a figment of your imagination trying to convince me she's a figment of mine?

[ Renko makes a frustrated noise, standing up abruptly and coming over to Kaito, getting right up in his face. Even Yukari seems vaguely surprised by this development, if he bothers to look at her. ]

Don't talk about me like I'm not here. Listen to me. If you engage her on her terms, you're going to lose everything. You shouldn't have come here in the first place, but now that you're here the smartest thing you can do is to ground yourself. Go back to your coffeeshop and make coffee and forget about demons and dragons and all of this. You --

[ It's like a skip in a video. One moment she's there in your face, talking to you, and the next the sound has cut out, the light has shifted slightly, the crickets cut off mid-chirp -- and she's gone.

Or not gone, exactly. She's lying on the grass, head cushioned in her hands, looking at the stars and smiling wistfully. ]

-- believe how clear the view is. I thought there would be more light pollution, but it's perfect.

[ She falls silent, then, looking content. Yukari, meanwhile, seems to have stood up at some point, and is now tapping her fingers on the telescope, idly, staring down at Renko and looking amused. ]

Anyway.

To answer your previous question: from my perspective, this was a very, very long time ago. Thousands of years, in fact. And insofar as anything is 'real,' yes, it did really happen.

[He was in fact, looking at her, and listening to her, and is startled and disoriented when she just... blinks, into a different place.

He's still for that, and Yukari trying to play as if it didn't happen, and he listens to her.

But what he says is.]

Do you lose control of your own illusions a lot?

Dreams are generated by the subconscious, so that's not exactly unusual, is it?

And your subconscious is worried about me... ah, 'engaging on your terms'.

My subconscious is generating a message. If you think concern for your well-being is the reason for that, I have some unfortunate news for you, about me.

No, that wouldn't make any sense.

Is 'two minutes' ever going to be up?

Oh, you know. Two minutes in dream time, right? Are you planning on taking her advice?

It wasn't very good advice. "Go back and making coffee and forgetting about demons and dragons" sounds really boring.

She also assumes I'm a lot more attached to the bounds of the world as I knew it than I am. And that somehow you are the only threat to those ideas even if I was. Like I haven't seen someone dodge a bullet, turn back time, or experienced being conscious while surgeons put my brain back together.

Edited 2017-05-27 05:59 (UTC)

[ You are probably tired of hearing her laugh by now, but bad news, she is just Like This, all the time. ]

Is that so... you'll have to tell me about it, one of these days. And I suppose there's no point asking if you want to bail out now, right? [ She turns to Renko. Her voice is a little softer when she speaks, a little off, somehow. Not quite her own voice. ] What time is it now, Renko?

[ Renko blinks, shaken out of her reverie. She looks to the sky, mouth open as if to answer, but no sound escapes. The quiet smile slowly drops, turns to a frown of consternation. She shakes her head, rubs at her eyes and looks again. ]

I... I don't know. I can't tell.

[Honestly it's not like he expects Yukari to take him seriously. He's not that arrogant.

He sticks his hands in his pockets and shifts to look back up at the star.]

Would you even let me if I said yes?

Well, I do like this part. But surely it couldn't hurt to ask.

[ Said in a way that suggests it absolutely could hurt to ask, but you already knew that. Renko is saying something as well, but her voice is distorted somehow, muffled. And she's hardly the most interesting thing happening here.

There's a faint streak of light across the sky, a falling meteorite. You might almost miss it. But even if you do, another follows shortly after, and then another. The stationary stars begin to flicker, and then tremble. The world falls silent, holding its breath --

And there's a crack. Not like thunder. It's bigger, and closer. Too close. A gunshot going off inside your skull, splitting it open. A sound so loud it takes up everything, burns up every other sense. An echo that lasts forever until it doesn't, and you're standing there, you don't know how much later, hearing the sound of air sucking into a vacuum and staring up at a crack in the sky, spiderwebs of light, like broken glass.

The stars are all shifted out of place, meteorites scattering as the crack grows, and there's something up there, something solid and three-dimensional, not just formless darkness but a surface, reflecting the faint light of the stars off its scales and claws and teeth. ]

[You can kill people with a loud enough noise.

It's just vibrations in the air, after all.

There's no reason you can't vibrate delicate veins out of place, pool blood inside the brain, kill him just like that.

Which is what Kei is thinking about with the first crack.

He forgets, for a moment, that it's a dream. That rules don't apply here. That if they did, none of this would be happening at all.

When he can process other senses again, he reaches up to his ears to see if they are bleeding, but he's too enthralled by what is happening in front of him to take the time to inspect his fingers. He still isn't sure if he hears those cracks or if he has gone deaf and just feels them in his bones each time they shatter across the sky.

He doesn't say anything when he catches a glimpse of what lies beyond. Other than perhaps a single quiet sigh as his lungs can't hold the air in any longer.

A lot of people find it frightening to feel powerless and insignificant, apparently.

Kei finds it kind of soothing.]

[ The void made flesh, the unknowable emptiness given dimensions, the universe having simultaneously become smaller and more terrible. The dragon twists slowly, the bright points of the stars on its back shifting as it turns, showing its belly, shaking itself and sending showers of meteorite scales down to earth -- the horizon is a red haze, fire and ash and dust kicked up from impact of the falling scales -- and the North Star is the only thing not moving, still firm in its place, its light so blindingly white-hot that it's impossible to look at for more than a second.

The ground beneath your feet buckles, soil crumbling and churning. There is the sound of birds shrieking in alarm, of Renko (behind you?) asking, Merry, what are you --, of someone laughing and laughing, and there's no blood on your fingers, but there is the smell of it in the air, suddenly, fresh arterial blood. The dragon opens its mouth wide, and there is thunder in its throat, ozone and smoke in its lungs, teeth black and glimmering as they snap shut around the star, its light still glowing faintly between the gaps. ]

[Kei doesn't spare a glance for the girls. He can't. It even occurs to him that he should but that takes a strength of will he doesn't quite have at the moment. He can no more look away from what is happening in the sky than he could fly away from this entire scene.

It doesn't matter, is the thing.

If someone just died behind him, if he is going to die next. Even if he can die that's all irrelevant. That information changes nothing, has not the slightest impact when there's a dragon the size of a universe eating the north star.

When the ground shakes he stumbles, fights to regain his balance, all on automatic. He squints against the brightness and doesn't look away.]

[ The universe holds together, somehow, for as long as that glow can still been seen. Then the dragon swallows, and it breaks. The grounds shifts, then is gone. Gravity pulls hard one last time, then lets go. Everything is in free fall, lights dying and being reborn, sound and sight all in a jumble, a rush of sensation and impression. The field, the girls, the broken sky is gone, and in their place are flashes, too fast to comprehend.

Yukari on a mountain path under the stars, naked, her hair wild and her mouth bloody and her eyes cold and alien and uncomprehending. Yukari sitting at a table, visible only by the faint glow of candlelight, star charts and astrolabes spread out before her, tracing the curved band of an armillary sphere with the tip of her finger.

Yukari smiling in the dark, laughing, a little star held delicately in her teeth, in her closed mouth, illuminating her ribcage from the inside as she swallows it down.

Then, nothing.

And then, of course, something again. Grass tickling the back of your neck. Shorter, this time. Recently cut, because Quiet Mounds is a nice community where they cut the grass every week. ]

[Kei opens his eyes and is kind of... offended in a weird way. By the benign daylight. By the warm air. By how incredibly normal it feels.

His brain is still trying to hold onto the afterglow of what happened, or maybe recover from it? He's not really sure. It's a submerging sensation that he isn't done examining and he resents more mundane stimulus trying to overwrite it.

He moves only so he can drag a hand over his eyes and try to hold onto the darkness. But even that is too bright. Light glowing red through his own skin. Like the star disappearing down Yukari's throat, but nothing like that at all.

He makes a vaguely disgruntled noise.]

[ It gets a little darker, at least, when she puts her own hands over his, laughing. ]

Like a bad hangover, right?

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