IC contact for lastvoyages

[cactusy]

[If I don't have an active post up, feel free to use this post to have your character call, videochat, text, or knock on Shaw's door.]

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[cactusy]

"Jet is," she says, jerking her chin at a tricolored border collie, who is wagging his tail furiously, but still very nicely restraining himself from throwing himself bodily at Avalon in an attempt to seek pats. "And the other three - Bear's from home, Glitch is from that flood where people were manifesting stuff with their emotions, and Goji's from people who think the Barge is a great place to breed dogs, for whatever weird reason."

Each dog perks up their ears when they hear their name, but she has them trained well; they all stay seated.

[chaos_drifter]

“Interesting. I was manifesting animals, too.” Their curiosity had created several teacup kittens.

Avalon bends down once Shaw lets them in, holding their hand out to Jet. They can feel his excitement to some extent, though not as clearly as they can sense human emotions. They probe for a moment, searching for any hint that he might recognize them as something other than human, but pull away almost immediately.

“I was expecting that Flood to be more useful than it was, but my objects seemed to have a pattern after a while.”

[cactusy]

"Do I wanna know?" she wonders, turning to head towards the kitchen area to grab them both a drink - or to grab herself two drinks, if it turns out that Avalon isn't into whiskey. "I'm glad I didn't get animals; I saw other people making spiders and stuff."

[chaos_drifter]

They step back from Jet, glancing around Shaw’s cabin. “I had small animals and empty containers, for the most part. Those, and my item.” They wear an identical bracelet on their other wrist, this one serving its original purpose.

When Shaw comes back with the whiskey, Avalon studies their glass for a moment before taking a sip. They know whiskey is stronger than Earth wine. Maybe this will affect them more than Rawne’s sacra had.

[cactusy]

"Have you ever had alcohol before?" she wonders. Probably, she realizes, that's a question she should have asked them before serving them, but-- oh, well. Hindsight.

[chaos_drifter]

“Yes, but not much.” They had mostly done it to blend in. “It seems to make me tired more than anything else.”

[cactusy]

"Okay. Take it slow, and tell me who you want me to call to cart your ass away if you pass out."

She's joking - probably. It's often not so easy to tell with Shaw.

"So, you, uh-- got a reason for coming here, or did you just want to say hi in person?"

[chaos_drifter]

They have no idea if they should take that seriously or not. “I think I should be able to tell when to stop. I had sacra with Rawne a while ago.” They shrug. Not having many body sensations makes it easier to notice the ones that they do have.

“When Will dies, how do you feel?” It seems like a good place to start. “Or Root,” they add, glancing at her pockets. She had kept her orb there. If they touched it, would their emotions be covered by gray the way hers were?

[cactusy]

She immediately gets the significance of their glance, and her hand slips into the pocket of her hoodie - fingers curling around the orb, but not taking it out just yet.

"Tired," she says. "Why?"

[chaos_drifter]

“When Rawne died on the Enposib, Norton and I found his body. I might have felt worried before that, but once I got there I just felt cold and weak.” They pause. “I could tell that nothing was physically wrong with me, but the cold felt like it was right under my skin and I had no way of reaching it. I was wondering if you had felt something similar.”

[cactusy]

"Oh." She pauses, squeezing the ball in her pocket. "Yeah, kind of. 'Cold' sounds right for how I felt when Root died at home. Did you feel empty? Hollow?"

[chaos_drifter]

“When I was talking to you, I did — physically, not mentally.” Mental emptiness, to them, is still essentially normal. “It was mostly in my chest.” They had decided to breathe just so they could feel something, so they could remind themself that their lungs still existed.

[cactusy]

"I get it in my stomach." And in her chest a bit, she thinks, but that's not as easy to pinpoint. "But, uh-- not when people die here, or at least not in the same way. They come back here. It's different."

[chaos_drifter]

“It might be different if I come to care about someone in my world, and it might have been different if we had been able to contact the Admiral.” Though the first person from their world that comes to mind would be difficult to kill.

“What does your orb say about it?”

[cactusy]

"What, you mean right now?" She closes her fingers around it, pulling it out - it's the same swirly, cloudy gray that it so often is. "Or when people have died?"

[chaos_drifter]

“When people have died.” They watch the gray swirls, sipping their whiskey again. After a moment, they add, “Do you ever get different colors mixed with the gray?” Would it do that if they held it?

[cactusy]

"I can see faded colors underneath the gray sometimes," she says - staring hard at the ball, trying to will it into giving her an example to show off. It doesn't work: the gray continues swirling all by itself. "They never come up to the surface, but they mix with each other sometimes. People dying gets a darker gray, but--"

She shakes her head.

"People dying here come back, so that pollutes the data. Thinking about the people I know who've died at home, who've died for real... that gets dark blue, sometimes. Sometimes really dark gray or black."

[chaos_drifter]

“I usually had colors on the surface of mine, but they tended to be thin streaks.” They watch the swirls, too, wondering if another color will appear. “I like your gray. It seems alive.” Their black was still and hard, like a wall for the rest of their emotions to break through. Shaw’s gray is always moving, always hinting at something under the surface even without other colors.

“Do you mind if I hold it?” They had felt something when Malcolm had asked them to think about how they would feel if something happened to Rawne. Maybe that will be enough for Shaw’s orb to pick up on it.

you can put what they're feeling in the next tag, and i'll say what the colors would be in mine!

[cactusy]

"Alive?" Shaw echoes, surprise etching across her face as she studies it anew. Alive. She's never thought of it that way, never had anyone else describe it that way, but... she can see it. Kind of.

After a long moment of what isn't so much hesitation as it is just wanting to hold it herself for a little while longer, Shaw carefully hands over the orb.

Awesome, that was my plan, too!

[chaos_drifter]

“Yes.” They glance at their bracelet, and Admiration appears on the panel. “Mine was always still, like a marble, but every time I see yours it has movement. Like you always have something happening under the surface, even if no one can see it.”

They reach for the orb, and their bracelet switches to Curious/interested.

[cactusy]

"I can't believe you get words," Shaw grumps, peering at the panel. "Figures mine wouldn't be straight-forward, alive or not. Can I wear yours?"

As the orb leaves Shaw's touch and transfers over to Avalon, the gray sticks around - but threads of light blue start to swirl through it, along with a few tinges of pink. The movement is apparently universal, but like Shaw's colors, Avalon's are sedate and slow-moving: there are no big bursts of frenetic energy here.

[chaos_drifter]

“Is your cheat sheet difficult to interpret?” Sometimes they thought it would be better if theirs would show the colors rather than naming them, but they can work out what everything means eventually.

They unbuckle their bracelet, offering it to Shaw. “Go ahead.” Then their focus is back on her orb, on the memory of finding Rawne’s body with Norton, on the way the cold emptiness had seemed to weigh them down. They watch the orb, wondering if their memories will be enough to make it change.

[cactusy]

"No, the cheat sheet's fine. I just--"

She hesitates, aware of how much this undercuts her grumbling. She doesn't want to lie to them, though.

"I want to try to figure out what the colors mean myself. But words are still a hell of a lot more straight-forward than colors - it's the principle of the thing."

She holds the bracelet in both hands, though she doesn't put it on just yet. Instead, her focus is also on her own orb, which is slowly shifting to a deep, dark blue, the cloudiness solidifying into a more uniform hue.

"What the-- why's it doing that?" Shaw demands. After all, as far as she can tell, nothing has happened to make it change. "You think it's defective?"

[chaos_drifter]

When they get theirs back, they want to try to figure the colors out themself, too.

“That makes sense. I like that the colors can show more complexity, though. The bracelet only tells me about one emotion at a time.” Their orb had showed them more about the quality of their emotional state, rather than being limited to the content.

They watch as the gray on Shaw’s orb blends into the blue. “I wanted to see what would happen if I thought about how I felt after the shipwreck. Mine never changed when I was thinking about a feeling without experiencing it.”

Now that their focus is back on her, the orb might start shifting back to the way it was before. “Has the gray ever blended with another color like that before?”

[cactusy]

"Sometimes other colors come up to the surface like that, yeah. Black, mostly, but I've seen a couple others, too. They don't usually stick around for long."

She tilts her head, studying the orb.

"So what do you think? Empathy for your past self? You ask me, that's not too far off from empathy for other people."