cactusy | IC contact for lastvoyages

“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.

"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.

“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.

"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.

“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.

"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?"

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?”

"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."

“It could be empathy for my past self, or it could be that I have more familiarity with my emotions now. The last time someone asked me to imagine how I would feel in a particular situation, I was wrong.” They had felt more than they thought they would.

“Do you know what blue and black mean?”

"Black's definitely angry, or something like it. Blue... sad?"

She's clearly not sure about that one, but she does think that it's a pretty solid guess, based on her own experiences.

“Sadness makes sense.” It sometimes feels empty, coming from other people. “I have no idea what anger would feel like to me.”

"I can feel anger pretty well, actually," Shaw remarks. "But I have no idea how to describe it. It's... tight."

It seems like something stronger than what they can feel, but so had grief. “Do you know why it comes easily to you?”

"No. It can't just be because it's negative; I don't feel things like hate in the same way."

She pauses, thinks - and then asks them a question that she very likely wouldn't ask anyone else.

"You got any theories?"

They study her orb for a few more seconds, then hand it back to her. “Curiosity always came easily to me. It used to feel like a state of being rather than an emotion, but it helped me feel like I had a purpose.” It was part of what drove them to want a purpose at all. “I had trouble wanting to connect with people, so I wanted to know things about them instead. Curiosity was my mind’s way of replacing connection. Anger could be your mind’s way of replacing another emotion.”

"Passion," she supplies, though without any strong conviction; it's just a guess. It's the first thing that comes to mind, though, and it does so easily, like a puzzle piece fitting into place.

“Does your cheat sheet have passion on it?” They have no idea if the cheat sheets are meant to be a representation of what they can feel, but Shaw seemed to think of it that way.

"Nope," she says, popping the p. "So maybe that's a bust. But it's the closest one-to-one I can think of."

“Maybe,” they say. “The cheat sheet might not be a representation of everything you can feel, though. When mine changed, I think it was to add nuance, not because I was able to feel new emotions. Yours could be missing some nuance.” They might have never seen hers, but that was what theirs had done.

IC contact for lastvoyages

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

Awesome, that was my plan, too!

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