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[NOVA] Mama? (M 1.10)

WPTunesWPTunes
edited August 2014 in NOVA
Mei, you're in the arms of something that might be called "mother" and she is singing to you. You are warm and safe, no pain, no worry. She stops singing. mei will be safe as the egg of the sighing swans of voryani she will be protected as she has protected You are sleepy, your needs met, but a name tickles at your contentment. Something that starts with a "k," but that's all you can remember for now.

Comments

  • MischaMischa
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    [Taban Mei]

    What's a voryani?

    More singing.

    Hold me.

    It's nice to be safe.
  • MischaMischa
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    [Taban Mei]

    What happened?
  • MischaMischa
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    [Taban Mei]

    Where am I?
  • MischaMischa
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    [Taban Mei]

    Am I dead?
  • WPTunesWPTunes
    Mei, you drift and wander for a bit, until the warm but distant voice stops. You find yourself in a scene from your early childhood. Something that contributed to who you are today. Tell us about that.
  • MischaMischa
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    [Taban Mei]

    I'm eight.

    I'm walking down the corridor in between classes.

    This semester is at a station in a Lagrange point.

    I'm in white. Everything's white, clean.

    There's a broken lift, so I have to take a different route.

    I'm skipping, humming a little tune I can't get right in my lessons.

    But here's a corridor I normally don't walk down.

    And down that path, there's been an accident. A robot malfunction.

    One of the scrubbers has toppled and is running too fast, too much. Bubbles are everywhere.

    As I watch, one floats by me. It's small.

    I turn my head, casually caught by something shiny.

    The bubble is a few centimeters from my eye as one of the ships is docking.

    And in a moment, for one beautiful impossible moment, there's a swirl of stars and oil colors and twisted spaceship lines curved around me and I can see my face reflected in the window and time is slowing enough I feel like I can see single distinct filaments of purple and reds and blues and oranges spanning the stars and the ship and me and things are silent and my mouth falls open at this casual beauty that nobody else can ever see and the astronomical chain of uncertainty to this now that a few tiny atoms and photons are perfectly aligned from my pupil to lightyears away.

    I wish you could see it, too.
  • WPTunesWPTunes
    edited August 2014
    Mei, you drift with the bubble, reflecting and refracting the ancient light of distant stars. For an unknown time, you float directionless, touching memories and the shadows of memories, never alighting. Your first year at the Academy, when your training squaddies threw you a birthday party, the first you'd ever had. The day Eileen left the arcology, her last fierce hug and glistening eyes. Leaving the Dauntless for the unknown bulk of the alien ship.

    Finally, the bubble pops. You are alone in an unfamiliar and alien forest. It is night. This is not a memory, or at least not your memory. Mei, describe the trees.
  • MischaMischa
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    [Taban Mei]

    I'm no xenobotanist, but I know a few things. Dark dark purple leaves tells me about the sun, maybe suns for this world. Most of the leaves I can see appear to be extremes- either large, the size of my two hands spread wide, or curly and thin. The thousands of peculiar shaped seedpods across the ground suggest lots of winds or grazing beasts to eat them.

    Many of the trees grow squat and short, or just short. No so as I can see over their tops, but short enough that I can see all of the tops. I don't feel heavy, but who knows how dream gees work?

    One of these tree species has big fruit, oddly like a hanging box kite. I watch as one breaks free and is blown away.

    It should be gloomy, but it's not.
  • WPTunesWPTunes
    Mei, you follow the kite-fruit on its journey, skipping along through the purple leaves, until you reach the edge of a purpureus lake, gleaming in the light of double moons. The wind dies, and you fall to the shore with the fruit.

    this is where it begins taban mei watch

    Something begins to rise from the lake. Something huge and unknown to you, but with lines and curves and swirls that are familiar to your mind's eye. Your adrenal medulla triggers the "fight or flight" response upon seeing it surface.

    What do you do?
  • MischaMischa
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    [Taban Mei]

    The sound hits me first. It doesn't sound like water, it sounds somehow heavier and ominous. How can just water do that? Is it something else? Gaumata would know...

    I hold Cora's voice, spin it around my hands like yarn, unsure of what I'm weaving. A weapon? Cover? Both? Feeling the rough softness makes me remember/realize that this is not entirely real.

    I drag my foot back along the dirt like David, ready to run or charge. I feel my breathing patterns change, and I move my center of gravity as though I'm about to box.

    But I wait.

    And I watch, eyes open.
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