TEST DRIVE MEME #5

[sailmods]

1. not subtle revealings

[you wake up.

it doesn't matter where you were before. going to bed? dying? opening the door to face a great evil? same result. you wake up in a soft bed with starched sheets in a cool, darkened room, sunlight peeking out from behind thick curtains. maybe you're alone; maybe you aren't. maybe you immediately notice the folded paper on the bedside table near your head. if you don't, you better fix that real quick: you won't be able to even open the door before you read it.

the note itself is written in a neat hand on white card stock; there is a stylized logo of a ship with the words SERENA ETERNA printed underneath. the note reads as follows:

Dear Passenger(s),

As your cruise director, it is my great honor to welcome you aboard the Serena Eterna, your destination for fun and adventure! We know you could have chosen any cruise line for your vacation, and we're very grateful you chose ours! On behalf of the Captain, I would like to assure each and every passenger that will we do whatever it takes to fulfill all your needs and desires during your journey with us.

At your earliest possible convenience, please attend the mandatory lifeboat drill by the end of the day. I'm sure everyone is very eager to get started on all the fun and sun, but safety always comes first! You can find your life jacket in your cabin's closet; carry it to your assigned muster station on deck one, where I will take you through the drill. If you can't find me in the crowd, just look for the gal with the winning smile!

See You Real Soon!

Sincerely,
Gal Friday

you walk to deck one. you have no other choice: every time you try to step in a direction some unseen being considers "not towards deck one," you find your legs no longer move, staying stock still, frozen. whether compelled quickly by curiosity, or delayed by pure stubbornness, the result is the same, and you are left milling around with other similarly curious or stubborn people.

you see someone in uniform near the front of the crowd. she seems to be a gal, but is missing the winning smile, along with most of her other features. she seems to see you, though, rushing to your side and placing a lei around your neck with great formality. a voice, cheery but artificial, sees to come from nowhere and everywhere.]

Welcome! I'm very glad to have you aboard!

[you touch the lei. rooster feathers, lotus seeds, and a carved circle of something white and hard, linked onto a silk string.

after the drill is completed, you are seemingly free to go. or, well, your legs work, now. and maybe that's as good as it's gonna get.]

2. a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling

[the reflections are missing. all of them. in mirrors. in television screens. on the backs of spoons. nothing looks back at you.

then, figures do show up. not your own, like you'd expect. thin, wispy apparitions, people with pleading eyes and hands, reaching out to place their palms against the surface, from their own end. faces familiar and not, beckoning, mouthing words you just can't quite make out. help me, it might be. get me out, perhaps. just until you're close enough, until your skin warms the surface of whatever it is you're peering into. and then, those same hands wrap, all too real, burning-cold against your flesh, and pull, trying to drag you through the surface, making up for their lack of strength with desperation. any flesh unlucky enough to enter the reflection comes back bone-white and cold, all sensation dead, though it will fade within a few hours.

in retrospect, it looks a bit more like they were saying something different. something more like, better you than me. or maybe it's not even words at all. they look a bit more like they're laughing.]

3. complex mementos

[but, hey. sometimes changes are good! like, today, in Playback, there's a brand-new game available for all the children to play! it's an old-fashioned sort of claw machine, the type that's so large, a particularly dedicated kindergartner could wriggle their way inside. the prizes vary, and sit loose: bags of candy, stuffed toys, firearms, painfully early-00s electronics, actually that one just looks like a dead iguana, tiny ship-branded knickknacks... like all the other games in the arcade, the game starts up automatically upon being touched; lack of quarters shouldn't keep you from having fun! pro tip: they are loaded, and they will go off if you suck at claw games and let it fall.]

Comments

[fonomena]

Oh, yes, we certainly can use our artes--which makes it all the stranger, doesn't it? I'm still not sure how he achieved it...but somehow, the captain has structured this place in such a way that it somehow accommodates multiple aspects of other worlds.

[Without fonons they themselves would not survive, after all...as is the nature of a normal (Auldrant-native) body's fon slots. Yet others have different properties to their bodies entirely in some aspects, here. To say nothing of the multitude of somehow-functioning magical systems...

As forever a consummate scientist, these are the sorts of questions that occupy many of Jade's more sleepless nights, truly. Yet still, this remains the best answer he can offer to Tear for the meantime...it'll have to be sufficient for now. --And at least there's slightly more of a sense of normalcy, in the way they can segue to the matter of food after that.

It's slight, but there may yet be something of a very familiar smirk happening on Jade's end for just a moment here, at Tear's mildly stubborn agreement to the prospect of a buffet and the bit of coloring to her features that accompanies it. He sure is aware by now that Tear really is quite fond of food, especially in variety.....not that he'll ever claim to be teasing about it. Goodness no! Definitely nothing but politeness here, totally...]

Ah, yes, the infirmary would naturally be very relevant to your interests. It does have more general supplies--specialized medicines, painkillers, small tools for mending or patching of wounds. However, I'm afraid gels aren't vendored here in general...do you have any gels on your person currently? I arrived with two pineapple ones--I shall lend you one of them, later. Hmm, alongside a few other things...

[It feels--a bit--like slipping into business as usual, in the oddest sort of way. If he closes out the too-familiar ship surroundings from thought for just a moment or so...it's almost as if he and Tear are having a rendezvous in some foreign place after some time apart, catching each other up and gearing up for a difficult task ahead. A sort of rhythm their entire party had fallen into at the various times they'd had to split up, for the last year or so back in Auldrant, before the events of Eldrant and the true end of such travels...

In a way Jade's still not sure how to feel about this. He doesn't...want to be happy. Or pleased, or relieved--that Tear is here, that she hasn't changed, that...he himself also hasn't changed--at least to an extent where they couldn't fall into that familiar co-working rhythm so quickly, even despite these terrible circumstances. And yet, all the same...it's still as if something's easing just a bit in his chest, speaking to her now...some gnawing ache he hadn't even realized was there.

There's a guilt in this. But he sets that aside. No, Tear needs to be supplied and brought up to speed, as promptly as possible--oh--]

--Actually, now that I think of it. There was a phone on the dresser near your bed when you first woke, yes? ...That is--here--it's a piece of fontech, I suppose you could call it... [As the thought occurs to him, Jade's reaching into an inner pocket of his coat, and pulling out the phone in question--that thin slab of black glass small enough to be held in a hand, you know.]