TEST DRIVE MEME #10

[sailmods]

a. that's where we both belong

[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 aboard! I'm so happy you could join us!

[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.]

b. and there's plenty of that down by the sea

[it’s strange to think about, isn’t it? how all those new passengers, the ones grumbling or shouting their way through the forced muster drill, have absolutely no idea what happened just last month. no idea about the labyrinth. no concept of why anyone around them would be a bit more hesitant around shadows.

they’ll learn.

sometimes a shadow is darker than it’s supposed to be. very rarely does anything come of that; just a vague sense that someone is watching you, and little more. sometimes, though, the shadows move. sometimes they grab at your ankles as you walk. sometimes they give you a shove as you go down the stairs. sometimes they pull your hair, or pinch your arm.

sometimes you feel something sharp cut into your lower leg.

that’s not a shadow, though. that’s a fiddler crab. you see the crab, sometimes. the cut isn’t from its claws, which don’t look very intimating; it’s not a very large crab. the cut is from the large kitchen knife crudely taped onto its back. it’s probably fine. it's not chasing you. there isn't evil in its heart. probably.]

c. think I'll go back to the Keys

[one day, in the atrium, two pedestals suddenly appear. on each is a large button: one green, and one blue. pressing the blue button gives you a little treat, popping out of thin air next to you. pressing the green button sends a small electric shock through your body. weird, but, hey, pretty avoidable, right?

except, it seems to be spreading. to every other button on board.

in the elevator. on the soda machine. the arcade. your phone. the bell on Friday’s desk.]

Comments

[abhorrently]

Thank you Johnny, you're a marvel, no wonder you landed two husbands.

"Mm. I'm not...economically based." She means an economist. "But gold's always good. Or trade."

Slipping the coins back in her pocket, she takes the water.

"Anyway, none of it changes the main part. If there's another Fever, I've got to kill her if she comes near. Both of us can't....we can't stand in the same room."

[businessorlibation]

"You'll never be in the same room as her while on the ship," says the man who dealt with his doppleganger in the Labyrinth by dancing with himself.

[abhorrently]

"Good. Good. It'd get very ugly very fast."

Drinking the water, because she knows it's good for her.

"A year and a half, though? Does this place just keep travelling?"

[businessorlibation]

"Yes and no. Are you familiar with the concept of 'pocket realms'?"

She looks like the type who might be.

roll: 20

[abhorrently]

Drinking more water, she probes her brain to see if the alcoholic marinade has done any good, and her mind clears enough to point out some obvious links in the chain. Connecting, extrapolating, and even with the booze in her to cause a stagger, the implications honestly couldn't have been easily accepted sober.

"You're saying this entire place is a demiplane."

Of course she gets pocket realms. She'd walked straight into one, at the creche. Only it was a knotted bit of Astral pulled in on itself. And this entire ship being something created by that god Erin had mentioned - well, of course it's within their power. It feels slightly embarrassing that it didn't click sooner, but there was enough to confuse and bamboozle her to make it less obvious. Or she just wasn't thinking about the right things.

[businessorlibation]

"We're not actually on an ocean, going anywhere in physical space. Yes, this is a demiplane, and sometimes it visits or connects to other demiplanes." Well, that makes it easier.

[abhorrently]

Fever's going to gulp more of her water while she contemplates that one.

"Why couldn't anyone just say that to begin with?"

She shakes her head, as if it was impossibly simplified by that explanation.

"No wonder it seems like we're stuck. The door's on the outside."

[businessorlibation]

He lets out a bit of a laugh. "Not everyone comes from a background where that explanation can be a useful one. I had to be introduced to the concept slowly by a necromancer."

[abhorrently]

"How many of those do you have kicking around the place?"

And can she get them to write scrolls for her...

[businessorlibation]

"Mm, unfortunately, Palamedes and Bash are no longer aboard. I'm not sure if Maxwell counts, but he is a user of dark ritual magic all the same. Let's see, who else. Klaus is tied to ghosts and the dead, but I'm not sure how much he identifies that ability with magic. Valdis is...powerful, and she and I don't often talk. Darcy...Darcy."

That last comes with a loose handwave.

[abhorrently]

"Not your friend?"

She can guess.

[businessorlibation]

"He's young and energetic and in some ways I relate to him, and in other ways I find him utterly unfathomable. We're not close, but if he showed up at my cabin needing help, I'd give it freely."

[abhorrently]

Draining her water glass dry, she nods once, a deliberate action.

"And somehow linked to necromancy. You know, I can speak with the dead, read some good books on it, but making a whole business of it...mm, I don't know."

There's a shrug there.

"To each his own, though."

[businessorlibation]

"Calling, I think, for some of those I mentioned. I don't know that any of them started by choice. But I'm not intimately familiar with such. Normal as they come, me."

Bullshit, says the fizz in the air.

[abhorrently]

"If you're going to lie to me, at least put a little more effort into it. I can sense that magic in your aura from at least five feet away."

Caught in another wild surge, or something else? She's not clever enough to know off the bat, but maybe he'll be forthcoming.

[businessorlibation]

"...it was true when I first arrived on the ship. The magic is, ahm, a change for me. Something that's happened to me." He ducks his head slightly.

[abhorrently]

"Oh."

Her tone gets a little more subdued, her expression softer - she's trying to gauge how he feels about it, truly.

"Do you...want it gone?"

[businessorlibation]

"Oh, that's not a simple question." He lets out a sheepish little laugh. "It's hardly the only way in which I've changed over the past year and a half."

[abhorrently]

"Imagine the question applies to all of it, then. Do you want it, or do you want to be who you were?"

Backwards or forwards. Such is the question, over and over.