sail_ooc | TEST DRIVE MEME #1

1. now it's fun to wake up in a strange chateau

[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! We're so glad to have you!

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

2. messing with my mind was fun at the time

[freshly lei'd, your legs are forced to lead out onto the deck and towards your muster station. the same woman is there, carrying a clipboard. this time, she introduces herself as Gal Friday, the cruise director, before immediately going into the muster drill spiel. it is very boring, and you are not allowed to move, except when you are required to show you know how to put your life vest on. you could try to not do this, but Friday will move to stand in front of you very closely and just. look in your direction until such a time that you decide to do it. and I'm sure your fellow passengers want you to just get on with it, too.

but, once it ends? she reiterates her desire to welcome you aboard. and, then, you're free.

well, free to move about the ship at your own leisure, of course. which is a kind of free, and probably the best one you can hope for. you could try to escape, maybe, if you have the means to; Friday certainly won't be one to stop you. that's what the barrier is for, after all.

but, wouldn't you much rather have fun?

the buffet is full. the pool is open. the casino jingles and chimes.

welcome aboard.]

3. lots of mystery in the history of the devils I knew

[you were never alone.

a few days have passed since you first arrived on the Serena Eterna. perhaps you've made yourself a little routine, and settled in a bit. or maybe you haven't done that at all. either way, you're here, and it looks like somebody is pretty pissed off about it.

it starts small. sometimes nearby plates skid off tables, or a pool chair upends while you're walking next to it. and sometimes that chair is aimed right at your head. objects are moving with quickly increasing frequency, and a wide variety of styles: some are dropped, or pushed, and others and others are tossed, but a few of the items are thrown, with great force and odd accuracy. if Friday is around during the lighter moments, she simply titters and cleans up whatever mess is made. if a pot of soup sails off the buffet line and nearly drenches you in boiling minestrone, she simply walks away.

and then there's the voices. hundreds, maybe thousands, calling out. not all are intelligible English, but you seem to understand them anyway. some sound scared, or angry. some are screams, others whispers. some sound entirely strange, while others are achingly familiar. and they're all saying the same exact thing:

Get Out.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The joke was lost, but it was hardly the first time one of Diana's jokes had fallen flat. It didn't help that she had a pair of sisters who--between the two of them--had roughly no sense of humor at all.

But she let it go without comment.

"Yeah," she said. "Totally lost." The lay of the land wasn't much different from your average mall. But the fact that she was on a boat at all was pretty...lost.

Add to that the spiritual disappointment that had completely consumed her in Phoenix. And yes. Definitely lost.

"So am I. It's been two sunrises but it both seems much less, and much more. I have found places for food, however, which I could should you if you wanted?" Water had been Kore's priority, then food, followed by toilets and making her way back to her cell. She's been able to do that much even if she didn't know what to do with the glass device near her bed, so she simply ignored it.

Food was kind of an enormous concern for Diana. Mostly because she didn't want to get to the point of having to start chewing on the passengers. Not cool. Not only because it was, you know, cruel, but because she knew the math well enough to understand that a population this size probably wouldn't be able to sustain much of a Cainite presence. Maybe in the short term, but definitely not in the longer.

Still, forgetting all of that, Diana really did kind of want a friend right now.

"Sure," she said, shifting the strap of her guitar up on her shoulder. "Lead the way...uh. Sorry. Manners. Totes a thing. I don't even know your name! What is it?"

Kore could use friends, she'd had some in the villa, and a one in the Follower's Camp, one in Caeser, and a few among the Rebels. The idea of being here without friends was a kind of heartache she didn't want to face.

"Kore. You are called?" She's been too long among the Rebels to not introduce herself by now but she'd learned there could be reasons to conceal one's identity.

Kore? Diana's eyes lit up like the lights on a pinball machine. "As in the goddess of spring?"

If ever Diana had a patron goddess, Arty always joked it would have to be Persephone. The goddess of springtime and flowers, forever associated with the dead? That was Diana to a T.

The York sisters always made jokes like that. A residual carryover from having the father they'd had. For all of Adam's faults and flaws--and there were many--he had given his girls a classical education. And they used it.

Diana grinned, holding out her hand. "I'm Diana."

Kore smiled warmly and nodded, she had indeed been named after that Goddess, as was common for Romans to give their slaves Greek or Roman names.

"Goddess of the Hunt." Kore was much more familiar with that goddess than the one she was named after. "Matching patterns of names must mean the Parcae have ordained us to be friends?"

Parcae? Diana tilted her head, impressed. It was an interesting way of phrasing it. Most people referred to them as the Moirai. Or, if they were Disney fans, the Fates.

This chick knew her stuff.

"Could be," she said, letting her hand fall to one side. Not everyone was a handshaker. She respected that. "Although, between you and me, I'm not really much of a hunter." Although Joseph used to jokingly call her 'little huntress.' Mostly just to annoy her. Before she realized that she loved him.

She knew her Gods well and would be sad to know so few knew them now. There was comfort in the ritual of prayer and sacrifice.

Kore had completely missed the meaning of the gesture of the handshake, as she didn't know what it was. "And I prefer city over meadow," she admitted with a small laugh.

"Oh, totes," Diana said, waggling her eyebrows. "Cities have it all over everything else." Cities had people. And people were much more entertaining than flowers.

Then, of course, there was the dreaded Midwest, which Diana absolutely loathed.

This girl, though, definitely wasn't a Midwesterner.

"So where ya from, Kore?" she asked, absently twisting the ring on her left hand, like she always did when she wasn't sure what else to do with her hands. "I'm getting a European vibe off of ya."

Kore started to lead towards the dining rooms, thinking the lines and rows of food would be best to show first. "This ship appears as floating city, not unlike confusing dream."

As she lead, Diana would get a view of her back - largely bare save for the artful twisting and draping of her dress, notable for its lack of joining seams, clearly made from one piece of fabric and embroidery. "Rome. I was born in Gaul, but I have no memory of it, taken into Italia when I was very young. Rome being the first place I remember."

Gaul.

That was the first warning klaxon to go off in Diana's head. Although, she supposed, she should have been wary before. Arty and Selene never trusted strangers. Diana always did. It was a problem.

But Gaul. That was too old-timey to ignore.

Was Kore a Cainite? It was obviously the first thought to cross Diana's mind. She didn't look like a Cainite, though. And Diana was pretty sure she was breathing, that her heart was beating. But who else talked about Gaul?

"Rome," she said, biting down on her lower lip as she follows Kore. "Never been there. I hear it's beautiful. Always wanted to visit the Trevi and St. Peter's Basilica."

In Kore's experience people from Gaul never stopped mentioning it. Slave she may be, born in Gaul she may have been, but she considered herself Roman.

"Some of it is. But there are areas of alleyways so narrow you must pass single file with little cracks and holes for robbers or worse to hide. Fires happen in the poor areas often, even in the nice areas and some," like her Dominus, "take advantage."

Kore turned to look at Diana. "I'm not familiar with either, apologies."

A little line formed between Diana's eyes. While she wasn't as well-traveled as her sisters, she knew the Trevi and St. Peter's Basilica. Pictures of them were in glossy, full color across the covers of dozens, if not hundreds, of travel brochures. Hell, back in the ancient days of actual travel agents, they'd been on posters as liberally as cats hanging from trees.

Option one: The chick was lying about being from Rome.

Option two: Well...she was sure there had to be some kind of option two.

"How about the Colosseum?" she asked, uneasily.

"The Amphitheatrum?" It's not the same one - but she does know if a large one she's been too several times and assumes, "Visiting them is always an affair but dramas and speeches are preferred to gladiators or exotic hunts." Because they weren't fir show in her time but in active use.

Option two: This girl thought she was Philia in a production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

And Diana might have gone with that, if the chick was a Cainite. Except she wasn't. She was a living, breathing person. A living, breathing person who was clearly acting out some Roman epic fantasy. In all fairness, Diana had been through the golden age of Hollywood and had been super into movies like Ben-Hurr and Quo Vadis. Mostly for the pageantry and the costumes and the romance.

She got it.

But seriously...what was she supposed to do with this? Was it a joke? Was it serious? Something in between?

"Yeah," she said, aiming for diplomatic. "Well, I'm not a fan of killing innocent animals..."

TEST DRIVE MEME #1

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