TEST DRIVE MEME #1

[sailmods]

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.]

Comments

[hect]

Her loose hand, the one which had just been holding the cocktail glass, drifts upward and fists emptily at her throat. To some eyes, it might look like she's clutching at a set of invisible pearls. (To other, more knowledgeable eyes: it is perhaps like she's kneejerk reaching for a little bag of bones which isn't there anymore.)

The sound of his voice shivers down into the soles of her feet, settling over her like a warm blanket. He's the only person who calls her Cam, and certainly the only person who says it with such comfortable familiarity; such graceful ease; such unthinking intimacy. She's been waiting to hear that voice again for eight long, painful, wrenching, empty months.

Ergo: She might be imagining things.

Camilla doesn't exactly go for her knives, but she does re-settle her weight on her heels, ready to spring into action (to— embrace him? attack him, if it's all a trick? both?). She watches Palamedes with the sharp-eyed intensity of tricking to pick loose where the details might be wrong or missing: revealing him to be a ghost, or a revenant, or a hallucination, because this ship hasn't been normal so far.

"Is it really you?" she asks.

[hellonspectacles]

"In the flesh." It's an absolutely stupid joke, but all at once Palamedes wants nothing more than to see Camilla suppress a smile or roll her eyes. Now that he has allowed himself to inspect her, he can see the weariness in every muscle of her body. The tension running down her spine doesn't indicate an eagerness for action, as it may have once, but instead a pent-up fear and readiness to flee. He wants to run to her, to embrace her, to ask what happened and assure her no harm will come to her ever again.

Instead, he just tips his head to the side, watching her gently. "Come sit? There's tea."

[hect]

"In the—"

She cuts herself off, sharp as a knife hacking through the words, because if anything, that hopeless joke and that offer of tea is just so Palamedes. It sounds so very much like him. And it's like he's luring in a stray, a companion dog gone feral on its own in the wilderness. But so she rolls her shoulders and then strides across the room — ignoring the mess she's left behind, because her heart is already a battered mess in her chest and she needs to pick up those pieces first.

Quick, businesslike. She pulls out the chair beside him and plants herself in it, knees straight, leaning forward, and she reaches forward to touch his shoulder; the line of his neck (waiting for a pulse, got it, alright); that brisk touch of practically a medical check-up; and then even the frame of his glasses. How the fuck does he have his glasses?

And then— something caves. He can see that stormcloud on Camilla's face blow apart and then, finally, that fragile smile blooms in its stead.

"Not a revenant," she says. And before she even realises she's about to do it, then she's lurched forward to drag him into a hug, her face buried against his shoulder.

[hellonspectacles]

Palamedes watches her intently as she looks him over, doing a visual assessment of his own. Up close, the change in her is even clearer, reminding him of the time that passed since they last saw each other. There are bags under her eyes, scars and blemishes on her skin he doesn't recognize, and even new calluses on her hands. It doesn't really matter, though; they can get to all that later. She's here.

"I did say," he answers, and before he can do anything else, she flies at him, knocking out his breath with the force of her embrace. He gives a soft oof and then wraps his arms tightly around her, hands fisting in the back of her shirt as though he was holding on for dear life. Which he is, in a way.

[hect]

As Camilla dissolves into his shirt (his poor shirt), she latches onto him as if she never wants to let go. Her eyes squeeze shut; she does not cry. Palamedes has seen Camilla Hect in any variety of situations and battle and distress, both emotional and physical, and she barely cries in front of anyone. Even him. Even when she was a child. But her fingers curl into his clothes with a terrific vise-like grip, and her feelings betray themselves in the desperation of those clenched muscles, that iron grasp.

And with her bare hands so close and his psychometric abilities to hand, he can sense it: her bones are older. Her skin has touched the dirt of strange new planets. There are new nicks and scars on her body, the flesh healed over, a map of the intervening time she's lived without him — the eight-and-some months since she lost him, the longest months of her entire life.

"Welcome back, Warden," she says, although it comes out as a bit of a muffled mumble against his shoulder. It's very undignified. It is, probably, the most undignified she's ever looked.

She couldn't give a damn.