refiningspacetime (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
refiningspacetime) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fleetlogs2014-12-17 01:36 pm
refiningspacetime) wrote in fleetlogs2014-12-17 01:36 pm
THE EDITED PHERES LOG POST
=> PHERES: Abscond.
SUMMARY: Taking drinks from strangers is generally a bad idea. Pheres needs to be picked up from a party, but life is hard when your moirail is out of town and all of your friends are terrible. Luckily, there's always Fleetbound!
WARNINGS: None! Except for Pheres being thoroughly depressing in Lead him home.
THIS HAS BEEN FINALLY EDITED. For like the third time. Due to POV-switching shenanigans, you may occasionally encounter weird shifts / incorrect verb pluralisation at points that I missed in switching from 3rd person to 2nd person POV. Sorry! :c
For the most part, though, typoes should be fixed and continuity is now more accurate!
ALSO: Follow the story through the links above to ensure you're reading the correct, edited threads, please and thank youu
=> FLEETBOUND POST. [refiningSpacetime - FIN]
=> MARDUK: Call your guide. [FIN]
=> RICCIN: Retrieve the damsel in distress. [FIN]
=> HINNOM: Lead him home. [FIN]
=> FLEETBOUND POST. [activatingAggro- FIN]
=> SIPARA: Fetch your dumb moirail. [FIN]
=> PHERES: Wake up. [FIN]
=> MARDUK: Call your guide. [FIN]
=> RICCIN: Retrieve the damsel in distress. [FIN]
=> HINNOM: Lead him home. [FIN]
=> FLEETBOUND POST. [activatingAggro- FIN]
=> SIPARA: Fetch your dumb moirail. [FIN]
=> PHERES: Wake up. [FIN]
WARNINGS: None! Except for Pheres being thoroughly depressing in Lead him home.
THIS HAS BEEN FINALLY EDITED. For like the third time. Due to POV-switching shenanigans, you may occasionally encounter weird shifts / incorrect verb pluralisation at points that I missed in switching from 3rd person to 2nd person POV. Sorry! :c
For the most part, though, typoes should be fixed and continuity is now more accurate!
ALSO: Follow the story through the links above to ensure you're reading the correct, edited threads, please and thank youu
no subject
"Come on, dude," you laugh, because fuck it, it's almost two in the fucking evening and you are exhausted, "calm the fuck down! It's not like I said don't fuck indigoes, it'll give you frostbite - even though it will, actually, don't fuck Riccin, either, that shit probably rubs off -"
=> MARDUK: Call your guide.
FS: 1. [POLITE] hello, pp.
FS: 2. [INQUIRING] are you perhaps still awake?
FS: 1. [REGRETFUL] if you are not, of course, that is entirely acceptable, and of course the expected response: when speaking in regards to acceptability, being awake at this hour is somewhat abnormal.
PP: ( - Yo + wHaSsUp bOo - )
PP: ( - nO NeEd tO ApOlTeRgHeIsT + YoU KnOw mE GiRl + oNlY GeT ShUtEyE WhEn i'm dEaD-EyEd - 0*v*0 - )
PP: ( - hOoHoOhOo - )
FS: 1. [RELIEVED AMUSEMENT] ha ha ha.
FS: 2. [EVIDENT RELIEF] i didn't wish to wake you, but i am glad you are awake.
FS: 3. [CURIOUSITY] are you perhaps out on one of your delivery routes?
PP: ( - YaH + JuSt gHoUlInG AbOuT On mY RoUtE + LeTtInG ThE SpOoKs dO ThEiR ThAnG + WhY - )
PP: ( - YoU WaNnA HaNg? -)
PP: (- cOs i fOuNd sOmE RoPe iN ThE TrAsH-HeAp oThEr dAy + hOoHoOhOo! - )
PP: ( - 0*v*0 - )
FS: 1. [WRY AMUSEMENT] you are a very funny grub. whomever would think to intermix the literal and colloquial definitions of two similar words in such a way, but you?
FS: 2. [INFORMATIVE] i do wish to "hang", as you put it, using of course the colloquial definition, and not the literal.
FS: 3. [INFORMATIVE] aa has asked me to do her a favor. have you checked fleetbound as of late?
PP: ( - YaH + I SeEn tHe fRaIl + bOy iS CrUnK As fUcK - )
PP: ( - GoNnA GeT ShAnKeD - )
PP: ( - bUt i bEt hE'Ll lEaVe a rEaL SwEeT GhOsT BeHiNd! + SpArKpLuGs aLwAyS Do + 0*v*0 - )
FS: 1. [HESITANT] ...
FS: 2. [INFORMATIVE] i'm afraid that the purpose of aa's favor is to, in fact, ensure that he does not get shanked, or killed, or otherwise end up as a ghost for your collection.
PP: ( - UgH + ArE YoU SeRiOuS - )
PP: ( - GiRl iS A DrAg + sHe's aLwAyS CaStInG ShAdE On mY FuN + 0*n*0 - )
FS: 4. [SINCERE] my apologies.
FS: 1. [HESITANT] but to digress, i was wondering if you would like to accompany me.
FS: 2. [HESITANT] since you are already awake at this hour and venturing around the city, i thought perhaps it could be a fun engagement, and the presence of two trolls would make us both slightly less likely to engage negative attention of which we are unprepared to handle.
PP: ( - HmMm + bOo i gOt wOrK - )
FS: 1. [APOLOGETIC] i know. i was hoping that perhaps you could delay some of your activities, but now i see that this was an unkind and indeed unfeasible thing to proposition, given the importance of your work.
PP: ( - IdGaF + LeTs dO It - )
FS: 2. [APOLOGETIC] your help is, of course, entirely unncecessary, and i was largely asking out of the selfish desire for company during this jaunt: as a jadeblood wearing imperial colours, the likelihood of gaining negative attention is statistically marginal to the point that any actual confrontation would fall entirely out of the norm.
FS: 3. [APOLOGETIC] and third of all--
PP: ( - HeY - )
PP: ( - HeY - )
PP: ( - HeY - )
PP: ( - )-(EY - )
FS: 1. [APOLOGETIC] ???
PP: ( - BoO + LeTs dO ThIs sHiT - )
forgottenSebayt [FS] ceased trolling postalPrestidigitation [PP]
no subject
It's a nice image, and you hold it firm in your mind, keeping the edges tightly wound and the picture firm. The streets are clean, the sun high in the sky: one of the children is swathed in ratty oiled cotton that must be older than they are, but the other is bare-skinned, her gray skin flushed with a healthy green. Their lusii are playing behind them. They're probably laughing.
Unfortunately, that's not what's actually happening. But it's a wonderful thought, and you clings to it. Maybe if you picture it for long enough, it'll become real.
The reality, of course, is that you're currently sludging through the city's millenia old sewer system. If you had ever contemplated going through the underground waste transportation system before, then perhaps this wouldn't be so terrible: you would've had expectations that would've been flouted and surpassed in turn.
But you've never thought about it much, something that you're sincerely regretting now. When your thoughts did stray towards the waste management transportation system, it was only fleeting, never really serious. Perhaps the sewers were metal! Perhaps all of the city's waste was carried away by trolly, or by drones, or by the fervent wishes of those involved: it was all equally likely, as far as you were concerned, and as it turns out, it was all completely, entirely wrong.
Every new thing you've encountered down here has come as an unpleasant surprise. It took you awhile to realise that you needed to keep your skirt hiked up around your knees, so the bottom is all soggy and wet, and you hadn't thought at all to dress down, so of course it's one of your nicer skirts, too.
At least you had the wisdom, when Hinnom first led you down to the sewer grate, to immediately hide your sash away in your sylladex. Proctor Sungazer is lenient in some ways, but coming in with a sash stinking of waste is not one of the things he would tolerate. Unfortunately, there's still damp all across your shoes, and things keep dripping in your hair: your sash might not smell of waste, but it hasn't even been an hour and you already stink of it.
Everything is terrible. When you see Sipara, you're going to give her some very stern words on maintaining contact with her own moirail, if she's so desperately concerned.
(You won't. Sipara is your friend, for all that she is prone to take advantage, and you wouldn't want to upset her any further than this day already has.)
The air reeks of chemicals strong enough to make your eyes water, but it's not as if it matters much: you can't see a damn thing down here anyway. Trolls are hatched to see in all levels of the dark, and so there's no lights built into the walls, no light at all but the occasional streamers from the sewer grates far above. Unfortunately, jadebloods are the exception. Some low or high jades can see well in the dark and in the daytime, well enough to be at constant ease, but you're solidly in the middle. Your eyes are built to handle the bright light of the daytime sun, and you can barely see in your own respiteblock if the lightgrub is hibernating. Down here in the sewers, with no lights at all, you might as well be blind.
If it weren't for the hand you're keeping clamped on Hinnom's shoulder, you'd have already fallen into the water and died. The sound of rushing of water to your left is the only way you know it's even there: there's nothing to reflect off of the water, and no way to tell when the floor changes from the rough stonework to the sheer drop of water without light to guide you.
If you did die down here, you reflects glumly, would Hinnom even remember to go tell your lusus?
"Hinnom," you say, trying your best not to breathe between words, "I don't ask as a discourtesy, but -- are we there yet?"
no subject
(Mardie gave you a clamshell to keep track of the time, but you don't see the point: only time you ever use it is when she messages you, anyway.)
The only time you need to pay attention to like, hours is when you're out delivering, 'cause sometimes you need shit you can't harvest from the dead, like glue and pencils and sparkledust for your projects, and you know an olive who'll trade you that shit in exchange for work. You keep a suncloak you found for times like that, but you hate doing it, on account of the fact the stuff she wants you to do is always boring as fuck.
It's not even like you're the one doing anything. All you ever do is stand there, with your suncloak up and the mailbag strapped onto your back, and wait while the ghosts you keep leashed take all the little packages to the right spots. Occasionally, you gotta whack a lusus or two that gets snooty with you, but otherwise, it's just standing around for an hour or two, and then bringing the empty bag back to the olive lady. She bitches whenever you show up, about shit like responsibility and reliability, but she still trades: she's boring and slow, and the route that only takes you an hour or two can last her the entire night.
You were supposed to be doing that today, and you know skipping means you're gonna get an earful the next time you do show up. But Mardie asked you for a favor, and that never, ever happens: usually, she's the one giving you things, and then hemming and hawwing when you try to give her anything else back. Helping her is way more important than getting new pencils.
And, like, it's already turning out to be way more fucking fun.
"Hinnom," Mardie says, her voice funny, "I don't ask as a discourtesy, but -- are we there yet?"
"Almost, boo," you call, sing-song, over your shoulder. "Chillax!"
It was a huge fucking hassle to convince Mardie to get down in the sewers, but she hadn't known how to get to the coordinates she'd been given, and like fuck you're going over the roads. The streets are filled with rumblecarts and giant fucking lusii, and while you're not sure which is more terrifying, you are sure you don't want to fuck with either.
You prefer the sewers. As long as you keep out of the inner city areas, there's no ghouls or walking dead, and it's all straight shoots and narrow paths: none of the clutter or the people or the noise of the streets above, just a grid that'll take you wherever you need to go, and coordinates on the walls to let you know where you were.
The destination Mardie wanted isn't that far from the big old hivestem she lives in, but it's taken forever to walk with Mardie clinging to your shoulder. The numbers on the wall have been steadily climbing higher, though, and there's an ancient climbing device up ahead, mounted to the stone wall. There's spackles of light coming out of the grate way, high above, and.. hmm.
The numbers closest to you declare, in big, white blocks: 612314. It's not quite right, but hell, it's close enough. "We're here," you trill. "Gimme a sec and lemme send one of my ghouls up to scope, 'kay?"
no subject
"Okay," you say uneasily. There's no legal precedent for ghosts in any of your books, and privately, you've always suspected they were some kind of an elaborate lowblood joke. The very fact only yellows and below can see them is suspicious: psychic abilities are hardly unknown among higherbloods, so why would this specific one be limited?
But if Hinnom wants to make a joke at your expense, well.. it's not like ze'd be the first. You pat zir shoulder, and then, releasing it, carefully take a step back, away from the ladder and the grate. You've never actually seen someone use psionics before, but the gamegrubs always make it seem like a hectic affair.
"Do I need to move back farther?" you ask, bracing a hand on the wall. You resolutely do not think about how damp it is under your skin. "Or, ah.. is this distance sufficient?"
no subject
She pats your shoulder and steps back, and when you turn your head to peer at her, she's braced herself against the wall instead. "Is this distance sufficient?" she asks, and you blinks.
"Umm.. it's aight," you say, dubious. You have no idea what the fuck she's doing, and the best you can tell is that it's some sort of weird greenblood thing: she does that, sometimes, goes off to do weird shit and claims it's just like, proper behaviour later on. "You gonna have to scoot back on up in a min, though."
Staring at her is pointless, so you shrug, turn your attention back to the ladder and get to work.
As far as you're concerned, any troll could probably see ghosts, if they just tried. It's not like it's hard! It's just a matter of unfocusing your ganderbulbs, and letting them see what they want to see, not what you think they should see.
When you do it, the room blurs to a muddy gray mess, until all that's left is the coloured shapes of trollish forms. Most of them are immaterial, barely more than blood-coloured smudges in the corner of your eyes. Those are the imprints, the results of ghosts rubbing up on each other too much over the course of sweeps: they've forgotten their names and their shapes and even their blood colours, in some cases, until all that's left is a voice and a pan that doesn't know how to use them. The only proper ghost in the sewer right now is a big, hornless blue one, and the leash tying him to your horns shines ember bright in the dark of the room.
You sent most of your ghosts on home when Marduk first sent you that message, but you kept one leashed, just in case. The death rate in the city is super, duper high, which is great, because there's always ghosts around to wrangle if you need it. But it's easier to work with the ones you know, and you've known Castor forever.
"- can't believe you brought a jadeblood into the sewers," he says, as his voice fizzles and sizzles into your hearing range. You can always hear ghosts, if you want to: it's not like looking, where you've gotta focus. It's more like hearing the creak of bones in the floor below, and knowing if it's a ghoul or a revenant. Just a matter of paying attention.
Mostly, it's not worth it. Especially in Castor's case. If he wants your attention, he'll holler, but all he usually does is whine, whine, whine, like he's doing right now.
"Cry more," you jeer. Castor's the first ghost you ever leashed, and he's just a big whiny grub, always acting like he's trying to be your moirail -- or, worse yet, your lusus. He was pleased as punch when you and Mardie started getting friendly, but if he had things his way, he'd have you as stiff-laced as one of her academy pals. "Buck up and bounce, dude? I don't wanna get jumped."
He sighs and gives you a look, the sort that means you'll be hearing shit later. Whatevs: when Castor's not complaining, that's when there's a problem. He disappears up the ladder, balancing each foot and pulling with his arms like he still needs to do that shit, and a moment later, you hear his voice call down:
"All clear."
You bounce with delight. "Okay," you chirp, spinning on your heel to snatch hold of Mardie's hand. She's looking at you like you're speaking tongues, but she makes that face a lot, and you pay it no mind as you tug her towards the ladder. You'll climb up first, 'course, but poor Mardie's blind as a bat, and you don't trust her not to go falling into the pipes as soon as you turns your back. "Let's bail!"
=> RICCIN: Rescue the damsel in distress.
=> HINNOM: Lead him home.
Not today. And worse yet is the smell of fresh bile, strong enough you can practically taste it. The smell is so bad, it makes you want to heave.
It sounds like Pheres is already in the process.
There's spots in your vision, but you're used to the transition of light and dark: already your eyes are adjusting, and you can make out Pheres's outline in front of you. He's hunched over, wheezing, and - oh, gross, he's the cause of the smell.
He's puking all over the ground, and his nice, white shoes.
"BLUH," you say, scampering back.
no subject
Huge jumps like this are universally awful, and it turns out being drunk doesn't make it any better.
The world is spinning violently around you, and it feels like your stomach arrives seconds after the rest of you. You're puking before your vision even clears, doubled over nearly in half like the added pressure will stop the nauseating pain.
(It just makes it worse. It always makes it worse.)
Hinnom is saying something, but you're having difficulty just staying upright: listening is a little beyond you right now.
no subject
Whatever issue Pheres is having, it hasn't rubbed off. You feel foggy and gross from crying, but elation has won out over that. You're in the sewers, and the numbers on the walls mean they're well over a dozen blocks away, in a different district entirely. The drones are far, far away, and your hive is so close.
It's just a matter of figuring out how you'll haul Pheres there. The quickest way would be cutting down into the catacombs, and up the pipeline that leads directly into your nestblock, but you're not sure Pheres would be able to shimmy up the pipe. There's no ladder, and you always just use your back and feet, but Pheres is probably a little big for that: in the last sweep or so, it's gotten tight even for you.
The other way is going through the catacombs, and following the path through. There's only a little bit of climbing there, but you'd need Castor to tell them where the dead are and when it was safe to go.
Where was Castor?
You give the leash a hard tug, but there's no response.
no subject
You feel disgusting. Your mouth tastes repulsive, your snout is bleeding, your orbs are leaking, and with the way your pan is aching, you wouldn't be surprised if it was dripping straight out of your soundclots. The dim lights of the sewer feel entirely too bright and too dim, all at once, and you are never going to drink again.
Or jump again. Or ever come into a city: you never gets into these sort of situations when you just stick to the countryside, and the trolls are much nicer out there, anyway. A country troll has never threatened to pluck out your eyes.
Oh. Wait. Weren't you with someone?
"Hinnom," you call out, and opening your mouth was a mistake, because you can practically taste the odor in the air. You gags, pinching your nose, and gingerly starts to walk. You just saw the little troll. He couldn't have gone far.
no subject
You aren't even sure how far the leash stretches. What if it broke? What if --
The leash tugs back. Castor's too far to hear, too far to see, but he tugged back, and you can sense the direction. Up.
Oh! He's at the hive already.
no subject
You feel like you're walking through some vast, stone creature's intestine, and you have a dark suspicision that you're walking in a fucking sewer, although you've never seen one before. You know they're bad, though: you don't need to have spent time in one to know that sewers are a vestige of disease, and misfortune, and feral trolls who'll slit your throat and wear your skin.
(Don't think about that. You didn't survive drones just to get eaten by some frothing lunatic.)
"Hinnom," you call out again, rounding the corner, and the sound of your voice echoing back sets your teeth on edge. Everything here is setting off that reaction, to be honest. What you'd thought were lights from above are actually just lightgrubs nestled into the high dome of the ceiling, their fluorescent bodies flickering as they feed on whatever is up there.
Algae? Mold?
How fucking far underground are they?
no subject
How they'll avoid the dead, without Castor there to guide them - and why Castor isn't there, with them - you're not sure. But they'll figure it out. Pheres got them here, right?
Backstepping is easy as anything. You know the sewers like the back of your hand, and it's not like you went far: into a wall-niche, across the bridge and down the hall. Not even a five minute walk!
So you're a little baffled to find Pheres has followed them.
He's walking across the bridge, his hands braced on the railing and his body curled up like he's about to drop down and die. Maybe he is! There's bile all over his face, but there's maroon, too, dripping from his snout and all the way down his shirt front.
It's blood. There's blood on his face and his shirt, and his eyes are white as the dead roaming the sewers around them, and everything in your pan screams that being seen by him is a terribad idea.
You never did make sure he wasn't dead, did they? Your lusus can't see anything more than light, but she knows there's only one source of light that bright down in the sewers, and she's chittering her mouthpiece together in a quiet demand.
You can't refuse it. You back up, quiet as a mouse, and presses yourself tight against the stone wall, until you're squashed flat up against a pipe.
Maybe Pheres'll look less scary when he's closer. But just in case, you yank the leash again: not a request, like the previous times, but a demand that Castor get down here.
(You should've kept more ghosts leashed, and not just him. Stupid. So stupid.)
no subject
Dying down here is starting to look like an actual possibility. Your snout won't stop drizzling blood, and walking is starting to get difficult: the fear of being lost here drove you to keep moving at first, but exhaustion is starting to set in past that.
You keep a tight grip on the rail. If you're going to collapse, it won't be in the river you're sure must be running far below. It's flat determination that carries you to the end of the walkway, and back to the safety of the concrete.
You're one foot off of the walkway when the room lurches as your walking struts decide to fold under you. You hit the concrete knees first, your palms only just managing to hit the ground before your face does. It takes all of your concentration to stay like that, face inches above the ground: it should be so easy to just push back up and keep walking, but you can't muster the energy.
From here, you can't see anything but the rough texture of the stone under your palm, and the steady drip of blood from your snout as each rosewood drop hits the ground and splatters.
no subject
Your pityglands are working overtime now, and there's an unfamiliar crawling feeling deep in your gut as you listen to Pheres gasp, but breathing doesn't mean anything: even Castor does it, when he's not thinking. Habit is a hard thing to break, even after you're dead.
It's horrible to listen to, though!
Maybe instead of waiting for Castor, you'll just... go?
no subject
They can move as quickly as a thought, in theory. There's no flesh weighing them down, no breath to make them slow, and while it takes them awhile to forget the rules and just do it, older ghosts can pour through physical matter like walls and dirt and stone like water through a crack.
In reality, most ghosts simply can't. There's no gizzards left to stop them, but they remember there should be, and forgetting is an art that takes practice. Even Castor drags his feet, sometimes, when he's feeling especially corporeal, and on days like that, you have to dawdle, slowing your steps until they match a blueblood's heavy stride.
Perhaps the fear has made him remember he's dead, though. The walk from the hive to the sewers is a fifteen minute walk, but it only must be five minutes before the room lights with Castor's familiar off-blue as he slips and slides down through the ceiling, heels first.
He's barely corporeal: somewhere between an imprint and a real troll, his features worn away to the impression of eyes, a nasal hole, the gaping mouth. But you can't doubt it's Castor, not when the leash is tied around his waist so firmly, the doubled strand of your maroon psionic aura stretching from him to you.
And you'd recognise Castor's voice anywhere.
"Putain - enfin fini!" he growls. "Vous disparutes! Et j'retourne chez moi, et -" He flings up his hands. "Vous absentâtes! Que? Tu es un gosse à la con: à cause de ça, vous devez être prudent, tu dois rester près de moi!"
Even when he goes off on his crazy gibberish.
"I don't understand you," you snap, keeping your voice low. You knows a few words, enough pidgin to keep track when Castor goes off in one of his fits - but not when he's spitting words like acid, one after another until the pronunciation is slurred. "J.. j'ne parle! Shhh."
It'd be so much easier if you didn't have to speak aloud.
"C'est des conneries!" he snaps. "Vous parlez français, pourquoi tu mens?
"Shhh!"
"Que? Qu’est-ce qu’il y a -- ahh."
Castor follows your gaze to Pheres: at the sound of your piping voice, the maroonblood has started to stir, and pressing yourself flat against the pipe, you try not to breath and draw more attention.
no subject
There's a reason you don't use his psionics for recreation. Even the effects of small jumps are annoying: a nosebleed and the resulting nausea are easily managed, but they're only worth it if it saves you a long walk with heavy books, or if they keep a customer from culling you.
Big jumps like this.. well. You were lucky you were awake when he landed. You're lucky you're awake right now, because the ringing in your pan and the darkness crowding your vision are hinting it won't be the cause for long.
Fuck.
There's a sound nearby, and you can't tell the source. It might be the river, it might be voices.. or it might be the feet of some hideous sewer-beast, come to eat you alive.
Or it might be Hinnom. They have to be around here somewhere, don't they?
"Over here," you rasp, dragging your head up to peer into the dark. The light off of your psionics is more a hindrance than it is a help: it illuminates a few feet ahead of you, like a cone, and the light only makes the gloom of the room seem deeper.
You can't see what made the noise. If it's something come to kill you, well.. fine. You'd prefer to die when you were still awake.
"Hinnom?"
no subject
The way that Pheres's eyes are lit up was less noticeable up above, where the light of the day and the glare of the sun had washed it out to the point of near invisibility. Down here, with only the dimmergrubs high above, it's glaring. He looks like a ghoul.
He sounds like one, too.
"He's not dead," Castor says, slowly, like he's questioning it. He's lapsed back into standard, thank fuck. "So..."
You wait. Sometimes it takes him a moment to think up a plan. But Castor usually comes up with good ones.
"We have to take him back to the hive."
Sometimes he comes up with good ones.
You shakes your head furiously, and you hiss, as low as you can: "No!"
"If he's not dead already," you continue all in a rush, "then he's gonna die, and then he'll turn, and it'll be awful, 'cause not like shit we can do 'gainst a revenant --"
"My god. You're a little angel." You don't know jack about religion, though Castor's tried to teach you, but you know that isn't a compliment just by the way he says it. "He saved you from the drones. We can't just leave him to die."
You don't see why not. Their mom clacks her mandibles, unsure: she can't see Castor, you don't think, but she still really doesn't like when they argue, so you zips it.
(And.. okay, because he does have a point. When someone does something for you, you gotta pay it back: good or bad, that's just a rule!)
(No one ever said it had to be a good pay-back, though. Leaving someone to be eaten by ghouls is still a reward, 'cause they're more likely to end up as a ghost that way, instead of just fading. But. It's a pretty shitty reward for saving your life.)
When you don't say anything else, Castor takes it as agreement and pulls himself together. As he spoke, he materialised more: rattlereeds and a speechwaddle for sound and lips to form them, but now he forces the rest, until he's less of a blur and more of a person, with clothes and horn-stubs and a body all between them.
And, wrapping your telekinesis around him like a shroud, he approaches Pheres.
no subject
This is what you deserve, probably.
You try to live life like all the feeds say that redbloods should: you keep yourself in your cart, with your books and your taxidermy, and you work. When you deal with others, you're well-dressed, docile, and helpful to the higher castes: in short, you're respectable.
When you act like you should, it works out. When things go wrong - when a customer tries to cull you, or a deal goes badly - well, it's because you slipped, made a comment you, shouldn't have, wore something you shouldn't have. When you behave properly, it works.
It doesn't earn you much respect, no matter how polite you are. It doesn't get you many friends. But you've never died, and it's only when you decide to go out, live a little, and act like everyone else - immoral, disrespectful, churlish - that you ever seems to come close.
(Even now, you know that's not precisely right. Most of the time, you've gone out and come hive the next evening or by midnight at the latest: embarrassed, maybe, but perfectly fine.)
(But ypu're bleeding on a sewer floor, in the one place that your moirail would never think to look to retrieve you, and that means you're going to die here alone, where your body will be eaten by squeakbeasts and grubs. Right now, the gloomy thoughts feel right, and that's all that matters.)
You give up on staying upright and curls up on the ground instead, your horn scraping against the concrete. Hinnom is gone, you can't walk any further, your eyes are so heavy, and all you wants to do is sleep.
So you close them, and you let the darkness settle in.
no subject
Ugh, GROSS.
You try not to gag as Castor bends down next to him and picks him up, careful as he sometimes carries you. You can feel the rasp and slide of Pheres's weight against your telekinesis as Castor returns, but thankfully, not too well: it's Castor controlling it with the ease of sweeps of practice, and the sensation is like touching bone through flesh.
"You'll have to play look-out today," Castor warns you. "But we won't go deep, just to the pipe."
You bob your head in a nod, but you can't help the dubious look you shoot towards Pheres's horns. He might be able to fit, even with his dumbo shoulders, but his rack is kinda huge.
Oh, well. If they won't fit, Castor can always snap one off.
no subject
Your hive is the old catacomb where you first found Castor, back when you'd been nameless and small and fresh from the caverns. You had thought it safe because his presence had kept away ghost and the walking dead alike: you hadn't realised what that presence was. Castor had watched you for a few nights, just long enough to affirm that you could see him, and then he'd introduced himself.
He's been taking care of you ever since.
His presence still keeps the dead away, and sweeps and sweeps of your hard work have replaced doors, set locks, and made it thoroughly impenetrable to the living as well. (Kids from above like to go trawling in the crypts, for some reason: that's how you met Marduk!) The walls are padded with fabric, and anything and everything you've salvaged from the catacombs over the sweeps: a few things from the culling pits where the bodies used to be dumped and burned, but mostly gifts left behind for the ghosts in the sweeps after.
Recently, you've set up a ruperacoon that Castor found above-ground, and that Mardie helped you haul down. You don't like to use it after sweeps of sleeping dry, but the slime helps when you're injured or sick, and so it only makes sense to dump Pheres in.
You curl up around the outside. The recuperacoon always runs hot, and so you've built your pile of pillows and fabric right by the side, so you stay warm all day long. Castor's use of your telekinesis always makes you tired, and now that you're in the safety of your hive, it's turned into outright exhaustion.
"Gonna sleep," you tell Castor, and you don't even have to ask: he drapes them with one of the shrouds off of the wall, a nice, thick one they stole from a seadweller's bonerest, and that tiny use of telekinesis uses what feels like you last drop of energy.
You sleep.
=> SIPARA: Fetch your dumb moirail.