genessia | a blue and open sky/ post 01: action&action, in and near the Bay.

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a blue and open sky/ post 01: action&action, in and near the Bay.

Eleria woke up in near-darkness, her side cool with the absence of her companion and her breath too fast and too strained. There was no creak of wood and leather, no distant crackle and hiss of fires in brass bowls, no hint of the secondary breath or animal snoring that she had grown so used to in her years of travel-- just a breeze, passing through rocks, and the soft sound of water (but it surrounded her, its susurrations continuing out farther than she'd ever heard before).

There was something on her chest, and she was not where she had fallen asleep.

She opened her eyes, to a dark roof, high above her, speckled with lights like mushrooms on a fallen tree, but otherwise appearing stony. (The light was so white, like angels' fire and magic, not flame or daylight or even the greenish cast of glowing growths.) The box on her chest was also uncommon white, white as a flower's petal or bird's feathers, not the white of things that could be built with, and finely crafted; she moved it carefully to her lap, and sat up.

The smoothness under her palms and tentacles was fabric, even more fine. More fine than anything she had ever seen in her life. Like-- like something angelic, again, like something crafted by inhuman hands.

Swallowing past a dry throat, she looked out, at a broader expanse of water than she had ever below her in her life, filling the cavern like she was deep underground (where she had never been, but where she had heard tales, of pale, blind monsters who breathed steam, who swam in a mirror of the sky).

Feeling light-headed, Eleria ducked her head from the incomprehensible sight, instead looking into the box. There was a folded object atop it, which she did not recognize the make of, though it was marked densely and was smooth under her fingers, and the back of it had a pocket of sorts, filled with more things of the same unknown substance, wrapped in a ribbon of incredibly soft and perfect fabric.

Her spine itched, looking at it; she set it aside.

Under it was a necklace, as angelic-perfect as everything else, studded with stones that made Eleria's spine itch again; her tentacles curled close to her back, wary, as she nudged it aside with a fingertip, barely willing to touch something so precious, to leave her baffled at the block beneath it, irregular in shape but perfect in crafting, and made of many different materials (all alien to her).

Shivering, she set the box of mysteries down at her ankles. Each item, surely, was more valuable than all the things she had ever held in her life, perhaps even the box holding them; she shouldn't even have touched them. If someone had seen her handle them-- they would be cursed with bad luck, surely, their value destroyed by a cursed touch? (How had they even been placed on her? How had she even been placed here?) Edging away from the box, she peered over the side of the bed, into shallow water that stretched out dizzyingly below her.

Slowly, Eleria removes her sandals and ties them to her skirt's laces, then climbs out and sets off across the water, leaving the precious box behind, trembling and short of breath. There are arches around the rim of the cavern, and she heads for the nearest, her tentacles curling close around her bare shoulders and belly as she splashes along; her feet are cold by the time she reaches the arch, and she passes through it, shoulders hunched and motions cautious as she steps outside--

Oh, she thought the objects were strange!

The perfectly straight, absurdly broad, solid-stone path before her is wildly alien, and as her gaze moves up, nothing familiar reaches her eyes; and as she continues to look up, her mind rebels, and she clings to the arch, gasping and dizzy and almost nauseous. The sky is missing, it's missing, there's nothing there but blue, distant distant unmoving blue that's farther away than the horizon--

And that is how she will be found by the first (and maybe second) person who finds her: clinging to the Bay's exit like she'll fall over without it, her face ashy and red eyes wide, her vivid pink tentacles huddled around her, not reacting in the least to Weiss Schee's pre-recorded message because she is absolutely staggered by how sanity-breaking this is to her.

[I'd like only one, maybe two threads with people encountering freshly-traumatized Eleria-- one helpful and one unhelpful, at most. I don't need the explains pile to be as tall as Eleria is, y'know?]

--

After having things explained to her, Eleria retrieved the box and sat at the feet of the projection, nervously worrying her skirt's edge and fiddling with her blade and sandals, and listening to the explanations over and over again.

She feels idiotic for how they pass over her head, but then she looks up into the dizzying blue sky and and swallows down a burst of anxiety and listens to it again.

When she's sure she'll find no more meaning from the words-- when even the words she understood start sounding meaningless to her ears-- she stands up and walks away, shoulders hunched and head down and glancing around nervously. Everything is bizarre to her eyes, and built to a scale perhaps a cubit shorter than she's used to, and all the buildings have square edges and flat panels where there ought to be curtained arches, and the windows are filled in whit must be glass, but perfectly flat and clear as a handful of water.

Clutching the box to herself, she still looks dazed and upset, her body language crunched in close and frightened; she does not mean it as an invitation to be bothered, but the very kind, or very meddlesome, may not be able to resist it, and the curious might well see her impressive tallness and compliment of vibrant pink tentacles and decide to bother her because of her unusual appearance. Regardless of who approaches her, though, she's likely to react shyly, keeping her head ducked (though that hardly makes her shorter) and gaze averted.

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Adeline was a wanderer. She made a habit of wandering around until she knew a place and even then, she's amble about nigh endlessly. Part of it was falling back on old habits picked up when she was just a guttersnipe in Sigil and the rest was just seeing what was interesting at the time. Interesting sights often lead her to really fun experiences.

And so when she saw this strange humanoid her first thought was if this was someone from home, a Daemonhost or something of the sort. She had seen tall, was tall for her race and even then she wasn't the tallest around so the woman's size wasn't much of a inhibitor for her.

Coolly, Adeline ambles over, red robes fluttering in the wind as she raised a taloned hand in greeting. "Yo. Ya new here?"

Eleria jolts in surprise at the greeting, and turns to look at the other woman, red eyes sweeping over her-- and found a smile, shoulders relaxing. Another giant? The skin, the horns, the claws-- yes, she must be, Eleria decides. She didn't usually keep company with others of her kind, but someone who looked like they might almost be from a place she knew and spoke in common, irreverent style to her was someone she could appreciate.

"Yes, I am that," she replies, smile shy, and waves one tentacle to the scaled woman, keeping a firm hold of the box. (She has never found other nephilim to be shy or superstitious of her tentacles, not how humans are.) "Are you, um... not, Friend?" (Perhaps she could explain more things to Eleria?)

Hey, you'd be lucky if you were her kind! Dragons are awesome! Still, the fact that she hasn't tried to rip her body apart to get at her juicy juicy draconic-hybrid soul garners the stranger lessened apprehension. A hand goes to her jutted out hip as she takes a casual stance.

"Well, ain't your enemy, if that's what you're askin' me," drawls Adeline out as a good barely-answer to the woman's question. "Friends or not, well that depends on a lot, yannow? Still, ain't gonna start shit if you don't. Good policy, yeah?" She shrugs before cutting a cocky smile to the woman. "Name's Adeline. Who're you?"

Eleria blinks, because that wasn't what she'd meant to be asking, but she understands where the confusion fell; it was surely on her for being too awkward to phrase herself properly.

Shaking her head to clear it a little, her bronze curls settling slightly more in disarray than they already were, she lets Adeline know, "I don't want to start trouble." The thought of being trouble unsettles her, makes her tentacles curl around her shoulders again, cuddling against her arms and pressing close to collapse her profile down to almost-human; no, she doesn't want to start it, or finish it, or be involved in trouble in the least. "My name is Eleria."

Only two types of people, in Adeline's experience from Sigil, used the phrase "I don't want to start trouble". There were the people who wanted trouble but wanted it on their own terms and from casual examination on how Eleria was holding herself, all curled up in self defense and body language crying out 'Don't hurt me!', she wasn't one of them. She was the other group, the civvies, people who couldn't handle a Hero.

Confident that Eleria was not, in fact, a threat, Adeline's smile turns softer. "Eleria, huh? Nice to meetcha. You're new too, I'm guessin'?"

She lets out a shaky laugh, and nods. "Very new. I just came from-- from that cavern, with the water--" The magical projection hadn't mentioned the name, so she had no idea what it was called. "-- it's, um. Very different, here."

She glances up at the sky, and looks like she might fall over for a moment, before she averts her eyes and takes a couple breaths.

Some of how different this place must be is clearly evident in the way Eleria's dressed; her skirt is a solid strip of soft leather laced together at one side with an equally leathery thong, and her shirt is of some rough woolen fabric dyed green. There is a sword at her side, but it's bone, carved from some huge animal's jaw, with the sharp teeth left to give it an edge; the only speck of metal on her is the bronze guard of that weapon.

She is not from a technologically advanced society, is the thing, or at least not as far as metalcraft and textiles go, and she sticks out like a chicken in a fox den (and seems to be about as nervous as one).

"Yeah, its different, innit?" asked Adeline as the idly ambled closer to the woman, shooting glances at the sky when Eleria stared at it. "Real different. Got a problem with the sky?"

Adeline was a clear study of contrast to Eleria, at least when it came to clothes. Her robes were clearly 'mass' produced and littered with metal knickknacks, such as a large metal broach on her shoulder, shaped like a dragon roaring at the sky. It was somewhat interesting that the robe seemed to be 'two' layers and the outer one was lighter but that wasn't that big of a deal, right?

Does she? Of course she does! Who wouldn't? Eleria seems baffled by the question for a moment, because she can't imagine this sky couldn't be a problem, but...

"It's blue," Eleria starts, looking up again and wincing back down-- "and it's too high-- it's like-- there's nothing there. It's empty. Doesn't it bother you?"

Eleria had noted how beautifully perfect the other woman's clothes were, but everything here seemed to be cut on too-perfect lines; perhaps their supplies were given to them from higher beings, or perhaps higher beings resided here and wouldn't tolerate imperfect goods in the first place. (Her father, she remembered, had been very exacting, when he responded at all to the mortals surrounding them.)

Adeline honestly seems to think about it for a moment before she assertively shakes her head. "Nah," she drawls, "Only thing about the sky that bothers me is that there ain't any ships in it."

Adeline's eyes glimmer with mischievousness as she looks up and sighs dramatically. True, she was part dragon, partly a being that found the skies as much home as the ground but she was more than that. Inside her, the blood of a Void Dragon flowed, the stars and sea behind the sky calling to her very bones. To fly admist the stars, that was what she longed for.

She stares up at the blue, past it, and sighs dramatically before turning back to her conversation partner and glances upon Eleria's weapon. It elicits a low whistle of appreciation. "Niiiice. Trophy that?" she asks, pointing at it.

"That, too, but that's-- not the kind of empty I--" She waves a hand and falters. Where were the ships? Usually there were one two within sight, as long as you could see the entire stretch of the sky, even if they were far distant. "And I've seen nothing larger than a bird flying," she adds, a bit worriedly. No dragons (which was perhaps for the best), but also no leather-wings or massive fruitbats roused from their rest.

(It has yet to occur to her that the sky she's lived under for something like twenty years might not be the norm, and it may not occur to her yet for a while.)

Eleria glances down, and touches the hilt of her weapon, more to steady it than anything else. "I'm no warrior or hunter," she confesses; "I traded for it some time ago. I wouldn't wish to fight whatever these teeth came from-- I think it must have been a small dragon?" The woman she had bought it from had boasted that the teeth had come from the beast in the waters below the ground, but that was probably an exaggeration.

Adeline shrugs, a motion that makes all sorts of clinking and sussering noises as metal and scale klink and rub against one another. "No clue on that. Kept asking about space ports but everyone kept goin' on about how they don't have any. Real bugger, if you ask me."

The mention of a dragon tickles Adeline's interest, as the widening of her eyes and narrowing of her slitted pupil would show. Her gauntleted hands twitch and move closer to it. "You....don't mind if I take a closer look? I've had some...dealings with dragons...." she asks, trying to hold back her enthusiasm but clearly failing.

After a moment of baffled silence, Eleria asks, "Space ports?"

Are they... not talking about the same kind of ships? Eleria thinks maybe they are not talking about the same kind of ships.

Regardless, she unties the leather strap holding the weapon at her hip, and extends it to Adeline, holding it by the blunt edge so Adeline can take its carved bone hilt. It is not of masterful craftsmanship, but the teeth are sharply pointed by nature; they could certainly puncture and tear if the weapon was swung with force, and though it's been clearly washed clean and scrubbed as bright as it can get, there's some brownish bloodstains sunk into the bone. There are also some chewmarks on the bone just below the handle, though probably not recognizably from any animal Adeline knows.

Emerald had been heading into the bay for less than just reasons, but she stopped when she saw someone at the entrance. She was a fair distance away when she saw the rather tall woman clinging to the entrance. Newbie? Very clearly. Emerald rolled her eyes briefly before coming over and held her hand out as if she was trying to give her a helping hand.

"Are you okay? This place can be unsettling."

For a moment, Eleria seemed deaf to the other girl's words, but her gaze came down, sweeping over the her in a quick assessment-- green hair, red eyes, surely not human. And Eleria herself had been that small, not so long ago, before she'd shot up the last few feet to her adult height.

She swallows, and doesn't take Emerald's hand, though she looks a little grateful for the offer.

"No," she answers, honestly but shakily. "I don't know what's going on, or--" Or where the sky has gone (it's blue and endless and she feels dizzy thinking about it), or where her companion has gone, or where the ship she had been aboard has gone, or where she has gone to to leave all that she knows behind.

"You've been kidnapped to another world- not by me, I'm just walking by- and now you're stuck with the rest of us who have been kidnapped. But it's pretty sweet here, so once you get used to things, it's not bad at all."

Of course, Emerald's experience was probably a little different from most peoples'.. but that was true back home, too, since she didn't tend to go along with the standard way of doing things. Those who did all seemed pretty fine with things as well, though.

"I'm Emerald."

"... Ah," Eleria said, because there wasn't anything else to say, and rather wished her companion was here, to pet and cosset and comfort her with his presence. "Well then," she adds after a moment, and sits down rather heavily on the ground, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands.

She takes several moments to breath, and then asks, tone as polite and unshaken as she can make it (it is pretty shaken and not as polite as she'd like), "Please tell me more, Emerald."

If Emerald wishes to ask why she didn't just read the brochure, that would be absolutely fine, since most people could probably just read the brochure.

Emerald certainly doesn't care if she's polite or not, as long as she's not straight up rude. The number of people who can get away unscathed after being a jerk to her is pretty limited. Four, it's four people, and amongst those only Cinder and Mercury get away with it more than half the time. But because of Mercury in particular, she's got pretty thick skin. It may not have been as polite as Eleria would've liked it, but it was more than Emerald expected.

"Well, for starters, you're in Genessia City. The whole place is called Genessia, I think, then there are more cities beyond just this one. I have no idea why they decide to have us wake up in pods like a sci-fi horror flick. You have the stuff you woke up with?"

Emerald doesn't care that she didn't read it, she just has a certain image of being as helpful as possible she wants to uphold. After a few moments she comes closer, holding both of her hands out to help Eleria up.

"Come on, if you want to sit down, I'll treat you to a drink and we can talk."

Eleria is pretty heavy, with all those extra feet of her and the surplus of densely muscled tentacles, but the takes the other girl's hands as she climbs to her feet again. (Her hands are each short a pinky finger, but unscarred; it's especially evident when they're clutched around Emerald's.

"The stuff--" She glances down at her own clothes, the sandals and weapon at her side, then asks, "The box? It looked-- it looked too valuable to touch. I didn't want to steal anything..."

(Eleria is kind of a jellyfish, despite her imposing height.)

Belatedly, she realizes she never introduced herself, and tells Emerald, "My name is Eleria. I think a drink would be very nice right now, thank you." A strong one, preferably.

To compensate for the extra weight, Emerald takes steps back as she pulls her up, using the distance and the force of applying weight to different areas of her body to offset Eleria's weight. Emerald's much stronger than your average 5'9" woman anyway, though. It comes with being even better trained for battle than she likes to let on.

"That box was for you. We all get one when we get here. It has some things you'll need in it, so let's grab it and go get that drink, Eleria."

Emerald takes a look at the girl's hands, making a note of it in her mind. She's the type of person to keep track of the details, mostly because that's.. well, sometimes her job. Either way, the look doesn't last long, only a second or two before she lets go of Eleria's hands, casually strolling past her back toward the Bay. Not for her original purpose, but to actually help this person.

Edited 2015-02-12 06:37 (UTC)

Eleria is a little impressed that the other girl can pull her so easily, and doesn't even tug away from the examination, certain in her impression that she's speaking with an undersized non-human and thus not so touch-shy as she might usually be.

"All right," she agrees, and follows, tentacles twisting together behind her.

"It's pretty cold, you don't have to go back into the water."

Emerald was nothing if she didn't act incredibly courteous to others. Generous even, as she would make clear with her next words.

"I'm agile, just point me to which one you woke up in so you don't have to get wet again."

Since he had taken on the role of Attleton's Guardian, Midboss didn't head into Genessia proper as much as he used to. Recently, however, a number of his close friends had vanished from the five cities, and Laharl was still lurking around somewhere since the argument a little way back. He needed time to think and time to find him.

It was in one of his wanderings that he noticed a -- well, rather hard to miss -- woman nearby, looking undoubtedly despondent and disorientated. A new arrival, probably. Slowly, he approached, giving her a friendly smile. She certainly towered over his rather slight form.

"Are you quite alright, Mademoiselle?"

Edited 2015-02-04 14:59 (UTC)

Eleria is starting to wonder if anyone she will meet here is going to be a true human; this man, for instance, is inhumanly pale of skin (at least according to her own experience), with eyes as red and slit-pupiled as her own-- though he's no taller than most humans.

She also has no idea what mademoiselle means, though it doesn't sound rude from his tone.

Offering a strained smile, she answers, "I have been better. But-- thank you for asking." She's rarely met to much concern from strangers in a month, let alone an hour or two; at the very least, this place is welcoming, more welcoming than anywhere she's been in her travels.

The pointed ears were probably a good indication, as well. Midboss was by no means human...and neither was she, that much was obvious to him.

"I can imagine...I assume you have just woken up here? The experience can be a little disconcerting for the best of us, unfortunately," he said with a sigh.

Zelos was walking back from work when he passed Eleria. Over the last couple of days, he had been trying to get a regular work schedule back together. This had been a challenge, what with him avoiding working on days where the weather was poor, and working too much on days he was trying to distract himself from other issues. Today, at least, was a fairly nice, normal day.

Or so he thought.

The sight of the pink tentacles out the corner of his eyes immediately caught his attention and for a moment, he froze. In that brief glance, they almost resembled the pink fragments that made up Colette's wings-- His newly arrived fellow Chosen, who he had been avoiding like the plague.

Edited 2015-02-04 15:11 (UTC)

When he actually looked over, though, he very quickly realised his mistake. For starters, Eleria was far too tall to be Colette, and although she also had blonde hair, it was darker, and curlier than her's was. Colette was also a fair bit lighter in skin tone.

He couldn't help but break into a relieved chuckle. Thank goodness. Figuring it was a little rude to just walk off like that without a word, though, Zelos went over to her and flashed his best smile.

"Sorry about that...you're pretty stunning, you know?" he said, winking.

Edited 2015-02-04 15:16 (UTC)

It's true! Eleria is probably four times the size of the girl she was mistaken for, and otherwise bears little enough resemblance to the Chosen in general, with her rough leather clothes and primitive bone-and-tooth weapon.

Perhaps they have more similarity in their bearing than their appearance, though, because while Eleria is unsurprised and barely responsive to the double-take and staring, the smile and blatant flirting leaves her staring at him rather blankly.

"... Um?" she manages, after a moment of complete confusion, then finds her words. "Thank you...?"

Stunning? Her? Either he is using the word in a way she's not familiar with, or her life just notched up to a new and exciting level of bafflingly weird, even beyond the fact that the sky she knew had vanished.

Yeah, Zelos was feeling very silly for jumping to that conclusion right now. He blamed the pink tentacles on her back, and the utter panic of seeing Colette turn up yesterday. That was all.

It looked like she was surprisingly naive, though, judging by how confused she seemed to find his advances. He'd have to be a little gentle with this one.

"No problem at all~" he said, smiling. "Guessing you just woke up here, right?"

She was certainly...different from anyone else he'd seen in his world.

Naive or simply completely unused to flattery, though the difference means little in terms of her reaction.

She nods in reply, then leaves her head ducked, shy or deferential or both. (Probably both.) "Yes, you're right," she tells him, staring down into the white box that she has totally had with her in all the B-choice threads I swear. "Are you from here?"

The other people she'd spoken to had seemed to have been from not-here but also not where she was from; surely there must be natives somewhere?

Either way, the last thing Zelos wanted was to overwhelm her, whatever the reason for her hesitation.

"Nah, I just woke up here too. It's been about 6 months for me now," he replied. But truthfully, he might as well be from this world - less said on his homeworld, the better. "The name's Zelos. Zelos Wilder. What can I call you, sweetheart?"

[Tori cannot bring herself to resist it. Tori Crawford is very meddlesome. Kind in her own way, but extremely meddlesome.

And that's why she ends up walking up to Eleria and--wow. Oh, wow. She's tall. Eh, that doesn't change the fact that she seems scared out of her wits. She manages a small smile as she speaks in the most gentle way she can muster.]

Hey, you okay?

[Eleria is again stunned by all the friendly people here, even if they are mostly strangely pale-- as pale as that magical projection; perhaps magic pervaded this place and drained all the darkness from their skin? It didn't make much sense, but perhaps nothing here was going to--

In any case. It's strange to be spoken to gently, but almost nice; it makes her feel smaller than she is.]

I think I will be. I-- ah. I'm new to this place, [she explains, shyly,] it's all very. Very, very, very strange to me.

[Now that she's sure that Eleria's not going to be scared out of her wits, Tori begins to loosen up (read: be her usual self.)]

Don't take this the wrong way, but I can tell you're new. [She chuckles a little.] But hey, that's just fine! We were all new to this place once, right~? So, if I may ask, what's strange about this place to you?

[This girl is eight feet tall and has bright pink tentacles. Whatever place she's from has to be pretty different from Genessia, Tori imagines. Color her interested.]

[Eleria is silent, then asks,] Was everyone new to this place, once? It seems too-- too sprawling to be all newly-made. [Too perfect, too, not a hint of rot or wear that she can recognize-- though they don't seem to build much in leather or uncovered wood or the bones of beasts, no sod overgrown wild with grass and shrubs helping to keep the roof together, all the bricks perfect-edged and unbroken.

She breathes a laugh, though she cuts it short, covering her mouth with a three-fingered hand and looking bashful that she'd let out so much emotion at once.] I don't know where to start-- the sky-- the everything--

[She waves that hand at the everything, gaze glancing off the houses, the streets, the order of it all. It didn't look grown, it looked arranged, under this empty sky...]

It all looks arranged. Like a pattern in cloth, not a place people live, [she voices, voice soft.]

Well, maybe not everyone. I'm sure there are residents who have always been there, but for those of us who aren't from here? Yeah, we were all new here once~

[Wow, this girl is really cute. Seeing her get all excited and then bashful is something Tori finds absolutely adorable. She makes a quick note to herself to introduce this one to Jeb. The cuteness should be off the charts, for sure...]

Sounds like the place you're from isn't like this at all. What is it like, then? Err... if you don't mind me asking.

['Excited' is a very nice way to put 'on the edge of hysterics', Tori! Eleria would appreciate it if she could read your mind.

But she appreciates that the other girl is relaxed-- she takes her cue from it, taking another few breaths and shaking the bubbling anxiety out of her head as best as she can.] It's-- different. The buildings are made of living stuffs, or dead stuffs, not of perfected stuffs. And the villages I know might-- they might have planned bits, the halls and meeting places in the center, the walls around the edges, but they're not woven basket-tight with paths as straight as strings. And there's more wild things, under the sky, and always you can see a skyhome or two or three ducked below the waters--

[She looks up at the sky again, and feels taken by vertigo. There is so much blue. She's seen blue before, in feathers and flowers and shells of beetles, but spreading from edge to edge of her sight-- it's insane.]

-- and there wasn't so much blue, anywhere, [she nearly-whispers, looking a bit wobbly.]

Wow. That sounds way different from this place, the place I was at before, and back home. [A brief pause.] ...except for the "wasn't so much blue" thing, for the place I was at before. There wasn't much blue there, either.

[Hard to have blue in a place like Exsilium, really.]

But it sounds like you didn't have as much blue in a different way, so is it cool if I ask what you mean by that?

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a blue and open sky/ post 01: action&action, in and near the Bay.

B [Action]

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B!

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B~ 1/2

B~ 2/2

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B

<3!

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no apologies for late tags here because you damn well will reply to me :P (ilu)