awashlogs | Event Thirteen.

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Event Thirteen.

To love a human face was to discover
The cracks of paint and varnish on the brow;
Soon to distrust all impulses of flesh
That strews its sawdust on the chamber floor,
While at the window peer two crones
Who once were Juliet and Jessica.

t's a regular morning here in the Town. The sun isn't shining at all, snow is falling like crazy, and...there may be the sounds of shouts coming from the well, thoroughly muffled.

Okay, so it's not a regular morning at all, but you'd better go help those people! The newcomers are here again. Of course, once you get to the well, you'll notice that there's actually no real help you can offer -- it's totally frozen over.

As for the newcomers, well... hopefully being suddenly dumped into freezing cold water in the middle of November in a dark, damp well is your idea of a good time, because that's your life now!

And that's not even taking into account the mirrors in everyone's homes that are about to wake up and start chattering...

Welcome to Awash's thirteenth event log, everyone! Further information on this event can be found here at the OOC post. Please keep in mind that while this is a general event log, it is also an intro log; be sure to pay plenty of attention to our newcomers!

If there are any questions, please ask them here. Thank you!

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Everyone died because of me.

[ sierra clicks her tongue. ]

You’re getting ahead of yourself, fool. [ or maybe it’s still dwelling on the past—throwing a dart on sierra’s personal timeline is going to end up with loss no matter where it lands. ] A man eventually found me. And then more, and more, some women and children, and I turned them all into monsters like me until I had a village all my own.

[ she twirls the mirror thoughtfully in her hand, and when it comes glass-up again, it has more to say. ]

I loved them all, you know… I really loved them.

[hoo boy. reim is quiet for a moment, processing all of this. the mirror, what sierra says to it— there isn't a happy ending to this story, he guesses.

and this time, he isn't sure what to say. this doesn't feel like the time for platitudes about what does and doesn't make someone a monster— interrupting with something like that would sully the fact that she's telling him this at all, probably... hmm.]

Were they happy there?

[surely...]

[ not wanting her mirror to interrupt, she takes reim’s comment as a sign to place the object face-down again. there will be time for its commentary later. ]

Let’s see… [ she turns to him. ] Would you be? You were going to die, and then a lovely young maiden gave you an eternal life and a community of people like you.

[ she’s the lovely young maiden in question, thanks ]

[you know, he has almost died before, and becoming a vampire seems only a few steps away on the extreme reaction scale from what he actually did. never mind that.

he rubs at his neck where she has helped herself to his blood before, considering eternal life... honestly the thought kind of gives him a stomachache, but he's deathly afraid of running out of work to do.]

I could be, I suppose. Eventually.

[ eternal life sucks, actually, but a few hundred years of more time isn’t so bad. ]

They were happy. We all were happy, I think… as happy as a group of outcasts can be.

[ reim got to see sierra’s memory of being hated by the townspeople—by then, she’d taken it all in stride. there was a period of time long before that where she hid herself away, still cautious of her power, afraid of inviting judgment on herself. ]

[that makes him think of the baskervilles, and the gnarled mess that is his own understanding of them. outcasts, made villains by the other great houses and whispered about in the dark as monsters, when they're only people like anyone else. he isn't an outcast of any kind, himself, so he can only offer clumsy sympathy.

but at least he wouldn't have called her a hussy in the middle of town. there's that.]

Then it must have been worth it. [these words should ordinarily be accompanied by at least a smile, but uh, he isn't.]

I don’t regret doing it. I regret what came of it.

[ those words feel like they follow everything she ever does. her decisions are never truly ill-intentioned, but they always seem to turn out for the worse. she doesn’t know how to stop it. ]

I’ll spare you the details, but to make a long story short, I was betrayed. [ instead of staring at the mirror, she looks at the rune on her hand. it belongs there. ] I failed them, and without my protection, some of them simply died, and the others became monsters that I was forced to kill.

[ she speaks through it so quickly that it’d be enough to guess at a generalized sorrow for the tragedy of her village, but her heart breaks for one man in particular. someone she’d killed only recently, someone she loved. that’s the strongest emotion in her chest right now, and she sighs. ]

I was alone again. Isn’t that sad?

[and of course it's that spike of tragedy that cuts through the rest of her sorrow, almost shocking for just how raw it is, and reim can only frown again. if he pries, the illusion is completely shattered...

whatever this new skill of his is, it's terrible.]

It is. [...] You are... often challenging, but you don't deserve to be put through all of that.

And you didn’t deserve to be put through my story, but here we are.

[ there are so many other things that have happened to her, so much loss, so many things she’s run away from—she could tell reim stories all day and then she really would be a crazy old crone. ]

That version of myself in the mirror… she is a person I’d rather forget that I was.

Don't act like I don't know what I'm getting into by spending time with you.

[ha... jokes. that would be closer to their usual banter if not for basically everything she's just told him, but he still means it. he's still here, after all.

.....is the mirror still listening? he doesn't understand mirror physics, but,] If she's still worried that I'll leave, I don't plan on it.

[ sierra hates how grateful she feels for that small reassurance—it’s not even for her, for that crying face in the mirror instead, but as much as she wants to ignore it, that person is sierra mikain just as much as the one standing in the real world.

she thinks she’s got it all nice and hidden, though, since she doesn’t know what reim is feeling on her behalf. ]

You called me challenging, and yet you’re offering to stick around? You masochist.

[please, if he said it directly to her and not her mirror self, she'd definitely throw him out of this cottage. or something equally transparent, and not just because he can actually feel her gratitude today.

so the snow day is going great.]

Well, I believe you've doomed us to being snowed in, so what choice do I have? [they aren't even snowed in, but it's back to this just for a moment.] I don't mind "challenging."

[ there’s something sierra wants to say, torn between the easy route of their banter and another display of sincere thankfulness for all that reim does for her, and her only saving grace is that he can’t read her mind.

she settles for something in between, her tone soft despite the stupid words. ]

…and I don’t mind masochism, so I suppose we’re even.

[in maybe a day's time he's going to deeply regret letting her call him a masochist, isn't he... well, that's for tomorrow's reim to deal with.]

Oh, I've finally made it onto the board. How fortuitous!

I take it back.

[ that seems cruel, but she just remembered something. ]

What is your mirror saying about you? I told you all about my life, it’s only fair.

Well— alright.

[it... is fair, that's true. he fusses with his many layers to tug the mirror out from inside his vest, and frowns briefly at it before showing it to her.

it is not actually talking, is the thing. not right now, anyway; right now it just seems to be stuck in some kind of powerpoint fueled by god's mistakes, which is to say, it's just flashing images of things like reim oversleeping, or reim with a huge ink stain all over his face, or reim being a lot smaller and getting poked repeatedly in the forehead while he looks increasingly distraught about it.

basically, it's fucking nothing.]

[ this is not what sierra expected, but also, somehow, it totally is. reim seems remarkably well adjusted, so it only makes sense that the mirror would have to pick up on something as small as the fact that he’s a person who has made mistakes in his life. ]

…I see.

[ she looks up at him. ]

This is the first time I’ve noticed how vast your forehead is.

[that's his only advantage, being a person with no extraordinary abilities... mental stability.

anyway, this is bullying, so he's putting the mirror away again already.]

Thank you, I had forgotten the thrill of hearing about it.

Oh, don’t be like that. I’ve been told the same thing.

[ that’s why she has bangs, reim! ]

[is this what she wants to bond over? big foreheads? sierra, please.]

And yet... [and yet!! he sighs, shaking his head.] Well, how about this? In the interest of fairness, you may as well ask me something directly if you're curious.

[because his mirror is just bad facebook photos he tried to untag himself in, and all.]

One moment.

[ they’re really going to settle in now, so sierra moves over to the door of the cottage to shut it a little tighter—she may not be human, but she knows people get cold, and she can feel the breeze trying to get through the cracks. ]

Tell me about that… hare of yours.

[oh, how thoughtful. it's still cold, but thoughtful! and of course she had to pick the most nonsensical thing he could have talked about...]

Oh. The March Hare... it's a creature from another, er, plane of existence, I suppose. [it already sounds dumb. unconsciously his hand drifts to where his weird blood mirror is tucked under all those layers.] We call it the Abyss, and the creatures, Chains... They can't cross the border into our world and survive without making a contract with a living human, so you could say I'm hosting its extended vacation.

[ haha, what ]

…I see. And here I thought I was asking about some dark curse of yours, not magical real estate.

[ she jokes, but she does cock her head and look at him—thoughtful now, after everything they just discussed. ]

It does offer you power though, does it not?

A curse that looks like a hare...?

[just imagine having a curse so cute! how lucky.]

As for power... sadly, no. These Chains usually have some kind of special skill, but mine is more or less completely useless. That's likely why I was allowed to contract with it, considering I spend most of my time behind a desk.

[ isn’t that sort of sad in its own way?

sierra wasn’t fishing for something sad though, as much as she likes to tease, and reim seems so comfortable in himself that she’s not sure she’d find anything even if she ripped him open. ]

…hm.

[ she sits on the floor of the room, motioning for reim to come near her. ]

Who’s the better boss?

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