[catch-all] my body is a cage;

[dreamflowers]

WHO: Jade and You.
WHAT: Catch-all log for April.
WHEN: Month of April, namely after the Shard-Bearers have awakened in their respective Resting Rooms.
WHERE: Various, but mostly Old Springstar (and Skysong).
WARNINGS: Psychosis due to the Arcane Fever stuff. I'll mark in the subject headers for anything heavy.

Prompts will be added in the comments. If there's anything specific you'd like me to whip up for you, feel free to hit me up in a PM, discord, or plurk (whippoorwill). This will be especially helpful as Jade's Arcane Fever will result in her struggle to discern what's real and what isn't, potentially causing her to hallucinate alternate versions of characters! Fun times.

Comments

[dreamflowers]

[Just tell...

[Jade sighs and rubs her forehead. The static noise persists in her brain, but she can ignore it for now. She always does.]

Yes, but I'll need a different kinda still. Specifically an alembic -- the stuff used in alchemy and the like. Makes potions, usually.

[If magic and the like didn't exist in this world, she'd have her doubts that finding such an apparatus would be possible.]

[a_noble_flame]

[Hmph. Alice doesn't miss the way Jade rubs her forehead but she's equally a little at a loss to figure out where they might find that sort of still. The Last Dance has plenty of liquor stores and Skysong had plenty of bars and the like but alchemists? She'd never exactly needed one so she never had looked for one.

Alice casts her glance around the area for a moment. Most of the Skyson citizenry do talk to her so that's a huge bonus from back when the war was raging in earnest and they all looked at her warily. Now she's Harmonized and most stop immediately. It does mean she has to leave Jade a moment but she assures her quickly:]

Give me just a moment.

[Thankfully she does find at least one person relatively quickly that seems to know just where an alchemist is. They give her directions and while her grasp of Skysong is rough she knows enough of Springstar's former layout to know where to go.

Returning to Jade she pauses, only momentarily awkward before she offers the other woman her hand.]

There is an alchemist not far from here. If you can make it alongside me then we ought to be able to find some of what you need.

[Hopefully anyhow.]

[dreamflowers]

[Before Jade can say anything, Alice takes off to do exactly what she said she would.

[Well, she's driven, one has to give her that. It's more than what Jade could say about herself a year ago, when she still lived in her home country and expected she'd find a nice ditch to die in before long. Maybe one with flowers.

[When Alice returns, Jade will have situated herself on a bench, cradling her head in her hands while trying not to look at the faces of the locals passing by. On occasion, one of them would stop to ask her if she's okay -- her position and complexion certainly giving one cause for concern. But Jade would just wave them off and send them on their way, her foreboding aura not inspiring them to stick around her for very long.

[There's a brief flash when she opens her eyes that Alice looks... different. Her expression doesn't match the tone of her words, neither does the blood on her clothes.

[It was the same with Dimitri. Jade sighs and closes her eyes for a moment, then nods.]

Yeah... I think I can make it. Got this far, anyways.

[Hesitantly, she takes Alice's hand. The blood feels real -- Jade knows it isn't.]

Just so you're aware... I'm not seeing or hearing things right. One of the symptoms is hallucinations. I'm not... I'm not just being crazy.

[a_noble_flame]

[Oh. No wonder Jade isn't looking directly at anyone. Alice feels her shoulders droop some.]

Like that night in the dorms?

[Or well the equivalent, where the new Shard-Bearers slept and where her Resting Room was now.

Alice doesn't squeeze Jade's hand or anything like that. She probably doesn't need the overstimulation of such a gesture. Instead Alice begins to lead the way, fending off those who might ask anywhere or anyone who looks far too curious.]]

Is this a side effect of sleeping so long?

[dreamflowers]

[Feeling Alice's hand helps, at least a little. It's warm, real. Grounding. Jade tries to focus on that, on the feeling part rather than what her sight and sound tries to tell her.]

Mm, kinda...

[Jade falls quiet for a moment, before she adds:]

More like a side effect of my magic, and the body and mind not being able to "cope" with all the myriad Eventualities that our magic draws from. It's like... seeing the world and the people in it -- as they were, are, will, and could be.

[Much like the corpse of Alice holding her hand right now. Jade isn't trying to think about it too much. Only the skin, not the blood.]

Not being able to maintain the Fever during our little "nap" probably didn't help, though.

[a_noble_flame]

[Oof. Alice tries to wrap her head around the idea of seeing so many things. She'd seen enough through that dream of hers after all.

She pauses a moment before she dips into talking of said dream.]

During the time I was asleep I had a dream of the past ... or I think of a different version of myself. Zenith, part of Yima's Honor Guard in fact. I was the last one standing between her inner sanctum and those rushing it. I even recognized the one who killed me in the end -- or killed the other me I should say.

[...]

It's ... hard to differentiate. I know this other self was a Zenite but ... she believed what I believe. Wholeheartedly in fact. That with Zenith she could save many lives, give many people the chance to live as well.

[And Alice is beginning to wonder if that other self of hers was wrong in her decision. With Skysong now and Aetos ... she wavers some.]

[dreamflowers]

[Even before her conversation with Dimitri, Jade had her suspicions that she likely wasn't the only one plagued by a dream like that. And she had experienced enough to know not to write that off as a mere "dream" -- especially after everything they had gone through during their long sleep.

[Nodding as she listens, Jade glances over to Alice again. It's hard to tell whether the flickers she sees from time to time are the Alice she knows, or the version of her from this other possibility. So long as she grounds herself to the warmth of that hand, it doesn't matter.]

I saw something similar -- a version of myself that would ally with Zenith. [She flinches at the memory.] It... didn't end well.

[The masked face, the voices, the pain of having her body ripped apart and changed into something else. It's still fresh in her mind, even now.]

Dunno about this one, but in my world, it's common knowledge that there are near-infinite realities, in which different choices branch to different outcomes. A world existing in which we both make the same choices as our other selves is not unheard of. Anytime someone thinks "I would never do something like that!" there likely exists an Eventuality in which they do.

[a_noble_flame]

... I see. I will admit I did consider Zenith in the beginning so it's not so far off in the end that it might have happened.

[Thankfully they're now outside this alchemist shop. Alice has never been inside of one and entering it it does have a certain feel to it, doesn't it. Maybe it's the scent of different herbs and the like in the air that does it?]

[dreamflowers]

[Being as far into her Fever as she is, Jade's more sensitive to her environment than usual. The smells and vibrations in the air is noticeable, but she pushes down the ever-present unease for now as she searches for some semblance of familiarity here.]

Can't blame you. If it were myself from a few moons prior, I probably would've been on that same track as well. Heck, sometimes I still wonder if there's anything in my world worth saving.

[Judging from her tone, however, the answer is obvious -- much as she wanted to give up, she can't.]