Red Tide | Glowfic Constellation

Her first conscious experience is a weightless feeling, the muffled sound of wind, and the gnawing feeling that she's forgotten something terribly important. It's like waking up from deep sleep with all the world around her ablaze, except worse. Was she asleep? She feels like she'd been dreaming, but that's not right. It's sort of right, but it isn't, and she can't put any words to why. There's no before the not-dreaming, she doesn't know her name or who she is or what she even looks like. This... does not seem normal. Wait, that doesn't make sense, either. How does she have any idea what normal is when she doesn't remember anything at all? She doesn't understand. What is this thing she's in, why is there the sound of wind, why does her weight seem weird, why does she have a concept of what weight is and isn't weird, isn't that more strange than anything else?

And then the protective cocoon around her tears, and is ripped away, and many of her questions are answered. The ones that aren't are tabled for later, because she has bigger problems right now. Like falling out of the sky. Like that. Quite reasonably, her second conscious experience is panic. This does not seem like a problem she is equipped to solve. Knowledge from... somewhere... notes that this fall is not from the kind of height people survive, especially not someone completely unprepared. A confused amnesiac is probably even less equipped to handle it than the average person. This is so incredibly unfair.

She has enough practicality to flatten herself out to catch the wind. This buys her enough time to figure out that she has no kind of device, some parachute or propulsion system or something, to slow her own fall or catch enough wind to slow herself down enough. And then also to curse, or at least try to, because the ground is very close and she is out of time.

"Oh, fuc—" she begins, and then is cut off by crashing (painfully) into some kind of large glass dome. Ha, she thinks, through the pain and the confusion as she crashes through it, at least I beat the dome in resilience! This is an outrageously petty victory, but it's all she has.

Then she crashes into something else, and all she knows is pain and darkness.

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kaleido_gogi

He can wordlessly lead her from there to Circus Minor, so that she has a better idea of where she is with respect to everywhere else.

There's a reason he does not like Salimeri.

fallen_star

"Yeah. I can see why," she mutters, on the way there. "... Actually. Can I um. Have a hug?"

kaleido_gogi

"...what."

fallen_star

"... A hug. Where two people put their arms around each other and, um. Hug. Salimeri brought up... some memories and I feel complicated things about them. And I think I'd like a hug over it."

kaleido_gogi

He knows what a hug is, just.

Uh.

Whatever, sure, he can uh. Take a step closer to her and...? Hug? He guesses?

fallen_star

She hugs him and kind of clings, leaning into him and closing her eyes.

Right now she would like to drown out the complicated touch memory of a life she didn't live in favor of this life, now, that she is definitely living. ... Upon reflection she kind of wants to go make her own sex related memories to drown out her sire's, but, uh. Probably she should have some chill about that, and think about things first. Especially since her most obvious partner would be Aleks, and. That might. Make things complicated, somehow, and that sounds scary.

"Thanks," she mumbles into his chest.

kaleido_gogi

"S...ure," he says, more bemused than anything. Like, he hates Salimeri too but he's not sure what exactly triggered this.

...............he's also not complaining, though. Pat pat pat.

fallen_star

Snuuuuuggle.

"Uh. Well. The entirety of my sexual experience is now memories of sire-dearest with her, so. That's... not great." Shiver.

kaleido_gogi

"...oh. Oh of course they did." They deserve each other, Salimeri and Adahn.

fallen_star

She giggles. "Yes they do. That was why all of the stammering at the start, I was suddenly confronted with. All of that."

kaleido_gogi

"I'm sorry, I didn't know." Yuck.

fallen_star

"You have nothing to apologize for. And. Yes. Yuck is right. Though actually if it were just a flat yuck, it'd be simpler, it's. Not zero appealing but it's also... really distinctly incorrect and obviously not me and. It's complicated." Sigh. "Hugs are simpler."

kaleido_gogi

Well, hugs are a thing he can provide, at least.

fallen_star

Hugs are excellent, and she indulges in them for a while, but eventually they must end. She has things to do. So, she pulls away and gives him a grateful smile.

“Okay. I think I’m better. Eugh. That probably won’t even be the last of those from sire-dearest.” She makes a face. “So that’ll be exciting.”

kaleido_gogi

If it means he can hug her again and he is ending that train of thought right now and resuming his walk back to Circus Minor.

fallen_star

She giggles, and follows.

“You can hug me. I like hugs. When they come from people I like, anyway.”

kaleido_gogi

Not engaging with that.

CIRCUS MINOR here it is oh would you look at that it seems they are holding a public execution he had missed it earlier.

fallen_star

They’re holding a what?

She spots the crowd of people, and their thoughts are honestly uncomfortable to be around. They’re all… spectating. Watching, for a million different reasons, most of which aren’t good. And then on the stage is a man who seems to be spewing something from out of his mouth. What he’s spewing is coiling around him slowly. That… might kill him, yes, but it’ll take days.

“How is that an execution,” she whispers. “That’s. That’s not an execution, that’s public torture.”

kaleido_gogi

"He will die at the end of it all the same, won't he? And in the meantime he will vomit nightmares which the crowd will listen to for enlightenment."

Disgusting, but not his business.

fallen_star

“Oh, yes, because someone’s dying nightmares are so enlightening. The local government sanctions this?? I don’t have any idea if he deserves execution or not but if he does it should be kinder. Skist. He’s. He’s so confused and terrified, did they drug him too?”

kaleido_gogi

"That's where the nightmares and the death he is throwing up come from, yes."

The "death" being the strange, disgusting humanoid creature standing behind the man, who seems to be made out of the fleshy tendrils that are coming out of his mouth and getting wrapped around him.

fallen_star

She hadn’t even noticed that… thing. It doesn’t have a mind to notice. The most obvious thing to her right now is what every single mind associated with that fucking stage is thinking. It’s all she can really see. Or, well, sense.

“This is horrible,” she hisses. “And unconscionable and pointlessly cruel and, and, and. Why even do this at all, just stabbing him is faster.”

kaleido_gogi

"To scare other people away from doing the same, is my guess," he says, shrugging. "The Devourer of Wrongs," hooded dude standing in the shadows over there, "will eat his corpse to acquire his memories and find any accomplices."

fallen_star

“Then why the fuck are they drawing it out! Accomplices have plenty of time to flee the city while that poor man is tortured to death! This makes even less sense now! And what if he’s innocent, what then, do they apologize to his family, or just to what’s left of his corpse after they’ve eaten it.”

kaleido_gogi