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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"I—I remember Tash cutting me. I see the holes in my mind. I remember him forcing me to the ground, tearing out my history with his Tides..."

She sucks in a breath that almost sounds like a sob.

"And I have other memories now. They're. How are they real. Tash didn't do it. He could have, but he didn't, he. He lied to Paj and saved me and. But he didn't...?"

Matkina holds her head in her hands, shaking, her voice becoming thick. "The two strands of memory... this is pulling me apart." Then she looks up. Tears stream down her face. "No. No it's pulling me back together. I remember now. The hole is. It's gone. Almost. I can. Half see it. Little sister. You changed reality. You changed it!"

fallen_star

"It was cruel and unfair," she says, with passion. She pats Aleks's hand and stands. "So yes, I did. And I'm only sorry I couldn't change it more." Pause. "As long as reality is fine, anyway, I guess I'd regret it if this ends the world for the ninth time or whatever we're on."

Matkina blurbles a little hysteric laugh.

"You're mad. You're mad just like the rest of us."

Then she tips forward and scoops her into a hug.

"Thank you."

fallen_star

Oh! Hugging time now, okay. She returns Matkina's hug, patting her back.

"You're welcome."

kaleido_gogi

Memories...?

Oh. Oh. Yes, now that she mentions it, he, he does have different memories. Probably much fewer than Matkina herself, of course, but still, every time he's interacted with her is—doubled, overwritten, overlayed. It's subtle, it's the ways not being so broken have changed her, the mannerisms and the paranoia and the hurt.

His castoff... changed reality. Or forced another reality on top of this one? He doesn't understand. But he is...

...in awe.

fallen_star

She beams at him. She kind of likes it when he thinks of her as his castoff. Even if she thinks she maybe has a name for herself.

“Do you think ‘Vetmera’ would make a good name?”

Matkina collects herself and pulls away, wiping at her eyes with a sleeve.

“What, that’s, that’d be ‘shifter of Meres’? In… how do you know anything at all about the ancient dialect of the hills-people. I barely even know that, and I was there. Why would you pick something from them. They’re, they’re all dead, you didn’t change that.”

fallen_star

“But they mattered. And they deserved better. And… this feels kind of personally defining, so. Fine name? Bit on the nose, admittedly, but if I’m leaving multiple memories in my wake I’d rather just directly own up to it.”

“… call yourself whatever you want.”

(It matches her name. ‘Matkina’ is from the same dialect. Kholn Village was responsible for naming her. It’s something they both share, now.)

kaleido_gogi

"I like it," says Aleks. It's pretty. And fits her. And maybe his brain is sightly less than fully online right now with how much he wants her.

This is distracting he doesn't like it.

fallen_star

Vetmera giggles, then practically floats over to him to take his hand.

“Do you want some time alone to adjust to, um, being okay?”

“I. Yes, please.”

fallen_star

“Okay. And may I come back later to visit you and talk?”

“… Fine,” grumbles Matkina, looking away. “Now get your damn hormones out of my bolt hole.”

fallen_star

Vetmera cackles.

“Yes sister, sorry sister!”

And now they can leave!

kaleido_gogi

He can teleport both of them outside and then walk the rest of the way.

"I had never been called hormones before," he says, dryly.

fallen_star

“There’s a first for everything!” She squeezes his hand. “We should probably go check on how the murder mystery is being handled, I hope that got sorted by Tahir while we weren’t looking. … I hope that got sorted competently while we weren’t looking!”

kaleido_gogi

Aleks... is not holding out hope.

fallen_star

"I am! Because if it's all competently sorted we can do whatever we like with the rest of our morning! ... It's still morning, right, I wasn't out for all that long?"

kaleido_gogi

"Yes."

He more meant that he's pretty sure the golden man is not going to have been of any help.

...wait, "whatever we like"?

fallen_star

"Mmmhmmmm."

kaleido_gogi

Temptress.

Back to Fulsome, then.

fallen_star

She giggles. But yes, Fulsome first.

He is not where they left him. Some of the bloodstains are still there, haphazardly cleaned, but the symbol on the wall has been meticulously scraped off.

But he's not hard to find. He's at the Dendra O'hur Chapel, arms crossed, glowering at a woman's corpse.

"—going to be new insurances in place to make sure none of this mind fuckery happens again," he's telling a too-tall skeleton of a man that Aleks will recognize as Imbitu, leader of the local Dendra O'hur cultists.

"This is why it's our church's custom not to eat alone," Imbitu sighs, "but yes, I quite agree."

Tahir

soul_of_adventure