Abyss

[Administrator] Nocturne, welcome to In Character Room (Now)

[Administrator] Callista Alexander, welcome to In Character Room (Now)

[Callista Alexander] [[WP. Eek!]]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 5, 6, 6, 10 (Success x 1 at target 9)

[Nocturne] The first thing she'd notice was the wind. The second thing was the sky. It was a vast thing, clear blue and scattered with sparse, membrane-thin cloud trails. The sky went on forever. And the wind... it was cold up here. It rushed past in great, wintery gusts and bit through her clothes to gnaw at her skin. At first it would seem as though there was nothing but the wind, and the sky.

And then Callista looked down, and beneath her was rough, grey stone. And beneath that, a long way down, was a thick blanket of mist. Mountain peaks broke through the fog and dotted the distant landscape, but Callista was not on a mountain. She was on an island of stone that seemed to float motionless in the air, with only enough space around her to encompass a tiny car before the edge dropped off into oblivion. There were other islands like it floating nearby, some larger than others. The nearest looked like it was just barely within jumping distance.

There was no sign of life up here. None but her own. Except... for a little emerald dragonfly that landed on the stone beside her, its wings humming with delicate vibration as it stared out with multi-faceted eyes.

[Callista Alexander] Crossing her arms and hugging herself against the cold wind, Callista turns a slow circle. She couldn't remember how she'd gotten here, but it didn't seem all that important right now. Scanning the sky, first, she looks for... well, anything really. She stares up at the endless, blue sky. No birds. No planes. No life.

Leaning forward, she peers over the edge of what she quickly discovers is a floating island. (Cool, wonder what's keeping it up here). A quick glance down and she steps back away from the edge, before peering over again a little more slowly. Looking down at the cloudscape far below.

Moving away from the edge, Callista sits in the middle of her island. Noticing the dragonfly (Don't they usually hang around water?), she leans forward for a closer look.

"Hello there. How did you get all the way up here?"

[Nocturne] Dragonflies couldn't talk, of course. This was commonly accepted knowledge, so perhaps Callista had intended her question to be rhetorical - the way that people often wondered things aloud when they were alone.

And yet...

I flew, it said, as if this ought to be obvious. The voice did not come from the dragonfly so much as it did from the world at large - resonating within the sky and echoing in the wind. But what else could it be? There was nothing else here but the two of them.

The dragonfly's wings shimmered in the light as they hummed again, and it floated into the air once, drifting out to the next nearest island and landing there. Silence settled in, broken occasionally by the whistling of the air. A great gust of wind hit Callista's side, hard enough that it might knock her over if she wasn't careful, and whipped her hair into her eyes. When it settled once more, and she was able to get a clear view, she'd see that the dragonfly... was a dragonfly no longer, but a tiny girl, elfin and delicate like some kind of fae creature. She sat on the neighboring rock with her knees tucked up to her chest, dark hair spilling down her back to drape against the stone. Her eyes were huge and deep emerald. Her dress was a simple, green silk affair. And on her back: glittering dragonfly wings.

"Watch out," she said. "It's a long way down."

[Administrator] Sinclair, welcome to In Character Room (Now)

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[Callista Alexander] The question was, indeed, intended to be rhetorical. That an answer came was quite a surprise. Callista sits back as it comes, looking around to try to place the voice. Seeing nothing, she turns back to the dragonfly as it floats off to the next island.

She stands just as the wind arrives. Her sense of balance has always been good, so she's not bowled over by the sudden gust. She takes a step to brace herself, bends to cut down the surface area the wind has to push against and turns her back into it. She tries to hold her hair back as she looks over to the other island to see how the dragonfly had fared.

Only it wasn't a dragonfly any more. A tiny winged girl, apparently unaffected by the gust, sat watching her. Callista's eyebrows rise at the change. She mutters to herself, "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Chicago any more".

The warning is taken with a smile. "Don't worry, I have no intention of falling off. But thank you." And, of course, because this is Callsita there are questions. Always questions.

"Maybe I should have asked what brings you here. Although given you're the only one of us with the means of getting around here, perhaps I should ask if you know how I got here? And, I hope this isn't a rude question, but what are you? You're not the common garden dragonfly, that's for sure."

To guard against another gust, she crouches down again. She's thought about joining the girl on her island, but is happy to stay put for the moment. With the unpredictable winds, and the distance to jump, she isn't quite ready to leap without a good reason.

[Nocturne] The dragonfly-girl crinkled her nose and smiled. Her wings shimmered, fragile and translucent in the sunlight.

"You ask a lot of questions," she said.

(And of course, indeed she did. Like any good reporter. One never got any answers in life without first asking the questions.)

Another gust of wind hit, and the girl's hair fluttered out onto the breeze, but she seemed otherwise unaffected (despite looking as though she might very easily be blown about in only a slight breeze.) Her expression became pensive, touched by a kind of uncertain sadness as she looked away, out at one of the craggy, snow-covered mountains. This was not a dragonfly's environment. It was cold and dry and empty of life.

"You're here because you're here. Same as everything. I don't know what I am. Whatever you want me to be. Whatever I want me to be. Anything. Everything. I forget. It doesn't matter."

Far below, where somewhere one might presume the ground lay, an echoing roar filtered up through the mist. Not like a lion or a bear, but like some great, fantastic beast. Or maybe just a disembodied, nightmarish sound. There was no way of knowing. The girl looked down, but said nothing. She did not seem surprised so much as resigned.

[Callista Alexander] You ask a lot of questions. That got a laugh from Callista. "I get told that a lot. But how else am I supposed to find things out?" Again the question is rhetorical, although an answer wouldn't be entirely unexpected after the earlier one.

As the gust of wind hits, Callista stays crouched. Turning into the wind this time, she closes her eyes and just enjoys the sensation for the moments that it lasts. Shivering a little, she rubs her arms again. Trying to get a little warmth back into them. Why am I even cold..?

Anything. Everything.. Callista eyes narrow as the dragonfly/girl says this, curious again. Was this, finally, her Avatar coming to say hello? But, then. why wouldn't it be able to remember anything?

Just as she's about to ask another question, the roar comes from below and the train of thought is, at least temporarily derailed. Her open mouth, question poised, snaps shuts as she leans forward over the edge to peer down at the cloud and peaks below.

Glancing up at the girl, Callista notices the lack of surprise. "You know what that is." Peering down again, she asks, "It's bad, right? Nothing good makes that kind of noise. What is it?"

She gives the girl another glance. "You should run."

[Nocturne] You should run, Callista said, and the girl looked at her and gave a slow, ominous shake of her head, but exactly what that was meant to imply wasn't clear. It wasn't that she was unafraid. Far from it. There was a rigid line to the girl's spine now, and she hugged her legs to her chest so tightly that the delicate muscles stood out in her arms and her knuckles turned white where her fingers gripped her knees.

"My mother told me once that truth had teeth. She said if you weren't careful, it would eat you alive. I never believed her." There was a long pause, and then, "...If you want to know, jump. And you'll find out."

But she didn't seem particularly inclined to leave her own perch. And deep below, another roar sounded. It might have been closer.

[Callista Alexander] The truth has teeth, and curiosity killed the cat.

Realising that the girl wasn't going anywhere, or give any useful advice, Callista leans forward again. While jumping off would certainly answer the question about what is it?, she's not convinced about making that kind of leap of faith. On the one hand, wherever this is isn't following the normal rules of reality. On the other hand, she's seen enough weirdness to know that things that don't follow those normal rules can still hurt like hell. Or worse.

Peering down at the mist below, she tries to place where the roaring's coming from. It seems strange how the gusts of wind so far up here don't seem to be affecting the cloud layer below them. Well, what's she got to lose by trying to bend the rules herself?

Callista pushes out with her will, gathering the air far below their little islands. Steering it round, pulling more air in, pushing it faster and faster. Forming a small cyclone, she steers it towards the mist bank.

[[Spending WP to clear the mist.]]

[Nocturne] The girl watched as the winds whipped themselves into a small cyclone, and looked at Callista as if she knew that it had been her that had caused it. If so, she didn't seem particularly angered by this knowledge, but she did release her knees and crawl away from the edge of the rock. Crouched down as she was, her hair drifted in front of her eyes and partially obscured her face. Her wings shivered.

Beneath them, the mist began to stir, whipped up by the winds and swirling into a funnel-cloud. It was small, at first, but soon it began to grow, widening out as the fog parted and dipped toward the ground like a cone. Watching the swirling mists, Callista might not notice the way that the light changed, but if she happened to look up at the sky, she'd see that it had darkened into something grey and stormy. And even if she did not, she'd certainly feel the pulse of electric current igniting the ozone in the air, and hear the crack of thunder as lighting struck one of the nearby mountains.

And then the cyclone finally touched down to the earth, far, far below. So far that it seemed an impossible distance. And gazing up from within the eye of the storm... was blackness. An abyss. No land, no monster. Just an empty void where something should have been.

[Callista Alexander] Crouched on the edge of her island, Callista concentrates on what's happening below. Her ability to Will things to happen is relatively undeveloped, so it's a little surprising to see the massive effect that her push had. But this place isn't exactly normal, and it seems a lot easier to shape things here. Trying that back in Chicago would have been way, way beyond her.

Wherever this is. And assuming I can get back there.

As the cloud clears, she expects to see... something. Callista was waiting to see some huge, flying creature lurking below the mist. A dragon, maybe? Certainly not nothing.

Why is there nothing there? She said that she could be anything that she, or I, wanted her to be. Is it that nothing's decided what's supposed to be down there, yet?

Or is something else going on here? It's just me and her, and I'm damned sure how much of this I've shaped so far. So what is going on here?

She looks up at the other island, watching the girl suspiciously. Voice edging on a shout, tinged by anger, she yells, "Again, what are you? And what the hell do you want with me?"

[Nocturne] None of this made much sense to Callista, but then... dreams seldom did. Any sense they did make was wrapped up in so many layers of unconscious neurosis and random brain impulses that deciphering them could be a dubious task at best. (And if a question really needed to be asked, perhaps it was this: whose dream is this? Maybe that wasn't so simple a thing to answer either.)

But it felt real. The cold wind and the howling skies and the dragonfly girl with her too-bright eyes. And when Callista shouted at her to give some kind of explanation, the girl just looked at her with a mix of fear and sadness, wet tears tracing their way down her cheeks. "...You already did it."

And then the girl wasn't there anymore, and in her place a dragonfly soared out into the air, disappearing as the strong winds carried it far away. And Callista was left alone with the gnawing chasm beneath her. It continued to grow, opening up like some huge mouth as the clouds streaked with lightning. And then the mist itself began to darken, as if the blackness were contagious, and they reached up like clawing shadows from the void as the eye of the tornado drew closer and closer.

And then the world was swallowed whole. And still... nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

... and then it was gone.

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