Week 2 Post-Trial

[strictura]

[ The trial itself may have been pretty straightforward, but with how high emotional tensions were running afterward, there's probably no one feeling like organizing any kind of gathering right now.

So, go do your thing until a new week starts, and write down those memories you don't want to forget. ]

Comments

[octopups]

[He's not catatonic this time, fortunately, just very not okay. He quiets his whistling and looks back miserably over a couple of his shoulders from under the bed. His simulated little boy's voice comes out in multiple overlapped streams.]

I'm sorryI'm sorry I'm sorryI shouldn't be cryingI'm sorry I'm such a cowardI'm sorry

[prescience]

[He's responsive, so that already seems a little less insurmountable to handle. Oriko gets on hands and knees so she can look under the bed better.]

You're not a coward. You've seen something truly frightening, and not for the first time. Sometimes things happen, sometimes we see things that root themselves inside us and poison everything.

Won't you come out?

[octopups]

[He whistles a couple more forlorn notes, but slowly, a couple at a time, he starts to belly-crawl out from under the bed towards her.]

Hhowow howdid did... [He stops, tries again, remembering to speak in words and not chords] How did... you know it, it wasn't the first time?

'how did you know?' seriously look at yourself amdi

[prescience]

[As he starts crawling back out, Oriko sits back down on the floor, the blanket next to her, giving him some room to settle down.]

No one reacts that way to something they're seeing for the first time. [She pauses.] Most people, anyway...I think it's much more normal for shock to set in at first.

[She hesitates, wanting to be delicate while he's still so fragile.] And I believe I heard you say something else...a name?... that none of us would have recognized.

HE IS FIVE YEARS OLD

[octopups]

O-oh. Um, right.

[While she's first talking, he scoots out the first couple members lays down around her again, placing two heads on her lap from either side.]

[By the time she goes on the rest of him are out, and they look at her sadly.]

Oh... yeah. Blueshell...

[prescience]

[She rests her hands on the crown of either head, not quiet petting him, but letting her fingers linger there, trying to offer some steady presence.]

Sometimes, when someone else understands what you're going through, it's easier to bear the weight.

But sometimes we prefer to keep these things to ourselves. You don't have to tell anyone if you would prefer.

[Heaven knows Oriko never wanted to.]

[octopups]

[The tympana on his foreheads are humming away in their usual seemingly-random pattern of ultrasonic sweeps and spikes, but the activity seems to pulse brighter for a few moments after she finishes speaking. Then...]

A... a couple of tendays ago, before I came here, me and my friend Jefri... it's a long story, but... we had to escape from a castle. We found some secret tunnels, but Mister Stee... th-the person we were escaping from, he started filling the tunnels with oil. We only barely made it outside the walls.

Jefri's friend Ravna had just landed with her friends from space, and one of them came over to help us get away, but... but the oil outside had pooled in the field, and someone set it on fire, a-and... and we were trapped.

[prescience]

[She listens intently, doing her best to keep up with the story. It's patchy, a lot of words and names she has no way of recognizing, and rambling, so she needs to give it enough attention to understand it.

When he pauses just as the situation seems most dire, Oriko nods.]

But you were able to escape it...you were saved.

sorry for the wordvomit

[octopups]

Y-yeah, but...

[Amdi presses a few more of his members close around Oriko.]

U-um, Ravna's friend, Blueshell, he was an alien, but not a human like Ravna and Pham and Jefri and Johanna, he was a, um, a... Skrode-rider? I think? Um, he was really weird, he was kind of like a tree, except that he could move his branches and see with them and stuff, and also he wasn't in the ground, he was planted in this big metal cart that had six wheels that he could move up and down so that he could roll around anywhere, and the cart could make voice-sounds for him, and it helped him think because his memory wasn't very good.

And um, him and his mate Greenstalk, they were really cool, they flew the ship that Ravna was on and they used to do trade and have adventures all over the galaxy, Ravna told us all about it, they were really brave and kind and everyone would never have made it to my planet if it hadn't been for them, and, um...

[He's stalling. His voice is getting higher and shakier.]

A-and, um, he had this small tarp that was, was made of some kind of space fabric, and he told us to c-climb up on his cart and if me and Jefri covered ourselves all up with the tarp we would be okay, s-so we did, and me and Jefri held on tight and bundled up in the tarp and Mr. Blueshell started moving and it was s-so, so hot, I-I could feel it on all my lips and pelts as we held the tarp down around us, a-and it felt like it went on forever, a-and all the time there were these, these terrible sounds coming from Mr. Blueshell's voice maker, and we didn't know what they w-were, b-but he was... he was...!!

[prescience]

[Oriko cannot quite imagine what a tree alien would look like, but if the trees of earth could be compared, she can imagine what fire might do to one, what it might feel like. She had accepted the sounds of people dying, screaming, long ago - but she remembers most of them.

She's entirely still as he recounts everything about it, just her hands resting on those two heads against her knees.]

You were so near to it... It must have been horrifying. I am sorry that you had to experience, that he could not protect you from that one thing. However...

[She's never been the best at advice. There was a reason she'd been forced to never cry again...what was it?]

Sacrificing yourself to protect something is not something done lightly... He had determined that you were important to him and worth saving.

[octopups]

[He's shaking a little as he finishes, but he stills in turn as he listens to her.]

... I-I'm... I'm not sure I am that important. Mr. Blueshell was an amazing brave space adventurer, and I'm... I'm just me.

[prescience]

So what if that's the case?

[Her voice is serious and firm. She doesn't want to make him feel any worse, but Oriko seems determined in what she's saying.]

So what if you aren't a space adventurer right now? He chose to save you, and because of that you can choose to do with this life that you've been given.

[octopups]

[Slightly startled at her firm tone, every single one of him looks up at her as she speaks. Then, his aspect softens, and he presses close to her again, humming placidly.]

... Thanks, Oriko.

[prescience]

Oh, my, did I do something?

[She seems - or her tone, at least, seems - a little surprised as he calms down and nuzzles against her, and she gives his two foreheads a little stroke.]