This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?

[notathreat]

WHO: Ellie + OPEN (Grab me if you want a custom starter, even if they haven't interacted yet!)
WHERE: Dreamscape!
WHEN: September 22-25 2512
WHAT: Ellie's managed to keep y'all out of her head until now, but everything's got a breaking point.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Violence, death, torture, body horror (zombie-type), violence towards a teenager.

Radio Nowhere

Comments

[notathreat]

It's not fine, and they both know it, but she accepts it -- in the end they have to move on. Have to process and keep going. It's how things are; they don't get to stop for a break to let things heal over.

But this is nice.

Ellie grows slowly more clear as they watch, clothes less frayed, bloodstains disappearing. Less starved and haunted and wounded. The scars heal over, and it settles into something else. Flannel and a rifle. The smallest two fingers on her left hand missing.

She still doesn't look well, but it's at least more stable.

"... your brother?" she asks, her voice quiet. It's a guess, but she felt what he felt. What she was projecting had twisted itself, burrowed into his closest bonds to make sure it all made some modicum of sense.

[browbeater]

"Yeah," he answers simply, though he's focusing on her and observing the changes. "We grew up on these streets. Ran small cons like that to survive." Though he wants to know who she lost, what happened, and maybe try to understand her.

Because he knows that sometimes you can do bad, horrible things when you're desperate. And sometimes what you can do when you're not-- but what he'd felt, what he'd experienced, that felt like desperation. A kind he could sympathize with.

"After our parents died, we didn't have much else we could do."

Trying to communicate that he understood.

[notathreat]

"Better than what some people did."

Ellie doesn't sound particularly judgmental about it. Hell, she can't be. She's known and loved people who have done far worse things for the sake of survival, let alone for revenge. She owes her life to smugglers and cutthroats, to torturers and worse.

Shadows creep in at the edges of the dream -- the vines are old, breaking down foundations, reclaiming. He might get a whiff of fungal rot. This isn't industry and nature living in harmony. Instead it's squalor, home to scavengers, everyone looking over their shoulders.

It's indistinct. More a feeling than a place.