meadowlarklogs

[ There are a number of firsts one might notice.

The way that wherever you turn there’s technically no outside, everything in an enclosed space. No sky, probably because there’s no natural atmosphere. The taste of recycled air. The way walking might be difficult, unless you’re wearing mag boots - which you probably aren’t - because the gravity here is only about one-sixth what it is on Earth.

How alcohol lazily flows into the kid’s glass at the bar. How the place is empty - the bartender basically a non-entity - but for… not a man, not yet, but not really a kid, either. Probably about mid-teens, the ghost of the man he’ll grow into evident on his features. Tall enough already, solidly built, though he could stand to fill out a little more. But not by much.

The way his right hand, holding his glass, is swollen, knuckles skinned, raw and recently cleaned of blood. The shotgun resting against the stool he’s sitting on. The two corpses at his feet, heads mutilated in different ways: one missing an ear, an eye; a massive hole in the skull. The other caved in, face beaten beyond any recognition.

(Though that could explain the hand.)

A third body lying off to the side, hole big enough for a fist to fit through blown into its chest, forgotten otherwise. The smell of smoke becoming evident in the air, though there’s no fire.

Amos takes a drink, sighs, sets the glass down. And, just speaking out loud, ]

We’re still right next door to Earth, so they import the good shit up here. Heard the quality goes down the farther you go out, though. Ganymede crops aren’t a substitute for the real thing. [ He shrugs, turning from his glass to look up. ] I figure booze is booze though, right? But maybe it gets shitty enough it makes a difference.

[Everything about this place should tell Kyna it's a dream—the bartender she can't quite look at fully, the lowered gravity, the odd intimacy. But in the way of dreams, all of that feels natural, unquestionable. There's a kid beside her, and for a moment she's so struck by the incongruity of seeing Amos so young that she can't focus on anything else. Her eyes catch on his injured hand, only vaguely registering what he's saying, because then she sees the bodies.

Oddly, she doesn't panic. He isn't panicking, and so she only goes stock still, a metallic taste rising at the back of her throat. It's as though her brain can't make sense of it, corpses lying on the floor while Amos chats amiably about booze. She realizes, distantly, that her heart is beating too quickly, but she can't drag her eyes away. It's only when one of the faces distorts, flickers into the features of the man she killed in the Quarry, that her eyes screw shut and she shudders.

She can't be understanding this right. This can't be what she thinks.]

What the fuck is this?

[ It clicks, somewhere in the back of Amos' mind, that he knows Kyna. Likes her. So there's no reason for him to question why she's there, sitting beside him. It makes sense, right? They've done this before.

Dream logic seamlessly mixes the two different time periods; that of course he'd already have a friend with him so soon after leaving everything he knew back in Baltimore behind. It's what he'd wanted, wasn't it? So she fits in perfectly with the scene.

He doesn't really follow her question though. Or the way she freezes. The horror, or distress, or being unsettled, or whatever it is going on with her. He's completely relaxed, so he approaches things like that's how it is for her, too. No reason for it not to be. ]

Is this your first time off-planet, too? Yeah, it's weird as fuck. You can stare up at rockets and the sky and dream of it your whole life, but now that I'm actually here, dunno what to make of it. Still getting the hang of just walking in these things.

[ He looks down at the mag boots on his feet, swinging them lightly. And it's not that he doesn't see the dead bodies there either, just that they aren't really worth acknowledging. They're definitely not as important as the boots, so. ]

No, the—

[It's so utterly surreal that her mind won't let her process it. The words stick in her throat and she freezes up, forces herself to tear her eyes away from the floor and back up to Amos.]

I mean the fucking bodies, Amos.

Oh.

[ Now that she brings them up, that's maybe the first sign that something isn't quite right. He absently toes at one of them with his boot. Nothing happens because, well, it's a dead body.

He looks back up at her, brows furrowed, like he's gotta piece something together and the answer is just beyond his grasp. ]

Yeah, those shouldn't be here. I would've left them back in Baltimore.

[It's still incomprehensible, maybe more because Kyna doesn't want to consider what that means than because she actually can't understand it. There's a tightness in her throat, but this is Amos. She trusts Amos.]

What do you mean?

[ He's too lost in trying to make sense of this to recognize any distress on her part. Seriously, the answer is right there and he just can't reach it.

Maybe if he lays out the facts she can help him figure it out. Bemused, ]

Well, that's where I killed them. I wouldn't have brought them up with me. [ A beat. ] Didn't get the chance to bring anything, actually.

[She tenses, gaze drifting to his injured hand.]

Why did you kill them?

They ordered me to kill my friend. Decided I didn't want to do that, so. [ Decided, like he was going to until he'd had a change of heart. He shrugs. ] Only alternative was to kill them.

Jesus Christ.

[It comes out soft and a little strangled.

But after the Aerie, haven't they all been forced to do awful shit? She's torn, expression conflicted.]

Why was that the only alternative?

[ Amos frowns. He's still missing something here, and it's bugging him, but catching Kyna up has become the bigger priority, so he turns his focus to that. He can figure the rest out later. ]

Where I grew up, everything ran through Burton. [ He kicks at the corpse with the face beaten beyond all recognition. That one. The one that could bear no possible resemblance to him. ] He wanted something done, it got done. And, ah. We got caught up in the churn. My friend was a loose end. So, he had to go. So Burton wouldn't get fucked over.

[ There's a note of apology to his voice. At who, it's not entirely clear. Could be someone involved in the story who'll never hear it. Could be for Kyna, that she has to hear any of this. Not like she grew up in the hellhole he did, not like she ever had to acclimate to it. ]

I was still on probation. Kinda fucked up earlier. But I got the order. Kill my buddy. Only the more I thought about it, the more I didn't really want to. And really, Burton was his only problem. So, get rid of him, there'd be no reason my friend had to die. So... you know. I took care of it.

[ Amos looks away for a second, back at his drink. He finishes it off in one gulp, sighs, sets the glass back down on the bar top. ]

And then I ended up here. So I guess it all worked out. [ And, turning back to face her and without missing a beat, because that's all over with and he's still gotta figure out how the bodies even followed him to begin with, ] Hey, you've never been to Luna before, right?

[Kyna doesn't answer right away—she's struck silent. There's a part of her that realizes that this is off, beyond the strangeness of the bar and the bodies. Amos is different, too.

But all of it tracks, based on the little he's told her and what she's noticed. There's that piece of her that's horrified, but it's hard to give into that completely after the Aerie. Isn't this just another way of being forced into doing something awful to survive?

She doesn't answer his question mostly because she doesn't register it, reaching for his hand instead.]

You're hurt.

[ He's pretty comfortable with her silence. It had been quiet before she'd shown up. It's usually quiet. Not getting an answer to his own question is kinda weird, but maybe she's just thinking things over, like he is. Or she's also noticed some things are off.

Either way, he's content to wait.

When she reaches for his hand, though, Amos instinctively jerks it back. Something in him tells him it's not a good idea. He casts his eyes downwards, away. ]

'm fine.

[This is easier to focus on, this little disagreement. If she stares at his hand, she won't notice the way the bodies seem to twitch out of the corner of her eye. She can pretend they aren't there at all.]

Amos. Come on.

[ He flicks his gaze at her, still guarded. Flexes his hand, like he's testing it. It's still raw. Stings, particularly where layers of skin have been scraped away. But it's fine. Nothing he hasn't dealt with before.

So he shakes his head. ]

It's fine. I can look after myself.

[ He's going to have to now. Outside of Baltimore he's got no one, and it's not like he can ever go back down the well. Something shifts - the scenery stays the same, bodies still casually underfoot, but it's a little colder. More hollow. A personal sense of dread letting something click into place.

He eyes her with some suspicion. ]

You weren't here before. Nobody was.

[ Wherever one turns, there’s nothing.

Just… nothing. It’s an empty void, filled with darkness and nothing but. If you’re standing on something, it’s unclear what. There’s no ground, no sky, no up.

Somehow there’s a down. While here there’s a vacant sort of calm, it’s like it’s nothing more than a layer preventing the down from rising up. An unacknowledged maelstrom exists far below, probably only felt because it’s foreign. No chance for acclimation, not if you’re fresh, new, haven’t existed on some level in this space for decades.

It’s possible to walk on the not-ground, though. It’s highly unlikely anyone’s going to fall. Not when it’s so tightly boarded up, any cracks only the faintest of fissures, recently opened and their patching up still in progress, but well underway. It’s weird, to be able to see through them, if only slightly, when everything’s black. Just a different, palpable feeling from them. A weakness. Or an openness. Maybe both.

Depending what direction you go in, it’d be possible to stumble across a faint blue glow. One that’d become more apparent the closer you get to it. Or maybe not, and there's just another presence to become aware of, and you could reach out and clasp your hand around an arm if you aimed right.

Either way. Amos tilts his head and fixes you with a gaze, unbothered by the lack of light or whatever it is that’s below. In a casual drawl, ]

Kind of weird, for someone else to be here. Not really used to that.

[ Spires like shark teeth jut up from the ground, both unnatural and clearly not man-made. They decorate an otherwise barren landscape, one recently reshaped by tsunami waters that are only just receding. Destruction isn’t even evident in their wake; anything that was once there is completely gone.

Except the ruins. They’re fine. They’ve stood tall for well over a billion years or thereabouts, uninhabited and undisturbed, and they’ll stay that way.

Inside is another story.

The scene jerks from one visual to the next, stuttering along like it can’t decide what to be. A reactor with a glowing blue mass curled around it, trying to find its way further in. Plants along the walls, overgrown like in New Amsterdam before anyone came back from the Aerie, untamed and shifting from natural green to eerie blue and back, curling, creeping towards the warmth of radiation, like they’re hungry. Blue fireflies, aimless artefacts dotting the air whenever the blue takes over.

Wherever light shines over free spots on the walls, moving patterns of bright green become evident. The slugs make their way over the walls, paying no mind to the way the scene shivers between plants, protomolecule, whatever. Occasionally one or several will fall, will resume creeping along on whatever path they were on before.

Amos stands in the centre of the room, hood pushed back, looking up, eyes unseeing, the green going so far as to dot at the corners of his eyes and make them all the more useless for it. A slug falls and just misses, landing beside him with a soft squelch. He cocks his head at the faint sound, then raises his foot and grinds it into the ground, far past the point of necessity. He doesn’t react to anything otherwise, present in body only. ]

[ this isn't anything she's ever seen before, and she somehow knows in an instant that she's dreaming again, the same way she was dreaming before with that guy and those weird twisted fungus zombies, but being in the dream, acknowledging that it's happening, doesn't make it feel any less real in her brain, especially not when she's standing inside these strange ruins looking bright and out-of-place amidst the darkened interior, not when everything starts shifting and changing around her.

the atmosphere flickers like someone's changing the channel and she's stuck in the television set, eerie blue light replaced by fresh greenery she can almost feel, smell and then back to blue again, tiny lights floating in the air all around her until she nearly feels compelled to reach out and touch one before it shifts again.

nothing moves in her periphery but it's like she suddenly becomes aware of him standing there, at the edge of her vision, and she turns quietly, making her way over to where he's standing, eyes stained with something strange. if he hears her, sees her, she can't tell, and she finally reaches out to lightly place a hand against his shoulder. ]

Hey. [ she doesn't raise her voice much louder than a murmur, as the scene shifts around them again. ] Where are we?

[ He isn't present until he feels something touch him, and then Amos jerks away suddenly and violently. He finds his footing again quick and spins around to face her, fists up and snarling. The scene settles in that moment, too: the plants click into place but they're coated in blue, still reaching up for something at the top of the spire. The lights multiply but continue to float aimlessly otherwise, and the slugs don't react to a single thing, continuing along their merry way.

His heart is pounding, blood pumping, but almost as soon as it began, it clicks for him that the touch had been light, the voice soft. And sometimes it had been like that, at the start. But the part of him that's regaining sentience in here recognizes that voice, so he lowers his fists slightly. His expression changes to something more wary than aggressive. He stays in a fighting stance, but a more relaxed one as his mind frantically works to piece everything together, breathing heavily.

He doesn't think there's any immediate threat. If there is, at least he'll get the chance to go down swinging. Amos decides to speak then, his voice rough from disuse. ]

Dunno. [ He narrows his eyes, closes them, shakes his head, opens them again. He doesn't look directly at Harley because he can't see her, only a rough approximation of where he thinks she might be. It's probably off. ] Can't see shit. Can you?

open,

> luna | ota | cw past violent murder, descriptions of corpses

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> nowhere | ota

> ilus | ota | cw death slugs! just feels like death slugs should get a cw

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