RE: MORITURI TE SALUTANT!! [S!4] ROUND 3- OPHIDIAN JADE!
04-05-2017, 03:18 AM
Fire. A burning harvest. Golden wheat, tarnishing to black ashes. Mercy. The standing stones. A sacrifice…
Sam tried. Somewhere out there in this underground city - another underground city, they just couldn’t get away from that, could they? - the fires were burning, the stones are falling, the memories were there in a head in a Lavi in a room in a building in a neighborhood, to her left, to her left, right, colder, warmer, hotter, hotter, gone again. Where was she? Somehow she had to find the mind in which lay the memory of fire and stone. She had never done this before, but she knew she could. She ran, and walked, and ducked under arches and leapt over fences. She climbed a wall at one point. Her hands felt gritty. Was this how Lavi felt all the time?
Soft lips, loose ships, no canals this time round, thank god. The air was cool and dry, not mildewy and unhealthy like it had been in that terrible mock Venice behind all of them. She breathed in a deep breath, and felt the urge to curl her toes into the dirt that wasn’t there, to bury roots she didn’t have.
A blessing or a curse?
Another shake of the head. Sam forged onwards, cutting off the tendrils of curiosity. Too many times in the past she’d wondered too much, wandered into other people too far. The punishment for that was usually twenty thousand volts. It’s funny, now, that she could look back on those splintered and fragmented memories almost clinically, as if she were the scientist with the cattle prod and not the crying, spasmodically twitching girl on the floor. The tears came freely, without end, she remembered. Her eyes squeezed tears out of their own accord.
Muted reds and lavender lights lay suspended lazily from wrought-iron brackets, the tinted lamps beckoning with a promise of delights beyond measure, dreams without end. Red Harmonic, the badge on her - no, Lavi’s - robe sang to her her, Red Harmonic, Red Harmonic, Red, Red, Red, Red. If you sing in chorus, all of you get solos, together. A lavender light, hung just above a red one, the bottom of one lantern dipping almost entirely inside the other, a harmony and interplay of color and light: a harmony in red. A promise from your dealer to you: let me tell you a story…
Ahead, the lavender gave way to a deeper ultraviolet. These lamps lingered near the ceiling, clinging onto it with polygonal legs. Below, trees grew bathed in cancerous rays. Between the leaves, finely-dressed people strolled among the plants, chattering. Parasols spun and sunglasses shone with the effort of removing their bearers from the sterilizing glow above.
Was she a prisoner, somewhere in there? Tortured by the unworldly light - Sam could feel her own skin tingle with the action of carotenoids performing non-photochemical quenching on molecules of excited-state chlorophyll, bringing them down to the ground state through nonradiative decay in response to the high light levels exceeding that of the capability of photosynthetic absorption - or perhaps just cut and examined by the… the…
Sam strained to make out the half-remembered family name, the name for the ones who were strolling along not ten meters away. The badge whispered something to her, but there was too much Lavi in the way. She wouldn’t be able to get in there like this, anyway. She peeled the sad brown robe away for a second, and noted the places where her skin had turned green; she’d have to cover them. A tokenistic and ultimately useless effort was made to remove the last of the sequins while she was at it. Di Capreo-Linae, that’s what it was. The House of the Deer. Gardens for growing poppies, coca, harmonium. She kissed the little badge.
The rest of the story here can be abbreviated as follows, like flashed images progressing simultaneously through the realm of a harmonic dream: Sam sneaking into a nearby speakeasy. Sam pilfering a duffel bag. Sam pilfering several more duffel bags. Sam giving up on the duffel bags and straight-up stealing purses. Sam, disguised, strolling past the cops looking for her. Sam walking into a tailor. Sam walking out of a tailor in a new slinky dress with lace ruffles. Sam accentuating with a stolen scarf, comporting herself with all the grace of a Lady. Sam strolling back towards the gardens, black parasol in hand.
Sam tried. Somewhere out there in this underground city - another underground city, they just couldn’t get away from that, could they? - the fires were burning, the stones are falling, the memories were there in a head in a Lavi in a room in a building in a neighborhood, to her left, to her left, right, colder, warmer, hotter, hotter, gone again. Where was she? Somehow she had to find the mind in which lay the memory of fire and stone. She had never done this before, but she knew she could. She ran, and walked, and ducked under arches and leapt over fences. She climbed a wall at one point. Her hands felt gritty. Was this how Lavi felt all the time?
Soft lips, loose ships, no canals this time round, thank god. The air was cool and dry, not mildewy and unhealthy like it had been in that terrible mock Venice behind all of them. She breathed in a deep breath, and felt the urge to curl her toes into the dirt that wasn’t there, to bury roots she didn’t have.
A blessing or a curse?
Another shake of the head. Sam forged onwards, cutting off the tendrils of curiosity. Too many times in the past she’d wondered too much, wandered into other people too far. The punishment for that was usually twenty thousand volts. It’s funny, now, that she could look back on those splintered and fragmented memories almost clinically, as if she were the scientist with the cattle prod and not the crying, spasmodically twitching girl on the floor. The tears came freely, without end, she remembered. Her eyes squeezed tears out of their own accord.
Muted reds and lavender lights lay suspended lazily from wrought-iron brackets, the tinted lamps beckoning with a promise of delights beyond measure, dreams without end. Red Harmonic, the badge on her - no, Lavi’s - robe sang to her her, Red Harmonic, Red Harmonic, Red, Red, Red, Red. If you sing in chorus, all of you get solos, together. A lavender light, hung just above a red one, the bottom of one lantern dipping almost entirely inside the other, a harmony and interplay of color and light: a harmony in red. A promise from your dealer to you: let me tell you a story…
Ahead, the lavender gave way to a deeper ultraviolet. These lamps lingered near the ceiling, clinging onto it with polygonal legs. Below, trees grew bathed in cancerous rays. Between the leaves, finely-dressed people strolled among the plants, chattering. Parasols spun and sunglasses shone with the effort of removing their bearers from the sterilizing glow above.
Was she a prisoner, somewhere in there? Tortured by the unworldly light - Sam could feel her own skin tingle with the action of carotenoids performing non-photochemical quenching on molecules of excited-state chlorophyll, bringing them down to the ground state through nonradiative decay in response to the high light levels exceeding that of the capability of photosynthetic absorption - or perhaps just cut and examined by the… the…
Sam strained to make out the half-remembered family name, the name for the ones who were strolling along not ten meters away. The badge whispered something to her, but there was too much Lavi in the way. She wouldn’t be able to get in there like this, anyway. She peeled the sad brown robe away for a second, and noted the places where her skin had turned green; she’d have to cover them. A tokenistic and ultimately useless effort was made to remove the last of the sequins while she was at it. Di Capreo-Linae, that’s what it was. The House of the Deer. Gardens for growing poppies, coca, harmonium. She kissed the little badge.
The rest of the story here can be abbreviated as follows, like flashed images progressing simultaneously through the realm of a harmonic dream: Sam sneaking into a nearby speakeasy. Sam pilfering a duffel bag. Sam pilfering several more duffel bags. Sam giving up on the duffel bags and straight-up stealing purses. Sam, disguised, strolling past the cops looking for her. Sam walking into a tailor. Sam walking out of a tailor in a new slinky dress with lace ruffles. Sam accentuating with a stolen scarf, comporting herself with all the grace of a Lady. Sam strolling back towards the gardens, black parasol in hand.
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So very British / But then again | People are machines Machines are people | Oh hai there | There's no time
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Superhero 1920s noir | Multigenre Half-Life | Changing the future | Command line interface
Tu ventire felix? | Clockwork for eternity | Explosions in spacetime