ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴏᴅᴛᴇᴀᴍ ᴏғ ʜᴀᴅʀɪᴇʟ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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hadriel_logs2018-11-14 07:35 am
hadrielmods) wrote in hadriel_logs2018-11-14 07:35 am
Entry tags:
- !event,
- abigail hobbs,
- agent carolina,
- akira kurusu,
- atem,
- carlisle longinmouth,
- charles yvry,
- curufin,
- daenerys targaryen,
- dr. newton geiszler,
- elena fisher,
- fingon,
- floki,
- george lass,
- geralt of rivia,
- gren,
- hanako nurumi,
- harlan halliday,
- inquisitor trevelyan,
- isaac 'zack' foster,
- ivar ragnarsson,
- jason todd,
- jill valentine,
- jo harvelle,
- kettara bloodthirst,
- laura palmer,
- lup,
- lyanna stark,
- margaery tyrell,
- mariane cousland,
- michael munroe,
- nagito komaeda,
- nick valentine,
- oscar,
- sally face (sal fisher),
- sansa stark,
- scott ryder,
- staci pratt,
- terrence ephemera/sharkface,
- the disreputable dog,
- tinya wazzo,
- will graham,
- yusuke kitagawa
Event Log: Memories Past
Who: Everyone
What: Memory Share Event!
Where: All around the city
When: November 14th-20th
Warnings: Please remember to tag all warnings for memory shares!
What: Memory Share Event!
Where: All around the city
When: November 14th-20th
Warnings: Please remember to tag all warnings for memory shares!
Have you ever looked through someone else's eyes? Heard through their ears, spoken with their tongue? The gods have tried to teach some of you empathy, but it's time you learned the hard way, exactly what the others here have been through. For a week, every time you brush skin to skin with someone, you'll experience a memory of theirs: happy, sad, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that it feels real to you.
The first touch may come as a surprise- it lasts only for a split second but may feel like an eternity, where you're trapped in someone else's memory. After that, it could be more expected, and some may even figure out how to control it and share specific scenes from their past with others. Or, you might wear gloves and long sleeve shirts for awhile, nobody's judging.
Maybe curtail the handholding for awhile- or go right ahead, if that's your thing. After all, you never really know somebody unless you've walked a mile in their shoes, right?► This log covers November 14th-20th.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If you die in a memory, you don't die in real life, but if you do die in real life please let us know here.
cw: body horror, and gimmie 3!
[ He's mostly kidding. He can wrangle a boat, if it was an emergency he'd manage but really he simply prefers to have company just in case. The seas look pretty calm today, they'll manage fine.
Pell stands up, offering Julie an hand to climb in without realizing that's a mistake -- he hasn't had any accidental encounters yet. Unfortunately she either forgets as well or is comfortable enough with him to not be on high alert over an event happening. As soon as she touches him, Hadriel is gone.
--
It is the morning of Pell’s Harhune, his inception. He’s woken to be pampered by two attendants, skin oiled and perfumed, his long dark hair brushed til it shines and then done and adorned with flowers, and is dressed in a robe of sombre black linen. Two more arrive, taller figures with seemingly more importance from their attire, green and gold and adorned with jewelry. Julie may recognize the one as Seel, still with the beads and tassels in his multicolored hair, but everyone has the same ambivalent male-female countenance as the Pell that Julie knows. The other, who passes him a goblet with foul murky liquid, seems to have great authority. Pell drinks it down and immediately feels sedated, and needs to be aided as he’s led out of the building he was in.
Saltrock is a small town up in the mountains, everything hand built and rough but it has its charm. And it seems there’s some kind of celebration going on, but Pell is afraid. He lets himself be guided to a carriage adorned with flowers and ribbon, and as they ride towards the Nayati the townspeople sing and call to him joyfully. It would seem whatever’s going on is about Pell, and there’s some pleasure in that, but it’s overwhelmed by the uncertainty of what is to come.
When they arrive at the Nayati he nearly has to be carried, feeling drunk from the philtre and ill from fear. The building seems to be made for ceremony, seats surrounding what may have been an altar, and other hara taking their places. Pell is led towards a chalked pattern on the altar, propped between the two larger figures, and Seel grabs a staff and strikes the ground. The crowd rises and begins to chant. “Harhune! Harhune!” Pell’s fear grows. Seel pushes him onto his knees.
“Today we witness the inception of Pellaz Unhar. He is deemed fit by myself, Seel Griselming and my colleague Orien Farnell. Does the Harhune take place?” He asks the crowd, who respond with a resounding “Aye!”
The two tall hara begin to anoint him, partially disrobing him before the assembly to write symbols on his skin. It’s all beyond Pell’s understanding, except that he has to do this. And it’s only once they’ve finished that two more hara enter, these of even more seeming importance. They are dressed in white and gold; one holds a metal dish and the other a blade.
“Pellaz, be still,” Seel tells him, and Pell’s eyes close as the blade is raised. There’s a shearing sound, and when he opens his eyes again his hair, his one true vanity, still adorned with the flowers his attendants put in, is in the dish. Pell begins to shiver with fear, now.
There is the distinct sense that nothing is over, not even close. One more has yet to enter and does so now, a mighty figure in pure white, his red hair flaming around him. He has an aura of power that even human Pell can feel, and he is terrified. The others gasp and Seel sounds shocked when he utters, “Him? Him?!”
His companion at the start, still at Pell’s side, merely says, “Yes. I know.”
The congregation is now kneeling before this new har, but as he takes his place Seel and the other pull Pell up and lead him over. He introduces himself as Thiede, and orders the pair to disrobe him completely. Pell can only stare at this new figure, who asks him, “Are you here of your own free will?”
“Yes,” Pell hears himself answer, and Thiede orders him drugged again. The world goes black.
Things skip ahead, or so it would seem, as the memory picks up with Pell surging awake, in terrible pain. He screams, a high terrified sound, clutching at his abdomen for the twisting in his gut. The next stab of it makes him spasm so hard he’s flung from the bed to the floor, but Pell can hardly see from the pain. Everything is blurry and spinning, but he starts to crawl, seeking help. Trying to call out for someone to come, but he can’t get enough air.
He seems to hit something, hand slapping a cool smooth surface, and he sees something move out of the corner of his eye. Turning to see what he’s touching, what the movement is, he finds a monster. No… it screams and recoils as he does. He’s looking in a mirror.
Pell’s half-naked scalp gleams damp and white, paler than he used to be. A long matted plume
of hair covers half his face -- they’ve only cut the sides -- but that face is bloated and grey, the eyes rimmed with red, the mouth purpled and slack. All that he can see of himself is bruised and discolored, swollen in odd places. His left arm is nearly twice the size it should be. Pell tears his eyes away from the sight and wretches, spitting up blood and mucus. He can’t scream anymore, but someone is coming.
Someone calls out, “Get him back on the bed!” but the voice is unrecognizable.
A softer tone: “It’s started.” And the memory fades out. ]
no subject
The car screeches to a stop, and Julie's head snaps forwards. She smacks her nose against the seat in front of her and tenderly feels it to see if it's bleeding as she slumps back. Between the front seats, she can just about see out of the front window of the car.
They have just crested a hill. Across the road, directly in front of them, is a chain meant for shredding tyres, and in front of the chain is a wall of wrecked cars extending across all eight lanes of the freeway. Beyond that, across what was once farmers fields, is a war zone. The shopping district has been reduced to burned out shells; the only vehicles in the parking lots are tanks, some with their turrets blown off, some lying on their sides. And behind that, the tall, skeletal remains of concrete buildings engulfed in the white flames of Fire Church phosphorous, left as a warning... or a monument.
A small voice comes from the twelve year old. "Why?" she says, but gets no answer.
Her father leaves the car with a shotgun. Julie cranes her neck around, but she can't see anything moving down in the valley. Her mother calls out--
"John, let's just go around. We can take the back roads until I-5 clears up." 'John', her father, says nothing. He's assumed the pose of a trained soldier, in procedure mode, locked into patrolling the area until he's certain there's no threat. Her mother calls out again, then sighs and grabs her own gun. She turns to Julie. "Stay here."
Julie stays. She watches. She watches her parents argue, too focused on it to see the person creeping up towards the car. The window beside her smashes, an arm reaches through and pulls the door open and Julie just manages to grab her shotgun as two hands grab her ankles and swing her out of the truck. Her head hits the ground, her vision swims and she sees the man is not a man at all but a boy. Just a boy, barely older than her.
She shoots him in the chest.
Everything moves slowly as she drags herself back to her feet. Her parents run over, but she hears them talk as if through a long tunnel, or under water. She's watching the boy, watching as his last breaths leak out like a popped bicycle tyre. Her father bends down, picks up the gun she doesn't remember dropping, and puts it back in her hands.
Something about this infuriates her mother-- "Are you serious? Are you fucking serious, John?"
Julie is still watching the boy. His eyes seem to vibrate as the colour drains out of them.
"It's her third kill and we can't keep hiding this part from her, she needs to face it."
She's twelve years old! She doesn't need to face this yet!"
A wet-sounding breath attempts to fill the boy's chest. Julie's mother steps forwards, but Julie's finger is already squeezing the trigger of the shotgun. The boy's head explodes in a spray of blood. The girl says nothing as she secures her gun inside the truck again and buckles herself in, staring blankly forwards as her parents join her and they move off.
"Hey, Julie," her mother says. She points to a flag as they pass it, the letters fading but one standing out clearly. "R."--
She doesn't know what Pell saw. What she realises when she snaps out of it is that she suddenly hurts in places she didn't before, and her stomach feels as if it's about to crawl out of her throat.]
I think I'm going to be sick. [Julie whispers, struggling into an upright position to lean over the side of the boat and breathe in deeply, trying to wipe the image of her-- of Pell's face in the mirror out of her mind.]
no subject
I'm sorry, we both forgot. What did you see..?
no subject
[She flinches under the touch to her shoulder, but when nothing else happens she straightens herself up and pushes herself onto the nearest seat in the boat.]
Uh, you, but... ugh, god, it wasn't you. There was some kind of ritual, a--... and you were in so much pain, Pell. God.
no subject
Althaia -- the changing. The blood of my kind redesigns the body quite a bit and birth is never pleasant, I suppose.
[ He tries to think of it as rebirth rather than a series of agonizing mutations, because he doesn't regret it. But Julie's right, it was horrible. And he remembers that glimpse in the mirror... Pell shakes his head as if to ward it off, considering Julie again. What he saw. Maybe she doesn't want to know? ]
no subject
I'm going to be having nightmares about that one. [She mutters.] No offence.
[No offence at all, but it was awful, and one of a hundred things she could have certainly done without seeing.]
Uh... what about you? And we should probably get going or get out of the boat, y'know.
no subject
[ Like that. It was indeed awful, and incredibly painful. But he moves on, and nods about getting moving. He shifts to grip the oars and steer them away from the pier. ]
I saw... you probably won't want to be reminded of this, but you shot a young boy.
no subject
Oh.
[She doesn't look too fazed by the reply, and she sucks her lower lip in between her teeth for a moment before she follows the brief acknowledgement up with--]
... Which one?
no subject
Which-- ah, I don't know. You were in a car? You couldn't have been any older than he was, honestly.
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[That boy. She'd nearly forgotten about it - the first time she ever saw one of them turn after she killed them. She saw others, after that, but her mother never really forgave her father for that first one. It was funny how, after a few nightmares, it just faded back into the general noise of the collapse of the civilised world.]
Yeah. I remember. He was trying to get into the car while my mom and dad were checking ahead, right? [She nods again, slow and thoughtful.] ... Yeah. Sorry you had to see that.
no subject
It's not your fault. And what I saw wasn't either, Julie. But I'm sure you know that.
no subject
I had to protect myself. The second shot was just... better for everyone. I couldn't let him turn.