[audio] un: nah (forward-dated to the 3rd)

[damnable]

So turns out the beacon can swallow you up and spit you right back out after several decades in your own world - in case everyone else is as unaware of that being a possibility as I was.

Name's Red for those of you who didn't know me before when I was teenage-shaped and brand spankin' new to life. For those who did, sorry for the awkward, weird social situation the beacon's just created for us. Now that I'm wiser-to-life, I feel it's better to be up front about some things. I can see people's souls, auras, whatever you wanna call 'em. So I know a lot about someone from the get-go, and I can't turn it on and off.

So there's some options:

A) I can tell you what I see when I meet you in full detail so you know what I know.

B) We both pretend like I don't see shit. Denial is not just a river in Egypt, it's a fun little coping mechanism.

C) My ability malfunctions - can't control this but it happens here.

D) I can make some colorful description up, and we roll with it, cause why not? Live your dreams.

If you got a preference, let me know or I'll assume B is it. I'll be at the bar, drinking about a thousand drinks, and grappling with sudden onslaught of memories and emotions and all that messy fun shit. Cheers, and Happy Train day.

( OOC: Open to network responses and/or action spam. If you want Red to see your chars' aura at some point, feel free to fill it permissions here - I assume her ability just doesn't work if there's nothing filled out so no worries regardless. :) If you already filled it out on her old journal, no need to fill it out again! )

Comments

[damnable]

Y'know, if we're gonna be playing some-form-of-chicken here, I'd like a heads up.

( Red sucks in a breath, takes a deep drink from her glass, and then winces through the burn sliding down her throat. She doesn't know why she's being stubborn about this but all the compartmentalizing in the world doesn't prepare her for what this in particular is like. Is she just never gonna look, and Vanessa's never gonna speak, and then they're locked in some immortal contest for no other reason than emotions are shitty?

One more gulp and then she does turn to look, and it's like a swift blow to her chest, like temporarily being transported back into the younger version of her who cared so much, had so many friends here, lived a short but very different life. It's hard to adjust to the flood so all that leaves her is a soft, strangled hiss: ) ...shit.

[matermali]

[ Whatever type of game chicken is, it appears that Vanessa has won, but there's nothing to gloat over. Her heart pinches when she thinks of everything Red experienced without her near to even know, but then she hardly deserved to be told if Red chose to leave. She had nearly let Hell's demons isolate her from her friends. What did they owe her?

Stepping closer, she reaches out to try to brush a few strands of Red's hair back behind her ear so she can better see Red's eyes, needing to adjust and lift her hand a bit higher than she used to. The slight adjustment is enough for her eyes to feel a stinging behind them.

She had so looked forward to seeing Red grow, but if her darling monster had been allowed to find herself away from here, Vanessa would have preferred her never to return.

Her whisper is soft for its sad musing. ]

You are taller.

[damnable]

( Emotion lodges in Red's throat though she fights against it, swallows it back - helpless instinct at this point. Alcohol only goes so far to numbing through that piercing haze, but still she has become so much more used to feeling emotions than she had been when she first arrived here. Back then she was stumbling and being overwhelmed by them with such ease.

Her eyes meet Vanessa's, and she takes in the sight of her aura too like she saw it back then - the first time they met, after she returned from her own trip home. It's still unlike any other aura she's ever seen. Even if she's seen a whole helluva lot more by now including gods and goddesses and demons and angels and all of the above.

She tilts her head to the side and then lifts her hand to indicate with her fingers by how much given she's still incredibly short. )

Just by an inch or so. It's the hair. ( Red waves a hand, shakes her head, gestures in front of her as if that will help her to express what she means to. Words fail to match the moment. ) ...you look the same. ( A joke. ) But I know Alem was...

[matermali]

[ An inch or so in the blink of an eye, it seems. She might as well have grown three more feet, for how far Vanessa feels left behind. It speaks deeper than she wishes to admit out loud, and her own throat tightens while her gaze momentarily drops.

She does not feel the same, but she seems to be traveling backward instead of forward like everyone else. Alem was... ]

Indeed.

[ It was a trial for them all. A test. Did they succeed? Did they really?

It seems small to ask Red of how the end of Alem's siege felt to her, when it must have been so long ago now. So long ago, and Vanessa wears it like it only just happened. ...Because it did. If Vanessa discovered immortality, would she still care about what happened in a century? Two? Three? Would the pain be less, then? She could ask one other person, but he's precisely the one that she cannot.

With tired eyes, Vanessa reaches to take the hand that Red waves, gentle in her coaxing, to carefully look it over as if the familiarities will somehow help her understand the other slight differences. Vanessa notes the shape of her nails, the length of her fingers, and the lines of her palm once her hand is slowly turned. The tip of a nail trails the heart line—feather light. ]

Were you free?