[Riley] On a Saturday morning like any other, Riley Poole is a lazy little so-and-so. She takes her time getting out of bed, sees that Dr. O is fed and watered and his litter box cleaned. She prepares a simple breakfast, a bowl of cereal beside a bowl of fruit, and a glass of cranberry juice besides. On a day like the day, with the concrete of her balcony stained dark with leftover rainwater and the air heavy with the promise of more storms tonight, she sits outside. Her laptop is open on the glass outdoor table top, and she sits in one of the wrought iron chairs with her legs stretched to rest on another one.
By now she's performed the usual search for housing. She's killed a few zombies and read a few news articles. Now, she's idling, fingers resting feather light against the keys, staring at a blank Google page. Chuck isn't around, so they can't have one of their usual Saturday hacking parties, gorging themselves on junk food and breaking into wherever they want to go.
So.
With the dregs of her cereal in the bowl to her left, her glass of juice nearly empty and the bowl of raspberries and blueberries still mostly untouched, she's bored. And it's never a good idea to let a Virtual Adept get bored. Riley stares at her screen and she wonders.
What sort of trouble can she get into today?
[Riley] [awareness]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[Automata] Mid-August. The heat-drenched lull of summer drags on slowly, fills the time before back to school fever sweeps into hurry everyone toward Autumn. Summer's had a good run this year; there have been a few brilliantly beautiful days, the trees are fat with green leaves and seedpods. There's been enough rain, but not too much; enough heat, but not too much. On a day like today, basking in the golden warmth of the midday sun, it's hard to conjure up thoughts of snow, or ice, or the chill that bites down to one's very bones.
It's idle. Lazy. There's a gnat buzzing about her ear that dwarfs the city-sounds of the Green around her. A glint of reflected light bounces off her monitor at an angle that makes it momentarily more difficult to read. This is a good life you have, Riley Poole, the minor annoyances seem to say. For while there's dirt and grime, litter and crime, bums and broken bottles and turf wars and all manner of human strife and suffering in the city at large -- up here there's wayward sunlight, a single small bother-bug, more food than she has interest for, and wifi. God bless wifi.
Her screen flickers, once, but it could also be the sunlight. Or light let through the glass doors from within the apartment. Inside there's a clatter, then a Mrrrrowr! as Dr. O upsets something (is upset by something) that might be his water bowl.
A there, just there, whisper-light and half-imagined, is the brush of something Other; a shadow moved across the light from within her home, at the corner of her vision: blink and you've missed it. Subtle. Elusive.
[Riley] It really is a good life she has. Has always had. And she knows it, has known it. Her job may be annoying, but she's exactly where she wants to be as far as work goes. She's taken on higher paying side jobs to pay her new expenses. A house, likely to be rented but still. School. Grad school. Even she's surprised she's traveling that route, though after nine years of college she shouldn't be. She was bound to complete the necessary requirements someday. And with Emily's help, or even just Emily's presence - another mage, another grad student, who works - Riley may even follow through. And if she follows through that means more money, which means more time to spend with
someone. Maybe Alex, if they last. Never in a million years would Riley have actively gone searching for a partner for life, and yet there is he is. The young Euthanatos has wormed his way into her head, has burrowed in and will be impossible to evict from her heart. Just knowing that he's out there, somewhere, that he exists and the he's hers, it makes her simultaneously giddy and horribly worried. It's a dangerous life they all live.
But a good one. Riley wouldn't trade it for anything. Unfortunately, the side effect of such a good life, is that she's becoming complacent. She learns what she can from Chuck, fills in the gaps in the chantry library. Their current subject is Prime. But, her drive is lessening, her voracious hunger for knowledge weakening.
She has the condo to herself this morning, her dad is out 'golfing' with his friends. Riley knows what he's really up to, but still after all these years, they call it golfing. She's alone with her cat, who is of course getting into mischief. Before Riley can scoot back her chair and investigate, there's that flash. That brush against her awareness.
Frowning, Riley looks around her on the balcony patio, searching for the source. Reaching out blindly, she finds her phone half-hidden behind the laptop. And she looks for an application Chuck showed her.
[Mind 1 (scan): Is someone here? diff 4-1]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 3)
[Riley] [and again, with the proper number of dice]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2 (Failure at target 3)
[Automata] It's hard to muster up the momentum to work against the summer heat, the happiness (and complacency it brings), the natural inclination of people approaching their thirties to want to settle down, settle in, nest and build small kingdoms together. Riley has Alex now, and perhaps that stays some of the reckless pursuit of knowledge; there's a danger in pushing to the ends of the eart, leaving no quarter unsearched. There are things out there she might rather not know. Things best left undisturbed.
And yet, when something tickles at the back of her mind (it's like the scratch in her throat just before she needs to cough: a minor irritation, too small to be known and named, a burr), she reaches for the app they've installed on her phone. She draws up the extra senses she has and reaches out...
... for the mind of an agitated cat. Her father's not home. There's no one in the condo. Her effect, as it is, fails to find anything significant beyond the threshold of the patio door. There is resistance there, as if a thin veil has been drawn between inside and outside, as if her magic itself might get caught up in the tiny wires that make up the mesh screen. A something that ripples, like water, but on a vertical plane.
Riley is outside.
Something is inside.
There is a boundary between.
[Riley] The fact that she finds no mind, no physical presence beyond that of her agitated feline, does little to reassure Riley. She's learned more in the last seven months about the true nature of the world. A world whose boundaries can be bent and warped at will by those with the power to do so. And there's the knowledge that there is something there. Some boundary between where she is and where Dr. O is.
There's a grinding scrape of metal against concrete as Riley pushes her chair back and rises. It's warm enough today, and she's been lazy enough, that she's still wearing a pair of jersey shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. Sweat prickles at her brow and temple and a tiny thrill of...something -- fear or excitement, she can't tell which -- traces its way up her spine.
"O?" she calls through the screen door, while she reaches for the screen door and pulls it open to step inside.
[Riley] [awareness!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 7, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[Automata] As Riley reaches for the door, she can feel her fingertips dip into something cooler. A patch of air not quite so heated by the summer sun. It's possible that this is just how her mind translates the feeling of slipping from something tangibly familiar to an interface with the unknown. It's as if space is denser her, and it pushes back against the ingress of her fingertips.
Like sliding them into barely-set jello. There's a surface to break, and then that something yields. It's fully permeable, but also unmistakable: this is a crossing over, a choice, a boundary.
Through the screen, the apartment looks the same.
[Riley] When Riley's hand reaches into that barrier, that threshold, she freezes. Her instinct is to yank her hand back, maybe squeak like a startled little girl. Her dark eyes widen with the sudden shock of it.
And then logic takes over. First it tells her that unless she has a desire to climb over and hang out on Chuck's balcony until her mentor comes home, she's welcome to it. She'll likely be stuck outside for a while, though. Instead of pulling away, she holds her hand in that strange jello, and she concentrates on that. Riley categorizes the sensations, matches them up with what she sees. What she sees is her hand halted just beyond the reach of her screen door. Everything looks so ordinary, so every day. That screen is the same as it was yesterday, with all the little tears from O's claws. The view inside is exactly what she left this morning.
It only takes a minute, maybe less, to calm down and focus on this sensation. It takes less for her to think
I wonder if this is what the Stargate feels like. Mmm James Spader NO, Riley, focus.
There's a choice here. But as Riley isn't immediately harmed by the boundary, there really isn't any choice at all. Of course she chooses to cross that threshold.
[Automata] Crossing the boundary feels a little like slipping. It's not the same space-time she's used to, clearly. There's a moment when all of the cardinal directions go wonky and not even gravity can tell her which way is down. It's cold in this between-space, but not ice cold. Nothing as definite as freezing. It's cold because she's numb to the senses that may give her more direction here. And just as it becomes worrisome, as the fear pricks toward a certainty that she might just get stuck here, Riley breaks free of that initial boundary, slides through the millimeters than feel like miles, and finds herself on the other side.
In the utter and complete darkness.
She can feel the undulating boundary behind her, rippling like the surface of water after a large stone has landed. Like the surface of a pool after someone's Cannonball! breaks the plane. Sinusoidal. Diminishing. Soon that boundary will stand still, and even that directional cue will be lost to her entirely.
It is dark, and there is no movement to the air. She must have some firmament below her feet, because there is no sensation of falling. There must be air here, because her lungs do not scream for want of oxygen. Beyond that, there are no certainties. No grounding references.
[Riley] Well that could have been immensely stupid.
After that initial crossing, that passage from her patio, her world, her reality and into something else, when she finds herself in total darkness, Riley starts to understand. Not what's happening now, she's still (heh) completely in the dark. But what she's starting to understand is the way other magi approach new information, experiences or situations. She'd always wondered why they would go into the danger, why it was that when presented something new the only obvious solution was to waltz right up to it and say hello.
It's curiosity. For her, it's that need to know, dimmed these days but ever present. She still has that need to look at something, to hold it in her hands and analyze it from every angle. Take it apart, look inside, and throw it all together again. Though she can't imagine she'll willingly travel into a basement again, or go chasing after anyone carrying a weapon, let alone a broad sword. She still has that strong self-preservation instinct.
And yet she's here, in this place. She just stepped through something unreal and into a place that's even more unreal. Here in the dark, she has no flashlight, no collection of utilities that will help her see. She analyzes and examines her options, and determines them to be as follows:
- Sit here and wait for something to find her, possibly die
- Move through total darkness and 1. Run into something, causing injury or death, 2. Be found by something that is either friendly or not, or 3. Wander aimlessly until she dies here
Or, "Hello?"
Draw attention to herself and be found by something either friendly, or not.
[Automata] I'm sitting in the study when the first crackle comes through. Faint, like the static, the promise of an oncoming storm, but the sky is not heavy with rain clouds just now. It's possible that Jeremy is tinkering, plugging away at one of his projects, and some discharge has caused this tiny zzzot. I put it from my mind, until the second jolt, which is far stronger, makes the lights flicker and the lamp in the dining room begin to sway.
I tap my fingers against his heavy desk. It's metal, and the best way to ground oneself in the whole of the study. I rise from the armchair, leave behind its soft green upholstery and begin to move toward the stairwell, calling ahead of me...
"Hello?"
*** *** ***
Riley's call is swallowed up by the space. It emanates outward from her, pushing on until it finds a wall or another hard thing to reflect off of. A room must be so big before it can create an echo, large enough to feel cavernous in some way. Too large and the echo never comes; the sound decays over all of that distance.
Her Hello pushes outward, onward, eventually reflects and comes straight back to her, faint and somewhat worried.
The reflection point must be due forward, and quite a ways off.
*** *** ***
All that I hear is the echo of my own voice. He is not home.
[Riley] She waits a bit to see if someone comes at her call, someone looking for a tasty meal or trying to figure out how someone got into this...dark place. When nothing happens, and nothing comes to investigate her she feels vaguely disappointed. And upset with herself. And is starting to feel that initial prickle true fear.
She walked right into a trap, though why anyone would want to capture her is beyond her. Granted, she's a pretty woman, with a very specific skill-set. There are reasons why someone would want to catch Riley Poole and put her in a jar. But this doesn't appear to be a collection jar. Riley doesn't feel like she's going to close her eyes, then open them again to find she's up on someone's shelf or locked away inside a drawer.
No, she feels like she walked into a trap meant to make the trapped party die of boredom. Not every exciting.
The feel of the barrier behind her is fading, taking from her that sense of direction. She knows that her voice had to have echoed off of something, a wall perhaps. A wall with a door maybe.
Wrapping her slender arms around herself, she sets off forward, bare feet padding quietly over whatever makes up the ground here. She moves slowly, cautiously, and prays she doesn't stub her toe or walk into a wall of spikes or set a tripwire that'll have her falling into a pit of spikes. Maybe with walls that close in on her.
She has got to stop watching so many movies.
[Automata] The ground is smooth, like tile or concrete. There are no grout line or minor imperfections to let her body map the space. Just one smooth footfall after another. Footfalls that make no sound. In the darkness, it's difficult to tell if she is moving forward at all, or to place her progress.
*** *** ***
This search carries me out the front door, and the world is humid-hot with late summer. The ground is still rain-damp from last night's storm, but any promise of more to come is veiled, just now. There is a pull, from the path across the street from my front door, so directly across the street that I might draw a line perpendicular to the asphalt and find myself precisely aligned with its midpoint. The path's, that is.
It calls, the red earth path does. Jeremy has told me a hundred times not to wander off without him, but I leave the front door open. I take off without my handbag. One foot before the other until the sidewalk gives way to summer grass, which gives way to red dust, and it takes me away with a cornfield on my right and, after the fence of the neighbor's house ends, a great nothing on the left. A few trees break up the monotony, but otherwise, the path seems to carry on this way forever.
*** *** ***
After many footsteps -- twenty, maybe fifty -- a small dot appears on the horizon, just at the midpoint of what must be the room she's in. With each subsequent step, this white dot rush forward to meet Riley. It becomes a meridian, like a yardline on a foot ball field. It gives her reference now, a stable, centerpoint to navigate from. Eventually the line reaches her feet, passes under her, and becomes a fixture in each direction.
It seems to luminesce of its own volition.
It is also not alone. Soon, equidistant from one another, new dots appear on the horizon. They, too, spread into lines that rush forward to become meridians. Now she walks along one line among many, and the many march off, at even intervals, both to her left and right.
Walking further brings the ingress of latitude markers, running inward from the margins of her point of view. Until it is not a series of line-like-tracks, but a grid that populates the floor space around her.
And her footsteps, now, have taken shape. They sound like high-heels on hardwood floors.
[Riley] Riley walks and walks, and walks and walks. She doesn't know if she goes miles or feet, or if she's even really moving at all. She doesn't know if she's going toward something or away from something or in line with something else.
It's that thinking that reminds her, just before the dot appears, that all she needs is a grid and she can find her way anywhere. She's pausing, trying to figure out how she can find a grid to focus, when the dot appears, leading her onward. Maybe that's all she needs, the pinpoint like a lighthouse directing her away from the rocks.
Then it's rushing toward her feet, not a pinprick, not the faraway exit she was hoping for, but a line. It darts between her feet, and she starts, stepping aside to make way for it. There are more, and more. And then there are cross beams.
A grid. A grid like what she needs to align herself and find her way. Her bare feet klack on the hardwood floor. Or are they bare? Is it wood? Riley's mind is on other matters.
[Sense of direction: Corr 1, diff 4-1]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5 (Success x 1 at target 3)
[Riley] [alert]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 5, 10 (Failure at target 7)
[Riley] [1 extra die]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1 (Botch x 1 at target 7)
[Riley] [mulligan!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 7)
[Automata] [mysterious dice roll]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 7)
[Automata] I've lost track of how far from home I've strayed. There's a trickle of sweat running down my throat, starting just behind my ear. The day is so sticky I hardly notice.
What catches my attention is the way the sky flickers like lightning, but the crash never comes. I cringe anyway. The blue above has begun to go grey, but not because the clouds rolled in.
It's making me anxious.
Have the fields begun to fade, too?
I could have sworn this path was red-dust not brown, but I keep walking.
*** *** ***
Riley's rote flickers to life with the electric crackle her magic often holds. It brings a sense of relief, a surety. As she might have expected, the lines on the floor hold perfectly straight and true to north-south-east-west. She is walking precisely down one meridian that runs east-west. She has not wavered in direction in the slightest since she left the threshold behind. If she had to, she could turn around and walk all the way back, one foot before the other, and hope to find that cold echo of crossing over.
*** *** ***
It's just ahead, I can feel it growing stronger. This certainty is enough to pull me forward, despite the flicker-fade of the world around me. It is as if some wire frame underlay is showing through. Terrible. Terrible. Colors fade but do not run, everything turns to grey and the crackle-strum of energy does not fade.
I have to know what's causing it.
*** *** ***
There, on the horizon, still due ahead of her. There is a broader swath of white-grey, something that is not just a line running this way or that. Its as if the grid begins to fill in, just there, to take on truer characteristics of the floor. The rote she has active will still guide her east-west/north-south, preserve that sense of direction, even if the underlying wire-frame disappears from view.
To press forward, Riley?
Or to turn back?
[Riley] It's a relief, knowing where she is now, what the directions are. And knowing that no matter what, if she aligns herself on this path she'll get...well, somewhere.
And what a grid it is, with its glowing light illuminating the path before her. Riley half expects a light-cycle to appear any second now. Or that she'll get one. Oh god, that would be so awesome.
She doesn't even hesitate, doesn't slow down or feel any desire to look back over her shoulder. She doesn't look for the cross-over point that will lead her back to her patio balcony, her cat, her computer and her life.
Riley walks onward. One foot before the other, eyes on that faint glow on the horizon. Then she does hesitate. She looks around her, left, right, straight ahead. Long-ingrained instincts of safety. When she starts off again, her pace is quicker as she trots ahead.
[Automata] There are, alas, no lightcycles. Though it does have the vague feeling of being stuck inside a low-budget Tron remake. Perhaps a matrix without all the (whoa) floating text. Maybe it's a holodeck? No? No. More's the pity.
At a trot, the patch of something is not far away. It takes on more characteristics as she draws near. The ground appears to be concrete, from this side, and there is Riley's patio chair, at an odd angle, just as she's left it.
The space is a circle, centered precisely on one of the vertexes of the grid. The half closest to Riley is patio flooring and her chair. The half beyond that is an oak wood floor, plank style, carefully maintained. There is a small armchair there, in a soft green upholstery with a bright pillow tucked against its back. Its feet are a dark wood. It is faded in places; old but not yet worn.
Riley has the distinct feeling that she ought pause here. Wait. On something. (On someone.)
*** *** ***
I have lost all sense that I am walking down that same path now. Gone are the corn fields, gone is the empty-meadow, gone is the grit of dirt beneath my footsteps. The sky above is nothing. The ground below just an openwork grid. Behind me, I can see the scenery begin to firm up in the distance. It is eerie.
I despise these shallowings.
In the near distance, though, I spy an oasis. Something firm and tangible in the sea of open coordinates and negative space.
A figure approaches.
*** *** ***
The distant horizon is fuzzy with data. It seems all noise, at first, but after a broad time of no noise at all that much alone is significant. There is little color to it, beyond a reddish pulse at the center.
That begins to solidify into the figure of a person. The sound of footfalls coming toward Riley resolves. They are high-heeled on hard floors. This is a woman, in a red dress -- no separates -- with red pumps, and red fingernails and red lipstick. No handbag. Dark hair. There's a faint prick of sweat at the woman's brow, despite the relative cool of this place Riley has stumbled into.
[Riley] At least she's not stuck in one spot, bored, waiting for her end to come, for the years to pass and the lights to come up and find her hair has gone grey and her face lined with age. Just before the end. At least no monsters have crept out of the darkness to hound her steps and snap at her heels. At least she's getting somewhere.
And that somewhere is a little open patch of reality. Realities? She can't tell, doesn't have that kind of skill or knowledge. But that is definitely her patio chair, she knows the wrought iron whorls and twirls, twisting like vines, like the flowering plant that decorates the top of her left foot. She remembers picking it out when she was twenty-two, how she had to beg her dad to get it and the whole set. One table four chairs. She remembers his token resistance. It's amazing, really, that Riley is as generous of spirit as she is, and that she isn't a selfish sort of bitch.
So there's her chair, in the middle of a grid that she got to when she walked through her screen door and into somewhere else.
So. Probably not really her chair. But it looks like a meeting place, with the way the patio chair and the arm chair are aligned. Riley takes a seat in the familiar chair. At first, she sits with spine straight and her arms stretch out over the chair arms. Feet a little apart. A position of power, some might say, of confidence. For a moment, Riley sits like a queen.
Even if she weren't barefoot and in her pajamas, the pose wouldn't last. It's just not comfortable, not natural for her. Riley makes herself comfortable, then. She draws up first one leg, presses her ankle to the seat and moves her other leg to rest atop it. Then that leg is drawn up, as well, shin left upright. Her hands wrap loosely over her ankles, and she waits.
For someone. Something? No, someone. Riley can hear the foot falls, the heels on hardwood. She can see the red splotch resolve and solidify, like something coming into the focus of a lens. Her smile is just as warm and charming as it is for everyone she meets, though it's a bit on the wary side. It's been an odd morning.
"Hi."
[Automata] She's sitting there, regal, poised, princess-like, when I approach. It must have been morning, wherever she'd been, because she's barely out of her bed clothes. It occurs to me that I ought to be polite, but there is an irrefutable surety that stays my smile.
She crackles like lightning. Electric.
There's no mistaking it for anything else.
*** *** ***
The woman approaches, and she is tall like Riley. She has well defined features, like Riley. A hair color that approximates Riley's own. She is thin without being unhealthful, confident without being cocky. This woman exudes that quiet, elusive sense of Other that had first tripped Riley's awareness on the patio this morning.
Riley says hi; she says, "Hello."
*** *** ***
When she says hi, it strikes me just how similar our voices are.
*** *** ***
She sits, now, in her chair. This must be some echo of the place from which she's come, as the woman regards it with a certain familiarity, trails her fingertips along its spine before sitting and turning her knees politely to the side. She smooths her hands over the pleats of her skirt, righting their folds as they cross her lap.
And then she waits, looking directly at Riley with an eerie patience and focus.
[Riley] There are similarities between them. Height and build and appearance. Enough to be striking. Not enough that Riley feels she's looking through a mirror, or - and wouldn't that just be the coolest thing ever - peering through a rift and gazing a self from another dimension.
She wonders, briefly, if in such a situation if hers would be the 'cool' dimension, the interesting life, the greener grass on the other side of the fence.
By the time the woman appears, Riley is curled up in her chair like a girl much younger than her years. Not exactly childlike, though that descriptor has been applied to her many times.
They greet each other politely, and the other takes her seat. Primly straightens out her clothing. She is like Riley, and yet so very much unlike her.
There's a wealth of expression flitting across Riley's face, shifting and mercurial, but still showing the same things. Interest and curiosity, wariness, a sense of her wry humor.
"So," she says, shifting her feet on the chair and drawing out the O. "Do you know what's going on here?"
[Riley] [WP! eeeeee!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 4, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 8)
[Automata] [mysterious rolls, take two]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 4, 7, 10 (Failure at target 8)
[Automata] She seems a little surprised. Taken aback, momentarily, and then her expression sheds the curtness and brightens to something more akin to Riley's.
"I forget, some times, that you may not have been here before." It's lightly self-chiding, but warm none the less. Now the woman extends one neatly manicured hand to Riley, leans into the space (just crosses the border between hardwood and patio floor) to close the distance between them. "It's nice to meet you," she says, as their hands meet.
*** *** ***
It always surprises me when someone new stumbles through the curtain. It's impossible to tell, as they always look the same. The clothes are different, accents are different, mindsets and diction and mannerisms, but they always look the same and for a moment I can't tell.
The sundering takes me by surprise today. Overwhelms me. There's flashes of a warren, housing units stacked upon one another, some sort of water-based assualt waged across the maw of the courtyard. Joy, and laughter. A man named Alex. She is a happy one; some tangle of wires and buttons that lead back to a television which is flat to the wall and has no space for its tube.
The streets are filthy. It is hot where she's come from. Anger, oft controlled. I can feel the sensation of falling, as she remembers it, through the portal and...
I cannot push it back, today. Perhaps it is the storms. I shouldn't have strayed. Beyond here is the nothingness, and through that nothing is her way home.
*** *** ***
For Riley, the smell of tall grasses presses against her senses as their hands meet. She is aware of a staircase with nineteen steps, two turns, that opens out into a small hallway. A man with a kind face; the sensation of being kissed, passionately; loved. There is a small house with a weather-vane on the roof; it feels like home. A storm rattles the windows; lightning splits the sky; thunder rolls.
But it is easier for her press aside, to push it back. There is a long red-dust road beside corn fields. Riley knows that if she continues on from this point, in the direction she's been walking, she will end up on that house, that trails back to that house, wherein lives that man.
All of this knowing transpires in the moment when their skin first touches, kisses, where Riley's reality meets the red-dress woman's. She knows the woman is surprised, and unable to withdraw.
That she is limited, somehow. Fainter. (An echo.)
[Riley] "Nice to meet you, too." Riley drops her feet to the floor and leans forward. She's all long and lean and slender, her movements lithe and sort of graceful, though it's the grace of an athlete, not a dancer or performer. With her left hand, she reaches up to brush a loose lock of wavy brown hair back behind her ear. Her right hand stretches toward the woman.
Riley's dark eyes widen in that first moment of contact. Images flash through her mind, sparking her curiosity like flickers of lightning, but it's subdued today, easily suppressed. She's curious about the man and the kissing, but she doesn't ask. That's just rude.
They shake hands, or Riley shakes hers. Her grip is loose at first, then politely gripping. Riley pushes back those sensations, the feelings of the road back to where this woman came from. And she realizes she's perhaps not as acclimated to this world of magic as she thought she was. Or more than she thinks. This woman looks so much like her, sounds so much like her, who knows what sort of reality paradox would have struck out when their hands met across the distance.
She loosens her grip on the woman's hand, and tries to pry her own free from her grip. When - if - they are freed, she smiles again. Warm and friendly. That's what strangers usually notice first about Riley, that and the way she accepts them as they are. She doesn't shy away from their flaws, she has enough of her own.
"I'm Riley Poole. Where are we? Is it some kind of, I don't know, trans-dimensional border?"
[Riley] [aware!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 4 (Botch x 3 at target 6)
[Automata] "It is a meeting place," she says, folding her hands back into her lap and looking a little wan. "It is just beyond from where I live, so it is easy for me to meet with you here. I suppose the crossing over is harder from your side."
She predicates this idea on the violence of the storms, the Electric push that snapped and crackled through the small house at the edge of the fields.
"I'm glad you've come," she says, as if she has been waiting quite some time for Riley to appear. There is warmth, here, that echoes Riley's own, but also a seriousness. This meeting is no accident.
The longer they sit together, at this place, the more the woman's mannerisms seem to mirror Riley's own. It is a lot like looking through a mirror, or meeting up with a parallel self. But the boundary between them seems permeable in some ways. At times she almost catches an echo of the woman's thoughts, motivations, the something behind that smile.
Almost. If Riley reaches out to solidify that thin connection, that window (that crosses a boundary [threshold]), all she'll find at first is noise. An untuned radio station. Static. But there's something more behind it, something she can't quite get at now.
The woman in red makes a small movement with her left index finger. Like a nervous tic. Except that it happens again. And again. Like a stutter, or a glitch. She notices, frowns, and places her right hand over her left.
"There have been storms, here, lately," she says. "Electrical storms. It knocks the power out, sometimes, or burns out transformers. Has it been the same where you are?"
[Riley] When Riley leans back, she does not curl back up into the familiar chair. Her feet are apart, but her knees together. She leans forward, right elbow resting on the chair's arm. Though her smile fades to something more thoughtful, her expression, everything about her is open and honest as ever. Her eyes flick to the tick. The glitch. She notices it and there's no hiding that she's noticed.
There's something to their connection, but she can't get to it now. All that meets her is static and white noise. A barrier. So she thinks about the storms. Strong enough to knock out electrical systems and be a major inconvenience. More than just an annoyance.
"No, I don't think so, and I'd know. I work in electronics." Leaning to the side, she rubs her hand against her chin. The woman covers her twitching hand. Riley's eyes drift that way again.
"Are you alright?" she asks, more than merely polite concern. Riley's voice is colored with genuine concern.
[Automata] Riley works in electronics. The woman's mouth forms a little O, as if this somehow explains something vital. She rubs at the back of her hand a little, until the tic apparently relents. Seems to. She keeps that hand covered.
"It's alright. Just a bit of bad code," there's lightness to her tone that implies this is some sort of joke between them.
"No storms," she moves them back to this topic, mulling the words carefully, sounding vaguely confused. "How odd. They feel like you do, I thought you might know something about them."
[Riley] The woman sounds like she's joking, but Riley's expression remains serious. In this place, she feels, anything is possible. Maybe the woman who looks a little like her and acts a little more like her with each second is made up of code. Maybe Riley's in some sort of computer. Or a pocket of the Digital Web.
The storms here feel like her. Electrical storms that short out their power. Electric like the charged electricity that surrounds and emanates from her when she works her magic. It clings to her more strongly today, and more now than it would have if Riley had simply arrived at this place.
This meeting place. With one path leading back to where this woman came from, and one leading back to Riley's world. Not just Riley's world, Riley's home. It goes back to the condo she shares with her father and her cat. The path back to this woman's world is the same. It goes to a house and a man and her own world.
"You said this was a meeting place. Is this place," she looks around, motioning to their pocket and to the grid - if still visible - beyond it, "are we the only ones who can get to it?"
[Automata] "For now, it is just us," she says. It is difficult to pin down this place. Right now it has two roads, two paths, leading in opposite directions. It is possible that, at other times, other circuits are connected, other lines patched through, and neither Riley's world nor the woman's might meet here. It is a nexus, defined as much by the two of them as anything else.
The grid is still visible beyond. Everything is just as it had been when they arrived.
The woman's brow knits for a moment, as if she is listening to something that Riley can't hear.
"Why?" she asks. "Where do you want to go?"
[Riley] Riley doesn't know that this place is a nexus, this meeting point. All she knows is that a path from her world connected to it, a path from this woman's world connected, and here they are. Chatting.
She has other questions, questions that lead down winding paths, paths that would perhaps lead her to an understanding in time.
The woman's question throws that train of thought right off its rails. Riley looks at her, expression alight with curiosity renewed.
"Can we go somewhere else? What else is out there?"
[Riley] [int + alert]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 5, 8 (Failure at target 6)
[Riley] [*flashes Kahseeno* re-roll!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 6, 6, 10, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 7)
[Automata] It's familiar, this question, the way that it's posed in the midst of a crazy moment in her Awakened life. It calls forth a flash of sans-serif font, Bill's seatbelt chime bing bing bing-ing, and an unruly GPS.
Riley Norina Poole, where are you going?
Who are you?
Does that work?
Why does that work?
Where do you want to go?
The woman's right hand has moved, no longer covers her left.
Her finger is still twitching. (What about work, what?)
[Riley] This question is familiar. Where do you want to go? Riley's head jerks a little to an angle. A shadow forms between her brows and she'd be surprised to learn the woman can't hear the gears whirrwhirring inside her skull.
She thinks of her phone, her focus, made her focus because of a night spent trying to deliver a package. Because of something that asked a similar question.
Where do you want to go?
There's more to it than location. More than a physical destination. Because Riley's in a strange world, one with grids like the ones she uses to cast Corrospondence rotes. A realm where she's face to face with a woman who looks a little like her, but wearing a dress Riley herself would never wear.
Immediately her mind shifts gears. She rises from her chair, holds out her hand to the woman. Not for her right. Riley holds out her hand and indicates the finger-twitching left.
"C'mon," she says with a broad beaming smile. "Let's go explore. Together."
[Riley] [WP! I'm not afraid to get personal]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[Automata] The woman, who has not yet given Riley her name, regards the young Virtual Adept cautiously, then places her still twitching hand in Riley's and moves to stand.
It rushes over her again, the wealth of images and sensations. This time Riley doesn't push to keep them back. In her mind's eye the path back to the woman's home springs to life with uncanny clarity. There is red-dust on the road, the crops are a brilliant green. The memories are almost painfully technicolor after this long period in the dull dark-chill of the grid and its oasis space.
Riley feels the crack of thunder, sees the lightning split the sky: she knows it tastes of her own resonance. She feels the shudder in the house when she broke through the threshold, how it rocked the lamp in the dining room. She sees the flicker-bright in the sky that shows the grid behind it through, like a glitch in code that lets the wireframe break through a model. The world clips. She's nauseous. Like sliding through, like slipping sideways.
The memories of this woman and her man slide ride up against Riley's memories with Alex. They echo and merge, weave in and out of one another. There is no less love, no less passion.
The woman's hand continues to twitch, where Riley holds it. She feels the flicker-prick of electricity to it. All of this rushes over her in a moment, and it's ravaging, it leaves her mind numb and her body breathless, and the silence of the grid-space is deafening.
When her sense clear, she is holding the hand of a woman who has gone still. Gone stiff. Who is rigid, like a manikin, halfway between sitting and standing up. Only that one finger moves, and it twitches, tics, like a bit of bad code.
There is a pathway reaching back toward home, but that is fading and uncertain. There is a red dust path ahead in the distance, that calls toward home. It is a subtle pull, elusive and curious, but it eggs Riley on.
[Riley] The emotions rock through her this time, so quickly and so suddenly she gasps like she's been thrown into ice cold water. For a moment, she can't recover. For a moment she's lost to it, to these memories of this other woman. Her life. Her man. Her everything.
Then they start to slide together, to press into each other and mingle, intertwining. Finally, after a second or a thousand years, Riley can breathe again. She can open her eyes, so she does. And she finds the woman frozen in place. Just that twitch twitch glitch of her finger. Shocked, Riley leans forward, studying the woman. Or what was a woman. She's like a frame, now, a machine with nothing inside. Engines off. Riley releases her hand and looks down at that twitching finger. If that's code, if this place is tied to her and her resonance and her workings of magic, maybe she can fix her. It. The hand. But would it matter? Would it bring the woman back?
And right now, Riley has other worries to attend to. The path back to her home, back the way she's come, is fading. The path ahead, to this woman's world, is open and inviting. Riley looks back over her shoulder. It's home, there. Familiar and comfortable. That's where her family is. Her friends and her cabal. Chicago, magical and mundane.
Riley takes a deep breath to steady herself.
And she steps off toward the red dust path.
[Automata] As she walks away from the meeting point, the grid becomes denser. Each major meridian gains minor ones that slat in to firm up the frame of the world. And soon that wire-frame begins to take on a grey skin. Behind her, if she looks over her shoulder, the oasis stands as a well-lit beacon, a splash of color and firmity in the grid-dark. The woman is brilliant in her red dress, bent at an unnatural and awkward angle. She has not moved.
Soon the grey-skinned world begins to take on color, on texture, as it is wrapped in the very details she has read from the woman at the meeting point. There is a fine grit beneath her feet, red-dust between her toes. To her left there is a cornfield, brilliant green against the blue summer sky. To her right an open meadow. The path stretches onward, forward, up a subtle incline, dragging on with only a tree here or there to mark the passing distance, until it opens into tall grass at the margin of a residental street.
Across the way is a plain house, with a weathervane on its roof. The front door stands open. There are two porch steps. The flooring is oak hardwood, planks. Inside she can see movement, the shadow of someone hurrying from room to room. Frantic. Worried.
She knows this place, as she knows the man inside is named Jeremy, and that he worries after her (after the red dress woman) who has wandered away after the storm.
[Riley] Riley wishes she'd worn flip-flops, sandals, something to protect her bare feet. The thought is minor and fleeting. She'd have worn shoes if she'd been prepared, but if she'd been prepared for this strange and sudden journey, she'd be wearing normal shorts. A normal t-shirt. She wouldn't have hung around her balcony all day, playing on her computer and wondering where she could bury herself today, what secrets she could steal.
There's that, that thought, that memory. Her laptop open on her patio table, browser history full of normal every day activities. Normal games, normal searches, normal everything. It's open to a Google search page with nothing in the search window. If she doesn't come back from this place, if she gets lost at this house, she wonders if anyone would even be able to find her. Or if she'd just disappear, no signs of struggle, all signs of mystery. Leaving behind Alex, and their fresh relationship. Leaving behind her father, who today is driving to another state to 'golf.' Today would be the absolute worst day to lose his daughter, too.
And that's where Riley stops thinking about it. She focuses her mind on where she is, where she's going. The changes in the scenery around her, from grey and stark to warm and colorful. She knows this world, through the filter of the other woman's memories.
When she comes upon the house she stops across the street, in a world that is humid-hot with late summer. The ground is still rain-damp from last night's storm, but any promise of more to come is veiled, just now. She stands on the path across the street from the door, so directly across the street that she might draw a line perpendicular to the asphalt and find herself precisely aligned with its midpoint. The house's, that is.
There's movement inside. She knows that man, has memories of him that he didn't create with her. She hesitates.
Well, Poole, you've come this far. She trots across the street and up those two porch steps to the front door. Though it's ajar, she reaches up and raps her knuckles against it.
"Hello?"
[Automata] Her voice echoes in the space, but even before she calls the man's footsteps have stopped. He hears her coming up the steps, and turns. Her voice, her call of Hello into the house only solidifies what he suspected. He hurries to the door, calling for her as he approaches.
"Yriel? Where have you been? I was worried." He does not seem to recognize that Riley is not the same person. Her clothing does not strike him as odd, or set her apart. He reaches for her, pulls her into an embrace. He is warm; she is loved.
He pulls her into the house, across the threshold, and it is a little like breaking through newly set jello. There is a resistance, firm but quickly yielding to her momentum, and then the sensation of slipping. Riley sees through the wavering sight lines a woman in a red dress enter the house, in the arms of the man who had welcomed her in. He kisses her temple, holds her close.
The world shifts. There is no absolute up or down, no forward or reverse. It is cold here, but not ice cold. Nothing as definite as freezing. The disorientation is enough to make her nauseous for the second time today, and just as the world begins to pitch violently....
.... the living room floor of her condo rises up to meet her. The patio screen stands open. The bright sunlight rushes through. Her momentum carries her forward and down, as if she has tripped across the threshold and fallen.
[Riley] Riley just wanted to tell the man what happened, ease his worries and let him know where to find the red dress woman. And she wanted to see inside, of course. She wanted to see the metal desk, that good place to ground oneself against electricity. Her resonance. The green chair, faded but not worn.
She didn't expect the man to grab her, pull her close as if she were the woman he had been so desperate to find. Then she's passing through the Stargate again, that cool liquid feeling that tugs her in and sends her forward. Sending her home.
"Whoa-ah!" she cries as she falls forward, frantically throwing out her hands to catch herself. She lands heavily on the carpet of her familiar living room, thankfully missing the glass top of the coffee table. Riley pushes herself back up and rolls into a seated position. Drawing up her legs, she rests her arms over them, and she looks out at the balcony. There, she sees through that glass, is her cereal bowl, the fruit bowl, the juice glass mostly empty. Her laptop, open. Her cell phone, left behind on the strange journey.
Left behind. It was here while she was there, with a woman she suspects is or is somehow related to her avatar. A woman who is more apart of her than she originally though. The phone is nothing more than a focus, she sees that now. Her avatar is something else.
Something cheeky. Something proper. Something that drives her forward, that asks her Where do you want to go? It spurs on her need to learn and understand. It, she, herself, reminds her of what she is now.
Still a little off, her stomach still a little wonky, her head swimming a little, Riley scrubs her face. Then she picks herself up off the floor before Dr. O can come and curl up on her.
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