deercountry | Promises Promises/Insomnia

Entry tags:

Promises Promises/Insomnia

Who: Luz and you!

What: Accepting loss and dealing with NEW problems (yay)?

When: The first week of September

Where: Check prompts for locations!

A- Cellar Door

Luz would have said she was being needless emo. After all, there was rainfall here and she was depressed, so she figured being here would match her mood. How more dramatic did you have to be? But Luz wasn't in laughing mood, and it was everything she felt like right now.

Margot wasn't coming. She knew that now, she accepted it, and accepting that meant everything else that came with it. Margot was back in her world, robbed of her ability to think and reason as a person, back to her basic instincts as a wolf. No more playing and late night talks. No more huddles with her adopted sister. No more gardening. She wouldn't even remember Luz when she was there. It would be like she was never with Luz at all.

But Luz would remember. She'd remember and know that Margot wasn't just some person who wandered and left the dream. She was the sister she never had, the girl who'd share a room with her and helped her paint it and watched Eda cook as they eagerly awaited being fed and what the next day would bring.

She'd remember, and now, in the rain, she could at least cry with her hood up, and she'd be as much a passerby as anyone. Just some shadow person passing, weeping about something or other.

Or so she thought anyway.
thinky-Copy

B- Cassandra (The Disaster House)

Luz has had some time to think, and it was finally time for her to head to the place that would be her home. It's be nice, honestly, to have a place where there were more people her age, she reasoned. Obviously living with Eda and Margot had been ideal, and after that it had been the Doctors and Vira Lorr. Now she was at a new place, and a new place required a completely new way of living and, most obvious of all, would be redecorating her new place, which was the attic upstairs.

If you were visiting or a resident yourself, you'd see Luz busy at work already trying to make this place her own. There were already several stuffed animals, although Trenchwood seemed to have it's own ideas of what was cute, so the various creatures might be a bit off putting. There were several easels in the corner, one notably a wolf friend she was missing as well as one with various witches: Azura, Miss Hardbroom and of course her beloved Eda. The curtains were pulled back and there was air rushing in, so Luz was having a bit of trouble keeping all the papers from flying away.

"Darn it! This is the fifth time!"

C- Disaster House- I don't need sleep, I need clean!
needs-sleep

Was Luz getting a little unhinged because of her recent depression? Was she just overcompensating somehow? It was hard to tell. What one could SEE, however, was that it was the dead of night and Luz was not at all sleeping, but was instead intent on cleaning the disaster house, half mumbling to herself as she did so.

"I could tackle the living quarters, got to arrange the skulls. I don't want to get to the garden because I'll be crying again, or the greenhouse because I could probably die, or get poisoned. No good. Not going into Fern's room yet, I'll definitely die. The kitchen, YEAH! That sounds perfect!"

She had to go to the bathroom first.

"ARGH! WHY IS THERE A HOLE HERE?! VARIAN! THEY'RE JUST BATHROOMS!"

hunched-over

D - Drifting into Dreamspace

So after finally "convinced" to try and get some sleep, Luz finally had settled down, her omen (that was new) giving her a reproachful stare.

"I promise, I'll try!" Luz insisted, though Tempest did not look convinced. Luz blew a raspberry at the wolf and added, "thanks, you're the best" and closed her eyes, attempting to drift off. She'd been trying to do this the past few days, and doubted anything was going to happen, but figured if she couldn't sleep, she'd maybe go to the tower and get some reading done.

However, she DID drift off, just not in the way she though. For a moment, she felt a wave of color pass over her, and she figured that she was finally nodding off, but instead of that she felt light. She exhaled and felt herself leave, and for a moment, she was assuming she was unconscious.

But it was a strange feeling. She opened her eyes, and realized she was very much not awake, not quite. She was instead floating, drifting quietly down the attic steps and then out the door. She should have been freaking out, but her body felt so tired, and whatever was happening now felt NOTHING like that.

A passing though occurred to her. Maybe I should try these lamp location thingies out.

But where would she wind up?

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"It wasn't that long ago, yeah."

Luz wasn't sure if she thought of this place as a hellscape yet, although it certainly hadn't done her any favors the first day that she got here. It definitely was good to find someone she knew a little older, and, apparently, better at shows of affection now!

"Oh, that sounds about right! The antler sleeping part, I mean. So you've gotten older and probably better at magic, right? You have to tell me about what's been going on!"

Right. Yeah. Why she was here crying.

"Not everyone came back," Luz said, her voice sounding smaller. "I haven't seen Margot anywhere, and she was planning to plant a garden and everything. People kept saying that I might find her later, but I haven't seen her yet."

"Margot..."

The wolf child. She remembered in the dim way that one remembered things important to one's friends and kept track of them for that purpose.

"I'm sorry, Luz. You lived together for some time, didn't you?" If she sounds a little more distant than she ought, it is because she's trying to recall the past with as much fidelity as possible. In truth, some parts of Deerington had started to seem like a dream after a year. "But... if she doesn't come here, perhaps she chose to go home and live out her life as best she could."

This is meant to be comforting.

It will likely not land that way.

She was at least glad that Lysithea remembered her. A few people did, but they were not likely to be as affected by her not being around.

"Yeah. It was more than just living together. We shared the same room, the same sleeping space, and Eda took care of the both of us. She was the reason I didn't die with those mountain guys."

At the last pronouncement, Luz's face fell.

"No, Lysithea. That would be impossible. The only thing that waited for her back home was...forgetting she could walk and talk and be my sister. In that reality, a scientist robs her of her ability to talk and think like we would."

"Ah."

In the field of accepting hugs, her ability to successfully navigate uncomfortable emotion has shown marked improvement. Less so in regards to helpful responses to awkward silences. Lysithea ruminates on this answer for a moment or two and resists the urge to ask how Luz could possibly know this. (Deerington had its ways.)

"Then, if she did not want to go home..." For she could not imagine that a sapient creature would wish to become non-sapient. "And she is not here. Then perhaps she is resting in her... true form." A long pause. This is exceedingly bizarre. "In the, er, ocean."

Is this comforting?

"There are... horrors in this city still, too. Perhaps she yet sleeps, in hopes of awakening to something more palatable. After all... there at the end, I recall that Deerington was very clear about giving us choice."

Edited 2021-09-07 15:21 (UTC)

Luz had been told by Margot herself that it happened to her, and it was only coming to Deerington that she retained her "mute" characteristics. That wasn't surprising t Luz since she knew others had escaped death by coming to Deerington anyway.

Luz snickered. "There is NO WAY Margot would want to live in the ocean! She's a wolf! She loves running around in nature, living in a house, having a gar...den."

Oh crud, now she was crying again. She swallowed, wiping her face.

"S-sorry. I guess I always held out hope that she'd be here with me, but its possible she woke up back at her world before we got to make the decision. I'm trying really hard to move on. She was the last part of that home in Deerington I had left."

"Mm."

Lysithea's out of comforting words. Truth be told, she doesn't know enough about Trench to really be able to offer anything reasonable.

"...Don't lose hope altogether, Luz. I don't mean hope that she'll pop up here. But there are any number of things that could be possible in this frankly mad world. If I've learned anything, a slim possibility is still a possibility."

A possibility that her vision of the future was wrong, a possibility that Margot had simply found a different life. Lysithea offers her younger friend a handkerchief wordlessly.

Luz herself didn't know enough about Trench to offer a response. She wanted what Lysithea was saying to be true. Heck, she'd been hoping that her apprehension about what happened to Margot was proven false, but it felt like if it had been anything within Margot's control, she would have left a message.

She hadn't, and quietly Luz had to accept that sometimes unfair things happened. Maybe she WAS somewhere making amends with the sister she betrayed. Who knew?

Luz took the handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. "Yeah, maybe. I might never know. But you, you're older now, and you look stronger too! That time from Deerington looks like it did you well!"

Lysithea is aware that her attempts have certainly not improved Luz's spirits. ...She is aware that there is nothing more to be said, nothing more to do but to wait for time to heal this particular wound. Luz has always been stronger than she appears - or at least, she puts on the appearance of it.

She respects the attempt to change the subject. They can revisit the other topic when Luz is less raw.

"...Here. Let's get out of the rain and warm up somewhere. We'll get some tea."

Lysithea offers Luz a hand to steady herself if need be.

"It's been about four years. I don't know that it's all gone 'well,' but I am stronger. I've had time to practice my craft, after all. Regrettably... the war that I told you about rages on."

Luz honestly didn't blame Lysithea for not having the most sympathetic ear. That was just not her wheelhouse, and as it stood only a few people likely remembered Margot at all. It didn't change the fact that Luz missed her and this was pretty painful, but like Eda waking, she knew she had to persevere somehow.

"Good idea. Last thing I need is to pass along a cold in the house."

Do they get colds anymore? Were they resistant to that now? Even Luz wasn't sure anymore. She could definitely go for some tea though.

"I'm sorry to hear that. War is never a good thing. I AM glad you've gotten better at magic though! I'm actually going to have someone helping me here. Oh, that reminds me: where are you living now?"

"Er."

That was a good question.

"...Nowhere. I haven't chosen a house yet. ...Which I see they're still handing out as if they were common commodities. I imagine I'll settle somewhere in Gaze."

She takes Luz by the arm and walks with her down the street towards the first welcoming establishment (lots in the Cellar Door) that looked suitable for two teenage girls (less of these.) They are seated and their outerwear hung to dry in record time.

"Truth be told... I've just been wandering from place to place. It all feels a bit like some grand delusion still." Lysithea doesn't often feel 'lost,' but she imagines that this sentiment is likely shared by many of her fellow Sleepers. "What about you?"

"You should probably see if you can share a place with someone! Unless you want your own space, that makes sense. It just is more fun to have a place to share with someone. Gaze specifically? is it more suited to a job you want?"

Luz was still getting used to the way everything looked, but had mostly stayed in Cassandra since she had so much cleaning to do. She did look at the places around in awe though, since she hadn't explored Trench much.

"Oh I get what you mean! We are just coming to terms with the new blood magic and everything, so of course it would still feel a bit surreal. Luckily, I discussed this with Varian before we made the decision to open the door. So now I'm living with him and Fern and this new boy Luca."

"Ah -- I've never been very good at being roommates." She pauses. Apart from that stint at the end when she had stayed with Mako and Wu... but that was just because her dorm fell into an earthquake fissure. "I'm very fussy about certain things, you know. I'd annoy people, and they'd annoy me."

Also she'd require a lot of cookies.

"But if they can put up with my habits, I suppose it would be cost-effective. Varian and Fern and Luca..." She frowns for a moment or two in recollection. "...The plant boy?"

As for the other two names, nothing rings a bell immediately.

"Then you might want to find someone who is just as fussy, or someone who's happy putting up with that. Believe there are people like out there! I mean, I live with three boys and I have to definitely clean up after them, but it doesn't feel like a chore! I genuinely like all of them and I know we all enjoy each other's company. Granted, it also helps that the house is big but still!"

How had Lysithea not heard of Makoto?

"I'm still not sure about money, but you would have a good kinship too, if they were friends! Oh, sure, that's Fern you're talking about. You've never met Varian before, the kid with one leg?"

Wait, Lysithea did magic, it might make sense that the two of them never met. Then again, Varian had managed to meet (and super dislike) Luna so maybe that didn't matter that much. Luca she didn't expect Lysithea to know, he was very new.

"I'll consider it."

She responds noncommittally. Lysithea has a reputation of being somewhat stand-offish and wholly independent that's perhaps more difficult to shake in her own mind than it is in others'. She finds it difficult to visualize herself happily sharing a domicile with another.

"Well, if anybody would want me."

Lysithea's tea arrives at this moment, and she takes a calming sip for a moment or two - she has a brief flashback to the last time she had shared tea with Luz like this, in an odd hotel room stocked with everything she could possibly want.

"...I think I remember him, now that you mention it. He made potions?" Something like that. "We had an argument once. ...I don't actually remember what it was about anymore. ...And the two of them went about with a third boy, didn't they? Rather angry."

"Oh come on! Who wouldn't want to room with a fun, stuffed animal loving girl like you! I would if it was my house! In the end, that's your choice, of course."

Luz made a note to herself to check up on Lysithea. She may have been self sufficient, but that didn't always mean you took the best care of yourself.

At the mention of potions Luz nodded. The third boy, however, surprised Luz.

"I don't think I know who you're talking about there. Do you mean Glitch, or Eddie?"

"The first one. The odd name."

There had been three boys living together, and they were all peculiar in their own ways, she remembered dimly. The plant boy, the potion boy, and... well, she never really knew what Glitch's deal was apart from that he seemed perpetually ticked off.

"And thanks, Luz. I think I would have to live with somebody who knew me quite well and who understood my fussy habits. It wouldn't go well if I just dropped in with a stranger."

Cookies arrive now, and even if Lysithea has lived through four years of war, nothing will ever prevent her from making loving doe eyes at a plate of freshly baked pastries.

"I guess Glitch wanted his own place this time?"

She wasn't sure why they weren't rooming with each other again, but in any case she was more than happy to have the housemates she did right now. As for Glitch, she imagined it had something to do with his perpetual bad luck.

"No, of course not. But I don't love the idea of you having a hard time finding a place to live either. Just make sure you keep me posted on how that's going, all right? Worse comes to worse I'll find you a good roommate myself!"

She didn't suggest her place because it was all of theirs at this point and she knew everyone would have to have a say about a new person...even if one of the occupants of their house lived in teacups. Somehow.

"Ooh. I haven't had one of these in awhile. What kind are they?"

"You haven't had this specific cookie? Or cookies at all?"

Well, the former wouldn't make any sense. It's not like Luz has been here longer than a few days. The latter is unthinkable and raises a note of indignation in Lysithea's voice.

"...But, of course, you came straight from the crumbling confines of Deerington. You must nourish yourself."

The plate is eased across the table to settle in front of Luz.

"You really don't need to worry about me, though, Luz. I'm not a child hoping to be taken in. It would be perfectly normal and expected for me to rent a suitable suite of rooms."

"A cookie! I haven't had one since you've been here! You're the one that really liked them, remember?"

New world, old treats. Luz has been roughing it for a little while, so she'd been only real indulgent treat Luz had had been the ice cream.

"Oh yes, of course. How foolish of me."

Luz gave a wry smile but gladly helped herself.

"What? How does wanting company make you a child? If you want to be by yourself, I get it, but I don't think wanting people to be with me makes me childish. Besides, you remember what Deerington was like. Sometimes being by yourself is more of a recipe for trouble than you think."

"No, Luz." Lysithea responds patiently - a word that couldn't, under most stretches of the imagination, be applied to her younger self. "I'm not saying you're childish. I'm saying you're framing my situation a little too desperately. I'm perfectly happy with or without anybody else."

"Besides, if there were someone else around, I'd have to share my sweets."

Lysithea picks out a particularly well-iced cookie.

"Regardless... I'd prefer to learn a little more about my surroundings first before settling in. This city is much larger than Deerington. And considerably more bizarre."

Luz is definitely grateful for that patience. The last things he wanted to do is make her friend mad at her, especially over a misunderstanding.

"Maybe you have a point. But I'm more concerned about you finding a comfortable place to rest your head. Having a roommate would just put me a little at ease: that way, I know there's less likely something bad that's going to happen to you that no one would know about."

Luz laughed at the sweet comment though. That was such a Lysithea concern.

"You sure have that right. Guess we're also dealing with more of Julia's kind too, right?"

"Well, if you're truly so concerned, how about I promise that I won't reject the idea without giving it due consideration."

Of course, she can't promise that the outcome of that consideration will be what Luz desires.

"It's sweet of you to care, though. And, you know - now that we have these warp devices, you're always welcome to visit if you're concerned. It's not like it was before."

To be fair, Lysithea didn't exactly want visitors teleporting into her living room unannounced whenever they pleased, but it did make for easy access to the people she cared about.

"Julia's mother's kind, I think. ...And actually, she's still here, isn't she? The Moon Presence."

"That would make me feel a whole lot better. You're one of my dearest friends from D...that place. I wouldn't want to think of you in a shack somewhere, hunkered down and eating cookies in, like, a tin can or something. That's a little extreme, but still!"

Luz was just trying to be funny, despite being legitimately concerned.

"Oh right, same here! I won't surprise visit you though, I'd know you'd hate that. But you can come and visit me anytime, ok?"

Right. Julia's mom. Cynthia.

"I just keep calling her the moon goddess. I dunno why, it just stuck with me. I guess I feel like it's more respectful somehow?"

"A shack hunkered down and eating cookies..."

Lysithea considers this for a few moments and realizes, somewhat to her chagrin, that this doesn't sound unpleasant at all. But perhaps she will not tell this to Luz.

"I'll contact you in advance if I want to visit. I'll probably put the Lamp out somewhere on a porch or patio so there are no unpleasant surprises."

A sudden image of Darth Maul appearing in her bedroom while she is asleep flashes through her mind.

"I think this is what she wanted, isn't it? I hope we made the right choice. Truly... I have no idea how we were supposed to know how to choose at all."

Luz wrinkled her nose. Come on, Lysithea.

"I'll look forward to it! These little guys are really cute anyway!"

If Darth Maul appeared in her bed room, Luz would take a second to make sure he wasn't acting on his evil master's orders, then tell him not to wake anyone else up.

"No, I think we did exactly what she wanted. She's not tethered to the town anymore, to the memory of Deerington and the pain it brought. We know for sure she got what she wanted. Can't really say the same for everyone else."

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