deercountry | the balance of complete and incomplete [open]

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the balance of complete and incomplete [open]

Who: Anna Amarande and you!
What: January event catchall
When: January
Where: The Snake Den and around Trench

Content Warnings: Eye trauma, blood, swearing, artful robot nudity, will add as they come in

a. i will trust the artist molding me [the snake den]

Anna doesn't really need much help right now cutting loose at the Snake Den. Madam G has been on her list of Pthumerians to check out for a while, and even if there had been some kind of reluctance to begin with, now that she's here mingling in a borrowed suit she feels downright comfortable. It's like she's ten years younger, and though her voice is still smoky and she's still missing an eye as far as physical age goes, socially she's just. Free, right now. It's nice.

It's nice enough that, when she's not striking up conversation with other people, she decides to indulge herself in the open mic. Borrowing an electric bass from backstage, she walks up, sits down, plugs in, and grabs the mic. "This is one from back home," she says, "By a band called Silversun Pickups. It's about finding freedom and acceptance and love in the places and with the people that everyone else tells you to stay away from. They'll say that the only way to be who you are is to file yourself off. That you need to hold yourself back to make other people comfortable without ever worrying if you're comfortable." She's talking very passionately for someone who doesn't think of herself as a motivational speaker. With a confident look, she finally leads into the song. "Let's bury that lie, Trench. This is called 'The Pit'."

And she starts playing, and she starts singing. And when she doesn't need to be playing and her hands are free, even she's not really sure how she does it, but she finds a way to channel her androidinous self to modify her own voice—just for a little bit, just to test it out. Just to see what happens, before she snaps back into the final lines of the song. And regardless of how it's received, once she's done, she puts the bass down and gently thanks the crowd. Her heart-simulacrum is pulsing faster than it should be as she gets off the stage, and she waits there in the wings in case she happened to inspire anyone with that performance.

b. the echo of what is and what will be [the shedding ceremony]

This is... not a good month for Anna outside of that, so far. For her time at the Snake Den, yes, she's still resonating with A2, and she's still who she thinks she is. But it never really takes long for her to start shedding her own skin again, and damn her brain but she can't stop fucking picking at it long enough to avoid the transformation.

The first time it happens, Anna emerges in a pure white dress that she's wasting no time in staining red. Her hair is longer, cleaner, and in lieu of a katana she's brandishing a blood-red shortsword in her battles with these beasts at the edge of the city. Taking zero precautions against pollution or corruption, she swings her blade right at the neck and lets the blood spray wash over her. When it stops, she hunches forward and shrieks out a strangely melodic note while the beast falls over dead. Her back straightens, and it's clear even from whatever distance anyone may be watching at that she's no longer entirely who people might know. The flower blossoming from her right eye is a good early warning sign, but you'd better act fast, because her good eye is a blazing red and she's rushing towards her spectator with that bloodblade at the ready.

The second time is much less interesting by comparison, but it's not doing her much good. Because the second time, she's just... a normal 29 year old. Both her eyes are fine, she's fully organic, and she doesn't know how to use a sword. In fact, she's taking her time and walking slowly through the streets of a town that she's starting to get to know better, wondering what her life even is anymore. Her Omni helps her keep connected with back home, sure, but nobody can get in touch with her no matter how hard she tries. And she woke up, for lack of a better word, with this katana that she's got on her back, and the first friendly-looking person she sees, she just asks outright, "Hey, uh. You have any idea why I would have a sword if I don't remember ever actually owning a sword?"

c. i am creation both haunted and holy [wildcard]

((got anything else you want to do? hit me up here or at

roseward!! also: source for the suit image and lyrics for the cover.))

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If you just don't talk about having feelings, and quickly move past them after you do, then hopefully, they'll just go away. They never actually do, but it's still easier that way.

"I meant about getting your lungs cleaned out, but yeah, sure." Kainé scoffs sarcastically. "Good for you that you have some girl out there to stick squids up your ass." A sudden twinge of grief shoots through Kainé at the subject of love and its attendant affections. It resonates with muddled memories, undefinable feelings of grief and loss. And, of course, a lifetime of abandonment, the belief that nobody could love a body like this, even if she's since learned that they sure could treat it as an exotic object of lust.

Edited 2022-02-02 00:28 (UTC)

Ah, hm. Well, the joke wears thin fast when Kainé brings that up, and Anna decides to focus on a far corner of the kitchen away from her roommate instead. It's not time to be depressed, but it is time to be... real, she supposes. Or honest. There's a soft sigh through her nose.

"Nah. Haven't had anyone like that in a long, long time. Not since home, and another girl kind of like me named Rose." She could talk about Rose forever, but she doesn't want to bore Kainé with emotional bullshit if she's not interested in it. Can she pull out of this with another, different joke? Maybe. "So my ass will, sadly, have to remain free of squids."

Kainé's immediate reaction to Anna's dejection is cruel satisfaction that she's managed to score a blow in turn. But within seconds that just makes her feel worse, filled with ugly self-loathing. There's too much blood, too many scars. Why did she think she could be happy like this? How long will it take the corruption to claim a filthy creature like her?

Kainé's jaw sets in tension, and its only when Anna volunteers that piece of her history, that vulnerability, that her shoulders relax. She takes the ladle to the sink, setting it aside for future cleaning. All that's left is letting it simmer long enough to cook the potatoes.

"Girl like you, huh? Just a lesbian, or some machine person? Or a soul-fused whatever." She ignores the strange feeling of... disappointment? Deflated hope? No, surely it's jealousy.

"First and third," she says by way of clarity. Joke didn't work out, but that's fine. She can at least bring herself to look back in Kainé's direction as she hears the ladle clatter. "Met her way before the soul stuff started happening. She's the one who taught me that I was a lesbian. Then we broke up," and the way she says it, there has to be a long, stupid story there, "And I didn't talk with her for a while. Until I found out she was changing, too, and we reconnected, and I just... I don't know, dude," she says, almost in defeat, and her body sags with a breath.

"Eventually her soul stopped resonating with the other girl. It went back to the way it was before we reconnected, except I remembered everything and she didn't." It's depressing, sure, but she talks about it like it's just simple facts. There's no use wasting tears on it anymore—definitely not in front of her new roommate who looks a lot more like Rose than she'd prefer. "But that's just kind of how it went back home. People would just forget you, and you wouldn't have any say in it. You'd just have to live with it."

Big deal. You lose people all the time. Everybody does. The wound bleeds, then you die. But something in the tone of Anna's voice stirs something deeper than the layers of cold cynicism. She sees the defeated way her shoulders slump. Forlorn, needing something that will never return to her. And... memories. Something forgotten. "Shit sucks."

Kainé pauses, chewing her lip as she gives another sidelong glance to Anna. "When I was a kid, I never thought anybody could accept me. Think of me as a person instead of—" She breaks off, pulling back from revealing too much. "Some unnatural thing." But the rawness of her voice says more than words could. "Eventually I found people who did. People who cared about me. But I lost every one of them."

Maybe this is a good way to kind of... get off the subject of Rose. Because, like, it's clear that Kainé's history is a lot more painful than some shitty breakup, and Anna is honestly a little confused by the whole idea that anyone would call her unnatural at this point. She seems totally normal to her. Downright pleasant, honestly—albeit in a little bit of a fucked up way that probably only Anna and a small handful of others could appreciate.

"I'm sorry," she says instead, ignoring the way it makes her feel inside. The pang of loneliness that she's learned to recognize in others by now. It'd be easy to turn it into overwrought sympathy, but nobody needs to hear that right now. "For what it's worth, you're stuck with me now, K. Wouldn't offer you a place to live and then ghost out of your life like that. No matter what else happens."

Of course, Rose might have said the same thing once. She knows she can't really promise it when they live at the privilege of unknowable gods. Maybe that makes the willful promise stronger.

Goddamn. This was just supposed to be cooking dinner and telling Anna to stop looping that damn song. This is just what happens when you let a couple of moody bitches with broken hearts live with each other. Well, another logical consequence of that comes later, but Kainé certainly isn't anticipating anything like that.

She sighs, looking at Anna's tired, lonely face for a few seconds, before staring out the window. "Don't make promises you can't keep." But there's a half-laugh at the end, her voice wistful rather than truly angry. "Sounds like I gotta put up with your mooching for a while."

She huffs a less sad sounding laugh now, and abruptly walks away from the kitchen and into the living room, eying the bass guitar. "So, you're making the singing into a regular thing, huh?"

Dinner plans never survive first contact with the enemy. These plans just happen to come with a gun conspicuously placed on the mantle.

"Guess so," she says, glad to get back to something a little easier to think about. And if calling it mooching helps Kainé feel better about it, then fuck it, yeah, Anna's mooching off her. She turns up the corner of her mouth as that thought hits her, but she moves on past it before they can dwell. They've done enough of it for the moment, right?

"And yeah, been thinking of adding vocals in for a while. I had a friend here for a bit who would rap with me, but he headed back home last month, so I gotta do something to fill that space." That's a hell of a way to put it, but she doesn't know how else to describe what happened to Samatoki. "Over the bass track, I mean. But I'm definitely not the best singer in the world, so, like. I might tap you if it turns out you do sound awesome."

It's not like Kainé can very just agree that Anna should stay with her, and express just how much it already means to her that she's not alone again. Maybe... maybe someday. But this is too new.

Kainé does not pretend to know much, or anything about music. Her grandma taught her some songs when she was young, which she occasionally sings to herself when she's alone. That's easier now that Tyrann is no longer there to mock her in those moments. But that doesn't mean she's comfortable letting another hear.

"You sounded fine before."

"Thanks," she says, at least knowing how to accept the compliment. It's definitely not easy and she wants to couch it in a bunch of things. "But I'm not the kind of girl who likes taking center stage constantly, you know? If someone else is right for it, then who am I to tell 'em they can't do it?"

She doesn't push, though. More refusing to push, more staying in whatever has to pass for her lane around Kainé. Pushing too hard might mean pushing her away, and that's not something that she's willing to risk right now. Not when things are already going so well for both of them. Or at least they seem to be going well, and maybe Anna's just, like, projecting super hard. It's impossible to tell.

"I don't know, K, I'm just feeling it all out. Maybe I won't feel like being a solo act forever." She is... not constructing a metaphor here, or if she is then she hasn't quite realized it yet. "I know I'm not the only one around here who uses music to talk about the stuff she's dealing with. But I mean, you heard my whole thing about 'The Pit', you know where I'm coming from."

It really is going well. There have been times in recent days when Kainé felt really, truly relaxed, for the first time in many years. Can something like this really last? Anna already knows her darkness, so there shouldn't be much else that could make her turn away in disgust. Awful things may happen to them, one of them may vanish, but she'd always known that's how things are. So what else is she afraid of? Because she's still afraid.

"Then you'd be shit outta luck with me, because I'm not about the stage either." She scoffs. "Dunno if you could find anybody less right for it." All those people staring at her... ugh. No.

"I guess... it would be harder alone. It has to be." She's definitely talking about singing here. "It'd be nice if you found somebody. I bet a lot of people know what you mean by that." Kainé certainly does.

"Yeah... met a few people around here who seem like they get it," she says, gently tiptoeing herself into talking about a little more than just music. Hard to talk about just one thing when she sees someone else, even for a split second, every time her eye flits to Kainé's face.

"But I don't know. There's specifics they're missing. They get the broad strokes of where I'm coming from when I'm singing about, like, finding people to keep fighting for, or being who you are without letting the world shove you into a different box, but..." Eh. She trails off with a shrug, trying to pull herself back into the comfortable fiction of the music. She could say something else right now, something more direct, but she doesn't know Kainé well enough to be sure of it yet. So it's better to just leave that an inside thought.

"Not a lot of people get it the same way, I guess is what I'm saying. And I don't need someone to get it exactly the same way if I want to make music with them, but it sure as hell makes it easier."

Kainé has no way of knowing about those little flashes Anna gets of another when she looks into her face. But she knows that music is only a small part of what they're talking about. Hell, she's not even trying to hide that, right now. "And you think I do, huh?"

She turns that around, considers it. She could admit many things more directly too. Maybe she wants to. But she doesn't know Anna well enough either, to say most of them. "It would be too damn embarrassing to do in public," she admits. "I... I'm not used to spending a lot of time around people."

Kainé says that, instead. It's a start. She used to sit with Emil around a guttering flame, and they'd talk, in ways unlike how she'd ever talked to anybody else. It's not the same as how she's talking to Anna either. But wouldn't it be nice to have that feeling again?

"Look, I'm... sorry for some of the shit I said. Out in the shack. I didn't have a right to define what you are. Nobody does. And... thanks. For all of this."

Anna scoffs, but it's gentle, like she catches herself falling back on a default response before realizing that it's not what she really wants to say. "Don't worry about it. I came on pretty strong," she says like she stopped, "And you've got a lot going on anyway. Can't even say I blame you. Thanks for giving me a second chance to make a first impression."

It's a nice reminder, sometimes, that no matter how badly Retrospec wanted her to remember A2 and the legacy of people who came before her, nothing can really replace the firsthand experience. She likes Kainé much better in the flesh, standing before her, not a half-formed memory but an actual person. It's a chance to form her own memories, as Anna, whatever that might end up meaning.

"I do think you get it, though," she continues with a little less caution than she might otherwise need. "Better than anyone else here has so far. I think it would be pretty easy to find something we can both sing along to." God, just fucking say it already, Anna. "The kind of stuff we've been singing for years."

Kainé huffs a small chuckle, shrugging her shoulders. "Yeah, no shit. But I come on like a feral bitch, so fair's fair." Which isn't to say that she's not a feral bitch. There was still a lot about it that she couldn't completely understand. Everything about A2, for one, and who that made Anna. All that stuff about her universe being destroyed thousands of years in the future— or maybe some history that it might take.

"Heh, maybe." God, she's really going soft if that's all she can manage. "Can't promise I'm not off key." She looks back into the kitchen, gives the stew another glance. The flame is low, but it'd be better not take to take any chances and have them both leave the house.

"I'm out for a bit. I'll be back before it finishes." She's gonna get some spices.

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the balance of complete and incomplete [open]

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