Illarion Albireo (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
unsheathedfromreality) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
deercountry2022-03-13 01:59 am
unsheathedfromreality) wrote in deercountry2022-03-13 01:59 am
Entry tags:
Real & Half-Real: Iskierka's Notes | OTA
Who: Illarion's Omen Iskierka and anyone who happens to stumble across her notes.
What: Receiving messages from hell.
When: March 5 onward, after Sayo's full return to the Waking World.
Where: Throughout Trench and the Levels
Content warnings: All of the following are mentioned or discussed obliquely: magical zombies, mind control, emotional manipulation, war-time violence, murder of family members, drug use, cannibalism, suicide, hallucinations/derealization, existential horror, apocalyptic setting, kidnapping, enslavement.
Iskierka has not been idle while her Sleeper is missing from Trench. Somewhere, he's wandering a hell far removed from the Waking World; somewhere, he rehearses to himself the briefing he might give to any would-be rescuers when they arrive, what is necessary to survive and sufficient for Sayo's ritual. When hoping for rescue pales on him, he dictates his thoughts to the air or an animal or a corpse's patient ear, and she hears it.
She hears every word of it, and she cannot respond; she listens faithfully, and the words fill her head to the point of forgetting. When there's no more room for them, she writes. With whatever comes to hand--beg buy borrow or steal--on whatever surface she can find, she writes--scratches out--rewrites. Notes and letters emerge beneath her pen, and she takes them where she thinks they belong. Some she abandons in significant places and others she brings to significant people, urging them to take this fragment of her lost Sleeper.
It may help, when they go to rescue him. If anyone can.
[[ OOC: Real & Half-Real Plot Write-Up and Interest Check, for those just joining us. Even if you haven't left a comment there you're more than welcome to join in on finding notes!
See comments for how to use this post and tasty tasty plot hooks. ]]
What: Receiving messages from hell.
When: March 5 onward, after Sayo's full return to the Waking World.
Where: Throughout Trench and the Levels
Content warnings: All of the following are mentioned or discussed obliquely: magical zombies, mind control, emotional manipulation, war-time violence, murder of family members, drug use, cannibalism, suicide, hallucinations/derealization, existential horror, apocalyptic setting, kidnapping, enslavement.
Iskierka has not been idle while her Sleeper is missing from Trench. Somewhere, he's wandering a hell far removed from the Waking World; somewhere, he rehearses to himself the briefing he might give to any would-be rescuers when they arrive, what is necessary to survive and sufficient for Sayo's ritual. When hoping for rescue pales on him, he dictates his thoughts to the air or an animal or a corpse's patient ear, and she hears it.
She hears every word of it, and she cannot respond; she listens faithfully, and the words fill her head to the point of forgetting. When there's no more room for them, she writes. With whatever comes to hand--beg buy borrow or steal--on whatever surface she can find, she writes--scratches out--rewrites. Notes and letters emerge beneath her pen, and she takes them where she thinks they belong. Some she abandons in significant places and others she brings to significant people, urging them to take this fragment of her lost Sleeper.
It may help, when they go to rescue him. If anyone can.
[[ OOC: Real & Half-Real Plot Write-Up and Interest Check, for those just joining us. Even if you haven't left a comment there you're more than welcome to join in on finding notes!
See comments for how to use this post and tasty tasty plot hooks. ]]
LOCATION | Shroudwood - 1A
Number available: Lots
Conditions to receive from Iskierka: None
If you can survive Trench, you can survive Shroudwood.
It is the first thought to mind on returning to my home, after months in the Waking World. Trench is a trial and horror to most Sleepers, the worse to the solitary. Survival requires constant vigilance and exacting performances. Trust in friends, family, and flock are necessary, but the threat of corruption and wilding stretches all those ties to their limits. Trench, at least, still has sun and moon and stars overhead. We lost them, when we sacrificed our Starwood to the pillar and were given Shroudwood in return. (A thought for logistics: We'd need torches. Shrike eyes are made for the gloom. The abominations now haunting it can't need more light than we did.)
Yet, Shroudwood--even here, even in hell--is still more alive than Trench. Pillar corruption is not blood pollution; it doesn't sterilize the soil. (Though Locusts will in time.) There are still stargroves. There are still places the dusk-deer crush the bracken-fern to bed down in it, and reaper-hawks come to hunt them. The apricots are in bud; the sap is rising in the laurels, and by and by they will open their
eyesbut for now they are demure and lovely.I wish I could see it. Even knowing I will see the scars of blade and mattock, the gas burns and the torn tracks of tanks. Starflower will grow through them in time. Cyclamens will reclaim it. They always have.
As with Trench, you will survive longest by keeping simple rules in mind: Don't walk alone. Beware of eyes in the dark and never meet them. If you are in a place you don't recognize, speak softly amongst yourselves; if you can't understand each other, retrace your path immediately. If you can see your shadow, retrace your path immediately.
If you see the sun rise above the top of the trees, be still, do not move, close your eyes, wait for rescue.