caveofsapphires | smaller patch of fading sky [ open ]

smaller patch of fading sky [ open ]

WHO: EVERYONE. All PCs thus far will be in this log, through active tagging or implication.
WHAT: THRILLS. SPILLS. Hiking trip toward the Diamond City.
WHERE: The Overworld.
WHEN: Forward-dated to May 1st (Tuesday) through May 7th (Monday).
WARNINGS: May contain violence or other mentions of physical harm. This is not summer camp.
NOTES: More information can be found on the OOC post here. Please read it!

Gathered in the morning haze, Sleepers were brought to the mouth of the Cave with plenty of supplies and equipment. Compasses that would point them toward the City. Backpacks full of clothes and food, medical kits, tents and even weapons. Stun rifles and knives — to fight off any unwanted company, they said. ("Watch out for their bite," Ryan had commented. "Those fuckers are downright feral.") The straight and narrow path would get them there in six days if they kept a good clip. They were sent off just like that. Refusals to leave were met with a wall of guard force officers blocking the entrance back into the cave city. No way to go but forward, unless someone was particularly stalwart about remaining.

From the exterminator's station near the mouth, leaving the Cave was as simple as a short hike upward into the fresh air of the Overworld. Dust and an uncomfortable sort of heat pervaded the atmosphere, light winds stirring up the sand and teasing the meager bits of vegetation that had grown. No matter what direction you looked... it was all wasteland, cracked ground and desolate emptiness. Jutting up from scarred ground were boulders and small spires made entirely of glass and patches of stone; instead of reflecting the harsh sunlight, they seemed to absorb it and only add to the muted loneliness of the atmosphere. As far as the eye could see, there was no life to be found.

With no other option, the Sleepers eventually made their way onward.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"The Arc?" he asked. "Wouldn't happen to be anything to do with that whole Awakening thing, would it?" She'd just told him that they were trying to renew the world, after all. It fit.

He snorted. They could've been akin to pagan gods, he supposed. Or maybe the Leviathan. "No. I mean the One, the Almighty. If you've heard of Him you'd have heard of His angels."

And the implication there was clear.

"They were connected in as much as they both marked the end of the world," Re-l said, "but Awakening had more to do with Vincent. He was what awoke." Her mouth twisted. "I'd say the gun was coincidence, but then Proxy One engineered me, so it would probably be a lie."

She let his final statement sink in. Was it even reasonable to believe him? But if his world held magic, then real gods were not so implausible. She couldn't judge anything on her own standards. There was only one conclusion she could come to.

"You're as bad as he was," she said. "You'd think angels would have better faces."

The details were vague, but Gabriel got enough of the context, and he echoed the twist of her lips with a wry smile of his own. Then his expression morphed into startled indignation.

"Hey!" he objected. "What's wrong with this face? I'll have you know I've worn it for fifteen hundred years!" Then he frowned. "Which, okay, I'll grant you is a while, but everyone else tended to burn out after a century or two no matter how careful I was with 'em."

He didn't think he want to give this one up, even if he could. Not jus because the man had been his one true vessel, which kept him from burning out, but because they'd had a lot of fun together before he asked Gabriel to send his soul on. Taking another meatsuit would have meant binding another soul all over again, and he had less justification for it now than he ever had.

Re-l thought about asking what he meant by "burn out", and then decided she didn't want to know.

The flow of sand was definitely lessening. Whatever force had whipped up this sandstorm, it was fading away. The constant swish of sand grains was fading, and in its absence other sounds became magnified. She still couldn't see the sky, but by now it must be nearly night, or at least late evening.

"All those centuries," she said thoughtfully. "It might be nice to have so much time." She'd known it, even with Vincent in the last good days. There was every chance he could live forever. She had a century, at best. Her grandfather had had much more, but he'd been a sick and dying doll for most of it.

"Not that I'd trade," she added, just in case Gabriel was getting the wrong idea.

He looked at her, then, and smiled grimly; his amber eyes glittered, and for a moment the being peering out them was clearly not just old, but ancient. "You only think that because it's a basic human desire to want more. In my experience? You get so much more out of life than long-lived beings. You don't have many years, so you make the most of them. You can achieve so much in so little time--things other, more powerful beings I know have never been able to understand at all."

The way he spoke was just how he looked, and so familiar. Familiar, and fond, and not exactly awed, nor exactly respectful, but somewhere in-between.

He'd been alive since the dawn of time and he was one of the few of his kind who seemed to have found anything to do over the years. Most of the rest of his family had just stagnated, wallowing in orders and sameness and never having an original thought. Humanity, though. Humanity lived. Most of it. There were always those ones that didn't.

For the first time she really understood that the man next to her had once not been human. His face looked old and tired, the way Proxy One had looked under all the bluster. The way Ergo had looked, when he stared at her in her apartment. Only beings like that were fascinated with humanity. Or pseudo-humanity, as it were.

"You're wrong," she said. "Time has nothing to do with it. My fellow citizens never had an original thought in their lives, and Pino had more creativity than most humans I met. Pseudo-human, AutoReiv, Proxy, angel. It's not what you are, it's what you do and what you think that matter."

Gabriel couldn't help but smile, and it was bitter, ironic and still, yes, still fond all at once. "You'd think it wouldn't. But most of my brothers and sisters have never had a creative thought in their lives. It's all orders, orders, orders and Destiny, all the time. That was the gift Dad gave to humanity."

He shrugged. "Sure, a ton of you don't do shit with anything. But where I came from there was almost seven freakin' billion of you. And most of the time? If you were given a reason to fight, to live, to try harder? You did. My brothers tried to destroy the whole damned world. It was humans who stopped it."

Okay, now he was depressed. With a sigh he let his head thunk back against the stone, and the archangel stared up at the clearing storm.

"It sounds like we come from very different worlds," Re-l said. She probably meant it to be nice, but her tone had taken on its analytical edge. How fascinating the differences were. There was so much to learn, so much to understand. It was almost worth this stupid situation. Almost.

"Well, you're human now," she said. "I guess this is your big chance."

The sand had faded, and the stars were coming out. Re-l stared up at the sky, entranced. Stars were the most beautiful thing about this place, beyond a doubt. She could have looked at them forever.

"I don't want to be human," he grumbled. "I like you guys and all, but your bodies suck. You sweat and stink and are squishy as Hell isn't, you get sick at the drop of a hat, and you can't even eat candy all day. And let's not even get into the other physical functions."

Besides, he wasn't really human. Not in his head. It made a difference.

Gabriel found his eyes closing and forced them open again with a blink. The stars really were the best thing right now. He'd never really taken note of them before; after winging past a couple of suns from close-up, you kinda just didn't think about them as something to look at. Humanity was far more interesting.

But down here, with his relatively new physical limitations, he was far more aware of the utter space in the night sky. "At least the storm's cleared off the view," he murmured.

"That statement is rather at odds with some of your earlier pronouncements," Re-l said, not looking at him. The stars still held her attention.

Her nose was cold, and when she exhaled little white plumes appeared and vanished in the dark, but she continued to look up.

"No sun means no stars, you know." She wasn't even really talking to Gabriel. More thinking out loud. "I never saw stars before."

The endless galaxies whorled away into space, swallowing her up. She felt herself to be very small and very large at the same time, insignificant and connected to everything all at once.

"That one's the exception that proves the rule," he answered promptly. "Most of the others are just gross, without any fun to help you get over it."

At that he had to look at her oddly. "Stars generate their own light, y'know. It just takes a few million years to get there. You can't tell me whatever messed up your world screwed things up that badly that it shut off all the lights."

The stone really was cold, cold enough now to urge him to move. With a shiver he shuffled forward and pulled the blanket around him, then leaned back again with a sigh. Sure, stars were pretty and all, but they could occupy his attention for only so long. The sheer vastness of the space upstairs was making him start to feel a little homesick. Obviously the best response to that was to stop looking and ignore it.

Re-l hmpffed, huffing out a white cloud.

Her nose really was cold, so she reluctantly gave up on stars and buried her face in her blanket. When she spoke her voice was muffled by the layers of cloth, but she was feeling too lazy to lift her head.

"No, there were stars. And a sun, actually. But they were hidden by thick clouds that had covered the world for a thousand years. Thermonuclear winter."

Of course. "That would do it, all right," Gabriel murmured. He meant to ask what the Hell even happened to her world, then decided he probably didn't need to know, because weren't Armageddons all the same?

And besides, his eyes kept slipping closed. Now he didn't have the cold of the stone to distract him the chilly nip against his face wasn't nearly enough to keep him awake.

Gabriel was falling asleep, Re-l noted. She bit down on her lip and let him drift off, almost holding her breath. Only when she was certain that he was unconscious did she move, standing up and stretching quietly. She shoved the blanket back into her backpack, picked up the torch and headed out into the desert.

The sand had moved, and the landscape was changed, but the stars remained constant. She picked out the particularly bright one she had noticed on earlier nights and used it to find her bearings. There were the distant mountains of the Cave, which meant that the city was this way.

It was not particularly safe to walk at night, but Re-l did not intend to go far. She simply needed to be alone. There was no one in this world that she could truly trust, and she had to remember that.

Putting one foot in front of the other, she began to walk towards the city.

The activity tugged him out of sleep just enough for him to kindasorta note it, but then he drifted off again. What woke him a few hours later, it was hard to say; it could've just been that the stone and sand had grown uncomfortable enough. (Given how much had gotten into his clothes, not such a surprise, really.)

Either way, he woke up, blinking in the darkness and automatically glancing around. It took a moment to register that Re-l was gone.

"Oh, she didn't," he grumbled. Sure, it wasn't like they didn't sometimes move at night, to make up for the heat of the day, but at night alone after a sandstorm? Had she even slept?

He was warm and comfortable, and for a moment debated just not bothering to go after her. She was a competent woman. And this was a very dangerous landscape, where people shouldn't go off alone.

"Dad damn it," he growled, forcing himself up, wincing a little at his arm, and packing up what little he'd pulled out. Hauling that bag onto his pack again was surely cruel and unusual punishment. There wasn't room for his blanket; after a moment he shrugged and wrapped it around his shoulders. Wasn't like he couldn't make another if he lost it, and it got cold at night. It took another little while to scramble up out of the crags, and he shivered as the air hit him.

The landscape had changed, which wasn't unexpected. He checked his compass, glancing around, and then spotted the scuff of foot-divots in the sand. With a sigh and shake of his head he followed the trail.

The stars had whirled and changed by the time Re-l found a handy crevasse to tuck herself into. She was pale and tired, but at least she'd made up for lost distance. And the marks around her suggested other pilgrims had also made it this far.

She wondered if she should erase her tracks. It would be sensible, but then who was going to follow her, out here? She couldn't imagine any interest the supposed-angel would have in tagging after her.

Re-l shrugged the warm blanket over her shoulders, closed her eyes, and fell asleep.

Despite being so unused to these circumstances, Gabriel didn't do too badly at tracking. It was just a matter of noticing the right things, and he'd done that for a long time. So he at least didn't get lost, especially since the storm had swept everything clean and Re-l's tracks were one of the few things to see.

Dawn was on the horizon by the time he made it to where it began to get rocky again, dusty and tired. He was looking for a place to sit down and rest himself when he spotted sky-blue on red-grey stone, and grinned. The blanket was coming in handy for more reason than one after all.

He plopped himself down nearby, shrugged off his pack to get some food and water, and kicked some stones into Re-l's little nook, pretending at being far less tired than he felt. "Wakey-wakey!"

The cheery tone intruded on Re-l's consciousness, pulling her out of sleep and back into the brutal reality of the desert.

She sat up and glared at everything in general and the man next to her in particular.

"Tell me," she said, "do angels feed on annoyance? Because that is the only possible reason I can fathom for following me across a desert and waking me so rudely."

"Yep," Gabriel said cheerfully, breaking open one of his ration packs. "It's one of the perks in small writing. We get to heckle anyone we damn well please."

He pointed at her. "Besides, there's the other reason of going in the same direction to begin with. And that other other reason of it being stupid to wander around a place like this alone."

"I can see that you consider it a perk, certainly."

She was tired, she had been woken up and she felt off-balance. It was a poor combination. When she spoke, her voice was level and flat and cold, with absolutely no warmth in it at all.

"It didn't occur to you then, that I might have left for the express purpose of being on my own, and that company might be completely undesirable to me?"

Gabriel pretending to think that over for a moment and then gave her a sunny smile. "Nope!"

Hell, if she was going to be stupid he may as well annoy the shit out of her. No one alone. Hadn't they said that at the beginning of this farce of a trek?

He indicated where the sun was rising. "Besides, you had to've had a few hours. We should keep moving while it's cooler and bunk down when it gets too hot. Or try and meet up with some of the others."

"I don't think I need to be lectured about safety by you," Re-l said. "Mr. Idiot who can't take care of himself."

She sat cross-legged and looked at him, drawing on every reserve of strength and patience she had.

"I know the risks and dangers of this situation much better than you do. I'm strong, I'm fast, I'm an incredibly good shot with a weapon. I will be fine. I'll even check in with you later if you are so desperately worried about me." The last bit was a lie, but he didn't need to know that. "So now will you," she swallowed, "will you please leave me alone? I need to think?"

She'd never had to work this hard to get someone to leave her before. Most people didn't want to be there in the first place. Or, like Iggy, could have their functions turned off.

Part of it, the part that Gabriel was staunchly not admitting to himself, was that he didn't want to be alone. The sandstorm had separated them from the others, so he couldn't even pester his brothers, and after even a month of having them he'd realised--he was tired of being alone.

And Re-l was better than no one at all.

Except that she specifically wanted to be alone. Gabriel let out a long 'hmmmmmm', rolling his eyes upward in exaggerated thought. It was a cover, all a cover, while he thought seriously to weigh up his desire not to be alone and his good will toward giving her what she wanted. If not for the utter, exhausted sincerity of her plea, it wouldn't be nearly so difficult.

Finally he sighed and gave her a crooked smile. "What the Hell; I'm lousy at resisting a pretty lady. But I do think we should stick together, for my sake if not yours. So I'll just be over there, out of sight until you're ready to move on." He jerked his head toward another bunch of rocks at least a hundred feet away.

Re-l paused. She was aware that it would be easy to walk away now - to simply leave, and hurt him if he tried to follow. It would make her life much more uncomplicated.

What stopped her was partially the feeling that offending someone who could make objects out of nothing was stupid, but mostly it was guilt. Iggy, Deadalus, she'd failed them both. She wanted not to be the person they accused her of being.

She hunched over herself and pulled out her diary. This wasn't privacy: she could feel Gabriel hovering, but it was the best she was going to get.

She took about three quarters of an hour to get down everything she thought crucial. She focused mostly on the revelation of Gabriel's power, with a little on his world and less on the man himself. That strayed close to territory she found difficult, even in writing.

When she found that her words had moved off topic, dwelling more on her fears for Vincent than her present predicament, she shut her notebook with a snap, tucked it away, and stood up. The sun was climbing, but the tracks of the group still lay clear in the sand.

"Come on," she said, walking over to her unwanted companion. "Let's go find your real friends."

Gabriel had stretched out, lying against his pack, and was dozing a bit while. In this kind of place sound carried well, and he kept himself just uncomfortable enough that he wouldn't fall too deeply asleep, so he'd hear her if she got ready to move.

So when she crunched up toward him Gabriel snapped awake, stretched with a yawn, and pushed himself to his feet.

"So you write in that every day, huh?" he asked, just to make conversation, as he hauled his pack up onto his back. When he glanced over at her, she looked ... prickly. There was no other way to describe it. Sorta like a cactus. The image was gone in his next blink.

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since we're playing sleeping nearby on the sixth Imma go for something different here.

sure thing!

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