[open] arrival

[lovereborn]

Who: Shirley Fenette and any Red Dragonsworn
What: A very confused, newly-undead young woman tries to make sense of what exactly's happened with her life.
Where: The Ruby Sanctum
When: Backdated to April 10th
Warnings: Spoilers for Code Geass, mentions of violence


Nothing really makes sense anymore.

She's heard the introductions. She's managed to make it out of the cave she woke up in. By this point, she's even managed to suppress the urge to run screaming every time she hears the powerful beat of wings nearby, or sees the impossible red beasts in the corner of her eye. But none of that changes how fundamentally wrong all of this is. Just forty-eight hours ago, her life had been so simple - what had she done to deserve any of this?

(She has a few ideas, of course. They're tentative, uncertain - she remembers doing awful things, yes, but she also remembers not doing them, and she remembers being told to forget about them but also remembering again and-)

And now she's sitting beneath a gorgeous tree, holding a sword she doesn't remember picking up and trying to ignore the feeling of dried blood coating her clothing. She's staring up at a sky that doesn't seem quite right, catching glimpses of humans and things that aren't quite human and outright dragons, and trying not to think too hard about the idea that her home - her world - is under attack.

She tightly clutches the handle of the sword she arrived with. She's never seen it, of course - just like everything else in this place - but it feels important. It feels almost familiar. More than anything, though, it feels heavy - heavy enough to merit taking a rest break under a tree in the first place.

Maybe she'll just sit here for a while longer. It's not like she's got anywhere else to be.

Comments

[seesbosscrotch]

Speaking of things that aren't quite human, the plate-armored blood elf lifted a hand as he approached -- less of a greeting and more of a test to see if her eyes were capable of focusing on something closer than a thousand yards.

"I've seen that look before," he said sympathetically.

[lovereborn]

She starts as the blood elf's voice knocks her out of her reverie, but only for a moment. His voice is fairly warm, after all - he doesn't seem like he's trying to threaten or hurt her. (Not that that actually helps her, of course - it seems like everyone around her learned to hide things somewhere down the line.) So she drops her gaze to him, focusing on his words-

-and almost immediately noticing the armor and the glow of his eyes. It's enough to completely throw her off, her response getting discarded in favor of a blank stare. After a few moments, she manages to shake it off, pulling herself together long enough to answer.

"A look? Do I- wait, what do you mean?"

It's not anything bad, right- wait, of course it's bad. She's stuck here, covered in blood, and staring up at the sky. She probably looks like a complete disaster, doesn't she? Some first impression she's making.

[seesbosscrotch]

"Well, you mostly look traumatized." No one could accuse him of beating around the bush... or tact or diplomacy. "I'm guessing you weren't particularly prepared to show up here and now, like any number of the rest of us."

Without waiting for an invitation, he dropped to the ground to sit a respectable distance away. It looked a lot easier than it should have been, given his armor; he might as well wear it like a second skin.

[lovereborn]

Traumatized... Is that what's going on? It isn't really how she'd put it, at leas. More confused than anything, and more than a little scared to go with it, but she's not in pain and she's not crying right now. She's still having some trouble comprehending just what all's going on here - things are just happening. It's like the world around her is too foggy to really do anything... Maybe she's in shock? That seems a bit closer to what's happening - then again, that's just kind of part of the same umbrella, right? So she'd just be splitting hairs-

Thinking about this isn't getting her anywhere. She finally nods at him, breaking eye contact to look back to the ground. "Mm. I guess you could say that." Something else to say, something else to say... "You look prepared, though! A lot of the people here do."

[seesbosscrotch]

That's trauma in Mar's book. It may not be hysterical weeping, but struggling to come to grips with everything and exhausting yourself to the point that you couldn't was still a sign of a person who'd been through too much, too quickly.

"I'm used to this sort of thing," he said with a shrug. "Tends to happen a lot on Azeroth. Usually it's slightly more voluntary, though... generally I'm used to ending up stuck places because the transport ended up demolished."

sorry for the delay, grad school kicked my butt for a week

[lovereborn]

"Oh."

Oh? That's one heck of a way to respond to a line like that - not like she knows how she's supposed to respond, of course. It's not every day you're standing there, face-to-face with someone who's probably from some weird alien world's military, and wondering how to ask questions without sounding horribly offensive.

"Does the, um - does the transport break down often?" He's talking about cars or something, right? Or, wait a moment, he looks like some kind of elf - maybe horse-drawn carriage or cart? She's beginning to regret not reading as much fantasy and fairytales as she did when she was a kid - it's looking like it could've come in handy.

[seesbosscrotch]

"Wrecked, actually. The zeppelins to Northrend went all right, but the advance forces had established a pair of beachheads by the time our deployment occurred," Mar said, with the same sort of familiar casualness that one might use talking to a friend in a tavern. "The ship to Vashj'r was sunk by Ozumat, the airships to the Twilight Highlands were taken out by the Twilight Dragonflight, the Alliance shot down the airship to Pandaria shortly after our arrival there..."

No one would blame her for wondering just how many exploding or shattered vehicles one man could escape in a few years of warfare.