Difference between revisions of "Log:Meet Me At Rib Hollow"

20 October, 2017

A Moon Ogress joins an Autumn Darkling in the shadow of Mischance, meeting him - and herself - on the edge of Rib Hollow.

Rib Hollow, Mischance Rise

There's been more coming and going than usual lately in this part of the Eastern Wilderness, just far enough into the woods to be out of sight and earshot of Mischance Road. Quiet coming and going, true, but not beyond the notice of those on the lookout for such things. It's just about sunset now. The shadows between the trees and the thick brush have started to run together in the fresh, cool darkness, hued faintly with red as the sun sinks lower into the trees. There's a steady wind blowing through from the north.

Somewhere in that in-between, borderland area of the woods, there's a grassy clearing with a round depression set into the earth near the edge of the trees. A faint, inconstant light winks in and out of the air around here, winding back and forth through the trees, but eventually always circling back to that hollow scooped out of the ground. It's a circle about eight feet in diameter. And upon closer inspection, the depression is really something more like a mine shaft: dark, deep, and open. It appears to go down at least ten feet. Perhaps more...

Dross is perched on the edge of that hole in the earth, looking down. He wears a black shirt, a little big for him perhaps, so that the panels of the open collar lift on the breeze and shape dark triangles against his pale throat; a thin belt, loose black trousers, and boots. Coming from somewhere below is the soft sound of water dripping.

What's that rustling in the grass? Just the wind.

What's that squeaking of some boughs? Just the wind.

What's that wheezing of ragged breath? It's Uschi, suddenly emerging from the earth juuust behind Dross - as simple and relaxed as any homeowner stepping through their front door. Just step on through. How is she dressed? In the same old raggedy clothes she always wears; her bare feet on dirty ground, her rucksack hoisted lopsided on her shoulders, her dead arm swinging in the breeze as she sniffs in, leans to the side, and looks over the edge of the hole.

Silence for a little bit -- beside that steady breath -- then...

"...There's gold, in them mountains." Eyes glint in the dim dusk light, as Uschi's shadowed face turns to Dross and she side-steps to get a better look at him. Sure and steady. "Whot'cha findin' down there, Precious? Whot'cha lookin' fer?"

A crow calls from the trees. Its jeering taken up at once, echoed back in a sudden, serrated reflection, by other, equally hidden birds.

When Uschi appears, Dross looks up at once, turning where he sits on the edge of that narrow crevasse in the earth to seek her shadow-veiled gaze. Somewhere behind that web of crawling darkness, something often shines... His own pale eyes like a mirror, upturned to show that dark gleam right back to the Ogress. He doesn't seem surprised to see her. But perhaps-- the corner of his mouth lifting slightly as he examines his companion-- he might be... pleased?

"What do you think, little bear?" he asks. Much as before, there's a slightly enervated look about the Darkling; the same slight redness about his eyes, and yet, at the same time, a kind of tense, concentrated energy. Looking past him into that vertical tunnel, there's not much to see. But the irregular slough of falling water continues, not so far away.

Caw on, crow. Uschi's here now, let the other's know.

The Ogress keeps the Darkling in her sights, although most of her focus is on the pit in front of them --- right?! It's so hard to /tell/ sometimes, what with that Moon Mantle darkening everything up like it does. What's more obvious is the way she leans her weight forward, toes pressing into the grass as she gets incrementally closer to Dross - dead arm curled up against her body, shuddering in tandem with her chest as she sniffs in twice, deep.

Did Uschi just smell Dross, or the air that's breezing over the hollow ground? An ear is turned in it's direction, all the better to hear water drip, my dear.

"...Sounds deep. Looks dark. Smells... Good."

Because damp freshly turned earth always smells good, but especially in autumn.

Uschi's attention pivots, along with her body - turning towards Dross, she hunches forward and reaches out with her ruddy right hand; fingers splayed out, as she moves to push him gently in the pale strip of skin where throat meets chest. S'like she was testing his structural integrity or something.

Does she say anything? Uschi doesn't -have- to say anything; the sheer weight of her presence is probably enough to strongly suggest she's expecting /some/ kind of answer from Dross -- even if she's positioning the question in a very contra-articulate manner.

Dross, who's been spending a lot of time in this particular pit, smells very much like it himself: that same newly exposed smell, of things buried many feet under the earth suddenly exposed to the cold air, the north wind, the moon that will appear where it has always been after the red sunset has faded enough... And beneath that: something richer, headier, almost drug-like.

He keeps his gaze fixed on Uschi as she comes closer and pushes those rough, reddened fingers against his skin. Cool to the touch; smooth and white as vellum. Dross raises a hand and reaches up to graze the side of Uschi's face with the backs of his fingers. Just once, very slowly. As his hand falls away, returns to lie flat on the dark earth beside him, he answers, simply, "Soul."

The pale light in his eyes has a sharper, harder quality than usual, as they travel up and down his companion, coming back to fasten once more on the iridescent sheen behind the shadow of her eyes. Those slight, subtle lines at the corners of his mouth, like if he were someone else he might actually smile, deepen. And Dross says, "I thought I'd find you here, sooner or later."

What's that smell, what's that smell... Intoxicating. Is it the microbes in the dirt, emitting some gently psychoactive pheromone as they're crushed up in tilled earth? That's supposed to have an effect on the brain -- give some form of euphoria, unique to the wild places where trees grow in excess, their leaves adding the ever complicated biome that feeds everything from microbes to monsters like Uschi.

Not that she's a monster, exactly. It's just that there's a hint of the monstrous in everything Uschi does; even the absence of aggression hints at it through omission. Feel the way those cracked nails press against the vellum of Dross' skin, moving ever slightly to push in at the base of his neck.

Uschi's checking his pulse.

Completely nonchalant as Dross touches her face; it's nearly - but not quite - impossible to read her, as she stares back at the Darkling, the edge of a cuspid glinting as her head wobbles ever so slowly from side to side, edging a little closer, trying to really /read/ his expression. See beyond words.

"...I take my time, same as youse." Fingers press, testing, and Uschi continues. "Ya feelin' again?" Press, press. "Ya ready? Ya got somethin' to show me now, or I gotta wait for one of them... Whatta they call it...In... In..." Uschi licks at her tooth, frowning a bit -- unable to find the word; maybe it's frustrating, but that's a fleeting feeling. Instead? She presses a bit harder. "Let me in."

That pulse: a quick stutter in the hollow of that slender throat, startlingly fast, like the heartbeat of a trapped bird. It's incongruous: too rapid for a creature Dross' size. And then, there's something off, something strange, about that sparrow-bright racing of the blood, so near the surface of a body that outwardly moves so slowly, so little. A body that is so often perfectly still.

Still, as he is now, letting Uschi test his skin with her nails, peel back the first layer of the language of his body, exposing the swift, racing heart. Dross watches her come closer, staring, and that little smile shades itself further into the light lines about his mouth. "Yes, Ursula," he says, and reaches for that ruddy right hand. "You can find your own way in, can't you?" Dross clasps Uschi's hand in his and rises to his feet. He pulls her gently up with him as he stands. "But I also invite you."

He guides the Moon Ogress back a step, two steps, walking backward beside her, till they come to the exact spot, not so very far back at all, where she first popped out of the earth and was suddenly there, present, with all her strength and curiosity, her belonging to this part of the wilderness. Upon reaching that spot, there's a shimmer of light just ahead of the pair where they had been seated at the edge of the pit. Light that shifts into a three-dimensional recording from behind of Uschi as she looked approaching Dross before, just as she was. Rucksack on her shoulder, much-mended tatters of clothing hanging from her body, with dark spots and threads starting to float through the image as if borne up on that cold north wind. Her double walks to the border of the dark hole in the earth and stops there. Sniffing.

The pressing, however persistent, is not entirely aggressive -- rough and raw, sure, but not /violent/, not overtly. Uschi is testing. She's exploring. She's sensing quite a lot, and giving away very little; eyes darting over Dross' face, iridescent flickers of green and purple.

When Dross takes her hand, says her name, Uschi tilts her head back - teeth exposed, because she is smiling. Harder to be subtle, when ones teeth are so... Much. Her grubby hand tightens across Dross', calloused and oddly heavy in his own. "I always find a way."

Sometimes -- and not very often -- Uschi's voice is... Well, it's not that her voice changes, it's still that gravely croak of something often unused, but the words she chooses... They don't always sound so clumsy. In that brief phrase? There is not only unbridled confidence, there is humanity. Stark and clear and sharp, in contrast to the foggy immateriality of that hazy, shadowed monstrousness.

Dross leads, and Uschi follows: invitation accepted.

When they get to the place he means them to be, Uschi stops and stares and... Stops. Genuinely stops. While she may not possess -perfect- perfect stillness, there is something more suited for wild places; a soft swaying, like a young aspen moving in tandem with the breeze. The ragged breath of hers has either ceased, or become at one with the wind itself: she is staring out, at the strange double-image of herself, and in that moment Uschi is something she has not been in a long, long time.

She is captured.

Silence.

As Uschi's former and Masked double sniffs at the air, the real thing reaches out -- only not with her right hand, with her left. It doesn't move - so Uschi is left, stumbling a step or two forward. Not very far, but enough that the Moon Ogress is left exposed to the darkening realisation of her own limitation. What does it feel like? ... Good question.

That reproduction at the edge of the pit-- the verge of Rib Hollow-- stands there in her patchwork clothing and bare feet, the confidence that Uschi arrived with an almost physical presence in the cooling air around her, red sunset sinking into the frizz, dun and ash, of the tall woman's braided hair. Soaking up that halo of blood-colored light, the fine ends turn scarlet and flame against the shadow of night falling. The double's left arm also hangs empty and useless by her side, but does it bother her?

The copy of Uschi, looking as she might if she truly were human still, turns slowly, slowly, to its right. There's something inexorable about that rotation, like it's pure gravity drawing her to look around. When the recording was made, that movement was toward Dross, but in the absence of the Darkling, it just looks like Uschi's turning toward her/self/. The corner of her profile comes into view. But before her face becomes visible-- before the revelation of her human eyes, naked without that veil of ever-hanging shadow, their color about to be made clear--

The image starts to shudder and spit... Starts to fragment and break up like a strip of film put through a projector that shreds as it spins. The crimson stain of sunset shows through the tears in that battle vest, the gaps between the strands of her hair, the emptiness between arm and trunk. Until nothing is left but the black pit before them, and the tall trees of the woods, and the cawing of the crows, invisible in the branches and dark leaves above.

Dross waits where he is, so quiet and so still that it would be easy to forget that he's there. Or even to look where he's standing, and not see the Darkling. When Uschi takes those two stumbling steps forward, and her good hand leaves his, he simply watches her go.

Why is this so... So... So... Off putting?!

It's not as if Uschi has never seen her Mask -- it's not as if Uschi has never seen some closed-circuit footage of herself, on some security cam or whatever, lumbering down the isle of some shopping mart or train station or -something0-. So why is it that now, here in the near wilderness with Dross, looking at the projected image of her Masked self should inspire so much...

...disquiet?

Because it's also not as if Uschi has never felt fear -- she was Autumn for a while, and it shows in the subtle nuances of her mannerisms and Moon Mantle; there is something inherently fearful about her disposition - her brand of disgust is based in fear, not desire or anger or desperation or sorrow, it's -fear-.

Which has still not prepared Uschi for witnessing the shuddering disintegration of her projected Mask, as it almost but never-quite turns to face the camera and... How infuriating! How wondrous! What longing it inspires, if only she could get a little closer and see, if only Uschi could reach out and shake the image by the shoulder, if only she could truly grasp what she was looking at, take it and ask herself questions and become reunited with the part of her which was borrowed and never returned in Arcadia and...

...isn't that the drive, really? To be reunited with that which was taken from her? Uschi once told Dross she doesn't regret what she did over there. It doesn't mean she doesn't want to take back what is rightfully hers.

So as Uschi reaches with an arm that no longer functions, she stumbles -- and for a moment, it is likely that the Moon Ogress is going to regain her footing, and she does.

Only the ground is loose, the fallen leaves plentiful, the surface slippery.

When Uschi falls, it is without a sound: no cry, no scream, no worry. When she drops twelve feet and hits the stone floor beneath, well... That's another story.

Whatever remaining crows may take to the wing, real quick - then again? Maybe not.

It's not so much a bang, as a whimper.

Because it is stone that Uschi lands on, though it doesn't look like stone. The floor looks like there's black and gritty earth underfoot. But it doesn't smell like dirt. Or rather-- not the fresh, newly turned up earth smell from before. It smells more like it might coming up to the edge of a crater blasted into the earth by a bomb that had filled up with rainwater; water that attracted a thin mist of gas to hang just over its smooth, featureless surface. Clinging.

And there is water at the bottom. Water that falls in slow, irregular drifts from above, a patter of dark droplets that disappears into the growing pool. Looking up, there's no sky. No leaves and branches, no wine-dark sunset, no place where the moon will be seen when the red glow has faded enough. Only a ceiling of what looks like fresh dirt. Walls made-- or rather, 'made'-- of dirt, too: plain dirt with wooden beams for support. Someone’s scratched thin lines into the walls, like a prisoner recording the passage of days, or perhaps simply in place of screaming. Tracks like the marks of a needle. Or a pin, or a knife...

Attempting to follow any particular point-- a scratch mark in the dirt or a support beam-- to see whether it’s moving, and if so, in which direction, or how fast, proves all but impossible. And yet, distinctly, the dark pit that Uschi has fallen into is moving. Even more slowly than her image had started to turn toward her, up above the surface of the earth.

A halo of pale light starts to collect at the highest point of the 'ceiling.' It has the same flickering, insubstantial quality as the recording outside. In fits and starts, one long stretch of light at a time, it drags down toward the floor of the pit, shot through with the glint of metal here; with a flake of ash. Like watching motes of dust turn and float on a sunbeam. A thin, scraping, metallic sound, wire on wire, echoes from somewhere.

Uschi whimpers - it's true, and it's not because she's weak: it's because it would take rather a lot more than a simple twelve foot drop onto hard stone to cause her to scream. The weight of her pack plus the deadness of that left arm means she's landed rather violently onto her left side -- the only real benefit of this is Uschi's managed to not cause any significant damage. Oh, sure, her entire left side will become one long bruise; but hey, it will not be the first and it for sure won't be the last time that's ever happened to her.

Eventually, after some good stunned seconds - how long? Long enough - Uschi starts to move. The idle re-focusing of the room around her hasn't stopped, as much as intensified: the hunter's hyper-vigilance returning, as she... Quietly, smoothly, pushes herself up on her right arm, so Uschi remains crouching low on the wet floor. Why stand up? No need to stand up.

The Ogress waits: looking, listening, smelling the air as the water drop-drop-drops around her, ash falls, light beams in broken patches. Uschi is not looking at that, though: she is looking at the scratches in the beams, and then she is looking up. How far can she see? The ground is turned and looked at moments later; watching the ripples in the pool.

She could escape. Bare feed on the ground, Uschi could be out of there faster than Dross could whisper the words: 'mauled by bears'. But it doesn't happen -- why? Because... Because Uschi knows she can go one way. She doesn't know if she can go the other.

Observation takes as long as it takes, the the Moon Ogress starts to move -- heading to skirt along the parameters of the crater; it may be moving in ways she can't quite tell, but Uschi's trying to move along with it, either in or out of time. Follow the patterns, observe, survey, assess, and then take action. This is not done as a conscious thought process: Uschi works on instinct alone.

When the beam of pale light shining down from the dirt ceiling reaches the pool of cold water Uschi has fallen into, the projected light coalesces into a strange landscape, colorless and devastated. Black tree trunks protrude from the earth like shards of bone, each one prematurely shattered. The air fills with smoke. Thick and white, the smoke has a texture like paint peeling off of it in wisps, rough paint that flakes off into the lungs, making it hard to breathe. Here and there between the tree trunks, water runs together from the smallest rivulets into flat, enormous pools of standing water, wreathed by that same clinging film of thin, stinking gas.

In spite of that: while Uschi feels along the walls, the truth is: this is a small, narrow space, and getting narrower even as the virtual reality that shimmers with its hand-scratched looking veins of ash and bone and smoke expands like a flowering tea immersed in water. Out comes one petal of film, then another... Meanwhile, under Uschi's groping hand, the surface of the walls is smooth and flat, featureless, with not a scratch or grain of dirt to be felt. The blasted landscape fizzes and sparks at her touch; distorts around those ruddy fingers. Light and shadow both bend in the wake of each movement.

Hidden by the movement of the shadows projected from above is the square, window-shaped opening to a stone tunnel. The same phrase is cut three times into the black stone around the tunnel’s mouth, each time in a different language:

      DAS WIRD IHNEN WEHTUN. DAS WIRD IHNEN BEFREIEN.
      ÇA VA VOUS FAIRE MAL. ÇA VA VOUS LIBÉRER.
      THIS WILL HURT YOU. THIS WILL MAKE YOU FREE.

Words shaped from slight recessions in the surface, limned lightly with glass, these phrases feel almost perfectly flat; can hardly be distinguished from the glossy blankness of the walls.

Is Dross observing from afar? It's probable, right? But if Uschi knows this or not... Well... Under most circumstances, Uschi has confidence that she is Unobservable: for an Ogress, she has an uncanny knack of just - slip! - side-stepping into the underbrush and remaining unnoticed and unseen.

This is not the underbrush.

This is some place else entirely.

Familiar, all too familiar - but alien at the same time, something beyond her experience yet tied up to it; niggling those little memories that lay half charred and hazy and difficult to process, like the shattered phantom tree drunks projected through the mists. There, but not there. Close but ungraspable.

It's not something Uschi is particularly comfortable with.

It's something the Ogress would walk far away from, usually.

But it's so -unusual- that she is stunned, left pacing by rote around the perimeters for a second time as she scopes out what's going on: expression shadowed, sure, but it's not exactly difficult to assume that Uschi is taking a particularly long time to try and figure out not just what's happening /around/ her, but within.

What is happening, Uschi?

Maybe she felt the absence of space around the tunnel the first time around, but it's not until Uschi's third lap that she stops, turns, and stares; trying to look past the protected shadows, and into the dark. No words are read - it's all Greek to her - but maybe she doesn't need to read the writing on the wall. Maybe Uschi just assumes the truth of the statement, without ever having to know it's there. She's experienced it first hand, after all.

The Moon Ogress turns, and starts walking down through the square opening of the stone tunnel.

As Uschi paces, images come and go in the landscape of ash and smoke that fills the narrow, vertical trench in the earth. A shadow passes over the surface of that crater filled with rainwater. The shadow of a tall, blank figure, much like Uschi's, but upside down, inverted, with each new drop of dark rain a rupture in the image.

Overhead, a dark, vicious red starts to leach into the sky. It looks like the texture of the world's enclosure is being slowly scraped away, bit by bit, with a dull knife, letting more and more of that blood-scarlet light show through. By the time Uschi finds the tunnel entrance, the sky above has turned completely incandescent.

As she climbs into the mouth of the tunnel, there's a soft, low sound from behind: a kind of hiss. The sound of metal travelling through the air. It lands, and the entire thing ruptures, spraying black dirt hundreds of feet straight up, with an impact like an earthquake...

But all that is in the rearview, now. The tunnel that Uschi enters is small and dark. Too small to stand up in, soon enough. The walls are patterned with pyramid-shaped protrusions; spikes of dark stone that call to mind other small, sharp, pointed-things: the tips of knives, perhaps, or thorns... Putting weight on the walls shows that a clear, thick acrylic-like material has been poured into the spaces between the spikes, however, such that the surface is almost smooth. Almost.

And does the tunnel move backward as Uschi moves forward... Or is that just one more illusion?

Slow and steady -- there's no need for Uschi to rush, of course: not only would it be a tremendous waste of energy and undermine any future sprinting, it would mean she'd have to speed through her experience of the situation around her. That is no Uschi's style: like many who've suffered tremendous trauma, those senses of hers remain hyper-vigilant almost always, sure -- but it is not the high-strung whiplash anxiety, or the slow-burn of conniving internal scenario planning, no.

Uschi's vigilance is tied up with careful, continuous observation of her immediate surroundings.

As the red starts to leach, the Ogress stares down at her right hand - and after a moment's hesitation, her left. Has the projected light permeated through her shadowy Mantle? Possibly. Iridescent eyes turn away from herself and back to the environment: watching the world get scraped away as she pads on, turning back to see again where that familiar shadow had passed before, warped by drops.

Hmm. Here she stops, and presumably Uschi thinks.

About what? Unsaid and unshared.

By the time the Ogress is on the move again, heading up the mouth of the tunnel, she's only giving the briefest of looks back at the strike in the crater she's left... It's odd. Sound of metal, spray of dirt? It doesn't shake her resolve -- not nearly as much as seeing her own Masked self did.

Explosions are to be expected. Self? Another matter...

Uschi may be bare footed, but the gentle spike of those nearly-covered stone pyramids don't phase her in the slightest; girl has thick skin, that's for sure. It's only when things start to shrink -- seemingly shrink, at least -- that the Ogress takes a moment to slow even further, half-crawling but persistent; even if that persistence is intercut with a gruff, grumbling off low irritation.

Just for a single second.

Then, without much warning? Uschi begins to laugh: boulders cracking open and sliding over loose shale - rough, raw and erratic, but musical none the less. The move forward - backwards? - the act of movement, it continues.

A dim, flickering greenish light appears at irregular intervals in the tight passageway, with complete darkness in between. At times, there is the sound of breathing. Filtered through something like a respirator, it's hard to tell who-- or what-- the breather is. Is it Uschi's own breathing? Somebody else's?

Impossible.

The tunnel slopes and angles as Uschi crawls, making it difficult for most, although perhaps not for Uschi, to discern where it's leading or how it relates to where she came from or the world (does it still exist?) up above this dark pit. After one particularly sharp turn, it widens suddenly out into a rectangular opening in the surface of the earth. The sky shows through it: the real sky, no? But just as red as the sky Uschi just left behind. Sun squeezing down over the Eastern Wilderness; drenching the silhouette of every leaf, every blade of grass, every pebble, in this violent blaze of crimson.

Is it her breath? Is something listening to her breathe, and echoing it back? Is it in or out of time? Uschi flicks her head to the side, horns scraping against the edges of the tunnels' uneven surfaces as she creeps onwards; dead arm curled up and tucked into the front of her battle vest, hand hidden away. What a picture she'd make; a grotesque interpretation of some calm and firm leader -- because that part is true, even if the visual representation is... Not residing within the aesthetics of 18th century portraiture.

Still. Uschi carries on; a lopsided and difficult crawl, through an impossible space. No wonder she was laughing before.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Twisted and angled, when the sharp turn releases Uschi off into that exposed space, she turns immediately to face the sky - expressionless and observing, grim and blank and enduring as any persistence hunter is wont to be. Don't be hasty, Uschi... Conserving energy, she stops and lays down there - hardly defeated, no. It's just Farwalkers know when the right time to stop is.

Sometimes they just need to see a crimson sun soak everything though.

When was the last time that happened, Uschi? The Ogress watches, for as long as it takes: what happens when the sun goes away, is everything left in darkness? That's the time to move.

Yes, darkness. Landscape edged now not with red fire, but with the softer, bluer glow of the moon: the smallest sliver of mirrored light, just a fingernail paring's worth, which pierces the roof of the world.

The tunnel spits Uschi out just a few paces back from where she fell into the pit. Where she was standing with Dross before, in fact. A strange sound, two swift rotations of a handle-cranked machine that plays some kind of fractious, sentimental music, splits the darkness of the tunnel behind Uschi. And there she is, standing in front of herself once again: that recorded image, three-dimensional, more lifelike than the thing itself, strands of her bunched-up hair flying back on the breeze.

Uschi's double shifts the weight of her knapsack on her shoulders as that same brief moment repeats: the slow turn to her right. To her good side. When this image was first taken, she was looking at Dross; and there he stands now, too, at the edge of the pit beside that eerie copy. It turns further back toward where Uschi stands now. Moonlight bounces off the leather of her vest; the silver, black, and red tassels that swing when she moves. Catches in the clear surface of her eyes, unmarred by any clinging film of moving shadow. Ordinary human eyes: hazel and...

...empty.

The thing opens its mouth. And the words, captured unseen when Uschi spoke them before, pour out: "I always find a way."

And then it starts to smile. Disintegrating as it does, film run backward fast through the projector, an image that sparks and jitters with static before tearing apart into nothingness. Into a vacuum for the autumn wind to rush through.

Darkness.

Everything is better in the dark: it is Uschi's time, with her closest ally hanging high in the sky above. There's something comforting about that, right? Even for someone so disinterested in what's commonly comfortable, Uschi still has scraps of her humanity sewn together with the monstrous, like the patchwork of her battle vest...

...a vest which she is turning, viewing from behind a she crouches there on the ground, right outside the mouth of the tunnel. No. A facsimile of the vest -- a symbolic representation, but of what, of what, of what Uschi? Which Uschi?

Because while Dross will surely know Uschi is -here-, because her presence has triggered the mechanisms of the installation to play out just so, it's still hard to see Uschi because... She is trying very hard not to be, doing everything in her power, beyond literally melding with the earth, to remain nestled down in tall grasses as she observes the projected image of her Masked self go through her earlier motions, echo through her earlier words.

Uschi's running through the relentlessly self-preserving rote actions of her monstrous survival, which observing the flip-side reserve image and Masked aspect of what it is she's trying to be, well, surviving for; some semblance of humanity. She is herself watching her self.

This is an observation Uschi has perhaps never taken the time to be vigilant about. Not in a long, long while.

And that long while runs on, as Uschi just... Stays there, crouched low in the grass, dead arm curled up against her and totally immobile save for the rustle of breeze against her body: staring off into the absent void of where she once was.

Once Uschi's duplicate dissolves into thin air, ground up like so much confetti and leaving nothing behind, not even the ragged streaks of light that came and went in the image while it was present, Dross is left alone at the border of the pit. Seemingly. The tall, thin Darkling goes on standing there, white hands folded behind his back, for some time. Absolutely still.

There's nothing but the slow silver drift of moonlight from above. The cold air that cuts through the trees and the grass. The crawling buzz of insects, almost too soft to hear, immediate to the earth. And the eventual re-emergence of the cawing of crows, harsh and raw, that echoes through the branches and the leaves...

After a time, Dross says, still without turning around or indeed, any movement at all, "Ursula... Come here." The same quiet, clear tone as usual; just as if nothing had happened.

For a long time, Uschi just stares off into that void; unmoving

In the absence of any further action, Uschi remains still; crouched in the grass, staring off into that lack. What does it feel like, to have her staring off like that? It feels still, that's what -- the imperceivable motions of the Ogress' already glacial mind grinding away, forging out a new path.

To where, to what end?

It is a rare instance where Uschi's focus is not on the external, but the internal: the autumnal air and drifting moonbeam are not given their usual reverence from the tyro crone: she is not here, she is somewhere else -- it shows most strongly as the absence of iridescence, as her eyes have nothing to glint for. She is not looking outside at the world.

Not this one.

Only when Dross speaks, does Uschi get jarred back into the external.

Feel that, Danny?

He may be speaking as if nothing had happened, but that isn't exactly the case is it... How can the rustling of leather and grass as Uschi stands sound so... Hmm. Well it's not frightening per se, because it's not exactly intimidating or anything, because Uschi isn't even trying: and yet, yet, -yet-, there is this... Energy. Feeling, around her.

The omission of violent action. Like waves getting sucked back from the shoreline preempt a tsunami.

Wildflowers are softly crushed under foot, as Uschi takes slow, sure steps in Dross' direction shortly after her calls her near. Oh. If she wanted? She'd be silent -- but she doesn't want that. Uschi wants Dross to know she's on her way. "..." Wordless, just the subtle ragged wheeze of her breathing, the dusty rasp of her dead arm against her damp jacket, and the pad of Uschi's feet as she draws near.

Only a few feet separate them, after all. Feet that take little enough time to traverse, even at the slow, intentional pace Uschi takes, which speaks more through absence and portent for now than through what can be seen; heard; felt. Once on her feet, it becomes clear that there is no pit in the ground anymore. The earth before Dross is sealed up, closed, that eight-feet-across circle carved only slightly deeper than the terrain around it, a bare few inches lower to the center of the world.

Does he notice the shift in Uschi's energy-- the green emptiness of the sky before a tornado, the quiet before lightning? As the stone ogress pads closer on those hard bare feet, he remains where he is. The cold north wind rakes the tall grass over the earth. Nearly crackles with that heavy emptiness, as if the night had electricity in it.

When Uschi comes close enough, Dross at last turns to face her. In the darkness, the faint silver-and-blue cast of the moon, there's little color in those grave, expectant eyes, which wait like lighted windows on the second floor of a house in the distance. He studies Uschi as she approaches: the black flatness before her eyes, with no sheen in it now, and the slow rasp of that dead arm; the soft creaking of her breath, so like the sounds that came and went in that tunnel, now invisible, with no opening left anymore where Uschi so recently emerged. Fine grass wet where she's walked...

Without a word, he extends a hand, once more, as before this all began. Pale gaze still open and waiting for Uschi to speak.

It takes no time at all, yet Uschi takes that time and stretches it out -- turning to look out at the absence of the pit, asymmetrical shoulders squared as she allows herself a brief glance backwards; something normally out of the question, for the Farwalker is much more preoccupied with where she's going, rather than where she's been.

Only Dross' work tonight has entirely warped that sense of perception. Which way is the right way, Uschi? Where are you going - what part of you is going there?

Finding nothing of that tunnel to the naked eye, Uschi's horns cut through with a soft whoosh of air as her attention snaps back at the Darkling: in the here and now, that iridescence has returned to the shadows of her features. But for all that sudden action, all that reserved energy that hints at potential force, Uschi does not leap to speak or shout of stab or smash.

She goes still again; greenish-purplish-yellowish-reddish glint of her eyes flickering, as Uschi leans forward to peek into Dross' waiting eyes. What does she see there? Something that gives her further pause.

Magic. Dross has done some kind of magic, beyond the kind Uschi has familiarised herself with.

A ruddy right hand is raised, and Uschi's fingers wrap around Dross' - held firmly, but not tightly, not crushing. It's like she was cradling a wriggling rabbit kit, keeping it close without harm. For it's own good, or her own curiosity? Finally, she speaks:

"How many times do we go through, until we end up facing ourself?"

Dross leaves his hand in Uschi's, light, fine-boned, almost hollow. Pale eyes still trained on that shifting glimmer of color. Did he expect that eerie silence, that build up of violent energy, to turn into anything else? From the quiet way that he looks at Uschi, it doesn't seem so. There's nothing stiff or defensive about his expression, or about the way that he holds himself, slim and straight as a birch in that cool, steady wind.

"You can face yourself any time, Ursula," he says. A hint of that strange half-smile he wore earlier this evening starts to reappear on his face. "You don't need to borrow any eyes but your own."

This, too, seems to be a kind of joke. An allusion to some other creature, also with a quick pulse, suddenly stopped, on some other occasion. Dross looks for a moment at the wet footsteps in the grass; then back to Uschi's face, still cloaked in shadow, but somehow nakeder than before, exposed to the moonlight.

"Whot it feel like, when ya faced yerself?"

Uschi is obviously on a conversational roll now - her loping, asymmetrical stance made all the more crooked as she leans her weight on her left leg and inches closer - dead hand swinging, but her right not letting go of Dross' as she tries to get a better look of the Darkling's expression - his face - those subtle cross hatching of scars around the orbit of his eyes.

There's a wet sucking sound, as her tongue runs over a crooked cuspid; lip snarled back, but with more contemplation than annoyance. Hungry for... Understanding.

"There are creatures, whose eyes I ain't gonna borrow, Precious. I'm..." The Ogress lifts her chin up and down in a slow nod, sniffing in the air. "...I'm gonna find them who gone an' got my arm, an' gonna get it back... Then? I'm gonna track the thing whot came an' took my name, an' I'm gonna get that back... Then I'll have the eyes, that're gonna let me see where I went when I wasn't here, because what got took from me when I got gone? I cannot sense, 'til my sight's restored. D'ja get me?"

Uschi squeezes Dross' hand -- very... Gently. It's like she's trying to impress on him not her strength per se, but her... Seriousness? Good Wyrd -- she couldn't /need/ him to -understand- or something, right? That'd be absurd, of course not, of course...

...because Uschi doesn't need anything, save what she can scrounge up from the trash or glean off the land. Yes, of course, of course...

What's in those eyes, set in that latticework of faint, intrinse scars, that seem to catch and hold the silver moonlight like water? A kind of mirror, in which Uschi's own eyes, with their purple-green sheen like gasoline floating on the surface of a puddle of water, shine back at themselves.

It's not possible to repeat the experience of seeing her own Mask here, in these pools of pale blue light, and yet... There's something similar about the feeling of looking into Dross' eyes. Like there's another Uschi in there. Perhaps one that he sees, looking at her in this moment, after her re-emergence from the dark, wet earth? A child with ashen hair, hazel eyes, two healthy arms, but the same granite strength, somewhere inside; and the same confidence, too. The same wide, tooth-filled grin...

Dross' expression, listening to Uschi speak, watching her shift her weight and search the breeze for a scent that can't be detected; for something that, at least at the moment, simply isn't there, remains patient. Even tender. He returns that squeeze of the hand and, further, places his other hand on top of Uschi's, cradling it between his own.

"You saw how it felt," he answers. "Didn't you?" Here he glances at the grown-over place in the earth where the pit used to be. "If you want to see more, you can come back." He presses Uschi's hand once more, then lets go.

Looking into those eyes, it's... A strange feeling - a feeling Uschi doesn't feel usually - something she's not familiar with within herself, and all too familiar in inspiring in other people: discomfort. Oh it's not just the reflection of herself, mirrored back and stark in everything it omits and shares about her by omission, no.

How does Uschi feel about that? It's... It's impossible to tell.

Or is it? Because she may be just sniffing at the air and shifting her weight around like it's no big thang -- but there is a shift. Dross is reacting in his own subtle ways, and the hyper vigilance of Uschi is turning to focus in on him, and those scars a little further... What do they mean?

It's the questioning that's causing the shift. Why would Uschi feel the need to question what she sees, instead of accept it straight on for what it is? Dross' scars mean Dross got cut up some time by something that ain't around anymore, then Dross healed. End of story. And yet, and yet, and yet... What does it mean?

What does it mean, what does it mean, what does it mean?

What does it mean, Uschi? It is a hungry question, and the more she looks at it, the more it devours: what's the meaning of Dross' scars? Why is he holding her hand like that? What does it mean to feel tenderness? How did it feel down in the tunnels? What does it mean, what does it mean, what does it mean?

Uschi should answer Dross, should probably reply about coming back or seeing more or confirm what she's taken away from Rib Hollow.

But she doesn't.

Dross let's go of her hand, and without a single second's hesitation, the Farwalker melds down smoothly - becoming one with the dirt beneath her bare feet, and going far, far, far away.

After Uschi disappears back into the fresh, raked-up earth, with its overhang of tall grass and crushed wildflowers, the dew of the coming morning just starting to come out, Dross watches the spot where she was for a while. Then he smiles. Slips his hands into his pockets and walks away, into the trees.

They leave behind nothing. Nothing but the wind, and the moonlight, ghost-pale over that flat circle bitten into the earth, and the hard, raucous, sawing of the crows perched somewhere high in the darkness.