[Open + Closed] If I Had A Nickel For Every Time My Soul Got Transformed...

[crushed_pearls]

Who: Erin Peters and YOU, but also Phil and Cassandra de Rolo
When: January 21st Onward
Where: Locations
Summary: Fallout of some regains, trying to bounce back still, So Many Animal People On This Ship
Warnings: Lost bullshit, Erin's eyes in a jar, violent transformation. For reference all prompts after 1 feature the post-transformation Erin.


1. Well One Of Us Is Going To Have To Change (Closed To Phil; Sundries)

Avoiding asking Friday why she gets so much fucking mail is getting increasingly difficult for Erin. The curled-up scrap of the Contract with Stone is unexpected but very welcome; at last, she can haul her own sunfish, or at least not spend power like water to do so. The jar with her FUCKING EYES IN IT is disgusting but Erin had given them to Colors for Hedgespinning; maybe she could do the same? Or, preferably, Ossie or Giles or Okie might do the same, as Erin doesn't want these curst fucking things anywhere near her...

The grooming kit arrests her attention, though. Erin knows these tools. She used them often, once Gabby had warmed up to her. They're even etched with a little 'GG' encircled by feathers and thorns. God, it's been so long; Gabby was decades ago, and yet, and yet -

Searing pain, down Erin's shoulders. She lurches, dropping the grooming kit back into its package, crying out in shock. That sound rapidly becomes a scream of absolute fucking agony as raven's wings tear their way out of the meat of her shoulders and shred the back of her dress and coat into tatters. Feathers lace their way into Erin's tempestuous hair, joining the storm, and little scales - like a bird's - grow into place around her wrists and ankles.

"Mother fucker," Erin half-yells, half-sobs. And then, in a louder voice, a call for help: "PHIL!"

There's blood everywhere now. It's gonna be a whole fucking event, isn't it?

2. The Retired Villain's Club (Closed to Cassandra; Cabin 134 & the Hoard)

Love can you come to my cabin at your convenience? I have something I want to show you and talk about. Difficult conversation probably. There is no rush whatsoever.

3. Acceptable Levels of Hypocrisy (Around)

Sometimes you need to resort to weird measures to get around your problems. The issue: Erin has not been eating properly and she knows it. The solution: Erin is now eating in the weirdest goddamn places. Catch her with cups (not bowls) of various foods while perched on the statue in The Promenade, nibbling her way through an improbable amount of carbs while whittling in the Lounge, carefully eating garlic bread with a fork in The Library, or even indulging her endless need for sugar in the shallow reaches of The Infinite Tommy Bahama. Can't be on people for self-care if she's not caring for herself, damnit.

4. A Castle Made Of Clouds (Tauva)

Every few days you might catch Erin at Tauva with her doll's castle, now fully-manned by wooden figurines with operational siege weapons (powered by rubber bands), poking and prodding at it with her stylus and sometimes jotting down notes in braille. If she has reason to suspect you're into building, y'know, buildings, or have experience with interior design, you might have received a text requesting a consultation on a project; if not, well, she's got a doll castle in the smoking lounge, fuck's up with that?

Comments

[crushed_pearls]

"Donated them to fight club, they're in Dimitri's care now. Available for teaching, or for arming students he deems able to handle them. I'd rather they go to work, y'know? An abandoned blade is a terribly sad thing."

[businessorlibation]

"Flattery will get you almost anything. Of course I'll give you my opinion. But you know taste isn't a matter of better or worse. You're growing your garden. You're not growing me another Margrave."

Would he even want one, at this point? Hard to say.

[crushed_pearls]

"True, but, well...I'm not good at...living, yet. Surviving, sure, but I've never actually made or been in a home that's supposed to be like...loved."

It's hard to admit. Peter's words about a home being where you can feel safe continue to haunt Erin.

"I'll have you over when I get the materials together, yeah? Something tells me the walls and floors are gonna define appropriate interior decoration."

[businessorlibation]

Johnny shakes his head slightly.

"Erin, I made my home the greatest status symbol in the city, and then was blackmailed and held prisoner there for years. It took a while before it held love."

[littlefairytale]

"Erin I know what a catapult is and also do not know what a Roman is, I'm obviously asking about the—" More wild gesturing, including a frankly embarrassing flapping motion that's probably meant to indicate wings, "—you have! Wings! Big wings!"

[crushed_pearls]

"Have I not always had big wings, spiritually?"

The time for complicated personal feelings is after the golden opportunity has passed okay.

[crushed_pearls]

"...You know, fair." Erin sighs heavily. "I'll hit you up again to model yeah? Whittling takes time."

[littlefairytale]

Ruby pouts and puts her hands on her hips, and honestly for a moment it's like she's being thrown back to whining at Yang when she teased her, but, "Maybe! But not physically! Which now you do!"

Erin please she knows it's probably a sundries thing but it's still a real surprise.

[crushed_pearls]

"Ahhh, those wings. Yeah, they uh...came in the mail. Something from home but not...my something exactly."

Erin gestures at an empty chair. "What's your feeling on hearing some old, sad memories?"

[littlefairytale]

Ruby moves to sit in the chair, one leg tucked under her and the other dangling, attention staying fully on Erin. "That's a pretty big change to come in the mail... but I can handle some sad memories."

It's not like Erin hasn't heard and even seen plenty of hers.

[midnightroads]

"Enh, I already knew he wasn't your biggest fan. Though...I'd lay money the bridge is not in the bridge, strictly speaking." Space already being a fuck in places like the Tommy Bahama suggest that he doesn't need to make things work neatly.

[not_the_last]

She nods at that, a little pensively.

"Are you planning on donating these as well?" Peering at the books, to see if she can make out any titles. "To the library perhaps?"

[crushed_pearls]

A nod. She's still not going to get completely into it, Ruby had refused to hear Erin's past as Liz before and she's not gonna hear it now, but...

"I was stolen from home at age thirteen, by a nightmare god who kept me in a tower, and made me other than human. At fifteen, I got back to my homeworld, and it was...not easy, to adjust. I'd never had a job, I'd forgotten how to cook, I didn't have an ID any more so even if I grew up I couldn't buy a house or anything like that...point is, my people took me in, and they roomed me with Gabby Garters, this hawk girl who'd been free for about a year, roughly my age. She was a fucking nightmare. Think I mighta been in love with her a bit."

Erin picks up a figurine from her castle and toys with it, idly. Something to keep her hands busy.

"Gabby was honest and straightforward and fierce. She liked painting, and gliding, and high places, and she always said she didn't like me reading fantasy novels out loud but she never left the room. I used to slide her breakfast across the room when she was molting 'cause she'd have your guts for garters if you got anywhere near her during that time. Even when I made it big, became a powerful noble and got people fawning at my feet and paying their life savings for a date, I never moved out of the home we shared. She was...my first friend. And I abandoned her to save my skin, left her behind when I got outed as a fucking supervillain. Broke her heart."

[crushed_pearls]

Erin gestures for Bash and starts walking. "Such a thing as the spirit of the law, though. That said if the bridge ain't the bridge, what is it? We know this place has to be a ship."

[midnightroads]

"...no. I mean, yeah, it's like shaped like a ship, but."

He lets out an exasperated little sound. "There's smarter people who can explain this, you know. You don't wanna hear it from me."

[crushed_pearls]

"I can hear it from you or I can haunt you during my first molt, and that's a threat buddy."

[midnightroads]

He frowns, stops walking and faces her.

"Okay. So. The ship has no engine, we're not moving anywhere, and the ocean ends at the barrier, because this is as much a contained created space as any of the Captain's places that we've visited. The Tommy Bahama is infinite because none of this needs to conform to space-that-works-like-space. The ship's wake is there to create the illusion of motion, because ships are supposed to move. But there is no point in space we're getting closer to or father away from, strictly speaking."

[littlefairytale]

Some of the earliest parts of the explanation Ruby at least had a sort of inkling of, with the way Erin talked about knowing what it was like to have to be a woman before you really got to be a girl, but of course even the details on that are new and far beyond where she could've got on her own.

The story of Gabby herself... Ruby winces, not unsympathetically. It doesn't take a genius to connect dots between why these memories are related to the matter at hand. "...oh."

[crushed_pearls]

Erin's voice is a soft murmur. "Got her grooming kit for feathers in the mail, and the wings came with it. Might end up teaching you how to use 'em if it proves to be a trial, Gabby always appreciated the help. Dunno how I'm feeling right now, only really told you and Phil about her but I'm realizing now that she never really left me, you know? My first friend ever, even including before I got changed."

[crushed_pearls]

Erin also stops. As Bash explains her head tilts in that birdlike way she has.

She hrmmms.

"I mentioned this to Skulduggery, and I'll mention it to you now too. Can't hurt to have two heads on it; I asked Friday about audiobooks, and she told me cruise ship libraries only have paper books, so this one has to as well. There's no mechanical engine, it's true...but I'm not sure there's no engine. Something takes our energy - fuel - and turns it into the lights, the services, the stuff. Might that not be the engine?"

[midnightroads]

"I was using engine in the sense of 'big mechanical muckity-muck what makes the ship move'." There's a self-mocking little smile there.

"But also, yes, what Friday said...in my homeworld, there's ways in which self-fulfilling prophecies start to snowball. How fate--or as them Norse fucks call it, the Wyrd--makes shit happen because that's how shit happens. Yes, I know Wyrd's a thing for youse too. But like. For us, the most obvious way it goes is in terms of Fatebinding. You rescue some mortal from a monster or Titan a couple times and Fate gets on deciding 'that's your damsel in distress. That is how they relate to your story'. The Captain, he's not like the Fates doing the tying, he's like the world who sees the stories and lives by them. Does...does that make any kind of sense?"

Or did he bungle his explanation? There's a reason he tried to point her toward smarter people.

[littlefairytale]

"...yeah, people like that don't ever leave you. Even if you might not see them still lingering there, sometimes." Her voice is soft. She offers out a hand. "And, y'know, it doesn't have to be a trial for you to teach me if the help will... well, help."

There is a certain amount of self-aware hypocrisy in the sentiment, 'hey you can ask for help before it's actually a bigger problem' being something they both know she's abysmal at, but.

"Sundries stuff sure has a habit of stirring things up..."

[crushed_pearls]

Erin takes Ruby's hand. "Sure does. I'll take you up on that when they're less sore, right now anyone who touches them will die and it won't be fast. I cannot even begin to explain how sensitive they are from exploding out of my back."

[crushed_pearls]

"It does." Erin strokes her chin, thinking. "Like a funhouse mirror version of what I'm used to. Fate likes stories in my world but it's neither terribly original nor terribly smart, and you can game it if you can get ahead of it and fill in the blanks - or defy it by main force, if you have the courage and the cunning and the might. But I didn't bring up the idea of a magical engine to like, correct you. I'm thinking about what might happen if we like...found it."

[littlefairytale]

"They actually like—" she mimes a bursting gesture with her other hand, while the first squeezes Erin's, and winces. "They didn't just... appear? That's... owwwww. Way to pair physical and emotional pains..."

She thought most gifts like that just... happened without much fanfare. What in the name of the Gods...