Fable the First: Fuck this shit I'm out

[breakaleginhalf]

WHO: New beastie boy Gil!
WHAT: Memory share event!
WHEN: throughout March
WHERE; Everywhere while he gets his settle on, also memories in Arcadia
WARNINGS: Memories may include: Body horror (potential for mutilation, dismemberment, disembowelment, decapitation); cannibalism; cruel/unusual torture leading to death; forcible sedation; mind control/manipulation/commands to murder; Faeries but like, old school Gaelic horror stories. Please let me know if there's anything you'd like to hard opt out of!


I. Where's the beef (OTA, everywhere)

Alright, well. That was a stupid-ass safety drill. And Gil can't say he's fond of Friday either, with the whole No Face thing, but at least he's free and can do what the fuck he wants.

So at least step one is easy: work out what the fuck this place is. Cruise ship? Easy. Specifics? What the fuck. Also he's never been on a cruise ship before so it's very... new.

It's pretty easy to find him: he's the new guy, what's there to say. He's short, he's jacked to the shithouse, he's got a black buzz cut, he has thick scars covering every inch of his visible body in his singlet and cargo shorts and bare feet (some thick and ropy, wrapping around limbs and his neck like the pieces got melted back together, some are small, narrow and deep, and yet others are just shallow and superficial, and everything in-between), he has bare feet as he wanders the decks.

(For those with special eyes, though, he looks a bit different: the same height but a monstrous beast, his knuckles nearly dragging on the floor, arms almost half as broad again; thick, dark fur where the scars glint through like streaks of silver and flesh, the fur short but deliberately clipped down to the same length around his neck and chest, where there was clearly a mane at some point; his face is more like that of a bear or hyena, with jutting fangs and huge, bat-like ears; and his bare feet are now cloven hooves, oil-slick black and almost serrated at their tips.)


II. Thks fr th Mmrs (CW: ALL OF THE WARNINGS ABOVE)

If you're unlucky enough to fall into one of Gil's memory slips, it immediately and intensely feels...

Wrong.

There's a brilliant force of emotion in the air, like the buzz of an audience anticipating a stellar performance, made tangible in the air, like breathing through glitter, a sparkling hit of energy and life that feels like wading face-first into a dream. Or maybe the best high of your life, where everything is surreal, beautiful and overstimulating and intense.

And in every one there's a huge behemoth, black as sin, eyes like burning embers - sometimes it's like a wolf, all teeth and hunched shoulders, prowling - sometimes it's almost a bear, claws and thick fur and a roar that burns through to the soul with unbridled fear - sometimes it's no longer a human, disproportionate, foul and fury.

And in all of them, there's blood.

Comments

[ablativeholopleather]

They're both bad at this, clearly. They'll get better at it though.

"Cool, glad to meet you, Gil." He's not going to offer a handshake, it's not a habit, and the last time someone shook his hand they made a face about the texture of it, so...no. But he can raise his fork with a bite still on it in cheers.

[breakaleginhalf]

He grins back, casual and easy and way less mindful of his teeth than he usually is.

"So since we're on a first name basis now, do I actually get to see your notes?" He's even wiping his hands on his cargo shorts, his plate finished but for the crumbs. Dude can really put it away.

[ablativeholopleather]

Between Gil and Wayne, the ship staff is going to be working overtime to keep up with their raids of the buffet. Add in some of Wayne's other friends and they might as well just give up entirely.

"Mmh, sure." He trusts Gil to keep his word when it comes to the notebook being kept secret, at least because they're in agreement that the lack of documentation is a fucking travesty. He packs up the rest of his lunch to take with them, figuring he could stash it in the cabin's miniature fridge while they went over his notes.

"Oh, you got one of those phones right?" he asks as he once more takes the lead to the elevators that would lead to the decks where their cabins are. "You'll be able to get ahold of me if you wanna do since you have my name and stuff."

[breakaleginhalf]

"Yeah, sure." And he pulls out two, one the same model as Wayne's and the other distinctly more beaten up. "My own phone came with, but I don't have reception. Just the weird complimentary phone app."

He puts his own mobile away and opens the aforementioned app. "At least this one's contemporary - same time and world as me, roughly, so it's been easy for me to get the hang of. Still hate it, mind you, but that's more the principle of the matter."

[ablativeholopleather]

"Yeah, nothing gets reception here like, ever. Even the TVs. Can't do anything with the antennas to try and get anything either." Which also sucks considering how much more he's cut off from everything he knows than most here.

Wayne's phone comes up to exchange information, poking at the app himself. All he's used it for so far is to navigate a little bit.

"Keep it on you. Never know when it'll come in handy."

In the meantime he's still moving, further down from where Gil's cabin is on the same side of the ship. The door unlocks as he approaches, and he gestures for Gil to follow into the by and large identical room to every other cabin. The only real notable difference, besides the unmade bed, is an assortment of cat-shaped figurines of all stripes on whatever flat surfaces are available, the bulk of them arranged around a central pinch-pot clay yellow one that's a little bit bigger than the rest. He kneels at the TV stand and digs a composition notebook with floral print on the cover out of it, and holds it out.

[breakaleginhalf]

Honestly he appreciates knowing they're in the same general rooming area. He'll make a point to rap his knuckles on his own door as they pass it with a brief, "This one's me."

But he'll follow Wayne otherwise, only stopping when he's inside and sees how many cat statues there are, because his ears flick at the sight and he pauses in the middle of closing the door to stare.

"Uh." Right, the door, let's close that. "I did not ping you for a crazy cat lady, but good on you for knowing what you're about?"

He'll take the notepad and have a quick glance, then.

[ablativeholopleather]

Congratulations Gil, you're actually the first person to see all of them, outside of his roommate that he has not actually met yet.

Until Gil mentions it, it's obvious that Wayne was not actually aware of how odd of a sight this is, much more focused on the notebook that he's handing over. Inside, it's all tight-packed scribbling that it might take the translation thing that the shit does a moment to sort out, but when it does, Gil gets to read a lot of little disjointed thoughts that have come from conversations that he's had with several different people. Everything from general questions about how some things worked, to phrases and peculiar behaviors that he's noted, a lot of question marks, and a couple of small doodles, most notably of Klaus' umbrella tattoo near the that question, and one of a small creature with a crescent-shaped head similar to his own, next to a drawing of a small child.

"They kind of just...appear," he explains, though he's aware that this, like most things that he says to people, explains exactly nothing. He picks one out of his pocket, a small bread loaf-shaped cat knicknack. "This one's Deputy's. That's miss Helena's," he points out a foggy crystal statue that's much more elegant, "and that's-" he goes on, pointing out each one in turn and reciting the names that go to them. Every single one is representative of a friend that he has made on the ship.

[breakaleginhalf]

Gil doesn't know enough people on the boat to recognise all the names yet, but he's making a point to at least try and remember them, as he skims the notes as well.

"Okay, so. Is there anything here that's like- particularly annoying for you?" he asks instead, turning a page. "Seeing as you're like- apparently some kind of insect person? Which, fair, no wonder all the mammals are fucking with your head."

[ablativeholopleather]

"Uh...I mean, nobody knows what Gestures are and that's been weird but they kinda have equivalents so it hasn't been that bad. I think like, the biggest thing is that there's literally nobody around here that understands anything I say the first time I say it." He doesn't mean to complain, but it's been weird, for the last month, trying to navigate how to talk to new people that have no context for anything that he's talking about. Even the people that come from vaguely the same planets but totally different versions at least have something to build from while he just...well, he has food. That's about it.

"The insects where I'm from are a different organism from the insects here but I mean, I guess so."

[breakaleginhalf]

"Okay, so- for humans, especially the science types, larva means the, like. Diminutive? Newly hatched kind of insect, which-" he glances back a few pages. "Yeah, you got most of that covered, I think. Pupation is... I guess equivalent, more or less? Like, completely different biological process, but, sure, I guess, let's go with that."

He flips again. "...which does explain why like, a thrice-removed euphemism for fornication doesn't make any fucking sense."

[ablativeholopleather]

Wayne nods, sort of distracted as he puts together a few things from other conversations. "We go from egg, to larva-" he points out the funky little segmented creature next to the drawing of a little girl- "to the kind of shape I am, then we go to ground again after about thirty cycles and grow again, metamorphosing. But talking to Crichton before, humans and human-like people don't pupate, they just kinda...grow. Like plants." That much he understands if he bases it in that sort of logic.

He's got a grumpy sort of pout on his face about the euphemisms. "Yeah and when I tried to get clarification, the assumption was that I was making fun of someone's choice in boyfriend?" Which, granted, he did kind of switch gears to when he realized he wasn't going to get any clarification and instead realized that there was more to the gender thing here.

[breakaleginhalf]

He opens his mouth to comment on the plant comparison. Then closes it. A short pause. And then he just shrugs.

Hey, if it ain't wrong.

"Okay, so gender is a whole other problem I'm not even gonna bother starting on, we'll- fuck, I dunno, circle back to it later." It can wait. "Relevant point being, humans are stupid about the same apparent gender being a couple. It's a whole thing. I'm not, personally, I'm gay - I'm a guy, I like guys, moving on."

He flaps the notepad a little. "Getting laid is a euphemism for having sex, which- I. Genuinely have no idea if you know what that is. Uh. An anatomically internal method of procreation?"

[ablativeholopleather]

"Gender's dumb to get all hung up on anyway."

Wayne listens, and almost thinks he should be taking notes, but he can write down the parts that he remembers later. It's like a lightbulb comes on over his head when Gil gets to the whole thing about sex.

"Like galliforms? They need two to make more and they lay eggs."

He's probably way off but he's trying.

[breakaleginhalf]

He grimaces, ears flicking under his Mask, but it's not aimed at Wayne.

"Jesus Christ I hate human anatomy so much," he mutters, passing the notebook back in case Wayne wants to, like. Take notes. "Mammals don't lay eggs, females have a special organ called a womb that serves the same purpose of like, fetal growth casing. Gestational period of about nine months, then the baby gets birthed whole and free."

[ablativeholopleather]

Welcome to your life now Gil, you are providing sex ed for local confused alien. Thank you for being a good sport about it.

Wayne does write it all down as soon as he finds the pencil that he'd stashed to be able to do so. There's more sketching, a very small human all curled up in a ball inside a larger person, the closest he can really get without actual anatomical reference guides.

"Got it. Okay. We don't do that. I mean, Waynes don't do that. When we die our flesh goes back to the planet and reconstitutes into the beginning stem components of new larvae. If we live to become Old Waynes and die that way, there's more material for them." He turns to a new page to sketch the process, from that same little slinking creature, to a smaller Wayne with more of its carapace wrapped around, to what is basically the present Wayne. Off to one side, there's a little skull in the shape of his head, arrows for the cycle making it into something of a flow chart. The creature that he draws at the end of the process is downright alien, with a multitude of arms and legs and a tail to boot.

[breakaleginhalf]

Honestly the sketch is pretty much spot on, Gil can't fault that.

"Yeah, humans don't do that." He pauses, then corrects, "Human humans don't do that. Like, the baseline ones."

He gestures for the notepad back so he can sketch too, lining his up beneath Wayne's.

"We go baby, so larval-" and a tiny human sitting down. "-children and teenagers, the sort of pupation, puberty phase?" A medium sized stick figure beneath the smaller Wayne. "Adults, like- post-pupation. Us." A full-size stick man beneath the Wayne. "And then old, uh. Like, ages sixty upwards, I guess?" And a hunched stick man using a walking stick under the eldritch Wayne. "And then we die. No redo's or respawn or new life from our corpses. Just-- dead." He adds arrows between them, but after the old human he just draws an X.

[ablativeholopleather]

Again Wayne can hear the voice of Dedusmuln in his head going fascinating as Gil explains the human life cycle.

"That explains why some people are stoked to be here when they woulda been dead in their worlds," he muses, thinking back to conversations he's had with Pratt. "So, the having uh. The children, that has to happen in between because you don't generate afterward. Okay that makes more sense."

He feels so much better about all this now that he has someone that's willing to actually teach him things.

[breakaleginhalf]

"Yeah, the adult phase for us is when we procreate, but, uh. The actual time span is pretty much 'straight out of pupation' until 'right before we get old', so like. Forty? Years?"

Then he frowns. "Wait, you don't use years." He looks back at Wayne. "How long is a cycle? We can probably convert it."

[ablativeholopleather]

"Uh..." there's an absent look that comes with that, when Wayne's hands come up and he counts briefly on his fingers. "Ok, so I was a larva for about seven cycles, I was two cycles out of pupation when I moved into my new place, stayed there for like...two, then went back to Waynehouse for another seven..." A little bit of muttering under his breath, and he's starting to look more confused. "If I'm roughly approaching middle age, and Crichton was saying that's like thirty years or something by human terms and we're assuming I'm kind of the same age...uh..."

Why is he doing this to himself? Where's a calculator?

[breakaleginhalf]

Gil snorts abruptly, loud and dry, and he grins.

"Okay, first of all, Crichton's a dickhead, thirty isn't middle-aged. For humans that's like, fifty. We live to like, ninety or a hundred."

He invites himself to sit on the couch, flipping to a new page. "Secondly- so, uh. Day-night period, one day, is twenty-four hours. Three hundred and sixty-five days in a year." He's writing as he talks, left-handed, making a neat table out of it. "Eighteen years for the first two human stages, then you're an adult until you turn like, sixty, then you're an old adult."

[ablativeholopleather]

Well, shit. If someone has been pulling his leg then that sets him back some doesn't it?

Wayne takes a seat on the pull-out bed that he's been using as his normal bed thanks to having arrived to the cabin second and not wanting to take over. He leans to watch Gil writing with his arms crossed atop his knees.

"Okay. So if people usually hit puberty by like, thirteen years and we're equating that to pupation, with mine being pretty standard, then that's just under two years to one cycle, and if we follow that, then it's...uh..." More counting on his fingers, and then writing down what he's muttering, and coming up with a repeating decimal.

At least from there, he can work out easily enough that not only is a cycle approximately 1.7 years, but that he would be the equivalent of 32 human years old, and that his estimation of when he would need to go to ground for metamorphosis was a little bit off. It's a relief knowing he has a little more time than he thought.

"Okay...cool?" He doesn't know what to do with this information, but he sure does have it now.

[breakaleginhalf]

Gil's leaning in to look at Wayne's math - and at least maths, apparently, stays consistent across the multiverse, which is nice? - and gived a nod. The maths seems solid, at least.

"Hey, the more you know." He'll never say no to more information. He likes that he can put shit in terms Wayne will understand. "It'll help contextualise shit later on, at least. Also, you're almost two and a half cycles older than me."

[ablativeholopleather]

Numbers are one of those universal constants. It makes situations like this far less stressful, thankfully.

"Yeah." Wayne relaxes a little bit on the spot, feeling a little better about even that small bit of progress. Now he can tell people how old he's pretty sure he is without doing mental gymnastics. He flips back to one of the more recent pages of notes to start adding corrections and additional notes, including one about not taking Crichton's comments at face value.

He pauses as he leans back again from his note-taking, and cracks a small smile. "Thanks for all this, man. I owe you one. 's there anything you wanna know?" He figures the exchange of information should continue to go both ways, after all, and Gil has done him a huge solid just by taking the time.

[breakaleginhalf]

He lifts his hand in a casual dismissal. "Nah, man, I'm having a good time, I like helping people learn. This is literally my job, I'm a teacher for pupation-age kids."

He drags his hand along his jaw in an idle scratch. "What's the most, like, frustrating thing you have to keep trying to explain to people? That people keep having trouble like, getting?"

[ablativeholopleather]

It's pretty comforting, knowing that Gil is coming from a place of experience. Maybe not strictly in educating people like him, but in education in general. It feels like that means he can trust what he's being told.

It reminds him of one of his best friends in the world.

The smile fades a little bit. "That's kind of...everything, to be honest. Every time I start answering questions there's a blank look or, like..." People are disturbed by the nuances that he's tried to give them. Crichton, for all that he ended up misinforming Wayne a little bit, had reacted the least negatively when he talked about developmental stuff. The other really positive interaction was with a very nice man running a Valentines booth that thought it was pretty neat that his skin could hold a shape. "I try to explain the Hylemxylem and it's like they immediately glaze over. Nobody's ever heard of a pneumataphore and I can't look up an equivalent to help with that. It's not like I can just stop trying to answer questions though, that's way rude."