come_sailaway | Fable the First: Fuck this shit I'm out

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Fable the First: Fuck this shit I'm out

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.

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To Gil's credit, he's certainly seen weirder things than the way Wayne's hand shifts like Play-doh. On the other hand, he hasn't seen anyone quite like that before, and his eyes widen reflexively at the odd sight.

"Woah. Uh." Focus, Gil. "Yeah, that's definitely gonna be strange to humans. Ours just- okay so I'm not the best example, but like--"

He mimics the act, pinching the the back of his hand, but Wayne will see how the skin pinched and relaxes, slightly paler from the force that settles quickly, that Gil actually can't through the fur.

"Yeah, human skin is a- shit, what's the word. Semi-permeable membrane. Lots of blood vessels in it - that's what the colour changes are, from blocking those for a second." He turns his hand back and forth, showing off how the tendons shift in and out of visibility as he flexes, how that deforms the skin and changes colour. "Humans only have like ten litres of blood. If we lose more than like, four or five? We pass out. I think if we lose eight we die 'cos our brains don't have enough oxygen, but like- don't quote me on that one, that's straight up me guessing."

Wayne observes, just the way he had with Max, and comes to the conclusion that regardless of the color of a human's skin, it all behaves largely the same way, just the same as it tends to back home. Somsnosa was blue but she was just as malleable as he is.

Following the motion of Gil's hand, Wayne does the same thing. There's a similar tendon shift in his wrist, but it's nowhere near as visible, as if the clay that makes up his outer layer of flesh is that much thicker that it would hide such things. There is also, very subtle at the joints of his arms and wrist, seams similar to what one might see on a jointed doll.

"Okay, so like...best to keep all your blood inside, got it." Which generally seems like a good idea for life overall if he's being honest. He pauses on that thought, then drags up the shirt he's wearing, momentarily forgetting that his torso is still going to be covered by the rash guard. That would be a little harder to move aside to be able to show a mark on his stomach that would have probably been interesting. "When I got here, I was healing from this really bad fight. There was still a mark where I was leaking," he explains, realizing that the motion is probably weird from the outside. He gestures to the space just below the subtle arch of his ribcage, where a human's solar plexus would be.

He snickers a little at the blood on the inside comment. That is indeed where the blood's supposed to be.

When he gestures to the injury area, though, Gil's expression sobers a little as he grimaces.

"Yeah, humans don't... repair, easy. If a cut is big enough we'll need to get stitches- literally, you get a special needle and thread to sew a wound closed. And it'll heal, if you take care of it, but it, uh."

He holds his arm out again, and traces one of the thick scars - this one encircles his entire arm, though there are a great many smaller ones, some only an inch long, some long and thin, some like his skin was gouged out and closed clumsily enough to leave a distinct shape.

"It scars. And those don't get better, or go away."

The idea of holding flesh together with needle and thread makes him feel a little bit squirmy. He doesn't like the mental image that this presents.

"Weird," he says simply, then leans forward and carefully lays his fingers against the back of Gil's hand to tilt his arm and get a better look at the scars. He doesn't hold tight, and his skin is fairly cool to the touch, smooth in a rather uncanny way that, if Gil were to look close enough, would be a result of having no fingerprints or other obvious creases in his fingers unless they're bent to a dramatic degree. "Is that why they look like that? The needle and thread make them like this? Do they hurt?" They certainly look painful...

Luckily Gil's got the layer of fur separating Wayne's fingers from his skin, but it's still weird watching his skin pick up the imprint of fur that Gil knows he won't see.

"Not anymore. They did when they were first healing - humans have a lot of nerves that let us feel pain, but those kind of die when a scar forms. So the scars themselves don't actually hurt. More like the area around it ached until it finished, I guess."

He shifts his wrist, gently so as not to dislodge Wayne's exploring. "You see how there's like, ridges in them? It's where the new tissue pushed against the thread as it was forming."

He's got enough of them that he might as well admit it now. "That's one of the ways I'm not human anymore. When a human gets a limb chopped off, the amount of pain and blood loss kills them. It takes some pretty severe medical treatment to make sure they even survive, and you don't get the limb back." He lifts his free hand to gesture to his neck - and the thick collar of scar tissue, that bobs with his Adam's apple as he talks. "Head off? Instant."

"But you just come back, and come back. Kinda like me," he concludes, because even if the method is different, they've both experienced repeated death from the sound of it. His fingers smooth over a more raised strip of tissue, and the line of his brow furrows. It sure looks like it should hurt.

He wiggles his free hand.

"Kinda. I got brought back, over and over," he explains. "Someone else had to sew me back together every time. I was in a weird place- literally, like. Another realm, not quite Earth." He frowns for a better comparison. "You know how the Captain kidnapped us all and brought us here? I got kidnapped by another being, me and a few friends, about a year and a half before I got dragged here."

There's a distinct sort of distress as he listens to that. "You don't have a choice in the matter?"

The more he learns about other peoples' situations here, the more upset he gets on all of their behalves. It isn't right, to just be putting people through the things that he's heard. But then another one of those little lightbulb moments happens, and his hands come away as he instead gestures toward Gil as a whole. "That's why you were saying ex-human, right? Because like, all of that did something to you?"

He gives a slight grin, but it falls a bit flat. "Fast learner."

And his gaze flicks to his hands again. "I... a part of that whole mess made it so I still look human, to most people. But it's just an illusion. It wasn't the killing me that changed me, but. It was a pretty big part of the experience."

He can't even really take the compliment because that's just. That's a lot. That's fucked up.

"Dude... That sucks." How else is he supposed to say it? What can he even say? "Are- Is- Uh. What about now? Are you okay now?"

"I mean, I got out, so."

He shrugs one shoulder.

"There's a few other people here like me. Uh, different stories, but same, like. We all got hit by the same assholes. We're called Changelings. Erin's one too, but her Mask- the, uh, the human illusion. She doesn't have one."

Wayne's mentally going down the list of people he's met so far. Erin isn't one of them, unfortunately. He'd take Gil's word for it though.

He settles back into his seat, slouched over with his elbows atop his knees, looking down at the notebook again. He'd made so much progress just in the short time they've been sitting and talking here. There's a small uptick in his pride over that; in spite of everything, he was learning and more importantly, he didn't feel weird about it. He feels weird about most things here, he's just pretty good at hiding it.

He's quiet a moment, looking from Gil to the floor. "Hey...thanks you, for all this. It's cool not feeling quite as lost."

"Hey, nah, dude. No stress." He smiles again, lopsided and a lot more genuine. "I know what it's like to feel completely out of the fucking loop, it's rough. And if you've ever got other stuff you wanna ask about, no such thing as a stupid question."

He leans back on the couch, lifting an arm to rub through the fur on his neck. "Or even just hang out, or whatever, like. You're a cool dude. I like your company."

Wayne can't help the smile growing in return. He rubs his hand over the back of the opposite one where the skin is still raised just for something to be able to do with it.

"Yeah man, sure. It doesn't always have to be about answering questions, we can just chill. I like the pool up on the top deck, plenty of through-traffic there too if you wanna meet some of the others."

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