come_sailaway | i tried ( memshare event )

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i tried ( memshare event )

Who: clarke griffin & your poor unfortunate soul
What: memories, all alone in the moonlight
When: all of march
Where: wherever you least expect a rift in reality to open up. also space, mount weather, earth...
Warnings: general warnings for blood, violence, murder attempted or completed, genocide, maybe even gross body farming. specific prompts will have their individual warnings listed in the body of this post and any additional ones will be noted in subject headers.

CHILDHOOD ( open )
— enjoy the little things, like watching a kid commit the stupid crime of touching books. no warnings here.

SKYBOX ( karkat, number 6, & open )
— did you know clarke was in prison for a year for treason? conspiracy to commit treason? eh, best summed up as "to keep her quiet". well now you can find out! bonus points, she thinks she's hallucinating. cw: probably some dead dad/execution talk and mention of mild eugenics themes, this is dystopia space after all.

D(ropship) DAY ( rita & open )
— when 100 kids are pretty certain they're about to be prematurely executed, one or two's likely to fight back. abby griffin cameo! cw: see above warnings.

QUARANTINE ( darcy, palamedes, & open )
— witness clarke gone absolutely feral, and her first escape attempt from ~~body harvesters she doesn't know are body harvesters yet~~ mount weather. cw: some self harm, blood, violence, potential body horror depending on how the thread goes.

LEVERS ( open but requires plotting )
— join clarke in committing a genocide! cw: genocide!! (also mentions of torture and body farming) this can also partially serve as a cinematic experience for your character, but please respond with some sort of reaction just so i know who saw it.

AIRLOCK 5 ( semi-closed to natsuno, but hmu ooc if you're interested )
— no one likes being faced with their demons. but sometimes those demons set up creepy music boxes and lure you into watching your friends being murdered. cw: violence, attempted (or successful! threads of fate can be changed) murder

THE CITY OF LIGHT ( open )
— when you show an a.i. a picture of the greater metropolitan new york, but she cleans it up and also makes it a hivemind that you have to infiltrate. cw: violence, some creepy hivemind shit, will warn further for anything else.

AFTERMATH ( open )
— your all purpose aftermath wildcards! wanted a memory i mentioned in the plotting post but it didn't make the cut? still available upon request! request starters or throw up your own

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( palamedes has a good amount of time to stand and stare, and ponder the vast depth of space unbothered. the two kids haven't realized they're not alone anymore, and should honestly work on their vigilance if they're going to commit space crimes. but at this point in their lives, that's never really been a concern. they've been safe and well cared for as best as one can be at the end of the world; they're comfortable, this is their home.

but eventually the whispered murmurings of an argument are bound to burst pal's bubble of wonderment, and leak into his ears over the constant low whir of the ark engines. )

There's pictures of horses on the tablets in class.

This isn't about horses, it's about — it's — Well, I can't explain.

Can you try? I wanna know what we're risking our lives here for.

I don't know, maybe there's other stuff in there they aren't teaching us about. Did you get the code or not?

Of course I did, but —

Open the box, Wells.

This is stupid.

Open it.

I'm not —

Opeeeeeen iiiiiiiit.

Clarke, ( with all the exasperation a seven year old can muster. then a beat of silence that's also several long seconds of a staredown. and wells huffs a sigh. next comes the beeping of a six digit code being punched into a keypad, and the slightest hiss as the glass door of the display case eases open. )

[Eventually, Palamedes realizes that he’s not alone.

Though he can’t quite catch the words, the murmured voices don’t sound particularly threatening. Still, Pal has no idea where he is or what dangers might await, and so he turns around very slowly, scanning the room in search of the room’s other occupants.]

Hello?

[It only takes a few moments for him to notice the children crouching beside the now-open glass display case.]

Oh. Hello there.

( two heads may as well have been mounted on swivels for how quickly both turn to look at palamedes. clarke makes an abortive squeak in the back of her throat and somehow manages a picturesque deer in headlights look without ever having seen it. wells jumps to his feet immediately, arms stiff-straight at his side like a boy playing soldier.

they've very obviously been caught. and with unpracticed awkwardness, they simultaneously choose to lie. )

We have permission —

We found it like this —

( poorly, lie poorly. with at least enough awareness to catch onto fumble, glance at each other, and try again. they're both nervous now, and despite neither child recognizing him, pal is still adult-shaped and thus immediately deferred to as an authority figure. after a beat of silence, clarke tries again. )

We didn't... touch anything yet. Can we please just close the door and leave?

Ah, so you had permission to come here, but when you did, you discovered that someone else, mysteriously, had already disengaged the vitrine.

[They look terrified, and for that reason, Pal is trying hard not to smile. Hands clasped behind his back, he approaches the books, unable to entirely hide his own interest. They’re only a few hundred years old, which makes the vacuum seal more of a gesture of worship than a necessary preservation practice.

Pal glances at the children, his gaze settling a little longer on the girl—she’s familiar, but without context he can’t quite place her—and then towards the door.]

Yet?

[it really is very difficult not to smile]

( wells glances at clarke, clarke glances back at wells. then: )

Y... yeah.

That's exactly what happened.

( when pal moves towards the case, clarke finally stands up and shifts next to wells; like a little amoeba of friendship, they slide out of the older man's way but hover nearby. wells glances towards the entry of the oversized room a few times like he wants to leave, but clarke's latched on to the scene before her; not quite able to make herself meet palamedes' eyes, but diligently flicking between the bookcase and his shoulder.

neither kid knows what to do with that almost amused question he parses them, though, and both remain silent. )

A pity you didn't catch the real miscreants in the act, then.

[Palamedes looks at the children a little longer. The boy is entirely unfamiliar, but the girl--he knows those eyes, that defiant stare, that slightly upturned nose. They're on a space station, one with a view not so very different from some of what Palamedes saw out his shuttle's window on the way to the First House.

Ah. Of course.

Palamedes' heart swells with protectiveness towards Clarke Griffin--and, by extension, her friend. He doesn't know much about what the present is like for them, but terrible things lie in their future, and in this moment, he would bargain away anything at all if it would shield them from it.

But he can't do that. In fact, there is only one thing he can do for them, and it's a dreadfully small gesture in the grand scheme of things.

Pal looks back at the door, then at the books, and finally at the children.]

Now then. Do you want to take a closer look or not?

( wells falters. )

Uhh...

( but clarke — after a beat where she's assessing if this is a trick someone would play to get her in trouble and deciding it wouldn't be — unglues her feet to take one little baby step closer to the bookcase. )

Yeah. ( full conviction, borderline demanding before she remembers to be polite. ) Yes please.

( then straight back to an almost command, when pointing to a copy of The Old Farmers Almanac 2034. ) That one.

Edited 2023-04-03 04:08 (UTC)

[Shocking, really, that Clarke would be the one to step forward first.

Now, he allows himself to truly smile. Palamedes is a lot of things, but he is a librarian first and foremost; of all the things he has seen and experienced in these memory rifts, handling old books is one he is actually qualified to do. With care, he selects the book she’s pointing at.]  

Are your hands clean?

( she nods diligently, while also doing that very childlike thing of rubbing her hands on the side of her dress. you know, just to make sure. extra super clean.

all the books inside the glass case are relatively young — 100, to 120 years old at most — and the vacuum seal is entirely for show. for preservation, for remembrance of the original grounders who brought them on board. but they are also a thing that's been locked away for her entire life, and as palamedes touches the spine of the book clarke's been staring at, on and off, for about a month... amazement, curiosity, excitement, and reverence play all over her face. this version of clarke hasn't had the time to develop pronounced forehead lines over the smallest crisis, she's a relative blank slate with a lot of questions bubbling beneath the surface. )

[Clarke is almost vibrating with excitement as Palamedes picks up the alamanac. Despite the mundanity of its contents, the cover is colorful and highly illustrated, so it’s no wonder that it caught the girl’s eye. He lays it on the pedestal in front of the other books, using the surface as a makeshift table. Slowly he opens it, careful not to crack the spine.]

Let’s see here…do you want to know about popular gardening trends in 2034?

I want — ( but oh, then she gets a little shy. cuts herself off to take a deep breath and chew on her lower lip. because she's not a baby and feels nervous explaining to this grown up that — )

She wants to see pictures of the farm animals, ( wells offers up in the background. for all his flighty, resistant body language, now that the book is out of the case and open he's stepped closer to peer at the pages. and do that best-friend thing where ya swoop in for an assist and just end up embarrassing your best buddy. )

So she can draw them.

It sounds silly when you say it like that, ( clarke hisses under her breath, a failed stage whisper. )

It sounds silly when you say it at all. We have pictures on the school tablets —

That's a screen, this is paper. It's different.

It is different. [Palamedes speaks gently and offers the boy a smile; his goal here isn’t to make Wells feel badly, after all.] Screens aren’t very good at depicting depth, and color is only as good as the resolution. Now, let’s see what we can find in here. Can you hold down the cover with your finger, Clarke? Ideally, we would use a book weight—just a heavy piece of string, really—but needs must. Now, let’s see what we can find…

[He begins to page through the book, not yet realizing that he has used Clarke’s name before she had actually introduced himself. Pausing on a page with a photograph of some truly adorable baby chickens, he pauses.] Ah, here we are. [He looks up at the boy and smiles.] Would you like to see as well?

( yes wells wants to heckin' see, and the temptation inevitably breaks him further. he crowds in right next to clarke, a few inches taller but still somehow moved to stand on his tiptoes to get the best possible view of the picture. meanwhile, clarke had diligently stuck out a single finger to hold down the edge of the almanac. but as she's so completely validated in this quest for animal pictures and her best friend in the entire galaxy jostles her a little, she's distracted enough to look sidelong at wells.

grins so brightly, with that untouched childlike enthusiasm for the small things. then does that behind-the-teeth-squeal of little kids who are so excited that it feels like their entire body is vibrating. even bounces a few times on the balls of her feet before remembering she has a very important job to do here and stills herself.

but can't entirely refocus. )

They look so fluffy, ( clarke hisses at wells under her breath. )

They are so fluffy, ( he hisses back, soaking up her delight like a sponge and getting a little giddy himself. ) They look like, like, you know the —

Like those big balls of lint you see down in the laundry.

Yes! Just like that!

I bet you'd have a sneezing fit if you ever held a baby chicken, too.

Hey!

( there's that easy shorthand and familiarity that comes with a lifelong friendship, to the point where you can finish each others sentences without second thought. both these kids are somewhat in their own world on board the ark — the children of high ranking council members, privileged by apocalypse standards but a little isolated — and that world was just made a little bit larger by a picture of chicks.

then she asks palamedes, with all the firm confidence of a child who recently learned something in class and wants to share it with everyone around them: )

Did you know, back on Earth, if you ate a whole chicken, you'd be getting approximately 165 grams of protein?

( wells follows up with a solid nod. ) They were a very common source of nutrition in the old world.

[Though he remains outwardly calm, the proper grown-up, Palamedes’ eyes dance with his own sense of wonder. Sure, he had had access to an entire Empire’s worth of books back home, but pre-Resurrection literature was dreadfully rare. Books like this almanac, with its brightly-colored photos of vegetable gardens and farm animals, had not been among the Library’s holdings. And they weren’t the sort of thing the Captain had much interest in, either.]

...I didn’t know that. [That isn’t something Palamedes Sextus can say very often, but he has never had a reason to research protein values of long-extinct domesticated avian.]

That would be quite a bit of protein. You probably wouldn’t want to eat it all in one go. [A sly smile.] Shall we see what else is in here?

( wells is musing aloud to himself, ) I could probably eat a whole chicken...

( but clarke's on the ball, and tears her eyes off the picture of chicks to look up at palamedes with bright eyes. excited, full of anticipation, still not entirely recovered from having her little kid mind absolutely blown away. but still a tad shy when she asks him to find: )

Suuuuunflowers? Or — or — a house. Animal house. A barn, I mean.

Animal house. [Palamedes echoes the words under his breath, strangely charmed. It’s not like he has any more experience with barns than she does. Frankly, animal house seems like a perfectly reasonable name for them.

He carefully turns the pages, which mostly show weather forecasts and predictions regarding the most popular sort of apple for the coming year, until he pauses on the perfect picture.] Well, would you look at that. Two for one.

Oooooooooh! ( one will not catch current clarke dead admitting she could ever squeal and jump and clap with absolute delight. but this version of her, twelve years younger, has virtually no worries to weigh on her shoulders. no façade of calm to worry about keeping up. no guilt, no ghosts — nothing except unadulterated glee over simple things like farm pictures.

the chicks had been great, but these sunflowers? these sunflowers?

they dropkick caution and decorum to the wind. where she'd patiently stood off to the side and held the edges of the pages as instructed, now she crowds in. little fingers stained around the edges with graphite and charcoal press fingerprints against the picture, and clarke's mapping the edges of sunflower petals like she could commit them to memory just from this. like she can imagine what they feel like; soft and pliant, suntouched and warm in midsummer air.

off to the side, wells is a little more reformed. he watches his best friend do her thing, and watches palamedes watch her. he could absolutely eat a whole chicken, but the beginning flickers of confusion are sparking in the depths of his dark brown eyes. )

Careful. [Palamedes admonishment is gentle but pointed; the books might be absurdly young by the standards of the Library, but they will need to last a myriad. There’s no need to keep them under glass on sacred pedestals at all times, but they also need to remain clean.

Off to the side, Wells remains wary, looking far too serious for a child of his age. Pal offers him a smile.] Is there anything you would like to see?

Oh, uh. I dunno, airplanes?

( wells is particularly serious. not to the point of having divested the last shreds of childlike wonder — he'd enjoyed this book viewing, just not as much as clarke — but he's watched his father act as chancellor from the entirety of his life, casually groomed to one day run for the position himself. he's developed a keen eye.

...while still possessing that childlike capacity for bluntness. )

What station are you from?

[Pal isn’t sure he is going to find any airplanes in a book called a Farmer’s Almanac, but he starts to carefully turn the pages to look for one. It gives him something to do while he thinks of an answer to the boy’s question. Clarke has mentioned a few of the stations in passing, but he hopes he isn’t about to get quizzed by a seven-year-old.]

Hydra Station. And what about the two of you?

( quizzed? more judged, because wells continues to flit his eyes back and forth from the book to palamedes' face. what he's actually looking at is the man's hands, because they don't look particularly strong, nor like they've held the tools required to maintain the water system on board. pal also uses the station's proper name, not referring to it as hydro station, which is the more popular pronounciation.

but he doesn't ask any more questions yet.

and clarke happily butts in, because palamedes' had asked a question and she was nothing if not a teachers pet in those early years. )

Alpha Station! ( there's no hint in her tone about the class disparities between stations, nor really any notion in her head that her housing quarters denoted her as one of the privileged. there's also no vanity, because she doesn't expect him to know who they are. but does kinda expect he'd have heard of their parents, because they do important work, and thus a trickle of pride seeps into her voice. )

My mom's Chief Medical Officer, and my daddy's the Senior Environmental Engineer. So they need to be close to the Go-Sci ring, you know?

Oh, naturally. [The boy is still looking at Palamedes with a certain amount of wariness, but little Clarke remains open and eager. It’s enough to make Pal’s heart break, knowing that so much will harden her in the next ten years. Pal wishes there were some wisdom he could grant her, something he could say that would soften the blows to come. But he cannot. All he can do is show a little girl and her friend an old book, and be glad that it gives them joy.

With care, Palamedes closes the book. Eventually, someone will come in here, assuming Wells doesn’t grow suspicious enough to find an adult who actually belongs here. As much as he hates to leave them, he needs to extricate himself.]

That’s all the time I have, I’m afraid. Do you have the material you need for your drawings?

( the closing of the book comes as a rather abrupt let down for little clarke, who looks up at pal with big, sad blue eyes. for a second it looks like she wants to protest — they're not done yet! they haven't seen fish, or corn stalks, or any really cool bugs. they haven't found the horse pictures yet either! — but swallows it. drops her head to look at the floor and sorta scuffs the toe of her shoe against the ground.

but not entirely put out, because she'd gotten to see sunflowers and a barn, and — )

Yeah, I have charcole and ( with the pride akin to someone from the sixth proclaiming they have a piece of real paper all to themselves ) — a whole pencil.

It's like half of a pencil. ( wells on the other hand seems a bit relieved this is over, and is looking over his shoulder at the entrance door like he echoes pal's thoughts. but still finds time to playfully chide his best friend.

and it works to snap her out of the mini depression that storytime is over, as clarke whips her head around and raises a hand to her mouth — like that at all hides the fact she's sticking her tongue out from pal. ) A pencil's a pencil, it counts.

I’m afraid I have to agree with the young lady. A pencil is still a pencil, regardless of its size.

[Palamedes rocks from foot to foot, struck by the uncharacteristic desire to pull Clarke and her friend into a tight hug. But he isn’t used to such displays of affection in the best of circumstances, and he can’t imagine that such a gesture would go over well here and now. Instead, finally, he returns the book to its plinth and sets the glass covering back in place.]

Well, this has been an absolutely fascinating diversion. [A pause, looking at each of them in turn.] Be well, children.

( wells, relieved.

clarke, pouting. ) Aw...

( but neither put up much of a fight if and when pal turns to leave. wells does not jump down his throat asking questions about water compressors or the purification process, clarke doesn't cry and beg for one more book. but she does lift one hand to give a small wave, before her best friend grabs the other and tugs insistently. he can probably hear them whispering — )

We gotta go before someone else comes along.

I — I know. But that guy... ( ...huh. ) What did he say his name was?

( just out of the rooms opening archway, a rift will reopen for palamedes to exit through. actually really well timed this time, not everyone this month gets so lucky

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