Nimona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yournewsidekick) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
come_sailaway2023-09-07 09:15 am
yournewsidekick) wrote in come_sailaway2023-09-07 09:15 am
[OPEN] September catch-all
Who: Nimona and YOU!
What: Recovering and regressing (thanks to the flowers)
When: September
Where: All over the ship
Warnings: Game-typical angst; more warnings will be added if needed
(1) a feather on the air
Nimona doesn't spend much time as a human right after the big tournament. It still makes her itch. So there are a whole lotta pink animals flitting around the ship for a while -- a rat here, a bear there, a lizard sunning itself on a railing, a rabbit gnawing industriously on the nearest piece of wooden furniture. An enormous whale breaching off the starboard bow of the ship. Maybe an octopus sipping a milkshake by the pool, as it reads a library book with one tentacle and draws mustaches all over the pictures with another.
(And a horse probably thirty percent of the time. She's still gonna play that long game, even if she's pretty sure her cover got blown when she freaked out all over Edgar.)
(2) dreams are sweet until they're not
Within a week and a half, though, she's feeling okay enough to shift back to human for a while. She's got heists to commit, after all!
Well. "Heists." Going through the motions of paying for things kinda puts a damper on it. And honestly, her heart's not really into the attempt, anyway, as she sweeps an entire rack of personalized souvenir keychains into a sand bucket and slouches toward the side of the ship.
Threading her legs through the lower bar of the railing, she takes a seat, folds one arm over the top railing, and starts listlessly chucking the keychains into the ocean one by one. This isn't brooding. This is a good old-fashioned proper mope.
But hey, maybe you can get a keychain with your name on it if she doesn't empty the entire bucket first?
(3) i remember fields of flowers
And then the flowers start to sprout.
They're... actually kind of pretty? Not that Nimona would admit it, but seeing them unfold from the decks and the ceiling cheers her up a little. There's something about the tiny blue and purple ones in particular that she really likes -- enough to draw her closer one day while she's wandering around.
A little self-consciously, she leans in for a sniff.
And then, jolting back with a gasp, she vanishes in a rush of pink light that immediately darts out of view.
[Nimona's been hit by forget-me-nots! She's regressed to her earliest days of running wild in the forest, before she met any humans; she's more timid, will appear much younger if you spot her, and does not have a cynical bone in her body. Relevant (spoilery) scene from the movie is here.]
What: Recovering and regressing (thanks to the flowers)
When: September
Where: All over the ship
Warnings: Game-typical angst; more warnings will be added if needed
(1) a feather on the air
Nimona doesn't spend much time as a human right after the big tournament. It still makes her itch. So there are a whole lotta pink animals flitting around the ship for a while -- a rat here, a bear there, a lizard sunning itself on a railing, a rabbit gnawing industriously on the nearest piece of wooden furniture. An enormous whale breaching off the starboard bow of the ship. Maybe an octopus sipping a milkshake by the pool, as it reads a library book with one tentacle and draws mustaches all over the pictures with another.
(And a horse probably thirty percent of the time. She's still gonna play that long game, even if she's pretty sure her cover got blown when she freaked out all over Edgar.)
(2) dreams are sweet until they're not
Within a week and a half, though, she's feeling okay enough to shift back to human for a while. She's got heists to commit, after all!
Well. "Heists." Going through the motions of paying for things kinda puts a damper on it. And honestly, her heart's not really into the attempt, anyway, as she sweeps an entire rack of personalized souvenir keychains into a sand bucket and slouches toward the side of the ship.
Threading her legs through the lower bar of the railing, she takes a seat, folds one arm over the top railing, and starts listlessly chucking the keychains into the ocean one by one. This isn't brooding. This is a good old-fashioned proper mope.
But hey, maybe you can get a keychain with your name on it if she doesn't empty the entire bucket first?
(3) i remember fields of flowers
And then the flowers start to sprout.
They're... actually kind of pretty? Not that Nimona would admit it, but seeing them unfold from the decks and the ceiling cheers her up a little. There's something about the tiny blue and purple ones in particular that she really likes -- enough to draw her closer one day while she's wandering around.
A little self-consciously, she leans in for a sniff.
And then, jolting back with a gasp, she vanishes in a rush of pink light that immediately darts out of view.
[Nimona's been hit by forget-me-nots! She's regressed to her earliest days of running wild in the forest, before she met any humans; she's more timid, will appear much younger if you spot her, and does not have a cynical bone in her body. Relevant (spoilery) scene from the movie is here.]
no subject
Gross.
no subject
He leaves out the part where one of his closest friends lay dead in front of him and he forced himself to kiss her cold, blood-stained lips (only for it not to even matter because she was undead). He does not enjoy revisiting that memory.
no subject
That requires a few more keychains thrown overboard for extra emphasis!
"If it's gonna make you kiss a dead body at least it could be original about it. Do it because the zombie's surprisingly handsome and you wanna smooch it, not because of some legend, gross. Legends suck anyway. None of those old stories actually tell the truth about stuff."
no subject
Curling his arms around his knees, he adds, “NEVER REALLY TALKED ABOUT IT AFTERWARDS WITH ANYONE. I THINK THIS IS THE FIRST TIME IT’S EVER COME UP.”
He snorts at the comment about legends. “YOU CAN SAY THAT AGAIN. THERE WERE TONS OF LEGENDS AROUND MY ANCESTOR WHO WAS SUPPOSEDLY THIS ENLIGHTENED PROPHET WHO WAS TRYING TO SAVE TROLLKIND. I ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT IT WAS ENTIRELY BULLSHIT. I WORE HIS SYMBOL BECAUSE I THOUGHT IT WAS METAPHORICAL. ALSO BECAUSE I NEEDED SOME KIND OF SYMBOL TO GO OUT IN PUBLIC, YOU DON’T JUST GO OUT WEARING NOTHING, THERE’S RULES TO OBEY.”
“ANYWAY, SWEEPS LATER, I ACTUALLY GOT THE CHANCE TO MEET THE GUY. TURNS OUT HE WAS THE BIGGEST SELF-RIGHTEOUS TOOL I’VE EVER MET, WHOSE HOBBIES INCLUDED FONDLING HIS OWN BULGE EVERY TIME HE HEARD THE SOUND OF HIS OWN VOICE. AND THAT’S COMING FROM ME, SO YOU KNOW IT’S BAD.”
no subject
She huffs out a breath. The noise can't quite decide if it wants to be a sigh or a laugh.
"The stories I could tell about Gloreth. Jeez." She grabs another keychain -- sadly, if Gloreth were here, she'd be walking away from that wall of personalized souvenirs empty-handed -- and chucks it over to join the others. "She's the one who founded the Kingdom, and everybody worships her. Kinda literally."
no subject
no subject
She never even told Ballister about Gloreth.
(For good reason, maybe. He's still a knight. His boyfriend is Gloreth's great-great-lotsa-greats-grandkid. But when Ballister literally stared into the depths of her heart and didn't back away, yet she still kept this little part of herself a secret -- )
"There's this big myth," she says, a little quieter, "about how Gloreth defended the Kingdom." She picks up a keychain, but this time, instead of dropping it into the water, she turns it over in her hands. "How this huge, terrible monster stormed through, laying waste to everything in its path, and she rose up with sword in hand to drive it away. 'Go back to the shadows from whence you came.'"
It takes so, so much effort not to let her voice crack. She rubs her thumb over the keychain's nameplate.
"You know what that monster was?" She turns to look at Karkat, eyes bright. "A kid. A little kid who just wanted a friend. And until someone else called that kid a monster, Gloreth wasn't afraid of them."
no subject
He can tell the conversation has gotten a bit more serious than the gossip fest he was anticipating, so his tone gets just a bit softer.
“SO I’M GUESSING THIS GLORETH LADY THEN PROCEEDED TO HYPE UP HOW THREATENING THE SITUATION WAS AND HOW MUCH OF A DANGER THIS KID WAS TO SOCIETY. AND YOU’RE JUST STANDING THERE WATCHING THIS SHIT GO DOWN AND KNOWING FULL WELL THAT SHE’S A MASSIVE HYPOCRITE.”
“SHE’S SUPPOSED TO BE A DEFENDER OF THE PEOPLE BUT SHE COULDN’T BE BOTHERED TO DEFEND ONE LITTLE WIGGLER WHO JUST LOOKED A BIT DIFFERENT THAN THE OTHERS. AND SHE DIDN’T EVEN HAVE THE GLOBES TO HAVE THAT BE HER ORIGINAL OPINION ON THE MATTER. SHE JUST HEARD FROM SOMEONE ELSE, OH THIS ONE’S NOT RIGHT, AND WENT, GEE I GUESS IF YOU SAY SO.”
no subject
And Gloreth hyped it up so much there's still a wall around the Kingdom a thousand years later.
There's probably no point pretending she's talking about another monster; a touch embarrassed, she wipes her eyes and lets out a little ugh of frustration. It's punctuated by a brief, wry smile, there and gone, as she hooks her arms back over the railing.
"I never talked about that with anybody else, either," she confesses. "Man, it's like Deep Dark Secret Hours over here."
no subject
“I WAS FORTUNATE TO NEVER ENCOUNTER THE ALTERNIAN QUEEN (EXCEPT IN HER TEENAGE ALTERNATE UNIVERSE GHOST FORM, BUT THAT’S A WHOLE OTHER STORY), BUT IF I HAD, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A SIMILAR REACTION. SHE WOULD HAVE 100% CULLED THE SHIT OUT OF ME. OVER A MUTATION I HAVE THAT IS PRETTY SIGNIFICANT IN ALTERNIAN CULTURE BUT GENERALLY MAKES NO SENSE TO ANYONE WHO ISN’T A TROLL. SO I ALWAYS END UP LOOKING LIKE A MAJOR DRAMA QUEEN MAKING A HUGE REPUGNANT STINK OVER ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.”
no subject
Not that it'd matter if he did look different. Clearly, her tone implies, Alternian society is super dumb and the queen needs to get thrown into a shark pit either way.
"Which is aaaalll me being a clueless not-a-troll, not you being a drama queen, promise."
no subject
“I WAS BORN WITH A BLOOD COLOR THAT HAPPENS TO NOT BE ON THE HEMOSPECTRUM AT ALL, WHICH MEANS I CAN’T BE CATEGORIZED IN SOCIETY, THEREFORE I WOULD BE REMOVED FROM IT INSTANTANEOUSLY SHOULD ANYONE HAVE FOUND OUT. I HAD TO GET INSANELY GOOD AT HIDING THAT SHIT AT A REAL YOUNG AGE. I HAD TO ALWAYS KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR SCRATCHES OR CUTS, I HAD TO HIDE AS MUCH SKIN AS POSSIBLE, AND I HAD TO LEARN HOW TO BE AN ABRASIVE ASSHOLE SO NOBODY WOULD ASK ME TOO MANY QUESTIONS.”
“THE KICKER? MY BLOOD IS THE SAME EXACT SHADE OF RED THAT 90% OF OTHER SPECIES I’VE ENCOUNTERED HAPPENS TO HAVE.”
no subject
For lack of any better way to emphasize this, she seizes the bucket itself and hurls the entire thing overboard. The keychains sail out of it in a graceful arc before it hits the water.
"Why does everybody get so weird about things like that?! Oooh, oh no, one guy doesn't fit into the system, his squishy bits nobody can even see aren't the same color as ours, CLEARLY WE GOTTA MAKE HIS LIFE MISERABLE!"
no subject
He shakes his head. “BUT KNOWING NOW THAT ALL THAT SHIT I WENT THROUGH IS IRRELEVANT AND GENERALLY MEANS JACK SHIT TO MOST OF THE PEOPLE I INTERACT WITH REGULARLY IS WHAT PISSES ME OFF MORE.”