come_sailaway | A Being of Duality (OTA)

Who: Sheogorath and YOU!
What: Life on the ship, feeling the fallout of the past month, one for being generally aware of the emotional aura of the ship in the aftermath of Valdis' murder
When: October 1st onward
Where: Various
Warnings: Discussions of murder; likely discussions of grief, depression, violence; reflection on loss of memory/identity; overall a darker tone to start the month (though there is one light one in here)

My Future Seems Like One Big Past [various, stern of ship]

It seems like the stern is the part of the ship he reserves for the emotions that are too big for him to keep inside his skin. Though perhaps that's not entirely a correct assessment, as he's keeping to a humanoid form as he scratches images of birds into the deck with the sharpened end of a pool net handle. Every so often, he stops, looks up at the sky, and shakes his head.

Its one of those days where he can feel another god's skin inside his own... or perhaps outside of him, and he's the one crawling around in the dead skin. Memories and feelings that aren't his hammer at the mausoleum door like a throng of the dead, driven single-mindedly to escape and feed. But Sheogorath is nothing if not a well-constructed prison for such things.

They rattle the bars and claw at the doors but the only thing that slips through is a wistful thought and a craving for emotional catharsis.

"Tell me," he asks, out of the blue, "Does it ever rain, here? Does the wind ever howl, of its own accord?"

It's the Only Thing That Slowly Stops the Ache [various, response to Valdis' murder]

He notices the change in the mood on board, but he doesn't know why. The anger, the grief, the pain, all of that reaches him through the filter of madness; loss of control, overwhelming emotional, seeing red or white or flashing lights.

The question arises: does he help to cultivate those emotions, or does he treat them? Certainly, he has the power to do both. In the short term, it would be kinder to ease their pain, but what had that Being of Order said? The ship runs on misery, runs on pain, runs on hurt. He was almost definitely summoned here for those purposes. Would it be better, to unleash one great and terrible burst of pain, one that could sustain the ship for a long time, and feed his Sphere as well?

Perhaps the mindset of the next person he speaks to will sway him, one way or the other.

Leave Me All In Pieces [Outside Stellar]

With all the chaos on board, it becomes better for him to be many things. He settles into a fungal grotto outside his usual place, in the entryway of the Stellar. More fruiting bodies are sprouting from him than is typical, each one like a tiny ear and a tiny brain, processing the ambient chaos. That isn't to say he won't form a mouth and try to converse with someone if they come closer.

Put Me Back Together [The Laundry Room]
As much as it's nice to have all this ~~free real estate~~ madness floating around, it almost makes him start to feel uncomfortable, like when you get sweaty and bloated after eating a meal that's way to big and way too rich. The solution?
Cat's going for a ride in the washing machine to get himself cleaned up.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

It's going to be hard for anyone in the facilities not to notice the sound or the smell of hot, wet cat.

Sheo doesn't care though, he's having a great ride.

Tell Me Reality is Better Than the Dream [Promenade]

At some point, Sheogorath has managed to set up an entire tea party in the middle of the Promenade, long tables made by pushing together shorter ones and covering them with a tablecloth. The tables are laden with everything he deigned to scrounge up from the shops and the restaurants. He's sitting at the end of the table, leaning back in the most ostentatious chair he can find, with his feet up on the table.

If, at some point, you decide to sit down and join him, he'll greet you with, "Good mornoonafterneevening. I'm not sure whether to pour you tea or cut you apart! Which shall it be? Cake or death?"

I Guess I'll Save the Best for Last [Wildcard]

(Despite the gloomy tone of these, I'm absolutely up for silliness and cosmic weirdness, reading the recap of the Valdis incident has just put me in a mood. HMU on Discord- you know who you are ;) )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Ah, I suppose you're welcome to think that. But I do encourage you to think about it more. You'd be surprised what silvery things you find when you scratch away the dark surface."

"So, tell me more about what you do here. How do you 'feed the ship with your suffering?'"

"Welcome to?" she scoffs at the implication that she needs any sort of permission. "Furball, if I thought of it any more then I'd owe it a w-2 and a pension plan." She painstakingly obsesses over most of her decisions, so she's fairly comfortable with this one.

"And honestly, it's a matter of allowing myself to get emotionally invested despite my knowing better." She could just as easily block things out and stop caring. But what's the point then?

"Hmm. Just the casual day-to-day suffering, then? Nothing splendidly horrific?"

"I sign up for the excursions, obviously. Somebody has to. I can't pretend I'm too precious to get my hands dirty." She rather it be her than the teenage population.

"What about you? Was your offer of death an attempted contribution or merely boredom, or are you so lonely that you rely on threats?"

"A bit of all of the above, I suppose. Sometimes I break things when I'm bored. Sometimes I make threats because the common civil expectation is that you shouldn't threaten people. And, well, I suppose being summoned to a place comes with a certain obligation to fulfill a request."

"Wait, so which is it? You're trying to go against the status quo. Or with it?"

"Oh, I'm all about changing the status quo. But I'm also inextricably interwoven into it. How do I say this... I'm an idea, but I'm also a person. But I'm less of a person from being an idea, and I don't like that much at all. But it's important to me that I be an idea."

"Whose idea are you?"

"Ah, now, that's... that's a topic best not discussed. A few people know and are the better or worse from it, but most of the people who know aren't anything at all now. It doesn't like it when you notice it, you see."

"You mean the vanished?" Ava asks, wondering if he knew any of the recently departed. She squints at him suspiciously. "You're certainly not my idea."

"Oh, but I am, my dear. I am all the static between the ripples and echoes, those irrational, fractal edges, and I'm that flicker-flash, that triumphant giddiness that comes with understanding the maddeningly complex or the deceptively simple. And I'm other things, too. You know that crawling along your skin when your suit isn't actually too tight, but you're questioning why you're doing any of what you're doing enough that your very being begins to itch?" He licks his paw, not elaborating further.

"The vanished... that's a good way to put them, I suppose, though there are different sorts of failing. The ones who failed... the ones who succeeded, much to their horror... the ones whose fates even I can only hazard a guess at. But again, probably not a good idea to dwell on those things, lest you vanish yourself."

"Oh shut up. You're none of those things. You're clearly struggling with identity crisis, but you don't get to take ownership over my personal beliefs and experiences just because you have some invasive mind abilities."

Ava stomps off. She wants cake now.

He continues striding after her on his little kitty paws.

"Well, then in that case, I suppose that just makes me a cute, clever, ultimately insufferable busybody. What sort of cake do you think they have in the Windjammer today?"

"Cute, fine," because even she isn't going to deny the intrinsic adorableness of a kitty. "Clever? Eh." Wiggle of her hand back and forth. Having access to somebody's thoughts is cheating, not a proof of cleverness. "Busybody, most certainly. But you're no Eddy Izzard." See she knows the reference after all.

"Hoping for lemon."

"Well, no one is Eddy Izzard except Eddy Izzard. I think I might've had the last slice of lemon, I got hungry while I was waiting, but we could always raid the kitchen for more."

"No hairballs in the kitchen. So if you're just a thought, do you have any original ones of your own?" she questions. She continues heading back up the stairs, despite starting on the lowest deck and the buffet being at the top.

"That's a very good question. I think I do, but I can't be entirely sure. I'm never entirely sure of anything, really. I just stumble my way through existence on very informed hunches."

A Being of Duality (OTA)

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