Siffleur (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
teethoftherisk) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
come_sailaway2023-11-01 01:16 am
teethoftherisk) wrote in come_sailaway2023-11-01 01:16 am
I want God to come and take me home [OPEN]
Who: You and... Siffleur?
When: 3-days after the end of the Oct expedition, into November
Where: Daisy's cabin, various places around the ship
Warnings: Gore, body horror, cosmic horror, self-harm, CPTSD/trauma, etc.
1. who am I supposed to be? (Closed to Daisy)
It’s common for Siffleur to show up in the room after expeditions, his body dragged in by Friday sometime in the night and left to finish waking up. They’ve got a system by now - he wakes up, grabs his emergency clothes, and takes off. It’s fairly predictable and simple.
Today, Siffleur starts breathing like usual. His body twitches as he’s on the edge of waking up. Then spasms. And then, with a terrible crunching sound, his ribcage splits wide open and blood splatters over the walls and furnishing. The split doesn’t stop there, quickly spreading up his throat and skull, his face opening like a book until even the bone splits and his pink throbbing brain is on full display. His eyes roll and slither, no longer held in sockets, and his lower-half kicks and twists as it splits in two as well. All of him folds open, and keeps opening, keeps turning until his insides are outside, his organs sliding out of the cavity, his intestines writhing and crawling and still, he keeps turning.
Until finally, with one last wet crunch, all of him inverts again and from the gorey mess on the bed comes flesh - hands and arms and a torso, a whole body birthed from the mess that was Siffleur. It’s an old woman with white hair, scars all over her, and missing toes on one foot. She’s somehow sound asleep despite it all - despite the entrails sliding inside of her unseen back, until the only trace remaining of all of that chaos is the blood still flecked everywhere, and the puddle underneath her.
The woman’s chest rises and falls a few times, and her eyes slowly open.
2. the illusion that you feel is real (Assorted - Open)
There is a stranger on board the ship. She gives a wide berth to people, carrying a nervous and somewhat frantic energy as she ducks out of corridors instead of sharing them, or quickly puts a table or shelf between herself and whoever has come in. She’s older, weighed down by layers of clothing taken from the Tommy Bahamas, but she wears no shoes as she pads silently wherever she goes.
A select few who have the ability to see what others can’t will notice there’s something in her skull, a long sharp sliver of something that glows with a sickly deadlight, an oily shimmering sheen that flickers. Looking at it directly for too long causes an awful headache to form right behind the eyes. She sometimes swats at it, though her hands always go through it.
Occasionally, she’ll stay in one place and not scurry off when others come near. This is mostly at the buffet or bar, where she’ll guard her food or the bottle of vodka she’s drinking from. Occasionally, she has a book in front of her instead - the book Siffleur almost always seems to be writing in. The page she’s on is blank and nothing appears, no matter how much she glares at it.
Anyone who does approach her will get a wary look if they’re a stranger, or a more nervous look if they’re someone who knows Siffleur - and who knows her. She’s older than those who met her in dreams will remember her being, but her voice will be much the same as she tries to fend off the inevitable questions with a- “I don’t know how I got here.”
3. I survived. I speak, I breathe, I'm incomplete (Sports Deck - Open)
Despite how apprehensive she is, despite how much she shrinks in on herself, that’s not her only mood.
As those unfortunate souls who come up to the sports deck will find, emotional regulation is not something she’s capable of. In fact, some poor soul’s first introduction is likely to be of the woman muttering furiously to herself while drawing intricate ritual circles on the deck with sharpies taken from Sundries, her irritation quickly and violently boiling over into screaming, full-body tantrums. She howls and thrashes, slamming her hands and face against the deck, contorting her body and clawing at herself until she draws blood, until she exhausts herself enough that she has no choice but to be calm as she lies on the deck, panting while her wounds slowly heal.
And when she’s calm enough, she starts over, trying desperately to finish a SOS call that can go nowhere.
4. Does anyone ever get this right? (Wildcard - any prompts welcome, DM me if you have any questions)
When: 3-days after the end of the Oct expedition, into November
Where: Daisy's cabin, various places around the ship
Warnings: Gore, body horror, cosmic horror, self-harm, CPTSD/trauma, etc.
1. who am I supposed to be? (Closed to Daisy)
It’s common for Siffleur to show up in the room after expeditions, his body dragged in by Friday sometime in the night and left to finish waking up. They’ve got a system by now - he wakes up, grabs his emergency clothes, and takes off. It’s fairly predictable and simple.
Today, Siffleur starts breathing like usual. His body twitches as he’s on the edge of waking up. Then spasms. And then, with a terrible crunching sound, his ribcage splits wide open and blood splatters over the walls and furnishing. The split doesn’t stop there, quickly spreading up his throat and skull, his face opening like a book until even the bone splits and his pink throbbing brain is on full display. His eyes roll and slither, no longer held in sockets, and his lower-half kicks and twists as it splits in two as well. All of him folds open, and keeps opening, keeps turning until his insides are outside, his organs sliding out of the cavity, his intestines writhing and crawling and still, he keeps turning.
Until finally, with one last wet crunch, all of him inverts again and from the gorey mess on the bed comes flesh - hands and arms and a torso, a whole body birthed from the mess that was Siffleur. It’s an old woman with white hair, scars all over her, and missing toes on one foot. She’s somehow sound asleep despite it all - despite the entrails sliding inside of her unseen back, until the only trace remaining of all of that chaos is the blood still flecked everywhere, and the puddle underneath her.
The woman’s chest rises and falls a few times, and her eyes slowly open.
2. the illusion that you feel is real (Assorted - Open)
There is a stranger on board the ship. She gives a wide berth to people, carrying a nervous and somewhat frantic energy as she ducks out of corridors instead of sharing them, or quickly puts a table or shelf between herself and whoever has come in. She’s older, weighed down by layers of clothing taken from the Tommy Bahamas, but she wears no shoes as she pads silently wherever she goes.
A select few who have the ability to see what others can’t will notice there’s something in her skull, a long sharp sliver of something that glows with a sickly deadlight, an oily shimmering sheen that flickers. Looking at it directly for too long causes an awful headache to form right behind the eyes. She sometimes swats at it, though her hands always go through it.
Occasionally, she’ll stay in one place and not scurry off when others come near. This is mostly at the buffet or bar, where she’ll guard her food or the bottle of vodka she’s drinking from. Occasionally, she has a book in front of her instead - the book Siffleur almost always seems to be writing in. The page she’s on is blank and nothing appears, no matter how much she glares at it.
Anyone who does approach her will get a wary look if they’re a stranger, or a more nervous look if they’re someone who knows Siffleur - and who knows her. She’s older than those who met her in dreams will remember her being, but her voice will be much the same as she tries to fend off the inevitable questions with a- “I don’t know how I got here.”
3. I survived. I speak, I breathe, I'm incomplete (Sports Deck - Open)
Despite how apprehensive she is, despite how much she shrinks in on herself, that’s not her only mood.
As those unfortunate souls who come up to the sports deck will find, emotional regulation is not something she’s capable of. In fact, some poor soul’s first introduction is likely to be of the woman muttering furiously to herself while drawing intricate ritual circles on the deck with sharpies taken from Sundries, her irritation quickly and violently boiling over into screaming, full-body tantrums. She howls and thrashes, slamming her hands and face against the deck, contorting her body and clawing at herself until she draws blood, until she exhausts herself enough that she has no choice but to be calm as she lies on the deck, panting while her wounds slowly heal.
And when she’s calm enough, she starts over, trying desperately to finish a SOS call that can go nowhere.
4. Does anyone ever get this right? (Wildcard - any prompts welcome, DM me if you have any questions)
no subject
She can't imagine seeing people twisted in hallucinations, the pain it must cause to the psyche...no wonder her head has been hurting so much.
"Where did this sliver come from?"
It's not like Harvey, but Devon has to have some idea of when this started happening to her.
no subject
She wrings her hands and takes a breath, trying to start at the start. "W-when it all w-went bad when it went wrong when I- when they betrayed me-" Her teeth set, almost gnash, and she sucks air between them, pushing herself past that deep well of rage that always, always howls when she remembers this. "WHEN they made me LOOK at it. T-the eye. It- it was- they said it w-was stone, they said it, but I didn't k-know until I st-stared at it, and it stared at m-me too, it looked at m-me with it's- it's greasy b-black surface and it s-shone, it shone like gasoline spills, ugly UGLY rainbows, sickening l-light and I f-felt it trying to make m-me into meat-"
She slams a hand on the table and then digs her fingers into her thighs. As uncomfortable as she is to look at when she's in this state, the ring does it's job - the emotion stays inside, stays away, and it's just her and her discomfort, just her and her rage as she pushes through it.
"I-it got- it got- it got st-stuck-" She points to her head with the hand wearing the ring, her breathing strained but she forces the words out anyway. It's never easier to talk about this. But she has to. "S-something about it, s-something that was m-more than stone, something like a fu-fucking- a fucking g-god. B-but it was- it didn't- it couldn't care, it couldn't care about us! We weren't even ants, not even ants, w-we were- we were mites, so small, s-so- so insignificant!"
no subject
"Who is they?"
tw gore/body horror/self-injury
Every day for forty years, she's dragged herself across broken glass, just to pay them back for what they did, just to find safety in a world where they took it from her permanently.
Her arms wrap around herself and she jams her fingers into her sides. With a sobbing sound, she finally manages to spit it out. "Th-they were- they were m-my everything! T-they made me f-feel like I belonged! F-for the first time, I w-was with people like me! S-smart and- and ruthless and bold and w-willing to do anything to learn a-about our world! They m-made me happy! T-they made me love them! B-but it wasn't- it wasn't enough it wasn't fucking enough, it w-wasn't enough to l-love like family! H-he wanted more and I couldn't- I c-couldn't give him that, and h-he was- he re-resented me and I- I thought- I thought h-he understood but he fucking lied! He lied! And then he sold m-me out and handed m-me over and they-"
Her heart is pounding in her chest. It feels like it's going to explode. The pain of her fingers isn't enough. She feels the rage coming over her. She doesn't just want to hurt. She wants to hurt everything and everyone around her. She wants to explode into bones and flesh and teeth and claws and she wants to go screaming through the halls until everything here is meat too.
It's desperation that makes her grab the pen, yanking the cap off, and plunging it into her left eye. The pain is instant, bright and bold, the kind of injury that should ground her instantly. But there's no clarity, no end to the building horror.
She screams.
no subject
Valdis reaches for the hand with the pen a moment too late, unable to predict what the woman will do. The screaming and the blood have no impact on her psyche as she lunges for Devon, knocking her to the ground and trying to restrain her.
no subject
And at the top of her skull, an ugly iridescent shard glimmers and shines. There's a pulsing light from it, ugly grey and sickening to see, but visible now. It throbs and as it does, 'Devon' screams her throat raw. Her limbs twist and there's faint creaking sound as she starts to put enough pressure on her bones to hurt them badly.
The shard twists in her skull and she howling, crying as she tries to get away from the awful feedback loop she's in. And yet, even as she breaks her own ribs while violently thrashing, not a single drop of this emotional agony makes it through the ring. All of it stays inside, echoing and echoing and echoing until there's nothing but her pain fed back to her a hundred-fold.
no subject
Desperate, Valdis goes for the only thing she can, attacking that shard with her magic, trying to destroy the god hiding inside of it. Fenrir said she could kill gods, maybe this one will die as easily as he seems to think the Creator will.
no subject
But it goes down. And down. And down. Deeper and deeper. It draws Valdis in. It devours everything given to it. It pulls, it drinks deeply. There is no mind inside of it, no conscious thought, no living creature. This is not something with a will or direction. It's a fractal, ever growing, ever deepening.
This is a sliver of something greater - or, something that was greater outside of the ship. With the barrier in place, this pocket universe has kept this separate from it's larger self. So it's nothing more than an eyelash, a toe clipping, a bit of spit or skin. Yet it functions like the whole. Everything and nothing, all time and no time, everywhere and nowhere, all space and no space. It's the detritus of a thing that existed long before any living creature did, and will exist beyond the end of all ends.
And it's been stuck in this woman's head for years, slowly twisting away inside of her skull.
It isn't trying to kill Valdis. It isn't trying to do anything. There's no thought or purpose to it's actions. It simply takes what it's given and draws it down the endless fractal of itself, doing what is natural and nothing more.
And when it starts to tear at her body, dragging bits of flesh into that spiral, it is just as pointless and thoughtless as before.
no subject
She tries to keep a hold of Devon, but her lungs are collapsing, like the air is being ripped out of them and into that void. Struggling against two monsters at once, she feels like she's being ripped apart.
Foolish girl.
Her own voice rings in her head, but it's not her power that rushes through her, seizing her soul and pulling it out of the emptiness, drawing her back into herself. Air flows back into her lungs and with a violent yank she rips the ring off of Devon's finger.
All that pain floods back in, her own and Devon's and she feels death trying to take her. It would be nicer than this. The silence. She's suddenly no longer in control as Tiamat seizes her body and places the ring on her finger.
"You'll need all seven pieces to kill a god like that, Valdis." Tiamat says before fading into the depths of the Void and leaving her alone with Devon.
no subject
She's alive. Some broken bones that will heal. And a messy eye socket that likely won't. But that's for her to deal with when she wakes, which won't be for hours.
no subject
"It was not supposed to go like this," she murmurs. "I hate gods so much."
She can't do anything except sit next to Devon's unconscious form and continue to bleed, too tired and weak to even stand up.