Sweeter than the First Time [Open to All]

[applesaucemod]

Hello, dreamers of Manhattan. The Rift knows that things have been kind of rough, lately. The last dream didn't go as well as it had hoped. Consider this an apology of sorts, and a hearkening back to the good times you've shared.

It's a grand old (and potentially familiar) cabin house that the dreamers will find themselves wandering. The furniture is plentiful and comfortable, the floors are strewn with cushions and blankets, and there are cheerful fires burning in the grates. It seems a little odd that the house still manages to be on the chilly side despite looking so warm, yet it is.

Oh, well. You'll just have to find another dreamer or two and spoon up and fall asleep like little baby cats get cozy. It shouldn't be difficult; most of the dreamers (excepting those with strong telepathic defenses or deeply ingrained cuddle-averse personalities) will find themselves feeling friendlier than usual, along with an almost overwhelming desire to snuggle up to someone. How convenient that the house seems designed for that very purpose!

And if some of the cushions are Hello Kitty themed, well, that's just coincidence.


[OOC: Standard dream party rules apply. Characters will be affected by the dream-whammy to whatever degree makes the most sense for them, and will remember or forget the events of the dream at the player's discretion. Backtag into infinity.]

Comments

[noteasybeingblue]

The newness should not have surprised her - this is but a child, a significantly smaller sort of human, but the tiny whispering things in its blood have changed it so, and it is not fully human. For a moment Illyria looks at the hand, uncomprehending, until her shell's expression crumbles into one of faint disgust as she distantly recognizes the inane human ritual.

She takes it delicately and holds it for a moment - small, seemingly fragile, teeming with foreign life, stronger than those of any ordinary vermin - before simply releasing it. That is near enough to the socially accepted custom.

"You are not afraid," Illyria observes with equal parts puzzlement and disappointment. There are only wisps of guarded interest radiating from this symbiote-creature.

[all_the_gifts]

Melanie pulls her hand back, resisting the sudden urge to grin. It was her mistake, really, to assume a god would behave in the same sort of way humans do. Especially a very old god, from well before when humans were coming up with things like handshakes.

But it was also sort of funny.

"We're dreaming," Melanie says with a little shrug. The worst thing that's happened to her after a dream was waking up hungry. Granted, bad things can also happen in dreams… but if Illyria wanted to hurt her, she could have done so already. Melanie just gave her a good enough opportunity, holding her hand out like she did. "Should I be afraid?" she asks. "Were you planning on hurting me?" She sounds more perplexed by the idea than nervous about it. Even if Illyria was curious in the way that Dr. Caldwell was (which Melanie could believe), cutting people open to see how they work seems a bit low for a god.

[noteasybeingblue]

"Yes," says Illyria when the child offers the explanation of dreaming, sounding utterly disgusted at the fact. God-Kings do not require sleep. The Rift and its intrusive machinations do not intrigue her. She is not meant to sleep and being pulled into this odd little space is simply against her nature.

She looks at the symbiote-child-thing again with dismissive curiosity.

"I am sworn against harming your kind, or those like you." Her tone, once iron with contempt, sinks into something more glum. The child may not be definitively human but it is near enough, she thinks, that her oath still stands. And she does so miss crushing tiny squirming squealing things, but this is no longer her purpose.

[all_the_gifts]

"That's good," Melanie says with a little nod. "I've done something like that, too." She wouldn't put it so dramatically, like something out of an epic poem or novel, because killing people seems like the sort of thing everyone should try not to do without making a big fuss over how hard it is to restrain themselves.

But she does know how hard it can be to restrain yourself.

"There aren't really humans left in my universe," she explains, "so I'm not dangerous there. I have to be careful now that I'm in this one."

[noteasybeingblue]

"You are dangerous?" She cocks her shell's head sharply. The notion is almost absurd, except that Illyria herself does not appear so outwardly threatening in this shape, all of her self and her being packed into this tiny, fragile little container. "Are you not the dominant entity in your shell?"

It is how Illyria is. There are - remnants, scattered, of Winifred Burkle, but all of them are swallowed out by the far superior presence of the God-King within. But this symbiote-child's hunger is made of so many small things, and the child itself is without question the one who speaks and decides.

[all_the_gifts]

It takes Melanie an extra moment to parse Illyria's language. Shell must mean her body. Entity means herself - the normal part - but it means the cordyceps, too. Melanie frowns.

"I'm… almost always the dominant entity," she says carefully. "If I wasn't, that's when I'd be dangerous."

[noteasybeingblue]

She does not understand the aversion to dangerous. Illyria is dangerous, feared, and she would not be perceived any other way. Even the principality, that which can match her strength, treats her with a certain wariness and an awareness of her power.

"If you are dangerous," she counsels gravely, "then you are feared. When you are feared, you have power. You have such potential, yet you eschew it. Why."

It is a quiet demand. When one has strength, one must embrace it to become all they are. This is how the Primordial beings warred during the world's conception. Why would one deny this pivotal part of themselves?

[all_the_gifts]

Melanie shakes her head slowly in bewildered disagreement. "When you're feared, people keep you locked up. That's what they used to do back home. They kept us all strapped into wheelchairs whenever we weren't locked in our rooms."

"Besides," she continues, standing up a bit straighter, "I don't want to hurt anyone."

[noteasybeingblue]

"It is your duty," says Illyria, "to use that fear. Even here. Now." The child radiates power, nothing near the grandeur of a Primordial God-King, perhaps, but power nonetheless. That it would not think to use this power is unfathomable.

"With your strength you could do much." She pauses. This symbiote is a strange and curious creature simply by its own nature, but its complete lack of a desire to conquer as it so could makes it even more so. "But you choose not to."

[all_the_gifts]

"No," Melanie says, appalled. She takes a step back, eyeing Illyria with a disapproving frown. "I can't do that here. Everyone would die." It was one thing to finish the cordyceps' takeover back home. It was inevitable; all she did was hurry things along a little. But she can't be responsible for starting something like that.

[noteasybeingblue]

"You would live." This is apparent, though the differences between conquest and massacre maybe be few and varied, and a god can so rarely have one without the other. Yet a kingdom without subjects is not a kingdom at all, but a wasteland, and therefore without meaning. Perhaps even a small and new symbiote-thing can understand this.

"You would prefer - not to rule?" This, too, is an alien concept. Some would prefer to follow, this is true, but there is doubt in Illyria's mind (doubt, laughable, something removed from what a god should be, what she no longer is) that this child-thing would acquiesce to even that.

[all_the_gifts]

What a weird god. Melanie's familiar with the Greek pantheon and other assorted deities, but none of the gods in the stories were like this, obsessed with ruling and conquering. Well, all right, some were, but they fought with each other or used humans as pawns. She can't imagine Zeus telling her to destroy the whole human race.

"That's right," she says firmly. "I don't want to rule. I... I want to learn." Even a hungry child is still a child, and learning is what they're supposed to do. "That's what I'm best at, and what I like the most: being a student."

[noteasybeingblue]

This is truly a curious symbiote. It prefers not to follow, not to lead, but to learn.

"I came into being upon my world's conception," Illyria tells it solemnly. "In the time of the Primordials, there was no learning except in the ways in which we dismembered our foes. In living so long and knowing so much, my knowledge is infinite, but the space it occupies," she looks at her shell in utter disgust, "finite."

[all_the_gifts]

Melanie can't help but be intrigued by the phrase 'infinite knowledge,' and she gives Illyria a reassessing look. "I don't need to learn how to dismember my foes," she replies, almost an even match for the god's solemnity. The hungry part of her already knows how to do that. "But I like learning other things, like maths and science and the arts. And I like stories."

She loves stories.

"Maybe there are things you could teach me," she hazards. Illyria might not like the idea. Aziraphale might not like the idea. But if he doesn't already know about Illyria, he probably should meet her, right? "About plants--the green?"

[noteasybeingblue]

She looks at the symbiote in complete bemusement. It is a strange blend, human but not purely. Mortal, likely. Illyria had not considered that vermin would come in such varied sizes. It has no interest in harnessing its powers to its own advantage, but would prefer to dismiss them entirely simply to better understand the world it occupies? Illyria has seen this world, its physics and its place, and she finds it utterly beneath her interest.

"I hear them," she tells the child-thing. "I hear their song. There was a time when I could not, and there was a time when no Rift would stop me from visiting whichever world I pleased." She looks at the thing in its eyes with a direct, penetrating blue stare. "Do you wish to know what your voices say?"

[all_the_gifts]

"I already know what my voices say," Melanie replies, meeting Illyria's gaze steadily. "That's why I keep them in a box." She touches her fingertips to her chest, just below her sternum. The box isn't real, but that's where she feels it would be, if it was. "But I can't hear any of the others, like the grass or the trees."

[noteasybeingblue]

She cocks her shell's head.

"Box."

She sees no box. The symbiote has given no indication of a box. Human biology is fairly incompatible with containing boxes within, as boxes are typically meant to encase things in an external.

Illyria was once kept in a box. Her essence was intended to remain contained until the end of time. A simple box could not hold a god, however, and she circumvented that pitiful boundary to be reborn.

"They are in your blood," she says evenly, displaying a minimum of confusion. Gods do not experience confusion, particularly not over small symbiote-children who speak of nonexistent boxes. "Within you. Not within any box."

[all_the_gifts]

"Not a literal box," Melanie explains, a little surprised by Illyria's confusion. Doesn't infinite knowledge cover metaphors? "An imaginary one, where I put the hunger so it can't hurt people." She shrugs once, gently. "When I don't listen to the voices, it's like I'm putting them in a box."

[noteasybeingblue]

That is a uselessly perplexing expression. Illyria decides it is not worth much of her time in determining the specifics; human colloquialisms are so very incomprehensible in their ever-changing, nonsensical fluidity.

"An unusual strategem." And not one she wishes to occupy herself examining. "You are intriguing to me. I will endeavor to locate you upon waking."

[all_the_gifts]

She's not sure she likes being referred to as 'intriguing,' but Illyria's promised not to harm her. And she's interesting in her own right. Melanie wouldn't mind hearing what other plants have to say, if she can talk the god into translating.

Still, that blunt promise to find her is a little bit off-putting. She doesn't think Aziraphale would like that. "I'm warded," she says instead. She doesn't know if the angel's protective magic would work on Illyria, but she doesn't want the god bouncing off of it and getting upset. "You'll have to ask Aziraphale."

[noteasybeingblue]

Warded is a peculiar measure but Illyria disregards it, disparaging. Wards cannot keep her out, nor have they ever. Perhaps magic functions in a different capacity here; she will tear to shreds such a thing if it happens to be the case.

The symbiote's next words elicit a flare of subdued interest.

"You live with the principality?" Coincidence or fate, it means little to Illyria. The principality may not be pleased to see her after their previous interaction, but she cares little for what it may think of her. She is a god, and she goes where she pleases. If she wishes to speak to the principality's symbiote, she will do so.

[all_the_gifts]

"Yes. He keeps me safe." Keeps everyone else safe from her, really, but he might also want to keep her safe from curious god-kings. "You know him?" she asks with a faint trace of hope. Maybe they're on good terms? She's not sure how an angel would get along with a god who probably has nothing to do with the god they're used to.

[noteasybeingblue]

"I do." Though their relations are somewhat more dubious now. The principality has been a highly useful source of information regarding this infuriating little prison of a world. Perhaps it would be prudent for Illyria to visit it once again and demand further explanation.

"The principality is an honorable opponent in battle, and has told me much of this world." This is entirely too favorable an evaluation of the creature's character, but it has been some time since they last exchanged blows. The principality can do very little to prevent a god from achieving what she wishes, if she so chooses to visit its symbiote.

[all_the_gifts]

Battle? So much for them being on good terms. Aziraphale might not like this at all. Melanie purses her lips in preemptive disapproval of Illyria trying to fight her angel, though she's not quite sure how to prevent it. Illyria already seems determined to visit. Melanie might know how to negotiate with a soldier like Parks, or other humans - people who ultimately don't want to fight if they can help it. She's not so sure about god-kings who seem to like the idea of battle.

But she also isn't afraid, not in this dream, so she folds her arms. "If you want to see me, you have to promise not to fight Aziraphale."

[noteasybeingblue]

The god gives the child a look intended to be cold and unyielding. Within this shell it perhaps looks vaguely stern.

"It was not my choice the second time we engaged," she informs the symbiote coolly. "The principality took my phone. I was merely attempting to retrieve it."