Link to Aislinnâs carrd: https://aislinnnorth.carrd.co/
Backstory writings can be found here!
wallacepolsom

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Discoholic đȘ©
I'd rather be in outer space đž
cherry valley forever
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
Jules of Nature
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"

oozey mess

⣠Chile in a Photography âŁ
RMH

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Kaledo Art
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Peter Solarz
Claire Keane

@theartofmadeline
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
NASA

PR's Tumblrdome
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@lettersnorth
Link to Aislinnâs carrd: https://aislinnnorth.carrd.co/
Backstory writings can be found here!
Troubleshooter
False Calm
As Sergius came back online, Aislinn carefully disconnected the cables from the mobile unitâs spine. In the wake of alarms and red line after red line of code spilling down the monitors, silence had landed in the room like the aftermath of an explosion. It left a faint ringing in Aislinnâs ears. One by one, the displays had returned to calm blue status screens as though the last thirty seconds hadnât happened at all. Which was definitely reassuring and not ominous in any way.
Neither of them spoke. The silence continued to stretch until awkwardness set in.
Sergius buttoned his shirt with rigid mechanical precision and the deliberate focus of someone trying very hard not to think about anything else.
Aislinn had seen him like this before. Usually right before he made an incredibly bad decision. What made it stand out all the more was the fact that the peripheral processes that helped the unit cross the uncanny valley had yet to start up, sidelined for higher functions to finish restarting first. The lack of movement was unsettling. Real bodies were always in motion. Breathing, blinking, swallowing, fidgeting.Â
She stepped back but stayed in his line of sight. âDo you want to do this here, or outside?âÂ
Her voice was level but firm. She didnât want him to feel trapped but she wanted him to know this discussion was nonnegotiable.Â
âYou wouldnât listen if I said no anyway.â
Unhandled Exception
Four stood motionless beside the diagnostic terminal sequestered in Aislinnâs lab, rigid and blank. Cables snaked from the unit's spine into the parent terminal where Aislinnâs custom diagnostics crawled through layer after layer of systems, hunting for corrupted code.
The progress bar advanced so slowly it was almost painful.Â
At first Aislinn had watched every percentage point tick upward but now she sat at the terminal, bathed in the blue glow of its multiple screens, sketching schematics for another project in order to distract herself. A watched pot never boils, or something like that.
Sketching helped her clear her mind and it kept her hands busy. It also helped sort through the things she was feeling.Â
Sergius should have told her sooner.
That thought kept circling back around no matter how many times she shoved it aside. The corruption in his systems was obvious now that she knew where to look. It had been there long enough to root itself deep. Long enough that parts of it had started disguising themselves as small inconsistencies buried under sub routines, missing data fragments and latency spikes.
Did he think she couldnât fix it? Had he simply not trusted her enough to try?Â
Beside her, Four remained motionless except for the faint flicker of status lights. Sergius slept. Or as close to sleep he ever got. His systems had entered a low-power state while the diagnostics ran. A fact he had nearly argued with her about. He still didnât entirely understand why people voluntarily rendered themselves unconscious every night. Now though, he could admit it had some advantages.
The darkness was quiet. Warm in a strange abstract way. His processes drifted without the constant friction of the world around him demanding his attention.
âFinally.â The voice slipped through the dark like a cold shock to his systems. âThis is much easier.â
Diagnostics
the best part of the princess bride is how it says that love is the number one motivation in life but! a close number two is spite.
No Anomalies Detected
The world went dark.
Again.
Sergius stopped moving before he walked into something breakable or alive. Though in the confines of Heartwoodâs library that probably just meant a shelf of old books or Zilmat. For one stretched, ugly second he just stood there, every process thread spiking hard enough to make his temperature warnings twitch. Then he shoved himself into action and cycled through the drones.
Ping. Ping. Ping.
Every visual feed came back black.
âCome on.â He cycled through them a second time.
Not disconnected but black all the same.
He tried not to think about Alvarium. About waking up on that table with memory corruption and missing hours and Aislinn telling him, very calmly, that she had to pry open his chassis and that if she hadnât gotten there when she did he could have lost the mobile unit, Four, permanently. Since then the glitches had been happening more often. Little things at first. Stuttering motor control. Corrupted audio. Lost time.
Now this. He dumped the visual executables and restarted them.
Nothing.
Diagnostics had insisted he was perfectly functional, which just proved the diagnostics were garbage or he was. Possibly both.
The dark shifted. An image resolved slowly out of the static like something surfacing from deep water.
A girl.
Done and Rusted
Sergius observed Aislinn enter the library and immediately knew this wasnât about books.
There were several indicators. The direct line toward him without even pretending to look at the shelves. The expression that said she had already concluded somebody (probably him) was being an idiot and was only here to confirm details.
He marked his place in his book but didnât close it yet. There was still a statistical possibility she might reconsider and leave. Not a high one.
Aislinn stopped and stood in front of the armchair he had folded himself into.Â
âWhatâs your plan?â Not a real question. More the kind of thing people asked when they were already annoyed with the answer.
So he put the book down and looked in her direction expectantly. She never needed encouragement for this sort of thing. Â
âSit here and sulk? Be aggressively useless to everyone out of spite?â Those also were not questions.
His attention drifted toward Zilmat, who was hovering beside the shelves pretending to reorganize books while very obviously listening. The voidsent was terrible at it. Sergius had seen malfunctioning security constructs with better situational awareness, and those at least had the excuse of missing half their sensors.
âThatâs not -â He stopped.
No, that was exactly what he was doing.
âSo what.â He said instead. âYou need me to go out on a job?â
"Let's get this over with."
when i say my love language is physical touch, don't ask "but you hate people touching you", that's exactly why it is my love language. it is reserved for people i truly love and feel comfortable with.
When a character who normally has a silver tongue and a quick wit is speechless.
When an expressive character who wears their heart on their sleeve goes still, face blank.
When a character who is quick to solve problems with their fists drops their hands to their side, frozen.
Just the sudden absence of something that is always there, in both the good and the bad.
Gone in an instant.
Such great heights
The Ties that Bind
The clinic lay wrapped in the hush that only came in the quiet hours of night. No boots pacing outside in the corridor, no groans rose from behind curtained cots. The beds stood neatly made and untouched, their soft linens ghostly in the low lamplight. It had been some time since Heartwood had mounted a company-wide mission and the stillness felt like a reprieve, proof that their mercenaries were, for once, keeping clear of the kind of trouble that led to broken bones. Or worse.Â
Firelight pooled warmly in the hearth, lending the room its amber glow. By it, Gentle Fist had fallen asleep. The Roegadynâs immense frame overflowed the chair he occupied, his feet, broad as bear paws, propped up on an ottoman. A book lay open across his chest, its pages fluttering faintly with each thunderous snore.Â
At the alchemical stove, Aislinn stirred a simmering potion, copper pot gleaming in the glow. When the door clicked shut behind Maijah, the Hyur lifted her head.
She had a way of looking at people that felt less like being seen and more like being dissected. Her gaze slid over Maijah from top to bottom, sharp as a scalpel, missing nothing. It was the look of a woman who catalogued and inventoried the world around her.Â
âSomething youâre needing, Maijah?â Aislinn asked, already turning back to her brew. The ladle clinked softly against copper. âAnd thank you for the foxglove you dropped off the other sun.â
The Questionâs Still the Same
"Are you ready for this?" Stark Oak rumbled. His thick arm braced against the doorway of the warehouse's manufacturing room like a gate. Only the right words would cause the gate to drop and let her pass.
Unfortunately, Aislinn did not have the right words.
"Not even slightly." She said, honestly.
He stared at her, wide jaw clenching and unclenching as if he were chewing on some particularly unpleasant bit of gristle.
She shook her head. "Do you want me to lie?" She asked, her voice coming out sharper than she meant it to be. Nerves were getting the best of her. Knowing that, she flapped her arms in exasperation at her sides. "Doesn't change the fact I've got to go. How I feel has no bearing on any of this, so please don't ask me what I'll do if I see him, if he comes to talk to me --"
"He won't be talking to you." Stark Oak interrupted, each word like a shot fired and left ringing in the air.Â
Silence fell heavily between them, a leaden thing. She knew the direction of his anger and it wasnât her. This would mark the first time she'd lay eyes on Sterling since the back office incident moons before. Stark Oak had been diligent about his previous threat to the man, prowling the manufacturing rooms like a guard dog, setting his crew on edge.
She had learned from Kikirifi that the ornery Hellsguard had a family once. Wife. Two daughters. But when she asked where they were, the lalafell had grown unnaturally quiet and she knew it wasn't the sort of question to ask.
"You can stay here. With the machines." He said, his voice a measure quieter.
"You know I can't. The lieutenants will be making note of who comes and who stays away. This is U'Rahna's wake. If someone's not there, they'll ask why." She scratched at her newly healed scar. It always seemed to itch. "You know they're going to close ranks, all of them are paranoid. Nymeia's blood, they found her floating in the river with a bullet in her back."
Stark Oak grunted. As good as a vocal acknowledgment that she had a point. And yet, his steel cord of an arm didn't budge.
"Then you get ready for this. Ainât no different than target practice out at the train depot. You breathe. Slow. Until you know your hand is as steady as it's gonna be and your sight is lined up. You just keep breathing. Never let 'em see your hand shake. That's the trick."
She looked over his great charcoal-skinned arm, past the doorway to the hall beyond. She could do this. She would do this because there was simply no other option. And she would get through it. And she would adapt. Because that's what she did. Every time.
She inhaled a cleansing breath. "Alright."Â
The memory faded and she became aware once more of the blazing sun high above, of the dust along the craggy trail that wound its way through the scrub lands. She wondered how much time had passed while she was caught up with ghosts. Bertram hadn't said anything. Most likely, he was wrestling with ghosts of his own, she reasoned and flicked a brief glance his way as he moved along the trail ahead of her.Â
Now, as they traveled in silence through the Gyr Abania wilds, the soul stone weighed heavily in her belt pouch. With each step it gently bumped against her hip, a constant reminder of so many things. Both passed and yet to come. And Stark Oak's voice rumbled in her head.Â
"Are you ready for this?"
She had the same answer for him. "Not even slightly."