Life solves the problems we hope it won't.

If they no longer exist to feel loss, then I shall feel it for them. sidebar credit

[moonhater]

there's never a great shift, only a gradual sliding downwards

[dominusnocte]

“Do you normally sleep on sand, wouldn’t it have, like, rocks in it? But I guess those are better than sticks.”

As she watched the mud slip through Dana’s fingers, Marceline thought briefly of who or what could be in it. The mud in a graveyard is sure to be chock full of all sorts of interesting things, especially one as old as this one appears to be. Night Vale? Marceline cocked her head at that, what a strange name for a human place, assuming this person was human that is. As calm as she was, she may as well not be. Of all the humans Marceline had met in her life, most would not react this passively to waking up in a graveyard.

“I know how you feel. Last thing I remember doing was leaving for a little night adventuring, and then hello! Here I am in.. wherever we are." Looking back towards the ground, she noticed a knapsack near where she had been sleeping. Marceline nudged it slightly with her foot, hearing the shifting of whatever was in there. Upon opening it, she laughed and pulled out the emotionless mask, then placed it on her face.

“This fits the mood, right?" She took out the rest of what was in pack: a jar, a video camera, and a small pocket knife. Marceline prodded the power button on the camera a few times, but nothing happened. "Well that blows, it must be busted or something. Didja get anything?”

[moonhater]

"Um, no, not normally. But I did when I was stuck in a desert for months, the same way that I think I'm probably going to be stuck here now. So I did get used to it, but I am not used to this yet, which means it is more difficult and uncomfortable. There were rocks but they weren't very big rocks, not like these rocks here." She picked up one of the rocks, turning it over in her hand with a violent ferocity that implied anger, though her expression was mostly bland. Then she threw it down, back into the dirt. Take that, rock.

So, Marceline, whoever--or, whatever--she was, reacted to the name Night Vale as if she hadn't heard of it before, which meant she wasn't from there. That didn't surprise Dana, who could not remember ever having seen Marceline before. If this were Night Vale, Dana would have yelled "INTERLOPER...!" to show that Marceline was an interloper--but Dana was pretty sure that she was an interloper, here, too.

"I guess you didn't come here in your adventuring, then? It doesn't seem like a very adventuresome place, at least not right here. It's just a graveyard." Dana giggled a little at the mask, which was probably intended to be slightly unsettling, but, in this context at least, wasn't. There was a backpack on the ground near where she had been lying, in addition to the one near Marceline. She picked it up, and opened it, and picked out the contents, one by one. There was no emotionless mask in Dana's bag, just a ball of yarn, a few batteries (probably fresh--the package hadn't been opened), two cans of fruit and a small vial of blood.

"Oh!" she said. "I wonder if these batteries are for that video camera. Although I don't know why we would need to videotape anything. Do you want to try it out anyway?"

[nyeh2-deactivated20141113]

[moonhater]

there's never a great shift, only a gradual sliding downwards

[dominusnocte]

Of all the places Marceline had ever woken up in her life, a graveyard was hardly out of the ordinary; in fact, one could argue it was quite normal for the queen of vampires to wake up in such a place. And yet, this was certainly not like any of the graveyards she’d been in before, the whole place felt wrong, off somehow. It felt ad though they were some sort of heavy weight upon her. Ah! She realized she was laying on the ground, not floating like she was accustomed; what a burden gravity can be to those unused to it.

Slowly opening an eye, she took in the sight before her: a stone grave marker, weather beaten to the point of illegibility. Poor sap, she thought to herself, squinting closer at the gravestone. Wait, are those scratch marks? Yes indeed. She rolled onto her stomach, floating slightly above the grave. Well, I guess i could just raise him, see what’s u—

Before she could finish her next though, Marceline heard a voice nearby; she’d been far too concerned with the idea of whose grave she was sleeping on to have even looked around.

"Oh, hey. I’m all good, not really digging this whole ‘sleeping on the ground’ thing though." 

She glanced at the other girl, squinting slightly. "I’m Marceline, and I can’t say I really know where we are either. Looks like some sort of graveyard though, how spooky." She laughed and stood up straight, floating closer towards Dana. 

"Soooo, do you remember anything from before you woke up here? Or was it just ‘wam bam hello graveyard’?"

[moonhater]

"Oh, no, me neither. It's even worse than sleeping on sand, because sand is soft and doesn't usually have sticks or mud in it." To prove her point, Dana picked up a handful of dirt, complete with two (2) sticks and muddy enough to run through her fingers.

The graveyard itself didn't look like a particularly bad place to be. Sure, the ground was muddy, and there was a level of foliage outside of it that Dana had not come to expect, especially if she was still in the desert, and that foliage had a particularly "creepy" quality to it. And all the inscriptions on the graves were scratched out, and she wasn't sure how she'd come to be unconscious on the ground on top of one, which was a little bit ominous, now that she was thinking more about it. But as long as you overlooked all of those things, you could appreciate the good things about the graveyard, like how her companion didn't look scared at all, and how the presence of unpleasant sensations like hunger meant that this was a world which bore at least a passing resemblance to the real one, and not an otherworld like that desert had been.

"Well, it's very nice to meet you then, Marceline! I agree that it is probably a graveyard, but I also don't remember how we got here. I remember I was at home, in Night Vale, and everything was normal--or, as normal as it can be. And then I was here! So I guess it was sort of... wam bam hello graveyard."

[moonhater]

there's never a great shift, only a gradual sliding downwards

There was something soft and damp pressing against her cheek--like soil, but not like desert soil, unless it was very carefully cultivated, garden-y desert soil, which she didn't think it was. There were rocks in the soil, and twigs. She could feel them pressing against her side. It wasn't a particularly nice feeling, and it wasn't one she had expected--even the otherworld desert had had softer ground to lay on than this--but there was an easy enough remedy to that.

Dana sat up, brushing dirt off of her everything. Apparently she had a backpack at least, which was better than last time she was stranded in a bizarre and unknown nowhere, although she got the sense that this nowhere would be more dangerous than that one, too. Her muscles were aching, and she was hungry, and she hadn't even been here for more than a few minutes, as far as she knew. Also, there were gravestones sticking out of the dirt around and beside her, although none of them were new enough to be legible. Or if they were that new, something terrible had happened to them.

But perhaps most worrying of all was the fact that this time Dana wasn't alone in this strange... wherever it was.

"Hello?" she asked, and then, "Are you okay? Are you awake? My name is Dana. I don't know where we are."

[moonhater]

introductions ??? my name is twergo, i'm actually going to be out of town and completely without internet from tomorrow afternoon until sunday afternoon but i want to thread with everyone anyway, my twitter is twergooo and I DON'T BELIEVE IN THE MOON

[moonhater]

ROBOTS OR DINOSAURS?

"Oh! Well, I’ve never met a dinosaur, but the last robots I met were helping us try to destroy the moon, and also holding a canned goods drive to help the needy, and a craft fair for the children, and they were really nice, so… I’m going to say robots come out on top for this one."

[theirforest]

ok well I'm going to be disappearing in a couple days but here's Dana Cardinal with app in the sidebar!

Welcome to the forest, Dana.

Your backpack of survival contains a ball of yarn, a small package of batteries, two cans of fruit and a cracked container of unidentified blood.

Your starting point is the graveyard and your survival partner is Marceline. For information on survival partners, click here.

[moonhater]

Hey moon! Your glow is the death rattle to the breaking light of day! You symbolize all that is meek and obscured and radiant with shame! And also you're just a big old dumbo on top of all that, you stupid piece of rock that couldn't even escape orbit and float away forever into the forever away!