- He has sworn an oath not to kill anyone and to do his best to heal and save those put in his care.
- He is a regular Troll! Born and raised on Alternia.
- His favorite color is green.
- He's got something pretty close to body integrity identity disorder. The most commonly affected body part is his skin. Which results in him dressing as full coverage as possible to make functioning in day to day life more comfortable.
- And of course we all know he is Anrifi's primary care physician.
Your name is… is…. It's something. You forgot it a long time ago. You think. Or maybe it was seconds ago.
You are walking, as far as you can tell. You can't feel your feet anymore but you can hear your steps. The after echoes of them, distant and behind you as if you already walked this way some time before. It's entirely possible, you think. You don't really keep track of where you've been anymore.
The thing about your footsteps being so far behind you is that it prevents the formation of solid bodily awareness. Something about how your vision and your motion feel so disconnected. As if staring through a telescope. Focusing and unfocusing. In the few seconds of being aware of your walking you spare the thought that navigation has always been difficult. You think.
Not that there is much to navigate around in this particular time. The environment is all muted purples that bleed into each other at the edges of various shapes. Maybe. It could be blue for all you know. You think those were the same color. Hardly matters, really.
As the concern for color leaves your mind it is met with an uncharacteristic recognition of form. Rarely are things defined well enough for you to recognize them and even rarer still do you have the memory to put name to what you see. At this moment you can tell that some of the shapes are walls; the smaller shapes inside them are doors. You cannot feel it, but you can glimpse a floor at the edge of your vision.
Hallway.
You are in a hallway.
A brief echo of… something, something unpleasant, passes over you. No. You are nowhere. You will pass through this blur like you've passed through the others. You will forget it like you've forgotten the others. Other what? You don’t remember. It doesn't take your mind long to let this concern slip away.
It takes a moment longer to process the fact that you have stopped moving. Your only indicator of this is how the echos of your footsteps gradually creep closer to you and then suddenly cease. You blink, maybe, and look down to see if you can identify the reason for your stillness.
After however long it takes for your eyes to settle in the new position you see… something. It's gray. With long lines sticking out of it's center. A circle on top. It's moving, jerkily and too smooth at the same time, gathering itself off the floor. As if it's not victim to the overbearing weight in the air that you’re starting to feel. The circle turns towards you.
The circle has a face.
You're seeing someone.
A… troll. Right. You see a troll. Smaller than you, knocked off kilter by your apparent impact but recovering well enough to look at you straight on.
Their face scrunches when they take in your appearance. Judgement? Affront? It doesn't stay long enough for you to process. The twist of their mouth goes slack and their eyebrows raise. Shock. That you can recognize. But how come?
Have you seen his shocked expression before? No.
He says something, his voice registers only as a soft wisp at first. A word you don’t recognize. Perhaps your face does something you cannot feel because he shifts. He leans forward, his head tilting up more to keep his eyes on your face. He’s so small.
“-dara?” He says, brows knit and hand slightly raised.
Dara. Your name is Dara.
Some part of you twists, some place low and distant. Annoyance? What is there to be annoyed about?
Him, you think. He did just show up. Interrupted your walk. To nowhere in particular you can admit but you were in fact walking. He just came around the corner without looking where he was going. He made a habit of doing that. He made a habit of pretending to do that just so he could bump your arm on the off chance you were holding something important.
Then he would follow as you walked. He would talk your ear off the whole way. Words that you can’t quite bring to the front of your mind. His voice, on the other hand, you….
You remember him. It's going to hurt so bad when you forget.
“Siunik.” You hear yourself say. You sound awful. Akin to what you imagine a mountain would sound like if it decided to break in half. You can talk. Could you always talk? No. Who would you even talk to? How long has it been since you've sang? You could cry.
“Holy… you look like shit.” Siu is looking at you, amused. His gaze remains on your face, your eyes. That would explain why his hand seems to be inching upward in preparation to make contact. He can’t see that he is doing it. You expel the needed energy to pull your head away, though the growl that escapes you takes no conscious effort. He scoffs and just reaches up further to touch your face anyway.
Whatever gentleness was held in his first attempt to touch you is gone now. The back of his knuckles knock against your jaw as he reaches past to tug at your ear. His face shows his surprise for the second time when you buckle forward slightly, groaning with the motion.
“Shit-” he lets go of you, eyes shifting over your form. “What happened this time? You gotta sit down or something, hang on, I think my room is- hhk-” His eyes fly up to your face as your hand closes weakly around his neck. You don't need his help, you don't need his pity.
Your mouth opens but words are old and rotten. They are as useless as the space where your bones used to be. You manage a gravelly growl and, after a few seconds of trying, a half wheeze. You vaguely feel the sound drag itself up through your nonexistent throat and catch behind your teeth.
“Hhhaate you.” You say.
Siu scoffs at you once more. Your fingers twitch. “Hnng- yeah- you too, ass.” He attempts to turn out of your hold but you can't let him go. You need to keep him here. You need to make sure he knows how much… how…
For a second you can breathe again. For a second there is blood in your veins and you can feel from the tips of your horns to your toes. It burns like acid. Too many nerves coming to life all at once.
You loathe him. More than anything. You hate him more than you hated the weakness inside of yourself. The weakness he cultivated. You listened to him. He killed you.
You feel the cascade of sensation as every muscle in your arm tenses, squeezing down on his throat. You feel his skin. The thudding of his pulse against your palm. You feel the life that is yours to take by rules of fairness alone.
The flood of familiarity is its own agony. You remember being here, several times before. Your claws shift as you think back to when you last had your hands around his neck. Back, back, and back…
You had not killed him then, you had no real desire to. He had bared his throat and let you grasp it. He allowed you close, in the dark, in the private spaces between meetings and paperwork and meals. That was something you hated about him. How he just let go when you were together. Let go of himself but held onto you.
You're back then, briefly, suddenly. The images in front of you changing too quickly for you to comprehend. The ground buzzes as if you aren't really touching it. The room is dark and small. You remember it well, the records in folders in cabinets in a space all but discarded by the fleet at large. Your head is stuck looking forward. Watching the intimacy unfold. Watching yourself back when you had a self. Siu looks at you, over your own shoulder, and there's too much recognition in his eyes.
You feel his hands touch your wrist and it brings you back to what you suppose could be considered the now. It's just as disorientating as when you left. Yet, through the thickness of the air and the burn of your marrow, you feel his claws digging into your skin. You have skin, you have blood for him to draw. You shiver. Focusing on his face again shows you he is smiling.
His eyes are crinkled at the edges. His mouth moves but there's not enough air to make words. You can see blood flow to the tips of his ears. The twist inside you happens again but now you can tell that it's in your guts and that yes, it's annoyance. It's disgust, it's hunger. It's hatred and it is joy.
You laugh, you think. You pull him up by his delicate little swan neck and kiss him. You taste something sour, some type of smoke. He was a smoker. He was a smoker and it drove you crazy.
He kisses you back, biting at you. His hand fists your hair and pulls so hard you can't help but reach back to try and detangle his fingers. He takes the chance to gasp in a breath. One you steal the second he has it.
You feel him laugh into your mouth as he pulls himself closer to you, bending you down towards him. You're practically crescent shaped, you imagine. You have to reach down to support his back so you both don't fall.
The two of you take turns breathing, kissing, hissing sharp words at each other. He attempts to wrap his arms around your shoulders and bring himself up. Unfortunately, you find that as much as you want to carry him you cannot. Your muscles are both too old and too fresh. He makes a disgruntled whine at your resistance and you bite at his mouth.
He pulls away from you a few minutes later. His fingers tangle into your hair and he presses his forehead to yours, knocking your horns together. You feel the tip of his click against a notch in one of yours that you're certain he made himself many sweeps ago. You can feel yourself smiling.
He's looking at you again. A soft curiosity taking over his expression. “You know, if you wanted attention you could just ask.” He teases, “You didn't have to crawl into my dreams half dead looking.”
His dreams. He always had such odd dreams. He would talk to you about fate and the immortal soul and ghosts. It's not that you didn't believe him entirely. Ghosts just fell under lowblood issues you didn't have time for. All would be gone and dead after the vast honk anyway. Immortal souls included. Besides, things he said didn't make sense on a basic level sometimes. Ghosts breaking off from themselves. Someone managing to be a ghost while alive. He never could explain that to you.
You feel a shift in the air. A slight reduction in pressure around the edges of your awareness. You'd like to say you don't know what's coming next but unfortunately, in this state, you remember everything. You try to hold on.
Siu looks as if he is about to say something before nearly jumping out of your arms. He looks around rapidly, eyes wide, for a noise you didn't hear.
You try to hold on.
He notices the desperate tremble in your hands and looks up to your face.
“Hey,” he tries to sound comforting, you hate him for that, but his voice is already starting to fade and with it the air from your lungs. He grabs your ears again, you think, and pulls you down to look at him.
“You’re alright.” he tells you. You try to shake your head at him but abort the motion halfway through when it causes the edges of his form to melt and blur with the background. You wheeze, you mumble, you try your hardest to beg.
He smiles, rueful, and pulls himself up to kiss you again. It's a placating one, an ill placed bandage over a gaping wound he just ripped open. You can't cry. You lean into him instead and hope that your numb arms are still holding. You close your eyes.
When you open them again he is gone. Only echoes of his touch remain and they are fading fast. You close your eyes again to chase them off. Expedite the process.
You've clung to them before, you think. The memories. Agonized over trying to remember the sensations. Remembering him, life, the time before this. You spent so much time trying to keep it with you but no matter how hard you held they eventually slipped through your fingers. You could feel yourself forgetting like a prisoner of war feels slow, irregular drips of water that eventually erode their sanity. You didn't know how much you would forget or when. How long it would take till you were nothing. How long you would be here alone, just a gaping hole missing something it could never know.
The dull pain diminishes to an echo of an ache, somewhere in the space of something that used to be yours. You think. Flashes of thoughts become less focused, and with a small effort you almost can't remember the face of that troll you saw. Why do you feel like you know them?
You don't know how long you've had your eyes closed. When you open them you don't recognize the space. Blurs of shapes fading in and out of each other. Blues to grays to something. Maybe you should just stay here. Is that all you can do? Wait? You don't know.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Your name is Siunik Esmavu and you just had a very weird dream.
You groggily pull your head up from your desk only for your eyes to be met with the blaring light of your new fleet issued semi mobile internet usage and file management device. You like to call it a laptop.
Your mouth tastes like cobwebs and you can feel the indents of the key pad on your forehead. Glancing about your desk shows no water bottle in sight. Shit. Oh well.
You take a moment to uncurl yourself, stretching your achy back and raising your arms above your head. This transgression is met with another loud blast of a chapel horn. You glare at your laptop, more specifically at the Online icon underneath one particular profile in your direct messenger application.
You close several other pages that contain things like imperial culling forms, scans of old tomes, and a sermon recording you reached the end of while asleep. Once it's just you and the messenger page you navigate to the offending conversation. You've found that so long as you have it open the personally installed notification sound doesn't go off.
---- acerbicChapel (AC) began trolling tastefulTenacity (TT) ----
AC: Rise, motherfucker.
AC: You are wasting the moonlight you have been wrongly blessed with.
TT: calm your massive spheres. I'm up
AC: You fell asleep at your desk again.
TT: nuh-uh I'm a good grub I sleep in my slime all cozy and moist
TT: that's why I didn't respond to you, wad.
AC: You are lying. It has been 5 minutes since my first summons of you. It takes you 15 minutes for evening ablutions, 7 if you are simply rinsing off and sitting naked at your chair.
TT: i hurried my silly ass up because I missed you ;}
TT: dearest beloathed, black hole in my sky, needle beneath my nails
AC: You disgust me. Rise.
TT: Dara its like half an hour past moon rise you need to motherfucking chill
AC: No, I motherfucking do not. Rise. It is your duty. You promised sister Zaheal you would assist us in preparation for evening massacre and I will not have you embarrassing yourself by arriving late.
TT: bleeeeehhhhh
TT: fine fine let me wash and smoke up
AC: Do not. Why would you ruin the rare occasion you brush your teeth by inhaling that filth.
TT: who said I'm brushing? Who are you, Troll Lucille Ball? Need the Heiress treatment?
AC: Do you really think you need to do it again? It makes your mouth taste bad.
TT: i'm gonna kiss you when I see you
TT: prepare >:}
He doesn't respond to your threat. Which is good, since it gives you time to actually get ready. Get all your herbs and pipe put away, because yeah, he got you, you inhaled some crazy shit not to long ago. It helps with your dreams.
You're still not sure why you occasionally see the shambling corpse of your kismesis when you sleep. Especially since he's, ya know, alive. But you have figured out a method to semi-consistently run into him. No sopor, read over some old books (or photocopies, those seem to work), have some background noise, and be high as shit when you clock out.
It's still a gamble though. There's a lot of ghosts where you are currently stationed, given it's the main flag ship and all, and you don't know where he is exactly when you go under. You have deduced that if you dream and don't see anyone else for a few minutes there's a higher chance he's close by. Scares off the others, probably, the big creeper. Seems like he would prefer it that way.
Even as you think that, the image of his face from last day comes to you. He seemed sad. He always seems sad. You have what you like to call a Messiahs given hunch that something is crazy fucked with your beloathed's soul. You're just iffy on exactly what it is. Unfortunately, any attempts to bring it up to him he takes as you testing his faith or insulting him.
It's all good though. You'll figure it out and save him and rub his face in it when you do. It's not great that you have to work while you're awake and while you're asleep, though. You're gonna have to do some serious vibe reallignment soon lest your own soul falls out of whack.
You've gotten your desk situated and your clothes picked out when you hear the regular notification sound go off instead of having another blast of faith in your ears. You spare it a glance, expecting him to keep badgering you to hurry up or call you gross.
AC: It’s Badara and you know that.
You roll your eyes. You kinda wanna respond just to mess with him but can't be assed. How many times do you have to embrace a man's wayward soul before he accepts a nickname? Apparently more times than you have. You'll just be exceptionally annoying to him tonight to make up for it.
Looking over my trolls and being like "Okay one of your ancestors' just has to be a Guy. You can't all be descended from someone freaky and weird. It's getting embarrassing."
Hiyett: i mean my ancestor was pretty normal all things considered.
Me: Now he's a freaky echo mind ghost. All 'its me boy I'm the PS5 speaking to you in your brain.' Junji Ito's The Long Dream looking ass.
