Once there was a little girl who was held captive on a ship. Already sick and weak, she ran into the woods of a strange island and died looking up at the stars through the trees. She died thinking of home, and the comforts of her mother's cooking, and the love her father had for her even though one night he never came home. She died there in the woods, and something completely unexpected arose where she lay.
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It's a kind of house that really shouldn't be here on an uncharted island. It's huge, and made from such a variety of building materials that it couldn't possibly have been constructed from the local palms and stones and sand. There's a big yard with off-island animals in pens, too; pigs and goats and chickens. Whoever built it must have spent a fortune just to get all of these things to the island. A fortune and then some, to have all of this built.
For all that effort, it looks old, almost abandoned. But a woman rushes out the door to greet the small party of scouts as they approach.
"Stranded by the storm, aye?" she calls out through the beating rain. She speaks Common as one who has grown up speaking it. She isn't dressed for the weather, but she doesn't seem to mind standing on the porch in just a simple dress and apron.
"Just you three, or a whole ship, my dears?"
The woman is not put off by the size of the crew, nor does she seem worried about the prospect of theft. She insists that she wants to invite all of them inside for a hot meal, and she has one ready by the time the crew makes it to the house. She brushes off questions about the speediness with which she prepared the food. "Sometimes storms bring hungry crews, my dear."
The dinner conversation is pleasant, engaging, and even forgettable. Their host wants to know about places they've gone and sights they've seen. She offers herself as a perfect sounding board for their story, saying ooh and aah in all of the right places and offering little about herself. The few times she does talk about herself, her comments are evasive. She seems preoccupied. Her husband is coming home later on, she says. And then the conversation trails off, as if the subject cannot really be addressed without the husband present.
One time, just once, she accidentally calls her husband your father. She does not seem to notice that she has said something odd and carries right on talking.
Just as dinner is ending, the sudden storm begins to quiet. As the woman is collecting empty plates, an evening sun ray pokes through a rain-dotted window. Even though they never really talked about anything of substance, the woman notes sadly that her guests will be leaving soon. And nothing seems to prevent them from leaving the house and boarding their ship and setting sail, or at least having the perception of doing so, despite the odd vibe this entire place has had from the start.
No, the latent trap springs only when each dinner guest next falls asleep. They sleep deeply, too deeply, and when they wake up it's not in a familiar hammock. They're at the woman's house again, around the same dinner table and at the same places they were seated before. This time, though, the fire is cold and the lamps are dark and there are no plates set out for anyone. A hidden bookcase door opens slowly, revealing a passageway outside to the pig pen built against the side of the house.
More urgently, they all seem to be turning into pigs. Piter has a general-purpose antidote hidden in a ring, and he buys his own salvation with a quick twist of the gem with his teeth. He's visibly shaking as he looks around at the others to see if anyone else is having much luck escaping the curse. The navigator is a druid, he remembers. He's never seen her take a wildshape form, but he thinks that if anyone could wriggle out of this, it would be her. She was seated... there? He makes his way over to her, stumbling and sick with fear. He very deeply doesn't want to die, and whatever the magic of this house is, it clearly has him outclassed.
"Rhaya, Rhaya," he hisses miserably, looking around and around the room for threats. "You've got to fight it... you're a human, Rhaya, you've got to snap out of it! You can do this!"
He knows her name at least, but it's a large crew, and he hasn't had a chance to interact with everyone. He hardly knows her. He will put his best, friendliest foot forward, though. He's used to adapting quickly to appeasement for survival. He doesn't know yet, just how much she is a pretender too.
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Once there was a little girl who was held captive on a ship. Already sick and weak, she ran into the woods of a strange island and died looking up at the stars through the trees. She died thinking of home, and the comforts of her mother's cooking, and the love her father had for her even though one night he never came home. She died there in the woods, and something completely unexpected arose where she lay.
She also thought of the people who had stood by and not interfered when she was captured. Knowing she was dying, and that she could have had a better fate, she had the thought that those people and their glassy and pitying eyes had been as useful to her when she needed them as the shuffling and indifferent pigs her mother kept at home.
Sleep or death will still reset time and bring those under her curse back to the cold, dark dining room that is not set for company, and they will have to struggle for their correct shape anew. To break the curse completely, the girl's soul must find peace. The copy of her childhood home holds many reminders of what felt unfinished in her short life.
When Jason was much younger, he once thought to look for work on a fishing boat to experience the novelty of life at sea. And he hated it. He hated the lack of privacy, and he hated being trapped in a small place he couldn’t leave. He’s clumsy, slow to learn new things, and bad at sticking to schedules. If he picks up a job on land and can’t keep up with it, he has the freedom to quit preemptively at any time and look for something else. On open water, he becomes a prisoner of his employer, and of the sea, the moment the ship sets sail. Any mistakes he makes are ones he’ll have to live with for a long time, and he knows himself well enough to know that walking into an arrangement like that is like sticking his own face into a pie.
Jason’s never changed this basic opinion that he doesn’t belong on open water, but over the years he’s gotten less downright scared of the idea. Being mortified by every mistake got old a long time ago. Any long term situation at sea would be guaranteed to kill him slowly, but he’s found that temporary work on cargo ships can be a very cost effective way to travel. Restlessness inspired him to travel abroad in this way; about three years later, a sort of homesickness he wouldn’t have thought himself capable of is inspiring him to return to more familiar territory. That, and practicality. He’s terrible at picking up languages. People think it’s funny.
Standing at the rail and staring blankly off at sea isn’t privacy, but it’s something. As he lets his mind wander, Jason can almost feel the meager foreign language vocabulary he spent years cultivating hurtling itself passionately into the ocean, one word at a time, never to be recovered, free at last. Not that this is unexpected.
Something unexpected catches his eye, something large and dark in the water near the ship. For a split second, he’s almost positive he sees an eye open and look back at him. Then the thing abruptly swims away, and he’s left wondering what the hell he saw, if anything.
A reason to quit staring at nothing and get back to the grind before someone catches him slacking off, is what he saw. He turns from the rail and crashes neatly into another crewmember who’s passing by. They drop everything they were carrying.
“Aww shit I’m so sorry,” Jason says hurriedly, immediately reaching to help pick up the load. You don’t want to make mistakes on a floating prison, and you definitely don’t want to make enemies.
MY MUSE HAS JUST BEEN THROUGH A TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE. SEND “C’MERE, BABY” TO COMFORT THEM.@defiantambiguity
Luise was trying not to show it. She was trying to keep in all of the pain, all of the hurt, all of the trauma. But she could only hold it in for so long. She was shaking with the effort, a slow tremble that she couldn’t seem to stop. She had escaped the meeting room as soon as she possibly could, not able to put up with the others today, not even Gilbert. So she had left, finding her way up to an isolated area where she had tried to keep control, wrapping her arms around herself, taking deep breaths and trying not to let the tears that were forming fall.
She had thought she was alone, at least until she heard Alfred’s voice. She wanted to stiffen up, to wipe away the tears in her eyes, to make herself calm, but she couldn’t. Instead, she turned to look at him, and then next thing she knew she was reaching for him, reaching for comfort.
@gxldengxngstergxrl Sato gasped in horror, this isn't what she wanted to happen. She didn't mean to strangle her. What would she do if she woke up!? Panicking she paced around the room and then it hit her. "Of course!!" Picking up her swimsuit and stuffing it with gravel, she had formed her weapon. She then lifted her arm high, getting ready to strike. "Cut! That's all for today folks good job!" Sato sighed relieved and dropped the swimsuit club, thank got they stopped filming, her arms were getting tired. "We'll all reconvene tomorrow to finish the twilight arc! Get excited!" Shizuka smiled and offered her hand to her co star. "Good work today!"
