[SEMI-OPEN]

[acreage]

WHO: Amos Burton, James Holden, Wysteria, Ellis, and YOU
WHAT: Two spacemen fall out of a rift, later explore scenic Kirkwall
WHEN: Nnnnowish? Waves hands
WHERE: The Wounded Coast, then Kirkwall
NOTES: A closed arrival thread, plus open individual threads for meeting Amos and/or Jim after their quarantine period.

Comments

ARRIVAL - closed to JIM, WYSTERIA, ELLIS, AMOS

[acreage]

AMOS, LATER

[acreage]

JIM, LATER

[acreage]

[innerharbor]

Amos doesn't dream much, tending not to really remember the strange, surreal landscapes his mind conjures. After Ilus, he's happy to to sleep with an empty mind. But there it is, the color blue-- death-- and the color green...

If he were the right kind of Earther, the type that's supposed to be in space, green would represent life. It doesn't. It's just a color, and Amos follows it through a landscape that becomes clearer and clearer until he wakes up.

He doesn't wake up on the Roci. That's the first thing. He smells salt, and the rest of kind of a memory. Fresh air unpolluted by modern toxins, unrecycled, unfiltered. He's on a postcard of a beach.

Fucking weird.

And then the screaming starts, and Amos reaches for a gun that isn't there, ducking cover behind a rock. A horrific alien creature-- too many legs, too many eyes, scuttering over the beach with a gnashing open maw-- wanders out of jagged green wormhole.

"What," Amos whispers to himself, "the fuck."

JIMOTHY.

[innerharbor]

Amos is lucky, in his way. He can understand how other people think. A surprisingly small amount of people can. Of course, he can't understand it like you can understand refitting a fuselage. Once you get it, you can do it. Amos can't ever quite make that transition with other people, being able to see the sign of worry and feeling it himself.

That's alright, though. He made his peace with that a long time ago.

They're in Quarantine. Makes about as much sense as anything, here. He can guess, without really having to stretch himself, what the Cap's feeling.

Amos reclines on his cot. Quiet, not quite a whisper, he says, "ain't gonna be like Eros."

MESS HALL, OPEN.

[innerharbor]

Amos is a large man, minding his own business, until he isn't. It's breakfast, or it's lunch, or whatever the fuck, but Amos looks up from eating his food with a frown, and turns to the nearest person at table. "Wait," he says, "is this real meat?"

GALLOWS, OPEN.

[innerharbor]

Amos' hands are bloody red, fingernails crusted over, and swipes of it have dried pink onto his beard.

He's eating a pomegranate.

It's not bad. It's actually incredibly great. He plans to save some of it for later and make Holden eat it, but that's for later. For now, Amos reaches out with red fingers to grab at the nearest passerby.

He holds up a half-eaten pomegranate. "What the fuck is this?"

LOWTOWN, OPEN.

[innerharbor]

Amos feels more comfortable in Darktown, sure, but that's probably something he should keep his eye on rather than lean into. There's parts of yourself you have to watch, to let grow or shrink, to control. Lowtown is a world away from Darktown, and anybody who doesn't see that's a fucking idiot.

It also doesn't matter.

A shout goes through the crowd. Thief! Thief! Amos looks over his shoulder, but the thief is an adult, and stupid slow. It takes only a slight shift of weight to punch the guy's ticket, punching him so hard into the face that the thief is flat on his back and dazed.

Amos picks up the stolen bag. "You want this?"

[justashotaway]

He's asked exactly the right person. Laura nods, as if this is the most normal question she's ever heard, and then she says, "I think it is nug."

As if to punctuate the statement, she pulls a glimmering lyrium claw to stab a chunk of meat on her plate: nug drenched in gravy, mashed turnip, and something green she still hasn't figured out the name of.

THE WOUNDED COAST, OPEN.

[innerharbor]

Amos has to go back to the ocean. He didn't get a good look at it. The water is blue. It comes right up to the sand. There's no wall, no decades old trash, no grime.

It's just a beach. A natural beach. He's seen things like this in holos and paintings and advertisements. Baltimore is right next to the ocean-- Amos had his own boat, even-- but the ocean wasn't like this. The islands were made of trash, drowned barges and plastic tubing. This is... something completely the fuck else.

He takes off his shoes and wades forward, before spotting something dying in the sand. He doesn't know it, but the thing he's poking with a stuck is a dying jellyfish. "What's got a nose big enough to sneeze you out, huh?"

THE WOUNDED COAST, OPEN.

[innerharbor]

And, eventually, he can't take it anymore. Amos climbs to the highest rock he can, overlooking the water. He takes off his boots, jumpsuit, his shirt, folding them all neatly and tucking them away in the high branches of a tree.

And he jumps into the ocean, Geronimo! echoing off the rocks.

[innerharbor]

Well, that's a bit disappointing. He frowns a little, poking the food with his fork that probably isn't made of an aluminum compound. Looks at the pot, which is probably clay or stone and not some recycled polymer alloy.

"So, some new strand of soy." Like mung beans. "Damn impressive."

[acreage]

Holden dreams too much, when he bothers sleeping.

His brain can't goddamn shut down after everything that happens in their days -- but he can't blame recent tragedies on his insomnia. Sleep's never come to him easily, not even on the farm when the nights stretched long and quiet, rustling in the wind the only sound for miles. Night anywhere else seems noisy after that, city noises or station noises or the machinery powering their vessel.

But too often, even after he manages to nod off, it's Eros, or it's Ilus, or it's the thing from Ganymede, or it's the Ring, it's blue glowing fireflies and

tonight is different.

For one thing, he wakes up with -- sand shifting beneath him as he levers upright, the unfamiliar tang of brine in the air (clean air, the kind you can't help taking deep breaths of after any time in space), and

fucking alien abominations.

Because, of course.

He scrambles backwards, spots Amos and sprints for him as yet another what the fuck is that crawls out of the -- portal? Jesus.

Pitched so as to hopefully not get their attention. "Amos! Are you okay?"

[justashotaway]

"What is soy?" Nothing about nugs is strandlike, aside from the way the meat pulls apart when you cut it--but that's true of all meat, as far as she knows. And she's eaten enough different foods in the past year that she knows that the food at the Gallows is not considered "impressive" by most.

[innerharbor]

"S'a bean," Amos says, poking at his 'nug'. "Meat substitute. High in protein."

[justashotaway]

She frowns, trying to piece together how this relates to his plate of meat and vegetables. "But we are not eating beans."

[innerharbor]

Amos isn't going to get caught up in this who's on first bullshit. He pinches the bridge of his nose. "The fuck is a nug, kid?"

[justashotaway]

It's rare that she meets someone whose knowledge contains the same sort of holes as hers. But once she realizes that's the case, she looks at the man a little more carefully: large, with a serious brow and a flat mouth.

"Nugs are small animals that live where people do not." Sometimes they live near people, but she's not sure a clarification regarding villages is necessary. She tries to think of what would have made it easy for her connect that word to the creatures she'd seen in the countryside. "They have large noses and ears, and their skin is pink, and they are easy to kill."

[innerharbor]

"Rats," Amos says, poking at the food. "We're eating pink rats. That's not weirder than everything else, here."

[heirring]

The arrow which punches viciously into the sand perilously close to them can't possibly help anyone's sense of security. It does, however, cause the nearest multi-limbed, hungry mouth agape creature to hiss and briefly skitter in some other direction.

From a dozen - perhaps two dozen - paces away, a voice cheerfully calls out: "Sorry! So sorry! I'll aim lower this next time!"

The voice belongs to a sea wind whipped young woman, her bright blue skirts all a-flutter, red cheeked and in evident good spirits despite the chaos whose margins she inhabits. There is a small pile of equipment, a round shield, and barely pinned down papers threatening to be carried away by the wind at her feet, and she is and haphazardly waving her next arrow in greeting.

"You see, Mr. Ellis!" This is called to neither of them as she lowers the arrow, struggling to nock it in such a way which suggests that she is at best a beginner archer and that it might be prudent not to be anywhere near where she means to shoot next. "I told you we might have help."

[justashotaway]

"No," she corrects, stabbing another piece of nug with her claw. "Rats are smaller."

[innerharbor]

"So people eat this shit on the regular?" He can't blame them. For everything, it tastes good.

[justashotaway]

"At the Gallows." She's seen nug in marketplaces, too, she thinks. "I do not know what people in other places eat."

[innerharbor]

He gives her a look, trying to suss something out, before deciding he doesn't have enough information to make up his mind. He keeps eating his food. "You have never heard of soy," he says after a fair amount of thought. It's not a question.

[justashotaway]

This is, apparently, something he expects others to know. She shifts a little, turning her attention back to her meal--her claw disappears so she can reach for her spoon and start eating her turnips. "I know what beans are."