WHO: Miriam & Vanya; Miriam & Joselyn WHAT: Workin' 9 to 5 WHEN: Now WHERE: Somewhere in the Free Marches; The Crossroads NOTES: catch-all; starters in comments. will note cw's in subject lines if necessary.
Eventually, the stripped down and surrealist quality of the Crossroads--its colors all faded like bright things left too long in the sun; drifting structures inaccessible to them, and the flickering shape of spirits at the edge of vision--slips under the skin and begins to irritate. It's like a splinter in the fingertip. The low grade irritation of it can be ignored for hours (minutes? seconds? It's difficult to reckon in the bald light of the space), and then suddenly it will catch against something and she will be reminded by a sting to her nerves.
It reminds her of dreaming. That moment at the edge of lucidity where one only just begins to be aware of the dark things which linger there at the edge of the subconscious, waiting. And no, she isn't a child (and she's seen her fair share of Harrowings), but the hairs at the back of her neck still prickle if they loiter in any one place too long.
So they're making quick work of their survey today. Or were, until the wisps descended and to invade Joselyn's space, little flits of light and sparkling energy keen to interrupt her half of the work.
Miriam, standing on some high outcropping of rock to judge their next move squints back down in her sister's direction.
“Through no fault of my own,” Joselyn gripes, straightening at the interruption (the new, different interruption) and sweeping her staff to ineffectually scatter the spirits clinging to her attention. They play out miniature scenes, indistinct thus far and difficult to precisely make out; walking in pairs, swirling into and out of vision.
She sets her hands on her hips as she looks up, struck not for the first time by how strange it is to see her face with hair so dark as Miriam's is now.
(Maybe if they spent more time together she'd be accustomed to it already, but whose fault is that? She doesn't think about it in case she's moved to give an answer.)
“Other mapmakers don't have to deal with this, I'm certain of it.”
"Imagine you're trudging through a swamp and they're the flies."
Is a horizon-flat kind of good cheer, a practiced deadpan punctuated by a certain widening eyed look. A practiced sort of humor designed to be inoffensively throwaway, so bland and habitual that it barely constitutes as a joke.
“Maybe they like my perfume,” she mimics, maturely, instead of literally anything she might say about a swamp. As if she wouldn't probably prefer a swamp, overall, because most of what she could take home from it would be a little more familiar than the insubstantial qualities of everything in the crossroads.
Two of the spirits are holding hands. Swinging hands, specifically. Joselyn pokes the end of her staff between them, and they reform either side of it, upright but vague figures with their hands on their hips.
From up on her lookout ledge, Miriam sticks her tongue back at her. Like an adult. Naughty spirits aside, they're alone and unobserved which makes it acceptable for severe battlemages with bluntly chopped bangs to debase themselves so—
It's a fine vantage point from which to watch as the figures to either side of Joselyn's staff warp, the arm of one coming away from its hip and stretching out. Stretching around, unnaturally long, and at last looping back around behind Joselyn to grip the crooked arm of its partner. The shape is unpleasant, unnatural.
With a tsk from behind her teeth, Miriam tucks her staff up high across her shoulder and begins to pick her way down.
“They're damned determined,” Joselyn observes, and her displeasure is more bemusement in truth than anything else; strange, alien things. As they seem to have become strange, if not alien, to each other —
It feels a little like the chasm she had been afraid of yawning wide between them as girls, watching Miriam be taken away. Then, she had known immediately what must be done about it and she had resolved to do it at once; now, her feelings are not half so clear as the tolling bell to guide her then, and neither the way forward.
Maybe it would be easier if the unfamiliarity was more pronounced, instead of this half-step, this key change.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
:format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1925375-1419421956-4838.jpeg.jpg)
miriam + jos
It reminds her of dreaming. That moment at the edge of lucidity where one only just begins to be aware of the dark things which linger there at the edge of the subconscious, waiting. And no, she isn't a child (and she's seen her fair share of Harrowings), but the hairs at the back of her neck still prickle if they loiter in any one place too long.
So they're making quick work of their survey today. Or were, until the wisps descended and to invade Joselyn's space, little flits of light and sparkling energy keen to interrupt her half of the work.
Miriam, standing on some high outcropping of rock to judge their next move squints back down in her sister's direction.
"Making friends?"
no subject
She sets her hands on her hips as she looks up, struck not for the first time by how strange it is to see her face with hair so dark as Miriam's is now.
(Maybe if they spent more time together she'd be accustomed to it already, but whose fault is that? She doesn't think about it in case she's moved to give an answer.)
“Other mapmakers don't have to deal with this, I'm certain of it.”
no subject
Is a horizon-flat kind of good cheer, a practiced deadpan punctuated by a certain widening eyed look. A practiced sort of humor designed to be inoffensively throwaway, so bland and habitual that it barely constitutes as a joke.
"Maybe they like your perfume."
Now there's the real punchline.
no subject
Two of the spirits are holding hands. Swinging hands, specifically. Joselyn pokes the end of her staff between them, and they reform either side of it, upright but vague figures with their hands on their hips.
no subject
It's a fine vantage point from which to watch as the figures to either side of Joselyn's staff warp, the arm of one coming away from its hip and stretching out. Stretching around, unnaturally long, and at last looping back around behind Joselyn to grip the crooked arm of its partner. The shape is unpleasant, unnatural.
With a tsk from behind her teeth, Miriam tucks her staff up high across her shoulder and begins to pick her way down.
"I'll clear them out."
no subject
It feels a little like the chasm she had been afraid of yawning wide between them as girls, watching Miriam be taken away. Then, she had known immediately what must be done about it and she had resolved to do it at once; now, her feelings are not half so clear as the tolling bell to guide her then, and neither the way forward.
Maybe it would be easier if the unfamiliarity was more pronounced, instead of this half-step, this key change.
“How much longer, do you think?”