Bless of Magic Caster | OTA

[ourlastadventure]

WHO: Arche and YOU
WHAT: Arche is acclimating to her new circumstances, looking for help getting a staff around, and attempting to be curious without being a pest. Godspeed to her on that last one.
WHERE: Strictly within the lantern's light
WHEN: Shortly after her arrival from the River
WARNINGS: If you ask how she died, you might get an answer (CW violence, death of a teenager); potential CWs for child neglect/abuse mentions & descriptions, existentialism, Arche Needs A Fucking Drink So God Damn Bad

Fifth Tier Magic: Fabricate | Near The Water

If the weather is decent, or seems like it will be decent (more than a few of these instances might get caught out by a storm, necessitating shelter), one can find Arche near the water and, more importantly, near the woody plants that grow by it. She's running her gloved hands along branches and trunks, frowning to herself, pondering. If she only had a decent knife and whetstone...or someone else did...

It's possible that you catch her during another part of this process! Arche is not above sketching blueprints into the dust, displaying a simple staff with rounded bulbs at the ends, though other designs eventually flower - walking sticks, odd little two-handed clubs more like a blunt glaive than anything, and, curiously enough, something that can't be wood.

Do you own a knife? Is this public knowledge? Arche may be asking for help, or at least to borrow the blade.

Skill: Message | Network/You Pick The Location

workaday: Arche, new arrival, seeking information about prior experiences within this hereafter. No expectations had, be as personal or impersonal as you please, willing to meet in private or speak via this strange text-based common communication. Available at all hours presuming my experiments with sleeplessness bear fruit, all daylight hours otherwise. Thank you for your consideration.

Skill: The Goal Of All Life Is Death | Shelters At Night

She's dead, right? They're all dead. And yet Arche still perceives herself as having the needs of the living, and that fact is curious to her. Perhaps that's the 'life' in 'afterlife', but perhaps not. It isn't as if she could seriously hurt herself by experimenting, right? Arche starts by trying not to breathe but this quickly proves to be a difficult mental hurdle (or she has to breathe, but Arche is going to be stubbon on this point). So she aims at something that she's already good at - going without sleep. Why sleep? Why should that be a need of the dead? Undead don't sleep, and that surely is a trait they inherit from death - even fish sleep, somehow, after all.

It's at night, alone with her thoughts and sitting on the roof of her new home(?), when the weight of it all hits Arche. She tries to keep it in, tells herself that she's being silly, being childish. She got a lifetime, same as everyone else, right? She took a dangerous job and it didn't pan out. Death was always on the table, right next to the money she never got to spend because she had to save up for...save...save up for...

The first sob is a hesitant thing, but it blows the floodgates open. Arche cries with ugly sounds and bone-shaking sobs, tears streaming down her face, and when she tries to make herself stop it only gets worse.

Profession (Nerd) | Wildcard

Come at me. Maybe you catch Arche patching up holes in the shelters. Perhaps she's giving that odd look at the hamsters again or conspicuously avoiding the dracolisks with the nervous air of someone who is not used to horses. Or something comes up that you decide! Fuck me up! I'm right here!

Comments

Fifth Tier Magic: Fabricate

[blindluck]

Nagito has been reading nearby--a battered-looking murder mystery novel. He doesn't immediately bother the girl, though he watches her consider the branches and sketch in the sand. That drawing sure looks complicated. But he leaves her to it until he hears her going around asking after knives.

"Ferryman-san won't let us have weapons," he says, though his eyes don't quite leave the pages of his book. "If you want something like that, you'll have to see if you can find something metal you can shape on your own."

Fabricate: Near the Water

[toilet_bound]

Hanako finds himself near the water and, in spite of himself, spots Arche nearby. That should have been enough for him to backpedal - after all, the last time they had both been near water had left him a blushing mess - but… she was currently crouched over the sand, all of her clothing was intact so… it should be safe, right?

Right. Which is how he finds himself leaning over her, looking at the contents of her sketches with interest.

“Whatcha drawing~?”

Shelters at Night

[toilet_bound]

Hanako didn’t sleep at night - maybe Arche was correct in thinking that the dead didn’t actually need rest, but he hadn’t been in the habit for a few decades now. So while most of the other denizens of the Oasis were in the clutches of slumber, he tended to stay up and stare at the stars.

Another thing they apparently shared in common? Making their way up to the roofs of their dwelling.

The boy didn’t know this at first: instead opting for his nightly sightseeing atop one of the makeshift huts until…

Was that crying?

It certainly sounded like it. Wrenching sobs, like someone coming undone at the seams. Normally, he would tell himself that it wasn’t his problem, there wasn’t much he could do but…

A sigh, and then he went searching for the source. Which turned out to, surprisingly, be Arche.

He hesitates for a moment, standing atop one of the roofs adjacent to the one she has huddled on. Touching her… probably wasn’t a good idea. Not without her knowing who was doing so and that he was nearby. So he tried the next best approach, speech.

“Nightmares?” It was a guess, one that humans had often at night, and the only thing aside from the crushing weight of reality that would get someone to cry. His voice was soft, cautious, as one foot stepped onto the roof.

Shelters at Night

[witnessvelama]

The darkness of the night is soothing, but it's also lonely. Celehar is long familiar with the sleepless hours of the dark, and with the various methods of fighting it. This time, he takes to walking the pathways between the little buildings, dressed in his usual black now that the absence of the sun allows it without discomfort.

Then his ears catch the building sobs, and he hesitates. He's well aware of the desire, at times, for privacy when emotions become overwhelming, but to turn and walk away, even to grant privacy, is a callousness that ill settles on him.

So he stops, his attention tilting towards the roof and the curled form on it. Climbing it is... an effort that he reserves, for the moment. Instead he raises his gravelly voice. "... Need you company?" It's not quite so banal a question as 'are you all right,' particularly when the answer there is obvious.

wildcard

[ghostmoder]

From a fellow roof-sitter to another — though Yusuke does his sitting during the day, sprawled out under the desert sun to watch the others go about their routines with bored, unabashed curiosity, like a particularly lazy bird.

He's been watching Arche poke and prod at the shelters for a while now. It's true that they're kinda run-down, and so for a while that was sufficiently interesting for him... but she seems pretty dogged about it, and it's starting to get boring. Has he mentioned he'd kill somebody for a cigarette? Unrelated. Of course.

Eventually, he calls down to her: "Yo. You know they're gonna move us eventually, right?"

Wildcard, as discussed

[marblenest]

Dankovsky will be waiting by the lake near the middle of the Oasis. This wasn't where he was before he was writing to Arche, but it is where he is now, having wandered out of the abode that he's chosen as his home. He really does feel debased having to do this, knowing he's made an absolute fool of himself the last time he's spoken to the poor girl, but, well, he's not above an apology, and she deserves one.

He was such a genuine ass to her. He really regrets it. Thinking about how earnestly Arche spoke of her home, and how quick he was to shut it down... why does he act like that sometimes? He truly doesn't know. It's like his emotions are trapped to the whims of a see saw. One day, they swing one way, one day, violently the next...

He wonders how much he's going to need to explain all of this to her as he waits nervously. Hopefully a sincere apology will be enough.