Time weirdos anonymous

[ephemeralflow]

Who: Timekeeper, Siffrin, and possibly Loop
What: Continuing their meeting from here!
When: Sometime pre-subnautica
Where: Outside under a tree somewhere
Warnings: Will tag/update as needed


Indeed! You are truly new here, if I am the first Cookie you meet! But of course you are, I would have noticed someone with such interesting threads of time on them.

[Timekeeper's smile widens as she leans forward, tapping a finger to her chin. She either doesn't seem to notice Siffrin's sour face, or doesn't seem to care.]

Yes, your time has been altered indeed - in person, there's no doubt! I should like to hear about it.

Comments

[start_again]

[For what it's worth, Siffrin does not look to comfortable with any of this either. He frowns at the scissors, brows knitting together uncertainly.]

Maybe no one should be cutting reality anyway? That sounds...bad.

[Putting it mildly. He gives the scissors a wary look and quietly considers perhaps a theft in the middle of the night or something. Maybe that'd be safer than destroying a device that can fuck with time.]

[ephemeralflow]

[Oh really? Oh REALLY, Loop???? Timekeeper's expression sharpens suddenly, though her smile only grows wider and more unsettling.]

Well! I suppose that depends on your definition of "bad," does it not? There is so much you can do with time, after all! But, if you want to see bad, this is what a time rift looks like here!

[She snaps the Embroider closed, pulls it upwards, spins it briefly and deftly over her head, then jabs it through the space to her side. A glowing golden tear opens in the air, crackling for a second before stretching wide. It's flickering and wavy, clearly unstable...]

[sticksandbonesmods]

A young girl with her curly hair in a ponytail can be seen sitting on a fence, clearly taking a break from working on something. Two teens are there too, though the face of only one is visible- Sifrin- and though everything flickers, it's easy to see others from the Grove as well. A man with red hair talking to an old woman with a lily in her hair. A boy with white hair and purple eyes talking to what they'll definitely recognize as Nene.

...

The girl with curly hair seems to look right into the rift.

And then it destabilizes and closes once more.

thanks they hate it

[theuniverseleads]

[It's like nails on a chalkboard to a sense they can't even name. Their skin fizzles violently in response, light crackling, instinctively reaching to grasp the person next to them like they might get sucked in without an anchor—

and then it's basically over. Loop looks puffed out like an upset cat.

They shift their wide-eyed glare to Timekeeper, their anxiety exchanged for something more primal.]

What is your problem?! Are you insane?!

[they're still clinging to Siffrin's hand like a lifeline, sorry if that hurts they're not being gentle about it in the slightest.]

[start_again]

[At her sudden movement, Siffrin does nearly leap to jump her in a panic. But he's too late, and the action is aborted as the image flickers across the rift. It's only for a few moments, but Siffrin is frozen watching it, wide-eyed as the rift closes again.]

Wh...what was that?

[In truth, he's forgotten more than he can remember. Whether or not that brief moment would have been from an age before everything was voided is a toss-up. But he knows instinctively that the familiar faces are wrong. It's the people from here, not the life he's missing, it's something else and it feels like salt in the gaping wound of his missing memories, a half-step from what he wants to remember. That's from this place, and that's not where he's from, because he's from–

The thought is as slippery as ever, but he clings to it desperately. Home, home, home is to the north, it's–

The pain of their hand being crushed feels distant, but they try to focus in on it. It's grounding, at least. They squeeze Loop's hand back just as tight and breathe, in and out.]

1/2

[ephemeralflow]

[They're not the only ones rattled by the sudden window into another eerily familiar time. Timekeeper simply isn't showing it so much, though the air does crackle around her briefly. She recognizes the faces in the rift, but... instinctively, not by logic or by memory. It's like the dust has been shaken off a clocktower bell as it tolls somewhere in a piece of her heart she'd forgotten about.

When the girl with the curly brown hair and deep brown eyes turns towards the rift, seeming for a fraction of a second to recognize what she's seeing in turn, she almost lets the name slip.]

Croi-

2/2

[ephemeralflow]

...hmm.

[But no, she clicks her mouth shut after breathing that syllable, her smile waning but refusing to entirely fade. That's not Croissant Cookie, and she knows it down to her bones. But it's not herself, either. Not anymore.

Words from a dream echo in her head as she regards the space where the rift was.]

Well. That certainly didn't happen when I tried that before. How interesting!

[Loop's shouting is getting studiously ignored. It's not anything she hasn't had yelled at her before, after all.]

[theuniverseleads]

[How interesting. How interesting!

They want to throttle her. Anger boils under their skin, but it's the fear that keeps them rooted in place. They want to throttle her, but they don't know what she's capable of—know exactly enough to understand how dangerous she could be to them. They have little fear of death, but a power of this scope? The power to unravel, to stitch, to twist their already mangled threads?

Loop inhales a breath into their empty chest. They hold firm, gaze level with Timekeeper as they nudge one foot forward—to stand in front of their stardust, the only thing they have left worth protecting.]

You showed him what you wanted to. We're done here now. Study it on your own time.

[start_again]

[Ha. Hahaha. She doesn't even know what she's doing? Amazing. Awesome! That's not worrying at all!

Throat tight, Siffrin is still trying to formulate a proper response when Loop edges their way in front of him. It should be frustrating, the way they speak for him, but those scissors fill him with dread and Loop's protectiveness is a little nice in this moment. He squeezes their hand and forces himself to breathe.]

Just...stop trying at all, okay? Don't mess around with that stuff.

[ephemeralflow]

[When her gaze slides back to Loop and Siffrin, it's gleaming, some kind of mania barely contained.]

Futile. You could no more stop me from trying than you could stop yourself from breathing.

[Then it's gone, that smiling mask back firmly in place.]

After all, if none of us had ever tried, where would we be now? It would surely be a boring timeline. But I'm not changing your minds, am I?

[Her head tilts innocently, and she sweeps the scissors underneath her, sitting on them with legs crossed as they float.]

One last question before I leave, then. What shape is time?

[theuniverseleads]

[They know it's pointless to ask, they know, they know... she's no different from the King in that sense. Stuck in her ways, whatever her true goal might be.

Hah. As if they're any better, right? When that kind of power was theirs...

but they push that thought aside for now. They don't want to goad her into doing something even more insane. Better to just play along, give only enough to make her satisfied.]

I don't know. Triangles? [two triangles, duh. you need to ▶▶ to speed up and ◀◀ to go back.]

[start_again]

[Siffrin's eye narrows at her. The temptation to just rush her and knock her off those stupid giant scissors and run off with them is strong, but she doesn't exactly seem super stable. He's wary of setting her off while she's in possession of the giant sharp foreboding time fuckery device.]

Sure, triangles, whatever.

[It's as good a guess as any, and their brains understandably work the same way on matters like this. Not like Siffrin is invested enough to think on it further anyway.]

[ephemeralflow]

What a unique response! As expected. Certainly, triangles could be the two sides of an hourglass, or the arrow on a clock's hand, or a sundial's gnomon. Or perhaps you are thinking of something else, even! There are as many ways to associate such a shape with time as there may be a line, or a circle, or a spiral, or a branching tree.

[She nods, then looks up from under the brim of her hat, letting it cast a shadow on her face through which her eye glows gold.]

But that is conjecture, a substitute, the mortal mind trying to grasp a concept bigger than it. The closest to the truth?

Time is an abyss, and we all fall through it. Well, excepting me and some few others, of course. You cannot stop falling unless something catches you, wouldn't you agree?

[theuniverseleads]

[Stars, this is getting excessive. Does she have to talk down to them about the shape of reality beyond mortal comprehension or whatever??? Colors make their eyes hurt enough already, they're fine with comprehending a normal amount!

They give Siffrin's hand another squeeze, simply because they're trying really hard not to roll their eyes at this and make everything worse again. They're trying so hard. They really don't want to fight today, but damn, the sass is in their blood.]

A temporal safety net, sure.

[start_again]

[Siffrin just falls silent. Half of it is that he just doesn't truly know much about all this. His struggle to escape the timeloop was a mess of misunderstandings and false assumptions and he's learned by now that he doesn't know shit. He would have kept falling through that abyss forever if not for Loop.

And the other half is that TK is, frankly, fucking insane, and Siffrin is regretting this whole interaction.

So he ducks his face into the collar of his cloak like it might hide him from her, happy to let Loop take the reins here.]