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

[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.]