sticksandbones | The melody that filled the empty me [OPEN]

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The melody that filled the empty me [OPEN]

Who: Till and YOU!
What: Till has arrived! He's freaking the fuck out, it's probably fine dwbi
When: Early March
Where: The Grove, location fluctuates depending
Warnings: References to death and very slight suicidal ideation

[Despite growing up in a part of the wider reaches of the galaxy, Till's universe has always felt very small. Isolated. Contained. Not allowed to do anything less than what is expected of you. Step out of line, act in a way they don't like...

The last thing he remembers is standing alone on that stage. The lights went out, yet he could still feel the icy cold of the simulated rain pelting his face as he stared at Ivan's still-warm corpse.

He walked out on that stage fully expecting to die. This...felt wrong. He shouldn't be still here. So why...?

He blinks, and suddenly the stage is empty. The body is gone, as are all of the aliens watching him as they cheered when the song ended. It's eerily silent, and as he looks out into the great expanse ahead of him, he sees...

Does he know the word? "Mother"? That isn't what they called her. Provider. He is the Creation. When the aliens took him from her, he never knew what became of her. They ripped him, screaming and crying, from her arms. If he's seeing her now because he did die after all...then all the better, honestly.

He throws himself off the stage, and when he collapses into her arms, it all feels...idyllic. He's met with the true world of humanity. The trees, the grass, the clear blue sky. Was it all...just a bad dream?

...

..

.

Till startles awake to the tune of Rusty licking his face, and though it takes him a few long moment to regain consciousness enough to even realize what's going on...he recoils violently, practically throwing his body back to get away from the dog, only for his limbs to lock up on him in a similar way to the feeling he gets when the aliens set off his collar. Fuck. He has no idea that he's been laying in the Nethersea Brand for X amount of time, but thanks to Rusty he'd been dragged out and able to (mostly) recover enough that he isn't completely paralyzed.

Does that mean he's feeling GREAT? Haha, oh no. Hell no. This man has never seen an Earth dog before, do you think he has any idea what happened to him?

As Rusty tries to come back close to him, Till quickly tries to scramble to his feet- falls and eats shit once in the dirt- then manages to drag himself half-upright as he looks forward beyond where he ended up. Though the Grove isn't exactly your fount of beauty...it's grass. Trees. He's outside, and it doesn't feel real. It can't possibly be. It's either a near-death hallucination, or fake like Anakt Garden was.

Holding one of his upper arms for stability, Till's eyes settle on the Grove in front of him. The multitude of buildings large and small that have been cultivated into a small town...even amidst the sprawling city structures of the alien race, it seems foreign. He is, at least, visible at the tree-line to anyone who might be looking from their window.

Because in a fit of panicked desperation, the light on the choker(???) around his neck flashing red, Till turns and starts to stagger into the trees. If he IS outside...he has to run away. If he's found, he won't be killed. No. They'll capture him, and he will WISH they'd killed him.]

===========

[At some point, when Till has been convinced NOT to try to disappear into the Forest forever and fucking die immediately, he will do whatever he can to isolate himself away from everyone else. This is accomplished by Till finding one of the empty Inn rooms and locking himself up in it. He will go so far as to pull the largest piece of furniture he can find over the door to ensure nobody can come in, at which point he's not seen or hear from for...a while.

...

A post appears on the netbook in scratchy, uneven handwriting.]

if youre looking for me then come get me
i dont care anymore
ill tear apart every last one of you who tries
should have years ago

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[Look man if you come in here and start watering shit outside the chart-designated times he Will find you and he Will kill you.]

Yeah? I didn't have flowers where I grew up. Kazdel doesn't actually have any. Until five years ago, I was sort of in your same boat.

[He points to the flower crown.]

Did you make that?

[He doesn't want to be skinned, so don't worry he'll behave around the plants probably.

Till's expression is hard to read. Kazdel? Is that an Alien settlement of some sort? It would explain why it didn't have flowers...

But then Flamebringer asks about the flower crown, and he looks down at it, nodding slightly.]

Yeah. Long time ago.

[They look like normal flowers, but...something is really. Wrong with them. The center of each flower is...highly reflective, like it's wet, and they also usually don't have multiple of them.]

[Squints.]

Really? You preserved 'em pretty well.

[He doesn't want to just take it, but he does walk a step closer and crouch a bit to look at it.]

...are those camera lenses in the middle of them?

Yeah.

[ :) ]

They're not real. S'why I asked you if these were.

[He thought they were, when he was a tiny baby Till. He knows better now.]

...this is giving "dystopian future", you know.

[He stands, grabs a watering can, and proceeds over to some succulents that he's been babying for the past while.]

I'm not gonna ask. It's not my business. You wanna learn how to make a real flower crown? It's gonna die eventually, real flowers do that, but it's better than something with a camera lens in it.

[Dystopian hahaha...yeah that's a word for it!!

He's...surprised, though, that Flamebringer doesn't question him further. Everyone else here so far has. Literally this guy is the first to be like "that ain't my problem", which Till appreciates. It saves him the necessity of dodging questions he doesn't want to answer.

In spite of himself, even though he wasn't planning on sticking around that long until he actually saw the flowers...Till inclines his head slightly.]

S...sure, I guess. But that's gonna mess up your flowers, right...?

[Flamebringer is firmly in camp "you don't ask another man about his problems/traumas/sins/amount of people he's killed". You just don't.]

I have to trim some of them anyway. If a plant gets too heavy, it leans like this, [he says, straying over to some pansies,] and sometimes, the blooms will choke the others out. The stronger flowers survive, but the rest of the plant will die. Kind of like society... I used to not think about it that way, thinking only the strong were worthwhile, but now I'm not sure whether that's correct.

[Okay, this is not the time for your plant-based philosophy system to come out full-force.]

All things die eventually anyhow. Better to snip the things choking out everything else and turn them into something beautiful.

[Flamebringer your plant-based philosophy...weirdly enough though, Till thinks he gets it. Kindof. It makes more sense than if he'd used some other kind of metaphor, anyway.

But maybe that's just because he likes flowers.]

...okay. Show me, then.

Alright.

[He's going to snip the heavier pansies near the soil itself. Those stalks will regrow; the rest of the plant balances out as he does this, the relief obvious. He makes a mental note to give them some TLC later.

With some flowers in hand, though, he leads Till outside to sit in the sun, then plops down in the grass nearby.]

Here, these are yours. When you weave them together, you want to make sure the stems are sturdy, but not so rigid you can't actually weave them. That's why I picked pansies instead of roses, since the stems are thick and thorny.

[Rose flower crowns are not real because ouchies.]

When you start it, weave the stems like this...

[Flower crown. :) ]

[Till takes the pansies gingerly, like he's afraid he might crush them into dust if he handles them too hard. And as Flamebringer explains, he'll follow his instruction carefully, weaving them in the exact way he's told.

Though he's silent as he works, he is completely engrossed in it. Like, to a degree that a boy his age probably normally wouldn't be.]

...

[Aww... he looks so happy. Good!]

Looks like you're a quick learner. Are you sure you haven't done this before?

[Tail wag :) He is making a friembd...]

[Till blinks, looking up at Flamebringer breaking the silence snaps him out of his thoughts. He rubs his thumb gently against the delicate, velvety petals of one pansie before he keeps going, talking while he works.]

I have, just...not for a long time. And not with real flowers. Not ones like these, anyway.

[Flowers that are soft, and genuine, and don't have cameras in them.]

I get it. That's sort of how I felt when I left Kazdel for the first time.

[He's working on his own right now, and he's pretty quick at it. Flower crown made, he plops it onto his own head where it sits awkwardly against either set of horns.

Hm.

Oh well.]

Granted, we didn't have them at all. Not even the fake ones. We have trees and grass and other plants, but not these. The whole place is a hellhole.

[Till watches as Flamebringer places his own crown on his head, even if it looks a little silly trying to sit around his horns. It makes Till feel a little less self conscious about the whole thing, instead feeling a touch melancholy about it.

He'd rather be giving this to Mizi, he thinks as he looks at the way it hangs between his fingers, the flowers a vibrant hue that will eventually fade as they die. Even now they're not long for this world, plucked from the roots as they are.

There's a moment where he hesitates after Flamebringer says that, before he breaks the silence.]

You're not...from Earth either, I guess.

Nah. I'm from somewhere called Terra. Kazdel is just another country on it. Most other Terran countries have gone through over the last thousand or so years and completely destroyed it. They don't like us Sarkaz.

[He glances down at the barcode tattoo on his wrist, frowning.]

Hell, not even the Sarkaz like other Sarkaz. It's complicated.

[Out of reflex, Till's gaze travels down to follow Flamebringer's line of sight, which prompts him to catch on to the barcode tattoo there. There's a moment, when he sees it, that he just...freezes.

The aliens don't really use barcodes, necessarily, to identify their pet humans. They prefer to brand them with their "names", or- if they're considered just a provider and nothing more- they'll notch their ears to identify them, like cattle. Till doesn't need to recognize the symbol to know what it means, though, finding himself reaching up to touch the choker that should be around his neck hiding his own, but isn't. This is before he gets his scarf, so...

He realizes what he's done a second too late as he quickly turns his face away, looking back down at the flower crown held loosely between his hands.]

Fuck. Sorry, I-

[...]

Sorry.

...what, this thing? It's fine. I won my freedom. They can't do shit to me now.

[He taps his neck. He's not oblivious, he knows what slave brands look like. Lots of places on Terra do them... none with names, at least he doesn't think, but still.]

You got yours too. Never forget that.

[You got yours too. Never forget that.

Is that really true? He's only free as long as he's here...and he doesn't know how long that will be. He could be snatched away back to the stage at any moment, and at that point...he doesn't have much time left, essentially. It's not like he really thinks he's beating Luca, after all.

His hand falls back into his lap, instead carefully letting the flower crown fall between his fingertips.]

It doesn't really feel like I did.

Look, we've got a new fuckass keeping us captive, but it's not like we're slaves. We're not entirely subject to its whims, and we can fight back. For a lot of people, that's more than they ever had.

[Pats Till on the back...]

Besides, if we kill that motherfucker keeping us here, we're going to live in fucking paradise. This place fucks. [thank you flamebringer very cool]

[The contact, though unexpected, isn't...unwelcome. It feels weird, in a way he can't properly describe, as someone who's never really had an older adult figure in his life. Especially not a guy like Flamebringer, who seems to have had a similar upbringing even though he doesn't know the exact details.

He still hates that he saw his brand, but the fact he didn't dwell on it helps.]

If you say that cause you're comparing it to whatever life was like before here, then yeah. It fucks.

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The melody that filled the empty me [OPEN]

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cw: slavery

cw the whole thing all the way down

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