[Everything is leaking. She's no exception. It's an accepted hazard of returning to Wonderland. You accept it, right? Otherwise you wouldn't be helping Erika explore, watching her back as she tries to map out the tree's warped geometry. Or whatever it is you're doing here. Crossing paths. Wandering lost. Just accept it already.
There is a memory and the memory is ------------ having been pressed through distortions of creation, storage, retrieval. There is a normal car on a normal day on a normal overpass in a normal city. There is noise, impact, confusion, contained eternity a bed? a room? something is lost, someone is here, up is down and down is up and the memories grow out of place swallowing up time and space like the branches of this sick tree spawning worlds unto themselves spilling out like blood heat pain confusion confusion miss do you understand what is do you understand can you remember no nothing hurts at all because she can't remember until she remembers until she can't remember until she wants to leave but she can't leave but brother are you still there i'm scared but .
There is a memory reconstructed. It is full of holes. The holes fill themselves with abstract details. There is a ----- in a hospital bed. The walls were painted the color of -----. There were ----- people in the room. The memory is ----- days long and the world which is the room fades in and out in dizzy blotches.
There is a memory reconstructed. It is full of holes. The holes fill themselves with abstract details. There is a ----- in a small dingy room in a space station. The walls were playing ----- music at top volume. There were ----- broken VR terminals in the room. The girl in the memory has not slept in ----- days and the world which is the room fades in and out in dizzy blotches.]
That one's mine, [Erika says, about one or both, kind of stubbornly. Like, claiming the obvious, because the whole point of this shit when it happens is that these are secrets and it's supposed to be invasive and hurtful but it can't be if it's yours, can it? If you call its name? It's hers.] The thing about memory that you don't really think about is that none of it is actually set in the past. It's a simulation. A present configuration of your brain, possibly modeled after something you perceived in the past, physically part of you right now. [This cannot be anything but a rehearsed spiel. Erika rattles it off too quickly, and without breaking her focus from the path she walks and the notes she takes, for it to be impromptu.] They change over time. Your present affects how you look back on your past. That's kind of obvious, right? But the key is that whatever's after this will exert that pressure too. If we have to change to make it out -
[She trips. There's a short little gasp from her, not part of the spiel, and her eyes widen in a moment of pure surprise, and then she's just...gone.
But not gone. There's a drop, a strange trick of the landscape and a short fall and the guts of the room beneath and Erika lying more-or-less-okay-looking at the bottom, and the walls there are blaring too but it's something different, a swimming churning optical illusion of nothingness and a strange steady sound like static or chewing or the noise of matter undoing itself. The sound is quiet above, louder leaning down over the gap, probably deafening in the pit.
And though she doesn't look hurt, bruised at worst from the fall, Erika seems frozen under the surprise of that sound, eyes huge and limbs locked, barely breathing.]
[wildcard?]
[Hit me up any time if you have something you want to accomplish. Also, Erika is involved with the research crew based in Shadowdale, so she'll be doing that frequently, as well as just spending nights and rest periods there. Open to any generic Shadowdale content.]
Erika | OTA
--> cw: car accident, hospitals, brain injury, memory loss/distortion, unreality
[Everything is leaking. She's no exception. It's an accepted hazard of returning to Wonderland. You accept it, right? Otherwise you wouldn't be helping Erika explore, watching her back as she tries to map out the tree's warped geometry. Or whatever it is you're doing here. Crossing paths. Wandering lost. Just accept it already.
There is a memory and the memory is ------------ having been pressed through distortions of creation, storage, retrieval. There is a normal car on a normal day on a normal overpass in a normal city. There is noise, impact, confusion, contained eternity a bed? a room? something is lost, someone is here, up is down and down is up and the memories grow out of place swallowing up time and space like the branches of this sick tree spawning worlds unto themselves spilling out like blood heat pain confusion confusion miss do you understand what is do you understand can you remember no nothing hurts at all because she can't remember until she remembers until she can't remember until she wants to leave but she can't leave but brother are you still there i'm scared but .
There is a memory reconstructed. It is full of holes. The holes fill themselves with abstract details. There is a ----- in a hospital bed. The walls were painted the color of -----. There were ----- people in the room. The memory is ----- days long and the world which is the room fades in and out in dizzy blotches.
There is a memory reconstructed. It is full of holes. The holes fill themselves with abstract details. There is a ----- in a small dingy room in a space station. The walls were playing ----- music at top volume. There were ----- broken VR terminals in the room. The girl in the memory has not slept in ----- days and the world which is the room fades in and out in dizzy blotches.]
That one's mine, [Erika says, about one or both, kind of stubbornly. Like, claiming the obvious, because the whole point of this shit when it happens is that these are secrets and it's supposed to be invasive and hurtful but it can't be if it's yours, can it? If you call its name? It's hers.] The thing about memory that you don't really think about is that none of it is actually set in the past. It's a simulation. A present configuration of your brain, possibly modeled after something you perceived in the past, physically part of you right now. [This cannot be anything but a rehearsed spiel. Erika rattles it off too quickly, and without breaking her focus from the path she walks and the notes she takes, for it to be impromptu.] They change over time. Your present affects how you look back on your past. That's kind of obvious, right? But the key is that whatever's after this will exert that pressure too. If we have to change to make it out -
[She trips. There's a short little gasp from her, not part of the spiel, and her eyes widen in a moment of pure surprise, and then she's just...gone.
But not gone. There's a drop, a strange trick of the landscape and a short fall and the guts of the room beneath and Erika lying more-or-less-okay-looking at the bottom, and the walls there are blaring too but it's something different, a swimming churning optical illusion of nothingness and a strange steady sound like static or chewing or the noise of matter undoing itself. The sound is quiet above, louder leaning down over the gap, probably deafening in the pit.
And though she doesn't look hurt, bruised at worst from the fall, Erika seems frozen under the surprise of that sound, eyes huge and limbs locked, barely breathing.]
[wildcard?]
[Hit me up any time if you have something you want to accomplish. Also, Erika is involved with the research crew based in Shadowdale, so she'll be doing that frequently, as well as just spending nights and rest periods there. Open to any generic Shadowdale content.]