abraxaslogs | [Closed] nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced

WHO: Martin, Phoenix and Jon Sims
WHAT: First time Horizon time
WHEN: Start of September
WHERE: Horizon!

For Phoenix

Martin, despite the meditation, is still incredibly nervous when he feels that final tug, like he's falling asleep and snapping awake into a dream all at once.

But when he wakes up, of course, he doesn't worry about any of that. He just finds himself on the ground in a surprisingly comfortable outfit, with the Empress symbol in a repeating pattern on his tie - though at the same time, he can't help but wonder what he's comparing it to - and pushes himself to his feet with a visible air of confusion, in the sparce patch of open farmland he's found himself in. With a companion, even, and he frowns slightly.

"Uhm... hello, there?"

For Jon

The building Martin feels compelled to make, in the end, is singular: a long, flat building with only a ground floor, with the almost stereotypical classical architecture of a university. Inside is warm, and comforting; not just because it's literally a pleasant few degrees warmer inside than out, invoking memories of stepping in from the brisk winter wind, but the wooden floor and wall panels are a homey brown, the upper walls and ceiling lined with a creamy-gold wallpaper that's peeling in spots, but somehow charmingly so. There are people here, too, kind of - literally faceless mannequins in modern, casual fashion, that only change position when not being observed, but they don't mind Jon any as he explores.

There's a few different rooms, most of them classrooms, but there's a pair of offices next to each other, one labelled Prof. Blackwood, the other blank - but the wood grain had made a perfect eye shape where the matching bronze plaque would have gone. The largest room, though, taking up most of the entire side of the building is a library, filled with piles upon piles of books, the majority of them on poetry but a few random ones on other, non-fiction subjects.

That is where Martin is currently located, in animated conversation with a pair of mannequins that pose like they're genuinely interested in what he has to say.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Martin gets halfway out before he levels another suspicious glance at Jon.

"Exactly how many people are you going to watch me make an ass of myself in front of?" he asks. The way he turns to Jon as he says it makes his path arch awkwardly, giving the wood-eyed door a wide berth.

Jon snorts, watching Martin avoid that door. "I would tell you if you were making an ass of yourself. I sat on Sam's porch for hours and chattered about fireflies, my first time here."

Fireflies, and the nature of safety. He doesn't mention having made himself into a child for the experience.

"And he tried to poison me with American tea," he adds, wrinkling his nose, exaggerating the contempt to a silly degree.

That gets a sharp huff of laughter out of Martin, too surprised by the tone Jon's using to keep it in.

"Okay, sure, Sam," he says with open derision, and even a sort of little exasperated 'ta-da' motion with his hands. "If you think that's real tea."

The hallway feels smaller with company, and when he pushes open one of the heavy double doors to the outside world - he hesitates. Here was safe, and comfortable, and his, and a part of him can't help but be nervous for all the stuff out there, all the... unknowns he'll have to deal with. Including himself. So when he looks back at Jon again, his eyes are a little bit plaintive.

"Can... can Sam and all that... wait? Until next time? Maybe just yours, for now...?"

Jon pauses, eyes gone gentle, and nods.

"Yes- yes, of course. Martin, we can just stay here, if you want." Jon had felt the need to wander, to explore other domains, but he'd also been here for what later turned out to be weeks.

"Oh- no, n-no, I still want to see yours! It's just everyone else I'm a bit, um..."

How to phrase this tactfully.

"I don't... care?"

Nailed it.

"I-I-I mean, oh God, uh-- I just, I want to wait until I know people s-so I can, um, appreciate it properly...?"

The upward flick of one of Jon's eyebrows likely accounted for some of that stammering, but Jon doesn't remark.

"Mine, then. We can see it from here." He points, to where the upper curve of his prison stands against what passes for a sky in the Horizon.

The eyebrow makes his face turn red while he's sputtering, yes.

He'll take the excuse to look away, lifting one hand to rub his face down as he does. "Oh wow, that... that's really big, actually." He glances over his shoulder at his own tiny domain. "I didn't realise you could."

"There are at least three mountains scattered around. No one was exactly measuring out plots." And fortunately, none of them lie between Martin's domain and his own.

"I'd built that before I realized what I was doing."

"Right. Yeah, um. Makes sense I s'pose." He hadn't stepped of his domain previously, so there's an air of nervous wonder to him as he looks at the other domains surrounding his, feeling very self-conscious about his own, and altogether it leaves him with a discomfiting existential crisis.

"Um. Shall we?" he says, looking down at Jon a little expectantly.

It isn't really a conscious choice, his hand seeking Martin's as he leads him out, not directly towards his own domain, but in a path that skirts the borders of two others, rather than crossing directly through.

Martin hesitates when Jon's hand reaches for his - but something feels right, about letting the man hold him. It makes his chest flutter and his breath catch a little short, and it makes it hard to pay attention to the other domains around as they walk along. So he forces himself to, to try and focus on anything that's not the heat in his cheeks.

"This place really is incredible," he says quietly.

"It's- yes, it is," he agrees, nodding. "Like a shared dream." And mostly not a bad one.

"I wonder how hard it is to move a domain. They're all... pretty fluid, I think."

"Do we... have to? I mean-" he adds quickly, "I-if, um, this place is just like a dream, f-for you, uh, couldn't we just... make a connection between two of them?"

Though something about random doors appearing makes him unexpectedly anxious, and his hand tightens around Jon's.

Jon pauses, looking at him. It doesn’t take a big nosy eye to understand where that moment of nerves comes from. Not with what happened to Martin just before his arrival. He squeezes back.

“We probably could. Although, my domain has a lot of empty space to fill.”

He feels... conflicted, about how much that returning squeeze helps.

"I can only imagine. An entire panopticon must be... well, massively empty," he comments with a faint chuckle to his voice. "If you're the only one there."

"Just me and the Commodore." He smiles, the expression fond as they resume their progress.

When they finally step onto the untended grass lawn that surrounds his domain, Jon breaths out a quiet sigh. Another large chunk has fallen off of the outer wall, lying in a wedge of crumbled cement on the grass, having crushed the pile of broken timbers already there.

"It's. Ah- something of a mess."

When they get there, Martin actually takes a quiet breath in, looking at the structure before them. The crushed, dilapidated, crumbling monstrosity before them.

"It's... kind of incredible, honestly."

And despite himself, as Jon leads him inside, he finds himself composing a poem in the back of his mind, distracting him from fully paying attention.

In the heart of disaster
Of darkness and ruin and strife
Light still drips through
Every crack
Every shard
Every note of dust
Sparkles
Like blood on a bar of gold
And I feel in awe
Of the majesty of your broken whole.

Jon's steps pause, chest rising as he draws a deep breath. He didn't mean to hear that, Martin's mind putting such deliberate shape to language, but he did.

That's a little darker than Martin's usual. But maybe that isn't a surprise.

"Incredible? No..." Jon murmurs, looking up at the ugly iris of the falling-in roof. "But the empty space it leaves behind will be."

"Yeah, you're just... waiting for it to collapse, you said." He can kind of see why. There's still a certain majesty in the way it looks like this, filled with fog and debris, like it'd been abandoned half a thousand years ago or something.

He frowns slightly, when he looks back at Jon. "Is this an 'I'll understand it when I've my memory back' thing, too?"

He meets his eyes, with a slight shrug that's mostly in his expression.

"Only in that I've told you a little about it, I think. It's- This is just a replica. The real one was- was something of a weapon."

[Closed] nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced

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