abraxaslogs | [ OPEN ] i know some places and i've seen some faces

[ OPEN ] i know some places and i've seen some faces

WHO: sam wilson and anyone/everyone.
WHAT: captain america cookout.
WHERE: sam's horizon domain
WHEN: third saturday of september (aka, about 3 weeks after the jailbreak)
NOTES: see below!

HELLO ALL AND WELCOME TO SAM'S CAPTAIN AMERICA COOKOUT!!!!

Over the last week or so, Sam has been going out of his way to contact as many people as he knows to invite them to a cookout at his place in the Horizon. He knows that after the jailbreak, a lot of people were separated, and this was his first thought on how to bring people together. The purpose behind it is simply because Sam thinks that the one thing all of them have in common, opinion on the Singularity and their situations aside, is that they were all brought here and can actually access the Horizon. He sees merit and use in coming together when they can, especially in ways that don't involve the politics of the land they're now living in. So, what better way to do that than around food?

The long and short of it is - this is a peace meal. Leave your issues at the door. Sam has very few rules and there is very little he will give in terms of what this cookout will entail, but three things he will make very clear:

1.) There will be no fighting at his home. You want to duke it out? Take it somewhere else. There will not be warnings or second chances. Don't be an ass.
2.) There is no meeting or serious reason for this cookout. Literally, he just wants people to come together who may no longer be able to see each other due to the travel constraints. It's meant to be fun. Come have fun. (he knows y'all know what that is, even when some of you pretend you don't). Bring food if you want to! There is also a kitchen (if you know what that is) and places to crash. Hope you like seafood!
3.) Anyone who can come into the Horizon is welcome. He'd love it if everyone came, so spread the word.

The cookout itself is set up out front, with picnic tables and chairs and fire pits and lights abound. There are tables set up near grilles if anyone wants to do any actual cooking outside, and a table (probably multiple) set up with sides and napkins and utensils. There are a variety of different places to go and sit and hang out while you're eating. Anything and everything you can want is available - food, drinks, yard games, music playing from out in the trees that will remain consistent unless someone tries to find the speakers and hijack the playlists, etc. If you can't find something outside, you're more than welcome to check the house.

All throughout the party, too, there will be a new friend. Red, as Sam fondly calls him, is a blood-red hunting hawk with silver in between the feathers. He can be found circling around Sam quite often, or perched on his shoulders, but also if you are out and about you can often see him checking up on anyone and everyone. He's a very curious little bird, and also pretty sassy, if you want to interact with him.

If you haven't, or have, been to Sam's domain before, feel free to take a look around. Anywhere is open (save for one locked bedroom) so everyone has open access, but most of the cookout itself will be located in the front yard.

OOC: This is mean to be an OPEN LOG, so leave your TLs or closed threads below! This party will last basically as long as people want it to, but the idea is for it to be an afternoon into the evening. Y'all have free reign save for destroying Sam's home, but if you have any questions, hit me up on plurk (disarmingly or disco (dai#3757). Sam's TL is below, and he will be bouncing around like the good host he is, but lets get a little party started.

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I'll add 'em to my list of things to see.

[ Julie figures that, as long as she's not entering other people's private dwellings with their domain, she's still free to look at the landscapes they've plunked them down on. After all, you can't tell people that they can't look at nature, right? And either way, she's not exactly someone who's afraid to go snooping where she shouldn't anyway.

Her people have features, albeit terribly blank, forgettable ones. Their faces are unimportant -- they are only present to fill the room. She does knit her brow, demonstrating obvious confusion over this concept. ] But I didn't make 'em. Plus, isn't it kind of like murder? I mean, I know they ain't exactly real, but... they ain't exactly not, either.

[ Ah. So she doesn't realize. Hadn't whoever brought her in explained a damn thing to her?

(Who did bring her in? One of the people she'd run to Nott with? Lloyd? Nadine?) ]

Julie. [ Geralt tilts his head. ] You did make them. Intentionally or not. This place—people can't hold form the way an object or an animal can. That's why they don't speak to you. Or vanish now and again.

[ They're not real, but. He gets it. How undoing them might feel. He realizes, he's just fucking glad Ciri had disappeared before he returned. That she wasn't still here, waiting. Because unmaking that. He doesn't even want to think about it. ]

[ Correct, she was taught close to nothing. If Geralt ever spends more than about ten minutes with Lloyd, he will immediately understand the disadvantage that Julie had in becoming acquainted with the Horizon. Bringing her in was the first time Lloyd had come back himself, to the point that he was changing things in his domain even as they made their way to each other from opposite sides of the room. It was the first time he was seeing it all with eyes that knew what it should look like.

The stitch between her eyebrows deepens, as this thought has literally never occurred to her. She is, vaguely, aware that they can manifest things without trying, but she did not believe people to be included -- only objects and possibly animals (Lloyd has some weird nightmare bunnies that she turns tame without trying whenever she gets close). There is a long pause where she obviously starts and stops several thoughts before they ever leave her mouth, and then she finally settles on: ]

Well, I don't know what they're doin' there. [ Which is a lie, now that she understands what's happening. She knows damn well that she's terrified to be alone now, that she's not haunted by the pestilence and death that she comes from. Only the loneliness. ] But it don't seem right to just... wish 'em away or whatever. This whole place, it's connected to the Singularity, right? If we hurt part of it, is it the same as hurtin' the Singularity itself?

[ She curls into a tighter ball in her chair, downs a large gulp of vodka as she looks into the distance. They can't see it from here, but she knows that the monolith lurks in the center of it all. Julie doesn't like the Singularity very much. Even if it's all Flagg wants, it still makes her stomach clench to think of it, to know that she's tethered to it. ]

And if these people are right, maybe we shouldn't be hurtin' it.

[ That is a lie, probably, but he won't mention it. Not his place. He's been avoiding dwelling on his own reasons for bringing forth the girl. He hasn't even told Cirilla, though he knows he'll need to at some point. Just. Not right now.

He's quiet, eyes on her, considering what she's saying. It's interesting. It's interesting she thinks of it that way, that unmaking something is destroying a part of the Horizon as a whole. Is that true? He does know he feels an uneasiness at the idea of someone else fucking with his domain, uninvited, with the intention to destroy. More so than he should, given his understanding that it can all be recreated in a matter of minutes. ]

It was blank when we arrived. Untouched. We all felt...a desire to make. [ His suspicion, at first, had been that Thorne brought them inside to feed it with their creation. Why grant the prisoners access otherwise? Then he learned what they did to Relena. Now he isn't sure. What would happen if they returned this place to its blank slate? It must be possible for it to exist in that form. That was how they'd found it. But Julie's observation, whether she meant it to or not, is beginning to make him reconsider: what if the Horizon was not born out of the Singularity? What if its existence is owed entirely to their interlinked connection to it instead? If more and more of them are connected, would the expanse within the Horizon grow? ]

I don't know. [ His expression softens for a moment as he watches her stare across their little world, before he takes another drink. Shit. He's had too much to theorize over transcendental creations. Or not enough. One or the other. ] Some believe our connection to the Singularity is vital. That may have been part of Thorne's intention. So we have little choice but to defend it on their behalf.

[ She too feels uneasy at the thought of someone else changing her domain, or even of changing too much herself. What if it was supposed to mean something, the world that was created for her? Sure, she could fill it with other stuff, but changing the core of it feels wrong. Dismantling it rings even worse, intrinsically bad, the same way that it might feel wrong to murder someone in cold blood, or hurt a child.

Maybe that's it. Something about this place makes it feel like it needs to be protected, cared for. Guarded. Is this what ancient temples and holy places feel like? She hates it. ]

It's been here a long time before we got here. Don't know why we'd need to defend it. Seems pretty capable on its own.

[ Feels like he's been here forever, it slips his mind on occasion not everyone was there. For Ambrose's grand speech at the Singularity, for the snatches of information heard through the bars. A beat goes by. ]

Thorne believes something's changing that'll collapse the world. [ It's clear, from how he repeats it, that he's skeptical at best. He's heard it all before. World-ending prophecies and omens. (But then, what of the Red Riders, who Ciri believes so firmly is real?) ] Though they appear to have little want of us. For now.

[ Hence, the dungeons. He gives the smallest shrug. As much as he's avoided getting caught up, he also knows he can't in the long run. The question is what he wants to do about that when the time comes. More and more, the longer he stays, the more he talks to people, he finds himself with a reason to do...something. Reasons that aren't all to do with Ciri. ]

Thorne don't seem to know jack about squat. They're talkin' outta their asses. Besides, it ain't like I never lived through the end of the world before.

[ She scoffs. Thorne seems to be basing their entire approach to the world on one specific guy who just... decides shit without ever asking a question. It's like letting a toddler run the household. ]

I dunno. I knew a few people upstairs, and they said they weren't told that much more than us in the dungeon. Like, you want people to save you, you're gonna tell 'em what the problem is in the first place, right? But they can't. It's bullshit. I half think they just stumbled on the way to bring us here and they're tryin' to justify it all.

[ A wry, quiet huff comes from him. ] Likely. But they believe the bullshit.

[ Like her, it's a hell of a thing to be told of another cataclysmic event on the horizon, when his own world's not just ended—it was born out of exactly the event Thorne describes threatens their existence. A collapsing of multiple spheres. If it happened once, perhaps it's only logical it can happen again, but he doesn't believe, either, something of that magnitude can be predicted or stopped. But it does serve as an easy excuse for a kingdom to grasp for power, redirecting an entire nation's fears. What else is new?

A beat, before he finally offers Julie her drink back: a trade for the bottle in her hands. If the cup is still surprisingly full, mm. He's not been paying attention, exactly, to how often he subconsciously refilled the thing. What is certain, though, is the yellow of his eyes has taken on a glassy quality few get to see in him, and that he's giving far less thought into what he chooses to say. ]

People have done worse for less. I've seen a century of the same fucking thing.

[ And now he's crossed entire spheres just for more of it. So. Everything he ever wanted. ]

Doesn't mean we have to believe it too. And all I know's is, if the Singularity is as powerful as they say, then it's fucking stupid of them to mess with it. The government and scientists started messin' with things bigger than humans, and now we're probably gonna go extinct.

[ She trades him back the bottle, taking a final gulp of punch before setting the cup on the ground at the leg of her chair. When she sits back upright, there's a stitch between her eyebrows that wasn't there before. ]

Wait, how old are you?

[ No. They don't. But when have humans not harnessed power and forces they don't understand? ]

Nothing like a war started through hubris. [ He tips back the bottle, appreciating the familiar taste of it again. At least he's not the only one here tired of—this. The Singularity and this sphere's seeming obsession with it. Whether or not it was ever important, it is now. They've all made it so. Julie is not wrong: self-fulfilling prophecies are the only kinds he believes in.

He looks over the bottle. Mm. His gesture is vaguely dismissive, like he doesn't consider the number significant. ]

Hundred. Give or take. [ Older than he looks; not as old as others presume sometimes. Though it doesn't stop Jaskier from calling him ancient. ] I'm youthful at heart.

If we get lucky, maybe a bunch of 'em will pull a Heaven's Gate or some shit. [ There's a very small hiccup, then she realizes she needs to clarify. ] Oh. Back home, there was this famous cult, like when I was a baby. There's this comet, comes 'round every couple thousand years? Anyway, these psychos believed there was an alien spaceship behind the comet, and they could get on it and become gods, kinda. So they all killed themselves, drank poison to "get on the spaceship". The whole thing was so stupid that they literally stopped makin' the shoes they were all wearin' when they offed themselves. That stupid fuckin' rock ain't nothin' but a comet with no spaceship behind it. The sooner all these weirdos drink their poison, the sooner everyone else can move the hell on.

[ It's big talk from someone who is, for all practical purposes, also in a cult. Hers doesn't require mass suicide, though, so it's fine. Totally fine.

She arches her eyebrow and laughs a little. ] Shit, that's what hundred year-old people look like where you're from? I gotta move worlds.

[ It's Geralt's turn for his brows to draw together—less in concern, more in concentration. Not the first time he's understanding only half the words being said, but normally Geralt's got a better grip on piecing context together to make a sufficient picture. Right now he's—a little less than focused. Which doesn't stop him from trying, but he comes up short in what the fuck she means by aliens and ships in space. (What space?)

He blinks once, twice. Takes another drink. ] I—hm. [ That's. Different. ] Are these spaceships a myth?

[ He's certain this is not the point of her story, but at the same time, it feels worth noting because the other part of it—needless death for some horseshit belief—is typical enough. And dredges up things he'd rather not delve into. (If Destiny were a spaceship, would his mother have willingly thrown him to the wolves all the same? Likely.)

A brief pause passes before Geralt catches what Julie is insinuating. He shakes his head, a light curl to his lips. ] Not exactly everyone. We're slow to age, my kind.

All spaceships? Hell, probably not. The universe is huge, right? I'm sure there's all kinda stuff out there. But that specific spaceship wasn't real. Just a bunch of crazy people believin' an even crazier person's ramblin'.

[ She shrugs. Julie has never been the kind of person who's interested in space and aliens. The thought of being so small and insignificant in the grand scheme of everything makes her deeply uncomfortable. But she'd never thought that her Earth and humans were the only real life in the universe, even before she met Flagg or got brought to Abraxas. There was simply too much out there to believe that she was cosmically chosen.

She tilts her head to the side, frowning. She doesn't understand. His kind? ] What does that mean?

[ Oh. When she says universe, he realizes suddenly she means space in the astronomical sense. Is that how they imagine moving from one sphere to another for her? A ship that travels through, as though it were the sea? He supposes without magic, that remains the only option.

He'd ask, but he's sidetracked by her question, one he's beginning to learn to expect. It's a little unusual, still, how easily so many gloss over his eyes without question. But then, her hair is pink somehow so perhaps humans are simply even more variable on her world. ]

They call us Witchers. We're— [ He pauses, then shrugs, too. The actual details are too longwinded for him to bother delving into. He just doesn't particularly care to skirt around what he is. ] Created by mages. [ He seems to ponder for a second. ] Whether our lifespan was intended or a side effect, I couldn't tell you.

[ It's true that his appearance has never pinged her radar simply due to the availability of modifications where she comes from. You want white hair and bright yellow eyes? That's two days in the salon and thirty bucks on a shifty website. But there's also the fact that she has been quickly acclimated to the idea of other worlds, and who is she to say what people look like in them? Her first thought was never "someone must have forced him to look like that".

She listens in silence, her face falling with alarm and trepidation. Her words come out slowly, carefully, like the very thought people doing such a thing is so unfamiliar to her that she needs to test each verbal step. ]

They... created you? Like what, they stitched you up outta spare parts? I don't understand.

[ What? ] No—

[ He squints a little at her, head tipped to the side. Most have taken the created by mages aspect in stride, or at least without too many questions. Faced the concept that she's imagining pieces of various organisms being sewn together, he's thrown off track for a second or two. (Has she seen something like that before?) ]

It's alchemical. The process forces a mutagenic transformation.

[ That's as well as he can explain it. The rest is either a mystery long burned alongside the mages who perished or he simply hasn't cared to examine it in depth, the particulars of what exactly was done to him. It matters little and changes nothing. ]

[ Look Geralt, there is actually a reason for that question, but it's a cultural touchstone that you just don't have. Be thankful that she thought to ask it in a way that wouldn't require a fifteen minute crash course in movie monsters and high school required reading. (Actually, it's kind of surprising that none of the others who seem to share similar timelines with her have brought it up. Sam definitely knows what Frankenstein is.)

The idea that he was changed actually seems to rock Julie more than the idea of him having been built from random parts of corpses. She's not entirely sure what he means by mutagenic -- her understanding of that word is heavily based on comic book superheroes (he can't be a mutant like that, right?) -- but it certainly doesn't sound good. ]

So what, you asked to get turned into a Witcher? Why?

[ Something about Julie's reaction makes him hesitate. Like she finds the idea upsetting. All of this—it's such a deep part of his life that he's stopped wanting to give much thought to the fact that it isn't...(normal). His preference, always, is to speak of it casually, if he ever speaks of it at all. ]

I didn't ask. [ He frowns at the bottle in his hands and drains a good chunk of it. He wants to say, And no one asked me, but it sounds borderline petulant so he doesn't. ] They take you. No shortage of children who won't be missed.

[ He leaves it at that. It's not a topic he delves into on the best days. Besides, it isn't important, the hows and whys. He's asked, thought about it over the years (thought about it a fucking lot), and if Visenna was ever right about one thing in her life, it's that no answer will grant him what he needs. ]

[ Geralt, of course, has no way of knowing that one of Julie's very few personal morals is to never hurt children, to always take care of them. Adults, she's happy to destroy down to the last atom, but animals and children are where she draws the line. She spent weeks haranguing Nadine about the fact that she killed her unborn child when she killed herself. It is, in many ways, the worst thing she can even think of, and she can think of many truly horrifying things.

The idea of this being normal enough to be an industry is deeply distressing to her. And logically, she knows that most people who undergo incredibly traumatic events don't want to relive them, because she sure as hell doesn't want to relive hers, but she is also intoxicated. Extremely intoxicated.

Silent, she sort of slides out of her chair to sit on the ground at his feet, planting her hands on one of his knees. She looks up at him intently, as if she wants to reach into the past and change it, even if it means they never would have met (because he's a hundred and would be super dead). ]

Hey. I'm sorry that happened to you. That's fuckin' bullshit. Just, like... [ Julie is, again, extremely drunk and also not eloquent even at her most sober. ] Like it's bullshit, and the only reason it's even slightly less bullshit is because I got to meet you. I never thought I would meet new people at all, so I'm real glad you were one of 'em.

[ There's a moment where he regrets having said a damn thing about it. He's equally full of liquor and that means he's even less capable of understanding what to do with...sympathy. Or what registers as sympathy. Maybe it's pity. He can't say for certain, because neither are often aimed in his direction. He wants to dismiss it—it is shit, but so is everything else, like being dead or having most of the world die on you; whatever violence or loss has dogged his life, it isn't any more or less than what's found so many others—but Julie's hands are warm, her gaze remarkably earnest, and he finds he can't bring himself to shrug her off.

His eyes drop down towards her. For a few seconds, he's quiet. He shares the sentiment; it just isn't one he knows how to say when acknowledging when people begin to inch closer to him is something he's spent his entire life avoiding. Maybe it can be read on his face anyhow—more easily so than were he sober—in the mild, thoughtful expression that flickers over him. ]

I'm rarely much for company, [ any semblance of eloquence has also completely evaded him now that he's this many bottles deep, though in its place is a sincerity where his deadpan normally is, ] but some are worthwhile.

[ Perhaps finding new people has made dying less bullshit for her, too. Who knows? He rather hopes so. Neither of them have a hell of a lot to hold onto. ]

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[ OPEN ] i know some places and i've seen some faces

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