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TEST DRIVE MEME 005
⚰︎ ⍢ ⌲ ⍚ TEST DRIVE MEME:
Welcome to RUBILYKSKOYE — a dark, horror-smut game where player choices will drive a mod-run storyline about the world and its NPCs. This test drive meme provides a medley of prompts evoking the game's general tone.
THESE THREADS CAN BE GAME CANON if both players are accepted into the game and agree to it. However, if players who'd prefer to start fresh are welcome to reuse these prompts in their own personal logs upon acceptance into the communities. Note: the universal test drive arrival prompt will not be repeated on the any event log, but players are welcome to reuse the prompt.
CONTENT WARNINGS for this game include: monsters, body horror, dub-con, non-con, religion, blood/violence, and marking/branding, loss of autonomy/self, and mental influences. This log additionally has warnings for: spiders, aphrodisiac and truth serum effects, public nudity, exhibitionism/voyeurism, bdsm, kink negotiation, social pressure, and animal sacrifice.
If you have QUESTIONS about the test drive prompts, please ask HERE. Questions about the game itself or the general setting should be directed to the FAQ.
FAQ ✧ SETTING ✧ CALENDAR ✧ RESERVES ✧ APPLICATIONS
THESE THREADS CAN BE GAME CANON if both players are accepted into the game and agree to it. However, if players who'd prefer to start fresh are welcome to reuse these prompts in their own personal logs upon acceptance into the communities. Note: the universal test drive arrival prompt will not be repeated on the any event log, but players are welcome to reuse the prompt.
CONTENT WARNINGS for this game include: monsters, body horror, dub-con, non-con, religion, blood/violence, and marking/branding, loss of autonomy/self, and mental influences. This log additionally has warnings for: spiders, aphrodisiac and truth serum effects, public nudity, exhibitionism/voyeurism, bdsm, kink negotiation, social pressure, and animal sacrifice.
If you have QUESTIONS about the test drive prompts, please ask HERE. Questions about the game itself or the general setting should be directed to the FAQ.
IN THE WOODS SOMEWHERE
The chirping of partridges in the treetops rouses you. Light barely filters through the canopy, just enough to suggest daylight. By the time it reaches the forest floor, the light has taken on a sickly green. You lie amongst the frost-covered mosses and ferns, the frozen soil cold and just a little damp on your bare skin. Wherever you were before this moment, whatever you were doing or wearing, when you awaken in this forest, you find yourself naked and helpless as the day you were born. As you sit up and get your bearings, aside from a brief wave of disoriented nausea, you seem to be no worse for wear than you last remember.
You seem to be alone. The gnarled oaks and moss suggest no sign of civilization or sentient life. Just flickers of movement from curious squirrels or brave lizards reemerging after a long winter. With your feet under you, and you'll find the wood is filled with berry bushes and nut trees, though much of the fruit has been picked clean. The freshwater stream that runs north-south, populated by both poisonous toads and delicious crawdads, will lead people towards the first signs of civilisation, the cabins of those who choose to live beyond Rubilyskoye's formidable walls.
In the forest, you may run into others with stories just like yours. Some may have already formed clumsy nudist groups, others may still be processing their confusion, with no memory of how they got here. Now is a good time to overcome any hang-ups you have about modesty; it's going to be a long hike.
Turn your back to the darker, shadowy parts of the forest and eventually the glow of manmade lights and the curve of a dirt road may come into view. At the edge of the wood, you'll find a town surrounded by a fifty-foot wall of beige stone. The only entrance is an iron gate positioned on the southern edge. When you arrive, the gate is already open, welcoming people inside.
This quaint, historic town of five-thousand has cobbled street and signs lit by gas lamp. Wooden shutters protect otherwise open-air windows on the buildings, which are all under three stories with gabled roofs. A number of businesses hug the main street — a clockmaker, a cobbler, a grocer — while residential homes sprawl outwards towards the wall. At the far end of the main street, visible about a mile to the north now that the trees and the enormous wall is out of the way, sits a castle with three towers.
When you enter, the streets are full of people, but despite any efforts on your part to hide or make excuses, they don't seem offended by your nakedness. Even families with children don't gawk or look twice. Those determined to find proper clothing regardless will find that modern clothing stores aren't available — the closest this town has is a tailor's shop and a stand in the central marketplace selling scarves and blankets.
breaking and entering
If you intend to have your character break into someone's house or yard to steal some of their clean laundry, please review the info about game laws on the FAQ and give the mods a heads up HERE.
Fortunately, the people of the town are very generous! Anyone who ask the locals will be directed to the boarding house for both clothes and a place to stay. Accessible through an embellished iron garden gate and obscured by hanging plants, trees, and vines, beyond an overgrown yard in the residential sprawl of the town is a bright-red door, which opens to a spacious cottage of several stories. It's already full of people who appeared in the village just as you did today.
finding roommates
Don't spend too much time asking questions in the common areas. You'll want to claim a bedroom quickly because each one only has two full-size beds, and there aren't enough spaces for everyone. Maybe you'll get lucky and run into someone who has decided to move out? (Roommates will not be mod-assigned; players should coordinate directly with one another to determine their living arrangements; at this point, many characters have used activity rewards to move to accomodation outside the boarding house.)
Get a good night's rest. By the light of day, locals will help get the new arrivals set up on the coal stove with a breakfast of thick grain porridge and caramelised bananas from the new peaks; these NPCs can also answer any questions about the situation. You may notice they're dressed in a way you would almost call normal — at least, in a manner befitting 19th century Eastern Europe. Gossip about new arrivals spreads quickly, and Rubeans who run businesses or train trades are eager to help you find a place to apply your skills so you can contribute to your new home.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try: naked hiking, acquiring clothing, being offered work, asking questions over breakfast, or staking your claim on a bedroom!
HEARTS FESTIVAL
New arrivals to Rubilykskoye will find themselves strongly encouraged to participate in the current zadza purging festival, and will be assigned either a collar in leather or iron based on their Niez or Wilk mark, or a wrist-strap or manacle that suits the attachment of a leash for those with a Diabel or Skala mark.
Characters are encouraged to embrace this temporary designation as a sign that they will be good citizens; those who object or ignore their designation may find the NPCs try to helpfully guide them, express displeasure at "Void-Touched" who won't assimilate, or in rare cases exert social pressure, coercion, violence or shunning to ensure compliance.
Throughout town various NPCs have set up tents and booths to host myriad performances, workshops, demonstrations, and food stands for their celebration. The foods were made using some of the new flora that have brought back from the peaks. Characters can get their hands on the following heart-themed foods from the second day of the festival onwards:
The nature of the booths set up for performances, workshops, and other goods focuses around the festival's dominance and submission themes. These persist throughout the day regardless of the hour or the audience, so very few people can be found consistently at their places of work during the day this week. In addition:
However, characters may also come across some carnival games operated by NPCs who are eager to help the Duchess find her heart! Some involve slaughtering livestock by removing their hearts—rest assured, these livestock were already on the menu, but their ritual sacrifice will now involve the cutting out of their hearts. Cut out an animal's heart yourself, or just attend the show! Many of the townspeople will get into it, painting their faces with animal blood or drinking from it.
Characters are encouraged to embrace this temporary designation as a sign that they will be good citizens; those who object or ignore their designation may find the NPCs try to helpfully guide them, express displeasure at "Void-Touched" who won't assimilate, or in rare cases exert social pressure, coercion, violence or shunning to ensure compliance.
Throughout town various NPCs have set up tents and booths to host myriad performances, workshops, demonstrations, and food stands for their celebration. The foods were made using some of the new flora that have brought back from the peaks. Characters can get their hands on the following heart-themed foods from the second day of the festival onwards:
- HEART-SHAPED COOKIES: eating these intensifies body heat, making characters a great cuddle buddy for the cold weather and likely to strip down, feeling overheated even in a snowdrift
- BEEF HEART STEW WITH DUXELLES: eating these fills those who consume it with confidence, making them more solicitous and dominant
- LIME-GLAZED GOAT HEART SATAY: eating these intensifies sensation, making characters more sensitive to both pain and pleasure
- CINNAMON GLUWEIN: drinking a cup of this hot beverage will make characters especially honest
The nature of the booths set up for performances, workshops, and other goods focuses around the festival's dominance and submission themes. These persist throughout the day regardless of the hour or the audience, so very few people can be found consistently at their places of work during the day this week. In addition:
- Skala and diabel NPCs may offer to share their partner(s) with the Void-touched, or ask to share theirs.
- PIOTR, a farmer, brings tools over from the farm including bridles and saddles, which can be found at a booth near some hunters who've made anal plugs that end with real animal tails, as well as muzzles.
- The cages from the Moot Hall have been moved into the streets, and people are allowed to move freely in and out of them. One of them has been covered in curtains to function as a glory hole booth.
- Some niez and wilk NPCs line up near the main event stage and kneel to offer themselves as human furniture.
However, characters may also come across some carnival games operated by NPCs who are eager to help the Duchess find her heart! Some involve slaughtering livestock by removing their hearts—rest assured, these livestock were already on the menu, but their ritual sacrifice will now involve the cutting out of their hearts. Cut out an animal's heart yourself, or just attend the show! Many of the townspeople will get into it, painting their faces with animal blood or drinking from it.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try reacting to being assigned a dominant or submissive role, scenes where your character is starting to feel the effects of the food, watching (or participating in) a performance, or joining in on a gory animal sacrifice. NPCs that are usually welcoming may strongly pressure even new arrivals to participate in their cultural festivities.
the fathomless dark
At the outer edges of the forest, shadows grow long and the air grows thick. Though the sun never grows warm red-gold with sunset, the wood darkens. Birdsong is replaced by the click of mandibles and the skitter of many legs. Anyone who ventures out this way will soon find it difficult to see before them, even in the middle of the day — eventually, even the brightest magical light source or darkvision cannot stretch further than a few inches. In the void, the air feels heavy, as if it were not air at all but some more solid mass. Almost like liquid-smoke, it presses down upon you. Slowing your movements. Characters who push too far into the void may stop being able to move at all, and find themselves given over to insanity if they collapse, unable to draw themselves out. This is just one of many dangers.
Monsters thrive this far out. Huge, blood-red spiders the size of hunting dogs drop from the treetops. In addition to their venomous bite, which contains a fast-acting paralytic, these creatures are clever: they attempt to use their webbing to entangle any trespassers, binding limbs together or to trees. If you're unfortunate to become fully cocooned, you don't have long before this forest will be the last thing you see.
Those who seem lucky enough not to run afoul of the monsters here are in for a worse fate. The void can play tricks on your senses. As madness sets in and you lose all sense of direction, you may also lose control of your body — what is that steers your hands to turn against your friends? Why does it sound like your own voice whispering?
In the fog, you may also hear the voices of those familiar to you — people you know from the town, or people whom you know with almost perfect certainty aren't here. these figments may recreate unhappy memories or force trespassers to hallucinate their worst nightmares. Nothing is as it seems in the void, and when you swing at these figments, desperate to silence them, it might not be a figment at all, but a friend in the flesh trying to help you. By the time you see their true face, it could be too late to stop yourself.
writer's block?
If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try fighting a monster, hallucinating your worst nightmares, and/or attacking a friend or stranger!
HIDING INSIDE EACH OF US
Uh oh spaghetti-os.
The marks worn by all residents of Rubilykskoye aren't just cool body art, as it turns out. The town is full of rumors, whispered in shadows and over candles of a starving creature hiding in the dark corners of your chest. Feed your inner beast, they say, before it finds a way to feed itself.
Alas, its emergence is inevitable — sooner or later, the horrible things that happen here pile up and make someone repulsed by the idea of human contact. Someone holds themselves back, bites their tongue, or simply does not believe the stories. Today, for one reason or another, that creature is coming out. Someone hasn't been keeping it sated.
Symptoms escalate over weeks, from monstrous irritability to full-blown body horror transformation, where people physically shed their human forms and evolve into the monsters this place made them. Once a person becomes something more (or less) than human there's only one way to go back — sate the beast.
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Poor Merta Chesnokov, the usually stalwart older woman who mans the Apothecary, has been beset by unusual requests in addition to her regular demands, not to mention sweating blood. The festival, a rash of skala blood flu, and a little extra town chaos in January, has brought a high demand to her little shop. Now there's also a local fashion springing up for teas and herbal remedies sourced from the recently revealed tropical mountains.
After another failed tisane test drive, and the third customer asking for a new kind of aphrodisiac to add to their festival food, she was seen tossing down her work knife with uncharacteristic frustration, and taking an "early lunch" that she didn't return from that night. Though her children, friends and employees reach out to her, there's no sign of her until you stumble upon her in the woods.
Merta overboils with her suppressed fury as her body distorts and her flesh blackens and crusts. Her attempts to hold off her transformation have failed, and Merta turns into a Smoldering Skink, a large repillian creature whose thick scales hold back her magmatic insides. The noise she makes is an unhearthly hissing scream like a boiling kettle, and she attempts to vent her pent-up stress by wildly attacking everything in sight. Immediately, the surroundings catch aflame! There will be a small fire eating at the dead wood of a long winter if it's not put out, but your first priority might have to be fielding a stampeding lizard with massive teeth and burning hot scales...
(There are other monsters lurking in every townsperson — feel free to invent your own npc monsters and scenarios!)
The marks worn by all residents of Rubilykskoye aren't just cool body art, as it turns out. The town is full of rumors, whispered in shadows and over candles of a starving creature hiding in the dark corners of your chest. Feed your inner beast, they say, before it finds a way to feed itself.
Alas, its emergence is inevitable — sooner or later, the horrible things that happen here pile up and make someone repulsed by the idea of human contact. Someone holds themselves back, bites their tongue, or simply does not believe the stories. Today, for one reason or another, that creature is coming out. Someone hasn't been keeping it sated.
Symptoms escalate over weeks, from monstrous irritability to full-blown body horror transformation, where people physically shed their human forms and evolve into the monsters this place made them. Once a person becomes something more (or less) than human there's only one way to go back — sate the beast.
someone else transforms
After another failed tisane test drive, and the third customer asking for a new kind of aphrodisiac to add to their festival food, she was seen tossing down her work knife with uncharacteristic frustration, and taking an "early lunch" that she didn't return from that night. Though her children, friends and employees reach out to her, there's no sign of her until you stumble upon her in the woods.
Merta overboils with her suppressed fury as her body distorts and her flesh blackens and crusts. Her attempts to hold off her transformation have failed, and Merta turns into a Smoldering Skink, a large repillian creature whose thick scales hold back her magmatic insides. The noise she makes is an unhearthly hissing scream like a boiling kettle, and she attempts to vent her pent-up stress by wildly attacking everything in sight. Immediately, the surroundings catch aflame! There will be a small fire eating at the dead wood of a long winter if it's not put out, but your first priority might have to be fielding a stampeding lizard with massive teeth and burning hot scales...
(There are other monsters lurking in every townsperson — feel free to invent your own npc monsters and scenarios!)
you waited too long
At first, as you hide yourself from your darker impulses, a subtle itch develops under your skin. An irritability that makes you snap at the person who bumps into you on the stairs because all those fleeting emotions that you've been repressing bubble to the surface. Every dark thought you've had about being here, all the fears of never getting home, of being surrounded by ticking time bombs, the anxiety of wondering who you might hurt or what relationships you might betray by doing what you have to do. The anger. Oh, the anger.
Maybe you shut yourself in your room or run into the woods to hide away, but there's only so much you can do to deny the itch that grows into hunger like a spark catching and growing to wildfire. Someone comes to check on you. That knock on the door or crunch of leaves in the wood that fills you with dread at what you might do and hope that you will be sated.
As claws and fangs and scales and spines and fur grow and your body transforms with a sickening crunch of bones and peeling of skin, so do your appetites. If you won't sate them, you'll lose yourself to your beastly impulses sooner or later, mauling friends and taking your fill. Is it better or worse if only your claws get inside of them?
Maybe you shut yourself in your room or run into the woods to hide away, but there's only so much you can do to deny the itch that grows into hunger like a spark catching and growing to wildfire. Someone comes to check on you. That knock on the door or crunch of leaves in the wood that fills you with dread at what you might do and hope that you will be sated.
As claws and fangs and scales and spines and fur grow and your body transforms with a sickening crunch of bones and peeling of skin, so do your appetites. If you won't sate them, you'll lose yourself to your beastly impulses sooner or later, mauling friends and taking your fill. Is it better or worse if only your claws get inside of them?
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He figures Stark's used to touching down. He didn't bother with notice and he doesn't bother to apologise for the lack of it, busy keeping up with the pace of his own thoughts, chasing sense down frantic corridors.
"This is nothing to do with us. It's not Earth, it's not an invasion, it's not some new problem for you and your motley crew to fix. And I need you to tread with caution with these people before you do something we all regret."
Panic reforms as precise, potent anger. Cold, direct. Unearned, but the surest cover he can grab at for the maelstrom spiraling out in his head. Stealing some time to make sense of it, harness it, make it something tame.
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And he really resents that little motley crew kick.
"Hey! The last time I saw you --" Tony points an accusing finger at Stephen and follows it, steps in closer, "you were busy selling out half the universe and giving up the time stone without so much as a strongly worded argument, so forgive me but you're the last person I'm going to listen to when it comes to being cautious."
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"Alright." Firm, but no longer sharp. No attack to it. Warning him off. "Alright."
Somewhere in there, Tony must be terrified. Bone deep terrified. He had been, he recalls dimly, and abduction to another world is at this point a semi-standard of his daily working life. Stephen's rabbit-fast heartbeat really has nothing on whatever must be going on in there just from being here, and he doesn't even know the half of it yet.
"I wasn't expecting to see you here. Just give me a minute."
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He leans into the pressure. Searches Stephen's face, desperation in his eyes. There's a lot of grey in his hair and his beard these days, more than he's comfortable with, and a lot of that is down to the stresses of a life he's not prepared to leave behind yet.
"You weren't expecting to see me, but you're here." He drops his voice, as if they need privacy. "How long, Stephen? Tell me you've found a way out. I have things to get back to. I have a kid to get back to."
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Once upon a time there was nothing in the family room for him but relief and outpourings of awkwardly received gratitude. How long has it been since he delivered good news?
"I know." That shouldn't come as a surprise. He saw everything, of course he saw her. (He just doesn't need to elaborate on where.) "Not yet."
The question goes briefly unanswered. He won't get away with it forever, he knows, but he needs to leave some space between blows.
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"Great," he sighs. Not accepting it. Just trying it on for size, for the sake of getting through the next few minutes. "Great."
Belatedly, he realises that Stephen's hand is still tented against his chest and glances down at it, somewhat pointedly.
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"It's been half a year. A little over."
Better to rip that one off now after all.
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Let go, Tony turns away from Stephen, moving to lean one arm up against the brick wall of the nearest building like he needs it to support himself. He runs his hand through his hair again, restlessly, trying to pull things into something that makes sense. It can't be real, but it is. It's all so vividly, unquestionably real, down to the fresh cool air that smells like wood smoke and horse manure and the faint scent of pines. Almost but not quite like being home.
Almost but not quite. Something he might have to start getting used to.
He looks back over at Stephen.
"So you've been here ever since you.." blipped, "on Titan?"
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Stephen's half-ready for the question when it comes. Ready enough that he answers without a pause.
"No." Twisted as the implication of some better news might be, it's better than a lie. "I was back for a while first."
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It's not often that Tony Stark is stymied into silence, and not often that he does it in front of anyone else, especially someone with as complicated a relationship as the two of them share. He runs through the possibilities, the only explanations, and comes out the other side looking at Stephen with a degree of wide-eyed surprise.
And holds up a hand, palm out, before Stephen can offer anything.
"Actually, you know what? Don't. I don't -- I don't want to know. Not right now." He's got enough to deal with. Tony rubs the side of his thumb across his forehead, thinking. "Right now I need.. a snack. I'm starving. Is there anywhere around here that does, like, pastries? I could really go for a Danish."
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Then the question, and - "Sure. Follow me."
Where he will not be taking him is anywhere that serves anything close to a Danish. Truth told, Stephen's not entirely up to date on which establishments will and won't let Void-touched through their doors, or serve them once they're there, and he doesn't intend to find out while guiding around a man who doesn't yet know the difference between friend and foe. Or, for that matter, the stakes at play in the knowing.
So they're walking toward the tavern. Somewhere he knows they're welcome, somewhere he can subtly conjure up something sweet without making Tony spend another afternoon in the boarding house. Somewhere he can complain about going once they get there, if it comes to that. And in the meantime, as they walk, Stephen can explain.
"The people here are divided. Some of them hate us, some of them like us a little too much. The rest sit somewhere in the middle. When they call you Void-touched, it's only an insult if they belong to the first category."
no subject
"Nobody thought to leave town?"
It's mostly a rhetorical question. He's been briefed, to some degree, on the whole situation. The boarding house is a clear enough message, and Mateus had been apologetic but firm in his advice to try to adopt their newfound culture as quickly as possible. Tony's already seen enough to know that's not going to be an easy process. Some of the stuff he'd witnessed the previous nights during the festival makes Folsom Street Fair look positively tame. He's still not sure what all of that is supposed to be for.
It's a lot, even for a guy who has seen as much weird shit as he's seen in the last decade or so.
"So they hate us. Do they have a good reason besides taking a cue from the villagers in Dracula?"
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But he does work to answer most as diligently as he can. Softening things only when the topic's one he doesn't want to touch, or when it's something he determines is better handled with food and drink and a table between them. And when they make it to the tavern, he ushers Tony to a table and returns from the bar with two full cups and two empty plates— the perks of having assisted the owner in even less stable times.
Onto these plates swiftly appear a small selection of local snacks.
"Fresh this morning."
He would not know, he did not make them.
no subject
"Can't take the Vegas out of the man." He reaches for a thing that looks a bit like a rugelach cookie and puts it away in two bites.
"What's with the ink?" Tony lifts his eyebrows at Stephen, indicating with a glance the symbol drawn on the back of Stephen's hand.
no subject
Still clinging onto the barest edge of hope that he's misunderstood the scope of the question, that it's really as small as the mark that he bears and not indicative of an ignorance about everything it means, he asks a faux-casual: "You haven't found yours yet?"
no subject
Tony works his confusion around a cinnamon pastry, still chewing as he raises his eyebrows at Stephen. There's the barest hint of tension in the other man that doesn't, in Tony's estimation, bode well for whatever the mark is. He glances down at his own hands, turning them over to examine the backs and then the palms.
"My what?"
no subject
"Your cursemark." He lifts his hand, turns it to indicate the mark they're already discussing, as if it still needs any introduction. "It might not look like mine, but you'll have it somewhere."
And here that troubled will caves enough to pinch his brow. Rather than say anything meaningful, he buys himself one last stretch of seconds. Commits them to finding out how big a gap he has to fill. "Zadza? Duchozwierz?"
no subject
Perhaps belatedly, Tony reaches for his glass of wine, sensing that he might need it to get through this next part.
"I've heard it mentioned," he adds after a swallow of the surprisingly good vintage, in a vague attempt to try and smooth that look off the wizard's face. "Kind of hoped it was part of the colorful local folklore. Something about purging? Energy? Some kind of magic?"
He clears his throat. "You're saying that it's legitimate?"
no subject
Now the corner of his mouth twitches downward as Tony's picks up, and the tiny little spasm at the corner of his eye might well be a flinch. Stephen doesn't go for his own glass until the word purging joins the conversation, then he takes two swift swallows and sets it back down. How is he supposed to break this one gently? He can't. So here goes.
"Purging energy, feeding urges. You can look at it however you like. The long and short of it is that if you don't sate the curse, you'll change. It's only a matter of time."
no subject
But if nothing else, he knows that Stephen doesn't fool around. Not with stuff like this. Not when it matters. And even if he doesn't precisely trust him right now, he can at least trust that he knows what he's talking about, and if he's picking his words carefully, there must be a reason.
His frown deepens. He drinks some more wine.
"This is getting pretty Hammer Horror, doc. I feel like next you're going to tell me to rub garlic on my neck and watch out for bats. How about we skip to the actual explanation?"
no subject
But no. Come on, Stephen. One quick rush, like a bandaid. It's your everyday now, and soon enough it'll be his, so just—
"Sex and violence. You have to participate in either regularly or you'll turn into whatever monster is lurking inside of you now that you have the mark."
And with that out, he watches as levelly as he can for the reaction, steels himself for whatever comes next.
no subject
"Doc, come on. You're saying that if I don't act like a freshman on spring break, I'm going to turn into a.. monster?"
He holds his hands up, palms to the sky as if waiting for a reasonable explanation fall into them. Lets out an incredulous little laugh, a last shred of hope that Stephen's going to dissolve and tell him he's just yanking his chain, paying him back for knocking over the Ancient Jar of Toledo or whatever.
"Come on, I'm not Banner. Though really he's the other way around. But then again, if he's not getting any, he's probably going to be pretty angry about it --"
no subject
Words aren't working. He replaces them with images: a bath full of jet black water, a winged nightmare poised on a Moot Hall rafter. A hand covered in a sheen of pitch, Niez mark visible on the back as it turns.
When the cursemark share is over, Stephen's still there. Watchful. Steady. Sorry, too.
"It's real."
no subject
He subsides with a heavy exhale, sitting back down on the bench -- he hadn't known he was starting to stand up.
"Jesus." More wine will help. "Was that you?" Any of the.. stuff.
no subject
So— the rest. Tony sinks back down to sit and Stephen regrets for a moment the stretch of time between himself and being new here. How it's been long enough that he hadn't paused to consider the effect he might have, dropping thoughts right into a mind that hasn't adjusted yet.
But it had had to be done. Stephen waves his hand and Tony's wine tops itself up, and it's about the best commiseration he can offer.
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