AUTUMN TEST DRIVE MEME

[rubimods]

⚰︎ ⍢ ⌲ ⍚ 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 coming 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, animated skeletons, aphrodisiac effects, exhibitionism/voyeurism, bdsm, kink negotiation, knifeplay, potential dismemberment.

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

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 damp mosses and ferns, the balmy summer air warm and sticking 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 emerging from their hiding places. With your feet under you, 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, is knee-deep and chilly. Here and there, dotting the autumnal forest, are strange, massive white trees extending into the sky, surrounded by a circle of dead soil. Their sides are smooth and cool to the touch – like bone, for those who know its texture – and they creak alarmingly, threateningly at the press of warm hands.

As you explore, you may encounter caches of clothing left in painted crates or placed in hollow tree trunks. They contain loose shirts and trousers, perhaps even a moth-eaten coat, along with a note that includes a bare-bones explanation for your arrival and a sketched map toward town. You may also 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 to find civilization.

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. Above the town, drifting like a low hanging cloud over the tops of the buildings, is a pavilion swathed in deep red cloth, and to the north, past the end of the main street, are several large blockades barring further exploration. Somewhat strangely, the whole town seems to be in a state of slight disrepair– workers bustle around, filling in a large hole in the town wall, a woman curses and fiddles with the crank mechanism of a well, and children splash through muddy potholes in the cobblestone, chasing a malnourished looking dog. Here, the bone trees have taken root as well, a few rising through buildings, branches extending through cracked roofs, others rooted in the middle of the street.

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.

SETTING: CRIME

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. Parts of the house still bear the dust of disuse, gathered on various furnishings – bedding, sofas, curtains, wooden tables. However, it's already full of people! Once inside, you may notice patchwork repairs have been made, some scorch marks still linger from a fire about a year back, and the place seems somewhat in disrepair

Tonight, a few of the townspeople will help out with the new arrivals. They stock the kitchen and prepare a communal dinner of parsnips, pheasant, and squash. During dinner, they (and those outsiders who've already begun to settle) sit down at the enormous wooden dining room table and help orient the newcomers and answer their questions. The town has recently been through some upheaval, and its people have suffered a great loss, newcomers are told. Everyone is doing their part now to restore it to its former glory.

finding roommates

Don't spend too much time in the dining room going for seconds, though. 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. The last people upstairs will need to double up to squeeze in. Roommates will not be mod-assigned; players should coordinate directly with one another to determine their living arrangements.

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 breakfast. You may notice they're dressed in a way you would almost call normal – at least, in a manner befitting 19th century Eastern Europe. As you find your way around town to get your bearings, folks 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 or other inventory items, asking questions at dinner/orientation, or staking your claim on a bedroom!

RECUMITA

The festival fills the streets with dancing locals and all the stuffs of a street market. Despite a stressful summer - the events of which the local seem reluctant to speak of - there's much cheer and reveling over the abundant harvest, and the harvest festival of Recūmita becomes a celebration of unity and community strength dedicated to their fellow townspeople for salvaging this year's crops, the Duchess' magic for protecting them from the horrors beyond the Void, and the Void-Touched who have become such an integral part of their community. Everyone is expected to participate, and everyone is expected to pitch in.

Over the weekend, all regular work is put on hold, except for the necessary festival preparations. The streets come alive with vibrant stalls and stands, offering a wide array of delectable treats and refreshing beverages. From barrels of beer and cups of kvas to mouthwatering roasted meats, delightful squash-based dishes like pumpkin latkes, honey-glazed brussel sprouts on skewers, hot borscht in both pork and vegetarian variations, and tantalizing mushrooms stuffed with leeks, cranberries, and bryndza cheese, there is an abundance of flavors to indulge in. But take care of what you put in your mouth. Rubeans traditionally spice their foods with aphrodisiacs, something that is so culturally normal to them that they don't feel the need to mention it.

The first day of the festival transforms the streets into a bustling night market, where the Rubeans organize an assortment of carnival-style games and communal activities.

- Test your strength and aim in knife throwing contests as willing (or confused, drunken) volunteers line up to serve as live targets, standing against a wall with an apple balanced atop their heads. Hopefully someone explained the rules to you beforehand - pierce the apple, and the target is yours to... pierce... in turn. Miss your shot in three attempts, and they get to have their way with you instead. Either way, it would be in awfully poor form to refuse...

- Challenge your pain tolerance in public displays where individuals whip or cut each other to determine who yields first, with the watching crowd cheering the participants on into a frenzy.

- Impromptu improvisational theater where hapless members of the audience are pulled in to act out bawdy jokes or monstrous tales... and are expected to fully act out their part, whether it means growling and biting the actor while playing 'angry bear' or giving him a good fingering in the role of 'lascivious rake.'

- Hot oil massages are being offered in a large tent, where smooth chunks of volcanic rock have been brought in from the nearby coast and heated to radiate warmth, warding away the autumn chill. Relax in your own curtained room and let yourself enjoy a massage from an enthusiastic volunteer - or take your turn rubbing out tight knots and sore muscles among the Rubeans and Void Touched alike. Of course, these intimate activities often take an enthusiastic sexual bent, so for those trying to hide away in the tent, be careful about ducking into the wrong room.

- For those artistically inclined, a long bench is loaded up with massive sheafs of wheat-stalks, and Rubeans sitting around braiding and weaving them into intricate wreaths and crowns. Join the gossip circle to hear about Yudmila's affair with both of the blacksmith's daughters, Hugo's feud with his next door neighbor, and other small-town tales. When you're done weaving, you're expected to spill a bit of blood upon the wreath and dedicate it to the Duchess Zlatka.

Enthusiastic Rubeans, particularly those involved in integrating the Void-touched, take it upon themselves to enhance the festivities. They recruit local participants and willing Void-touched individuals to partake in impromptu stage performances and competitions, with no need for rehearsals. Come as you are and join the spectacle! Once the performance begins, the passion and excitement behind their efforts become truly evident, as all the performances call for explicitly sexual or violent acts to be performed together.

However, those who refuse to get in the community spirit of shared trust and pleasure may find themselves singled out by the Duchess' stewards for some personal, mandatory education on Rubean culture and traditions. They may be forcibly dosed with potent aphrodisiacs, put on display in the stocks or upon a stage until they plead for Her Grace's mercy... or have satisfied enough of the sexual or sadistic desires of any passer-bys.

Throughout all of this, the general attitude from the local townsfolk may occasionally come across as strangely admiring or overtly hostile. While many of the common people of Rubilykskoye hold mixed personal opinions toward the newcomers to their town, two extremist groups have emerged with opposing viewpoints: some think you are benevolent, beneficent beings with nascent powers sent to lead and guide them and solve their woes. These people, called Blackguards, will do their best to make sure your participation in the festival is one of joy and pleasure. But others, called the Zlatniki, believe that the outsiders coming into their land have corrupted their fellows and seduced their Goddess, and will do their best to twist their native traditions toward cruelty and vindictive sadism when it comes to the Void-touched.

writer's block?

If you're struggling to pick a way to engage the prompts, try your hand at knife throwing or serving as a knife-throwing target, get or offer a massage, watching or joining a live sex performance, or eating some aphro food (deliberately or otherwise)!

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.

In addition to the spiders, you may come across strange skeletal creatures out in the deep forests. An enormous gray bear wearing the horns of an elk, studded with sharp bony spikes protruding from its fur. A wolf-sized badger whose entire skull is visible beneath mossy green growths, sprouting human-like bony limbs from its spine that grab and claw at anything that comes near. Each one is distinct, an unholy hybrid mishmash of plants and animals and bone, but viciously aggressive toward any living creature that crosses its path.

FAQ: DEATH RULES

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

Something's wrong here.

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.

FAQ: MONSTER CURSES & TIMELINES

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

Rubilykskoye's performance troupe is thrown into a state of panic as Emrik, the male lead of their newest opera, has vanished without a trace! Sure, Emrik has a reputation for being broody, jealous and a little too fond of dramatic entrances and exits, but how is the show supposed to go on without him?

But in the scramble to find their leading man AND get set up for their next performance, a heavy beam nearly crashes down upon a stagehand's head, and the female lead narrowly escapes being snatched up by a shadowy figure that croons a tender melody to her shortly before flinging her into a mirror. Emrik has transformed, and his skeletal, bat-like figure now haunts the rafters of the theater, trying to seduce the prettiest members of the troupe with his haunting song while cutting ropes and raining deadly projectiles down upon them from above.

(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?

RULES: CONTENT WARNINGS

Comments

[thirdofline]

Oh.

It makes sense, Diogo supposes. Maybe it's like when he and Hama tried to explain to people about the Char, about Mama Dread and all the ways they had to live. They tried to tell it like a story or a song, something beautiful, but that's not usually what strangers took from it. They couldn't see the beauty. They didn't want to. He can't really blame them. These days, Diogo has trouble remembering the parts that were like a song.

He watches Wrench's hands instead of his face. That's a little easier. Diogo, he adds. Why Wrench?

[wwrench]

It's taken some time to figure out what to do with the rest of his body while he communicates telepathically. There's a certain kinesthesia Wrench associates with speaking that's rendered wholly unnecessary, and his body still misses it. There are other points of difference, too. Wrench isn't sure he'll ever get used to talking to someone without looking at them. Even know, he's still trying for the eye contact the younger man doesn't seem able or willing to return. He crosses his arms in front of his chest and squeezes his biceps in his fingers, trying to keep the stress out of whatever passes for his mental 'voice.'

That's a weird question. Why Diogo?

Maybe this man isn't from a place as far off as some of the others. Maybe he knows Earth. Or maybe Wrench hasn't realized in all this time that his own name is subject to the same translation the rest of the words get. Maybe it's been taking in the concept of a wrench and spitting out whatever passes for that tool in other people's native tongues, and he's just never realized it.

He breathes in audibly through his nose, and holds the air in his lungs.

The man who raised me gave me the name. I was a tool for him to use, so he called me something that fit.

[thirdofline]

It's the name they gave me.

He might've had a different one when he was small, but he can't remember it. That time is fuzzy. All shadow and hungry dreams. Mama Dread saved him, probably. Gratitude's more complicated now. Time made it that way. At the time, he loved her for it. He would've said that forgetting was an easy thing to give up in exchange for all that.

Thought it might be a call sign, he adds, watching Wrench's fingers flex. Wrench had calluses, Diogo remembers. Maybe from a gun. Maybe just from tools. But he felt strong when he was holding Diogo's wrist. People choose those like masks. Thing-names. Not people names.

[wwrench]

Who were they?

He feels an itch creeping up his spine. It's a warning to proceed cautiously, but something about it feels like tickling fingers waiting to lull Wrench and shove him over the edge. Maybe he feels the similarities because he wants so badly for them to exist. Maybe it would be better if he were wrong. After all, what kind of person would hope another man lived through similar, just so he didn't have to feel so alone? Wrench clasps his biceps more tightly, fingernails digging past the thin fabric of his tunic to leave half-moon shaped impressions on the skin just beneath.

Don't lose your head, he reminds himself. Don't want something so badly you make yourself vulnerable in the process. But it's been a long few months, and Wrench feels more lonely and confused now than ever. It's hard not to hope he's reaching out for some mutual understanding.

Then maybe he wanted me as a thing, rather than as a person. Made no difference to me. A name is what other people call you. It's got nothing to do with how you think of yourself. At least, mine doesn't.

It's a lie that Wrench wants desperately to be true. Maybe if he keeps saying it like it is, one day it'll become sincere.

[thirdofline]

Diogo doesn't answer immediately. In the old days, when he and Hama first left the Char, he made mistakes what that. He told the truth all the time, to anyone who asked. Sometimes to people who didn't. And there were consequences to that, over and over again. One bad turn, then another. He didn't know how to shut up.

It went how it went. He knows better now.

Diogo rocks a little and watches Wrench's fingers dig into his sleeve. How hard he grips. It looks like it might hurt.

It doesn't matter when you break things, Diogo offers finally. You can just get more. Are you going to hit me now?

[wwrench]

And even if your tools don't break, you don't have to worry about their wellbeing. Nobody asks a nail if it hurts to be hammered.

Wrench makes no reply. At least, he doesn't mean to. He's got no idea that the breath he lets out comes loose from his chest with a soft, mournful little whimper. Just the barest sound of air catching over a lump of unexpressed emotion. Instead, his expression sours for just a moment and he lets his hands fall by his sides.

No, I'm not going to hit you. Not unless you need me to. Someone explained that to you, didn't they? How we've all got a curse that means we have to fuck or fight each other, or we'll turn into monsters?

[thirdofline]

Animals make noises like that when they're hurt, Diogo knows now. He keeps his eyes on Wrench's hands and only rocks a little. It's not a good noise. Men make it too, when you hit them. Knock the breath from their lungs. Then Wrench drops his hands to his sides and Diogo watches those, even though he knows it's rude, that people don't like it when he can't look them head on.

Some of it.

He shivers, unbidden. But that's not as bad as flinching, so maybe it's okay.

Sounded like poetry. Didn't think they meant it literal. They were laughing.

He thought they were making fun of him, somehow. Playing a joke. Tac says people do that to strangers. You're not supposed to take it personally unless they pull a weapon on you.

[wwrench]

Might've been a local who thinks it's funny. Might've been laughing to cope. Either way, it's real.

There are people here who can probably do better to explain it than me. Honestly, you're better off with anyone but me explaining it to you. Wrench lets his hands lift in a tired shrug and drop again. They swat against his sides with the gentle scrape of dry skin on fabric and he ducks his head, a halfhearted attempt to meet the other man's eyes.

Is what why you volunteered to let someone throw knives at you? Did you think that was a metaphor too? Some kind of magic trick?

[thirdofline]

Hama used to say that real gets complicated. Real isn't always the same to everyone. That's why she wanted to collect the stories. Put it all down as best she could, in the original language. That way, the ones who came after them would have a chance of understanding where everyone had stood in the beginning. She called it foundational. She said that some things were realer than real, too.

It feels a bit like that here. Maybe it was a metaphor. But it was something else at the same time.

Diogo rocks on his heels, uneasy. But he can see Wrench trying to look at him, meet his eyes, and he tries to do the same. He manages it for a moment, even though it makes him feel heavy and strange. No.

Knives aren't usually a metaphor, anyway.

They gave me cider. It was nice cider. And knives aren't so bad unless somebody gets you in the eye.

Diogo shrugs. He was drunk for a bit. He's sobered up now. He misses it.

[wwrench]

He's met a lot of people in his lifetime, but few of them more than once. Before this place, Wrench wasn't used to knowing people or to being known by them. That's only changed moderately in the time that he's spent as a so-called Void-touched. He still tends to keep to himself. Even with the telepathic connection to break down the barriers around language and being understood, Wrench finds that he just isn't used to much casual interaction with others. It grates at him, the obligation to play pleasant and get along. To work in community with others.

A larger part of him craves that easy connection that others seem to find with one another. Wrench wants it to be that simple; he's just never sure he can trust that it is.

Diogo doesn't strike him as a liar. The younger man hardly seems to be trying to hide anything, either. The discomfort that appears to seep through every pore feels too plain to be treacherous. It simply is. So Wrench lets himself slide down the length of the banya wall and settles himself in the dirt, cross-legged. My aim could've been shit, though. You had no way of knowing it wasn't.

Will you tell me some things about where you're from?

[thirdofline]

It occurs to Diogo that he's been carrying tension only after some of it releases. Wrench sits down, crosses his legs, and Diogo relaxes a little. It's harder to get hit by someone who's sitting down. And it's quieter out here, just the two of them. No crowd making noise, everyone grinding together like faulty gears in an engine.

Told you not to miss. Diogo smiles at Wrench for a moment. Where I grew up, the sky was so black you couldn't see the stars. But I've been all over now and I know some of their names. Constellations, I mean. The Dancer in the Dark is my favorite. But I don't recognize any of the stars here.

[wwrench]

Wrench can see how readily Diogo's whole countenance transforms when he takes a seat. Even when he's not trying to wear his size like a suit of armor, it has ways of shielding him from others. More often than not he's grateful for the protection it provides him, but Wrench knows it's made him a target, too. More often than not it simply keeps him from getting too close to other people who naturally mistrust him because of his size or his silence or the scowl he wears like a comfortable veil.

Nobody would believe he can make himself small enough and move with enough still ease to call wild animals to him. Wrench is pretty sure he'd be good with kids, too, if he'd ever had the chance to find it out. As it stands, he can't blame anyone for never having put a newborn in his hands. Still, the feeling he gets when Diogo grins can't be all that different. It makes Wrench feel like he's seeing a different side of himself entirely, one that doesn't make him instantly recoil in disgust.

Slowly, he turns his own gaze skyward and lets himself get lost in the blanket of constellations above. I don't know that one. Least not by that name. What do you do, that lets you travel so much?

[thirdofline]

Probably he shouldn’t say too much. That’s always been a problem. Tac doesn’t yell much and he’s never smacked anyone that Diogo’s seen, but sometimes Tac gives him a look that says shut up. And that look has a tendency to linger. You don’t gotta tell the whole universe your story, Tac said once. Jesus, kid, it’s like you want to be caught.

But it’s nice, isn’t it, not having to lie. To just talk. He doesn’t even mind that someone else’s voice is in his head anymore. Wrench doesn’t feel a thing like Shayla Sun did.

Wrench looks up toward the sky and Diogo looks at Wrench—closer this time, taking in his shape. The angle of his jaw and how bright his eyes look, even from a distance. Salvage. I work on a tug. Derelicts mostly. We go all over.

Always on the move, never in one sector for too long. He’s never asked what Tac’s on the run for. Lumen, neither. But it’s something dangerous, he’s pretty sure. Maybe even something as bad as Shayla Sun.

He doesn’t say they’re thieves. Tac would give him the disappointed look and maybe smack him for real for saying that part.

[wwrench]

He could ask for clarification, but Wrench worries his questions are verging on interrogation as it is, and he doesn't want Diogo to clam up on him. So he uses his imagination to fill in the blanks. There's plenty of time to get the details right later. Or maybe there won't be. Maybe it doesn't matter at all, since Wrench has no intentions of sharing the finer points of his own story with this man or anyone else. He doesn't want to scare Diogo off by warning him that the Void has a way of doing that on your behalf whether you want it to or not, or that the Duchess has been fucking around with whatever magic governs their curse marks and it's caused an emotional leak in the telepathic channels. That sometimes when he's talking with someone like this, images from the past have a way of working themselves into the conversation unbidden.

Plenty of time for the younger man to figure that out for himself. And truth be told, Wrench doesn't want to have to bear the responsibility of explaining what he can barely make sense of for himself. So he keeps looking skyward, feeling the younger man's eyes on him but letting Diogo get his fill of looking anyway. Wrench doesn't try to guess at what the newcomer thinks he sees. Whether it's the face of a deplorable killer, or a lost man doing his best to get by.

I've never been much of anywhere myself, he admits. Well, not to any major cities. Definitely not out of the country. There's enough open land around for a guy to hide out for a lifetime. Hunt and fish and forage and never have to see another living person. At least this is what Wrench tells himself. He's in no hurry to get back home and test the limits of this; to find out just how much longer he can keep on living without running crossways of anyone else.

You got friends? It's a stupid question, but he'd said 'we,' hadn't he?

[thirdofline]

Are you from a place like this? Diogo asks curiously. Somewhere green.

Somewhere beautiful, he means. Tac’s ship and all the space stations they visit are all metal and sharp angles. Nothing green at all. This place is beautiful. If it were warmer, Diogo thinks he’d take his boots off and dig his feet into the dirt. Let his feet sink in.

He hesitates a moment at the question. Not here. Back home, though. Rest of the crew’s nice. Tac’s showing me how to fix the engines.

[wwrench]

Fuck no. But here comes the leak — the cruel byproduct of the Duchess's efforts to strengthen their curse marks. The moment Diogo clarifies his question, images start popping into Wrench's mind. And through the live wire of his own telepathic connection, the younger man might find his own mind awash with the same depictions. A thicket of tall trees, leaves bathed in all the colors of a campfire. A million shades of red and orange and yellow reflected off the surface of a still lake. A hundred common loons, black-faced and feathers speckled like polka dots rising from the snow-covered ground. Two bodies splashing in a river with hands cupped to shoot water at each other's faces, and a million tiny droplets glimmering like rainbows in the sunlight.

Wrench shivers and draws his knees to his chest. His gaze falls from the sky, and eyes fix on the other man.

Maybe green, he revises. There was plenty of that. But nothing like here. For starters, we've got technology. Cell phones and the internet.

What kind of engines do you have back home? Car? Boat? Spaceship?

[thirdofline]

Images bloom suddenly, almost violently, in Diogo's mind. Beautiful things he's never seen. All trees and green and the sound of animals. Sun shining in water. He flinches back, hands clamping over his ears even though that's never kept Shayla Sun or any of the others out. Not once.

Then it's done. There one moment, then gone. And his mind is empty again. No one but Diogo settled in there.

He lowers his hands slowly. Heart racing. Uh. Ships. Yeah. Space ships. Please don't do that.

[wwrench]

This time when the laugh blossoms, it's in the here and now. The quiet puff of air doesn't find itself relegated to the telepathic connection, passed through layers and layers of someone else's magic. Wrench's incredulity comes through live and in person, filling the quiet space around them with the soft sound of his surprised breath. There's not enough of it there to give voice to, but there's no mistaking it isn't a happy sound. He rolls his eyes skyward and lets the back of his head rest against the wall once more.

You're going to have to take that up with the Duchess. She's been fucking with our curse marks, trying to keep her enemies from contacting us. This is all just a side effect of that.

He swallows, a mingle of exhaustion and annoyance and emotion making the lump so thick in his throat it causes a rather unintended gulping sound. For several seconds Wrench is totally quiet, then he lifts his head and focuses his gaze back on Diogo. The smile he wears is a thin mask, a pleasantness so painted on it barely conceals anything.

Won't happen again if I quit talking to you telepathically. Easy enough solution. He puts up his hands in a gesture of surrender, then starts to dust the legs of his trousers like he's preparing to stand.

[thirdofline]

Oh. Wait -

Diogo keeps his back pressed against the wall, rocking on his heels. He's said the wrong thing again. Or said too much. And now it looks like Wrench is going to leave, wearing that expression. Something haunted, something pained.

I'm sorry, he tries.

[wwrench]

Don't be sorry. This time, Wrench doesn't answer telepathically. Those hands that Diogo has focused so much of his own attention on spring to life, casually signing the response in his own native ASL. It's another benign cruelty of this place that he assumes the younger man will understand him. The Duchess's magic that grants them all universal comprehension will do just as fine a job with a manual language as with a spoken one.

It's a generosity that flows only one way, though. If Diogo chooses to voice back, well. Wrench still won't hear him.

This is what my native language looks like. I can sign to you and you'll understand me somehow. And you can voice back, I suppose, but I'll still be Deaf.

Fortunately, any petulance Wrench feels at this is relegated to his face only. Without the very obvious mental pathway connecting them, his memories stay locked where they should and his emotions don't risk bleeding past the boundaries of his own mind and impacting the younger man. Don't be sorry, he reiterates. I don't like people messing around in my brain either. I didn't mean for you to see any of that.

[thirdofline]

Oh.

Diogo stills, head cocked. Focusing on Wrench's hands again. He knows, sort of, that people can talk with their hands. Tac and some of the older salvagers have their version of it, something that combines hand motions with facial expressions and sometimes tapping. Lights flashed in sequence. Sometimes they use it in zero g, when they have to ghosts on the comms. Tac's tried to show him a bunch of times but Diogo could feel the other man getting frustrated every time he failed to memorize a gesture, to connect it to a meaning or an order. Tac never called him stupid out loud but the thought is always there, impossible to shake.

It's not like that here. He watches Wrench's hands and bites his lip. Focusing. It's not like when Tac tried to teach him. Here, he just looks and he - understands? Somehow? The gestures aren't the same but there's intent there, meaning. Words.

Okay, Diogo tries. The mark on his hand glows bright. He rubs it even though there's no pain. I just, I don't like people in my head.