thisavrou | (no subject)

I didn't run away to join the circus, only the circus archaeologists. [Wanda's TAB displays a stone carving of an acrobat, and then a figurine of a bull. They're sitting on a shelf, and the wall behind the shelf looks like rough stone.]

They're replicas... I asked if I could have one of the real ones, because there were about a million of them just in the tiny tunnel we were excavating, but they wanted to catalogue them all, so I went to the museum and bought the acrobat. The bull...I carved that myself, to the pattern of the real ones. It's only a keepsake...

It's funny, there are a million of the acrobats in the archaeological records of Deslora, but the bulls were new to the site I was working on. They want to discover what it means, whether the acrobats and the bulls are connected. They think the site used to be... important... Sacred dances and ritual danger -- that's funny too. Ritual danger.

But I missed the fun house and the crowds, I went to the fair and all I got were these tiny figurines.

[She zooms the camera view out, so that the whole shelf is visible, dwarfing the few things on it. Two figurines, a few origami figures.]

Oh, and this is my house.

[Zoom again, and pan to show a very simple room with wooden furniture that looks like someone fashioned it with an axe. There are a lot of cushions, though, in many bright colours and patterns, and a number of plants growing out of the floor. There are no windows, but light filters in from somewhere above, skylights perhaps.]

I'm still working on it, I've mostly been away...

[Zoom in, back to the shelf.]

It'll fill up with memories, eventually. At least that's the idea...

[Wanda sighs.]

It doesn't really feel like home.

[She turns the camera on herself for the first time. Looking directly at the camera--] What do you think makes a home a home?

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Or shrieking birdsong.

Just patterns of history. Of the way those fuckers were interested in the Ingress tech.

Or hire a choir.

[Wanda is silent for a moment, thinking about that.] Are they near here? The people who want the tech?

Out here? The choirs might summon something from the deep at this rate.

[a hum] I'm not sure, after everything went down. I figure they're not far behind, and the guys we just met out here sure want something.

If they do, I simply won't pay ... them ...

[Wanda lets it trail off; she's more interested in the other thread of conversation-- Interested with a large side of dread.]

I suppose with Ingress technology, it doesn't matter how close anything is.

[good because HE WASN'T RUNNING OUT OF QUIPS but this is also more important]

Ah no, it matters a lot. Connections always do.

But the Ingress makes everything connected. At least... everything they have the ... coordinates for?

[She's a little vague on how that's supposed to work, much less how it actually works in practice.]

So if you have the Ingress, and you wanted to go to war, geography -- [no, wrong word] interstellar topography, it would not matter. And...

[She falls silent, trying to fathom a war fought via Ingress. The picture that comes to mind, whether rightly or wrongly, seems familiar. Not so very different from a war fought with ships that can pop up anywhere in the galaxy, except...]

I do not know who the sides would be. [She really knows very little about this system, Thisavrou, or the universe outside the system. She'd been so caught up in the details of finding a place to be and things to do, she hadn't really realized just how little she knew until now. It makes her feel dizzy, like a universe of unknowns is whirling around her.]

That's right-- but what about the guys that made it? What else rattled in their brains before they just released us into this shithole?

The world works in what you have, and what you don't have-- interstellar especially, seems like.

[there's a great shrug, he feels it with his very bones. He tries not to think about it, doesn't know if it will come to be.]

Either one, make sure you know what's worth a side to you. Your life might not be. Ah, I don't say all this to scare you-- this all started over plants, didn't it?

[Wanda knows nothing about the guys who made it. She knows so little about any of the things that have come up that she begins to wonder if she is being mistaken for someone who does know more about the situation. It would be easy to do...

But if that is the case, she doesn't have the energy to issue a correction. Beneath her edginess, she feels a great weariness.]

I do not like sides. Especially sides that want to go to war.

[Known or unknown, she knows that much. She sighs.]

Plants, yes. Perhaps I should go water them.

I feel you. I don't either, I don't wanna be involved in shit that is my business-- unfortunately I've found a lotta stuff becomes my business after awhile...even a fight.

Ah, yeah. Wouldn't wanna keep you from em.

Fights have a way of expanding into everyone's business.

They need a lot of water. [Excuses, excuses.] But perhaps I will see you around some other time.

Ain't that the damn truth.

[those are great]

Yeah, small world out here now. I'm sure we will.