It Takes Time <To Be Properly Taken Apart> - Chapter 09
Chapter 9
Chapter Length: 3,500~ wordsRaqi Marr's Grand Play: Part I
There were two ways Raqi could go about this. The first was the way she had gone about it in the past. She could start at the beginning, explain things as they had happened one at a time. It would take literal hours. Not only that, but it was a fundamentally miserable process that was akin to mouthing off a list of ways you had been injured or tormented. It was like that because, in essence, that was what her personal history was. But she knew how that kind of thing was received by other people: it had the effect of painting her as some pathetic, downtrodden thing in need of saving. The only way anyone would ever view her after that- the only way anyone could view her after that, was as something to be pitied. To be lifted out of her misery, taken into their arms, and cared for. That depiction of her was the exact one that she had spent the last ten or so hours worth of discussions with Punica trying to avoid being seen as. If she went ahead with that approach, it would be throwing away every inch of progress that she had managed to make so far. No, that wouldn't work; what she needed was a different way of conveying her story. Something that didn't gloss over all the bad parts, or how important they were to the person she had become, but that framed them in a way that made clear they were not all she was. Approach two was something that had existed in the back of her mind as a vaguely formed idea for quite some time now. It wasn't exactly a fully formed plan, per se; she'd never had the chance to do it, and she'd never seriously thought she'd get the chance either, so she hadn't bothered actually sitting down and thinking out how she would go about doing it. Fortunately, she didn't need to. Punica had given her something that would allow her to go ahead with her plan without any rehearsal, nor the need to sit down and work out the details of what she was going to do: she had given her a spark. Where the cold that existed inside of her was an ever-present force, always waiting at the edge of her mind, threatening to wrap around her heart and freeze it solid at a moment's notice; it did in fact have a twin in the form of an unlit brazier. The brazier was buried deep within the core of the glacier, in a cave that was neither hot nor cold, and it remained inert unless lit. Raqi couldn't really light it herself, either; it required a certain kind of emotional kindling that she could not produce on demand, and which was only available to her under very specific circumstances. But when it was lit, that was the only time when she could access a certain part of herself. And Punica had given her a flame with which to light it. A heady sensation began to fill her body, starting from the top of it and gradually progressing downwards, where it started to pool in her stomach as a kind of delightful tingling; the exact opposite of how it felt to be anxious. In her mind, she watched a flame burst to life within the brazier. It was small at first, but it began to grow, and then grew and grew and grew; until it had filled up the entirety of the cave and burst out from the entrance, spreading outwards into a true firestorm. Tongues of flame ran eagerly up the sides of the glacier, hungrily devouring and consuming every inch of the cold until nothing remained; replacing it instead with a mountain of fire. A wave of sensation ran all throughout her body like a bolt of electricity, starting from her neck and passing down her spine; moving out into her arms, and dissipating somewhere around her midsection. It caused her head to shake for just a moment, and she recognised that as the cue to step onto the stage. It was time for the play to begin. She closed her eyes and drew herself up to her full height. Placing her left arm over her chest, she straightened every finger on her hand forward, and for a moment she held it there. In her mind, she brought forth a great coalescence; summoning up every piece and prop that she would need for which to operate her display. "Straessa," Raqi the Simurgh said, gradually tracing an arc across her body with her arm, until it was fully outstretched to the left of her body. "Fulfill my will. Become as my arms and legs. Grant me a body to call my own!"
Punica watched the events unfolding before her with intrigue. Shortly after she had agreed to Raqi's deal, the other woman had begun smirking. Then, she had turned away from her, and for a few seconds fallen into silence. Yet she was not idle during this time, for all throughout, tiny and subtle motions played out across her face. Punica could not read their meaning perfectly, but she could sense somehow that she was watching something important unfold before her. Even now, she still found it strange. Every time she thought she had finally reached some kind of understanding of this xenosophont, it seemed as if that prompted her to begin behaving in a completely new and unexpected way; almost as if she was doing it just to confound her. "Straessa." Raqi's voice was cool and clear as she spoke, and radiated with a newfound intensity. She watched as the woman held one arm close over her chest in a gesture that she did not recognise. The meaning of it was unknown to her, but the way that her hand glided softly through the air felt somehow as if it held an almost ritualistic meaning; as if Punica were watching some sort of ancient pre-Compact rite being performed. "Fulfill my will. Become as my arms and legs." Suddenly, her voice filled with force, as if she were speaking to command some great entity. "Grant me a body to call my own!" There was something strange about her voice. It was almost as if when she spoke, Punica had been able to feel the words- Before she could finish her thought, the Rending Talon began to shake. The ground underneath Punica's feet started to vibrate, and for a moment, a jolt of panic shot through her. The sound of creaking industrial machinery filled the room all around her, paired with a rumbling like that of an earthquake- and then there wasn't a room around her. She found that, all of a sudden, she could see out into the main ship corridor. The main wall that had separated the garden from the rest of the ship had vanished. As she was mid-way through processing this, she saw the next wall vanish as well, and suddenly, she could see all the way into the portion of the ship where her airlock had originally been located. A second later, she could see all the way to where her glass cell had first been. The ship was ceasing to exist. All around her, every part of it was being dismantled all at once, save for the garden itself. The room- not that it could any longer be called that- where she and Raqi stood was the only place that seemed to be safe from the chaos. Even as the walls vanished all around her, the plants and the equipment sustaining them was left intact. "Raqi!" Punica called out urgently. "What are you doing?! What is happening to the ship?" "Don't worry!" A voice replied to her, but it was not the other woman's. Raqi's mouth did not so much as move, and the sound seemed to emanate from elsewhere. It was almost as if it was simply being played directly into Punica's mind, but surely that couldn't be possible? She narrowed her awareness inward, trying to locate the source of the sound- "You're not in any danger! Just watch!" Noise was merely a series of vibrations, interpreted by receptors in sapient beings' bodies and converted into an auditory response, which they then interpreted as sound. For a creature such as an affini, for whose entire body thrummed with such subtle motions at all times, even the slightest disturbance was easily noticeable. So it was that Punica was able to trace the source of the sound to somewhere just next to her humanoid head; the precise location seeming to be a ring around the level where a Terran or landamaeri's ears would be. She tried moving her head mid-way through Raqi's sentence, and found that the sound remained in the exact same position regardless. How it was possible for it to emanate both from such a precise location, and without seemingly any source was a mystery to her, but right now that was among the least of the inexplicable things going on around her. The ship had more or less finished dissolving. She was able to notice that what seemed like certain pieces of machinery at the other side of the ship had been left intact. It quickly clicked in her mind that these must be the systems powering the Chimera module; presumably if Raqi dismantled those, the entire system would stop working. Even as she was thinking this, the floor seemed to open up beneath them, and the components vanished into the ground a second later; leaving her standing in a blank plasteel expanse. "There." The voice rang out inside of Punica's head once more. "Now, I have a clear stage to work with." The rumbling and sounds of machinery had died down, leaving Punica in almost total silence. The relative quiet allowed her to better focus on the sound of the new voice that was speaking to her. It was immediately identifiable as Raqi's voice, but there were a number of differences to the way she normally spoke. This version of her voice was deeper, and her words were spoken with clearer enunciation; as well as what Punica thought was some kind of an accent. What was by far the most striking was how far she had shifted from her usual monotone: The xenosophont usually spoke in a fairly flat tone of voice, and expressed emotion primarily through raising or lowering the volume of her voice; without ever shifting her tone or cadence very much. Now, however, her voice had grown distinctly more traditionally emotive; the usual flatness having been replaced with a much broader and more musical range of sound. Even the simple acknowledgement that Raqi had given a moment earlier had been filled with emotion. As Punica had continued to listen to her, the same strange sensation she'd felt before the room had begun moving had gradually returned to the surface of her mind. The more she listened, the more she felt there was something bizarrely familiar about the way Raqi's voice was making her feel. It reminded her of her conversations with other affini, where much of the conveyance of information was often performed through biorhythmic fluctuations rather than words. Words were also utilised, but a substantial portion of the information being exchanged was often encoded into subtle emotional cues, and was therefore felt rather than heard. Raqi was not an affini, and Punica very strongly doubted that landamaeris could communicate through biorhythms the way they could; but what she was doing right now felt remarkably similar in principle. The thought triggered a memory in her. A long time ago, she had read as part of her studies on xenobiology that certain florets pluribus experienced inter-system communication as remarkably similar in nature to being influenced by their owner's biorhythms. Communication between two alters was often performed in raw thought and-or emotion; a much more efficient method of conversing made possible by the fact of two sophonts sharing a brain. I wonder if that is perhaps what I am feeling right now? Punica pondered. All species possessed of hearing naturally associate certain sounds with emotions. In theory, it would be possible for a sophont with absolute control over their voice to produce a series of sounds that served as a perfect translation of a given emotion. It would still be imperfect, on account of the other person likely not holding the exact same associations between sound and emotion, but given how many such connections are innate even across species, one could get very close to accurate communication through such a method. If that was what Raqi was doing right now, then Punica had to give her credit for ingenuity. She had essentially devised her own method for achieving one part of what an affini's biorhythm was commonly used for purely from first principles. "Raqi, are you able to explain to me what you are doing right now?" She asked, curious to verify her hypothesis. "Uhh... Not really, no." There was a feeling of strain; something akin to a person looking for something, then realising it could not easily be found. "I think 'dissociating extremely hard'-" Compromise, expediency; the second best thing and the best she could come up with, which she thought would be close enough to get the job done, "-would probably be the most accurate way I could put it." The effect was fascinating enough that Punica felt herself being overtaken by a strange desire. Rather than sully their communication with a verbal response, she felt the desire to reach out and press a vine against Raqi through which she could communicate her rhythm directly. It was the kind of instinct that came to the surface when speaking to a fellow affini, never with xenosophonts, and so it didn't even occur to her not to act upon it until the voice rang out inside of her head, filled with alarm: "Woah woah woah woah, hold on! Don't touch me, please!" She halted immediately, only then realising what she had been about to do. Her humanoid eyes widened, and she quickly retracted the tendril. "Oh- My apologies, I did not mean to-" Her voice fell off mid-sentence in a wave of confusion. Why did I do that? I know she does not like being touched, but there, it simply felt like the right thing to do. A note of concern ran through her at the way in which this experience seemed to be affecting her, but she didn't have time to examine it in full, as her thoughts were soon interrupted by Raqi's not-voice once again. "I'm- trying very hard to ignore that thing," the xenosophont continued. "If you poke it with those tendrils of yours, I'm probably gonna snap right out of this, and I won't be able to do what I want to do." Punica knew intrinsically that the 'that thing' Raqi was referring to was her own body. "In the same vein, I kind of need you not to ask me questions about what I'm doing right now, because that'll bring me out of it as well. Okay?" There was a slight irony to that statement; given how the exchange which had prompted this entire scene had been about asking questions. Still, Punica was not unfamiliar with the concept of flow states, and so she readily nodded her head in agreement. "I will refrain from touching you, or from posing any questions for the time being." A radiant wave of heat momentarily filled the room, passing over Punica and filling her with a tangible sense of gratitude. This had her raising her antennae once more. That was not auditory, but it was definitely still intended communicatively. Does she think in sensations, as well, then? "Thank you," Raqi continued. "Oh, and also: If you could try and not get into my line of sight at any point. Just- Stand right behind me, will you? That way I don't have to try and keep track of where you are relative to me." "Of course." Punica moved quickly to acquiesce to the request, gathering her stray vines together to make sure that none came into Raqi's view, and then making her way behind the other woman. Upon coming to a stop, she turned around to face her. There was something about their positions, the way she towered more than a head over Raqi while she stood there completely motionless, that made the xeno seem even smaller than she actually was. For a moment, Punica felt something stir within her. An ancient, primal urge; telling her to lean in forwards, towards the girl's neck. She felt her several of her injectors twitching, chemicals beginning to rise into their chambers- She immediately pushed the urge down. "Yesss," the voice purred, "perfect. That's about the perspective I'm used to working from, anyway: so you should get a pretty much perfect view." She was distracted from thought of Raqi's vulnerability by the turn of phrase the sophont had just used. 'Used to working from'? She wondered in what sense Raqi meant working; but she recalled her request not to ask questions, and so was forced to bite down on the question that was forming on her faux-lips. How deeply frustrating that even an activity designed to answer her questions was only producing more of them. The little xenosophont really was very good at that. Perhaps somehow able to sense her impatience, Raqi's next response was aimed at an earlier query of hers. "Yeah, so, uh- About what you asked earlier: Basically, I'm controlling the Chimera module directly with my mind's eye right now; the way actual non-fake ship pilots do. So it should be producing pretty much whatever I'm thinking of, but uh... I've never done this before, and it's kind of finnicky. And by 'kind of finnicky', I mean by Inos I am going to be so dead after this." Her voice abruptly sped up. "But anyway that's not the point- Let me get to what I actually did this all for." The ground suddenly began to vibrate once more. "I figured rather than giving you some big old depressing speech that you wouldn't interpret properly anyway, instead, I'd just show you how it happened from my perspective. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to temporarily cease to exist." The world around Punica began to grow dark. The light of the walls faded away, alongside all of the remaining elements of the ship, until there was only darkness. She could see herself, and Raqi's body before her, but there was nothing else anywhere. It was as if she were standing at the very centre of an infinite, endless void. Like she had ventured out into space and found a direction to look at in which there were no stars. It did not linger enough to become frightening. Before that could happen, a convalescence of light and matter began to manifest a short distance - perhaps 50 or 60 feet - away from her. It grew and grew until it was the size of a small building, and then the rate at which it had increased began to slow rapidly; before stopping entirely. A moment later, the distortion began to solidify, and what had been an amorphous mass started to gained colour and distinction. As the matter clarified, it separated into two parts; the first a large red curtain suspended from atop a metal railing, and the second a somewhat dated-looking wooden base beneath it, formed in a semi-circle around the front of the curtain, in a shape that somewhat reminded Punica of depictions she had seen of 19th-century Terran theatres. "There we are," Raqi spoke, voice filled with satisfaction. "The stage is set. Now, the play can begin."
TerraTranslate :: Raqi Marr :: Punica Granatum :: The Affini Compact :: Landamar Mobile Fleet :: Hormone Replacement Therapy :: The Chimera Module :: Affini :: Intersidera :: Posters :: Magnesium ::