TEST DRIVE MEME #4

[fairyfoes]

TEST DRIVE MEME

Considering apping to EACHDRAIDH? Why not give the setting a test run here! OPTIONAL SCENARIOS 01. ARRIVING IN THE DRABWURLD. The Seelie and Unseelie courts welcome you with mirthful revelry and hearty food. After you have been briefed on your purpose here, you will find an endless feast and a night filled with entertainment to placate your concerns. Mingle with new arrivals, sneak down the castle halls and make sure your eyes are always on your glass; fairies and imps have no bias when it comes to tricks! 02. THE STATION. Looking for a little slice of home? The Station gives you all that and more. Take advantage of the wifi, have a cup of fairy-brewed coffee (the one they didn't spit in) or sit back and relax on the patio. You can even move your things into one of the available rooms! 03. WILDCARD. Your own scenario! Explore the Drabwurld or simply take advantage of your Locket!

Comments

[oikodomae]

[ she'll beat herself up later about how she didn't hear the footsteps coming up behind her. how she's so out of it that she can't keep up with the basics of self preservation. she's better than that, she knows it, but the last quest still hangs heavily from her shoulders. dust from ancient rome, spider webs from arachne's liar, the humid stench of tartarus at her feet. when annabeth blinks, she can feel herself hanging there, still, percy's hand in her's-

and then it's gone, replaced by the cheerful buzz of conversation. of a feast. she fends off that feeling of camp that threatens its way up her chest, because that's not true, that's not where she is, and once she can find percy they can work to get out of whatever part of tartarus or the underworld or whatever else they stumbled into.

that's when the voice comes in, behind and slightly off to one side, and annabeth tenses - ready to fight, ready to throw a punch, ready to dive - before it really sinks in whose voice that is. sandy hair, strong build, impish eyes...it's an image she can still see so clearly in the back of her head. he's dead rings clearly in her head, but as soon as she hears it she's retorting (to herself) 'and I'm supposed to be in Tartarus'. being surprised, or caught off-guard, was a right she didn't really have at this point. even if that didn't stop her from holding her breath, working herself up, as she turns.

that's when whatever handle she might have previously had on her reactions falls away, crumbles like the ground beneath her feet. her grey eyes widen, one foot sliding back a hair - she's not stepping back, would never let herself show that much weakness - but the shock that courses through her...

when she speaks, her voice is a little softer, a little more vulnerable, than she'd like. but it's what comes out, after a few heavy moments of silence, where she just stares. ]

Luke? How...

[marred]

[ it's not necessarily a surprising reaction, as almost everyone who he had known in a past life has had one of two various reactions toward him reappearing: shock or anger. the latter belongs with clarisse, the former with the cooler heads of the demigod clan. it's no surprise annabeth looks at him as though he's not real. he's almost tempted to pinch himself to ensure he is; he's beginning to not believe in his own heart beating solidly against his ribcage. but it still manages to surprise him, her reacting in such a manner, seeing a ghost she perhaps wishes to see ... ]

[ it's probably wishful thinking on his part. ]

[ he shrugs. for a kid who may have all the answers, that one eludes him. his tone is sarcastic, the smile he pulls one of mirthlessness, ] Welcome to the land of Tinkerbell, where the dead really aren't all that dead. [ when they should be. it's the shard business, but he doesn't wish to go into it, the information delivering a gift from his dad, but not he wishes to wield. there are more important fish to fry, and that's ensuring this isn't a vivid and tangible hallucination he's experiencing. ]

[ she looks exactly how he remembers her — the her from here, that is. he'll never know how she looks four years from now, whether her hair ever gets cut to the length of thalia's, if she ever walks with her back hunched rather than straight, and if she ever happens to stop staring at everything as though it's a puzzle she must decipher. his eyes travel down her, the corners of his lips no longer sarcastic, even his tone seems to lesson with its derision, ] It's good to see you again.

[oikodomae]

[ annabeth just can't bring herself to stop staring, like there is some level of miscommunication going on between her eyes and her brain. like no matter what she sees, or how she sees it, it still won't register.

it hasn't even been that long. and yet when she looks at luke it's like it's been years since she saw him on the floor in olympus, dying by his own hand, his own decision. annabeth closes her eyes and feels so much younger, standing in front of him even now, despite it all. but it's a feeling she pushes away, because after years of looking up to him to years of thinking he was a traitor to wherever it is she is now, annabeth doesn't quite know how to respond to it all. with distrust? with apprehension? is this some kind of joke? luke answers her, but annabeth just keeps watching, staring, because it can't be possible. it can't.

and yet here she is.

he says tinkerbell and her eyebrows shoot up a little. ] Never Neverland? [ because isn't that the story? the reference? she forgot how easily she always did fall for luke's word-games, but that was something she would remember a little more clearly later on, when she wasn't still trying to figure her way through the maze that was her own emotional response. her feeling. it's like being lost in the labyrinth all over again, and the memory of it has a frown tugging at the corner of her lips. ]

You're alive. [ a novel statement, she knows. and maybe annabeth will be a little more embarrassed at how she just can't seem to move past this idea, but she's not a child of hades. she doesn't expect to see those she's lost again, and after finally having the time to mourn luke, to have him standing in front of her again.

forgive her for being a little captain obvious here, luke. she'll get back to her senses in a moment. ] How did you get here?

[marred]

[ he makes a point of pinching his arm — hard — and wincing. then, he presses his index and middle finger together to press against the pulse in his neck, feeling it beat beneath his fingers. it's the first time he's done that since he arrived, but he schools his expression into nothing but a sarcastic canvas. it's unsettling, to have that reaffirmation, this isn't some vivid dream a dead kid has before he arrives at hades' doorstep, served his eternal punishment until someone higher and more powerful deems his sentence over. his arm drops to his side to hang uselessly, mouth pressed into a line as the corners pull upward. ]

Kind of took a boat along the River Styx. [ he lifts a shoulder, shrugging it off casually. he's dead — he has no idea how he isn't in the afterlife, running naked in a field of cactuses. he has no idea how he's here. even though everyone keeps telling him why, he adds all those types of questions into the i don't know pile. it unnerves him to not have any of the answers, when he used to pride himself on knowing too much. and where he had always fallen short in that department, the girl before him always picked up his slack. ]

[ it's too tempting to remark on her appearance, the one change he can visibly take note of that doesn't quite match up to his own memories of her. but percy's stated she's changed. perhaps he's standing in front of a stranger, just as she is when she looks at him. she has to see him as someone other than luke — the rest of the merry gang of demigods look at him a little too closely, eyes sharp and narrow, wondering where the hint of gold in his eyes rests if not in his blue irises. he feigns looking sheepish, but his tone is anything but genuinely confused, ] Guess we got sort of lost ... [ he makes a show of glancing around, the party alive and well, while this conversation continues to be steered by him in a direction that will leave him standing alone in a crowded room. but it's partly what luke wants, despite having sought her out first; it's best if she takes off, brows pinched, rather than looking at him the way she is, as though she's seeing a ghost of someone she remembers, rather than that of a stranger she should feel uneasy around. ]

[oikodomae]

[ it's hard not to pick up on every little thing he does. the tension in his shoulders, the pinching of his arms. she watches, maybe too closely, as he checks his pulse and winces by his own hands and marvels at how he's still trying to convince himself this is all real. she's the one who just got here, the one trying to sort through what she sees in front of her, and yet he's the one who has to double check. it hits her almost a little too hard, then, how real that is. honest. he's not sure if he's dreaming, which must mean he can't be a figment of her imagination either. ]

The River Styx dropped you off here? [ her eyebrows furrow a little with her question, like annabeth actually considers taking the comment seriously. it's not too farfetched, if she thinks about it. he went down to the underworld, ended up here. she went down to tartarus, ended up... annabeth shakes her head, trying to dislodge the thought, because as much logic as she might want to connect the dots to, it's not. it's not possible. so rather than letting her mind continue to wander, to pull potentials and possibilities from every corner of her brain, she watches.

guess we sort of got lost and annabeth can't help it. she tries, forces her face to remain steady, calm, but the breath of air that comes out through her nostrils breaks it all. she smirks, softly, the huff coming off more of a laugh than anything else. her grey eyes follow his around the party, the people gathering and shifting and talking. enjoying themselves. this was some kind of underworld, that's for sure. ]

Considering where I should be, it's not a bad place to get lost in. [ she shouldn't be talking to him. she shouldn't be still standing here when she could be looking for percy, looking for anyone. but then a word of his catches her attention and she turns back. we? ] Are you here alone?

[marred]

[ fairies had plucked him from the boat and had dropped him in this odd afterlife where he has too many chances to atone for what he had done in his own past life. luke takes every chance he has, stealing the opportunities as he does with odd knickknacks to quench his own restlessness, but as quickly as he leaps toward seeking forgiveness, he purposefully trips himself over in the process. his knees are scraped and his palms are cut, the lifelines as severed as his own life string. it's no different with annabeth before him, hoping to see her hand strike his cheek while he desires it to be soft and tentative around his wrist, her own fingers searching for that pulse of his as annabeth chase is never quite happy until she locates the evidence for herself. ]

[ good things don't happen to luke castellan; annabeth looking at him as though he's the boy she remembers isn't a good thing in his world. he searches for that hatred he knows she must feel, wishing to see it darken her grey eyes and see to it she flares into a burning ball of anger. it's easier to deal with the punches than any sort of softness, his mind returning back to how she had seemed so tired when she had arrived here, perhaps merely letting him shift back into the role as caretaker as she had been too exhausted to slap him away, taking to him as he had been the only one at the feast who knew how to take care of her while even in his sleep — or even possessed by a titan. but she stands tall, limbs sharp, and her voice even more as her unspoken words take to lashing out against him as if it were a dragon's claw. ]

[ his smile falters; drabwurld isn't a bad place to get lost in unless she's stuck with only him. a part of him wishes to act petulantly and kill any growing desire and hope she may have that percy's within this realm, having travelled from the streets of manhattan to dip further than the underworld in his merry adventures of heroism. but it's annabeth — so he falters in his own self-loathing, preferring to lash out at himself than at her. an invisible hand tries to push her away. ] Yeah. [ his tone hardens. ] I'm alone. Your boyfriend's somewhere around, though. Probably swimming with the fishes. [ is it lost on luke what that idiom means? no; even in it's altered state, coming from him, it's almost a threat, despite being hollow and one he doesn't even wish to make. while he knows he's not the kid she may remember, so bent by his hatred and anger for the gods and the world itself, intent to see it burn as he stands, unburnt, in the very centre, there's the urge to step back into those shoes in a bid to push her away. he's not who she's looking for. he doubts he ever really has been. ]