Logs:Never Skip Spin Day

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Cast

Vorpal, Lif Loracks

Setting

Freehold Trod, just outside the Freehold

Log

A powerful, rippling sense of despair ripples over the edge of the Freehold nearest to its Trod. To those with a sense of it, it's not particularly potent, more like the wafting scent of something being distilled rather than some sort of direct emotional outburst. It might well be enough to draw attention, though.

To those who come looking, Johnnie's at the edge of the Trod, on her knees with both hands on her knife. Sigknifr is stabbed hilt-deep into the soil at the base of one of the withered, wild Goblin Fruit plants, and her hair falls to either side of her face, hiding it from casual view, her shoulders shifting, shaking faintly.

On the previously barren plant, precisely one stalk is green and healthy, and even that is fading slowly. But whatever she was doing worked- from that stalk dangles a single, plump red aubergine.

Compared to Johnnie's Mantle, Lif's is the very slightest, lightest, a bare whiff of chlorine in the air as they approach along the trod. "I thought I felt you out here." Their skin is terracotta, their eyes pondlike and leaking water down their cheeks; a crack on their neck, under the left side of their jaw does the same, as always. "Do you mind company, eh?"

Johnnie slowly draws the knife out of the soil and carefully trims the sole fruit off the stalk- it whithers back to brittleness in moments. A slow breath, a touch shaky. "Mind?" Another unstable breath. "Not- in as much. So long as you understand that any and all unbecoming emotions you perceive are byproducts of a rather necessary process? Have a seat, Mx. Lif."

"I can respect that." They move to sit nearby, running a hand over the dried up grasses on the ground with a sigh. "Fucking mess, this all is. I'm going with a few others to get a better look at the roots up close, in a couple days. See if I can get more of an understanding about this, maybe. Hopefully."

Johnnie nods and sits back, her shadows cleaning crumbly, wasted soil off the blade of her knife. "It is, yeah. Which roots you guys going to? Just- wherever you can find some? Not that it's hard." Her voice is thick, and a couple shadows reach towards her face, touching it briefly. She's still facing away. "Might help to think of this as an attack, or- a heist. Some Hobs call the roots a She. As in "she thinks the Hedge belongs to her.""

"Whoever she is, she's very large. The root system being this extensive points to there being a massive aboveground structure--or perhaps many trees, similar to a clonal colony of quaking aspen. I'm...look, I'm not actually good with Hedgery, but I'm deep into environmental science, and this has struck me as similar to a mistletoe or another parasitic plant the whole time. Even if it's conscious, even if it's aware enough to self-gender, that doesn't mean we can't think of the problem through that lens. I think."

A pause, as Lif looks up at Johnnie. "I have a handkerchief in my bag, a waterbottle clipped to it, if that'll help right now. Or I can, you know. Sit back and ignore you crying some more."

"I'd definitely appreciate that latter solution," responds Johnnie drily. "Didn't want you to think I was trying to steal your style, but Amaranthine needs despair to grow, and since there's not exactly a plentiful source of absolute despair near the Freehold," she explains, gesturing to the plant, "I thought I'd water it with mine."

"Just...make sure you do drink at some point. Crying dehydrates you, and you'll wake up with an awful headache if you don't take care of yourself." She leans back into the grass, folding her arms behind her head. "You're carrying that sort of despair in you?"

"Well. Enough to Spin with, at least. I don't know that you have to BE in despair to SPIN despair, but I suspect you probably need to have experienced some? Most of the time, the poignant Spins don't require a specific emotion to invoke, and just leave an echo on you, but this one is- specific," she explains, deflecting the inquiry into her own despair with a flap of her hand.

"Mmh." The deflection is noted, Lif's eyebrows raising as they look up at Johnnie. "I have despair. I have had despair. I try not to carry it every day, but. I look out my window at a world dying of heat exhaustion like a baby left in the car in the dog days of summer, and I can't help but hold a little despair, because what's been done can't be undone easy, and even if we wanted to, everyone would have to pitch in, but people are busy bitchin' instead, and I know whatever I do is just a drop in the bucket."

"Every raindrop is one in a bucket, but that doesn't mean a storm can't stop a drought," Johnnie points out before leaning forward again and carefully brushing aside some of the dirt to make sure she's not about to stab through some roots. "It sucks when there's a problem and the people that oughtta care, don't," agrees Johnnie quietly before twisting her knife from a casual grip to a brutal, two-handed chokehold and slamming it into the earth between the roots of the poor, strangled plant.

"You'd have to have the storm, though. A movement in the air. A reason to care. I'm doing the best I can, but it's a damned uphill battle and I'm not nearly Greek enough to be Sisyphus." She shakes her head. "Not that I'm enough of anything else, either. Something of a mutt, me, even before my time over there complicated my identity like this. But yeah, I just get tired sometimes." There's a cadence when she speaks, the ghost of slam poetry, an essential rhythm behind her words.

Johnnie's words, unsurprisingly, just flow, carelessly delivered with the easy, diffident elegance of someone who at least affects not to care. Or- normally do. They're a little clogged just now. Uneven, jittery, as a new Amaranthine starts to swell on the vine."Well, that's so, but. Everything has to start someplace. Someone has to be first. Just cuz nobody ever has doesn't mean nobody ever will." It's the best she can come up with- she's really not a particularly motivating speaker, after all.

"Do you actually believe in that, or is it just a reassuring platitude?" They laugh quietly, and then cough a bit as water gets caught in their throat.

There's a brief cracked bit of laughter, and Johnnie wipes at her eyes as if removing tears of amusement. "Ha! No, really. I believe it. Just because a thing is impossible doesn't mean I won't try to prove it isn't. Just because nobody has been able to muster a global movement to repair our world doesn't mean you shouldn't try."

Johnnie's quiet a moment.

"What happens here, do you think? If the real world dies? Do the roads just start to crumble? Or all start leading Down? Do the Fae choke and starve without their minifridge? Or do they just... Move On to some other poor reality?"

"I don't know. I'm not...I'm not a scholar of the Hedge. But...the principle that bridge-burners operate on is that without dreams, the connection would be severed. But with people not around at all...I don't know." She shakes her head, sitting up and rubbing her throat gently with another cough, before spitting up what seems to be pure water.

"Well, if it makes you feel better, I AM a scholar of the hedge, and I'd still be fucked if I knew." Johnnie chuckles, pausing to look back as Lif spits up water. "Are you okay? I always thought the crack and stuff were ornamental. Did you get hurt or something?"

"When I first fell out of the Hedge, I was very polluted water. That was how I escaped, by convincing others Over There to drop things in me, to make me too unclean to be useful, anymore. They had to operate on me in the field right away, because I was dying from the pollution. It never healed quite right."

Johnnie winces hard at that. "Yikes. That- makes "oh shucks, I got stuck with all these pretty scars" kind of a pretty good deal by comparison," mutters Johnnie. "That was clever. I'm glad it got you out. I'm sorry it's still got you fucked up. That sucks. Is it ever gonna heal, you think?"

"Three years, it hasn't yet." She shakes her head. "I don't think it will. It looks healed, in my Mask, so this might be as much as it ever does." She shakes her head. "Still better than being over there. But I wake up my roommate sometimes with coughing fits. Less now, he's going through a weird depression sleep cycle change, I think."

"Gotcha." Vorpal takes that in, and offers, "Well. Good job making it. I mean, obviously, pretty much everyone we know did, but. Still worth saying. Good job." She takes a deep breath and starts to lean forward again, but she- falters. Her hands drop to the ground in front of her instead, knuckles white and fingers quivering.

And that's when Lif is up and moving closer immediately. "What do you need?" Concern is clear in her voice.

"To get this done." It all comes out in one forced breath- followed by another deep one, ragged. "This isn't real. It's just- bleedover from the Paradigm shift. It'll go away. I don't know whether fucking paranoids are starting a war over their own suspicious-ass fearmongering, or if we got a whole freehold fuckin' up the Hedge, but shit's gonna go down, and one of the most precious resources we got ain't growing because of whatever selfish Bitchqueen rootfuck is out there slurping the Hedge dry, and I can fix that. If I GET-" Stab, clumsy, unfocused. "-OVER-" Stab. More precise, but still uncontrolled. "-MYSELF."

Third time's the charm. Emotion ripples outward, feeding the plant and nurturing another crimson aubergine. The emotions might be manufactured, but it doesn't stop Johnnie's face from leaking around grit teeth or her shoulders from quaking.

"You can stop. You don't have to do this all by yourself, or all tonight." Lif seems conflicted, watching as Johnnie works.

A bitter little laugh. The faint wince from Johnnie afterwards suggests she doesn't mean it. It takes a moment to pull herself back together. "Of course I can stop. It's been a long time since anything was about what I can do." Slow breaths, one ragged in, one ragged out. Two ragged in, two ragged out. "I ever tell you I used to be a God? I opened up a hobgoblin tank- treads, cannon, the whole deal- with a kitchen knife once. I've scaled things back, but my Story, it's- not... about what I can do, Lif."

"It's about what I will. Or won't. Do."

She sits back more fully, slumping back bonelessly, barely keeping herself upright as she shoves her free hand through the curls on her face. "When I don't do what I can do, whatever happens is my fault. This isn't any different from someone refusing to do some chores cuz they get sore after. Work makes you sore, that's why it's work. This is just- being sore."

Lif stands. "I should get back to my research on mistletoe, then. To make sure you don't need to be at this work too long. I'm going to find the solution, if there's any way I can. To fix all this."

"Alright, Lif. Good luck. I'm sure y'all will do great." She stays still and quiet after Lif goes. It takes a long time before she can make herself lean forward again, and she only manages one more, with a ragged howl accompanying. The fourth and last pulse of emotional energy pulses outwards, and Johnnie collects up the last of the four fruits and hands them to her shadows, drifting off towards the Freehold's stores to deposit the fruits and head the fuck home. (8 glamour spent this scene, Demoralized Tilt accepted due to Paradigm Shifting- seems appropriate for the amount of channeled Despair.)