MOON MINGLE

[compostabelle]

WHO: Anyone
WHERE: THE MOON
WHEN: Anytime through August
WHAT: Whatever u want, please feel free to use post for all your Moon-based shenanigans
WARNINGS: Warnings and opt-outs for the Pale Maiden can be found here. Please warn other threads as appropriate.

[ While chaos turns down bellow, it is hopefully a much more peaceful August on the Moon. Local businesses are a bit worn out from the tourism blitz over the eclipse, but on the plus side, #EARTHCLIPSE2018 memorial coins can be purchased for 25% off. Also: the cafe finally serves cold brew coffee, so there's also that. ]

Comments

Pale Maiden | OTA

[compostabelle]

[ The Maiden stumbles as she exist the porter. Her eyes go wide, pupils constricted to pinpoints. ]

Em . . . empt-t-t-ty. E-empt-t-ty.

[ For a moment, it looks like her knees are going to give out entirely. Like she's going to trip over herself or maybe just collapse. But gravity such as it is up here, she takes a couple of awkward steps and rights herself more-or-less. Still, her shoulders are shaking, her eyes are still wide and glossy and she just looks not OK-

And then in the next moment she's bouncing up on her toes, and laughing like a bell- a bell that had rusted into place and was incapable of laughing, only making horrible scraping noises, but hey it is almost definitely laughter she looks pretty tickled ]

Empty!! You're empty. You're empty and small. You can't even h-hold an atmosphere! How d-do you expect to hold me? St-st-stupid.

[darkpants_warmfeeling]

[As misfortune would have it, Jacob Taylor is just passing through the Moon base's Porter room himself with an electronic pad in hand when the Maiden emerges. He looks up, recognizes her, then immediately makes to detour around her, studiously avoiding eye contact. He does not want to be hissed at by a chorus of centipedes again, thank you very much.]

[compostabelle]

[ cool good luck with that. ]

Hello, Jacob Taylor.

[darkpants_warmfeeling]

[Well, shit. Busted.

Jacob holds back a sigh, halts in his course, then turns to her and... not quite nods, not quite bows, trying for respect without deference. How do you greet a decay deity, anyway?]

Pale Maiden. I wasn't expecting to see you all the way up here.

[Not much to compost on the lunar surface, after all.]

[compostabelle]

No, you weren't.

[ she sounds inexplicably pleased with herself by this assertion ]

[darkpants_warmfeeling]

...Right. I wasn't.

[What do you even say to that?]

What brings you to the Moon?

[compostabelle]

[ She points to Jadus ]

He's raising a small completed circle, uhm. For a space ship. I want to meet her.

[darkpants_warmfeeling]

[Oh. Great. That other mysterious entity Jacob is deeply uncomfortable around but who isn't officially a Bad Guy yet.]

A... circle?

[It takes a moment for the quarter to drop, but the reference to the ship makes it more clear.]

You mean the life support system. The thing that recirculates air and water, right?

[Like... a completed circle. He's beginning to grasp how her phrasing works. Maybe. Hopefully.]

yo

[jadus]

[As deathly silent as the Moon was, it reminded him of the months following the destruction of the Dominator. Floating in space, senses dulled so that he could hide his presence from the rest of the galaxy, while the minds around him unraveled and remade themselves. It was so tempting to do the same here.

He would not. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. The planet might soon be consumed, an unpleasant but not unfamiliar prospect. Something he would work to avoid.

Whether this trip today had any utility towards that goal, he did not yet know. But the entity's response to the moon's silence was fascinating.]

And yet what holds us back still reaches through here. [He turns to regard the porter.] It could be severed.

[compostabelle]

[ The moons she knew had never been silent, though that would have been an improvement, frankly. She shifts from foot to foot, feeling out the change in gravity. ]

Could it . . . ?

[ this sounds like a TERRIBLE idea, but she is intrigued ]

[jadus]

The porters have been disabled in the past. Whether this one could be destroyed outright, I do not know. [He has been considering it, both as an opportunity, and a threat.

Certain events would follow, not all of them consequential.] The people of Earth have no technology to maintain an atmosphere in a station of this size. Without the porter, it is likely that most animal life trapped here would suffocate.

[He could likely grow something to sustain himself, but he was feeling his body's limitations more keenly now than before. Especially when compared to her.] But if it took you beyond the Porter's reach, then it would not matter. [She might return to a form that suited her better.]