Natalie Davis (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
littlebisque) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
maskormenacelogs2016-10-08 02:24 pm
littlebisque) wrote in maskormenacelogs2016-10-08 02:24 pm
Entry tags:
[open]
WHO: Natalie Davis, open
WHERE: around Heropa
WHEN: October 7th and onward
WHAT: How not to handle being interdimensionally kidnapped
WARNINGS: possible sensitive content, please see permissions
[arrival]
It happens without warning. All at once she's somewhere else, stumbling down from the platform, gasping from the shock. She whirls, dizzied and disoriented, all her senses under assault from the barrage of new information. This isn't her home - where is she, what's happening - ?
She's surrounded. Two men wearing camouflage take hold of her arms, and she shrieks and struggles, but she's in no state to overpower them even if she were physically strong enough. They have guns, she realizes. There's a sharp pinprick in her shoulder and someone is there holding a needle - but who are they? What do they want from her? Why?
Before too long, though, she stops resisting - not because her panic has abated (it hasn't, not in the least), but because her mind has begun shutting down to protect itself. She follows where they pull her, eyes glazed over, head lolling slightly to the side. She quietly listens to the woman explaining the situation, even though the words feel muffled and far away, and maybe a third of them get processed at all. Porter. The USSR. War. The government this and that. Nanites. It's all just nonsense.
This can't be happening. Whatever's happening here, it's impossible. So it must not be happening.
Ultimately she's given a packet of papers and escorted outside. The midday Florida sun draws her back to her senses, squinting and raising a hand to shade her eyes. It's so humid. It feels like a sauna. Hot like Vegas, but not dry like Vegas. Where is she, again? How did she get here? That strange light...
Dimly, she becomes aware of someone approaching. "Ma'am? We've arranged a ride for you into the city. Step this way, please." Another soldier, reaching for her elbow, and there's a strange-looking car a little ways behind him, its backseat door open. She flinches away, stiffly shakes her head. No. No, she can't. Where are they trying to take her? Do they know...?
She's clearly disoriented and upset, at any rate. Help?
[Heropa residential area]
One way or another, eventually she's dropped off at Heropa #008. "This is where you'll be staying," they told her, and now they're driving off in their flying car, leaving her standing there with all her worldly possessions. Which, at the moment, consist of a brown manila folder, a weird-looking cellphone, and the clothes on her back.
This is where she'll be staying? For how long? The place is huge, she can't be the only one they've sent here. Who else have they rounded up? And why? She still doesn't have a good answer for that.
Rather than going straight up to the house, Natalie takes a moment to look around the street, get the lay of the land. And of the people. She knows she can't be the only one...
[a craft / hobby store in Heropa]
A few days later - the initial shock still hasn't worn off, but Natalie's starting to put a routine together again, if only because thinking about everything that's happening(?) is exhausting. Working with her hands calms her, but for that she needs supplies. She's starting from scratch, here. All her tools, her workstation, everything's gone. But they've given her a little money, enough to get started, at least. Tide her over.
It's real basic, what she's picked up so far. Not even enough to warrant a shopping basket. A Strathmore sketchbook, 9 by 12. Two boxes of pencils, one fifty-cent sharpener, a pack of three block erasers. A triangular scale ruler, a small pack of polymer clay. A craft knife and replacement blades. Stuff that everyone should have.
As she's heading toward the checkout, though, a particular display catches her eye. Vintage-style dolls - not actually vintage, she can tell at a glance that they're new, but in that style, with the big eyes and chubby red cheeks and bonnets and lacy dresses. It's a fall display, the dolls sitting posed around a large cornucopia brimming with earth-toned ribbons and fake maize. Natalie sets down the things she was buying on a nearby shelf, so she'll have both hands free, and slowly, gingerly, picks up one of the dolls.
It's not quite right, though, she thinks, tilting her head one way, then another, to get a view of it from all angles. The face is similar, and she's got the auburn curls, but her eyes are blue instead of green. It's not Chloe, it's somebody else. But is that a disappointment, or a relief?
She goes to put the doll back, but as she looks between it and the display, she's unsure it'll fit, despite that that's where she got it from in the first place. If it were a little smaller......
All of a sudden it slips from her hands, landing on the floor with a dull thud. Startled, she freezes, looks nervously around - did anyone see that? - then goes to pick it up in a hurry that borders on frantic. She sets it back where it was originally, and that's when she realizes what's wrong. Now that they're in the same place, the scale's clearly off. The doll is actually half the size it was before.
You did that, something whispers, and at once Natalie knows she did, and she backs unsteadily away from the display, her mouth dropping open as if she's struggling to breathe. Why'd you do that, Natalie? the doll whines. I didn't mean to, she wants to say, but it's as if her speech circuits aren't working. Can she still get out? Did someone see her?
Did you? The store isn't packed, but there's a decent number of customers around, and while they don't seem to have caught her using her new powers, a few are starting to notice her now.
WHERE: around Heropa
WHEN: October 7th and onward
WHAT: How not to handle being interdimensionally kidnapped
WARNINGS: possible sensitive content, please see permissions
[arrival]
It happens without warning. All at once she's somewhere else, stumbling down from the platform, gasping from the shock. She whirls, dizzied and disoriented, all her senses under assault from the barrage of new information. This isn't her home - where is she, what's happening - ?
She's surrounded. Two men wearing camouflage take hold of her arms, and she shrieks and struggles, but she's in no state to overpower them even if she were physically strong enough. They have guns, she realizes. There's a sharp pinprick in her shoulder and someone is there holding a needle - but who are they? What do they want from her? Why?
Before too long, though, she stops resisting - not because her panic has abated (it hasn't, not in the least), but because her mind has begun shutting down to protect itself. She follows where they pull her, eyes glazed over, head lolling slightly to the side. She quietly listens to the woman explaining the situation, even though the words feel muffled and far away, and maybe a third of them get processed at all. Porter. The USSR. War. The government this and that. Nanites. It's all just nonsense.
This can't be happening. Whatever's happening here, it's impossible. So it must not be happening.
Ultimately she's given a packet of papers and escorted outside. The midday Florida sun draws her back to her senses, squinting and raising a hand to shade her eyes. It's so humid. It feels like a sauna. Hot like Vegas, but not dry like Vegas. Where is she, again? How did she get here? That strange light...
Dimly, she becomes aware of someone approaching. "Ma'am? We've arranged a ride for you into the city. Step this way, please." Another soldier, reaching for her elbow, and there's a strange-looking car a little ways behind him, its backseat door open. She flinches away, stiffly shakes her head. No. No, she can't. Where are they trying to take her? Do they know...?
She's clearly disoriented and upset, at any rate. Help?
[Heropa residential area]
One way or another, eventually she's dropped off at Heropa #008. "This is where you'll be staying," they told her, and now they're driving off in their flying car, leaving her standing there with all her worldly possessions. Which, at the moment, consist of a brown manila folder, a weird-looking cellphone, and the clothes on her back.
This is where she'll be staying? For how long? The place is huge, she can't be the only one they've sent here. Who else have they rounded up? And why? She still doesn't have a good answer for that.
Rather than going straight up to the house, Natalie takes a moment to look around the street, get the lay of the land. And of the people. She knows she can't be the only one...
[a craft / hobby store in Heropa]
A few days later - the initial shock still hasn't worn off, but Natalie's starting to put a routine together again, if only because thinking about everything that's happening(?) is exhausting. Working with her hands calms her, but for that she needs supplies. She's starting from scratch, here. All her tools, her workstation, everything's gone. But they've given her a little money, enough to get started, at least. Tide her over.
It's real basic, what she's picked up so far. Not even enough to warrant a shopping basket. A Strathmore sketchbook, 9 by 12. Two boxes of pencils, one fifty-cent sharpener, a pack of three block erasers. A triangular scale ruler, a small pack of polymer clay. A craft knife and replacement blades. Stuff that everyone should have.
As she's heading toward the checkout, though, a particular display catches her eye. Vintage-style dolls - not actually vintage, she can tell at a glance that they're new, but in that style, with the big eyes and chubby red cheeks and bonnets and lacy dresses. It's a fall display, the dolls sitting posed around a large cornucopia brimming with earth-toned ribbons and fake maize. Natalie sets down the things she was buying on a nearby shelf, so she'll have both hands free, and slowly, gingerly, picks up one of the dolls.
It's not quite right, though, she thinks, tilting her head one way, then another, to get a view of it from all angles. The face is similar, and she's got the auburn curls, but her eyes are blue instead of green. It's not Chloe, it's somebody else. But is that a disappointment, or a relief?
She goes to put the doll back, but as she looks between it and the display, she's unsure it'll fit, despite that that's where she got it from in the first place. If it were a little smaller......
All of a sudden it slips from her hands, landing on the floor with a dull thud. Startled, she freezes, looks nervously around - did anyone see that? - then goes to pick it up in a hurry that borders on frantic. She sets it back where it was originally, and that's when she realizes what's wrong. Now that they're in the same place, the scale's clearly off. The doll is actually half the size it was before.
You did that, something whispers, and at once Natalie knows she did, and she backs unsteadily away from the display, her mouth dropping open as if she's struggling to breathe. Why'd you do that, Natalie? the doll whines. I didn't mean to, she wants to say, but it's as if her speech circuits aren't working. Can she still get out? Did someone see her?
Did you? The store isn't packed, but there's a decent number of customers around, and while they don't seem to have caught her using her new powers, a few are starting to notice her now.
▸craft store
That kind of raw, animal-in-a-trap-searching-for-an-escape kind of fear and confusion are things his own mind has internalized almost to the point of repressing them entirely. He's felt disconnected from fear so long he might not even know it again if he did feel it, which is perhaps what brings him to approach her without much debate, once he sets down his own armful of spray paint cans and roller brushes.
"Um, hi--" He walks over slowly, voice quiet but as steadily monotone as it usually is. "Are you... do you want to go outside? Or, uh, if you need anything else, I'll try to help, but--?"
Everything doesn't seem okay, at least not at the moment, so he doesn't ask that question yet.
SLAMS IN HERE i am so sorry about the wait @Д@
She tilts her head back, then nods twice, mechanically, like she has to pull on the associated muscles by hand. "I need ... air," she says, almost whispering as well. Cloying, muggy air that'll remind her with every breath that she's not where she should be, she doesn't belong here - but she can't stay.
Finally she wrenches her eyes away from Pablo's, but she follows along with him, moving toward the door in a daze. The image of the half-size doll, seared in her mind in perfect clarity, propels her forward. You did that. But she can't bring herself to believe it. It's impossible. It can't be real.
Hot air hits her like something solid as the automatic doors slide open, stopping the little momentum she had. She gets to a square cinderblock column and puts her back to it, slides to the ground. Get up. But she can't. One hand, trembling, brushes a strand of hair from her face. You look like a crazy person! Pull yourself together! But she can't.
"What's happening to me?" she murmurs.
no worries :>
"I don't know," he says, tone unchanged. He walks slowly, trying to make sure she's following him -- that no one's getting in between them, or confusing her further, that nothing else is piling onto what's causing her panic already -- and once they're outside, he walks over to stand beside her. Then, after considering a moment if he should offer a hand to help her up, he kneels instead, hands resting on his knees.
"Can you breathe better now? Um-- do you think you need an ambulance, or--" He pauses, lips pressed together in consideration. "What does it feel like?"
no subject
But she's not sure how to articulate it. These whirling thoughts, that power, the doll, Chloe - where does she start? Does she start? She just met this guy. Can she trust him?
She's a little bit calmer now, though. The panic's less acute, it's slowly returning to the baseline level of terror she's been feeling since Cape Canaveral. Enough that she can form complete sentences, at least.
"... I think ... I broke something," she says, gazing at a crack in the pavement somewhere in the vicinity of Pablo's feet. She broke more than one thing, it occurs to her. She remembers a sick, wet crunch, blood clinging to the rolling pin. Ernie's voice, shouting at her...
Her head tilts right, the fear in her expression mingling with a hint of anguish. "Th-they're gonna put me in jail."
no subject
He watches her carefully, following her gaze downward to the ground for a moment, before raising it to look back at her.
"No..." Pablo says finally after a brief silence, as if he'd taken the time to consider her words. And maybe that's what he did do; Pablo is often difficult to read, both his face and voice intonation tending to lack in emotional variation regardless, which is a difficult obstacle that makes him try harder to at least always listen, and to mean everything he says.
He doesn't move, making no motion toward physical comfort such as a touch to the shoulder.
"Um, like, it's okay for things to break sometimes... I don't think that can really be helped, you know?" Pablo continues. "No one's called the police or anything."