Participants:
| Scene Title | Not All Mothers, Not All Goddesses |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | …are vengeful. |
| Date | February 7, 2019 |
The Ruins. The thought pulled at some dark, tangled, and frayed heartstrings that she didn’t know still capable of carrying a tune in there. She had to see them for herself. She sets out for Staten Island in the morning. A tan, loosely crocheted cap with sad droopy cat ears tames down her initial winter-frizzed, crimson locks, but the curls come back with a vengeance below the edge of the winter hat, falling over the shoulders of her gray coat in an untamable fashion.
She’s found a building not far from the water. It probably wasn’t the tallest in its heyday, but amidst the rumble, it is now. As it, she stands at the bottom of a set of decrepit stairs within. Her hand rests on the mangled railing and a less observant man would think she was afraid. A more observant man would recognize she’s terrified. “Stairs,” she mutters. “You got this. Just stairs.” She clears her throat and begins the climb. She makes it to the fourth level, now an open-air suite, boots shuffling uncertainty over the rubble and daring her closer and closer to the edge. She holds her breath and scans the horizon of destruction, amidst it the shatter remains of The Lighthouse. Her breath catches and she holds a hand over her heart, the twang of that rusty string therein playing a strongly painful cord.
There's a noise behind Isis, something like a crack and a pop following soon after. It's not.. right where she is. It's below. The wind picks up but that doesn't drown out the sound of whatever it is that's below but one thing is for sure. It's only getting closer. A flash of red so fast it could almost be a trick of the light. There's a hum and then something seems to be vibrating somewhere in the The Lighthouse before there's a loud audible slam, echoing upwards towards the redhead above. The seconds tick on in silence and no more flashes of a brilliant red light.
Instead there are footsteps, coming from the first floor but the door to the outside had never opened. A shuffling and scrappy can be heard, slowly trudging up the stairway that Isis had just battle her way up.
It’s only because she’s on such high alert already, anxiety tightening every cord of muscle in her slender body, that she manages not to yelp at the first pop that echoes. The fleeting flicker of crimson has her spinning around, until she realizes this leaves a precarious and crumbling ledge at her back. “Oh fuck. I’m sorry.” Is she… Yes, she’s talking to the spirits that she has disturbed. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I just had to see-…” Footfalls.
The redhead closes her eyes and swallows past the tension in her throat. When she opens her eyes anew, the soothing hazel has been exchanged for an molten gold, driven restless by her overactive imagination, paranoia, and circumstance. It’s the only give away, though, her expression stoic in contrast to the warring anxiety therein. At least she’s not talking to ghosts anymore. Instead she moves towards the stairs, keeping a fair distance away. Crumbling walls leave little in the way of places to hide. So, instead she peels off a glove and tucks it away, other reaching down to retrieve a small butterfly knife tucked into her knee-high boots.
“Whoever’s down there. I’m not looking for any trouble, ‘kay? But… I will drop a rock on your head if I have to…” She looks around for the nearest manageable piece of concrete, in case she has to make good on her bluff.
"Why would you do anything silly like that?" The singsong tone echoes up to Isis' ears and there's a sense of laughter coming followed by actual laughter. Something shifts in the dark but soon a head or raven hair can be seen as someone, clearly a woman shuffles up the stairs without looking upwards. "Lighthouses are so sacred, even when they're bombed to the seventh dimension." A pale hand slaps onto the landing and a tall woman pulls herself up to full height, there's a tattered piece of clothing failing as a robe that covers her, feet bare but she has a pair of dark sunglasses resting on her nose.
Eve doesn't immediately look at Isis instead she peers out at the world outside with a uptick of her eyebrows, "Fuzzy fuzzy, three three." Scratching the back of her head the wild woman shudders and turns to look towards Isis, red lightning pops off of her fingers and she winces, "Not many people stick around here, they feel the spirit-" Eve stops as her eyes find Isis' face and those golden eyes and the dark haired woman gasped and springs backwards and as she does so, her form starts to shift, her veins glowing red beneath her skin. She's almost about to blow but she quickly steadies herself. No no.
"What,"
Taking another step back and ripping her sunglasses off to reveal eyes that burn crimson. "Are you doing here? Ho-" Eve stops again, "Have you come to finish what you started?" On the defense, Eve crouches and puts her back to the wall.
That essence of laughter draws a shiver up Isis’s spine, but the real reverberation of laughter and an actually body to accompany it puts the redhead slightly more at east - a fleeting thing, it would be. She backs away as she gives the woman in the threadbear attire a quick scan, but the mention of the Lighthouse and those revenant words… The freckled face woman looks back out over the ruins. “Leading people safely home…” she adds, in accompaniment to Eve’s assessment about the sacred nature of the building, but the woman goes on…
Threes. Spirits. Isis’s golden eyes grow wide, hear heart catching in her throat and pounding out a vicious rhythm. What does this woman know? Does she know Isis’s obsessive superstition about that foul number? And, spirits, she must have heard her… It’s coincidence. Then…
Isis mirrors the other woman, backing up and crouching. One ungloved hand is raised out, palm open, the other hand holds up the little butterfly knife flipped open. “What? Finish what? No! I mean, I have no idea what I’m doing here! I got a letter telling me to come home. Did you send it?” She manages to turn confusion to words amidst her fearful breaths, watching the woman’s essence seem to flare in her very veins.
Noticing the knife Eve gives the redhead a new assessing look, Isis was prepared. "Three. Third time's the charm." Eve's ramblings are her own not having an idea what effect that word has on the redhead, it would seem Three rattles Eve as well. The younger woman was also carrying a knife and The Entity surely wouldn't do that but the pale woman across from Isis is currently caught up in the mood and she shakes her head viciously, "A letter?! How would anyone send a letter to a interdimensional prison?!" The dark haired woman seems flabbergasted at the thought it's even a lot for her to suggest. Isis' confusion only ramps up Eve's and she grunts in pain as a convulsion ripples through her.
"Are you trying to tell me," said through her teeth as sweat beads on her forehead as Eve clamps down on the power inside her, this was all so new to her. It's what Gillian must have felt all the time except she didn't explode she made other people explode. Eve could relate to this struggle now.
"That you aren't an ancient deity from the beyond here to strike me from this plane of existence?" It's a rather specific question but Eve is hoping to not leave any loopholes for Isis to leap through in her answer. "HMM?!" Nearly shrill.
Blink blink. Those golden eyes spark behind fluttering lashes. Ancient deity? What the fuck does this woman know? The name - her name - she hasn’t gone by it in nearly a decade now. That must be what Eve means. Dear Gods, what has she gotten herself into again? She should have stayed in Maine. Should have stayed as Joanne.
“Isis? It’s just a name! I’ve never claimed to be some cosmic, divine entity!” She shaking now. These omens have shaken the redhead to her core. She backs up another pace and steadies that bare hand, perhaps more dangerous than the one with the blade, against the nearest wall to try and stop the world from spinning topsy turvy. The shrillness seems to cut Isis to the quick, though. This woman… power in a woman’s form is… scared? Of her?
“Hooooold on.” It’s a withered, nervous whisper. “I’m not here to hurt you. My name is Isis. Was Isis. I worked at the Lighthouse. I helped kids. That’s all. I’m just… “ Lost? Homesick? Alone? No, she’s not going to admit that - not to herself, no yet. “Confused. But, I’m not here to hurt you.”
If there could be an audible screech right now then it would be loud and very annoying but it sends Eve backwards mentally and she pauses, hearing Isis' words among her own delusions and rightfully placed fears. Slowly she relaxes her posture as she hears the words worked at the Lighthouse and not being there to hurt her. Eve guesses an angry goddess would never be like this no no, but it was such a good trickster. "Well why didn't you just say that! You can't go running around with golden eyes didn't you get the newsletter?" Imitating a phone ringing.
Ringringringring.
"Oh hello! What, oh no, an angry vengeful god whose been trapped in a Hell world for decades is now finally loose on the world and it's signature are your pretty spinning discs of gold." Eve slams the fake phone down on her thigh. "Mayhem, fire and brimstone..cats and dogs living together! Mass hysteria!" Waving her arms in the air, Eve also now imitates the sound of an alarm.
"But you're a friend of Briguy an-" She doesn't say Gillian's name. She misses her but she's afraid to blow up her life and not in the metaphorical sense this time. "They are good, you must be good. Good Goddess Isis with the Golden Eyes, who has sent for you mmmm?" Crimson eyes flare as she grins widely at the woman, a grin that's too wide.
Is this better or worse? Isis doesn’t need to say it, her nervous-golden eyes read it plain and clear as she gawks at this theater show recap of the world literally going to hell. Isis’s first impulse is to take her ungloved hand and cover her eyes, but then she can’t see the crazy, demon-eyed woman! Fuck that! She gasps at her error and just as quickly peels her hand away. “I didn't know they were gold. They’re hazel-ish. It’s just a thing they do when I’m-,” scared shitless, “-nervous.”
A pause. “Are you… serious right now? Like no bull-og-na? A goddess?” She’s inclined not to believe this woman and yet… spirits, threes, the impossibility of this entire interaction, then there is the mention of Brian and well, this woman may be crazy, but Isis can’t dismiss all that. “I don’t know, who sent for me I mean. I thought it was Brian, or one of the kiddos, maybe.” She shakes her head, curls bouncing around her shoulders. “But, that seems a little less important than whatever the hell you have going on.” The Goddess didn’t send her a letter, right?! “If the Goddess is after you… what did you do to piss her off?”
"I tell no lies to you dear Isis," Eve leans against the wall with a look of exhaustion on her face, she's been running since she exploded, exploded, exploded- Eve stops her train of thought from forming a full song and she does in fact close her eyes as she speaks. Her pale hand drags up against the rough surface of what she leans on slowly, Lightning crackling and leaving marks as a trail. "You think JoJo or Lance could have sent the letter.. the kiddies are so grown up now you'd barely recognize them. Meddlers." Aunt Eve beams in pride, she's so proud of the next generation of Meddling Kids.
But they subject of family and the past only sits for so long before Isis asks what Eve did in the first place to deserve this deity coming after her.
"It's all connected." Waving her hand in the air to indicate this goddess and the children of the Lighthouse, Brian.. she.. Isis.. all of them. "I kept looking where I shouldn't, sticking my face under the River to listen how the echoes directed me." Eve sounds mournful, she's mourning a piece of herself lost to the ether, "Mother and Father sees it all, they know us. Us their Children of the Eclipse," using the term that Squeaks had learned from Zhao. There's a moment of pause and then Eve is leaning forward unexpectedly and looking into Isis' goldish eyes with her crimson ones.
"Do you have any weed?"
Isis watches Eve with equal measures of awe and fear. The snaps and crackles of garnet electricity between feminine figures toying at her senses and frayed her wary nerves at the same time. She gives a little sniff and a quick flick of the wrist folds up the small butterfly knife and tucks in back into the pocket of her long gray coat. The promise of no lies settles on Isis in a strange way - this woman is clearly dangerous and yet, the redhead seems to calm tenfold. “We grow up. Then they grow up. Then…” We die. Then they die. The forlorn statement doesn’t need to be spoke aloud to be mutually understood between these complicated women.
“I really hope your right,” she replies in response to the matter of the ‘connectedness’ of it all. There’s something pleading in that statement, a tightens that burrows down in her core, a fear that is greater than even the immediate, sparking, unstable presence before her. Eve is just hitting all the nerves today.
“Is she the Mother? Or something else?” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out two bottles. One is the tacky transparent orange of medical prescriptions - a label reads Joanne etc. etc. etc. - ATIVAN. The second is a white bottle. “Dose cubes. I don’t like the smell of pot.” She pours some into her hand, looks up at spark-a-thon-woman, and decides to keep these few gummy treats for herself. She sets both bottles down on the ground between them as offering. No need to risk frizzing her hair more or shocking her heart into submission, right? She stuffs four of the pot-infused gummies in her gob and watches Eve.
"I really wish I wasn't. Scratchiness and booms, nice but the Rivers were nice too… except when I died in them." Because what's to come even though Eve can't see it anymore, she knows what she has seen before. She knows what The Entity is capable of, "I've witnessed a tenth of its power Im sure. It is.." Eve's face screws up as she tries to explain and finds herself thinking of Kam in this moment, "It's an idea. Nobody knows just how it was brought into this world," Yet. "But I call it Mother and Father and we their Children of the Eclipse because they made us, there's a piece of them in all of us. Look at your eyes!"
"Oh you are a saint!" Or a goddess, as Eve reaches forward to take some of the gummies from the bottle and she leans in close before stuffing a few in her mouth and leaning back against the wall grinning widely, "Oh oh it's been weeks since I've been stoned. It really makes me less of a whack a mole." Eve doesn't take more she doesn't want to be greedy and by the time these things set in.. she'll be just fine. Back to the matter at hand.
"It was trapped for a very long time in a little cubey cube but it's out now. You should be careful, Goddesses can be hurt too." Eve shudders as a crackle of crimson lightning winks in and out of existence around her body. "Watch out for Adam too, blonde old dude. Real old. Likes to make with the stabby."
A soft twitch at the right corner of her lips. Goddess. Ha. She’s never felt so less goddess, so less Isis than now-a-days. What made her thing Joanne could hack it in NYC, anyway? A flutter of her lashes blinks away the downward spiralling thought chain. “You died? I mean, you’re dead?” Why the hell does she sound relieved? The inquiry is punctuated with a single step forward and a few coils of garnet falling across her face as she tips her head in curiosity. Curiosity - did you know it’s the color green? At least for Isis, it is. Fear and interest leave hazel eyes showing prominent gold flecks suspended in a sea of emerald. “Mothers and Fathers don’t do this to their children.” She motions over Eve’s body. “You might want to reconsider the title.”
Isis doesn’t move to retrieve the bottles. In fact, she fully intends to leave them there. This woman needs them more than Isis - that’s impressive. Instead, she’s about to launch into the questions, oh-so-many questions. But, then… “Adam? What’s Adam got to do with this?” Isis finds her hands moving to her middle, holding fast to her stomach and her sternum - it’s like this woman can see through her, to a past that has become muddled by time, change, heartache, and prescription drugs.
The shift in Isis' eyes makes Eve blink and almost take a step forward herself but she falters and a brilliant smile shines on her face despite the pain she's in, "Three. Three times dead, three times alive. Is it science or magic? The physical or the metaphysical? You shift, special." Eve huffs and flexes her fingers. The chaotic energy within her threatens to bend and break her but she holds for a while longer. Whether or not Mothers and Fathers treat their Children this way.. "I've known parents to have done worse. These ones though.. more like the Vengeful God of the Old Testimony, Floods, Calamities. There's a black unicorn." Eve whispers the last bit reverently and the veins in her neck bulge and she covers her mouth to suppress a snicker. "Unicorns are fun."
While they're on the subject of the Bible and Isis shows she knows Adam, Eve is again surprised. "You're more connected than I thought hm?"
What she should or could say on the blonde immortal takes a few for Eve to gather in her mind. How to explain, "Mother and Father gave him his gift of course in ancient times, maybe the first they did. Though they are the true First." While Eve could delve further into the mythology that she's been diving nose first into her eyes track up to Isis' face and she asks, "What do you know of him? A slithery snake, cheap, The Plague born from The First."
Is her jaw on the floor? Almost. “Three”, her whisper is set to quiver by the shiver raking up her spine. Isis leans back now, needing a place to steady herself against the weakness tingling in her knees. She peels off her hat and tips her chin up, pressing red tangles and the crown of her head to cool, jagged cement as she looks up at the sky - it sudden feels so heavy. It’s in this stance she takes in all Eve has to say, though she does open her eyes and look out across her nose at the mention of black unicorns. “Jealous,” she mutters in interjection.
What does she know about Adam? The Adam. She shakes her head, garnet locks catching on scratchy concrete and forming an awkward fiery halo around her head. “Not much. Not all that certainly. I worked for him - just a little. Side jobs here and there - working the bar… acquiring money.” Her gaze flicks down to the ground, as if there was a pensive pool there reflecting her past in those ever changing eyes.
Wanna see what happens when the Curious Cat doesn’t ask? It explodes. I mean, not in the Eve way, just the verbal vomit way: “What does Adam want? Can he put It back? Better yet, what does Mother and Father want? Is this like… Great Flood material? Is It going to wipe us out and start fresh?” There’s a pause, her face turning away ever so subtly with chin lowered so she can take in even from the corner of her eyes. THen the heaviest question of them all. “Can I help you?” Eve’s pain has not go unnoticed. She steps forward anew, past the bottles - she offering more help than chill-out drugs. She’s offering to get in over her head, again.
"Like Miss Kaylee and The Huntress, Huruma but smaller, you're still large though lady don't let that fact fool you." And then there's an explosion from Isis and Eve is leaning back with raised eyebrows, jaw fixed as the questions land like firecrackers at her feet, she extends her leg, pale skin peeking out from under the coat. "It's motivations are murky like the water after you've washed all your dirty sins away yea? My grandmother use to say, il peccatore si bagna in lacrime." Eve doesn't offer a translation at first instead she shrugs when it comes to Adam.
"He's as slippery and mysterious as ever. Being so old has made him a strong secret keeper. Maybe one of the best."
Help her? That's a nice thing to ask and Eve smiles and tips her head back before shaking it, "The sinner bathes in tears." A translation finally for Isis' ears as Eve rises to her feet. She's felt it coming this whole time and it's a testament to Eve's inner strength that she hasn't exploded herself yet but that time approaches fast and Eve scrambles back, "Well my Goddess friend, keep it secret for now that you ran into me. If Mother and Father or Adam find out well…. I'm always around! Ruins, caves, not hard to fi- Oh I never gave you my name. Hi! I'm-" Eve's voice is cut off as her ruby eyes bulge and she slowly begins to glow and shine bright red, the light filling in the room and then she's toppling over the ledge and she just explodes.
That ruined robe flutters to the ground, burning lightly and smoke rising to the sky. Eve Mas is no more among the smoke that Isis realizes isn't smoke.. it's red. Like the eccentric woman's eyes. There floating just off the ledge is Eve's true form and Isis gets to see it all. A billowing, cloud of ruby red energy crackles and swirls there. Red lightning pops and sparks near the Lighthouse but the cloud moves backwards before that lightning and its mere presence can hurt the redhead. The ever present metal fillings glint in the light.
“Kaylee?” Surprise tickles the edges of this whisper. She knows this one. “Huntress Huruma?” Another whisper, this one touched with confusion of the unknown. Isis bites her lower lip as she hangs on every syllable that follows like a cord that is somehow tethering her both to her past and to the unknown cosmic forces at play here, pulling her in apart at the fragile seams she pieced together this past decade. And then the mesmeric woman, is moving, withdrawing and taking with her this link. Isis finds herself reaching out unconsciously, Eve’s smile reflected back upon the drifting woman in Isis’s eyes of confliction - emerald and gold, life and lava. Her features have just begun to mimic Eve’s smile at the way the conversation turns, the introduction of a name hanging in the air…
And then it is Eve’s turn to explode! The wash of sharp energy and bright, sanguine light drawing a stuttered gasp from Isis as it reflects of garnet curls and casts her pale visage in a bloody glow. Her eyes remain wide despite the glaring burn, equal parts unwilling and unable to turn away from the spectacle of the woman becoming a cloudy, sparking, garnet specter before her. “No!” At first she wonders if the Mother and Father had reached out and snatched the otherworldly woman from her. But, no… there she is. The cloud, the energy, the essence of laughter and fear - right there. Isis’s senses seem attuned to this kinship and she recognizes the sparking entity for what she is.
Carefully, so very carefully - like approaching a predatory animal with reverence and caution as much as not to disturb it from its natural habits as out of concern for one’s own safety - Isis’s boots draw her up to the edge of the building. “Your secret is safe with me, Scarlet Spirit,” she promises quietly. “Hide well. Remember, not all Mothers, not all Goddesses are so vengeful…” She offers a sad sort of smile and back away, waiting until the very last before she turns away and descends the gnarled stairs.
Two lonely medicine bottles sit on the crumbled concrete amidst dust and the confused footprints - the last vestiges of a very paranoid, precarious dance and unlikely kinship.