Participants:
| Scene Title | Kill The Lie |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | After a fight breaks out upstairs, two women - one more level headed than the other come together. |
| Date | January 2, 2020 |
Cat’s Cradle - Downstairs
There are many unresolved subjects on Yi-Min's mind as she steps down the stairs that Eve had fled down with a very leisurely preoccupied, unhurried grace, one small hand trailing lightly on the material of the wall beside her. Eve, however, had established herself as the focal point for more than one of them— and thus this is the one that Dr. Yeh deems it proper to turn to first.
The pandemonium of the scene she is leaving behind seems to fade out behind her as she descends deeper into the core of Cat's Cradle, away from the gloomily lit candles and the ruckus of the small crowd upstairs into a different, more silent darkness. Kara is, she assumes, off to deal with the situation of Rene and Isis. There is really no telling how long that might take, or how involved Kara might just have to get.
And so Yi-Min presents herself alone, rapping her knuckles on the closed door that she finds before her upon her arrival at the bottom of the staircase, and then settling back into the shadows slightly to wait.
"Who the hell is it!"
Comes Eve's voice from inside the room. There's a crackling and pop also that's become associated with Eve but as she rips the door open Yi-Min finds there's a fire cooking in the fireplace. Eve's eyes glaze over as she tries to place Yi-Min. "You're Lady's friend," It's delivered flatly, there's a smoking joint hanging out of the corner of her mouth.
Scooting back to allow the woman inside Eve closes the door.
The Oracle Room is stuffed to the brim with paintings, a light hazy smoke hangs as well though as Eve moves to sit herself back down on one of the many huge, plush, vibrant colored pillows, the smoke curls and scatters, leaving a trail in her wake.
"Are you here to throw things," Taking a large pull from the joint while looking Yi-Min over, "Or…"
Allowing the other woman to finish.
Rich of Eve, considering, "Really, weren't you the one who threw a trumpet in my direction back there?" Yi-Min reprovingly points out from the open doorway several moments after Eve practically tears the door open to let her in, though with a lack of real sharpness behind her voice to indicate that she is actually upset by this in some way. On the contrary— she is already looking around the space she had been allowed entry into when Eve shuts the door again behind her, barely veiled curiosity pulling her gaze towards the details of the paintings beyond the obscuring clouds of smoke.
Hands folding, she remains standing stock-still near the center of it all, head tilting at the much taller woman who is looking her over at the same time. "Lady… yes, if you mean Kara. I'm Yi-Min, and I live with her, in Providence. I am here because I am interested in hearing what you had to say."
The rest of it, at any rate, before a series of interruptions had caused Eve to go storming offstage. There is a tiny exhalation from Yi-Min that sounds rather like a sigh, as though in anticipation of an explanation being demanded. "If you had any ideas about stopping whatever entity sent the dream." Lower case 'e.' Assumably?
"Ah yes… the trumpet." Eve stops and looks over the smaller woman, more closely. "A friend of Lady, ok." Apparently living with Kara is a good thing in Eve's book. "Is she a messy roommate? She seems very organized. She missed you a lot." The last part might sound strange but Eve is assuming Kara is among the ones she thought were dead. "Did you really die?" Leaning in closer with eyes widening a little. "I've died a few times. Trying to get a support group going."
But Yi-Min is not here for any of that, she's here for the important stuff obviously. So Eve leans back and tokes on her joint. "The brightest minds haven't been able to solve that mystery. Everyone's come to the conclusion of banishment but, that only works so long. It's only getting more angry each time it's slammed into a cage." Chewing on her inner cheek and looking into the fire.
"I tried to talk with it, last night it came to me. Not much in answers on how to stop it," Like It would anyway. "It grows stronger but talking about it. How do you defeat something without ever bringing it up?" Now this is rich because that's how Eve usually does solve her problems but this seems like something that needed a little more thought but into it. "We blow up the vessel it's using… it hops to another. We trap it… it breaks out and terrorizes the next generation." Throwing her hands into the air she repeats the question she's been asked multiple times now and asked even herself:
"How do you kill an idea?"
Going further, "Were the ideals of the Vanguard destroyed or just the figurehead? Are there people out there still who believe in the message? How do you kill the message. How do you kill… the lie?"
"I came very close, but I experienced what I believe you might call a miraculous healing." The way Yi-Min puts it makes it sound almost faith-based, but the wry expression on her face plainly suggests otherwise. She does not explain what, or who is responsible for her, but in this implausibly connected world it had been proven that they live in— well, maybe Eve can narrow down the list of possibilities. Neither does the idea of dying multiple times seem so inconceivable to her as it once certainly would have been.
Some amusement crosses her face at the idea of Kara being involved enough with her material possessions to be anything resembling messy about them. "No, to the messiness. Kara is so spartan it is a wonder she didn't choose a stone block for her bed. You should have seen the terrible bareness of her room, before I got to it." There is a tenderness that glimmers suddenly and shortly under Yi-Min's bright, black eyes when she says it, under her laugh and the little shake of her head, and she does not try to conceal it to Eve. "I missed her just as much. I think she knows so."
Nor do the swift topic changes seem to be something that faze Yi-Min. In a way, this seems right in line for a woman with such a volatile ability. When the whirl of the conversation returns to the Entity, her chin dips slightly, reflectively, towards the level of the fireplace. "It is far from being something so vague though, isn’t it? It had a beginning, at some point, presumably. Thus there must be a way to bring about its end."
"And—" Hold on. "Did you say that last night it came to you?"
Eve holds her tongue as Yi-Min speaks fondly of the blonde woman. Mmmmm. The Lovers. The chaotic woman smiles deeply and nods her head. "She must be so happy you got to her. Room." Heh.
But yes, Yi-Min heard right. "Last night. It's housed in the vessel known as Sibyl Black. That used to house The Bird Eileen," There's a significant stare in the other woman's direction. She can in fact glean who might have miraculously healed her. "I tried to ask it, about the start. Why it was a slave… what happened to it and the others. It said none of that mattered, none of it. It would heal this world, this world is sick. A twisted and rotten thing."
Eve frowns and bites her bottom lip, "It also said…" She didn't even know Yi-Min but she was still in shock, "I was never a seer." The implication is surely lost on the other woman.
There is too much here to even respond to the insinuation Eve had just made about the two of them together.
Yi-Min flattens a vertically upraised hand in the universal gesture of 'wait just a fucking moment.' "The child's body that Eileen's mind was trapped in, yes," she murmurs, following along as best she can, firelight flickering in her motionless gaze. After this, though, is where things fall off for her. "You speak of this thing as a slave? You'll have to forgive me, but I am not familiar with any of this story behind it. What… happened. Can you enlighten me of this?"
A deepness of curiosity settles itself inside the slope of Yi-Min's shoulders, intermixed with the growing suspicion that Eve might simply be fafeng de. Completely out of her head. But, it is a chance that seems like it must be taken.
"Long ago… apparently. There was a war. There's always a war isn't it? And when the war was done in order to appease the King Four young slaves were gifted. Each with a wild gift… they lived under him for a time and what happened next is unknown but something… changed the Four. They ascended from their bodies and either became the true embodiments of their gifts or their gifts left them to travel to another. I don't think it's the last."
The mythology behind it all makes Eve excited she's dedicated her life to the pursuit of knowledge surrounding these events.
"Somehow it ended up in a cave in Japan, trapped until the man known as Adam Monroe met it and struck a deal. It gave him eternal life… he betrayed It." Eve feels particularly close to that moment in history, "That's around when I showed up with my cousin and got beheaded but. IT brought me back." There was a ticking clock with her life on it. "In that moment it saw a chance to assert more influence and made me a seer as a child." That is something Eve wishes wasn't true.
"Later in the 80's it broke out again. The Company handled it best they could. Made everyone forget. And now, last year it broke through again. I don't think we're gonna get a fourth time to send it away. No no. It is tired of cages. They won't do."
The fluttering glow of Eve's crackling fire continues to reflect in Yi-Min's eyes in little orange bits and pieces, until she closes them for a second. "There was a time when I would have said that you have had entirely too much to smoke. Perhaps that is still true, as well. I do not know. But everything that you say that has taken place— well." There is a definite ring of truth to the madness of the fairy-tale like twisting of the words, and too much specific detail that Eve could not otherwise have known. That thought is left purposely unfinished, but the trailing silence is commentary enough, in its own way.
The casualness of the remark about being beheaded causes Yi-Min to exhale a hair more sharply than normal, with a quality of bemusement and amusement both.
"It… made you a seer, you said. Somebody who is able to divine the events of the future? Is that how you were able to come to know all of this history?"
Who are you, Eve Mas?
The wild haired woman leans back and studied Yi-Min, hands now folded in her lap. She hums a little and nods but also shrugs, "My dips into the Echoes of the Future gave me the first clue about It. From there…"
How best to explain it..?
"We have been sparring mentally for the better part of a year." Now that doesn't sound too far fetched. "I traveled backwards in the River of Time and that's when we met face to face. I've been researching as much as possible ever since. There are legends about it, ancient inscriptions on obelisks from the Middle East. Adam, The Conduits. All of things connected I have sourced. The Institute had their science fairies studying our lineage, where we come from. They found an old set of bones. I think that's It's body, the original."
She grows quiet and looks down, lightning dances around her fingertips. "Some of what I've learned has been given to me by It, it's hard to realize what's mine and what's Its.." Eve tilts her head.
It is a good deal to take in. So much so that Yi-Min doesn't even react to the phrasing of science fairies, at least not by itself. Not with all those other words to deal with first— topics which she mentally files away to seek clearer elucidation of at a later point.
Again, Yi-Min is quiet for a moment after Eve leaves off, following the merrily crackling shimmer around the other woman's fingers.
Though she has many of them, her most pressing question is expressed nearly as quietly. "Why would it give these things to you? And if this is so, then. How can you discern what is truth, and what is falsehood?"
"I suppose I can't," is replied back simply and Eve doesn't shrug but she just as should, "I've never known what's real and what's false. What's a dream, what's reality." Those days, she almost hungers for them again.
"I always acted unpredictability for everyone else. But always in the favor of It. That's why It gave them to me. I pushed people for what I thought was the cosmic balance but it was not. That's not so anymore though." She frowns and looks down at her hands, twisting them nervously. "It has had far longer than any of us to plan for this, to move the pieces but if fighting with an immortal for the last decade has taught me anything it's that long life leads to arrogance.
"It thinks it's already won. We are no match and maybe it has seen the future and that it's swayed for It's favor. But," Eve holds up a finger, "That is one future, it may be ten futures. One hundred. All we need is one that it doesn't win. That path we can follow."
The How is as elusive as ever.
"Keep your ear to the ground. The more we learn now without my visions, the better for the next generations. Don't trust little girls with gold eyes. Not ever! Protect yourself, protect your loves." She would reach over but Eve feels more and more unstable by the minute.
So much elusiveness, in so many things.
So many questions, still.
But for the first time in what felt like ages, Yi-Min had some place to start.
All of it is good enough as a bare-boned introduction: for now, it is her misfortune to have somewhat more pressing instabilities to keep an eye on than just Eve herself. The Taiwanese woman seems equal parts troubled and regretful, even inside the calm of the next words she says. It is not a direct reply, but,
"I… must go and see what mischief my friends are getting up to, upstairs." Speaking of those ‘loves,’ hey. "You and I, though," she says in a very mild tone that nonetheless brooks no room for argument. "Are going to talk further about all of this later, over drinks." Whether or not this would turn out to be a future source of immense regret is something that would have to be seen.
Ex-seer or not, insane or not, Eve was still a highly intriguing source of untapped guidance regarding the events surrounding all of them—
And wild chance or no, it was one Yi-Min was not going to pass up.
"Mischief is always welcome here!" Though Eve's reaction to the bar brawl upstairs might state otherwise she still grins while Yi-Min looks slightly unnerved by it all. This the former seer was use to. "But yes yes, grab those chuckleheads. We will speak again. I always just pop up!"
That was way way too literal now.
Watching the woman leave the room and close the door behind her softly, Eve waits for that moment to drop her grin, it's replaced by a frown, she wasn't sure they would be able to come together, unite to save themselves. Ruby red eyes slowly tick over to a notebook with sketchbooks buried on top of it. Reaching to yank it out she turns the medium sized leather bound book to an empty page, one with a black ink pen laying in the middle.
Gutes-asi
Gutes-asi
Gutes-asi
Gutes-asi
Scribbled out on the top half of the page on the left, a pair of eyes colored in with a gold marker stare up hauntingly. Phrases are interwoven through the various doodles and shapes. The Ritual. The First. The Vessel. The Crossing. The End. The New. Eve scribbles on the right side the beginning of a paragraph: Met a nice lady today. Yi-Min. I'll have a nickname for her in no time! She's quite elegant. Like an Orchid. Mmmm. She wants to know more about It. She wants to help… lovers with Lady. She wants to keep her safe. I want to keep them all safe. The pale woman continues and slowly a smile begins to spread across her lips as she recounts the meeting of the Dreamers. Even in that strife she can escape, lean on. It's better than staring at the phrase underlined and in bold almost tearing the left page all the way through.
The River Runs Silent As The Titan Strokes The Wave