ArchivedLogs:Motivation

Motivation
Dramatis Personae Hive, Jim
In Absentia	2014-02-07 Part of Morpheus TP
Location In dreams
Deep puddles ploip and roil in the dark backstreets of the jungle-made city, strewn in long ropey vines and huge frond leaves, backlit by dirty neon lights. In the upper canopy above, the skyscraper trees are studded with a million glowing windows, ascending towards the heavens to knife-fight with massive jabs of lightning from the bulging black clouds. But down below, it's the overgrown back alleys, wending and dipping in and out of over arching nets of root systems. Clogged with dog-sized toadstools and prowling mysteries. Shadows ducking around corners like serpents. Jim knows this urban jungle isn't in Thailand. Except that it is, a lush alternate world of urban woodland and pulp, all pumping with living plant fiber and Vegas-style neon lights amongst the branches, sporting glowing billboard adds in Thai (or he thinks it's Thai; the details hardly matter). And he FEELS it all; the vibrant gorgeous hungry life of it. Miles and miles of that slow unique ... not /consciousness/, but floral /ambition/. To expand. To spread. To envelope and overtake at a speed unknowable by living creatures, all electric-green in the storm. And Jim creeps amongst it all; sometimes as vines, others as a man. With a trenchcoat and a camera, a battered old Nikon. And he's LOOKING for someone. Hunting with his mind. There's laughter, through the trees. A girl -- young woman, really, late teens, sharp-angled copper-dark features and long straight-black hair, dressed in brightly colourful purple and gold pha nung, lightweight matching blouse, barefoot as she wends her way through the vines. Her fingers trail along them, brushing lightly against a leaf here, a tree trunk there. She's racing away from someone -- playful rather than scared, the older boy chasing her (jeans, long blue knee-length tunic) carrying in his arms nothing more threatening than a bowl of some form of stew. "-- {have to taste it,}" he's telling her. "{Not /your/ cooking, /gross/,}" she answers in lilting Thai, vanishing off into a darker thicket of trees. There's richer smells coming from it. Crispy-frying-smells. Jim feels the patter of bare feet over the ancient treebark as though it were his own hearty-coarse skin. Where the two caper, they're followed by a trail of little white flowers and vines spring up in cartoonish curlicues and a few fat PUMPKINS. Brush and shrubbery ripple and sway, the rain pattering like bell-shimmers to match the passing laughter beneath the neon lights. Hidden behind a bush (trash can?): Click click click! Kneeling, crouched up low, Jim snaps rapid pictures of the two in merry flight like a duet of birds, each camera shot flashing before his eyes. In a ripple of beige coat tails, he's stealing off as well, following the delicious scents of frying foods. Camera at the ready to capture it and eat it. The woods open out into a clearing, of sorts. Thick-thick-thick all around, but here in the center it's only lush grasses underfoot rolling down to rolling /water/, waves breaking right up against the /edge/ of grass with no actual /beach/ to be found. For an ocean it's very small. A campfire has been lit, a spit turning over top of it with fish skewered and crisping over the small flame. The pair from earlier have found woven-vine hammocks to flop themselves into around the edge of the clearing. Centrally, Hive is tending the meal, rubbing seasoning into a third segment of -- the first portion sits already sliced and ready on a plate, crisped-up skin and spicey smells filling the air. "Rohu," he offers, gesturing with a skewer towards the fillet. He's perched on a rock in plaid red-bordered white tunic, brown trousers down to mid-shins, no shoes. "{Has a kick to it.}" Jim passes through - breaks away from - the mesh of foliage and vinery that make him up, emerging from the rough plant husk of his trench coat and into a pair of comfortably worn cargo shorts, Birkenstocks and a brown t-shirt beneath a green and gray flannel with the sleeves rolled up. "Didn't know you had a little domestic bliss in you." He hefts the plate up under his nose, the smell making his mouth water and all the curling flower buds in the trees and grass to twist open. The simplistic plant-thoughts, celebrating the sun (for there's sun now, pouring through the canopy in long sideways bars) and the rich dirt and the cool taste of the water is in all things - save with none of the detriments. No loss of human consciousness, no slow and dangerous loss of time. Just sweet peaceful quiet. Vines spiral up the rock Hive perches on, branching out wild and vibrant and heavy with berries. Jim flops back - a net of vines rush up to catch up smoothly, swinging him out over the water to lazily sway, plate resting on his belly. Hive's eyes slant over towards the pair lounging in the hammocks, and turns the spit slowly. "{Takes the right motivation, I guess. To bring it out.}" His toes wiggle down into the vines climbing up his rock, letting them wend up around the lean ropy muscles of his legs. His chin jerks out towards the camera. "{What was /your/ catch?}" The vines climb, light weight and unrestricting, over Hive's legs and spiral down his arm, forming into a smooth wooden armband in tribal swirl. From a back pocket, Jim withdraws a stack of photographs that fan out like a hand of cards. He slings it at Hive like a frisbee, where it erupts, blowing past Hive. Each flash their faces towards him as they trail gently past like leaves on a breeze. Pictures of the girl, of the boy. Jim is grinning behind the blizzard of them, "Motivation like these?" "{Jegus now I'm really a frat boy.}" Hive grins, quick and easy, at the tribal armband. He lifts a longboned arm to snatch a drifting photograph out of the air, holding it up to compare it to the girl over in the hammock now swaying lightly as she nibbles at her own piece of fish. He twists the picture slowly between his fingers; with each rotation the face on it changes. The young man in the hammock, but then other faces, steadily climbing in ages though the family resemblance is strong right up until the older woman with grayed hair tied back in a knot and lines creased into her face. "{I've always had so much fucking motivation, man.}" He turns the picture in the other direction; now the faces in the photograph are familiar. Warm and scarred and smiling. Lively and /fangy/, small and blue and toothy. Brilliant-glowy and pierced through with so much metal. Bright-beady eyes over long-sharp beak. Hopelessly tousled auburn hair and a warm lopsided grin. Long-straight chocolate hair and lips pursed just-so. Jowly-stubbly /scowl/ that's -- starting to grow moss. Through the trees in the distance, Bangkok architecture is rubbing shoulders with Manhattan. Leaning back, swaying in his hammock, Jim lazily raises his camera to his face and watches the tall rise of trees frame the view of cityscapes feed into one another through the lens. One cheek is still puffed out with delicious fish, when he turns the camera on Hive. Click. Click. Click. And the greenery, some parts shrubs, some part vines, some part sprouting sapling trees, all begin to shove up around Hive in a child-sized version of a housing unit - in the semi-form of the three-dimensional model of the Harbor Commons. Incomplete, but responsive as clay to Hive's movements, it instantly blooms over with little yellow flowers, "So use it." Click. Hive is leaning forward, through these pictures, taking his fresh fish off its spit to put the last piece on the fire. He's sitting with the fish steaming on a plate in his lap, blowing on it as he picks of small burnt-black crisp flakes to lick off his fingertips. He stops, one finger in his mouth to suck spices from it as the model begins to grow around him. Eyes widening, his mouth turning up into a sudden delighted grin. He slides down off his rock onto his knees, reaching to begin molding the flower-dotted greenery. His eyes tip up towards Jim, yellow flowers reflecting light to, for a moment, make his coppery face glow. "{You know I will, man.}" As the forest fades from around them, vines are slowly creeping down along the windows of Geekhaus from outside. Inside, there's not much to tell of the dream that just passed. Not much, save for a few petals of yellow flowers sprinkled over a pair of photographs on the desk. Jim nestled in a vine-hammock, Hive kneeling as he refashions a model of the Commons' common-house. From the kitchen comes the succulent spiced smell of fried fresh fish.