ArchivedLogs:Treepoking

Treepoking
Dramatis Personae Aerin, Hive, Jim, Rasa
In Absentia	2014-03-29 '
Location <XS> Forest
Quiet and shady, the trees rise all around here high and thick. In stillness, woodland creatures make appearances, though sudden noises scare them back into the cover. Dappled sunlight filters down between the thick foliage, and the ground underfoot is heavily overgrown, though here and there paths have been worn, by deer or years of students wandering familiar trails. With the rain coming and going all day, it's not big wonder the forest has begun to stir in these first hints of a spring to come. Small spears of crocus leaves poke up from the ground, a few so bold to open a spare blossom here, there, clung close to the soil and frequently lost amongst the yet thick jacket of dead leaf litter. It's getting on in the day, classes out but few venturing forth into the drizzle, and here bouldered up and hunkered low, even the warped ominous black tree has sprouted a bad tempered suggestion of green. Moss has crept up one side of its bark, flowing into the mouth of the deep corewood split, softening the angry shape of it, its color stark and emerald against the crumbly char. Far out at the fringes of mismatched branches, tiny pale buds have begun to form, where leaves incubate just shy of debut. Sadly... the same can't be said for the plants growing /around/ this tree. Perhaps appropriately, to match the eerie, overgrown ambiance, the surrounding foliage is not doing well at all. It sags and droops ominously, no buds growing on the sides facing the Fell Tree. Rasa has been out in the elements for a while now, hir feet soaked through hir sneakers and hir pant legs darkening where the water leeches upward. Still, ze walks on, a large blue tarp like rain coat covering hir upper body. Wing tips can be seen below, brushing against hir sides, hir tail low and dragging against the ground. Hir attention is down on the ground, which makes the transition from the verdant foresty floor to the less lifeful more obvious. Ze pauses a couple steps into Jim's range and looks upward at the gnarled mess, hir face bluing in wonderment. Ze steps forward and sneaks a previously unseen hand out into one of the folds that apparently has a sleeve hold in it. Ze pauses when ze sees the 'do not disturb' sign, head tilting to one side as ze considers. Hir hand slips back under the layers and ze exhales. "Hey, Jim. Heard there was a freaky tree out here, but I just... wanted to be sure. You know. Hope I'm not disturbing." The wolf girl has been out in the rain for a while, seeming to be more used to the elements than most. Barefoot, she noisily runs throughout the forest making all manner of noise, long nails digging into the earth like claws. Her white dress clings to her form as her tail remains upward flowing behind her in a fluid movement. She doesn't see any signs as much as Rasa when she's talking, and digs her feet in. Moving into a crouch she skidders along to a stop almost landing on her back. A big huff of breath releases as she starts to stand "Tha's a funny lookin' tree.." The looming hunk of flora offers no words; it hunkers squat and thick at the base, some near-semblance to human shape suggested amongst there, crouched low to the ground amongst the thick knuckles of root and knot cable, like a Vesuvian relic. But it's hard to really say, being... a tree. Sleeping rich and earthy beneath its dust of moss. A sensitive nose would pick out a punky burnt-wood smell, a beneath the healing and dewy greens. Something like burnt meat, coming from the deep chasm gouched in its center, but so very old and far-faded. DRIP. Some droplet or another from its taller branches bounces off Rasa's nose in entropic answer. "Yeah. He is," Rasa agrees, moving forward to lean really close, examining the now mossy entrance to the seam up his middle. Ze wrinkles hir nose as ze tentatively peeks a hand out again. "Not sure if I should wake him up or not." Ze turns hir head to look Aerin over, hir brows furrowing a bit, skin shifting into a slate blue color. "Hey. His name is Jim." Ze turns hir head back to the tree. "Jim - this is someone I haven't met before." And then there's a drip on hir nose. Hir neck jerks back reflexively and ze grimaces. Aerin looks rather confused. "Who're yae' talkin' tae? Is the tree a person?" She moves closer sniffing the air. "Smell that? Smells like burn'n wood, like someone built a fire.." She looks even more confused "Ah'm Aerin..is um, everything okay 'ere? Yae' look really tense." The nearer delicate canid feet travel, the more the damp grasses rustle with the dry deadening of the Jimtree's proximity. It continues to brood, unbreathing and without movement, inanimate as trees tend to be but with that smell of spring, other small peculiarities - the branches fastened off each thick bough are not all of one plant; there is a peach and a cherry. One outcast sprig that may even be a fir, impossibly lurking at the edges. Also: it does not seem to have the manners to say how-do-you-do. "Well, we got blown up a little while ago. It was and still is a really shitty situation. No everyone made it out alive, and those who did ended up pretty hurt. Jim, the tree guy, he heals better as a tree. So, yeah. Um. Anyway. I'm Rasa. Welcome to Xavier's." Rasa nods, the hood of hir poncho obscuring hir head as ze bows in greeting. "Apologies for the tension. Just... it's shitty." Aerin shrugs her shoulders "Well, it's alright..sometimes shitty things happen. Ah've been th' cause o' some shitty things b'fore. Is there somethin' we can do for him then? Get him..fertilizer, or planter's soil..or something?" Rasa considers for a moment, both hands now emerging from hir tarp as ze looks him over, hir hands rubbing together a little before ze steps forward again. "I guess I can ask him, if his skin isn't too burned and dead." Fingers twitch before they lay down against the surface of what may have been one of Jim's elbows at one point. It's convenient that it's somewhat evident where ze is reaching. Safer that way. Aerin stays in place "Are yae' sure that's such a good idea? Ah' mean..maybe he jus' wants tae' be left alone..seems he knows what he's doin'?" Concepts like 'think' and 'want' are matters for the hierarchy of fauna. The tree's bark - damp, cool and charred at its surface, but it's old char now with some suggestion of vitality firm beneath it now - at first yields nothing. Only the dull hum of the arboreal world, that prolonged ancient understructure supporting the eternal innocent youth of new spring just arriving. But...? It's slow to feel, some secondary mind deep within the plant fiber, slow-steady like water brought gradually to boil. But there. Human /ambition/. Complicated animal intelligence. But slumbering on the far side of an alien world that requires no pulse, no beating heart, no tangle of nerve feedback or brain center. Essentially: static zzxzzx. "Oh, I don't know," Rasa confesses quietly, looking over at Aerin for a moment, hir gaze steady, but eyes out of focus. "I mean, I've spoken to him like this before, but he got cranky because all he wanted to do was sleep. It was super clear though, easy to feel. Now his mind is just sort of distant and staticky. Maybe like a coma. You're supposed to talk to people in comas, right?" Ze licks hir lips and keeps trying, hand flattening out so hir palm is pressed down as well. << Jim. You there? >> Aerin shrugs "Ah' dun' really know..but it couldn' hurt right? Maybe yae' could try poking him? Ah' dun' know..." She takes a step further, reflective red eyes peering at the tree which she isn't quite sure is a real boy. "'Ello...anyone in there? Yae' have visitors...C'mon out n' plaaaaaaay..." << What the fuck. >> This -- doesn't sound like a tree at all. It's a bristly-prickly mental voice that shivers out /anyway/, though, into Aerin and Rasa's minds both, sharp and irascible as though annoyed at being woken /up/. The nearer approached, the more the figure of the man can be made out, knelt over, the deep split dragged down the side and back of semi-suggested flank - details are obscure, pocked with irregular bulges of scar-knot and layer after layer of overgrown bark. There's nothing further at first; not of the derelict and overgrown mind Rasa would recognize as Jim. But there's something else here as well - a rushed cluttering of whispers. And ANOTHER mind. There is, not /abruptly/ but in the tectonic way shifting continents will rise to earthquake, something - creaks. Twists... and for a moment, is aware. "Fucking shit monkeys." Rasa exclaims, hand pulling away instantly. There's a faint ripping noise and Rasa's form shifts, growing taller, like ze is being pulled through a taffy pull. Hir face becomes distinctly masculine and wings and tail disappear from underneath hir poncho. Hir voice shifts, dropping and acquiring an accent that is difficult to put a finger on, something definitely Asian in origin, but muddled with a lot of time in America. "Hive?" << Shit, Hive? Damn. I didn't know you were in there." Aerin points at the tree, jumping straight up and back about a foot. "Holy faek-shite, th' tree talked!" She didn't really expect it to actually be someone. She watches the her?-Become a he? "What in th' 'ell is goin' on 'ere? This shite' is gettin' weirder n' weirder!" << You're at a goddamn school for freaks, did you expect it to be fucking normal? >> The mental voice coming from the tree still has a distinctly cranky edge to it, but aside from this, in cadence it is -- soft. A quiet sussurating whisper that echoes with many /other/ voices layered beneath the dominant one, like a crowd of people murmuring together in chorus. << Can't you read? There's a sign. It has /words/ on it. >> << ... >> That awareness in the dense plant matter shudders, faint, faint spider-crawling webs of nerves falling out. Taking in. Like blind fingers exploring the inside of ones own skin. Dreamy-lost, some subconscious voice is quoting lines of a poem. << --going on down, into the moist guts of the earth // taking in and thinking, eating every day -- >> But it's dreamlike and hollow, echoing with meaningless words, in latin, in the alien pheromonal communication of plantlife. A word, a /concept/ forms, taking shape as generation after generation of creatures might /evolve/ into a shape finally familiar, finally human, bearing dread -- << my body. >> "Uh. Um. Uh. Shit." Rasa!Hive replies, hands reaching up to rub his face, then pulls back his hood to check the length of his hair before quickly kicking off his shoes to give his feet space, the expression of pain still registering on his face. "Jim's friends with this telepath named Hive. He's crankier than Jim... and he has a bad effect on me." He turns disturbed eyes back to the tree, apologizing. << I was worried. I just wanted to check up on him. He looks terrible. I didn't want to bother him - Just... fuck. >> Aerin holds up her hands and begins slowly backing away "And..this is gettin' tae' weird faer mae...Mental telepathic..form chagin'..hives? Ah' dunno..but ah' think ah'm gonna punch out on this one..jus' let mae' know how yaer' freind's doin' once it's sorted n' all that.." The irascible-cranky voice subsides, as the Ent-voice wakes up. In Jim's slow-moving mind there's a firmer denser /packing in/, like earth gathering rich and thick around roots. And outwardly to the others there's a stretch of silence -- for a time. Before: << ... you didn't want to bother him so you came out to -- bother him? Fuck kind of logic are you working on, kid? >> << --to go on as a root and a tomb-- >> Monotone flat, the memorydream of recited words harbor almost no meaning, a droning background with no intended foreground to overlap it. Jim's mind constricts, blind-hard and invasive with multiplying root systems, then loosens, then tightens, like fluttering eyes entering dreamsleep, turning over to send massive, rolling ripples as some submerged swimming /thing/ deep beneath the surface. Sluggish, << my body. >> It's not entirely sure, but it... strains. Confused. << where. >> Grasps for some purchase against the tide of unknowning, the tide of growing and cool water. << --alone under the ground, a warehouse of corpses // half frozen, dying of grief--... >> Aerin has even more incentive to not be here anymore! "Good luck!" she calls after before taking off like an arrow, running fast away towards the mansion! << The shitty logic that made sense at the time. >> Continued telepathic contact with Hive continues to change Rasa!Hive, but in more subtle manners now. Words start to print across his face and hands, words that echo through all their heads, picking up the faint chorus in the background even if Rasa's mind doesn't register it fully. "I'm ... I apologize. I didn't ... bye." Trying to speak becomes too much for Rasa to handle. Instead, he turns toward the tree and scowls. << I pulled away. I let go. I won't bother him again. >> << Fucking teenagers. >> Hive's cranky is returning in force, a sharp snipped irritation bristling along the surface of his words to Rasa. << For how /prickly/ as hell you get just to find out we /exist/ in your presence you're really quick to -- >> Whatever he was going to say here, though, falls off into a wash of confusion, uncertainty, fumbling for /language/ that won't come. The words melt back into quiet. Inwardly, the sluggish grasping /finds/ solid-firm mental tethers to grasp /against/, firm cool earth a solid and stable foundation to pull up on. << Jesus /fuck/, >> finally mutters back to Jim on a /tide/ of relieved-hopeful mental energy, << fucking emo poetry. You're /not/ alone. >> Eyeless, numb to sound and touch, there is not enough in Jim's narrow immediacy to understand more than bear /down/, close in on the solid grounding it finds without understanding of restraint, letting the full weight of horror/confusion/disorientation(fire)(fire my body)(this isn't)(my body) fall on Hive like a landslide. Somewhere on the physical plane, inside him, plant fiber attempts to knit into muscle; to constrict and move an arm or a lung or a length of spine, to thrash or... recoil, when it tries to explore the boundaries of its own body. THe poem is ending, a muddle of << --false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot-- >> and << --umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords-- >> but it's fading in and out to something that isn't a pulse for lack of blood and rhythm. But it churns. Twisting. You'd almost miss it, amidst the chaos. A single flat word, caught between << no no no >> and << dying>>. The word, in syllable. Awake, for a terrible moment: << hive. >> << What? I'm quick to seek out a guy I didn't know was /with/ you to see if he was okay? Should I have asked everyone who is also dealing with their shit to ... >> The flare up of temper is cut short by long even breaths and a moment's concentration to start ordering hir thoughts. << I apologize for what happened with Shane and Sebastian. Everything is shitty and I just wanted to hug them but ending up in the med lab again seemed like not a helpful thing. I didn't realize it was hurtful. I misinterpreted all of the other shit they were going through just then. >> There's a pause and a scuffing of his toe in the ground. Bubbling to the surface are more thoughts, about how there's a world of difference between how much ze would want to touch a burned out tree or that guy ze ran into in the game store before the explosion -- and two very attractive teens ze is close to. Silence, again. And then, slower, grudging but /accepting/ in a heavy /exhaustion/ that pulses with the sick wrenching thump of barely-muffled headache: << Everyone's going through some shit right now. >> In mental landscape there's a rippling undercurrent to these words of: s'okay. It's a /brief/ calm before the heavy-crushing weight of emotion that pushes in at Hive spills /over/ -- a far paler echo than Hive is getting by the time it gets to Rasa, just a faded wash of fear and disorientation, pale flicker-images of fire, a sense of thrashing confusion. Brushing up against Rasa's mind is the mental equivalent of a gasp, sharp and sudden and drawing back into itself for a moment. It settles into bolstering firmness, solid, strong, a grounded sense of /presence/ that ripples out not just to Jim but around the woods in /general/ just now. << (here) (here) (i'm here) (we're here) >> settles into << (/you're/ here), >> with a very /firm/ sense of identity. Not Tree-identity but human, gruff and cranky, cheap cigarettes and sewer-smell and a clumsy fumbling (strong) sense of caring. << (You're here.) >> << (/Be/ here.) >> << hive. >> It's crushing. Maybe it's even trying to be, turning in on itself(on /Hive/) to batter and dash identity and awareness against inner cliffsides like Jim intends to /carve/ and /bludgeon/ out a new life for himself in the wreckage. Just mindless /fighting/ and bearing against, ripping and prickling over because these things are familiar; they smell(no nose, no lungs, no breath) familiar, feel(no flesh, no hands, no nerves) familiar. And he grips at them. Somewhere deep inside the tree's trunk, something creaks. There's a wooden /pop/ as though the tree had grown softer in some vital place and bore the weight badly for it. << my body. >> And then, a second, same flat-unsure tone. << jax. >> << Oh fuck what. >> Rasa begins to change again, hands disappearing under hir poncho to pull at hir clothes. Ze could maybe handle Hive's physique, but Hive's pressure of Jim's identity ripples through hir body to the point where a blending of the two people distorts hir form. The new person looks a bit as if Jim and Hive had given birth to some sort of love child - tall, broad shouldered, trim, with black hair, a more domineering jaw line covered in scruff and piercing blue eyes. The poor guy also looks like he's been smacked upside the head with a sledge-hammer, the way he stumbles around and drops to his knees, firmly rooted in the location. The word 'here' surfaces on his skin from time to time, in bark like blisters, receding again soon after. Hive's mind goes silent, externally. The ripples and the pressure pull back in, and quiet. Internally it's still a chorus of quietly affirming: << (here) >> that answers the fighting and ripping with a calm solid sense of stability. << He's fine. You saved him. He's fine. Save /you/ now. Be -- >> A mental image of Jim in /his/ normal body, two legs and two arms and a /face/ and presumably /organs/ somewhere in there instead of jus this mass of bark and tree and char. << -- here. >> Jim rails, simplistic and mindless. Plant instinct is only to expand, to dominate, to engulf. This is here as well, these lands /familiar/ and their wending channels sturdy, solid. The longer << (here) >> withstands (/Hive/ withstands), the more he gradually allows it to be. And, is wont to happen, instead grows like roots around it, conforming shape, and settles there exhausted. << saved... >> For a moment he's simply gone again, communing with the rainwater in the soil and savoring cool water trickling through the grooves of his bark. << can't. >> It's quieter now. Further away, hanging like a draped weight amongst the hard beams Hive's mind makes for him. << yet. too much... >> Just once more, he tries to twist skin from bark; something loose and... unsupported sags deep in his stomach, without other muscles yet formed to contract and hold it in place. << not enough. >> All fragments. Bits of thought that shove up from the slow flow of sap like trouts from a stream, then fall beneath again. He fights for one more push, some clenched and desperate thing, from all the plant-simplicity: << your brain. >> << Who is fine? What are you two talking about? >> The Jimhive!Rasa stirs, head aching, but mind starting to clear. << Do you want me to go get someone? Help? Just get lost? >> No response will do. Ze is good at getting lost without being told. << Yet, maybe. Can work towards -- >> Towards something, something fleshier and breathing and quicker-moving and quicker-thinking. << You /have/ my brain the fuck would you want with it anyway it's a piece of shit, >> is grumbled after this, even while his mind bolsters in in a rich heavy loam for roots to channel through. To Rasa after hir latest Sudden Transformation there is still just -- radio silence, entirely, from Hive. Just In Case more contact would -- do something else terrible. Recoiling, recoiling, Jim drags whatever tendrils of othermind are woven through his alien thoughts, rejecting /flesh/ and breath and identity. Save -. << ...brain. >> Pulse-pressure, roots like fists in Hive's soil, confirming its existence, forgetting soon after releasing, pulsing again. Unknowing anxiety, some nagging priority that this is important. That /something/ is important. Like a nest of ants, though, there is a mindless other industry, steadily plunging onward. Sipping upon the (greenalivewetliving) lifeforce of the plants around him, knitting damage, pouring energy into greedbuds through branches still /healing/, still being assimilated into a foreign treebody. The energy is draining, and thoughts come slower now. << brain. >> Important. Somehow important. Rasa frown at the tree and nods solemnly. << I apologize. >> Ze then turns and walks away. In Hive there's just a tightening and then a release, like a breath held too long and expelled all at once. << Yeah, okay, >> he finally agrees. << Let's just start there. >>