ArchivedLogs:Through the Trees

Through the Trees
Dramatis Personae Hive, Jim
In Absentia	2013-05-22 (Part of Thunderdome.)
Location Back of a VAN.
It is a local no-name brand moving van of the variety typically used for moving... furniture. Except instead of conscripting friends with the promise of pizza and beer there is, instead, the promise of getting /other/ friends out of cages. Oh my. The back of the van is sort of furniture-laden. The floor is padded with a hodgepodge of old mats and mattresses left over from keeping the Prometheus refugees, in hopes of making things a shade more comfortable for the... fight club refugees. Oh. There are many people busying themselves with rescue efforts, ferrying prisoners out of the warehouse, whisking the most critical ones away to the clinic where there are doctors and healers (and clothes and food and blankets and showers and AID), getting the less critically injured settled in the van in order to drive them to the same place. To all outward appearances, Hive is not /one/ of those people. Sitting kind of slumped in the passenger seat, head dropped to rest shaggy dark hair against the window. He’s staring out it, or at least staring /through/ it, black eyes half-lidded and kind of vacant. The frenzy and bustle washes around him. He doesn’t lift a finger to assist. Ash has been kindly enough to provide Jim with a bed more comfortable than the soft mats provided to the other rescuees that would appreciate them more. The hunk of soil is positioned at the back of the truck, up against the back of the passenger seat, neatly contained but it's hardly necessary. Like a potted plant lifted up from a container it's begun to outgrow, Jim has extended rootsystems - gnarly and thick as a man's leg all tentacling out from below his knees, but finer and finer the longer they grow until they double up on themselves and the spaces between the larger cables are just /snarled/ with stringy-thin root ends. He's shifted since arriving, sitting with his back propped against the back of Hive's seat in a way that avoids the bone spears stuck bloodlessly through his torso and out the other side getting jarred. It's not specifically that his mind is unreadable. But so far into a plant-like state makes the static surface thoughts queer and alien; grow-grow-grow << vivat. crescat. floreat. >> And then: << The kids? >> From Hive, there is little by way of acknowledgment to these thoughts; not the alien plant noise nor the more familiar words. Just a continued steady staring out the window as people trickle in and out of the warehouse. But, slowly -- slowly, something shifts. His head lifts -- doesn’t quite turn. Thunks back down against the window. His eyes slip closed, a slow squeeze that shuts out their vacant (suddenly glistening) stare. His fingers twitch, mindless-quick, jittery, a sudden jerk of motion that taps at the window control on his door. Sends the window opening an inch or two, the motion pulling downwards at his shaggy hair. << I guess, >> he finally answers, not hammer-hard but soft and underlaid with myriad whispering echoes, << you found them. Good detective work, there. >> << Fucking /cops/. >> Jim's state is beyond anger. It's deeper. Lost partly in the vibrantly simple greenery and worship of sunlight, cool water, clean soil. It's rare, the way his mind /fastens hard/ onto Hive's. Possessive. Like it's the /good/ pillow on the hotel bed. << Where'd you send 'em? >> The cops. The guards. There’s a shudder, that comes with this fastening, a mental /ripple/ of power that licks out to curl around Jim’s mind. /Squeeze/ it. There are claws sinking in but they retract again unbidden, Hive’s shoulders clenching up for a moment. << Away, >> he answers, but this thought is layered over the concurrent one: << Nowhere. I /have/ them. >> In body, Jim is unbreathing; unmoving. Still as a forest. But in mind, he /sucks/ in air through mental teeth. The hazy drift between vegetable and animal << -thrusts his fists against- >> polarizers for a moment, digging in /hard/, /starply/ Jim in mind, shoving back reflexively against the sink of claws. << Watch it. Don't get so handsy, hero, 'm not that kinda girl. >> At this brief precipice, he hangs on by his fingernails, hissing close against the ear of Hive's mind. << Don't. >> he struggles. Focuses. << You keep 'em. Don't you /fucking/ keep 'em. I don't want these -- fucking. People touching >> (you, too) << anything else. >> << -- posts, >> it’s a ghostly-quiet whisper but it comes in time with another /push/. This one isn’t digging in claws, isn’t digging in at all. It’s just /settling/, a quiet mental presence that /leans/ up against Jim’s mind and stays there. Nestled. << Far from the dirtiest hands that’ve been on me, >> there’s a sense of laughter with these words but it’s not really /humoured/. << Not keeping ‘em. Just. Have to. >> This is clipped, abrupt, and quiets for a moment before continuing: << They know things. We need to know them. >> Like a tide, already the seething heat of Jim is fading behind << sunlight. sunlight. grow. >> the encroaching foliage. It builds up loosely braced against Hive's lean, where it remains docked like kudzu against a wall, clinging onto that solid surface. It does nothing to remove the detached thought of /other/ ways to find out the secret things men know. The ways that involve pliers and a bottle of Draino. For them. For dirtier hands on Hive. /On/ him.-tear loose the fingernails, split the bones, scream at the void (<< cool mist. clean air. fresh dirt. >> ) << I think. >> He states from the roil. << I'm fucked up, Hive. I need some -- fucking. /Twine/. Took an axe to the fucking face. >> << I could end them, >> it’s quiet and idle, more like a casually dropped commentary than a threat. Musing. The chorus of plant-needs elicits a more pragmatic response: << We’re going -- Jax is taking the kids. For the weekend. To his farm. Georgia. Lots of sun. Good soil. Have a guy who can teleport there. Quick. >> And, quieter, sort of wistful: << Peaceful. >> It’s been in short supply lately. << Bet Lucien could twin you up. Motherfucker seems like the sort of pretentious asshat who’d do bonsai. Got some healers, too. Between everyone we’ll get you your ugly face back. >> << There's a guy. >> Jim seizes on this instantly but it's - it's all - falling apart. Stupid bumbling thoughts that don't pull together, plodding along slow simple trajectories to ideal sunlight. Like sleep. Like time gone still - << Shit. He. >> Rustling leaves unfurling. << Nhhn. >> His mind clenches like a muscle, squeezing itself hard against Hive's like an encroaching thicket, trying to convey urgency from a platform that has no... concept of it. << The hobo with the face. Hive, he's bad off. One 'a your guys picked him up. Made off with him. >> His /hobo/. << You gotta warn 'em, buddy - he's dying. But he's intense. If he wakes up, he could take someone's fuckin' arm off on reflex. Don't -- drug him. Don't restrain him. Just. >> Here the strain, the vegetable mind, the exhaustion just - collapse. << Just leave 'im alone. The bastard's been through enough. >> << I know him, >> Hive gives in tired answer to this: << I was him. >> To the rest he makes no promises or assurances, just a brief feel of ackowledgment. Heard, understood. But: << S’Jax’s call, >> might be reassuring with regards to not meddling with Masque. Or it might not be. It’s all Hive gives, though. << Got a brain like a fucking Ent right now, you know that. >> It’s gruff and kind of irritable but after that his mind curls tighter, /against/ that mind, /around/ that mind. And then sort of abruptly: << I’m getting the fucking teleporter, you’re getting planted. >> << ..just can't... >> Jim's mental voice is hunkering, rolling inward in deep under-earthly worlds. Slow-lapsing time in a metabolism that functions with no heartbeat. No breath. Slowed to a different plane of gradual permanence in movement. And frustrated. But quiet. Halfway to himself. << ... fucking.... think. >> Maybe it's an apology. Or the closest thing you'd get to it, standing against the squeeze of Hive's mind not in rejection but pure contrariness. Like he just wants to /shake/ it like a dog with a rope toy. But keeps forgetting... how. Through the back of the chair, Hive can probably feel Jim leaning harder against it behind him. << Been a long time. >> Pushes up slowly from deep below. << since it's got this bad. >> Beyond the trees, as ever, is that echoing report of gunshots. Of impact. Of black, cool slumber, just on the far side of Jim's wooded mind.. << Won't get /worse/, >> Hive's voice is a low mental growl, and he /does/ shake, or the mental equivalent thereof. Scruffing. Jostling. His presence withdraws, but only for a heartbeat. When it returns it is not squeezing, not leaning, but a bolstering-solid post to lean /against/. It comes with a rustle, not of words or even proper memories but disjointed feeling-images, sensed more than elucidated. Flaky OLD MAN skin. An apartment floor blanketed in dirt. A wallet too empty to pay for a hot dog. Cigarette smoke and cheap orange flowers. A goldfish in a kind of scummy tank. And then words, finally, that come as before with a soft whisper of echoes but, more solidly, come in Hive's voice. Kind of acerbic. Kind of dry in its leading, << He thrusts his fists against the posts -- >> For a moment comes only the steady ancient static of a mind in tune with priorities unhuman. Timeless. Sleeping awake. It drinks in these markers of identity in a language of rainwater on thirsty earth, budding fragile green spears in remote, thirsty answer. << --insist he sees. >> /sighs/ through the rustle of leaves, kept awake by the shaking, and finding enough human motivation to shove back. Not to shove away. Just. /Shove/. Yank. Pull. Remote sensation of arms locked, shoving a bony body (...sleeping on the couch) against the couch cushions. << -- fucking /ghosts/. >> Like they're a pest. Or maybe just fucking /Hive/ is. << Eerie as fuck. >> He comments, dryly. Still from deep beyond, the very earth and trees given voice. << /You/ being reassuring. Fucking... rain of toads bullshit. >> Apocalyptic thoughts from a tree. << Rivers of blood... /Locusts/... >> << Fuck you on about, I am a /font/ of sunshine. S'why we get along. >> This whole while, Hive has barely moved from his half-slumped position, but now he stirs, sitting upright in his seat. Slowly scuffing his fingers through his hair. << How do you feel about farms. >> Stygian silence again; broiling in simple-tree thoughts, functioning on slow-motion tree momentum. Hoooooom. The thoughts that do glean up are far from cheerful. New places. New strange people(humans). Tangled like cobwebs between branches are unresolved -- faces. Slowly remembered concerns in fragment; nox's blanched ashen colors, nearly dissolving into shadow, masque seizing against the ground. Wanting (dirt water sunlight) to just settle in (see them again) reach deep into the ground unlimited by cement flooring, cast down the soft rustle of sunlight dappling where there's no need for a fucking face or fucking hands... All of this while curling vines more and more invasively up Hive's powerful mind, fractal-invading like spreading frost up a window pane. Like a sigh, but without the wind to carry it; roots of a different kind anchoring in. << Hivey. I just. Don't give a shit. >> << Fuck you, then, >> in answer to this Hive's mind just settles in further, solid-steady anchoring beneath Jim's, << I'll just have to give them for you. >>