Re: Nothing Ever Changes, Does it? [Open]

Wed Jan 23, 2019 4:36 am

Nothing Ever Changes, Does it? [Open] - Page 2 6EdIfMt

The Flame Of Hope

Artist: Hammerfall - Song: Hearts On Fire

Hmm...well, this failed, huh? Letting Calypso go as she recovered from her drunkness, she looked over at Yaksha and shook her head softly.
"Ever the politician, huh? Spin what you can and lie about what you can't. If you had no choice but to do what I so, 'Demanded'-" she abused her Tulpa to spawn a pair of amber hands to do the air-quotes around the word "- then you wouldn't be in the desert trying to see how much a hollow can snort before he dies. I wouldn't have to hover over you like I was your mother if you'd stop acting like a child" She shook her head before looking to Cali and talking to her soul.

It was a neat trick she could only do with people who have received her Resolve Flame or Devil's Heart, but it certainly kept communication silent. She then gave Cali an old-fashioned coin, and looked up at Yaksha.
"There is nowhere you can go that I can't follow you. Huaco Mundo isn't big enough to hide yourself from me. So don't give me a reason to have to hunt you down like the Hollow you are" She then vanished in a billow of wind, gone in an eyeblink.

Wed Jan 23, 2019 8:47 am

Artist: N/A- Song: N/A- Word Count: N/A

The turn of events felt rather fast, Yaksha stating their relationship, then negative talks, and then suddenly Ulv was dropping a coin, her voice speaking it's purpose in some corner of her consciousness, and then she was gone with the wind, literally. The girl's hair even swayed as the woman left, quietly pocketing the coin. She blinked softly as she was now suddenly just alone with the much taller being, slowly looking to him in silence.

She wasn't sure what to say or do, still trying to process everything. She didn't know every detail of their relationship, or much about this man, but she felt compelled to say something.

"..Ulv may not be the gentlest, but I find it hard to believe she forced you to do something detrimental."

Her golden eyes glowed in the darkness of the club, though instead of child-like excitement, they were calm, staring at the hollow's eyes, "Hollows are born from a negativity in their hearts, yes? All the hollows i've met up til now have been too lost to speak to me. So tell me..."

Her gaze stared at him, golden lifeforms gently peeling off her body and fluttering off harmonically, butterflies, dragonflies, moths, a gentle hum radiating from their wings, "You talk like someone who's given up and ready to die, so, what is your seed of negativity?"

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[THEFROST]

Wed Jan 23, 2019 8:47 pm

"Ulv is. What you saw there is pretty much the extent of our relationship. She appears without warning, talks down to me for thirty seconds or a minute, then just disappears, with some sort of not-even veiled threat or some absurd demand. I was quite happy with my life, before she decided to step in and start treating me like her little pet."

Yaksha's voice was uncharacteristically upbeat as he spoke, more like someone talking about something they were heavily enthusiastic; there was a mirthful twinkle to his eyes that had seemed to be lacking when Ulv was present, and one could almost see him starting to come back to life, bit by bit, with the shinigami's absence. He gestured for her to follow, walking up stairs two at a time, his hands folded over his chest. He looked up at the roof, eyes seeming to look through things for a few moments.

"Let me ask you something, Calypso. You're a demon, so you likely don't understand a lot about human nature, or culture. All the same, some things are universal, I find. If you were to set off on some arduous task, like let us say...trying to write a book, or setting out to teach yourself a new language. How would you go about it?"

His voice was growing warmer with every second, filled with delight and curiosity, with an eagerness that was almost childlike in its intensity. And yet behind even that, there was a sense of boundless sagacity and insight, the sense that even when he wasn't looking anywhere near her he was watching. It wasn't an uncomfortable sensation, but more like a fatherly or avuncular one: It was almost like being given a physical examination by a doctor you had visited countless times before, as he probed her mind and soul, from just out of arm's reach, without moving an inch.

"There's no right or wrong answer in a dialogue. Just tell me what you think the best way to tackle a task that looks too big at a glance is. Ulv will tell you that you climb mountains by being bigger than them, or something similar. She'd tell you to write a book by brute force, and just -force- the words onto the page. How would you make a work of art if you started on it and suddenly found it a lot harder than expected?"

Thu Jan 24, 2019 10:57 am

Artist: N/A - Song: N/A - Word Count: N /A

Calypso's face bore a frown towards him, appearing rather disgruntled when he didn't even answer her question, and on top of that speaking poorly of someone she viewed as a friend. It didn't matter to her that he was suddenly speaking all chipper and good, coming along with him as she produced tendrils, in order to copy the two-step stride the taller being performed.

She remained silent as he asked his barrage of questions, of suggestions, as she flowed aimlessly on her back as the tendrils did all the work, the glowing golden insects perched on her chest, sighing gently, "I actually do know about human nature, plenty, in fact. It would be a disservice to my concepts, Dreams and Nightmares, if I didn't. I'm linked to everybody, human, demon, hollow, or beyond."

The girl sounded a bit upset as she spoke, entirely not expecting to suddenly be pulled into an in between where animosity burned on one side for the other so brightly from her perspective, "How I would go about those kind of things, especially if they were harder than expected, is... Well."

She bit a nail, "Listen, I don't know what happened between you two, I probably wasn't even born for that, I wasn't born for a lot of things I wish I was there for. But Ulv just wants to help people, like I do. The Ulv I know would want you to feel bigger than the mountains, not literally be bigger, feel bigger in order to feel you can do it and conquer it. The second, I don't think that sounds like her at all. Again, she can be pretty harsh about it, but.. She just... Wants people to not suffer or stagnate. She completely rewrote how my empathy abilities work in order to help me, even if I was kind of stubborn about it. If she didn't.. I literally wouldn't be here. I literally couldn't be here, because if I was i'd be a fucking black puddle on the ground screaming my head off from how many people's emotions were on me!"

She covered her eyes, groaning, expecting backlash, but continued, "But to answer your last question, too big at a glance and harder than expected are two different things! I mean, for the first thing you just.. Gotta do it, and you find it to be easier and that you'd like it, that's great! But if it's harder than what you thought just.. You have to think of the pros and cons, yannow? I mean, if the cons outweigh the pros, maybe it'd be better to find another way, though by no stretch am I saying you should stop if you don't like it, specifically if the pros are greater than the cons... Sometimes you just have to do what you don't like to get the better outcome.."

She gritted her teeth, finally going onto what she wished, "Besides, you didn't even answer my question. What made you become a Hollow?"

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[THEFROST]

Thu Jan 24, 2019 11:29 pm

For a few moments there was nothing but silence, as Yaksha stared up at the ceiling, absorbing every word calypso spoke. It was a pleasant, innocent silence, the sort of thing you got when someone was -really working out- the next few words, and the right response. He inhaled slowly, letting it rest in his lungs for a moment, before turning towards her, and when he first spoke his tone was conciliatory, even warmer now than it had been moments ago, filled with genuine joviality and sociability.

"I'm sorry. It seems I've spent a little too long talking to the same people. Or maybe Ulv's presence shook me up more than I'd care to admit. In either case, the communication channels clearly broke down for a second. You asked about my seed of negativity in a particular context, and I assumed if Ulv had told you about me, you'd know enough of the basics to realize that the circumstances surrounding my death are so far removed from now they may as well be obsolete. I wasn't welcome where I was born, plain and simple. I was executed. It was horrible, and then the world changed. Now it's better."

He folded his hands over his chest, the faint reddish runes on his skin still twitching and squirming in an eye-watering manner, as he shrugged one shoulder, ever so slightly, the light in his eyes fluttering for a moment. They receded into themselves, to be replaced a moment later with a more canny, eager light. His voice picked up speed, coming out in torrents now, very much unlike his almost patronly tone of a moment ago.

"Although if we're being entirely honest I think you're being a little too egocentric, assuming that everyone behaves in the same manner as you. You needed help from someone else and that's perfectly fine but there are quite a few people out there who are perfectly capable of building up their own momentum. In our first interaction, she went by the name of Mirja. She mocked my powerlessness, insisted I find a hollow mentor which is in and of itself a farcical notion because hollows are by their nature instinctual beings which means they can't -teach- one another, any more than I can teach a bird to fly by kicking it from the nest. She continued to belittle me for my pragmatic methods. In our second interaction she tricked me into a trap wherein I was assaulted by a creature ten times my weight, twice my size, eager to smash me to a pulp, and she sat by to watch as it came closer and closer to killing me, until I surrendered and admitted my inadequacies, painful though it was. She herself said our relationship was simply business, and that she would kill me when I ceased to be an amusing aberration."

"In our third interaction, I invited her to my home which I had procured through various risky methods, along with a human body, and got down on my knees to beg for her help. I approached her, in a disguise, and insisted that she had offered to help me and I was now cashing in on it. She refused, refused, refused, until finally I was forced to put my cards on the table, discard my pride, and reveal myself, only for her to tell me that she was not going to help me because she was a bitch and it was too little too late. In our fourth interaction I was ready to die, because I could see little alternative when I had spent my life trying to avoid violence and pursue the enrichment of the mind. Mirja arrived, after cheating at games of chance, ran across me and expressed concern for my suicidal state, one she was at least in part responsible for. She derided my attempts at overcoming my hungers as stupid and told me she was going to strike me until I stopped being stupid. Our every conversation goes the same way, time and time again. She always draws back to the fact that I once turned her down, out of stubborn pride, and because I felt I had more immediate concerns than learning to throw a punch, or wield a sword. And I always draw back to the fact that she's holding a petty grudge. I see no way to break the cycle and so I simply maintain my distance from her. And from everyone, lately."

He inhaled at this point, wings finally unfurling from around him, very nearly knocking her over as he drummed long clawed fingers against his hip, with a sound much like dice clattering. He once more seemed to lapse into that contemplative silence, before he spoke in a quiet, small tone.

"Everything which I have at this moment, I got for myself. I consider that a point of pride, much as I did when I made the point to Mirja. Or Ulv as she nows goes by. She demanded that I learn to fight after forcing me into one, and in a fit of rage and passion I told her to fuck off. Ever since, she has behaved the same way. She appears, spends a few scant moments commenting on the state of my life, always reminding me that it is only by her goodwill that I remain alive, and then walks away. Never once has she actually been there when things were dire, unless it was by her own machinations that they became as such.
The one time I deigned to speak about my life, and the circumstances that led me to where I am...she beat me to within an inch of my life, and it took me most of this year to recover."

"So yes, go on about how she did a good thing for you once, one really amazing spectacular thing that you can never repay. She does that. She makes you think, just maybe, there's something still worth getting to know there. But every time I've tried to truly get to the person beneath it all, it keeps going back to that thing. She -embraces- the identity of being a bitch. She bludgeons me with it. She seeks reasons to rebuff my attempts, to make my life more difficult, as if I lack enough of them already. Because I made certain decisions, she refuses to let me take them back. So perhaps, just maybe...it's time to throw a third party into the mix."

Sat Jan 26, 2019 11:37 am

Artist: N/A - Song: N/A - Word Count: N /A

"She only mentioned you by name when she was telling me about hollows that were capable of sanity.. She didn't really.. Explain who you are, but again, I didn't really ask, and that wasn't what the conversation was about."

She frowned when he had detailed that he was executed and such, which was rather confusing. He had to have been at least a bit over.. 700? 800? Years old? She wasn't too sure, it depended on what he was executed for doing, and she was only going off of the assumption of accusatory magic or witchcraft. 1800s, bare minimum.

She couldn't imagine that, being executed for doing some arbitrary thing others found scary or confusing. Her heart felt like an anvil at the idea, weighed in her chest. The girl looked over at the humanoid being, the way the patterns on his body twitched hardly seemed to fuzzy her, the golden glow of her eyes being more of curiosity than nausea.

She swallowed whatever words she had for this being as he went on and on about this Mirja person who gave him all this grievance, which really Calypso could tilt her head and look confused about. She didn't know anyone named that, and him stating that was Ulv was only harder for her to digest. In general they just sounded like they didn't have the best relationship, and even the swimmings of animosity towards the woman shook her. Though it wasn't as terrible as things she's had to forcibly feel herself before.

As the man's speech slowed, her head raised, "I don't know a person named 'Mirja', sounds Norse-ish," She began, "Yet you keep talking like she and Ulv are the same person. I've never met anyone who has called themselves that, but if she's as cruel as you've said, then that's too bad. That's too bad I wasn't born soon enough, to soothe her anger. I don't know where she's gone now, but the only person of whom you've just mentioned that I know, is Ulv. Ulv can be rather brutish and pushy, but in her heart she wants nothing more than for everybody to be happy."

The young being repositioned herself as she was almost knocked over, the flying insects around her perching on her shoulders and arms, their glossy golden wings twitching softly as she stood before the male, "I'm not saying you're not allowed to hate her. Do that all you want. I'm only saying that's not how I know her. But please, don't blame her for something someone else did."

She tilted her head, her eyelashes softly fluttering as her pale face became rather neutral in emotion, "..Do ya mean me? What for?"

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[THEFROST]

Sat Jan 26, 2019 10:50 pm

"You don't believe in reincarnation, do you? You're an incarnation in and of yourself, such a concept would probably be hard for you to grasp. You are a concept given form, thought made real. Ulv is the flesh built around a soul, a concept which is distinctly her...and distinctly the same as the one who so tormented me. Ulv is Mirja, in the same way that I am whoever I will be, once I die and my soul finds a new body to inhabit. We all wear different masks, and to an extent we change our behavior when wearing them. But the core of who we are remains the same. And Ulv is the kind of person who would leave me to suffer because she can't stand the idea that I didn't do things at her pace."

Yaksha turned towards Calypso once more, his expression bemused to an extent; he seemed out-of-sorts, somewhat entertained, and heavily frustrated, but even so he maintained an air of warmth and delight to his conduct as he looked at her, a sense that he was already desperately trying to find a way to make certain lessons and ideas clear to her. His posture, his tone, and his demeanor all screamed enthusiasm, as he swept his wings out in a small arc, pushing aside a few people with murmured curses, and then began to walk towards a nearby balcony.

"Let's go back for a bit, before we discuss the topic of Ulv and Mirja. That itself is a topic I could spend hours trying to delve on, and all it'd do is frustrate me. I'll go back to a topic I asked. You say that if you had to climb a mountain that was of indomitable size, to perform a task of hideous difficulty, you would 'just do it'. That answer amounts to nothing more than self-help feel good fluff. Yes, there are a great many people who need to have someone yell in their ear until it rings, to shake them loose from their comfortable monotony. I want to know...what you would do. Ulv is very big on action, and drive, but she is remarkably lacking in...shall we call it compartmentalization? She doesn't consider a problem as a series of steps, like climbing a flight of stairs. She considers it like one big straightaway, where your options are to move or not."

"Just...try to build a step-by-step mental picture of how you'd climb a mountain, Calypso. What tools do you need? Which side of the mountain do you climb? How long do you give yourself to reach the top? How many meals do you skip, how little sleep do you go on, to reach your goal?"

Sun Jan 27, 2019 9:05 am

Artist: N/A - Song: N/A - Word Count: N /A

Calypso huffed gently as the Hollow concluded his speech of reincarnation, feeling somewhat annoyed, but relinquishing to face the fact that she just wanted the Ulv-Mirja conversation to die off already, since it was rather clear that all he wanted to do was speak poorly of her, and that in itself made her feel uncomfortable. Sensing his springing and sprawling emotions of excitement or fatherliness didn't help much either, making her own mind feel somewhat dizzied. She'd wish to get piss drunk again, that was fun, funny!

"..Let's just cut the wolf-lady subject, okay? We're just not gonna agree and it's bumming me out."

The girl looked visibly bored the fuck out of her mind and uncomfortable, like some school child who just couldn't sleep during nap time, her lip somewhat pouted as she then sighed, continuing on to answer his question,

"..And, my response, to climb a mountain? I mean, under normal means, I could probably just teleport up to the top, even if my ability to do it isn't 100% accurate," She chuckled gently, lamenting her rather flighty mind in conjunction with her ability, "But i'm pretty sure you mean under mundane circumstances. Sooo..."

The young one jumped up onto the balcony, casually stepping about, as if there wasn't any kind of drop to the left of her, "Hmm. Kind of difficult to think of proper steps, considering some of the things humans can do without for a bit, would be a big detriment to me. I can't go without sleeping, that's how i'm fed. Though depending on the mountain, that would be sleeping for a pretty long time in adverse conditions... I can't take a friend because, if I were to take this mundane set of steps and implying this person would need to eat physical food, I would be properly fed by time they were almost out of supplies. Why would I need tools if I can form additional body parts to move to my whims? I'm a demon comprised of thought and energy, there wouldn't be anything to stop me from doing it.."

She sighed, "It would be totally impractical if I went up the mountain in a way that was actively holding me back. I'm not a human, i'm me. I could probably get to the top of one within two hours of crossing the unseen parts of objects, or maybe half a day bare minimum if I just used my body and manually climbed..."

She stared at her hands, blinking softly, "It's a chore to humans, they'd have to continuously eat and maintain their body temperature, but it's a walk in the park to me, heh. I can't really handicap myself to just meet the standards you or others probably have in their minds. And in a scenario of powerlessness... That would be dangerous, I couldn't climb the mountain under that assumption. I'd have to be asleep for a week, minimum to recover some of the energy to even get up halfway! But... Really, depends on the mountain's size and conditions, fully."

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[THEFROST]

Sun Jan 27, 2019 11:36 am

Yaksha began to chuckle, his eyes closing ever so slightly as he shook his head, in wonderment and confusion. He'd expected the conversation to be a difficult one, but this difficult? He truly couldn't begin to imagine what he was missing here, why he couldn't get this thought across to her...and then all of a sudden, something in his head clicked, and he tilted his head back, laughing deeply, for a full four or five seconds. It caused his very body to shake, making him unable to even speak, until he finally settled down, raising a finger in a polite gesture.

"I just realized. So many things, in that moment. It's no wonder we're having so much trouble with this conversation. You live in a world of dreams and abstracts. A world where effect does not always follow cause, and where physics are a mere polite suggestion. I live in that world too, but...I'm a tourist. You've already bought land, cultivated it, started farming. The idea of asking you to apply realism to an abstract is something that won't come easily to you. But we can discuss it in time. You've certainly seen humans dream of frolicking atop mountains, going skiing, swimming deep in the ocean...but these are all dreams for good reason. There are inherent limitations which mankind has acknowledged, and the past centuries have been dedicated to overcoming them. You see, humans have a very interesting form of evolution that a lot of people don't seem to understand. But that topic we can discuss later. Let me start by explaining what a mountaintop is like, for a human being. Perhaps then you'll understand why telling one to just do it is essentially encouraging them to kill themselves."

"The air is thin. A normal man must breathe twice as deeply to get the same amount of oxygen into their lungs. The idea of running or performing heavy manual labor when you're already struggling just to keep your brain cells from dying off is one most humans don't relish, so they travel at slow paces. A wise option is to bring tanks of oxygen to breathe from, but that increases the amount you have to carry. It slows you down even further. The temperatures won't feel as cold as you'd expect, but that's simply because water behaves oddly under pressure. A pot of water will boil at only 150 degrees near the top of a mountain, but can remain liquid at temperatures well over 800 degrees while at the bottom of the ocean. It still caps out at negative two at the warmest times of the year, and will drop far lower at night. You'd need to bring clothing. That slows you down still more. Beyond all of this, you'd almost certainly have wildlife present, that could steal your rations, and cause a great deal of backtracking. None of these things appear in dreams, sadly. In fact, humans have a very reliable metric for knowing when they're in a dream."

He leaned closer, eyes glittering softly, as he reached out to gently tousle her hair, while speaking in a voice that was almost painfully compassionate, like a doctor telling a person they were going to be dying soon.

"In dreams, you can never remember how you got somewhere. You simply look around you, and see that you're atop a mountain. All of the many steps to get there are simply erased from your mind. For most people, it's only in the realm of dreams that they can 'just do it'. But, in the end, I blame myself. I was hoping you'd have a firm grasp of the physics of this world. I should've considered more carefully your spheres of influence. So let us instead pick a new analogy."

"Traverse all of Hell. From the very first layer to the very last. And then back again. Is that something you would tell a person to 'just do', Calypso? Or is that asking a person to do many, many things, all in quick succession?"

Mon Jan 28, 2019 10:33 am

Artist: N/A - Song: N/A - Word Count: N /A

Calypso slowly crossed her arms, a neutral expression on her face as she was about at level with the hollow's face, her body seeming to stubbornly resist the call to giving into gravity and falling. She listened to the man quietly, though felt somewhat patronized; it felt as if he was talking down to her in some instances, literally and figuratively, but she wasn't one to interrupt and squash a point before it could come out.

But then, the hollow said something that made it feel like a bomb dropped into whatever inner cavity she formed within her that she called a stomach, it was the mentioning of hell. For some reason that tapped at some memory in her mind, of a certain trapped fellow, but she shook off the surprise rather quickly, having lightly flinched from having the male's bony fingers along her hair.

"A mountain is excessively trivial to travelling in Hell! Like, excessively excessive!" Her arms swung out as she shouted, "Listen, I may not 'get' everything in this realm, but my head isn't constantly in the clouds, ignoring reality. The dream realm is something you can't fully comprehend, fuck, I can't even fully comprehend it. That's pretty much the point, I think, it's one big collage of 'Fuck you' to reality, human, hollow, demon, or anything else that exists in this multiverse!"

She huffed softly, her body seeming to once again stubbornly never fall off the balcony's border, "But comparing HELL to a mountain is comparing a small puppy to a wolf! Hell is pretty much IMPOSSIBLE to traverse from top to bottom without the right conditions or knowing the right people. From what I know, you have to be invited to a layer by a hell demon or whoever the heck is in charge, unless you want to feel pain ranging from high discomfort to feeling like all of your cells are screaming and tearing apart. And if I remember right, DEATH ITSELF IS AT THE BOTTOM. Like, literal and figurative DEATH."

Her head tilted to the side as she tried to remember a thing here and there from Khalaism that she hung around for, "Oh yeah, and Deveta's ALSO there, so, I don't imagine that'd be a good idea to go there uninvited."
She felt a rock in her stomach, however, due to the reminder that she herself was called down to the bottom before, a long time ago, but that wasn't for this discussion,

"Look, point is, you're comparing shitty weather conditions to the place that's used to scare a bunch of people, and it's perfectly reasonable to be afraid of... Especially if you aren't a demon, I heard it'd be a totally more shitty time if you weren't one. I could never in my right mind tell anyone to go down there, for any reason, unless I was certain I could get them down and back up safely..."

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[THEFROST]