OPEN | the waves still crash on the bonfire ash.

[evite]

who: skye & you, hopefully.
what: getting settled? getting hype? what's soon to be the usual, probably.
when: throughout the month of may.
where: city-wide!
warnings: none yet.

✈ in memoriam.

( she doesn't want to mourn. not like this, anyway. skye has too many guilt-laden memories that hang off her ribs to let them free into this city yet; she's half-convinced she'd light too many lanterns and burn the place down. so, instead, she opts to observe. she finds a quiet place off to the side where she can draw 8-bit patterns across the lantern someone had so helpfully placed in her hands and thinks back to all the people she'd left behind.

she draws a pattern on one side, jagged lines that don't quite meet so much as attempt to cross each other out, and hides a name in the blur of ink in the middle. trip, four letters, but they're hard enough to write as it is. another side depicts the layout of the bus, a messy blue print from an untrained hand. the lines are thickest for a square off to the side; not her bedroom, but the sparring room. a place that left her mourning for something that had never been real in the first place. ward. what could have been.

at one point, someone approaches her, lighter in hand and ready to help lift the lantern up into the sky. there's a beat of hesitation before she shakes her head, fingers clutching reflexively over the paper between them. )

No, I think I'm going to keep it, actually.

( is that weird? it might be weird. )

Is that okay?

✈ in officio.

( they offer her a job. well, to be more specific, they tell her to find her own work, which seems a lot more real than anything else thus far. she's not used to having things handed to her, anyway; the idea of having to find her own work seems much more skye than playing cheerful worker drone and just going where they tell her to.

not that she really has to try, anyway. the city seems more than happy to request software codes — mostly inconsequential things, housekeeping projects that likely are a little too blase for anyone they might keep on staff full time, but skye doesn't mind. it puts money in her pocket and boredom on the back burner, the former of which she prefers and the latter of which is probably better for the city.

as a freelancer, though, skye doesn't have an office. there's no official place for someone to meet her or come calling; ultimately, it means that everywhere becomes her office. depending on the day or her mood, she calls a few places "home away from home" — the coffee shops, of course, with their comfortable seating and plentiful selection of baked goods; the local university's library, naturally, and its expansive collection of quiet working tables and reference materials; and in a twist, the local gym, where skye can scout for someone she might want to approach after hours, in the hopes of filling up all that precious free time.

she thinks may might even be proud of her for that. sparring voluntarily? who would have thought. not skye, that's for damn certain, but she's trying new things. like talking to people, for one. such as: )

Hey — ( hey you, no, that's rude. ) — listen, can you hand me that?

( "it" could be anything. a lamp, a book, a muffin someone dropped on the ground. go crazy. get weird. make things happen. )

✈ wildcard.

( y'all probably know the drill. if you want something particular, please shoot me a pm and let me know! ♥ )

Comments

in memoriam

[holds_up_walls]

[Lyle happened to be passing by during this. He had done up his own lantern, full of the people he'd lost during his life. He had more done it just because, but it had felt oddly good... to just let it go at the end of it all.

So now he was just enjoying the sights when he saw someone working on one of their own, offering his lighter if she needed it. Then she said she was going to keep it. He did raise a brow but then shrugged]

Hey, it's not a problem with me. Entirely up to you if you want to release it or hang onto it.

[He blew out his lighter and put it back in his pocket]

People have different ways of working through things. If that's what you're doing.

[evite]

( is it? working through things. she probably could stand to work through a whole mess of things, but this probably isn't the time or the place. skye shrugs, fingers smoothing out a little flatter over the lantern as she peers up to get a better look at the man stopping by. )

I don't totally know what I'm doing, to be honest.

( both with the lantern and here in the city, if she's honest. she hasn't been here long, certainly not long enough to get her bearings, but she can't help feeling like the other shoe's about to drop. it can't just be that easy — people don't just get summoned to strange places where they get to live and work and survive without fear... do they?

granted, they probably don't wake up with sudden and uncontrollable superpowers, either. the world is a weird place. if skye would only just admit it to herself, she might feel a little better. )

I don't even know what I'd do with it. Like, just tack it up on my wall, kiss it goodnight?

[holds_up_walls]

[Lyle decides at this point it is better to sit rather than stand, sitting down nearby. He hasn't seen her around before so he has a thought that she's might be new. Of course the fact that he hadn't seen her meant nothing really. There were a lot of people here, both natives and arrivals]

I guess that's up to you. Would it make you feel any better to put it on your wall where you can see it?

[evite]

Uh. ( her default is obnoxious sarcasm, and the words really are lingering on the edge of her tongue, but there's something about the genuine way he asks the question that makes her hesitate. maybe she could opt to not be a total asshole just for funsies for once, that'd be a novel concept. ) Is that... a thing people actually do around here? I mean, I don't think it would really do anything other than tear off a chunk of paint on the wall.

( the lantern does look like it's too heavy for tape, after all. it'd probably need actual hooks, and she's not really feeling like better homes and gardens-ing her assigned living quarters yet. you know, just in case they change their minds and send her home. )

Sorry. I mean, it's nice, I guess. I don't really know what to do with all of this.

( all of this... being everything. the festival, the city, the weird alien planet she's wound up on. )

[holds_up_walls]

[If they both knew more about each other, they might find irony in the fact that they were both very quick to sarcasm when the moment called for it. Right now he was trying to be serious, but her comment did make him snicker]

Yeah, it might cause some damage to the wall. Could always try a hook... a shelf... a levitation spell.

All this? I take it you are new here? Not just the festival, but to Quarantine?

[evite]

( a levitation spell? she can't help but laugh a bit under her breath at that; the levity feels almost wrong in the cirumstances, though, and skye stifles the sound with a brush of her wrist across her mouth. )

I mean, yeah. A shelf would probably work. I'm pretty sure I left my magic wand back home, so no wingardium leviosa for me.

( it's unfortunately a little ironic that this area is known as quarantine, considering that's exactly where skye had been prior to arriving here. in a literal quarantine, held away from other people for both her own and everyone else's safety, being told there was something very wrong with her.

to his question, skye shakes her head, a slow rock back and forth as she considers how to answer it. )

To this one, I guess. Quarantine's kind of a running theme lately for me, but this one's still got that new planet smell.

[holds_up_walls]

[Lyle grinned when she started playing along with his joke there. Hey, if laughter was the best medicine, it was okay to laugh when you were sad because it would make things better, right? Of course that was always easier for the person trying to cheer them up]

Darn. I was so hopefully someone remembered to pack their magic wand. Too bad there's not a spell to help people remember the stuff to cast spells.

[He did raise a brow at that] Quarantine's a running theme? How so if you don't mind me asking.

[evite]

( she's not sure if tile keys and bluetooth finders are exactly compatible with quarantine technology, but there's likely something similar. and if not... well, she appreciates the opportunity to carve a niche into the local economy, in any case. she's never been much of a real entrepreneur, but there's a first time for everything. )

A hack-a-track might do the trick. It might help people find their missing stuff, anyway.

( she knows she's being a little too serious. it's not that she is incapable; in other circumstances, without this physical reminder of the losses that put her in said quarantine, she might be more willing to give in to the joke. as it stands, she offers a weak smile in return before her gaze drops down to the lantern in her hands; it's easier to answer his question if she doesn't have to look at him in the process. )

I don't know how else you'd describe it, honestly. Going from one episode of solitary confinement to an entire city dedicated to... a community of solitary confinement? ( not that they were individually isolated from each other, but the point still stood. ) I mean, why else call a place Quarantine, right?

( she didn't exactly read over the entire history of the city in her welcome dossier. she's been meaning to, but actually sitting down and doing it seems to make this whole experience real in a way skye's not ready to accept yet. )

[holds_up_walls]

[Aww she didn't continue the joke. Oh well. He's not too broken up over that]

Never heard of a hack-a-track before. Guessing it's one of those things that's supposed to help you find anything right?

[Given what they had been talking about before]

Oh so like actual quarantine. Man that's terrible. Well, yeah this place is a quarantine, but I guess not so much for a disease. Quarantine is probably a bad description though it happens to be the name it was given. It's more like being stuck in a holding pattern.

Oh, and I'm Lyle by the way.

[Should probably introduce himself at some point]

[evite]

Lyle, okay. I'm Skye.

( her name isn't that interesting, but explaining things often involves skye talking with her hands, which proves a bit difficult at the moment with said hands full of paper decor. she opts to set the lantern at her side for the time being, decorated sides face-down, which allows her the ability to show what she's trying to explain. )

Hack-a-track's kind of a joke name. Most people call them trackers or chips, or they have some brand names too — you know, like how people call all tissues Kleenex? They're... well, they're kind of hard to explain, but they're basically small squares with varying kinds of tracking software embedded in them. RFID, bluetooth, wi-fi, sometimes GPS; it just kind of depends on what you're using it for. They're mostly bluetooth, though. ( she pauses for a moment, considering. ) Is there even bluetooth compatibility here?

( clearly, she's going to have to do more research. )

I'll have to ask.

[holds_up_walls]

Nice to meet you, Skye.

Oh, yeah. I think I've heard of something like that before. I don't think I've heard about here, but I would be surprised if there wasn't something like that. There is a lot of things here that people haven't heard of.

[A pause]

If there isn't something like that, is that something you'd want to make?

[evite]

I — maybe?

( if she comes off a little unsure, he's not mishearing her. while skye would probably agree that building something like the quarantine equivalent of tile trackers would be a more traditional use of her tech genius, she's lacking the all important hardware skills to make it a reality. which, naturally, would require things like sourcing appropriate partners and relying on other people and ... well, she's not so gungho about those things. not yet, anyway. give her some time to acclimate. )

I don't know how to build something like that. I just know how to use the system once it's built. ( she pauses for a moment, considering. ) But I could probably reverse engineer something like it, if I had the right hardware to match.

( her mouth purses for a moment. )

Which I don't, so I guess it's kind of dead in the water.

[holds_up_walls]

Eh. Give it time. If the idea grows on you, there will be a way to do it. If the idea flops, then no harm in thinking about it for a few days. Trust me, I've had a few of those, good and bad.

So what did you do back home? Maybe there's something similar here.

[evite]

( talk about a loaded question. )

I didn't really have a job. More of like... cult status, I guess.

( there is really no good way to say 'i was part of an underground hacktivist group' or 'i joined a secret government organization' or 'i was in quarantine because i got insane superpowers from this exploding rock and i'm pretty sure i'm a walking disaster waiting to happen' ... )

I bounced around a lot. Foster kid, you know, and then the system just kind of dumps you out and tells you to figure it out. ( true, if not a lie by omission. ) I guess I'm still figuring it out.

[holds_up_walls]

Cult status? So more of a position because people knew who you were or because they knew the group.

[He feels like he needs a "been there, done that, bought the t-shirt" for that. His own life as a Gundam pilot could probably fall into that category. But somehow his organization had a way of paying him. He's not sure how...]

Sorry to hear that. Sometimes they don't do quite enough. Maybe you'll have the chance to figure it out here. This place seems to be good for that.

[evite]

Neither? ( it's kind of a long story. ) More like, you join up and it feels like a cult, but nobody knows who you are anyway, so it's kind of a shitty cult? At least Scientology paid people.

( she knows that doesn't help very much. )

You're probably right, though. Figuring it out, I mean. ( she doesn't sound very confident, but to be fair, she hasn't felt very confident about this yet. ) I'll let you know how it goes.

[holds_up_walls]

...Yeah that sounds like a terrible cult. You could have left and no one would have known. Sounds like they aren't doing their job very well.

Well, you get the chance without the same forces of your world. No cult. Just new friends. Yeah, let me know how that goes. I'm sure you'll find something soon.

[After a pause]

You know, you could hang that lantern at your floor or your house when you get one. A way of keeping them close. You don't necessarily have to look at it, but its there.

[evite]

Yeah, I guess I can do that. At least for now.

( it's not that being part of shield had been bad. it just hadn't been what skye had expected. at least with rising tide, there'd been the understanding that what they were doing was anonymous by definition, that they weren't attaching their own names to their agendas. they were just doing what they needed to do to survive.

she doesn't regret coming here, but she does wonder how she'll feel about it when she goes home. it's something to think about, anyway.

skye's quiet for a moment before she finally replies, albeit a bit briefly. )

Thanks. ( it's a start. ) For the pep talk.

[holds_up_walls]

[It really was hard to tell what she was thinking as she sat there, quiet for even that brief time. This place could be rough for new arrivals simply because they had to leave everything they had, but it sounded like things had been rough for her back home too so it was hard to tell what being here would do.

When she spoke again, he gave her a smile]

No problem. I hope you start getting into the swing of things soon here.