General Kirigan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cruelyethuman) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ximilialog2021-12-05 08:26 am
cruelyethuman) wrote in ximilialog2021-12-05 08:26 am
OPEN
CHARACTERS: The Darkling and you
LOCATION: around the station
DATE: all through december (personal toplevels can be added if you want)
CONTENT: Darkling being the Darkling in the dark
WARNINGS: none yet
Return to the station infirmary
The day after returning Infirmary (for Alina Starkov)
December The Simulation Room [Butter Churning!]
December The Kitchen
December Training Room / sunlight room
LOCATION: around the station
DATE: all through december (personal toplevels can be added if you want)
CONTENT: Darkling being the Darkling in the dark
WARNINGS: none yet
Return to the station infirmary
[The return never stops being jarring, the subtle bump as the crew lands on the deck. The eyes of those who've done this several times are dark, as the injured are carried off to the infirmary for help and the Darkling slips away in the confusion.
After picking a rather lovely bouquet of blue flowers, he heads to the infirmary himself, still ignoring the blood slipping slowly down the side of his face from the dream-rock trying to crack his skull open in Kilnan, as he places them on the table next to Alina's bed.
The words that he wants to say, dries up in the face of her injury. Of her stupid, selfless sacrifice, and he leaves her bedside cloaked in shadows. They drop as he nears the doors, wiping his arm across his forehead to clear the blood.
The day after returning Infirmary (for Alina Starkov)
[Newly showered and dressed in loose clothes from the pile of things in the back room, the Darkling walks towards the bed. His hands clasped behind his back as he watches Alina on the pale, crisp sheets. Looking smaller than ever, with her hair fanning out around her face.
The consequences of her actions, the offer so easily made to the inhuman orb and how ineffectively he had been able to shield her from it.]
Alina?
December The Simulation Room [Butter Churning!]
[The cottage in the woods, is lit with only the light of a blazing fire and the Darkling sits on a stool in the only room in it. Bundles of herbs drying from strings hanging from the rafters, and there's a pot of what might be tea brewing on the table by his elbow.
The wooden barrel in front of him rattles as he works the plunger up and down in a pattern only he knows. Staring off in to the flickering flames in this simulation of his old home, lost in thoughts.
About the missions. About the station. The too-raw emotions that every new mission brings him, and the time it takes to lock them all away, elongating and the fear that realization brings.
December The Kitchen
[With nothing else to occupy his days, the Darkling takes to the kitchen and starts trying to prepare traditional Ravkan winter foods.
He can be found making pickled herring, in a variety of flavours, and he will make rice pudding, served with butter and cinnamon sugar. He would welcome any help, as electric stoves are confusing and infuriating.]
December Training Room / sunlight room
[Most mornings, the Darkling will be in the training room, working out or practising hand to hand combat.
Dressed down to a simple shirt, dark pants and his ever-present leather gloves, he will welcome any and all who might want to spar or practice the noble art of sword fighting.
Late afternoons, will have him running laps in the Sunlight room or simply sitting under a tree, relishing the warmth on his face and the tranquillity that can only be found in the sun. Even if it is a fake one, and Jim has already warned him about the additive properties of spending too much time relying on this sun.]
no subject
Yes- [That was it exactly. The jarring of having to watch his thoughts more closely while trying to think like a letter. The instant communication, as if everyone on board the station was sitting right next to him.
No, closer than that.
There's something terrifyingly intimate about this form of communication, but he nods, twisting on the stool until they're face to face.] I have been wondering the same. About everything, really.
There is no electricity in Ravka, no easy or safe way to cook your food. We have fire, torches and heaths. Letters, delivered by hand.
no subject
[He shrugs. The conveniences of this station, for all their baffling unfamiliarity, have become more familiar every day. If he remembers this place when he finally gets to go back, he has to admit that some parts of home will become uncomfortable, especially when it comes time to travel. Back to cooking over a fire, and sailing through storms with nothing between him and the endless black sea but a few planks of wood.
He'll have to see about upgrading that cog. Get him and Law something that has a cabin, so he can at least keep the kid dry while he takes the rigging.]
no subject
[Why not, after learning about Viveca - humanity created with electricity and the ingenuity of man. The whole station is like that, for him, waking up and the first thing he does, it throw his arm out to find the matchbook. The shiver that runs down his back, blinking in to the darkness and listening to the breathing from across the room, trying to find that center that he carries with him from home even as he flicks on the light next to his bed.
It's still jarring.
Even the network. Instant gratification, and he still wants there to be a pause. A brief moment to think things through before throwing them up for all of the station to see.]
But you might be right, we do come from worlds more similar than any of this. Have you figured out how to use the tiny oven in the kitchen yet?
no subject
[There's probably a point and he knows that, but last time he touched it (because he did, in fact, mess with it) it made a bunch of beeping sounds and there was a countdown and it was all a little intimidating so he left it alone. Because, truly, the stove works fine. Yeah, he's burned himself on it a few times but he's used to that.]
no subject
[His own little experiment with the limitations of technology, the blue sparks zipping inside the little box and the acrid stench of something burning.]
I've been told it can make food in minutes. It might be magic, but I'm not sure.
no subject
But only certain kinds of food you wouldn't cook in a pan? ...I'm not sure how much of this whole station is magic and how much isn't. When I first got here I assumed it was all based on science, but then again, I don't have magic in my world. Don't really know the first thing about it. It seems like sometimes the two can even be woven together.
no subject
[The bowl of oatmeal and water had turned in to a congealed mess, the bowl melting in to the porridge and burning his fingers and it had not smelled like something anyone should put in their mouth.
He had thrown the whole thing away, hiding his failed experiment at the bottom of the trash.]
My world does not have magic, but I've heard our Small Science explained as such. It's not true, of course. Everything can be explained by science and by the will of the Making.
no subject
[Said without any harshness, because it isn't like he blames people in remote areas for not having access to the same resources as everyone else. And some of it's cultural too, and that's still fine as long as it's not harming anyone. Just the sort of thing he shrugs off rather than picks at, really.]
The funny thing is I'm pretty sure some of the people here must see it as magic, even if they come from worlds they think of as more advanced. It's just that unfamiliar to them.
no subject
[Rosinante has a more optimistic view about the prejudice surrounding magic, than the Darkling has ever had. The misery and hardship that followed everyone like him back home, the horrors they had been subjected to, all excused by calling it witch craft or magic.
Something other.
But he's not about to argue that point, not here. He resumes churning the plunger up and down, the liquid inside the barrel slushing against the sides with soft sounds.]
You use the word magic as if it means unexplainable. Are there any unexplainable phenomenon in your world.
no subject
[But now he's fascinated, and waits for a reaction. What is "magic" except for a word for unexplainable phenomena? Maybe he'll finally inch closer to understanding what it is some of the people on this ship are even doing some of the time. His cynical, logic-minded brain still struggles with it all the time.]
no subject
[Said with the same casual infliction of someone talking about the weather taking a turn for the worse. As if the emotions that ran so thickly through the otkazat'sya hadn't been the root of all of the evils visited upon his people. The raided villages and the burning bodies, too hot to touch and still he had plunged his hand in to every one they found. Searching for the call that rings through him, the wave of Small Science that his touch brings to those with a connection to the Making at the Heart of the World.]
I'm not any of those things, but because they cannot understand it, they label it as something other. Something less. I still marvel, sometimes, at how fast people make that distinction and how easily that leads to suffering.
no subject
Sorry to hear that. And yeah, you're right. Most people are good, deep down, but they struggle with things they don't understand. Good people can still do terrible things.
If you don't mind me asking, what are you that makes you different from them, if none of those?