voice, un:blue

[firstroar]

Those who knew the dream...

[words are spoken with a soft and careful cadence, like someone staving off sleep or working to speak through pain.]

Please. Help me understand...what death meant in that space. And what...it would mean in this one. What you truly believe or have seen or...felt yourself.

I wasn't there. I don't know. Yet...

I, myself, should no longer exist. But am here, too. So...

I want to understand.

Comments

Private - Audio: UN - Onelthes

[onerthes]

[There was a sigh from the other end. The creak of a chair could be heard as it groaned a little while someone got comfortable. They sipped something, and when they spoke there was a measured distance to it all.]

I do not know that death there and death here will be the same. There's been a fatality in the arena, so we will know for certain in about a week I think. At least, in so far as whether or not death is final in this place...

[She sighed again.]

I might know the most of death in the nightmare of anyone. What, exactly, do you wish to know?

[She didn't like to think of herself as an expert on this topic, but after seven deaths, she'd learned a great deal about how it worked in Deerington.]

[firstroar]

[after a pause to consider a response:] Was it truly death at all? Or some other state.

CW so much talk of death and philosophy

[onerthes]

There are two forms of death. Temporary and Final. In some realities, there is but one, and all death is forever and final. In others, there are the two. My own had both, as did the nightmare.

Death in the temporary sense is the cessation of life's functions. The heart stops. The brain ceases to function. The soul is dormant, and the journey is for a time at an end. It may become final, depending on circumstances and often it is. However, there are means in some worlds to bring a person back from this. They are only... mostly dead.

Final Death is the end of one's journey in this existence. Within some realities, this means that the soul departs the body and cannot be returned. It enters into a final state among those who have also died, in a realm of existence reserved for those whose physical form is lost and who are now only spirit. For others, it is reborn, to live a new life and often with no or almost no memory of its past. For others, it is simply the end of the journey, and there are no further steps. Their existence lives on only in memory.

In the Nightmare, death was temporary. A week's time, and the spirit would return to life, damaged but still intact. The magic of a woman named Ramona Derwin, and a deal that she made with the Moss King that trapped the soul of the Moon as a warden of the spirit caused the person to come back to life. The damage was worse each time that they died, eventually causing the person's spirit to be so marred that they were little more than a beast, a servant and slave to Ramona's will. I came as close as any you will see here to having suffered that fate, but others came far too close for comfort.

But Ramona is dead. As dead as one can be, and if she remains she is reborn anew, her memories a shattered husk. Cynthia now lives free as the moon again, so ... if death is temporary here, the system and cycle is different.

[firstroar]

[there's a soft sound, but a long silence after the fact so he can process all of this. there is only dark finality when Blue feels the deaths of others - all threads are severed, no sense of the vibrant self and mind are left.

but putting all that aside, the things this voice is speaking to sound more like a fairy tale than anything remotely true. names and titles he doesn't know, souls of satellites and celestial bodies?

...he wishes he were speaking to this person face to face so he could insight the thoughts behind these words; trusting at face-value isn't something he's keen to do.]

Perhaps...it is my definition of 'death' itself that must change now.

[onerthes]

Only here. And I would not change it here until we are more certain of exactly how it works here. Without Ramona to control the path of death or trap our souls in an endless cycle of suffering to break us down as her soldiers in her mad fight? We do not know exactly what is going to happen.

[Oddly? She'd probably talk to him in person if he asked. the privacy was merely so she didn't have others looking at the conversation. Some of what she could relate about death in the nightmare was very personal.]

Voice: UN: ClickClickBloom

[onekindsoul]

...Death was a weird feeling.

I did it once there and it was kind of peaceful? But lonely at the same time. It was surreal. But-

You also had to make the choice to stand back up and return to life. So- It was kind felt empowering in it's own way? Actually coming back to life really sucked. You were totally out of commission for like a month or more depending on how times you did it.

But to your point that you shouldn't exist?

I think I'm kind of in the same boat back home.

I'm still trying to figure out how I should feel about that too-
But I'm trying to make the most of being here while I'm at it.

If that makes sense.

[firstroar]

[it takes a while to give any kind of feedback beyond a soft sound to acknowledge he'd heard it at all, because there's a lot to try and unpack here. where to even start?]

Choosing...to continue living? Such a thing...who was even making such a choice possible? What power or...machine...?

[onekindsoul]

So I don't know all the details myself-

But there was a creature there. It would offer you a fruit from a tree. You had to eat it to come back or well I don't know what happened if you didn't. I was pretty happy to eat that right up.

I think it was Ramona in the dream that had control of the whole dying and reviving thing.

She was... also really complicated.

[firstroar]

[...]

And...are you convinced...there are threads still tying that dream and those things to this land?

[Private Audio][UN:A_Wesker013]

[subject_013]

[A throaty baritone voice with a patrician accent speaks.]

If by the dream, you mean Deerington or Sodder's Nightmare? As someone who'd died there once, due to a misadventure with a portal... I found it strangely peaceful, almost like a dream within the dream. I was no stranger to death and dying: I'd already died once some years before in my world of origin. But in Deerington, there was something more wondrous, dare I say more numinous about dying there. At the time when I'd passed and later returned, there was a chance that for us Sleepers who had passed, a part of one's soul would emerge and roam the town in the form of a Deer. I admit, that pleased me intensely. That may be the precursor to our Omens here.

[firstroar]

[dang sounds like someone wears matrix sunglasses indoors over here]

I'm... [hold on now.] I don't fully follow. You've died before?

Perhaps "death" doesn't mean the same thing here as...as I understood it.

[subject_013]

[We suspect if he was in a good moond, he'd take that as an amused compliment...]

I had, yes, in the world that I originated in. I suppose in some ways that experience prepared me for further brushes with mortality, but there's no preparing for when it happens and how.

I've heard rumors that death and rebirth in this place are as much a part of life as living it. The locals are vague on the details, but they have a hopeful mien about it.

[firstroar]

[Blue is quiet for a moment.]

Yes... Despite the monsters, all the blood...people here are...they're...very different from humans I've known before.

video; un: lowell

[vibing]

[ Yeah, he's just downstairs, what of it? Too lazy to go upstairs. And there's a lot of ink on him. Yikes.

But he does remember, now that Blue mentions it, that first memory that made its way into his head, the memory a gun, pointed right at Blue ]

Well, clearly death doesn't mean much here.

...you're really gone? At home?

[firstroar]

[...........is that??

isn't he...???

Blue considers responding telepathically, but...maybe that's what Yuri wants to avoid right now? so.

okay.

time to communicate the way millennial siblings do.]

...I am. [a hesitation.] I must be. And...that only means...death must mean something different here, whether less or more.

[vibing]

[ Sorry, Blue, turns out that's the relationship you're in, now. Millennial siblings where your brother is 300 years younger than you. ]

Man, I'm sorry. That's rough. That was the, the thing you showed me, right?

It really must. The shit that was happening with Flynn's body? That's not what death looks like where I'm from.

[ He's just... assuming that the lion told Blue what was up by now. But Yuri's a lot less morose than he's been for days, now. ]

[firstroar]

[long pause.]

...What did I show you, Yuri?

[he doesn't remember it - not the full consequence of first contact. now he's worried about what unintentional handprint he's left on Yuri's heart.]

[Private] Voice; UN: Willow

[frogfear]

It happened to me once - in Deerington. After, I woke up in a field, with this... creature that looked kind of like a deer. Except for the face. Oh, and the hands. It's kind of hard to remember a lot of the specifics now - a bit like a dream? But I remember it feeling peaceful, and safe, but knowing I wanted to come back too.

That was different, though. Deerington was a dream. Well, nightmare, depending on your point of view. Trench is the real world - or a real world. I don't think it'll work the same here.

[firstroar]

Like a dream...

[Blue considers that quietly for a moment, realizing that, perhaps, "like a dream" might mean something different to humans.

it's hard to be certain over a call, unconnected to the conversation by his mind.

but she says she's not sure what happened there will happen on this planet. that is strangely comforting just because of it being similar to his own thoughts on the matter.

but familiarity doesn't mean it's right.]

Sensations of death in dreams...are always strange. But many would wake up from it, yes?

Instead of...lingering.

[frogfear]

Deerington wasn't a normal dream - we couldn't just wake ourselves up. Trust me, I tried.

So I guess it was like a dream inside a dream? You could choose to stay where you woke up after you died. A friend of mine stayed a little longer than most, but he ultimately chose to come back too.

[firstroar]

[a dream...inside a dream...]

...Even as a Mu...there are things a conscious mind can do or perceive...that I cannot perceive, it seems.

un: eudaimonikos; video

[eudaimonikos]

Well, in my experience, death's just humans moving from one plane of being to the next after their bodies give out. Doesn't really stop them from existing or anything like that. But my afterlife only connects to the one version of Earth, so I can't speak for what they've got going on here.

[firstroar]

[...]

...Just humans?

[eudaimonikos]

Yeah. Only sapient mortals around. If animals are going places, it's a different place.

[He can't really discount the idea; really, he's got no information on which to base either stance.]

Which is really for the best, given how our whole situation has mostly been.

[firstroar]

From what...little I know, it was...torture? Wasn't it?