intro

[pinkprismstaff]

You don't remember getting knocked out.

That's the best descriptor for the feeling you experience before you wake up. There's a glittering absence of color to your field of vision, and a sensation that you aren't yourself, you aren't anything in particular. Abruptly, unpleasantly, you wake up in a strange, sunny location. Where that is might vary--laying in a sun chair on the pool deck, draped over the skee-ball machine in the arcade, face down in a cart in the laundry room....or just stretched out in the long, long expanse of sand surrounding the island.

There doesn't seem to be anyone else here, aside from the others who have woken up and have as little clue where they might be as you do. It's a silent, empty island filled with a lot of questions and few clear answers. What you can conclude are a few things: that you don't get hungry or tired, that any wounds you have don't seem to either heal or worsen, and leaving the island doesn't seem to be possible.

Maybe it would be good to meet with the others who have woken up?

Comments

[reresurrected]

I won't let anything happen to them.

[...]

Or to you.

[There's something about the way she looks at him, stares at him as though she isn't quite comprehending - or believing, perhaps - his words that makes the same sort of protectiveness he feels towards Mercuria and Kocis rise up within him.

Well. He is a knight, after all, so perhaps it's only natural.

That hand on her shoulder gently nudges her a little closer, silently encouraging. If she wants a hug, he's more than happy to allow it.]

[shoveltalks]

( she can't help but think of megu-nee. she didn't hesitate to just hug them, honestly- but the intent is the same and it feels foreign. kurumi looks up at him, legs shaking almost before she closes the gap perhaps too quickly.

maybe she's trusting too fast. maybe this is a risk. but

she wants it to be real.

just for a little bit. )

[reresurrected]

[His hold on her is gentle, not wanting to squeeze too tightly for fear of making her feel trapped. Whatever she's experienced before she arrived here has clearly affected her more than she wants to let on; that's one thing he understands well, not that he'll say as much out loud. As upset as he may be with Balor at the moment, he can't help but feel honest gratitude for being granted a physical body that gives him the chance to do things like this.

Slowly, carefully, he lifts a hand to rub soothing circles into her back-- she can pull away or tell him to stop if she wishes, but if not? She can have this hug for as long as she'd like.]

[shoveltalks]

( sometimes the world collapses around you and of four girls, you're the one with blood on your hands. sometimes you want to curl up and bawl your eyes out but you have to be brave so you don't. sometimes you're so unsafe that even in the most secure room you've ever been in, you have to hold a weapon to sleep.

and sometimes the only people who can give you this kind of hug- the kind you'd get from a parent- are all dead.

kurumi doesn't mean to cling. she doesn't mean to let her shoulders shake like this, either. she should have pulled back but she doesn't want to. )

... Sorry...

[reresurrected]

There's nothing for you to apologize for.

[Now he does hug a little bit tighter, reassuring even as her shoulders shake within his grasp. There are a great many things in this world and his own that he can't fix, he knows that well-- that he'll carry the regrets for for the rest of this second chance at life. But that doesn't mean there aren't still things he can do, and right now this much is very clearly something that's making a difference.

If she isn't pulling away, neither will he.]