voice

[anklets]

[This query brought to you by a pretty handful of missing puzzle pieces, not that you'd know, since Lenalee has no intent to justify or explain that imagery, nor to keep picking at scabs until they fester.]

We've already seen how the smallest change made can rewrite the entire history of this world. People are unborn, warheads are undropped... because we've cut out the circumstances which led to their happening.

How do you think that it might be the same for us? Transports come and go so often here and no one knows why. Whatever we do, we are always altering chances, there is no reason not to consider they could also be our own. That someone arrived on a day no longer existing may suddenly leave, or return by new circumstance, or forget they were ever here before.

It may be that we don't "go home", just. "Never arrive".

[ about ten minutes after broadcast, through careful squinting and experimentation, the feed is locked from Gilbert Nightray ]

Comments

[devotedtothecore]

[ The name means little to him, save that it belongs to someone else. Ungloved fingers splay out on the door's cool wood out of habit, as though by doing so he might feel-hear better the contents within. ]

...it's Chrysos.

[ A pause. ]

Come out. I need a hand with something.

[ It's not a request. ]

[anklets]

[Lenalee doesn't much like the idea of being called to show herself to the world again so soon, though she needn't any hints to guess why he would come calling on her for help. With- machinery? engineering? She'd be hopeless.

It's a moment yet before the door creaks from its stop. Her footfalls had been utterly silent and she stands quite small and tired in the sliver of open doorway.]

With what?

[devotedtothecore]

[ The face at her door neither of pity, nor reproach, nor discomfort; just a level expression, stolid and lake-still. He towers over her, like this (was she always this small? or was it that they'd never stood face-to-face before?) and for a moment, seeing the bone-weary look on her face, wonders if he might not be pushing a notch too far, too soon.

...the moment passes with the soft grunt that escapes him. ]

Holding something down. Keeping time. It's not difficult.

[ Turning at the last to step down the hallway, without a backward glance. As though already taking for granted that she'll follow. ]

It just needs a second set of fingers.

[anklets]

[Forth comes a placid smile, once he's already turned from it; it is a foregone conclusion, Chrys, that she would follow after. Who is she to say no? Moping in her room keeps her out of everyone else's sight, but it doesn't lend them anything, either.]

As it so happens, I've plenty of those.