multiversallogs | i am hung with graveyard flowers;

Who: Ilde Decima and Hasi; OPEN
What: The water helps her.
Where: The Gross Tar; initially near her waterfall territory in Raven's Gate, after that various areas.
When: Givdi with Hasi; open after that through Shundi.
Notes: Specify time/place (if not Raven's Gate) if you tag in, please!
Warnings: Descriptions of LM:A-related horrors to follow in the thread with Hasi; discussion of rape & related fall out in thread with Jae.

When she finally goes down to the water, it feels so good that she hates herself for a moment sliding in, her clothes on the bank under an illusion. It soaks into her skin like she belongs there and she's glad that she got there first, that Hasi isn't there yet, because sinking into it hurts a little and it's-- not anybody's business what internal conflicts she's having. She just died. She's allowed to feel...whatever this is that she's feeling, and whatever it is she's going to feel it at the bottom of the river for a while, her tail catching light as it flicks up before she dives.

She'll surface, eventually.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ilde is still holding onto him when she surfaces as well, slightly disgruntled in light of having a human dropped on her; she can't really be blamed for that, she feels. "Did you fall?" she asks, her mostly received pronunciation accent slightly incongruous with 'pearly water-nymph in the Gross Tar'. There's a neatness to the way she speaks that reflects careful tutoring - a debutante taught how to be a lady.

That's an accent Will recognizes, from years of being dragged to political events. Of course, why not. A society girl – or a society mermaid, naiad, whatever – in the river. It makes about as much sense as everything else around here, and he should apologize for landing on her, at least. “Pushed,” he says, blinking a drop of water out of his eye. He barely registers her hands; the water's cold. “Sorry,” he adds.

Ilde glances up toward the bridge and the aforementioned jerks; after a moment's consideration, she flips them off before dismissing them entirely, turning her attention to the business of getting Will toward the bank. She's less pulling him than just sort of casually steering, now, letting the water do most of the work for her. A powerful tail doesn't change the fact that he's bigger and heavier than she is, and hauling people around underwater is a pain in the arse without a bit of help.

"Some people have no manners," she says, genuinely a bit irked but, at least, not evidently holding any grudge against him.

Will coughs out a wet laugh, figuring that he'll probably just be getting in the way if he tries to help her move him. She seems to have it under control. “Well to be fair,” he says, “I stepped on her tail. Accidentally, but.” The onlookers on the bridge have apparently gotten bored and wandered off, now that Will doesn't seem to be in danger or either drowning or suffering some horribly gruesome death. They're probably more used to mermaids in the river than he is.

At the present time, Ilde is more or less the only one of her kind - a naiad - in the river, but that hasn't always so and probably won't always be so. (And there's more in heaven and earth, Horatio, but it doesn't take long in Baedal for most people to figure that out; it applies to the river, too, as Ilde could elaborate on if she were inclined to. She's mostly of the opinion that it isn't the business of landwalkers.)

"They should at least wait to see if you'll apologize first," she says, grudgingly; it's possible that she's just inclined to be uncharitable to somebody today, and with the way the past month has been--

That she's inclined to give him a hand at all is something, really. She's so tired.

“That would have been nice,” Will agrees. He would have apologized – not being used to people having tails isn't an excuse to go around stepping on them – but apologies were apparently less desirable than attempting to smash Will's face in. So, taking that into account, he's gotten reasonably lucky today. “My name's Will,” he adds, after spitting out a stray mouthful of water. “Thanks for the assist.”

"Ilde Decima," she says; people treat the latter half of that like a surname and most of the time she doesn't correct them. Her actual surname is now floating around on the network, thanks to a few unusual arrivals, but for the most part she's just Ilde and that's just fine. Surnames aren't so important, where she's from.

(Was from.)

Will doesn't start shivering until he gets out onto the bank – but then his flight suit kicks in and starts compensating for the cold. Maybe it was having trouble reading his body temperature in the water. He'll have to keep that in mind if this ever happens again. He can tell his helmet's still attached to the tether on the back of his neck because it's full of water. “Does this happen to you a lot?” he asks Ilde, while he reaches around to grab it and empty it out.

"It has happened," she shrugs, settling against a rock by the waterside, her weight on her elbows and her tail turning aimless circles in the shallower water. She picks idly at the bracelet she's wearing, a gold twig-and-apples cuff, watching him with an almost disconcerting level of focus that just seems part and parcel of her and less directly about him. "Not so often."

“Probably a good thing,” Will says, dumping river water onto the bank. It's cold out, so he's not sure how quickly his helmet is going to dry. It's not quite as self-sufficient as the suit, but hopefully it'll manage, before he has to put it on his head. He's starting to steam a little, as water evaporates off the exterior of the flight suit. He lets the helmet go back to resting between his shoulder blades. Maybe proximity to the warmth will help. “I suppose things get less disconcerting around here, eventually.” People dropping out of the sky, people popping out of rivers, people appearing in sealed rooms, whatever. He'll get used to it eventually. Maybe.

She considers that for a while, her chin in her hands. Will is probably not anticipating a very serious answer to the remark, but he gets one anyway because she's just that kind of girl, really--

"No," she says, quite deliberately. "Not on the whole."

Some things, yes. Baedal, though, it always seems to have something else.

That does give Will a pause, stops his fidgeting for a moment, and he turns his head to look at her properly. It's not actually surprising. Not comforting, either, but not surprising. “Guess I should have expected that,” he says, wry.

He must be in her cohort; everyone new is, at the moment. (She wonders if that'll change while she's still here to see it, and it's a disconcerting thought of itself. She wonders what having died does to her lifespan.)

On a better day, maybe that would be a reason to linger-- but he's human as far as she can tell, and she's not quite ready to sink back into usual patterns, and she just commits his face and name to memory and shrugs. She'll remember him if only because of the way he looks at her, or more to the point the way that he doesn't; there are too many humans in Baedal who seem to look at her and see something strange to be disconcerted by and not someone to have a conversation with. Maybe he's still adjusting, but as far as she can see, he's doing better than some.

Enough she doesn't regret fishing him out of the water; enough she smiles, briefly, a shutter in the dark.

"You'll be all right," she says, confidently, and the last glimpse of her is her tail breaking the water as she dives again, out of sight.

i am hung with graveyard flowers;

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