[EVENT] A NEW WORLD ORDER

[ironwood]

Characters: ALL!
Date: December 8, 2015 (with some starters for the following weeks)
Location: Keeliai, the Midnight Hotel, others
Situation: The Foreigners have awakened.
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings as needed.

They've been in the Dreaming for so long that when they wake up their bodies feel more like automatons, alien and ill-fitting. They haven’t atrophied, thanks to Milyn, but they’re stiff and a little bedsore, and the solidity of the Life Plane is jarring. Here, the surroundings don’t move on a whim. Here the world is more stable, almost harsh and unyielding in spite of the homey surrounds.

It’s been a year, says the clock on the mantle and on the second floor. Says Milyn, too, when she’s able to stop hugging them long enough to speak.

Nothing much has changed in the Midnight Hotel. There are dishes out of place, objects belonging to either Milyn or Eva in evidence, the diorama exactly where it had been but now brightly-painted thanks to Milyn's boredom. Milyn and Eva took a room each, in the time the Foreigners were sleeping, though neither used them much.

Eva’s upstairs, Milyn will tell anyone who asks. In her room.

Eva hasn't left that room in three days. She hasn't spoken in three days, either, or walked, or moved, or breathed. Her effects are neatly arranged around her bed, and the sheet has been pulled up. There is heavy incense in the room and Milyn has managed to preserve the body enough to remove the risk of too much mess (and other things). In a way, that makes it worse: as though Eva is sleeping. It’s difficult to tell whether Milyn is in denial or whether spending three days with no one to talk to other than sleeping Foreigners and a corpse has had its influence.

---

LINKS
Dreaming log | Foreigner's Awakening (Hotel) | Milyn’s Relief | Exploring Keeliai | Old & New Faces (Canon Updates/New Arrivals) | OOC: State of the Shell

Comments

closed to Cain

[ruinsprofessor]

It was some considerable time after Foreigners had begun waking and finding their way back into Keeliai that Raine had enough of her thoughts and wits together to do so herself. She'd found her staff, too, as misplaced as it had gotten in the dream, and now rather than head out onto the streets alone with no concept of what might have changed in the intervening time, Raine searched out a potential companion.

She was sure she'd seen Cain recently enough, and when she spotted him again she waved briefly before heading toward him. "Do you have some time?" she asked without preamble, once she was in earshot.

[insertdadjoke]

Seeing Cain was not a hard thing to do. Having fallen on the homeless times and still trying to understand the state of affairs in a city rebuilding from a war, he was just about everywhere and anywhere. He was quickly learning and taking in the new power players, the things they no longer had access to and the opportunities these closed doors now highlighted for them. His brain was working in overtime to make the most of it, and part of him couldn't help but be amused how even on his decade off his mind couldn't stop analyzing all of the possible angles in which he could put himself on top.

When Raine approached him, he let his thoughts run off his back and smiled in greeting. Seeing her again was good, it helped ground him and remind Cain that anything he would be gaining in Keeliai would more likely to be shared with the rest of the foreigners. He wasn't looking to gain so much power, but to provide stability in order to allow whatever their next step would be. "All the time in the world," he said with a very wry tone. "What's up, Raine?"

[ruinsprofessor]

Hah. She had rather walked into that one. The corner of her mouth tugged up with amusement. "Yes, I suppose so," Raine agreed. And it was good to see Cain again, outside of the Dreaming. "Right now, however, I was thinking of exploring the city to see for myself what's changed." And yes, in previous times she might well have just hared off on her own to sate her curiosity, but in lack of full knowledge it was a foolish thing to do.

"If you're not busy, I'd appreciate company." For a variety of reasons, really, even besides the simple practicality of not traveling alone in an unfamiliar place.

[insertdadjoke]

"Certainly," agreed Cain. That was a genuine enough request and one he could see the practicality of besides. Having seen Raine's specialty and ability in the Dreaming, he could easily imagine the difficulties of wandering alone without proper backup in such an unfamiliar place. Cain himself never worried about it because even if anyone struck him down, he could get back up and make an escape before anyone would get over their shock.

Anyone else would probably feel rightly reluctant to go street-walking on their own.

Motioning for Raine to go ahead (this was her idea, she would get to set the route), Cain fell into step. "Looks like a lot, though. This whole city's basically been restructured from the ground up. Maybe not physically," he allowed, "but you'd have to be blind not to notice the changes."

[ruinsprofessor]

Beyond simple practicality, the near necessity of another person with her to make her most effective in combat, Raine was better accustomed to having other people around. While she could and in fact had functioned in Keeliai more or less alone, the unsteadiness of it all made her more reluctant to do so now.

The layout of the city hadn't changed, it seemed, but the atmosphere certainly had. Raine turned their path in the direction that would lead them first toward where the Foreigners had previously been housed, wanting to see for herself what had happened. She couldn't imagine they would have been left fully alone, with the Foreigners vanished without word for a year. "I... believe I see what you mean," she said slowly, when they'd gone only a little ways. The changes were visible, the difference in attitudes nearly a tangible thing in the air. "A lot can happen in a year."

[insertdadjoke]

Cain was already becoming used to the differences in the natives' attitudes. He had been observing, not ready to do his same stupid-foreigner routine as before, and it was far too obvious that something had changed in the kedanese society. There was not enough discord for it to be new, and Cain was willing to bet that the change had started as soon as Malicant's influence had disappeared. Nothing he saw so far had contradicted that. Some of the kedan were still willing to talk to him, but they were far and few between. Almost like before, and yet the air was totally different.

"A lot can, did, and there's room for more to start happening again," he said easily. "From what I can tell, there's three active power groups right now vying against each other in their own ways. Well, actually, it's more like one is trying to take the others over, one is trying to expand on its own and the other knows it has a pretty solid power base and no one knows what they want to do with it. Don't think it's outright dangerous yet, but I'd keep my guard up," he added with a small smile toward Raine.

[ruinsprofessor]

Three. Three was interesting. Three also meant less risk of a purely polarized conflict. Could mean a nastier mess if anything devolved spectacularly, but with any luck they'd balance each other. Raine nodded thoughtfully, her gaze flickering across the streets and the kedan there rather than focused on Cain himself. "It still doesn't feel like we were dreaming nearly that long. I'm not sure it had really sunk in."

Till now, at least. Dreams worked that way, she supposed, with regards to time. The world had moved on without them. Not a particularly pleasant feeling. "I'd be surprised at this point if there were Foreigners with their guards down, however," she added. The reverse of that problem: the battle had been recently enough that they were, or should be, still wary, rather than complacent.

Well. Perhaps an exception for Dante. She still wasn't convinced he had a self-preservation instinct.

"What else have you found out so far?"

[insertdadjoke]

"Dreams never feel long enough," Cain said sardonically. He knew what she meant, but it could have been ten years for all that Cain barely felt the passage of time anymore. That didn't mean it wasn't odd and unsettling to have been asleep for that long, but in the grand scheme of things, only missing a year was a rather good record and he was willing to leave it at that.

Sighing, he said, "Not much. I'm still looking for people who are willing to actually tell me things and trying to dig in my heels. Housing is going to be a complete bitch for a while, though. Might need to start looking for tents to hole up in."

[ruinsprofessor]

Quite frankly, she could have done with less time in that dream, within and without, and it took her a moment to place the sarcasm. But of course Cain would be a little less perturbed by the passing of an entire year; for her, it was still a significant fraction of her life to date.

"I suppose it was too much to hope that any of our old housing would remain both unoccupied and unmolested," Raine said with a little sigh, looking ahead along the road. She'd left things in her suite-- nothing vital, but some of her collated research. Clothes. She'd almost started to settle in again, but that had, in retrospect, been foolish. "I wonder. Have you been to the hospital?"

[insertdadjoke]

"After a year?" Laughing, Cain shook his head. "Yeah, no. I doubt anything just disappeared into the ether but these people are rebuilding and they never liked us enough to preserve our spaces for an entire year anyway."

"What?" Cain asked, obviously not expecting the question and bemused by it. Aside from taking others or merely dropping them off, Cain had not been to a hospital in several ages. Those laboratories didn't count, obviously. The only times he ever ended up at places of healing, really, were when he was caught out as injured and taken to help before he could protest. "Hospital? No. Frankly, I haven't had a reason to for about twenty-five years now."

[ruinsprofessor]

Raine smiled a little when he laughed, but it was rueful. "I don't blame them," she said, and shook her head. "Even if the general attitude toward us had been more positive, we vanished, with barely a word, and with no indication of when or if we would return."

Of course he wouldn't have thought of visiting the hospital. "I suppose you wouldn't have," Raine said wryly, acknowledging the relative folly of the question. "I ask only because it's one of the facilities the Foreigners primarily ran, at least at first, and I used to work there. I'll have to see what's become of it."