primrosella | Quest 115

Current Mood: scared

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Quest 115

[Accidental Voice Post]

[The device switches on amidst a shuffle of cloth, presumably by accident--as though, perhaps, it is being kept in a pocket, out of sight, and its owner has jostled it by mistake.]

Don't look don't look don't look don't look--

[The whispered words keep time with the faint clicking of footsteps.]

There's nothing there, it's fine, it's fine, don't look, don't look, there's nothing there, just keep going one step at a time, don't look, don't look, oh, drat these boots! Don't look, there's nothing there, don't look--

[Somewhere nearby, gears grind and electricity crackles. A strangled sort of cry escapes before she can restrain it, and when she begins to speak again, it's with renewed, frantic vigor.]

No, no, no, there's nothing, it's fine, it's fine, there's nothing there, don't look, one step at a time, one and one and one and one, it's fine, it's all right, just get home, it's fine, it's fine--!

[The sound of machinery returns, louder now, clanking and rattling and grinding. Too close--this time, her fear wins out, and her scream is filled with revulsion.]

Get away!

[And now there is scuffling, shuffling, and the distinctive gasping of someone running, stumbling, and running again, as though her life depends on it.]

[OOC: It's mentioned a couple times in the King's Quest Companion that people from Daventry have a deep, universal loathing for technology. Of course, seeing as how the Daventry definition of "technology" means gears and cogs and clockwork stuff...yeah, Rosella's not having a good day. She's been fighting to keep her freaking out under control all day, but between the steampunk atmosphere and her wardrobe modification, it finally got the better of her.

All responses are assumed to be voice, and action for

not_so_smooth and

bombylious.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"It's these boots that are the worst," Rosella muttered, extending her legs a little and pulling back the blanket to display the riveted leather boots. "It's bad enough trying to--to run through the forest, and doubly so in things like these."

But she was calmer now, and the cave was cool and dark and quiet. It felt right, and that made it much easier to cope with. "Is he all gears and things too? I don't--it'd hurt his feelings, I think, if I saw him and screamed. But music...that'd be all right. And you know I like stories."

"Well, you can take the boots off if you want," Sam suggested. "We won't go anywhere until midnight. And Bee's normal, so he can just play music into the cave for us."

Sam sat up a bit and called out to his friend. "Hey Bee, can you play us some music?"

There was the warble of a searching station and then, "When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's-"

"BEE!" Sam shouted. The station changed and played some soft instrumental.

Surprisingly enough, Bee's antics managed to get a weak laugh out of her; she might not have recognized the song, but Sam's reaction to it was all too familiar. Curses or not, some things never changed. "Oh, Bumblebee..."

She shook her head and then sat up a little, too, straightening out the blanket and tucking it more carefully around herself. No machines. No awful noise. Just herself, and Sam, and Bumblebee being ridiculous, just like always.

"I'm sorry if I scared you," she murmured. And then, with another weak chuckle, "...And for ruining your vacation."

Sam ran a hand through his head and smiled over at her, glad to see Bee managed to make her smile a little and she even chuckled.

"I've just never seen you that scared," he said, voice etched with concern before going back to something more casual. "Ruin? Who said you ruined my pretend vacation? Spelunking was next on the list of things I was going to do. I was just heading home to see if you wanted to come so really, you were just a step ahead of me the whole time."

"No one else seems to mind it very much," Rosella remarked quietly, thinking back to the people she'd passed as she ran through the City. They'd all seemed perplexed, bemused, and usually intrigued by the changes in the City, but none had been as horrified or disgusted as she had. "But other people are used to--to things like that, I suppose."

She drew a slow breath, then let it out again, glancing over at Sam and giving him a shaky smile of her own. "Spelunking? That sounds like the sound a heavy rock makes when you throw it in a deep pond. But anything sounds more interesting than sitting around in a cave all day, really."

"Magic would probably freak most people out," he said, shrugging a bit. It still weirded him out some, but not too much. He preferred technology but it wasn't like he didn't live in a giant warehouse protected by magic with a magical princess for a roommate.

"Spelunking is just cave exploring," he said. "Although it does kind of sound like what you described."

"Magic makes sense, at least." Why, yes, she was deliberately being stubborn about it, but she'd had an awful day and so she felt a tiny bit justified in being difficult. "It's natural."

But the talk of magic, combined with the topic of cave exploration, got another laugh out of her. "There isn't much left to explore in here, I'm afraid. You recognize this cave, don't you?"

"So you can explain to me then," he said, giving her a skeptical look. "Why your rock had to be a strange color? Also, what good is a teleportation rock if you don't use it?"

Sam nodded at that. "This is Rosella's Sleepy Time Cave."

"Not like that. It...feels like something. You'd know it as soon as you picked up my magic wand, you can just...tell. Machines aren't like that, they're cold and dead and ugly."

She paused, resisting the urge to reach up and touch the pendant around her neck. "And I don't use it because I don't know where I'll end up when I do. I might get dropped somewhere safe, or I might end up in the ocean, or as high as the clouds up in midair, or any number of things."

Sam thought over that for a minute. It was probably true, but Sam wasn't so sure that he wanted to feel anything like that. He decided that he would just let that go.

"Well, that's probably a good idea then," he said. "And I'm glad that you made it safely here."

"You and me both," she remarked, frowning. "I just...hate that feeling, being so scared I can't think straight. I freeze up and I just can't...I can't stop it at all."

"You could unfreeze if you needed to," Sam told her. "You could if someone depended on you. I know you, you always come through for people no matter what."

"That's different, though," Rosella answered. "It's different when someone else is relying on me. If I get hurt on my own account, that's careless and it's one thing, but if someone else is going to get hurt because of me...I have to think of them, and not of myself, or of anything else, either."

And how much of her willpower and her optimism came from thinking of others, really? Wasn't that how she'd kept her hope alive through all her adventures? Wasn't that how she made it through all those awful curses? She sometimes joked about how someone in the City had to be an optimist to make up for all the others who weren't...but in a way, wasn't it the truth, too?

"I think...there are a lot of people in the City that I have to keep holding on for, in one way or another."

Sam thought about that statement. Rosella did seem to be a beacon of hope most of the times and he wondered if that was necessarily all her personality or if sometimes she wasn't doing it for the sake of others.

"Yeah, well, I don't have to hold on for very many people in the City," he told her. "So if you can't hold on for yourself? Just, you know, let me do it. Besides, things always do get better, right? Curses end and sometimes people leave but others come and everything might not be okay, but the important stuff is okay."

It was strange, to think of how many times she'd repeated that statement to herself in the year she'd spent in the City, usually when dealing with one awful curse or another. No matter how bad things got, they always got better again, too. It was just a matter of waiting them out, and having the strength to hold on and keep hoping until then.

"You lean on me and I'll lean on you, and neither one of us will fall over," Rosella agreed, vaguely amused. "...Well, unless we're both leaning in the same direction, and then we'll fall all over each other, instead."

How was it that Sam could always manage to cheer her up, she wondered, even on days like today when she was at her absolute worst? She could be miserable and despondent and crying all over the place, and somehow he always managed to find a way to pull her out of it and make her laugh again. Yet another thing she so often took for granted...

Sam chuckled and he leaned against her a bit more. He thought of all the times he really had leaned on Rosella and probably hadn't even known it. She never tried to force cheerfulness on him, she just sort of quietly let him know she was sure things would get better and she'd be there to help until they did.

"Okay, but if we lean the same way, lean towards me," he said. "I make a better pillow. You might have a brick stashed in your pocket or something."

"Um." Rosella flashed Sam a sheepish look and reached under the blanket, retrieving a large chunk of rock she'd been carrying tucked away in a makeshift pocket in her skirt, and tossing it lightly across the room.

In her defense, she mused silently, she'd picked it up somewhere along the way as she'd gone about her day, figuring that if all else failed, she could at least throw it at one of the machines in the hopes of destroying it. "No, not a brick, actually...just a rock."

Sam had to laugh at that. Not just chuckle, but laugh. He had only been half joking about the brick thing, but apparently it was one of those things that was funny because it was likely to be true.

"We need to start playing a game," Sam said. "Where I try and guess what random thing you have in your pockets at any given time. It could be like one of those little computers that can guess what you're thinking of in 21 questions or less."

"I once carried around a dead fish in my pockets for the better part of an afternoon, you know," she replied with a laugh of her own, elbowing him lightly. "There's no end to the sorts of things I'll carry around with me. But what do you mean about little computers guessing thoughts?"

Sam gave Rosella a look that was halfway between puzzled and horrified. Sam couldn't even comprehend carrying a dead fish around in his pocket for 5 minutes.

"You are really, really weird," he told her. "Seriously. But the computers, they're about the size of a tennis ball or smaller, and you think of an object. Then it has 21 questions to ask you about the object, then it tries to guess what the object is."

"It was alive when I caught it!" Rosella protested, wrinkling her nose. "I was going to eat it. But I ended up giving it to a bird instead."

She frowned, trying to wrap her head around the thought of playing a guessing game with a computer. "What sorts of questions will it ask, though? With only twenty-one to use, they must be good questions..."

"And the bird probably had something in it's mouth you needed it to drop?" Sam asked. It seemed like the sort of thing that would happen to Rosella.

"They are good questions. You can play it with people too. Pick an object that we both know and I'll see if I can get it in 21 questions."

"Did I tell you this story already?" she asked, surprised. "Yes, it did, it dropped a whistle that called a dolphin that helped me get back to shore."

Well, all right, a game sounded like fun. And in any case, it would certainly help to keep her mind off--no, no, she wasn't going to think about what was out there. A game would be good. "Ummm...all right, I have one."

"I- I don't even know what to say to that," Sam said, literally somewhat speechless. What were the odds? Seriously, he needed to find out the odds of that happening.

The first questions in the game were always easiest. "Is it bigger than a bread box? Wait, you probably don't know what that is. Is it bigger than a loaf of bread?"

Rosella shrugged a little, not thinking much of it. After all, all things considered, the bird and the whistle were some of the least absurd things about that whole quest.

She thought a minute, picturing the two side by side. "It...well, yes, I suppose it is."

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