GOATS

[blackgoat]

"Do you have children?"

The voice seemed to come before the lady, as if the question summoned her, rather than was actually spoken.

Small, demure in appearance, lovely in a way that quickly extended itself into the realm of disquieting. She seemed doll like, unliving and not quite made of flesh.

Little hands resting on a heavily pregnant belly, the woman draped in heavy Victorian dresses of stone grays, off whites and dull sky blues, with that porcelain skin and wild snow white hair, she'd almost look like she was trying to blend into the snow.

"If you do not, do you want them?"

Ah, so it was her speaking, the voice soft and sweet, if... off, in an odd way. A tone that crept up the spine and settled into the neck and base of the skull, like cold fingers pressed against the nape.

Comments

[darkmountainfarmer]

"I have a son. He lives in California. It's been...some time since we talked outside of letters." Henry misses George, but the two of them went their separate ways some time ago. Henry's quite satisfied living by himself in the hills, even though part of him misses going into town as much as he used to. "I'm a widower. Been one for a while now, and haven't felt like remarrying."

He sighs, heavy. "I loved her. Still do."

[blackgoat]

"Why do you not meet with him?" That tone never does actually change. It's unfair to call it monotone, but it still seems to lack... something in it, the appropriate feeling.

"Do you hope to find her again?" Because longing for death was no new thing she's heard at all.

[darkmountainfarmer]

Henry twitches slightly. The question discomforts him, though he doesn't show it. "He lives in San Diego. That's a long way from Dark Mountain, and I'd imagine he has his own life there by now."

"No, I don't want to see her just yet. Though there are worse things than death."

[outpostcook]

Kinner can feel the chill running up his spine, and this time the chill has nothing to do with Antarctica. He has a vague sense of something off with this stranger, but he holds his ground. He wonders if the vague hunch he feels is part of what happened with Micolash, or the cook's own instincts. In any case, he has a sense that the lady he's talking to isn't human.

He bows slightly, minding his manners. "No, not really. I'm not really the kind." Can Kinner imagine himself with children? Maybe, but not at the time being. He doesn't feel ready to enter a relationship just yet. "My name's Joseph Kinner. I don't think we've met."

[blackgoat]

"Never? Or not yet?" The distinction is important, you see.

"We have not. I have only just arrived." She doesn't make any motion, not to offer a hand to shake, nor a bow in return, just watching him from under heavy, dark lashes.

"From where do you hail, Mister Kinner?"

[outpostcook]

"Not yet. Though I'm not sure I can have children, since I am dead, if you wanna get technical about it. I was attacked and eaten by a creature..."

But he's getting ahead of himself. Kinner decides to explain things to the newcomer first.

"I was born in Missouri, but I died in Big Magnet, Antarctica. I was a member of the 1938 Secondary Magnetic Expedition under Commander Garry."

[eumenis]

When Furiosa passes the stranger she barely notes her appearance. A woman, fine-boned and petite--a bit like the Dag in appearance, only shorter. But the question couldn't have caught her attention harder if it had been whispered directly into her own ear, and when she turns to blink at the questioner--

Well. Look, Furiosa isn't oblivious to the unsettling feeling. She hasn't encountered too much in the Nexus or on her home turf that is this kind of supernatural. And she knows not-normal when she sees it, but she's also susceptible to a woman's voice and a question she's asked herself many, many times before.

"I don't...have children of my body," she answers. "I can't. Supposedly."

She could probably have a doctor in the Nexus look into that, actually, and change whatever the problem is. She's thought about it, but then if she did want to go ahead with breeding, she'd have to choose a father, and she's not entirely ready for that. If she ever will be. "A lot of our motherless pups call me their Initiate mother, though. That means more than I have words for."

"I've thought about it." She takes a couple steps closer, cautious. "Are you comfortable, standing there? I could find you a place to sit."

The hairs on the back of her neck are standing on end, but she's ignoring the instinctual alarm. Mother is a powerful concept in this woman's mind, whether it means 'benevolent caregiver' or 'devouring creatrix'.

[blackgoat]

There's nearly nothing to glean from her expression, akin to trying to converse with a statue. Granted, one that spoke, and moved, but it seemed her face never strayed far from that nearly blank, unreadable countenance.

That being said, the confession that Furiosa may be barren seemed to awaken something in there, for the briefest moment. There, and then gone again. It seemed that sentence, and the one proceeding it, had touched off some sort of reaction in there.

"If someone were to offer you the gift of carrying your own, would you take it? Or do the lost children of others fill that place?" She heard the offer, of course, one hand running over the dome of that massive, swollen stomach, considering.

"I've traveled many miles, like this. I do not need to sit, just yet."

[seven_lifetimes]

"Nine children. Some have passed already. Some are still around." The woman who answers is tall, carries herself with confidence, and has several distinctive markings along her face and down her shoulders.

She is wearing a blue Star Trek uniform.

"I think of them often."

[blackgoat]

"What took them? Illness? Violence? Accidents? Or time?"

[lovesuwithknives]

This arrival literally startles Azwel so badly that he knocks over the chair he was sitting on. Backward he goes with a squawk, and chips (his new favourite thing) go flying. Everything about her didn't so much ping his magickal senses as it smashed them to pieces with a Louisville Slugger and then threw the pieces into a deep freeze. That cold sensation, far different to the winter's chill, set his nerves screaming. The shards in his gauntlets flicker in a manner that somehow manages to look distressed.

After a beat, he peers at her from behind the chair. "I... what?" is his witty observation, followed with a strikingly erudite "No?"

[blackgoat]

Not much reaction to the stumble and fall, just watching, and patiently waiting, for the reply to her question. Chips everywhere, what a goddamn mess.

"Do you want them?"

She's moving now, following him, the glimmer of the void barely visible under long, thick eyelashes.

[grantuseyes]

The caged man's approach is cautious. Not out of fear; something more like awe. Her features are uncanny, porcelain and fine. Made of pearl instead of bone. Hair as pale as the rest of her. A delicate being that does not live beneath the sun and mirrors the moon for it. And on top of it all, she's pregnant.

Everything here adds up to something that must be known with due reverence. Everything here is something deeply powerful in ways that are profound to him. If she gives off an air of something regal, Micolash is one of imposed humility. A commoner approaching a queen.

"I have. Never. Borne my own offspring, no. Nor have I wed." His voice is stilted and droning. He talks like a hesitant sleepwalker. "I had. Once cared for a babe not mine, however. Mergo was its name." Micolash wonders fretfully if he should go into the circumstances of why he would once upon a time be shouldered with a foundling. It could blunder into the realm of offense if he's not mindful.

"He was beautiful," the scholar concludes instead.

[blackgoat]

He'd be taller than her, technically. Any bystander would say he dwarfed her easily, but physical size was nothing. One wouldn't think it would be possible, for someone more than a head smaller than another to seem to gaze down at them, and yet here we are.

The way he approached her was not missed; she openly seemed to drink it in, the vaguest hints of approval in her expression.

"If it was not of your blood, how did you come by the child?" It didn't sound like a loaded question, as demure and soft as her voice had been before.

"Would you ever hope for offspring of your own?"

[hasturtheunspeakable]

A wavering yellow light can be seen not far away. It quivers in a manner lights usually soundly fail to take--a kind of shivering of reality. This shivering stops after a small while, and the light coalesces and then flows like water, indecisive. Hesitant.

It's merely choosing a form. With a horrific screaming, rushing sound, half a dozen images flicker on the eyes and in the mind in the span of a heartbeat. Reality pulls inward and then he's simply there.

Figures Hastur the Unspeakable would make more of an entrance. And it figures that all that hullaballoo would result in a rather... unimposing-looking being. Cognitive dissonance is just the cherry on the madness sundae.

He's a slight fellow, with straight blond hair so long it almost reaches the floor, flowing yellow-and-gold robes, and a face, much like Shub-Niggurath's, that's best described as 'unsettlingly beautiful.' On his brow he wears a circlet with a stone in the centre into which is carved the Yellow Sign. Yellow-on-black eyes take in the area for a beat. He glows slightly. All in all, a very alien looking figure.

Until he grins sunnily and drops himself into a chair.

"I think you know the answer to that," he says with a voice so mellifluous that hearts shatter for parsecs around.

[blackgoat]

He was always flashy. It behooved her to be a touch more subdued in her arrival, one doesn't find potential mates by being a flashy Outer God after all.

But that didn't usually tend to be Hastur's priority anyway. She wasn't surprised to see him, nor his entrance.

"Ithaqua is still so bitter." Which, understandable, honestly. Considering the limitations imposed on him from the Outer Pantheon. She doesn't sound terribly sad about this.

"Did you follow me, beloved?" Or are you looking to make a mess?

[chiron_survivor]

It's not often that the moon rune within Adia's mind -- a blessing from a Great One -- is so blatantly insistent about something being Not Right in the Nexus, but for a moment the young woman in the warm peacoat and pretty blue scarf has to clasp a hand on the back of her head, because ouch.

She looks around for the source, and her eyes fall on the doll-like pregnant woman. Just in time for her question.

"Um..." She blinks, and looks away hurriedly, not wanting to stare. What the heck is this woman? "N-no, no children... I, um. Yes? Maybe. I don't know, I'm... I'm kind of busy helping others right now, and I'm not married, anyway..."

[blackgoat]

Now what was that feeling? She's watching, not from under those dark lashes, but directly now, unblinking, that gaze like a galaxy and as piercing as a sharpened, white hot needle.

Adia might not have wanted to stare, but clearly someone here didn't much care about being polite.

"If you wish to help others, there is no greater blessing you could give to the world than new life."

Moving, closing in now, her heavy skirts dragging through the slush and snow.

"Do you require marriage, to create?"

[to_the_wolves]

"No. To both of your questions."

There's something disarming about a woman who's dressed in Victorian attire, sitting so peacefully among the other denizens of the Nexus. Honestly, Marie looks rather tired and disheveled, suffering from some sleepless nights as of late. Why she's stopping to answers questions before getting some sort of hot drink is beyond her knowledge, but one can blame whatever enticing aura this woman has on that.

"I'm not a fit parent, before you ask."

[blackgoat]

"Is that your only reason?" Yes that does sound vaguely disapproving. An entity geared almost entirely towards reproduction wouldn't quite approve of the choice not to, of course.

So many strange, alien ideas here, in this little nexus.

"What makes you unfit?"

[brooklynbarnes]

Bucky took in the sight of the lady. She was unusual, but by now he had been exploring the Nexus long enough not to be fazed by her eerie appearance.

"Nope," he replied. "I take safe sex very seriously. But who knows, maybe one day, when I don't have to choose between not paying my rent or eating anything but instant ramen for a week."

Despite his words, there was a gentleness in the way he was looking at her obviously pregnant belly. "How far along are you?"

[blackgoat]

"You require wealth to procreate?" She's learning a lot of things here, isn't she? "I could give it to you, if that is what you need."

Her little hands rest upon her swollen stomach as he mentions it.

"Any day now." It'd been trying to escape for a while, after all. Perhaps it'd be strong enough to flee her this time.

[drehnifusbahi]

He was making his way across the plaza when the question comes. Something about the voice alone makes the back of his neck prickle, and when he turns to look for the owner an eerily familiar feeling washes over him - it's like the creeping oppressive presence of Hermaeus Mora, only colder.

There's no hope of avoiding her, as his chosen route has him crossing right through her line of sight. And as much as he doesn't want to discuss his children with anything on the level of a daedric prince, he also isn't about to mouth off or try to deceive such a creature. He's too fond of his sanity and his limbs for that. So...

"I've two," he says simply.

so sorry for the long wait!

[blackgoat]

"Are they young? Old? What do you hope for them?" She'd push, she'd pry. Of course she would.

"What have they become?"

[magpiemythos]

For all the strange woman was so brilliantly pale, something about her also spoke of darkness. Something deep, something dangerous. Not unlike the sharp light of the moon reflecting off the ocean, where all you could see was the blinding light but couldn't help but be aware of the abyss that was just under the surface.

Or the things that lurked in the depths.

Loki paused at the questions, head tilting as he considered the stranger. Not looking as himself, blue skin and white hair, dark glossy horns and swirling stripes across limbs, red eyes flicking over the woman consideringly.

"I have." From both sides of the fence, some sticking in his memory more than others. The Old Man had been prolific even outside his storied young, and many of his devoted followers had borne his children either knowing their heritage or ignorant of it.