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."

[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]

"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.

[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."

[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."

[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]

"Distance, then." Hard to tell if there was any kind of judgement there, honestly.

"What can you name, that is worse than dying?"

[blackgoat]

"You are dead?" She moves closer, just a touch, and the obvious inhumanity in her gaze is revealed for a moment as she peers into his face.

Opalescent, voidlike, the color was hard to place. Less like eyes, and more like a pair of polished, spherical mirrors.

"What devoured you?"

[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."

[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]

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

[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.

[seven_lifetimes]

"Time. I had five as a mother, and four as a father." Jadzia notes softly.

"I never felt very successful either way."

[blackgoat]

The idea... doesn't seem to startle her.

There is, however, definitely more questions coming.

"What manner of being are you?" Asked just as softly, just as sweetly, as all the questions before it. As if just asking what the date was, or if the weather was any good today.

[eumenis]

She's a little bit reminded of Hazel, except that even at her most ethereal Hazel's expression was malleable, and she smiled to see Furiosa. The doll-like tranquility of this stranger's face is beautiful and eerie. She's drawn to her, while at the same time her gut instinct says hey, no, bad idea.

"I don't know," she answers honestly. "Maybe. But only if I had the absolute right to choose the sire. My tribe called themselves the Many Mothers. I'd like the experience, but...it's something that can get turned against a woman, too."

Been there, done that, got the bloodstained t-shirt of vengeance, etc.

Something tells her she doesn't need to know this person's name, nor is she eager to share her own, but she lingers, fascinated. "All right. If I can bring you food or drink, I will."

A dangerous offer, probably, but at least she didn't just offer to do anything helpful, right?

[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]

"There is nothing more powerful in all the universes, as a mother. Nothing else that commands as much respect and dedication, every matron a ruler.

You should choose not a sire.

You should choose an army of them.

A ruler deserves no less." What an idea, that one wouldn't be able to pick their mate. She had a few of her own to pick from herself, after all.

Food and drink, that was tempting. A moments pause.

"... Red wine, and fresh meat."

[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?"

[lovesuwithknives]

Azwel does realise he's going to have to clean up those chips and the spilt vinegar, but he'll get to that in a moment. He's fascinated by how his own magickal senses try to simultaneously recoil from and reach out to this being. How her presence pulls at the sense that usually tells him where astral fissures will appear and twists it. He knows he should flee. But he doesn't. Not even when she draws closer.

He does, at least, stand.

"I don't really know, now," he says, fighting to keep his mind focussed. "I'm... displaced from my homeworld. My former life didn't.... leave much of a possibility for it."

[blackgoat]

She doesn't seem to care too much about the mess, looking slowly to the gauntlets for a fraction of a moment.

"What kept you from it, before you arrived here? If given the chance, would you take it?"

Closer now, obviously not deterred at all by the height difference, it would almost seem reminiscent of a beast moving closer to it's prey, pausing just barely too close for what some might deem comfortable.

[grantuseyes]

Micolash is tall to begin with; the man's all legs. He only looms worse with the cage on his shoulders, adding another two heads in height to him to begin with. However, he hardly feels taller. In fact, he feels markedly ant-like right now. It doesn't keep him from making eye contact, however. In fact, he seems to seek it. Some would recoil at the cold and crawly feelings the woman's voice and countenance seems to exude, but Micolash revels in it. It feels like fresh air to him.

To make up for the difference in height, the man is bent slightly at the knee and his posture tilted forward. (As best he can with the giant iron implement on his head, anyway.) His hands clasp together in front of him to keep them from fidgeting.

"I...I found him. I reached into the murk of the cosmos, into the dark between the stars. And what I extracted was...him. A perfect. Beautiful child of the Great Ones. I knew of him, from my research. The babe conceived between a Pthumerian queen and Formless Oedon. Doomed to never be born at all due to the. Failings of her court. But here he was, in my arms; and soon, in the Nightmare together that he helped form for me." These terms and these circumstances all sound dire, but Micolash speaks with a hazy sort of fondness.

As to the question of his own offspring, Micolash hesitates. There's several times he starts to answer, but then stops and closes his mouth again. Eventually, he looks downwards at the floor as if embarrassed. "I don't think I'd. Be a very good parent." He laughs, weak and nervous.

[seven_lifetimes]

"I am a joined Trill." Jadzia answers honestly (and a little proudly).

"What manner of being are you?"

[lovesuwithknives]

The gauntlets are an interesting sight, and an interesting concept. One holds a shard of something that is literally the essence of Chaos, and the other one that is literally the essence of Order. They swirl and ebb against each other, yet one never overpowers the other because they're filtered through Azwel, himself. He's the catalyst in an eternally balanced reaction between the two.

He's quite the individual, his every cell permeated with this energy. And yet, right now, he's simply staring, entranced, breathless, his speech hesitant.

"I... my life's work for the last ten years was... consuming, to say the least." He finds himself rambling truths. "I had lovers but never did the idea of a family... occur to us. And the Aval Organisation was no environment in which to raise children." His gaze snaps back to the present and then all the way through it. "But now, I...." He shakes his head. "I would make a dreadful father," he finishes.