[Plot] The Loneliest Person That I've Ever Known ((open))

[Miriam Bell]

After languishing at the bar for way too long and ultimately having to leave when it closes, Miriam ends up on the roof of the dorms, leaning against the brick-work of the chimney and staring out into the night. Sam's words are still ringing in her ears. So how's it supposed to get out of your system? It can't and as terrifying as that thought is, what seems to cut even deeper is the slow dawning realization that regardless of what she's been telling herself, Sam has dealt with the same kind of thing she has and has handled it so much better. So much better that it took her mere moments to hazard a guess as to what's wrong with her. Such a small little thing that clicks into place in a long series of Miriam's mistakes. Not only was she at fault for almost everything going awry, but any time she's dismissed Sam's advice or suggestions the red-head had been right. Trying to help. Despite the vitriol she continued to throw her way. Her head is swimming, the world around her seeming to collapse in around her, so many sleeping minds underneath her, she's losing her grip on her mental barriers. She takes a deep breath for the first time in a couple days, trying to steady herself...

...and as she breathes out purple and red are beginning to spread over the clouds like a giant bruise on the world. How long has she staid up here? Lost in thought? The sudden panic only seems to make reality more spongy, unsteady. She stumbles as she runs for the door to the stairwell, the sunrise behind her swelling across the sky, surreal, like an impossibly large hand slowly reaching for her. Maybe the sudden movement is flushing the drugs into her head or maybe her mind is just slipping all on it's own, but everything is spinning and not in the drunk kind of way. She throws open the stairwell door and it yawns wide before her, larger than it should be, larger than makes sense and through it is nothing. The absolute vastness of the lack of anything is staggering but she has little choice. The dawning cloud-bruise is filling the world behind her, forcing her forward and as she passes through the door the feeling of missing a step on the stairs rushes through her as she moves forward and down, without falling somehow she pivots or maybe the world pivots around her, flipping upside down and inside out and then the nothing has her and becomes something, no longer empty now that she's stepped into it and from where her foot steps down to touch the ground a lush carpet spirals out beneath her...



And in the real world Miriam has stepped into the stairwell, the door slowly swinging shut behind her and saving her from the rays of the sun creeping over the edge of the roof outside. Her ghastly visage seems to smooth, features receding little by little and as they bleed away from her the ground she's standing on fades from the regular dorm carpet into thick, dark-red Persian carpet with spiraling designs. The effect slowly creeps up the walls, transforming the plain wallpaper into Victorian wallpaper of golden flower and branch designs embossed on the black cloth background. Seemingly unaware of what exactly is happening around her Miriam is staring into the middle distance, one hand raised and almost touching the wall, head tilted ever so slightly.


((Open))

[Wanda Johansson]

Footsteps sound on the stairs as Wanda makes her way up them, adjusting the messenger bag slung across her body. Like a lot of people, she's looking at the steps and not the summit, so she encounters the creeping carpet first and blinks, watching it move before looking up towards where Miriam's staring at the wall. "Miriam?"

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam turns her head, but her eyes don't seem to quite settle on Wanda, seeming to stare right through her. The effect of the carpet usurping the stairs seems to move her way though, steps seeming to fold over into wooden stairs with carpeting covering it up. The floral designs on it spread out towards Wanda and seem to coil and condense around her feet.

[Wanda Johansson]

Wanda holds her ground, obviously a little frightened, but she'd told Isolde she'd stop jumping at shadows and she knows something's not right here. "Miriam? Miriam, can you hear me?" She gathers her breath and takes a step up, trying to move slowly closer towards Miriam.

[Miriam Bell]

The carpet is soft under her feet, the stairs creaking a little but they're perfectly normal steps. If it wasn't for the fact that they clearly don't belong, foreign architecture reaching out like a runway. It's more pronounced the closer she gets to Miriam. The walls are wallpapered and she can see a sconce slowly pushing it's way through, wall folding away around it and closing up again seamlessly after the lamp has settled into place. Even the air seems to change a little bit, smelling stale and dusty.

"Yes..." comes Miriam's voice, oddly calm and distant. "Wanda..."

The sconce on the wall suddenly sags a little, held up by the cables threading into the wall, the lamp's shade tearing with a quiet sound and tilting, sitting askew on the tilting sconce.

[Wanda Johansson]

Okay, she's not... upset. The sound of the shade tearing catches her attention, but she wrenches her eyes back from what she's assuming is a dimensional distortion. Wanda holds up her hands, trying to keep her voice even. "Yes, Miriam, it's me. Wanda. What are you doing here?"

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam's eyes find Wanda's although they still don't really focus.

"Here? There's nobody here... Everything's inside out... Had to get away, get inside."

The door to the roof, the one that should be painted metal but now is made from a dark wood sinks into the wall, cloth wallpaper unrolling over it and seamlessly removing it. Miriam turns her head as if she was looking for something and the walls of the relatively narrow stairwell slowly widen, the stairs growing handrails that turn into a balustrade for the landing slowly growing around them.

[Wanda Johansson]

Wanda mentally notes the time and nods, "Yes, you would need to be inside now." She holds out her hands as if to reach for Miriam's. "We should get out of this... whatever this is," she says, slightly unsteadily as the world continues to morph.

[Miriam Bell]

Miriam quietly laughs to herself and doesn't reach back, but she also doesn't pull away when Wanda takes her hand and tugs her along.

"There's no out, just more and more and more, everywhere you look, always more..." she says as Wanda leads her down the stairs. At first they're getting closer to the edge of where the strange carpet turns into the regular stairwell again, but as they reach it the edge of it seems to spill out further again like a wave being pushed out from Miriam, slowing once it's a couple feet away from her.

[Wanda Johansson]

The rapid expansion catches Wanda's attention and she slows down, still holding Miriam's hand. "Okay, that's not good. Miriam, is this something you're doing... or did?" She begins fishing in her messenger back with a free hand, rummaging for something.

[Miriam Bell]

"I had to get inside and it..." She makes a series of convoluted but ultimately nonsensical gestures. "This is mine. You don't like it. But yours is dangerous. To me. Too much open sky..."

[Wanda Johansson]

"I know it's dangerous for you," Wanda says, fishing out a black marker and uncapping it with her teeth. She tries to take her other hand back from Miriam. "But there's some distortion here and it's moving slowly into the dorms."

[Miriam Bell]

Wanda easily manages to withdraw her hand.

"Oh... here... This one should be alright..." she says, barely taking note of what Wanda is saying or doing. The carpet begins to fade, almost as if it was being worn down rapidly, but where it fades large, roughly hewn stone tiles take it's place. There's a little bit of grass and weeds that grow in between the gaps as the stone floor pushes out through the carpet. It spreads to the walls and soon bundles of herbs unfurl from the ceiling and the smell of a hearty soup or stew of some sort wafts in from nowhere. A fireplace begins taking shape in one of the walls, the flames scorching the wall where there's still wood-paneling and Miriam takes a couple hurried steps when she notices and makes shooing motions at the hearth, flames dieing down and the fireplace closing up with large grey bricks. It's like bits and pieces of a comfy little hut or hovel have taken over in about a ten foot radius around them.

[Wanda Johansson]

Wanda watches the continued growth of whatever this is and wracks her brain for some sort of mitigation. Drawing with your off-hand is difficult, more-so when your medium in a spongy substance like flesh. Still, Wanda manages, starting on her right palm with a looping design, bring it up between her fingers and onto the back of the hand. It wraps around her wrist, before going up the back of her arm, following a curving design reminiscent of the letter art from some medieval book. As the design grows, she becomes more absorbed in creating it, almost not paying attention to Miriam again.

[Miriam Bell]

Whatever it is Wanda is doing, it does seem to have drawn Miriam's attention at least somewhat. Sprouting from between the stone tiles vines are crawling over the floor, imitating the swirling patterns she's drawing on her arm. And overall the spread seems to have stopped for the most part.

[Wanda Johansson]

Wanda continues the design up her arm to her shoulder, though it becomes less elaborate by necessity of physiology and joints "not bending that way." She lowers herself to one knee, putting her palm on the floor. The Children are set in their ways she's heard from more than one person. She tries to pull on that, pushing that through her rudimentary working and into this place, trying to grant it this space and no more. The words come to her, almost unbidden, with the cadence of a prayer:

"Mother of life, Lady of earth,
Anchor of the physical, Binder of the ephemeral,
Wrap this place, grant it safe haven,
Give it its place, but no more than its need."

She sways slightly, magic tapping her for something in the working, though maybe not what she intended.

[Miriam Bell]

The patterns guide the working and although the vines aren't very exact in their imitation of the design, it still serves as a connection and for a moment Wanda catches a glimpse of things.

A cozy hut set into a hillside, smoke curling from the chimney and rising into the sky above the expansive woods. It's not a place she recognizes as much as it feels like it. Comfortable, familiar, home. A dream, a metaphor. A place that exists in thoughts. Her thoughts. There's more to it, other places, landscapes, something howling in the woods, all shapeless and malleable until it crystallizes, contextualized by the need to make sense of it. Miriam isn't physically there, but her presence is what is interpreting Wanda's thoughts into this. And beyond this land is Miriam's own, shrouded in mist, silhouettes of Gothic architecture. And even further are more and more and more places. Shining crystal expanses, overgrown ruins, bustling towns, electric cities brimming with light. Other minds. Other places that don't exist. Until Miriam is bring them forth somehow, bit by bit.

Her spell fully takes shape and the connection is severed. Miriam stumbles backwards as the interior of the cozy hut begins to crumble, stone giving way to carpet, vines shriveling up and disappearing, leaving behind jsut a simple hallway and a lost-looking vampire staring blankly into space. "Where'd you go?" she quietly mumbles to herself.

[Wanda Johansson]

"I'm right here, Miriam," Wanda says unsteadily, not quite having the energy to get up from her current position. "Are you okay?" It's a stupid question, she knows. Obviously nothing about this is 'okay'.

[Miriam Bell]

"I think I'm lost... Bloody hell..." she mumbles, sounding a little more recognizably like herself, although still uncertain. "You're like a needle in a haystack. Or maybe I'm the needle and everyone else is the hay."

[Wanda Johansson]

"It's just me here," Wanda says, sounding a little worried now. She pulls herself to her feet, stumbling just a bit as she tries to move forward carefully, holding out a hand to Miriam. "I'm right here," she says, trying to touch the other woman's hand.

[Miriam Bell]

"You're closest." she seems to correct her, looking at Wanda with unfocused eyes as she takes her hand.

[Wanda Johansson]

Wanda looks at the unfocused eyes, "You're... not really seeing me are you, or maybe you are."

[Miriam Bell]

"I can see the Wild Forest and the Cottage and the Mire Ruins but I don't know where you are... I don't know where I am... I thought I'd found my way back but I... felt you cut me loose." she says, her voice hitching slightly.

[Wanda Johansson]

Shit. Wanda pulls on her hand, "Well, let's get you somewhere that you're not at risk of sunbathing and we'll try and figure out how you can find your way back, alright?"

[Miriam Bell]

"Somewhere safe, right..." she let's Wanda lead her, although she doesn't seem to be in any danger of running into a wall at least. And after a couple moments of walking down the hall doors turn into high-reaching stain-glass windows that are too opaque to see the other side, framed by thick, heavy velvet in a deep wine red. It looks vaguely familiar to what she saw of Miriam's mind before but what had been dream-like imagery now at least appears to be intruding on reality.

[Wanda Johansson]

"That's, less than good probably," Wanda says softly, looking at the windows to see if they opened.

[Miriam Bell]

There's no obvious latch or handle and they seem too large to be able to be opened anyway.

"It's safe. They're mine." she says, although she does walk over to one of the windows depicting some kind of spray of glass and other things, a lot of it tints of red. Reaching for the curtains she swiftly pulls them closed.

[Wanda Johansson]

"That was an interesting design. What was it?"

[Miriam Bell]

"Blood and pain. Too many places like that, it creeps in from the edges even here."

[Wanda Johansson]

"But it's a part of life isn't it?" Wanda says, even as she begins looking around to see where else they might go.

[Miriam Bell]

"Too much of mine." she says as Wanda finds a door sliding into existence. It's not nearly as nice as the rest of the surroundings, iron bands reinforcing it, a large sliding bolt holding it close but not completely keeping the smell at bay that wafts out from behind. Wet and metallic.

[Wanda Johansson]

"It doesn't have to be that way, you know," Wanda says, moving to inspect the door before pulling the bolt back and trying to peek into the room beyond.

[Miriam Bell]

The bolt slides free and the door creaks open. On the other side stone stairs lead down in a slight spiral. They're worn smooth, unlike the walls that are bare and riddled with faint gouges and streaks of reddish-brown. Dried blood.

"Maybe it didn't have to be, but how many mistakes is too many mistakes? Please don't make me go there. Not now. Not with you."

[Wanda Johansson]

"Mistakes become bigger problems when you don't acknowledge them," Wanda says. "This seems to be the way forward. I know you don't want to see it, but I don't know where else we can go." She starts down the stares, trying to pull Miriam with her.

[Miriam Bell]

"I am acknowledging it!" she insists, pulling back against Wanda as speared tips of a portcullis rise from the door's threshold and cut it off.

"That's why it's locked away." she adds, more softly. "Do not go down there. You'll be more lost than I am. Please."

[Wanda Johansson]

Wanda turns on her, "Then where do we go from here, hmm?" She gestures, "We need to find a way out of this so that we can get you somewhere safe."

[Miriam Bell]

"I am safe. This is safe. As long as I'm here I know where I am..."

[Wanda Johansson]

"And where exactly are you?" Wanda takes her hand away from Miriam and crosses her arms.

[Miriam Bell]

"The Chapel, with you. You banished the Cottage and I got lost again. You said you wanted me to be somewhere safe so I brought forth the Chapel. And the door to the Charnel slipped in along with it."

[Wanda Johansson]

Wanda processes that for a bit, "So we're in your head then?"