midnight texts.

[mllememe]

MIDNIGHT TEXTING MEME
It's the middle of the night and you're trying to catch some z's — or brooding alone in the alleys, as one does — when your phone dings and suddenly a stranger or a friend is texting you. What could they possibly want at this hour? Is it important? Stupid? Are they drunk or maybe just needy? Do they need help hiding a body??? Pick up your phone and find out!

instructions: What it says on the tin! Leave a comment with your character, include preferences, a start, absolutely nothing or whatever you want. Run around and reply to others. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Comments

Pela Cintri | Original

[skeine]

[ info. assumed CR, misfires and AUs all welcome! ]A

[victoryclaimed]

What does it take to make someone disappear?

[skeine]

In a party trick kind of way, or a "someone's going to report them missing to the authorities" kind of way?

[victoryclaimed]

In an "even death shall struggle to find them" way.

[skeine]

Well, sönna... it can certainly be done but that's not a light request. What happened?

[victoryclaimed]

The people who were supposed to protect me are no longer able to do so.

[skeine]

You don't think that's a bit of a steep price for failure?

[victoryclaimed]

They have failed before, and they will continue to fail. Because the failure is in their principles.

[skeine]

Then cut them loose and find new guardians. That doesn't mean they deserve to disappear with the vitriol you're suggesting.

[ Pela's not a mercenary, after all. And while she's not strictly opposed to Bad People occasionally disappearing when the situation calls for it and all other means of fair justice have failed, it's not a tactic she treats lightly. ]

[victoryclaimed]

[ A moment's delay while Bilis considers how to say: they impose their principles on the world, they have imposed their principles on me, too. Instead, she ends up asking, ]

What would make them deserving of that?

[skeine]

An inability to exist without doing harm, I suppose. But let me reframe the question: what would, however theoretically, absolve them of such a judgment as you're casting?

[victoryclaimed]

If they would go back and rebuild the city they left in shambles.
My home.

But you must understand, they never go back, only forward.

[skeine]

[ It's text, but Pela's tone is gentle nonetheless. ]

If I should make them disappear, it cannot undo what was done to your home. Pardon my presumptiveness in saying so, sönna, but I'm not a tool for someone else's vengeance.

[victoryclaimed]

We are all tools for something.
For what purpose do you work, if not this?

[skeine]

[ Some days it is indeed hard to argue that sentiment, even if Pela yearns to be completely severed from the obligations that entangle her. Still, her answer is simple. ]

To help those who cannot help themselves.

[victoryclaimed]

[ Bilis feels dwarfed by that sentiment; it is such a pure notion. She wants to ask, isn't that everyone? Who can truly help themselves among us? The words won't come, to her who masters nothing but words. ]

At what cost?

[skeine]

The cost of knowing that the day will inevitably come when I'll make a choice to say no when I should have said yes, or yes when I should have said no. And that someone will be worse off for my choice, and there's nothing I can do about it.

Weft, you've got me maudlin. How about I buy you a drink or five, and we drown out these thoughts of ours?

[victoryclaimed]

The cost of living, you mean.

My travel companions will inevitably ride on and this time, I will inevitably not follow.
Something else must stand in their stead. If that be drinks, I won't refuse them.

[skeine]

Only for some. Too many don't think about those kind of consequences.

[ Like, she imagines, the way that Bilis talks about those companions of hers, if such a term can even be ascribed to them. But Pela doesn't want to push her thoughts down that road any further than they were when this conversation started with such a request. ]

Drinks, then! And I'll tell you the story of the time I tripped over a frumhöggr in the middle of swamp and three shanks dizzy, and woke up the next day in a grain mill with a pair of lambs. Now tell me that's not a story you'll be able to spin into a worthy bardic tale!

[victoryclaimed]

There is poetry to you. Nothing you do would be difficult to put into song.
Grain mills, lambs and everything.

[ If she is smiling, she hides it well, but her tone - even in text - might betray it. It's not as if she is keeping her amusement away from the other woman. ]

[skeine]

The kindest thing said about me this decade!

Now the lambs, you see, I thought they would have belonged to the mill. Imagine my surprise when the grain-master there said it was not so...

[ She'll spin the story for as long as Bilis seems content to listen. Pela doesn't shy away from making it as outlandish as possible, using herself as the funny fool of the story, no matter how it makes her look. The drinks will certainly help that as well.

To help others who cannot help themselves does not only apply to magic, and wards, and tangible protections. Sometimes it is a smile, and a laugh, and a decision to call for one more round from the barkeep without prompting just because the night shouldn't end too early. ]