[Give her a minute to wrap her arms tightly around herself, tail lashing wildly as her pulse slows back to normal, stubbornly refusing to think about whatever that was before.
After a couple minutes of just breathing, she scents the air carefully, and then wanders towards where the kitchen is (she thinks?) –– after a brief detour where she steps in a stream, jumps with a startled squeak, and then rounds on it to hiss so it knows who is boss and not to mess with her if it knows what's good for it.]
Jail for streams. Jail for one thousand years! As you jump back from it, though, one of the tall lotuses brushes against you, and you feel something: just briefly, like the touch itself is brief, there's a feeling of being strange and powerful, and in ways you can't always control—
So, how about that kitchen! ... There's no one here.
—But wherever they've gotten off to can't be far, if the state of things is any indication: there's a whole row of spices out on the counter, some already in a mixing bowl, plus a pot of rice on the stove.
From the look and smell of the spice selection, curry is on the menu. Next to the ingredients is a handwritten recipe in what you might recognize as a combination of Silk's and Lumen's handwriting.
[The only problem is she has no idea what curry is. She sniffs at the ingredients, wrinkling her nose at the strong scent of the spices, and touches absolutely nothing because 'does she even know how to boil water' is a legitimate question.
Glancing over the kitchen -- any other exits? Anything here other than food?]
It's what someone else might recognize as traditional Japanese-style curry: potatoes, meat, carrots—that sort of thing.
More wild roses are growing here; in fact, a few seem to have wound their way almost to the counter, the flower heads peeking over like a child on tiptoes.
But besides that, nothing much is here, and the only exit is back into the main area of the dorm where you came from.
They're covered in needle-sharp thorns, which dig into your palms where you grab their stems. Of course, you've had so much worse than that by now, so perhaps it hardly matters.
So you start ripping at them. Each time you touch them, you feel that otherness, and that sensation refines into a kind of recognition: these are Wild Rose, Key of Something Different.
Caring about "difference" at all, though... that's the sort of thing you can only feel if your difference matters; if it is part of the story of you finding your place in the world.
[She doesn't care about the cuts to her hands, growing more frantic and violent the stronger the feeling grows.
And it turns out she does know how to boil water! Because the plants she rips up are going straight in a bot to be boiled like the little wretched assholes they are.]
And isn't that something precious? Realizing that having a place you belong is something you could want? Something you could have, if only you reached for it?
...But you tear at the roses, and shove them in the boiling water, where they are in fact boiled, though there's definitely way too much plant mass here to fit all in one pot.
Actually, now that you're paying such...uh... such close attention to the wild roses, something else about them might occur to you: while the stream with its lotuses had plants that looked like they'd been growing for years (never mind that that's longer than BAD END itself has existed), with lush leaves and a proliferation of pink-veined flowers on tall, gently swaying stems, but the same can't be said for these roses. For all the wildness of their growth, you can see places in the kitchen where they've scratched at the cabinets, and even knocked over a bag of flour, all of which must have been in some explosion of new growth.
But, satisfied she's scalded at least some of the nasty little things, she leaves them there (for some poor sucker to drink, I guess) and backtracks to the main room.]
Hey, those roses were an invasive species. Or something. They deserved it? Maybe???
You return to the main room, and it's still empty of people—though there are indeed all sorts of signs of how lived-in and perhaps even loved the space is. The scattered tsums could only belong to Sashay, for example, and there's a pile of books on one of the coffee tables.
Just beyond, there's the entrance to what looks like a long hallway of bedrooms.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END
After a couple minutes of just breathing, she scents the air carefully, and then wanders towards where the kitchen is (she thinks?) –– after a brief detour where she steps in a stream, jumps with a startled squeak, and then rounds on it to hiss so it knows who is boss and not to mess with her if it knows what's good for it.]
Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END
As you jump back from it, though, one of the tall lotuses brushes against you, and you feel something: just briefly, like the touch itself is brief, there's a feeling of being strange and powerful, and in ways you can't always control—
So, how about that kitchen! ... There's no one here.
—But wherever they've gotten off to can't be far, if the state of things is any indication: there's a whole row of spices out on the counter, some already in a mixing bowl, plus a pot of rice on the stove.
From the look and smell of the spice selection, curry is on the menu. Next to the ingredients is a handwritten recipe in what you might recognize as a combination of Silk's and Lumen's handwriting.
Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END
Glancing over the kitchen -- any other exits? Anything here other than food?]
Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END
More wild roses are growing here; in fact, a few seem to have wound their way almost to the counter, the flower heads peeking over like a child on tiptoes.
But besides that, nothing much is here, and the only exit is back into the main area of the dorm where you came from.
Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END
She crosses over to prod at one of the roses, curious.]
Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END
Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END
––wow, this place is rude, with all these feelings––
––and then she starts wildly tearing at the roses because fuck them, honestly.]
Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END
So you start ripping at them. Each time you touch them, you feel that otherness, and that sensation refines into a kind of recognition: these are Wild Rose, Key of Something Different.
Caring about "difference" at all, though... that's the sort of thing you can only feel if your difference matters; if it is part of the story of you finding your place in the world.
Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END
And it turns out she does know how to boil water! Because the plants she rips up are going straight in a bot to be boiled like the little wretched assholes they are.]
Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END
...But you tear at the roses, and shove them in the boiling water, where they are in fact boiled, though there's definitely way too much plant mass here to fit all in one pot.
Actually, now that you're paying such...uh... such close attention to the wild roses, something else about them might occur to you: while the stream with its lotuses had plants that looked like they'd been growing for years (never mind that that's longer than BAD END itself has existed), with lush leaves and a proliferation of pink-veined flowers on tall, gently swaying stems, but the same can't be said for these roses. For all the wildness of their growth, you can see places in the kitchen where they've scratched at the cabinets, and even knocked over a bag of flour, all of which must have been in some explosion of new growth.
Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END
But, satisfied she's scalded at least some of the nasty little things, she leaves them there (for some poor sucker to drink, I guess) and backtracks to the main room.]
Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END
You return to the main room, and it's still empty of people—though there are indeed all sorts of signs of how lived-in and perhaps even loved the space is. The scattered tsums could only belong to Sashay, for example, and there's a pile of books on one of the coffee tables.
Just beyond, there's the entrance to what looks like a long hallway of bedrooms.
Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END
That done, yes, the hallway.]
Re: CHANCEL BAD END=DEAD END
(It had felt a bit giddy to hold them, actually.)
You continue to the hallway, which has... uh, kind of a lot of bedrooms, in fact.