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[pyraxis]

All right, I'll start.

My name is Daria-toren. I was born on Karn. Last week a robot named Jim Nightmare ( yonjuunana ) hosted a pizza party in the dreaming. For a short while a space carved out of the formless ether became host to a small group of jiko from all corners of existence.

They posted in a fury. A journal which normally landed only a handful of comments suddenly broke a hundred. I met the handmaiden of an exiled princess and a psychologist committed to the study of raw creation (rosencrantz ). I summoned a copse of trees, and a man from a thousand years in the future saw one for the first time. I traded notes on death and fear with a necromancer from the Sundered Kingdoms (galen_6thnecro ).

The wave of connection passed, and I was sad to see them go.

So this is a space to meet again. I call jiko, spirits, soulbonds, characters who've seized a life of their own, from all across the multiverse. If you are invisible, if you are lonely or bored, if you have spent your whole existence talking only to the one or two people who acknowledge your presence, come meet us here.

Any language, words or pictures or sounds or however you communicate, is fair game. What we cannot understand, we will learn.

Come join me in this place where it's all real.

Comments

[pyraxis]

I don't have family. That's the toren curse. Got kicked out of Thumar, made my own way. That's what I told you about, the shapefinding ritual.

Which means I should tell the rest of the cursed thing. You know we're shapeshifters on Karn. But you're not born with a shape, you come into it when you hit adult. Fourteen. So yeh, they put me through the tests. Shot fire, the griff dove me, fricking tiroth got his hands round my neck, nethik near-speared me. I'm not supposed to say any of that - it's one big damned secret of the priests. They say they're going to kill you and you're not supposed to know it's not true. They're just scaring you so you'll change.

But for me it was true, cause I couldn't change. So I ran like hell, and they grabbed their torches and came after, and I crossed into the forest where they were too scared to go. Never saw the bastards again.

*shrugs sharply, pries a bit of bark off the tree stump*

I think I'd like this girl Maggie.

On Karn you get raised by a lot of people too. It's just this place Dirt where you only get two parents. Kids are raised by the whole village, and when they're tiny, it's the mothers in the childhouse that suckle them. The fetus transfer stuff, you better ask Gy. I only know it happens.

I live in Teiranen with the other toren, when I'm not running 'round places like this. Got a cave behind the waterfall.

You sound smart enough to me. How smart do you have to be to go to this place your sister's going?

[yonjuunana.livejournal.com]

Oh man. That... that shapefinding thing sounds intense. What a messed-up system. Isn't there any other way for people to get their shape? I mean... if you really think you're gonna die... people don't always get through that kind of shit okay. PTSD and all that. I've seen it happen.

I know I'd be pretty pissed if someone tried to kill me then was like "Oh, hey, just kidding! Congratulations, you're a lizard" or whatever. Isn't there, like, at least a pretty high rate of priests getting strangled after doing this?

College? I dunno. You have to be smarter than me. People keep telling me I'm smart, but if I'm so smart, why do I keep nearly failing out of school?

[pyraxis]

I think the point is to give you PTSD. As Earth people define it, anyway. It takes death-fear to break you through into the first change. There's no getting around that. At least that I know of. If there was no shapefinding, people wouldn't learn to change.

And then they'd go mad. We have stories about that. People who stay too long in nok - that's human - form. They go as mad as people who stay too long in shape. A long time ago, there was no shapefinding, and people's first shift came when they got attacked by worms or sarkotu or whatever. There was no one to guide the change and bring them back, so sometimes they'd run wild and never come back. And sometimes somebody never got hurt, and then they got too old and rigid to change, and when something finally happened, they couldn't defend themselves.

It's in our blood, the change. You have wild animals on Earth, don't you? Think how they move, how they startle, how they think. It's not PTSD. It's a way of life in a hostile environment. And Karn is hostile, and we don't have machines to tame it.

I don't think we'd be better off if we did. Look at what these people have done to Earth.

The priests, the Grehti, they're the ones that are messed up. Not cause of shapefinding. Cause they really kill the ones that fail.

School - that's like an apprenticeship, right? Maybe you're apprenticed to the wrong craft. They tried to make a weaver out of me, once. It didn't go well.

[yonjuunana.livejournal.com]

I... I guess that makes sense, then. For you guys. But not for us.

I've gotta disagree with what you're saying about Earth and machines, and not just because I am one, though I'm probably kinda biased. Sure, the planet's messed up, but it's not all bad. Nobody here is a shapeshifter. We get attacked by a tiger- that's our word for big scary cat- we don't change. It eats us. Unless we have technology to defend ourselves. So it's not like it really was a choice.

It's sorta worse when you're a robot. I'm not kidding when I say a 10-year-old could probably beat me up. We die easy, though it's really hard to kill us so we stay dead. Doesn't help that I've always been way small for my age. I get what you're saying about wild animals. Used to feel like that all the fucking time when I was a little kid. But it's... it's no good when you can't defend yourself. Just makes you crazy. Or you feel so helpless that you just give up. So... yeah. Bring on the machines.

Anyway... *smiles* Man, this is heavy stuff. I totally can't imagine you as a weaver! I wish school were like an apprenticeship, maybe I'd do good if it was something I actually liked. Science and art all day long, that I could handle! But no, they send all the kids to a place where you have to sit quietly and learn about all kinds of boring stuff. I can barely sit still. Half the time I can't even keep track of what's going on. It's pretty bad.

[pyraxis]

Oh. Um - I didn't think. You are a machine.

Yeh. It's not good if you can't defend yourself. I could tell you about Celesty sometime. But that's even darker than - what I was talking about.

How come your body's so weak? It looks like it's made of hard metal. Could you forge armor?

I don't like machines - some kinds of machines - cause they mean progress, and I know what too much progress too fast could do to my world. We're strong against sarkotu and the like. But - we'd be - as defenseless as you as a kid, to Earth machines. We'd be - caged, and tamed, and made mad.

I guess the machines are like your shape. But I don't get, if machines could kill a - tiger - for you, why couldn't they make you strong?

...

I used to run away from weaving, *smile* but I bet you can't run away from school. They should let you up to run around every little while, I bet then you could bleed all the energy out and be able to think straight.

[yonjuunana.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not saying you'd be better off with machines. I think we both have worlds that are good for us but bad for the other. :) I like it here in the dreaming, how we can meet and hang out without screwing things up for anyone.

Why I'm so weak? Well... Yeah, machines can be really strong, but androids have to be weak. It's... Ah, it's complicated. *paces back and forth as he talks* Okay. So, I can't feel pain. Sounds good, right? No. If a human gets born who can't feel pain, they never learn how not to hurt themselves, and they die young. Same for us. Nobody has figured out how to make robots feel pain right, so instead they made us weaker so we're not a danger to ourselves. Or... not weak exactly, let me see if I can use these words right- our isgeni's decent but our sora is really bad? *frowns* Plus it's cheaper. And I think people would be scared of us if we were stronger than them.

And yeah, metal is strong, but I'm also made of a bunch of really complicated little fiddly bits. It's easy for something to go wrong. And if I get hurt, I don't heal on my own. Entropy is a bitch. Being made of metal isn't as cool as it sounds. *grins* It's not bad, though, I just need to be careful. It's gotta be less weird than being made out of meat!

Go ahead and talk about Celesty if you want. I'm kinda curious now. I just- I dunno, it's my own angsty shit that I don't want to dwell on. It's in the past, I'm better now, time to move on.

*Grins* Run around at school and bleed the energy out? Oh man, I wish! See, I've got this wonderful combination of ADHD, being unable to get physically tired, and only needing about 4 hours of sleep every night. I'm kinda stuck like this. Well, unless I'm running low on batteries, then I'm tired but it doesn't help with the thinking straight.

Now you see why I'm so desperate to get out to places like this and talk to people? I need interesting stuff to do. Otherwise I'll just be driving myself nuts and climbing the walls all day.

I do wish I could have breaks to play my guitar at school. That might help. Music always lets me slow down and chill out for a bit.

[pyraxis]

Yeh. Entropy is a bitch. Entropy is my biggest enemy.

*sits on the stump with her arms around her knees, looking into the distance (which is suddenly sporting the silhouettes of woods and tufted grass, as if through mist) and thinking hard*

So if I touched you, you couldn't feel it? How do you know how to move? You don't move awkwardly.

What if someone broke one of your fiddly bits? Could you tell?

You should tell Gy or Fiona to take you to Dekan. It's not like Karn. The people don't have shapes. But they're used to people from other worlds. There's a place there would love to hear your music. You ever play for an audience?

I know what you mean about not dwelling. I used to be like that 'bout Thumar. Used to run off into the forest and tell nobody about anything. But I have to live. I want to tell the truth about how things are.

And Celesty - *jumps up, matches Jim's pacing* - she's one of the two I told you about that disappeared. Second night I was out in the forest after Thumar. Heard screaming, and the speritu had found them, her and her brother Bryn. She's curled up under a tree, and they're going for her, savoring it, and Bryn can't do nothing to stop them 'cause he didn't know how to change yet. I showed him and we killed them, and we got her back to the fire, but she's -

She never did learn to fight them. The speritu, I mean. She'd just curl up and scream and cry, and Bryn and I would lead them off her, but it wasn't enough. She got so she wouldn't cry, she'd just lie there, Bryn or I could be fighting two paces away and she'd fricking sleep through it. And she still kept the camp so we could rest. But she faded out, her spirit faded out and then one day she was just gone.

And then years later, I'm helping this guy Song, on another world, and I see a woman that feels like her. But she's twice my age, somehow she lived a whole life while I was running around the dreaming, and she's got the dead-mind. Slave mind. I snap at her to do something, like I used to, and she just does it, no question, no complaint, doesn't even take her eyes off the ground.

I wanted to show her the way back to Teiranen, but she's gone someplace I can't touch. *not looking at anyone now, just pacing, viciously, face shadowed.* I can pull a fucking sperith out of their nihil, out of entropy. But I can't do shit for Celesty.

You used the words fine. Sora is right, you say someone is sora, or someone's found sora. Isgeni's a verb though, you tell someone isgeni. I just use it like that, there are rsakk conjugations, but they're confusing. Too many words.

[yonjuunana.livejournal.com]

No, I can feel stuff. Some stuff, anyway. I can usually tell if something's touching me, just can't feel pain or temperature. Humans always seem to have a kind of hard time wrapping their heads around what that's like. My friend Kelly used to always poke me with weird stuff to see how I'd react. That is, until I decided I was pretty curious about how humans feel temperature as well, and put an ice cube down the back of her shirt. Then we called a truce. :D

I can sometimes tell if I'm broken. Something just feels a bit off, or I stop being able to feel or move a body part. *scowls* Or I'm just minding my business then the next thing I know I'm waking up on the workshop table not knowing what the fuck just happened to me.

What you said about moving awkwardly, though- That's actually a problem for a lot of androids. Er, not me. But I guess it's just hard to get us to feel where our bodies are right. My brother and sister both move weird. It doesn't look weird to me since I grew up with them, but I guess it creeps a lot of people out. Kind of frustrating for them.

Oh man. That's... that's rough about Celesty. *thinks for a minute* I... I think sometimes you just have to wait for people to help themselves. After my brother got hurt, he spent years just sitting around and watching TV. Stopped wanting to go to college, even though he's so smart. We couldn't do a thing about it. But he's getting better now. I always knew he would. *smiles, then shrugs* I know people gave me all kinds of good advice when I was a kid, and it didn't do shit because I wasn't ready to listen. Not their fault. Don't give up on your friend, maybe someday she'll snap out of it. I hope so.

So sperith have something to do with entropy?

What's Dekan like? If you think it's safe for me to go there, I'll go. Would you come along? *summons his acoustic guitar* I've... I've only played for really small audiences before. Friends and stuff. I guess I could see how I'm feeling, maybe give it a shot. Man, I'd love to get a chance to see instruments from other worlds!