2023-07-22: ...rusalka makes no sense of mE
- Log: ...rusalka makes no sense of mE
- Cast: Yuliana Kafim, Alma Stirner
- Where: The Silent Castle, Kaffeklubben Island
- Date: 2023-07-22
- Summary: Yuliana wakes from her communion without Elisa beside her -- and the help Sokrova brings her is Alma, instead. Yuliana speaks of her visions and Her desires, and tells Alma the meaning of love. She corrects a thoughtless comment... but did she really help at all? How Alma can help at all, of course, is a question still plaguing her after she brings Yuliana to her wife. Yuliana's direction is confusing and confused, and Alma can't see the way out, any more. (CW: Eldritch horror, abuse, brainwashing)
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDfTc0nl4v0 Lamb - 'Til The Clouds Clear
One takes tea in the tea-room, of course; and sometimes that tea is calming tea, when one's nerves are frayed, and one needs to hug a tiger to calm down. Wen was chatting relatively amicably with Yuliana, even given her condition, but on seeing her flop into Sokrova's fluffy fur and doze off...
Well, she snuck out, obviously. She's not some weirdo who keeps pencils in her snail-box or watches Yuliana while she sleeps.
It's a shame, really. Yuliana doesn't nap frequently. Or, well -- she naps quite frequently, at times, but only when she's slumped into Elisa. The problem is that even her normal slumber has been particularly restless, lately, too many memories and too much pain, and it's a problem... that tends to... compound.
Until those memories of tireless drilling melt away.
And the garden grows from bodies,
in the red dirt,
in the black ground,
and stasis is blue.
Green's more their colour. It's all inside, where the inside's woven through. Braid it into steel-strong cables, and plug them into your heart. Watch! They fall away.
And away and away and away, draining slow as an hourglass, drip... drip... drip.
The shell is a chassis, and the soul's left behind.
Y oni llia:.
"Beside me," through her lips and her lips, along two planes of her face.
Always, eternal, leaking through those winnowed cracks...
When Yuliana wakes, she jerks, openly. She grasps for a nightgown and clutches only fur, another layer of confusion over her mosaic-mind. "Ghhh--" She gasps, as if drowning, "the cicada's crying out! Every colour to black! Elya?! Elya!" She's the one crying, as Sokrova whuffs and grumbles, nosing at the side of her head.
"H--help," she chokes out, fumbling at Sokrova, half-patting him and half-shoving him. "Help, get help, hhh--help..."
Sokrova rumbles, and tries his best to extract himself from one of their broad, tiger-sized couches without sending Yuliana tumbling to the ground. He understands her request, of course; their little treasure has not been gifted with many unworldly powers, all the better to retain his friendliness as a housepet, but that docility and comprehension is so given. And he is, as with any of the green men here, occupied with Yuliana's safety.
So it happens that the very first person he comes across is going to get tiger-escorted to the tea-room, with incessant headbutting and tiger-grumbling.
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
Alma, for her part, has gotten steadily more agitated over the last couple weeks. She sees virtually no way out of her situation, at this point, save to run straight out with the Spinatia with which she's been furnished and lash out at the world until she has Lilith's attention and the problem can be addressed, but she doesn't really feel like she can do that, either.
It's meant a lot of walking through the Silent Castle aimlessly, trying to vent energy that has no place to go. This makes her very readily findable by Sokrova, of course, because she's right out there in the hall.
She, too, is preoccupied with Yuliana's safety, of course -- which means when she walks in and sees an ostensibly dubiously-conscious Yuliana, she's instantly worried. Thoughts of her own situation fall apart in short order.
"Yulie?" she calls, tentative at first. She doesn't want to intervene that aggressively just yet -- in large part because she doesn't really have the sense of what she's dealing with.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Sokrova finds Alma and immediately starts herding her to the room, because, well -- she's the first human he found. She has a human throat and human hands and she can take care of this situation better than he can. His cute little pawsies are great at killing a man, but that's not really an applicable skillset in this situation.
(Indeed, it couldn't be.)
"Nnnh..." Yuliana grasps at the side of her head, all half-slumped over the couch. She hears a voice, and reaches for it, fumbling. "Don't leave me!" She cries, louder than her grumbling. "Don't leave me alone! She comes, ever She comes! All I am is repossessed! Rearranged! Oh, love me no more, I'll go mad! Have I caused You worry?! Please, I'm trying...!"
And when her fingers find Alma's cloth she drags her in, with a strength she's not minding or perhaps cannot, strange green gaze wide and piercing. "Transient!" She screams, looking through her. "All trespass is transient! Claim the earth and harvest! No drop of blood remand to me! It's cicada skin!" She speaks without listening and grasps without feeling and she is surely mad, mad, mad.
When they lived in Yuliana's apartment Alma may have overheard phone calls, in the middle of the night, as Yuliana called her wife half-blind with panic -- sometimes coherent, sometimes not, if she was impolite enough to listen in. But something like this... well, she's never slept on Alma, after all.
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
Alma proves easy to herd. She was made to be that way, after all.
Alma continues to approach cautiously, getting closer as Yuliana begins to fumble and start to shout, to cry. Her approach rapidly becomes less cautious --
-- and immediately, her dress is seized and she's pulled in close. She tumbles into, roughly, Sokrova's previous position (though not quite, obviously). Yuliana continues -- screaming, now -- and Alma gropes for words, finding them impossible to seize. She'd known something of Yuliana's difficult nights in the apartment they shared, but by the same token she'd never been allowed into Yuliana's bedroom essentially at all. She never saw this this closely. Here, though --
"Yulie," Alma starts, again, but all she finds she can do is shift uneasily. Yuliana has curtailed so many of the ways she could conceive of caring for her -- which leaves her mostly to just sit there. She does try a slightly louder, "Yulie, wake up," but...
... all she can really think to do is call Elisa or at least send a message, but she's left her phone in her room.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"Oh!" Yuliana gasps, and there's a wound behind her eyes, all carved in. Tears spring to her eyes, and she asks: "I'm awake, aren't I? Aren't I? Don't I still wake? Do I not wake? Will I wake? Will I one day not wake?"
She collapses into Alma, clutching at her as if she were a liferaft, with a hitch of a sob into her shoulder. "Alma, it hurts," she says, and says her name, because there is one she first calls her, inside herself. "It hurts so much... it hurts so much..." She is a demanding woman; She demands. Always working, always working at her, feverously trying to solve a puzzle Yuliana can't fathom.
All she knows is she is made the puzzle, all her pieces out of place.
"Please," she says, as if Alma could give her anything.
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
The barrage of questions catches Alma off guard -- it takes the usually-a-little-scatterbrained pilot a second to sort through them, as they wind into each other. "You're awake, Yulie. You still wake. You do wake. You will wake." The last question... brings her pause, and the longer she's known Yulie, the harder it's gotten to know, conclusively, the answer to that question.
"I don't know," she murmurs, getting herself into position to be easier to clutch. "Yulie..." she says, again, quietly. "I wish it didn't." She's asked, 'Please,' and sure enough -- Alma can only give Yuliana nothing after nothing.
Sitting there and letting herself be held as an anchor to a world that constantly hurts Yuliana, Alma asks, after several moments, "What can I do for you, Yulie?" Everything else she's done has been wrong, so... maybe it's best if she just lets herself be what Yuliana needs.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
She wakes. She still wakes. She does wake. She will wake. She... "would be blessed, if ever I didn't, left eternal to walk perfection's realm," as if the sentence never started, as if the subject's not the same.
Why, then, does she curl herself around Alma, clutching to her so tightly?
Yuliana tries to think of what she needs and finds herself overwhelmed by the crushing demand of it all, what must be done, what is done and what was. She needs -- she needs -- "Don't go," she whines, instead, pitifully, because if Alma fetches Elisa she will be alone, alone, alone.
(She does not see that Sokrova has left. Every witch needs a cat...)
"It wasn't always like this," Yuliana whispers, all ragged from her lips, all buried against Alma. "It wasn't when I slept. I saw Her -- Her glory -- in the quiet, in the tanks, when I could scream no more. But the nightmares, they were normal. Needles and sensors and demands. Now -- now the demands fade to Hers, whenever I sleep, whenever I sleep... it wasn't like this a few years ago, was it? Just a few years ago..." It wasn't when she met Elisa, of course, not that Yuliana would ever be suspicious of her own wife. No -- she'd known Elisa for months, before her dreams began opening up to her.
She can't remember what started it.
Rather, she never figured it out.
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
The oracle-like sentences catch Alma off-guard for a second... but there's a momentary flash of recognition in those faraway green eyes. "... for now, though," she murmurs, and whatever momentary insight she'd had fades. It's always been hard for her to grasp such things without her intuition.
'Don't go,' Yuliana says, so Alma then stays, curled around. She glances back toward Sokrova -- or rather, the void where Sokrova once was, then ultimately returns her eyes to Yuliana all the more.
Alma has not been with Yuliana from the start; she cannot provide any greater insight than Yuliana herself has, about the change in her nightmares. She will do all she can for Yuliana, of course, so what she does is --
"My situation's changed from a few years ago, too," she offers, gently. "I think it's normal for things to change... I wish they'd change for the better for you, Yulie." The demands fade to 'Hers,' though -- that's something Alma... can at least remember, for Yulie's sake.
"I guess they have, in some ways! You're with Elisa now, aren't you? It's really great to find someone who'll hold every part of you close..."
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
For now, for now, for now. "Always is this world for now, comma to sentence!" And what Yuliana Sees --
Her insight was never for this world. She is greater, still.
A shudder runs through her whole body, as Alma wishes things would change for the better, as physically she struggles between reality and the horror which waits her. No! No, it is better; Elisa would weep.
Alma invokes her, just the same, and Yuliana hums through her lips. "Where?" She demands, as she lifts her head and finds her own demands, orients on what's important. "Where is she?! Boyevaya podruga, no sense made of me!"
But she clutches Alma, and she insists, again: "Don't. Don't go. Don't..." Her head hangs; her eyes squeeze shut. "She should be here. Elya's always protected me... before I shatter, she calls me back. She makes it make sense... why don't I make sense? It's not like this... I know it, I can't know it... I've gone mad, I think. This is the truth that burns. But I'm the only one who can breathe it..."
She is still so vague, looking past Alma, as she says: "Inhale. Exhale. Open wide the jaws and bite. In your belly lies the world. Lo, we feed the birth of paradise."
Yuliana shakes her head, vigorously.
"Why -- why do you break the world so?!" She demands, instead, as she tries to drag herself to the here and now. She looks at Alma -- no, to the left of Alma. "You've always been all empty spaces...! So much which should and cannot be! Can't you see yourself? Can't you see it's all around you?" Can't Yuliana see herself? Can't she see...
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
That shudder instantly puts Alma on her guard. It'd be easy to mistake her as strictly helpless in front of Yuliana at all times -- no, she's certainly permitted to defend herself, as long as it's in Yuliana's best interests as well.
(Sometimes, admittedly, she wonders.)
"I mean -- um --" She knows she's said the wrong thing, and after a moment, can even figure out why. This half-awake Yuliana needs... something different. For now, she begins by doing as she asks -- by not going. "I can get her," she volunteers, at first. She does not comment on whether or not Yuliana has gone mad; there is no insight Alma can offer her, in this way.
It's the last comment that catches her attention, though -- gets her to think about what Yuliana's saying. "... Empty?" she asks, brow furrowing a little. "I only feel that kind of emptiness when..." Wait, hang on --
Alma ends up deep in thought, but there's nothing she can do to find her way to this, in this moment. Whatever she was trying to say dies on her lips.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Yuliana is a capricious woman, and her madness frequently violent; it's entirely reasonable to worry, feeling her tremble so. But Yuliana has been... more restrained, since the start of '97, as if trying to keep Alma from coming to harm.
Is that why she's kept safe, now?
It would be nice to think so.
"Do this," is what Yuliana says, first, when Alma volunteers so kindly, only for her hand to grasp her arm anew: "-- don't go!" These two commands, in direct conflict with each other...
Rather than interrogate what it must be like, Yuliana thinks on what Alma asks, instead. "When you are around me," she says, and the frills about her ears lift with the statement, a reactive spreading of her existence. "But it's you who's carved away! All of you, there's nothing there. What should be is nothing there. Those jagged edges... oh," Yuliana sighs, gaze unfocused to the side of Alma, "She watches me, still."
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
The requests contradict. Alma feels every muscle in her body tense up -- it's a different feeling from that nauseating, crampy experience she used to have around Yuliana. No, rather, it's more paralytic than that. "I -- eventually -- I'll get her when you're ready to let me go," she forces out, having to say it through gritted teeth. Now that she's committed to both requests, she feels herself relax...
... somewhat. There's still an irrepressible urge to do something, a feeling that she needs to move now in spite of what she's just said -- but she remains as she is, instead.
She nods, quietly, at the end of her own sentence delivered to her so. "... who is 'She'?" A moment passes. "Those eyes, in the..." She pauses, trying to articulate the way she saw that miracle. "... Her?"
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"All right," Yuliana seems satisfied enough with that conclusion, at least, for whatever bitter salve it is.
Alma is insufficient, but --
it's so cold.
(The fireplace is still crackling.)
Alma asks that question, though, and Yuliana sinks her head to her shoulder again, all the better not to see it. She still can, of course; she doesn't need her eyes, for this. Who... WHO?, the question echoes, in her mind. Who is that, in the darkness, with Her eyes and Her eyes and Her...
"I -- I don't know," Yuliana says, and she sounds so small, as she says it. "I know that She loves me. I know She has claimed me. I know She is unlike anything in this world... though I still know Her heart. Perhaps She is God, or alien, or some being greater than we could possibly comprehend." Her voice strengthens with her conviction, at least, as she speaks. "Our bond is the most sacred thing in existence. I am blessed to know Her, to glimpse Her desires, though I am yet unable to comprehend Her works entire."
Yuliana's fingers curl, into Alma's cloth, as her eyes open and lid and glance aside. There is something a shade complex, to her fervency, though she deeply believes.
"She is the Empress at the End of All Things, and She cannot be denied."
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
This is the closest Alma's gotten to actually asking questions instead of letting herself be whatever was needed of her. She's hesitant -- it's never felt like it was her place to explore this knowledge, always felt like it was some other world of Yuliana's that she simply could not understand. But...
The more Yuliana talks about this, about Her... well -- the more uneasy she becomes. Her loyalty, after all, is to Yuliana and Elisa, not -- that she knows -- to...
... She thinks back harder. To that miracle. To those eyes. It turns her stomach. But...
"... Is that what love is?" she asks, quiet. "No -- no, of course it is," she says, cutting herself off, looking down. "I wouldn't know what love meant, anyway. Lilith didn't..." She trails off, unable to bring herself to quite say that, either.
"I'm sorry you're in such pain," she says, weakly, reaching for Yuliana's hand... then thinking not to, instead shifting position and gently squeezing her shoulder.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
Is that...
"Of course it is," Yuliana agrees, echoes, as Alma corrects herself.
She glimpses Alma's fingertips, and how they fail to bridge the gap. It's right, of course, and good. Her fingers are made for Elisa's, and no other...
"This world tempts me, torments me, tears me to bits," is how Yuliana apportions the blame, shivering. "When I am opened, there will be no more pain. The truth will not burn, then, when it comes to this world. It will be beautiful," she insists, and desperately.
"Love... love is never letting go," she says, eyes closing again. "It is attention and care and concern and there are demands, of course there are demands -- but it is only natural, when your existence affects another's so keenly. Sometimes it may hurt, but love never means to hurt you for the sole sake of your pain," and Yuliana's chest lifts, and falls, in a jagged breath. "She does not -- change me out of some base torture, some desire to hear me scream. No, She is... searching for something, digging through my flesh. She is anxious. Even -- e-even when Elya..." but her voice trembles, and Yuliana swallows down what she was going to say. Instead: "I mean -- I didn't mean to hurt my darling, back then. And... and of course, she was not trying to hurt me, when she was upset at that pain," and this is a safer way to say it, perhaps.
It wasn't Elisa's fault.
(It was Rita's fault.)
And what does it say about Alma, that Yuliana delighted in hurting her, solely to bring her pain...?
Perhaps it's better not to think about it.
Particularly as Yuliana frowns, and comes to: "... Lilith... she's a wretched woman." And why is that important, she wonders? Why does it stick in her mind-- ah. Ah, yes.
Her little chat with Eight, about sending people to their own suicide. Unfortunately, it did remind her of a thoughtless comment she made, once.
Without any care for how the contradictory orders hurt, she insists: "You mustn't let her bring you to harm, Rusalka."
Yes. This is better. This won't bring embarrassment to her wife. Elisa will be happy, now.
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
Yuliana insists that it will be beautiful when she is opened, and it must necessarily be so. Rusalka listens, as always, to Yuliana's idea of love -- and nods with her. "... I hope," Alma answers her, slowly, "that she's able to find what she's looking for, and that you're happy when she does."
That's... love, then. Why, then, does it make Alma feel so uneasy, to hear about this intractable pulling between her, and her, and Her? Alma tries to glean some understanding from this moment, but... she can't see what Yuliana sees. She wonders if it's even possible for anyone to.
"I -- yes, she is," Alma defers, though she's not sure what wretchedness even is, anymore. "Don't worry, Yulie... whatever happens, I'll make sure you're happy with how it goes." She has to settle things with her, still -- but she can't let her bring her to harm. Of course, even if they were to clash, she'd be so terribly likely to be harmed in the exchange...
... she'll -- think of something, she's sure. There has to be a way to satisfy Yuliana's every whim, or she wouldn't make such requests.
"... I'll stay with you until you ask me to go," she says, and she's not sure of the context in which she means it.
<Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed.
"I'm happy," Yuliana says, and she is, she is, and any complexity to it is surely just the depths of her joy, "I am so happy, loved so completely. Love saved me... hers, and Hers." And it is true; she would be dead, if not for the devotion of those closest to her. And though she cannot see Elisa's heart, she can see Hers, and she knows She does not desire her suffering.
Perhaps there's just no other way Yuliana could understand Her affection and attention, human as she still is.
If only she were less. She is so much more than human, after all. It's all evidenced in the tentacles, latched about Alma, too.
Yuliana smiles -- tries to smile; it is wan, but it's an effort. (A small, small effort.) "You're a good girl, Rusalka," she praises her. "I'm so glad you care about my happiness. So few people do, in this world... I can't trust anyone out there. So of course, you won't tell anyone about these private things, will you? Matters of the home aren't to be discussed on the street. It's just not... proper." Yuliana pauses, with a light frown, and adds: "Even if you said something, they'd only misunderstand you. It's not worth the risk at all..."
Is she telling Alma, or telling herself?
But it must be fine, she tells herself, to tell Alma; Elisa's prepared her for her, after all. Alma, singular amongst those violators, is safe. She has been made safe. It's fine, isn't it? ... isn't it?
The anxiety gnaws a pit in her stomach, and finally Yuliana finds the solution she's blinded Alma to. "... help me up," she asks, insists, as she straightens up and grasps Alma's arm. "You'll bring me to Elya, now. Yes... yes, that's the solution. I must go to her..."
Luckily, thanks to Sokrova's efforts getting Elisa's attention, they shouldn't have to walk too far. The witch's cat will have done his very best to get Yuliana proper help, after all, even if he had to walk right up to the Northern Tower to do it.
And as soon as Yuliana's in Elisa's arms, well...
... she doesn't need Alma, any more, does she?
<Pose Tracker> Alma Stirner has posed.
If Yuliana says she's happy, it must be so. Rusalka offers her no more than that, and no less.
When she's told not to discuss this with anyone, she nods. "Of course not, Yulie... this is your Castle. I wouldn't bring anything out of it that you didn't want brought out..." And that, it seems, is that in the matter.
Moving dutifully to help Yuliana up, Alma extends an arm to Yuliana, allowing herself to be grasped. "Of course. Don't worry -- you're safe with me," she says, an unconscious affirmation that comes so, so easily.
She doesn't need to concern herself with being discarded. After all, she can give herself to what's best for Yuliana -- and that is, of course, returning her to the love she's chosen.
... Which leaves her with her thoughts. How to satisfy Yuliana -- to give the woman who has taken such a firm hold on her life what she's searching for?