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*'''Log:''' .welcome to the Void, renA *'''Cast:''' [[Character :: Yuliana Kafim]], [[Character :: Rena Lancaster]] *'''Where:''' The Void, in slumber *'''Date:''' 2023-12-22 *'''Summary''': ''Rena finds a door in her dreams which leads to the Void -- and Yuliana and the Empress weren't expecting her. Yuliana manages to convince her Wife not to unmake their new sister, though, and she speaks to her instead -- about the graveyard of the Void, and her experiences therein. By the end, Yuliana can't manage to apologise to Rena... but she can help her escape a place she's never been able to escape. (Content warning: Eldritch/body horror, family violence)'' ---- [[Category:Logs]] [[Category:Phase 1, Turn 3]] <Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed. <poem> OST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MVCh02g27M Kalafina - Nux Walpurgis Before the world, there was nothing. Nothing pours from nothing until nothing more comes out, and from the wounds pour hands, vast and vaster still. They are green and they joint at their palms, and then they joint at their first knuckles, and then they joint at their second knuckles, and then they joint at their third knuckles, and then they joint at their fourth knuckles, and then they joint at their fifth knuckles. They must belong to something. No -- Someone. Her form is shrouded by the blackness of distance but there, eyes cut through the black, two and four and ten and eighty. She is vaster than the emptiness. She is this present location. They are holding something. No -- someone. Some of those claws are yet small enough to commit Her surgeries, as one of Her smaller hands engulfs a woman, dark skin scarred from a thousand battles. She splits her face at the jaw, splits her jaw; and from her face She crafts three faces. On one, a dozen eyes blink and stare; the two below it craft their own mouths from the halves left to them. These snapping jaws grin, like three flowers on stems. She is searching for the right perspective. And those jaws howl and cry, beneath Her ministrations, as She splits her chest open like an orchid in bloom. Her ribs spread wide, her beating heart exposed beneath, carved and shaped... ... into another set of hungry jaws. </poem> <Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed. <poem> Like most of Rena's dreams, she doesn't really remember the one she was in before her awareness suddenly increases. It melts away, her mind bridging the gaps -- the collection of people she knows, of situations and places familiar to her, but remixed together. And then she steps through a door... And it's dark, but that's not quite right. Nothingness is the absence of everything. The Void is, ulitimately, the absence of darkness. The door closes behind her, and light goes with it; then the gem at Rena's chest gleams, and she looks around with brown eyes. She isn't so much ''not'' where this vast creature is, as much as positioned where she cannot yet see her. Despite her being everywhere. But Rena has an increased awareness. A sense that this ''is'' a dream, which makes her more tentative. "Hello...?" she calls out into the nothing. She has the sense that something is here with her, and her back -- metaphorically -- is turned to the claws, the split jaws, and the orchid. </poem> <Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed. <poem> H e l l o . . . ? Rena speaks, and two and four and ten and eighty green eyes whirl about, in the darkness, to orient upon her. Some are slit catlike; some barred across, in the manner of a goat; some pupils waver, like the 'W' of some horrific sea-creature; some pupils are almost human, but for the way they contract to horrific pricks of black amidst their sea of green. She is not the only one who hears. "Ll:iaou...?" But it is not ''nonsense,'' that word which broaches the emptiness, shocked and pained. No, it ''makes sense.'' It is -- Any call and response they might venture is immediately cut short. TRESPASS The Empress's feelings -- Her ''feelings'' -- are massive in scope and in pressure, here. Not with Her twenty-hundred mouths does She speak, but Her heart ''thunders,'' as She recognises Rena's interruption. INTERLOPER And two hands far vaster than Rena reach for her, with wicked claws. One curls around her, in a crushing, all-encompassing grip, as She pulls her closer in towards Her. (Closer to Her wife, by extension.) Her intent is unkind, and it rattles the edges past eternity. </poem> HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE <poem> She will ''split'' this interloper to ribbons, and use her as a lattice to grow Her garden, Her children climbing high. Except, before Her claws can descend on the interloper's flesh -- "U-oyth!", "U-oyth!", those two jaws cry in unison, and just as she called 'hello' before -- she cries out 'Wait!', now, and Rena ''knows.'' Rena ''hears.'' She can understand the ''meaning'' of that black speech -- and though it remains twisted when that creature next opens her mouths, Rena ''knows'' what she says. "Empress, pray, stay Your hand," she speaks from one mouth, as her hands reach to grasp around one of Her great fingers. "We have never known trespass into our intimacy before. I want to know why! Please, allow me to speak with her..." MINE Her fingers only curl more ''tightly'' around the woman She's unmaking, and her twin jaws grit their teeth, as she strokes the side of Her vast finger with a palm. "Always am I Yours," she assures Her, "I could not forget. Please... release her. Let us speak." And with a thunderous feeling of ACCEPTANCE, Her vast hands lower to what isn't quite the ground. One gently lays Her sculpture down -- the other unceremoniously ''tossing'' Rena to the ground. Her arms fold, one over the other over the other over the other, creating a vast, inescapable arena. But where would they run? This world is Hers. </poem> <Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed. <poem> Eyes open in the darkness and Rena sucks a sharp breath in. No, she thinks; they don't open. They've always been here. Now, though, they're looking at her. They're all different, looking down at her, and there is a sense of ''presence''. This is not new, to a Newtype, and yet this is nothing like what a Newtype has experienced. She speaks and Rena realizes, to her terror, that she understands. Claws reach for her -- and Rena ducks back from her, but she cannot move back. The claws come around her, squeezing, and Rena's eyes bulge with pain and terror. "What--" She knows, then, who this is. The Empress; the other part of Elisa Kafim, the half of her that is goddess. She feels Her emotions; hate and outrage, that she is here. Rena can only just manage to listen to the voice that speaks, in that black speech, and realize she can understand. She thrashes, trying to breathe and suffocating. Until she is tossed. She hits the ground in a heap before the Empress, hyperventilating, sweat running down her brow. Or is it? Is it her mind filling in the gaps, still? Rena looks around, then -- carefully not at the Empress, but otherwise -- and for the person who called out. "Wh-who?" </poem> <Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed. <poem> The Empress sculpts with human flesh, and Her subject... She must have been human, once upon a time. But her face has been replaced with ''three'' faces, like that of an orchid in bloom, each lined with green-black frills; so, too, has her chest been split apart, ribs fanning out in full bloom to expose the jaws where her heart should be. Behind her, tendrils like snakes or jaws or flowers writhe, twisting in the black. One face possesses only eyes; two, only mouths, great and grinning jaws. And it is hard to hear a Zaftran accent which has taken a walking tour of the world, when the words are stretched and warped and pulled all inside-out -- though the ''scorn'' may be familiar. "Don't you recognise me?" "Have you already forgotten me?" Twelve eyes stare at her, and twelve eyes frown. "It's Yuliana," she says, with one set of jaws. Her hands lift, as if they could cover her exposed heart -- or what it has become. "You shouldn't be here," she says, with the other set. "This place is not for you." "Why would you come?", the first set asks, before the second is finished speaking. </poem> <Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed. <poem> It takes Rena a second to recognize Her subject. It takes Rena a moment to realize that her subject is not a ''part'' of her, not some amalgamation of beings or a human core to the Empress. It is, in the end, the way the chest is split -- the way that tendrils writhe -- that does it. Rena recognizes those as something that matches Yuliana in the waking world. Yuliana, who is looking at her with twelve eyes look at her, and so many jaws. She sucks a breath in, forcing herself to stand up. Knees shake, as she does, and she feels worn out already. "Yuliana," she says, softly. She raises a hand over her chest; it's underneath the gem at her collarbone. Deep sea blue and bright green swirl together in it, liquids weaving together and not quite touching. "I didn't forget. I don't know how I got here," she says. "I was dreaming and... I came here, and I was aware." But not awake. </poem> <Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed. <poem> "The veil is thinnest in slumber," "Without the distractions of this world, the world to come speaks clearest," "Through long dedication may She reach me," "But you have not bled!" Yuliana's jaws speak over each other, snapping in the air, and it is half an explanation and half an ''accusation.'' She frowns, and frowns, and frowns, and frowns. "You should not be here," she says, with one set of jaws, ending her own cacophony. "She will not suffer intrusions into our involvement. You should not ''see'' this." Things like plants grow, upon the black. They stretch up -- is 'up' the right direction? -- in hitches and halts, as if they move when Rena blinks, and not before. Their broad, green leaves are reflective mirrors, as the Children display just what Rena shouldn't see -- Countless visions of Yuliana's body, twisted to countless unfathomable shapes. As Yuliana asks and asks over herself: "This blessing, you ''want?''" "You too are yet imperfect," "But there would be no love in ''your'' craft." "I don't know how you have come," "But this is not a place for shapes like yourself." "I cannot protect you." </poem> <Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed. <poem> "I.. certainly feel like I bled. Or was about to," Rena says, with a groan. She puts a hand over her eye and grimaces, like she has a bad ocular migraine. Her eyes blink a couple of times, and then she looks up. She makes herself look at Yuliana. And she tries to not be afraid, to see her form here. It almost makes her want to flee in panic. But she forces herself to stand her ground. "I--" She stammers. "I don't know ''why'', Yuliana. After... after the North Pole, I've just--there's been a feeling of someone there. And there's--" She hesitates, as she sees the forest. She sees the plants that grow here in the void. Rena stares for a moment at them. Then she looks at Yuliana. "I don't want it," she says. "I just... came. I don't understand. But this is... Her place?" The Empress's; her wife's, but the other side of her wife. </poem> <Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed. <poem> She is afraid. It hurts her to be here. Yuliana feels disgust, as those teeth at her heart gnash, to realise she ''understands'' how Rena must be feeling right now. "You were." "The Empress was not pleased." "She wished to strip you to your component parts." "Build something of worth from the shreds." "It is not often She receives ''raw materials.''" "But I bid Her stay Her hand." "I do not know how long Her patience will last." She takes a breath -- and it's ''visible,'' the way her lungs fill and deflate, in such a way that she oughtn't be ''alive'' -- and lowers herself down, hand to what passes for the ground, to sit upon the abyss. At an angle, away from Rena. Legs folded beneath her, she curls her hands and her tentacles in her lap. "Something watching you, when no one is there? Staring out through the cracks in existence which follow you? No... I don't suppose you would see the truth of yourself that way. Still..." She sighs, running a hand along her frills. "It's as I Saw, back then. You are connected to the Void, now." She looks up and she looks up and she looks up, at the eyes staring above. "Welcome... sister," she says, and if she sounds a little weary -- a little reluctant -- surely it's just the strain on her chest. "... for here you have come." She looks back and looks back to Rena, and her eyes do not blink all at once. "You stand in the Void, and take audience with the Empress at the End of All Things. My wife," she confirms Rena's suspicions, spreading a hand. "All the old men are dead, and their graves long forgotten... no one dwells here, any more. Only desires, twisting through the realm, becoming. So She has crafted Her demesne from the bones, and so She now shapes me, searching for the configuration of my flesh to preserve my soul." </poem> <Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed. <poem> Rena tries -- and fails -- to repress a shudder to see Yuliana's lungs breathing in such a way. She never, truly, understood what had been done to her. Part of her still wonders if this is real; if it is not some dream world imagined by them. She stays quiet, for a moment. "I'm not trying to upset her," Rena admits, quietly, because angering a goddess in her domain is an unwise idea. Even if she doesn't have any love for that goddess. "When I struck that dragon," Rena says, her voice quiet. She looks at Yuliana -- it's an effort to decide which face, which set of eyes, ''and'' to not recoil. She tenses. "S-Sister?" she says. "I... what do you mean, sister? Because I'm also connected to the Void?" She looks towards the Empress, not so distant, and then she looks around the place that -- it seems -- is a graveyard. "I didn't stop being a Newtype, though." After all, that Psychoframe shard still gleams blue, too. She takes a deep breath. "It--it can't be safe for me to be here," she concludes. "It's... a graveyard? Or it was?" </poem> <Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed. <poem> "Good." "I won't forgive you if you upset my Wife." "I give Her enough grief," "Without you barging in here and ruining everything!" It seems like whenever Yuliana gets agitated, she starts speaking ''over'' herself. But then... she does that in the waking world, too. Yuliana is quiet when Rena stammers over their connection, and the gravity around herself may well be ''felt,'' that oppressive weight which settled across her bones. "I already told you," she snaps with one set of jaws, "it isn't safe. You shouldn't have come! And yet, here you are. Our cousins died long and long ago, their dwelling-place left empty and hollowed. They named themselves for flowers and fancy, and so the Empress tends Her garden, in memorium. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye..." She buries one of her faces in a hand, her eyes and her eyes closing. "Must I say it?" "You're a demanding woman." "If only you were not come!" "But destiny led us here." She argues with herself, briefly, before she takes another ragged breath. "... listen," she bids her, head turning away. "And you will feel Her. Here, where we come though we are not come, though the Void has not yet graced this world, visitors in heart and mind..." It tastes too bitter, in her throat, as those twisted words pour from her. "I didn't stop being a Newtype, either," Yuliana admits, all draped in heavy regret. "When those experiments woke me, my connection was turned from the world where hearts speak together. I forged a connection with this place... with Her. I knew the hearts of men for mere moments before they injected me with those cells... you have not been so changed, and have lived in base transgression for years." She looks to Rena, dour. "It will surely take time, then, for you to adapt to your new knowing. But your status as a Newtype does not preclude you from this place. No... perhaps only a Newtype would find a gate in dreams, this way... wretched, isn't it?" </poem> <Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed. <poem> It is unnerving on a few levels to hear Yuliana speak over herself in a more ''literal'' way. The way of speaking is familiar; the three mouths only adds to it. "Who were they?" she asks. "Our... cousins?" It seems like it could be important -- or maybe not. She wrinkles her nose and she quiets, though. Part of her rankles at that; she doesn't much ''like'' being the girl who quiets down when someone yells at her, trying to please them. It feels like sliding back into old, bad habits. But, here, it might be necessary. She does as Yuliana suggests. She doesn't close her eyes, but she focuses; her senses reach out, to see if she can feel the Empress. As she does, her eyes fall on Yuliana, and she listens more. Base transgression, she calls it. "...I suppose it makes sense, that a Newtype would be able to find the door. You were connected with this place more directly. I had to come through. Though--" She frowns. "I think, when I was dreaming, you were there. Maybe that pulled me towards you." </poem> <Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed. <poem> "I know only one name." "Cypripedioidea." "She came to Earth, and blessed Siti Dian with the power to unify her people." "My ancestor." "So is this place a house of unification." "Just as it is the house of change." "Evolution." "We grow together." Perhaps the worst part about heeding the Empress... ... is the fact that Her emotions are ''not,'' entirely, inhuman. Her hatred for Rena is comprehensible; so, too, her love for Yuliana. Her ''concern.'' (Oh, those feelings are VASTER; they are more terrible! But She was not always this way, expanding upon a realm. She did not always possess six and sixty eyes, staring from the black.) And Yuliana pales -- her flesh which can still react, in any case. "Yes," she says, with regret. "I am here, present moment, present situation." "Time has no meaning in this place," her other jaws explain, "but with effort, we may localise." "Yes. So it is from me that you have come. It is because of me you have come." She looks and looks and looks to Rena, frown over frown. Impossibly, she says: "I am sorry. I did not mean for this to happen. I did not wish for you to witness this." "To see me this way," her other jaws add, speaking the unspoken. </poem> <Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed. <poem> "Your... ancestor," Rena says. And a person -- a being? -- known as Cypripediodea, who came to Earth long ago. Her lips purse for a moment. "Did she? Was she able to unify her people, back then?" It takes a lot to make herself remain calm. But if she can get that, then--maybe she can look something about it up, when she escapes here. (Not if. When.) She does shudder again, to feel the Empress's emotions. Quite human, despite it all. The love and hate are something she can interpret nd understand. "...It's not your fault," Rena says, finally. "I didn't know where I was headed." Her voice is quiet. "Did... did she heal you? After the battle at the North Pole? When I last saw you, you were..." She can't quite keep the fear out of her voice. Did the Empress turn her into this? In the waking world and here? </poem> <Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed. <poem> "I believe so," Yuliana says, because she doesn't ''know'' the details. But it would be nice to think she could. And, when Rena escapes here... ... but what escape can there be, from Her waiting arms? Rena isn't the only one thinking of it. She shakes her head and her head and her head, hands grasping in front of her open chest. "It was not the Empress who restored me. It was Elisa... Elisa reversed Her changes to my flesh, to allow me to live in your world again. She is still... irate." She smiles, and she smiles, but the expression is thin. "You are afraid," she knows. "It is... kind of you. But when I wake, my dreams do not follow me. Not... permanently." Yuliana sighs, her frills all wilting down. "Not ''yet.'' More often, these days, I wake to paralysis, or blindness, or I seize in our bed... but these things pass. It is my mind which makes it real, I suppose. Generally... generally, the veil is too thick for Her to shape me, physically." Generally. ''Generally.'' "It is only in this place that I bear all Her anxieties... only when I sleep." Her smiles are tense. "I didn't always come here, on resting... I do not rest much, now. It's..." What she meant to say, she chokes back into herself, with a great heaving of her lungs. "It is beautiful," she says, under the Empress's gaze, "how thoroughly I am loved." </poem> <Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed. <poem> It isn't the first time that Rena realized the Empress -- not that she knew Her title until recently -- could affect the waking world. She had seen Emptear; she had seen the Void Dragons. Rena knew She could exert an influence on their world. But knowing and hearing how much she can, how strongly she can, is terrifying. And Yuliana is the one bearing the brunt of it, and in a way that is quite human. Rena looks down for a moment, not meeting Yuliana's eyes or the distant Empress's. "I'm glad Elisa could restore you," she settles on, carefully. "Are... aren't they the same? Your Elisa, and... the Empress? Or... have I misunderstood?" She is quiet, for a moment longer. "Does it hurt, Yuliana?" she asks. "It... seems like it has to hurt." </poem> <Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed. <poem> "It hurts so ''much,''" Yuliana murmurs, miserably. "Why do you think I stopped Her? Even someone like you... I couldn't bear to be subject to these ministrations. I thought I'd get used to it, but I can't. Every night I come here whole, and every night I wake like this. I suppose I even look miserable in your world... with how often Elya has to rouse me back there." Mercifully, she can't cry, shaped into her present form. It would rather sting her eyes eyes eyes. (And how interesting that she can be ''woken'' from this state.) "When I connected to this world," she explains all she knows of the situation, hands clasping together on her lap, "the Empress saw me, and so She fell in love with me. She carved a piece of Herself away, and sent it to your world... and this piece of Herself is Elisa. But She cleaved away all Her most human aspects to be able to live in this world, all Her mercy and Her moderation. Elisa has been learning these things, on Earth, and when they reunite, she will bring her knowledge back to Herself. When She becomes whole, She will be able to be kind to me again..." Yuliana frowns and frowns and frowns. She lowers her voice, though it's futile; She hears all. "But because they have grown apart, my wives do not always... agree, with each other. The Empress may be content to capture my spirit, were the Gate to open, but Elisa insists I must survive the process. It's because of that my Elisa has put aside our plans, in favour of searching for some way to protect me through them... the Empress isn't pleased. It's been... difficult..." And Her displeasure shakes the foundations of the Void, those leafy mirrors all shattering at once with a deep, sonorous roar. "I am with You!" She hastens to add, calling out to those thousand eyes. "Empress, I am here! I am Yours! Come, do not crease Your brow..." And her abject reassurance -- as much frightened as it is loving -- at least seems to calm Her anger, for the moment. How much of her night does she spend soothing Her possessive anger -- even regarding Herself? </poem> <Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed. <poem> "Every night? That's... that's a lot," Rena answers, quietly. She can't help but notice -- see and ''feel'' -- the Empress. She thinks better of criticizing her directly in front of her. Especially when Yuliana seems unsure that the Empress will let her flee. She falls quiet, as Yuliana explains: the Empress created Elisa. She wonders if it is somewhat metaphorical; she wonders if time means little to the Empress. She looks down for a moment. "...It must be," she says. "I saw how closing the Gate was painful to you." Painful enough that Yuliana called out to ''her'' and turned to her for help. And then that terrible roar -- and Rena hears Yuliana placate her. She begins to understand, then. It is worse than Leina said. She swallows, then, and looks towards the Void -- those mirrors, those distant plants -- and back at Yuliana. "The Empress... would let you die? Or--or is it something else? I'm--" She hesitates. "I don't want you to die. I know you might not believe that, but..." </poem> <Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed. <poem> "Mm." It is a lot, but only one of Yuliana's three heads nods, in agreement. She knows better than to criticise her Wife, too. And Yuliana did say time meant little, here -- so perhaps there's a level of metaphor, to it all. The exact details escape ''her,'' just the same, but she's been able to make enough... educated guesses. "Opening the way was just as painful," she says, quietly. "If not... more." Yuliana hugs her arms about her midsection, below her blooming ribcage. "When we die, it's not the end... I hated Ritechka for saying that. Inviting a world so eager to leave me behind... but it's true, isn't it? When powerful Newtypes die, a certain presence remains..." ... and it's even true of the Ra Mari II, if rumours about a certain custodial spirit are to be believed. "If I Open the Gate," she sighs, despondent, "such a thing may well demand my death. Always, there is a price." And in this place, Elisa's words colour Yuliana's so ''plainly.'' "But the Empress would happily claim my spirit. What am I, here, if not a ghost? The Gate is not Opened; we cannot truly exist in this place. But She is calmed, to grasp me... She would be pleased to possess me completely, even were my flesh to fail." Yuliana frowns. "I..." But she flinches, shoulders curling in, and she doesn't say what she wants to say. "I don't disagree with you," she settles on, obliquely; it's safer for her if ''Rena'' says it. "My Elisa doesn't, either. But the Empress is terribly disappointed... She'd almost grasped me, and I ''rejected'' Her. I am sorry." Does she say it for Rena's sake, or Hers? "That's why She's so angry with you... you must give Her time, Renalle. Rena. Oh, I don't know..." </poem> <Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed. <poem> "Just because Rita's not wrong doesn't mean she's right," Rena says, quietly but firmly. Maybe she can't help but say a few things that the Empress might disagree with. "Newtypes can leave something of themselves behind when they die. But... they change, and it's not the same as living." Her voice is quiet for a moment. "I saw that firsthand in Denver. I ''felt'' them. And where they went... I don't want to follow. I don't think it's ever wrong to want to live." She frowns, a little more sharply, to hear it confirmed. Opening the Gate would carry a terrible price. It takes a lot of willpower to not voice her objections more assiduously; to not call this what she sees it as. But, in the domain of the Empress, doing so might mean never helping her. "Give her time... and then what?" she asks. "I felt what she thinks of me. I don't... think that will change." Because of what Rena will do, if nothing else. </poem> <Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed. <poem> "Elisa would agree with you," Yuliana says, "but the Empress is so ''impatient.''" "Eager," her other set of jaws corrects herself, quickly, "to have me beside Her, as I must be." She is not pleased, to be a sacrifice in the eyes of her God and her Wife. She does not voice her own displeasure. Not in this place. "Maybe not," Yuliana frowns and frowns and frowns. "But surely She will see you for who you are, now that you are with us. It's not like... you're as powerful a Newtype as little Sharochka was. Surely..." But she sighs, because she can't say it for sure at ''all.'' She might think the best of her Wife, but her Wife is a cruel woman. "... it would be better were you to avoid this place," she says, at length. "You spoke of a door? Do not open it. Leave me be. I am loved, here. I... don't need people coming in and interrupting our time together, all right?!" And her words grow sharp, as she rejects her, as it it weren't plain as day -- -- that she's always needed that. She's been dealing with this for so long, rarely speaking of its realities. </poem> <Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed. <poem> "That's--" Rena stops herself. No, she thinks; do not dare to taunt the Empress. Not here. She squares her shoulders, then, and she looks at Yuliana. Her lips purse for a moment. She hears the rejection. She sees it better, now, for what it is. When she speaks, her voice is quiet. It takes her a moment. "I should really hate you, you know," she says. "You tried to ruin my life. Point out the worst things in my past and make me doubt myself. Give substance to the worst doubts about myself." Rena glances to the side. "You've hurt me and the people I care about," she says. "But..." She looks back at her. "...I didn't look for the door. It opened for me," she says. "Sometimes, we don't get to choose what doors we open. We find them." Rena swallows. "And we either walk through or we pretend they're not there." </poem> <Pose Tracker> Yuliana Kafim has posed. <poem> "I -- took my own pain out on you," Yuliana admits, in the honesty under Her gaze. "It wasn't really fair... you had no way of knowing I was being hurt, I suppose. I couldn't lash out at Devi, so I made to destroy you, instead... I thought it would make me feel better. It wasn't completely unsatisfying, but..." She sighs, her shoulders sinking. "When it was done, and I'd ruined everything, I still had to go back to that place." She still has to come back to this place. Her hands curl to fists, at her lap, before she pushes herself standing. She staggers; she catches herself. "It doesn't matter if I apologise. It's long since done, and you wouldn't care to hear something so pointless, anyway." "As if I weren't poison!" Her second set of jaws adds, bitterly, drawing out the underlying point again. She hasn't clustered her sentences together so much, these days... ... but is it because she's saying what she really thinks more often, now? "But I can get you out of here." It's not an apology. It isn't nothing, either. Yuliana takes a step, and turns, ''twirls,'' and Rena may well recognise the dance which calls down the Void. Her fingers reach out to grasp the blackness -- and tear it apart, as she spins. With her other hand, she grasps Rena. "Don't come back." "Turn away from your ''doors.''" With those dual hisses from each jaw, she promptly tosses Rena ''through'' that gap in nonexistence -- -- and out into her usual dreamscape. </poem> <Pose Tracker> Rena Lancaster has posed. <poem> It doesn't make Rena feel better, exactly, to hear Yuliana's honest confession about why she did that. But it doesn't feel worse, either. It isn't nothing. She opens her mouth, inclined to say more -- but stops. To point out that Yuliana still has to return here, to the attentions of the Empress and Her anger, would be unwise. The Empress is watching her. "I'm not... an apology isn't pointless--" But Yuliana is giving her something else. She knows that dance well, now; she helped Yuliana do it, to close the gate. Her mouths speak, telling her to not return -- and she makes a surprised noise as she is grabbed. "Yuliana!" she says. "Wait, I--" But she is thrown through the gash in reality. She falls through, eyes wide. And her world changes around her, as her dreams reassert themselves. They're stranger than they were before she came here. But not as strange as the place she just left. </poem>