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❄ april things [open]
Who: Crymaria & ???
When: Throughout April
Where: Aefenglom, dream hellscape mirrors
What: Mostly open event prompts! However, if you're full up on memory dives or find these unappealing, there's also cake baking! and pet wolf spoiling.
Warnings: human experimentation/torture is the big one. wartime violence. suicidal ideation may come up for prompts ii and iii especially.
((For all memory prompts, the events coming from Crymaria’s perspective means nearly everything will have an atmosphere of overwhelming anxiety just rumbling in the background. Think of water dripping in the other room but really irregularly, and you don’t know if the next drip is when the pipe is going to burst. Or your preferred metaphor for a brain running in neurotic mode. I did more summary than scene in most of them which hopefully creates room for people to jump in where they want 🙏 if you want anything specific or want to chat you can find me at![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
antiquating))
i. at the looking glass house;
[By far the worst part of these waking dreams is that she is alone in all of them; without Fenrir’s calming presence at her side, Crymaria is always drifting in and out of awareness, wandering these unfortunate landscapes like a specter and just about as useless.
If only the inviting glimmer of the mirrors meant that passing through one would bring her somewhere else. Not home, but a somewhere else she hasn’t discovered yet. But Crymaria knows better, after all.
The frame of her own mirror is carved to appear as though winter encrusts it all, though in the shapes of snow and ice a closer look would reveal smaller hidden details etched into their curves: crystalline flowers, a wolf howling, a single bolt of flame.
She’s just about to touch the surface when she hears someone approaching behind her, and she pulls away and back into herself, adapting as aloof a demeanor as she can immediately toward whoever happens to be here.]
Do whatever it is that you need. It’s not as if this place can make any more of a mockery of my life than it already has.
[Her voice is cold as she dismisses whatever’s behind the mirror, but her body language is nothing short of defensive. She keeps her arms crossed close to her chest; it’s not as if anything else is going to protect her.]
ii. the chosen and the unchosen;
[It’s warm here, perhaps unexpected given the icy symbols wrought into the mirror frame, but the pervasive, thrumming anxiety is everywhere. The people, the landscape, everything’s present enough but blurry and indistinct as if the memory is just fading in, as though what occurred before that point is hazy, stifled or drugged away into uncertainty. There’s some distant conversation, a never-quite reconciled “where am I?” and yet the people and the surroundings don’t fade into focus until -
”Selvaria?”
Selvaria Bles is two years younger and a hair shorter than Crymaria, but it’d be impossible to tell that from this memory alone. She seems impossibly tall, her voice confident and rich. She’s an icon more than she is a person, her commanding presence towering over the constant anxious hum. Beautiful and untouchable and yet so, so wrong. A mix of awe and spite highlight all of her positive features and yet make the entire day’s events feel as negative as possible; Crymaria’s memory twists every word from Selvaria’s mouth and condescending and dismissive.
Perhaps you, having come through the mirror to witness this, will see the battle that ensues?
Or perhaps the fight doesn’t happen for you. By the time Crymaria has worked herself into a frenzy, power coiling around her as she repeats herself in a violent rage—“I’ll show you! I’ll kill you!”—the landscape and the actors once again become fuzzy.
But do you think it really mattered who won, in the end?]
iii. until my final sunset; (CW medical experimentation, torture; threads might also include suicidal ideation)
[Time in this memory does not seem linear in the slightest; instead, whoever ventures into the mirror this time will encounter a tangle of events, difficult place in order but still so, so vivid. The laboratory in the frigid north is as cold inside as the snowy wilderness beyond its walls, and Crymaria is surrounded by other girls, but she is alone. Researchers fetch her from her quarters and bring her into other rooms. The Crymaria in the memory is grown and yet she looks and feels impossibly small, dwarfed by the other Valkyria girls who torment her for crying, by the apparatuses used in each examination.
The experiments vary depending on the day, but they are nearly all painful.
And it seems to go on forever, which may be the real pain of this memory, that it runs more like a slideshow than a shadow play and shows no signs of ending. For now, all the witnesses are trapped here, just like the version of Crymaria who lived through the memory. What is there to be done?]
iv. what a fool; (brief mentions of the cw from prompt iii)
[The uncomfortable atmosphere isn’t entirely lacking from this memory, but, unlike the others, there’s a warm quality to it. There are no surprises here; just Fenrir, and Crymaria, and a man. No explosions, no hidden torments; just conversation and someone foolishly trying to get too close to her, acting as if he cares. It’s annoying. Utterly annoying. But by the time Fenrir chases Walz across the snowy field, growling protectively, she’s smiling.
The real Crymaria, the one who finishes watching this memory, remains with that same, almost fond smile on her face even after everything has faded away.
Then it’s gone.]
After that, I was here. All that really did have to be a lie, in the end.
v. piece of;
[In the waking world, there's a little more peace. Though Crymaria still hasn't quite shaken her loner nature and generally keeps to herself, she’s also been doing some part-time work at Piece of Cake, responding to the call on a whim and a need for a financial cushion. She's a rare enough sight around town that working behind the scenes is much easier, besides.
She is not a baker by trade or by nature, and it shows in how she struggles with measuring things to an exact science, how messily the ingredients are strewn through her hair and on her clothes, but the routine procedures also seem to be somewhat calming for her. She’s very focused, even around other people who may have picked up the part time job, and surprisingly…approachable and willing to help, even as she crouches down to look closer at the level of her dry ingredients to see if they're integrated properly.
Alternatively, someone might even catch her sneaking out to deliver a wolf-approved treat or two to Fenrir, who’s staying out of the kitchen (for sanitation reasons, obviously) in a safe place, looking a little suspicious and sneaky about it, stealing a glance over her shoulder every so often.]
When: Throughout April
Where: Aefenglom, dream hellscape mirrors
What: Mostly open event prompts! However, if you're full up on memory dives or find these unappealing, there's also cake baking! and pet wolf spoiling.
Warnings: human experimentation/torture is the big one. wartime violence. suicidal ideation may come up for prompts ii and iii especially.
((For all memory prompts, the events coming from Crymaria’s perspective means nearly everything will have an atmosphere of overwhelming anxiety just rumbling in the background. Think of water dripping in the other room but really irregularly, and you don’t know if the next drip is when the pipe is going to burst. Or your preferred metaphor for a brain running in neurotic mode. I did more summary than scene in most of them which hopefully creates room for people to jump in where they want 🙏 if you want anything specific or want to chat you can find me at
i. at the looking glass house;
[By far the worst part of these waking dreams is that she is alone in all of them; without Fenrir’s calming presence at her side, Crymaria is always drifting in and out of awareness, wandering these unfortunate landscapes like a specter and just about as useless.
If only the inviting glimmer of the mirrors meant that passing through one would bring her somewhere else. Not home, but a somewhere else she hasn’t discovered yet. But Crymaria knows better, after all.
The frame of her own mirror is carved to appear as though winter encrusts it all, though in the shapes of snow and ice a closer look would reveal smaller hidden details etched into their curves: crystalline flowers, a wolf howling, a single bolt of flame.
She’s just about to touch the surface when she hears someone approaching behind her, and she pulls away and back into herself, adapting as aloof a demeanor as she can immediately toward whoever happens to be here.]
Do whatever it is that you need. It’s not as if this place can make any more of a mockery of my life than it already has.
[Her voice is cold as she dismisses whatever’s behind the mirror, but her body language is nothing short of defensive. She keeps her arms crossed close to her chest; it’s not as if anything else is going to protect her.]
ii. the chosen and the unchosen;
[It’s warm here, perhaps unexpected given the icy symbols wrought into the mirror frame, but the pervasive, thrumming anxiety is everywhere. The people, the landscape, everything’s present enough but blurry and indistinct as if the memory is just fading in, as though what occurred before that point is hazy, stifled or drugged away into uncertainty. There’s some distant conversation, a never-quite reconciled “where am I?” and yet the people and the surroundings don’t fade into focus until -
”Selvaria?”
Selvaria Bles is two years younger and a hair shorter than Crymaria, but it’d be impossible to tell that from this memory alone. She seems impossibly tall, her voice confident and rich. She’s an icon more than she is a person, her commanding presence towering over the constant anxious hum. Beautiful and untouchable and yet so, so wrong. A mix of awe and spite highlight all of her positive features and yet make the entire day’s events feel as negative as possible; Crymaria’s memory twists every word from Selvaria’s mouth and condescending and dismissive.
Perhaps you, having come through the mirror to witness this, will see the battle that ensues?
Or perhaps the fight doesn’t happen for you. By the time Crymaria has worked herself into a frenzy, power coiling around her as she repeats herself in a violent rage—“I’ll show you! I’ll kill you!”—the landscape and the actors once again become fuzzy.
But do you think it really mattered who won, in the end?]
iii. until my final sunset; (CW medical experimentation, torture; threads might also include suicidal ideation)
[Time in this memory does not seem linear in the slightest; instead, whoever ventures into the mirror this time will encounter a tangle of events, difficult place in order but still so, so vivid. The laboratory in the frigid north is as cold inside as the snowy wilderness beyond its walls, and Crymaria is surrounded by other girls, but she is alone. Researchers fetch her from her quarters and bring her into other rooms. The Crymaria in the memory is grown and yet she looks and feels impossibly small, dwarfed by the other Valkyria girls who torment her for crying, by the apparatuses used in each examination.
The experiments vary depending on the day, but they are nearly all painful.
And it seems to go on forever, which may be the real pain of this memory, that it runs more like a slideshow than a shadow play and shows no signs of ending. For now, all the witnesses are trapped here, just like the version of Crymaria who lived through the memory. What is there to be done?]
iv. what a fool; (brief mentions of the cw from prompt iii)
[The uncomfortable atmosphere isn’t entirely lacking from this memory, but, unlike the others, there’s a warm quality to it. There are no surprises here; just Fenrir, and Crymaria, and a man. No explosions, no hidden torments; just conversation and someone foolishly trying to get too close to her, acting as if he cares. It’s annoying. Utterly annoying. But by the time Fenrir chases Walz across the snowy field, growling protectively, she’s smiling.
The real Crymaria, the one who finishes watching this memory, remains with that same, almost fond smile on her face even after everything has faded away.
Then it’s gone.]
After that, I was here. All that really did have to be a lie, in the end.
v. piece of;
[In the waking world, there's a little more peace. Though Crymaria still hasn't quite shaken her loner nature and generally keeps to herself, she’s also been doing some part-time work at Piece of Cake, responding to the call on a whim and a need for a financial cushion. She's a rare enough sight around town that working behind the scenes is much easier, besides.
She is not a baker by trade or by nature, and it shows in how she struggles with measuring things to an exact science, how messily the ingredients are strewn through her hair and on her clothes, but the routine procedures also seem to be somewhat calming for her. She’s very focused, even around other people who may have picked up the part time job, and surprisingly…approachable and willing to help, even as she crouches down to look closer at the level of her dry ingredients to see if they're integrated properly.
Alternatively, someone might even catch her sneaking out to deliver a wolf-approved treat or two to Fenrir, who’s staying out of the kitchen (for sanitation reasons, obviously) in a safe place, looking a little suspicious and sneaky about it, stealing a glance over her shoulder every so often.]
no subject
[ Iramaat murmurs that mostly to herself, but she's a little distracted by the ongoing memories. It's all a whirl, but she tears her gaze away to regard the real Crymaria with something between pity and sympathy. She remembers how absolutely terrible she felt when she was a prisoner, being tortured for nor particular reason but to satisfy someone's petty hatred.
She walks over and kneels in front of Crymaria and reaches out a hand to start wiping away tears. ]
These memories still hurt, don't they? Ah, regret and pain - it's part of being a mortal, isn't it?
no subject
The nature of this memory - how everlasting and disorienting it is - makes it so much harder for Crymaria to separate its fiction from the reality. There might be another "her" here experiencing that torture, but for her, it doesn't matter. It's like going through it all over again.]
Don't - !
[When Iramaat reaches over to wipe at her tears, Crymaria flinches, trying to pull away. But she's already in the corner, and it's hard to put any more distance between them. Her eyes track fearfully to Iramaat's hands, and she keeps watching them even as she speaks.]
I hate this place... I don't ever want to go back here!
no subject
[ Iramaat shushes her as she crouches and her thumbs brush against her cheeks. She doesn't seem deterred by the don't or the way that Crymaria stares at her or the way she flinches. She just moves with quiet, easy determination to gently touch. She's not used to comforting - not really - but she thinks she can manage. Probably. ]
You don't have to. This is all a dream. A nightmare. In the morning you can forget again.
no subject
Do you think I ever really do? Forget?
[She doesn't need these mirrors into old memories for those dreams to haunt her at night. It's her past and future rolled into one, the place that stole her childhood and the place where she'll return, until death at last breaks the cycle.]
no subject
[ Admittedly, she has a hard time with bad memories herself - nor does she have much experience with it. But she's doing her best to help, despite all of that. Look, she can be a decent person sometimes. ]
Would you like to talk to me about it? [ She continues to soothe her with little gestures, wiping away tears, carding fingers into her hair. She doesn't totally grasp what's happened or understand the circumstances - only that it was terrible and that it hurt. ]
no subject
She shivers as Iramaat drags fingers through her messy curls, a mix between fear of the touch turning suddenly violent and the urge to lash out and push her away.]
Talk to you...? Why do you want to know?
[She wonders if the other woman is relieved: They had forged only a temporary Bond to keep her stable, so Iramaat never had to experience the side effects of these emotions. Is she just going to gloat? Does she regret being drawn into this hell?]
no subject
Because I've never been good at keeping myself out of people's business, that's why. And perhaps it will help? I've experienced my share of painful emotions over the last year and it's never been easy.
no subject
That's why I knew... The people who kidnapped the Mirrorbound before, they would never have stopped without being forced.
[She remembers how Iramaat had been when they met again on the expedition--still injured, more lost than Crymaria had ever expected to see her. Maybe that's enough to guide a little more trust out of Crymaria, forms enough of an understanding between them that she speaks again.]
A Valkyria's healing abilities can close almost any wound. They know that, but they needed more data...
no subject
[ Her tone hardens, her eyes turning dark and angry. ]
And that's why I was glad that I at least got see so many of them die. Even if it wasn't nearly enough. [ There's more there. Hurt and anger and a desire for vengeance that outstrips anything reasonable, but Iramaat manages to reel it in - if only because Crymaria is continuing. ]
It doesn't matter what their reasons are, they ought not to have done any of that. They ought not to have hurt you in the first place. Did they ever pay for it?
[ Her voice is a low coo. Coaxing. Comforting. ]
no subject
[They'd spoken of it before, back then. Crymaria had wanted to kill them during the siege, only kept from going against those orders by the other Mirrorbound she was working with. Seeing them die again later had been satisfying, but not in the same way she wanted to see them torn asunder.]
If anyone does understand, it would have to be someone like you.
[It's the first time she's admitted it: that she has pains and experiences that someone else might be able to comprehend. That maybe her life doesn't have to be experienced alone. Briefly, Crymaria presses into the comforting hand against her cheek, buying in to the offered kindness.]
...But no. It's always the same. I'll be back here soon enough, if I continue to fail. I'm just waiting for it to happen.
Most of the time I don't even feel like I'm living.
no subject
[ Although she's done something similar before, she feels justified in handing out life advice. That's honestly Iramaat in a nutshell - she'll say things and do the opposite or do things and then say the opposite. It's how she is. ]
Or not living as the case may be. You need to seize control. These people - they're not here, are they? This is just a memory. You can do something different here.
no subject
What does she know? Someone came and saved her, so what would she say if the fear of being dragged back was constantly eating at her mind? Iramaat was taken, but this is where Crymaria belongs. It's the only place that has ever called her its own.
The words seem to be penetrating, but she's still resisting them, shaking her head nervously as her breath becomes shallower, rapider, more anxious.]
... It's too late. [Her voice is small>] What if it's too late? I can't. I don't even know how.
no subject
[ She doesn't like saying that, but it seems to make the most sense. ]
But I still have to. I still need to. And so do you. You can't trap yourself in here and wait to die.
no subject
[It might be the candor that catches Crymaria's attention. Maybe that's the truth, but maybe she wants to be dead. Maybe it doesn't matter if she stays here forever and wastes away.]
But I'm not you! I'm not that strong.
[So why hasn't she? The dream certainly feels as if it's lasted long enough. At what point is this ever, ever over?
She looks around the room, confusion stippling her features.]
But... [This is just a memory, isn't it?] Don't we just have to wait for it to be over?
no subject
[ Iramaat, this isn't about you. Focus up. ]
It's your dream; we're in it. Why don't we try going somewhere else?
[ She stands and extends a hand to her, offering to help her up. ]
Be proactive.