Stephanie's Heart: The Archive

[reading_rainstorm]

In your dreams you are in a thick and foggy forest. It could be mistaken for the woods around Tributary if you don’t know your plants. You are on a trail leading into a clearing, in the center of which is a simple, concrete structure with a single door. A chaos star has been spray painted on it with a stencil.

You approach the structure. Looking over your shoulder you see a large shape lurking in the fog, obscured by the foliage. Two shining Feline eyes peer at you from the brush. You feel your heart rate spike as you turn the knob and find an old fashioned elevator tucked neatly inside with an accordion grate standing between you and the ornate, gilded interior. It creaks open as the presence behind you steps into the clearing. It is a sphinx, an eight foot tall lioness with the face of a woman and the large brown wings of an eagle on her back . The feminine face and olive skin tone of a Greek woman from antiquity smiles as she readies herself to to pounce, the wings on her back stretching and give a few readying flaps.You back into the elevator and close the gate with shaking hands as the sphinx leaps at the elevator. Her claws twisting and shearing the metal of the grate slowly, but she is too late. The elevator springs to life and you descend.

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A small light above flickers on as it illuminates your view outside the exposed elevator as you sink into the concrete structure. You descend for a few moments before an opening in the concrete gives you the view of an observation deck on a hill, looking down on the sprawling suburbs and campus of a college town. The elevator continues downward. The concrete gives way to old, dusty marble as you continue sinking. You see a vast maze stretch far and away that gets nearer and nearer. This has to be it, right? Your destination? No. You plunge further down, past the walls of the maze and the marble is replaced again by well polished wood. Beautiful stained mahogany rises past you as your descent finally starts to slow. You are greeted by another grate that creaks open for you. Entreating you to enter.

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[reading_rainstorm]

The model of Renvo breaks apart at the arms, seeming to sneer up at you as you leave.

Blowing the candle out in the office makes the globes of light disappear, filling the room with darkness. The energy in the room fades to a nervous ripple. Less charged with excitement and heat in the moment, to something more...intimate. Is the Stephanie model somehow blushing harder now?

[turntoash]

Hmmm... maybe they didn't all have a card. Worth noting that this one still had a reaction, and an interesting one at that. Metis pondered her options before making a decision. She'd come back here later if necessary. For now, though, she elected to examine the final diorama - the map.

[reading_rainstorm]

In the case is a large and impeccably detailed diorama of Tributary. All of its locations and cottages are lovingly carved from wood. Its many inhabitants are represented by wooden miniatures in the places they often can be found or by the houses in which they reside. There are two buttons on the diorama one of a sun with a needle and thread and one with a moon and a sword.

[turntoash]

Metis took a moment to appreciate the craftsmanship, then pressed the button for Sun House.

[reading_rainstorm]

The figures all spin around in place and the light changes, illuminating thin threads of different colors connecting all the figures to each other. You can see that the Metis figure has a lot of grey strings going from it, but the one connecting her and the Stephanie figure is a sunny yellow.

[turntoash]

Aw, that's nice. Metis smiled. What about the moon button?

[reading_rainstorm]

Pressing the moon button makes figures all shake for a moment...but nothing happens. There is a sound of grinding machinery below the display.

[turntoash]

Metis knelt down, trying to get a look at what might have been blocking the mechanism. She didn't know if that was something she'd ever been good at, but no harm in trying.

[reading_rainstorm]

Below the diorama is a little sliding door that reveals the inner workings of the thing. Gears and spools of thread that connect irrationally. In a little box filled with soft fabric you can see some figures have been placed, people who have stayed at Tributary but are no longer there, tucked safely away.

The source of the problem seems to be a thread caught up in the gears attached to a figure. One Metis might not recognize. A woman that looks like a rabbit with antlers and wings, she is posing with an oversized sword. She is wrapped tightly in a rosegold thread that keeps her dangling from some gears that has a card stuck between them.

[turntoash]

Yep, no idea who that was supposed to be. Metis carefully attempted to unwind the thread from the gears, placing the figure back in the box and freeing the card.

[reading_rainstorm]

There is a feeling of relieved tension. An exhale as you place the figure in the box. The place it belongs. The card is The Lovers.

[turntoash]

Cool. Metis is sharp enough to make that connection - she slips that card in her pocket alongside the Emperor and the good luck charm and files that relationship away in her mental organizer. Finally, she stands and presses the moon button again.

[reading_rainstorm]

The diorama springs to life, all but a handful of figures go to their respective homes as the light over the diorama changes again to a silvery light shining down on the clearing. The cottages Stephanie has been in open up to show their residents inside, with tiny warm lights illuminating their interiors.

A set of figures gather in the clearing, and a few of the figures that Metis saw in the box, including the rabbit girl are brought up for the clearing. A soft song plays from a speaker as the Stephanie figure spins and moves about the clearing, as if performing a dance. Stephanie's voice, though one deeper and raspier than the one you know fills your head.

"Day 4 Cont. Is this too much to hope for? Not only actually doing magic myself but...making My body my own? Or...more my own. I can't dismiss the work my forgotten self has made to make this body livable even if she also made it uncomfortable in stranger ways than garden variety dysphoria. It is hard to believe I have been here for under a week and the people here are already doing so much for me. I hope in due time I am able to repay the favor. I'm being shown wonders beyond belief as though they are common occurrences, I must endeavor to give as much as myself to this community as they have given to me."

[turntoash]

Metis watched the scene. She knew what it was showing, of course - the ritual that Stephanie had told her about. It still stung, just below the surface, but Metis let the feeling drift away.

It was beautiful, in a way.

When it finished, Metis wiped her eyes and returned to Ava. "I got a couple cards out of the dioramas for you. Mind if I take a look further down this hall?"

[reading_rainstorm]

"You can hold onto those. I'm sorry but I can't let you past here. That stuff is under construction. Hopefully with those cards you got she can actually get to work finishing what's there."

Looking through the darkness you can just barely make out the outlines of some figures. Two of them standing over a workbench of some sort. You can tell from the silhouette one is Stephanie, but younger the second...could that be Ava? The Ava sitting before you snaps at you to get your attention.

"Hey! No peeking."

[turntoash]

"No worries, I'll see myself out." Metis put her hand to her chin as she left the hall, running lines of thought around in her head. If necessary, she'd come back here later and see if she could lure Ava out so she could sneak in. The amount she'd learned about Stephanie thus far certainly answered some questions.

For now, though - she decided to stay on the second floor. On to the Remembered Rooms.

[reading_rainstorm]

The hall of Remembered Rooms is well lit and has more of the bookcases like the main hall, but between the cases are doors that do not match with the rest of the decor of this place. There is an anxious looking man in a well pressed button down shirt stocking the shelves with books. Like the Harmony he is carved from wood and moves like he is being animated by stop motion. He looks at you as you enter but does not say anything, he has Stephanie's thick eyebrows.

There is a simple rectangular door with a cheery blue coat of paint on it, a door Metis would recognize as belonging to Sun House, a rotting, decrepit door that could easily be broken apart, and a plain metal door painted white with a small slit window in it.

[turntoash]

A relative, Metis thought. Let's see what I can get out of him. She walked around the room first, examining the bookshelves. "Hey," she asked the man as she tilted her head sideways to read some of the spines, "mind if I ask you some questions? What's going on here?"

[reading_rainstorm]

Getting closer to him, you can see it's the same man who was in the diorama with Renvo. Stephanie's father. He hesitates and looks a little annoyed, putting a book down and turning to face you.

"O-oh...I suppose. What do you mean here? The archives or this hall?"

[turntoash]

"This hall. Already been over to the diorama hall, and I think I got a good grip on what's going on overall. Don't worry, I'll be quick here and you can get back to shelving." Metis was slipping back into what she knew as her native accent; she knew she did that when she was trying to put people at ease, not that she knew why.

Just to test a reaction, though, she did tug a book at random from the shelves, ostensibly to get a look at the cover.

[reading_rainstorm]

The book, oddly enough is "Theories of Deduction".

"The rooms are places that have either had such a strong impact on the high priestess that their image is permanently cemented in her mind, or places she has spent enough time in to memorize their details entirely."

[turntoash]

"Thanks. Appreciate it. Mind if I borrow this?" Without waiting for an answer, Metis tucked the book into her coat to leaf through later and examined the white metal door.

[reading_rainstorm]

"O-oh I...I guess not...You know you can't leave with it right?"

The metal door is pretty clearly to a hospital room; looking through the slit window you can see a privacy curtain obscuring where the bed ought to be.

[turntoash]

"Don't worry, I gotcha. Just for a little bit of light reading, then you'll have it back." As Metis rambles, she tries to open the door and get inside.

[reading_rainstorm]

"Sure thing. Just...return it to Harmony when you're done."

The door swings open and you are in a modern hospital room. Tile floor, the smell of antiseptic, eerily quiet. Someone moves behind the hospital curtain. You can see Ava's crutches leaning against the wall beside the bed. A knot forms in your stomach. This is wrong. You don't want to be here. You turn around and the door is gone.