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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[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.

[turntoash]

Shit, Metis thought. Looks like I'm here for the duration. She grit her teeth and tried her best to swallow her unease.

"Hey," she said, her voice cracking ever so slightly. "You okay?"

It was, perhaps, a dumb question to ask someone in a hospital room.

[reading_rainstorm]

"You know I'm not fucking okay Stephanie!"

Suddenly Stephanie is there beside you, or...a ghost of her, she is younger, no sphinx eyes and for once she isn't dressed in her cloak. She wears a black blouse with an olive skirt. She passes you and pulls away the curtain to reveal Ava, fuming.

"Finally got the courage to face me hm?"

"The courage!? I didn't even know you were here! I haven't heard from you in a week, I was worried Ava."

"You made your worries quite clear before I left, Grim." Stephanie cringes as Ava uses that name for her. Ava's frown burrows into Stephanie. "Your little superstition spooked you away from a trip we had planned for weeks!"

"Supperstition? You know- You've seen my magic! You know the things I can do."

"You let cards keep ruin a trip with my family."

"I told you I thought it would be dangerous, and-"

"AND YOU WERE RIGHT? Is that what you were about to say Stephanie? Oh great, your predictions came true and the doctors tell me I'm going to walk with a limp forever. So what, I should have listened to you and just stayed home with you? Holed up like a pair of hikikomori?"

"That's not what I-" The knot in your gut turns. You didn't deserve this. All this spite Ava was throwing at you, no. At Stephanie. That fear turns into anger. "You're going to call all this superstition after all you've seen. After all the luck charms that got you straight A's."

"Doubling down on the creepy girl act. Very nice Steph."

"You think I want people to call me creepy!? You think I want their attention? I sure know you do. That's why you started dating me, right? To look like the nice girl deigning to date the Freak" Tears prick at the corner of your eyes. You're crying. Ava points to the door and tosses a card at Stephanie. It slides to your feet.

"GET OUT. Take your stupid luck charm with you. We're done Steph."

[turntoash]

Metis wiped her eyes. Her normal coping skills weren't working. She pushed and pushed and pushed and the anger, the fright, the sadness, the torrent of emotions just wouldn't go away--

She wheeled around and kicked the wall as hard as she could.

Predictably, this was a bad idea.

Metis fell to the ground, hissing in pain, tears pooling in her eyes. Her hand landed on the card, and she grabbed it unconsciously before looking up, to see if Stephanie was still there.

[reading_rainstorm]

Stephanie is still there. Frozen in anger and fear. She blinks at Ava and looks to the spot where the card had landed. She makes eye contact with you as she turns to leave, not reaching for it at all. The door re-materializes for her.

The card is Strength

[turntoash]

Metis hobbled to her feet and slid the card into her pocket as the violent emotions ebbed. Three of them, now. She wondered how many there were.

At least the door was back. She limped out of it and closed it tightly behind her.

[reading_rainstorm]

Having the three...feels right. You somehow know it's enough to tell the past present and future in a typical tarot reading. Having more will only show more of what fate has had in store for Stephanie.

Where will Metis go?

[turntoash]

Metis fanned the cards in her hands, examining them. She decided on a course of action: though exploring more was tempting, it was also a violation of privacy.

Admittedly, something inside her suggested that this wasn't something she usually cared about, but this time it was a friend. She wasn't looking forward to explaining to Stephanie that she'd ended up in her soul and had seen some of her most emotional memories.

She also considered that this meant that she now knew more about Stephanie's past than her own.

Letting out a breath, Metis left the hall (after reshelving the book; she wasn't a monster) and went back to Ava. "Found 3 of them, now."

[reading_rainstorm]

Ava looks up from her book.

"Cool. That means the Hall of Fate is open, if you want to get to Steph. Just like...do her weird tarot thing or whatever."

[turntoash]

"Right, thanks. It's been a trip."

Metis knew for a fact that before this dream she had no idea what tarot was, let alone what Steph's 'weird tarot thing' was - and yet, in a corner of her head, the knowledge was there. She sat crosslegged on the floor and shuffled the cards facedown in her hands before revealing them one by one in front of her - one for the Past, one for the Present, and one for the Future.

[reading_rainstorm]

"You're doing it on the floor? We have a table for that in the main hall, you know?"

The cards as they reveal themselves to you are Emperor, Lovers, Strength.

[turntoash]

"Well, excuse me for trying to be efficient. This is supposed to open the Hall of Fate, is it? Because as far as I can tell I just dealt a hand and nothing happened."

Metis might have had a little less patience for Ava after seeing the scene in the hospital room.