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.

Comments

[maskformask]

[Frowns thoughtfully but like. heart stuff. either the hermit had to go or, uh, symbolically it looks clean from up here but up close is messy? Louis considers, then absently checks the book subject matter as he goes towards the Diorama Hall]

[reading_rainstorm]

That does certainly ring a bell about Stephanie doesn't it? If the books are organized by any system it is not one you know. At a glance you can tell that most of the books here have been bound by hand. The titles on the spines are mostly unfamiliar, and without any author. Is there a specific topic Louis was hoping for? The ones closest to him seem to focus on theater, New England history and crafting.

[maskformask]

[Oh I'M a new england theater boy. Sort of. Not normal theater. Will take one out and look at it.]

[reading_rainstorm]

The book you take is on the theatrical traditions of Rome and Greece. Not only how the plays were run and performed but a few scripts as well! "Prometheus Bound" "Medea" "Oedipus Rex" Thinking on Not Normal Theater does make "The Great God Pan" appear on the shelf next to it.

[maskformask]

Oh, classic. [Gives a thumb's up toward the middle of the library. Gets distracted reading the treatise on theatrical traditions for a little bit, sorry, but you'd do the same.]

[puts it back with a sigh and heads off to the Diorama Hall after he realizes what he's doing]

[reading_rainstorm]

She would, in fact, do exactly the same.

The Diorama Hall is a more dimly lit corridor, with the light mainly spilling out from alcoves which have a few scenes being portrayed by skillfully carved wooden figures. Only a velvet rope separates the hall from the dioramas. Only three scenes are on display: two adult male figures in a dorm of some sort holding books in front of a drum with a fake fire glowing within it, a woman opening the door to an empty storefront with Stephanie standing st the center, and two cloaked women embracing in a kiss in a brightly lit office. The last alcove doesn’t have a velvet rope. From here you can tell it seems to be a diorama of a landscape in a large glass case, instead of the scenes like the others. The path further into the hall is blocked by a velvet rope which seems to be guarded by a young woman with strawberry blonde hair sitting in a chair by the rope. She is reading a book on astronomy and barely looks up when you enter. There’s a pair of under arm crutches leaned against the wall beside her.

[maskformask]

[slowly examines the dioramas, a little unnerved, which is unusual for him. He doesn't cross the ropes unless he sees signs of a card, but circles them, looking them over.]

[followed by examining the glass case; is it Tributary or another place that the landscape represents?]

[reading_rainstorm]

The more you focus on the dioramas the more they seem to fill with detail. There maybe was something sticking out of the journal in the diorama of the dorms?

The case has what you assumed, 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.

[maskformask]

[he'll go back for that dorms image, but first he's pressing the sun house button]

[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. The one between him and Stephanie is a pale yellow. A brighter yellow one to Much and Lark and a red...no purple, or is it red...to Mithrun. It seems most of Louis' relations are a mystery to Stephanie at this point.

[maskformask]

Ohhh. Oh, Stephanie, this is incredibly sweet. [just makes a little sound back there behind his masks, looking at it for a second.]

Well, if that's bonds, what's...

[moon house button pressed]

[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.

[maskformask]

[...ducks down to look under]

[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 some thread and a card caught up in the gears attached to a figure. It's Harriet, bound up in rosegold thread. Along with her is a card stuck in the gears. The card is The Lovers.

[maskformask]

Ohh, sweetheart. [makes a little pained noise, trying to gently and carefully extract both Harriet and the card from the gears] It's hard to move past a loss. I know. I know. It sticks in you.

[reading_rainstorm]

You're able to take them from the gears. There's a bittersweet feeling to it. Untangling all this. Once the figure and card are free, it feels like some tension has been relieved. You let out a breath you didn't know you'd been holding in.

[maskformask]

Phew...

[hesitates, looking at harriet, then gently puts her in the box of people who have left. Better than in the gears, and it feels like putting her back up there would just be going against the arrangement here.]

[reading_rainstorm]

Safely where she belongs. It feels good knowing she's safe there. Do you push the moon button again?

[maskformask]

[Yeah, he'll try that again now!]

[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 you saw in the box: Jhaez, Sharolin, Harriet. 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."

[maskformask]

[gently touches the side of the diorama.]

While it's not the same thing, I understand. At some point, the status quo is at least one you have made it comfortable and livable, even if it's not what you really want...

[hesitates, then takes his mask off, hanging it at his belt again.] Then they give you hope. And that hope's frightening too.

This place is a good one. By which I mean, the people have made it that.

[laughs a bit] Look at me. Talking to a diorama.

[reading_rainstorm]

The girl at the end of the hall pipes up

"With the way some of the dioramas work sometimes i think they're alive too.

[maskformask]

[comes over to her, rubbing his chin] Does working with them make it worse or better?

[reading_rainstorm]

Getting closer to her, you can see that like Harmony behind the reference desk, this woman is wooden.

"Worse I'd say. I don't even know why Steph keeps some of them around. She's always been a bit of a packrat though."

[maskformask]

[does this one resemble Stephanie like Harmony, or do they just seem like, well, a visual shorthand for heart npcs?]

Well, sometimes things are important to us even if they're complicated.