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

[reading_rainstorm]

Fair and valid. The things people have resorted to in worlds without proper knowledge of mana am I right?

[misenplaits]

If all the books are going to be like that, maybe she's going to go up those stairs after all.

[reading_rainstorm]

Not all the books...but if Marcille looks for romance, Steph's taste leans a bit steamier than she might be used to.

[misenplaits]

She has noticed that!!! And she is in a public library!!!

Okay. Stairs it is. Let's go 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 a simple rectangular door with a cheery blue coat of paint on it, the door to the Sun House shrine room, a rotting, decrepit door that could easily be broken apart, and a plain metal door painted white with a small slit window in it. There is a man here, much like the woman at the front desk, wooden and stop motion animated and a familial resemblance to Stephanie. He looks a bit nervous and pretends not to notice Marcille.

[misenplaits]

Marcille is going with the Sun House door. Might as well start with something familiar.

[reading_rainstorm]

It's the Sun House Shrine Room alright, almost exactly as you know it. Someone is tucked comfortably into the four mattress high bed, loom, spinning wheel are all exactly where they ought to be. There's something else here as well though, one of the bookshelves from the reading room is along the wall and there's a chair from the reading room as well. Sitting in the chair is...Stephanie? No, another wooden reproduction of Stephanie sits reading a book, unlike the other wooden people you've seen so far this one isn't self animated though, she seems to be puppeted by a figure made of pitch black smoke and eyes with large black pupils. The figure and the puppet look up at you at the same time. She speaks with a soft, whispery voice.

“Oh, Marcille... I wasn't expecting to see you here...”

[misenplaits]

"... oh," Marcille says, awkwardly. Is she not a good enough friend to be in Stephane's heart?

[reading_rainstorm]

"Oh...it's not like that, I wasn't expecting visitors at all..."

[misenplaits]

"Oh. It's a heart dream, though?"

[reading_rainstorm]

"It is...but we were not exactly...expecting to host one so soon.

I think Stephanie...would be disappointed by the state of things..."

[misenplaits]

"I mean I live here too. I'm hardly a visitor."

[reading_rainstorm]

"Oh...to the shrine room, yes, I suppose..."

It may dawn on Marcille that every few nights Rowan and Stephanie go to the shrine room together and do not come out for quite some time. Even sleeping in there on occasion. The day after Stephanie always insists on washing the sheets for the room.

The Stephanie puppet glances over at the figure in the bed.

[misenplaits]

Marcille follows her gaze. Who's in the bed?

(Come to think of it, that is odd. What are they-- Oh. Oh. Marcille goes beet red at the realization.)

[reading_rainstorm]

It's another puppet. Of Rowan's body.

[misenplaits]

Marcille goes over to poke at it, concernedly.

[reading_rainstorm]

"Oh...you don't need to worry. I'm just not using that one right now."

[misenplaits]

"..."

[reading_rainstorm]

"...Is there a problem, Marcille?"