Beyond Sight (Eonia/MoonBeryl)

[Jaycy Ashleana]

(( December 9, 2022 ))

She didn’t know how or why she ended up outside the double doors of the Outback or when - how long had she been standing there staring at the doors? Jaycy blinked, shaking her head faintly to try and sift through the fog that beset her. A hand lifted so she could touch the portal and breach the place but the door opened of its own volition before her. Her head canted but she paced forward and twisted, eyeing the closing behind her.

Steps forward took her to the bar and instead of journeying behind as she was usually wont to do she climbed upon a stool. Silence reigned as she surveyed, a thin meager hand pausing just atop the bar top. “I know this place,” she murmured faintly.

The words held little strength either in modulation or timbre, tiny and tinny and crackled. “Something….” What would have come next drifted to the empty room and her green-gold eyes flitted shut. “Mmm,” she crooned, swaying lazily on her perch. That simple sound pulled to a gasp and her eyes flared open with the shock. Echoes of light, barely there but nonetheless plain to her in the still air, formed to illusory women engaged in… things.

One squatted in the middle of the Outback, gnawing on something lengthy, thin, and blue. One reached before her to the empty place just in front of her. A third sat at the bar, peering intently at something on the ancient wood. Others moved through rings, or danced, or performed in all manner of events.

Scenes from a life long-lived here, simultaneous before her eyes.

One by one they eventually shifted and drifted toward the middle, to the crouched figure. With each connection, every time a figure brushed on the central, the light pulsed higher and harder.

Finally they merged and the leftover being stood, licking seeming lips. Another sharp exhale escaped and she turned, cowering from the bright moment. “What the hell!”

Her inattention allowed the thing to stalk closer and it was several seconds before Jaycy consciously noticed. A yelp preceded her scrambled retreat and she dashed off the stool, crossing the common area in an effort to evade the specter.

She tripped over her own feet, swearing as she tumbled to the ground and made herself an easy target for the approaching thing. It took advantage and pounced, descending onto and then into the red-and-silver-haired woman, a beaming skeletal outline quickly absorbed.

The scream was soft, almost silent, as the woman herself faded. Wisps of her flitted out and up through the closed dome.

When all was said and done, all that remained was the plain black t-shirt, jeans, and low boots left in a vaguely person-shaped pattern.

[Jaycy Ashleana]

The first thing Jaycy noticed as eyelids fluttered open was the minute rocking; the second was that fingers were curled around the top edge of a railing that she stood before, facing outward. She was standing, it seemed, and on a moving platfor--no, ship. Her gaze moved swiftly from the outward toward her conveyance, brows knitting. What, where was she, and how did she get here? Her hand freed itself from its anchor point and she turned fully to take in her surroundings.

Almost immediately she fell back into that railing, gasping as the monster - personthing? - passed inches away, phasing into and out of existence within seconds before her. "What the....!" Willing her heart down, she set a hand to her chest and manufactured several deep, slow breaths. As she calmed, she took several more moments with that railing at her back in study of the rest of the barge. Other figures, ephemeral, laced to and fro. Some seemed at work, moving arms and muscles with purpose while some seemed near to her own stillness, visitors and patrons and... where was she? "Heyas?" she called to the air, voice pitched to carry to someone.

Keemela'och. Keemela'och. Keemela'och.

The word echoed around her and she whipped her head left and right to identify the speaker or any clue that could signify what that meant. Red-and-silver hair, contained in a simple, loose braid, smacked against her mouth and she jumped at the contact, yelping. "What the....!" she repeated, blinking and scrambling to tuck the braid behind her shoulder once more. "Where the hell is this."

Answers remained illusive on the barge so she shifted to peer at the swiftly-coursing landscape without. Nothing seemed immediately or intimately familiar in the shifting visions, quasi-unrecognizable shapes and patterns making up wholes she'd never contemplated. One constant held, however, and grew larger in the journey. A ball of black so thick it seemed as if a hole to yet another space - a starless space - punched so cleanly in the air. Would they go through it? The woman's frown deepened as they neared, noting warmth seemed to fill when frequent clouds passed the place between barge and sphere.

"Is that a black hole?" she finally mumbled, querying herself while taking a step back from the railing.

The barge slowed to a halt and docked and she grasped at the rail to keep her balance. The sphere itself remained at a minor distance, a blot well ahead of the clouds they found themselves in. Fluff swirled around, dipped and dashed by long ribbons, curving and carving through the air around the ship and beyond.