010 ☀ video ☀ you'll learn things you never knew you never knew

[tumbleweeds]

[ There is white and red and black, bone and blood and rotting flesh, when the camera first blinks on. Some fiddling, dirty fingers tapping at the lens then pulling it back reveals that the rot is not a human passenger but bovine; the cow that has been on board since Strela, effectively smashed by the jump by all appearance, but rotted already -- rotted for months, by the look of it. (For a year, its owner will tell you, and forensic analysis will back up her story.)

More fiddling, those filthy fingers and long strands of dirty golden-blonde hair (falling, from the looks of things, coming out in chunks and joining the cow on the floor of the ship) covering the lens until Jaye can look into the screen properly. Once again, she looks like a mess. It's worse, this time. Worse physically and mentally, and it's easy to tell by how she interacts with the camera, slides her thumb up over the lens and bobs her head like a bird. It's almost like she can't quite remember what she's supposed to do. ]

I heard voices, [ she starts, voice a hoarse, scratchy mess. Unlike last time she doesn't try to save it, pushes on as if she's talking to herself and her dead cow and not anyone who's listening. ] Are you back? It's been so long. I didn't mean to leave -- I couldn't get there. I was so close and just like him, just couldn't get there. The halls just kept going and then the ship screamed and I had to change before I did, too.

[ She shifts onto her haunches, rocking back and forth, not looking at the camera -- looking around instead, taking in how things look with eyes that aren't the compound eyes of an insect. One hand moves up to move some hair behind an ear and the hair simply falls down in strands, leaving a patch of bare scalp behind on her head. ] It was red again. Red and angry, so angry, the whole time. I didn't mean to do it this time, I didn't -- but I figured it out. They're the same, aren't they? Exactly the same. Trickster and hero and villain all at once. "Fear not, I will help you."

[ There's a laugh, then a sob, then both at once. ]

Don't be mad. A year isn't forty. Just-Like-Creator took the flesh and threw it over the land, and there grew the tribes of men.

[ One hand reaches for the skull of the cow, for the rot covering it, and draws. :) ]

((ooc: Explanation over here!))

Comments

[tumbleweeds]

I didn't believe at first. Didn't ask.

[ A beat. ] Jenna. [ Jenna's important, part of her mind prods -- Jenna will make the thoughts form correctly, make it easier to separate woman from insect from canine from bird. She can't make the words come out, though, simply looks puzzled for a moment before coughing again. ]

Are you broken?

[thatsaflaregun]

You don't always have to. They tell you. And then they don't let you forget it. You run and you run and it doesn't matter- it finds you. Simple as that.

[Jenna. He needs to talk to Jenna. He got waylaid on his way out of the pods and then this. He hasn't actually spoken to her yet- first mistake. You don't lose your constant.] Aye. Jenna.

[That question makes him laugh, mad as the proverbial hatter.] I think I arrived that way, sistah.

[tumbleweeds]

He saved me, [ she says, and she really is talking about Coyote -- not this twisted thing that her mind has created. ]

Not a priestess. Not a prophet. But something. [ A beat. ] Can we see her? She knows how pieces fit.

[thatsaflaregun]

So he could ask you to do what? [Because the details don't matter. Nobody saves anyone unless there's a reason for it- fate, destiny.]

Aye. I think I need to. [He keeps touching his nose as if he's expecting it to be bleeding.] If nothing else, I have to know she's still here.

[But she is. He'd know if she wasn't. He'd just know.]

[tumbleweeds]

Work for him. Serve him. His minder taught me to be more than human and I taught it to someone else. And belief keeps him alive, and fear feeds these engines and blood is the fuel.

[ Well, part of that was coherent, at least. ]

... People left. [ It's a sudden, horrible reminder and her knuckles turn white as she grips the communicator, stares down at him. ] I haven't seen them in so long. I just waited for them to wake up -- what if they're gone?

[thatsaflaregun]

And it doesn't matter. None of it matters.

[And that is totally coherent, because it doesn't. Gods, the ship, the island. It doesn't matter at all.]

There aren't any boats that can stay on the bearing. [Grumbled] So they get taken, yeah? They wander off and we just don't find them again. It's a big island.

[Ship, Desmond. He flinches.] Ship. It's a big ship.

[tumbleweeds]

Lost sheep. Little lost lamb, eaten by the big bad wolf. Or the coyote.

[ She giggles. ]

Make friends with the teeth and maybe they won't bite you.

[thatsaflaregun]

[He tried that once.]

They'll make promises they can't keep. I just want it to go away, sistah. I don't care about anything else.

[tumbleweeds]

You could go back to sleep. Go to the woods like my teacher did, old cougar whose time had come, broken teeth and soft claws.

[thatsaflaregun]

Or I could wander back out into the ship and come back so mad I don't care, yeah? There's something I'm meant to get to out there. It'll fix this.

[tumbleweeds]

They'd say you already were. Will say that about me. I said it about Neal. But it makes sense, to us.

Not mad. Just seeing differently.

[thatsaflaregun]

Problem is I'm damn well certain I'm already mad, so it's not gonna matter either way.

[tumbleweeds]

Matters to me.

[thatsaflaregun]

I just need it to end, sistah. It can't go on like this forever. It just can't.

[tumbleweeds]

Won't. Even gods can die.

[thatsaflaregun]

That's the thing, sistah. They can. I know they can- I've seen it happen.

[tumbleweeds]

Only one god, here. And he's mine.

[thatsaflaregun]

Not the one they call Smiley, then?

[tumbleweeds]

What's in a name?

[thatsaflaregun]

[The Man Who Wasn't Locke didn't have a name either.]

Either way, I've seen to the end of this bloody farce. I've just got to do it right this time. Then I can rest.

[tumbleweeds]

Oracles see many things. Fate and destiny again, hm?

[thatsaflaregun]

That'd be it, yeah.

[Oracle. Of course he is. He's no Odysseus. He's just Cassandra of Bloody Troy.]

[tumbleweeds]

[ There are no heroes in this story, Desmond. ]

Serves no god but those, then. Still important.

[thatsaflaregun]

So they keep bloody telling me, anyway. So that just makes you a servant then, sistah? You're content with that?

[tumbleweeds]

Not just. Never just.