oo1. open.

[cestrumnocturnum]

CHARACTERS ▶ Benji Ryans and You
LOCATION ▶ Simulation; the Dock; your choice.
SUMMARY ▶ CR getting, day in the life, and so on.
WARNINGS ▶ Will add if need be.
NOTES ▶ Please feel free to select any prompt from below and tag it directly or generally! If you would like something specific, go ahead and set it up or let me know so I can!

SIMULATION;

[ These noises are unusual, these days: the rustle of wind in leaves, birds chattering, beetles clicking where they crawl beneath the dead leaves on the forest floor and up beneath loose sheets of bark. The forest is not quiet, but these sounds layer over a sort of otherworldly peace that the bustle of Zion never achieves.

It's very cold, biting at the exposed tips of her fingers, her face. Leather jacket is fur-lined and tickles at the collar, and her boots are flat, slim, picking dainty steps despite her height down the slope, leaves and debris loose underfoot. At her back is a quiver full of arrows, matching bow in hand -- a modern thing of pliant plastics and metals, but uncomplicated all the same. She ducks down behind foliage -- beyond that, a skinny, shallow river of ice-cold water, and further still, a large buck dipping his nose towards where the water's edge tickles rock and dirt.

Silent, she picks out an arrow, nocking it into place, aiming. Steam flutters on her exhale.

She doesn't loose her arrow. After a long moment, the buck lifts his head, and doesn't even glance her way as he turns and ambles back into the dense forest beyond. Taking a sharp inhale, she lowers her shot, watching until he disappears from sight completely. ]

THE DOCK;

[ Seated on the edge of a sparsely populated walkway, Benji pays as much attention to the surrounding expanse of the Dock as she might her own room. Traffic is light and the hour is small, and so no one has yet queried what she's doing here, please clear the area. That she works here isn't explanation enough in itself.

Besides, she is off-duty, and has a large datapad balanced on her knees, in use now for drawing. There doesn't seem to be a lot of specificity to what she's sketching -- it has sharp edges, though, and ragged textures, and she appears to be using the hovercraft sitting idle on its platform across and a little above her as a reference, the rounded shapes of its thrusters informing her design.

And then she pauses, when a rumble shivers through the walkway, and her reference goes from idle and dark to brilliantly cyan. An echoed announcement refers to one of the gates being opened, and soon the sound of those giant mechanisms fill the air too. The stagnant air is all movement, rustling the waves of her hair and the worn, patchy fabric of her sweater, and she watches with unrelenting fascination as the giant machine rises up and up. ]

WILDCARD;

[ Hit me up in PM or plurk if you'd like to do something else! ]

Comments

[milagros]

( milagros does not necessarily have a real purpose to being on the dock, besides the excuse of 'serving on a craft' which doesn't really necessitate 'hanging around the dock like a weirdo' - but she isn't queried, either, mostly because she's already asked several people for directions to where benji probably is, which is a fairly good explanation for why she's here, off-duty and unremarkable as she drops down beside her, offering a second bottle of something not strong enough to get them frowned at for drinking it around heavy machinery.

she doesn't precisely presume that they're friends, but rather that she felt like having company and wouldn't object if they were. and you sort of want a positive relationship with someone you routinely take your shirt off for when they're wielding a tattoo needle. )

Barter society equivalent of a penny for your thoughts?

( -- dryly. )

simulation!

[imitant]

Does it still feel like you're killing something?

[ In the Matrix, Xas feels cold the way you feel light pressure against a fingernail, more knowledge than feeling. His breath hangs in the air the same as anyone's, but his vessels don't constrict. His nerves don't protest. His clothing is long-sleeved but thin.

And in the Matrix, he's more himself--like what he feels he should be, less a set of wings--high saturation and a Gaussian blur, eighty pounds of inhuman bone and muscle, silent and statuesque on his perch in the trees above Benji's head. Formerly silent. He unfolds his legs to let them dangle off the branch and leans forward to look down at her, instead of off toward the vanished buck.

His feet are bare, but that isn't his mental projection of his digital self. His boots are tied together at the laces and hanging around either side of his neck. ]

[hoodornament]

[Max comes and goes. Docks aren't his place, not really, but work brings him plenty of places, here more often than most. Lots of work for a gearhead around here, and lots of opportunity to scrounge up some supplies, too. Mostly it's just that: business. Today, an exception arises in the form of a moment of indulgence. His step slows when he sees the motion of her hands, the sweeps certainly not indicative of writing, her attention too neatly split to be anything but something he hasn't seen in years.

Carefully, quietly he shifts, moving to allow himself a better angle, out of her immediate line of sight but still close enough to get a glimpse, just a glimpse of what she's doing. It fascinates him. Idle creation is one of the things he still understands least about life here. Maybe it's not as widely indulged-in as it would have been at home, before the water and the wars, before the bomb, but he catches it here and there, in flickers. Storytelling, tales recounted for the joy of it. Personal decoration. Form as well as function. And now this.

He lingers, unspeaking, hand rising to run thoughtlessly across his mouth, to wander on to scratch at the back of his neck. It's beautiful, really. He can still recognise that. See it in the act. Output almost doesn't matter. It's all beautiful.]