sixthiterationlogs | [MINGLE] PLOT: Siren's Call

[MINGLE] PLOT: Siren's Call

WHERE: Anywhere
WHEN: August 25-26
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Mental manipulation, drowning, death
NOTES: Details here. This post is for EVERYONE, not just the affected. Please make sure and note if your thread is locked for plot purposes.

It began slowly.

A wisp of song or familiar sound on the breeze swept in from the lake. No source to be found, only the uneasy feeling it had been heard before as it coiled itself steadily inside the minds of the chosen. The sound was a mantra, pulsing soft at first and then louder, growing over days until it seemed to fill the skull, relentless. Come here, the lake whispered, cajoled, shouted. It is cool and quiet beneath the waves.

Come here, it presses now in time with the melody until there is nothing but to blindly follow. The water is calling.

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She can't get back. Owen isn't letting her. That starts to upset her especially when all she can see if trees and houses in the distance and not the water. A stray coherent thought filters into the madness or at least what passes for one when you're under a spell. If Owen knew what was going on, he'd let go. She just has to help him understand what's going on. "You don't understand. I can explain-" She starts breathlessly. She really wants to go back. It's hard to ignore the call. Owen is her friend. She trusts him. She just has to make him understand so she can get back. She can do it.

"It's quiet beneath the waves. We'd be safe down there." Except they don't need to be safe anymore in that sense. Kamala should know that. "We'll go together. I won't leave you, but you have to let me go. Please, Owen. I want to go."

It's a sentiment he's heard before, if not in voice then in the language of empty places. Madness that feels like clearest sense, a child's idea of the world given new life in teens and adults. It happens, when the world is turned so inside out from what it was, when safety is so far forgotten. And it can happen suddenly, quietly, escalating until settlements disappear from their sites, until vaults guard corpses so old and dry there's hardly a smell.

He doesn't want it to make sense. Not here, not in Kamala, but it's not a thing that's ever going to. If it's not her own mind, they'll deal with it; if it is, well, that's a slower, more sideways thing to fix.

"I understand," he says. When he puts her down, it's with one arm still crooked around, holding her with her own arms still pinned. Just enough to reach down for his pack. He's got his lines in there, his tools. Even then, he pushes them further up, until there's grass underfoot again. "I won't leave you either, alright. If I put you down, so I can make us a tie to keep together down there, will you stay? Just for a minute?"

Calm as he keeps his tone, his heart's in his fucking guts, right now.

In her right mind, Kamala wouldn't fall for this. She can barely think clearly enough to talk Owen into joining her rather than fighting him. He seems to be giving into her so she sees no reason why she can't wait a minute. The cool water isn't going anywhere. It'll be sweeter if she can share this with him.

Kamala nods in agreement. "I'll stay for a minute. I promise." She pushes down that need to go back for his sake. They'll go soon. This way they can be together. It's perfect.

Most circumstances, he wouldn't make her touch his bad hand, but it'll be enough work tying them together with five digits, instead of his full eight. "Sorry," he says reflexively, more for only having two full fingers to curve between her own, when he sets her down and links their hands. The lie, well, that's necessary. She can kick him all the way back to the other village, in a few minutes.

"Why don't you keep telling me about it," he suggests, pulling the nylon line from the pack and biting down on one end, looping the length between and around their torsos, making sure the loose ends can anchor around his shoulder, knot on the one opposite from her. "Where you need to go. I won't make you go on your own, we'll stick together."

In more ways than one, by the time he finishes lashing them together. He knows boats more than livestock, even now, and it might be fitting that he's knotting her in like a lifeboat against his hull. Pulling with his teeth, the setup lets him shoulder his pack. "Just keep hold of my hand, alright?"

He's not taking another step toward that lake.

This would normally be the part where she reassures him. They're friends. She only cares about how he's different to the extent to how it bothers him enough to apologize. All her effort is going towards not breaking her word. The call is so powerful she can hardly stand herself. The distraction he offers her while he ensures her survival is taken quickly as a result. "Okay! I don't really know where exactly." She frowns, looking somewhat disappointed. "They just keep telling me to go under the waves. The water wants me to come so I'll go to it, swim to the bottom, and... I don't know. I guess we'll figure that out together. I'm so glad I won't be alone."

It'd be terrifying to her ears to hear her relief at that any other time. Kamala squeezes his hand and smiles. "Are you ready?"

They, the water--the more she speaks of it, the less he knows how to feel. Relief, at how the pattern of this sudden madness doesn't match the brittle despair he's encountered on the other side? Fear for what else it might be? The outcome's the same, if he hadn't come by. Another person lost, with no creature to fight.

None he can see.

Taking a deep breath, Owen tests the link of their fingers, and trusts the knots he's been tying most of his life. He tries to put into his mind the worst of what could follow: the way she might plead or berate him; the way she might attack; the very real possibility that he will have to choke a young girl out to save her life. None of them are as bad as letting her drown herself at the bottom of a lake.

"I'm ready," he agrees, and walks decidedly toward the houses.

She takes a few steps before the confusion settles in. Thankfully for all involved when push came to shove, Kamala is much more likely to cry than say awful things. Her version of awful things is never more severe than pointing out an unpleasant truth. There's none here for her to speak on. Kamala can do nothing more than try to dig her heels in and try to pull to back towards the lake.

The look of betrayal on her face probably isn't too pleasant to look at, but it's undeniable she has the losing hand here. Kamala's eyes fill up with tears. "You said you'd come! Why are you taking me that way?! We're supposed to go to the water. Owen!"

He pointedly doesn't look: eye on the prize, whatever sorry excuse for one it is. There's the easy way, where he stashes her in one of the houses and goes for help, but that's too many what-ifs. What if she gets out, what if he's too far away, for too long, and she just tries again?

They're going to walk, trussed to the other, all the way back to the southern village. She can cry all the way there, she can question.

"Because I lied," he says, not ungently, and the hold on her hand is firm. "Something isn't right, and I'm not going to let you hurt yourself or worse. I know it probably doesn't make sense right now, but we're going to get help."

Her stomach twists itself in knots. Deep down she couldn't be any happier about this. Something is still pulling her strings so she just gets more worked up into hysterics over being denied. "I trusted you! Why won't you let me go?! I want to go to the water." She complains childishly before giving into her frustration and swinging at him with her free hand. Clearly trying to walk back while weighing like ten pounds and having no muscle mass isn't helping things. "You're such a jerk!"

He only really left her their arms' worth of slack, on the rope. In backing up, all she can hit is his arm, and he could let her go, dangle her at that end and drag her like a pack dog across both rivers. Hurt's not what it's about, when her hand connects with his elbow--he's not letting her go, even if he can.

She digs in her feet, he bends a bit at the knee, leaning into his steps. They hardly slow. "Keep trusting me, then. You know you're not talking sense. You know I'd hear you out if you were."

He doesn't expect the logic of it to register; it just passes the time.

It's all useless. She tries to hit him, slow him down, and yell. Nothing really stops his efforts to get her away from the water. Kamala still tries until the second the song stops. They're close to her home by then. Nothing is outright different. She still drags, but it's more out of shock than anything. Kamala came dangerously close to losing her life only for a miracle rescue by the guy who always seems to have her back when it counts.

She wipes her eyes with her free hand even knowing it's not going to help for long. She's so relieved she could cry all over again. "You saved me." Kamala notes softly.

It's a struggle, crossing the first village. She almost gets him at the first bridge, feet catching in planks and his energy flagging. What kind of luck keeps someone from crossing their path and questioning him, he isn't sure--he could use the help, once explanations were settled.

She could use the help. He's just tired and a little bruised, the kind of sore spots he might get walking through a whip of young branches.

On the second bridge, she's quiet, almost walking on her own. He expects a lull, some false stop and a break for it--but when he turns she looks--different. Worn out, but present enough. Upset in a way that isn't about the water. "What," he asks, not quite catching the words. Turning cuts some of the slack on the rope, but he puts a second hand over hers, ducking a bit to look her in the eye. "You with me here, kid?"

She nods stiffly at the question. Her eyes are definitely welling up with real tears now. Kamala is surprised she actually made it this long. "I'm with you." She squeezes his hand fiercely. The tears are definitely in free fall now. It hurts so badly. She can hardly stand the shame her actions have brought her. "You helped me even though I was acting like a lunatic. Owen, I'm sorry. I was so awful to you." She breaks into full sobs at that.

Owen wouldn't say he was uncomfortable with tears: he's had a long time to get used to the ways people can crack under pressure, or leak just enough to keep going. Kamala crying is good, even--it would be worse if she just stood silently, if she went into shock.

But Owen's always approached it like a thing that isn't happening. When his mother found her own hole on the ship to hide in, and it wasn't safe to go to her--her crying was like a storm, or a ghost wailing in the hull. Something too big, and not quite real. Nothing he needed to deal with. On the roads and paths between settlements, if a straggler wanted to cry, if a kid wanted to have a fit at the unfairness of the world, all that mattered was the noise, or if they kept walking while they did it.

Here: does it matter? He can't be sure, not after the Wendigo, not with some unheard call trying to walk people into the lake. Owen leads her in by the hand and lets her have his shoulder, cups a hand to the back of her hair and crouches. "It's fine," he tells her, and if she leans into him he'll lever her up, ready to carry her into the next village if it means she won't go back.

"You haven't been awful, I'll get you home, it'll be alright."

She goes in without a second of hesitation. Kamala rests her head on his shoulder and cries silently. The shaking of her shoulder is the only real indication of how broken up she is by how she behaved before she snapped out of it. "I shouldn't have hit you! It doesn't matter if it didn't hurt. I had no right to treat you like that." She had no right to treat herself like that either. All Kamala can think in this moment is how ashamed her parents would be. They wanted her so badly they gave Kamala a name that translated to perfection. How could she betray them by giving into some whispering devil who told her to drown herself and hurt her friend? She should have been stronger.

"No right," he can agree, shifting her up in his grip, feeling the bite of the rope pressed now between them. If she weighs a thing it's from the water not yet dried on her clothes, and whatever he does or doesn't believe--he wants to tell her, her soul's too light to go anywhere but up.

"No right," he repeats, up close. "But a reason. I know you weren't acting right, kid. I forgive you."

The sharp pain from the rope pressed against her feels deserved after what happened. That morbid thought doesn't actually stop Kamala from seeking out more comfort from Owen. She buries her head against his shoulder as she's shifted up.

It's something that he forgives her even if she's still upset with herself. She spares him the melodrama of not being ready to forgive herself yet by at least acknowledging what he said. "Okay.... okay." She lets out a sharp exhale. "I just want to go home."

One thing you don't do, even if you fuck up the first thing you don't do by getting involved in the first place--is make promises. He's fucked for that first one, he's still dripping lake water from his clothes and hefting her up to settle in his arms.

But it's such a small thing; it's a walk, despite all the things that could go wrong along the way.

"I promise, we'll get you there soon."

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[MINGLE] PLOT: Siren's Call

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