002 | text

[relinquishing]

[It takes him all day to muster himself out of his bed to make this post in the dormitory levels. Had he not been slammed with a message about his new "job", he would have kindly stayed in his room for a day or two just to... he wasn't even sure what the right word was. He didn't need to relax. He needed to detox. His journey home had been short, but he hoped and prayed it was just a dream. Only a dream, please just let it be that. But he'd seen the barren landscape, inhaled the putrid, acidic smell of miasma leaking out of every crack and crevice, seas of purple mud and poison all that remained of his world.

Of course he wanted it to be a dream.

...]

Two questions. Feel free to answer or not.

First: How many of you have been back home? As in: how many have returned to what used to be their home, only to come back? What did you see, and did it... feel real?

[...]

Second: What are we left with if the worlds we all know are really gone? Is it just us, this Tower, countless years and a few grim expectations?

I really am starting to wonder.

Comments

voice;

[cullscuttlefish]

It's happened to me at least twice now. It never gets any eelsier to sea your world dead, and it feels more real every time it happens. It would be a whole lot betta if it was just...gone, not absolutely dead. Easier to deal with, anemoneway.

...were you here when the administrators decided to hit the fast-forward button a couple of months back? It made it feel like there was nothing but years and reely grim expectations, all right. But I don't intend for that to be the reel end.

Voice

[relinquishing]

[Ah, it's the girl who made the announcement about their deaths. Just hearing her speak gets Guy's already weary voice to soften.]

Yeah, I was here. It makes your heart sink a little bit, doesn't it? To think that people have the possibility of being here for decades... centuries, if their body allows it. I doubt that anyone would really want that.

...So, what do you intend to do?

Voice

[cullscuttlefish]

...my own body would allow it. My kind, and my blood specifically, would probably live for that long. I know I wouldn't want it.

I intend to work with those that want to find a way out, and ensure a safe passage home for everyone that has a safe home to go to. For those of us that don't? We'll find someplace new and start again.

Voice

[relinquishing]

[He hums tiredly.]

It sounds like a grand idea, in theory. Just "how" and "when" and "where" are the big questions, aren't they?

[He wasn't pretending to have any more information than anyone else, especially seeing as his own stay in the tower hadn't even spanned two months... or, well, four, if this bizarre and foreign calendar they used around here was to be believed. The notion of escape was easy enough to imagine, but to put it into practice... did anyone even have a glimpse of a plan?

It's a bit depressing. But it's part of why he's asked his questions in the first place.]