thecapitol | A dream I dreamed // OPEN

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A dream I dreamed // OPEN

Who: The Disciple & Anyone
What: Exploring the center from the elevator doors
Where:Training Center Elevator/Any Floor
When: Today, anytime
Warnings: Probably tears.

Too many hands had touched her this morning for comfort. A woman used to living alone and running if people came too close was not suited to strange aliens manhandling her or others insisting that her clothing be changed. Her hissing and tearing at the clothing they pressed at her just got hurt scared looks and she felt a pang. No stronger than grubs, these creatures with their clothes and devices held out pleadingly. Eventually guilt and a sense of inevitability made her take the clothes she was offered and let them pull the knots from her hair.

They called themselves humans when she asked. Humans. Aliens. Was she merely a creature to them, to be kept for their amusement, killing and playing their games. Hardly. She pulled on the only thing she had managed to save from their hands, a long skin and fur cape, and held it closed over the clothing. As much as she liked the leather and fur that adorned her outfit, she almost wanted to tear it off.

The Disciple did, at least, want to find out where she was being kept beyond these rooms. A way out was probably too much to ask at this point, given that they had subdued her before. Their words and explanations flew over her head, things she didn't know of or understand. They at least managed to explain the elevator to her and when she asked if she was to merely stay here, they encouraged her to go look around. Technology she didn't quite understand swept her up and down until her stomach was queasy and at each new floor, she surveyed the area from the elevator doors and occasionally stepped off to explore.

She's not as silent as she hopes with new clothes to adjust to and the ding that precedes her at every floor makes any hope of a silent entry impossible.

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"Kankri..." She doesn't particularly approved of him going pitch for Psiionic but she would never really presume to dictate his quadrants. Even for all of that she sort of ends up in all his quadrants at once. Or she did. Time and loss seemed to have brought out all the flushed and pale and little else.

"Do what you must but I don't think it'll work out well. Wanting him to be close is one thing but you never hated him. Keeping him in a quadrant shouldn't be above keeping you both sane. Don't force things just to keep him romantically."

Then she pauses, "...Mating fondness for Mituna. Hmn."

"Yes, we do be having that!" And Pruna has been learning all about it. She hadn't known it had anything to do with pity though, no one had mentioned that. She wrinkled her nose and thought about that. Okay she thought Sandy was pathetic sometimes, so she guessed that counted.

"So do matesprite be being your word for girlfriend or boyfriend?"

"I guess so? I don't know why you have different words for genders but..." She shrugged a little. Humans.

"Do you have different words for hate romance and that type?"

"Hate romance?" She wrinkled her nose, now that sounded interesting. "I do no be knowing about that."

"You know, when you hate someone so much you want to keep them to yourselves. Kiss them and things--Because you hate them but they're attractive in a way?" She frowns, "Not killing of course, you shouldn't want them to be dead. Then you can't keep them."

Wow it sounds so healthy doesn't it. Perfect for growing minds of children who murder.

Hate someone so much you wanted to kiss them... Pruna didn't know anyone like that. But she knew people that she hated but liked hating so wouldn't really want to kill. At least not forever. Unless she had to anyways.

"That do be sounding cool, do you be having someone like that?"

She ponders it for a second. Signless spent a little time in that quadrant long ago but no one full time. So she shakes her head no, kneeling down to look at her. She traces the spade in the training floor dust idly.

"It's harder when you can't stay in one spot to find someone to hate that way. Most trolls I had to slash and run, no getting to know them. It's a hard quadrant to fill to be honest. Finding someone you hate in the right way who hates you the right way back."

Pruna wrinkled her nose, "Yes because they could be hating you even more and be wanting to be killing you." She could see how this was difficult.

"Can you be having a bo... matesprite and a person you do be hating at the same time?"

"Matesprit." She gently correct and draws the heart intersecting the spade, "And the person you hate is your kismesis. Honestly you can but it's not generally...done. In our culture. I don't know if humans do or not. But your switch between quadrants. Hate and pity are so close sometimes that you simply can't stop yourself from switching quadrants."

"Ideally you have one in each quadrant. But I have one person who filled all mine." She smiles softly.

"No I did be meaning two people, but at the same time." She wrinkled her nose again, hate and pity were sort of close. Though Pruna didn't really pity anyone... "Who did that be being, who did be filling yours?"

"Oh then yes. You should have one in each and each should be different. According to the 'rules' of society and all."

Where the spade and heart intersected she made diamond stand out. Then she drew the club inside the diamond and smiled, taping the ground beside it, "My quadrants in one was Signless. Heart--the red one, it was our main one and the one I called him by for lack of a better name. But we sort of...mixed all four."

"Meowst of them, I think," Nepeta answers, even though she's certain that it's not likely to be a very comforting response. It's the truth though, and it doesn't sound like the Disciple had been expecting too much to have survived. All the same, Nepeta feels a little bad leaving things there, so she continues on a moment later.

"It's okay though! I can help remember for efurryone now."

The cat puns--hard to catch in spoken word unless you were the type to know it--immediately soften any reserve she had. Like her as a wriggler. Still a wiggler. Young.

"Do you even know what I wrote of?" She laughs, tilting her head. There isn't even much bitterness in her voice. She can teach. She can always teach.

Venus is trying to impress Enjolras, just a little bit. That doesn't mean she's 'put on clothes' any more than her usual (today, it's a pair of shorts and a halter top shirt that, while it covers plenty of skin, she's sure he'd still find scandalous), but it does mean that she's reading a book about 'some crap she doesn't understand'. She's never taken any real interest in politics, because she hardly needs government when she has money and power; a wealthy superheroine can delegate all that legal stuff to her agent, who actually gets paid to care about those things.

As such, she's nose-deep in The Republic and sleeping when the ding of the Disciple's elevator rouses her from her nap so quickly that she knocks over the empty can of diet energy drink near her ankle.

"Hello?" Venus can tell from one look that the Disciple isn't one of those camera-ready people. She looks uncomfortable in her clothes, displeased with her hair, although Venus thinks it's one of the more stylish of the Capitol's fashions at the moment. Yet despite these differences, Venus always has a small space in her heart for the weirdos, for the strangers, for the non-humanoids. Given that she spent over a decade of her life as a technologically-contained living bag of anti-matter, it's be silly for her to feel anything but empathy, and she greets the new girl with a wave and a relieved snap shut of her book.

"Hi! Do you live here?"

Disciple is a little startled to be greeted so casually and compassionately but she pulls herself up straight and shakes her head. There's a long moment where she looks around--It's the same as the other floors honestly. She's not sure what she expected.

"I was exploring." She admits, staying in the door of the elevator for the time being, one hand on the frame to keep the doors from shutting, "I live on the seventh floor."

At least she thought it was the seventh. She remembered the particular decoration of the main room so it was merely trial and error when it came to that.

Pruna looked at the symbols with interest and then wrinkled her nose. "What do the other two be being?"

She hesitates a little, she really didn't mean to get so involved in the conversation. Just this and then she'll leave the girl be.

"Pale, the diamond. Ashen, the club. It's a...those two, the matesprit and kismesis, you kiss, these two, you wouldn't. Ashen is where you keep two people from hating each other in the wrong way or work as a go between to keep their relationship from failing or changing. And Pale, the diamond, where you keep each other out of trouble or make sure they don't do dumb things that get them killed."

Still very young, for all that she's seen and done things that no wiggler should ever be asked to do. But the Disciple doesn't need to know that. Not when the Capitol is hard enough to get used to without going into the part where Alternia is gone and none of them are ever going to be going back, not even the ones who haven't died or been killed. So instead of even trying, she simply shakes her head at the Disciple's question.

"No. But I can learn!"

She wrinkled her nose, "So one you do be making sure two people do be hating each other but do no be killing each other and the other one you do be looking after them but do no really be their girlfriend."

Because really that last one sounded exactly what she had thought being a girlfriend was. She sighed. This was really complicated.

It's entirely based on what he knows about Nepeta, otherwise he wouldn't even know the term "purrbeast".

"As you wish, she will be curious about you either way, I wot. Forgive my manners, I am Cuthbert Allgood, son of Robert."

He gives her a little bow to go with his introduction.

"Or don't hate each other in the romantic way. You can hate someone without wanting to kill them or be their kismesis. It's...like rivals really." She tilts her head, "And with your moirail...you keep each other sane and out of trouble and really that's part of matesprit as well. Pity. But you don't want to kiss them and you know all their flaws and how to help them overcome them rather than...letting your pity for them overshadow their bad points."

She's not sure that made sense really. It's so hard to explain the finer concepts when she wasn't sure that's how humans did them. Since the names weren't even the same.

She watches his bow with confusion. He talks half like a highblood but bows to her. Humans were strange but this one seemed stranger than most. She nodded at him, in lieu of a bow and realized she should at least give a name.

Her title could do little harm with a human at least.

"The Disciple. I'm the Disciple. My title."

"Well aren't you the eager student." She kneels in front of her now. Not that she was very tall to begin with but eye to eye felt better.

"I'd be glad to teach you. Time purrmitting."

She had told herself she wouldn't get attached to anyone. There was no point if she had to kill them when the time came. But it's a little different for her tiny descendant. There's too much of herself in Nepeta to ignore the girl. And if she wants to learn what Disciple wrote about, she had to tell her.

"You new?" Venus sets the book on the table, idly moving its cover to face away from Disciple with her fingers - never show off a logo or identifying brand, in this case a title. "I didn't see you on the screens last time."

One of her flip-flops has fallen off her feet while she dozed. She inches her toes around for it, trying to redress herself without having to bend over or get out of her chair.

Pruna frowned, this all sounded really complicated, much more complicated than she had thought already. "How can you be being all four with Signless though, if you do be wanting to be kissing him, but do no be wanting to be kissing him, all at the same time?"

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A dream I dreamed // OPEN

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they're going to have weird ideas about romance after this

like she doesnt already cry

sob

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