Marian [Open]
May 15, 2018 21:57:02 GMT
Post by Iona E. Mason and Ocellimon on May 15, 2018 21:57:02 GMT
Before the door was even halfway open, Iona was already swiftly and awkwardly snaking her way through the crack she'd made pushing it open. Her pleated skirt flared as she backed against the door, closing it. She found herself on the sidewalk of busy downtown Shibuya.
The girl looked back at the small shop. Dimly lit, but with red lights in the windows, and skulls and bats hanging in the crimson glow. She thought she'd found somewhere to belong there, a cure for her homesickness, but she'd been quite wrong.
Above her blazed the neon screens showering the people below with the light of new revelation. Others looked up to receive the news from on high, but Iona merely glanced and kept walking. The message was not for her ears. She had been voluntarily excommunicated.
The screens proclaimed the words in Japanese written upon their neon walls, which she knew to mean "Live at Some Concert Hall: Some J-Pop Monstrosity. Saturday at Who-Gives-a-Wet-Fart O'Clock"
The headphones she wore replaced the loud proclamations with a heavy baseline. Andrew Eldritch's low, droning voice belted out the key to her own feelings--words more pure and real to her that, though they were oceans and decades apart from her, they felt more real than her current surroundings:
In a sea of faces, in a sea of doubt
In this cruel place your voice above the maelstrom
In the wake of this ship of fools I'm falling further down
If you can see me, Marian, reach out and take me home.....
She almost wanted to dance right there. One could rarely get the girl to talk about her feelings, but dancing them came easily. But in the crowded streets she knew she would receive nothing but derision from those around her. She sighed and held back on her urges.
This place was so much different from Glasgow. And even in Glasgow she hadn't really belonged. Here, though, her differences were even less tolerated.
"The nail that sticks out gets hammered down."
A truism, to be sure. An oversimplification of the varied cultures that exist here. And yet...it's not that inaccurate. Iona felt suppressed and repressed at nearly every turn. She had to wear a uniform to school, her father didn't approve of her street clothing (no matter how casual she attempted to make her look), and she hadn't made any real friends with whom she shared any interests.
Not for lack of trying, though. What did she even have to talk about with anyone around here? The only ones she'd had any real contact with were those weird kids she'd met at the mall when all that weird shite was going down--the ones being followed around by those creatures...those creatures that talked like they were people.
I hear you calling Marian
Across the water, across the wave
Iona turned the corner into an alleyway which appeared to be empty. She couldn't take it anymore. The crush of strangers. Besides: It was faster to get home this way.
I hear you calling Marian
Can you hear me calling you to
As she crossed the dirty alleyway, not caring how much nondescript grime her school shoes were picking up, she began dancing as she walked. She stared at her feet, moved her hips ever so slightly, waved her arms as if pushing away imaginary cobwebs. She kept moving forward as she did this.
Save me, save me, save me from the
Grave...
She began to feel alive again.
Marian
The world around her disappeared. She was back in Glasgow. In a dark room, hazy, bathed in crimson light. Nobody judged her there, or if they did, Iona didn't care. Everyone gave her her own space on the dance floor. No creepers creeping up on her (well, except for very rarely, and normally they were swiftly shunned by everyone). The dances were introspective, a subversion of normal club dancing. She'd never have dared to try to sneak into a "normie" club underage, but this wasn't just a club: This was home! All her anxiety and anger dispersed as she danced, crushing imaginary insects under her heavy black boots.
And then then it all swept out from under her feet. The white smoke of the fog machine disappeared, as did the lights and the darkly-clad people around her. She stumbled, feet sliding out from under her on the thick coat of muck they'd accumulated. She fell back, barely catching herself on the lid of a trashcan, which bent back, colliding into the concrete wall with a clang, but broke her fall without toppling over. A sharp pain shot up her back from the impact.
A tasteless expletive escaped her lips.
Just then, a dark shadow leaped out from the trash pile. She felt it scuttle over her school shoes. She let out another expletive, louder this time. Her heart was pounding. It took her a moment to register that it had been just a rat. She watched a wormlike tail snake its way into the darkness, slithering into some other trashpile on the other side of the alley.
She breathed a sigh of relief and straightened herself on her feet as she removed the headphones from her ears. For a second there she thought it was another one of those--
"You again..."
Iona started. She looked around.
"Who said that?" she called out. The voice sounded familiar, mature, but belonged to no body. In fact, there was seemingly nobody else in the alley aside from her.
"Down here, little girl," said the voice, confident and sure of itself.
Iona obeyed without thinking.
There, at her feet, was Ocellimon.
The slivery cat stared up at her, eerie green eyes seeming to glow in the alleyway. She licked her paw and spoke (somehow, she did so without having to move her mouth):
"You frightened away my dinner," said the cat, displeased.
"Ah'm sorry," Iona blurted. Shedidn't know how serious the digimon would take that offense, and she didn't want to find out.
"Oh? Are you now?" said the cat, finished licking its paw. Never taking her eyes off of Iona, the cat leaped forward without any warning. Iona shrieked, thinking this was it...
...but all that happened was that she heard the soft pad of Ocellimon's paws meet the metal lid of the trash can behind her. The silver cat had jumped clear over her, and now stood nearly touching her back.
Iona turned quickly. Their eyes were almost level. The cat was not being overtly aggressive, yet, like real cats, her expressions were at least somewhat alien. Iona wasn't quite sure what Ocellimon was thinking.
Ocellimon, however, knew that and took advantage of it. Ocellimon loved to toy with her prey, after all, and this girl had already frightened away her chosen quarry.
Iona could smell the thing's disgusting breath. It was like carrion--like something that lived off of rats in the alley. She wondered, morbidly, if it ever ate anything bigger...
"Y-yea," said Iona, "I didnae mean to--"
"Your eyes," said the cat.
"Yeah, what aboot 'em?" replied a confused Iona.
"Why do they look like mine? How did this happen?"
Huh? Oh...right.
"It's makeup," she said, "I reckon that's why they call it a cat-eye."
Given her inclinations, Iona's makeup was a fair deal more bold than most, so the effect of looking like a cat was even more obvious on her due to the thick lines she drew around her eyes.
"Cat eye...," repeated Ocellimon, "I suppose I should feel flattered. Now..."
Ocellimon leaped again, this time up higher to rest on top of a dumpster lid. She glared down at Iona, her inscrutable face threatening to Iona. Her in the dark, being stared down in the shadows by a green-eyed cat monster--this would totally be her aesthetic if she wasn't too busy being scared for her life.
"Why is it that you are here, my cat-eyed human," she asked, curiously, "It can't be for the same reason as I. I've watched you humans very closely. You have older humans that provide you with food. So that cannot be it. And yet...you humans do like to do things that don't involve food or sleep. That puzzles me."
"You...don't care about anything besides eating and sleeping?" said Iona, forgetting her fear a moment.
"Well," said Ocellimon, "I do occasionally enjoy toying with my prey. Letting them go for a second, only to strike and obliterate their frightful hopes of escape in one fell swoop. To usher them into darkness at the exact moment their fear is at its zenith. To pierce the throat and feel the heart pounding against my teeth."
Iona's breath caught. The cat had said that so casually, yet...somehow it was the most threatening thing she'd ever heard in recent memory. Everything from her svelt body to her smooth, icy voice oozed with danger. Again, she'd love this if it were a movie. But it wasn't. It was real. And it so was the fear that welled up in Iona. She could feel her heart pounding in her throat, to which both her hands went instinctively.
It was then that Iona heard it: laughter. Soft, musical, haughty peals of laughter filled her mind. Clearly amused, Ocellimon leaped down to Iona's feet, having now completed one circle around the girl.
"Bet at peace, child," said Ocellimon, "Killing you would take too much work. I could do it, but then I'd never finish eating you. I'd have to leave most of the corpse behind to the rats."
"Well," said Iona, "Other humans would find me before the rats ate me up too badly. They'd put me in a box and bury me so that I wouldn't be eaten."
"Oh?" said the cat, shocked, "Now, that truly would be a waste."
"But at least I'd get to wear a pretty dress," said Iona. It wasn't like she'd never imagined her own funeral before. She really needed to lay out in her will what kind of gown she wanted to spend eternity in.
"Humans..." the cat mused, "Yet, you haven't answered my question. Why are you trampling around in alleyways when you have your own home to go to."
"I...suppose I just wanted to be alone..." Iona muttered. Ocellimon's ears perked up.
"So," said the cat, moving closer, "You, too, prefer solitude?"
"Sometimes..."
"Curious. But what's that sound coming from your hands?"
Huh? Sound from my...Iona looked down. Oh. She means my headphones.
"It's music," she said.
"I've heard music before, human," said Ocellimon, twitching, "it never seems to cease echoing down here from the streets at all hours of the day and though the night--and never ceases to be a nuisance upon my sensitive ears."
Iona giggled.
"Mine too, mostly," she said, "but my music is different from what you usually hear. It's...uh...obscure 'roond these parts ah reckon. Here."
Iona didn't know what she was thinking. Before she could stop herself, she was already placing her headphones over the dangerous feline digimon's ears. Curiously, the beast allowed it. For a moment, she sat--but just a moment.
In an indignant fit she swiped the headphones away from her. They clattered to the ground where she continued to stare at them, back arched, hair standing on end.
"Foul, loathsome noise!" she hissed, "Don't ever subject my ears to that again!"
"I guess you just don't like music..." said Iona, reeling in her headphones up from the ground with the chord that attached them to her phone, "This isn't even to most people's tastes, ya ken?"
"I can't imagine why..." said Ocellimon.
Meanwhile, the music continued on, quietly from portals of Iona's headphones, barely audible to her but easily picked up by Ocellimon's superhuman hearing:
Was ich kann und was ich könnte
(What I can do and what I could do)
Weiß ich gar nicht mehr
(I just don't know anymore)
Gib mir wieder etwas Schönes
(Give me something beautiful again)
Zieh mich aus dem Meer
(Drag me from the sea)
Ich höre dich rufen, Marian
(I hear you calling Marian)
Kannst du mich schreien hören
(Can you hear me calling?)
Ich bin hier allein
(I am here alone)
Ich höre dich rufen, Marian
(I hear you calling Marian)
Ohne deine Hilfe verliere ich mich in diesem Ort
(Without your help I am lost in this place)
(Song lyrics: Marian, Sisters of Mercy)
The girl looked back at the small shop. Dimly lit, but with red lights in the windows, and skulls and bats hanging in the crimson glow. She thought she'd found somewhere to belong there, a cure for her homesickness, but she'd been quite wrong.
Above her blazed the neon screens showering the people below with the light of new revelation. Others looked up to receive the news from on high, but Iona merely glanced and kept walking. The message was not for her ears. She had been voluntarily excommunicated.
The screens proclaimed the words in Japanese written upon their neon walls, which she knew to mean "Live at Some Concert Hall: Some J-Pop Monstrosity. Saturday at Who-Gives-a-Wet-Fart O'Clock"
The headphones she wore replaced the loud proclamations with a heavy baseline. Andrew Eldritch's low, droning voice belted out the key to her own feelings--words more pure and real to her that, though they were oceans and decades apart from her, they felt more real than her current surroundings:
In a sea of faces, in a sea of doubt
In this cruel place your voice above the maelstrom
In the wake of this ship of fools I'm falling further down
If you can see me, Marian, reach out and take me home.....
She almost wanted to dance right there. One could rarely get the girl to talk about her feelings, but dancing them came easily. But in the crowded streets she knew she would receive nothing but derision from those around her. She sighed and held back on her urges.
This place was so much different from Glasgow. And even in Glasgow she hadn't really belonged. Here, though, her differences were even less tolerated.
"The nail that sticks out gets hammered down."
A truism, to be sure. An oversimplification of the varied cultures that exist here. And yet...it's not that inaccurate. Iona felt suppressed and repressed at nearly every turn. She had to wear a uniform to school, her father didn't approve of her street clothing (no matter how casual she attempted to make her look), and she hadn't made any real friends with whom she shared any interests.
Not for lack of trying, though. What did she even have to talk about with anyone around here? The only ones she'd had any real contact with were those weird kids she'd met at the mall when all that weird shite was going down--the ones being followed around by those creatures...those creatures that talked like they were people.
I hear you calling Marian
Across the water, across the wave
Iona turned the corner into an alleyway which appeared to be empty. She couldn't take it anymore. The crush of strangers. Besides: It was faster to get home this way.
I hear you calling Marian
Can you hear me calling you to
As she crossed the dirty alleyway, not caring how much nondescript grime her school shoes were picking up, she began dancing as she walked. She stared at her feet, moved her hips ever so slightly, waved her arms as if pushing away imaginary cobwebs. She kept moving forward as she did this.
Save me, save me, save me from the
Grave...
She began to feel alive again.
Marian
The world around her disappeared. She was back in Glasgow. In a dark room, hazy, bathed in crimson light. Nobody judged her there, or if they did, Iona didn't care. Everyone gave her her own space on the dance floor. No creepers creeping up on her (well, except for very rarely, and normally they were swiftly shunned by everyone). The dances were introspective, a subversion of normal club dancing. She'd never have dared to try to sneak into a "normie" club underage, but this wasn't just a club: This was home! All her anxiety and anger dispersed as she danced, crushing imaginary insects under her heavy black boots.
And then then it all swept out from under her feet. The white smoke of the fog machine disappeared, as did the lights and the darkly-clad people around her. She stumbled, feet sliding out from under her on the thick coat of muck they'd accumulated. She fell back, barely catching herself on the lid of a trashcan, which bent back, colliding into the concrete wall with a clang, but broke her fall without toppling over. A sharp pain shot up her back from the impact.
A tasteless expletive escaped her lips.
Just then, a dark shadow leaped out from the trash pile. She felt it scuttle over her school shoes. She let out another expletive, louder this time. Her heart was pounding. It took her a moment to register that it had been just a rat. She watched a wormlike tail snake its way into the darkness, slithering into some other trashpile on the other side of the alley.
She breathed a sigh of relief and straightened herself on her feet as she removed the headphones from her ears. For a second there she thought it was another one of those--
"You again..."
Iona started. She looked around.
"Who said that?" she called out. The voice sounded familiar, mature, but belonged to no body. In fact, there was seemingly nobody else in the alley aside from her.
"Down here, little girl," said the voice, confident and sure of itself.
Iona obeyed without thinking.
There, at her feet, was Ocellimon.
The slivery cat stared up at her, eerie green eyes seeming to glow in the alleyway. She licked her paw and spoke (somehow, she did so without having to move her mouth):
"You frightened away my dinner," said the cat, displeased.
"Ah'm sorry," Iona blurted. Shedidn't know how serious the digimon would take that offense, and she didn't want to find out.
"Oh? Are you now?" said the cat, finished licking its paw. Never taking her eyes off of Iona, the cat leaped forward without any warning. Iona shrieked, thinking this was it...
...but all that happened was that she heard the soft pad of Ocellimon's paws meet the metal lid of the trash can behind her. The silver cat had jumped clear over her, and now stood nearly touching her back.
Iona turned quickly. Their eyes were almost level. The cat was not being overtly aggressive, yet, like real cats, her expressions were at least somewhat alien. Iona wasn't quite sure what Ocellimon was thinking.
Ocellimon, however, knew that and took advantage of it. Ocellimon loved to toy with her prey, after all, and this girl had already frightened away her chosen quarry.
Iona could smell the thing's disgusting breath. It was like carrion--like something that lived off of rats in the alley. She wondered, morbidly, if it ever ate anything bigger...
"Y-yea," said Iona, "I didnae mean to--"
"Your eyes," said the cat.
"Yeah, what aboot 'em?" replied a confused Iona.
"Why do they look like mine? How did this happen?"
Huh? Oh...right.
"It's makeup," she said, "I reckon that's why they call it a cat-eye."
Given her inclinations, Iona's makeup was a fair deal more bold than most, so the effect of looking like a cat was even more obvious on her due to the thick lines she drew around her eyes.
"Cat eye...," repeated Ocellimon, "I suppose I should feel flattered. Now..."
Ocellimon leaped again, this time up higher to rest on top of a dumpster lid. She glared down at Iona, her inscrutable face threatening to Iona. Her in the dark, being stared down in the shadows by a green-eyed cat monster--this would totally be her aesthetic if she wasn't too busy being scared for her life.
"Why is it that you are here, my cat-eyed human," she asked, curiously, "It can't be for the same reason as I. I've watched you humans very closely. You have older humans that provide you with food. So that cannot be it. And yet...you humans do like to do things that don't involve food or sleep. That puzzles me."
"You...don't care about anything besides eating and sleeping?" said Iona, forgetting her fear a moment.
"Well," said Ocellimon, "I do occasionally enjoy toying with my prey. Letting them go for a second, only to strike and obliterate their frightful hopes of escape in one fell swoop. To usher them into darkness at the exact moment their fear is at its zenith. To pierce the throat and feel the heart pounding against my teeth."
Iona's breath caught. The cat had said that so casually, yet...somehow it was the most threatening thing she'd ever heard in recent memory. Everything from her svelt body to her smooth, icy voice oozed with danger. Again, she'd love this if it were a movie. But it wasn't. It was real. And it so was the fear that welled up in Iona. She could feel her heart pounding in her throat, to which both her hands went instinctively.
It was then that Iona heard it: laughter. Soft, musical, haughty peals of laughter filled her mind. Clearly amused, Ocellimon leaped down to Iona's feet, having now completed one circle around the girl.
"Bet at peace, child," said Ocellimon, "Killing you would take too much work. I could do it, but then I'd never finish eating you. I'd have to leave most of the corpse behind to the rats."
"Well," said Iona, "Other humans would find me before the rats ate me up too badly. They'd put me in a box and bury me so that I wouldn't be eaten."
"Oh?" said the cat, shocked, "Now, that truly would be a waste."
"But at least I'd get to wear a pretty dress," said Iona. It wasn't like she'd never imagined her own funeral before. She really needed to lay out in her will what kind of gown she wanted to spend eternity in.
"Humans..." the cat mused, "Yet, you haven't answered my question. Why are you trampling around in alleyways when you have your own home to go to."
"I...suppose I just wanted to be alone..." Iona muttered. Ocellimon's ears perked up.
"So," said the cat, moving closer, "You, too, prefer solitude?"
"Sometimes..."
"Curious. But what's that sound coming from your hands?"
Huh? Sound from my...Iona looked down. Oh. She means my headphones.
"It's music," she said.
"I've heard music before, human," said Ocellimon, twitching, "it never seems to cease echoing down here from the streets at all hours of the day and though the night--and never ceases to be a nuisance upon my sensitive ears."
Iona giggled.
"Mine too, mostly," she said, "but my music is different from what you usually hear. It's...uh...obscure 'roond these parts ah reckon. Here."
Iona didn't know what she was thinking. Before she could stop herself, she was already placing her headphones over the dangerous feline digimon's ears. Curiously, the beast allowed it. For a moment, she sat--but just a moment.
In an indignant fit she swiped the headphones away from her. They clattered to the ground where she continued to stare at them, back arched, hair standing on end.
"Foul, loathsome noise!" she hissed, "Don't ever subject my ears to that again!"
"I guess you just don't like music..." said Iona, reeling in her headphones up from the ground with the chord that attached them to her phone, "This isn't even to most people's tastes, ya ken?"
"I can't imagine why..." said Ocellimon.
Meanwhile, the music continued on, quietly from portals of Iona's headphones, barely audible to her but easily picked up by Ocellimon's superhuman hearing:
Was ich kann und was ich könnte
(What I can do and what I could do)
Weiß ich gar nicht mehr
(I just don't know anymore)
Gib mir wieder etwas Schönes
(Give me something beautiful again)
Zieh mich aus dem Meer
(Drag me from the sea)
Ich höre dich rufen, Marian
(I hear you calling Marian)
Kannst du mich schreien hören
(Can you hear me calling?)
Ich bin hier allein
(I am here alone)
Ich höre dich rufen, Marian
(I hear you calling Marian)
Ohne deine Hilfe verliere ich mich in diesem Ort
(Without your help I am lost in this place)
(Song lyrics: Marian, Sisters of Mercy)