Fourth Wall Month!

[sphererpmod]

Who: Everyone and visiting Characters!
What: The Fourth Wall log!
When: The month of September!.
Where: All over.
Notes: If you have any questions about how this all works, please head over here to the Fourth Wall info post!.

Fourth Wall Log!

Company's coming!

So the Sphere is malfunctioning and there’s new arrivals here. In order to give them somewhere to sleep and rest, the Sphere has given them all temporary housing in dorm dome number two! That means sunken beds, three squares a day that are already prepared for you and clothing in the closets that just happen to be to your character’s taste. (And you know if they happen to die then you’ve got a nice space to Rez.) All and all it’s a nice little home base for people to have. There’s several common areas for mingling, and all though there aren’t individual rooms for the characters who are staying there, the domes also provide screens for privacy. Don’t worry, no one’s spying on you or something. Probably.

John (one of our resident NPCs here, who is a doctor and also a ghost but shush) knows the importance of family, and she knows how tough it can be when people arrive in a place they don’t know. The visitors haven’t really had the same experience as people brought in the traditional way, so John has stationed herself in the dorms with a sort of ipad thing, and she’s offering to take people’s information and to show them how things like the network work. She’s also there to hold hands and deal with any medical issues that these new arrivals may just happen to have. If people don’t want to talk to her, that’s totally fine! She won’t push. But she’ll also provide directions to places if people need them. Or at least point them in the general places that they need to go.

Speaking things out into the void.

This is a prompt for visiting characters to be able to put out a network post without actually joining the network community! Upon waking in The Sphere, each character (even temporary ones!) are fitted with a small golden circle behind their right ear. This is how they are connected to the network through a neural link. Touch and hold the button to create a broadcast of one of three types:

1. Audio. Your character thinks audible words onto the network.
2. Writing: Your character thinks text into the network.
3. Video. Your character projects a broadcast of a video of themselves onto the network.

Replies are determined by the player. The network needs to be accessed by choice, so character broadcasts are not automatically beamed directly into people’s heads. The Sphere isn’t that rude.

Private messages are allowed by pressing and holding and pressing and holding again as you picture the person in your mind. This can be an image or a name, err more on the side of things being more accessible than less.

God let people have their pumpkin spice lattes, Karen!

It’s September, and that means that fall has hit the Sphere hard. Well, as hard as any place can be without having actual seasons or sunlight. So, in the artificial sun of the Sphere, what there is instead of colder weather and leaves changing is a new festival. The festival, which if you ask someone who’s been there for a while is in celebration of the most fall thing in the entire world: pumpkin spice. That’s right, there’s an entire festival just centered around pumpkin spice flavored things! Of course, the people of the Sphere do try and make an effort to invoke the spirit of the season, with large garlands of fake brightly colored leaves lining the street. The scents of pumpkin spice fill the air and there are small fire pits near Adirondack chairs that are clustered together with all the things to make s’mores.

For those not pumpkin minded, there are also a fair amount of apples picked from the Sphere orchards, and a few small knives. Some older women promise that if people can peel the apples in a long spiral and throw them behind them, then the peel will form the initial of the person that the thrower is destined to marry. Of course there is also bobbing for apples and pumpkin carving.

In both the merchant dome and the agricultural dome there’s massive tables brimming with enough pumpkin foods to make Harry Potter jealous. There’s all sorts of pumpkin baked goods, pumpkin ravioli, roasted pumpkin and vegetables and there’s even roasted meats with pumpkin sauce! There's also drinks of both the alcoholic and non alcoholic sort: pumpkin beer, pumpkin spice wine, pumpkin spice vodka, apple spiced whiskey and so on! At each place is a coffee cart with a poor overworked barista who is doling out every sort of pumpkin coffee, hot chocolate and tea imaginable including yes pumpkin spice lattes.

We're waiting for the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.

There’s even a pumpkin carving contest in the agricultural dome! Pumpkins of different sizes ranging from small sugar ones to ones that could comfortably form a children’s fort are stacked around, and there are picnic tables set in newspaper and with things like knives and scoopers and nails and even drills for those people who want to remove the pumpkin guts or use them to do some carving. Everyone who participates receives a ribbon as well as a bag of toasted pumpkin seeds to take home.

They hope you really like pumpkin seeds. There’s a ton of them.

When the dark comes, people hunker down between the false stars above, with blankets all around them, the scent of pumpkin in the air. Flashlights and small lanterns are distributed by people, and when asked what’s going on, they’ll say that they’re waiting for The Great Pumpkin. Children whisper the name excitedly, and even some of the more inebriated adults do the same. Either way, at midnight the largest pumpkin rises above the crowd to gasps of shock and awe before it just magically changes into the types of candy and small toys that one would expect to come from an excellently stocked pinata.

The color of magical bounty.

In the rec dome, some magically gifted people have conjured up massive piles of dried leaves for people to frolic in. And when I say massive, I mean massive. It’s almost like an entire forest of leaves that’s thankfully free of all of the problems that come with jumping in leaves. With no animals in the Sphere, there’s not any of their presents hiding in the leaves and anything sharp hasn’t been created! Which means that it’s great for things like jumping in, burying things in and of course leaf fights.

If your character is missing nature, the area smells exactly how one would expect a late September walk in the woods to smell: it’s almost as if you’re there! The sunlight in the dome has also been altered a bit where the leaves are located, so it’s cooler, and a slight wind seems to be in the air, stirring the leaves every so often. It’s enough to encourage sweaters and scarves, that have been provided by people if they’d like them. The scarves and sweaters all seem to be of the handmade variety, and just the tiniest bit irregular, with one sleeve longer than the other, or the fringe on a scarf being slightly askew, that sort of thing. But they’re still lovely and soft and warm and smell of dryer sheets and leaves.

And we're flying, flying far beyond...

So the Sphere saw that everyone just loved the fireflies last month so this month it decided that what the city needs is to fly for real! So in the Rec dome, there’s a marked pad that people can step on that lets people fly around this particular dome for 30 minutes at a go using the same sort of controls that the communications behind your ear has! Press quickly once to go up and twice to go down. The clearance in the dome clocks in somewhere around 400 feet so there’s plenty of room for flying and even going up and touching the top of the dome and staring out into the abyss of water.

Be careful though because sometimes if you stare too long into the abyss, things just happen to stare back at you and then there are things in the deep water that you may not expect. Or that you might. Giant fish and squid may just find all this unusual activity quite interesting. But don’t worry the dome won’t crack. Guess what! You are now the fish in the aquarium for them! Or you know the bird flying past the cat in the window.

Wanna go to a real party? (CW: Mentions of drugs and alcohol.)

If people are looking for more illicit entertainment, and discreet inquiries are made, a passcode to the Black Market hidden behind some of the stalls is offered. The entrance is hidden enough that someone needs to be looking for it, and there is a rather large bouncer guarding the door and asking for the proper passcode. The passcode of the day happens to be I hate pumpkin.

Inside the black market is large, but much more dimly lit than the regular market dome. There are various pockets of people clustered under bright neon lights. The lights, someone confides to you, are code for what they’re offering. And nearly everything is on offer if a person has the ability to make a trade. Things from home, character skills and even favors tend to be the currency here, but watch out: the hawkers within are shrewd and sharp. If they make a deal with someone, it’s nearly always going to favor them. Eventually.

There’s also a large and loud party happening inside. Think of a rave with a large amount of people who happened to be a bit out of their minds. Drugs aren’t given freely here, they’re too valuable, but should someone want to figure out what they’re rolling on, eventually someone will ask or offer. The drug that they are currently using is called ‘self’ and it’s something that affects your character in an intensely personal way. For some, it’s an experience like your favorite cocktail mixed with vicodin, and for others it’s just like being drunk. For still more people, it’s like ecstasy without the side effects.

The drug has no physically addictive properties. It does however cause a hangover. The Sphere doesn't want to take all the fun out of imbibing too much.

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[foundries]

The Sphere has dragged in its fare share of recalcitrant, unhappy denizens— and Hades, lord of the underworld, is no different.

After having the situation explained to him by one harried but helpful woman named John, and rifling through his wardrobe, his first faltering steps out of his shared quarters (shared! the king has to share! incon-fuckin-ceivable) are unsteady. He got to keep a pinstriped vest; there's that small mercy, at least.

But apart from that small touch of home, everything in his entire body is bristling and screaming about how godsdamned wrong this is. He's under the sea. He's surrounded by water, trapped at the bottom of his brother's domain, and not his own. He smells faint metal and plastic and salt, not the rich earths and healthy soil and cold ore and rock of back home. It's like he's set adrift, cut off from his source of power, the realm that's more an extension of himself than anything else.

And so he wanders, back straight and his demeanour cold, aloof, for anyone who tries who strike up a friendly conversation with him. He's in no mood. He walks and walks, until he catches the scent of— fall, somehow. A chill breeze. Decaying matter. That's more like it.

He follows it, until he catches sight of piles of dying leaves and amongst them—

His breath catches in his chest; it's like the whole world bends towards the sight of his wife, everything narrowing in on Persephone, a piece of startling comfort amongst this alien place. She was supposed to come home. He wasn't supposed to come here.

[threshes]

It had only been a few days ago, when the turnin' of the world had come around to fall all official like that Persephone had lamented the lack of train whistle and husband coming to go along with it. There'd been three seasons that Persephone had been here now, at least for her. Winter back home, just after she'd tried to convince her husband to let the boy (who had been here and gone) and his wife go. There'd been the Spring that she'd arrived in the middle of that had come without her, and there'd been the faux warmth of Summer that had done little more than remind her of Hadestown with it's artificialness. Oh, it was better than what he'd done, but it sure weren't real either.

So, drinking in the leaves, because even if they were made with mortal magic, they were close enough for her to at least feel something close to what she wanted. To what she missed. To what she's still been missing and what Persephone still missed even when she was at home and the two of them were just so damned at odds all the time.

But there's somethin' more than a little familiar about the feeling of eyes that are the color of stone and earth and coal, and Persephone knows that they are even without seein' em. She knows just like she knew when he'd watched her in her mama's garden before the world began. Quickly (perhaps too quickly for the amount of booze that she's using to try and soak her feelings and memories within) Persephone sits up, and then she pulls herself onto her feet and up to her full (slight) height. Wobbling steps grow more sure with each bare foot that touches the earth, as if the effervescent feelings inside of her chest and the contract with their combined elements sobers her up.

Or maybe it's just him.

"Hades." There's a yearning in her voice, of course, but somethin' else too that ain't been there in a good long time: a note of joy that he's here. With a speed that Persephone hasn't used to greet him in perhaps centuries, the goddess throws herself into his arms and just presses her lips to his as if to assure herself that this was all real.

[foundries]

This instinctive awareness of each other isn't officially a part of their gods-given powers, but they can sense each other anyway, like a part of him is always tied to her (a red thread, winding permanently between their hands). And his barefooted goddess, his wife, comes tearing across the dome with a warmer welcome than he's received for centuries — Hades catches her, sturdy like rock as she flies into his arms and he spins her in a circle to burn off the momentum, like the years have melted away and she's that giddy young girl with flowers in her hair, and he's just the somber dark-clad young man with his words bricked up behind his tongue, knotted with nervousness again, all over again.

His hands wind around her as he kisses her back, breathlessly, and then breathes in her hair. Caught off-guard. Not expecting it.

(The seasons have been passing for her, but for him, he's only just let Orpheus go and they've only just parted for spring.)

"Persephone," Hades says when she lands on her feet again, and she can hear that thrum of surprise in his voice, naming her for once. Not just wife, not just his possession. "How did you get here?"

[threshes]

There's been no small part of her that has long since expected that the reason that she says her own name so damned much is because of the way that her husband won't. It's been so long that she's almost forgotten what it sounds like in the graveled thunderclap of his voice, and the way that it always moved deep into her chest like one of his rough hands pressin' against her heart. That alone is a sign that something has changed for him, for them, and hope is a frantic tattooing against her rib cage. He said her name. He said her name. He said her name.

Her fingers just reach up, cupping against his cheek, familiar as her own is, even if it's been a long time since she'd done this. Too long, too many times she'd forced herself to stop doin' it like they were stuck in an old groove in one of Hermes' records. This feels like a passage out of that, and later Persephone's rage will come. For the first time in longer than she cares to remember, that rage ain't gonna be cursed in her husband's name. It ain't gonna be directed towards him and the bargain that they'd two of them struck millions of years ago. Instead it's gonna be directed to something that she ain't had no control over in choosing: this place and the golden bauble that powers it.

"Hades." Persephone says it again, because though it ain't been the same amount of time for her that it'd been for him, it still feels like it, especially when it comes to respondin' in kind to it. "The same way you did, I expect. The Sphere dragged me. I've been here for months now. Got here and it was may, and it's damned near October now." It's evident from both the way that she'd greeted him, and from the expression on her face that it sure ain't something that she'd have picked. Yes, she's gotta leave for those six months, but for a reason. This doesn't have a reason to it other than that the Sphere picked the wrong damned person.

[foundries]

"Months." Hades repeats the word numbly, disbelievingly. It's not like they age at a mortal's rate, and it's not like you'd be able to see such a passage of time on them either — but he finds himself staring at Persephone's face regardless, as if he could see the proof of those missing months carved into the laughter-lines around her mouth. As if he can see it on her.

It's such a small thing in the scale of their millennia, just another six months, but—

Hades is acutely aware of time. Measures it, both on an exquisitely-made gold pocketwatch nestled against his heart, but also by the clockwork beating of his heart itself. He measures time, counts it down. Each minute with his wife is a treasure; each minute away from her is agony. The fact that, somehow, their timelines have fallen out of sync and they've been robbed of part of the year... it's a violation.

"How? This isn't Poseidon's realm. Not Hadestown, either. Where are we?"

Even as he's asking the question, he lets his hands settle on her hips, the small of her back. As if reminding himself that she's really here, and he's not imagining this.

[threshes]

There is a part of Persephone that does feel almost like she's been aging here. Back home, even when she was up top, There was always the connection to the things that were a part of her. There's always been the cycle of earth below her feet and things that are dyin' to come back to life. Here, there ain't either. Oh, things live she makes em live but they live and their deaths ain't right. Mortals die here, and the shades that should have been sent to the Underworld simply are sent to new bodies, living going on even when the natural order of things is tellin' em to stop.

But she does feel robbed. Robbed of him, robbed of the time on Earth, robbed of knowing what happened with the poet and his wife, robbed of helping the humans who depend on her and who make the pain of their separation normally worth it. Leavin' his side had a reason, and for Persephone, there ain't no reasoning that could ever make this worth it for her. Ever. They had those moments stolen. When Orpheus had come into Hadestown, it felt like things were changing, but now they'd lost that.

"I don't know. What that thing is, it ain't like nothing that I've ever felt before, Hades. It has the power to put shades back into new bodies. It runs the sun and the machines and everything else that makes this place go. Ain't no way to stop it, and I've been tryin'." Of course she'd been trying, but plants ain't strong enough to break through the glass that surrounds it and from what she's heard, ain't nothing is.

"What happened back home, Hades? With the boy?" She needs to know, Gods help her, she does.

[foundries]

That piece of information staggers him. Galls him. The sphere has a power that's supposed to be Apollo's (the sun) and Hades' (the machines), and Persephone's or Clotho's (life). What is this thing that's trampling all over the gods' domain, retrieving shades and stuffing them back into their bodies rather than letting them pass into Hadestown? It's a perversion of the natural order, of the tidily-humming machine that he'd spun up millennia ago and derived such quiet pleasure from watching it run. The satisfaction of everything being in its right place.

This place, on the other hand, isn't right.

But Persephone's question, at least, has a better answer. If not a happier one. Hades sighs, and in that moment he looks as tired as his immortal age might imply. "I let them go," he explains, and before the skepticism roils across his wife's face, he adds, "With a stipulation. A trial. The boy had to walk out of Hadestown and not look back, and have faith that she would follow him the whole way."

He doesn't continue, just yet. The ringing silence after his words imply how it might have gone.

[threshes]

This place ain't right and Persephone has been railing against it for months. But there ain't nothing that she can do. This ain't like the nothing that she can do about the arrangement between them because in the end, if she chose to do it, Persephone could break it on one side or the other. She could chose to leave behind him and Hadestown or the Earth and the mortals above if she had too. Oh, she hopes that he never makes her actually have to, but Persephone knows that contracts between gods have bindings because they believe they do.

Here, there ain't no matter of believing or not that makes comin' or goin' any easier, and Persephone's been trying that too. Been trying damned well everything that she could think of to get home, and she ain't gotten anywhere. At this point, she doesn't think that there is a way out other than the Sphere itself sending 'em away.

But all of that stops, it can't not stop. "Hades," Persephone just whispers quietly, her heart in her throat and her love and surprise in her voice. "You let 'em go." Yes, even with the stipulation, he still did. Humans can't be thinking that they can't just come and go from the Underworld without it being hard. (Not that she'd ever think that the boy's trip down had been easy. She knows it wasn't.) But Persephone hears things in her husband silence even when they ain't as loud as this was, and for a moment she just nods quietly. "But he didn't believe enough not to do it. Not to turn around and see." Because of course he didn't. If the two of them--gods who had loved one other since before there were humans couldn't, how could a human man even if he did have divine blood in him.

"How's the girl? Did she get back okay?"

[foundries]

It's an easy enough guess for a goddess as wise as she is, and immortals as experienced they are. The foolishness of men. Their doubt and paranoia, their lack of faith. Their lack of trust in their women. Their need for absolutes and to know. It was a massive glaring faultline, and Hades had applied that pressure to it, knowing it would likely crack — that Orpheus would fail. Because men always failed.

His hand rests lightly against his wife's elbow; a note of apology in his voice. Not regret, not remorse, but at least apology:

"His turning around sent her back down. She's in Hadestown. She'll be as well as any of the workers."

Which meant not very happy at all, but. He provided for them, he kept them safe, and their memories slowly bled away into the shallows of the river Lethe. Persephone was the one who brought glimmers of happiness and light back into their lives, little touches of the world up top. Down below, there was only the sweat and the coal and the fires and the unending work.

[threshes]

Of course she'd gone back to Hadestown--that was the deal and Persephone always abides by deals just like her husband did. Oh, he would cut as close to the line of breakin' em as he could but he wouldn't actually do it anymore than she would. Persephone just sighs softly, all of the weight of their worlds on it, both the living and the dead, Up top and down below. The girl had to go back, and she would slowly forget. Sometimes forgetting was the right way of things, that's what the Lethe was for. Maybe it would be better for the girl to forget, forget that the poet had failed. Maybe it would be better for her to forget for a while, at least until the boy finally died.

Though Persephone can't help but worry that the boy ain't gonna last the Spring without his wife. Moving heaven and earth to get to her would be easy compared to how the weight of the failure would be. If there's anyone who understands what the costs involved are when it comes to being away from your lover for an extended period of time, it's definitely the two of them. It's all the goddess can do to hope that it ain't gonna be as long for the two of them as it is for her here and him back home.

"Will you do somethin' for me when ya get home, lover?" Because of course he's going to be home, because she can't even think about him staying. Honestly, Persephone needs to prepare herself for the idea that he's gonna be gone again or she ain't gonna survive this again. "Put her up in the Speakeasy. Let her have a softer place to land than down in the mines." Persephone's club, Persephone's place and Persephone's mercy. It's also Persephone's fault, and she can try and ease some of that time until the boy gets down there.

[foundries]

It's not something Hades would have thought of himself — because he was a rigid creature, all unbending metal and iron and inflexible — but as soon as Persephone proposes it, she can see the idea crossing his face and slowly working its way in through the chinks in his armour. His expression is thoughtful, contemplative. Hades is a slow creature, methodical and precise: he mulls it over, weighs it as if setting precious gold on the scales.

And he finds no fault in it, no hairline fracture. He loses nothing by assigning Eurydice elsewhere — she's not strong enough for the mines, really — and the speakeasy does need someone else to man it, for those six months his wife is gone.

His hand trails down the line of her neck, accepting.

"Done," Hades says, as firmly and decisively as if he's already signed the contract. Then, a pause before he adds, uncharacteristically wistfully: "Her voice really is something else."