The flashlight dances against the deep shadows, highlighting the peeling plaster and cold cinderblock walls of the hallways. The beams and rays of illumination occasionally dance over murals and street art of varying qualities and styles, making the colors pop and swim.
"It's one street over from a high traffic area, they said," Luca Armaros grumbles to himself, as he advances slowly down the corridor, swinging the beam of the flashlight into the doorways as he passes by them. "It's bright during the day and too close to high traffic at night, they said. You'll be fine alone they said." There was nothing but rotting plaster and more art on the walls. "Nobody told me it was in a huge, old factory and its office."
He swings the beam to the left and pauses, and nearly jumps out of his skin, hand going to the pen in his pocket. The flashlight illuminates several sculptures, some of them humanoid and resembling mannequins, made of wood, ceramic, and marble. He holds the recording device bound around his fist up to his face. "Sculptures in the south wing, room…" He shines the flashlight on the faded door plaque that's almost rotting off the wall. "342."
A quick step into the doorway, further scanning. "Art supplies neatly arranged? Air is thick with… well it's not dust." He switches the flashlight off, and a gentle luminescence fills the air, tiny dancing orbs of light providing multi-colored illumination that spreads out across the room, and past him into the hallways. "Tiny glowing orbs? Think I'm getting close to the source of the Hermeneutic."
He spends the next few minutes poking around the room with the sculptures, waiting for one of the art pieces to pop to life, scare him, do something whimsical and magical. It doesn't happen.
"No I suppose it's too much to ask for this to be a simple resolution. So much for date night." He sighs, regretting the last minute cancellation. He pulls out the piece of paper with the notes he was given about the location. "Tiny dancing lights suddenly appearing and disappearing. The distinct sensation of feeling creatively inspired, time dilation and time loss, twinkling music, reenacting creative acts of defiance against authority with no prior urges to do so." He pauses and reads the last point aloud, brow wrinkling. "And sudden transposition into a completely empty village, always full of food and drink, with places to sleep and bathe."
One by one the little light filled orbs flicker and dissipate as the room and hallways return to pitch-black darkness. Luca looks up into the black and turns his torch back on. He scans the room again, settling on one wall where in big colorful graffiti letters 'Pseudogenesis Productions Presents: A Place to Rest'.
Luca waits for a moment, seeing if anything else happens, before softly mumbling to himself, trying to keep the confidence up. "Pseudogenesis, ok that's not scary at all. Totally chill modern art group. So much for it being another Andersen artifact," His voice twitters with both relief and disappointment. He makes his way back out of the room to the hallway, trying not to jump at every little sound that echoes through the rotting building. "Ok, now to find the source. If it's not one of these… I'd guess it's probably something simple. Pseudogenesis always does something simple right Luca? Simple with feelings attached in ways that just doesn't work with the classics." He laughs dryly. "This is going to take all night."
He rounds the corner flashlight flicking to the side at more graffiti and a distant sound as he walks. Something tugs against his ears, twinkling golden notes tickling against the edge of his hearing, just out of reach.
"Huh, what is… am I hallucinating? Side effect of the Hermie?" He stops for a moment, trying to pinpoint the source, turning slowly in place. The major problem is, it's coming from everywhere.
He turns the light back to the front, flicking the flashlight to the side as he walks up to another doorframe.
An undignified and wordless squeal rips from his throat as the beam catches a moving shape in the doorframe, two sky blue rings in the darkness surrounding pitch black spheres that rapidly shrink into slits at the sudden bombardment of light. He leaps back.
The shape on the end of the beam, equally startled, scrabbles backwards. Luca's fingers fumble for a moment in his pocket. The pen comes out as it extends into the flaming sword. His wings buzz into existence.
A high pitch noise of surprise emanates from the ill-defined shape. It shivers in the flickering beam of the flashlight as its' tones fill the room. The resonance of its' shriek ripples through Luca's whole being, coalescing in his eardrums and flowing through into his mind. For a moment his vision swims, and he manages to utter, "Bugger."
He crumples like a ragdoll in place, swallowed by blackness.
Short scene in the past between Chelsea and Luca
Tinnitus rings in Luca's ears as consciousness swims back to the forefront of his mind. A deep ache, that only comes with the uncushioned impact of the skull against a hard floor, radiates through the back of his head as his eyes open.
Open sky, the glittering lights of many stars gently wax against his corneas. Their warmth washes over his flesh. He sits up slowly, regretting the decision immediately as the throbbing gets worse. He nurses his head with one hand, fingers of the other splaying against the soft fabric of a blanket beneath his palm.
The clasping tongues of a gentle fire blaze at his feet, blurry without aid of his glasses as he squints. It only takes a moment to find the glint of the fire in the half-moon lenses, folded and precisely placed on a low stone table within arms reach.
Sliding them back onto his nose he looks around. Tables laden with roast game, custards, fruits, breads, meads and so much more greeting his eyes. In the distance tolling grey stones loom, framing homes carved from huge sandstone pillars into rounded domes. The wafting aromas of the opulently displayed dishes waft across his nostrils, making his mouth water. A sensation of peace, of contentment and clarity settles over Luca.
"Either I found the source, or I'm in the middle of it now." He mumbles, briefly removing the glasses to rub his eyes, and then place them back on his nose. The pain in the back of his skull quickly falls away as he picks himself off the blanket, and frowns when he notes the absence of the pen in his pocket. "Great job Luca, you lost it, or let it get stolen."
"Not stolen, taken and kept safe for a bit." A gentle and warm voice waxes against Luca's ears. Each syllable driving a series of legato oscillations in an abstract song that dances across his mind. A desire trickles, seeds, and then begins to burn into his chest. He knows it well, for it is so often wished for, grasped at in the moments when he was trying to spur the pen across the page. "I'll give it back when you leave, I promise."
Fighting down the sudden and intense compulsion to drop all other concerns, and openly opine on the regrets and resentments of his pockmarked love life; or, less embarrassingly, his most recent re-read of the tempest; he focuses on the direction and volume of the voice. "Are you the Hermeneutic? Or are you the manifester?" As the words pour from his lips, they bounce, rise and fall to different pitches. Unconsciously singing to the the just-out-of-reach song that plays on the edge of his hearing.
"Depends on who's asking?" A bit of a sting in the voice, dissonant distrust. He couldn't find any malice in the tone, just caution. "Are you AWCY? You don't feel like it."
Luca scowls. "What a farce, am I AWCY." He turns slowly in a circle. "I'd never even give them the time of day, pompous ninnies who think they define what art is."
Silence greets the response, the feeling of eyes boring a hole in Luca's back making him turn around, but no one is there. Then, the tension in the air drains quietly away. For a moment, reality seems to shiver, some abstract value of narrative weight adjusting. As the effect clears, nothing outwardly seems to have changed. Well at least at first.
He turns around again, and fins himself face to face with large blue eyes. An undignified yelp slips past his lips as he hops back hands held out defensively, though in an entirely ineffective form.
Golden furred ears emanate from a mane of messy curls and strands of identical color. The hair obeys gravity, hanging a few inches off the ground. An impressive amount of hair and strength to do that, Luca thinks. He looks over the sunkissed, glitterstained, bushy-tailed catgirl hanging off the tall wooden lamp-post by her toes, like a circus acrobat. Either I hit my head much harder than I initially thought, or am I actually caught in the hermie proper.
"C-c-could you stop doing that!" Luca stammers out, trying to regain some modicum of his dignity.
She tilts her head slightly to the right. "Doing what? Oh! Sorry about the noise earlier, you spooked me and I accidentally hit your resonance." Every note that drops from her mouth, twinkles in times with a glimmering instrument hanging on her back.
Again the notes of her voice sparked that creative fire in Luca's chest. He started to respond. "What? No, I mean stop sp—" He stops, finally noticing that he's singing back to her. Wrinkling his brow as he focuses on not doing that. "You keep spooking me, and I'd appreciate it if you would stop."
"Oooop! Okay, sorry I forget other people can't hear heartbeats." She nods twice, as if this makes perfect sense, underlining the total sincerity in her cords.
"What?" Luca stares at her for a moment in disbelief.
"What?" The catgirl tilts her head the other way, eyes dilating with the adjusting light as the two briefly stare at each other.
Luca pushes up the glasses on his nose, trying to hide the increasing bewilderment and fascination with this newcomer. "Uh yes, right… I guess it makes sense that you'd forget that." Beat. "Are… who are you?"
"I'm me!" She says emphatically as she makes a face very approximately close to :3, before closing her eyes and smiling.
Well, I just lost the bet with Heather and Chelsea, catgirls do in fact :3. "Right yes, you're obviously you. But did you make this?" I don't remember the Pseudogenesis dossier having a cat-girl…
The stranger on the pole shifts, rocking her muscles back and then pivoting forward. Her toes come off the pole, and she flips, briefly curling into a ball in mid air, before landing on her feet, and bouncing up like a spring.
"Maybe! Who's asking?" She tilts her head, one ear drooping, the other remaining pert as her tail flicks.
"Uh, my name is Luca Armaros if that's what you're asking?"
She nods twice, slowly. "Luca Armaros." she runs the words through her mouth several times in different intonations and pronunciations. "I'm Donny." Her tail pushes forward, offering to be shaken.
Luca stares at the tail for a long minute in bewilderment, before he takes it, and shakes. "Nice to meet you Donny." His eyes widen slightly in surprise at the softness of the fur, and the sudden jolt of ideation that runs roughshod through his nervous system, provoking the seed of a concept, already planted in his mind, to bloom.
"I made this one." She gestures.
"Sorry?" Luca says, looking up from his hand, pushing his glasses up.
"The Hermeneutic. I made it." She smiles at him again with both eyes closed again. "I had some help, but it was mostly me!"
Luca's lips twist upwards in excitement, all traces of being annoyed or baffled sliding away. "So you're not some imagination, or engrained projection of the Hermeneutic? You're real real, and you made this, or rather contributed to it?"
"I did just say that!" She confirms with another eyes-closed smile.
Luca bounces on his feet with sudden excitement, leaning forward. "I have so many questions, there's so few opportunities to understand how Hermeneutics are engineered as opposed to the natural way they might arise. Are you a reality bender? How do you seed them?"
Donny's head tilts, and she considers. "Do you play an instrument?"
"Uh, used to play french horn, why?"
Donny's lips curl up into a big toothy grin as the air and reality ripples.