As Tasha watches in shock, the black marker squirms in the dragonet's paws, briefly sporting wiggling, stubby tentacles before it settles back into a new asymmetrical shape. The piece in Charon's mouth bursts into a cloud of yellow vapor, causing the remote to cough as it envelopes its head. The vapor is disturbingly similar to the half-there, half-not appearance of Lukthu-hem's invading appendages.
"AHH!" goes Tasha for the second time, instinct taking over as she lunges for the remote in an effort to pull it out of the yellow fog. A mother's instinct for a child, conflicting with her logical understanding of Charon as a millions-year old pan-universal time traveling ancient, conflicting in her head she rushes forward.
The remote still holds on to the marker, but makes all sorts of disgusted expressions once clear of the cloud. "That is the worst tasting piece of candy I have ever had."
And Tasha holds on to the remote, slowly trying to scootch it and herself away from the position of the disipating cloud of madness. The bag gets dragged along as well, held in the tiny paws of Charon's remote. Once she's a few feet away she stares at where the cloud had been, needing a moment to work out the words, muzzle moving in slow pantomimes of language until she can spit out the words. "It ... It is?" She blinks, turning to the tiny dragon-like being. "Are you okay? No crazy think? Did it effect you? Was there a question!?"
The little dragon's tongue is still out. "I am not harmed. It is yellow inside. Very bad for dark-spacers, I think."
"I don't think it asked me anything," the remote claims. "I'm too young to confuse with truth."
"Hastur really likes yellow," Tasha says, or rather agrees, even if she's only agreeing to a phantom question because her nerves have shaken her focus. She considers the response as she tries to calm down, nodding slowly when she's processed it all. "Well, Hastur said it was a question and I can't be rid of the Marker until I've performed his task with it. My task this time was to bring it to you, otherwise it would drive my crew mad when -- and if -- we leave here. They were already starting to fall apart on me, I decided to trust in your resilience even though I knew I could be wrong. It was the best choice out of all the bad choices, at least I thought so. At first." She hugs on to the little creature, this time entirely for her own protection.
"Oh.. a question. I suppose it could be," Charon admits, not minding the hug. "Hastur is of memetic origin. A living concept, of sorts. Madness may be a side effect of extreme sanity."
"Is he?" Tasha cocks her head to the side, then nods again. "You know I thought he might be. They all seemed very taken up with specific ideas and areas of influence, it reminded me of what a Titanian named Lore told me about gods of very specific things. They're not that simple, but they do seem a lot like that: conceptual. Memetic. A living, thinking, concept-with-a-personality. So Hastur is extreme sanity?" She pauses, then thinks to add, "I believe the question was: where do you stand with Order and Chaos? The big concepts, I guess universal memetics. They seem to be engaged in a war between the two, but it's more complex than I understand. Yet."
"I don't think there is any Order or Chaos," the remote offers. "Have you heard anyone actually define those big concepts? Are they supposed to be forces, like gravity or electromagnetism? Social constructs like Justice or Truth? Reality is usually near the middle ground, with lots of crunchy and squidgy bits. Like in the more interesting sorts of sausage."
"I, uhhh, wonder if that's the answer, then?" It does sound like an answer to Tasha, if not exactly what she was expecting. Part of her can't help but think it's not what Hastur would be expecting either, making her wonder how a memetc deity will deal with being stymied. Either way, she thinks she may have completed her task, she just wishes she were more certain of it! "Well, I guess Order is very ... orderly and Chaos is very, um, chaotic? It's how you go about something? But then, maybe it's all the same thing after all. People say I'm chaotic but I'm always following my sense of order, I just change my whenever I think it needs to be. I guess sticking to an idea beyond when you think it should change is order? Order for order's sake?"
"Metal is orderly. Tea is chaotic," Charon notes. "Neither is alive. Living things, complex systems.. 'higher-order' systems seem more chaotic. But there's always order in chaos, and chaos in order. You can't have one without the other. Just like with hot and cold and light and dark. Although dark and yellow don't get along well. Yellow isn't as dangerous as pink though."
"I'll keep that in mind." The hybrid woman neverthought she'd have to weigh in colors by their danger, but there it is. She adds the information to her mental list next to whatever the colors wheer that He-Who-Moves showed her, which are themselves filed under 'What are these anyway? And what do I call them?' There are a lot of things in her head sorted under that catagory.
"Well," Tasha goes as she begins to rise, remote in her arms and bag dangling from its hands, "Maybe we should discuss reality more after we've saved you from Luk'thu-hem? At least we now have another weapon: The Marker might be useful. Is there anywhere we should go, or anything on board, um, you that would help us fight?" She turns to regard where the Eeee pilot had departed and frowns. "Now I wish I had him wait, but the Marker might have driven him mad."
"Will you be my lymphocyte?" Charon asks.
Tasha stops looking around to peer down at the little dragon. Her ears go decidedly askew. "What's a limpo-site?"
"There are many kinds," the remote explains. "Macrophages are my favorite. But you would be an eosinophil granulocyte! They kill parasites."
"I do sort of do a lot of killing of parasites," Tasha agrees, nodding slowly. And like a flash insight strikes her, as obvious and decisive as lightning: It doesn't matter. She made her decision to stay and there's precious little time; she said she would stake her life on helping and she meant it. The rest, as Yue Sen might say, is details. "You know what? I'll do it. Whatever it is you need me to do: I'll do it. I am here to help."
The little dragon wags his tail. "Thank you. I promise to put you back together if you get broken. All you have to do is fly into the storm, bite off pieces of the bad candy and spit them into the dark stuff. I think."
"Um, won't it just rip me to pieces?" Tasha supposes that would constitute the put back together part; it's not exactly the first time she's been put back together but it's not something anyone looks forward to. "And, well, how do I bite off the ... candy? Or is that something you'll enable me to do?"
"You.. bite it?" Charon suggests. "Have you not tried? Your mouth is canine. You may not want to bury things, but you must want to bite things."
Tasha tilts her head. "I do want to bite things on a regular basis," she conceeds, entirely because it's true. Civilization, on the other hand, frowns on that sort of thing. "I can give it a try?"
Reaching down, Tasha takes up the bag and wiggles the Marker up by massaging its outline and pushing upwards. She gives it a uncertain look, looks to the dragon for support, then shrugs. It's not the weirdest thing I've ever done, she decides, and then she bites it.
It's like biting ice, even though it isn't cold to the touch. And while there is no odor to the thing, it still tastes foul. For a moment, she's sure her teeth will just slide across the not-quite-there surface.. but then there's a sudden crack and part comes off in her mouth. The bag starts squirming of course. "Now spit for distance!" Charon urges.
The young woman grimaces around the chucnk, holding the bag at arm's length. When the order comes it can't have come fast enough: Tasha turns towards where the lurking storm of Luk'thu-hem hovers far above, braces her feet, sucks in a breath through her nose, and spits!
The blob of black makes it about three meters before blooming into a yellow miasma. Lukthu's storm is several kilometers off yet.
Tasha looks down at the ground and shakes her head. "Bumper would say I'm a terrible cannon," she admits. She had hoped for some sort of something, but it was not to be. "Looks like I'd better get closer ... " Her gaze rises, taking in the distant storm. She exhales a sigh. "A lot closer."
"You could also try bigger bites if you have to be close," Charon suggests.
"Aren't you a monolithic hyper-dimensional being? You could be more helpful, I am trying to save you after all." The dragonete still gets petted, despite the young woman's words. She stands there staring at the distant storm for several seconds as she marshals her courage, then nods once more. "Well, here I go. If you need help and I'm not available--" because I'm a smear on the wall, "-- contact the 'shiny demon-ship'. My friends will help you, ask for Gabriel or Thoth. Do you want to wait here?"
"I can't risk being grabbed," Charon apologizes. "I'm not as old or clever as you think, or I wouldn't have gotten stuck like this. I'm only three-dimensional, like you. Sometimes I have to eat and poop too."
"Well, I can't fault you for being in over your head. I am too, right? I think we have that in common." Tasha carries the remote over to the cave entrance, hoping Luk'thu-hem won't think to attack it near an exit point and it can board the Tadpole if the situation calls for it. She hunches down and pats the dragonete's head. "Wish me luck." Then she's standing and turning away, bag stuffed under her arm, wings stretching out in preperation for flight.
At least the target is big.. it's just those "little" landscape razing tentacle-mouth-things that billow in and out like clouds shouldn't do. Not even tornadoes. With the weird lightning veins it feels like deliberately flying into a Forbidden Zone. But.. Tasha hasn't seen any eyes. The blind flailing could be just that, if Lukthu-hem is just searching for whatever it is that makes a remote a remote.
It's a comforting thought at least: Perhaps Luk'thu-hem sees her as nothing more than one more random life form in a ocean of them, another Charon creation lacking that special something that Luk'thu-hem can sense. She knows she has other odd properties for a living thing, but then this is an odd place, and her oddities may not stand out amongst the noise. With her approach unbarred, Tasha debates her plan of attack, at first having decided to try and toss the chunks in to the randomly grasping mouthes. That could still work, she decides, but if the entity isn't protecting its core element she thinks she might be able to sneak in closer and land a more decisive blow, knowing she only has one chance at an ambush strike -- then Luk'thu-hem will be on to her.
Searching the mass, Tasha attempts to identify a core region, a central force hidden amongst the center. The mouthes must be drawing in all the matter somewhere, something must process it all, or so she believes.
The only hints of structure in the cloudy mass might be from the strange lightning. But it doesn't look like there's a single central location, or else it moves around. But then, unlike Charon's claims, Lukthu-hem is multi-dimensional. It may be how she's able to bypass the Stelya'rhyan's armor. There are definitely places with the lightning changes color, which could be due to some sort of dimensional shift inside the storm. Some of those bolts actually leave the cloud though, striking the ground just like real lightning would.
For all her years of sailing the skies, fighting a storm was never part of her training. Avoid, surviving, dealing with the aftermath certainly, but actually fighting one? No one back home would ever believe it -- but then they'd never believe most of what she does and who she is now. Marker biting luko-site, that's what I am now. She focuses on her task once more.
Without a clear entry or core target, Tasha opts for her original plan. She dives down to follow one of the reaching funnels, trying to get ahead of it.
The pseud-pod moves slowly.. relatively. It's still a kilometer long worm-like appendage that is scooping up the ground. The lightning inside becomes most intense just before it solidifies enough to split along its length and form teeth.
Using the lightning as a guide and assuming some sort of three-dimensional translation process occurs, Tasha makes her move. She gets ahead of the vortex's pathway and and times her bite to occur as the lightning picks up, pulling the bag up and gnawing a large chunk off, then spits it at a tree in the creature's path od devasttaion shortly before the anticipated strike. In this way she leaves a kind of trap, a mine, for the creature to blunder in to and take in to itself.
The blob of whatever actually bounces off of the tree to burst within the scoopy, toothy confines of the limb. Which also means it's very close to Tasha, so she may have to flee before she can see what effect it may have had.
Deciding even if she's taken down now she migth have trouble relocating the Marker, Tasha ascends away to observe the results. If Luk'thu-hem is anything like a living thing, it's first reaction to swallowing something poisonous will be surprise -- and a kilometer long being would make for a lot of surprise! Visions of being thrown in to the ground from a errant jerking tentacle fill her head. Even away, the fear lingers. She's no stranger to extreme risk and threat to life and limb, but Luk'thu-hem is the cloest she's ever come to directly combating a deity-class being. Not combating through a proxy, or from the relative safety of a vessel or Titan, but directly. The Marker is just a weapon in her hand, her only armor is some thin undersuiting and herself. Her mind drifts to that place of certainty when fighting in the face of certain destruction, of do-or-die. The fear lingers, but knowing she needn't retreat and she's in things until either she wins or they lose allows her another kind of armor: the comfort of acceptance and the certainty she need only keep fighting.
From a relatively safe distance, the effect seems slow, but it must faster than it seems. The cloudy blackness begins to turn yellow at the point of contact, and spreads from there like a drop of dye in water. First, the point where the yellow contamination separates the tip from the main body of the tentacle breaks. As in a solid something breaking, even though it still doesn't look solid. The tip falls into the forest and writhes as the yellow overtakes it. The exposed yellow stub begins to flake away like ash, the tentacle 'burning' like a fuse until the main body severs it before the yellow can spread further. The lightning certainly seems to be more energetic now, flashing across the surface of the cloud and along the ground.
Well there goes my surprise option, Tasha considers, observing with the analytical eye of a person too deep and involved to think beyond the immediate concern. She maintains a circling pattern, allowing herself speed and height in which to evade as she thinks on where next to attack. And as she think, she decides Luk'thu-hem is probably wondering just what happened and exactly where the attack came from. An accident? A fluke? Some defense of the Stelya'rhyan, or has she noticed they're no longer alone in the halo? There's no way for Tasha to know, so she tries to integrated all these possible assumptions in to her plans.
Not wanting to give the entity time to work it out, or worse scan the area, Tasha dives towards another feeding tentacle and repeats. She hopes to suggest a pattern so the entity will assume there is one, then use that assumption to further her plans. Like before, she goes for the timing-and-spit based on the lightning.
The result is nearly the same.. except that Lukthu severs the limb faster this time. Pattern or not, the entity reacts by absorbing most of its limbs into the central mass.. but not all of them. The ones further around the inside of the cylinder from Tasha are still probing about, but the lightning begins to probe around outward from the main body. It seems a lot like Tatha-hem's plasma-effects along the inside of its saddle.
Tasha takes the change in pattern as keeping to the plan, but adopting a more cautious approach. She suspects Luk'thu-hem is at least a little desperate and needs the mysterious Stelya'rhyan core to heal, yet it seems to have room to exercise caution. The young woman considers how to use this knowledge and reduces it to two parts: Not desperate enough to attack without caution and desperate enough to keep hunting despite the dangers -- a middle ground approach that doesn't leave room to stop. With this in mind Tasha pulls away, wanting to leave nothing for Luk'thu-hem to find, leaving the attack source a mystery. She can then chose her next attack to strike in a new way as she attempts to make any path of progress a dangerous one, randomly.
Also random is the way the tendrils of not-really-lightning-or-plasma jump around. The space inside of the cylinder is definitely three-dimensional, and this may putting limits on what Lukthu can do. But if her internal space isn't limited, it could be emanating from a single four-dimensional point. It definitely doesn't seem to be at the center, since the 'timestone' power core lances through that space, and the cloud doesn't seem to be touching that. Not without a second 'key' at least. Dodging the tentacles can be done.. they're slow and predictable. The plasma fingers and their habit of suddenly breaking out in branching fractal forms are another matter.
Having flown through storms, Tasha knows attempting to evade lightning -- even hyper dimensional lightning analogue -- is an effort in futility. She does what she can to stay away from areas that seem to be gaining intensity, but ultimately she knows her flight skills will mean next to nothing against something that can travel some significant fraction of light speed. Having waited a while, the young woman decides it's time for her random strike -- a dangerous one at that. She angles to head inwards, opting to go after one of the core tentacles that aren't decimating the landscape. She assumes these are held in reserve to severe the outter ones, and as a defence, and hopes they aren't prepared to be targeted for attack themselves. She moves in, readying her bite and trying to see if she can't find an opening to spit in to. That done, she plans to escape as rapidly as possible, fearing a return attack along the impact vector.
Several branching fingers of lightning spray around Tasha, but none make contact - and presumably that means she isn't detected. But then the color of the lightning itself begins to change, and more inner structures seem to be forming inside. Some.. may even be solid.
Sensing a flaw in Luk'thu-hem's defenses, Tasha opts for what someone from Chronotopia might call a blitzkrieg attack: She dives in and rapidly begins biting chunks off and spitting them at the solidifying structures. If previous attacks are like mines, this one becomes the stuccato pulse of a laser weapon, each impact intended to ablate the surface through yellow corruption decay. As each surface fails and is cast off, more impacts fall to the compromised area, and so on, as she drives towards whatever is beneath. It's a risky plan as all headlong charges are, her need to keep attacking means her presence in space becomes easier to determine, even if she adjusts her position between spits she'll still be in a small relative area. She can only hope that by driving a decisive blow she can force the demigod-like being to recoil, stumble, or even collapse altogether. If she can force it out the Stelya'rhyan may be able to use its external weaponry once more.
There are close calls - after all, the yellow blooms move faster when they're more around them, but the material is also more diffuse. There's no way that Lukthu-hem doesn't know she's there now though, as Tasha is fairly deep into the 'storm' cloud. There's definitely a vortex point ahead.. she even feels pulled towards it, despite the cloud seeming to flow out from it. The semi-solid looking things are just spheres as far as she can tell, but spheres wrapped in lightning and plasma. The yellow poison spreads unevenly, probably following whatever paths are the most dense. It's like being inside of an ever expanding tumble-weed.
Having gone for a weakness, Tasha knows all she can do is try to follow through. If she hesitates or backs out now she'll lose her chance and she highly suspects she'll be attacked from behind as she tries to flee. The method isn't entirely like fist fighting, she remembers that once she had someone's defenses down and the blows were really landing she had to follow through and end things. If she couldn't end them, then she'd pull back, but as long as her oponent was reeling and unable to mount credible defense she could keep on attacking. With a humanoid sentient that would usually spell the end of the fight, with Luk-thu-hem the young woman has no way to know if the same will occur. The attacks rain down, spread to try and disrupt the vortex and target the spheres; the former is assumed some kind of weapon and the latter functional parts of Luk'thu-hem.
Things are a lot more chaotic deeper within the intrusion. There are forces like wind but which Tasha doesn't feel, beyond that they move her. Lightning takes on strange geometric shapes, often outlining or illuminating things that look like horrific facial features (or inside-out facial features). Besides the buffeting are patches of sudden solidity that Tasha actually bumps into - but which make good targets if she can hit them. The ever-regenerating Marker is constantly squirming now though, and Tasha finds herself biting off pieces that are still squirming. But the yellow is spreading, closing in on the vortex point (the connection to the rest of Lukthu's body?) and the spherical bodies.
Tasha has never been in a Forbidden Zone of Bosch, but she's heard tales and now she images it must be something like this. Except rather than the nonsensical, the world becomes a storm of the abstract and the iconic with forces manifesting in ways beyond the natural that go beyond anything she'd ever heard of Bosch. It's here now that Luk'thu-hem's existance as a higher-dimensional being really begins to hit her, this breaking down of bridges between and beyond, of pushing in to and through the dark entity's shadow even as she makes the parts that create the shadow break down and fail to leave their mark as incpmprehensible fragments in her reality. It feels like terror and the thrill of gaining the advantage all at once as she presses the attack and proceeds ever closer to what she now suspects is the core -- or more precisely the dimensional bridge anchorhead.
Getting closer to the core gets slightly easier - she's definitely being pulled towards the dimensional vortex. The solid bodies are also closer, and begin to open up! Each becomes a multi-limbed starfish shape, the exposed undersides full of curved teeth all pointing inwards towards gnashing, beaky maws. And now the vortex makes things worse! Each poisoned spitball curves, bursting far from where Tasha aims! But the core area is definitely turning yellow, solidifying into something more like stone than ash. The lightning gets worse, and one of the starfish limbs tears through Tasha's thin flight suit and into her side, dragging her inward before she can react! She hears a crunch before she feels it.. and then everything goes yellow and black..
Pink is supposed to be worse than yellow. But pink is the first thing that fills Tasha's awareness after.. nothingness. Then comes a feeling of warm dampness, and weight. Weight because there's support. But.. things don't feel right.
Tasha's first instinct is to keep attacking, things look bleak, she must keep attacking. Go down with the ship. Like a holovid full of never-say-die personalities, to keep firing until there's nothing left even when all hope is lost. If she has to die, well, she had her time cowering and her time crying and then the other times in between. This time, it'd be different. No tears, just a scream until she had nothing left.
Except it's not working out that way, because now things are different. She struggles feebily. This is a new turn, something else. Maybe she's been swallowed? Fear, but she pushes it down. Keep fighting. Nora would have kept fighting, except Nora didn't and she lost her mind. Don't think about that -- she can be stronger than Nora after all. Nora would then be proud of her. No. She won't cry, or scream, except out of anger, defiance. Keep fighting ... keep fighting ...
"It is good to see that you can move," Tasha hears in her head. "You were very tangled up. I had to untangle things. I should be able to put you back together soon though. I'm glad that the least scary part is the one that is waking up."
"Oh ... Charon ..? Did we win ..? I need to keep fighting, I was almost there ... could see the vortex ... anchor ... closer, I just need to get closer ... just a little ... " If only she could move. Could one of the spheres have perished, leaving here afloat inside of it, unconcious for a time? That seems likely. She struggles to move, she can get closer. It would just take a little more.
"Monster-mom is not inside of me any more," Charon explains. "The ugly children perished when she withdrew. It was easier to recover you once they had melted a bit."
"Oh." Tasha supposes she doesn't have to fight anymore, at least right now. It would be very hard for her to head out in to space by herself and attack in just her undersuit, after all. She'll just have to wait a while. Maybe Charon has a space suit? Then she can keep going. Maybe a rest is in order? "Are we finished? When can I attack her again?"
"I'm still stuck, but only held from outside," Charon says. "I am uncertain if the part of her that was inside me was separate or not. Time seems odd for these beings, so I do not know if the main body knows that the intrusion was defeated."
That is definitely so, Tasha remembers. It does make the situation very complicated. She wishes she could bite something now, but she shouldn't bite pink -- it's dangerous and probably not the enemy. Was she at war with colors? She considers. No, she's fairly sure yellow was on her side and the rest were just bystanders. She'll need yellow's help again, perhaps, even if she was biting it. Combat can be very strange. "Yes they are untimely, they don't see things like a line, but many points. Many at once. Outsiders." She considers, yes, that checks out. "Bite her before she knows?"
"I would need to spit the candy very hard, but I can probably do that," Charon says, and then Tasha feels a lick on her forehead (which also doesn't feel right). She realizes then that her eyes are closed, and the lids probably a bit sticky. The pink could just be normal light shining through them.
Whatever the case is, it's very inconvienent to her plans. She should still be doing something about Luk'thu-hem, after all, not sitting around doing whatever she's up to. This has often been the case in her life, where she must act very quickly then wait a long time. It's very boring, for one, and frusterating for two, she thinks there must be a three and foru and five but then she forgets what one was and going over it again seems less than productive. At any rate, she doesn't like it at all. "Well you should maybe do that. I would do that, but I can't seem to move. I can't spit that hard either. And I can't live in space. I can't bite any of these problems."
"I'm moving the bad candy already, it will take some time to get to my mouth," Charon says. "Oh, I should release the neural block." And just like that, Tasha feels she can actually move if she wants to. It also means she can feel her body better, and the 'not right' sensation moves right up to 'this isn't my body' status.
Tasha then has the unsettling inner debate as to just whose body this is. It might be a panic inducing discussion if she wasn't so used to waking to bizarre circumstances, if she hadn't had her mind connected to things like gods and especially a fourty feet tall robotic version of Horus. She wonders what Horus is up to now; maybe Thoth is badmouthing her. That would be typical. She probably deserves it, but it's rather depressing. She does try very hard. It occurs to her she's rambling again, and returns to the question of her body. A quick inventory reveals it's not likely Mel, because Mel is not here. It doesn't feel like anything else, so it's not those things either. Her eyes begin to creek open; it must be something new. New can go either way.
Things are blurry. The chamber she's in is lit by glowing white veins. There are depressions that she can see.. like fleshy bathtubs. There are shapes in them. One is white, another is red. There are others, but that would require actually opening her eyes enough to focus in order to make them out. The black blob near her face is probably the remote.
"I had to untangle you," Charon notes again. "You didn't seem to be put together properly. Once I figure out the tangle errors I can make it work better."
Blurry. It's metaphoricaly appropriate to her life and also her situation, this amuses Tasha on an inward level. Life can be very funny. She wonders if there's meaning in that. Maybe Hastur would want to hear more about this idea, but it can wait. She does still have things to do. She tries to see around her. Still blurry. Bathtubs. Has she been in the bath for a while? She'll get musty, maybe pruney. Beyond that, it's a lazy way to go about a battle. Her eyes begin to open more.
"Nora made me," she asides, opening her eyes really shouldn't be such a struggle. "I'm version ... I don't know. She didn't tell me. Mission complete. I did very well for what she made me for. I wonder where she is now? Probably back home. I remade her, she broke a long time ago. It's weird like you said. I don't think she really knows a lot about making Tashas, otherwise she wou;dn't have needed six-thousand years. It's kind of lazy for Nora, when I think about it."
The white thing is easiest to focus on first, since it's right across from Tasha. It's a white-furred wolf. A big one. Not a Karnor, but the form they must have been created from. The tub next to that has a red-feathered avian. It's mostly hidden behind the wings wrapped around it, but it has very big talons on its feet. There's something.. not at all like a Rhian next to it. It's more like a lean boar, but with hooves instead of trotters. It has horns on its head, along with tusks. There are two crystals, not big enough to have individual tubs. One has some sort of dark, roiling shape inside, the other something more phantasmic and light. There's something missing as well: Tasha can't see her muzzle. She didn't often notice it, but its absence is very jarring. There's also a damp strand of blond hair in front of one of her eyes.
Her muzzle isn't something she often has to look for, but she supposes she ought to find it anyway. Tasha can just imagine the remarks if she lost her muzzle -- oh forget your muzzle again? That's very like you. Amused and a bit condescending turn of the beak. Lacci. Tasha, where's your muzzle? Concerned, a bit tut-tuting, worried. Katie. Tasha, we need to find your muzzle, it's important that we have it with us. Gentle but authoritative, certain, masculine. Gabriel. The thread connecting them is a certain expectation she's kind of a disaster on some level, and losing her muzzle will only contribute to it. Except, she can't really move very well. "Charon, I lost my muzzle. Do you know where it is?" A hesitation, she isn't sure she wants Charon to also pick up on her being a disaster. That's all she needs. "They might tease me if I lose it."
"It's right over there on the wolf," Charon's remote helpfully points out. As if sensing Tasha's confusion, the little dragon then licks Tasha's nose. It's a lot closer than it should be. And the tongue, while dry, shouldn't feel like that against her fur, or cover so much of her nose.
It does make her giggle though, which is extra confusing along side the strange feeling. "No really, I need it. Tell the wolf to give it back, I need to get ready. You can fix me later, when we're safe."
"Oh, you want to get up then?" Charon asks. "Right now? You should try to wiggle your toes then."
More delays. Well, she's used to it. Ride the train, watch the instructionals, listen to the profit forcasts. Boring, functional. She tries to wiggle her toes and consoles herself that she probably needs working toe--
Wait a moment.
Oh. Of course. Charon is a alien. Language problems happen.
"They're hooves. I'll move my ankle, is what you mean." She tries to do so.
"No, those are on the khuratzi," Charon corrects. "If you can't wiggle your toes you won't be able to stand very well. Maybe you should start by lifting your arm instead?"
More gibberish. It can't be helped, aliens are alien. It's right in the name. She's used to this sort of thing, too. "Right. Arm. Right arm. Up you go." And so she tries to lift her right arm, it would be very hard to fight without working arms.
There's some sticky resistance, but the limb pulls free of the tub, and Tasha can see it. The skin is pale pink, with stubby little nails that wouldn't be good for much. Human hands look so fragile.
Tasha studies this hand. At first she very much thinks she must have lost her fur, which is one of the decidedly less pleasant results of medical treatment. Of course. She needed medical treatment; the bite. It's all very obvious now. As she moves her hand around, she's struck by how weird it looks. Charon did say she had to be rwoven. Or maybe it was repaired? Re-something-or-other. Her hand could be new. Vat grown. Cybernetic. It does look new ... and finished?
The hand is brough closer where her eyes can focus better, the world is rather blurry at the moment, another exciting medical side-effect. She studies the hand and frowns, bringing attention to the fact her mouth also seems kind of weird. Off. Like the hand. Yet, it looks finished -- it has the sense of something complete. Something she's seen before. Where has she ...
"It's gods all the way down!" Dr. Yue Sen says, hand on the table. " ... riding the crazy train ... " Standing, gesturing. " ... bags are over there." Pointing. The Captain Astromancer. Jonas Knight. Riddle Smith. The man on the horse, he'd lost his wife. TerraGens. The Expedition, Expedition City. The Rectangle. Different faces. Different hands. All the same. Finished. All like ...
"W-wait, no, no, what happened to my hand?" A very unfamiliar gasp, girlish and higher. Unfamiliar. "It's Human!"