[PRP] update 2.0 (fox & jeremiah)

[azuredreams]

The licking of his ear got Bento an eyebrow raised and his eyes cutting towards the cat before he simply continued on (hand still petting; never not petting).

"Renard was the one who truly masterminded it but married couples often pooled their magic together." So two were one for the intent of magic or something similar. "I wouldn't say that there was a lack of understanding. A schema allows you to gather and store information within it for your spell work. So Renard put years upon years of research about it within it that would enable him to do what he wanted. He may have very well succeeded but the possible consequences of it never existing? That could change the world in ways we can't even imagine."

Yet here they were and AIDs still existed.

demon_pachabel

 

[demon_pachabel]

"So I take it something happened that didn't sit right," Fox said. AIDS existed, she couldn't think of anything strangely catastrophic happening in 1989 (why did that year seem like it had come up recently....). No. It was 1984 that she was mistaking it for.

Vivian wouldn't have been involved in this.

Azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

Vivien was absolutely involved in this but that was neither here nor there.

"More like a group of people, some who were close to Renard - a student of his and friends - decided that he needed to be stopped. There method of doing so? To cage him. I do not believe you've studied magic at all? They do offer courses but Rider-Waite is the only one that truly seems to know what it's doing but I digress ...

"Magically caging a human is not recommended. You need objects attached to them, freely given or otherwise; though otherwise comes with it's own problems and workarounds, and must carry out a ceremony of sorts. As there was a practice of married couples pooling their magic, they decided to cage both Renard and Liam. I've no idea what they had of Renard's - though I've theories - but Liam's? They dug up his dead fiance and took her ring that he had given to her."

demon_pachabel

 

[demon_pachabel]

Fox frowned as Jeremiah continued his short-version of the story. How did he know all of this? Was there a cosmic tome somewhere between the realities or..? Well, it probably didn't matter. "Cage like..." she looked at the piece in her hand.

"They dug up Vivian?" Fox wasn't exactly fond of the idea of grave robbing, but she could see why desparate people did what they did. "Is that why Liam Noor went looking for her ring?" had she given that report? She knew it was down on paper.

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"Renard was not at all caged like Liam is now." Jeremiah was flipping back through pages of his notebook. He paused when he reached a certain page, his finger running down a long it. "Our entire world became Renard's cage, us bound along with him but he was without his magic and unable to perform what he planned to do.

"It also changed the world as we know it and created the cycles; a side effect that hadn't been expected. Essentially, we are bound to repeat lives - though things vary from each life to life - until we reach the point of the cage's creation and then things reset. Over and over and over again."

His head tilted at the mention of Vivien. "It may have been. Vivien is waiting for him to return to her, to speak with him again one last time."

demon_pachabel

 

[demon_pachabel]

So to prevent AIDS from being cured, someone had set up a cage of existence for Renard and they were all along for the ride through..existences. "Man....does it clear out all of this information or is it just stashed somewhere when it restarts everything?" she asked. "Like, I can tell at least someone knows enough to know all of this, but what about everything else? Is there a warehouse of abandoned threads that don't make it to new cycles?"

On the note of Bento, however, Jeremiah's ear was probably REALLY CLEAN from how much licking she was doing in it. Prrprrrprr.

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

If there was a moment to be thankful of his particular abilities, it was this moment. Jeremiah's ear, while clean, was showing no signs of being otherwise abused by Bento's tongue. At least he wasn't getting his hair cleaned (because that was a thing he expected sometimes).

"There's a library within other ashdown that I've been to, though it's been a long time. The books there, when opened, seemed to hold memories? Though without context or knowledge, you wouldn't necessarily understand what they meant." His fingers drummed against his leg for a moment. "There are also those who have been around for thousands of years and retain their knowledge upon reset. Though they have their own motives and what we learn is not necessarily a truth but their truth."

Which was frustrating to deal with.

demon_pachabel

 

[demon_pachabel]

"So it resets people a bit more accurately than objects is what it sounds like." Fox had a lot of mixed feelings about this information, and while Jeremiah was a mostly reliable source of information...Fox liked to touch and handle it tangibly herself.

It was just easier to trust her information when it was in her own hands and not garbled by competing sources.

"Sounds like a convenient way for certain groups to set the world on the pace they'd like it to be..."

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"It resets people and this world we are in but not other ashdown," replied Jeremiah. He was, not so surprisingly, very much like Fox in that he preferred the information he could handle and gather himself. It was, more often than not, why he found himself so deep in everything.

"Yes, it is, though there were only a pair of them aside from Renard, Liam and Sonny up until last year." The implication there that they were different from Renard, his husband, and their child. "It also is not as old as this cage is. We are currently within the nineteenth cycle and have been at this eighteen times before."

demon_pachabel

 

[demon_pachabel]

"So the place where this cage is," she seemed to mean Liam Noor's current prison, "just..looks like that? I mean..." her venture into it all didn't quite look the same as what everybody else saw, as far as she knew. Fox Bliskiss hadn't gotten to stroll down the main streets and see familiar sights.

She'd gotten to see a cave and a rock.

"So eventually this cycle will reset again and...." she'd be a different Fox with a different Jeremiah or perhaps they'd never meet at all. Perhaps another Fox would help her dad with the restaurant. Maybe another Fox would have pulled that trigger and not gotten her partner paralyzed from the waist down.

She wasn't another Fox, however. If she stayed the same Fox, she'd relive her Coward's Debt.

"Were another pair. Something happened to them?"

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"Like something of this world but not quite? Perhaps a little dystopian? The colors that as vibrant? Except when they are and then it's too much. Comes with a sense of everything is off but you can't explain it? But, yes, eventually this cycle too will reset and start again, though the actors are still the same." It was a rather odd way for him to categorize it but it was how he had felt about it in the beginning.

"There's more now, though something has happened to them and they still exist." Just not the same at all. "For those who are part of this they can find themselves differentiating; coming into powers that are more specialized. One could become a warg, a moonwalker, or become part of the Court and leave the cycles behind." Hadn't she thought he was a sídhe? "Something that only occurs because of the creation of the cage." As in without the cage it would likely never exist.

demon_pachabella

 

[demon_pachabel]

"Like something has been taken from it."

It seemed like the right idea from what he was saying. "Physically the same, but not entirely." Other Ashdown was the traumatized PTSD victim of the cycles.

"Oh. Would...it help if something was done to help those people or..?" she turned the stone over in her hand repeatedly as she talked, mind trying to find a way she could actually use all of this information even though there was no way she could act on any of it. "There's something sad about the fact that just..." how did she put it, "depending on the length of these cycles, did my life not really happen if it can change?"

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"The first time I saw the other side, when I saw other ashdown, was holding Sunny's hand. Her pulse was thready and sometimes she looked as if she forgot how many teeth there are in a human being's mouth." A breath escaped. "Yet I remember the blood red of the water and the glint of the moon that was not ours. The stars aren't even the same."

Jeremiah shook his head, fingers scratching along Bento's spine and then curling along her tail.

"Your life happened, it is happening, and the most you can hope for is to change things. To make a difference. In the end, Miss Bliskiss, I tell you these things because it's more than releasing Liam Noor from his cage. We must see the cage itself opened, the one that binds everyone within these cycles. Seeing him released is a step towards that but I worry that someone deliberately trapped him to stop that."

demon_pachabel

 

[demon_pachabel]

Bento's butt went straight into the air. PRRR PRRR. The fine sweet spot. Jeremiah definitely knew where to scritch a cat butt to make for a happy Rex. PrrrRRRrrrrr.

The piece in her hand was turned over a few times, a small frown on her face as she considered what her options were. She was powerless, to be honest. All she had going for her was the ability to check out a cage and a piece of it in her hand. What could she do?

"Then all I can do is what's in my reach at this time."

azuredreams

 

[azuredreams]

"It's all anyone can do," Jeremiah admitted, "but you are capable of anything and," there was a wry smile on his face, "the more that you look into this? The more likely that one day you will find yourself actually in other ashdown. Not just the section you are able to go to."

His free hand, the one not satisfying Bento's desire for all the scratches in the world, rested against his notebook. "I've told you how this began but it doesn't give you much and likely given you more questions. What would you like to know, Miss Bliskiss? What question is at the forefront of your mind?"

demon_pachabel