Quintet (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
quintet) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
revivalproject2023-06-15 10:50 pm
quintet) wrote in revivalproject2023-06-15 10:50 pm
Catibrations
WHO: Quintet and YOU
WHERE: Quintet's Calibrations Room
WHAT:xenofiction Furry Nonsense™
WHEN: Calibrations Time
WARNINGS: tba
Entering Quintet's room, is like exiting a dark tunnel. At first the scene is too bright to discern more than vague shapes, outlines and shadows, the sun washing out all detail into white. Then you adjust.
Dirt floor— no, it's just dirt. Packed flat and cleared of plants and all debris, it's a wide, open clearing, surrounded by tall grass. Taller than you are, even, grass that towers twice your height or more, and giant trees and all around are a series of enormous cavern entrances. Or perhaps, they're other doors?
Animals filter in and out of them, walking in twos or threes, sometimes riding on one another's back, chatting amicably, with a relaxed air despite the strange combinations. Why are rabbits riding on lions? How can wolves be laughing alongside a hopping pair of robins. What's with the anteater, so obviously lecturing an entire group of rats and mice as he walks along, like a professor conducting a walking tour?
And Quintet is there, sitting at the edge of it all, just near the door, watching people come and go, hunched in on herself, tail coiled tight. Just watching.
Come to think of it, for a cat, she's exceptionally large, wouldn't you say?
Perhaps this is the moment when you realize: whatever you were, you aren't anymore. Like everyone else in this society of animals, you also have paws, or wings, or talons, or claws. You also walk low to the ground, and have a snout of some description. In this Society, there are no humans, and precious few apes or other hominids.
And, that means you, too.
WHERE: Quintet's Calibrations Room
WHAT:
WHEN: Calibrations Time
WARNINGS: tba
Entering Quintet's room, is like exiting a dark tunnel. At first the scene is too bright to discern more than vague shapes, outlines and shadows, the sun washing out all detail into white. Then you adjust.
Dirt floor— no, it's just dirt. Packed flat and cleared of plants and all debris, it's a wide, open clearing, surrounded by tall grass. Taller than you are, even, grass that towers twice your height or more, and giant trees and all around are a series of enormous cavern entrances. Or perhaps, they're other doors?
Animals filter in and out of them, walking in twos or threes, sometimes riding on one another's back, chatting amicably, with a relaxed air despite the strange combinations. Why are rabbits riding on lions? How can wolves be laughing alongside a hopping pair of robins. What's with the anteater, so obviously lecturing an entire group of rats and mice as he walks along, like a professor conducting a walking tour?
And Quintet is there, sitting at the edge of it all, just near the door, watching people come and go, hunched in on herself, tail coiled tight. Just watching.
Come to think of it, for a cat, she's exceptionally large, wouldn't you say?
Perhaps this is the moment when you realize: whatever you were, you aren't anymore. Like everyone else in this society of animals, you also have paws, or wings, or talons, or claws. You also walk low to the ground, and have a snout of some description. In this Society, there are no humans, and precious few apes or other hominids.
And, that means you, too.
no subject
He moves around her, looking at the scene before him, and maybe even kicks dirt towards her. "If I'm so free to leave, where's the exit, huh?" Billy figures one of the cave entrances has to be the exit so he heads right for it, leaping or side stepping around others as he goes.
no subject
But it's too late. Billy trots cavalierly on through, despite her desperation, and they are abruptly plunged into a very different kind of crowd.
It's a strange court-room by human standards, but it's still got all the same parts; the gallery is to the back, where a number of almost faceless animals sit, vague in her memory, unimportant. The judge sits on a high dias, a small rodent, presiding from behind the pulpit formed by a walnut-shell.
Overall, I cannot accuse a dead man of murder.
One side of the courtroom rejoices, quietly, smiles traded and sighs of relief. Quintet's eye is covered by a lily-blossom for the occasion, tied around her head by its stem.
Therefore, Meander and Quintet are hereby exculpated from all claims brought against them by the opposing party. Rule's death is hereby judged not to be a result of their chosen actions. The defendant herself displayed no will to aggress, only to self-defend, though this court has found that such aggression was legally justified...
It goes on like that; whatever this was, this court case was won by Quintet's side. The judge eventually pronounces the case closed, and justice done, and with a finality that splits both the nut and the memory, strikes the walnut pulpit, thereby dividing it in two, and symbolically truth, from falsehood.
no subject
The whole scene is confusing to him. All animals, no humans, but that would explain why he's a dog of all things. His canine shaped head turns to look at all the participants of the court, listening to the situation before he flinches at the crack of the wooden gavel against the stand. Then the memory is gone, back in the open square he had arrived in.
"The fuck was that all about?"
no subject
Quintet stops, not sure how to explain. Does his people do rule of law, with courtrooms and judges and witnesses and evidence? Who knew how things worked for him, at home? Anything could be true.
"It was, uh," She recovers a little, pulled out of reverie by the next question; how to explain what had happened? And did she even have to? "In my society we have a thing called a 'trial' where you... have a judge, and you present evidence, to try and determine the truth. A friend— there were some murders, at my College. It was my first criminal case, but my arguments were better than the other side, so. We won."
Dead? Maybe. Even so, what did death mean in a world like this? Anything at all could happen.
no subject
He huffs and snorts through his nose. “Were you being accused of murdering someone? Easier to get away with it when the dead can’t speak up.” He fixes Quintet with a hard look for a moment, but it softens and looks away to watch the others milling about in the dreamscape.
no subject
She's quiet then, for a long time, staring off into space, not listening. Then, abruptly, she shakes herself and stretches. Ugh. This sucked, this whole thing sucked.
"It was a new kind of crime."
no subject
"Sounds like something we read about in history class. A Holocaust, a war that engulfed the entire world for six years that massacred around six million people." Billy may be an arrogant asshole, but he kept his grades good to keep his dad off of his back. He looks down at the cat.
"Sucks that you had to stand trial for that shit."
no subject
Alright, she'd started off wanting this dog to eat shit and die, but... that's enough of a blow to the ego to give her pause. The sympathy is good too, a wilting, cloying pressure. Alright. Alright, alright.
"It's fine. It's not like I wasn't involved; maybe it screwed up my reputation, but society has a right to ascertain the truth. And it let me clear Meander's name."
no subject
"Well if you fuck up your reputation, here's hoping you've got other shit because a tarnished reputation will haunt you." Of all the people who knew, Billy did first hand. First paw?
No, first hand.
Even before Calibrations he had a truce, a pact made with Eddie and Steve to try and maybe be better. It was hard, and the heavy weight of his notoriety was heavy with each step he took for it.
"The fuck kind of name is Meander? No one has normal names in your world?"