@little-purple-thundercloud, For Your Viewing Pleasure, Lol

A Guide to Sleeping With Anafenza

- She sleeps in a bathtub.  She has a very large tub in her room, with a small hammock installed in it for her to sleep on.  Being Ejinn, she’s able to hold her breath for very extended lengths, so even rolling in her sleep won’t immediately wake her up or cause her to panic from a lack of breath.  Sleeping in the water reminds her of sleeping on the banks of the Great River with her family.

- She loves to snuggle.  Despite the “water” bed, she also keeps a small mattress and blankets in another corner of the room for when she has company.  She is already a very affectionate and contact-seeking individual, and the trend carries over into sleep (in the event she’s lucky enough to have someone wanting to sleep with her).

- She has vivid dreams.  Sometimes they wake her; sometimes she stays asleep through the whole ordeal, sometimes believing these even visited other locations because of the clarity of the dreams. She began keeping a journal of her dreams, and will quickly record the events of her dreams in the journal before she forgets them.

- She can’t sleep on her back.  Between the horns and her powerful tail, Anafenza is down-right pained when she’s on her back, and will avoid sleeping in that position by any means.  On her side is ok as long as she has a pillow to support her neck, but mostly she sleeps on her stomach as a result (unless she’s in her tub; the hammock is easier to sleep on her back in).

- She likes to nap frequently.  With all the exercise she gets swimming, Anafenza will nap throughout the day as well, which also means she rarely will sleep for a full six to eight bells: she just doesn’t need to given the sleep schedule she maintains.

Tagged by: @mercermachines​ !  <3 was fun, thanks!

Dream Journal 10

We are on our way to Ishgard now to find more on “Jessielle” and her house Vignesang.  Miss Sasani and Miss Sasari were…not extremely pleased to bring her up, and I can understand the pain behind it.  I think most of the caravan knew once Sasani returned for a few moons and…the elezen was nowhere to be seen.  Hearing more of her

Eh, probably for the best

Kiratai in his chair is a hard sight.  He is so proud, and I can see it bothers him to be…helpless?  Maybe that’s not how he feels, I don’t know.  But he is different now.  And I hate I cannot sit on his shoulder anymore

Still, he was a great comfort on the journey here.  Another dream (though I obviously didn’t immediately write it down).  I was younger, in the great river.  It was the day I was left behind – it’s not an easy to forget setting. But I was there, looking across the steppe…and I saw one of the women again.  It was the one with the arrowhead jewelry on her chest, the older one.  She saw me, and we locked eyes.  She immediately turned and hurried away into the rocks.  I followed as quickly as I could, but when I found her, she was disappearing in a swirl of lights and chimes.  Nothing remained of her there.  I searched a little longer, before realizing I needed to return to the river and my family. After that, the dream was the same as it has been before – I am searching for them, and they’ve left me alone.

Conflux, Finale

Commander St. Peter sat in her ready room, smiling as she stared down at the PADD in her hands.  On it, a picture of the three girls smiled back up at her: herself, the other Jessica, and Anafenza.  They’d taken it just the day before, that night in Hurricane Hal’s, as they waited to return to their homes.  She’d let the other Jess take the photo, and then gave a printed copy to Anafenza to keep along with her communicator.  Since the linkpearl had been fused to it during their rescue, it was inoperable…but it did make for a nice amulet of sorts for the woman. Temporal Prime Directive be damned, she thought; no one would be able to trace it anyway.  If anyone even believed the young au ra’s story anyway…

Her door chimed, and she looked up.  “Come in,” she called, and the doors parted to allow her first officer and science officer into the room.  Both wore concerned expressions on their faces, but Sano, her trill science officer, looked the most concerned.  “Dossu, Nizeri…what’s going on?”

Obruz Dossu looked to the other woman and nodded, the bajoran deferring to the science officer.  Nizeri Sano cleared her throat.  “Commander, there might have been a problem…”

“A problem?”

She nodded.  “We based all of our calculations on the assumption that the women were using our reality as one anchor, and that they were tethered to their own realities.  Every reality has a unique quantum signature; anything that originates there bears that same signature, and anything that comes from outside will have a conflicting signature.  The other Jessica and Anafenza had different quantum signatures, which we identified and based our calculations on.”

Jessica nodded.  “Ok, right.  Makes sense.  So what’s the problem?”

“We didn’t know about you!”

Jessica blinked, taken aback.  “Excuse me?”

Obruz cleared his throat. “We discovered an anomaly in your quantum signature.  And when we researched it more we…began to realize why the Andromeda mission – the one you and Wirstowx originated from – is classified at such high levels.”

“My signature is different…because I was born in the Andromeda Galaxy?”  Jessica shook her head.  “That doesn’t make sense…”

“It wouldn’t, no. Because, it shouldn’t make a difference. There would be some variance owing to location within the universe itself, but it would be similar enough.  No, yours is completely different.”  Sano shook her head.  “Yours has a known match, too.  You’re from the ‘Mirror Universe’.”

Jessica went wide-eyed at this, then turned to Obruz.  The bajoran first officer nodded.  “We checked with Admiral Scott; he confirmed it to us, after we pressed the importance of understanding why this went wrong.  The Andromeda mission didn’t just go to a different galaxy; it crossed the universal barrier as well.”

“He couldn’t give us access to the reports from that time, but he did explain a certain…’quantum inversion’ that occurred as ships passed through the gateway Starfleet used to get to Andromeda.  It wasn’t until the Aventine tried to meet the expedition using its conventional slipstream drive that the inversion was even discovered and studied.  But by the time we began to understand it, the expedition ended.  The ships returned home, and all of the data was classified.”

Jessica shook her head, her thoughts racing with implications.  Still, they hadn’t explained the problem to her.  “Alright…but how is this a problem?  What happened to the other two women?  What happened to Jessica and Anafenza?”

Sano shook her head and sighed.  “The calculations we used to anchor them here relied on our quantum signature.  Before we realized you were acting as the tether to them.  If we had been able to modify to match your quantum signature, it would have worked. We believe, when we inserted you into the equation, the navigational sensors used your unique quantum signature and anchored the women in the mirror universe.”

“Meaning?”

“We discovered a similar inversion during the transport process.”  Sano looked apologetically at Jessica.  “And before you ask; no, we can’t lock back on and rescue them.  We’re too far out of sync now.  They are where they are now.  I’m sorry.”

Jessica stared down at the picture of the three of them, then back up to her officers.  “So…where did we send them?”

“Near as we can tell,” the science officer replied, “some form of a parallel universe similar to their own reality.”  She bit her lip and frowned sadly.  “I’m…really sorry Jess.  If we’d known…”

Jessica shook her head, picking up the PADD again.  Her cheeks felt hot, and she feel tears forming.  “Please…get out.”

Once the door shut behind them, Jessica tossed the PADD to the side and, burying her face in her hands, began to sob.

 Meanwhile, elsewhere in time and space…

The transporter effect subsided, and Jessica St. Peter blinked, looking around at the city buildings surrounding her.  She expected to be deposited back in her home on Cap Au Diable, but perhaps the convergence and the transport technobabble she’d been subjected to didn’t have quite as accurate aim.  She stepped out from between the buildings, looking around.  That’s when it hit her.

All the banners.  The gold stars.  The images of an emperor standing victorious and benevolent, not towering over his minions with outstretched claws.  She wasn’t in the Rogue Isle.  She wasn’t even in Paragon City…

“Oh shit…” she said, with terrifying realization.  She immediately took to the skies with a whirlwind around her, making it harder to see her. She passed a banner and saw in large writing her fear’s confirmed.

Praetoria.

“I’m on Praetorian Earth,” she said, cursing again.  “I can’t be caught here, not if he is still alive here.  I need to get back, how to get back…”

She scanned the streets for the tell-tale ramshackle armor of the Resistance.  If anyone knows how to get back, she thought, they would know.  Just gotta bust a few heads…

 Elsewhere in time and space, further still…

The twinkling of chimes subsided, but the blinding light still filled Anafenza’s vision.  She squinted, looking around in confusion.

She was on a small hill, covered in bright pink and purple flowers.  Small roofs poked up out of the ground, the huts seemingly built built into the hills.  In the distance, on a small lake, rose a large castle with beautiful filigree wings spread behind it.  But the sky…the sky was nothing but blinding light.  No clouds, no sun – not even warmth, she noted, as she shivered in the breeze.

Small giggles echoed around her, and whispered, child-like voices from unseen speakers surrounded her.  “What’s this?  A mortal!”  “She just came from a pillar of light!”  “It’s a mortal!  Here!” “Is she a sin-eater?”

Anafenza spun around in confusion.  “Who’s there? Where am I?”

“Doesn’t know where she is? Poor thing…”  “I want to play!”  “No, it’s my turn!”

A cacophony of “my turns” smothered Ana, and she dropped to the ground in a panic.  The dark aether began to seep from her side as she slammed her eyes shut, the voices ringing in her horns.

Then, there was silence, and a small finger poked her in the nose.  Ana opened her eyes a smidge.

The small faerie-like being grinned at her, dark eyes regarding her playfully.  “Well you’re definitely not a sin eater,” it said with a happy giggle. “I’m Eo Aenc.  We’re going to have fun but first,” they looked up, then with a flutter moved forward to tug on Ana’s horns.  “We need to get moving!  I don’t want to turn my new friend into a leafman right now; mortals are so few in our realm.  Come, get up! They’re coming!”

“What…who…who is coming?” Ana scrambled to her feet and took a few staggering steps forward, turning to look behind her.

Large, grotesque creatures bounded towards her, their hides porcelain white, eyes dark and devoid of life.  The auras around them brightened the air, making it difficult to even look upon them.

Anafenza screamed, taking off after Eo Aenc into the relative safety of the realm of the fae, Il Mheg...

Conflux, Pt. 6

“Is that…is that your starship?” Stormy asked, her voice giddy as she clapped her hands despite their circumstances.

The Commander nodded with a small smirk.  “Yeah, she can hear us.  That’s good…”

Anafenza tilted her head in confusion at this.  While the Commander tried her communicator again, she turned to Stormy.  “’She’ can hear us?  That sounded like a man on the other side?”

“She meant the ship can hear us.  Ships are always girls.”

“Ships…are always girls.” Anafenza blinked a few times but shrugged.  “I assume this is an Earth thing?”

Stormy shrugged.  “I suppose it is.  Sorry if that’s confusing.”

The Commander groaned in frustration.  “There’s too much interference here, and we can’t get far enough away from the tree to cut through.”

The other two women turned to look.  Sure enough, as the Commander had implied, the cavern was smaller now, an odd gray nothingness taking the place of the stone walls around them.

Stormy snapped her fingers, then beckoned for the badge.  “Gimme.”  The Commander and Anafenza hesitated, not understanding what she meant.  Stormy huffed, beckoning for the device again.  “It’s simple, right?  How do you cut through interference if you can’t build a better transmitter?”

The Commander squinted, her thoughts racing.  “Change the frequency?”  When the other woman simply nodded, as if coaxing her to keep trying, the Commander shrugged and shook her head.  “Um, more power? I don’t –“

Stormy snapped her fingers again and grinned, interrupting.  “More power!” She held the device in her hand, and Anafenza saw threads of electricity start to wrap around her arm, snapping and crackling as the woman manipulated the environment around them.  As she watched, a thick fog began to form above them.

Stormy looked up to the Commander.  “Ready?” When the other woman nodded, Stormy grinned.  “Here we go!” She concentrated a burst of electricity right into the device, then tapped it, eliciting the chirp again.

The Commander practically leapt forward, enthralled by the woman’s powers and forgetting for a moment to speak once the device was activated.  “St. Peter to Rafale!  How do you hear us now?”

There was a curse on the other end of the transmission.  “Prophets! LOUD and clear, Commander, how do you read?”

“Same, Rafale! I’m trapped in a collapsing pocket dimension with two other people, are you able to locate us with the signal from my commbadge and my tricorder?”

“Standby…”  There were more voices in the background now, as more people began to talk over one another.  Anafenza struggled to hear them all, until finally the first man came back onto the channel.  “We’re locked onto the tricorder now, but there is still a large amount of interference. Whatever you labeled it when you scanned it – ‘aether?’ – it’s masking your signal.  Sensors are picking up three faint life signs but they’re all registering as you.”

The Commander shook her head.  “Yeah, it’s a long story, but you’re picking the three of us up just fine.  You can’t transport through the interference?”

“We’re having trouble getting a positive lock…”

Anafenza shrieked then, pointing.  “Jess, look!”

Both women looked up, then to where the auri was pointing.  The Commander gasped.  “Rafale, we have a problem!  The dimension is collapsing faster than before!”

A female voice broke through then.  “I just picked up a massive disturbance in your tricorder readings, Commander!  The link we created here is punching a hole through your dimension and causing it to destabilize at an exponentially faster rate.”

“You can’t get a lock, Nizeri?”

“Negative; M’Ral is coming up with a plan but we can’t make it happen in the next ten seconds. Cut power; use your tricorder to send data bursts.  We’ll send you a message when we have a good idea what to do on our end.  I’m sorry, ma’am!”

The Commander looked at Stormy, then swatted the communicator badge out of her sparking hand.

The grey Nothingness slowed its progress consuming the cavern, and the women all let out the collective breath they’d been holding.  Stormy shook her head.  “Now what?”

Anafenza spoke up instead, certain of the answer.  “We come up with a way to get out of here.”

The Commander nodded. “Boosting the signal definitely helped, but we need a quick solution.  While they work on a way to lock onto us, it would help to make it easier for them.”

“A beacon of some sort,” Stormy said, and the Commander nodded.

Anafenza looked at the other women.  “If the aether is causing the interference, what if we gave your ship a way to better navigate the flow of it to find us?”

“Not just a beacon, but a map?”  The Commander tapped her chin and nodded.  “How would we do that?”

“My linkpearl.” Anafenza brought her hand up to her horn, feeling for the small jewel embedded there.  “It uses the flow of aether to communicate; your ship could use the flow the linkpearl uses to break through the conflicting aether here and find us easier.”

“That just might work,” the Commander said.  “Alright…let’s get to work, ladies.”

Magus Musings: Week 4

Welcome to week four of Magus Musings! To get our creative juices flowing (and yours!) we’ve decided to post a weekly FFXIV themed writing prompt. A new prompt will go live each Monday and you will have a week to respond with a drabble, short story, poem, letter, or anything, really. I know we said writing prompt, but if your muse wants a series of screenshots, then, by all means, do that. We want to see everything you come up with and get to know your characters a little better.

This is open to all members of the FFXIV community not just those who are members of Mysterium. So, if a prompt strikes your fancy, get creative! Just don’t forget to use the tag #magusmusings! We want to see (and like and reblog) all of your amazing work!

Happy writing!

This should be a good exercise for me. Let's try it out!

Let Mun/Muse RANT!

We all get a little ticked from time to time. Now is the time to know what makes US ticked!

Send 🌕 + a Number to hear Mun rant. Send 🌑 + a Number to hear Muse rant.

A person they know/ran into.

A pet peeve.

Something they hate but everyone loves.

Something they love but everyone hates.

An ex RP partner.

An ex friend.

A current friend.

An RP experience.

A real life experience.

An out of context rant.

A character they hate.

A character they love.

A public experience.

An ex hobby.

A past relationship.

Their hopes & dreams.

A food they hate.

A food they love.

A bothersome brand of anything.

Senders choice.

Conflux, Pt. 5

Anafenza stared up at the tree and shivered.  She pulled away from the Commander’s comforting embrace.  “I…I don’t know what else,” she began, shaking her head.

Stormy interrupted.  “You mentioned a curse.  The vines choking out your tree.  They’re red vines, bloodred vines; what is this curse?”

Ana shook her head.  “When I killed her – the other Jessika – I wasn’t in control of myself.  I was under the control of these…other mages that call themselves ‘Nemesis.’  I was trying to parley with them; I didn’t want more of my friends to get hurt, and so I approached them using an amulet of theirs we had confiscated.”

Stormy blinked in disbelief. “Nemesis.”  She shook her head.  “It’s always a Nemesis plot…”

The Commander looked over at her.  “You recognize the name?”

Stormy laughed once, humorless.  “Yeah,” was all she said, and left it at that.

Anafenza continued.  “I just wanted peace…and they rewarded me for my troubles by using magicks to gain control of my mind, convince me the only way to peace was to silence my friends, starting with Lyta.  I was attacking her when Jessika got in my way and I…”  Ana trailed off – they’d heard this part already.  “I was still trying to kill Lyta when Jessika expired; this cloud of dark aether erupted from her body and surrounded me, subduing me and breaking the magicks that were driving me.  I woke up later in the infirmary…I knew what had happened, I was aware of everything.”  She wiped her eyes – she hadn’t noticed she’d started to cry – and continued.  “I woke up with this scar on my body, the same scar Jessika had born.  Her ‘bloodvine,’ as it were.  Since then, I’ve…heard a strange song…I’ve seen her memories…I’ve begun to use strange abilities she could use…and I’d swear I could feel her presence with me.”

The Commander tilted her head.  “What is aether?”

Anafenza nodded towards the tree.  “That dark fog rolling off the tree?  That is aether.  It’s…what everything is made of.  Aether flows through everything, everyone.  It channels to us from the lifestream.”

The older Jessica furrowed her brow.  “That would explain the strange energy readings, then.  This aether, do you have your own signature of it?  A pool of aether that is unique to you?”

Anafenza nodded.  “That’s how I understand it.”

The other woman nodded. “Ana, this strange energy reading everywhere, this ‘aether.’  It is very similar to your own.  That makes sense; you likened the tree to your own life force.”  She pulled out her scanning device, waving it near Ana.  She held it over the girl’s scar; the steady beeping and whistling of the device suddenly increased in frequency.  “And the scar you ‘inherited,’ it’s practically leaking this aether into the chamber.”

Stormy snapped her fingers. “She inherited that bloodvine curse from her world’s Jessika!”

“Exactly.  And with it, it would seem, a very large chunk of that Jessika’s aether pool…which would then help anchor us all to this pocket dimension.”

Anafenza looked stunned. “You mean…I really have had a piece of her with me this entire time?  I thought I was going insane…”

“And it was that piece that allowed you to come here and join us,” Commander St. Peter continued. “Whatever this aether and lifestream are, they must have reached out to similar aetheric signatures and pulled us all together.”

Stormy shook her head. “Like the stars just aligned just right?”

The Commander shrugged. “Maybe?  But now…we know it’s that ambient aether signature that is sustaining this bubble.  Maybe we can use that to lock on to and get out of here…”

“But how do we get out? We’re somewhat limited on the resources available in here,” Stormy pointed out.

“We are, yes.  But I think I know a way.”  She tapped the arrowhead on her chest, and the small brooch chirped.  “St. Peter to Rafale, come in…”

There was static, before the three women began to just barely hear another sound cutting through. “…ter, this…have you…and unread…are you?”

The three women looked at one another, their faces immediately reflecting the same emotion: hope.

I will do my best...I can promise that?

Reblog this if you promise to your RP Partners that they can safely tell you they want to drop a thread without you being rude or manipulative about it

Another night, another escape...

They’re married!  And I am genuinely, without a doubt, absolutely happy for them!  I knew it was coming even when i told him I loved him.  And it never bothered me.  I am very happy I went to celebrate.  They were adorable.  And I meant every word.  Every blessing.  They are perfect together, and I couldn’t be happier for them.

But Khala.  what he said bothered me more than it should have.  more than I think it should have.  “I don’t find every au ra attractive,” and I could feel him avoiding looking at me.  of course he meant me.  this after complimenting ayame on her beauty.  And anzu.

Ayame, Anzu, Suzume...all of them Raen.  All of them refined.   Cultured.  Learned.  Beautiful in their white scales and pale complexions.

is this what makes someone beautiful?  is this why I’m not?  Because I’m a dark-scaled, dark-skinned savage from the steppe?  Is this why no one consorts with me except out of pity?  I thought it just this accursed scar on my side, or my sins but

i am ugly.  mayhaps I shoudl just clothe myself and save everyone the suffering of looking upon me.