It's Curtains Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stagemanagers) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
itscurtains2021-05-30 12:40 am
stagemanagers) wrote in itscurtains2021-05-30 12:40 am
once more with feeling [act 3]
You awake in an unfamiliar bed.
It’s comfortable enough, sure, but it’s certainly not yours. The room, too, is unfamiliar, especially in such heavy darkness. There seems to have been a great effort put into making it a livable space, with fuzzy rugs laid over linoleum, beds arranged as best to fit (and one bunk bed per dorm, rip whoever has the bottom bunk), and a single desk. You've also got individually labelled trunks; if you look inside yours, you'll find a yearbook with mostly blank pages, as well as a few with some interesting information. But even with all these changes it’s clear this room started it’s life as a classroom, every window hidden behind heavy dark green curtains.
To add to the strangeness of it all, your clothes have been swapped for some kind of uniform. It, though fitting your body perfectly, might feel a bit odd to some of you, as the body you have isn’t quite the same as it was before you mysteriously fell unconscious. The other important thing to note is the people in the other beds around you, all wearing the same color-coded uniform.
The hallway outside the dorms is narrow but well-lit, with fresh white walls and some scattered posters advertising some kind of midweek club meeting. The hallway goes on until, for the more contemporary of you, the pieces start to fall together as to your location: a school. Once you leave your rooms you’re free to wander as you wish but pinned up on a corkboard just outside the cafeteria there’s framed information that you might find helpful. If you explore further into the other rooms, in fact, you'll see there's an identical copy outside all of them.
In the lobby there are linoleum floors and fluorescent lighting, and a pair of glass doors that appear to lead outside. You can see out of both of them that the sun is shining brightly and there’s definitely more to see in the distance but the glass is unbreakable; you can't get out that way right now. A rolling metal sheet blocks off the hallway to the west. For the moment, both doors leading outside are locked.
It looks like you’re stuck. But hey - at least you aren’t alone.
It’s comfortable enough, sure, but it’s certainly not yours. The room, too, is unfamiliar, especially in such heavy darkness. There seems to have been a great effort put into making it a livable space, with fuzzy rugs laid over linoleum, beds arranged as best to fit (and one bunk bed per dorm, rip whoever has the bottom bunk), and a single desk. You've also got individually labelled trunks; if you look inside yours, you'll find a yearbook with mostly blank pages, as well as a few with some interesting information. But even with all these changes it’s clear this room started it’s life as a classroom, every window hidden behind heavy dark green curtains.
To add to the strangeness of it all, your clothes have been swapped for some kind of uniform. It, though fitting your body perfectly, might feel a bit odd to some of you, as the body you have isn’t quite the same as it was before you mysteriously fell unconscious. The other important thing to note is the people in the other beds around you, all wearing the same color-coded uniform.
The hallway outside the dorms is narrow but well-lit, with fresh white walls and some scattered posters advertising some kind of midweek club meeting. The hallway goes on until, for the more contemporary of you, the pieces start to fall together as to your location: a school. Once you leave your rooms you’re free to wander as you wish but pinned up on a corkboard just outside the cafeteria there’s framed information that you might find helpful. If you explore further into the other rooms, in fact, you'll see there's an identical copy outside all of them.
In the lobby there are linoleum floors and fluorescent lighting, and a pair of glass doors that appear to lead outside. You can see out of both of them that the sun is shining brightly and there’s definitely more to see in the distance but the glass is unbreakable; you can't get out that way right now. A rolling metal sheet blocks off the hallway to the west. For the moment, both doors leading outside are locked.
It looks like you’re stuck. But hey - at least you aren’t alone.
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Well, there's certainly no shame in that. [And no surprise, coming from a man whose music could touch the heart of the god of the underworld.] I don't think I'd have the heart for such things, either. It's much better to help life grow, I think, than to end it.
[After all, with all the trouble her magic has caused, especially for her sister... it's enough to last her a lifetime.]
Hopefully he was a good sport about things not working out.
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[ He'd seemed pretty sad about it, actually, which Orpheus still didn't quite understand, but it was what it was. ]
I agree, though. Hunting is important and I'm glad other people can do it, but it's good not to have to rely on it too much. I'm not much of a gardener either, but I can grow some things.
[ Including flowers, spontaneously, by singing with enough heart, but that's mostly just useful for impressing girls. ]
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So it's true, then? That you can make things grow with your music?
[It's not just her love of stories that sends a spark of excitement through her. If it's true... then that means that the man before her can use magic. The idea of meeting someone else like her, someone who was celebrated for their gifts instead of hidden away... oh, it makes her feel like a kid during Yule!]
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[ He looks a little sheepish as he admits it, shrugging. Plants usually seem to do better when he plays music for them, but sometimes they grow much more than they should be able to, and there's no real predicting it. And then there's what happened with the flower... ]
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[Elsa gets Anna, now. How she acts like such an awestruck child every time Elsa uses her magic. Being on the other side like this, hearing about things people can do that nobody else can... forgive her. She's just a little excited, is all.]
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For a moment, it seems like nothing is happening. Then the plant shudders, buds forming on its woody stems and rapidly unfurling into pale white flowers as his song grows in intensity. He opens his eyes, drawing a song to the close and examining his work before looking back over at Elsa, grinning in a mixture of pleasant surprise and pride. ]
It worked!
[ There's something a little off about the plant, though. Are those flowers made of fabric? Orpheus sure doesn't seem to notice.]
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Oh wow.
[This is indeed what Anna must feel like, so awestruck over something so small yet so magical. It's a light, bubbling feeling rising in her chest as she reaches out, touching the... yeah. Very fake flower on the fake plant. But that just makes it all the more amazing!]
I never thought I'd ever meet someone else who can do magic like this...
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Oh! Can you do something like this, too? [ he asks, obviously curious and a little excited about the idea. He's known lots of other demigods, having met most of them aboard the Argo, but most of them were exceptionally fast, or strong, or durable. Which was impressive! But not the same as what he could do. ]
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[Elsa holds her hands out, slowly twirling them in the air like she's running them across an invisible globe. There's a light shine to them, a soft blue-white light... and between her palms, a slight burst of snow appears.
... Hm. Her brows furrow ever so slightly; she'd been meaning to so something a little bigger, but even this took effort in a way she hadn't felt in years. Strange... ah, but she can't dwell on that for the moment! As the snowflakes flurry to the floor, she looks back up at Orpheus, a bright smile on her face.]
I've been able to do things like that since I was born.
[It's nice. Really nice. To be able to be so open with her magic. To feel pride in her magic, when for the longest time she was taught to feel nothing but shame and fear.]
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That's incredible! [ he says. ] Is one of your parents a god, too?
[ Who would be able to pass on something like that, though. Boreas, maybe? His sons - or at least the ones Orpheus met - just had wings rather than anything to do with ice, but sometimes divine heritage can get a little weird. ]
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Her magic isn't a curse. It's a tool, something she knows can make people happy.]
A god? [She laughs.] No, no! They were just normal people!
[Though honestly, she herself has wondered that. When she was a child, she sometimes wondered if her great-great-great-plus grandmother could have been Skadi. It made sense, back then.]
Honestly, none of us are sure how or why I was born with these powers. It's just... been a part of life, ever since I was a baby.
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That's a little strange, but I guess a blessing is a blessing. Maybe your parents did a favor for one of the gods without realizing it? Sometimes that kind of thing happens.
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A blessing... I'm not sure if I would call it that.
[She's reconciled a lot, with her powers. She's grown so much, and come a long way in accepting these abilities she was given for some mysterious reason. But there's no denying that they caused her a lot of trouble, so a blessing still isn't exactly what she'd consider her powers.]
To be honest, they've given me more trouble than aid, for most of my life.
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[ That comes as a surprise to Orpheus. As far as he's concerned what she can do is nothing short of incredible, and it's hard for him to imagine seeing it any other way. ]
I'm really sorry to hear that. Did something bad happen with them?
[ That might be kind of a personal question to ask, but it doesn't quite occur to Orpheus not to, too curious and confused to think it all the way through. ]
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She has her bad days, of course. But she can't fully descend into conceal, don't feel again.]
My magic is tied very closely to how I feel. If I'm scared, or nervous, or sometimes even too excited, it tends to... flare up. [Or when she's sick. Or sad. Or a million other things.] You can imagine how difficult that must be for a child, or a growing teenager. My sister and I loved finding new ways to play with my magic, but... after some time, it started to become difficult to control.
[She's careful not to dip too deep into "this was a problem and I hurt people because of it". That... that she's not ready to talk to new folks about just yet.]
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That must've been really difficult. [ he says, quietly. His own gifts - he can't think of them as anything but - can also be kind of hard to control and seem to reflect his emotions, but it doesn't sound like anything nearly to the extent of what Elsa is talking about. Mostly when he's having problems they just don't work at all, instead of going wrong. ]
Did it ever get any easier? Controlling it, I mean.
[ She seems to have a pretty good handle on things now, especially given how stressful and confusing all of this is. If anything he could do was prone to going haywire based on how he was feeling, he'd probably be causing all sorts of problems. ]
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In a way. It was less about learning how to control it, and learning that I didn't need to repress it. As long as I was happy, and remembered that there are people around to support me... it was easy to stop it from flaring out of control.
[True love will thaw a frozen heart, indeed.]
I didn't need to work on my magic, I needed to work on me. I had to realize that it was as much a part of myself as my emotions are, not some separate thing that just lived inside of me.
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That makes perfect sense. [ he says. ] Trying to deny parts of yourself because you're afraid of them or what they mean is just a sure way to make them into bigger problems than they actually are, whether it's your feelings or something else. I'm glad you were able to realize that, though, even if sometimes accepting all of yourself is really hard.
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[The act of realizing the truth to her magic was one thing. That was easy. It was just the idea of learning not to hate herself after she grew up with such destructive thoughts that was the problem.]
That's why it's so reassuring to see other people who can do magic - like you. It helps me feel less... alone. Awkward.
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[Which certainly didn't help her feelings of loneliness as a child.]
there were stories, of course, rumors of magic in other kingdoms... but I'd never seen it with my own eyes.
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[ They covered it a little bit in school, when he was growing up, but he... hadn't really been paying attention. 'Arendelle' doesn't sound familiar, though. ]
That's kind of unusual, though. People being born with the power to do things like you do isn't common where I come from, I guess? But there's people who've learned sorcery. Not a lot of them, but they can be found.