Post-Moebius Liminal

[ayiyiyi]

In the sky above, a patchwork of papel picado. Below, a pit full of sugar skulls, surrounding a massive circular altar, each 'step' four feet tall and decorated with pictures. And at the very top of the altar, there were no more pictures but rather a table filled with foods Xena has never seen before. But those of another time, and another place, would know them as pan de meurto, mole chicken, and sopa azteca. All around, floating gracefully in the air despite the lack of a breeze, are orange marigolds.

She remembers nothing of how she came to this place. Her sword is drawn, and the sugar skulls crunch beneath her feet as she steps slowly through the landscape, always circling, always looking for the threat. She doesn't know how she got here, and yet she knows deep within her soul that there has been death. There has been pain.

And she hasn't seen Gabrielle in some time.

Xena steps towards the altar, her sword still raised. She looks at the pictures, and frowns. She recognises no faces, but there's something familiar...and over there, there's a picture of her. Should she know these people?

And how in Zeus's name did the artist make these pictures so...real?

[[ooc: the setting of this is the Liminal Space immediate after Moebius - so please let me know if your character is in fact a pre-Moebius vet! They don't have to be to tag in, but I'd just like to know just in case we decide to make any threads game canon]]

Comments

[brokers]

There is a blue skinned woman - or, at least, something wearing an approximation of a woman's shape, earless and hairless and scaled though she may be - clad in some manner of white armour examining the pictures on the second tier of the altar. Behind her, sugar skulls roll slowly back in to fill a path carved through the middle of them, obscuring the ground beneath once more. Nothing lasts long here.

The woman's lips move as she picks up another picture, as though giving it a name - and then she stiffens suddenly, the crunch of skulls underfoot alerting her to Xena's presence. The fingers of one hand twist as she turns, and a shimmer of blue-violet light surrounds her, accompanied by the scent of the air after a lightning strike. She makes no further move towards violence, however - rather, she blinks rapidly, as though just jolted awake, and says after a moment, "Xena. You're still with us?"

[ayiyiyi]

Xena stills, and raises he sword for a ready defense...but just like with Riddick, this woman - strange as she is - is familiar.

A name comes to mind.

"Liara," she says, lowering her sword slightly. "I'm still here, yes."

[brokers]

"I had thought... I had feared we would not all come back." She lifts a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose, little flashes of static discharge dancing along her arm as she moves. "How is your memory? So far, most of us appear to be missing pieces."

[ayiyiyi]

"I don't remember much," she says, a worried twist to her lips. "I know that I haven't seen Gabrielle in a long time, I know that I've been to travelling to many places - strange places, places that only the gods could dream up - and I know your face. But I don't remember. It's like there's a veil over my memories. I know they're there, but I can't see them."

[brokers]

"Gabrielle?" Liara asks, her slight frown akin to the expression of someone worrying at the gap of a missing tooth. She has the nagging suspicion she's heard the name before, but when and in what context - that's as absent as her memories of anything in between the broken Normandy and the metal-and-fog hell that lies just behind them. "Was she one of us?"

[ayiyiyi]

"No. No she's not a Traveller," Xena says, shaking her head. And as she says it, she realises that's the right word for who they are - Travellers. She doesn't know where they've been, or where they're going. But she knows that they're Travelling. "She's from my world. My home."

[brokers]

"Ah," Liara says quietly. "I am sorry. I know it's...difficult to be separated from your friends and loved ones."

Or, at least, difficult to know there's no returning to them under their own power.

[ayiyiyi]

"Yes," she says, her voice low and quiet. "But whatever it is that we've just been a part of...I'm glad Gabrielle wasn't there to see it."