returnjourneylogs | MINI-EVENT: RENDEZVOUS

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MINI-EVENT: RENDEZVOUS

March 9th, 2022
Tasked with picking up some emergency botanical supplies, the Peregrine stopped in Meodriotope in February and is now making haste towards another ship, for a rendezvous and hand-off of the supplies. In late morning, the view out of the windows on one side of the Peregrine will be blocked almost entirely by another ship — the Feather, also from the Admiralty's fleet. The hand-off will take place here, between two ships.

In the afternoon (local Peregrine time), a mini transport from the other ship docks in the Peregrine's loading bay. Three passengers disembark to assist in the loading, have some brief conversations, and then be on their way.

If you have any questions about the event, please ask here.

1. Observing the Feather

The Feather is one of the oldest ships in the Admiralty's fleet, a fact that is perhaps less known than intuited, simply by looking at it. While the Peregrine's sleek helices and centre spire move through space like some deep-sea organism, the Feather is a great drifting whale, its broad and boxy body speckled with simple portholes. The sides are painted with murals — abstract swirls of colour, flowers the size of houses, massive birds flitting between them. There's text that must have taken quite the ladder to paint: "Hope is a thing with feathers!" The murals are patchy and worn, but there's a lot of love there.

But despite how massive it is, it floats weightless in space. It comes so close to the Peregrine's side that it almost seems like they could brush, and the ships' respective force-fields thrum as they "merge", blending into one large bubble. In the distance, one can see quite a number of passengers on an outside deck, gathered at the railings to watch. Too far to shout across, but certainly close enough to see tiny limbs waving hello!

In the observatory, the computer monologues:

"The Feather. Currently on the 18th year of its current mission. Current population consists of 295 wardens, 306 inmates, 5 graduates in-transition and 53 supporting staff. Most passengers are from Earth Variants. The Feather is currently headed by Navarch Margaret "Old Lady" Lloyd, a Navarch with 45 years of experience..."

2. Loading the Materials

Want to lend a hand? The more the merrier. The crates of Lover's Kiss must be brought to the loading bay, checked and then loaded into the waiting transport ship. Caution is a must; we can't have the flowers crushed or damaged when they're sorely needed for medicines at their final destination.

Helping, of course, are the representatives from the Feather: two wardens and an inmate. (They'll have their own top levels below!)

3. Rewards

Passengers identified to the Navarch as having assisted in the gathering efforts will have a delivery bot stop by with a clear plastic container fogged over by steam. The container is warm to the touch, and opening it reveals a lusciously greasy cheeseburger with all the fixings, a mound of thick-cut salted french fries, and the fattest, cheesiest, richest-looking slice of pizza known to mankind. The food is cradled by red food-wrapping sheets with a white PIZZA PLANET logo. Enjoy!

(Or kill someone for a french fry after weeks or months of eating processed food substitutes. You do you.)

4. Oops, Caught Red-Handed!

So there was that thing the Navarch said — the flowers are fragile and must be handled with care, as they are only useful intact. And sure enough, on the surface of Meodriotope, dutiful flower-pickers had discovered that if you plucked them too roughly, they'd explode, leaving red stains that take weeks to wear off skin, even with dutiful scrubbing. It's been weeks and they're just starting to fade, fortunately, but there's a second phase.

Passengers stained red might discover they're having trouble sleeping. The redder they are, the longer their minds refuse to rest. In severe cases, this results full-blown insomnia. In mild cases, the body may shut down while the mind remains completely alert. These effects could last anywhere between a few days to a full week.

Good luck!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

“Everyone does, sometimes,” Lucifer says, honest as always. “Hopefully, we have people around us to help hold each other accountable.”

Grief is like the ocean-- no matter how well you think you've measured its shore, an unexpected storm can wreck everything. No matter how carefully you plan, at the end of the day, you're at its mercy. The cold water in Lucifer's words hits the bottom of Ellie's heart, a surprise so chilling she's silent for a minute, nursing the wound. She breathes slowly, and stares at her destroyed hand, and tries to think, but it just feels like she's drowning.

Finally, she speaks. Her voice is shaky, raw. "Yeah. Bad fuckin' luck, I guess."

Somehow, that hit home. He doesn’t know any specifics, and it wasn’t intentional. But there it is. Well, she’s lost people, hasn’t she? Of course she has.

“The thing about luck,” he says after a moment, “is that it can change.”

"Mine doesn't." She says it without thinking, revealing too much. Everyone dies or leaves, but they mostly die. She's going to be the only one left, eventually. When she was little, she thought she was cursed.

Now, it feels like something she deserves.

Ellie scrunches her eyes closed, taking a few slow, deep breaths. She's not gonna lose it here. It'd be so stupid.

Oof. Suddenly, Lucifer is thinking about Cain. I’ve watched it all turn to ash, over and over and over again. He’d hated it so much that he’d closed himself off from every human feeling, and it had hollowed him out, emptied him of empathy, and in the end, even when he did love again, it had quickly become twisted and selfish.

He doesn’t see that in Ellie, though. He sees, perhaps, someone trying to be that way, because she’s in pain, but she hasn’t gone that far down the road.

Maybe being here will keep her from going further.

“Luck changes all the time. People come and go, too,” he says eventually. “The important ones leave marks on you. That can be good, even if they aren’t around anymore.”

Ellie sees Joel's house, festooned in flowers. She'd told Maria how dumb it was, keeping a greenhouse for flowers in winter, what a waste of resources, couldn't they grow strawberries and mangoes instead? But she'd said it was important to respect beauty, and in the dark winter that took Joel, Ellie had finally understood. The knowledge would die with her, though; everyone else understood, except Joel, and now she'd never convince him. She'd never get to talk to him again. A life is squandered when you freeze it out, leave it in the ice and ignore it. She'd never fill their words with flowers.

"That's not enough." The words leak out between her teeth, like the tears trying to bud on her eyelashes.

“It’s not?” he asks, curious but sympathetic. “The time you spent with them wasn’t worthwhile, even if it was short and ended too soon? It’s not worth admitting someone might’ve changed you, for better or worse, even if they’re gone now?”

He hesitates a moment. “Is it not worth thinking about how they’d feel about you as you are now?”

Another long moment, recovering her cool. "That's not what you said." Her voice is thin, strained over each syllable. "Leaving marks. I'm all marks."

“What’s the difference? We’re all marked up, by the people in our lives.” Lucifer points at the long-nosed sketch of himself. “You think I’m not? Whose initials would you leave on the moon?”

She looks down at the sketch of Lucifer, but her memories only bring up the picture of Dina and her sister. It's better then looking Lucifer in the eye. At that moment, anything is.

She's not the only one who's lost people. It's just so hard to remember that, sometimes, when loss has been all she is for over a year.

"A guy I knew."

“Very specific,” Lucifer deadpans. But it’s gentle. Not harsh, just trying to turn her away from darker thoughts. “I’ve known some guys, too. Did this guy have a name?”

She rolls her shoulder, slow, trying to get her control back. It comes slowly, as if pulled down a long hallway. "Joel," she says, finally. Her eyes are dry. "What about you?"

Fair's fair, and all.

"Whose name would you write on the moon?"

Lucifer gives her all the time she needs. He’s better at hugging than he used to be, but he’ll never be Ella Lopez, ready to hug a perfect stranger just for saying hello. Miss Lopez can get away with that kind of thing; he’s a bit more circumspect.

So he doesn’t offer physical comfort, just his presence, looking out the observatory window until she responds.

Fair is fair.

“Two names,” he says immediately, reaching up to trace them along the stars he can see. “Chloe, and Rory.” There’s a hint of sadness in his expression, perhaps, but mostly he’s just soft, gently smiling. They’re the two most important names to him, clearly.

They're nice names. Not too fancy, like Lucifer, just simple and short. "What happened to 'em?"

Because everyone goes eventually. Wasn't that what they were talking about? It frames every breath Ellie takes, lately; she doesn't consider wanting to memorialize a living person like that.

"They're safe, on Earth," Lucifer says after a moment. "As happy as they can be." He knows Chloe misses him almost as much as he misses her, and he knows that Rory will grow up feeling as though he left a hole in her life, and she will fill that hole with anger for a long time, but other than that, he has it on good authority that they'll be fine.

"But I made a promise to them. Keeping it means I won't be seeing them for - a long time," he finishes quietly.

He hasn't told anyone else that.

That hits close to home. She hasn't thought about Dina or JJ since she left Jackson, months and months spent carefully keeping them pinned far back in her mind, deeper and darker than Joel. Joel's death, she can almost nearly breathe over the top of. Ruining things with Dina and the potato...

It's there, and it's gone, consigned once more into the darkness of her secret thoughts. Secret even from herself, until late at night, when the dark weight of death slithers up to sit on her chest.

"What was the promise?" Was it worth it?

That, weirdly, makes Lucifer huff a quiet laugh. "It's complicated. It involves time travel, and the need to preserve a time loop to make sure things turn out for the best, for everyone involved."

Hence, the laugh. Because it sounds ridiculous, and he knows it. "But it amounts to the fact that my daughter asked me to stay away, for her, for us, and I'd do far worse for her."

Of course he's a dad. There's always a dad out there somewhere.

Ellie ignores the bit about the time loop-- well, that's not true. She files it away for later like a pressed flower, to be taken out at another time and held up to the light. For now, it's best stowed away. The meaning is in the why, not the how.

Ellie relaxes on her seat, letting herself sprawl backward, forcing the tension out of her. "But you'll see her again, right? You're going back."

"I'll see her again, someday. Her and her mother, both," he agrees. It'll be a long time in the future, and nebulous - he's not sure exactly when. But yes, he does at least have the assurance that he'll be reunited with his family - something Ellie doesn't have.

"What happened to Joel?" he asks. Fair is fair, after all.

Ellie hopes he sees them again. There's never any guarantee, of course, but he clearly wants to. And he's a warden, so he probably deserves to.

"Some bitch beat him to death in front of me."

The answer spills from her without warning, like a soap bubble popping. She isn't a good liar, not really, not anymore. It just happened. She was focusing on him, and it just happened.

It's abrupt, and it immediately brings to mind a cavernous old warehouse, the image of his daughter in chains, the shiny red of her feathers dripping with red blood, laid out on a table next to her. The way she'd screamed as he'd knelt, a willing sacrifice.

What Ellie tells him is probably nothing like that, but it's what he thinks about anyway. He has no idea what sort of man this Joel was, but he suspects he couldn't have been all bad, if he was willing to give up his life for her.

But it raises one question for him.

"Did you kill her?"

It's neither accusatory, nor bloodthirsty. It's a neutral question, probing for more information. Ellie, he remembers vaguely, is an inmate, after all.

That drags up more shame than she'd expected. She doesn't regret letting Abby go, because someone's gotta take care of that kid. She does regret it, because it's not fucking over. It'll never be over. She doesn't, because Joel. She does, because...

Ellie has been in enough foxholes to know atheists are everywhere. But in the darkness of a lonely night, her lungs don't exhale contrition.

"No," she says. "Let her go after she bit off my fingers."

The lives of all her friends and dear ones, well, she still doesn't want to think about that, about the shape of one's stomach, full with the failed promise of life.

Lucifer nods, wondering - probably for the millionth time - what might've happened if Rory hadn't escaped her shackles when she did. If he'd been killed. If his daughter would've gone down a darker road.

So many what-ifs, and that's precisely why he made his promise. None of those what-ifs will come true, because he is preserving the time loop, exactly as it happened, as it will happen. Rory will be fine.

He shakes himself out of that thought. Focuses instead on the young woman actually sitting next to him.

"Sometimes there aren't really any good choices," he says thoughtfully. "We do the best we can in the moment. I'm sorry about Joel, though."

"You didn't know him," Ellie says, maybe a little too fast. Joel wasn't always a kind man or a good man, he'd be the first to admit. But he was hers in a way no one will ever be again. It's the familiarity she misses the most, and the way she squandered it in that last year.

But she still knew him.

A smile curves over her lips, savoring a memory. "He'd've hated you."

"Lots of people do," Lucifer responds easily. "Some may even have good reasons for it, though most just hate me on principle. But let me guess - I'm too flippant and arrogant and absurdly handsome for Joel to have ever taken me seriously."

He's willing to move into the lighter stuff. If this can be considered "light". Also now he's imagining Joel a little like William, but with even less of a sense of humor.

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