If the World Goes Blind and I Lose my Mind

[redlightgreenlight]

Characters: Valdis and some open
Date: May
Location: Around Aifaran
Situation: Various
Warnings/Rating: In Headers


Anani was being insistent, but there was no way dawn had approached, it was still too dark. Valdis rolled over, blinking against...nothing. There weren’t even shadows and even in darkness, there should have been even darker spots. She sat up, continuing to blink. As an experiment, she activated Soul Sight, Anani lit up right next to her, as did some fainter souls throughout the building. Turning it off, however, left her in darkness.

“Anani?”

The cat mewed and rubbed his head against her arm. Valdis looked over at him, but saw nothing but darkness. There was only one explanation, but how. Panic overcame logic, but only temporarily. The blindness wouldn’t last, right?

(OOC: Contrary to hope, Valdis will be blind this month. Have fun!]

Comments

Devin | May 5th | Valdis’ Apartment | CW: None

[redlightgreenlight]

(Devin’s Inbox)

[Devin’s yimo rings until it goes to voicemail. There are weird scuffling noises, followed by the sounds of mewing, a clatter which sounds like the yimo has fallen, followed by more mewing and then Valdis’ voice.]

Anani! Whatever you are doing, don’t.

[Louder mews, skittering as the yimo slides across a wooden floor and a clunk as it hits something else. Scuffling, a loud thump, followed by some swearing in another language. The creak of a door as it opens.]

Where are you going?

[She definitely sounds upset, perhaps there’s even a hint of fear.]

I’m locking you out…If I can even find the lock.

[There’s nothing but the sound of slow movement for several breaths, then another creak as the door shuts and a click as it locks. More slow movement, a crash, more swearing, then the call ends due to lack of room in the inbox]

[annihilist]

[When Devin finally gets around to checking his yimo, he is... highly bemused by the message that's waiting for him. It's not like Valdis to misdial or be clumsy, and the sounds that he hears leave him concerned, especially the second time through.

It's not giving him answers so he calls back, with no reply. He's done with work for the day, and instead of going home he makes his way to Valdis' new apartment. It doesn't take Devin long to find it, since he's grown relatively familiar with the city. Out of courtesy, he opts to knock rather than barge right in. He can hear that she's in there, at least.]

Valdis? Can I come in?

[redlightgreenlight]

[A low, happy mew greets Devin, and Anani comes up behind him, arching his back and rubbing against the Vampire's leg.

Valdis didn't really know what to do about her current situation. She's memorized certain aspects of the layout of her apartment, and as long as nothing moved, making it to and from the door was easy enough, even if she went more slowly than usual.

The knock startles her, but the fact that it is only Devin is both aggravating and a relief, though it takes her a moment to respond. He's not stupid and pretending to not be here wouldn't get her very far. She rose from her bed, holding onto the headboard to give her some sense of where she was.]

It's locked, just give me a few minutes.

[Valdis doesn't see the point in acting as if nothing is wrong, but she takes care to move through the space so she doesn't trip on anything. Not that anything may have moved. It does, in fact, take a few minutes to reach the door, but she finds the lock easily enough and opens the door to nothing but the scent and sense of the vampire. This affliction was becoming annoying.]

Can I help you with something?

[annihilist]

[The fact that it takes as much time as it does for Valdis to reach the door only heightens Devin's bemusement - and frankly his concern. He can hear her moving slowly through her apartment, though she doesn't seem to be in any real distress from what his senses can tell him.

Anani gets a few absentminded pets while he waits, and Devin straightens as the door opens.

Her eyes look... different.]

You sent me a rather odd message earlier. Or rather, your cat seems to have sent it, probably by accident. But you weren't answering my calls, either, and now you can't seem to traverse your own apartment in a reasonable amount of time. [He's frowning.] What's happened?

[redlightgreenlight]

[Anani darts inside the moment Valdis opens the door, but she's not exactly concerned about her cat right now.]

The yimo is on silent and Anani seems to have hidden it somewhere.

[Valdis isn't sure how long she can twist words without flat out lying and she isn't exactly one to back out of promises. Lying to Devin now would only take them backwards. Perhaps it was better to simply dodge the question entirely.]

Have you come to apologize for using the name I gave you?

Open | Die Rosa Tulpe | CW: None

[redlightgreenlight]

It had taken perhaps too much convincing to make her leave her apartment, but as Valdis didn’t know how long she would be afflicted with this, she knew she couldn’t hide forever. Hila had stepped in to be her eyes, and with the ka’s help, she was able to navigate the streets, though slowly. The white wolf now lay next to her at Klaus’ cafe, one paw on her foot so she didn’t need to keep soul sight active, something which was difficult to hold long term. Valdis sat with a book open on her lap, her fingers moving along the raised bumps on the page.

Learning braille had been an act of boredom, she never thought she’d actually find it useful, but Devin had found the books in the library, so perhaps the Dreaming had some grace after all. Valdis had read these stories before, the Arthurian Romances weren’t exactly light, but they were entertaining enough, and admittedly more interesting at the moment than the Odyssey, which still sat at her apartment.

It was still strange to hear, smell and sense things that she couldn’t see, but she’d adapted in the past, she should be able to adapt now. Hopefully.

[spiralpatterns]

Huh, interesting.

Zephyr came by the cafe decently often, after having been introduced to it. He hadn't seen a woman with a wolf before. And her gaze was distant, her hands on the book rather than her eyes... blind?

He tapped at the edge of the table as a sort of courtesy greeting, glancing at the wolf with a careful wariness for any aggression.

"Didn't know they had books you could read like that here."

[redlightgreenlight]

Valdis felt Hila shift ever so slightly as someone approached, her head lifted as if she expected to actually see who it was, but to no avail, there was only darkness. Hila didn't seem concerned, however, so Valdis didn't even bother looking at his soul. The tap, however, alerted her to the fact that he was letting her know of his presence, which she did appreciate in some ways.

"Someone I know found them for me, he said they appeared at the library," she replied, "The Dreaming seems to enjoy giving just as much as it enjoys taking away."

Valdis inclined her head, "Your voice is unfamiliar, have you been here long?"

[spiralpatterns]

"That's convenient." It was always just a little suspicious when you somehow found exactly what you needed. Zephyr believed in divine providence as much as the next guy.

He also believed in setups.

"Glad it's working out for you, I guess. And no-- only a couple of weeks." Zephyr shrugged, then realized she (probably?) couldn't see it. "Do you know everyone here so well?"

[redlightgreenlight]

"If you define the sudden loss of one of my vital senses due to the whims of an entity I cannot fight as 'working out'," She replied bitterly, "then yes, I suppose it is."

She reached aside, fumbling for the bookmark she knew existed on the table, though it took her a moment or two to find it. It thankfully took her less time to insert it into the book and close it so she could focus her senses more directly. Answering that question was slightly more complicated than she liked. His voice was unfamiliar, as were his scent and the sense of his essence, though the particular details of the latter were harder to determine without an actual examination.

"In some ways," she said finally, reaching down toward Hila, who lifted her head to press against the offered hand. "But I only left the Dreaming Bridge about two weeks ago. So either you have been here for some time, or you are a more recent arrival. It's all logic really."

[ilda]

Ilda was delighted that the Fool was going to let her hang around while he did his magical woodwork thingy. So she quickly went out to purchase some snacks, not even bothering to wait for his reply as to what he wanted, carelessly making the assumption that he'd meant now.

That was only the first part. Ilda being Ilda, queen of not being thorough, she'd misread the Fool's announcement and thought that he was at the Dia Rosa Tulpe, instead of the apartment above it. Typical.

Carrying a basket with both hands, she arrived in the shop, confused. There was no sight of the Fool anywhere.

But there was a white wolf lying next to a beautiful woman reading a book.

"Hello there!"

[redlightgreenlight]

Though Valdis had heard the footsteps, she wasn't expecting to suddenly be greeted so enthusiastically and without warning. Aside from Zephyr the other day, she'd mostly been left alone. She looked up, irritation cross her features briefly as she still couldn't see, her normally deep green eyes now the color of sea foam. The voice was familiar since she'd heard it before on the network, though she'd never seen fit to respond.

"Hello," she replied, trying to figure out a name to match the voice, "Ilda, right? I seem to recall something about selfies."

Hila huffed, closing her eyes and pretending to ignore the rest of the world.

[ilda]

Oops. Ilda caught the irritated look, and her smile turned sheepish. Was she too loud? She didn’t mean to be so loud. But she couldn’t help being excited; the white wolf was impressive, the woman even more so.

So Ilda actually blushed when Valdis responded and called her by name, totally not expecting to be recognized. It was probably the selfies— yep, that’s it, definitely the selfies. She tried to suppress a squeal of delight, but a little squeak still came out of her. Eeep. Hopefully it wasn’t so loud.

“Y-Yes, that’s me. We don’t have yimos in my village and I’m not very good at following instructions... sometimes. Um.” She bit her lip, looking like she was trying to gather the courage to say something, then finally said, “You’re so beautiful. Are you a model?”

[blap_blap]

This place? It has a library. And it even has real books, the kind that are printed on paper, so he doesn't have to download them onto his ECHO and hide them five folders deep in something inconspicuously named so that Jack won't go digging through them. It's been such a long time since Tim had actually had the time to sit down and read for pleasure; not since before he went to university, because even though he got to read a lot of things for assignments, that's work. It's totally different from reading things just for fun.

So Tim's got his nose right in a book while he's walking, and he's not paying all that much attention to where he's going. This is the main reason why he doesn't notice that he's on a collision course with a woman's chair until his hip knocks right into it.

"Oh!"

Tim fumbles with his book, nearly dropping it. That hurt, and he jostled this poor woman, and she also has a big dog? None of these are good things.

"Oh, man, I'm sorry," he says, a sentence that has probably never come out of Jack's face in his entire life-- so take note, Valdis, this is the only time you'll ever hear it. "I should be paying attention to where I'm going."

[redlightgreenlight]

Moving from the cafe to a quieter place like the library had been a fine idea. It was easier to focus when people weren't bothering her with idle chatter. Valdis was normally fine with social, but since losing her vision, she'd been far less inclined to interactions. The problem with being focused on reading, was that she paid less attention to surroundings and souls in the area, a mistake she rarely made. Her vision was improving, but not enough to read as normal and while she heard the footsteps as they approached, she thought nothing of it, still running her fingers across the page as she read the braille.

The sudden jolt sent brief panic through her mind and Hila reacted, getting to her feet before Tim even spoke a word, a growl forming in her throat. But the voice was unfamiliar, and the quick apology soothed Valdis' concerns.

Yes, Hila hissed, You should.

"It's fine, Hila," Valdis said. The white wolf looked at Tim, snorted, and then crawled under the table and lay back down, placing on paw on Valdis' foot. "Don't mind her, she's protective right now."

[blap_blap]

That dog looks really unhappy and sounds really unhappy, and Tim's not exactly sure what he's supposed to do about that because he's way more experienced with cats than dogs. The woman seems to have it under control, though, since the animal seems to calm down with just a few words from her and goes back to laying under the table. And that's totally normal, that's a thing that Tim would expect, since dogs-- and that has to be just a really big dog. People don't hang around with wolves, right?-- are loyal like that. Good at listening or whatever.

The weird thing about this, though, is that Tim's like ninety percent sure that the dog just talked to him. And since he's one hundred percent sure that he didn't eat any weird mushrooms before he left the library, there should be zero talking animals in his vicinity. That's just not a thing that should be happening, he is not prepared to deal with this.

Tim sort of holds his book against his chest with his eyes on the dog-- now resting a paw on the woman's foot, totally innocuously-- and purses his lips.

"So, uh." The real question here is how to respond to this without sounding like a crazy person. "Um. This is going to sound crazy, but... I think your dog just talked to me? Not, like, in a serial killer way, though."

Okay, so maybe zero for one on the not sounding nuts part.

Open | A plain outside the city | CW: None

[redlightgreenlight]

Valdis was very unsure about this plan. Hila had suggested that, since they didn’t know when he sight would return, she needed to figure out how to use her other senses in order to fight. The ka had assured her that the ground here was flat and free of large debris, but not being able to see it made her hesitate to try.

Your muscles remember, Hila sighed from her left, Lack of sight does not change that.

“I can’t fight if I can’t see my surroundings,” Valdis replied. “Muscle memory won’t help me avoid a tree. My speed and strength are useless against weapons I cannot see, against distances I can’t calculate. I can’t do this.”

So you are going to give up? Hila’s voice was to the right now, and she sounded calm.

“No,” Valdis drew her sword. She didn’t want to give up, but without sight, she didn’t see how she could be the same warrior she had been.

Good, because someone is coming.

[bestofthevein]

Kit knows a thing or two about fighting while backed into a corner--especially if it's a corner of his body's own making. He hadn't asked to have his hearing beaten out of his left ear as a kid; he hadn't asked for a lot of the shitty circumstances that life dumped upon him.

His crap hearing means that he isn't drawn to this particular plain due to hearing Valdis talk to herself. Instead, he's jogging absently after his little bibiru companion as he hop-hop-hops away with his leash trailing through the grass after him. Catching hold of the end of it, Kit is in the process of mumbling, "Come here before something eats you," under his breath when he spots Valdis, her sword drawn and her expression pulled into something like anger. Whatever friendly greeting he has prepared for his former roommate fails him then. Something is clearly wrong.

"Hey there," he calls out to her, hoping his voice will be familiar enough that she won't mark him as a threat. "It's Kit. You all right?"

[redlightgreenlight]

Even with Hila's warning, her heart skipped with the sudden sound of Kit's voice. She spooked sideways like a prey animal, dropping Revelations in her brief panic.

"Gods," she said, breathlessly, "Don't sneak up on people, Kit."

She didn't know where he was standing, but looked in the general direction of his voice, catching his scent an instant later. She shook her head, debating over how hard it would be to bluff her way through this interaction. She couldn't leave her sword on the ground, however, no warrior would leave their blade in the dirt. Problem was, she couldn't actually see it, which led to the fact that Kit would have to be very stupid to not figure out something was wrong. Damn.

"But, no, I am currently experiencing some visual difficulties. Can you please hand me my sword?"

[bestofthevein]

When she spooks, Kit immediately draws up short and lifts up both hands in an instinctive do-no-harm kind of gesture; this definitely lends credence to his theory that something is wrong, and she verifies that with her words a moment later.

I am currently experiencing some visual difficulties. Can you please hand me my sword?"

Visual difficulties. Well, it didn't take a bunch of Shapers to figure out what that meant. "Yeah, sure," he answers, and takes several heavy steps through the grass towards where the sword has fallen in the grass. With a mumble of, "careful, buddy, don't sniff that," to his inquisitive bibiru, he picks up the weapon by its hilt with the ease of a seasoned veteran, then crosses the ground towards Valdis to offer it out to her, hilt first.

"This must've come on quick," he tells her, cutting right to the chase. There's no point in beating around the bush. "What happened?"

X | The Beach at Night | CW: Vague Mentions of Hallucinations

[redlightgreenlight]

Why she had decided to take a walk at night only made sense in the context of her being unable to see anyway. The lack of other people made it quiet, enabling her to hear better without the din of crowds. Valdis had one hand gripping Hila’s thick fur, the white wolf helping guide her through the mostly empty streets. Hila also stood as a deterrent to any criminal or annoyance that might otherwise bother her, so her hesitation to move around the city wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been several days ago.

The crisp smell of the sea, followed by the sound of waves, told her they were approaching the beach. Valdis released Hila’s fur once she felt the land shift to shand. The light wind felt nice after staying cooped up most of the time since her discovery. If she closed her eyes, she could pretend that nothing was wrong. Until she heard a voice on the wind, a very familiar voice, one that sent ice up her spine. Looking around would do her no good, and there wasn’t a scent on the air aside from the sea and land. Hila didn’t seem concerned, but the voice came again, closer.

He wasn’t here, she would know if he was, Hila would have reacted. He wasn’t here.

[psituational]

"Valdis!"

X had been having an oddly difficult time tracking Valdis down ever since the incident in the park last month. Or, well... perhaps not oddly difficult, given her reaction at the time. X wouldn't ever blame someone for not wanting to confront themselves. He wished he could give her the space she wanted, the space she clearly needed, but this was far too important not to pursue.

"Valdis!" he called again, relieved that this time, his hunch had panned out. Asking around Aifaran about a large wolf would only ever have worked if Valdis had decided to shapeshift again, but when he'd started hearing about a white wolf guiding a woman along... "Valdis," he said, once he was close enough not to need to raise his voice. "I've been looking for you. Either you don't answer your yimo, or..." He exhaled, and rubbed the back of his neck. "I need to talk to you. Please."

[redlightgreenlight]

Fear. It didn't matter that Hila hadn't reacted, she had heard Amos as he said her name, drawing closer and closer, even though she couldn't sense the presence of a demon, there was still someone coming. She didn't know where Hila had gone, the ka's presence had vanished and without her, Valdis had no idea which direction she needed to flee to. Laughter covered the words of someone else. But there was still no sense of the archdemon.

Valdis held her breath, her sightless eyes closed tightly, nails digging into her palms so hard they began to bleed. She struggled to separate what she was hearing from what she was sensing. The last few words were stronger, drowning out the phantom voice. X. Relief spread through her core, it wasn't Amos. He really wasn't here.

"X," she said, allowing herself to breathe again, "I never thought I'd be glad it is you."

And not the insane demon from her home world.

[psituational]

... Oh. Okay. That was a much, much better reaction than the one X had been dreading.

"Well," he said, and faltered. "I'm glad, that you're glad. If you could keep on being glad, please, that would be marvellous."

She wouldn't, of course. Devin didn't; no one ever did. But X lived in hope.

"I need to talk to you," he repeated, "about what happened in the park last month. There's more to it than what you saw, and it concerns you." He hesitated, then frowned. "No, wait a minute, first -- why are you glad it's me? Are you alright?"

Open | Faith 2 | CW: None

[redlightgreenlight]

Though her sight still wasn’t back to normal, navigating the streets was somewhat easier as a Hound. The natives were more likely to move out of your way, but Valdis still kept to the later hours. Rumors had spread about the two black canines who had destroyed the small park on the outskirts of the city, and from her size, it would be immediately evident that she was one of them. Unfortunately, despite the later hours and nearly empty streets, some members of one of the religions she tried to ignore had decided that the giant, black, demon inan needed to be cleansed of evil.

Valdis’ first instinct was to snap at them, but they must have had great confidence in their gods, for her snarl didn’t deter them and all it earned her was a splash of ‘holy’ water to the face. Luckily holy water didn’t affect her the way it did actual demons. She snapped at the one who had thrown the water balloon, only to be struck in the shoulder with another one by a different member. Turning to face that one and she got two more to the side and rump. Fury showed in her scarlet eyes, so bright and bloody red that they almost seemed to glow in the darkness. The sight of the change only inspired them to throw a few more, the idiots were lucky that she was currently adverse to murder. Another coughing snarl and she knocked one of the religious fanatics over to escape the circle, taking off at a steady lope. Going too fast with poor eyesight probably wasn’t smart, unfortunately, those idiots were also determined and gave chase.