Cycle 002

[phantasmal_resplendent]

 After the last OOM, Lup is sitting by the window, with a cup of hot chocolate, looking a bit shaken. She's still trying to process the things that have happened to her lately.

She keeps glancing out the window, as if she's expecting to see something in the sky...

Comments

[mane_event]

Simba appears by way of seeing her, instantly figuring she could do with snuggles, and padding over.

He's big enough now that he can reach the cahir with his forepaws without jumping, pulling himself up and shuffling around on the chair - shift up, Lup - until he's sitting comfortably next to her, his head and forepaws resting on her lap.

"Hi."

[phantasmal_resplendent]

Lup glances over and gives Simba a tired smile.

"Hey, bud." She tousles the fur on his head a bit. "Did you get bigger?"

[mane_event]

"I am always growing," Simba says, leaning into the hand on his head, "so probably. Are you okay?"

[phantasmal_resplendent]

Lup nods. "Yeah, I'm alright. There's just been...a lot happening the past few days."

[mane_event]

"Do you want to talk about it?" Simba asks, leaning his head against her. "I mean you don't have to."

[phantasmal_resplendent]

Lup looks down at the floor, unsure where to begin, or how much to tell.

"...Remember that giant black thing I told you about before? The one we saw when we launched?"

[mane_event]

..."Yes?"

Simba's eyes are big and worried as he looks up at her. He doesn't have hopes for this ending well.

[phantasmal_resplendent]

"It...came back. We don't know if it followed us, or what, but..."

The hand that's not petting Simba is holding tightly onto the chair.

"It attacked the world we were on. We managed to escape -" (And somehow, Magnus was brought back with them) "-and jump to another plane, but..."

She can still see that giant black cloud consuming the world behind them.

[mane_event]

"The world with the animals?"

Simba would pale, if he wasn't covered in fur.

"Oh no..."

[phantasmal_resplendent]

Lup nods, a bit pale herself.

"You were right before, though. It might still be in there, with my world."

She has to hold on to that hope.

[mane_event]

"Yeah."

He pushes himself up, crawls all the way up into her lap.

"I hope you figure out how to get them back."

[phantasmal_resplendent]

"Me too."

Lup's other hand goes to Simba and pulls him in a little closer.

"We're gonna keep traveling, keep learning what we can about other worlds - and maybe we can find a way to save them, and stop whatever that thing is."

[mane_event]

Simba leans into her, pressing his head into her chest and up towards her face (although humanoids are weird about faces, he knows)

"I bet you will," he says. "Do you know where you're going next?"

[princeinexile]

You know what helps? Cinnamon rolls and hot tea, which is usually brought from the kitchen hot from the oven by Sunshine, who sees sad people and feeds them.

This time, well, it's Zuko. The cinnamon roll is still amazingly gooey and warm, tea just right. He sets a tray down beside Lup's seat on the couch, and then takes his own cinnamon roll and tea cup off it.

"Thought you might like that," he said quietly. "If you want some company, I'll hang around, but if you don't, I can go set things on fire in the forge."

Zuko had learned a lot of things over his time with the Avatar, and especially in dealing with pain that both he and Katara had felt, sharing experiences from opposite sides of the war. Sometimes you needed someone. Sometimes you needed time to be alone. Whichever Lup was after, he could deal with it.

[phantasmal_resplendent]

Lup looks up and smiles when she sees Zuko.

"Thanks. And yeah, company would be nice right now."

She takes a bite of a cinnamon roll.

"These are really good." Her smile is just a bit brighter.

[princeinexile]

"I'll relay the compliment to the chef, later," Zuko said as he sat down. "Sunshine made them -- I can only make tea, so i can't take credit here."

The tea, at least, he did brew.

[phantasmal_resplendent]

Lup has met Sunshine - she seems pretty cool. "I'll have to thank her later then, too."

She takes a sip of the tea, too, having finished her hot chocolate.

"Thanks. I needed this."

[princeinexile]

"When someone sits over here and stares at the fish in the fire," Zuko says as he started to peel away a delicious bit of roll, "or stares into the big window, they usually have a lot on their mind."

It's just one of those things about Milliway's; the end draws people with dark thoughts, and often, they need help out of them.

[phantasmal_resplendent]

Lup shrugs. "You're not wrong."

She draws her knees up, hesitating. Zuko's shared his entire messed-up past with her; it's only fair that she share this with him.

"We're...being followed. By...something."

[princeinexile]

"Do you think it can reach you here?"

It's not like it hasn't happened before. Zuko remembers when that one pirate ship came up and ate the other pirate ship in the lake, and now that one other pirate ship (he thinks it's the same ship) sometimes docs there and chills out like nothing weird happened.

(Zuko, as a rule, avoids pirates, so he doesn't know the whole story.)

[phantasmal_resplendent]

"I...don't know."

Lup's been thinking a lot about it.

"This place is, like, a pocket dimension, right? A self-contained mini-universe?"

She's read the pamphlets given out by the waitrats, and it doesn't seem like it's part of a larger planar system, but...

[princeinexile]

"As I get it, yeah. Kind of like our Spirit World. But-- also like our spirit world, sometimes other things can open doors they're not supposed to," Zuko said as pulled apart his cinnamon roll. "But that's exceedingly rare. Not impossible, but in years ofbeing here... I've seen it once."

[phantasmal_resplendent]

Lup nods, taking this in.

"If it's not connected to a planar system, then it'll probably ignore this world..." Also, the Light isn't here, as far as she can tell.

She sounds more like she's trying to convince herself.

[princeinexile]

"Bar lets in those she wishes, and refuses those she doesn't," Zuko says gently. "It probably won't come here, Lup. You have time to rest, and consider how to face if you must, here."

[phantasmal_resplendent]

"Yeah."

Lup wraps her arms around herself, and speaks very quietly.

"...I saw it consume a world. An entire plane."