Scene #8006:

Owner	Pose
Persephone Kore	The crimson sea of uncertainty resolves into a dirt path, or tile, or wood flooring, whenever one resolves "to walk on it"- whatever the walker is most comfortable with. But touching the raw stuff, even swimming in it, is just as easy if one intends that instead. It feels warm and reassuring, and a little heavy, like it's hugging you. It 'feels' wet, but doesn't wet skin, hair, or cloth, instead rolling off in big starry droplets. Far enough away that the Tidal Reactor is a speck in the sky, a chrome dropship lies half-submerged in the scarlet sea. It juts out of the ontological fluid at an angle, a hundred feet above sea level at its tip; its body is an open cavern with twenty-foot-tall racks from which the mecha were deployed. The white-and-green Earth Government paint has been scoured from it in places, leaving behind bare chrome. Marc and Dylan are here; Persephone is not. Dylan's presence can be dimly felt, in a rare moment of Phony-less calm; rather than warm and secure it feels focusing, determined. But its intensity is just a flickering ember of hers. Marc levitates bolts and scrap, using them to form a diagram of something. They're bickering. "What do you need a castle for? What does anyone? It's a symbol of violence. Of fear." "They're just cool, okay! And fear?! Wouldn't it make you feel secure??" "That's the problem. Should we not attempt to convey that we already feel secure? Defense implies the possibility of danger." "Ughhhhh. Didn't you ever read storybooks? Do you have an imagination at all?" "I've been reading a few, yes."
Darren	Turf spreads out beneath Darren's sneakers. At the edges of his influence, hash marks and the occasional yard line appear notated in white, before, with his passing, the sea reclaims it again. His hands are stuffed into the pockets of his track pants. He's flanked--on one side by Nessie swimming happily through the sea, on the other, by Roswell, who floats in whimsical, happy figure-eights, weaving between his two teammates. His presence and that of his closest friend is similar to Dylan's for the element of focus and determination, but slightly different, with the presence of a quiet buzz--like an empty coliseum whose silence speaks volumes of past feats, upsets and triumphs, the faintly romantic possibility that the last of those feats has yet to be seen. Coming up on the conversation, his smile is as relaxed as his pace. "A moon castle doesn't have to have the same political connotations as an Earth castle, blood," he offers to Marc. "Maybe it's about power projection there, but here, the storybook version can be what's real. You telling me you can't express that vision clearly enough to exorcise those ghosts?"
Staren	Staren felt a bit weird about actually hanging out here with Lilian and Ishirou, or hogging Phony's attention, and went back to the Thousand Freeholds to try and get a better handle on it. The local inhabitants are mostly indifferent, but fending off the predatory ones that think they have a new mortal to play with is tiring, even if all attempts so far have been easy enough for an elite to fend off. Eventually she returns here to sleep. Here is Safe. No one is going to bother a random cat on the moon. Probably. She's awakened by the sound of distant voices, sensitive cat ears perking up. No one sees her make an adorable stretch before padding out of the foliage and crossing the grass to where people are bickering in a perfect world. Dylan's aura, at least, helps focus her mind and drive out the remaining fuzz of sleep. "...Maybe you're both right." Yes, it's a talking cat with an appropriately squeaky voice for its size. Short black fur and a miniature version of Staren's scarf around its neck. "A castle is a fortification for war, yes, but it's also... the shining castle on a hill, a..." she fumbles to try and pin down the thoughts in words, "a romantic idea, a beacon." She looks between them. "If anyone can figure out how to take the idea of 'castle' and present it in a way that rubs the, the grubby, war-scarred rough edges off and leaves the good bits, isn't it you? You grew up in a space station, a structure that is by nature designed for the reality that the cold, inhospitable void surrounds you on all sides, and yet it feels like such a warm and welcoming and..." she fumbles for words again, "...nurturing place. Even the color red doesn't have angry or dangerous connotations the way you use it." "If Sapient Heuristics can do that, surely there's a way to do the same thing with a fairy tale castle." Oh, Darren's here! "Oh, hi Darren!" Staren-kitty looks over to him and greets cheerfully, nodding at his comments about the storybook version being made realer here.
Persephone Kore	"Ah, Darren," Marc says. His smile is genuine, but it also contains the slightly smug note of 'expecting he'll agree'. That shifts to good-natured exasperation, and a sigh, when Darren sides with Dylan instead. Dylan elbows him in the ribs with a grin. "I told you. And hey, I love your... pets? I didn't get to say so yesterday. They were a big help." "I'm sure that we could," Marc agrees begrudgingly, "make a 'Moon Castle' that is unlike the 'Earth Castles'. However, clarity of messaging is important. Why walk the tightrope when a broader path presents itself?" "Okay, what do you wanna build?" "Hmm. Perhaps a library." "We have a library at home!!" "That's not the point." "Uuuuugh you're impossible." "Tch. Well, I'll leave it up to them. That's fair, isn't it?" Marc looks down at the cat with an uneasy curl of his lip. "Who brought this?" "I think that's Staren." "Oh. Well, my remarks to Darren suffice as a reply to her, too." A little pause passes. Marc arranges and rearranges the scrap into varying shapes restlessly. "Don't you think it's improper?" he says to Staren, eventually. "You were just out here wielding military-grade firepower yesterday. And now today, you're presenting as something small, cute, and helpless, even though you very much are not. That feels like manipulating people's expectations, to me. I'm uncomfortable with it."
Darren	WE LOVE YOU TOO BIG D Roswell flits over to Dylan and wraps his tiny arms around her in a hug, as Nessie clambers onto realized-land to join in, briefly hugging with her long neck. "This team's been through a lot together," notes Darren with a small, proud smile. He does turn his head briefly to offer a minute, facetious correction to Marc. "Cats aren't helpless," Darren smirks. "See any videos on the internet lately? They act like God left them in charge. Granted, most cats don't have warheads on deck." WHAT ABOUT A CRYSTAL CASTLE, Roswell telepathically suggests. TOO TRANSPARENT AND WHIMSICAL TO GIVE BAD VIBES
Lilian Rook	Lilian didn't really intend to return here. If she really wanted to speak to anyone, she could have done so at the station. She's still planning things there, so she has plenty of reason to go. Even though she'd only done so much (visibly), the operation here had felt abominably tiring. Lilian had really not been ready for another 'the Paladins or someone she cares about' so soon. It'd only been the extreme danger that pushed her hand, or so she'd like to believe, and thus she'd very much like to forget about it and pretend it never happened. And yet she walks herself across the crimson ocean; a path of ancient wood, darkly varnished and immaculately kept, but every so often a board is just a little bit squeaky. She isn't dressed for combat; EarthGov left with their weapons or stayed without them, so there's no need. And yet she can't name the reason that she moves inexorably towards Mark and Dylan without leggings, without gloves, without concealer or colour contacts or long sleeves, without even all of her back covered by the billowy low-hung summer top on her shoulders that doesn't reach her waist, completed only by a matching summer skirt and cross-laced heeled sandals, a bracelet here and a hairpin there. Her presence is familiar to those two by now. Not invisible or nostalgic by far, but known. Something about all the red here makes her feel not dissimilar from the station. Like the first ten minutes of her arrival, just after she's begun to 'cool down'. She enters the dropship holding bubble tea that'd look stereotypical for the locale on any other girl, bag simply loosely hooked over one arm. Seeing the two arguing gets a sigh of relief from her. As if she'd expected it to be different. "That's because it is, Marc. Your instinct is just correct." That part's ostensibly in regards to the last thing he said. "And I presume Dylan's interest in a castle is mostly for the implicit inclusion of a dungeon." Siiiip. "No, I know she's been obsessed with them forever. Theme parks have castles too you know. There are certain aspects that are clearly defensive, and the things without them are properly called 'palaces'. I'm certain she's aware, and that just sounds too soft for her." A small, reluctant smile follows. "It's good to see you."
Staren	Staren flinches back slightly at being looked at that way, ears flattened back. And then Marc talks about her like she's not here. As she rallies to object, he pushes further and her claws dig into the dirt. Years-old memories of a lot of issues surge back, and she tries to sort through it all. "I-I... I..." Lilian coming along and agreeing feels extra wrong what with the general uneasiness of being around Lilian, but also wrong in her own favor in at least one way. She returns to catgirl form, at least. She holds a hand to her chest, looking at Marc seriously. "I don't... want... to look dangerous. I could have... I could have gone for one of those big killer cyborg bodies and made it tougher and crammed more weapons in it and everything and I never did. I only learned why a year ago. A-and... and I think that's wrong. T-that people who are able to wield power and defend themselves should have to look scary. Would you say the same thing if I were a wizard? With the cute hat and everything, throwing spells that crater the landscape, but without any sign of that power on my body, in my shape?" She looks away, down at the moongrass. "Even if I'm wrong... isn't this, right here, supposed to be the place of impossible dreams, where contradictions can come true? Can't I have that? ...S'not like you two look psychic, anyway..."
Lilian Rook	"They look like human beings. Who are exactly as dangerous as human beings are. If anything, they're overrepreseting their own threat, Staren." Oh god Lilian really has bubble tea really just to sip obnoxiously between sentences and look totally disinterested. "Look people in the eye when you talk to them. And not from their shoe level. Basic decency in conversational practice."
Darren	"Thanks again for your help," Darren says to Lilian, offering her a hand to shake. "Not just with the dilation field." He delivers the rest of his thanks telepathically. ...but for taking a stand; drawing your line in the sand and deciding what the Paladins mean to you. It's a good vision. "What do psychics look like?" asks Darren facetiously. "Should I be in a turtleneck and those lil' beatnik glasses?" He pantomimes the glasses by making circles with his indexes and thumbs, holding them before his face. NAH SON KEYHOLE SWEATER Darren snorts. "He's so stupid," he says between laughter. The tone, the energy, is like familial warmth, and his smile is hard to mistake for anything but.
Persephone Kore	"H-hey! Don't call me that!!" Dylan insists, even though she gingerly hugs Roswell back (and Nessie, in turn). "Oh? Is 'Big D' reserved for someone else?" "Shut up!!! This isn't about her!" The rabblerousing comes to a brief end, when Lilian approaches. Marc, having seen her more recently, is the less surprised of the two. "Oh- Lilian! You look..." "Alarming." "Amazing." "That too. But you're going to come by for the 'treatment' when the time is right, aren't you? I'd hate for 'too late' to sneak up on us." "Wait, is that bubble tea? Can I have some?" "Dylan, honestly." The poor girl claps both her hands over her face when the implications about 'dungeons' are made. "No! No!!! It isn't like that! I- Okay, so I don't want a palace, but- arrrrgh. Look, I just want, like, granite blocks, okay? And ivy growing on them! And a drawbridge and a portcullis! That's what I want!!" "A crystal castle, hm?" Marc interjects. "That strikes me as a suitable compromise. Would you care to begin building?" But Marc soon turns his attention back to Staren, with a little nod to Lilian. His voice is calm, but stern. "No. First: stand up, back straight. Look me in the eye. Stop stuttering; I know you aren't that distressed. You're doing this again: acting helpless so people aren't hard on you. Choosing not to compose yourself when scolded is manipulative, so make the effort to get it together." "Second, Dylan has scars, abs, and a psychic aura, and I'm sharply-dressed and 1.9 meters tall. Nobody assumes we're 'helpless' or 'vulnerable'. And yes, a witch hat would be an improvement; that, at least, signifies some kind of power." "You can wield power, and look as though you wield power. Or you can be helpless, and look helpless. But wielding power while looking helpless is lying, and manipulative. You are no more entitled to that, even here, than you are to striking someone in the face."
Persephone Kore	Roswell coaxes a short laugh out of Marc. It's refreshingly earnest. "Persephone has spares, you know, if you'd like to try them on. I believe she's about your size." "It'll be roomy in the chest, won't it?" "Oh, I don't know. Darren has pecs." There is warmth between them, too. Even- maybe especially- when they bicker. "Old married couple" is a cliche, but there is a sense that they argue less because they need to, and more because it's become a familiar way for them to interact.
Darren	Roswell (and likely Darren, considering the two egg each other on) are almost certainly going to call Dylan Big D from now on. Thankfully, she'll have a reprieve before the next time she hears it, as Roswell needs little further encouragement from Marc to begin working on the castle. He starts simple, with the classical towers and parapets--a drawbridge and portcullis for Dylan, too. The structure is a kind of pink-white, transparent crystal that blends well with the crimson ocean. Taking some inspiration from Big D, he makes the portcullis serve double duty as a trellis for a colorful spread of wallflowers, while Nessie joins in to make a glimmering ruby moat. Darren, meanwhile, reaches up to brush his locs away from his green eyes, to regard Marc with a sly smile. "Good of you to notice," he offers back. "Maybe I'll cop one so you can get a better look." Turning to Staren, "We believe in doing the impossible, in the Concord. But all ideas aren't equal; just because it's within our grasp doesn't mean we should reach for it." He holds up a hand, pre-emptively offering a counter-argument: "And I'm not talking 'bout 'secrets man was not meant to know,' so I'm not tryna see the mad science defense on that one." "It's just bad playcalling."
Lilian Rook	'Shut up!!! This isn't about her!' "Oh please. It's obviously about me." says Lilian, practising her insufferably smug sips. "Who else could it be? Spears is implicitly regular D Darren, coming from one of his own Pokemon, isn't it?" She knows exactly what she's doing. Her eyes slide sideways towards Darren as he offers his hand, in the way eyes don't when they're actually trying to look at something. She thinks; audibly, in a way; it's like leaves gently rustling against a second storey window at night. A second passes, then two, then three, and then she reaches out and takes his palm. Her grip is gentle and her blackened fingers feel like pleasantly cool glass. "I suppose I needn't thank you for aiding your own ally, but I appreciate it regardless. I did mean that I'd been intending to try it though. I 'came across' some very interesting data." Her lips twist a bit unpleasantly. "But it's one step closer to something very important." A short laugh follows. She answers with her voice instead of her mind, but there's seemingly no purpose to it except to let Marc hear. "I meant every word of what I said. I had a bit of a wakeup call a few months ago. I had to think about . . . why I wanted to defend the people that I think I really might still hate. Why I'd fight to keep things the same when I can barely stand them the way they are. And that was my answer. The Paladins should be the sword and shield of those who want really want to get better. To grow as a world. Even if they're wrong about how good they are now, or even how likely they are to succeed. The Paladins shouldn't be the guard dogs of people who like everything exactly the way they're used to." She laughs off Dylan and Marc's mix of concern and praise. It has the precise awkwardness of someone not used to hearing either unless she's intentionally sought it. "Of course. It's not like I woke up like this; I know what's causing it now." A pause. "Tamamo thinks I can't tell, but I know she wants to be involved. I don't want to cut her out. I couldn't. But don't worry; I'm not going to leave you behind." Lilian looks back out the dropship bay. "But there was a moment, when I saw you fighting, where I thought back to it. Where I wished I could be that big, that strong, just like Dylan was being, in my most perfect shape. I suppose that's how the devil gets you. Noble or selfish, the motivations don't really matter, do they?" Lilian listens to Dylan a little more. She nods with the grave sincerity of someone who understands the Feminine Urge to have an asinine level of control over the arbitrary characteristics of her Dream Home. "Would you mind if I tried sketching something? Crystal just isn't quite the same as ivy and stone, I know." she sighs. Yeah, that'd be more like her own house, wouldn't it. "And stop stutter--" Lilian cuts off at the same time as Marc says the same words, and laughs. Frighteningly, when Dylan asks, she reaches into her bag and pulls out a pair of still-taped hard plastic bottles, one some dreamy purple-pink concoction and the other looking more like amber swamp water. "Of course I brought enough to share. What do you take me for?"
Staren	Staren starts to look towards them, looks away. Being told off hurts, obviously. She clenches her fists and tries to listen to hard truths anyway, rather than try to let it wash over her. It helps that Lilian lets Marc handle it rather than adding to the stressfullness. Listening is enough to detangle a conflated idea in her head about just what's being discussed here; she relaxes slightly, no longer feeling like something so important is under attack, though residual tension doesn't fade quite so quickly. She takes some breaths, composes her thoughts, holds up a finger in a 'give me a minute' gesture. He did say make the effort to get it together! Opens mouth. Closes mouth. Thinks. "I always did like that look, but I don't know spells. And it's more of a cape and cloak thing than going with the scarf..." she shakes her head. "Anyway..." She looks Marc in the eyes as suggested (though she glances at the others sometimes when she takes a breath.) And tugs at the edge of her coat to indicate it. "I think this is more in the right direction? A fancy labcoat might not exactly say 'carries a rocket launcher around' but the only people who wear long labcoats are those for whom... those who engage in stuff considerably more hands-on than quietly taking notes in a laboratory where nothing dangerous happens. An' the fashionable fluorishes with the belts and stuff... I dunno quite how to say it, but it's a kind of look only an elite or someone pretending to be one goes for." She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, lets it out, then looks back at Marc, expression soft, then hardening. "I tried, you know. Screamed and shouted about how I was right and everyone else was wrong and it never helped. I refused to show weakness and made a laughingstock of myself." Then she takes a more casual manner discussing recent events. "I hit rock bottom, a state where I couldn't fake it, and people react like showing weakness helped, somehow. But the feelings were always there, I was just scared to show it before. Buuut..." She holds up a finger. "Showing weakness and looking helpless aren't the same thing." She crosses her arms. "And I guess it makes it harder for anyone to believe about things I truly do seem to be helplessly bad at. So, uh..." She finally takes her eyes off the others and holds a hand to her chin, furrowing her brow. "I'll work on it, now that I have a way to begin to define the problem. This is what makes it all so frustrating," she looks back at them, "y'see? Again and again." "People say, change this thing. Others say, stand strong by your belief. And the thing is, I have some understanding of things that's part wrong and part right, and caving or standing up for the wrong-right both go bad. I just get exhausted either way." She lets out a breath, ears and tail drooping, before returning to a more neutral relaxed state. "I know by now that understanding this a little better isn't gonna make me get everything right in the future, or just how to act on it, but I'll work on it, okay?"
Persephone Kore	"Better," Marc says to Staren, giving her exactly one nod while fidgeting with his cuff. "But you're right: this has nothing to do with 'not showing weakness'. Machismo like that is bad, of course. It's another thing entirely to be a poor, sad kitten so that, after you drop warheads, nobody can kick you back." "Wearing a witch hat is fine. Power is power, so that's not deceptive. Just don't look like a poor little animal or a child. It isn't complicated." "Hey, what's 'machismo'?" "I'll tell you when you're older." The talk about who 'Big D' is makes for a convenient smokescreen to keep Dylan from accessing Forbidden Secrets. "Hey, you can't be 'Big D'! Phony's b-" "Lilian's Medium D. That's all." "But that doesn't work. Her name doesn't start with that. She'd be... Big L." "Big L, hm?" Dylan greedily and unhesitatingly reaches for the bubble that looks like swamp water. "Oh, man. I was joking. You're the best, Lilian!" "A little bit of food is all it takes? You really are like a dog." Marc takes the girly one without complaint, sips, and nods his serene approval. Dylan slurps more noisily. "You want something like Forgive-Me-Please too, huh? ... It's a rush, for sure. Wearing a work of art, close to your heart, that's also sort of your body- I can't deny it feels really good. ... If that's something you really want, I have to believe there's a way to make it come true without a disaster. Maybe you could try one of the suits we still have?" Pink crystal walls, a ruby moat, and a flowered portcullis rise out of the scarlet Sea, gracefully overwriting portions of the ugly crashed ship as they take form. "Ooooh." "Oh, I quite like that." "It's pretty, and it's most of what I wanted, but..." "Come to think of it, I've liked everything you've shown me, Spears." Dylan crosses her arms and nods to Lilian. "Yeah. You get it. It's gotta be 'storied'. It's gotta feel like it has history. The moss, the ivy, the birds... that's different from crystal that just sprang up. I like this, the broad shape of it, but... can you put some touches on it for me?"
Staren	Staren really is expecting a lot of pushback about how this isn't enough and she's taking a lot of words to say nothing. Instead Marc seems to get what she said, and while she still has some minor quibbles about whether she was trying to come off as a poor, sad kitten for manipulative purposes, they seem like a distant and unimportant side issue. A base level of tension she didn't realize she was holding drains out of her and she wobbles on her feet a bit, deploying a chair from the matter manipulator and sitting in it, slumped, letting out a breath. Just relaxing for several seconds, before she sits up a bit straighter and brings up the conversation transcript on her HUD to catch up. Her brain entertains idle fascination about the differences between Sapient Heuristics mechs and others -- not the implementation ones, but the design, the purpose -- and about just what is it that makes something seem 'storied'. Can't you put the touches on it yourself? Everyone can edit weakened reality together here... can't we? But, she's taken so much of their time, doesn't want to start an argument, and they have a Nonthreatening Story Castle to build, dammit! "Hmmh." She looks over at the castle Darren is beginning to construct. "Is the storied look part of making it nonthreatening, or just an important aesthetic on its own?" She thinks back to the tower that served as her base of operations during the last Resonance Surge. "Maybe there should be a rooftop garden too. There's probably some way to aesthetically make people not think of it as a place for archers to shoot down from."
Darren	Offering his input on who Big D is:"Roswell's just a hater," says Darren smugly to Lilian. "Boy's got zero game off the field, so he's gonna make things up." An orb of moat-water is flung at Darren lazily by the otherwise castle-occupied Beheeyem. "See?" Darren asks, sidestepping to avoid being splashed. More seriously, "You need help extra hands for that sword and shield, hit me up," he says, as his phone levitates out of his backpack. Did those cartoon eyes on the case just blink? Tapping his contact info into his phone, he flips it around so that Lilian can see and commit it, if desired. "I put in hours for growth and change on my own time--so it'd be stupid not to lend a hand to somebody else trying to cultivate the same thing." Pointing a thumb to the small, but distinct shape of his RV in the distance, marked out by the slowly rotating dish atop it, he proudly adds, "I'm just as good in the backfield, too." "I can't take credit for it," admits Darren to Marc, on the subject of the castle. "That's all on the fams. But... peep this." With a bit of concentration, striations begin to form in the crystal. Rather than the familiar shape of lines to suggest brickwork, they curve into whorls that, compounded, form a mural of sorts. Standing close to that mural, stories are told--things that capture the imagination, like dragons in fanciful flight, knights (familiar looking ones!) in counsel with magical beings, quiet faerie glens. From afar, when the sunlight strikes it, the whorls and grooves give the crystal towers an indistinct, fanciful quality. One of the knights, helmet off, bends his knee for an equally familiar looking prince. "How you like that one, Marc?" WOOP WOOP SIMP ALERT "Boy, shut your five dollar ass up before I make change."
Lilian Rook	"Would you like to bet, Marc?" Lilian arrogantly raises an eyebrow. When Dylan gets out 'Big L' and grabs for the bubble tea, Lilian changes tracks to "Yes, hold this one." and waits to see how long it takes her to figure it out while she's giving Marc his. Lilian leans politely closer to read Darren's phone. Then her mouth hangs partway open. "You actually, literally, put growth and change on your schedule plan, didn't you?" She taps her own smart device and quickly repeats the information where Darren can see her doing it (albeit, reversed), paging through way too many pages of contacts to find the right spot to organize him in. The flash of her 'recent's indicates she's been texted 96 times today and called 14. "You know, you could always try coming to the Paladins with me." she half-seriously intones while her eyes are busy. "It's not as if I'm about to grow into a good girl who will always help the people you like. I'm too set in my ways to really be the heroine." She looks to Dylan, her greengold tea halfway gone, chewing on one of the glassy bubbles in thought, before speaking. "I certainly thought of giant robots as beyond trashy. Crass and tasteless. A glorified temple to the military industrial machine, wearing ten million credits of machinery in a desperate attempt to avoid either cultivating your own ability or place yourself at risk without it. It's the money of a nation assembled into a walking godform, to be given to some unworthy psychopath or another, for the purposes of destroying those who don't have one. Without even an eye to function or efficiency, too. A plane or a tank is ugly, but it's clearly a tool. Anthropomorphizing it-- worshipping it feels . . ." She trails off, making an uncomfortable noise. "The Queen in Veils is different. Obviously. But everything about Phony is different. Seeing you in Forgive-Me-Please was what cemented it. Obviously there was something inside me that already wanted it. Otherwise why would it be so big, when constrained into a shape? But seeing that ridiculous thing and knowing, instantly, 'that's Cruise, and she's taken my breath away', brought it to mind." Lilian shakes her head slowly. "Of course I love the offer, but I don't think it would be right. None of those are mine. They were made for the special children that went to Carpathia in the end. The people who made them aren't designing any more. It'd feel like riding in someone else's skin. I've had enough of that." "Now let's see . . ."
Lilian Rook	Lilian turns out to the castle. Her eyes scan the ocean around it, and the nearest spit of high ground that forms an island. She sing-songs under her breath, like running up a do-re-mi, "Ailm beith coll dair eadhadh . . .", closes her eyes, and raises her hands to it as if she were holding a pencil, and begins. Of course Lilian doesn't need to be told how to paint on reality, even if she only ever does it in one and a half ways. She certainly doesn't need to be told how to draw. Or how the flow of land and sky, water and earth and air, are arranged and altered, even if by magic. It's nearly effortless for her to extend that island, raising an arcing land bridge over the crimson ocean, build like the giant's causeway bleached white. Grass and creepers, shrubs and climbing vines, flowers and old trees, clover and juniper and cherry and wild rose, are all conjured straight out of her memory of home. Red water runs down a stepped waterfall. Standing stones of mysterious half-glimpsed purpose dot the area for no ostensible reason but feeling and vibe. a switchback path runs up the earthen rise coming up behind the crystal castle, fancifully shaped as a crescent moon, and choked with green, but the highest spires are where levitating platforms allow one to step from the glittering world of fancy and onto the terminated arch of solid ground, offered like an open hand. What she goes building on level ground, lower than the tip of the crystal palace, but only just so that the architecture can be the same height, is considerably more humble. A spot where the red falls turn to blue-black and starry liquid night, filling a triangular moat of interlocking swirls, over which a drawbridge straight out of her childhood tomes is lowered, to an ivy-choked gatehouse with no room for a guard or watchman. Turretless walls of rain-worn and mossy white granite trace the shape of the moat, studded with little windows, all wooden frames and old-whorled glass that allow sunbeams into the narrow corridors inside the historically accurate double layers, floored and carpeted like an old manor house. At the center, a singular courtyard houses a trio of trees tall enough for their fruiting boughs to poke above the walls, visible from the outside, and nestled behind them, just one keep, tile-roofed and arched, set with stained glass and flowering vines like a picturesque old church discovered by accident in the deepest woods. Three storeys tall, enough to look across the bridge and romantically gaze straight into the crystal windows of the castle spires across from it, and fondly down on the crescend moon island, the ocean, and the castle below. The portcullis is all engraved oaken beams without a point or iron rivet or chain in sight, only really manipulable by psychic power, like a playset toy. Apparently done with conjuring a sixteen year old image out of her brain and into an aesthetic, Lilian asks Dylan and Marc "How's that?"
Persephone Kore	"Huh? No. I don't really care about 'nonthreatening'," Dylan replies. "It just gives it character, you know? Makes it feel like stuff has happened there, instead of it just coming straight out of a box." "Oh," Marc says once in soft amazement, taking a step closer to the moat to appreciate the winding murals. "Oh," he says again, smiling slyly and covering his mouth with his hand, when he sees the kneeling knight. Is that a flush to his cheeks? "You really have a talent for expressing yourself, Spears. I think that's quite beautiful." When the additions to the castle surge up out of the water, Dylan gasps softly, then coughs after accidentally inhaling a tea bubble-bead. "Lilian, this is..." She takes a few tentative steps out onto the causeway, then sprints towards the courtyard in a giddy rush. Marc follows, tugging on Darren's shirt to encourage him to come too. She stops only at the base of one of those magnificent trees, finally turning around to grin at Lilian. "So you read those fairytales, too, didn't you? With the pretty illustrations. You had to have known somehow. ... You did a really good job." "That's what that large shadow was, hm? Again, you reinvented something all on your own," Marc adds when he catches up. "Do you think that that shape would fit you, the same way Dylan's does hers, and mine does me? Answer carefully. It will tell me a lot about you."
Staren	Darren makes an unreal castle. Staren feels like she's looking at a piece of art, the whorls like the grain in the paper or the irregularity of a watercolor painting's pigment distribution, only it isn't clear what technique would produce them; it takes a half-second for her brain to go 'wait, no, that's a physical object.' It adds to the unreality and storybookness of the whole thing. Ahe nods at Marc's comment. Lilian knocks the fine details out of the park. Staren is sure there is far, far more there than she sees or appreciates, but can't help being genuinely delighted to behold the results of their efforts. "Yeah, it's really detailed." So you read those fairytales too, Dylan remarks. "Oh right." She glances at Lilian. "I really would love to read that book -- the story I mean, not that specific copy -- someday, but..." She can't help breaking eye contact and looking away again. "I understand if it would taint it somehow. I mean, I don't really, but... I get that it might be important to you that I don't, and that's important, even if I don't understand why." Marc asks about -- Staren assumes -- the thing they saw in the Decompression chamber. Staren just watches Lilian as she answers. That was a very personal Lilian moment; she has no comment, and felt deliberately like she should avoid forming an opinion on what they saw that day. It's not her place, she couldn't know the true importance and significance of it to Lilian.
Lilian Rook	"I read something like them." Lilian replies to Dylan, with the exact character of 'looking out of the corner of one's eye' false aloofness that a cat has when pretending to ignore you whilst swishing its tail. "Though I'd hazard that my own were a fair sight more 'dramatic' than what they'd allow at Sapient Heuristics. I got my start with a big tome of historical fiction for children. The true history, with the magic still in it, for children who were supposed to learn about it." A tiny, distant smile creeps up to her lips. "Lilium Caerwiell's saga from the Tree of Swords series, was always my favourite. I took a little inspiration from how I always imagined her house in the abandoned keep in the old forest, so it was easier to keep in focus." She has to think more seriously in regards to Marc's question, though. Not so much that she looks unhappy, or troubled, but with the sort of nail-chewing focus a straight A student gives the extra credit question when their grade is a mere ninety-nine percent. She does, in face, go to chew her nail, then stop when she feels the texture of her fingertip touch her lips. "Almost. It's very, very close. It wasn't quite all there at the time. It couldn't be. It was a shadow cast in an absence of causative pressure, like one cast in an absence of light. But I could feel that it was excrucitatingly close to perfect. But I think I'd only truly know for certain if it had . . ." "A pulse?" Lilian is visibly taken slightly aback by her own choice of words. "If . . . the lights were on, then it might have been. It was like seeing a body, in a way. You can tell, you know. The instant someone dies. When they go from a person to a left-behind shell, even though it's only been a second, and they look the exact same way. That felt like a shell. The most beautiful shell I've ever seen, but . . . you can't really tell how beautiful someone is until they smile, right? It still needed my name on it. My signature on the side. The equivalent of a ridiculous little coffee maker or a tapestry of stickers." "Like Dylan said. It'd need to be 'storied' to be perfect, not out of the box. And it almost was. I could see my story on it. Just not 'our story'. Does that make any sense?"
Darren	"No one's ever told me that," says Darren to Marc, the quarterback's eyes finding his despite his burning cheeks. "Thanks." Turning to watch Lilian's castle rise, he takes a breath. The smile on his face is held steady, hands in his pockets as the levitating phone slips back into his backpack.Something about seeing it across from his--that pairing of beautiful ideal and otherworldly beauty, that bridge that connects them, fills him with a kind of pride I haven't felt before. Torn from his reverie by Marc's tugging at his shirt, Darren finds himself flushed once more, tagging along. The smile afterwards betrays him, even if he doesn't say anything out loud. Clearing his throat, he leans against the sturdy trunk of a towering tree and marvels at the rise of the lovingly crafted memory. "I see a lot of warmth and good memories reflected in this, Lilian. Thanks for sharing it with us." He laughs. "Damn. I think this is the second time I've thanked you for something like that."