unfinishedlibrary | in the glass cup, a liquid ruby

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tortall: hisako godsup

in the glass cup, a liquid ruby

Who: Hisako and YOU
What: Scrying, or trying to look at what's happening in canon. She can only get still, frozen images or nothing, but she can get them of your canon if you cooperate!
When: Vague time!
Where: Garden
Content warnings: minor self-harm to a purpose (to use blood magic)

[Putting on airs for the heck of it, Hisako leaves this on a paper, painted with a brush on the bulletin board. She'll return and take it down after making her scrying effort.]

Attend my words, for this humble scribe is a sometime seer. Among my talents is to peer into another realm, even should the twain be sundered, and therefore discover what transpires in my absence. Only come to the garden and you may see this, should you behave. Behave well enough, and only ask, and I will help you see just what you are missing as well.

Those who fear the sight of skin and blood, and those who love them without restraint, are invited not to attend. On very good authority I have it that my skin is well enough, and that my blood is lacking.

- Your most lovely flapper, Hisako.

[If your character comes out to the garden, please come see this permissions post! They can cut in at any point in this process, I'll roll with it.

The preparations are simple. Hisako has brought a plastic bottle of store brand canola oil from the kitchen, and half filled a garden bucket with water - carried laboriously, shuffle-hopping, handle in her teeth - which are set to either side of a bench whose seat she hops atop. She half spreads her great gleaming wings in a theatrical gesture.]

This is the technical part! I will be very put out if you jostle me!

[Hisako pulls a wing in a bit closer and reaches out with her neck, and gives herself a shallow cut just below the hairline, wincing a little as she does. Her blood is silvery. All of the scars on her bare skin, most of them resembling knife cuts, are also silverish. A fist-sized blot of crimson light with bright gold highlights flies to batten on the fresh wound. She will look sharply at anyone approaching her during the 'technical part'.

Before long the blot draws away, leaving her bleeding sluggishly. She mantles her wings around it and it opens into a little bowl full of silver, then starts flattening and widening, spinning slowly in the air, until it's more like a dish. Hisako nods briskly.]

You, with the hands! Pour something in, won't you? It's going to be a small image if I don't thin this out.

[When she's satisfied, Hisako leans her head down on her long neck, her expression distant and intent, and breathes on the surface of the floating disk. The silver clouds over. She contorts a wing to tap a spur on the surface, and it clears to a still image of other Stormwings in flight - people like her, but their skins and feathers are much more dappled with dirt. She frowns and it clouds again. She taps it again and there is a still image of a white-eyed man talking to a tall bipedal lizard.]

Strange... Here, does this happen with you? Come here.

[When Hisako decides to stop, she realizes she's worn herself out. Reaching out like this takes much more strength than she'd expected. She pulls her wings back and sways on her feet, much too tired to take to the air. Nope, nope, no flock or friends here, she can't just show weakness! Clenching her feet, she runs the tip of her tongue between her upper lip and her teeth and summons up some bravado and a cheeky grin.]

Well, that was fun. Show's over, chickadees! Today's ripe fruit have all dropped off the vine and tomorrow's are too sour! Now scat, I'd rather clean up by myself.

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[Mei arrives early, as is her wont.]

[For a moment, she pauses at the sight of Hisako. While she's seen her share of strange people, and certainly made friends with weirder, most of them were not nearly so libertine. That said, it's nothing she hasn't seen in the showers or in any baths she's visited, so she's more worried about the cut and sealing it than she is about the nakedness.]

[She's just about to make with the closures and the nanogel when Hisako singles her out and asks for assistance.]

Ah-- All right.

[For her choice, it's some amazake she took from the kitchens during the holiday celebrations.]

... They're not supposed to be stills, then? And. Your cut...

[Concern.]

[At first, she sees... Herself. She is chained-- much more literally than usual, against a secured bookshelf which stretches to the ceiling. Her arms, legs, body, neck, all of them quite secure. Normally cause for concern.]

[Opposite her is what can only be described as an oni. Absolutely gigantic, but clearly a woman, and a wild one at that, with gleaming red eyes and a toothy, knowing grin. Her hand is on Mei's cheek.]

[Mei's expression is not one of fear, nor defiance, nor mere confidence. It is the expression of someone experiencing some kind of awakening. Fearfully she tries to change the image to something else.]

N-now let's not get too into that--

[Hisako isn't entirely naked, but she's only got a series of necklaces obscuring her chest, an Isabella Rossellini situation at most. She would have a difficult time wearing more, too many feathers are razor-edged.]

It's supposed to be moving and there's supposed to be sound! No, don't worry, that can wait.

[She nods at the floating dish, now clouded over again.]

Think of something from home. The last thing you remember, or something important to you. Hold it in your mouth... in your hands, I guess. When you've got it, tap the surface real light.

[Hisako studies the image, eyebrows lifting, and grins. She's going to guess this is a moment in the past, because she's got no idea if her scrying is working properly at all.]

Wow. Isn't she a handsome specimen? Good taste, pigeon!

[The future is no mystery to Konrad Curze. He lived with its torment daily, an endless ongoing certainty of the inevitable horrors to come. But his was no gift to see what happened in the present - or how anyone might do such a thing.

He hasn't encountered Hisako yet, but occasionally he'd come across her scent. It wasn't human as he understood it, but doing anything about the aliens here wasn't about to happen so long as he was under restriction, so when he turns up, wearing little more than the long black feather cape and standard ragged pants that have definitely seen better days, there's a long silent pause as he considers the winged creature.

A mutant, perhaps. The human parts do look terribly human.

Once settled he does absolutely nothing, eyes narrowed against the brightness of the light ambiently present, taking note of the gleam of silvery blood, the cutting edges on the feathers. There's nothing at all comforting or pleasant about his presence for most, Jonathan is a strange exception to the standard. But he's not here to interrupt, he's here to observe, so he doesn't until called to do so.

Blood was what she used, so blood is what he uses, his own strangely dark where it runs under the pressure of one of his short claw-like nails. It's neither significant pain or significant loss, for something his size, and doesn't smell quite like human blood, if that can be detected over his otherwise fetid presence. Close to human, but not quite. Much like the rest of him. Most humans don't much stay smelling like a slaughterhouse if they can help it, either.

The image of other bird-people cements the idea that she's some form of mutant, and that it perhaps breeds true with so many looking similar enough to be of a kind. The bipedal lizard.. less so.]

It seems a reasonably clear pict to me. [His voice is soft for something so malevolent, almost but not quite kind.] The avian folk are obviously of a kind to you. But what of the others?

[Mei felt her ears burning as Hisako crowed, and the flustered answer is sewn through with undercurrents of raw fear, for all it's relatively even:]

She was tryin' to kill me. Doin' a pretty good job, too.

[That is a BLATANT lie. That is NOT the body language of someone about to kill a woman.]

Want me to try again?

[Nara'a is a little concerned at the blood, but he doesn't interrupt. When she commands him to approach, there's just a static image of an apartment, gleaming purple and neon.]

[He blinks in confusion, because -]

That's the last place I was before I was brought here.

[But... nothing's moving, past the shimmering of the liquid. If one looks closely, there's a large building in the background.]

... It's like it's frozen in time. Which... would match up with being told not to worry about time passing at homoe.

Do you scry for specific answers? It is a great skill. [One that he does not have, but...he sure would like some questions answered, if possible. ]

[Hisako happens to see the response while she's carrying the oil bottle and trying to find the garden again. She inks a much more hasty and less elegant response than her original missive.]

YES TAUGHT BY THE BEST COME TALK IN PERSON

[Well, what choice did he have after that allcaps enthusiastic response? He finds his way to the garden, but tries to stay in the background--a little difficult with the way the space seems to shift to accommodate his size. But he's trying to be inconspicuous and just...watch.]

[Hisako is distracted. She registers good smell, could use more fecal sweetness and the tumultuous, enticing banquet of invigorating feelings that seems to ease an ache that she's learned to ignore. But she is trying to do a bit of work that's harder and more complicated than it looks, so she largely tunes this out.

Her smell is primarily human skin oils, sweat, and steel, maybe a distant trace of sulphur and ash. There's very little suggestion of regular human processes like digestion and excretion; she drinks water regularly, but rarely ever eats. Her body if examined on an anatomical level is more bird than human, but that's human skin all right, hair, breasts, face. She can be interpreted as human-shaped and in a permanent crouch, with a coating of feathers and large avian limbs.]

Awww, that's so sweet! [She says that when he contributes blood, putting wry irony in her voice. It infiltrates and mingles with the silver, tarnishes it. Not a bad thing really, dark liquid is if anything easier to scry with than pale or clear. She scowls down when he comments, sounding preoccupied.]

Unless I'm looking for the past, and I'm not, it's supposed to be moving and there should be sound. And my avocet there should notice. He taught me, I've one of his bones, he should notice and we should be able to talk back and forth.

[Her necklaces do include a single vertebra that seems like it'd be human, but made from a silvery bone. Silver is a theme.]

Stormwings. We're Stormwings, the Eaters. The avocet's Aris, Truth Seen at the Bottom of the Well. He's talking to a basilisk, I think that's Haasa.

If another method is preferred, you should have clarified.

[To her tone of irony is one of utmost mildness in return. The wound will be healed in minutes, and is already disregarded as irrelevant, the smell of blood simply mingling with the rest of his generalized stink. He's watching though. Every move she makes. Every word she says.

It's difficult to map her entirely onto something human, but there's enough that tells him she's not simply a xenos.]

The Library's location may be interfering. Time can flow differently in the Immaterium. Does this method of farseeing ordinarily cross planes of reality?

[A silver bone, silver blood, metal teeth. Were her claws also metallic, as her feathers? It reminded him of Ferrus' own metal hands, like flesh but ... not. For once, he doesn't decide getting rid of the alien is required. Not all mutants needed purging either.]

I have not heard of Stormwings before. Or 'avocet', though I suspect based on context I would use the word 'psyker' instead.

[..Or basilisks, as an obviously sapient creature as well. All new words!]

[Her instructions, before the image forms:]

Think on something from home. Make a picture in your mind. Hold it clear, then tap on the surface, all light and quick, and imagine it flows out and is visible. I'm reaching out, you're telling me where to reach.

[Hisako tilts her head, birdlike, to look at the apartment.] Huh. Colorful! I'd get claustrophobic I think, but, I am a bird.

You were told that? First I've heard. Someone should put it on a sign.

[She would characterize it as an impatient response. Hisako wants to do the thing, not walk circuits past the bulletin board or hang around staring at a page.

While she's scrying, her expression would suggest that it's effortless, requiring only her intent, perhaps slightly voyeuristic interest. It is not. As she casts out again and again, clearing images and plucking new ones from places she's never seen, her breathing slows. Sweat starts to bead on her skin. The muscles in her long neck and in her shoulders show, just a bit.

When there's a pause, she grins and jerks her chin forwards at Sanguinus.]

Well? How about you, oriole?

[It's an inevitability of being a Stormwing, that people loom over you. Standing on a bench helps, so does having her scrying-tool out between her and them. It is not enough when it comes to this winged ogre.]

[Hisako half-notices the intent stare, but she's got to keep too much focus on her work to really feel it out, so seems more like normal staring. People do that, who don't know Stormwings.]

Oh, sorry, I don't think I got my meaning across properly. Let me try again. [She clears her throat.] Aww, that's so sweet!

[That's a higher tone, more pleased. A girl presented with a flower. Blood contains a person's essence and when she'd had the Gift, she'd been able to do a lot with essence magic. The lord of the underworld specific to her home city had used to have bits of rivals' essence brought to her, hair and nail clippings and rags soaked in blood or worse, so she could encase them in wax and track them, influence their health, their perceptions...

Stormwing magic is more limited. There are still things she could do, but they're along the lines of scrying his past, or she could make a darking attuned to him out of their mingled blood. These aren't things you do to a large and volatile cellmate, though, so she won't.]

It can reach across the Fourfold Realms - those being mortal, divine, peaceful, chaos - even after access between Mortal and Divine was cut off so I expected it could, and so it can.

[Hisako's foot claws and the scales on her feet are metallic. The clawlike bone spurs on her wings are also silver but of a softer hue, more like the decorative bones. The basilisk is covered in pebbled scales in darker gray hues, but has silver claws.]

No, I wouldn't expect you to. And avocets are cute little shorebirds that attack anything gets close to their nests. I just call him that. [She is clearly fond.] He's the least and lowest of the human seer gods, meaning he's also the least insufferable of any of them.

[It's fine: Sanguinius looms over almost everyone here. He's used to it. He also means nothing by it and has taken to, when addressing people (other than his brothers) dropping to one knee. Still tall, still loomy, but a little more genteel about it. ]

Oriole? [Must be some term of endearment. That's how he's going to take it.] If it is not too much effort, there are things I would like to know. Not of myself, though. [Look at him politely asking the ethics of third party reads!]

[Sanguinius just plain makes her nervous, and her brightly reflective feathers hold closer to her body, even if her expression barely flickers.]

I like orioles! You're almost that yellow.

[Blond, she means. She... doesn't explain that an oriole is a songbird. It might have been more appropriate to call him after a taller, paler bird, but this is cuter.]

Not of yourself, huh. Sure, why not? Now, mine is the reaching out. Yours is the telling me where to reach, all right? You're going to have to picture what you're looking for, and to want. The more concrete and fixed in your mind it is the more likely it is to work. Then, you're going to have to reach out and tap the surface, as lightly as you can, and we'll see if the fog clears.

[Hisako considers saying 'don't splash', because she fully expects him to be clumsy, but holds her tongue.]

[Sanguinius is not his brother: he doesn't want anyone nervous around him. ] Then I will take it as a compliment. [With his armor on he is, yes, QUITE yellow.

[Is he supposed to ask the question out loud? It just seems like good manners.] I wish to know the fate of Meros. One of my Apothecaries. [What? What? He's not almost crying YOU'RE almost crying.]

Edited (bottom margins hate to see me coming) 2026-01-08 15:53 (UTC)

[There's a low rumble at that higher pitched tone; he can't quite tell if it's deliberate mocking or not, and it takes a long moment of contemplation before he decides it's not worth pursuing to find out.

That actual magic is a thing and his blood could be used against him in any fashion doesn't even occur to him. Magic Isn't Real, even though it definitely is.]

Then perhaps we are currently in something of an eddy. It may pass.

[If she's already used to perceiving in and out of the Warp, having this kind of a delay meant.. time wasn't passing? Well, why the hell not. Nothing else is normal around here.]

Would you be willing to tell me more about your kind? [That he can consider way easier than the automatic derision over the idea of any god actually being a thing. He won't scorn her beliefs, and the expression of indulgent amusement passes quickly.] If you do find a way to communicate with him, or any other, we'd all likely be very interested to know.

[Oh that's a big splash of sorrow and... guilt? Is that what that flavor is, that hangs around him? it is so deeply weird to her to pick up on this. Hisako is very used to almost every aspect of being a Stormwing, but she'd never had a chance to work on this.]

Oh, uncertainty, is it? It'd be easier if you have something with their essence, but... how long has it been? I might be able to do it, if you know them well enough.

[Deep breath. Hisako spreads her wings around the floating dish of bloody fluids and breathes on the surface, making gold-tinged red clouds bloom and twist in what seems like great depths. She frowns intently, a vein gradually appearing in her forehead. This is distinctly more of an effort than the other scrying she's been doing. Like she's hauling on the trunk of a very tall felled tree, trying to get the other end to line up with something she can't see. Trying not to end up just seizing on a moment from the past.]

Hold this person in your mind. Like they're right here in front of you, just on the other side of the fog. Try to feel them there. And call out - it can be silent - when you touch the surface.

[the fog will clear with the ripple, just for a few seconds. Just long enough.]

[Ah, yep. Hisako schools her features. This is probably enough fear that she shouldn't tease too much.]

Of course, of course. I've escaped death a few times myself.

[Maybe it's not a euphemism! She lets her grip on the image go, and it clouds over again.]

If you like! Try and focus on something else, if anything else stands out.

[Hisako barely manages not to say 'if you have any burning desire to see something'.]

... There's one thing I'm lookin' for.

A shadow, that escaped me a few nights ago.

Show me that shadow, split from me when I defeated that monster--

[The picture resolves. To a nice boat. A moving Nice Boat.]

[In the distance, the forest carves a silhouette on the ocean, after dark.]

[And up, from that dirty black water, a shadow, void of form,]

[Raised itself out of the ocean, and climbs upon the boat.]

[If she's been there, Hisako will immediately recognize it as the Nice Boat Room.]

[Mei, however, does not.]

[Hisako shutters and opens her clear inner eyelids in a horizontal blink and holds position, deliberately not changing her expression, her feathers barely shifting, as the big man considers if he wants to take offense and strokes his own self-importance. She feels sweat break out on her back, but she's also irritated. People with no sense of humor - or a highly limited sense of humor that doesn't even include her lightly poking fun at herself - are so profoundly tiresome. Traveler! Witness what she has to put up with!

It doesn't matter. She's the bat among hurrocks, as ever, and how she feels doesn't matter as much as flying fancy so they don't snap her out of the air. She'll make nice, whether that means grovelling or not. Maybe hang on to that blood. At least this particular hurrock (horse-hawk) smells good and trails something delicious and complicated behind him.

All right, extra neutral and boring and bland it is, and maybe she can start introducing personality again as she goes and gets a sense of if 'causing offense' is in fact dangerous.]

Uh, sure? We... come in all the range of colors and features humans do, we keep our eyries in the Abattoir just off the Sea of Sands where it's good and hot, but we basically don't get cold so icier places are fine too. [She shakes her head.] I've no idea what you want to know.

I was told we're in a space outside of time, essentially. But yes, I'm somewhat claustrophobic in there, too.

[He wants to touch the reflection again, but...]

It's interesting. I see the past, and you see the present. Someone else I know - not here - can see the future. Is it something innate, or were you gifted this ability?

[Curze does have a sense of humor! ..Unfortunately for his victims, sometimes. For now, though, he's far more interested in what's going on than he is actively causing even a very obvious mutant harm.]

Oh, things like that are quite good. Where your people come from, the 'Sea of Sands' in this case.. [Sounds like a desert to him!] If they all have this ability. Your culture.. all the little things, I suppose. You deal with ordinary humans often?

[There's just enough movement to make sure that Hisako isn't within immediate reach, the closest he bothers to supply for reassurance that he might not have any terrible intentions. It's enough distance where she could probably get in the air before he could pull her back down.

None of the premonitions itching at the edge of his thoughts suggested this would turn violent, so he acts accordingly.]

Not long. Almost right before I arrived here. [Recently enough that he can still feel the wet heat of Meros's progenoid, resting in his hand, like a tithe returned, a promise of a future life given by one ending his.

He closes his eyes, briefly, because he doesn't want to remember Meros, not as he had last seen him, eyes burning with agony, but yet, nothing but pure willingness to save his Primarch, and the Imperium, from the horrors Kyriss had threatened. ]

...meros. [The word is small, barely a breath, a sound pushed out of a sudden lump in his throat and he forces his eyes open to touch the shimmery surface.

Oh. Oh...oh no. He rocks back on his heels, wings flaring to catch his balance, hand slapping the surface, as if he could strike the reality of it away along with the image.]

[The image vanishes. The very warm fluid sticks to his hand when slapped, stretching, having thickened into a viscous, elastic substance. At the moment it's silver, shot with red-black that looks almost like veins, as if the scrying medium is alive.

Hisako, hit with a wonderful bow wave that she's not sure how to pick apart and interpret, finds she's salivating hard and swallows, then tries to unobtrusively wipe drool onto her bare shoulder. It's already wet, she's really raised a sweat trying this. Sometimes she misses clothing.

She doesn't know how to interpret that image. Apparently it's bad. She wants to scold Sanguinius, like, "You should warn me if you want to look up something awful", but it seems a bad idea and honestly she's a little giddy, she's having to work to keep a straight face. This pleasure she's taking... the disconnect is kind of a lot. Hisako swallows again, pushes it to the side.]

Um. Let me pull that off you.

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in the glass cup, a liquid ruby

A moment, unfinished.

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