the devil in the details

[isocelesmonster]

Who: Bill Cipher
Broadcast: none
Action: Anywhere in the fleet
When: The night of the 22nd, and ongoing.

Although ostensibly the Golden has a new crew member, there's no new person in attendance at any meals. No new faces in the hall, nothing additional in the laundry. One of the standard crew cabins has been sealed up as tight as a tomb, the brass nameplate on the door unhelpfully scratched out with something sharp. No noises at all come from inside.

It'd take a careful eye to notice the only other change: the same sharp instrument has been used to carve little eyes of providence, no bigger than a fingernail, in strategic public places around the ship. They're shallow markings, not deep enough to interfere with any of the working parts of the craft, and no great works of art - each little scrap of graffiti is a matter of five lines at most. But they're there - and if sometimes the way the gold of the metal hull glints in the pupil is strangely canny, it's probably nothing to be worried about.

(It's not that Bill doesn't care about the flesh puppets that make up his new crew - oh, he does, they're all going to get very careful scrutiny over the coming days - but more important is finding out what his new playground looks like.)

When the fleet sleeps, their minds open and blossom like night-blooming flowers, each one illuminating a new section of the shared dreaming plane. For all of their poetry, few humans realize that the state of dreaming is as real an exploration as whatever meaningless actions they take while awake. It's irrelevant to their survival, most days, so evolution has never sought to provide that particular revelation. They're a young species. Five senses, auditory languages, limited psychic potential, and as far as they know when they dream they're just watching random electrical impulses fire in their brains. Ha!

(There's an expression about a one-eyed man's status in a land of the blind, and Bill intends to make it a reality.)

He steps sideways out of the material world into the closest dream as easily as a three-dimensional being can move along any of their limited axes. He makes himself invisible, at first, just to get his bearings.

[Bill is visiting dreams, as a way of saying hello! His permissions post for this ability is here. I am treating this ability on an opt-in basis. If you didn't give me the okay, he won't be spying on your character at all tonight ~but where's the fun in that~?]
ZOGSLFTS GSRH DVZP ZMW RWOV GSVNV

RH ML NLIV BRVOWRMT YFG Z WIVZN

DSVM NLIMRMT GZPVH BLF UILN NB GSIZOO

YV TOZW R OVG BLF DZPV ZG ZOO

Comments

[tetractys]

THEY WON'T!

[Bill bursts out laughing. Calm down, Bill.]

THE RULE IS THAT THERE ARE NO RULES! AND THAT'S A RULE TOO, SO IT DOESN'T EXIST! SINCE IT DOESN'T, THERE ARE RULES - SO IT DOES!

[flickerflash]

[That sets her off giggling all over again, both the laughter and the ridiculousness of it.]

You're going to give a lot of very stuffy people terrible headaches.

[Good tbh]

[tetractys]

IT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING FOR A LONG, LONG TIME! I'LL SHOW YOU THE ROPES SOME TIME!

[flickerflash]

How long is a long long time? As long as a piece of string?

[tetractys]

AS LONG AS STRING THEORY!

[flickerflash]

[I'm nine what the hell is string theory

on the other hand she bets laying out all theories about string could go on a long long time so whatever, she still gets the idea]

Were you around when they made the pyramids?

[She's wondering about ur shape dude]

[tetractys]

[It's old is what it is.]

SURE WAS! KHUFU AND I WERE PALS - I DID SOME FAVORS FOR HIM IN HERE, HE GOT ME SOME PRETTY SPECTACULAR BIRTHDAY PRESENTS!

[flickerflash]

Oh! What kind of birthday presents?

[^^^ kid]

[tetractys]

THOSE PYRAMIDS!

[flickerflash]

[Aw yis. She likes that idea.]

He must have liked you an awful lot.

[tetractys]

I GOT HIM OUT OF SOME BAD FIXES! PLUS, YOU KNOW, I'M VERY CHARMING.

[flickerflash]

Of course you are. And very pointy, too. [Which from the sound of her voice, generally sounds like an awesome thing to be.] Did you ever make friends in England? Perhaps we've met before.

[tetractys]

SURE, I'VE BEEN ALL OVER ON THE DREAM PLANE! HELPED YOU GUYS CODEBREAK DURING WORLD WAR TWO! MOST OF IT WAS BEFORE YOU'D HAVE BEEN BORN, THOUGH.

[flickerflash]

Mm. I am very young, after all. [She blinks innocently.] Were you around for the witch trials?

[tetractys]

[Bill's surface flickers like a television tuning, trying to find a station.]

LET'S SEE. BAMBERG, TRIER... YOU MEAN THE ENGLISH ROUNDS? SURE!

[flickerflash]

[She doesn't know the names. If anything, she has the faintest of broken memories of those times. They're stronger when she's asleep.]

What did you think of them?

[tetractys]

EH, DISAPPOINTED BUT NOT SURPRISED! THE WORLD IS AN INTIMIDATING, UNKNOWABLE PLACE WITH FORCES SHAPING IT THAT HUMANS DIDN'T EVEN SCRATCH THE SURFACE OF UNDERSTANDING UNTIL RECENTLY. SOMETIMES THAT EXISTENTIAL TERROR SQUIRTS OUT IN WEIRD DIRECTIONS AND YOU ALL JUST DECIDE TO OVERCOMPENSATE ON DESTROYING MUCH SMALLER MYSTERIES, LIKE LOCAL MAGICIANS. WHY?

[flickerflash]

[Oh my god too many big words. But after a bit of eye-glazing she shakes her head and thinks she gets it.]

That all means you think the Church did something stupid, right?

[tetractys]

OH, ALMOST CONSTANTLY!

[flickerflash]

[She giggles.]

Do you think they ever did something right?

[tetractys]

THE GOLD-PLATED STATUES ARE NICE! I MEAN, THEY'RE POINTLESS, BUT THEY'RE NICE!

[flickerflash]

You'd think they wouldn't have gold statues with all that silliness about "false idols", really.

[tetractys]

AND GIVING TO THE POOR!

I TAKE IT YOU'RE NOT A BIG FAN.

[flickerflash]

Oh no, I love the church. And the people who go there! I could lock the doors on the church so they'd have to stay there and worship forever.

[tetractys]

[In 10 years this girl is going to be the most sarcastic person on earth. Bill's down for that.]

THEN MATCHES, HUH?