rainbowlounge | Hotel of the Lost

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roleplay: open

Hotel of the Lost

The hotel lobby is broad and open, a big circular room with a fountain in the center stocked with gold and orange koi. A large handprinted sign propped against the fountain's rim reads DO NOT FEED THE FISH, but it is the only touch of humanity in the gold-and-cream marble room. The fountain is surrounded by small tables and comfortable armchairs in greens and golds, sitting on a forest green rug patterned with small cream figures that spreads outward until it reaches a broad walkway of cream marble tiles around the circumference of the room. Potted plants stand at regular intervals along the walls; they are live trees, though from a distance they could well be assumed to be fake. Between them hang the usual forgettable pieces of hotel art.

Double glass doors open onto the outside world, with the concierge's cream marble desk to their right and the gold sign-in desk to their left. About a third of the way along the circle from the concierge's desk is a fancy restaurant done all in green and cream, currently empty, complete with a large bar stocked with at least thirty kinds of liquor. Across from the restaurant is a gift shop stocked with the usual kitschy touristy items and t-shirts emblazoned with Washington DC, also empty. Across from the double doors is an elevator bank leading up to the rooms, with a marked door to the staircase beside it.

The portals are shifting....

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"Hmm. I wonder if your pantheon is anything like Huaxia's," Setsuko replied. She wasn't altogether familiar with it, but she did know of some people regarding certain deities as spiritual guardians, especially in rural villages.

"Oh, no, no." She shook her head. "None taken at all. There was a story in Huaxia, going around, about one war hero having saved a mermaid, of all things. The puppeteer claimed it to be true, but when I asked him if he'd ever seen one, he fell silent. Some skepticism is a good thing."

"Try advocating skepticism to someone convinced, absolutely bloody convinced, that an all-powerful entity is taking a personal interest in guiding their every step."

She tilted her head in consideration.

"Huaxia? I take it that's another country, then, or is it the name of the 'west' you've been sent to? What's their pantheon like, then?"

Setsuko nodded sympathetically. "There are some monks, from a faith brought over from a country south of mine," she said, "and they have taken to the streets, exhorting that we should chant sutras and put away all worldly desires this very moment, or our next life will be nothing but misery. Now, I don't see any problem with copying sutras myself, but yes, I agree, some temperance would be nice." She smiled, a little wickedly. "If only I could take you to see them."

"Huaxia? Oh, it's west of mine, but not the 'west,' no. The people in that 'west' have all different colors of hair and eyes. Very striking. The Huamin pantheon, though, does have a Heavenly Emperor, and he rules over the other gods and goddesses, even those in the underworld. It's the oddest thing, though--the Huamin believe that once heaven and earth were connected by the sea, which is how the idea of mermaids came about. Divine messengers, you see."

She made an exaggerated grimace at the description of the monks.

"Charming, but if all we did was pray and bemoan our sins, we'd soon all join the gods in whatever afterlife they've planned for us. If you have an afterlife, that is."

She had to return Setsuko's grin, though, and added, "You might enjoy the show if you set me at these monks, but arguing with the devout is an exercise in futility and frustration, I've found. When I was younger, I'd talk to the priests of the Shining God until I was blue in the face, and it never swayed them one jot. They thought I was...cute when I was a child," and she said the adjective as though it had all the charm of a dead mouse. "They found it less endearing as I grew older, thankfully."

A pantheon ruled over by one deity, like a human empire writ large! How strange.

"I suppose I'd have an easier time lending credence to a pantheon if their divine messengers were still frolicking about," she admitted. "Then again, from what you say, the existence of mermaids isn't any easier to prove than that of the gods they play mailmen for."

"It's not so much bemoaning sins as it is divesting yourself of worldly desires," Setsuko said, "but I do think the two are quite similar. Most in Yashima wait until they're old to take the tonsure and cast off the world, anyway. They indulge plenty until then, if the parties I've been to are any indication."

She nodded sympathetically. "I was sick often as a child, and thus I was indulged often with doing as I pleased, with history books and whatever else I could lay my hands on. My recitation of past wars and events was less charming as I got older, too."

"No, they're not. The puppeteer told me that the man who saved that one mermaid has a scale she rewarded him with, but even so, a scale doesn't really say much, does it?"

She snorted, amused. "I suppose indulging until age has already taken many of life's pleasures from you before you foreswear worldly desire is saner than some approaches to spirituality. Not, of course, that the faithful would view it in that light."

Setsuko's description of her past made her still. Her hands wanted to curl into fists, hiding her fingers. An inkling would read it as, distress, can't find the words, and she was obscurely grateful there were none near to see the gesture.

"I'm...sorry," she said, every word awkward. "About your illness, I mean. I know what it's like, well not really, but I saw what it was like for a friend of mine. She hated it, being treated like a clever pet at best and an object of pity more often." She let out a breath and pasted on a smile. "Obviously you're better now. If it's not too rude to ask, when did you recover?"

"Perhaps," Setsuko replied. "It's considered especially tragic if a woman decides to become a nun when she's still of marriageable age. But if one is a grandmother or widow, it's expected she renounce the world and shut herself up in a convent. Anything else is eccentric and unseemly."

"Well," she said, "I recovered when I was twelve or thirteen, although the others still fretted over me as if I was still sick." And she certainly wasn't as hardy as Yuyan, but that had to do more with lifestyle and station rather than overall health.

More arbitrary restrictions on people because they were women. Weird!

"I'm guessing that's the same sort of reasoning that led to women in your world being taught a softer script," she said drily.

"It's good to hear you recovered without any lingering side effects. It must have been frustrating, though, to be treated like an invalid after you were well. Did you manage to escape those preconceptions when you traveled to the west?"

"Very much so," Setsuko replied. "I assume you live a life unfettered by such restrictions. It's enviable."

"I did, thankfully, even earlier than that. Once I was in Huaxia, I threw myself into studying medicine, and now that I'm in the west, nobody sees me as a forlorn ill girl."

"Talking to you, I'm starting to realize just how lucky I've been."

She smiled sharply in recognition of the way Setsuko had pursued medicine, once she'd had the chance.

"There's no feeling quite like escaping the boxes we've been put in by those who knew us at our weakest," she said. "To tell the truth, one of the reasons I chose to study inkling calligraphy is that they regard me as a cripple for my lack of proper nibnails, not for my legs. It was rather refreshing to have the inability to walk be regarded as the least of my deformities."

Setsuko smiled ruefully. "I have to admit my reasons for pursuing medicine was to escape the label of invalid," she said. "There's a certain feeling of gaining back power when you become the healer after having needed it yourself for so long."

"How do you use these...nibnails?"

If she'd had a drink, she would have offered a toast to that sentiment. Since she didn't, and since she did so dearly love ~~pontificating~~ explaining things, she said,

"Nibnails - well, inklings don't call them nibnails, obviously, they're just plain nails - are what they sound like. I don't suppose you have fountain pens where you come from? In Liane, we designed pens with nibs, the tip you write with. They look like this."

She presented the gauntlets v5.3 with a flourish. They resembled more of a web than a glove, by now. Sheathes capped each finger up to the first joint, held in place by wires that connected them to the band around her wrists. Thin tubes fed ink from the reservoirs strapped to those bracelets to the crowning feature, the silver nibs tipping each finger.

"You use them to write, same as any pen. More or less. Admittedly, humans don't have ten pens in play at once, and we prefer straight lines to grammatical structures based around spirals, but the principle is essentially the same."

(OOC: It's been such a delight RPing with you! Let me know when/if you'd like to wrap up?)

"No," Setsuko said, now enthralled. "The Westerners write with feathers or 'quills,' but in Yashima and Huaxia, we've always used brushes to write."

Doralionne's gloves rendered her speechless, with their silver wires, fine as thread, their thimble-like tips, and the ink that sloshed about in the bracelets.

"They're...they're beautiful," she said. "How do you write with more than one finger?"

(OOC: Likewise! Any time you'd like to wrap up is fine with me. Sorry for being so slow tonight, the Saturation got away from me for a second.)

Dor did not preen, because that would be arrogant. She had a perfectly healthy pride in her work, and anyone who said otherwise was obviously wrong, and probably smelled bad.

"Like this," and she caught the air with her fingers. A corner of her brain had been worried it wouldn't work, which would not only leave her looking very foolish indeed, but would mean that she was well and truly lost. Her nibs found that half-felt resistance in the air that meant the world was listening, though.

Air-writing was one of the simplest workings. Almost every inkling could do it.

Like this, she echoed, though that was only an approximation. Right hand to draw the referential waveform pointed towards Setsuko, more accurately translated to "this answer references the question you just asked." If Setsuko had written her question, the referential would be drawn arising from her question itself. Left hand to sketch in the like cresting above the referential, which more correctly indicated "the below figure [this] embodies the answer."

"It gets more complicated than that," she said, "but that's the basic principle. The way you're standing, that's the mirror image. If we were two inklings have a chat, we'd be standing side-by-side so we could see each others' replies the right way around."

(OOC: Hah, I am the slowest responder. It is me. I can't wait to read your Harvest Gold saturation, though!)

It wasn't so much writing as it was dancing with the fingers. In fact, it wasn't so much a written script, but an entire language in and of itself. She watched the deft way Doralionne wrote in the air, her unseen words just so.

"That's...that's beautiful," she said, wonderingly. "It makes our calligraphy look like simple child's play."

(OOC: You won't have to wait much longer, since it's going up pretty soon!)

"Oh, I don't know," Dor said. She doodled little half-words in the air, dark lines trailing from her fingertips and dissolving a few breaths after. "There's a beauty in simplicity. A few of the inkling calligraphers at my university are modeling some of their work after human scripts. They pride themselves on their economy of line."

The ink swirls captivate Setsuko so; such grace and beauty in their lines.

"Human scripts? As in...our written language?"

"Well, my human scripts, yes. Linearity is weird to them, and they obviously don't have any symbols that are meant to represent phonemes like our letters do. I don't know about your scripts." She cocked her head to the side thoughtfully. "What does your language look like?"

"Well, there's two kinds: there's the 'standard,' which the men use, and it's for all official records and documents." Setsuko carefully traced a few characters in the air with a finger, emphasizing the bold lines and the sharp angles. "They're stylized pictures, so we can derive the meaning from seeing them."

She wrote a few lines of a childhood poem she'd learned in the women's script. "Women's script is softer and flowier; and there's no meaning in the symbols, really--they're simply sounds. We get the meaning from context."

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Hotel of the Lost

Re: Doralionne

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CW: Ableist language, interalized ableism

Re: CW: Ableist language, interalized ableism

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Re: CW: Ableist language, interalized ableism

Re: CW: Ableist language, interalized ableism

Re: CW: Ableist language, interalized ableism

Re: CW: Ableist language, interalized ableism

Re: CW: Ableist language, interalized ableism

Re: CW: Ableist language, interalized ableism

Re: CW: Ableist language, interalized ableism