saveourearth | STAY WITH THE GROUP DAMNIT ...oh. you already got lost. whelp. [open exploration log]

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STAY WITH THE GROUP DAMNIT ...oh. you already got lost. whelp. [open exploration log]

Date: 18th-24th of August
Characters: Open!

Like every year, there are tours of the tunnels under the cliffs. They are free of charge, but you need to sign up, as group sizes may not exceed twenty persons and only three tours per day are available. While that limits the number of people who can go down, there are waiting lists, and sometimes certain times and dates don't fill up because they're mid-week and one might be able to squeeze in at the last moment.

Before the groups enter the tunnels, the guides give a stern speech about staying with the group and the dangers of not doing so. They'll also hand out helmets and flashlights and explain that there is no phone signal down there, that the floor may be slippery, that the tunnels are in very varying condition and that sometimes cave-ins might lead to steep drops.

And then they go in.

[OOCly this logs works as follows:

Characters who enter the tunnels will be given information about their tunnel surroundings through brief mod tags.
If they manage to lose their group (accidentally or by choice) we'll rng fun and interesting trouble that they may run into. But you can of course also just follow with a guided tour and get out safely on the other end - some interesting things might still cross their way.]

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There is some additional noise for real, and maybe that's what Sky is thinking of - another of the group is addressing him, asking, "are you okay?" with a wave.

Specifically, Russell's coming over, gesturing one minute over his shoulder at people still in the cluster of the tour.

He checks Sky's face of disorientation, noting that while he doesn't look as elderly as the one cranky lady, he's still older enough that maybe it's a concern.

After all, Russell already accidentally volunteered himself to look out for one member of the group, along with checking in occasionally with his cousin and their friend. What's looking out for the wellbeing of yet another disoriented adventurer? Besides being a little stressful and bringing to mind the question why there aren't more tourguides.

Well the voice is there, but it's like... like someone's moved a candle in front of him, and he can see the glow through his eyelids, feel the heat, hear magnified the burning of the wick, the flicker and response to every movement of the air. The metaphors help. He tries to push the sensation out of the way, focus on what he understands, and opens his eyes.

"I'm fine. The bats startled me." Sky puts his left hand to his forehead and runs it through his thinning hair, and dredges up a smile. "Thank you for checking. It's funny how things can take you, at times."

He doesn't want to talk about the feeling, not now. Sky wants it to pass and fade away, but it doesn't seem to be doing that. It is something like hearing. Passive, and at more of a distance than touch or smell.

Well, Sky's reacting and talking normally, instead of standing so stiff and still with closed eyes. That's good enough for Russell. For all that the tunnels still feel strangely familiar and comfortable to him... the sudden bats were unexpected.

"Fair enough! They took a few people by surprise," he offers as reassurance, and gestures subtly back to the bulk of the tour group. A couple people still look shaken, and at least one kid is clamoring for the bats to come back. "Just don't let things take you funny down a side path. I think the guide's had enough, today."

Sky wonders why this kind of thing is happening now, and here, and how he'd have taken it when he was this kid's age. If it is happening, and something isn't misfiring in his brain. This is not a normal occurrence. There's a billow of incomprehensible not-sound from the rest of the tour, steadier and less pronounced than any actual noise people are making, and he doesn't actually want to get close, be surrounded.

But the insistently helpful young man will notice if he doesn't rejoin the group, and whether anything here is real or not getting lost down here would cause a lot of trouble for a lot of people.

"I'm not afraid of bats. They're marvelous animals with an undeserved reputation. But, I'm human and I still have the reflex to flinch when things come at my head," he says conversationally, starting to catch up. He doesn't move all that fast, but he has a good excuse, the quality of the flooring here is an unknown.

It really would. If the somewhat elderly man were to fall behind, confused after an alarm, and disappear into the tunnels while hallucinating? Ignored by the rest of the group? Nothing good comes from that. Even through personal discomforts, everything works out better if Sky walks with the rest of them. A small remove, a few dozen paces back, is probably good enough if he stays in sight.

"Of course, they're small and fuzzy, it's not their fault some carry... diseases." For his part, Russell nods as he waits for the loiterer's approach, standing comfortably tall despite the overhead stone... and the possibility of more bats swooping.

Logically, he knows the concerned parent in that group - warning kids not to touch any bats if they can help it, they carry rabies - has some merit to it. The chances of passing the disease to humans is slim, and vastly slimmer yet with how aggressiveness bats are... but it feels oddly distant. Maybe he's just distracted by how, that he's stepped away from worrying about the old lady's wellbeing, the caves really do feel comfortable, just like they did before.

The tunnels open up into a bit of a cave where some old, corroded machinery is located., and the group stops there. The guide tells them that they are allowed to wander around and look at things, but that they should please be careful when touching anything. And please don't go into one of the adjoining caves and tunnels further than a few metres so they can still see the group.

"You mean, uh, Old Yellerism?" he asks evenly, not pitching his voice too loudly or saying the rabies word. Kids these days still know Old Yeller right? "I'm not too worried, they didn't land so there's no biting." Sky is unaware that there is an airborne form of rabies. Don't tell him.

Whatever's coming off people - mostly off people, the other sources aren't as obvious - is noise, nonsense, he can tell there are patterns of some kind but right now it's just a baffling wash of alien sensation radiating in a block, he can't work it out - oh, there's his heartbeat again.

Sky doesn't freeze up and hallucinate - the memories don't work like that for him - but the suggestions of lines on his face deepen as he's able, for the second time, to remember something that could never have happened. This happened years after the encounter with Guri, he's sure of it, and he'd had a much more encompassing and comprehensive grasp of the world around him, and had known somehow exactly how to interpret and control the mysterious feedback, enough to comfortably advise someone with the same ability.

Of course this is happening again when he can't stop and write it down. Feeling the familiar phantom impression that his missing hand is present Sky rubs his left hand around the point where his prosthetic begins. Somehow in both of these memories he's got an artificial right hand, yes, but it's beautifully advanced, barely distinguishable from flesh. Still. He can start taking his own advice.

Following the group, entirely distracted from his surroundings and any urge to explore, he tries distinguishing and counting the people by sense.

It takes Russell a minute to recognize the reference, because kids these days mostly just remember that that's a code word for tragic ending. If it weren't for the literature major, he might have missed it.

"Right, that. I'm not worried either," he bluffs, not wanting to spread nervousness in anyone - especially while they're underground. "Just... You know what I mean." He dismisses the conversation, rationalizing that it's not a particularly pressing topic, now that the old man's catching up to the group and they're coming to a pause point anyway.

Russell waves at Sky and veers off back to the group, checking in with a couple people - another older woman, a couple of teenagers who definitely aren't holding hands or blushing at each other - before wandering towards some of the machines on the edge of the cavern. He's scatter-minded as he looking around, loitering by some of the side-tunnels to peer down them, impatient like he's waiting for something.

The caves still feel uncannily comfortable to walk through, but nothing else seems to be changing. What if what changed last time was from something strange, like the aurora, but subtle enough he hadn't noticed it? Seems a waste to rush to get these tickets for multiple trips down only for it to be nothing but paths through the rock.

Russel is, Sky suspects, more concerned than he's trying to appear. If not about rabies, something else. Just now though his closeness is distracting, Sky just needs a moment alone to center himself - fortunately it comes, and he can breathe. Go over his covenant. It's fine. He's fine. The world is radically different - the feedback isn't ebbing back and he suspects it's not going to - but he's still here, and learning to handle it.

To think he'd been interested in this warren and now can't appreciate it. Sky shakes his head at himself, tries to pay at least token attention. He's been on cave tours and knows how the guides there sometimes shut off the lights to show the true darkness of being underground. That's unlikely here with how many people are carrying lights, but he should at least try to listen to what people are saying.

After a while, the guide calls them all together again, and lo behold, the "please everyone shut off their lamps until I tell you to turn them back on" line comes.

Though it is immediately followed by a sharp look into the teenagers' direction and the reminder to not wander off without express permission to do so.

Ohh, he had forgotten this part. At the time he'd been so busy panicking about the fact that he wasn't panicking, wondering if he'd suddenly awakened memories of some ancient incarnation caveman, that he'd hardly noticed when the lights went out and people marveled at the shapes their minds made to fill the darkness.

Russell tucks his phone away again, complies with putting out the light, and leans back on his heels as he looks around them.

Ah. Yep, here we go. Sky pushes his prosthetic hand into a pocket. He'd strapped a watch to it and the watch has tiny glowing elements, enough to detract from the darkness. Their route was too convoluted for the sun to reach where they are now, so the only light is what they carry with them.

Normally, in the cave tours he's been on, he thinks about how bewildering it is when there's no difference between eyes closed and eyes open, when you want to touch your face just to check, and the phantom not-image of your own hand which your brain supplies. Now, instead, it's easier to perceive the people in the group. Sky listens to them. There are some insects here too, he's suddenly sure, wandering in from entrances and living on bat droppings and not a lot else.

There also is a bat or two, and... something else.

It is very diffuse, but in the darkness, Sky can feel a faint presence, distant, close and far away at once, of indistinct size but feeling somehow much more encompassing than the humans around, the insects, or any other living being that he can narrow down.

Occasionally interrupting the sounds of cave silence are the more immediate sounds of life, like nervous shufflings from the humans. There's nothing familiar about this darkness, between the last trip and the not-so-foreign memories, and Russell finds himself shaken to the bone by how he can't see anything down here.

Oh, his mind supplies a blob around where his arm feels, guessing from experience where it's at. But when he moves his hands in front of his face, the brain blobs just can't keep up with the exact shifting of his fingers.

It's enough that one hand keeps to the comforting feeling of the phone in his pocket, the knowledge - fading into mere hope, the longer this darkness lasts - that he could pull it out and banish the dark at any moment.

Well. That's new. Is it new? It's somehow... almost... Trying to focus on it is at once comforting and disturbing. Years ago he'd smoked weed and watched Contact and laid back to the happy, enveloping thought of being a child of the stars, one part of a fantastic vast whole. The sense of that, in a sober form, is part of why all his life he's been attached to spirituality.

This is like that, but it's not, all the same. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck bristle and stand, and he feels his breath and pulse quickening with something between apprehension and excitement, the darkness and the tour and the others here with him falling clear out of his mind.

Sky feels somehow that he should know what to do, but all he can think of is to bow his head and listen.

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STAY WITH THE GROUP DAMNIT ...oh. you already got lost. whelp. [open exploration log]

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