Xander

To the Stars, From Death.

My partner lost his grandmother and that snowballed into holiday travel. Sorry I'm lagging. I'll get a reply up by tomorrow night, krusty krew.

To the Stars, From Death.

This one was crazy bitter. But so pretty. I'm having my bottle of palm cove with Cap'n Crunch. I get the fancy.

Oh, my fella lost his grandma a few days ago. I'll be going out of town for the funeral and it'll be Friday or Saturday night before I'm back, just in case turns come back around by then.

To the Stars, From Death.

Gen, I have a whole bottle of Riesling that I'm about to pitch because I don't like. Too bad I can't email it. I got a good moscato instead.

To the Stars, From Death.

How much wine have you had, Aspid?

Thanks to whoever said the nice thing about the post. Yay. I just wanted to break it up a little, and I think William isn't emotionally resilient enough to just pop into the next order of business and friendmaking that quickly.

And we're decorating the ooc with a garland of hot guys? I approve this message.

To the Stars, From Death.

I posted. Woo and wee. Silly website totally killed my mojo more than once.

To the Stars, From Death.

The situation snowballed. There was still the positively incomprehensible reality of all that surrounded him, the floating castles and incorrectly colored bits of the habitat, still the very strange feeling of living though he knew he was dead, and atop it all was the sudden realization that there was a whole damned troupe of them. The detective couldn't feel as inclined towards the little kumbayah session as all the others seemed, but their introductions were too important to miss. He listened half-heartedly, slinking a bit away from the crowd instead of toward it. William crouched to pluck a grade of grass from the ground beneath.

Their stories were wildly varying, with no apparent common thread.

And the grass felt different. Smooth and cool, as it should, but also more pliant somehow. Almost as if William could push it between thumb and finger and form it, shape it into something else entirely. And the dirt beneath, it was warmer than he might have imagined, heated by an alien sun and pressing against his palm like a summer day. William ran his fingers back through his hair haphazardly as he stood again, turning in an entire circle to take in their surroundings. Perhaps there was a building or something of the sort on this plane, something they could access. William had learned a long time ago that everything belonged to someone, and trying to parse together the pieces of this puzzle was a welcome distraction from the feeling of lead in his stomach, the realization that a silly, prolonged tryst with an unlikely lover had cost him everything. His career, his ambitions, his life. But, worst of all, his son. Now his kid would just be another statistic, growing up in a hard city with only one parent. Shit, how many kids did he see every day who might have turned out entirely differently if they'd just had a father around?

A cluster of flowers, a more vibrant purple than he had ever seen, crowned the top of a very small hill just behind him. William, having lost track of the introductions when the language seemed to shift to French, turned to pursue the vegetation. With more earnest efforts at motion put forth, he realized immediately that the gravitational pull of this strange place was not the same as that of earth. It reminded him a bit of fifth grade, when his entire class had gone on a field trip to a glorified planetarium. Apart from the larger than life projection of a manned mission to mars, intended to stir all of their childish curiosities and make scientists out of them, there had been simulators to ride. William had been the only one to turn green on the multi-axis trainer, but he'd kicked all of their asses on the five degrees of freedom simulator, and the manned maneuvering unit as well. He had left convinced that he should be an astronaut, and that the buoyant bounce he had felt in the 1/6th gravity chair, meant to simulate walking on the moon, was certainly his fate. He would be the first man to go to Mars.

That, of course, was a big ass dream for a poor kid in a broken home. He had forgotten about that, buried it beneath layers of responsibility and adulthood. William remembered it now, though, as each step made him feel like he might just spring away from the ground entirely. Except that he didn't, and gravity seemed as tenacious here as it had ever been on earth - just with more give. At any rate, he reached his destination with less effort than would have been required on the human plane, and the flowers were so beautiful it almost felt like sacrilege to touch them. As he watched instead, William saw drops of clear dew push up from the centers of the flower, run down the petals and stem, and pool at the base of the plant. Eventually the few drops became many, and they traced a hollowed out path through the warm soil to join the quiet flow of water back down towards the group he had left behind. It was so gradual that William hadn't noticed it, but now he wondered how he had missed the slightly metallic flow. It was beautiful, just like everything else in this place.

It was easier still to traverse the hill on the downward slope, and following after the trail of shimmering, jeweled water led him right to the center of the gathering. One Ophelia was apparently trying to interpret for the English-challenged, and William thought to simply go around them. A niggling thought in the back of his mind warned him about casting off possible allies before he had even made sense of where he was, however, and so he paused in his pursuit to glance over his shoulder and speak to the lot of them.

"Ah, I'm William. I was in a car accident, and I suppose I drowned."

How ironic that his fixed fascination in this new place so far was water, then.

"And I'm going to go check out the river," he added as an afterthought, before his eyes dropped back to his feet, to that strange grass and the sparkling water atop it.

To the Stars, From Death.

I'm feeling a little crotchety at the site. Every time I come to write it is down. Grr. >.< I'll reply within 12 hours, Guild be damned.

To the Stars, From Death.

I'm totally around. I posted super quick the first time, and I wanted to give others more time to reply before I jumped in again, so I have more to play with.

Are there some basic rules of physics we could have about the world, so we can help shape things and not just basically all repeat what the first person said in turns? =D If that made sense.

To the Stars, From Death.

The darkness inside William's mind was thick and inky. In that place where memory and sensation war against what is real, what is present, William was still drowning. His lungs burned, and every bit of him felt as if the icy water was the prickle of tiny needles. He remembered fighting, for his life really, against broken glass and twisted metal. He could feel, still, that animalistic urge that propelled him upwards, that made him thrash and push and shove until he had used up what precious store of oxygen his muscles had retained. And then there was darkness, and quiet, and the strangest moment where the lights far above, over the surface, shimmered. William had thought of his son, then, realizing in some obtuse way that he wouldn't be there to see him grow into a man. And in that way in which time stands still, he remembered.

In an instant, a flash of color and life, he recalled how he had gotten here, and wondered what he might have done differently to avoid it.

William had lost his wife the first time she caught him with someone else, a guy William had met at a bar of all places, while having drinks with his partner and a few other people from the precinct. The married detective hadn't realized his occasional, errant thought of appreciation for the male physique had run so deeply until he awoke the next morning with a killer hangover and the memory of his wife's face, twisted in shock and hurt. Divorce had been quick and simple because he hadn't fought her over anything - what right did he have? He got his kid every other weekend and for a month of summer, plus some holidays. She didn't ask for alimony, too proud for that, and so life had just shifted back into some strange version of bachelorhood. William was a damned good detective, and it had been easy to throw himself into his work, and that was how he had met Julian.

The cute little frat boy had been at the wrong place at the wrong time, on the witness end of a convenience store robbery-turned homicide. William had a hard rule about getting involved with anyone he met while working, but he couldn't really resist the overtures the college sophomore had eventually made when William kept returning with more questions, and more still. He was witty and smart, and beautiful in a way William had never allowed himself to consciously recognize as attractive. Perhaps most appealing was the fact that Julian was completely at ease with who he was, and it helped soothe the awkward uncertainty William felt about engaging a relationship such as this while sober. They'd quickly and easily fallen into a pattern that William could deal with. After all, the sex was great, and Julian seemed content with that and little more. Until he wanted more, anyway. William enjoyed his little friend, but he certainly wasn't in love with him. He missed all the blaring sirens that announced Julian's changing feelings for him, even when the young little thing began to push for more time, for things like public outings and movies and things that felt strangely like dates. The detective tried to be a good sport about it all, but the day Julian had coaxed him to the farmer's market and conveniently ran into a cluster of friends there, to whom he introduced William as his boyfriend, complete with attempted hand-holding and all, William had to draw the line.

He'd miss those sleek little hips, but he had already failed at marriage, and had no real interest in doing this heartfelt stuff again. He was a generous lover, but that was all he had to give. And so he had carefully composed a brief e-mail to Julian, explaining that he just couldn't keep up anymore. Work and all, you know. It had been fun, and he certainly wished the college student well in all of his future endeavors. William had walked away from his desk that afternoon thinking it was all over, and he was more worried about figuring out who had sliced through an entire family on 4th St. than he was about Julian, or what he might do. When the kid had pulled up and asked him to talk, all teary-eyed and broken-hearted, William had felt a little guilty for his part in the whole debacle and had acquiesced. Maybe he could talk the boy down, help him see that William really wasn't good for him at all. There were much bigger fish in the sea, and all that. Except that Julian wasn't hearing it. His wild professions of love could not be thwarted and, realizing that William wasn't receiving it at all, the kid had decided that careening the vehicle off a bridge and into the icy river below was a better option than living without his detective lover.

Rather climatic end to a prolonged tryst, thus were the events that preluded William's stirring in this new place. He heard the sticky sweet voice of a female calling, and his mind grappled for consciousness. He awoke with a great gasp, expecting to find himself at the bottom of the river somewhere. Instead the sight that swam into focus was so wildly different that he couldn't even begin to parse together what was happening. He scrambled to his feet, one hand at his throat, as if the water would somehow swim back in again if he didn't protect it.

"What the hell?" he managed, surprised to find that his voice sounded completely normal. And he wasn't wet. No, not at all. He was dressed as he had been before he had ever met Julian, jeans and a button down, his favorite jacket. But he was dry, completely dry, and his mind just couldn't wrap around this. This, or the woman standing nearby, or the others apparently stirring from their own slumber. Or the fucking castles in the sky, the damned colors that made no sense. It had been a long time since William had thought about God, or heaven, but if this place had a name - certainly it was that? But how the holy hell had he ended up here, if it was heaven?

"Where are we?" he said, more directly this time, less incoherent rambling.