Ⅰ. ARRIVAL OOC: Harrow mentions/actions made with permission
What Gideon is mentally calling Third Island resembles Canaan House in a structural sense. It is a massive sprawl of hallways with more rooms than Gideon cares to count squashed together. These doors are (generally) open, though the ones out of the structure are locked. While alarming, this too is like Canaan House once the skeletons had pushed the shuttles down into the water. Like Canaan House, Harrow decides the first course of action is to map all the rooms to create their own scrawled authenticated maps. Gideon points to the maps already provided. Harrow nabs one for the details she considers important and Gideon grabs a backup because she doubts they agree on what's important and the first will likely be ritually drowned in ink.
The process takes hours. Harrow furiously writes down her notes, and Gideon jots locations for bedding supplies (of the bag variety), food, clothing that looks cool, warm, and/or comfortable, soap not made from people, dirty books, and makeshift weapons. In all, it hasn't been a bad idea to map the place because she is making record time power walking between the noted stores to build up necessary supplies. No one else is running or even jogging, with ever increasing bulk of bags (the Ninth House panniers could actually be useful for once) so she leaves a morning run for... well, the next morning. It gives her some time initially on her own, able to run into people.
She can also be found the next morning jogging around the mall.
Ⅱ. BLACK FRIDAY Sometimes it pays to be built like a rock. Gideon weathers the initial rush of people standing firm. Seeing people get trampled makes her swim upstream. She's firm, and people don't care to get back at her. It's not like she's holding anything they want. The trampled people don't approach saying thank you or noticing her at all. As soon as they're up, they're off toward whatever it is they want, even with a broken arm, a bloody and broken nose, a head injury, etc.
It's ridiculous. In a Second House kind of way if the goods were Blood of Eden terrorists and they were killing them.
The doors back into the mall are locked too now. Gideon—don't tell Harrow—wishes she had Harrow's annotated map. She skirts around the store with the vague inkling that they saw other doors or entrances/exits. Somewhere. It's a lot harder to tell in the throng of people, but Gideon's used to things being a slow wrenching process. No one's even trying to shoot her with a crossbow.
Ⅳ. MANNEQUIN CW: mentioned child neglect/abuse, mentioned murder/attempted murder (of children) likely in comments to come
Gideon halts suddenly in the hallway on her third lap of the mall. Slowly, she steps back and back and back until she reaches a set of displays she is asbo-fucking-lutely sure wasn't there on her last lap. They couldn't have been there during the map making process, surely? Gideon frowns. Would Harrow have said something? Would she ask Gideon to confirm something is only in her head? Harrow isn't here, so unless crazy catches when you share a headspace, it's real. At least, as real as the mirror magic on Second Island.
Even though the great-aunts and Crux are as still and dead as the reverend father and reverend mother have been for the last seven (eight?) years, they look far too at peace. Crux doesn't deserve to look at peace like Harrow brought him personally to the Mithraeum to smugly flip her off from the ceiling. It does fit that he looks more alive dead than he looked as a living breathing person. Stylish veils cover the great-aunts' faces. Even blind, they recoiled from her for as long as Gideon remembers. Prayer beads hang from each hand; whenever Gideon looks away she hears the clacking sound that echoed through Drearburgh. When she looks back, the great-aunts are as still as can be. Pelleamena and Priamhark are posed pulling back, as though worried Gideon will break the glass and brush their fitted black formal wear.
Her heart rate spikes at this mockery, at the same age-old treatment Gideon has known her whole life. She hasn't forgotten it, but the bright painful life and un-life at Canaan House and in Harrow and the generously peopled (and insected) islands has made it easier to forget. For a day, a week, every night when Harrow sleeps holding her tightly. Words said an eon ago haunt her. The more you struggle against the Ninth, Nav, the deeper it takes you; the louder you curse it, the louder they’ll have you scream.
Gideon curses. The memories of working with Harrow, of fighting constructs, cajoling a dinner out of her, of everything Ninth she felt keenly the month before bites her. She bites her lip. "I won't scream," Gideon declares to the missing mannequin. She says to no one. Her fingers reach for her sword, but it's not there. The machete is, but even Gideon Nav hesitates before smashing a glass window. Instead, she's stuck, not able to just walk away, not able to stand the mannequins in the windows, not willing to smash the whole display (for the attention it would draw).
Quietly, Gideon fumes from the middle of the hall, with her back to an informational stand.
Gideon Nav | The Locked Tom | OTA
OOC: Harrow mentions/actions made with permission
What Gideon is mentally calling Third Island resembles Canaan House in a structural sense. It is a massive sprawl of hallways with more rooms than Gideon cares to count squashed together. These doors are (generally) open, though the ones out of the structure are locked. While alarming, this too is like Canaan House once the skeletons had pushed the shuttles down into the water. Like Canaan House, Harrow decides the first course of action is to map all the rooms to create their own scrawled authenticated maps. Gideon points to the maps already provided. Harrow nabs one for the details she considers important and Gideon grabs a backup because she doubts they agree on what's important and the first will likely be ritually drowned in ink.
The process takes hours. Harrow furiously writes down her notes, and Gideon jots locations for bedding supplies (of the bag variety), food, clothing that looks cool, warm, and/or comfortable, soap not made from people, dirty books, and makeshift weapons. In all, it hasn't been a bad idea to map the place because she is making record time power walking between the noted stores to build up necessary supplies. No one else is running or even jogging, with ever increasing bulk of bags (the Ninth House panniers could actually be useful for once) so she leaves a morning run for... well, the next morning. It gives her some time initially on her own, able to run into people.
She can also be found the next morning jogging around the mall.
Ⅱ. BLACK FRIDAY
Sometimes it pays to be built like a rock. Gideon weathers the initial rush of people standing firm. Seeing people get trampled makes her swim upstream. She's firm, and people don't care to get back at her. It's not like she's holding anything they want. The trampled people don't approach saying thank you or noticing her at all. As soon as they're up, they're off toward whatever it is they want, even with a broken arm, a bloody and broken nose, a head injury, etc.
It's ridiculous. In a Second House kind of way if the goods were Blood of Eden terrorists and they were killing them.
The doors back into the mall are locked too now. Gideon—don't tell Harrow—wishes she had Harrow's annotated map. She skirts around the store with the vague inkling that they saw other doors or entrances/exits. Somewhere. It's a lot harder to tell in the throng of people, but Gideon's used to things being a slow wrenching process. No one's even trying to shoot her with a crossbow.
Ⅳ. MANNEQUIN
CW: mentioned child neglect/abuse, mentioned murder/attempted murder (of children) likely in comments to come
Gideon halts suddenly in the hallway on her third lap of the mall. Slowly, she steps back and back and back until she reaches a set of displays she is asbo-fucking-lutely sure wasn't there on her last lap. They couldn't have been there during the map making process, surely? Gideon frowns. Would Harrow have said something? Would she ask Gideon to confirm something is only in her head? Harrow isn't here, so unless crazy catches when you share a headspace, it's real. At least, as real as the mirror magic on Second Island.
Even though the great-aunts and Crux are as still and dead as the reverend father and reverend mother have been for the last seven (eight?) years, they look far too at peace. Crux doesn't deserve to look at peace like Harrow brought him personally to the Mithraeum to smugly flip her off from the ceiling. It does fit that he looks more alive dead than he looked as a living breathing person. Stylish veils cover the great-aunts' faces. Even blind, they recoiled from her for as long as Gideon remembers. Prayer beads hang from each hand; whenever Gideon looks away she hears the clacking sound that echoed through Drearburgh. When she looks back, the great-aunts are as still as can be. Pelleamena and Priamhark are posed pulling back, as though worried Gideon will break the glass and brush their fitted black formal wear.
Her heart rate spikes at this mockery, at the same age-old treatment Gideon has known her whole life. She hasn't forgotten it, but the bright painful life and un-life at Canaan House and in Harrow and the generously peopled (and insected) islands has made it easier to forget. For a day, a week, every night when Harrow sleeps holding her tightly. Words said an eon ago haunt her. The more you struggle against the Ninth, Nav, the deeper it takes you; the louder you curse it, the louder they’ll have you scream.
Gideon curses. The memories of working with Harrow, of fighting constructs, cajoling a dinner out of her, of everything Ninth she felt keenly the month before bites her. She bites her lip. "I won't scream," Gideon declares to the missing mannequin. She says to no one. Her fingers reach for her sword, but it's not there. The machete is, but even Gideon Nav hesitates before smashing a glass window. Instead, she's stuck, not able to just walk away, not able to stand the mannequins in the windows, not willing to smash the whole display (for the attention it would draw).
Quietly, Gideon fumes from the middle of the hall, with her back to an informational stand.