composmentiis

[composmentiis]

Questioning Sentences, Vol. 44

(Questioning sentences from various sources to ask all kinds of muses. Adjust phrasing where needed)

"If I'm holding something back, is it so unthinkable that I have a good reason?"

"Why can't I stop kissing you?"

"How long have you had a thing for older men?"

"What does she have that I don't have?"

"Haven't you ever done anything stupid just for fun?"

"I need to trust you. What if I can't?"

"Are you bored with me?"

"What do you want from me? What is it that you expect me to do here?"

"Why did you ask me if something was wrong when I came in?"

"What if there were no tomorrow?"

"I guess you haven't got much experience sleeping on the ground?"

"You're a fucking drama queen, you know that?"

"Do you spook easily?"

"Have you actually be discharged from the hospital?"

"What is it going to take for you to get comfortable with me?"

"Seeing as you let yourself in, forgive me if it's forwards to ask, but who the hell are you?"

"You don't say much, do you?"

"Whose idea was this? Who sent you?"

"Is today the day you finally give me something remotely challenging to do?"

"Can I please stay here? Just for one more night?"

"So, what are you running from?"

"How many hearts have you broken in your life?"

"Did you believe you could change me in the way I've changed you?"

"Can't you give me a straight answer anymore?"

"Why can't you grasp that it's over for you?"

"What the fuck happened to us?"

"Have you come here to just look down on me?"

"Where were you when my life was in peril?"

"Are we no longer on a first-name basis?"

"Don't you think that was a little too easy?"

"Do you really think we're going to beat the odds?"

"You really don't know how to have fun, do you?"

"What do you think you're playing at?"

"You've changed. What the hell happened to you out there?"

"You haven't learned your lesson, have you?"

"How are you still alive?"

"Why would I hang out with a loser like you?"

"If you could be anywhere in the world, where would you like to be?"

"Tell me something; would you ever consider working for me?"

"What are you afraid that I'll discover in that head of yours?"

"Why are you being such a bitch right now?"

"Has a woman ever punched you in the face?"

"Is that blood? Are you okay?"

[composmentiis]

Daniil withholds a scathing comment—Etoile is not the source of his ire, after all, though he often does struggle to make any meaningful distinction between cause and victim when it comes to his frustration. A plague is still a plague, even when watched from the rafters and not dealt with as a doctor; there's no need to sling around his petty feelings when he himself gets enough of that from the rest of the townsfolk.

A historical record will be important, anyway, when the plague is dealt with or when it deals with the town. Progression of the plague from a firsthand witness, in the event that none survive.

"Anyone who doesn't tire of tending to a breakout of this magnitude is either foolish or unwell themselves," he concedes, drawing his gaze back down to the failed attempts at a vaccine that had lead nowhere—that damned tragedian's outfit is unnerving at the best of times, but it's doubly so when seen in the dark. "I won't fault you for hoping. I suppose someone must."

Notes scrawled on paper, lists of symptoms to look out for in the resistant—he gathers these in his hands, organizing only because he needs something to occupy his restless body. The quiet can make him apathetic or agitated depending on the day, and today he's settled on agitated, seeking action and movement where he knows he should be seeking rest.

Somehow, he thinks, I still slept far less at school.

"I don't envy your position either, though we're not so different," he carries on, settling some of his papers into a stack. They're all likely to be discarded in the morning, when all of his work from today means nothing again and he has to start from the beginning. "Neither you nor I came to this place in expectation of a plague—at least, I certainly hope you didn't. And my best efforts have proven entirely useless thus far. My notes on the plague might as well be nothing more than a personal account."

Star- Etoile had a habit of pacing when they were speaking with others, usually one of the healers, while they sat in stillness most times, it felt... Wrong to when talking with them. So up above they paced, gaze remaining on the ground level, on Daniil.

It was hard to watch, the theater of the dead below, but he felt a responsibility, a duty to, look on at it, witness it, since he was there.

"I- Perhaps naivly, I hope bachelor you might find an answer outside these walls, and will come back in good spirits." They were quiet for a moment before bitterly chuckling for a moment. "That sounded even more naive aloud than in my head."

Their voice was soft, trying to not be stirring to the sick but still quite audible, there was a little movement and a small sound behind them hidden in the shadow, likely the tragedian that always seemed to shadow Etoile.

He lets out asympathetic sigh "Don't you tire of tending to it? I cannot patch a wound, I've been told my bedside manner is awful, and I am no bright mind like you, but I can watch, and write down what I see, so that's what I do, it is as simple as that, Bachelor." There was a matter of factness to it, it wasn't necessarily emotion that drove the answer, just reality as the writer accepted it.

[composmentiis]

the polyhedron is actually appropriately fascinating to me from the perspective of the healers. the adults and the children both see the structure differently, but artemy, the bachelor, and clara all see the polyhedron as being made out of the very paper it was designed with. the healers - the "actors" in the show, the ones who are inherently connected to the real people playing them through the mechanics of the game - all see the polyhedron as more of an idea than a place. as something-that-could-be-something, rather than something that 'is'.

[composmentiis]

@collectalong said → 006.   a funhouse’s room of mirrors . (collector!) ( src. / accepting. )

An endless expanse of mirrors and mirrors and mirrors.

Daniil wonders if this is what the children saw—what Kain spoke of, when he said that children saw the Polyhedron differently. Mirrors, Kain had said. Mirrors and mirrors, reflecting not faces but miracles and ideas. For all his amazement and worship, Daniil still finds himself barred from the imagination inherent to childhood, and can only see his own face reflected back at him.

He feels eerily calm despite the impossibility of the space the Polyhedron has left him in. There isn't anything more to despair for, after all—not the town, not the theatre, not the children and their sandbox, and not Thanatica. All of them are equally as unimportant as eachother compared to this. Certainly, he would have no future if he returned. That damned Haruspex, who thinks he knows best but can't see the man-made wonder set before him—with his panacea he will almost certainly convince Block to destroy the Polyhedron.

So Daniil does not think of returning, and for a time-outside-of-time he navigates the maze precisely, and in silence that only is broken by his own distant footsteps. And then there's a peal of giggling from somewhere undefinable.

A child's voice.

The Polyhedron does belong to the children, after all.

"Who's there?" The Bachelor asks, weary but still measured. "Are you from the town?"

[composmentiis]

[composmentiis]

every day i get a little closer to bringing back tumblr blog drfeelgreed with 100 baccano muses.

[composmentiis]

Haruspex: Where are the papers?

Bachelor: See the ashes over there, on the floor? Barely managed to do it before you arrived. Smart of me to burn them, rather than eat them. You’re a surgeon — you would have dug it out of my gut.

Haruspex: I would have.

[composmentiis]

@chaosmultiverse said → " Have you defeated death yet, Bachelor? " -Stargazer/Etoile Blanc ( rules read - thank you!! )

Irritation springs to life in the back of the Bachelor's mind—Daniil levels his gaze at the voice in the dark, haunting the theater with its fruitless queries.

Etoile Blanc is as foreign to the town as Daniil himself, by the writer's own admission. It must be so that those aligned with the arts are always so strange, for his behavior is nigh-indistinguishable from that of the superstitious townspeople, and Daniil has rarely seen him outside the bounds of the Theater even after its transformation into a makeshift hospital.

Then again, what better place to write about history from?

"You would be the first to know if I had," Daniil responds, voice level despite the frayed wire he's been walking lately. It's easier now, after the first few seconds of adjustment, to spot Etoile where he lurks on the higher floor. "Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae. You've been watching the mad scramble for a vaccine from your rafters since the damned pest first broke out."

Silence, except for the conversation between the two of them. Daniil knows he must leave, soon—he's already the only remaining member of the hospital. Even the sick are fast asleep. But to sleep is to waste valuable time, and no one in this accursed town is as qualified as he to produce a vaccine.

"Aren't you tired of watching this madness?" he asks—for watching must surely be no less exhausting than living in it.

[composmentiis]

The question sets Daniil on edge, though by all accounts it's a fairly innocent inquiry that anyone would be well within their rights to make. It shows in the tension of his shoulders, as though he's been caught in the act of something illicit. Nevermind that his acquisition of the drugs had been entirely legitimate—Daniil really has been putting his primary focus towards medicine to avoid suspicion, local or widespread.

"I have a Bachelor's in medicine, Torbon—morphine is an essential medication for the alleviation of pain in patients." Nevermind, of course, that half of Daniil's supply ends up in his own system, on days of excess agitation. He reaches into the cabinet, gloved hand sweeping up the shards of broken glass. "I'll have you know there are far more lethal things here than opiates; our culprit is lucky it didn't stumble its way into the rat poison."

He sighs, then stands from crouching, depositing the glass in a nearby waste bin and wiping the leather dry from the wet residue of the drugs themselves. Then, after short but careful consideration, he begins to remove the gloves entirely to properly sterilize them later, when time permits.

"Not that that would have killed a bear either, I'm sure, but it would have been far more unpleasant. As it is, opiates are primarily relaxants, so it's more likely to be sleeping than it is to be sick, though I wouldn't rule the possibility out entirely. Ah—how would you recommend I keep interlopers from the forest out of my lab, in the future?"

     ❝ it was a bear, alright. hungry one at that, ❞ is barrett's rumbled reply. with the shelving now upright, he could make out faint scours of claw marks etching the metal. tufts of fur sticking out of crooks in the corners. but aside from all the physical signs, the room simply REEKED of the creature.

     an adult male. black bear, maybe. stinking lightly of garbage when it went scavenging for a meal. he was only here for ten minutes, if that. gone for a couple hours.

     barrett's brow twitches when he inspects the cabinets. unlike daniil, a stab of SYMPATHY hit him in his gut. hunger was something barrett understood very well.

     ❝ why so much morphine, doc ? ❞ barrett casually rumbles out as he approaches the broken vials of the drug.

[composmentiis]

by the way, i have a pin board for daniil. it's one of my favorite's i've made, so please look at it if you feel like it!

[composmentiis]

among the many reasons i attached to daniil so strongly ... i just love a guy with snake associations. i just love that. look, here's a nice couple pictures of my own snake to prove it!

[composmentiis]

↪     𝑺𝑬𝑻𝑻𝑰𝑵𝑮 𝑷𝑹𝑶𝑴𝑷𝑻𝑺 , updated .     (  a  collection  of  various  settings  meant  to  inspire  drabbles  or  be  used  as  prompts .   )

001.   the seaside ,  as the sun is setting .

002.   a cabin in the middle of the woods .

003.   a picket-fenced home in the suburbs .

004.   a dark bus stop lit only by street lights .

005.   a private jet miles high in the sky .

006.   a funhouse’s room of mirrors .

007.   an office building ,  bustling and busy .

008.   the back row of an empty movie theater .

009.   a run - down motel room .

010.   a loud house party on a suburban street .

011.   a university lecture hall during a class .

012.   the rooftop of a very tall building .

013.   a great ballroom during an elegant party .

014.   the back of a wailing ambulance .

015.   the wine cellar of a large mansion .

016.   behind the school’s gymnasium .

017.   a boisterous bonfire at the lakeside .

018.   an otherwise empty parking lot .

019.   the shady bar of a noisy , dark club .

020.  the grounds of an empty summer camp .

021.   a large hedge maze ,  easy to get lost in .

022.   a neglected or derelict treehouse .

023.   a spacious ,  light-filled meadow .

024.   an underground illegal fighting club .

025.   an abandoned scrapyard .

026.   a large penthouse overlooking the city .

027.    an apple orchard in the middle of spring .

028.   an empty playground with squeaky swings .

029.   an extravagant greenhouse .

030.   the base of a large waterfall .

031.    a spacious walk - in closet full of lovely clothes .

032.   a solemnly quiet hospital room .

033.   the dark depths of an abandoned mine .

034.   the deck of a fishing boat at night .

035.   the thick crowd of an audience at a show .

036.   a long ,  winding road .

037.   the scene of a violent crime .

038.   a fork in a hiking trail deep in the wilderness .

039.   a cramped dressing room .

040.   a dusty antiques shop full of relics .

041.   the street of an unfamiliar city at night .

042.   between the tall shelves of a thrifted book shop .

043.   a building abandoned during construction .

044.   a house without power or running water .

045.   a mysterious trail found in the woods .

046.   the back of a taxi stuck in traffic .

047.    the inside of an elevator that won’t move .

048.   fairgrounds during a large event  (or after hours) .

049.   a garden bountiful with flowers or produce .

050.   a childhood home or bedroom .

+   30  more  setting  prompts :    1 / 3 / 2024

051. the site of a horrible accident .

052. a closed pool , after everyone has left .

053. a home holding horrific memories .

054. by the side of a dangerously quick river .

055. a private hotel room .

056. a police station in the middle of the night .

057. a ferris wheel carriage under a sky of fireworks .

058. a lavish , invite - only party .

059. a public transit stop as rain is pouring down .

060. the back of a taxi going in the wrong direction .

061. the underworld .

062. a dusty , forgotten attic .

063. on the set of a television show or movie .

064. a lighthouse overlooking the raging sea .

065. in a post - apocalyptic bunker .

066. on a ship hundreds of miles from the nearest coast .

067. on the rooftop of a perilously tall building .

068. a tent pitched in the middle of the woods .

069. a crowded stadium during a football game .

070. the morgue during an identification .

071. an otherwise empty library during a late study session .

072. a place that feels familiar , yet you've never been here before .

073. a long hallway that seems to stretch on forever .

074. a signpost at the start of a hiking trail .

075. a bar or tavern bustling with life .

076. the dance floor of a masquerade ball .

077. inside of a car parked in a secluded area .

078. at the edge of a cliff overlooking a large lake .

079. inside a very old house with very old haunts .

080. the antiseptic interior of a space station .

[composmentiis]

"The state of a bear isn't my foremost concern," Daniil shoots back, carefully sweeping away the glass shards from his shattered equipment. True to form, all he can think about is the money wasted—some of the broken instruments had come directly from the last days of Thanatica.

Barrett's help is appreciated, but he's not the sort of person who would understand the terrible miasma of frustration and apathetic concession Daniil can't help but feel, looking at the minor carnage in his lab. It feels, in the moment, like he lives a doomed life—all progress will inevitably and invariably be halted by some outside force that wishes him and his research to meet its swift end.

An ill twist of fate; he'd call it that, if he believed in fate. As it stands, Daniil knows he's only unlucky.

"But if you are indeed right about the perpetrator being a bear, it almost definitely got into the morphine," a downward quirk of the lip as further antsy frustration pulls at him, "and the fentanyl, judging by the state of my cabinets. Even half of what I was storing would be lethal for a human, and it'll be about as costly to replace as an arm and a leg."

@composmentiis asked : ❝ really? i wouldn't have guessed that about you. ❞ - for barrett!

for muses that are getting to know each other ( accepting )

-

with his eyes still lowered, barrett only occasionally makes glances at the other man. he was a QUIET man at the best of times - speaking about his history is a habit that had died a long time ago.

he only offers a single-shouldered shrug, pulling the tangled & dented shelving upright with very little effort. barrett's boots crunch against broken glass.

❝ spent most my life outdoors, ❞ he replies simply, moving on to the next piece of destroyed equipment. ❝ looks like a bear came through. real hungry, from the looks of it. hope you didn't have anything in here that'd HURT it, doc. ❞

[composmentiis]

... also, here's a little plotting call! to get things started. i recognize daniil is maybe not the easiest guy to interact with. like this and we can hash some things out.

[composmentiis]

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (2010) PROMPTS *  assorted dialogue, adjust as necessary.

it snows nine months of the year, and hails the other three. any food that grows here is tough and tasteless. the people that grow here are even more so.

it's a mess.

that's for kidnapping me.

you must feel horrible. you've lost everything.

thank you for summing that up.

the rest of us would have done it. so why didn't you?

that's not an answer.

why is this so important to you all of a sudden?

i was a coward! i was weak!

i wouldn't kill him, because he looked frightened as i was. i looked at him... and i saw myself.

i really did hit one.

you're thinking about this all wrong. it's not so much what you look like, it's what's inside that he can't stand.

the point is, stop trying so hard to be something you're not.

i just wanna be one of you guys.

everything we know about you guys is wrong.

what are you gonna do about it?

i could get used to it.

most people would leave. not us. we have stubbornness issues.

i admit it. this is pretty cool. it's... amazing.

get me down from here!

you have to give me a chance to explain!

i am not listening to anything you have to say!

get me down.

see? nothing to be afraid of.

you don't have to go up there.

i'm really beginning to question your teaching methods.

watch out babe, i'll take care of this.

i can do that, but i don't have the time right now.

we're leaving. let's pack up.

looks like you and me are taking a little vacation. forever.

i want to know what's going on.

start talking!

you scared me!

stay out of my way! i'm winning this thing!

this time, for sure.

you brought him back alive!

oh, i'm hurt! i am very much hurt!

i don't want to fight dragons.

can you not hear me?

this is serious.

this conversation is feeling very one-sided.

i love this plan.

let me out, please?

i need to speak with you.

get your hands off my shield!

this one has blood on it!

nice of you to join the party!

i thought i was crazy!

remember, a dragon will always, always go for the kill.

i knew it. i'm dead.

i should have seen the signs.

it's not what you think. you don't know what you're up against.

careful with that dragon.

just... promise me it won't go wrong.

i can't miss.

your most important piece of equipment is your shield. if you must make a choice between a sword or a shield, take the shield.

get to the ships!

i think i'll stay, just in case you're thinking of doing something crazy.

so i guess it's just you and me, huh?

will you please stop that?

no turning back.

why read words when you can just kill the stuff the words tell you about?

chances of survival are dwindling into single digits now.

there's one more thing you need to know.

their job is so much cooler.

don't worry, we got it covered.

just do what i told you!

i'll be back as soon as i can!

[composmentiis]

i can't claim this particular piece is anything but self-indulgent! truth be told, these characters have absolutely nothing in common except for the fact that they're the guys i'm thinking the most about right now...

[composmentiis]

it should be noted by the way that largely i have so many warnings about daniil's dickish tendencies because of the possibility of them coming up, not because they're relevant to the bulk of his personality. daniil is pretty abrasive but he does actually put forth a pretty large effort to be polite a lot of the time.

usually when he's being an ass to someone it's due to frustration with them. which - to be fair - he does get frustrated fairly easily, but it should be noted that as of pathologic 3: quarantine he's actually pretty kind to people who he feels he's close to even while under duress. i feel like this perception of him being a dick first and a decent man second is due to the fact that in pathologic we mostly only see him interacting with strangers, most of whom bend over backwards to violate what he considers safe measures for a town rapidly succumbing to the plague. like, he's not being an asshole for no reason.

that's not to say he's never an asshole when not under duress - as it happens he's a fairly self-important person regardless and that WILL come off the wrong way - but rumors of his dickishness are greatly exaggerated.

also, he's blanket-level quite kind to children, even when they aggravate him. even if he is rude to them, it's either because they're endangering themselves and he's stressed or it's for a silly reason that he apologizes for right away.