Dissociative Symptoms Grumbles
So I'm heading back to university tomorrow night and the following morning in a road trip, and - per the usual of swapping from hometown to university town - mild annoying dissociative symptoms are just back and sitting here.
Like logically I'm like "yep going back up tomorrow night, gonna be long distance from my boy for like two to three months again, possibly more if I get a job up there, gonna have a large change of how things be, going back to school going back to near-full independence and saving money cool cool" but like, my emotional brain is temporally just disjointed.
My emotional brain I don't think has even registered that anything is changing soon and is just completely stunted in assuming that tomorrow and the next day and the next day will be the same as its been and I'm just like "bro, if you don't catch up with the news, you'll probably be caught off guard and more sad when you realized you weren't emotionally available to process your emotions cause you weren't caught up."
Like there is the chance that I just really don't feel anything about the idea of going back to uni and all - but usually I do feel either positive / relieved or negative / sad but like.... I'm just like not even registering it emotionally as anything significant or weird and Im like 75% sure its just my emotional brain caught in a dissociative symptom cause every time I go from university and home town or vice versa there is always a period of just dissociative spike.
I'm pretty used to it at this point, since I go back and forth like 6-8 times a year so this would be like, time number 25+ of this transition, but its always all the more frustrating and annoying than anything else. Like just a big "Here we go again"
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Trigger Warnings: long post, corpse mention, death mention, supernatural, blood, injury, burned skin, racism, suicide ideation
Sequel to: Frozen in the Darkest Moment + No Title
After her first encounter with the Shadow inside the reflection in what should have been a safe haven, Artemis has tried to learn what she could about it and find all possible connections and common threads. The young adventurer has asked around New and Old Gridania and has received both scolding for poking her nose where it clearly doesn’t belong and information about a series of various disappearances of various individuals who seemed to have vanished without a trace.
Now people-watching from the background of the Mih Khetto's Amphitheatre, she felt a sickening feeling drop to the pit of her stomach. Everyone appeared to be enjoying their days without any care in the world, always looking up toward the sun, towards the future. Artemis left with both squirrel and griffin cub tailing behind her.
How can everyone just move on so easily?
Her stubborn questioning has rewarded her with a confirmation that there was always a reflective surface, a mirror or a large enough body of water, at the location of their disappearance and the threads tying them with her own encounter; they all have lost a loved one that they have deeply missed in either the Calamity five years prior or in a recent incident and a reflective surface existing in the whereabouts of their disappearance.
None mentioned a creature hiding inside the reflection but she strongly suspects that they were responsible for these disappearances.
At the Carline Canopy, she sat down at a table, poking at her plate of food, whilst thinking of a plan to track down the Shadow when her ears pick up the familiar stomping of a certain Wood Wailer as he slammed his hands on the table. Carlisle obnoxiously warns and scolds her to not go poking her nose in others’ businesses and picking at the scabs on their healing wounds and ends the conversation with Al Mhigan brat before stomping off.
The lancer quietly sighs as she takes a bite and her brows furrow in thought. She pulls a worn map of Gridania and the Shrouds out of her pouch to look over it.
I can’t ask anyone else to be involved. As far as I know, I’m the only one who has seen that monster and made it out okay… If I want to get to the bottom of this, I’ll need to use myself as bait. I can’t see any other solution and it should work. It’s gone after me before and I see no reason why it wouldn’t try again.
That night she ventures out alone, having instructed the griffin cub and the squirrel to wait for her at the entrance of the Carline Canopy, and bade Umbra to keep an eye of them both from the shadows. She couldn’t risk endangering them; they could get hurt or killed should they get caught in the crossfire.
She treks towards the Central Shroud and makes her way to the South Shroud in the Quarrymill’s direction. Artemis knew of a spot that would be perfect for her hunt that knocks off all the criteria. Taking care to avoid unnecessary confrontation, the young lancer soon steps to the waters of the Urth’s Gift, heading towards the Fount.
The young adventurer removes her lance and brings it close to herself, whispering an enchantment to the blade. She leaves it behind, rested the weapon against one of the many shining aether crystal formations in the Fount. I hope this will help lead me back here should it come to it since I’ve never been good at finding my way…
Time to wait.
Several bells would pass as Artemis waits for the creature to appear in the reflection of the Fount’s waters. But then she hears a faint song, a lullaby her heart recognizes, hanging onto the cool air as a pair of glowing eyes appear in the water ripples. As those pair of eyes draw ever nearer akin to a predator, the sound of the song would ever grow louder in her ears. Soon, she sees her mother’s reflection where her own should be, staring up at her with a smile and whispering, “It’s time to come home.”
Here goes nothing. After a deep breath, the foolish adventurer crouches lower until practically bowing, and lets the monstrous imposter take her. Low arms rising up from the waters, claws elongated, wrapping around her, digging into the armor. Before she had a chance to react, she’s being pulled down into the waters and her world grows dark. The reflection grins and fades.
When she comes to, Artemis wakes to find herself in dark surroundings and silence; she can’t see what lies beyond or the front and back of her hands even as she held them in front of her face. Not even when she attempts to conjure one of her flames in front of her face; only felt the bitter cold as the flame bites through the gloves.
This feels beyond the darkness I use to travel from world to world… She thinks to herself, craning her head over her shoulder to squint her eyes, I need to hurry and try to find the others. For some reason, it did not finish me off then and there. I dare not think why but I should assume that it’s here somewhere.
She stands, wobbly, and tries to step forward but the ground shakes under her boot. Feeling an icy breath on the back of her neck, the young adventurer turns around, summoning the Heartsickness keyblade to her side and swings the weapon only for it to connect with nothing except the heavy air. Still, she continued to walk on.
I’m starting to feel groggy…Artemis thinks, using her free hand to rub her eyes, but then her body jolts as a realization hits her, Shit, is the air poisoned?! I can’t fall asleep now!
Her foot hits something solid, and the foolish adventurer slowly lowers herself, putting down the blade and removing her gloves. Her hands slowly reach to feel out what is there and feeling rough, maybe burned, skin gone cold, the shape of a head and their ears. She couldn’t feel a breath on her hand and as they move lower toward their neck, notes the lack of pulse and a necklace with some sort of metallic pendant strung there.
Maybe one of the missing? Their ears feel that they could be either Elezen or Lalafell… Artemis theorizes, Even if I do locate a survivor, how do I get them back to Eorzea without using a Corridor to Darkness? Would they have been able to teleport back by aetheryte? No, if that was the case, they would have returned home first wouldn’t they…? I did not think this through enough…
She undoes the clasp of the chain and pockets the necklace. Picking up the keyblade, she stands up and keeps moving, unsure of the direction she’s going until hearing that familiar lullaby. Before the adventurer could react, a strong force tackles her into the ground from behind. Screaming from the sudden scathing hot pain, she feels claws on her right ear and struggles to twist herself around.
“You have no home. There is no one waiting for you in Eorzea.” The whisper scratches her eardrums and the keybearer grits her teeth as she struggles to break free, “No one. Everyone is gone and dead.”
“Your Star, your village…Your mother and sister. Wouldn’t it be better to die and join them?” Artemis reverses her grip on the keyblade and she manages to thrust the blade backward, causing the entity to shriek as it connects. The heavy weight is off her and she scrambles to get up.
“Wouldn’t you like it all to stop? Are you not tired? The running, the hurting, and heartache, the Stars disappearing one by one?” The keybearer feels the claws and their icy breath on her face, “You led the darkness, the shadows, to them and they’re all dead because of you, Selena Wolfsong.” The entity’s shining eyes stare the girl down, reflecting the fear in hers. Hearing her own name, she could feel her own pounding heart stop and for a moment, she could see a familiar heart-shaped emblem on its head. The entity pulls away with a haunted laugh that echoes inside her mind.
“Do you remember their screams?” Another’s, a child’s voice which she recognizes as her sister’s, rings painfully inside her ears as a blast of icy heat connects with her chest and sends her flying back, “Do you remember which one was mine?”
Selena shakily tries to stand, but once again feels a heavy weight on top of her, claws digging into the chest piece of her armor. The keyblade is knocked out of her hand, fulms away from her.
The keybearer reaches out, attempting to grab what should be their face with trembling hands, and manages to grab hold of something rough like leather and warts akin to that of a toad underneath her touch, almost immediately recoiling. Despite the darkness blinding and her hands burning, she shuts her eyes and tightens her grip, feeling the cold and ice spread from her hands.
The entity pulls away and Selena manages to call the keyblade back to her hands and thrust the blade forward. She feels a weight fall on her and grits her teeth from the pain burning from her right ear. The keybearer manages to push the weight off her, wearily sitting up and panting heavily.
The ground under her shakes and the girl struggles to stand, raising a hand intending to open a Corridor to Darkness in front of her. She focuses on the image of Urth’s Fount and finding the connection to the weapon that she left behind.
I’ve run out of time. Whatever that was, it must have been holding this space together. She regrets being unable to search more thoroughly, staggering though the darkness. Selena eventually feels a cold breeze on her face and the light of the moon meeting her face as she successfully steps forth back to the waters of the Fount.
After the Corridor closes behind her, she falls to her knees and nearly falls asleep right then and there. The keybearer breathes in the forest air and her body is shivering. She briefly checks her pouch to see if the necklace is still there and softly sighs in relief to find that it is. The pendant turned out to be a silver locket.
I made it…She muses to herself, trying hard not to nod off just yet, and puts the locket away, I need to get back…
Artemis pulls herself back up and holds onto the right side of her head, feeling something warm and wet drip down her hand. She doesn’t think about it as she approached the spot where she left her lance and went to reclaim it.
The trek back to the city-state has become a blur, but the young adventurer somehow returns to the Carline Canopy. She fails to hear Mother Miounne’s gasp and bumps into an unfortunately familiar Wood Wailer.
“Go away, Carlisle,” The lancer growls, her face showing a pallor complexion, and weakly glares up at him, “I’m in no mood to deal with you and the lance forever stuck up your ass. Let me through so I can get a night’s sleep.” She hears a scream but her vision is already growing dark as she remembers no more.
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