networkinthenight | [Backdated to 9/9] @silent

Broke my lantern. I wasn't injured otherwise.

[As for disrespectful, is it? It sure does show that the bodies are dispoable, and given this has been going on nearly a hundred years by some accounts, maybe that's just how things are here for the people who've stuck around longer than they have.]

What are the chances, though, of me pulling up my own dead body? If they're dumping years and years of them in here.

Perhaps not. Maybe just the new crop of dead ones.

But it would explain how come you're virtually identical.

I suppose our lanterns are tied to our souls then, if it would cause us to die. Tricky business, that.

[ He heaves a sigh. ]

Do you want to... inspect it? I probably could, but... seems. Invasive, you know.

[Ah, so Aziraphale hadn't heard about that yet, then - the lanterns being their soul, their life force, whatever one wants to call it. Well, he can explain more but for now the more immediate concern is the body.]

If you were a doctor, I'd say go ahead. But I might as well. Just be ready in case it reacts.

[He does have the basics down, after all. Has to, on account of taking solo field missions. So he crouches beside the body again and tries not to notice how it watches him; how without moving its head, those reddish eyes swivel in their sockets.

Touching the corpse is just about the worst thing ever, but he checks the cold neck for a pulse and finds none, then decides it's probably easier to slice through the shirt than try to remove it any other way. It's a good thing he'd brought a knife, hoping he'd have a fish to gut. Slicing through the wet fabric reveals an array of scars - stitched cuts, gunshot wounds, an old burn here and there. A brighter pink scar than the rest where a knife plunged into his back below his left shoulder.

It probably looks awful but he knows all of these old injuries, and shakes his head as the thing begins to smile wider.]

Maybe the front? Help me roll it over.

--Yes, yes of course.

[ He watches on, interested, seemingly undisturbed by all of this, and moves to help him do the rolling over bit. He is a very large person, but Aziraphale is mostly taking his time just because he'd like to be gentle with his arms and legs, and not destroy them more than the water had already done. ]

Will you want for it to be buried? When we are done here.

[ Out of respect for his body, you know. ]

I guess so. I'd say burned, but fire doesn't work well here.

[Cremation just seems appropriate. No point going through all the work of digging a grave. He's still alive, after all. He's right here. Right? It's life in some sense of the word, anyway.

With the body now on its back, he kneels back down and briefly locks eyes with the staring, grinning dead face and its ruined makeup. It changed again, he notices - orange and yellow streak down one cheek and drip to the sides, and smudged magenta stains its lips. Remnants of exactly what he's wearing now, as if it's trying to become a more perfect but drowned copy. He shudders and tears his gaze away to instead strip the remainder of the shirt away, but there's no wound fresher than the usual network of scars.]

I don't know why I'm looking. If this is somehow a previous copy of my body from when I died earlier, there wouldn't be much to see. Just a few scrapes here and there.

[He reaches for one of its hands, looking to see if the palm is scuffed from his fall on the rocks. The grin splits wider. The belly begins to bloat.]

[ Oh yes, that's very grotesque. Aziraphale frowns and then he goes to find some piece of torn cloth to cover his face with. He just doesn't want Rosinante to have to endure watching his own deceased face doing this. ]

Perhaps we should call it, then.

And I'm sure we could still cremate the body if you wish; the heat from fire seems to be just fine.

[ And he may or may not periodically check if his powers will work. ]

[That's certainly appreciated as a gesture. Both of them get to then miss the corners of the mouth as they continue to split through the cheeks, bisecting the face along the jaw. Nobody needs to see that many teeth all at once.]

And carry it all the way to the bonfire? Yeah, we could probably manage that.

[He glances over his shoulder toward the town center in the distance. It's a fair walk, but not impossible with help. Maybe they could beg a torch off Rastus instead, though that might not be enough flame to get very far with.

When he looks back, it's clear the corpse is rapidly inflating now. As he tries to stand and back away, his heel catches on the stony beach and sends him sprawling backward. So much for getting away from whatever the hell is going on -

And what is going on is that the body quickly swells like a bubble blanketed in scarred, stretched skin, though the arms are caught in the remains of its clothing. That hideous split face is visible briefly as the chest grows and dislodges the torn fabric, at which point, again like a bubble, the entire body bursts. Rather than gore, they are showered in a spray of seafoam. And as Rosinante swipes at it and groans in disgust, trying to get it off his face, the foam itself slips off of its own will and it all rejoins into a mass which shrinks back into the lake.]

[ Aziraphale frowns in absolute distaste for this as he is quite a bit smaller than Rosinante and now absolutely covered in seafoam that came out of his body double's gut. It's all over his face. It's all over his hair.

Damnit, it's all over his nice coat and shirt that he's had for one hundred and sixty years!!

He blinks and looks like he might be about to lose it for a moment before regaining composure. ]

--Are you alright?

[ He barely squeaks this out. ]

[It's all over everything, but even though he's soaked now, it seems to be... un-soaking him? As it seeps out of his clothing and recollects itself to sink back into deeper water.

And somehow that's even worse than just being lake water. Ugh. He shudders visibly as he sits upright and watches the foamy water drip off his bangs and drain away.]

I think so? Other than completely horrified.

[It's still way more reassuring to have someone else here experiencing it. Hopefully nothing more results from this, but after what he's seen deep in the woods, he's still concerned.]

[ It seems to be actually crawling out of Aziraphale's mouth in order to return to the greater sum of itself, which is both horrifying and terrible.

He nearly screams. ]

--Oh! Oh dear God, that's--

[ There is a full-body shiver involved as it sluices off his person. ]

Absolutely dreadful.

Let's--

--We'll come back and get the body to cremate it, dear boy, but I think we should come back with reinforcements. And perhaps some holy water.

Is there even any body left?

[He can't have watched in detail, of course - he'd fallen backward trying to get away, and had closed his eyes to keep the foam from getting into them. As he stands, now, and scans the lakeshore, he doesn't even see a single finger or wisp of hair floating in the water. It hadn't just burst from the belly; rather, it's as if the entire body had itself been foam made solid and human-shaped, and all that's left now are the wet remains as they slip out of clothing and between pebbles to return to the water.

Deeply concerning for future sailing trips, to be certain. But it's not going to stop him from trying. He stoops to retrieve his lantern, and the fishing pole, too.]

Reinforcements sound good, though. I wonder if there are more of those things down there.

I'm not sure, but I'd rather we find out later.

[ Because that was a hot mess, and Aziraphale feels very gross and possibly needs a long shower before they continue on this lil adventure, Rosinante! ]

I really, sincerely hope there aren't any more. In fact - goodness, what had that even been?

[ He's very disturbed by this somehow, even though he'd been cool as a cucumber about the dead body. ]

Not a clue. A spirit of some sort? Something else entirely?

[All he can do is speculate, and he hates speculation. It serves a purpose but needs to be backed up with real information before it can be acted on, and too many people seem to think it's fine to skip that crucial middle bit.

He shakes his head, and sucks at his dwindling cigarette.]

Shame to meet anyone this way, but I appreciate you coming to have a look. I owe you a drink sometime.

A spirit. Perhaps, I do admit that I don't know them well enough.

[ Either way, the moment is thankfully passing and they can move on from it, because Aziraphale doesn't want to think about this for a long time, after they bring people back to come try and carry this off. Nope, he'd really like to erase this from his memory entirely. ]

I wouldn't say no to a drink.

[ He shoots Rosinante a quick smile. ]

--Ah, that's right. I heard around that you'd been trying to map the stars.

They're not like they are on Earth--

[ He takes a look at Rosinante and quickly adds: ]

--Where I'm from, so I was wondering if they looked familiar to you?

[Another Earth person. Earthlander? What do they call themselves? There sure are a lot of them here, anyway. Must be a busy place. Or maybe it's just a common name for planets somehow, since quite a few of these people don't seem to have a lot else in common.

He smiles back down at Aziraphale, though it's a little hollow. That whole experience was disconcerting and he doesn't feel particularly happy, but it's good to make an effort.]

No. I'm not from Earth, but I've never seen this pattern of stars either. I started off wanting to map them but have also been working with Doctor Ingram to see if there's anything else we can learn from them, like this world's rotation speed.

Ah, yes, and what have you learned? I myself am very interested to know. It seems that either our rotation and revolution around this world's sun are such that they are in sync and therefore, we always face away from it.

Actually, that was how our moon was on Earth - I'm surprised we have just the one, here.

[ And he's really fascinated by it, and space in general, which was possibly one of the things he knew better than humans did, having seen the cosmos up close. This, though. This was a strange sky, and strange stars, and he felt so very small standing underneath them.

He wondered how Rosinante felt about the whole thing. ]

We're still working on it. He's the one with all the math know-how. But the map's progressing well enough, when the clouds part. Why's the one moon surprising?

[Sort of strikes him as an unusual thing to say. Should worlds have more than one moon? His only has one, as far as he knows. If there are others, they're small and dark and nobody pays them much attention. There are other planets out there, he thinks he recalls hearing, but maybe that's wrong. Truth be told, aside from what he needed to know for navigation, he never paid much attention to astronomy anyway.

Maybe it's just another little act of rebellion, given how the people of his home country practically worshiped their twisted concepts of descent from the stars and rulership over everyone lowly enough to have risen from mud instead. Stories based on maintaining a position of power, nothing to do with truth.]

I mean - I guess not really. Planets can have any number of moons, it just strikes me as odd that yours and mine and this one should all just have the one.

Particularly since this one also seems to just have the one face.

It's also quite similar to home, I might add. The architecture is a bit different and the fauna is, of course, quite unique to this place, I would say.

But... all the same. When things could be so different, I find they are... not so much.

[ He doesn't know if he made any sense, but he sure as heaven is rambling. ]

Oh, I'm very sorry. Don't mean to talk your ear off.

No, it's all right. It's an interesting subject. I'd like to hear more about Earth, actually, since so many of you are from there. But let me get cleaned up first, all right?

[He chuckles; an attempt to pass the whole thing off as a lighthearted moment and an opportunity rather than a distraction from whatever the hell he was just witness to. Maybe Will or Rastus knows more about this. Maybe Robin, though he doesn't trust her to give a straight answer. But it can wait until he's had a moment to shake off the shock of meeting his corpse.]

I'm going to head to the inn, but I'll be at the tavern in half an hour or so, if you want that drink sooner rather than later.

Hopefully you won't be gone for awhile, I'll bring someone back to look at this, see if we can salvage anything.

[ He doesn't know how long that will take, but certainly not long if it's as he says and everything has just... schlooped back into the water. Disgusting thought. ]

Certainly I'll come meet up with you later at the inn, and I'll tell you anything about Earth you wish to know.

[ Rosinante doesn't know he's talking to someone who's been kicking around on it for a cool six thousand years. ]

If you don't mind me asking, what exactly were you doing by the water, anyway?

Good idea.

[Salvage, study, whatever they want to do. That kind of science isn't really Rosinante's gig, but he's all in favor of understanding things better. Especially mysterious exploding corpse doubles.]

I was fishing, or trying to. Seemed like a nice way to kill some time and maybe learn about what lives in the lake.

[Instead, he got what's somewhat dead in the lake, so... success?]

Oh.

And here I was hoping we'd find a nice patch of it to go swimming in sometime.

[ Yes, this is going to be extremely unfortunate. ]

Ah well. I'll hopefully see you soon.

[ As soon as Rosinante is out of sight, he'll go back by himself to clean up, only to find that there's nothing left as said, not so much as a disembodied frown.

So he walks back home as a formality, miracles himself clean, and heads on over to the Inn. ]

[Ha ha. If he was ever intending to swim in that lake (he wasn't) then he sure wouldn't now, but he's not the right person to ask anyway. He shrugs it off as the joke it probably is, then waves as they part ways.

But after returning to his room at the inn to shower and change and have a much needed few minutes to just. Sit and smoke and not think about that nightmare, he makes his way back downstairs to the bar, where he spots Aziraphale easily enough from the stairs. At which point he stumbles and falls the few remaining steps onto the floor. Graceful as always, Rosinante. Whether Aziraphale or anyone else tries to help, he gets himself back up, checks his lantern over, dusts himself off, and walks over, though there's a quick detour to retrieve the pillow he usually leaves in a corner of the room. He places that on the floor at Aziraphale's table and sits, and even on the floor his long legs have to bend awkwardly to fit under the tabletop.]

Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long.

[ Aziraphale makes it over in a second, trying to keep Rosinante from falling entirely onto the ground but settling for helping him back up once his pesky legs have made him tumble. It's alright, he knows this feel. ]

Not at all, though I would've happily started without you.

Would you-- surely there's a short chair around here you could sit on instead.

I'm so sorry, this entire town must be so inconvenient for you.

[ Like, how does this guy fit on a bed... Can he close the door when he goes to the bathroom? How does he shower?? ]

It's all right, the pillow's fine. I make do with the rest.

[He waves one of the usual bartender spirits over to request a glass and some whisky because it sure has been a day already, then looks to Aziraphale.]

I found it really unusual when I first arrived here that other than Daylight, no one else here matches my height, and that most things seem intended for people like you. I guess Earth doesn't have a lot of variation, does it?

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