2020-06-01 Welcome to the World
Welcome to the World
Participants: Elle (2021) Olivia (2021)
Storyteller: Elle (2021)
Location: All over LA, really
Date and Time: 2020-06-01
Summary: In which a polar bear helps Olivia discover she has been stillborn for the last 22 years, which kind of explains a lot.
Crawling out of the wreckage and into the world feels almost like a rebirth. The hospital is located in a secluded area of the large medical campus, surrounded by privacy shrubs and flowers to make it seem more peaceful than the concrete and multistory cream colored buildings would indicate to most. You can go nearly anywhere in this darkness, but wherever it is you will have to decide quickly as sirens are blaring in the distance.
There are screams coming from behind you. People are terrified and, from the sounds of things, someone is trapped a few meters away among the shards of collapsed stone. She is creaming piteously for someone to rescue her. Doing so would, of course, make it increasingly harder to leave.
---
Olivia wasn't considered a suicide risk, so she was allowed what she bitterly thought of as people-clothes: clothes meant for *people* rather than *inmates.* Her outfit is a long way from fashionable, scavenged from the leftovers other inmates left behind as donations, basically made from granny clothes, but it will draw less attention than if she emerged into the city wearing an IV gown and yellow booties lined top and bottom with no-skid rubber tracks. It still looks weird on her, but it only has to survive scrutiny from passersby until she can reach the woods. She doesn't know why she needs to get to the woods, only that a green song is at her back and pushing her forward like a wind.
She ignores the sound of someone begging for help. The more people are hurt and trapped, the more people the hospital will have to divert toward helping the casualties. She wonders if she's a monster for thinking that, but her self-reflection contains no regret or horror, just clinical curiosity. Yes, being in the hospital had slowly stripped her of her humanity as she spent more than a decade being treated like an impediment to her "care"givers' jobs. The hospital had, naturally, not allowed the works of Harlan Ellison to their residents, but she'd read a bit of the Invisible Man in school, and her hazy memories of it provided what little vocabulary she had to put her perceptions into words. This moment, as far as Olivia is concerned, is just her way to win the battle royale, but for freedom instead of a scholarship.
So she runs like hell, sneakers squeak-squishing through the dew-wet grass not across the lawn leading to the road but along the wall for now. Its cover will hide her silhouette so she can make her break in earnest, at least until room lights start flipping on and blind any viewer's night vision. Her heart is already beating fast, good adrenaline being consumed by the counterproductive chemicals of fear to rob her of what little stamina she has from a life in which exercise mostly consists of tossing beach balls to people sitting in a circle in the living room. This is the most dangerous part, she just needs to make it to cover and from there the plants will protect her...
It's not a brilliant escape plan, but the song is at her back. She has to trust it.
---
You dash across the courtyard and disappear into the privacy hedges and the trees. The cover feels pitifully light for what you need but for some reason you still feel safe hidden among the prettily organized flowers and odd shrubs. They welcome you like a mother's embrace. They are not, of course. Your mother, that is. You know that but it doesn't stop you from feeling the warmth of being among them.
The sirens rapidly come closer. Fire trucks and police SUVs fill the courtyard as people are shouting for tools like picks and shovels to begin excavating the survivors. The glare form the lights blinds you briefly and leaves everything awash in a dull red glow. Your small circle of safety feels even smaller, surrounded as it is on all sides by cold, unfeeling concrete and the boots of faceless "rescue" teams.
You don't want their help. You are too busy rescuing yourself.
You nimbly make your way up the trunk of the cherry tree, among the white-pink blossoms. You know it is a cherry tree instantly when you touch it and the scent does wonders to soothe your nerves. You follow one of the larger boughs to where it nearly touches the privacy wall and then it is just a hop to cross over to the wall itself. On the far side is the rest of the medical campus, building after building. It is largely empty save for the people crowding the psychiatric hospital. Certainly, there are no plants in sight here. The wall continues a long ways but getting down might be challenging since it doesn't seem to be close to any structures on the far side.
---
Olivia lands heavily after dropping off the thick branch, twin shocks firing up her shins and into her knees like she landed on an electric cable instead of the relatively soft (but still parched to clay by California's decade-long drought) earth. The fall was about two inches shorter than it should have been: the tree branch bowed to try to help her down, doing its best to make the trip just a little easier for her but bound by its own rigidity. It was so limited, but it tried, a fact that turns the white light of the stars into a cloud of prismatic splinters through the tears welling up in her eyes at the cherry's unspoken kindness to her.
But this isn't the time. Olivia wipes her eyes with the cuff of her sleeve, her gesture odd if you don't know she's been in a mental hospital since before she was old enough to learn how to wear makeup and thus never learned how to wipe her eyes without smearing her mascara, and rises from the crouch in an uneven lurch as her legs protest being called back into service so soon after that abusive landing. She turns left: she once read that people who are fleeing and think they're choosing a direction at random will always choose their dominant hand's side, a fact she has no idea if the hospital staff will know or is even sure is a fact instead of storybook trivia, but either way, she won't turn right on her first choice out of here. Her gait smooths out after ten or twenty feet as her shins stop their grumbling, and she walks briskly, not running. Running would call too much attention.
She looks for a dim gap between streetlights for a place to run across the road. It's irrational, but putting asphalt between her and the hospital feels like safety.
---
You make your way across the street, then again, soon reaching a highway at the edge of the medical campus. Across the way the buildings do not, at least, all look the same soapy, vaguely salmon color as the ones you are used to since your incarceration. They look... Dirtier, but also normal. While during the day you have seen the street at a distance through the window it is not, as you recall from the daytime, full of rushing vehicles right now. A handful of cars come in spurts, rounding the nearby bend and then rushing past at fairly impressive speed.
You can run across in the darkness if you dare. No one will be expecting it. Certainly not the owner of the currently empty, and possibly decommissioned, Jiffy Lube across the way. Most of the other shops are the same. The 7-11 a few buildings down has lights on and people inside, however.
---
Olivia's heart is crashing in her chest. She's free, yes, but not safe; and recapture isn't the only danger. This city is so alien to her she feels instant kinship with a fish speared through the mouth and pulled out of its world into some hellscape where the light is too bright and the air so thin she can neither swim nor breathe.
Calm down, Liv. Breathe. There's no time to calm down but there's less time to panic.
She allows herself three deep breaths, and the hummingbird trapped in her carotid artery doesn't exactly stop fighting to break free but at least calms itself down a bit. She crosses the street a little more slowly than is probably wise, trying hard to think. Cutting between houses exposes her to a lot more potential witnesses, dogs especially. The gas station might attract a little attention ('shit,' she swears randomly in her brain, 'I should have stolen some scrubs so people would mistake me for a night shift worker'), but the darkness could hide anything, including a broken leg waiting to happen as she stumbles over fuck knows what.
Maybe she doesn't have to go it alone.
Olivia edges into the darkness, moving carefully, looking (and when necessary, crawling with her hands on the ground like Velma looking for her lost glasses) for a tuft of grass she can ask for advice.
---
You find a few dismal-looking wilted tufts of grass along the road, pluckily growing despite the odds against them. They are watching the traffic, it seems.
---
Olivia strokes the grass very carefully with her fingers, exerting almost no pressure, trying not to crush the struggling but tenacious blades. "Hello," she whispers down to them. She's been hearing the plants talk for some weeks now, and really hopes it's not just the ones in the hospital that can do it, or she's screwed. "I'm running away from people who are trying to catch me and hurt me. Do you know if there's anything in the darkness here that would stop me from looking for a place to hide?"
---
The grass has a fervent warning for you of the great lumbering beasts of rock that the humans have made to ride up and down the highway, wardens of what lies beyond. They do not think there is anything out the darkness across the way because all the humans have gone to bed now but they can't be sure because they lost touch with their siblings long ago when the great path was made for the ore-beasts to rampage upon. They do promise, however, that there is more grass across the way which might be able to help you more if you make it!
---
"Thank you!" Olivia whispers fiercely. She pauses before she says it, considering whether it's a wise thing to even offer, but in the end she can't stop herself: "Please stay strong. I don't know if I can get back here, but if I can, I'll bring you a drink." She nearly adds 'to thank you for your help,' but those words won't leave her mouth. Yes, she's grateful, but she wants the grass to drink whether or not it had helped her.
She pushes to feet again, palms burning from the bites of a dozen tiny pebbles on the road, looks both ways, and, seeing no headlights coming, jogs across the road toward the houses. Jogs, not sprints. She needs speed but can't risk being seen moving speedily, an irony she'll stop to appreciate when she's found a place to hole up.
---
You stop short just as a car rounds the bend, heading right at you. That's the risk of such a narrow highway in the dark. A step more and you would have been crushed by a Honda Civic, of all the ways to die. You finish your jog across the road and find yourself in the lot of the Jiffy Lube. A rusted car sits in a corner of the lot, while the garage is shut and locked. It is very dark, though some of the shops have their lights on after hours, and the 7-11 can still be seen to do a brisk business nearby.
You smell something. Pizza. Your stomach begins to rumble when you recall what it's like to eat junk food again. You're hungrier than you'd expect. Perhaps your magic powers use calories.
---
Pizza. Not just the floppy freezer stuff that's basically cheese on a big Saltine, but real(-ish) pizza.
No. That is a luxury for when she's more than ten minutes away from the hospital on foot, and more than a minute away for any pursuers in cars. They're bound to figure out she's not in the building any instant now. Come it to that, she can break into a house tomorrow after people have left for work, and steal their Poptarts or something for breakfast. Olivia tightens her jaw and ignores her stomach, trotting into the checkerboard of black and yellow squares cast by the lights from windows the closely-packed houses shed on the night, making a break for wherever freedom is. She's had a lot of time since planning her escape to wish she'd had access to a map or something, but even in a city like LA, she's bound to find green sooner or later. And, bonus, if she doesn't know where she's going, that means her pursuers are less likely to guess where she's going too, right?
---
So you flee through the various dead shops, across the silent asphalt and among the greenless human jungle. Occasionally, you are greeted by a weed sprouting from a stone or a handful of grass but, by and large, the city is silent and devoid of the plant life you hold so dear. Eventually, the shops turn to brick and the roads crack. The streets you are wandering down become neighborhoods with tall tenement buildings and busted basketball courts. You do find a small park with bright plastic play equipment and a couple of dozen trees scattered around to shield the play spot from the crushing drudgery of the nearby buildings. There's even a little pond. And in the dark, of course, there is no one here to make any issues of it.
---
It's three in the morning, and the hours of running through the dark high on a nitrous cocktail of adrenaline and fear have left Olivia exhausted. Not sleepy, strangely, but just trembling as her body has used up its stores of whatever chemicals make her muscles work without quivering. She could push forward, feels she should push forward, but--and she doesn't know if this is the voice of reason or of her traitor body trying to lull her to sleep--with no idea of whether there's a deeper forest anywhere nearby, pushing on risks leaving her in a worse place than this when her energy finally runs out. The trees here are big enough to support her weight if she were to climb them, but any branches that would threaten to be within her grasp have been amputated and capped with tar to keep children from climbing. She looks around, agonized, and decides with a certain sense of dull fatalism that it really doesn't matter if she's safe here: rest will not be a voluntary choice after much longer.
Well, she doesn't need a full night's sleep, she's pretty sure. Just a few hours will do for now, to let her limbs rest. Then she can start casing for a place to break into, steal some clothes and food, and get moving again toward... well, toward whatever place the music wants her to go to.
Olivia picks a tree toward the center of the grove, a tree that she hopes has at least some shielding from the outside world, and puts her hand on its trunk. "Hi," she whispers. "Look, I'm on the run and I need a place to close my eyes for a few minutes. If you see anyone coming for me, would you do me a favor and shout until I wake up?"
---
You awaken to the cedar you have taken residence in vibrating gently. The leaves rustling a dire warning. Someone is headed right for the tree! This never happens, and it is too early for the humans to be here so they must be here because of you! The tree cannot elicit much movement but they can vibrate with the best of them, honoring your request.
When you open your eyes just three hours you will see a diminutive woman, five feet tall perhaps, with a deep tan and pale blue eyes. Her long, blonde hair is naturally wild but has been combed and pulled back behind her shoulders to create some sense of order, and she is wearing a blue t-shirt and khaki shorts. This is the face of the one who has roused you from your precious few hours of sleep.
Overhead, the sun is already shining down, lighting up the little park in which you've taken refuge.
---
Olivia is rolling to her side and getting her feet beneath her before she even knows she's awake. A faraway part of her mind is delighted to notice that she's only been asleep for two-something hours, yet she feels as fresh as if she's slept for nine and woken up to an espresso IV. The nearest parts of her mind are simultaneously panicked and cold, preparing to do whatever she has to do to get away from this person. Right now, the best option seems to be to hide and hope to be passed by, but her spirit is already reaching out into the copse, prepared to ask the trees to hold the girl back. That might seem like overkill, but Olivia can see the woman's muscles in her exposed limbs, and already knows she's not winning a race against her.
She's reaching out her spirit, but not yet actually pulling the trigger. That's a bit weird for her. Normally, Olivia would have already struck without mercy, but there's something about this woman. Olivia doesn't hate her. It will be an interesting feeling to explore when she has more time to think about it.
---
The woman stops a few meters short of the tree, turning her gaze upward to settle squarely on you. There is no question, then, that she saw you before she ever approached but she does not appear to be inclined to try to pull you down from the tree, if nothing else. Small blessings.
"That seems like an awkward place to hide," the blonde observes as she sits down, legs crossed, near the base of the massive cedar. "I can't imagine it's very comfortable. And it's pretty exposed." You hadn't had a chance to look around to make sure you chose a hiding spot that would be of any use when people arrived and, it seems, you utterly failed. This park has no cover, save perhaps for the tree itself.
"But that's alright. We should be out of here before it matters. Hail, blessed of Gaia. I am at your service. If you'd permit me I would like to bring you to somewhere a bit more... Comfortable."
---
Olivia's lips peel back from her teeth at those words 'more comfortable'. It's a reflex. She loathes those words. They're trap-words, words that make her recoil in a gesture of self-defense that would have been a lot more effective if she hadn't been sitting on a branch ten feet off the ground when she did it. She yelps as she starts to fall, hands clutching at the branch for support but finding it too late. She's canted hard to her right now, hanging on for the moment but her arms too extended to get the leverage she needs to right herself again. The best option she has is to try to control her fall and land without much injury.
The tree shudders. Through gritted teeth, Olivia hisses, her tone due more to sudden exertion than any negative feeling, "Not your fault!" Poor Del really had tried their best--
Then, gravity gave her other things to think about than the cedar's feelings. She dropped heavily into an overhand hang, Del smoothing its bark so the sudden twist wouldn't rip the skin off her palms. Her grip was always going to give out before she could arrest the pendulous momentum of her topple, so her feet are not quite under her as she lands, heels too far forward to catch her weight. Her knees bend involuntarily and her ass-bone strikes the ground hard.
"Oof," Olivia says, or something very similar to it.
---
Elle watches all of this go down with a furrowed brow and a sheepish smile. She was only just stepping forward with her arms outstretched when you finally went tumbling, far too late to catch you before you plowed into the earth. Fortunately for you, the grass seeks to break your fall, cushioning what could have been a very bruising experience into something merely uncomfortable.
When you look up you are confronted with a small hand. The blonde is offering to help you to your feet, still smiling brightly. "My name is Elisapee. People usually call me Elle but you can call me anything you wish." She takes a deep breath and holds it for a few more beats. "We really should find you a better tree to sleep in..."
---
Olivia has accepted the hand to rise before she even knows what she's done. She has been well trained by her life to find human touch revolting, but this hand isn't? That's not to say she'll let the criticism of Del pass unchallenged, retorting indignantly, "It did the best it could. It was my fault I fell." The defense is more for Del's sake than for Ellisapee's, and she hopes the tree's spirit knows she means what she said. Her ear is cocked toward it, but the tree has already moved on to other issues, indifferent rather than malicious like people would be. She loves Del so much in that moment--
Focus, Liv. Do you ask who this stranger is and what she's talking about, or do you calculate how safe you are?
Her stomach rumbles, which helps settle the question. Whoever Ellisapee is, she's also a witness to the things Olivia needs to do this morning to continue her flight. Answers are necessary to deal with the problem.
"Who are you, Elle?" Olivia asks, measuring her facial expression, softening it from her previous argument into something that looks very much like shame and an attempt to regain her grace by responding to her savior. It's bullshit, but if there's one thing the hospital taught her, it's that you always show the other person what they want to see, not what you want to show.
---
"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't introduce myself very well. I am Elisapee Tanner, known to Gaia as Glacial Fury. I'm, well, a polar bear. The Lady asked me to come to see to it you found your way to a forest more worthy of you." The girl proclaims herself to be an animal without missing a beat and seems to think that you will accept this without hesitation, watching you intently to see your response.
"There's a much better place in southern Los Angeles where you might have at least a bit of freedom from prying eyes. Are you familiar with Griffith Park?" Elle rises slightly on the balls of her feet, releasing your hand as she does. "We should probably go before people begin to arrive."
---
A polar bear?
"Del?" Olivia asks. It's rude, it's basically calling Elle a liar right to her face, but she's incapable of stopping the word from leaving her mouth. Yes, Olivia herself is a freak of some kind, a human whose blood is now a metaphor for tree sap, but just because she's not what she seems doesn't mean Elle isn't either. And all this talk about a sacred mother? Olivia, in that moment, looks exactly like what she is: someone confused and just trying to get a friend to give her her bearings.*
The tree rustles slightly in a breeze only it can feel, and Olivia regards Elisapee with suspicion, wariness, and hope. "I haven't been there in a while, but I know it," she answers, though she's probably the only one who's immediately clear that she's answering Elle's question rather than continuing her one-sided conversation with the cedar. "I'd...like to see it again, actually."
- ba dum tish*
---
"Well," Elle begins slowly. "It's a bit of a walk but I'll go with you and make sure you're safe until you reach the woods." That smile turns to a thoughtful frown and Elle studies your face intently while she awaits a reply. She's withdrawn her hand by now and clasps them at her waist.
Out of the corner of your eye, you notice a young black man make his way into the little park. He casually wanders among the swings before taking up a seat in one and pulling a small white wrapped lump out of his pocket. He lights it and begins to swing as he smokes.
On the far side of the park, an old Asian woman has come to throw bits of seed to the birds who gather on the paths. She hums tunelessly as she goes, shuffling in little steps along the way.
The thing that is strange about both is that they seem to be spending far too much of their time looking at you. Or perhaps Del.
---
Olivia's own hands have dropped to her sides, and her fingers are drawing small circles in the air, a gesture that means god knows what to god knows who. "Did you bring back-up?" she asks Elle in a low voice, hopefully, low enough not to be overheard. Hell, while she's at it, she might as well hope she kept that spasm of fear from showing on her face.
---
"No," Elle replies slowly. "I don't need backup." She glances left and then slowly shifts her gaze to the right before shrugging her slender shoulders. Muscular but also quite small, it is hard to say Elle cuts a particularly imposing figure, but she carries herself with confidence at least.
"We've wasted enough time," the self-proclaimed bear advises you now. "If we're going we should go now. You have nothing to be afraid of while I am here." She reaches out to take your hand, intending on very gently dragging you from the park with a grasp that could shatter boulders.
---
Olivia should shy away from that hand. Everything in her life has taught her that people who want your hand want to control you so they can hurt you later. Always, always, always keep your boundaries clear around people.
But Elle says she's not a person, she's a bear. Maybe that's why Olivia doesn't feel her skin trying to crawl off her bones and scurry into the nearest sewer grate like a fleeing rat at Elle's touch.
Or it could be this Mother stuff.
"Olivia," she whispers without meaning to; she'd meant to say it louder. That's embarrassing. Slightly louder, she explains, "That's my name."
---
Elle squeezes that hand gently. She certainly feels like a girl, even if you find her strangely inoffensive. She offers you another quiet smile."It's nice to meet you, Olivia. Now, stay close and I will always keep you safe." -->
