Isobel Brandt \\ Persephone (praxidike) wrote in paxletalelogs, @ 2017-04-18 15:27:00 |
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Entry tags: | hecate, persephone |
welcome to the jungle
Who: Isobel & Kate.
What: Isobel's checking out the Aztec floor because PLANTS OMG PLANTS. Kate's trying to find a place to walk her dogs. Fates converge. Nothing that serious, really.
Where: The 10th floor.
When: Monday, April 17.
Notes: placeholder for a gdoc.
Isobel gently set Hanni down on his little paws; he instantly ran forward, his little black form lost amid the foliage. She was glad for the extendable lead and his fitted harness, keeping him within reach as she let the stairwell door close behind her before taking careful steps forward. She'd carried him all the way down from the Deluxe floor, mindful of the crocodiles therein; after awhile, it just felt comforting to hold his tiny body against her chest, which brought to mind the baby growing in her belly, and then she'd felt overwhelmed by everything still left unsaid between her and Obed. The minute she'd stepped out onto the tenth floor, though, those worries were washed away by her awe of the vegetation growing within.
The floor was muggy, compared to the few others she'd had a moment to inspect. She dragged in the lead a little, forcing Hanni closer to her (he complained with a few short yips, but then was quiet once more when he was back with his paws on the ground), then stepped forward to reach out for a broad leaf glistening in the low light. It was smooth and firm beneath her touch, and warm. Following it along its stalk to where it attached to the trunk of a tree, she found miniscule ivy and flowers wrapped beneath the shadow of the leaves. It was layers upon layers of ecosystem, each giving her more and more to inspect. Fingertips brushed the flowers, and they shivered in response.
Isobel snatched her hand back, surprised yet unafraid. She was slowly reaching forward when she heard the door to the stairwell open again, and dogs barking.
Kate couldn’t stay in her apartment any longer. What was usually her sanctuary felt like a prison when she felt forced to stay there.
The day before when she had left the apartment to walk her dogs in the morning, she had stood still in shock for a solid minute upon seeing sand, shrubbery, and palm trees. In her hallway. On one of the top floors of a tall building.
Kate usually adjusted well to change, but she thought this was a little much. She’d advanced slowly, the dogs sniffing around curiously, trying to make the images connect to reality in her mind. Because the breeze she felt, the grape vines she touched, the sand she smelled were too vibrant to be anything but real.
Intent on taking the dogs downstairs--she giggled, trying not to take the phrase the call of nature too literally given what had erupted outside her door--she’d changed her mind about using the elevator when she saw a real live crocodile guarding it, Scilla and Carrie growling and pulling at their leashes. They went down the 10 flights of stairs only to find that no doors would let them out. Defeated, she went back, skirted past the crocodile, tried in vain to get the dogs to go to the bathroom in the tub (she’d trained them well, after all), discovered that she couldn’t communicate with anyone other than through the apartment message board, opened her curtains to discover a river outside, and sat down very heavily on her couch.
After a long time, she’d made tea. For the rest of the day she monitored the message boards (where no answers were forthcoming but everyone seemed to be okay), worried about her family missing her at Easter dinner, and hoped the dogs wouldn’t hold things in to the point they got an infection or ruptured an organ. She had opened her windows, and while she couldn’t for some reason go through them, the quiet rush of the river and the breeze had been strange but relaxing.
So she decided to try venturing out again Monday morning, knowing that the front doors wouldn’t open but hoping that one of the floors the other tenants had spoken about would at least mimic a bathroom enough for the dogs to go properly and without shame, as they had finally done the night before. After a full day and night, the concept of the hallways being impossibly changed had started to become familiar, fear and confusion giving way to curiosity.
Going down only one floor to start--she might as well be systematic about it--the stairwell widened, and inside the greenery was thick, so that she almost missed seeing her neighbor. “Oh, Isobel,” she said with obvious relief. Scilla and Carrie had started to bark, perhaps spooked by the changes into not recognizing a familiar face. Kate shushed them, patting their heads to soothe them. “I think we’ve fallen down the rabbit hole.”
Hanni yipped a greeting, surging forward in his little harness to say hello to the familiar canines. Isobel was slightly less enthusiastic in her welcome, though no less happy for it.
"I know, right? This is... I still can't wrap my head around it." She move away from the plants (nearly imperceptibly, they followed her movements in a flowing motion, though Isobel did not notice nor take heed) and closer to Kate, hoping the other woman was holding together. "How are you doing? Have you seen... I hope neither Scilla or Carrie had a run in with the crocodile on our floor."
Kate frowned, looking at the strange movement of the plants behind Isobel, but then her neighbor's question distracted her. “We almost did. Luckily I had them leashed. What I'm more concerned about”-Kate did not miss the oddity of finding a crocodile in the hallway less concerning than most other things-”is finding a place for them to go to the bathroom. What have you done with Hanni?” She nodded to the dogs, who were sniffing each other enthusiastically.
"Oh, we had some pee pads left over from training him when he was a puppy. Thank goodness he's small, he's just been going in the bathroom," she replied, a hand pressed to her chest before her arms looped over her midsection. "Are you having trouble with that? I... Some of these floors look like dirt, though I don't know if that means its safe for them to use it as such..."
She shrugged, her face a painting of sympathy. "I mean, you could try, I just don't think anyone living on this floor might appreciate that. The fact that this is happening at all is unfair to us and the animals. It's cruel."
Kate nodded, anger stirring at the situation, but she didn’t know who to direct it to. So she focused on what she could control. “They eventually went in the bathroom, but I could tell they were afraid to. Plus I don’t want them to get into that habit when”-if-”things go back to normal.” She looked around at the shrubbery with a doubtful eye. “Are any of these plants dangerous?”
Isobel glanced back at the greenery, a smile moving easily over her face.
"Oh, no, they're..." She paused, looking down to a green and brown vine knotted around a large root erupting from the ground. White flowers dotted its face, turned up toward the light; they shifted as she moved. "Well that one's poisonous. Don't let your dogs eat it. I haven't been through all of them yet, there's just so many, and even still, without some access to the internet I don't think I can identify them all, but did you know these ones here are nearly extinct? I can't imagine what had to be done to bring it here..."
She continued on in the same vein, bringing Kate's attention to a cluster of pink and purple blossoms set on a branch; their delicate arch looked distinctly tropical, and completely out of place in a Northern American apartment hallway. As Isobel shifted, her arms moving to point out this plant or that branch, leaves, vines, and more seemed to follow her like she was the Snow White of foliage. In sync, that fact was immensely noticeable to anyone watching.
Isobel’s enthusiasm brought a smile to Kate’s face, and she relaxed a little. As Isobel described the plants, Kate led her dogs to a spot that appeared to be further away from what passed for a main path. “Go on,” she encouraged them, hoping the plants were similar enough to grass that they’d get the hint. Though they looked at her skeptically, they obliged, and Kate’s tension melted away even more. She figured a little fertilization wouldn’t hurt these strange growths.
She kept an eye on Isobel’s lecture the whole time and rejoined her friend just as she had moved on to pink and purple blossoms. Kate loosened the leashes so that the dogs could explore more (she didn’t want to let them off completely in case there were alligators or other creatures around, and she wanted to make sure they didn’t eat anything). When she fully focused on Isobel, she noticed the strange movements again and peered closer. She waved a hand slowly by the greenery next to her, then by a vine. Nothing happened.
“Um, Isobel?” she ventured, interrupting her neighbor. “I think...are you carrying plant food or something?”
"Huh?" Isobel stopped in her diatribe, glancing back at Kate with a questioning look. "No, why? I know I run a nursery, but I don't have mulch or anything on my person at all times," she quipped, grinning. A vine behind her moved to drape itself snake-like across her shoulders, and Isobel's eyes went wide. She gave a tiny yelp, jumping backward, the vine pooling on the ground at her feet.
"That keeps happening; I think they must be loose? Around the branches?" She didn't mention how she'd made small leaves and flowers move according to her whim, unsure if she should share such details just yet.
Kate had no reservations about calling out what she saw. After everything else, it didn’t seem quite so strange that…”The plants are following you. Only you.” On second thought, yes, she was still able to be amazed at something. “That’s not normal, right? Even for someone who runs a nursery?”
Isobel winced, though she was grateful that she didn't need to playact to hide something.
"No, it's definitely not," she agreed. "It's... It's been happening ever since I got on this floor. I haven't seen too many plants on the others, so I don't know if it's this place or if it's me." She moved away from where she'd been standing, approaching Kate with slow steps; the plants continued in their adoration. "Have you seen anything else like this on any of the other floors?"
Unexpectedly, Kate found herself laughing, releasing the rest of the tension that had fallen on her when she stepped into the hallway the day before. “I haven’t been to any other floors except the first,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It’s so appropriate, though.” She gestured to the plants around Isobel. “If there was anyone I expected the plants to worship, it would be you. I would have called you a nature goddess before, because of the way you have with flowers, but now you are, literally.” She wasn’t quite sure why, but those words just sounded right.
"They're not worshi-," Isobel began to assert, but Kate's description wasn't completely wrong. She glanced at the plants, who were not so much straining to touch her as much simply be near her. "It's weird, isn't it? I mean, why is this happening?? All the floor changes and now this??" Hanni seemed to detect his mistress' distress and ran to her side, darting around her feet with short yips. Isobel glanced down at him, shaking her head in amusement. Then she looked back to Kate.
"You're hilarious, Kate. I guess we'll have to figure out what you're the goddess of, hm? Maybe dogs?"
“Oh yes, which is why I was so effective in telling them they were allowed to go in the bathroom. A regular dog-whisperer.” Kate shook her head, still smiling. “Speaking of…” Scilla and Carrie had been pulling at their leashes for a minute toward the other end of the hallway. Kate walked toward them, picking her way around the underbrush and taking care not to step in anything. “Did you find something, girls?” she asked, looking up from her feet when she reached them and coming face to face with...well, a face.
She gasped and stepped back, instinctively pulling the dogs along with her. The head, placed on a large stone slab protruding from the wall, was slightly shriveled and disturbingly unattached to a body. “There are some...uh, gruesome props lying around.” At least, she hoped that was the case, but she wasn’t brave enough to touch it to find out.
But as soon as the words were out, she wished she could take them back. No doubt Isobel would see it if she continued exploring, but she didn’t want it to be on her account that they lost whatever levity they had found in the bizarre situation unfolding around them. She made her way back to Isobel hastily, determined not to go to the other side of this hallway again. She’d take animated plants over that any day.
Isobel wasn't far behind Kate, Hanni nipping at her heels as the young woman caught up with her friend. Her gaze went to Kate at first, brows drawing together in concern at the woman's fright, and then she glanced to what had spooked her so much. A hand clapped over her mouth, though Hanni had no such compunction and darted forward to wander amid what looked like a stone altar.
"Hanni, come here," she tried, but she did not have the effect on him that she apparently had on the greenery. Isobel directed her next question to a more reliable source. "It's not...real, is it?"
Kate shook her head, resigned to dealing with the gruesome object. “I don’t know. I hope not.” She looked back toward the head and received another shock when she saw, next to it, a gyrating, barely dressed human figure, head thrown back and seemingly oblivious to anything around it. She blinked and it was gone. “Did you see that?” she asked breathlessly, looking around to see where it had gone, and where it might have come from.
Isobel's eyes moved away from the head, toward Kate, brows drawn together in confusion. Her gaze moved over the rest of the space -- noting a few more specifically-placed severed heads, each unfocused gaze making her shiver -- but noted nothing else. She looked back at Kate.
"No? What did you see?"
“It looked like…” Kate trailed off, brow furrowed. She was sure she had seen something, but if it was something unlike the hallway changes which Isobel could obviously see, then maybe it was just in her head. It had been so fleeting, after all. Nevertheless, Kate couldn’t shake off an uneasy feeling. “It must have just been my imagination. Creepy heads will do that.” She tried to laugh it off. “Let’s go back.”
Isobel let an empathetic smile flit over her face, and quickly gathered up her pom, nodding.
"Yeah, I'm...very much for getting away from any potentially real severed body parts." She followed after Kate as they returned to the other side of the hall, though she could not shake the feeling that she had not been as discomfited as she should have been around the dead. She felt as equally at home with the corpses, despite her initial shock, as she had the plants, and she had no idea what to make of that.
"Do you want to explore a little more down? Give the dogs a good stretch, maybe they'll pass out for the rest of the day."
Kate shook her head. “I think I’ve had enough adventure for one day. At least I know a place to go when I need to take them out.” She motioned toward the dogs, who walked beside her obediently. “Hopefully this whole thing will go back to normal soon. If you go to other floors, just be safe, okay?” She locked eyes with Isobel to be sure her message was heard before taking the stairs back up to her apartment.