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Tweak says, "bbc1 you know what i mean???"

Esmerelda Weatherwax (ms_weatherwax) wrote in vas_captio_rpg,
@ 2009-05-30 12:40:00

Entry tags:

!dropped, day 09, ellen ripley, esmerelda weatherwax, location: barn, location: forest

Day 9 - Arrival
Who: Granny Weatherwax and Ellen Ripley
What: arrival
When: morning
Where: forest, closest landmark is the barn
Rating: TBA, PG for starters
Status: active

Granny Weatherwax woke up in a strange forest. This isn't to say that she regained consciousness, slowly opened her eyes, focused on the trees around her wondering why she wasn't in her room and what was going on. She simply went from being asleep to fully awake, staring ahead of her with disapproval written on her face.
The trees above her were unfamiliar. Not only this wasn't one of Lancre's forest (she'd walked them all of her life and she knew every single tree) but some of the trees here were some kind of trees she'd never seen before.

She got up into a sitting position, massaging her back with one hand. She was too old to be kidnapped and left asleep in some forest.
Looking around Granny noticed the other woman for the first time and her worst suspicions were confirmed. She pursed her lips tightly. People sleeping in the mud, with not even their... drawers... on. This was probably some heathen foreign place. It was just as well that Gytha Ogg wasn't here (and at this Granny looked around to check, even though she was fairly sure that her and the foreign woman were the only two people nearby); Gytha would probably make a lot of embarrassing remarks. And sing.

First things first. The most important thing to do now was to find her hat. It was unthinkable for a witch to go around without her black pointy hat: even in foreign parts there were such things as standards.
She got on her feet with surprising ease despite her back and walked over to a small box lying on the ground. There were some letters on it, which she ignored. In her experience, mainly derived from Gytha's souvenirs brought back by her sons, foreign writing was always something along the lines of "A Presetn from, Quirm".
The box contained a couple of tube socks, of some unsatisfactory white material, a box of sweets, a strange squishy bottle of water and a small black notebook.
And no hat.

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ellen_ripley
2009-05-30 02:26 pm UTC (link)

Ripley's first thought when consciousness returned was //I think I'm developing a bad reaction to hypersleep//. She felt like /crap/. Nauseous, way, way too groggy, and just ... bleah.

Then she realized she was curled up on her side.

People didn't /move/ in hypersleep.

"Notagain!" The words were somewhere between dismayed yelp and frustration as she fought to sit up ... then stopped dead, blinking in confusion. This was no medbay.

She craned her head back and stared up at the trees in dumbfounded amazement. She'd never /seen/ trees before. Closest she ever got was the little potted bushes scattered around stations. This was ... entirely, entirely different.

Right about then, her brain finally snapped into full gear, and she started looking around. "Newt! Hicks! NEWT!" Where the hell /were/ they? What happened to the Sulaco? It was the only answer Ripley could come up with, though it certainly didn't answer where she was, nor did it answer the fact that there was no dropship or emergency shuttle anywhere in sight.

No answer. "Shit." Then she noticed the oddly dressed elderly lady nearby. "Umm, hi. Where /am/ I?"

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ms_weatherwax
2009-05-31 06:47 am UTC (link)

Granny looked up from the box when she noticed that the other woman was waking up. She regarded her with deep distrust in case she was about to do something strange and foreign, but the woman simply sat up and looked around groggily.

The next words she said confirmed Granny's suspicion that the woman was not from Lancre. She had said newt and that was a perfectly normal word, but all those words stringed together didn't make any sense to the old witch. The where am I part was understandable but Granny, seasoned globetrotter, knew only too well that there were some words that meant other things in foreigner. Like silver plate actually meant please.

Granny held the firm belief that everyone would understand if she spoke in a loud, clear voice.
She walked up to the woman, keeping a couple of feet away in case being foreign was contagious, and cleared her throat.
"I," she said loudly, "am a witch."
It was all the hat's fault. If she'd had the hat there would be no need of pointing it out. But she'd better make everything clear from the beginning. Witches weren't very common outside of Lancre.
"My name is Mistress Weatherwax. What is this place?"

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ellen_ripley
2009-05-31 03:08 pm UTC (link)

A witch? Ripley blinked. Either the lady was completely crazy, or ... wait, hadn't there used to be a wierd religion, on Earth, with people who'd said they were witches? Such things had faded into obscurity a long time ago, but it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that there were a few people that still clung to such beliefs.

Ok, so crazy, or religious. Which, in Ripley's book, was still crazy.

"No need to yell, Miss Weatherwax. I'm not deaf." She said. "I'm Ripley. And I have /no/ idea where we are or what this place is." She stared around her again. TREES. And ... was that /snow/? Ripley glanced down at herself. Hell, she'd better find clothes, fast, if there was /snow/ here. Granted, there were only little piles of it up against the trees, but still. It didn't bode well. Ripley may have never been on Earth, but she knew enough about weather systems to know snow meant cold. She was /not/ dressed for cold.

Spotting the boxes, she grabbed one, turning it over in her hands and listening to the contents clank around before opening it.

More confusion. A bottle of what she presumed was water, socks, a little clear bottle of ... she wasn't sure /what/ the little pill-looking things were, but the label said Tic Tacs. Matches. It was the last item that threw her.

A book of paper. Ripley picked it up and stared at it. Such things were all but unheard of where she came from. Datachips and computers had long since replaced the bulk of them. Oh, things still got printed out, like at the fiasco of a meeting ... Ripley made a face at the memory, then shook her head and flipped the thing open.

Writing. Lots of it. In different styles, from the neat and precise to something so shaky and twisted she couldn't make it out.

Mysteries on top of mysteries. She flipped the journal closed, picking up the pen that had been attached and turning it around in her hands for a moment before returning both to the box and closing it.

Right. Crazy shit going down. Story of her life lately. So. First order of business. Clothes. Second ... shelter. Third ... find out what in the /hell/ was going on here.

She got to her feet slowly, grimacing as her stomach did a flip-flop.

"I don't know about you, but I intend to find out what's going on." She said. "And see if some friends of mine got tossed here too." She /really/ needed to find Hicks if he was here. He had been badly injured. And Newt would be scared out of her /mind/.

Fourth order of business ... find Newt and Hicks.

It was getting to be a long list.

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ms_weatherwax
2009-06-01 11:53 am UTC (link)

Granny's lips pursed. "Mistress Weatherwax," she repeated sternly.
She acknowledged somewhat reluctantly the fact that the other woman could speak her own language, but this didn't make her any less foreign. From the way she kept looking around, too, you would say she'd never seen a tree in her own life!
She obviously had no idea of where they were either. Not that Granny had expected much more - you could trust foreigners to get lost even in their own country.
When the woman picked up the box and looked through its contents, Granny closed her eyes and let her mind reach out...

At first the forest seemed much like any other forest she'd seen in her life.
However a couple of squirrels running nervously on the branches above her head were the first sign that something was amiss. She could feel the confusion in their small rodent minds. Snow. Suddenly. Not in winter, no food stored. Then again no more snow.
Her mind did the mental equivalent of a frown as she moved further away, to a deer that raised his nose to sniff the air and smelled humans. He swiftly moved away, to a deeper and safer part of the forest where people wouldn't go.
Granny could feel something else, some other mind, but she couldn't quite figure out what it was. She would have to extend her mind further...

The old witch returned to her own body, steadying herself against a tree while the first moment of dizziness passed. She felt even more confused than before, angry with the world and angry with herself. She'd been... scared! Too scared to try and probe that other mind!
It didn't matter that nobody would know about that weakness. She'd know, and that was more than enough for Granny.
She realized that the other woman was saying something. At least it seemed as if she hadn't noticed her temporary absence. It was always embarrassing to have to explain that she wasn't dead but just temporarily out of her body.

Granny thoroughly supported the idea of finding out what's going on, but she also supported the idea of getting some hot tea and some scones if possible.
"There is a village nearby," Granny said. She wasn't entirely sure of which direction it was, the world was rather different when seen through the eyes of a deer. But she picked a direction that seemed possible and stuck with it.
She turned to check whether the other woman was following before walking away. Not that Ripley would be in danger if she stayed there: nearby there wasn't anything more dangerous than Granny Weatherwax, but the forest was somehow unnerving. It was as if someone was spying them, and Granny couldn't pick up their mind.

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ellen_ripley
2009-06-01 02:49 pm UTC (link)

Ripley sighed. "I'd love to come with, but I'm not exactly dressed to march up Main Street. Even where I come from, doing that in one's pajamas is frowned on. I'm going to have to find somewhere to lay low until I can get /some/ sort of covering for my lower half worked out."

Fortunately, she could see a large, somewhat worn building of some kind through the trees. She pointed in its direction when Weatherwax looked back at her.

"I'm heading that way. Good luck, Miss Weatherwax."

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ms_weatherwax
2009-06-05 10:48 am UTC (link)

At least she had the decency to admit that she was practically naked. Granny didn't know what a pajama was and didn't want to know, but it was obvious that it was not decent to walk around dressed (hah!) like that. She gave Ripley a look of pure disapproval, which wasn't much of a change from her usual expression anyway.

"It's Mistress Weatherwax," Granny insisted once again.
She would have offered to fetch a dress for her, but her attitude was getting on her nerves. Besides she disliked people who ran around without their drawers on.
So she simply nodded and marched off stiffly, glad to be rid of such troublesome company.

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