Audience - Laurence Nimith

[holyspirits]

Comments

week 2, monday

[hotfixer]

[ ramiel is just vibing in the mansion lobby. living room, now, i guess! she's sitting cozy on a couch. ]

Hi again.

[outdistanced]

[ cola help. he's eyeing the memorials for a moment first. ]

Glad they got those cleaned up... [ back to ramiel. ] Hey. You've got a minute, right?

[ she doesn't look busy. ]

[hotfixer]

But now they're glued to the wall...

[ :unsure: but she sits up a little straighter. ]

Yes, always.

[outdistanced]

Not the best solution, but if it's all we have...

[ makes a face. anyway. ]

It's nothing that important, but... here.

[ a bouquet! delphinium, hydrangea, forget me not, purple poppy, and eucalyptus, all tied with blue ribbon. ]

[hotfixer]

[ !!! she will take the bouquet very carefully. ]

This is for me?

[outdistanced]

I'd be giving it to someone else if it wasn't.

[ ok enough sass ]

I don't know much about flowers and I wasn't sure what you'd like, but I tried to make it look nice.

[hotfixer]

[ ignores the sass. ]

They're beautiful. I've never gotten flowers before! I'm going to put them in my room and look at them every day!

[outdistanced]

You haven't?

[ why is that so surprising. ]

I don't know how long they last after they're cut, though.

[hotfixer]

[ shrugs! at that first thing!

and then the flowers sort of glow for a second in her hand. ] That's okay. I'll put them in stasis just in case.

[outdistanced]

Stasis...? You can do that?

[hotfixer]

Yes. It's just putting a halt on all it's input, output, and internal changes.

Most flowers where I'm from are like this from the start. Not many people still enjoy gardening, so.

[outdistanced]

You say that like it's an easy thing to do. I didn't know it was possible.

They don't...? I thought it might still be a big thing outside the Tower.

[hotfixer]

This is Heaven, so I can do things equivalent to what I could have done before. It's not necessarily something anyone could do.

[ anyway, ] It has more to do with the way culture has shifted across the eras. It probably is still more common, where you're from.

[outdistanced]

It's... kind of cool.

[ kind of freaky, too. ]

I don't know if it is or isn't... The only times I've left the Tower, I went right into the city. They don't really have gardens there.

[hotfixer]

What is the city like, outside the tower?

[outdistanced]

...I haven't seen much of it. Mostly just alleyways and stuff. [ thinking. ] Everything's dirty and dark. You can hear the noise from the rest of the city, but it's further off. Every time I heard someone talking, it was like they were worried about getting caught and arrested.

[hotfixer]

So your tower was better?

[outdistanced]

I think so. It's not as dangerous, either, as long as we follow the rules there, but that's not even that hard to do.

[hotfixer]

I think I understand. We have rules where I'm from too. And as long as you follow them, your life is a lot freer than it would be anywhere else. You can do so much more with your time and control so many more aspects of your life. It's not so different from Heaven.

What sort of rules were there?

[outdistanced]

The big one is not using any powers. Aside from that... I'm only se-- eighteen, so I still have to go to school for a few more years. And we have curfews, but that's like eleven at night.

There are other things like not getting into huge fights, no running in the residential areas - but those are just common sense, anyway.

[hotfixer]

Most of those seem like good rules, but I think you should be able to use your powers. They're yours.

And a few more years? What age does school stop at? Or become optional.

[outdistanced]

We can't do that because demiflora powers can be dangerous. And we're supposed to be living normal lives, anyway, so we shouldn't even need them.

Twenty-one. Then we start working like the rest of the adults.

[hotfixer]

Then they don't trust you to just not use them in dangerous ways? If someone wanted to do something bad with their powers, a rule wouldn't stop them anyway.

What kind of work? Do you stay in the tower?

[outdistanced]

It's probably just to make sure no one's tempted to do more than they should...? I don't know, but we can't really be equal to normal people if we're using our powers however we want. Besides, if they're dumb enough to do it and get caught, they expelled from the Tower.

[ kind of similar to how it's supposed to be here. maybe a little too similar to how it's actually done, in a way. ]

Yeah. It's stuff around the Tower, but I don't know all the specifics.

[hotfixer]

But you aren't normal people if you have powers that they don't. Why do you need to match?

[ don't worry about the similarities between here and there. this is 8 weeks and then you get free reign of powers in heaven! but 21 years??? too long. ]

I guess you'll learn when you get older.