???????

[forkedroad]

Who: Annabelle and YOU!
What: WHAT IS TECHNOLOGY??
When: D55 dusk
Where: The backyard


Annabelle has been trudging around the backyard after an...interesting introduction to her eccentric roommate, which she has deemed as an overall satisfactory interaction. But there are other things to experience! And while she's walking around, kind of staring at the trailers with vague unease, because they are incredibly strange, the walky-talky thing she has tucked into her belt suddenly goes off.

She jumps, and drops it. It falls into the dirt, and she hears some chatter. She furrows her eyebrows, immediately lunging for it, and she tilts her head. Then, when she hears more voice, she tilts the device itself. She gives it a shake, looking increasingly puzzled. And agitated, actually.

So hey, if you're out and about in your neighborhood, you might find a tall, awkward girl you don't recognize standing in someone's garden, perhaps, shaking the communication device like it's a margarita-to-be. And she's caught sight of you, because she calls out, demanding and confused with the thing in her clutches, "What is this?"

Comments

[kingsroads]

Strange can't help but laugh, a charmed sort of laugh, nothing malicious. Powerful and all knowing? Now that's ambition! And it's something he recognizes and appreciates about Annabelle already. After all, it's better to go out and know something than it is to sit idly by and accept the limitations placed on you.

"I can understand that. It's always better to yearn to be all knowing than to be one of those fools who accepts limitations."

[forkedroad]

Annabelle laughs, raising her eyebrows. She doesn't disagree, though. If the hermit had heard Strange say such words, he would have been disappointed in Annabelle's agreeing. Her interest is cementing into something else, very quickly—something she's not familiar with, but it's something like a feeling of kinship.

"I think so too. Life's only true limitation is death, and recently, I believe even that is possibly debatable."

[kingsroads]

"Oh, that's certainly debatable," Strange says, without a pause and without waiting. "Both in my world, the Carnival, and other's worlds, people have been brought back from the dead by various magical methods."

There's no bitterness or censure in Strange's tone: talking about raising the dead is said matter-of-factly, secure in the knowledge that he's right.

[forkedroad]

"I'd heard of it," Annabelle responds, her eyes maybe a little too eager and sparkling, the faintest of smiles at the corner of her lips. "Fabled tales of forbidden magic, largely chalked up to being fantastical conjecture. My mentor won't confirm when I ask about its applications in real history, which confirms everything; I know it's real."

With both her fingers, she folds her hair behind her ears, now beaming. "What have you heard of raising the dead in the Carnival?"

[kingsroads]

"I'm still trying to figure that much out," Strange admits. He's also a bit too eager, talking about this as he would talk about a new scholarly development or a new treatise, not literal life and death. "From what I understand, it's some form of a ritual, performed by the Ringmaster ahead of time. One can't be brought back from the dead as an afterthought, the ritual before the death is required."

Which honestly? Is very interesting.

"And don't worry. My mentor refuses to talk about the precise nature of raising the dead as well, despite the fact that all of London society knows he's performed that magic. I had to resort to blood magic of all things during my time in the peninsula."