lostcarnival | [CLOSED] Shadows and Light

Who: Rita, Carly
Where: The Wardrobe Tent
What: 'What do you mean you're MADE OF LIGHT' - RITA INVESTIGATES
Warnings: CARLY WHINES, PROBABLY

The Wardrobe Tent is a place that everyone-or at least everyone with a change of clothes-has likely seen at least once. Attached to the backstage portions of the Big Top for convienience, its inside is perhaps most organized where all of the make-up and dressing are done.

Which is to say, it absolutely isn't at the entrance. Fabric of all colours, textures, and patterns make up the inside, with one particularly long stretch dangling and tangling in loops along the celing which drop down every now and then-never seeming to be the same colour. Sewing machines and an enormous spinning wheel sit in the back with the massive '3D Printer/Recycler', while at the front among chairs of varying sizes and comfort levels, one can see the Mannequin...hopefully in its default position.

There's also a coffee machine there, but it's a bit closer to where the manager herself is. Which is to say, at the sewing machines.

To watch Carly at work, is to watch contained chaos-every limb is being put to work, making it perhaps easy to see how she's unintentionally convinced others to ask for a few extra hands themselves. She's certainly doing phenomenally without extra hands, her straw-like tongue both gripping and drinking from a bottle of iced phoenix fruit juice, wings pressing or stretching out sheets of fabric as needed while her feet either run the machines or even send a few pieces through to meet the needle. Her hands do the same-that, or they're creating strings of fire, blended violet-gold-orange and red, cutting sheets cleanly into appropirate portions for the job.

So hard at work she is, she quite likely doesn't notice anyone coming in. Which leaves plenty of time to observe the light floating off from her form like liquid, before it disperses into the air...

...One cannot watch forever however, assuming one doesn't interrupt immediately. It may be best to try not to startle her to do so though. It could get...Blinding otherwise.

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Rita enters quietly, then stops, standing in the doorway and taking in the... everything going on here.

She hasn't been to the wardrobe tent in a while. Being neither a performer nor a fashion-concerned sort, there hasn't been any need to, at least not since she first grew in her wings and had to get a few things altered. She recalls this place being a bit of a mess and a place that practically screams eccentric, but it looks like it's become even more so in the past few months. The manager's own appearance only seems to add to that impression.

"Hey," Rita finally says after loitering in the doorway for a bit. "I'm here to continue that talk we were having."

"Hmn-!" Taking the time to loiter, strangely, is what means Carly's response to Rita is only muted surprise. While she certainly jumps a touch, the light she emenates doesn't brighten any further- the woman simply stops the machines, lowers to a more typical three-inch-hover off the ground, and sets her mug down after briefly taking it in her hands. "Oh! Right! Ahhh... ...Do you want to sit for this, or..."

Suffice to say, she seems a bit nervous about the matter.

"Doesn't matter," Rita says simply as she steps deeper into the tent, glancing around as she does, the various fabrics and devices grabbing her attention.

Seeing how nervous Carly appears, however, she seems to reconsider. This might be a long story. So despite the apathetic response, Rita grabs a stool, pulls it close enough for a conversation, and sits.

"You were going to tell me about something that happened after Portland?" she begins, prompting Carly to continue the story.

"Ahhh... ...Yes," she coughs, only slightly less nervous by the motion to take a seat. The woman herself does the same, albeit with a nearby chair instead.

"Before Portland- and I mean before," Carly explains seriously, "...I was...technically 'undead'. I shared my body with demon- the Earthbound God of Darkness, 'Aslla Piscu'. He..." Well. She crosses her arms, chewing her lip. "...He wasn't nice. At all. But since the Ringmaster had us here obviously, he couldn't do a lot...and for a while I really thought he'd come around..! But..."

The woman sighs. "...That wasn't the case...When we were in Portland, I forgot everything about myself...but Aslla Piscu didn't, and he tried to take advantage of it. So I asked the Ringmaster to help me get rid of him..."

Which is, of course, where things got 'tricky'. "The problem with that though, was that I was already using a lot of his magic for things! Things that saved a lot of us when it got too rough!" Carly insists. "So I asked her to help me take his power in the process!"

....

There is...a slow point to herself. "Ahhh....so...this happened, when we finished. ...Before, I was all covered in black feathers! Pretty much a shadow with eyes!"

She was undead...? A doubtful look immediately crosses Rita's face at that, but she holds off on any comments until Carly's done.

"So... you were possessed by a demon, and she helped you kill the demon and absorb its power? And that caused... all of this?" She waves a hand at... all of Carly. There's a lot going on there. Does purging a demon somehow create... light? The logic's a bit fuzzy, as far as Rita can tell.

As they talk, however, Rita studies Carly, trying to use her third eye to detect any hints of familiar types of magic.

"Exactly!~ Well, I wasn't really...Possessed while here, it was more we were both around?" She frowns, trying to explain it. "I could hear him on my own, when we first started here, and he could talk to others if I let him...but after a while, he could talk from my shadow on his own... ...The Ringmaster kept him from ever taking control over me though; it was why I thought it was fine for him to stay a bit..."

There is a sigh over what was probably a bunch of common sense. "I still don't get how eating a shadow's power does this, but it doesn't change it..." As she says that, the third eye will probably just pick up a load of Carnival-based magic. It was eased in using the Ringmaster, after all. There is certainly something faintly demonic about Carly's own significant chunk, but it's watered down in a sense- Aslla Piscu may have been a demonic god by the standards of her world, but in the scheme of the multiverse, he was pretty small potatoes.

"Hmm... so despite the composition of your body being light, there's still a trace of Darkness in you, likely from the demon's influence..." At least, Rita assumes that counts as far as the primordial concept goes. Even if that demon of hers may be different from the ones residing in the hellish world the Ringmaster referred to, it could easily be a reflection of those entities, thereby possessing some measure of their qualities...

--Right. There's more Rita wanted to get through, before getting too deep into theorizing.

"You said before that you found a passage about Light and Darkness. Do you still have that information?"

"Ahh...there is?" Yikes! Carly half jumps, swallowing rather audibly. "Sh...shoot... ...do you think being a Harbringer for a bit would have affected that..?" Yes Carly, it definitely affected that-

But, Rita proposes a very lovely distraction to that sort of anxiety, and the woman is quick to answer. "Mm-! I put the original back, but..." She hops up, moving to the desk so she can dig out a notebook. "It was really short- it took no time at all to just write down what was there in the first place..."

She holds it for Rita to see-

A soul is both the Light and the Shadow it casts. Good and Evil are inextricable, they thought.

They are one in the same.

When even the Light invites Darkness, they must both be found unworthy. The mortal soul would be purged, only purified by yielding to a new and better form.

"Actually, that's debatable," Rita says, in regard to the Harbinger issue. "The essence of Void is fundamentally different from Darkness, even if they're both things that humans typically associate with 'evil'." Chances are that both of those aspects have left their marks on Carly's soul, to some degree.

She leans in to get a good look at the copied passage, then whips out a notepad and pen to jot it down for herself.

"The heck is that last line supposed to mean...?" she wonders, her brow furrowed.

"Mnh... I guess that makes sense...I had to wonder, since when I was in the Harbringer state, all my light would be extinguished..." Ah well. With a shrug on the topic, she moves on- looking at the line in question as her own brows knit together as well.

"Mnh...my best guess is that it's referring to humans, and similar...Faerie aren't really considered mortal, and there's a few other things that aren't 'mortal' themselves, I'm pretty sure...but us?

"We're sort of...squishy, if that makes sense. Just look what happens working here..! I'd bet trying to go that deep on the soul means..." Well. She swallows. "...It probably means some irreparable damage..."

"I wonder if it's got something to do with Lilith's plans to create a perfect soul. Purging a soul, purifying it into a 'better' form..." It certainly sounds consistent, though Rita still doesn't fully understand what 'better' means in this context.

With the notes taken, Rita slips the notepad back into her pocket and rises to her feet. She's done what she came here to do.

"Mmm. Quite probably...I have a feeling that anything that did yield couldn't handle it though- not if everyone else's finds are any sign... ...Ah-" She blinks as Rita stands, doing so herself.

"Mnnh, I guess there wasn't a lot to be said, huh... ...Explaining the light and dark in my case just really isn't the best thing for the public channel, though," she adds, laughing a bit nervously.

"...Thank you for coming here for that." Instead of, y'know. What others have done.

Which is keep pressing. Until she cracks.

[CLOSED] Shadows and Light

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