Cat Got Your Tongue?

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[[include component:preview
text="I don't know, the magic in this discharged and now I'm randomly spawning portals."

Yet another portal opens, this time looking out at Jupiter. She stares at that one in particular eyes wide and jaw hanging slightly open in disbelief.]]

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[[include component:image-block name=https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/local--files/cat-got-your-tongue/Carissa%20and%20Arty%20Resize.jpg|caption=Carissa and Artemis]]
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**Cat Got Your Tongue?**
**Author:** [[*user DrBleep]] & [[*user Queerious]]

Worlds and character collide, and the result is exactly what you'd expect out of Carissa and Dr. Heather Garrison.

[[[Forgotten Memories Hub]]]
[[[Seas of Orcadia Hub]]]

[[include :scp-wiki:info:end]]
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+ Cat Got Your Tongue?
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------

Coral crunches underneath [[[Swallowed by a Prideful, Lesbian sea | Carissa's]]] hiking boots as pebbles fall away and tumble down the cliffside. She catches her footing as she climbs into the ruins a structure made out of coral, but as if it grew directly into the cavern under a controlled hand. She was currently just southeast of Kalamata, and a recent earthquake had caused a minor rockface to slide away, revealing this peculiar set of archaeological sites. So, of course, they had called her in, due to the difficult verticality.

"What do you see, Decimus?" calls a researcher; one of her usual cadre, but one whose name her brain just simply refuses to remember.

"Lot of fucking coral," she replies snarkily, as she hooks one of her nail-like claws into a small gap and hauls herself up. She glances around, a chamber of sorts laid out before her with a smattering of what looks like furniture made out of coral, shells, and bone.

"I've got a room up here with what looks like a desk, a chair, maybe some sort of shelving unit?" She climbs up fully into the room. "Pottery, and a bunch of tools."

"Pictures?" Comes the reply from the man below.

"Keep your pants on, I'm taking them." She pulls out her phone and starts snapping pictures. The shutter clicks, echoing through the forgotten shelter. "I don't think this is of human origin. It might be Finnfolk, but the bones look human, so maybe not. They don't tend to use their dead, or human dead for that matter, for furniture." She sends off the photos.

"So what do you think then?"

"Well, it could be a lot of things." She steps in and starts poking around. She'd been doing this with the Foundation, she didn't call them the Jailers anymore, thanks to a memetic effect employed by someone within the department, going on four years now. She is still bitter about the memetic effect, especially since no one would cop to it.

Something glints in the light of the sun. It shines through a small circular window in the coral, catching her eye. She approaches carefully; a chain made of bone links attached to a small conch shell is perfectly situated on the desk. There might have been some sort of kelp-based paper draped over it at one time, but all that was left of that were piles of disintegrated fiber.

She gently hooks a nail under the chain and lifts it slowly and carefully, one hand-held underneath in case it shattered from age. The shell was magic, she could feel it, but she couldn't resolve precisely what. A pair of carefully crafted hooks on one end of the loop, designed to clasp or unclasp for ease of putting on or taking off.

"Hmmm. I found something," Carissa calls down. "It's got some ma- thaumic aspects to it." [[span style="color:red"]]//Now was it a necklace, or a bracelet for the waist/torso? Merfolk and Sirens did that sometimes, but this looks a little too small to be the latter.//[[/span]] She slides the chain over her neck and releases it, letting it come to rest against her chest. She examines it using the silver sheen and reflective surface of one of her smaller portals like a hand mirror.

Carissa blinks, and as soon as the necklace slides into place, the magic in the shell discharges and is rendered inert. Both ears stand pert on her head as she listens for anything that might be off.

"Oh! Interesting, could you extend the ladder down?" The researcher called up.

"Uh yeah one second, the magic in the necklace just discharged." Her head snaps over as a full-sized portal opens near the wall, an empty field with several cows munching grass on the other side.

[[span style="color:red"]]//I didn't fucking do that? Did I?//[[/span]]

"What was that Carissa?" The researcher called up.

"Uh, something's going on." Another portal pops open, this one in the middle of the Sahara desert. [[span style="color:red"]]//Uh oh.//[[/span]]

"Carissa, you're speaking gibberish. What's going on?"

She walks over to the edge of the coral and pushes the unfolding ladder down, taking the necklace off and looking at it. "I don't know, the magic in this discharged and now I'm randomly spawning portals."

Yet another portal opens, this time looking out at Jupiter. She stares at that one in particular eyes wide and jaw hanging slightly open in disbelief.

"I'm coming up, you're not making any sense." Carissa backs away from the ledge, still staring at the Jupiter portal on the wall, necklace in hand. The man climbs off the top of the ladder, looks at Carissa holding the necklace, and then at the portals. "What the hell?"

"I have no fucking idea. How do you not understand me, I'm speaking clear as day and the acoustics are good in here." Carissa's lips curl down in a frown, frustration growing. Yet another portal opens, this one looking out at a sky with three suns, and a volcano erupting purple-tinted lava down the slopes of a tropical island.

"Gillespie, we should probably call this in." The researcher whose name she STILL could not remember calls down to the rest of the team. "She's speaking pure gibberish, I think she's been exposed to something, and it might have something to do with this necklace."

"I'm speaking English, motherfucker. Do you not understand me? The magic discharged on the shell." Yet another portal opened, this time into the Library.

"Carissa, I have no idea what you're saying, you need to come back to the base. We're going to get an expert to come to look at this necklace to try and reverse whatever is going on." The man holds his hands up, palms facing toward her at the fluffing out of her tail fur.

[[span style="color:red"]]//Great, just what I need, one more academic dickhead who can't communicate. Hope they get Mary fucking Poppins to at least make it interesting.//[[/span]]

------

"You better bring back a gift."

Doctor Heather Garrison laughs, phone against her head. "You want a gift? From... Sorry, let me check my notes. Right, the middle of fucking nowhere?"

"I don't give a shit, bring me back something you stole from the head researcher there." Lillian Lillihammer, her girlfriend, said from the other end, her irritation mixing with her impatience. "I still don't know why you had to go there in person."

"They saw the work I'd done years ago with Luca and thought I could help; hey, I just got here, so I'm going to have to let you go, alright?"

"//Never let me go, Jack!//"

"Love ya Lils, talk to you later."

"Love you too. Be safe."

As she hung up, Heather looked around the temporary holding site she had been flown out to and was already disappointed; sure, her expectations were low, but this was... rough.

She would have loved to come to Greece, on vacation, but the Foundation never chose the most picturesque locations for their sites. And when it came to interiors, let's just say they weren't winning any awards. Scanning the room, Heather observed a number of scientists gathered around an object, standing a fearful distance away.

//[[span style="color: rgba(130,81,145,0.7); text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #848484;"]]That's probably why I'm here.[[/span]]// It didn't look like much, and judging by the confused and vapid stares she saw the other researchers giving the item, Heather felt like this wouldn't take long. //[[span style="color: rgba(130,81,145,0.7); text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #848484;"]]Maybe there's somebody less dull who can catch me up to speed?[[/span]]//

On the other side of the temporary site was a door to a holding cell, covered in paper warnings. 'Do Not Enter!', 'Authorized Personal Only', 'Warning! Critical Anomalous Danger Present!', and more.

//[[span style="color: rgba(130,81,145,0.7); text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #848484;"]]No better place to start, right?[[/span]]//

------

Heather Garrison didn't know what to expect behind the doorway. The cynical part of her expected a bathroom, while the bored part of her hoped that it would be a memetic discovery that would be an interesting puzzle to solve.

No part of her expected to get hit in the face with a paper football.

"Ow." Heather says, blinking in confusion. "Oh, hi, I'm Heather. I was called in to help with... whatever this is. And you are?"

Heather finally saw the lone figure sitting in the room. Whatever mysteries the room could have held, Heather never would have guessed what she saw. Seated on a chair, sitting up now and blinking at her, was a woman with a mane of maroon locks dripping from her head, sharp yellow eyes with catlike sclera, a pair of large fuzzy cat-ears and a //tail//? The tilts of the head, the pertness of the ears, and the way her lips pursed together said everything. 'Who the fuck are you?'

//[[span style="color: rgba(130,81,145,0.7); text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #848484;"]]She's adorable.[[/span]]// It took everything in Heather not to go over and pet the woman right behind the ears, but she managed to control herself.

"Oh sorry, do you work for the Foundation?" Heather asks, still stunned.

The expression on the woman's face changes to one of surprise. She clearly wasn't expecting anyone to walk through the door. She opens her mouth to say something, but stops, and then nods once.

"I just got here, can you give me a rundown on the situation? You seem... less panicked than the rest of the researchers."

Carissa shakes her head no. Her ears flop with the motion, drooping

"No." //[[span style="color: rgba(130,81,145,0.7); text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #848484;"]]Interesting.[[/span]]// Heather thought, grabbing a chair and sitting on it backwards. "Were you always like that or... cat got your tongue?"

She couldn't help herself.

If looks could kill, the one she got now would have pierced her clean through. The woman says something, but it's pure gibberish to Heather's ear. At the same time, there's a little popping noise, as space-time tears open across the room to, of all places -- the Moon.

"Now; that is fascinating." Heather gestures at the portal. "Could you do that before, or is that part of the anomaly?"

She nods yes to the before part of her question. Carissa turns her head slightly, ears pert, and extends a hand. A silver sheen ripples in the air from where her fingertips touch, before blossoming outwards into a full sized portal to an ocean-side beach. Heather recognizes the coastline from when she flew in to Greece.

//[[span style="color: rgba(130,81,145,0.7); text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #848484;"]]Right.[[/span]]// Heather nods to herself. //[[span style="color: rgba(130,81,145,0.7); text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #848484;"]]So if the anomaly isn't her abilities...[[/span]]// "When did you lose your speech? Was there a specific trigger you looked at or was it a spell of some kind?"

She makes a little gesture, something circling her neck, like a string, and then a spiraling motion with one finger. And then makes a fist and then pulls it back while opening her hand, making a "Peeeeohhh" noise.

"You tried to hang yourself, and now you can't speak? You know that typically happens when you hurt your throat that much." The grin and glint in Heather's eyes said enough to know that it was a joke. "A necklace?"

Carissa squints at her, one hand curling into a fist, nails long and claw-like. Finally, she nods at Heather's response.

"Wait, back up a second," Heather interjects, "you can make noises without any problems?"

Carissa nods, and shrugs.

Heather stares at the woman; no, not at the woman, but past her. Carissa watches as Heather's eyes glaze over, her pupils flickering from side to side in a rapid fire burst, like spent shells ejecting out of a machine gun. After some time, Heather's focus returns to her.

"The anomaly isn't targeting your speech. It's targeting your //language//. We'd need to do more digging, but I think that the conceptual center of your lang... no, it has to be something else, maybe an ontokinetic supplantation? No, that would need to-- wait, I'm jumping ahead of myself. Do you have a pen and paper?"

-----

Carissa gestures at the pen, paper and lines of perfectly legible text. Well, at least to her they are legible; gibberish to everyone else. [[span style="color:red"]]//This one jumps to the fucking point real quick, though she'll be real disappointed when she sees they've already fucking tried to have me write.//[[/span]] Carissa muses, still fuming and confused over the 'cat got your tongue' comment and the hanging joke. Her tail flicks behind her as she watches the newcomer, a hint of anxiety in her eyes. [[span style="color:red"]]//If you start poking and prodding me, I'm going to rip your throat out.//[[/span]]

Heather's eyes quickly scan the page, and push it to the side. "Okay, not that. Can you make another sound?"

Carissa raises an eyebrow and emits a popping noise with her lips, not using her vocal chords. Just to, you know, be a nuisance. Her lips curl up slightly in a smug look of success.

"Okay. Phonemes next; don't try to make a word, just focus on making a noise." Heather leans forward expectantly.

[[span style="color:red"]]//Hmm, no reaction to being fucked with.//[[/span]] Carissa makes an 'aaaaaa' noise. Nothing happens.

"Okay, stay with me here: I want you to think think about a sentence, like 'I am going to kill you if you keep asking me to do stupid things', and then just say the 'I' part out loud."

"I--" and a moment later, a portal tears open across the room, this time into a humid jungle. [[span style="color:red"]]//Never mind, she definitely got the message.//[[/span]]

"Great." Heather nods, looking smugly at Carissa. "Now I want you to forget about words, and just focus on making the same noise with your mouth. Just a noise, not a word."

"I". Carissa made the same noise, but nothing happened this time as she emptied her head of all thoughts. All of them. Even the running math equations she'd need to ditch this popsicle stand.
[[span style="color:red"]]//Oh, that's fucking weird. Why does **that** work?//[[/span]]

"I fucking knew it. Stay right here, I'll be right back, okay?" Heather gets up and quickly dashes out of the room.

Carissa blinks, watching her run out of the room. Her ears stand up as she listens with her extremely sensitive hearing. The sounds of rummaging happening in the other room reach her, as well as the researchers mumbling around the necklace. [[span style="color:red"]] //Fucking idiots are still poking at that spent piece of magic like its a dead body. At least this girl is competent, whatever the hell she's doing out there.//[[/span]]

A few seconds later, Heather opens the door and comes in with the same energy that she left with, a small vial clutched in her hand. "Sorry, I just had to get this from my bag. How do you feel about breaking Foundation policy?"

Carissa arches an eyebrow and her ears stand straight up. [[span style="color:red"]]//Oh this one. This one I fucking like.//[[/span]] She tilts, peeking past Heather to make sure none of the dimwits outside are peeking in, and nope, all are still gathered around the necklace. She gives Heather a thumbs up.

"Perfect. I'm not supposed to have this. Well, technically, it doesn't exist beyond theory. We're a little bit... rebellious at Site-43?" Heather grabs the chair and leverages it against the door, blocking the handle. "Do you want to do some drugs?"

[[span style="color:red"]]//Oh my gods, I think I'm in love.//[[/span]] Carissa makes a snickering noise, and gives her a double thumbs up.

"Right. This is MC-88, a drug we use in M&C for the weirder problems -- it will synchronize our noospheric fields and all--" Heather cuts herself off, as she watches Carissa's eyes glaze over. "Right. All you need to know is that it will put us into the same dreamscape. Are you alright with that?"

Carissa arches an eyebrow at dreamscape. [[span style="color:red"]]//Fuck it, better than nothing. Hope she likes math and **her**.//[[/span]] And nods once.

"Okay." Heather begins to unscrew the cap, but pauses, hesitating. "Wait. Before we do this, I have to warn you; my mindscape is, how should I put this, unstable? There's an antinoospheric thoughtform I had to deal with, don't worry about it, but... I don't know if that will cause any problems. If you don't want to go through with this, just say something, okay? Well shit, I mean, nod, yeah? Just because I think this will work doesn't mean I want you to get sucked into my problems, especially ones that big."

[[span style="color:red"]]//Not a fucking problem. Bring it, I need a good fight.//[[/span]] Carissa nods, and holds out a hand. Where her fingers touch the air, that silver sheen appears, but this time instead of spreading into a portal, they sink into it up to her wrist. After a moment, she pulls out an intricate and ornate bow. [[span style="color:red"]]//For insurance, hopefully you get that.//[[/span]]

Heather nods, staring in appreciation of the details. "Last time I saw the fucker, I conceptually nuked it, so we should be fine. But informed consent, you know?" Heather smiles, a joke trying to ease the mood. She grabs two small cups from the side of the room and pours a splash of the thick, shimmering liquid into them. She passes one to Carissa, and puts the other down in front of her.

Carissa stares at the cup of liquid, and then holds it up to her nose, sniffing.

"Now once we drink this, we'll need to enter our mindscapes -- in this case, we're going to go into yours. Normally, I'd use Lilli's cards but... this will have to do for now." Heather begins to draw a series of shapes and patterns onto a nearby page.

Carissa watches Heather, tail flicking behind her in slow twitching waves, waiting for her to finish. [[span style="color:red"]]//Well this is strange. Doing drugs with a stranger, it's like straight out of one of those mindfuck Hollywood movies.//[[/span]]

Heather groans, rubbing her temple with her left hand, as the right finishes the remaining patterns on the page. "Fucker, come on-- okay. Done." She covers the page up, and turns to look at Carissa, half-out of it. "Once we drink this, you'll need to look at the cognitohazard that I just... well I just made it. But it should knock us both out, and we should end up in your mindscape. You ready?"

[[span style="color:red"]]//Cheers mate.//[[/span]] Carissa nods, blinking at Heather's reactions. She picks up the cup in her hand, tail flicking behind her.

Heather raises her cup in mock cheers, downing it like a shot. Carissa downs hers as well, swirling the thick and thin liquid at the same time. She didn't like that it tasted like nothing, but swallows none the less.

"Okay, now look at this." Heather moves her hand and reveals the newly inked cognitohazard. Carissa looks at it. The last thing that Carissa hears before she passes out worries her, but it's too late.

"God, I hope this works."

[[span style="color:red"]]//Why the fu--//[[/span]]

------

Heather wakes up on a beach, the sound of a gentle tide stirring her into conceptual realization. There's something rich about this place, as if it's less a dream and more a malleable reality that burns with thaumaturgic fire. Before her, slightly back from the shore, rests a cottage balanced on stilts, modern in its construction, but simple in its style.

There are a few struts here or there that indicate that there may have been another cottage or two nearby at one time, but no longer. She covers her eyes -- the sky above burns with starlight, blistering waves of color and aurora borealium.

"Fuck, it's bright in here." Her words echo through the mindscape, as she looks around, scanning the horizon for the other woman. She is nowhere to be found.

"The cottage then?"

Seems like the cottage is the best destination to check. //[[span style="color: rgba(130,81,145,0.7); text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #848484;"]]It's probably an important place for the... catgirl? Lillian is going to fucking scream.[[/span]]// A streak of starlight arcs through the sky, blindingly green, just careening off towards the horizon.

//[[span style="color: rgba(130,81,145,0.7); text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #848484;"]]This dreamscape is... okay mine was fucked up, but this mindscape feels less like a dream and more... real? Who the hell is this girl?[[/span]]//

Sure, her sample size was... well one, plus what Lillian had told her. At a certain point, she had to wonder if she had done something wrong in her life to keep ending up in weirder and weirder situations. Shrugging, she continues down the path. After a time that was both too long, and far to short, Heather arrives at the base of the cottage, staring up at the winding and interlacing stilts.

"Anybody home?"

She gets a groan in response as Carissa steps out, blinking, and rubbing her eyes. She looks up at the sky and then down at Heather. "You didn't fucking warn me about the headache." The kiwi in her accent comes out strongly, mixed with something else, Greek?

"You didn't tell me to bring a bikini." Heather snaps back.

Carissa flicks a finger and Heather is in a dark green bikini top, straps crossing over and fitting her snugly. "Fucking happy?"

//[[span style="color: rgba(130,81,145,0.7); text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #848484;"]]If I get to keep this? Yeah I am.[[/span]]//

"Happy enough. I'm Heather, by the way."

"Carissa. Finally someone who's fucking competent." She pinches the bridge of her nose carefully with her fingers, claw-like nails carefully positioned so she doesn't tear out her own eyes.

"I know, right?" Heather sighs, stretching and basking in the sun. "There's no good beaches in Canada, sorry, it's been a while for me. Walk me through what happened?"

"Come inside, I'll make tea." She says turning to go back in the cottage. "Better to be inside the cottage than out, in case //she// decides to make an appearance. The less malleable the environment, the better."

"She?" Heather asks, her curiosity getting the better of her. "Does your girlfriend live here too?"

"In the real world my wife does, but not in here." Carissa flicks her tail as she turns and enters the cottage. "...most of the time, at least."

"Your wife?" Heather asks as she follows her in, looking around the cottage as she does.

The interior of the cottage consists of a cozy kitchen in the entryway. Further inside, through a doorway, Heather can see a sitting room with a fireplace, as well as a few more doors, likely a bathroom, a bedroom, and maybe a study of some kind. All three are decently well decorated with books, a few paintings, some personal knick-knacks, and at least one mounted boar's head.

"Yeah. But we can't do that without being in very close physical proximity." She pauses considering wording as her ears flick. A little bit of a blush creeping across her cheeks, before it slides away. "Very close. She's not the one I'm worried about." The kettle squeaks with steam as Carissa pours two cups of water. "What sort of tea do you like?"

"Whatever." Heather replies, waving her hand. "What has you worried? I mean, other than the fact that you can't speak anymore."

"Worried might be the wrong word." She puts a bag of black tea in one cup, and chamomile in the other, and brings it over. "Meh, I'm not worried about the speaking part as much, I figured they'd have someone who was capable of figuring it out. Thankfully, it was the first person they fucking sent and not the third academic. I almost punched the throat out of one of the researchers when they tried to touch me."

An uneasy silence hangs in the air.

"What sort of clearance do you have?" Carissa asks, unsure how to proceed. She turns head slightly looking up and away considering something.

"Clearance? Huh, I haven't thought about that since my transfer. We don't really have strict... you know what? My clearance is whatever you need it to be."

"Mmm. I guess that tracks. Sherry wouldn't have called in someone who didn't have the clearance to know I existed." She sets the tea tray down on the table and gestures for Heather to sit, as she parks herself in a chair. Her tail fits neatly and cutely through the back of the seating arrangement. There's a third cup on the tray, with a green tea bag in it.

//[[span style="color: rgba(130,81,145,0.7); text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #848484;"]]Three? Odd.[[/span]]//

Heather sits in the chair, crooked, leg thrown over the arm, her frame failing to fit comfortably in her seat, by her own accord. "So the speaking thing, you know, why I'm here; was it that necklace I saw earlier?"

"Yeah, the necklace had a magic charge on it. Didn't expect it to activate from me putting it on. Boy was I wrong, dumbass me." She rubs her temples. "Medea's going to kill me."

"Sounds familiar. Hey, this might sound weird, but can you try and visualize the memory of when you put the necklace on?"

"Sure." Carissa says, as she focuses on the moment she put the necklace on.

"Huh," Heather responds, "I only half-expected that to work."

"You can thank Artemis for that. This place is more real than, well, reality sometimes."

Carissa opens her eyes; in the air, floating above her is a thin silken string, intangible and weightless. It glows with a dull translucence, like jellyfish on a warm summer's night.

"That thread would be the mental connection you have to that memory. Every moment is represented by an object; some people are abstract, but it seems that Artem-- Wait, I'm sorry, like Artemis, the goddess?"

"Yes." Carissa says simply, ears half drooped as she sips at her tea, tail flicking behind her, as if this is the most normal thing in the world. "Honestly, I half expected her to manifest after that last one."

"Oh." Carissa watches as Heather's eyes glaze over for a second, filing that information away for later. "Right, sorry. If we follow the thread, it should lead us to the right memory node.

Heather follows the thread, tracing its course through the air, before finally ending on a small, wooden box. With a slight crack, it opens; inside is a solitary shell.

"This, Carissa, is your memory of putting on the necklace." Heather says smugly as she turns around, displaying the box like a medal case.

Carissa squints at it. “That little fucking thing is a memory?”

"Without the science? Basically yeah, this is your memory of the event." Heather sits back down and places the shell between the two women, on the table. "So."

“So?” Carissa asks.

"Well," Heather begins, "I was hoping you would have some magic bullshit. To be honest."

“I have magic bullshit, but its a very particular kind, involving molecular disassembly and reassembly in a different location. And foresty stuff, mostly animals.” Carissa gestures, tail flicking as one ear stands up, the other remaining drooped.

"Yeah, I don't think that's going to work. Sorry, the last thing I did with memories was destroy a ton in a cascadi-- you know what? Ignore that. You can make portals, right?"

“Yes I can.” She says, doing her best to ignore the memory comment.

"Well, I've been on a streak, maybe this will work too? Do you think you can try to open a portal to the specific memory? It shouldn't work like that, but..." Heather looks around, and gives a shrug. "What do I know?"

“Fuck it, why not.” She holds out her hand and the familiar sheen spreads. It ripples open to the memory.

"Sure, of course that worked. Why wouldn't it? Fuck, this is like... at least three, if not five research papers on the topic, noospheric fields //shouldn't// work like this." Heather shakes her head, standing up. She flashes Carissa a cocky grin. "No time like the past, right?"

“Well it probably helps that, as Medea likes to say, we're ontological Frankensteins. Anyways, you’re good, better than what I was expecting. Props.” To Heather, that seems like the highest compliment possible from Carissa, grinning as she moves through the portal and into the memory.

-----

As the women step through the distortion, colors bend, as reality seems to reassert itself. They are no longer in the cottage; they are in a cave. A chamber carved into the stone, rough and primitive; coral shooting out of the ground and forming itself into non-organic shapes, almost like a living room. On a dull coral desk, lays the necklace, radiating with power.

"This is where you found the necklace?" Heather asks, stabilizing herself to the new location.

"Yeah, this is it. I thought it might have been Finnfolk at first, but," Carissa points at the human bones embedded in the desk. "Those are human bones, and the Finnfolk don't do that, so."

"Huh." Heather says, pacing around the perimeter of the cavern. "If it wasn't Finnfolk, then... who made this?"

"I was trying to figure that out. Could have been a lot of different cryptic or paranatural races. Merfolk, Sirens, so on and so forth." Her tail flicks behind her, as her ears wiggle in thought.

"Okay, let's speculate then." Heather turns to face Carissa. "Of the paranatural races you know, who had this kind of power?"

"Which power specifically?" Carissa asks, tilting one hand, as she curls her fingers, half looking at her nails. "The language override? Or did you mean the sculpting of coral, or the human bone thing?"

"Good question. Yes?"

"Hrm. It would have to be tropical. So that would rule out the Selkie and the Finnfolk. Unless it was the Mediterranean tribes, but I doubt it. So maybe the Adaro, the Merfolk, or the Sirens? But we can safely rule out the Yacuruna."

"Huh. The Sirens? That could mea-- one second, sorry." Heather closes her eyes, focusing her breathing. Carissa watches as an almost unnatural stillness comes over Heather; for a moment, she radiates... not energy, no, the opposite. It's like she's absorbing part of the mindscape around her; just as Carissa is about to say something, Heather opens her eyes and the feeling disappears.

"Okay, I have some answers."

Carissa blinks. "Wha? Just like that?" Both ears stand up and her tail flicks curiously

"I figured, hey, if this noospheric field really is that magical, maybe I can just... will myself into tracing the noospheric ontological connections rooted in the memory node? And as luck would have it, I was able to. I traced the web back to the noosphere, and recognized what I was looking at. It was faded, but... well, actually, it being faded told me more about it than than anything else."

Heather laughs awkwardly, rubbing the back of her neck.

"Anyways, you don't care about the science part. The key thing is this: you're not going to be able to figure out who the race was."

"Noosph- Oh that's the fucking thing Medea's always referring to. Reality bending and shit, ontokinetic this and that." A lightbulb goes off in Carissa's mind, as she pieces things together.

"Yeah, like I said, bullshit science. The point is, you can't know who did this." Heather stares at Carissa, silently begging her to ask the right question.

"Who could know this?" Carissa asks, tilting her head, ears flopping.

"Me probably." A third voice says from behind them. Mischievous and intent on causing trouble.

"That's becau-- wait, who the fuck are you?" Heather says, unprepared.

Carissa nearly jumps out of her fucking skin, tail frizzing out as she whirls around. The third figure, a woman with long green hair, wearing a wreathe of flowers and deer antlers, dressed in very finely tanned skins and leathers looks at Heather as if she asked the stupidest question imaginable. "I'm [[span style="color:green"]]'Me'[[/span]], of course."

[[span style="color:red"]]//**Motherfuck--**, why fucking here?//[[/span]]

Heather stares back, eyes narrowing as her brow furrows. "Of course, how fucking stupid of me, right? You're obviously-- oh, wait. I don't know who you are. That's why I asked the fucking question, you know?"

The stranger looks at Carissa. "She's not Medea, are you seeing new people now?"

"Oh, I have to be her fuckbuddy? Hey asshole, you still haven't answered the question."

"You can't just, fucking do that!" Carissa says to the woman while waving emphatically, tail still frizzed out. "We're in a bit of a situation here."

"A new lover situation?" The stranger's lips curl up at the corner, Cheshire cat in it's appearance.

"Hey Carissa, who the hell is this?" Heather says as she turns to look at her, her eye twitching.

"Heather, Artemis, Artemis, Heather." Carissa says with an exasperated sigh.

"I'm the ontological consciousness of a fused soul, and yes I knew you were going to ask before you asked." The woman says confidently. Her eyes squint, as the smug smile grew larger.

"Eat shit, I'm not going to ask that //anymore//. And hey, you know, thinking about it now, maybe the reason people don't worship you is because //you won't fucking introduce yourself//? Just something to think about." Heather pauses, taking a breath and focusing back to the task at hand. "Anyways, I doubt even you would know who did this."

"Well no, people don't worship me anymore because my Noosphere disruption and Akiva radiation is at... two. Carissa's on the other hand..."

"Right, so who did it," Carissa says, interrupting and cutting Artemis off.

"It's impossible to know." Heather stares back at the two women with a cheeky grin. "Even for a goddess."

They both tilt their heads in confusion. "So what are you saying?" asks Carissa.

"Okay, so. The noosphere has every idea that could possibly be conceived of by any living being. As people die and forget something, that idea doesn't disappear, it stays in the noosphere, ready to be found again." Heather takes a breath, having naturally fallen into her lecture patter. "Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the society responsible for this is a lot like my deadname; it no longer exists."

"Oh yes, I knew that," Artemis says smugly, as Carissa side eyes her.

"You might be asking yourselves, Heather, how could you know that? I'm practically the only expert in this, so that's how. Something happened to the civilization, something cataclysmic. It's not just that they were all killed, no, they were... retroactively erased from existence. There's not a trace of them, not a spec of who they were, or what they did, or why this happened. It's all gone."

Carissa thinks about this for a long moment and then groans. "Of course. The fucking starfish."

"The starfish?" Heather asks, her thirst for knowledge evident.

Carissa side eyes Artemis. "You wanna tell her or should I?"

"I wasn't the one piloting the body during that." Artemis looks at a corner of the room, seemingly more interested in that than the current conversation.

"One of the 13. I'm assuming you know what that is. You'd call it anti-memetic, obliterated several civilizations in the Mediterranean before the Finnfolk could seal it."

"Right." Heather says, understanding parts and attempting to gloss over what she doesn't until she can revisit the topic later. "Like [[[Don't Let Me Forget|'absence']]]..."

"Yes. If you want to know more you'd have to go talk to the Finnfolk, and good fucking luck. They won't let me anywhere near them, and I ran with them 5000 years ago during all this shit."

"I don't think we need them. We have the necklace." Heather turns her back to the women, looking back at the necklace, and holding it aloft. "This is the key. Somehow, someway, this survived whatever happened to them. It wasn't chance, at least, I don't think it was. What if this was intentional?"

"Like a... memory of the entire culture and civilization kind of deal?" Carissa asks.

Artemis claps. "Look at you! Maybe I am rubbing off on you."

"Fuck off Arty, adults are talking." Carissa's ears pin back as she lets out a hiss at the goddess.

"You two can talk about rubbing off onto each other later, we've got a problem to solve. I think you're right Carissa, this is almost... a time capsule of their entire culture. Wait, maybe more than that."

Heather begins to clear a space on the desk, and traces shapes with her fingers.

"Let's say that this is all the culture and the memories and the knowledge of the lost race. To understand that culture, it's not enough to have the memories, you need the context. You need--"

"Their language." Carissa interrupts, the realization coming at the exact same moment to all three women.

Artemis claps for them both. "Smart cookies both of you. A match made in bed."

Heather blushes, looking away. "[[[Love Between The Margins|I have a girlfriend.]]]"

Carissa snorts. "I have a Medea."

"That hasn't stopped you before." Artemis points out.

"Look, we are trying to focus. Go away, behave, or I'll get her to conceptually annihilate you," Carissa threatens, pointing at the goddess with one of her nails.

"That will never work. You've tried it way too many times." Artemis smirks, tapping the side of her head.

"I don't know 'Arty', do you want to take that risk?" Heather said, teasingly, before focusing up. "Let's say that this necklace didn't just give you their culture, it... it overwrote your language. Into something unknowable, something lost, something magical."

"It would fucking explain why I'm speaking gibberish. But not the portals." In the background, Artemis grins at Heather, as if daring her to try

"Maybe they weren't expecting somebody with, oh I don't know, a fucking god inside of them to pick it up? So, let's say that the language was ontologically overlapped with your natural magical instincts, to the point where speaking their language is almost ritual-esque. And every time you speak, you've laid out a new ritual that makes you portal prematurely."

"Ok, point of order, she's not inside me!" Carissa says.

"Yes I am." Arty insists.

"She's //a part of me//. She fused our souls, deliberately," Carissa says.

"She was a lion and now she's not," Arty continues, interrupting Carissa's line of thought.

Carissa glares at her, and then turns back to Heather. "That makes sense, but can we not use the terminology 'portal prematurely'. I have never been premature."

"Can confirm," Artemis says

"Oh, you've never suffered from... projectile dysfunction?"

"Oh, she's definitely had some sensory dysfunction," Artemis says slyly.

Carissa puts her head in her hands.

"I mean Carissa, if a goddess is saying that, who are we to contradict her?" Heather giggles to herself, before continuing. "Back to business though, now that we know the cause, we can fix this."

"Hate. Hate both of you," Carissa says with a pained noise. "Spill it before I try and fail to kill myself."

"Fine. You can't speak because, well, any time you try to, the lost language reasserts itself in your mind, to make sure that it doesn't disappear. So, easy, we just... we just rediscover an entire lost language?"

"Oh, just like that huh?" Carissa says with a bit of snark.

"Absolutely just like that," Artemis says slapping the back of Carissa's head gently.

"So." Heather says, standing around awkwardly.

"So how do we do that?"

"Million dollar question."

-----

Unfortunately for Heather and Carissa, the problem was just as complex as they had feared. The three women had returned to the cottage, and spent what felt like hours trying to figure out a way to understand the forgotten language.

Heather had commandeered a wall with the help of Artemis - where there were once shelves, knickknacks and books, there was a blank wall covered in chalk and charcoal markings. The wall was a maelstrom of the mad ramblings of an unhinged memetics expert, interwoven with the unintelligible mathematical models of an enraged deadly markswoman. It was chaos incarnate, and despite their combined intellects -- they were nowhere. Even the gravity defying shape of a dream Maine Coon floating around didn't help their inspiration.

"Okay. Let's try this again," Heather says, sighing and turning back to face Carissa, holding a conch in one hand. "What is the word for this?"

"Again, I can't tell you." Carissa pauses for a moment, her tail flicking behind her in irritation. "The word keeps changing, every time I think about it."

"Maybe you should just give up darling," drawls Artemis, who is laying outstretched on top of the bookshelves, like a rebellious cat that refuses to behave. "Is it really that bad?"

Carissa looks up at the goddess with spite in her eyes. "Yes, Arty, it really is that fucking bad. Who do you think I am?"

"Artemis, if you're not going to help, can you at least not distract her?" Heather chirps, laughing as she watched the two. "Are you sure you don't know the word for this?"

"Absolutely not, it's ever my job to meddle with my vessel," Artemis says as she flutters her eyebrows.

[[image https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/local--files/cat-got-your-tongue/Carissa%20and%20Arty%20Resize.jpg]]

Carissa rubs her temples and looks at the shell Heather is holding. She shakes her head. "Nope, it's changed again."

"Fuck. Okay, this isn't going to work. We don't even have a stable definition for a single word, and there's no way we'll be able to figure this out before... well at least before I die of old age." Heather sets the conch down and hops up onto the kitchen counter, throwing her head back in frustration. "So what do we do?"

"It's a conceptual language, yes?" Artemis asks. "Have you tried stringing the concepts together?"

Carissa side eyes her as if she's about to string some innuendo together. Unfortunately, she was often right.

"Like beads of saliva after eat—" Artemis continues before being cut off.

"Would you go back to whatever you were doing before we came in?" Carissa snips, her ears pinned to her head, tail frizzing out.

"But this is what I was doing, don't you remember?" she says innocently.

"I should have eaten your soul, like Medea did with Hecate's," Carissa growls, plopping next to Heather on the counter.

"Oh, but that would be much duller."

"No wait, I think she's right" Heather interjects. "We're looking at this the wrong way."

"Someone appreciates my genius," Artemis says.

"I'm pretty sure she just enjoys the banter, which is about all there is to enjoy about you," Carissa fires back.

"Oh that's mean." Artemis plays mock wounded.

"Ok so, explain." Carissa ignores Artemis and turns her focus back to Heather.

"Right. We were trying to figure this out as as something akin to the romance languages, where every concept has an associated word. But their society was based around concepts, why would they need to use words when they could instead talk through ideas?"

"...ah fuck. We really have been going at this the wrong way."

Heather jumps up and runs to the wall, brushing away their scribbles and clearing a blank space.

"Okay, so, what if they didn't speak in a sentence; they spoke in a memeplex." Heather begins to draw on the wall, nodes connected together in a large chain of interconnections and relations. "They don't tell somebody a sentence with individual components, they are sharing each idea and piece of context and relation needed to communicate //exactly//."

Carissa nods slowly. "Right, so it's like telling a whole story with just a few words?"

"Basically? Think about it this way: if I say "The Foundation" to you, what do you think of?"

"A bunch of asshats that imprison natural creatures just because they use magic or are weird in their definition," Carissa says bluntly. A beat. "Not you, though."

Artemis seems amused by that response. "As if your Finnfolk friends didn't do the exact same thing, my love."

"Yeah, that's different." Carissa ignores her, focus turning back on Heather, as her tail flicks.

"Exactly." Heather replies, not even trying to conceal her agreement. "But if I told a general contractor "The Foundation", they would assume I was talking about the concrete foundation of a building."

"... Oh god so there's no... oh that's so fucky." Carissa mutters as she tries (and fails) to wrap her brain around that.

Artemis leans her chin on her hand, watching the two like characters on TV.

"The way their language works-- I mean probably works, but let's just pretend we're right for now. When they would speak, they are saying "The Foundation", with all of the context and information required to fully understand something as well as the speaker."

Heather spins around and claps her hands. "That's the point! We'll never be able to recreate their language word by word, because that's not how it was meant to be used!"

"Go on, tell her," Artemis chirps out like a songbird. "Tell her what she has to do."

Carissa glances at Artemis and then back to Heather, tail flicking as her ears stand pert.

Heather turns to Artemis and the two share a look. "Come on, can't I get her to guess?"

"Look at that head, it wasn't built for this." Artemis cackles.

"Fuck. All. The. Way. Off," Carissa says to Artemis. "I have to speak every concept of their language, a story I'm guessing. Probably //their// story."

"Yeah. Think about the difference between modern storytelling and proto-Indo-European storytelling. We write our stories down, but they..."

"Spoke them aloud," Carissa finishes.

"Exactly. An oral tradition." Heather looks over at Artemis, grinning. "So?"

"So Carissa is going to have to work on her oral?" Artemis answers, taking the setup with glee.

Carissa snarls at Artemis. "I'm going to fucking strangle you."

"Hot."

"You two can play cat and mouse later, we have work to do. See you topside?"

"Can you use a gun?" Carissa asks, interrupting Heather. "We'll probably need to move somewhere not so compact."

"Do I look like I can do anything straight, let alone shoot?"

"Hmmm. Does that mean she's straight?" Artemis muses.

"No. So that means I'm going to have to go loud." Carissa flicks her tail, the corners of her lips flicking up. [[span style="color:red"]]//Like there's any other way.//[[/span]]

-----

The moment they were awake, Carissa sits up and grabs her bow. [[span style="color:red"]]//Hasn't been since The Black Queen that I've had to get loud. This will be fun.//[[/span]] She turns and helps Heather up to her feet. Before the memetics expert can really say anything, Heather experiences the strangest feeling she's had... in recent memory.

That feeling, consisting of every single atom in her body spontaneously bursting apart, leaving her consciousness floating in a vacuum of multi-colored streaming starlights, and then as if in reverse, every atom piecing itself back together as Carissa drops them on top of a hill, in the middle of a forest clearing. There are traces of habitation here and there, a place once occupied, but long since abandoned.

It's a real clusterfuck of an experience, flying apart at a molecular level and then being pieced back together, as Heather's stomach does a small flip.

"Couldn't we have walked?" asks Heather, steadying herself against a nearby tree.

Carissa shakes her head. She takes a survey of the environment, and then stretches out the muscles in her back and neck. Archers muscles', as she runs her fingers along the shape of the bow. Experimentally, she pulls the string back, a thick flaming green arrow burning itself into existence against the string as she pulls all the way back. With her back to Heather, every single muscle is visible through the tight muscle shirt Carissa is wearing, definition gleaming in the Mediterranean sun. She looses the arrow. It whips through the air with a screech and she watches it's trace, holding a finger out in an L shape, one eye closed, and her tongue just sticking barely out of the corner of her mouth.

Heather manages to remember to close her jaw before she comes back to her senses. "So. I guess I'm ready whenever you are? Not really sure what I'm doing other than... listening?"

Carissa makes a gesture to Heather, pointing at her, then the archer points at her own eyes with two fingers, and then turns them around, and rotates -- communicating 'you watch my back.'

"Spotting. Gotcha, can do."

Carissa gives her a thumbs up and points at her again, then does a rolling motion with her fists. 'Ready?'

"If anything happens, Lillian is going to kill me. Fuck it, let's roll."

More gestures. 'I will not let anything happen, just stay close.'

Carissa closes her eyes, breathing in and centering herself. [[span style="color:red"]]//Easy, you just need to tell the story of an entirely forgotten race, one that you don't even know. But maybe trying to speak with that intent will work? Here goes nothing.//[[/span]]

"Memories of a distant time flood the world, like waves crashing against a rock face. A small group emerges through the misty spray, perched precariously on a precipice. They were the first."

As the first concept rolls off her tongue, a portal opens. Familiar biomes, woodlands, marshlands, swamps as she speaks, every concept opening another. [[span style="color:red"]]//Fucking hell this is going to be a lot. Hopefully we don't open anything to a 3456 den, that would be fucking terrible.//[[/span]]

The first real problem comes when a portal opens and a swarm of harpy-like creatures flies out, screeching. They have heads and bodies like cats, but wings and talons; worst of all, they were fucking ugly. Carissa taps Heather's shoulder with her tail as she draws the string of the bow back. She flicks the first arrow to the right, the shaft spinning and curling as the green fire of its magic takes on the shape of moose, stampeding through the air and knocking the creatures out of their formation. A second arrow follows it, blipping out of existence, reappearing with a spray of purple fluid as it finds its mark, embedded in one of the creatures.

Carissa narrows her eyes even as she speaks, and the bow ripples with a fresh wave of magic as an arrow is displaced by the shaft of a spear, the bow surging in size to match the new projectile.

"They were resilient, exiled from the deep and forced to carve a new home on the edge of their history. Stone gave way to coral, gave way to progress, gave way to a community." Carissa continues.

"Hey, whatever you're saying, keep doing it? But also-- fuck, look out!"

Carissa pivots, stepping in front of Heather as she hefts the bow away, and almost twirls in place, thrusting the haft of the magic spear deep into the jaws of the wolf-like feline beast that was rushing Heather. Heather watches as Carissa does something at the very end, and the beast implodes inwards, a sucking silver portal drawing its matter into itself, like a singularity.

She spins again, firing a twirling arcane sword that screeches through the sky, the blade bursting into flames as it hones in on one, two, three of the harpy creatures, forming a shish-kebab of purple dripping weirdness.

"They were crafters; each one an adept hand at reshaping the world. They made homes, worlds, stories, art, culture -- the people grew into one identity, one union of thought, a cohesive whole, all pulling the same chains and living the same dreams."

[[span style="color:red"]]//This is not easy to do while speaking AND having to babysit her.//[[/span]]

Carissa turns and rolls, her tail wrapping around Heather's waist as she pulls her along, both of them just barely dodging the swipe of a centaur-like creature. An arcane blade appears in Carissa's hand milliseconds after she starts the roll, and her arms leaps forward, twisting the blade to bite deep into the beasts belly as it rampages past. It crumples into the dirt, momentum carrying it clean over the hilltop and down the slopes in a mess of orange blood.

She rolls back up, and pulls the string taut, three arrows materializing as she aims it skyward. As if on cue, she releases, loosing the volley as a smattering of hostile creatures come bolting out of portals.

[[span style="color:red"]]//Well shit. We're in trouble now.//[[/span]]

"Warn a girl next time?" Heather says, catching her breath. "Why can't the portals go somewhere nice, like a field of flowers, or a distillery?"

Carissa shrugs. "Time was peace, and the community grew, elder after elder becoming etched into the tapestry of their time. But they were not forgotten, no, not yet. Others desired what they had wrought, what they might be, who they could defeat; if only they had the hand of the tribe."

The beasts rush in towards them, danger imminent; and then the sky grew dark, the sun shaded by clouds over head. Except they weren't clouds. It was already too late when the smattering of beasts look up, and realize their impending doom. Hundreds, no thousands of arrows fall from the sky, like stars, leaving a small sphere in the center. Everything that was breathing, except Heather and Carissa, cut down in the barrage.

"There was a marriage; no, not a marriage, a theft in the night. A daughter stolen, and a culture consumed. A community with a hole can only float for so long, the headless fish drifting seaward, unable to stop or slow the tidal wake. They laid down their brushes, their books, their chisels and seized something new; a power etched in bones."

Carissa takes a breath now, the portals seem, thankfully, to be settling out into more peaceful avenues and biomes. That was a momentary relief, but she keeps the bow out and stays on guard.

"Are we done?" Heather asks, rising to her feet.

Carissa shakes her head. "Fairness had fled, and in its place was vengeance, a whirlwind of destruction and righteous fury. Coralshapers, the aged and the young, all grasping, climbing, eclipsing those around them. Blood ran down the cliffs, mixing with the ocean below; their paint was crimson, their instruments their own art."

Every hair on the back of Carissa's neck stands straight up, and the fur of her tail frizzes out, as she turns around very slowly. [[span style="color:red"]]//Fuck, I just had to say something earlier.//[[/span]] An extremely large portal opens, and out walks a Nuckelavee. Carissa's eyes dart to Heather, and then to the creature. She couldn't protect Heather and kill this thing, she'd have to finish the story and get Heather the hell out of dodge all at once, and hope it didn't dematerialize before she could kill it.

"Hey, Carissa, you see it too, right?"

Carissa nods. "They had grown, not in size, but in infamy. The coralshapers, once renowned for their artistry, now recognized for the precise brutality, the bloodlust and overwhelming force defining who they were. They had forgotten what it meant to be them; they had lost community."

She knew it was going to play with them. Stupid bastards always did. It smiles at the pair, as if it has found the perfect unsuspecting meal. Carissa puts herself between Heather and it, tail wrapping around the memetic expert's waist, ready to peace out.

And then something very interesting happens. The creature looks down in surprise, as purple light starts to dance at its feet, symbols spinning into whirling existence in patterns.

"It wouldn't matter soon. Just as a rising tide destroys castles built of sand, an unnatural force swept them into the margins. Somebody, no, something wanted them to pay. It wanted them to stop being. They were being forgotten, in every meaning, definition and context of the word."

Carissa squints even as she speaks. [[span style="color:red"]]//She shouldn't be out here, unless they called her in too, but how did she...//[[/span]]

Carissa looks at her bow and spots the little blipping purple-lighted disc that was all too familiar. [[span style="color:red"]]//Of course.//[[/span]]

With renewed energy, she continues strong. "Erosion comes in waves, but this came in a downpour, filling in the caves that they had once carved out, forgetting who they were and where they came from. The ocean, once a distant memory, now seemed as foreign as the forces that sought to forget them. The elders convened -- something must remain. Something that says that we existed."

Smoke rolls out of the trees, as Carissa's ears pick up footsteps in the forest. The dancing lights beneath the Nuckelavee's feet solidify into a circular glyph, that continues to spin with gleeful energy. The Nuckelavee kicks at it dumbly, Carissa and Heather forgotten in the moment.

Heather watches as Carissa totally relaxes, her lips curling up in a smirk.

"Hey, not to be a bitch, but uhhh, the fucking monster is still there?" Heather yells, confused and concerned.

"It was then that they remembered who they were. The community, the people, they were not craftspeople, artists, coralshapers, warriors, enemies, historians, princesses -- they were a story. They were a language. They were no more than what they spoke; and what they spoke was them."

More spinning symbols appear in the air, all around the creature, another large glyph spinning into existence over its head. It looks up dumbly, both its heads staring at the sigil.

Carissa looks back at Heather, like she couldn't give less of a shit about the monster now, tail unwrapping from around her waist.

"It was decided. One last shape, one last craft, one last push before they disappeared. The margins cried and sang for their arrival, but they held on fierce, inking their tapestry into a vessel, embodying their community within a relic -- the first shell picked, found on the precipice where they began. It became them, and they became nothing. And just like that, they were gone. Absent. Unwritten."

The Nuckelavee looks up, and then down again, and then finally at Carissa and Heather. Its expression could best be described as utterly dumbfounded.

And that's when they go off. Horizontal glyphs ripple, as thick purple astral chains streak from within the symbols, imbedding themselves, thump thump thump, pointed barbed tips ripping through the hapless creature. It tries to screech but, its throats, both of them, are ripped to shreds. Finally, two enormous pillars of flaming rock cleave straight through, one from the top, the other from the bottom, impaling the beast in horrifying fashion.

After a second, it drops to the ground, any cohesion in its shape vanishing, as it becomes a mass of sheared and ripped-apart flesh, as the glyphs and their contents fade.

One by one, the portals close, an unfamiliar stillness permeating into the once pristine forest clearing.

"So," Heather says, "Did we do it?"

Someone strides out of the trees, a thick smoke trailing from a device she holds in her hands. A woman with sylvan ears, brown hair with purple ends, and bright lilac eyes. Arcane robes flow around her, glimmering with fading symbols.

"There you are," The distant figure says.

"I hope so, my throat is fucking sore," Carissa replies to Heather.

"Hey! That was English!" Heather cheers, collapsing onto the soiled grass. "Oh fuck."

"You good there?" Carissa says, eyes flicking to Heather and off the third figure, who was hurrying up the hill now.

"I just realized I didn't tell anybody I got here, and now I have to tell them that not only did I arrive, but I also solved their problem behind their backs." She pauses, shaking her head in disbelief. "Thank god I don't have to work with them again, I bet they're still huddled around the shell."

"I wouldn't worry about it," Carissa says. "They will get targeted amnestics before the day is out."

"Carissa, who is this?" The third person asks as they near, looking over Heather with appraising eyes.

"Right, those work on people. I forget that sometimes." Heather stops, looking at the newly approaching figure. "Hey, I'm Heather. I saved Carissa from the terrible fate of being unable to speak -- which, depending on your perspective, could be a bad or good thing."

"Oh? What was it?" She looks at Heather with more interest than she had in the few seconds before. "I heard, she put on an anomaly without checking for effects first."

Carissa looks away, trying to be innocent, and quite possibly inching just a //bit// away from the third woman. [[span style="color:red"]]//Shit shit shit she's pissed.//[[/span]]

"Hey, she told me that she always uses protection. But sometimes the moment gets the best of you, right Cari?" Heather says, a sly smile forming on her face.

Carissa looks at Heather, mouth open, eyes wide. Shock, and then a bit of 'how fucking could you' spill across her face.

The third woman's hand shoots out and grabs Carissa's wrist preventing her escape, as she laughs. "Protection. Really?"

"Actually, now I remember you telling me Cari; you slipped and the necklace just... fell onto your neck, right? Accidents are crazy sometimes."

[[span style="color:red"]]//Shit, she's so mad she's going to tie me up in Shibari again.//[[/span]] Carissa pauses as a flash of dumb realization runs across her face. [[span style="color:red"]]//Wait. I like Shibari.//[[/span]]

"Nope, I put it on all by myself. Just discharged. I was being dumb." Carissa says assertively.

The third woman looks at her partner suspiciously, and then back to Heather, and then back to Carissa. "You just want to be tied down."

"Nooooo, don't tie me up again." Carissa says as she pantomimes real distress.

"I won't, because I believe the stranger over you. I can see through your lies." The strange sorceress says releasing her wrist.

[[span style="color:red"]]//FUCK.//[[/span]]

"Hey, not to uhhh... well, I'm going to be honest. I need to call my girlfriend and then start on the massive amount of paperwork I'll need to file for this, and also, this is getting pretty intense for somebody who just met you both today, so..." Heather brushes some hair out of her face, searching for the right words. "Carissa, can you take me back to the site?"

"Apologies for her indecency, my wife can be a bit of a handful sometimes," She says, "but we will not hold you up."

"Heather, this is my wife, Medea, our sorceress in shining robes." Carissa says. "And hey! You're the one who said it, not me."

"I did no such thing. Please, let's transport this woman back to the site so she can handle her job."

Carissa throws up her hands, but walks over none-the-less. "Uh, to do this I need to touch you. Is an arm ok or...?"

"Carissa, we just spent hours in your mind, trying to figure out how to revive a lost language, and then you were physically picking me up and moving me with your tail just a few minutes ago. Yeah, an arm is fine." Heather replies, smiling back at her.

"Ok look, the heat of battle is very different fro- yeah okay." She lets it go, touches Heather's arm and takes Medea's hand. That same weird-as-fuck feeling sets in again, as the three of them dissolve.

Heather, feeling her body dematerialize, has a sudden disruptive thought as a fear surges into her mind. [[span style="color: rgba(130,81,145,0.7); text-shadow: 1px 1px 1px #848484;"]]//What if, when we reassemble, we get all jumbled up? Fuck, I just got used to this body!//[[/span]]

And then, before she can panic any longer, she rematerializes in the same room where they had passed out earlier, the chair still wedged under the door handle.

Heather regains her balance much faster this time, and after a panicked check of the girls and the rest of her, she sighs a breath of relief. She walks to the door, removes the chair and opens it.

"Hey guys! I fixed her! Oh also, I'm Heather, I got here a bit ago, but I'm going to leave soon, so don't worry about your lack of hospitality." Heather shouts into the rest of the temporary site.

She turns around and closes the door.

"So?"

"So?" Carissa asks tilting her head.

"Do we need to give her the amnestics, Carissa?" Medea asks.

"Nah, she's got the clearance. Or something like that. I think. I was... kind of not paying attention."

Medea sighs. "You set a pretty girl in front of you, and you become useless. Every time."

"Look, I've forgotten enough shit for an entire lifetime, I'm not forgetting anything else." Heather slumps down into the chair, exhaustion finally catching up with her. "Wait-- Your name is Medea, like //the// Medea? From the stories?"

Medea rubs her temples, as if just realizing Carissa's fuckup. "You didn't use the Pseudonym?"

"Uhhhh I may have fucked up." Beat. "A couple of times." Another beat. "Also I may have forgot the current Pseudonym."

"Carissa, please." Medea sighs.

"I'm trying babe, I swear I am. It's just you keep changing them, and I was running high on adrenaline," Carissa whines as her ears press to her head.

"It is fine. Eventually I will settle on one I like." She turns her focus back to Heather. "Yes. //The// Medea. And this adorable, but useless lesbian of a cat is Atalanta." Carissa just rubs her face as Medea pat pats the spot on her head between her ears.

"Right. I shouldn't be surprised at this point, you really do love your 'classics', don't you Cari-- sorry, //Atalanta//." Heather cocks her head to the side, a realization dawning on her. She pulls out her phone, and calls the one number she has on speed dial. "Hey babe, it's me. You remember that report we got of the hermeneutic in Greece, that was recreating the ancient Greek play? Long story short, but I may have just found the experts we were waiting for."

Heather covers the bottom of her phone and holds it slightly away from her face, turning back to the two women. "So. How do you two feel about theatre?"

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