Eleven (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bearshermark) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
tramitem_log2020-02-23 10:19 am
bearshermark) wrote in tramitem_log2020-02-23 10:19 am
I turned over the map for the inside of my mind
Who: Elliott (Eleven) and OPEN
What: Elliott doin' a heckin' research
When: Feb 16th-28th
Where: New York Public Library
Rating/Warnings: Low-key anxious teenager
To think only a few weeks ago, he'd lamented the fact that all of his friends were growing up. Getting jobs or else bogged down by responsibility, increasingly short on time to hang out like they used to. And now here he was, holed up in the library every day after school and every weekend, more relieved than anything that he didn't have to explain himself to many of them. Sitting in relative peace with a stack of books to work through while he flipped between tabs of scattered information on his laptop.
It didn't make a great deal of practical sense, but the public space felt safer than attempting to study alone at home. The library had a productive atmosphere, he reasoned: an air of focus in the shuffle of papers and heavy thump of closed books while still maintaining a quiet sense of community.
In such a space, he didn't feel at all remarkable. To everyone there, he was just a perfectly ordinary high school student working on perfectly ordinary schoolwork. Though occasionally, he did quickly change tabs or shift in his seat to discretely obscure more esoteric texts- a guilty habit he had yet to break himself of. No one would care about what he was reading, he knew, yet still the sense of self-consciousness persisted.
And then there were times he zoned out while he read or scrolled down a page, either intensely focused or not at all, and jumped back to reality whenever someone brushed by his seat. Always offering a nervous greeting and silently praying no one decided to sit next to him. His materials were spread about a bit rudely to that effect, scattered to take up more table space than strictly necessary to make sitting elsewhere an easier choice for most.
Unfortunately, it didn't always work.
"Oh, uh, sorry, let me move that.."
What: Elliott doin' a heckin' research
When: Feb 16th-28th
Where: New York Public Library
Rating/Warnings: Low-key anxious teenager
To think only a few weeks ago, he'd lamented the fact that all of his friends were growing up. Getting jobs or else bogged down by responsibility, increasingly short on time to hang out like they used to. And now here he was, holed up in the library every day after school and every weekend, more relieved than anything that he didn't have to explain himself to many of them. Sitting in relative peace with a stack of books to work through while he flipped between tabs of scattered information on his laptop.
It didn't make a great deal of practical sense, but the public space felt safer than attempting to study alone at home. The library had a productive atmosphere, he reasoned: an air of focus in the shuffle of papers and heavy thump of closed books while still maintaining a quiet sense of community.
In such a space, he didn't feel at all remarkable. To everyone there, he was just a perfectly ordinary high school student working on perfectly ordinary schoolwork. Though occasionally, he did quickly change tabs or shift in his seat to discretely obscure more esoteric texts- a guilty habit he had yet to break himself of. No one would care about what he was reading, he knew, yet still the sense of self-consciousness persisted.
And then there were times he zoned out while he read or scrolled down a page, either intensely focused or not at all, and jumped back to reality whenever someone brushed by his seat. Always offering a nervous greeting and silently praying no one decided to sit next to him. His materials were spread about a bit rudely to that effect, scattered to take up more table space than strictly necessary to make sitting elsewhere an easier choice for most.
Unfortunately, it didn't always work.
"Oh, uh, sorry, let me move that.."
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That might almost prove something, even.
"I could almost accept it, you know. Reincarnation. No one really knows what happens when we die. But.. that definitely was a different world, and that's the bit I'm stuck on."
He turns back to his laptop. "Yggdrasil is said to connect nine worlds. And our world, called Midgard, is one of them. A multiverse. Isn't that too crazy to be real? How did I get here, if I'm from another world?"
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After a second to think on what he'd said, she continues a bit more slowly again. "Well, if there are nine worlds connected by Yggdrasil, maybe they share one afterlife? And you got reincarnated here? A multiverse isn't that crazy in the grand scheme, is it? But then, is this Midgard? Or is this another of the nine?"
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Elliott rubs his face and chin, briefly concerned with whether or not he could pull off a beard.
"Yeah," he says, deciding it isn't important just as quickly. "My- my past friends, I guess, said that.. Yggdrasil's leaves.." He frowns, trying to recall how it went again. "Well, when someone is born, a new bud blooms, and when people die, their leaf falls. A cycle of rebirth, basically."
He clicks a link on the wiki page and scrolls down to the bottom, where very norse-looking names are listed. "..I haven't had time to read up on the other worlds yet, so I'm not sure. But a lot of this is kind of theory anyway, seeing as its all mythological.."
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She leans over his shoulder to peek at the page; there's a lot here, but it's not terribly dense, she supposes? Still not something she'd read for pleasure. "I'm not sure that explains the memory thing, but it's definitely a start."
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Elliott angles the laptop toward her a bit more. "I'd guess the memory thing has more to do with reincarnation and past lives, but it weird that we're dealing with both at once. But if it really is all real, I wonder why it's not happening to everyone."
He frowns, thinking about it for a second. "Maybe.. I don't know. Nah. There's no way billions of other people could be just on their first life or something like that."
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She focuses again after a second, now that she can see without stretching so much. "Maybe you have to be special to get the memories back. Or maybe it's something to do with the tree itself - maybe you have to be on a particular branch or something. Hey, maybe it is the fallen leaves - what if someone were saving them, or... yeah, no, this is all just conjecture," she admits after another second, sighing again. "There are too many variables and not enough information. It might all be worth noting for later, but we can't make a solid assumption right now."
Suiting actions to words, Lisa pulls out a notebook - a perhaps surprisingly plain spiral notebook - and a gel pen and starts to scribe their ideas from the last few minutes, humming softly as she goes. After a moment, she speaks again. "Oh, maybe that goes back to what the Bureau's hiding from us. Maybe there's a lot of people that suddenly got added into the cycle without having been in it before? And only the people that were in it before have memories? Or..." She trails off, grimacing. "Or maybe we're the new people." Still, she writes it down.
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"You think the Bureau's hiding stuff from us?"
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"It's just that I don't know what to be careful about. I mean, I'm not-" he glances around a bit. "Not telling anyone I'm- well, I might tell my mom but.. other than that, is there anything you think I should be watching out for?"
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She shivers, despite the heat in the library being turned up plenty high, and to distract herself she turns a bit more stern. "So don't let anything happen! I won't be happy if I hear about you getting into trouble. Well, that kind of trouble," Lisa adds quickly. "Feel free to get into whatever other trouble you like." She winks at him, trying to take some of the unhappy implications out of her continued worried rambling.
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'Don't get into trouble' seems to be a recurring theme, lately. It occurs to him that there's a lot of trouble he could have been getting into while his mom was away in her business trip, but simply hasn't thought to.
He clears his throat and fidgets at his laptop keys, attempting to refocus.
"I won't," he assures. "I'm not- I mean, other than environmental activism rallies, I don't want to cause problems for anyone."
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"I have a feeling those don't cause as much trouble as you want me to think they do," she says after a minute, grinning. "But thanks, that's honestly reassuring. I think you're probably less likely to find trouble than me anyway." She glances meaningfully at her gig bag, before shaking her head. "And sorry, I'm probably being a little too hard on you. I'm just worried, you know? This is... kinda weird."
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