towerofanimus | ❝It's a brand new day❞

Entry tags:

❝It's a brand new day❞

Characters: Willow (

guiltapalooza), jade Eridan (

littlemissnobody). CLOSED.
Setting: Starts on the dorm floors.
Format: Action tags yes?
Summary: She's going to cheer her gloomy friends up and no buts about it. Oh and P.S., backdated to before Buffy gets here.
Warnings: Nada! Maybe mention of past violence, I guess.

[Willow is determined. She is dauntless. She is going to do this.

She's going to make sure Eridan-- the other one-- knows that she doesn't blame him for anything that'd happened on the stairwell the other day, and check in on him, all while not making him talk about it. She well knows the value of not making someone talk about something. Post-crisis friendship bonding was an important Scooby tradition, meant to stabilize the relationship again and return things to normal after trauma.

Eridan doesn't know to expect it from her, she's sure, but he's going to find out. And she has the perfect pretense for it: Dawn would probably feel better if she had some friends here, and Eridan was close to her age. Willow also knows that Dawn has a hard time making friends herself, as much as she denies it, so it'll really kill two birds with one stone by cheering up both the people in her life that need cheering up.

All of this is why she's standing in front of Eridan's room and knocking on his door. Her cheerfulness is maybe a little aggressive, but really, just a little.]

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[Eridan shrugs a little, nodding.]

Yeah. Who did you meet?

[Because there are enough trolls in the tower, that the only real question is who, rather than when or why.]

[By this point in her life, Willow has accepted the fact that she can do nothing subtly, and is just glad Dawn's going along with it.]

Not to interrupt, but maybe we should be somewhere not the doorway for our talking?

Oh, my roommate...she's called Dolorosa. She's bigger than you, I think, but you have the same grey skin and horns thing going on.

[Dawn catches herself at Willow's comment, moving back just a little]

Oh, sorry. You can come in if you want. It was only me in here anyway.

[Eridan perks up at the mention of the Dolorosa, but then steps back as Willow interrupts. And just like that, he easily fades into the background, letting Willow and Dawn decide on their own. He's good with anything, anyway.]

[Willow's not about to let him fade into the background if she can help it, as that's the opposite of the point of this. She steps into the room and glances back to make he follows, then goes on with moving the conversation along.

And trying to draw him back into it, too.] In we are, then.

I think the Dolorosa is kinda like someone's mom? Which is apparently a weird thing for trolls. Though I have it on good authority that we are just as weird to them as they are to us. [She looks over at Eridan and says teasingly,] The Summoner at least definitely agrees with you on that one.

Well that explains a lot. I did definitely get a mom-type feel from her...not that I've talked to her all that much yet. But she seems nice.

[She doesn't really get that part about the Summoner so she's just going to perch awkwardly on her bed while Willow covers that with Eridan. He's far from the only one feeling awkward here even if she's a little less obvious with it]

[Eridan shrugs a bit and nods.]

She really is nice. She's the lusus of... someone else who couldn't have one.

[Eridan nods at Dawn.]

But she's much older than me, I think. I'm just six. Er... thirteen?

[He looked at Willow for confirmation he didn't screw up the math. Human ages were weird.]

Yeah, thirteen, [she confirms, leaning up against one of Dawn's bed posts. So things are a little awkward still, but if Willow's good at anything, it's making conversation.]

There's a lot of you guys at that age here. But we don't have to do a cultural exchange if that's, uh... awkward. I just wanted to do something fun after, you know, the past week of horror.

[Dawn looks a little confused at the mention of "lusus" but is soon distracted by the age discrepancy]

Wait, hold on. Thirteen in human terms...but that's not how you normally count age? I mean, I'm guessing not what with the whole six thing.

[Eridan flinched, about the whole week of horror. He couldn't really help it. So Dawn's question was something he gladly answered, for the sake of avoiding talking about that.]

We don't have years. In Alternia... the troll home planet, we don't have years. We have sweeps. They're about two years and a little extra.

[He raised his hand to scratch the underside of his jaw, a little awkwardly.]

Most of us have some... experience? Dealing with humans, I guess, because we ended up getting in contact with a few of them but. It's complicated.

[He offered a small smile.]

I don't mind doing the whole cultural exchange thing, if you need it.

[Oops, Willow forgets that people not from her town aren't quite so flippant about the horrible stuff they have to live through. She'd caught that flinch and reminds herself to keep the reminders to a minimum.]

It can get pretty nifty, [she admits.] We don't usually get to talk to the, uh, more intelligent other species we run across. Mostly just babble in their own language and then trying to kill us.

[Dawn listens, clearly intrigued, though she looks up at Willow's interjection]

Or they disguise themselves as human. Or were human to begin with. Oh and wait, I remember hearing something about a troll that was Anya's ex?

[And here she realises what she's said and starts back-pedalling]

Um, but, I think that was a different kind of troll.

Probably.

[Eridan shrugs.]

It's... kind of impossible, from my perspective, for trolls like me to have reached Earth. But if they somehow managed to break time-space continuum like that, they... wouldn't hide. They'd probably just annihilate humans and annex the planet to the Empire.

[Adult trolls are dicks.]

Definitely a different kind of troll, [says Willow fervently.] No question about that. He was a lot, uh, hairier. His name was Olaf.

... Yeah, that's about what I'd expect from anything that found Earth, at this point. We're a hot vacation spot.

[Dawn frowns a little]

Well, I guess that'd explain the movies. I mean, you never hear of the alien species who land on Earth and try to fit in. It's always the ones who want to blow us up or take us over.

[Eridan shrugged.]

Galactic conquering is kind 'a troll thing. I guess. I don't know, even if I hadn't played the game, I'm not from a caste involved in all that.

What is your caste involved in? Um, if it's not rude to ask that. I think I missed that part of the crash course on troll hierarchy.

There's a troll hierarchy?

[Screw the world conquering, this is interesting new knowledge]

[Despite himself, Eridan was amused at their questions, and nodded at both.]

There's troll hierarchy, it's called the Hemospectrum because. Well.

[He was a pragmatist. He bit his thumb a bit, teeth sharp enough to nick the skin, and sure enough, there was jade welling up. He offered the hand for Dawn to see. Then he rubbed it off with his fingers and shrugged.]

You've got your dark red, brown an' yellowblooded psychic powerhouses collectively known as lowbloods. Or gutterbloods if you're really into the blood superiority thing. Who live short, generally miserable lives an' no one cares about. Lime, green, jade and teal right in the middle, an' we all get the amazingly original collective name a' midbloods an' get to live slightly longer, potentially less miserable lives. An' then cerulean, blue an' indigo, the land highbloods, who are usually violent, psychic resistant, violent an' live long, fulfilling lives makin' anyone below them as miserable as fuckin' possible. Then there's purple, for seadwellers who, with the exception a' my alternate self an' half the seadweller I knew, are ragin' douchebags. They hate landwellers an' they're pretty much royalty so they can get away with anythin' they want. An' at the very top is tyrian, for the Empress an' her heir, one a' which has been alive for thousands a' sweeps, I mean years, an' the other one who's the cutest, silliest, deadliest troll I know.

[He took a breath. That was a lot of words and all of them were glorious, glorious deadpan. Then he sighed and shrugged.]

Jadebloods don't really figure much in the hierarchy, though, 'cause we're all supposed to serve the Mother Grub an' tend to her needs. So basically, we're a caste devoted to reproduction an' all the joys a' the incestuous slurry.

What he said. [She's frowning pretty severely, apparently personally invested in the topic.] Though obviously not everyone is happy with it.

... Also, can we maybe nix the phrase incestuous slurry from ever being said ever again? Please? [Her nose scrunches up, because wow is she not ready to think of her boyfriend in that context. Kissing and fin-touching is about all she wants to do right now.]

[Dawn flinches as Eridan bites his own thumb, though she can't quite hide the fascination at seeing blood of a different colour. At least growing up with a Slayer had made her a little less repulsed by blood as she might have been]

Okay, I get it, I think. I mean, it sounds kinda dramatic when you word it that way but it's not that unusual. Maybe the first time I've heard of blue blooded in the literal sense but, you know. Kind of like how purple's supposed to be a royal colour...though I'm not sure where the whole sea dwelling part fits in, exactly.

[She halts her train of thought at Willow's comment, that severe frown not lost on her]

O-obviously the making people miserable part isn't so good.

[And oh good topic change...except no]

Yeah...I'm not sure what incestuous slurry is but it sounds kinda gross.

[Eridan gave them both an odd look, almost as if to say, "what are you, four?" but then he remembered they were human and merely rolled his eyes behind the safety of his sunglasses. So for all intents and purposes he was just quiet for a moment. He snorted.]

Fine. But for the record, I bet human reproduction is just as gross.

[He shook his head, then he addressed Dawn directly.]

I'm... not sure, how it works in your universe. In ours, well. Humans inherited things from us. I suppose.

[Just in time, he bit back the "like the fantastic proclivity for failure". They probably wouldn't get the joke, and the joke wasn't really funny in the first place.]

Well, it kinda is, [she admits shamelessly to the human reproduction part,] but we still don't use the word slurry. There's a certain standard of decency and slurries are not part of that.

[Dawn pulls a face as soon as the words "human reproduction" were uttered because wow, she didn't need the gross details of alien breeding just now. And so of course she makes a joke of it]

Isn't this usually the part where someone tries to cover my ears or tells me they're not talking about what I think they're talking about and they'll explain when I'm older.

[The part about humans inheriting from trolls does intrigue her though]

Inherited things? So, like, there's stuff about us that's the way it is because that's how they are for you? Why?

[Eridan looked at Willow, then at Dawn, then rolled his shoulders in a shrug.]

Let's just agree humans are as weird to trolls as vice versa. Reproduction and otherwise.

[He tilted his head to the side, wondering if that was a thing he was allowed to talk about.]

It's complicated. Mostly just... causality, I guess.

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If you get the joke, you're welcome.

sadly i don't get the joke :(

I'm tempted to say HG2G but I'm probably wrong

XD

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