Welcome to Gaia! ::

:::It smelled enough like wine, and she thought she'd be able to handle it, so she took a sip, and let it swirl around her mouth for a moment before swallowing...:::

Mm... :::She said softly::: Yes...it's very... I don't know the word for it. But more so than wine.

:::Cora didnt have too many words in her vocabulary for describing food:::

:::At this she finally looked up at him. She always wondered exactly how much he knew, about both the brink, and it's occupants whether inside or out. But she would spare no detail.

She described spending years outside the brink, forcing herself to suffocate her emotions so that the people of Omegatropolis wouldn't send her to an institution, or for processing, how she'd agonized and dreamt for so long that she would appear here, that when she finally did again, she thought it was a hollucination. She went on to describe that she stopped leaving the brink all together, that since her return it had been months and months. How long exactly, she wasn't sure, but she could gather a good estimate by measuring her hair. It was close to four months now.

But that wasn't all! She hardly paused to breathe before going on to explain the strange new people arriving, how she didn't find any of them particularly as friendly as anyone she'd met before she left for those years. One of them even attacked Maggie and Bard, and was threatening to poison herself with Cora's own chemicles. It was mad!

And like the captain, she'd thought that she might never seen Tacitus again, because he too had not appeared in all that time. Indeed there were still a few people missing from her list. But then he confessed to her that he was really this other man who'd convinced Cora that Tacitus was dead...so that when she finally knew him for what he was, she couldn't bring herself to feel the same way. Not like she had before...not like she had no with this half-man...:::

Alex. :::But as the 'x' in his name left her lips, she looked up at the Captain, remembering that the Captain should well know who she was talking about:::

Your son...

:::This was when she paused to breathe, because she wasn't sure what to say next:::

:::She'd been starving to know, whatever the truth was...whatever it is he was talking about. She thought she was well prepaired for the answers:::

Yes.

:::She staired blankly at him for some time. This hardly made sense to her, as she feared. Cora had a knack for being terribly intelligent, but not being able to understand a damned thing anybody said around this place:::

Wh--what do you mean, I got caught?! I obviously have NOT been caught, I would have noticed. I would not be here, would not be alive, if they had caught me! Why are you talking about reality as though it's a plural sort of thing? What's real is real! I don't understand!

:::She sounded VERY frustrated as that last word left her mouth. She'd some time for this moment to come, only to have it make no sense to her:::

:::She ran the words he'd explained to her in her head over and over as though memorizing them would force them to make more sense... he said that the place she'd come from was too weak...that it merged with somewhere else...she couldn't begin to imagine what sort thing this entailed, but she was worried about one thing:::

Where is my time now? Where is everything from it? Where are all the people?

:::She asked wide-eyed, a little afraid that this answer too would make no sense:::

What do you mean gone!?!

:::Cora stood, slamming the palms of her hands down on the table, causing the wood to dent where she'd hit, and the glass of grape juice to bounce and tip over, the contents dripping away off the edge, unnoticed:::

They can't all be gone!! It makes no sense!! I was never caught! I'm still here! They're alive, I just left them!

:::her voice cracked:::

I was there!

Where is my father, and my ancestors and my coworkers. What time are they in now? Where are they?

:::She was still yelling, but she took her hands off the table and made her way to the key wrack:::

:::Cora went to get her key, she went to the spot where it normally hung, on the 37th ring.... but it was not there:::

What...!? :::She gasped. But after a moment, she began to wipe her hands along all the others searching frantically:::

Where is my key??

:::But she paused dead still again, and realized that she'd stopped using her key. It was a long time ago. She hadn't seen it...she hadn't been using it to get in and out of her room anymore, things were just open:::

:::She shot Tavin a dumbfounded look, before leaving the key wrack to try to open the door. If her room door didn't need one maybe...

But it was no use. The door wouldn't budge:::

Open! Open!!! Open the door!!

:::She yelled and began to pound away when no other means seemed to be working:::