The moment his hand touched the doorknob he accepted everything. There had been no 'escape' from the chaos, no glorious seven days later rescue. He remembered being asked by the redhead girl from the prisons, and no, he hadn't believed in it then, maybe because he knew deep down that they were all too far gone. All the things he had experienced, attempting to survive, it hadn't been survival at all just... prolonging what he knew of life. Pretending. Playing out the last time he had of himself, dreaming of his past and pretending it was a dream of the future.
John accepted it, these experiences in this surreal world were merely the next step towards his death. It accepted... it was merely knowledge. Creation. It was all around, everywhere, everything. All the memories of that person sustenance for the Legacy.
But it... HE, was not ready for that. Death was natural, becoming something else was natural. All creatures fell in time, rotting away in a process that was neither glorious nor demeaning. Everything would become something else, change was how things flowed from one form of existence to another. It was how things lived, flowing with the world. But he, John, wasn't ready for this form of immortality. This collection of experiences, not just having his physical body nourishing the next wave of life, but to have that very life itself feeding something that was creation itself... No.
He was not a part of this giant, sprawling consciousness, he was Johnathan Nordskov. He had come this far, and if he was going to go he wanted to go properly. Back to the earth. He had to finish what he started.
Then he was pulled... No, he was pulling free. Once more himself, although loose, floating, devoid of body. For a moment he worried, how was he still himself? Would he eventually disappear entirely, having no container in which to store this consciousness some might call a soul? Around him, in the green world he had found himself in, some of the vines began to curl towards him, satisfying his desire for a form as they twisted and twined together. Like a body, not his own, but perhaps it would do...
It wanted to collapse, this form, return to the world it came from, but John kept it moving forward. The misshapen mass moved through the world, until he encountered something that was not vines. Not his body, but a body. A young man, freckle-faced, with dark hair. Pale eyes too. John knew not from looking at the boy now, but from that part of the dream where he had seen the boy, awake, moving... scared. Even so, that young one had tried to save him.
This... maybe was not a bad way to go after all.
The old man, his mind feeling wearier than it ever had, carefully freed the boy from the vines. Somehow they listened, as they had to construct this sad excuse for a body, and unravelled. They relinquished their warm, living prize, and John accepted it with his own tendrils. Then he turned, carrying the boy back through the maze of vines. He felt the pull of the consciousness he had escaped, and moved against it, wading upstream, away from the center of Creation. Pieces began to lose their form, vines fell slack, feebly writhing until they lost their strength...
And then he recognized the shape of a building, and knew outside... Outside would be safe for the boy...
He handed over the precious burden to those shadow shapes outside, but he couldn't linger. There was no world for him out there anymore. He almost fell apart, for a minute he was even willing it to happen. Hesitating. But then he slipped back, towards the mass of vines he was inextricably a part of. Perhaps he was afraid to go like that, perhaps he couldn't. He was already a part of the legacy. A part of Creation, this was merely another step on his way to that unnatural end.
He felt others around him, more twisting shapes, and knew they were like him. Separate, but not quite. Others struggling to hold onto the last small pieces of humanity they could find within their grasp. The last memories, the last vestiges of their mortality. For once John took comfort in the presence of the others around him, feeling the weight of his consciousness while it was still his own, and reflecting on the life he had lived.
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OOC
Character's name: Johnathan Nordskov
Character's faction: Apartments
Character's journal link: Journal
Character's survival stats: Stats
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF MY CHARACTER:
Mr. Nordskov is always gruff and straight to the point, in a constant state of disgruntled disapproval. Despite this solitary attitude he has little desire to see anyone hurt. Seriously at least. Physically, the 60 year old is tall, well muscled with arms like tree trunks, sporting a bristly woodsman beard and piercing blue eyes glaring out from under bushy eyebrows.
