un: yotsuba; text

[blindluck]

Be careful if you see anyone you recognize from home in the mists! It seems like hallucinating such things is possible here. It would be a shame if you tumbled into the River chasing an illusion.

If you've seen one, though, I'm curious: were they someone who already died in your world, or were they someone who was supposed to be alive?

[Listen. Nagito can't only put up a warning. He has to gather potentially sensitive information about it too.]

Comments

[solitarynote]

…?

[The question mark he draws in his notebook might be telling enough.

Sunny… hasn’t seen anyone? Or maybe it’s harder to tell what was a hallucination and what was the mist playing with his mind. Were those technically the same thing?]

Is that what you saw? When you fell?

[blindluck]

Yes. Knowing I was chasing after something that wasn't even there makes it even more embarrassing!

[But he's far from the only one who's done it, as this post makes clear.]

[solitarynote]

have you seen anyone else?

[Sunny almost wants to ask… why he himself hasn’t seen anyone. But Nagito wouldn’t know the answer to that, so it’s unfair to ask. Also…]

Why… does everyone see people in the mist? Not here, but… someplace else, I did.

[Basil… yet not Basil. Basil had been in the mist, in his head, and somehow Sunny wonders if the mist leaked out from his dreams into this place. Maybe it had… during the last Crossing. He was someplace… and it takes a moment for Sunny to reference the drawing him and Nagito had made of Neighbor’s Room. It holds no great significance now, except for the fact that it was a drawing they made together, and… there was an entrance to Headspace there. So… maybe…]

[blindluck]

No, but I've been trying to avoid the areas with the thickest mist since then. I think that's where it's most likely to happen. According to some of the books I've read, humans are pattern-seeking creatures. When things are obscured, like in fog, we can mistake the shapes for other things. But this could also be something more unusual than that, considering our circumstances.

[You know, traveling through the afterlife and all.]

[solitarynote]

[There are echoes of such things in his mind: the ringing of laughter, shapes that are there then fade. Better to stay away from the mist.]

We make things up. [He has experience with that, so agreeing with Nagito isn’t a far stretch.] And it’s a new place. Unfamiliar. There’s always… a safe spot.

[The city in the Cavern, the oasis in the Desert, their communal hut in the Marsh… was it because the Ferryman was near? Their light still kept scary things away.]

[blindluck]

I don't know about always, but the village does seem to be safe from hallucinations. [Nagito can't trust anything to be entirely safe.]

[solitarynote]

[Well, safe from hallucinations caused by the mist. Sunny wasn’t entirely sure these days when his mind was playing tricks on him.]

Do you think… we’ll have to cross there next?

[It did feel like they stayed in one place and then ‘continued’ forward into the more treacherous parts. Normally they followed the River but…]

The water is everywhere here.

[blindluck]

I think an especially mist-filled patch of marsh is a likely option! I also think the area with the fire is likely.

[Nagito does like to also scope out potential Crossing areas.]

[solitarynote]

[Yeah, both of those options sounded…]

Scary.

[And yet that would make the most sense, wouldn’t it?]

Fire would probably hurt. During a Crossing.

[blindluck]

Only during a Crossing! And probably only if you don't go with Ferryman-san. But that makes it important to look at now, because there's always the chance those of us who don't go with Ferryman-san will be traveling via that route.

[solitarynote]

[Oh, right… there were people that made the journey without the Ferryman. It wasn’t that Sunny had forgotten but… he didn’t understand the decision. The Ferryman was kind. They kept them safe.]

How would they go through that? It’s dangerous.

[blindluck]

I'm not sure, but we should probably figure it out beforehand, right?

[solitarynote]

Probably…

[Though that would still be scary, right? Sunny wouldn’t be wading into fire anytime soon. (And ironically enough, he was unaware that Nagito was planning/had already gone to do such when Sunny was watching his possessions…)]