mycursedface

The Bar was familiar, safer than Guppy's world, but it was still inside with people and Medusa had only managed an incoherant explanation before she ran for the backdoor.

"You okay?" Sam asked, not much of a moment later.

"Too many people," she replies, studying the stars and stretching out her wings. Her previously hidden wings, and thank everything that her dress is backless.

"Ah."

"Mmhm." Beat. "You don't have to stay out here, though. I mean, I'm just calming down and it's silly that-"

"It's a nice night," he says, shrugging off his jacket and undoing some buttons. His reward is a shy, pleased smile.

"Okay," she says softly. She doesn't fly, not in this dress, but she walks and stretches out all her six limbs and gradually, gradually, gradually the air of a caged wild creature fades. By the time she comes back, Sam's lounging on the seat-swing with her sandals next to his shoes.

"Feeling better?"

"A little," she admits, and then shakes her head. "I may have gotten into an argument with one of Frog's friends."

"Oh?"

"He was wrong. The Egyptians built the pyramids, not the aliens. And they line up with Orion because they are replicating the stars, and it's not some...I mean, humans are terribly clever, I'm not sure why they go about talking about things from outer space. Besides," Medusa says, tossing her head up slightly. "I've seen them."

"How did he take it?"

"Not terribly well. I'm afraid I may have told him that I'm basically immortal and then used his mental flailing to run off to Atton."

Sam just laughs. "Ah, Meda."

"I did okay?" she asks, sitting next to him and reaching out for his hand. Sam tangles his fingers with hers and grins.

"You did okay."

from here

Running up stairs in five inch heels is...interesting, but not as impossible as it first looks - you are just running on tip-toe, after all. Which is killing her feet, but she's tipsy and in love and doesn't care.

Of course, running while laughing and holding hands with your boyfriend is not helpful to maintaining balance, so it's little wonder that at some point, Medusa trips.

Medusa and sleep are two things that often do not get along. Even if her dreams are free of nightmares now (and isn't she glad of that - even when she didn't wake up screaming, she'd be whimpering and moaning and causing a scene) it's still...
I walked beside the evening sea
Strange.
And dreamed a dream that could not be;
She mostly sleeps during the day, when it's safe. She sleeps with her arms curled around Sam's pillow when she can't get Sam himself, face buried and snakes lying this way and that. Tangled up in the sheets, wings out, and for such a small person, Medusa takes up a lot of room.

The waves that plunged along the shore
And she dreams. She dreams of the ocean that is her home, of the cliffs and clouds. She dreams of the waves giggling with the voices of her sisters and she dreams of her triplets in the new and empty world in which they'd been born. She dreams of babbling in their own language and trying to pull Stheno's hair as Euryale aims for her feet and-

Said only: "Dreamer, dream no more!"
And when she wakes up, blearily shoving the pillow onto the ground, she can't remember anything. Dreams are like that, sometimes.

It had been good when she first came to Milliways. Curled up in Lucifer’s bed, in Lucifer’s arms, with the devil between her and the door, she could sleep. Oh, could she sleep. Damn straight she was good in bed, she had slept for days. Dreams, yes. Nightmares, yes, but…But it was sleep. It was good, too good, almost.

Too good to last, certainly.

As the nightmares began to increase, as they began to get worse and worse, it was too easy to fall into old habits and fall she did.

Lie awake for hours, staring at the door. Lie awake all night and if some of it is just due to her being used to a different sleep-pattern, most of it is just due to the fact that, well. She can’t get to sleep.

She doesn’t want to go to sleep.

Sleep means being unaware, sleep means being vulnerable, sleep means waking up to being murdered all over again. It feels the same, it always feels the same. Sometimes she’s drifting off, sometimes she’s drifting awake, but it’s the same; a sickening gasp, blind panic, and then her heart beating, beating, beating so hard with terror she is convinced that it’s going to break her ribs.

And if she does fall asleep, then it is either oblivion or nightmares. The oblivion is disconcerting; the nightmares are horrifying. Mostly, they are of being insane again, of seeing the world lawless and strange. The sky is purple, green, the trees lunge towards her and her mind is being eaten by rats. Sometimes, it is her murder; sometimes, it is her rape; sometimes it’s a strange mixture of the two, with Athena and Poseidon fighting and trampling her body underfoot (if she can scream, they never hear her, but being able to scream is rare). Mostly, though, it is memories of being crazy, and that is quite enough.

She doesn’t really need to sleep, anyway.

So, today Medusa stretches on the bed, rubs her eyes and then the cat (Shredie isn’t entirely sure what to make of this stranger, but the feathers are fun to play with), and gets to her feet. Jeans, sundress, bangles; kohl around her eyes because even if she hates looking in the mirror, even if she isn’t living in a desert, some things are habit.

And then her wire-framed glasses, and with a called goodbye to the boyfriend in the shower, she’s out the door and heading down the stairs.

Medusa is sitting in a tree, jeans and sundress and hair in braids and no glasses, today. If anyone comes out here, she'll just...close her eyes or something of the like. She's in that kind of mood, contrary and a little out of sorts and have to be outside can't stay need to-

Only, she couldn't think of anything to do, so climbing the tree and watching the lake in the semi-twilight seemed the better alternative to pacing.

Or paying attention to the dull throb of a hangover.

There is a storm, and Medusa isn't in it.

Normally, she would be. Normally, she'd be flying and tumbling and letting lightning hit her. She may or may not be laughing, because sometimes it is best to try and repress the giggles for Ouranos' sake (silly uncle), but Medusa is a storm daemon. Wind and thunder and lightning are what she lives for.

The storm rages for hours, and all she does is sit on Sam's bed. Arms around her legs, chin resting on her knees, wings unfurled just enough so as not to be unnaturally bent, eyes dark and trained on the window.

The storm rages for hours, and all she does is watch.

There is a saying, a quote, maybe call it just plain knowledge that if you cage a bird for too long, they forget how to fly. The open sky scares them. She doesn't know how long she was in that...that places, doesn't want to know, but...

She doesn't want to fly.

Why?

She just doesn't, alright.

(if Sam says something during those hours, and there is no reason why he wouldn't, because he is Sam and worries about her, she doesn't reply.

By the time the thunder stops, she's crying.

By the time the skies clear, she is shy and skittish and quick smiles as normal, but that doesn't make her reddened eyes any better)

Medusa is not...okay, maybe she is hiding in Milliways. There are sound reasons for doing so! Including, but not limited to, the fact that Sam's bed is nice.

Still.

She is a creature of air and water and earth, and it's actually nice outside at the moment. Flowers and grass and leaves and warm. Not as warm as home, but acceptable. Which is why she's walking outside dressed in nothing but a white sundress (with a halter neck) and jeans.

Also a nosestud in the shape of a tiny spider. India has...left some impression.

So, there is a lake, right? Only it's somewhere which isn't Mama's home under the sea, and it isn't Pappos's home, it's somewhere a bit cooler and a bit north (so says Atlas, but what does he know, but at some point it turns into a nice, warm sea and Medusa really doesn't understand how that works.

The only way to investigate is to, well, investigate, so the tiny Gorgon is flying over the join of fresh water and salt, trying to see how it works