paper cities burning

[collector]

Characters: Braxiatel and anyone ever. It's an open log! Tag in! Join in origami art!!
Location: The Astral Plane. Somewhere near food, probably.
Time: After Narvin has been made into a wee-bitty thing. Before the hypothetical future where Braxiatel jumps into a ravine because he hates babysitting.
Summary: Braxiatel needs to do something in his spare time. This is it.
Warnings: Origami awesomeness.

Among the stars and spaces between them, free of the heavy weight of unease that had haunted the Plane, a man was putting his supreme talents in dexterity and mathematical genius to use by making art out of folded paper. Or to put it more simply, Irving Braxiatel was going slightly mad playing the babysitter and so had resorted to origami to try to keep himself sane.

He had begun with a few simple flowers and had quickly gotten sick with the mundanity. That was how the paper model of the Palace of Versailles had ended up at his feet. Then, when he had gotten bored with that, he crafted for himself origami warriors, the grand life-sized sazu game pieces that once were placed in the floating tombs of the Deathless Emperors of Draconia, that they may battle one another in their sleeping death.

Presently, Braxiatel was putting the finishing touch on Nelson's battleship. He had done a fairly good job of representing the Battle of Trafalgar, as far as he was concerned, and was rather pleased by the final product.

Comments

[collector]

[In his perfectionism, he straightens out one of the fountains] Thank you, Christine. I confess to something of a weakness for 17th century French architecture. A fair few bits of the Collection were modelled after the same.

[hypospraying]

The Collection? I don't think you mentioned it the last time we spoke. Of course, we were avoiding monsters at the time, so it's no surprise if it didn't come up, or if it slipped my mind.

[collector]

No, that was something of a distraction. The Collection is where I live, out in the Vega system. I don't suppose you've ever been?

[hypospraying]

Yes, actually. We went there to negotiate the mining of dilithium crystals. [She pauses, tilting her head to look at one of the boats he's made.] But maybe the same places don't exist in your reality. The name's the same, at least.

[collector]

Odd to find dilithium crystalized. We're on the planetoid KS-159, in orbit around Delfus-Clytemnestra. Ring any bells?

[hypospraying]

[She shakes her head, absently grabbing a sheet of paper.] Afraid not. May I...? [She gestures to the paper. There isn't any idea fully formed in her mind as to what she'll create with it, but she feels like she should join in.]

[collector]

[He nods] Of course. There's plenty more. [The paper is stiff, ideal for folding intricate works that require that sort of stability. In the traditional Earth style, the recto is smooth and the verso is rough. Irving has been known to indulge himself with nice paper.]

[hypospraying]

[She smooths her fingers along the paper, plotting out what to do with it.] Did everyone come out of these recent events all right? You seem to be the man to ask.

[collector]

I'm flattered. But that's . . . a difficult question to answer. Have all who died been resurrected? Yes, they have, and some of them don't seem worse for it. No one seems irrevocably wounded. But the psychological damage, well. That will depend on the individual.

[hypospraying]

I'm sorry, I don't mean to assume you have all the answers. You just helped me so much last time and seemed to know everything that was going on. [She finally started folding strips back and forth like an accordion.] I hope back at their homes they can find the help they need to recover.

[collector]

Nothing to apologize for. [a little wryly] I don't suppose that you've taken anything to do with psychiatry in your nursing? I've often thought that a fair few people here could do with a therapist.

[hypospraying]

Could have taken it as an elective, but I passed. [She finishes with her folding and pinches the folds together in the middle, fanning out the sides. She has no idea what it is, but it's keeping her hands occupied.]

I don't blame them. This place... it's an impossibility, and yet here it is, defying logic.

[collector]

[He watches her work, interested as ever in the attempts of those not afflicted with his precise nature. He also smiles.] "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me," I think.

[hypospraying]

[She looks up at him with a curious expression. It sounds like he's quoting something, but it doesn't sound familiar to her. She decides to question as to its source.] Fiction, or philosophy? In any case, I think it sums up this place pretty well, though knowing I can get home means it's not quite so terrifying.

[collector]

Philosophy, Blaise Pascal. [His eyes flicker briefly to Versailles when she mentions home] And I imagine the current lack of monsters helps.

[hypospraying]

Ah. Definitely not my area of expertise. [She sets her paper down and starts flattening it out.] That it does. Otherwise the infinite spaces filled with monsters would be terrifyin', all right. [She pauses in her flattening and gazes up at him.] You been home yet? Since the monsters.

[collector]

Of course. [He gestures to his work] Where else do you imagine I got the paper? There isn't really a lot to write with here. I'll have to do something about that.

[hypospraying]

[She smiles at the array of paper creations around them.] Of course. I really don't know this place well enough to know if there's paper. But I wanted to come back and explore, now that things aren't so dangerous.

[collector]

[amused] Space exploration without the ship?

[hypospraying]

[She laughs.] Yeah. Can't really refer to this as an away mission, since it's not on a planet, and I'm only as far away as a thought.

[collector]

Have you tried to convince anyone that it's real?

[hypospraying]

[She shakes her head.] I'm still not sure myself. This could all be some elaborate dream and I'm really in a coma or something. [She smirks and pinches herself on the arm.] Feels real though.

[collector]

I'm more inclined to believe it a simularity. We do some impressive ones on the Collection, though I say so myself.

[hypospraying]

This Collection sounds intriguing. [She starts refolding her paper in random ways. If she had scissors, she'd cut out a snowflake.] Could you tell me more about it?

[collector]

[His amusement increases as he watches her.] I could tell you quite a lot about it, but I'll do my best not to bore you. The Collection - the Braxiatel Collection, if you can forgive the vanity - is a sort of museum, gallery, and archive put all into one. It's where I keep everything I've gathered for myself over the years. We've art, artefacts, records, specimens, manuscripts... Everything I could get my hands on, really. I discriminate in quality more than in kind. Academics use the resources in their research, and as they do, their work adds more to the Collection. For myself, it's something of a delight to live on a planetoid developed particularly to suit my aesthetic sensibilities.