untrueheart | Act 1

Act 1

[For two days, Rue has spent her time deep in the forest, surviving on the supplies provided in a small but seemingly abandoned building. On the first day she saw no one, and spent her time as far away from the storybook bearing her name as possible, forcing herself to ignore the black wings on her back. Doing a terrible job of it.

On the second, someone came by, but she hid herself in the surrounding forest until they were gone. It was a stranger and she didn't want anybody to know she was there. Never mind that she was fairly sure this was outside the walls- somewhere she couldn't even imagine going. Not yet.

But on the morning of the third day, self-preservation wins out over uncertainty, and Rue (with her book, so no one else would find it either) walks from the small house until she finds a small lake, following its river upstream and coming within sight of a village with no wall.

There had been spare clothes in the house, so she wears a large jacket despite the heat, to cover her unfortunate wings; it turns away some of the rain that starts up part of the way through her walk. Eventually she stops under the overhang of a shop, staring around at the unfamiliar village, wondering if she ought to stay out of sight.

Too afraid to open a book labeled with her name - a book that might tell her story - she hasn't even come to understand just how different that story is about to become.]

[[ooc: Rue was at New Feather station bb, and she can be under any roof overhang you want but the Item Shop is the most likely one for running-into shenanigans.]]

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[He hears the gasp, and his gaze shifts towards her. His empty, lonely eyes.

He knows her. He knows her so well. But there's so much that's blocked off, hidden beneath the floodgates of his empty heart.

Mytho makes some steps towards her. And he calls out her name almost automatically.]

Rue.

[All told, he broke that wall of hers in record time.]

Mytho! [Heedless of the rain, she runs the remaining distance, stopping just short of actually throwing her arms around him.] You're...you're-

[Empty.

But how?]

[He blinks and tilts his head, waiting for her to finish his sentence. But no ending comes, so he guess a confirmation.]

I'm here.

Duck said that you weren't.

[She doesn't hear him right away. "I'm here," he said. All at once she is holding onto him, tight, with her face buried against his shoulder. Everything here is unfamiliar and strange and wrong so maybe he can excuse her if she shakes. For a few more minutes she can ignore the emptiness in his eyes.

She doesn't move to speak.]

Duck is here?

[It's not so remarkable because he doesn't feel it. Not at all. On some level, maybe he knows that he should. Not long ago, he had feelings, so many of them, some which he associated with Rue. But they were fleeting, gone, out of his reach.

All he was left with was his shell and his instincts. He knew that when Rue hugged him, he should hug back. So he wrapped her arms around her.]

Yes. I met her days ago.

[Something, a sound, not quite a sob but something equally uncontrollable and raw, escapes her when she feels his arms around her. He was hollow again but he was no longer cruel, not suffering from the terrible thing she did to his heart.

Maybe he can forgive her for shaking. Maybe he won't feel her traitorous black wings through the jacket.]

I don't know what's going on.

[He does notice that Rue doesn't seem to have wings, but in his airy way that doesn't merit comment. Mytho just keeps a steady hold on her for as long as she keeps up the hug.

He responds quietly - the closest to an answer he can manage.]

You don't?

We're stuck here.

But where are we?

[She abandoned her book on the steps of the item shop. Now she pulls away, looking him in the eye again.]

And why are you...gone again?

Luceti.

[His hand absentmindedly drifts over his chest as he meets her eyes unblinkingly.]

I don't know. My heart isn't here.

[Hearing that, she looks around, as though expecting to see the pieces of it scattered across the stones.

Stuck here. And they can't go home, either, not with her father ready to make his move like that. With the story stopped.]

Where is it?

I don't know. And Duck doesn't know.

[She doesn't know either. A flash of thought reminds her that her shoes are missing, but they are far less important than Mytho's heart. At least that was turning him into-

...Into a crow. Into a sacrifice. Because of her. Rue chokes on a breath and is glad that the rain gives her an excuse to look at the ground.]

How did we get here?

[And he just watches in a detached manner. While not exactly being the best person for answers.]

I don't know.

Nobody knows.

Someone must know.

[It is quickly coming back to her, how generally unhelpful Mytho is in a crisis when he has no heart. How he's better at taking direction. So she grabs his wrist and moves back toward her protective awning.]

Come with me.

Okay.

[Falling back into the habit is easy enough. Especially because, even if he can remember things, even faintly, he doesn't have the emotions to act out on them. So he idly lets her guide him along.]

[They are going to stand out of the rain so neither of them gets any wetter than they already are. If Mytho cares to notice, Rue skirts well around the book on the floor there.]

Tell me everything you know about this place.

The Malnosso are the ones who keep us. [He begins to recite in a similar tone he'd use to recite facts in class.] They did not bring us here. They only experiment. We don't know why we're here. We don't know how. It's not home.

[And he did notice her movements - and that the book seems to say Rue's name. Rue hates her stuff getting dirty, so he reaches down to grab it.]

You dropped this...

Keep us? [Why don't they know these things? Doesn't someone?

No one had ever questioned life in Gold Crown Town, either.

Rue flinches when he offers her the book. She does take it, because he's giving it to her, but she doesn't look at it once.]

I don't want to know what's in there.

Yes. We're experiments.

[While he peers at the journal and tilts his head.]

Okay. I won't tell you.

You know? You know what it's going to say?

I know what it could say.

Then tell me.

[Even though she doesn't really want to know just how thoroughly she managed to ruin everything before the end. She has some small idea, and that is too much already.]

Okay.

It could have messages from anyone in this village.

[Not what she expected to hear.]

Messages? But they don't know who I am.

They may or may not be for you.

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