voice

[lalliho]

[He's closed himself off. He thought it might help -- slow your surroundings to a standstill, and maybe everything going on inside would learn to slow as well. When he got control over himself, he could control this stupid magic of his that was given to him. He thought he'd be happy, getting back the gifts he was born into, but even with them, the storm inside had been roaring enough to keep him up night after night.

Which meant he'd been even more cut off than he'd intended.]

I can't sleep. I need to. Tell me...what to do.

[Simple as that. Just help him rest, please...]

Comments

[lalliho]

Wouldn't that get tiring, for the person...?

["set it on repeat" is such a callous way of saying it, too...]

Oh. You -- had things that did that. With headphone things. [Like that one guy he talked to briefly on arrival.] Right?

[splinten]

That depends on the song.

[Some work on an infinite loop, others need longer playlists.]

Yeah. It's easy to set up a track to go on repeat if you have the technology. With headphones, it closes you off to everything else.

[lalliho]

[Even the most patient person in the world would get tired of singing the same song over and over again, thanks for this misunderstanding, apocalypse.]

...That sounds nice. I never had anything like that.

[splinten]

[Dirk's apocalypse left him with the opposite problem: all the songs in the world, and no one left to sing them.]

I can grab you the tech for it and modify it easily to play whatever. My shades have a lot of songs on them already.

[lalliho]

[He has no idea what that really means, but -- ]

You can...? What do you want?

[In exchange.]

[splinten]

[He's genuinely unsure how to answer this.]

Nothing I can think of. It isn't hard work.

[lalliho]

What?

[Similarly, this does not compute for Lalli.]

Oh. Um... Okay. I guess.

[splinten]

[Good job, post-apocalypse kids.]

It's not a problem. [So, no big deal.] What kind of music do you like?

[lalliho]

[UHHHH]

I...don't know. Music was just music, when I heard it.

[Music has genre?]

[splinten]

[...]

I can play a few kinds for you and you can tell me what you like.. [Can he do that telepathically. He doesn't know.]

[lalliho]

[He doesn't really know, either...]

Are there lots of kinds?

[splinten]

It's a pretty wide variety. Classifications depend on instrumentation, speech, structure, melody, that kind of thing.

[lalliho]

[.....................]

That sounds really complicated.

[It's just music, why does it have to be complicated!!]

I don't want to have to learn them all. But finding what I like might be okay.

[splinten]

Don't worry, dude, I'm not going to give you a pop quiz on Musical Genres of the 20th century. I can just play you some tunes and you can say what kinds you like.

[lalliho]

[Pop quiz? Musical genre? 20th century? Tunes???]

...Yes.

[That seems safest.]

Not loud. I won't like that. I know that, so you don't have to try with that kind.

[splinten]

I can curate for quieter things. Do you want to meet up?

[lalliho]

Okay. You talk weird?

[HE NEEDS TO STRETCH HIS TELEPATHY LEGS MORE SO LEAKS LIKE THAT DON'T HAPPEN]

I don't stay in the busy parts of the city a lot... Can you come to the edge of Aimintas instead?

[splinten]

[There's a pause as. Oh.]

Yeah. Side we came in?

[lalliho]

Mmn. That's easy.

[omw, etc.

Good thing it's not bustling or anything, because Lalli gives zero indication of his name or what he looks like because why would you ever??? He just doesn't think of this type of thing.

But there's this skinny weirdo pacing around and scuffing the ground with his sick and thigh-high boots.]

[splinten]

[He is approached by a lanky teenager with spiky hair and some pointy shades.]

Hey. Insomniac?

[For lack of a better name, hey.]

[lalliho]

[how anime...of only he knew about anime. As things are, he has nothing familiar to compare Dirk to. What a strange-looking guy with weird habits...]

Um.

[...he doesn't actually know what that is either, but similar words have been said by now, so???]

...Yes. Maybe. [great] I'm Lalli.

[splinten]

Dirk.

[Not being great at social graces, Dirk cuts straight to pulling some headphones out of his sylladex. He holds them out to Lalli.]

I want you to try these on to see if they're comfortable before we get started. Then I can adjust them while we listen if they don't work for you.

[lalliho]

[Lack of social graces is just fine for Lalli, who takes the headphones like they're more like vicious snakes than something he was asking for. He still places them over his ears obediently, but holds them in place rather than letting go or adjusting them to fit better. Feels safer this way.]

Does everyone have these...?

[splinten]

They became commonplace in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, in my world.

[He will give Lalli time to get used to them? Just get a second to understand the feel. If they're new tech, then it makes sense Lalli wouldn't get it immediately.]

[lalliho]

I don't know what that means.

[History is kind of uhhh well time is complicated now for more mundane reasons than Homestuck reasons, at least.]

Okay. Do I have to do anything...?