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TDM #1

TEST DRIVE MEME

This Mess We're In The city sun sets over me...

You awaken slightly disoriented on a beautiful, smooth stone floor. A look around will tell you that this place is a hilltop temple with a good view of the beautiful city below. On opposite sides of the temple are genderless depictions of deities. One is clearly powerful, made of onyx, held up in an imposing stance with one hand holding a gilded flogger and the other outstretched with an open palm as if to enforce a command. The other, made of polished white marble, has taken a knee to the dominant statue across from them. One of their hands is a vase for fresh flowers and you can see that new ones have been placed there today.

The music of an unseen harp begins to play and a golden light permeates the temple. Suddenly, you know what is happening here. The duality that is worshipped here, the figures in the temple, they have a name. The onyx one is Ceannasach and the marble one is Cuiristeach and together with their combined power they are the ones who have brought you to Parthas.

What is Parthas? Parthas is paradise! You have either been brought here because Ceannasach believes you contribute to your world in some glorious way and deserve to be honored and served or because Cuiristeach believes that you would be excellent in a service role, perhaps they even feel sorry for the state of your life back home and want to show you something better.

The deities here also brought you because they need lik which is the energy that allows them to exist. Lik is created in small amounts when you interact with other people, in greater amounts when you grow fond of certain people, and in greater still amounts when you begin to use physical affection. However, when you orgasm, that creates the purest form of lik there is.

Ceannasach and Cuiristeach reward you in a special way. When you have sex with your soulmate or your hjarta, your vördr, or spirit, leaves your body in a time-frozen moment to commune with the deities and ask for something big or small that you might like. Sex carries on as usual and only you will know that you asked for something. If you ask to be sent home, the deities will send you into a hyperaroused state when you least expect it. Hey, you offended them.

The deities also believe you should know of something they have placed in Parthas for your benefit. There is a river in a valley in the middle of housing that will give and take anything you like from your body if you should so wish. This can mean a illness, sadness, a memory or anything else, but be careful because this river runs on fickle magic.

As the harp music continues, you become aware of a new power of yours. You can hear any thought that any other person sends your way, even the ones sent accidentally, and you can see images and moving pictures, as well. Don’t limit yourself to one person! Send that thought to everyone!

The harp music comes to an eventual end and you are left with the knowledge the deities gave you. Your intuition leads you down a southbound path towards a city where a celebration seems to be taking place, if the colorful banners are any indicator. Welcome to Parthas!

Dancing Barefoot She, intoxicated by Thee; She has the slow sensation that He is levitating with She

There is indeed a celebration going on in South City as this is the month of Feabhra. Where it was daylight when you left the Main Temple, now that you have reached the city the only lights are colorful paper lanterns strung up across smooth stone roads. The warmth of the daytime has cooled, so it might be smart to snuggle up with someone in one of the city’s various gazebos – each of them has a swing made for two (or three if you snuggle close enough.)

Harps, flutes, guitars and drums play lively music for everyone to dance to in the city square where garlands of brightly colored and white flowers hang for people to do with as they will. A stately woman dressed in black and wearing a brooch with the face of Ceannasach stands off to the side, her dark hair pulled back in a chignon. Whispers circulate, getting to you and informing you that this woman is E’ara Fraoch, owner of the most successful brothel in South City, and she is paying 50 gold pieces to the best dancers and 100 more if they will come work for her at Where The Wild Roses Grow, her establishment.

I Feel You I feel you, your precious soul, and I am whole

Food and drink is plentiful at this celebration and some of it is even free! The vendors believe that this is a good promotion for their stores during the rest of the year. They wheel their carts about, humming jaunty tunes and offering delicious things to you, the new arrivals, and everyone else in the city.
There is a man named Sam wheeling his cart of beverages and chocolate dipped waffles through town. If you catch him, he’ll probably suggest you order the alcoholic drink The Spirit of Feabhra. This drink does not come without side effects. It tastes like a fancy gin cocktail, sparkling and sweet with the flavor of berries and mint hitting your tongue, but the moment you get close to someone you actually have feelings for, you start to feel it… Them. Their thoughts, their emotions, their dreams… It’s as if they have melted into you.

Is This Desire? Is this desire; Enough, enough; To lift us higher; To lift above?

You have been told repeatedly throughout the night by smiling (creepy) faces not to wander out of the city limits into the wilderness, but now that you are here you just don’t get it. Lichens and fungi light up the night with a soft glow from the tree trunks, seemingly drawing you in.

In the forest, the music fades and the chittering of small animals creates a different tune. You don’t seem to be in danger. You might come across the healthiest, most beautiful apple tree you’ve ever seen. It is completely free of pests and only the dew clings to the apples’ shiny surface.

Should you pick one for yourself, you will feel a strange compulsion to bite it. Go on. Do it. If and when you have, you will find yourself incredibly aroused, but you won’t be able to bring yourself to orgasm – another must do it. If you didn’t bite the apple, maybe you gave it to someone else. In that case they will be unstoppably attracted to you with arousal to match. If you chose to plant it near your home, a tree like the one it came from will grow there and you will ICly receive a special reward.

Dead of Night When delirious fun; Has seriously begun; You'll be down on your knees; You'll be begging us please

Now you’ve done it. You’ve wandered into the woods without a spiritual guide from the temple. Now the vættir have been awoken and they are ready to fuck shit up… Sort of. Right now, these spirits kind of only want to ruin this party, but who knows what they’ll do later?

A low-lying cloud of black smoke crawls down the hills from the forest to the city until it covers the smooth stone roads and reaches up into everyone who is either of weak constitution or just simply tired and possesses them. It doesn’t take total control, but rather influences them, and causes them to destroy decorations, vendor carts, and do wild things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. Basically, these spirits want to cut through the façade and see you party like a rock star.

The only way to exorcise one of the vættir from a friend or loved one is to call on the deity of light – Cuiristeach. They accept demonstrations of service as the highest form of prayer, so get on your knees for your friend and get this done!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"You haven't let me get my mouth on you," he tosses back. "So it's always been there as an option, Jessica."

Granted, they'd only been having sex for, well, today but he fully intends on getting to that before they're done for the night. He drifts his fingers through her hair.

"Just promise me you remember which name to scream."

She heard the way he said her name, but it wasn't in that therapist tone. It was in that smartass tone and she bit his shoulder again. "Sure thing, Jucky. Or was it Bames? Schmucky? Great, now you've gone and gotten me confused..."

"James," Bucky says, rolling his eyes at her. "Although isn't it a thing now to smush people's names together when they're in a relationship? If you start calling me Jucky, they're gonna think I'm your boyfriend."

"That'd be Jessie. Or Bones. Bessica. Ugh, that name sound so goddamn old, it's probably something that'd be used when you were born." She was smiling, feeling a little strange at having so easily fallen into this naked bantering back and forth with someone that she barely knew, but... she knew about him. They were from the same shithole. And he wasn't proposing marriage or trying to get inside her head. She could handle this.

"Thanks. We actually had a lot of Susans and Bettys. I kissed a girl named Louise Callahan on the ferris wheel at Coney Island when I was fourteen. It was pretty good, except Steve got sick in his seat and we had to take the train home," Bucky says, laughing softly.

"Everyone thinks Captain America is so fucking amazing. Well, they didn't have to keep him from getting his ass beaten when all you wanted to do was kiss a girl or read a book."

"That some buried resentment there, Bucky?" She actually knew the feeling a little, having had to babysit Trish during bouts with her mother and the way she acted out once she moved out and became an adult. "And here I thought you'd be all Captain Spankypants this and that."

"I love Steve," Bucky says, shaking his head. "But nobody knows the real guy. They know...what they want to see, I think. When we were younger, I got all the attention. I became invisible after Captain America."

He pauses for a moment. "And then I was a brainwashed murderer, so, I could go for trading lives except I wouldn't wish my shit on anyone. Not even someone I hated."

"Don't laugh, but I actually know what that's like. All of it," she added after he was finished, resting her head on his shoulder and looking across his chest to see the scars on the other side. "Not the arm thing, clearly. Or war. But my... adopted sister sort of went off the rails and then there was this mind controlling rapist and... well. Shit sucked for awhile."

"Is he dead? Because I can kill him. I'm good at that."

Bucky says it in a casual way because it isn't something he should linger on, he thinks. The last thing Jessica needs is for him to go all avenging angel on her and swear that he'll be the best man who ever lived because, well, he's not.

"Just say the word. Free mercenary."

She tipped her chin up so she was looking up at him, her hand moving to rest on his stomach. "I killed him." She'd come to terms with that. She'd had to before she'd done it, otherwise she wouldn't have been able to. But Kilgrave had to go. She'd done her best to find anything redeemable, tried to see if there was a glimmer of humanity in him. There hadn't been.

"And I don't want to think about a creepy rapist when I'm in bed with someone that managed to get me off. Once." Yep, she was keeping count.

"I don't want you to think about it either. But I'm glad you killed him. Some people don't deserve to breathe."

Mind-controlling rapists and HYDRA scientists fall into that category. He grins at her when she says he's gotten her off once.

"Do men not normally get you off? Because you're making that once sound pretty good."

"I usually walk away disappointed, yeah." There'd been outliers, but they were few and far between and often involved feelings she didn't want to look at. Her hand moved over to his other side, fingers tickling against him there out of curiosity.

"Hey, that tickles," Bucky says, squirming a little under her fingers. When she says she usually walks away disappointed he decides that she won't with him. Maybe that's a little optimistic, you can't always control it, but he knows what he's doing.

"Don't have to be disappointed with me."

"That's said with a confidence I don't think you've earned yet, Barnes." She ceased the tickling, but she kept that in the back of her head; Bucky Barnes was ticklish.

"Hey, I'm a highly decorated war hero. I've got confidence for days, Jones," he tosses back, shaking his head at her.

"What kind of flowers do you want me to bring you next time we get together? Every girl deserves flowers."

"No flowers. I never got the whole flowers thing. Like, here, here's some dead things I want you to watch wither and rot. I prefer booze." And presumptive of him to assume a 'next time', but they were here in this weird fuck-place and it seemed likely that they'd bump into each other again.

"What's your poison, then? I'll come with a bouquet of...gin? I peg you for a gin girl."

Bucky used to be good at guessing a girl's drinks back when but he thinks half the drinks he used to order don't even get made any longer.

She made a buzzer sound, shaking her head. "Nope. Whiskey. Gin tastes like shit." Juniper berries. What moron made a drink out of fucking berries?

"Whiskey would have been my second guess," Bucky says. "And gin only tastes like shit when it's cheap and you don't mix it with anything. There was this club I went to back before the war where the gin was so bad it'd peel the paint off the walls but they always had the best bands. Bartender was shit so the Gin Fizz was always flat and the Bees Knees had crystalized honey but damn if I didn't pick up girls there.

He laughs and looks over at her. "You know, your look would have been a hit back then. Always did like a dark-haired girl."

"Gin tastes like someone thought pine needle flavored booze was a good idea. They were wrong, by the way. Bees Knees? Was there actually a drink called Bees Knees, or are you just grandpa'ing some shit to laugh at me over?"

Old people and their weird prohibition shit. But it was good to hear him laughing, smiling as he talked to her. Good to know that she didn't sour everything she touched. "My 'look', huh? You mean goth bitch? It's not even popular now, Barnes."

"Bees Knees is a cocktail with gin and honey in it," Bucky says. "It's real, look it up. I'm sure nobody's ordering it right now in the modern world unless it's a throwback bar but it's a hell of a drink. My drink was always a Sidecar, though."

When she says goth bitch, he shakes his head. "Goths were glam in the 20s. No, you'd look great in Victory rolls and red lipstick. I'd buy you a Manhattan and take you dancing. You'd probably shoot me in an alley afterward, though. Good way to die."

"I always thought it was like the cat's pajamas. Some weird old timey shit you guys said to sound cool but made no sense. And what's with all the weird drink names? Just... drink whiskey? Or beer. What's wrong with beer?"

He mentioned her all dolled up and she laughed, shaking her head. "Nope. I don't do 'glam' or whatever it is. I don't even do dresses. I would definitely knock your teeth out in an alley, though."

"It's to upsell the ingredients. If they have a fancy name, you can charge three times the price of what it is to make it and then you can turn profit. Beer doesn't make profit in bars, cocktails do. I'm not an expert or anything but it's just built into the business model."

When she says she'd knock his teeth out in an alley, he can't help but laugh at the image.

"Then you owe me new dentures if you get any ideas about knocking me to the moon."

"You know quite a bit about bar business models. Planning on opening one?" What? It was a valid question.

"Fine. I won't punch your teeth out. You have a decent smile. I'll just kick you in the balls." Like that was a decent compromise. Jessica was aware it was not.

"Nah, just know a lot of random shit. Got 106 years of knowledge packed in here," Bucky says, tapping his temple. "Prison breaks, how to run a bar, obscure languages. Everything a Winter Soldier needs on the run."

He cuts her a look when she says she'll kick him in the balls. "You probably want me to sleep with you again and if you bruise my balls I'm not going to want to get my dick out. It's not conducive to our sexual arrangement, Jones."