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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

"Your dick will heal. Your teeth will not." It was logic, really. But as she wasn't exactly in the mood for either punching him out or kicking him in the balls, she opted to grin at him as she slid her hand down under the covers, tickling at the top of his thigh. "You'd rather no teeth than bruised balls?"

"I'd rather neither," Bucky says, smirking at her. "But if I've gotta choose, I guess I'm choosing bruised balls. I won Best Smile in high school and I've got to keep the reputation going."

"See, and here I was voted biggest asshole, so I guess my trend is still running," she shot back at him, relaxing back against him as he conceded that bruises were better than broken teeth. "Pretty fucked that we're here, though."

"Didn't think I'd be forced to go to Sex World, no. I guess I should have known it was possible - we had aliens invade and shit like that - but it wasn't on my list of things that would happen this year."

Bucky sighs a little. "At least I can choose who I sleep with even if I can't choose when I'm worked up."

"Apples, huh? Guess it'll keep a doctor away if he's worried about getting screwed by his patients." That just brought everything to light here, and she tipped her head up again to look at him. "You know, if you're... not cool with being under some kind of enhancement to fuck, I get it if you don't want to hook up again." Memories were tricky things, after all.

"Nah, I chose you," Bucky says. "And for hell of a good reason, apparently. I don't normally have that kind of luck and discerning taste."

He gives her a look. "You think you're getting out of fucking me again, Jessica?"

"Hey, I'm giving you a valid out. I'm attempting to be nice here." She was an acquired taste, after all. Most might think she had a nice ass, but once her personality got involved, all bets were off.

"Don't need the out. You know who I am so I can save explaining why I'm the Tin Man and you don't feel sorry for me which makes you better than most of the women I've met since getting back into a life worth living. I'm not looking to let go of that," Bucky says.

Her brows rose as she glanced up at him. Well. That was a first. Someone seeing her as the lesser evil? Considering what he'd been through, that wasn't such a far-off idea. "Well then maybe one or both of us is going to have to play nice."

"Playing nice. Haven't done that in decades," Bucky says, shaking his head a little. "Might be a novel thing to do."

"That makes two of us." Though, her timespan was clearly much shorter than his in terms of just existing at all.

"Might be fun to give it a go. I haven't been a nice boy since I was in high school."

Bucky had always been a little bad, just because it made things interesting, but he'd never gotten beyond defending Steve at school or hotwiring a car to take it for a joyride. It had been the war that changed him, first, and then HYDRA. It feels nice to even think about being a fun person again and he wonders if he can manage it.

"Fun is a four letter word." There were a lot of four letter words in Jessica's life. Most of them involved things she opted to not longer think about having. She'd stopped having fun before she'd run into a certain mind controller, but after, well... what was the point?

"All the fun words have four letters," Bucky shoots back. "If it didn't get you in trouble saying it at church, it wasn't worth saying."

He grins at her. "What religion does the Smithsonian say I am these days?"

"Never looked at that part. Religion isn't something I give much of a shit about. I don't know your frozen dancing soldier boy's either." She'd gone to the exhibit, watched the reels, ignored most of it in lieu of making sure that Trish didn't go off and do something stupid to piss off her mom.

"Gold Star. I don't believe in anything any more," Bucky says. "I figured if there was something like the God they made me learn about in Sunday School, we wouldn't have aliens invade or half the people in the world disappear or me fall off a train to become a HYDRA robot. Shit's not real."

"That's the smartest thing you've said since 'let's fuck'." She smirked up at him, listening to his heartbeat and watching it vibrate the skin over his chest. "If there is an actual God? I'm pretty pissed off that they just washed their hands of their little science project."

"Exactly. Least he could do was stick around when I actually need something," Bucky says, laughing softly. "So screw all of that. Except Thor, I guess. He's real. But I don't think anyone is actually worshipping him as a god anymore unless we have some vikings who got lost on the way to the Industrial Revolution."

"Don't go on the internet. There were already 'Viking clans' and whatnot trying to live some fantasy of what being a viking was. Since Thor and his merry band of weirdos showed up, they got worse. 'Thorgardian' was one group. There was a petition to change Thursday to Thorsday." She shook her head, puffing out a breath. "People are so dumb."

"Thursday is technically Thorsday. It's just a modern corruption of the Old Norse. There would be no point in changing it."

Bucky knows that he has entirely too much extraneous trivia packed into his brain and apparently etymology of days of the week can be counted among it.

"All of the English words for days of the week come from the Norse. Other languages tend to use the Roman counterparts of those gods for their names."

"Ooh, your big brain is so sexy," she said with a mock groan, then flopped onto her back. "You know how dumb it is that we know this shit?"

"Hey, don't knock my brain. It's my best feature," Bucky says, laughing again. "And yeah, it's pretty dumb, but it might save your life one day. I know how to ask for directions in 32 languages. That'll get me by in every borough of New York."

"Trust me, Barnes, your brain is not your best feature." She grinned at him, smiling almost to herself at that. "And yet I bet none of those 32 languages include sex god planet chicanery, so... now what?"

"Yeah? And what's my best feature then? 'Cause if you say it's my ass, I'm going to walk out," Bucky teases back.

She's right about none of his training preparing him for this place but places like this are a crucible to show who is strong and who is weak. War is one. This one is a different kind of crucible.

"In a not objective fashion? Eyes. Definitely." None of anyone's training could prepare them for this place. Being stolen away from a world to another wasn't something she had a feeling most people were prepared for.