renren_writes
The Fool
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Very fair;; lemme see if I can edit it in via phone for you!
Hotel Solomon
- Thread starter renren_writes
- Start date
- Original Mature
Very fair;; lemme see if I can edit it in via phone for you!
renren_writes
The Fool
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And added the letter in text form! Sorry about that!
Solarstream
It's all in the cards
- Location
- Zombie World
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Show her the letter. Maybe she knows who Dies Infaustus and their Scheh'rezde are.
renren_writes
The Fool
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Voting is now closed! Stay tuned for an update.
II (II)
renren_writes
The Fool
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Show her the letter. Maybe she knows who Dies Infaustus and their Scheh'rezde are.
"I found a letter!" you quickly announce. She raises a brow, prompting you to go on, as she lazily braids the strips of fabric. "I thought you might understand it if you read it."
The crumpled letter is still clutched tightly in your hand. She lets out a low sigh, almost seeming annoyed, and she shrugs at you.
"I'll give you a pass with this one," she tells you. "All the paperwork outside of the files are too vague for anyone to understand. Took me a while to understand how to request things. It's by phoning Naamah before curfew, by the way."
She holds out one hand for the letter, waving it once.
"Tell me which part you don't understand. I won't repeat myself, though."
You suck in a deep breath and will yourself to hand over the letter. You can't find the strength to move, though. You just keep looking between her and the noose, unsure of what to say before you hand the letter over, and the hesitation makes you annoyed at yourself. You can see why she's getting frustrated with you over certain things, but you can't help not knowing anything.
So instead of giving her the letter, you ask her, "Who is Dies Infaustus?"
She twitches. She goes deathly still. She stares at you, unblinking, and you can see the gears move in her head. She's doing her best to stay calm, you can tell that much, but she's also trying not to let something slip when she speaks next. She knows who this letter is for, and she knows who likely wrote it. You wonder if the letter was what she was looking for last night.
"Not who. What." She lowers her hand and lets it sit on her lap. She doesn't continue braiding the fabric, the noose almost sliding off of her lap now that her grip slackens. "It's Latin. Means 'unlucky day'."
You frown. "Okay. Why is a letter addressed to an unlucky day?"
"It could be a diary entry."
"It's addressing a person directly. Asks favours."
"Some people project into diaries like that. You never met a human person before today?"
"Most people don't leave gifts for their diaries."
She sniffs. She stands up. She fixes her shirt. You watch as she holds her hand out again.
"Let me see it, then," she decides. "Your room shouldn't have been accessed by anyone before your arrival, and if someone else left it behind, it might be important."
You give her an uncertain look. But you hand her the letter anyway, and she stands up to take it and read properly. You watch her as she steps around you, smoothing the paper out and squinting at the handwriting—and then you're grabbing the noose while she's away from it and throwing it into a nearby drier. Okay, you think, that's one potential outcome removed.
You're relieved the same way you'd been distressed—all secondhand and not your own—and you don't dwell on it either. Whatever your emotional state seems to be, it's not something you can decipher on your own, let alone without the help of a professional rather than your flatmate. You hold a hand to your chest, steadying yourself, and when your fingers brush over the section of shirt that covers your key, you can feel it beating like a heart—slowly leveling itself to a more calm state.
The silence in the room is unbearable as you watch her eyes dart over the letter. She rereads sentences, mouths words to herself, and almost tears the letter in two. And then her face scrunches up; not the same way one would out of disgust or to cringe, but in the same way a child would when suddenly faced with overwhelming emotions they don't know how to process. Her legs wobble. She stumbles. You don't know if you should offer to help. In the end, you let her drop to her knees and sob, tears and snot all over her face as she clutches the letter for dear life. Sobs turn to wails, and you think it best to stay where you are, blocking access to her homemade noose.
By the time she stops crying, having curled into a ball on the tiled floor, you peek at the clock beyond the doorway and find only half an hour has passed. You're not… entirely sure what constitutes a long or short breakdown, but you feel like this is short for someone like her. She seems the type to rush everyone else, but never rush herself. Either way, she probably needs this outlet right now.
Bits of chopped up fabric are stained with her bodily fluids by the time she's done wiping off her face. She looks more miserable than usual, the large bags under her eyes now accompanied by swelling and bloodshot eyes that almost makes her look pitiful to you. It's heartbreaking, but you can't quite put your finger on why it hurts so much to see.
She hasn't exactly been the most welcoming of flatmates.
You lick your lips. You muster up the courage to speak now that the silence has taken over once again.
"Did… Did it help?" you ask.
She barks out a laugh. Sarcastic and cynical.
"Sure. That's a word for it."
"It doesn't look like it helped."
She sniffs loudly. She rolls back into a sitting position, the letter balled up in her hand, and she works herself up to stand. It takes a moment—you almost move to help her—but she manages on her own well enough. She leans against the bathroom door and groans, and not for the last time she wipes at her now dry eyes with her palm and wrist.
"Dies Infaustus is a nickname of mine," she finally explains. "It's what this floor's overseer calls me."
You stare at her, gobsmacked.
"We can talk to the overseers?" you mumble.
"Well… I don't know. The guy who used to call from the other floor—he never met the overseer for that level. And ours… He has to sneak around to come here."
You nod. You slowly find yourself leaning on the drier, almost sitting on it. "Where's Scheh'rezade now?"
She snorts. "That wasn't his actual name. It's like—" She cuts herself off with a groan. Now the way she scrunches up her face resembles a cringe. "He's weird, okay? Most people come up with, like, surface-level nicknames for me, but he went and pulled the whole Latin phrase associated with my name. I make one A Thousand and One Nights joke and he decides Scheherezade is his little moniker when he leaves notes."
"Okay, where's Not-Scheh'rezade now?" you scoff.
She gives you a sour look. You return the favour.
Dies Infaustus, which is a name you can't see yourself calling her on the regular, holds up the letter with an almost trembling arm.
"According to this… He's gone. And he isn't coming back."
"But he's the overseer," you reason. "This is his floor. Should he—I don't know—oversee?"
She throws her hands up and lets out a strangled sound. "I don't know! I don't run this place! All I know is how the phones work and the rules!"
"Well what about outside!?" you snap back at her. "I found the pamphlet. How the fuck can the world end and we still be here!?"
"Because magic!" Dies Infaustus screeches.
You stare at her. She stares back. You wait for her to burst out laughing, to say Just kidding!, but she doesn't. She's fuming, upset that you seem to be picking a fight, and for a moment you consider doing just that. Part of you rationalises that magic is absurd and isn't even real, but part of you thinks back to the sludge monster. That freakish creature with a maw that seemed to be an empty space, a black hole waiting to swallow you for all eternity, never letting you go.
(The doors function with magic, another part, quieter, tells you. A gem is the key, and you visualise opening the door with it, after all.)
You sigh. You run your hands through your hair. You, childishly, kick the drier with your heel.
"Okay. Magic. Was that what caused the world to end?"
Dies Infaustus searches your face for a moment—to see if you know something? You aren't sure. But after some contemplating, she lets out a long sigh.
"No," she says, voice uncharacteristically soft. "You probably don't remember that, either. It was… It was worse. The eyes, they just— Never stopped bleeding. It was worse than a flash flood. And it just kept getting worse."
Eyes and blood. And sounds familiar, but it's just out of reach for your mind to grasp.
You purse your lips and nod. It's clearly a scene Dies Infaustus doesn't want to recall. You're desperate for answers, but retraumatizing someone isn't the way to get them, you decide. If anything, she's probably resentful that she remembers and you don't.
"Alright," you sigh. All the panic has left you, the concern of suicide now off the table for the time being. Dies Infaustus doesn't look like she's doing better than before, but she does at least look more willing to help you now that she's seen the letter. Does this make you the gift for certain, then? Considered a baby because you don't remember anything beyond last night? That's one way to consider it, and Dies Infaustus seems okay with that kind of treatment.
Whatever kind of gift you are, it's the kind worth living for and cooperating with for the time being. You're fine with that.
"What kind of… What are you comfortable answering?" you ask her. Dies Infaustus rubs at her neck, a glance flitting to the letter for a brief moment, before she relaxes a little more and nods her head towards her living area. You walk over to her, cautious at first, but you're confident she won't pull a surprise self-detonation once she picks up some books from the floor on the other side of the doorway. You recognise some titles—one of them is the Merriam-Webster dictionary, possibly the latest edition by the look of the size—and you think you'll be getting a bit more understanding from her as a librarian rather than a teacher.
One of the books she also picks up is the Poetic Edda, and you side-eye it for a moment as she makes her way to the table. The manuscript is lovingly moved aside, clearly something she cares about more than any other paper strewn about on her floor; from the other side of the table, beside a stack of scribbles, she drags over a small case that yields an ornate quill pen with a peacock feather attached to it. Was she able to write all of this by hand with a quill? You're intrigued when you see her search for a jar of ink.
"Do you like calligraphy?" you ask lamely. Dies Infaustus thinks for a moment.
"It's a nice hobby. My cursive was never steady enough for it, though."
"I see." You fidget on the spot before slowly moving closer to where she sits. You spot more book titles. One very hefty set of books, all stacked atop each other and marked with coloured sticky tabs, brings forth that strange secondhand sensation again. You don't know where you've heard of Mafteah Shelomoh, but Shelomoh resonates with you especially.
Dies Infaustus has been studying something, and you feel like you know what it is she's been studying. You just can't put your finger on it.
Her Scheh'rezade has to have done something to you, you think. Between lost memories and constantly feeling what can only be described as someone else's emotions and recognition, you're becoming more and more frustrated beyond just the unspoken rules of this place.
"You can borrow any of those if you want, Nol," Dies Infaustus calls out. You look up from Mafteah Shelomoh, spot her watching you with the quill in her hand and a blank sheet of paper in front of her. "My room is more like a glorified storage for books, so you should be able to find something you like. If you like the classics, I think I have Antigone on one of the shelves."
"Oh, no, I'm fine," you insist.
She smiles wryly to herself and looks back at the stack of books she'd gathered. She stares at the Poetic Edda. "Shame. I kind of wanted to see how good you were at riddles. He ended up turning my name into one—with the nickname. Dies infaustus is Latin for 'unlucky day'. Like Friday the thirteenth, y'know?"
You blink at her. "Your name has a connection to bad luck?" you ask her.
She hums. "Maybe. Some people relate it to better things. Better figures. If he had nicknamed me Dies Veneris, the meaning would've been the same."
Dies Veneris… That same secondhand emotion kicks in, something in the back of your mind thinking, She's right.
Dies Veneris… Venus's day. You lick your lips and glance at the shelves.
"Do you… have anything on Roman mythology?" you ask quietly.
She's surprised, but not in a mocking way. "You actually want to sleuth my name?"
"You look like you're about to write something down, and it might take a while, so…" You shrug. "I can't call you Dies Infaustus all the time anyway. It's a mouthful."
She lets out a small huff of a laugh. She shakes her head and continues to smile to herself.
"Shelf closest to the phone. I assume you figured out the meaning of the phrase, so the basic information about the Roman pantheon can be found on the far left side."
"Thanks."
You think on the two biggest clues to the riddle her Scheh'rezade had created from her name—the nickname itself, Dies Infaustus, and the alternative name she'd claimed also would've meant the same, Dies Veneris. One meaning unlucky day, and the other meaning Venus's day.
She finally finds a jar of ink and dips the quill into it, quickly beginning to scratch down whatever she feels the need to write down for you as you look at the room around you.
[] Check the shelf near the phone.
[] Check the books on the floor.
[] Check the books she picked up.
[] Guess her name
- [] Write in...
"I found a letter!" you quickly announce. She raises a brow, prompting you to go on, as she lazily braids the strips of fabric. "I thought you might understand it if you read it."
The crumpled letter is still clutched tightly in your hand. She lets out a low sigh, almost seeming annoyed, and she shrugs at you.
"I'll give you a pass with this one," she tells you. "All the paperwork outside of the files are too vague for anyone to understand. Took me a while to understand how to request things. It's by phoning Naamah before curfew, by the way."
She holds out one hand for the letter, waving it once.
"Tell me which part you don't understand. I won't repeat myself, though."
You suck in a deep breath and will yourself to hand over the letter. You can't find the strength to move, though. You just keep looking between her and the noose, unsure of what to say before you hand the letter over, and the hesitation makes you annoyed at yourself. You can see why she's getting frustrated with you over certain things, but you can't help not knowing anything.
So instead of giving her the letter, you ask her, "Who is Dies Infaustus?"
She twitches. She goes deathly still. She stares at you, unblinking, and you can see the gears move in her head. She's doing her best to stay calm, you can tell that much, but she's also trying not to let something slip when she speaks next. She knows who this letter is for, and she knows who likely wrote it. You wonder if the letter was what she was looking for last night.
"Not who. What." She lowers her hand and lets it sit on her lap. She doesn't continue braiding the fabric, the noose almost sliding off of her lap now that her grip slackens. "It's Latin. Means 'unlucky day'."
You frown. "Okay. Why is a letter addressed to an unlucky day?"
"It could be a diary entry."
"It's addressing a person directly. Asks favours."
"Some people project into diaries like that. You never met a human person before today?"
"Most people don't leave gifts for their diaries."
She sniffs. She stands up. She fixes her shirt. You watch as she holds her hand out again.
"Let me see it, then," she decides. "Your room shouldn't have been accessed by anyone before your arrival, and if someone else left it behind, it might be important."
You give her an uncertain look. But you hand her the letter anyway, and she stands up to take it and read properly. You watch her as she steps around you, smoothing the paper out and squinting at the handwriting—and then you're grabbing the noose while she's away from it and throwing it into a nearby drier. Okay, you think, that's one potential outcome removed.
You're relieved the same way you'd been distressed—all secondhand and not your own—and you don't dwell on it either. Whatever your emotional state seems to be, it's not something you can decipher on your own, let alone without the help of a professional rather than your flatmate. You hold a hand to your chest, steadying yourself, and when your fingers brush over the section of shirt that covers your key, you can feel it beating like a heart—slowly leveling itself to a more calm state.
The silence in the room is unbearable as you watch her eyes dart over the letter. She rereads sentences, mouths words to herself, and almost tears the letter in two. And then her face scrunches up; not the same way one would out of disgust or to cringe, but in the same way a child would when suddenly faced with overwhelming emotions they don't know how to process. Her legs wobble. She stumbles. You don't know if you should offer to help. In the end, you let her drop to her knees and sob, tears and snot all over her face as she clutches the letter for dear life. Sobs turn to wails, and you think it best to stay where you are, blocking access to her homemade noose.
By the time she stops crying, having curled into a ball on the tiled floor, you peek at the clock beyond the doorway and find only half an hour has passed. You're not… entirely sure what constitutes a long or short breakdown, but you feel like this is short for someone like her. She seems the type to rush everyone else, but never rush herself. Either way, she probably needs this outlet right now.
Bits of chopped up fabric are stained with her bodily fluids by the time she's done wiping off her face. She looks more miserable than usual, the large bags under her eyes now accompanied by swelling and bloodshot eyes that almost makes her look pitiful to you. It's heartbreaking, but you can't quite put your finger on why it hurts so much to see.
She hasn't exactly been the most welcoming of flatmates.
You lick your lips. You muster up the courage to speak now that the silence has taken over once again.
"Did… Did it help?" you ask.
She barks out a laugh. Sarcastic and cynical.
"Sure. That's a word for it."
"It doesn't look like it helped."
She sniffs loudly. She rolls back into a sitting position, the letter balled up in her hand, and she works herself up to stand. It takes a moment—you almost move to help her—but she manages on her own well enough. She leans against the bathroom door and groans, and not for the last time she wipes at her now dry eyes with her palm and wrist.
"Dies Infaustus is a nickname of mine," she finally explains. "It's what this floor's overseer calls me."
You stare at her, gobsmacked.
"We can talk to the overseers?" you mumble.
"Well… I don't know. The guy who used to call from the other floor—he never met the overseer for that level. And ours… He has to sneak around to come here."
You nod. You slowly find yourself leaning on the drier, almost sitting on it. "Where's Scheh'rezade now?"
She snorts. "That wasn't his actual name. It's like—" She cuts herself off with a groan. Now the way she scrunches up her face resembles a cringe. "He's weird, okay? Most people come up with, like, surface-level nicknames for me, but he went and pulled the whole Latin phrase associated with my name. I make one A Thousand and One Nights joke and he decides Scheherezade is his little moniker when he leaves notes."
"Okay, where's Not-Scheh'rezade now?" you scoff.
She gives you a sour look. You return the favour.
Dies Infaustus, which is a name you can't see yourself calling her on the regular, holds up the letter with an almost trembling arm.
"According to this… He's gone. And he isn't coming back."
"But he's the overseer," you reason. "This is his floor. Should he—I don't know—oversee?"
She throws her hands up and lets out a strangled sound. "I don't know! I don't run this place! All I know is how the phones work and the rules!"
"Well what about outside!?" you snap back at her. "I found the pamphlet. How the fuck can the world end and we still be here!?"
"Because magic!" Dies Infaustus screeches.
You stare at her. She stares back. You wait for her to burst out laughing, to say Just kidding!, but she doesn't. She's fuming, upset that you seem to be picking a fight, and for a moment you consider doing just that. Part of you rationalises that magic is absurd and isn't even real, but part of you thinks back to the sludge monster. That freakish creature with a maw that seemed to be an empty space, a black hole waiting to swallow you for all eternity, never letting you go.
(The doors function with magic, another part, quieter, tells you. A gem is the key, and you visualise opening the door with it, after all.)
You sigh. You run your hands through your hair. You, childishly, kick the drier with your heel.
"Okay. Magic. Was that what caused the world to end?"
Dies Infaustus searches your face for a moment—to see if you know something? You aren't sure. But after some contemplating, she lets out a long sigh.
"No," she says, voice uncharacteristically soft. "You probably don't remember that, either. It was… It was worse. The eyes, they just— Never stopped bleeding. It was worse than a flash flood. And it just kept getting worse."
Eyes and blood. And sounds familiar, but it's just out of reach for your mind to grasp.
You purse your lips and nod. It's clearly a scene Dies Infaustus doesn't want to recall. You're desperate for answers, but retraumatizing someone isn't the way to get them, you decide. If anything, she's probably resentful that she remembers and you don't.
"Alright," you sigh. All the panic has left you, the concern of suicide now off the table for the time being. Dies Infaustus doesn't look like she's doing better than before, but she does at least look more willing to help you now that she's seen the letter. Does this make you the gift for certain, then? Considered a baby because you don't remember anything beyond last night? That's one way to consider it, and Dies Infaustus seems okay with that kind of treatment.
Whatever kind of gift you are, it's the kind worth living for and cooperating with for the time being. You're fine with that.
"What kind of… What are you comfortable answering?" you ask her. Dies Infaustus rubs at her neck, a glance flitting to the letter for a brief moment, before she relaxes a little more and nods her head towards her living area. You walk over to her, cautious at first, but you're confident she won't pull a surprise self-detonation once she picks up some books from the floor on the other side of the doorway. You recognise some titles—one of them is the Merriam-Webster dictionary, possibly the latest edition by the look of the size—and you think you'll be getting a bit more understanding from her as a librarian rather than a teacher.
One of the books she also picks up is the Poetic Edda, and you side-eye it for a moment as she makes her way to the table. The manuscript is lovingly moved aside, clearly something she cares about more than any other paper strewn about on her floor; from the other side of the table, beside a stack of scribbles, she drags over a small case that yields an ornate quill pen with a peacock feather attached to it. Was she able to write all of this by hand with a quill? You're intrigued when you see her search for a jar of ink.
"Do you like calligraphy?" you ask lamely. Dies Infaustus thinks for a moment.
"It's a nice hobby. My cursive was never steady enough for it, though."
"I see." You fidget on the spot before slowly moving closer to where she sits. You spot more book titles. One very hefty set of books, all stacked atop each other and marked with coloured sticky tabs, brings forth that strange secondhand sensation again. You don't know where you've heard of Mafteah Shelomoh, but Shelomoh resonates with you especially.
Dies Infaustus has been studying something, and you feel like you know what it is she's been studying. You just can't put your finger on it.
Her Scheh'rezade has to have done something to you, you think. Between lost memories and constantly feeling what can only be described as someone else's emotions and recognition, you're becoming more and more frustrated beyond just the unspoken rules of this place.
"You can borrow any of those if you want, Nol," Dies Infaustus calls out. You look up from Mafteah Shelomoh, spot her watching you with the quill in her hand and a blank sheet of paper in front of her. "My room is more like a glorified storage for books, so you should be able to find something you like. If you like the classics, I think I have Antigone on one of the shelves."
"Oh, no, I'm fine," you insist.
She smiles wryly to herself and looks back at the stack of books she'd gathered. She stares at the Poetic Edda. "Shame. I kind of wanted to see how good you were at riddles. He ended up turning my name into one—with the nickname. Dies infaustus is Latin for 'unlucky day'. Like Friday the thirteenth, y'know?"
You blink at her. "Your name has a connection to bad luck?" you ask her.
She hums. "Maybe. Some people relate it to better things. Better figures. If he had nicknamed me Dies Veneris, the meaning would've been the same."
Dies Veneris… That same secondhand emotion kicks in, something in the back of your mind thinking, She's right.
Dies Veneris… Venus's day. You lick your lips and glance at the shelves.
"Do you… have anything on Roman mythology?" you ask quietly.
She's surprised, but not in a mocking way. "You actually want to sleuth my name?"
"You look like you're about to write something down, and it might take a while, so…" You shrug. "I can't call you Dies Infaustus all the time anyway. It's a mouthful."
She lets out a small huff of a laugh. She shakes her head and continues to smile to herself.
"Shelf closest to the phone. I assume you figured out the meaning of the phrase, so the basic information about the Roman pantheon can be found on the far left side."
"Thanks."
You think on the two biggest clues to the riddle her Scheh'rezade had created from her name—the nickname itself, Dies Infaustus, and the alternative name she'd claimed also would've meant the same, Dies Veneris. One meaning unlucky day, and the other meaning Venus's day.
She finally finds a jar of ink and dips the quill into it, quickly beginning to scratch down whatever she feels the need to write down for you as you look at the room around you.
[] Check the shelf near the phone.
[] Check the books on the floor.
[] Check the books she picked up.
[] Guess her name
- [] Write in...
- Location
- St. Petersburg
"She's right" about what?
[x] Guess her name
- [x] Frida?
It's a bit on the nose, especially after mentioning Friday the 13th out loud.
But that's Old Norse mythology more so than Roman; after all, Friday is called that after Frigg/Frea/however you pronounce it. The very name means "Frigg's day". It became known as Venus' day after two goddesses were conflated together.
...is this important in any way? What do we get for solving the "puzzle"?
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