Pinturas Rupestres

[Carrion Queen]

"Oh. Yeah. I was just saying "

[Alt text: An image of a girl with brown, shoulder-length hair in a bob with bangs sweeping over her right eye. The girl is winking and pointing one finger towards the viewer. She is wearing a white, collared top and a green tie. Behind her is a pattern of blue and purple squares. There are two pieces of text. One piece of text says "Soraya Says!" above her. At the bottom-right, the text says "Never stop resisting the oppressor, even if it's God himself, and drink plenty of water."]

[Jilly]

"...How are you doing that?"

[Carrion Queen]

[Alt text: An image of an embroidery. The embroidery is of a stylized girl with a green tie and beauty mark shrugging. Below her is text that reads "Doing what?" Around the girl are four hands reaching out to her. The shadow of leaves are visible on the fabric.]

[Carrion Queen]

" -- and so I was like, 'How are you gonna make me pick a different name to be called when Martinez is like one of the most common names ever just because one guest said it was confusing that there was a Soraya Martinez and a Maria Martinez?"

Soraya was getting hot. She unhooked her collar, rubbed her neck, then snapped it back on.

"Hey. How long have we been here for? Beach?"

[Jilly]

"-Huh?" Abel glanced over, sunglasses over his eyes and cancer stick in his left hand. He took another drag before scraping it out against the floor of the cave. "Yeah, sure, long as it doesn't make us old or something. Think we might've lost Dominik though, he's been frozen like that for like a month."

[DerArknight]

((Adrian Calleia continued from nowhere))

Around one day and fifteen hours later, Adrian threw a short look a Dominik. "Yeah, you might be onto something." He answered in response to Abel's remark.

Then he continued juggling the zero smoke bombs he possessed.

"By the way," he suddenly said. "Did you guys know that during the second world war, Malta was one of the most intensively bombed areas?

"Basically once the axis had started the new front in North Africa, they realized that Malta laid between Italy and their new battlefields, meaning that the brits on the island would have an easy time attacking anyone travelling from one continent to the other. Rommel feared the axis would lose in North Africa without gaining control over Malta and gave a lot to conquer it. They even had a name for their plan to invade Malta: Unternehmen Herkules. Churchill on the other hand called Malta an unsinkable aircraft carrier and gave a lot to defend it. He didn't have an equally stupid name for his plan to defend Malta, but Malta was never invaded, so I guess he knew what he was doing.

"The one thing no one apparently gave was a fuck for the people living there.

"By the time the siege ended, 2 years, 5 months, 1 week and 2 days had passed, 30000 buildings had been damaged or destroyed, and 1300 civilians had been killed."

None of the smoke bombs fell down, so he didn't pick any of them up.

"1300 of my people in 889 days. That makes around 1,4623 dead maltese per day. All because of a war that had only vaguely relation to them.

"... Or at least that is what wikipedia says. I don't know everything about my country, and you can't expect me to fact-check everything, right? I mean, technically it isn't even that much of my country. Did I tell you that both of my parent's families are actually from Italy? That's why I have an italian last name, after all."

Adrian snorted.

"Damn, is this cave cold. I could really use that hoodie right now.

"But whatever."

He suddenly stopped his juggling and stared directly at Soraya.

"You now hold the two most powerful artifacts of the entire island in your hands: the Zorb Ball and the Lava Lamp. Use them wisely. They can be tools to do much good, but also to do much evil."

With that, Adrian seemed to have said everything he wanted to say.

"Guess I will go on my way. Thanks for allowing me to hang out with you. The last 27 minutes, 27 seconds and 57 milliseconds have been fun."

He went away. Despite Adrian's earlier musings about the cave being cold, he chose the path that led deeper into the cave system.

((Adrian Calleia continued in nowhere))

[Carrion Queen]

Soraya leaned against the wall sipping on the straw coming out of her pineapple, next to Abel who was smoking. She watched as Adrian entered, spoke, warned, and left.

"Hey. Was that a fucking ghost?"

[Jilly]

"Huh?" Abel asked, slightly slackjawed as the vape pen continued to billow out smoke.

"Oh, yeah. What was that about World War 2?"

[Carrion Queen]

"Hmmm."

Soraya leaned in to take a hit of the vape and then took a slice of pizza that was in one hand, while her drink occupied the other.

"Unternehmen Herkules, huh? I think that that ghost of Adrian actually had something there. Like, it wasn't all that different from my stories. The more powerful countries don't see us as anything else but props, tools. An aircraft carrier, a social media post. Sometimes -- "



Can I talk to you for a second?


Soraya straightened up.

"Yeah. Por supuesto. I'll be right back, Abel."

Soraya opened a door to a white void and walked through.

[+] A Private Conversation

V: Hey. It's me.

S: Oh, hey. I know what you want to talk about.

V: [SIGHING] I let you go inactive on purpose because I didn't know if I wanted to keep doing this anymore.

S: No fue tan mal, I enjoyed the break. If you feel like you can't at any point, just let me know, and we'll work something out. Okay?

V: Mmm. Okay.

S: I'll tell the Bing[Bot] you say hi.

Soraya emerged from the white door, closing it. It became part of the cave and disappeared.

"I think we should move on."




[Alt text: A title card reading "intermission" surrounded by swirls of color.]

((Soraya continuada en.....))

[Jilly]

Yeah, let's go. I've never been to the beach before.