15819/Ex Umbra: Return to Innocence

Ex Umbra: Return to Innocence
Date of Scene:	09 September 2023
Location:	Hudson River, New York City
Synopsis:	Jessica takes a path to face herself, and face what lies beyond.
Cast of Characters:	Jane Foster, Jessica Drew

---

Jane Foster has posed:
Summertime in the city brings its own set of challenges. Humidity that stifles any kind of creativity, a known factor. Unbearable heat that causes spikes in criminal behaviour, bad moods, and emergency room visits. Blasting sunshine fit to burn out eyes and cause relentless headaches. Evening offers little relief, still beset by a lid on a pressure cooker.

Things have hardly been quiet. SHIELD bombarded by endless requests, the minutiae of paperwork, and short tempers hardly help. Perhaps retreating to a private place ostensibly out of reach of everyone but Nick Fury is a welcome blessing. Wherever escape is as she knows it. The heights, a boutique, some green space imitating the success of the High Line, that must be a world apart from cranky analysts and field agents anticipating something big, something nonsensically significant.

Jessica Drew has posed:
Retreat to a strip of green along the river. Usually Jessica gravitates to Central Park but she selfishly has no desire to fight crime this evening. No desire to wrap someone in a web and call an anonymous tip into the police, no desire to confront her own fears of failing a mission or protecting her colleagues in a tight spot. Let's not talk about writing mission reports.

The antique picnic basket was a find in a local charity thrift shop - complete with Dalton china and sterling silverware, Jess added the cut crystal glasses and replaced the elastic bands holding everything in place that had gone slack with age. She checked the park out for others with the same idea as hers. Thankfully it was deserted so she was left with the distant thrum of traffic on the bridge and swift sound of the river flowing toward the sea and her thoughts.

Jane Foster has posed:
Parks along the Hudson or the East River are strangely underpopulated at the height of the evening. New Yorkers don't all have air conditioned homes or comfortably shady haunts to spend their evening hours. Why they might spurn the free views and mild breeze is a mystery, but Jessica doesn't have to worry about gaggles of teenagers lost in their phones or families crowding her in. Much further along towards the parking lot, several people pin down benches for reading or aforementioned doom-scrolling, a rare few bothering to interact with their dogs or dine on a quick bite. The river slides past them, uncaring, burdened by its secrets and murmuring in a rush that few hear.

She is not one of the few.

The swift mutters and gurgling retorts for someone with cannier hearing are a world of knowledge. The current's babbling comes in low basso notes and shrill, whispery ones at a much higher pitch, far from lulling. Peculiar rills repeat themselves in the onrushing cadence that she can pick out. Murky noises, distorted by the speed as the river hurries for the sea, but there all the same:

    notachoice notMYchoice noitwasneverachoice
        Shh, timetogo, timetogo, always-they-say, timetogo
    IwontIwontnotnow. ImnotreadynotnowIwont. Theyneedmeneedmeneedme.
        Timetogotimetogotimetogo


needhelpneedmeneed--

Jessica Drew has posed:
Her favorite Italian deli counterman knows Jessica's tastes. The Franciacorta Rosso DOCG is opened and poured and the Tallegio unwrapped. She is a secret foodie. Sometimes she wonders if it is overcompensation for the Spartan meals she ate while in training to be an assassin. They are delicious together but don't hold her attention.

The traffic sounds fade along with the distant thowk of balls at the chic driving range down river. It has taken her years to fine tune her hearing. Not that she had a choice. It was either that or madness. She believes she understands how overwhelming the world must be for the neurally atypical people of the world. So, Jessica chooses what she hears, most of the time.

Tonight the river speaks to her. It babbles about trade and refugees, suicides and murders. Its currents change, redirected by bottles negligently tossed from speeding cars and junked boats sunk to escape paying for hauling them to the dump. The cool humid air speaks of death.

A frown incises a deep line between her brows as the susurration becomes whispered words.

Jane Foster has posed:
Delicious meals have a habit of improving mood and a lacklustre day can become tolerable, a good day transformed to one great. Nothing like the popping flavours of a good slice of soft, fruity cheese to wash away the stress one experienced before. Taking a bite from the coarse rind brings its own troubles, a sensation of sandpaper on the tongue. The interior tastes of iron, for all its soft and slightly fuzzy texture instead of the tangy, creamy embodiment of the valleys that bore the cheese. Her wine, too, is strange, syrupy and altogether lacking a distinguishable kiss of strawberries. Subdued as it typically is, the rose should be fizzy. Not here. It comes out flat.

Perhaps a problem with the bottle, even if it hissed on opening. Perhaps a problem with the pollution and humidity, known to spoil all kinds of experiences.

Machines rumble. Pistons in car engines continue to slap and strike, bashing compressed air to fuel a tiny blast. A wonder Jessica can endure vehicles nearby at all. She chooses, yes, and yet the selective hearing perfected over her lifetime and by teenagers everywhere only goes so far. Gurgling protests make themselves heard. A singular drone behind the rushing water repeats itself in soft plaintive tones, strident and passive, somehow together.

    ididntwanttogo. iwontgo. noonecanmakemegoiwontgonotagain.
    You cannot stay. You cannot stay. You cannotleaveneverleaveneverever. Itsthelaw. ThelawistheLAWunbreakableinviolateLAW.
    needhelpneedhelpneedyouhelpushelpusHELPUS--

The collective wash of water along the shore forms a spiralling eddy close to Jessica's promontory. Metal juts out from the wreckage someone hasn't scoured away, one of the endless public improvement projects doomed to failure but great for photo ops. A cart of some kind, strewn in plastic bags and other detritus, smashing up against rocks used to abut the embankment of the park. Steel cage rocking in the current, it bumps against the hewn granite. Red plastic worn dull edges a corner, sodden papers trapped within barely visible.

'Kills 4 in Paris'
    'By unknown assailant, police say security turned off'
        '9:00 PM show at Hayden'
    'Friends and family of victims plead for answers'
'THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO HELP US'

Jessica Drew has posed:
?The limp paper sculpts itself to her hand, wanting to return to the pulp it was made from, slimy and cold. She scrapes it off with two fingers, only to find a message indelibly inked into her skin.

        --saved by bravery of heroes and allied--

As she examines it, another part of her mind muses on how stepping through one's fear can become a reflex. She surfaces from her self-absorption, eyes scanning the street for the source of a sudden stab of alarm. As she looks one way, a truck ghosts through her, stopping her dead in her tracks. Dim approaching headlights hurry her to the sidewalk.

"What the hell?" Jess seldom curses, saving it for unique occasions like the world becoming a hologram that she can walk through.

Heart racing, she stands under a streetlamp to examine the tattoo again, occasionally raising her head to look at how strange the world has suddenly become. The words printed on her hand tickle her memory. Where had she seen a monument with an inscription like this?

A few steps away from the lamp and Jess exclaims aloud. She had been going to visit the Hayden Planetarium because Jane works, no worked there. She still stumbles on the past tense regarding her colleague and friend. Jane was last seen alive at the Starport. The Starport where people died stopping the Dark Elf invasion that would have ended the world.The Planetarium will have to wait - she has another destination.

Jane Foster has posed:
Sounds in the background form white noise, a grinding and clashing cacophony. Almost crunching, though none of the grey shapes crawling along the distant bridge appear to be suffering a 15-car accident.

Murmurs spat up from the river continue unabated, repeating themselves in greater force as the woman focuses on distinguishing the finer details. Tiny deviations distinguish the two - or is it three - speakers, one babbling and plaintive; the other strident and grumpy; the last insistent, demanding, fearful.

Pleas repeat themselves between the current scouring out the Manhattan schist, all that remains of 400-million-year-old mountains that once towered high as the Alps. Begging without surcease assaults the finely-honed hearing, giving Jessica no respite, if she chooses to hear that broadcast. And whether they know anyone listens, the voices repeat, a refrain boiling up from the nether reaches of that opaque water.

The damp rag in her hand practically disintegrates, but not without a swatch of ink staining her hand. Words printed on the skin: --saved by bravery of heroes and allied--

Her path away from the water comes with a splash. A route trailing through a city that never sleeps nonetheless is off, wronged, a blur of wan neon and streaked headlights against grey concrete, dull windows, and shadows. The hour should not be quite so advanced that pedestrians flutter away like litter in the breeze, but they move away from her. Silhouettes lacking substance dart between buildings as she heads inward to Central Park.

Wet footsteps are left in her wake. Muffled noises mark vehicles slipping past, suggestive of motion. But it's not until she passes through the bumper of a box truck rumbling past, cutting her off without a care if she crosses a road, that something might be amiss.

Jessica Drew has posed:
?Now, to deal with reality. After several experimental swipes through the streetlamp with a hand, Jessica hefts her prized picnic basket, which feels solid to her, and swings it at the lamppost. Only her exceptional balance and strength keep her from spinning in place from the momentum of the basket passing through it. She is in Plato's cave; reality is a shadow projected on a wall.

Eyes shut, she takes several deep breaths, assessing the situation, then sneaks a peek at the palm of her hand.

"Of course," she mutters when she discovers the words gone and a mandala in their place. Mandala or compass?

After looking carefully both ways, she crosses the street. Consulting the morphing ink, she orients toward the Atlantic and the Starport. At this rate, she won't be surprised if some form of other wordly transportation awaits. Instead, with only minor disappointment, she finds what looks like an oil spill back where she had started. The stench of decay makes her step back. With a resigned sigh, she steps closer.

"Lovely," she affirms, wrinkling her sensitive nose, nodding to no one. "Now, what? Am I supposed to touch this stuff? For crying out loud."

Jane Foster has posed:
Beyond Plato's cave, perhaps. An odd place to be considering the graffiti still smeared on buildings, the trash piled up in the alleys awaiting pick-up sometime later in the week. No one's idea of Eden. Jessica's antics go unremarked by the travellers waiting for a bus or the gimlet-eyed college students plowing chips through watery salsa in a nearby restaurant. If anyone witnesses her follies, they keep mum about it.

The print on her palm adjusts subtly, mostly rotating, though its points stay oriented to fixed cardinal directions. Sinuous shapes braid and part like lotus petals, corrupted by the smear over her palm to her wrist. When she reaches the river again, that bank where the cart littered the shores, it's not altogether different from when she left. A bit darker, the oily rainbows leaving an unpleasant residue on the foul water. Pedestrians stroll up and down, ignorant of the risks they face, cavorting among the bloated remnants.

Garbage. Blood-stained rocks. Sacrificial plastic bags, refuse, and metal bits greet her eye. A fair few bodies, some in uniforms of American military forces and not a few stranger shapes. Dark elves, by the look of it, picked at by some carrion bird. Her nose will not thank her for this, though the underlying scent of sickly-sweet honey might be worse than death.

Jessica Drew has posed:
?Jessica stands stiffly, fists balled tightly, eyes screwed shut against the assault on her all senses and all reason. With a long exhale and the barest inhale, she opens her eyes to look at what the river currents have washed ashore. After all, it -is -New York in all its glory and ugliness. One would expect the remnants of a Mafioso payback to be wallowing in the wash of water or a street person, too long ignored by family and society, who had taken the final step away from the pain of existence.

She glances at the shadows behind her, another reality, no longer hers by someone's command or caprice. Someplace in the furious rush of thoughts racing through her, Jess congratulates herself on her sangfroid. Her knees want to tremble, and she can feel a protest tightening her chest. Only the grisly smell threatens to break her self-control. A smell any soldier or undercover agent might recognize and overcome with training. It is the other taint in the air that claws at the back of her throat.

Crouching by the water, she examines what the river has brought her, recognizing the rotting remains of Dark Elves and the soldiers who sacrificed themselves to keep them from this world. Sadness wells up in her for the unclaimed dead.

Well, Roger that. Message received and understood (she hopes). The inscription that faded from her hand, the bodies, and the supernatural compass inscribed on her palm seem to all point to the Starport where Jane was taken. She consults the compass and then looks east to the ocean.

Now. How will she get there?

Jane Foster has posed:
The water laps at the polluted shore, fouled by the detritus of the city. Soapy bubbles foam up where the current swirls, and the stiller parts bear the oil sheen of various automobile fluids. While she may be disjointed from the world she knows, at least the citizens of New York, she's not cut off from the rest of it.

The water is real if she touches it, her hand not passing through. The ground remains solid underfoot, a certainty she isn't floating. Temperature swings and noise are as acute as ever, evidenced by the bustling sounds of snarled traffic and shrill urban life.

The compass points on her hand blend and twist, henna stains left by a passing damp newspaper inked in ashen grey. Consulting them doesn't point east.

Lotus petals point down from her current position, and the only thing lower than her current position -- arguably other than a sewer, anyway -- is the river itself.

Jessica Drew has posed:
?With a sigh, Jessica observes the river closely before approaching the water's edge. The guardrail poses no obstacle; she ghosts through it and turns warily to see its solid shape anchored in concrete behind her.

Jessica Drew has posed:
With a sigh, Jessica observes the river closely before approaching the water's edge. The guardrail poses no obstacle; she ghosts through it and turns warily to see its solid shape anchored in concrete behind her.

Stunned by the realization that it is not the City that has faded into a ghostly existence, she hugs herself, affirming that she is real, at least, she thinks so. A few hesitant steps take her down to the slippery rocks near the grisly tangle of dead bodies. Crouching, she balances on the water's edge, her tattooed hand palm upward on her knee, and contemplates the swirls of pollution leaving a rainbow sheen on the rocks lining the shoreline. Water laps the upturned face of a sailor. A quick check confirms the compass no longer swings to the east.

Jaw clenched against the vivid smell, Jess gingerly touches the dark water. A wavering gleam reflects the lights of cars passing on the bridge and a shadow of her gesture.

"Christ, watch a water monster grab me."

Jane Foster has posed:
Stranded on the shore, Jessica is abandoned to her own wiles as a passing dog barks its fool head off, trotting past with barely a break in its yappy cadence. Some medium-sized breed that costs more money than sense to make trots around in a circle and then goes tearing back to the smeared silhouettes of Dad and Dad, providing another shrill notation to join the white noise of gurgles and moans.

Until she touches the water, when the chorus becomes a cacophony strong as the crowds gathered at Varanasi, a sonic tide to submerge the bystander.

dontwanttogo. notmytime. iwontgo.
Go. Go. Go. The law says go, go, go, go.
selfishbitch. selfishbitch. always does what she wants. selfish. selfish. gonnagetwhatchudeserve. gonnagonnagonna.
helpushelpus
Trust comes not without seeing nor understanding without words~!
Shut up! Shut up, old man! You had it all, now it's my timefinallyMYtimeMINE...

The water doesn't plead. It ruminates. It bubbles and burns, and the oily veneer coats the abattoir-drained water, a flash of black rainbows to beautify the very lifeblood of the city. Rings radiate away from the point of contact, and she can feel the pull of staring eyes. Of the voices rising for her attention, some of them perhaps familiar. Entrapped misdeeds of her own past lie beneath the surface with their own inescapable gravity, dragging at her. The only water monster to grab her might be the weight of her own actions, whether by HYDRA or other means.

A frozen split second and she stands on that foul surface, looking up into a river of flowing cream poured in a shade not entirely unlike fabulous pearls adorning the throats of a rani's throat, milky moonstone garlands on laughing devis, a bolt of the purest silk for a sloe-eyed princess' trousseau. Soft, warm light suffuses the rippling current, something that dispels and darkens the blackness of its mirror reflection below. None of the svartalfar dead pollute those waters, though figures suggested in the metamorphise even as she watches, their malleable figures made young if old, straight if crooked, some reduced to animals, some elevated to sparkling lights.

Jessica Drew has posed:
Jessica snatches her hand back from the water like it is acid and shakes droplets off her fingers that catch the lamp light like falling stars. The voices stop. Still crouched, she ignores the yapping of a pesky dog, pampered by his daddies, and stares into the opaque water. Slowly, she dips her fingers back into the unceasing dialogue and loses herself in time -

    then in space -

    surrounded by voices in continuous looping streams, some of which she recognizes from her past.

The faces and voices of both the long dead and the recent appear and disappear in succession. All dead at her hands. All dead in the name of SHIELD and ostensibly justice.

She has no memory of walking out onto the water. No consciousness that she has sunk below the surface, joining the dead. The diffuse light reminds her of the Milky Way seen from a mountain peak - an opalescent stream of light. And oddly enough, she doesn't panic or gasp for breath - this new element populated by the dead transformed into idealized forms - seems right for this version of herself.

Is this what death is like? Whatever the answer, Jessica is more curious about where it will lead her than afraid.

Jane Foster has posed:
Jessica stands upon a precipice. Above the ambient sheen of pearlescent nectar splashed across the broad sweep of New York's skyline. In place of stars, the wisps swirl and dance. It smells faintly of cream and flowering blossoms, shockingly cold to her stinging fingers if she reaches too high.

Below her, lapping at her soles and creeping up her ankles, the raven's-wing sheened waters of the river. Warm are those waters, for all their oversweet smell, at a temperature close to a bath. The current tugs at her and pulls her down by the weight of her misdeeds. Living carries a cost, no matter how small, measured in the countless selfish acts and lives sacrificed to get ahead.

Two selves, one falling. One rising.

Who is she? Which price will she pay?

Jessica Drew has posed:
Jessica is an impossibly giant being, able to touch the opalescent sky and improbably small, a tiny pebble barely diverting the hungry current pulling at her ankles. The warm pull of the water abstractly frightens her. She knows that powers whose existence she had sometimes vaguely divined on the edge of sleep have already begun to sift through her actions. There is nothing she can change, no bargaining to be done. That finality weighs her down, contributing to the drag of the water.

Though trained to take life, she had gravitated to SHIELD. Their ethos of not using lethal force whenever possible had spoken to her heart.

A heart she had hidden from her 'teachers' to preserve a kernel of herself. Something that none of them could have foreseen. The self they tried to erase and replace with an automaton at their command. They had counted on her being one of their most efficient assassins, and she had been an outstanding student.

Yet, nothing excuses the hand that pulled the trigger or made a lethal fist. She took life in what she believed was a just cause and will accept the consequences without wailing against her fate. There is no reckoning the moments of inattention to others, the casual wounding word or look. She doesn't suffer from eidetic memory nor is prone to regret.

Will she plead her own case? Will they see her life as a whole? Jessica walks, head turned upward to the curious play of clouds overhead, ignoring the warm water encircling her legs.

Jane Foster has posed:
Resisting the familiar, warm embrace of the dark water has its costs. She leaves the comforting darkness. Something brushing against her calf as a glancing blow emphasizes how busy the river is, if the polyglot murmurs in voices that stoke memory were not enough. Denying the immense pull leaves her naked and exposed, stretched out thin to reach something higher than herself.

Something in her snaps, like the webbing used to soar between gulfs dividing skyscrapers. Pulled too tight, drawn too far. She catapults up -- or is it down, or sideways -- into the cool spill of starshine painted across the face of reality.

Cold. Shockingly cold, the 'water' robs her of heat and breath in its jewelled perfection. Waves shouldn't have edges yet the ones at the surface do if she tries to breach it. Sparkling ideas slice and cut at the skin, concepts floating by like fish. Razor-blade lotuses mock the mortal flesh, as precise as the blurred newsprint mandala engraved on her palm. No bleeding henna; ink stains her black, jarring sin against pale flesh.

Up above (relative to her position anyway) rests a huge blue face, myriad arms clutched in multiple hands. Lotuses dangle from blue-black hair, the serene features of the immense figure turning slowly, slowly in her direction. The being has all the signs of a figure straight out of Hindu myths and iconography.

A great sword or staff used to stir the waters forces the river to foam, whirling, churning her around.

Jessica Drew has posed:
"Overreaching yourself once again."

Jessica ignores the voice, the internalized critic that rises in risky moments, a lingering unwelcome trace of the Taskmaster. The stunning cold perfectly accompanies the criticism as she is wrenched from the warmth.

Fury's voice in counterpoint wryly points out, 'Never said it would be a rose garden, Drew.'

Disoriented flight has a familiar feel. No worse than blindfolding herself as she practiced launching herself from point to unseen point on webbing so thin that the gossamer threads were barely visible to the naked eye. But it is no preparation for the dark eyes that weigh her soul in a face as vast and blue as the sky. Training that supersedes the awe and near panic welling inside measures the figure's multiple arms, eyes darting from the whirling disc to the blooming lotus, then the conch shell, to the trident urging the water to rise and engulf her. Nothing in her past prepares her for the being - religion, faith, and worship are unknown to her except as things to be studied to understand would-be targets. Yet, she pays homage to the deity, her hands rising, palms together, fingertips touching her lower lip.

Jane Foster has posed:
The entity in the churned waters leans forward, pivoting effortlessly against the strong tide sending water downstream. The trident in one hand stirs the waves and pushes away the water from the woman concealed within, holding her hands up in supplication. But she remains suspended in place rather than falling deeper or being expelled altogether. Narrowed eyes in their terrible aspects, red-rimmed and peculiarly gemlike, stare forth from the mighty visage upon Jessica in an unblinking regard.

"Why are you here?"

The question rumbles out in a vibrating chord akin to hearing storms rumble or waves crash, a voice at one distinctly masculine and commanding or disturbingly like Nick Fury's. All these things and none.

Jessica Drew has posed:
"Why?" Jessica whispers.

Her hands lower to chest level, fingers knitting together as she gazes up at the serene face. Would that she knew. She suspects that the deity and his aspects may guard the gate to another realm. A realm that contains the river flowing through the City that exists ghost-like beyond its banks and all the voices that greeted her, murmuring within its waters. Voices of the dead. None of the speakers seemed content with their lot. Among them, she had heard her friend, one of the heroes of the battle that had saved the planet from becoming the plaything of beings that would make every past tyrant and psychopath in history into children playing in the sand.

Jessica inhales deeply, making an effort to control her voice.

"For my friend," she avows and wonders what Jane had done to pass the portal and be taken into this realm.

"For Jane Foster."

She, of all people, does not claim spirituality. She understands duty - the duty to protect life and the world; she understands loyalty. No longer the unquestioning loyalty demanded by the 'teachers' who had trained her. Every step away from her past has brought her new understanding, beauty, friendship, and love.

Jane Foster has posed:
The peculiar stare levied on her has weight of a house pressing down on her chest. Those unnatural, red-rimmed eyes stare at Jessica and maybe through her, as if she holds the same translucent quality of the water and aether. Her substance shifts subtly here, leached of colour. Her clothes look more careworn and threadbare, her hair hanging listless in the water and streaked in ash.

His grand visage changes again, the mouth puckering in dismay in the broad, elegant face. Tines sweep against a silhouette nearly invisible in the water and cast some great five-headed ox back on a wave. Its hooves thrash up the spume, sending the odd smell of popcorn butter and fresh-plowed earth radiating through a medium that normally wouldn't carry smells. At least, not to humans. Her body bobs around like a top, despite the bubble of no-space she is briefly contained within.

"You made no propitiations. No proper sacrifices accompany you," the great being says. "You come nonetheless."

He leans forward, the glistening water parting around his body that towers like an oak of hammered cobalt and silver and black foliage high, high beyond the river's surface. Surely his feet touch the bottom she cannot see. His head nearly crests the sky, at least what can be construed as a sky alight in pale gold streaming auroras against a soft silver dome. "Your path forward requires both. What will you surrender from your last life to advance?"

Jessica Drew has posed:
While bobbing in the water, a floating lure hooked on a God's whim, Jessica glances down, taking in the threadbare clothes worn as though years had passed, with a blink of surprise. Garments made to tear in mourning while she heaped ash on her head in the extremes of grief. Since being freed from HYDRA, Jessica has amused herself with designer clothes and shoes when she could afford them on her lean government salary. Still, clothes are just another disguise, easily discarded. So, nothing of consequence. No, the deity's conditions occupy her attention with a deep thrill of alarm. Those red-rimmed eyes press on her consciousness like staring into the sun.

Blinking as she returns to herself, with no hint of excuse or apology, she acknowledges his accusation, "I did not ask to come, Guardian." Then, eyes lowered, head bent, and as much as it goes against her natural inclination, she adds humbly, "But, I'm asking to stay." Ready to face the assault of his gaze, she lifts her head and fixes her green eyes on the being

"I didn't come prepared to...to pass this threshold or leave my last life." She barely keeps her balance as the bubble encasing her yaws wildly in the current stirred by the being's trident. Hands braced against the sides of her cocoon.

"Would you... Would you accept my service as a gift to enter the realm? I would be yours to, ah, direct for a period of time. We would have to work that out. I've already sworn myself to SHIELD."

Another wave rocks the bubble, nearly upending her.

Jane Foster has posed:
The immense being remains a colossus in the river's flow, untouched by the waves, and yet influencing the current and waves that warp around his great legs. He does not seem to bend forward to see her or even lower his chin, but his attention clearly remains fixed upon her down so far away.

His glistening reddened eyes narrow slightly and the sharp black outlines crackle with thunderheads. Blurred shapes twist in the roiling water, jostling the no space that Jessica occupies, vibrations travelling through the invisible barriers that keep her from sinking into the depths or being carried away downstream. Not that any sort of clear shoreline remains to be seen from her vantage, the water a long sheet glittering slightly and then turned oily moments later. Offerings poured out from some unknown space splash by, a heap of waxy flowers joined by a narrow spill of ashes. Blossoms that rot become whole again as they pass her by. Others decay into a stinking heap that smells far too much like human secretions of some kind or another, best not considered.

Still, her offer deserves consideration. He contemplates that silently, brow only mildly furrowed. Huge arms flex and again he shifts the trident, almost as if to lean casually upon it instead of spearing a thick-bodied shape that thrashes and stirs deep below. Violet plumes rise and dissipate into speckled swirls of stardust, slowly congealed and sinking to the surface. (Yes, that.) "The requirements of your previous life do not matter. They held you to a place and time that do not exist. Your perception of them alone gives them relevance. If you are to pass, then how would they matter to who you have been when you are bound to become otherwise?"

He grinds the points into the flooded murk, and a fluttering of spirits jolt their way higher to the surface like globs of fat in a soup or stew, waiting to be whisked off and disposed of. "A period of service for one lunar month to be completed by the end of Sravana," he declares. "What tasks can you complete?"

Jessica Drew has posed:
A slender silhouette, dark against the luminous water flowing beneath her feet - no more significant than a blade of grass against the form towering above, Jessica floats precariously on the waters caught in the thrall of the god's eyes. Evanescent as the fleeting colors of the stars falling around her, her whole life balances on an edge as precarious as the vessel she drifts in.

Face upturned, under the force of his gaze, images of Jessica's past selves flicker through her mind's eye. There was a time when she was lost in the conditioning imposed on her by her makers - nothing more than her genetic makeup and training. She has been a death bringer, an assassin. Still, even after leaving the place she had called home, which was no more than a laboratory for the experiment that created her and others like her, she defined herself by the cold criteria of a science experiment. She possessed blinding-fast reflexes, acrobatic skills that surpassed those of any Olympic gymnast, superhuman strength, and was bred to be a living weapon - without feeling and obedient without question. Once outside the walls of the lab, light breached the place she had hidden so carefully from her jailors.

A chance meeting allowed it to blossom. After the terrigen attack she became something new to the world, - unique, in her way, not just because of her mutations.

Reality returns like a splash of splash water at the sound of his voice and she comes back to the present. With a wave of her hand she dismisses the weight of days he demands.

"I am more than my past. I can search, retrieve, and interrogate. On a good day, help someone see the world from a new perspective. On a bad day, I can protect those you deem worthy of protection. Set me on the path and I will use my all to accomplish it."

Jane Foster has posed:
River water babbles and moans. Her sharp hearing may distinguish the individual voices in lilting sighs or avaricious mutters, complaining and fretting, singing praise or damnation. The shift back and forth through oily intonations and playful laughs brings a discomforting symmetry spun from sheer discord. Opposition abraids and soothes her senses, building up in the liquid medium flooded over her pocket no-space. Whatever shields her from the inundation does not limit sound or odors from leaking through, albeit in varied states.

Bloated corpses rub up against her, turning their bulging eyes and blackened, sausage-thick fingers in the woman's direction to grasp greedily at her. Ripened skin ready to split gleams through molten globs suspended in sickly, polluted water. Embers somehow survive inundation, offering the lone source of fell illumination to the inchoate clouds of water rolling around her. Leering skull-smiles paint the figures passing in and out of sight, twisted by rage and desire and envy, and worse.

A blink and she bobs in the milk, bestirred by a trident and the chained flowers sent upon their way from upstream. Fiery marigolds tumble past; their fat, honeycombed petals roll around playfully, and suddenly she turns on her axis in that nothing space. Walls compress in and blow out simultaneously to throw her into the churned sea. The forewarning cracking her skull comes as a dull pang, not the sharp clarity of danger. Her inundation is neither cold nor hot, rough nor calm. Metronome vibrations of resonating bells accompany a downward pull taking her along wherever this river roams.

Jessica Drew has posed:
Despite a sense of dullness wrapping her, the stink makes her gag. So much for her vaunted super-powered senses. For once, Jessica wishes she was normal, then, perhaps she wouldn't hear the babble of voices rising like the stench of death from the corpses rubbing against her in the water. The disintegrating garlands of worship mixed with dissolved fat molecules leave tide marks of golden petals plastered on her thighs as the trident stirs the current.

Consciousness dissolves into disparate streams. She can hear a droning voice lecture on Brahmani death traditions and the River Ganges, another part of her concentrates on not vomiting and disappearing into a froth of disgust and fear. Unnumbered voices whisper: samsara. The whispers deafen her, stripping away rational thought and only leaving instinct. Every reaction, every action will be part of the great dance of creation as she surrenders to the pull.

Jessica knows she has begun her first steps on an unknown path. A golden petal glues itself between her eyebrows - a mark of the trident bearer. Then, a memory of laughter and shared friendship buoys her as she slips beneath the surface.

Jane Foster has posed:
Samsara.

Water thick with blood and offal leaves stains on her skin as Jessica ends up swept along with increasing speed. Sparks of flame submerged in the ink-dark hellscape burn out from the bloated corpse of an ox. Great clawed feet plunge deep, ripping a body free and the very human scream ripped from the waterlogged throat is a punctuation mark of raw, stinking fear.

She swings roughly left when the current takes a new form, plunging onward. No horse would catch the wavelets as she tumbles and surfaces briefly. A pair of hooves crash ahead of her, spume thrown airborne. A man holds aloft a blazing curved sword bright as the sun, Astrid the pristine white horse galloping for the great ocean exposed beyond a chain of isles. Broken, smoking peaks paint half the sky a sick rubicund shade. Skyscrapers rear and fall, sweating corruption. Vultures circle in lazy gyre along the shades on the choked shoreline and dipping into the water.

Another wave takes her under, but not before the brief glimpse shows the bicolour hue. The ashen, bloody river. The iridescent milk, sweet on her lips.

Vaitara?i splits and sends her hurtling into the formless space between the stars. Black so deep it appears purple quilts the endless cosmos, illuminated by Starshine and nebulous filaments. Gaseous strands turned blue and green owe their fortunes to the star -- or galaxies -- at their heart. She hovers, neither cold nor hot, breathing or breathless.

Matter exists, foremost as a round island surrounded by a descending archipelago of rocky islets, some no larger than a driveway. They slowly rotate around the central hub where the most impossible thing of all stands serenely: a two-storey stone building sprawling over five wings. Its high dome inspired by Gothic and Romanesque traditions rears proudly over stained glass windows and flying buttresses. No church, exactly; the embossed doors and its unlikely placement are telling.

Jessica Drew has posed:
Jessica has lost her sense of time. She has no appetite or need for sleep. The nightmare she tumbles through seems unending. Gradually, achingly slow, she recognizes it is of her own making. How many beings has she brought to the rives of death directly or indirectly? Someone has counted.

Can she atone for the deaths carried out in the name of justice? Acceptance comes. If she cannot, she will assume the burden of her actions.

The moment insight flashes through her, the river splits and spits her into the cosmos. The glory of vast galaxies spinning in blackness fills her vision. Nebulae - incalculable in size reflect in her green eyes as she spins caught in the slow sweep of stars.

She has no idea how far she has traveled as if distance mattered now. After one lazy revolution in the backdrop of towering spirals a speck appears. It slowly resolves into a landmass surrounding a building of neo-classical design. The rocky inlets should be lapped by blue waves - they remind her of Greece but the building seems out of place.

It feels secular to her despite the buttresses and stained glass. As she floats closer to her destination (Jessica is making an assumption fueled by hope. She is too human to desire an eternity of galaxies.) her eyes fasten on the engraved doors. The serenity that had blanked expression from her face is etched by a furrow between her brows.

Jane Foster has posed:
Jessica falls to the predation of weak gravity, not nearly as strong as the tethers holding her to the Earth. Floating at a slow, controlled rate allows her to maneuver herself around, if not relying on her natural abilities. The rocky islets boast a natural grade that slopes downward, meandering through jumbled stone outcroppings. Using them as stepping stones brings her around in a languid curve to the large structure at the centre of the miniature island chain.

Tall windows glow largely in shades of aquamarine, sapphire, and opalescent silver. Variation exists in the palette -- here, a rich golden-jade, there a deep plum -- but largely the hues of nine large stained glass windows follows a given theme. Imagery evokes comparison to the great Gothic cathedrals, light splintered into wonder in great painted rose windows facing the sun. Here, a sailing ship. There a row of mountains, spreading branches peaking above affluent figures turning, rotating in a dance. Smaller flanking windows carry on the patterns she can capture through the wrought work. Looking closely and there, a dark-haired woman surrounded by red specks of fire, hanging above cracked buildings and darkened spires.

The doors themselves are large and wooden, depicting a highly detailed star chart where each radiant spark holds its specific place within a wider oval. Heavy wood can push open soundlessly, or near enough on well-oiled hinges, if so she wishes.

Jessica Drew has posed:
Gravity plucks at Jessica with feeble fingers. If she were to cry, the tears would form smooth ovals and descend slowly with her until she touched a foot to this unknown land. But she has no intention of crying.

Down below her, the building's details come into view. The colors refracted through the images made of leaded glass enthrall her, their images teasing her memory. Who would bring destruction down on a city of spires? Who voyaged the ocean on ships flying before the wind?

Her dark hair floats about her shoulders. Graceful as a leaf on an eddying breeze, Jess touches a toe to the ground before the door and lands. She has a maddening sense that she should be able to read the star chart and know it wells up in her. She stands before the beautiful map for a long moment, lips pressed together, perplexed. Approaching the door close enough to touch her nose to one of the lucent points on the map, she presses the door open with a gentle push.

Jane Foster has posed:
Descent pulls her in, anchoring her when she alights in the courtyard. Something roots her firmly to the dustless pavers, her motions slightly more fluid than usual. This way, at least, a casual motion won't topple her or send her flying off into the void.

Constellations woven on the stars feature at least a somewhat familiar sky, but their depth betrays a three-dimensional plane somehow instead of two. Field of depth matters in space. Patterns picked out on the quilt of the sky by the Babylonians or Chinese stargazers of old aren't grouped together in actuality, the bodies separated by thousands of light years sometimes. Here might be the recognizable W of Cassiopeia, but next door lies something far different from Cepheus. How can stars be identified without colour or size to reference them?

The door gives way into a wide hallway lit by the starshine glow from frosted lamps on the walls. Mosaic floors and smooth, polished walls retain that simultaneous cathedral-like and academic styling, though anyone familiar with the old universities of Europe or their close kin the Americas probably recognizes certain similarities. The path is a straight one for her, lacking doorways. The corridor leads to the round, domed atrium presumably like the other wings she saw. Niches hold modest artwork or sometimes a book, the only concession to artistry willing to detract from the celestial motifs abundant in many places. Nine alcoves, nine arches, nine patterns underfoot.

Sounds carry superbly well here. A stray footfall travels. Echoes, too, if faint. She doesn't sense that, but a persistent, low-level hum remains regardless -- one that wasn't outside.

Jessica Drew has posed:
Before pushing the door open, Jessica studied the vaguely familiar star map for a long moment. The depths between the stars drew her in, and as she pushed the door open, she half expected to be pulled into its profound distances. Instead, she finds herself in a hallway that reminds her of a European museum or university.

She walks slowly but without stopping to the center of the room. Turning in place, she examines from her central position, each niche, and its accompanying motif not trying to name the designs or the star maps that ring the walls or not just yet. Her soft slippers shush on the polished floor and in the echoing quiet, Jess is overly aware of her breathing. She comes to the end of her first complete turn and only then hears a low distant hum.

Jane Foster has posed:
An accurate assessment, for if not strictly a product of Europe's academic palaces, then the architecture owes its origins to Oxbridge, Padua, Bologna. Ideals that crossed the Atlantic and Pacific left their mark in the buildings erected to pursue higher learning, as much as the sacred spaces reflecting a shared faith and ideology. Paris, London, Vienna, Cologne, Turin: elements of each subtly interwoven, here or there.

Images depicted in the vibrant painted glass carry their own illuminated tales. Irregular triangles form a low chain behind people huddled together, covering their heads, reaching forth with pleading hands to a slim figure while soldiers mass on the opposite side of the pane. Another, further, reveals a repeating mandala every inch as intricate as a Gothic rose window, petals decorated by figures at work in a spiral that leads to a curiously blue-black centre in partial eclipse.

All worth study, perhaps, but for the awareness. A heartbeat. Then two, both elevated somewhat.

Within another five meters, a woman speaking becomes audible, a woman she knows. Daisy Johnson.