EVENT 009

[sticksandbonesmods]

RULER OF MY HEART

HOW SWEET IT IS

As time ticks on in that strange, wobbly way it does in this place — where the nights feel like they last days, and the days feel like they’re only a few hours long — the fog, ever so gradually, rolls back in, until it’s that oppressive black wall it normally is. It means no more trips into the greater forest for the time being, though the surrounding ring of treeline around the Grove and the burned town to the north remains readily accessible.

The woods, now awake and alert, sends its regards with the occasional roar of a beast in the far distance, and the occasional biblically-accurate deer wandering into the Grove proper to nibble on grasses starting to spring up through the snow. Speaking of things springing up through the snow, there are some new trees near the riverbank, sporting perfectly normal lemons that are growing perfectly normal eyeballs. It’s fine, they’re edible, although they don’t seem to be native. Hmm.

All is peaceful thus far, until you open your dresser drawer. Suddenly, a little  creature flies out at you, or cries out angrily because you woke it up. Perhaps, that creature climbs on you instead, shuffling into your pocket to snuggle up. Or, maybe you lay down for a nap, and your pillow feels just a touch lumpier than normal, and when you move your head, something squeals at you. No matter where you find them, even if they’re being a nuisance and eating your shoelaces, these creatures are harmless: they’re merely cold, and you, a Warm Thing, will now be their space heater.

I REALLY LIKE YOU

One of Ydalir’s secret passions is cooking. You would not know this, because she doesn’t have the ability to eat, but that doesn’t mean she lost the ability to cook. A holiday is coming, you see, and it’s tradition for everyone to partake in cute chocolates and have candlelit dinners! (She will not be providing the dinners, that’s on you.)

What feels like early on in the month, Ydalir will approach everybody with a box of chocolates customized for each person with their favourite flavours. For those of you who don’t eat human food, don’t worry: These are safe for consumption for vampires and robots alike.

Like with most things here, though, things are not as they seem. Eating one of these chocolates suddenly makes you feel very, very cuddly, like suddenly you wouldn’t care who you snuggled up to right now so long as you were comfortable. With the candy in your system, you feel affectionate to anyone who you come across, even if you may not have liked them previously.

As it turns out, mixing magic with cooking makes a potion. Ydalir swears up and down she didn’t mean it, but enjoy your cuddle-chocolates anyway!

LET’S STAY TOGETHER

Sometimes, when you touch another person, your mind goes elsewhere. This isn’t a result of the chocolates, but rather some other force at work. If you see two people asleep somewhere — the ground, the couch, the kitchen counter — it’s best to leave them where they are, unless you want to risk passing out with them and seeing what they see. They’ll wake up in a little while.

What those who get dragged into their own minds see depends on the person, and what lies within their heart. These “heartspaces” are made up of core memories to the participants — important locations, emotional states given form, meaningful items, or anything else, really. When in contact with another person, these heartspaces will combine into one, perfectly interactable and wanderable at your leisure. Touching objects within these spaces will play a core memory before your eyes, or even change the scenery a bit, depending on whose heart it is you’re messing with.

Perhaps now is a good time for bonding and learning about one another, in the comfort and privacy of your own minds. After all, you won’t exit the heartspaces for quite a bit.

PAIN IN MY HEART

…just try not to break anything while you're there.

It might be an accident. Maybe you walk backwards into a table containing a framed photograph, and that photo falls and the glass breaks, the picture inside the frame ruined. Maybe you broke that cheaply-made but still-important toy while fiddling with it. Or, perhaps, it wasn’t an accident at all: You broke that thing on purpose, you punched through that wall, you set that fire.

Whatever broke the thing in question doesn’t matter in the end. What matters is that the memory associated with it begins to fade away like smoke on the wind. Fixing the broken object will bring that memory back, but failing to fix it before you wake up from the dream will have that memory gone forever.

Although, there are some pretty bad memories out there… if the memory broken was terrible, or if the item in question showed someone a dark secret you didn’t want them to know… shouldn’t it stay gone?

SPARK NOTES

CLICK TO EXPAND!

HOW SWEET IT IS

The fog is back. The creatures are clinging to you because they're cold. The eyeball lemons are, uh... lemon...y. Enjoy your completely normal slice of nature.

I REALLY LIKE YOU

Ydalir has made everybody chocolates! They're delicious and induce feelings of affection and a deep need to cuddle others. Surely this won't go terribly awry. Also, she's very sorry.

LET’S STAY TOGETHER

Sometimes, touching someone else takes you to a combined mental space made up of the important things to you and the person you touched. You can touch things within the space to play memories, or explore the environment together. Outside, you're just asleep on the floor somewhere probably, so hopefully no one trips over you.

PAIN IN MY HEART

Be careful in the heartspaces. Anything you break will take a relevant memory with it. If you can find a way to repair it, the memory will come back. Although, sometimes memories need to stay gone, don't they? Maybe leaving it broken is okay?

OOC

Happy February! The mod team will not apologise for the amount of pink in this event log. If you'd like to plot with people for this event, head over to OOC plotting. We will allow you to make up various plantanimal creatures for this event, they don't have to be like the images linked as examples. Have fun, enjoy creatures, they're here to stay. Reminder this month will have Heimrquest, so if you want to sign up, please do so on the OOC plotting post.

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Passenger | Arknights | OTA

[forwander]

I. My, my, those eyes like fire

[Birds do not respond well to cuddle-chocolates. Or maybe it's just Passenger in particular. He is wholly unemotional ninety percent of the time, and he's still completely unemotional even as he wanders up to you and drapes himself over you. If you're standing, it'll be his arms up over your shoulders, with Passenger pressed against your back — especially if he's taller than you, since he stands at over six feet. If you're sitting, he's simply laying his head in your lap and...

...taking a nap? Passenger what the fuck—

It is quiet time. Small voice, small baby pigeon, thank you.]

II. I'm a waking hell and the gods grow tired
a)

[Passenger's heart lies in Sargon. It always has, even if he may deny it, even if he will claim that a wanderer like him has no true home anymore. That is the place you're sucked into with him: A market, bright and sunny and furiously hot if you're ill-equipped for the weather. It's bustling, but no words reach your ears, even though lips move and coin is exchanged. Silent, despite what otherwise should be loud.

Off to the side stands a semi-familiar figure who Passenger regards without much fanfare, a younger version of himself standing between a scholarly-looking man and an ancient soothsayer. The two, and young Passenger himself, look cheerful. Happy, almost, as the scholar silently explains something to the child and the soothsayer presumably prattles on about some fortune. And, some hundred feet ahead of them, is some foreign merchant harking wares to anyone who will listen. If you're there long enough, you'll hear the voices of those three as though they aren't merely set pieces for the memories Passenger has.

As you walk forward with Passenger, the younger version of himself joins you, speaking openly about the area of Sargon you're in — Ibut, it's called — while the older version trails along silently. For the time being, anyway.]

b) cw: fires & fire-related deaths

[When the night falls, Ibut goes up in flames.

Even should these fires overlap with your own space, they don't do any damage to anything — but the flames lick at the walls, the pathways, and anything else within reach anyway, trying to burn something that won't catch. In the distance are screams, the agony of those that burned to death the night the fires were set and Ibut's black market burned to the ground. Passenger yet again is unaffected by any of this, though careful observers will see his brow scrunch momentarily.

Little Elliot, on the other hand, looks distinctly horrified. He tugs on your sleeve to get your attention, and should you crouch down so he can whisper to you, he says:]

I don't want to become like him.

[And he points directly to the man who set the fires currently raging, Passenger himself, whose only response is further silence.]

III. Wildcard

[hello pls throw things at bird thank u]

I :)

[lupusxylem]

[Here Wolfwood is, minding his own Damn Business sitting on the inn couch, not yet affected by the chocolates thank you...and Passenger is just.

???

His head is in his lap??? Hello??]

...what do you think you're doin'?

"you're not my boyfriend" energy from both of them

[forwander]

[The headwings give a little flap.]

Resting. You're rather warm, I must say.

[...soft bird cooing noises.]

LITERALLY

[lupusxylem]

[~Resting~ he says, as if he belongs here-]

Cool, that's great and all. Good for you.

Now how about respecting personal space, would ya?

[He has not pushed Passenger off his lap yet though, for all his grumbling.]

[forwander]

[Passenger is not listening.]

You should rest as well. You register as quite on-edge, despite being a particularly sound pillow.

[And, you know, people who are anxious and wiggly and on edge, as Passenger puts it, are not good pillows. Eat some chocolate and vibe, Wolfwood.]

[lupusxylem]

Wh- how am I supposed to rest when I'm the one being used as a recliner, here?

[Passenger is, unfortunately, correct. Wolfwood hasn't rested a day in his life.]

Also, I'm not on edge.

[See that's the trick to getting him, reverse psychology. Do you know it-?]

ii - b

[unheiring]

[Fire is not an unfamiliar sight to Luca. He's burned much to the ground over the last eight years, and if he has his way? More still will smolder. But this place in particular, an old vineyard and a childhood home? That must be protected at alll costs.

His hand has just twitched to reach for his sword when the boy catches his wrist. His head turns sharply, arm snatching away, only to freeze solid. The violence drains from him briefly at the sight of the boy, before igniting once more.]

I'll protect you. [It's easy to say, when he was already planning on lashing out at the man. The flames might not be real, but Luca doesn't know that. And he'll do anything to protect this last semblance of home and peace.]

[forwander]

[A vineyard and a childhood home... Passenger's eyes sweep toward where his younger self, a hallucination most of the time, points at him as though he's the villain. Passenger can't find it in himself to disagree.]

Is it your home? [He inquires,] Rest assured, I don't seek to harm a perfect stranger. It is a question borne of mild interest and nothing more.

But you did, [insists the smaller,] You did harm those "perfect strangers" in the black market. Even if you did not want to.

[Little Elliot stands behind Luca now, but the action can hardly be called cowering. It's more like he's trying to put distance between himself and the man he's going to become.]

[unheiring]

[Amicable though the older man seems, Luca can't bring himself to trust. He doesn't answer the question, instead watching warily even as he pushes himself up to his full height. It does little to help the fact that Passenger dwarfs him, but at least it makes Luca feel that little bit better.]

It seems as if I'd be better off not divulging information to you.

[A careful glance is cast back toward the child, affirming that he's tucked well behind Luca's frame. He might not actually be cowering, but there's little else Luca can do but interpret it as such.]

Stay back. And stay away. I will not warn you twice.

[forwander]

A fair choice. I shan't question it.

[He's looking now at the vineyard, the house itself, still wondering what the real answer is... but he won't press. There's no point; the answer doesn't matter. It was merely an unimportant question to drown out the silence. The fires surrounding them don't crackle, nor do they truly burn anything, merely a setpiece for such a lovely garden.

Passenger traces a fingertip along a vine.]

The one you protect, the boy behind you, is me as much as I am "me". Do you mistrust him, too?

[unheiring]

[Luca's jaw clenches visibly, though Passenger may not be paying enough attention to see it. He watches that finger stroke along a vine, half-expecting fresh flame to shoot out and begin eating away at the tree. He moves just a step closer, before remembering that he's meant to be protecting the boy.

The boy that Passenger happens to mention. Oops.]

He's given me no reason to. [But then again, neither has Passenger, when he thinks about it. He has the word of a child, but who can say what's real and what's illusion.]

Did you truly do harm to the ones he speaks of?

ii - a

[cryopathy]

[kiera is, as always, in furs. kiera's thick hair is down. kiera is suddenly in a desert. it doesn't matter whether this is a dream or reality or what the fuck ever. it's pure hell.

they recognize the adult passenger just from glimpses around the grove, but... right now, they're more preoccupied with rapidly tying their hair up and proceeding to all but strip. just right there in the market square. fur off, coat off, vest off, leaving a loose, thin tunic that honestly looks closer to an undershirt than anything... decent.

sorry.]

Beasts, this place is miserable.

[forwander]

[This is normal for Sargon, don't worry. Passenger doesn't even blink, instead looking away politely to give her a moment and paying mind to the blonde liason ahead. That rabbit never changes. Passenger doesn't even know his damn name.]

I quite agree with you. [Unfortunately, he spent most of his life here, so here it is: heat and sand and a market he distinctly recalls burning to the ground.] I would say you ought to wear more fitting Sargonian attire, but I doubt a place like this allows you to purchase anything. A pity.

[Inevitably they'd just touch something and it would give them both a memory of something completely inconsequential.]

[cryopathy]

[fortunately, kiera does, in fact, know better. they had a harsh truth revealed to them in their brother's heart and, well, that was plenty, thank you.

they do look around, though.]

Pity, indeed. Some of it's quite pretty.

[even nearly nude from the waist up, they're still dying. maybe conjuring up some ice shards in the air around their skin will help...]

A bit mundane, this place, hm?

[forwander]

Mundane... yes, I suppose something like this is quite mundane, at least on the surface. If you'd like to see the seedier portions of Ibut's underbelly, I could take you. Only the worst of the worst lie within the black market, only if you know where to look.

[After all, why would a black market be public knowledge for everybody? No, no, they have to go through the "regular" market first. Find the right people. The right alleyways that lead underground.]

[cryopathy]

[seedy locales? secrets hidden in plain sight? oh, she just got here and passenger already knows just how to pique her curiosity.

granted, she plays it cool with a breathy laugh.]

If "underbelly" implies someplace shaded, I would be more than willing.

I

[sesa]

[Just like Elliot no doubt has, Sesa has been downing those cuddle chocolates like there’s no tomorrow, and has been more than a little friendly with multiple people in the Grove thus far. But none have been such a magnet for his affections as, well…

The Liberi who currently has his head in his lap. And Sesa, being too afflicted right now to be his usual embarrassed and shy self, reaches a hand down to very carefully card his claws through Elliot’s long hair. He’ll let his fingers gently touch the wing on that side too, rubbing the small, downy feathers.]

It is not like you to do this in public, my dear.

[forwander]

[Elliot makes a distinctly birdlike noise that sounds like a coo. Sesa has heard it before; he's the only one who gets those sounds, really. There's the slight, almost inaudible sound of his tailfeathers shifting happily underneath his coat.

Elliot's eyes fall closed.]

Perhaps I wish to lay my claim on you in the public eye?

[Buddy, everyone here knows you're obsessed with him, you don't shut up.]

[sesa]

[The little bird noises he makes kills him. The sound, soft though it is, is enough to set Sesa’s heart to fluttering just like Elliots tailfeathers do as he plays gently with his hair, his tail coming up to drape itself loosely over the Liberi’s hips.]

Mm…as if there was any doubt in said claim?

[Even Sesa, who is a dummy, is well aware that Elliot talks about him to anyone who will listen. He knows this about him and, at least while he’s hopped up on chocolates, he loves it.]

[forwander]

[Happy bird noises will continue. Like this, he might actually be asleep soon, but at least he's still lucid enough to have a conversation now.]

Of course, I had my claim placed on you before you became entirely aware of it. I do wonder if you ever had me figured out.

[He's been sinking his talons in since minute one.]

[sesa]

…if I had to answer you honestly…likely not. I tended to shy away from that possibility if it ever came to mind.

[Him? Falling for his arch nemesis? Couldn’t be Sesa.

Yet here he is, still gently stroking his hair.]

III

[sesa]

[The carnage is not unlike what Sesa always imagined it must be like. Yet…it seems to overlap so seamlessly with his own space that it’s almost hard to tell where Ibut begins and the burned out lab ends. They mix together strangely, a combination of long burnt corpses and people still alive crying out for help. He tries his best to block out the noise, but it’s impossible to do when it’s been etched into your heart already.

He sees Elliot standing ahead of where he is, his back turned to him. Before Sesa can get the chance to approach him or say anything, however…

…oh.

Of course he will crouch so that Little Elliot can speak to him, keeping his attention split between the Elliot of then and the Elliot of now. The request is one that Sesa knows he cannot fulfill, not when this has already come to pass.

He closes his eyes for a moment before reopening them to slivers, tentatively reaching a much larger hand towards Little Elliot’s smaller one.]

I understand. For as long as I am here, I will stay with you. No matter what happens. I promise you this.

[forwander]

[Little Elliot takes that hand. There's a very sudden memory it evokes, one that Sesa will see like an apparition, first of the child holding onto Kal'tsit's hand when she saved his life twenty-something years ago, and another of him holding Old Isin's. They fade as quickly as they came.

The current Elliot, meanwhile, leans against a nearby pillar, one out of the way of the fires. He turns his gaze toward them, impassive, frowning. When he first set these fires, he walked away moments after, disappearing into the night. Now... he pivots to do much the same, but heads in the direction of the lab.]

Curious, that we should be so similar.

[Something he knew, but the similarities of their heartspaces are what he refers to.]

[sesa]

[The sudden vision, however brief, does give Sesa pause. He tightens his grip on Little Elliot’s hand, just a fraction.

Meanwhile, as Elliot begins to walk away from them, Sesa feels hesitant following. Leaving him behind feels like a worse option, admittedly, so…with a glance down at his companion, he’ll start in his footsteps. He keeps a bit of a wide berth, notably, perhaps just for the boy’s sake.

He seemed afraid. Understandably.]

Is it curious? You know my brother perished in a similar disaster, and I am as of yet unconvinced it was not caused by another then, too.

[forwander]

That isn't quite what I meant, though you're correct to say so. If this place is meant to be indicative of an important memory to us... I do wonder why I am not seeing your brother with my own eyes. Should your heart not be happier?

[Elliot has yet to start swiping his fingers through what looks like either a layer of dust or, perhaps, soot. Yet to. He's too busy looking at the scene, while Little Elliot holds onto Sesa's hand and sympathetically pats the back of it with his free hand. Your heart should be happy :( ours is very sad :(]