lostcarnival | It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

Who: Peridot and Lapis, Peridot and YOU, Lapis Lazuli and YOU, or, you AND Peridot AND Lapis! Now featuring Pumpkin.
What: Peridot called in a favor from the Ringmaster and got her vegetable dog back! Also, Lapis brought home a gross skeleton and a weird sword, and you can see it outside their trailer.
When: The night the carnival leaves Atlantis and on
Where: The supervisor's grove, and around the Carnival in general

A. CLOSED TO LAPIS

"Look on the bright side Lapis! We match now!"

This would be Peridot's attempt at reassuring her roommate that the changes which she has retained, following two weeks of being underwater, could be a whole lot worse. They are blessedly walking (instead of swimming) back to their trailer in the supervisor's grove, and Peridot is pointing at her mouth and flashing a sharp-toothed grin.

It's been a fairly exhausting two weeks for the both of them. All things considered, Peridot didn't find Atlantis to be too objectionable. Sure, there was the whole giant crab incident wherein a hideous sea beast had tried to kidnap her and her friends in order to add their gems to his treasure hoard, and Greg had been in danger of being eaten through the whole ordeal, but other than that? It was pretty pleasant!

She sure is glad to be back on two legs though. Also, she's more than ready to get back to her morps.

"Anyway, you're lucky you just woke up with your teeth like that," she continues, ascending the front steps and reaching for the door. "When my teeth changed, I was awake, and it was pure agony!" Peridot says brightly.

And then she pulls the door open. And something round and orange comes tearing out of the trailer and hits her square in the chest. Wheezing, Peridot goes flying off the stoop in a flash and slams into the ground flat on her back. Her orange assailant remains seated right on her chest, yapping wagging its weird vine tail in sheer joy.

...Despite the assault, the engineer is not even remotely angry. "PUMPKIN!" she squeals, overjoyed, and holds the gourd aloft.

B. OTA, THE DAYS BETWEEN ATLANTIS AND THE PARTY REALM

From the day after the carnival leaves Atlantis and onward, as you go about your duties around the carnival, you may be visited by Pumpkin with either one or both of her caretakers in tow. Pumpkin is a friendly and energetic little pal who basically just lives for pets and play time. Be advised, though, that she can be a bit nosy sometimes, and has an appetite for things that most people wouldn't exactly consider food? Like plastic cake toppers. And buckets of soapy water.

(Please specify in your subject line if you would like a tag back from Peridot, Lapis, or the both of them.)

C. OTA, LAPIS' VORPAL BLADE GOES SNICKER SNACK

There's another oddity in the carnival now, and it's Lapis and Peridot's rather macabre new lawn ornament.

...Okay, so it's more Lapis' lawn ornament than Peridot. Peridot's not really a fan of it, if she's being honest.

The "ornament" in question is actually the skeleton of a Mer, propped up against their trailer with a gigantic mystical looking sword pierced between its ribs. There is no explanation for why it's here. It just is, because neither gem has considered that maybe putting this thing out as a decoration is maybe not exactly in good taste?

You can stop and stare at if you want, but don't you dare touch.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A creature of habit, Papyrus greets the sun most mornings with a walk around the carnival grounds. That got a little bit interrupted in Atlantis by not properly having two legs, so with the dawn of the first water-free day, he gets right back into it.

And what a good morning it turns out to be! Not only are there several skeleton statues he and his brother are responsible for, between the wide-mouthed statue Sans has for a mailbox, the trailertop decoy, and the couple of sand Papyruses that Psiionic enabled him into making... But, today, there's a brand new skeleton statue in somebody's lawn! Remarkable realistic, too.

...In fact, Papyrus realizes as he inspects it, it's too realistic. It doesn't have the grainy quality of the sand, or the fine erosion of stone. It looks like bone, like his own bone. But if that's really a skeleton, one who's just taking a nap, somebody has pulled quite the jape on them. With that sword holding them in place, they may not be able to stand.

...Well, they wouldn't be able to stand anyway, with that tail. But they won't be able to swim, either. He coughs and calls out a greeting to wake them up.

"Hello! Are you in need of assistance? You look a little, ah, pinned."

The mer skeleton, unfortunately, does not stir from its place.

Lapis does, however, and she sits up from her place on top of her and Peridot's trailer and... squints at what she sees. "What are you doing?" You better not touch her skeleton, Skeleton.

Did the narration say don't touch the skeleton? Well, he sure doesn't hear it. Papyrus kneels next to the totally-sleeping decoration and rests a hand on its shoulder.

"I'm offering assistance," he calls over. "It seems someone has fallen asleep on your lawn!" The alternative is that they've fallen down here, and then someone put a sword in them for mysterious reasons? Or that the sword is part of that. Now that would be strange.

"Hey! Hands off!" Unfortunately for Papyrus, Lapis is the more physically aggressive of the pair that live in the trailer. Which means, very suddenly he is going to be shoved away from her skeleton meepmorp with a jet of water from one of the nearby fountains they have rigged up.

It's not harmful but it is hella rude.

Fortunately for him, he's still somewhat used to being flung around. It doesn't hurt too much, and he regains his fitting quickly.

"You're protective of your friend's nap! That's very considerate!" He calls over, never mind that shouting would need up a nap. "But now are they going to get up with that sword??""

"Seriously?" Is. Is this weird magical skeleton for real? "They're dead. They aren't getting up." Though as far as Lapis is concerned, said skeleton is in a much better state than it was while they were under the ocean.

It's definitely better not being disgusting and gooey with rotten bits of flesh still stuck in it.

He is very real, earnestly staring between her and the merskeleton with increasinly wide eyesockets. Sure, the way they're lying so still, maybe they have fallen down... but they don't seem to be breaking into dust. And it's such a public place to keep a fallen friend.

Maybe he misheard her. "They're... what?"

"Dead. As in, not getting back up." Why is that so hard to understand? "Now or ever." Unless there's some sort of magic that Lapis doesn't know about, but that seems a little weird, considering that it hasn't moved yet. It also probably couldn't get up and move anyway due to being a mermaid skeleton and not a regular human skeleton.

"Oh." Then he did hear her correctly. He shivers a little, stepping closer again to look between them. "What... happened to them? Why are they here?" Far be it from him to question somebody's decision to be left on a lawn, but that didn't seem like much of a funeral. Who loved grass that much?

"I don't know. I found them in a cave behind a boulder. The skeleton was a lot more disgusting before I removed the nasty rotten bits from it." Lapis suppresses a shudder. "Anyway, the sword was already through them so I left it like that." Because the sword seems to cut through literally everything else she tries to stick it through.

It's very frustrating.

"So you found a dead skeleton in a dump... and thought to clean them up?" When she puts it like that, it's not so bad. Practically a favor, even if they couldn't appreciate it. "I guess... skeletons from other worlds don't dissolve so quickly."

"A few hundred years, give or take I think?" At most, anyway. Look, she's hardly an expert on human bone deterioration rates anyway. "But yeah, I guess so?"

"Are you serious??" A hundred years is a stupefying amount of time for a dead body to linger. Papyrus clasps a hand to his head for a moment, trying to take it all in.

"Yeah? Why wouldn't I be?" What is he getting so worked up about? It's just a skeleto- Oh..

Oh well, not her business.

"A few hundred years," he repeats, staring at the merskeleton. He's not making any moves towards it, but he's also not moving on.

Two decorative skeletons for the price of one.

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

C because we need a battle of skeleton meepmorps

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