lostcarnival | ⇨ THE SUMMERLANDS

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⇨ THE SUMMERLANDS

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 138 - Day 152
Where: The Summerlands
What: The Ringmaster brings the carnival to the Summerlands immediately after being freed from Portland so that everyone can take a fucking nap. Her included.
Warnings: Individually marked! Most likely discussion of torture and trauma in here.

DAYS OF SUMMER↴

You made it! And things are back to normal... more or less. Upon waking, you will be greeted with a clear blue sky and gentle breeze – the carnival has found itself situated between a pair of mountain peaks, with great fields of flowers extending in the distance. In the other direction, you’ll see mountain-top cities and tall waterfalls accenting vast swaths of forest.

Some of you will already know this place. It’s the Summerlands. You game here once to rest in safety nearly a year ago, and now you’ve come to rest once again.

► WAKING UP: Shortly after the carnival arrives, the Ringmaster will send out a somewhat cryptic radio message - but her immediate location won't be clear. Whatever items you had on your person at the time the Severing was broken will still be on your person, including whatever clothing. All of the animals and pets of the carnival will have returned to the grounds as well, though they are currently free from their designated living spaces. Things in the carnival will appeared to have naturally aged a month, as if the carnival was been sitting here empty and waiting while everyone was in Portland. The lawn needs mowing.

► SUMMER CITY: After the Summer Fae become aware of everyone's presence, they will welcome you into their city. There are stairs that lead up the sides of the mountains, but thankfully there are also magical means of getting up there as well. The Summer Fae will be willing to help workers with the injured as needed, offering herbal remedies and healing magic to those that want it. You'll also be invited to join them for dinner, but they will not be particularly offended if they are turned down, for now.

► SUMMER PEOPLE: The fae here will mostly enjoy the company of any carnival members that offer it - it doesn't seem that much happens here besides day after day of peaceful meditation and relaxation. It is not uncommon to see Summer Fae spent days doing exactly the same thing, whether that be enjoying the weather, listening to music, or dancing - the day and night periods may be similar to earth, but when you don't need rest it can all blur together just the same. Some of the fae work on feats of agriculture or craftsmanship, and while there is no particularly need to work in this place, they take pride in the fact that they do.

► NEW ARRIVALS: Though the Ringmaster will not be offering much guidance for the first week or so, eventually the carnival will begin running for a few small performance sessions, off and on, as a thank you to their fae hosts. The carnival will also be open to receiving new arrivals during that period, and so there will likely be some newbies to train and get orientated as well.

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Iuliael's anatomy doesn't map up very neatly with Julien's. As an angel he was as fluid and changeable as flame and only rarely bothered with things like internal organs, or for that matter external ones like skin. He'd gotten scalded pretty badly, and for some reason that went and translated into a great patch on the side of Julien's body being steam-burnt. He supposes it's a good thing that it's a completely external injury, and that with his healing talent he's regrowing the feathers that dropped off. It just takes a couple days to be able to fly again, even if he can't go fast or far yet.

A while into a flight he has to stop and land to rest and hears the singing, and goes on foot to investigate. Is that... she looks kind of like that one mage, but he probably shouldn't assume she's too similar. Heaven knows Julien hadn't been himself back there, why would others?

"Beautiful," he says when she's done. "How do you get the music part?"

At some point, possibly due to psychological trauma, she'd stopped being surprised that things didn't work out. Like right now, when someone had found her despite her creeping off. That's how those things go.

She let the song trail off into whispers and gentle notes, quietly released. "That's my magic."

"Cool." He's not sure, but she doesn't seem entirely happy about it. "Sorry to bother you. I like your singing, but I don't want to intrude, either! Would you rather be alone?"

Julien has found in the past that when he's in a mood he recovers faster if he's around people, even if he doesn't feel like that at the time. But he's also old and experienced enough to know you don't just force company on people, they don't all work like he does. There's always asking about it later, right?

"Around here, the carnival I mean, that's really impossible, isn't it? You're surrounded by people." And still alone in the middle of it all, so what did it matter?

"Well, there's levels and levels of being around people," he says a bit hesitantly, fearing that stopping to discuss the issue is just making things worse. "I guess alone enough to not be heard singing like that's pretty hard. Could any of the tents be soundproofed? There are fabrics good for that. But, then that'd probably make the acoustics weird, and people are always in and out of there, aren't they."

"I'm less worried about bothering people with singing and more worried about bothering them with me, honestly." And more honestly, she didn't have the fortitude to put up pretenses and walls at the moment. She was tired. Everything was tired.

"Oh." Julien pauses a moment more, then 'sits', his several feet of tail laid out behind him and his feet braced so he can hold the weight of his chest at an angle. It looks like sitting down, it's meant to, but it's a bit more effort over a long period of time.

"I'm sorry that's going on," he says. "How are you doing?"

Ash registered none of this as the least bit strange. Just... this sort of thing happened.

"I'm fine," she said, too quickly for it to be plausible. Ash was ordinarily much better and lying about how she was doing, but Portland had been pretty special circumstances. "What about you?"

People who're fine don't say what she said just a moment ago. Julien shakes his head. How to proceed? Another version of him knew another version of her and wasn't entirely cognizant of how annoyed she was by him. They're not friends. "Well. You wouldn't be bothering me. I'm Julien, by the way."

And he's fine. He's always fine, given a while and people to talk to, not necessarily about the event.

"I'm Ash. Your voice sounds a little familiar." Naturally, the music mage picked up on vocal cues to hint that their paths had crossed at some other point. Luckily for him, her annoyance had not been for him specifically so much as angels in general -- and hey, she'd ended up working with them anyway, so.

He's willing enough to change the subject. "Hello, Ash. Yeah uh... I was the one who was really into music! Less so in like real life, but I still like it. I just can't do any magic with it."

Iuliael had had mood-influencing abilities, he remembers, and... general, vague mental powers related to song. He already can't recall all the details, and that's actually kind of sad. As an angel he'd been rather pathetic, but it's more comfortable to think of that as a different person from Julien, but he doesn't just want it gone.

"Well, on the one hand I'd honestly say you're not missing out on too much." On the other hand, her gift apparently was the only thing keeping her from being an amoral bitch, near as she could tell. "You, ah, appear to have other talents."

"It's really cool though! I can do other shit, but my cool factor is low." Might as well go on and let the subject be changed, though. Extra, blue bird eyes open on his wings, like he put puff stickers over his plumage.

"I guess I have an eye thing now? Is that cool, or just weird?"

"C-can you actually see out of them?" Because -- they might just be decorative, like a butterfly or something, right?

He turns his head so both his primary eyes are visible and winks one of them and some of the extras simultaneously. When the extras close, they disappear. "Actually I can! It's a little weird but I remember how it worked, uh, before." When he'd been all fluid and was sort of made of wings and eyes. In retrospect, that had been really, really weird.

"Okay, that's a little creepy." Hadn't even been what she meant. Like, being a giant pigeon was in and of itself a unique kind of power... "I gotta wonder how that even works, honestly."

Julien agrees readily. "It kinda is! If I keep them from appearing for too long they tend to just start popping up, though."

"I don't even know. They're not anatomical, that's for sure. Which is good, I don't need to get poked and hurt constantly."

"Well, if you chalk them up to 'magic, weird things happen' literally anything is possible." Ash felt that was a perfectly good explanation, for her part -- she'd seen way too much in her time to be incredulous. Heck, she only existed because someone decided to mess around with magic... "Is it just on the wings?"

"Yeah, you just gotta kinda try and roll with these things. Impossible's just a state of mind!" Magic is still a little strange to him. Just because you could take on animal features back home, or even go full bird, didn't mean people had magic. Julien's easygoing and openminded, though. He's been rolling with this.

"Nah, I can get them showing up almost anywhere. Over clothes and hair, too." She seems uncomfortable about them, so he doesn't demonstrate. "Have you been here... with the Carnival here, I mean, long?"

Somehow, being able to form those over clothing and hair made the whole ability much more palatable. More overtly magical, less body horror. She relaxed slightly, tail not quite so brushy.

"A few... months?" She'd kind of lost track, thanks to Portland and their changing circumstances. "Showed up in dreamland."

He feels a bit better, seeing that. The remaining eyes on his wings close and are gone. It's inevitable, being what he is, that some people are uncomfortable, to this or that extent, but he doesn't like it. Maybe she'd be happier if he'd brought his human body to talk.

"Right." Julien pauses a moment. He has a very vague sense of where the Carnival had gone before he got there. "Did everyone sleep a lot there?"

One laugh escaped before Ash even realized she was giggling, and she hurriedly smothered them down. "No, no, it was more like it was the realm of dreams. Like if dreaming is a whole other world, we were there, instead of just brushing on the edges of the world when we sleep."

He snorts, which always sounds a little odd and resonant coming from a beak. "That makes more sense. Mm, some kind of Jungian shared dream world. Was it nonsensical a lot?"

"Oh yeah, big time. It was exactly how you'd expect a dream world to be. You know, minus the dimension-hopping carnival in the middle of it."

Somehow it seemed fitting that the carnival was always the most incongruous and weirdest part of any world.

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⇨ THE SUMMERLANDS

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