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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Scout finds Lambert at meditation with the effects of the potion writ large over his face and skin and stops to stare, aghast. He kind of looks like he's on the Dark Side, kind of like he's poisoned or has some kind of toxin buildup- they're all the same on one level, of course. In certain people crossing over and using powers for awful purposes for the long term means a massive and detrimental reorganizing of superficial blood vessels, for reasons too speculative and abstract for her to have really looked into. But whatever powers Lambert has he doesn't have the Force and its peculiarities, so it's not that, anyway.

Poison, toxin, whatever, she could do something about that, but should she? It's much more work and strain than a pain block, and she's familiar with how doing something for someone once can mean being called on to do it regularly. Scout folds her arms over her chest and scowls. "Hey. What did you do to yourself?"

It's just typical that it's when Lambert finally manages to find some sense of equilibrium to meditate -- not an easy thing to do, with the poison curling hot in his veins and exhaustion pulling at him, and the fact that he's never had an easy time finding that still, silent place inside him anyway -- someone interrupts. He opens one slightly bloodshot eye to glare at Scout, staying where he is: legs folded under him, hands resting loosely on knees. That he has the energy to muster for annoyance says enough about his current physical condition, at least.

"What does it look like?"

She glares right back. "It looks like you're in some stage of liver failure. You're jaundiced. Are your feet and ankles swollen? Unusual itchiness? This is new and you're doing better despite it." Yep, she's figured it out. The Force had shown her his insides and there had been nothing there to suggest he'd be looking like this just a few days later.

"This is deliberate." Scout makes a face. "Now that I've talked about it I'm obligated to help, aren't I. Look, I can fix you but it's such a hassle." Working detoxifications on herself is easy, trivial even. Working on someone else takes time and usually leaves her feeling worse off. "If you keep doing whatever this is to yourself you'll undo my work and I am not going to keep it up."

"I was working on fixing it," Lambert grumps back, scowling. Since he doesn't look likely to get the chance to meditate any time soon, he lets his posture relax into a slouch.

"Witcher potions are usually toxic. Take too many of 'em, I have to meditate to start clearing the effects, get it through my system faster." So he can take more and start the process over again. He leaves that part out, though, waving a hand. "You're just a walking bag of tricks, aren't you? Maybe you should've put in for nurse instead of mechanic."

"Oh, good, toxic drugs, those are always a good idea. And let me guess, you're in a terrible spiral of taking it until you can't stand the effects, waiting for them to fade, and topping up again. That seems like your speed." Why don't they have bacta here? Suspending injured people in tanks full of clear fluid isn't just a much better method of healing, it keeps them out of trouble and lets passersby gawk at them. Scout should suggest it. She's not going to suggest it. It would have been easy for the Ringmaster to pick something like that up, but the Carnival just doesn't go with that level of technology.

Eyeing him up and refreshing the technique in her head she mutters something like "You should've seen what Master Caudle could do" and immediately, more loudly, says "I'm not a healer. If you don't know how much this kind of thing tires me out, I'm doing it right. Anyway I put in for both but I got assigned to repairbeing."

Edited 2017-08-15 12:22 (UTC)

Scout's not wrong, but it would be absolutely useless to tell her that, so Lambert just shrugs.

"You've got your traditions, I've got mine." Which is probably a direct contributor to the whole witchers never dying in their own bed thing, come to think of it. Still, just because he can tolerate it doesn't mean it's comfortable, and he shifts where he's sitting, grimacing as he puts a hand to his neck and feels the skin hot to the touch.

"How does it work, anyway?""

His traditions, she wants to say, are bad. There are limits to how rude she should be, though, respecting different cultures even when they're objectively wrong is a good Jedi quality, so she just casts her eyes upwards for a second and crouches so she's not standing so high over him.

It's hard to explain a lot about using the Force. She hesitates a moment.

"I touch your abdomen and meditate on your life force, so I can get a better look at your blood and your liver and kidneys. Basically I just... identify the problem and do a little alteration to it so it's easier for you to handle. Maybe rally your organs, they'll be under a lot of strain." Scout shrugs. "I can help things along. It kind of takes a while, but I know how to turn my ears off so you can run your mouth if you want and I won't have to start over."

Lambert would be the first to agree with that, but traditions are like habit -- hard to break once you've gotten used to them, because they make life simpler. If the Carnival ever brought Vesemir here, it'd make for some interesting times.

"I don't want to talk to myself while you touch my belly like you're a midwife checking to see if the baby's turned," Lambert says. Congratulations, Scout, you now get to treasure that mental image of Lambert as an expectant mother.

"If it's going to take a while, I might as well meditate. Can't hurt, maybe it'll go faster." It's worth trying, at least.

That Scout has traditions she also clings to whether or not they're actually useful is not relevant. She's a teenager. Things are different for her.

"Any child in you would need to be put in a surrogate tank anyway," she says, unruffled by the image. Scout transfers herself to sitting cross-legged, a little awkward because of those long feet, in front of him. "All right. I don't actually need to keep my hand on your gut, I think, but I have to touch you somehow and something really dignified won't work." They both have prominent tails. Back to back is just not possible without strange, custom furniture.

There's a little mischief in her face as she tries to pick an angle to come at this. "Pure hypothetical here, what's worse, getting caught holding hands out in the open or inevitably being discovered holding hands out of the open?" Clasping forearms, rather, but holding hands is sillier.

"Is that something they teach you, too?" Why not? People in the carnival are slowly turning into dragons, trees, and everything else. Getting changed enough to get knocked up regardless of biological sex would hardly be the most impossible thing they've seen here...

But that's not the point, and he raises his brows at her expression. If she wants to play at being silly, so can he.

"That depends on who's seeing it, doesn't it?" But he'll catch her drift enough to offer her his arms turned wrist-up, elbows resting on his knees.

"Why would they? That's what technology is for. Honestly all you really need is a scalpel and a reprogrammed tissue cloner." Scout's determined not to react the way he wants her to, not even if he smarmily tries to tell her they know about cloning and exo-ectopic pregnancies wherever he's from.

Shuffling fractionally closer, she leans forwards to grab his wrists and pull them towards her. This is going to take a while and she'll be stiff at the end of it. She doesn't want the angle more awkward than it has to be. She could tell he was feverish before touching him. Doing so... yep. Scout adjusts her grip, pressing her fingers against blood vessels.

"If anyone comes and asks, tell them I bullied you into participating in a weird Jedi ritual and now if they interrupt me blah blah some dire consequence or other," she says, forgetting that she hasn't said the word Jedi anywhere he could hear it. Scout follows that up by closing her eyes, shutting off her hearing so this won't turn into some long rambling thing, and going very still, just breathing deeply and slowly as she turns her attention inwards. It'll be a few moments before anything special can be felt.

"Jedi?" Lambert asks, faintly amused, but the lack of response at his verbal prodding -- including heights of maturity like 'you've got something hanging out of your nose' and 'I feel like we're getting closer already' -- makes it less fun to keep up, and he lapses into silence himself.

Since Scout's effectively cut off all further conversation -- at least temporarily, if she thinks he's not going to continue it later just to be an asshole, she's sorely underestimated him -- he decides to see if he can't get back to meditating, too. It takes him longer, since he's not at all used to doing it while also holding on to someone while Scout does ... whatever it is she's doing to initiate the process.

Scout doesn't react at all to any of that. She really doesn't have a poker face; if she's ignoring you, it's easy to tell. Some Jedi skills are little talked about but very, very useful.

It probably doesn't help that she's using a firm grip, either. Lambert doesn't have the sensitivity to perceive just what she's doing, but as time progresses and he does manage to meditate, it doesn't feel like nothing, either. There is a sense of a confined, controlled, strictly regulated and harnessed sort of anger - is it anger? Defiance? It's complicated and not wholly negative - roiling from his wrists to his fingertips and then up his arms, tracing big and small arteries and veins, and then it's a muddle of scraping and his heart probably beating faster than it should considering the lack of activity.

This won't take as long as Scout feared, but it's still the better part of an hour before she's done and releases his arms. Swearing, she shakes her locked-stiff hands out, making a face. Translated into Faeish her curses are a little strange. They seem to involve the phrase 'up the nose into the brain' a lot.

From Scout's end of things, it may come as a surprise how still and empty Lambert can actually hold his own mind when he needs to, and how long he can do it for. It's a hard-earned skill, but after decades, meditating comes second nature. He's spent more time that he can count on his knees, waiting out the hours until a wraith could be drawn out into the open.

It's the swearing -- which he can understand the intent of -- that makes Lambert open his eyes, slowly, trying to readjust to being conscious again. Meditation's normally a clearing of the mind, and the background noise had been strange to adjust to, but he'd been busy trying to get his heart to slow down and his breath to steady, working at cross purposes with her technique.

If nothing else, it seems it's paid off well enough. The veins under his skin are still visible, but fainter now, like smudges of old ink rather than the lichlike mess they'd left him looking like before. His eyes -- still catlike -- have become less bloodshot, and there's more healthy color in his skin. Experimentally, he tips his head from side to side, feeling his consciousness settle back into his body. If this had been a fight, he'd already be up and ready to go, but since it's the carnival, and there's nothing here to stick his sword into, he's gonna be slow about it, trying to get a better sense of how he actually feels.

"Huh," is what he'll settle on, eventually. "Not bad."

By then she's turned her hearing back on and is stretching out her wrists, pulling her hands back on themselves and cracking all the joints in her fingers and neck. There's a lot of popping happening.

"I'm glad you're happy," Scout grouses. Her head is pounding and it's good there isn't something to fight right now because she's not sure she'd be able to stand successfully in a hurry. With the shadows under her eyes, she looks like she's had a night of poor sleep, and her posture's become less correct. Neither of those are common looks on her, if only because she can run through techniques to pack a lot more sleep in a short time, or sleep while moving and doing repetitive tasks.

Probably she should tell Lambert to use his own bathroom and not pee in the woods or anything unless he goes really far out but she's really not in the mood to discuss that now. Broken down toxins have to go somewhere and that always makes for a very startling odor. Whatever. She can turn her nose off. "You should go show your friends. Eat something before you go and undo that."

Go away, in other words, so he doesn't see that indeed this took something out of her. She's not a healer. Why did she offer? Why did she do it? Even thinking that, Scout feels bad. Jedi don't do things to be thanked for it, or for recompense of any sort.

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⇨ THE SUMMERLANDS

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