lostcarnival | OPEN: New Beginnings In Stranger Places

Who: Dr. Helen Magnus and [You]
When: Day 92
Where: Roaming around, a little lost
What: Arrival, getting her bearings, etc. etc.

Adventure was something Helen Magnus never shied from and exploring the vastness of the underground Sanctuary, far beyond those walls was something she couldn't deny herself. So it was that she found herself here, under contract to the Ringmaster with her eyes wide with wonder at it all. The lights and colours, the excitement, the darker elements shining through here and there. It was as familiar as it was alien and she drank it in with an eagerness she had long felt lacking. It stirred her as she moved through tents, passed people much like her who had joined perhaps years before her. A bright flash of a tail there, wings, glowing skin, all of these people becoming Abnormals or were in the beginning. The sheer fascination would have been enough, really.

"Excuse me?" she asked, reaching out to catch the attention of one of the people she had fallen into step with, "I seem to have found myself a bit lost. I was looking for the medical tent and I seem to have completely gotten myself turned around. If you could point me in the right direction, I'd be most grateful."

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Steven looks up from the notes he's playing on his little guitar, careful to keep his crystaline claws from damaging the strings. He has patches of mossy green fur covering about half of his body, with ears and a tail like a lion. There are pink roses blossoming in his hair.

"Oh! Sure." He points a clawed finger past the Gamer's Circle. "It's in the other side of all those game booths." He pauses, and then adds, "Do you need healing? I help out in there sometimes..."

Honestly, Steven looks charming and she can't help but smile. Helen is no stranger to the strange and his claws and physical appearance give her no pause. Her eyes widen a fraction and she shakes her head.

"Ah, no healing for me. Actually, I've been added to your doctor's roster, I believe, and thought I'd better head that way first thing to get my bearings." She pauses for a second and then nods. "I'm Dr. Helen Magnus and very pleased to me you."

Steven's ears lift with additional interest, his tail swishing subconsciously in reaction. He stands up to greet her properly, holding his guitar aside in one hand.

"I'm Steven!" he says, grinning up at her - he's still quite short, and looks like he's about ten, though factually speaking he's older. "Are you new? Sometimes people come back after being gone for a while, so I wasn't sure!"

"I am indeed new, extremely so. I've to say, Steven, your claws are quite wonderful. Do they help you play your guitar better, do you think?"

"Oh..." Steven pauses, glancing at his claws. The pink crystal certainly looks nice, but they make things a bit difficult, too. "Um. I dunno! Not really. They actually kind of make some things harder, because I have to make sure they don't cut the strings, or hook the wrong strings, or... You know."

He smiles sheepishly, like he's sorry to disappoint.

"But... I guess they do make picking easier sometimes, as long as I trim the points." Which he has, apparently, the ends dulled like ground stone."

Helen nods, very much interested. In fact, that's a very good thing to know, really, especially when dealing with claws in general. Not all claws are meant for the same things, after all.

"I've known people with very long, very sharp claws before and it does take awhile to figure out how to best use them and how to care for them," she says with quiet understanding. "I can imagine they might make all sorts of things more difficult to deal with. Did you have them before you came here or are they relatively recent?"

"I just grew them a couple months ago, after I got shot," he says, suddenly, as if that assertion doesn't have horrifying implications. "I kind of grew a lot of stuff all at once, it was weird."

Apparently his reaction to kind of imaginary computer bullets was to grow fur, claws, and a tail. Who knew?

Her eyebrows arched minutely. Shot? Well, it appeared the carnival was quite a bit more than it seemed if young children were being shot in the course of things. He didn't seem bothered by it very much either, which seems a little bit strange.

"What were you shot with and what was the situation, if I may ask? That seems like a great deal of change to go through in a very short time. I can imagine it would be quite strange to deal with."

That's the power of repressing trauma, apparently. It's not the first galling thing that Steven has just casually blurted out relating to past horrible experiences.

Of course, her questioning it causes him to look a little bit more pressed.

"Oh, um..." He trails off, like he doesn't know how to explain it. "We were in this... computer world, I guess? Except if you got hurt there you got hurt in real life. And there were these guys that didn't want us there, so one of them tried to shoot us."

He makes a dismissive gesture, but it doesn't really stick.

"I got hit because my powers didn't work right when I was there. Zecora healed me, though, so I was okay! I just got a bunch of changes right after, when I was healing."

"That sounds like quite the ordeal, Steven," Helen says quietly. "I'm glad you're okay, I suppose if it had been me, I might have been a little frightened. It sounds changing like that might be pretty common from the way you talk about it."

She couldn't help but be curious when it came to the question of how common. And how others reacted to those changes. Having a support system would most definitely have helped and from what she had seen, the other workers seemed to be quite friendly. She really hoped they were as supportive as they seemed.

"Yeah," he confirms making a helpless gesture. "It happens to everyone, especially during the first few months. It's not so bad. I kind of like it."

He actually does, most of the time. Only a few changes have really pushed his comfort zone.

"My fur is really soft."

Fur. Moss. Whatever it is.

"That's good, then. If anything really does bother you or you just want to talk about whatever you're going through, come find me," Helen says with a smile. "I've been helping all sorts of people from my world when they find themselves with new abilities or changes like you've experienced for a long time. Sometimes it's easier to adjust when you have someone to talk to who's seen a great deal of the same sort of thing."

OPEN: New Beginnings In Stranger Places

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