lostcarnival | ⇨ GREYSOL

Entry tags:

⇨ GREYSOL

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 155 - Day 169
Where: Greysol
What: The carnival resumes its tour, this time heading to Greysol, a city tied deeply into the fabric of the multiverse. Here, everyone has an animal companion from birth that is the second half of their soul - and thanks to the Ringmaster, so do you. (Remember,

joysweeper is our guest event runner for this location, and location specific questions should go to them.)
Warnings: Individually marked!

THE CITY OF GREYSOL↴

The carnival arrives in a manicured park in the center of a big city that sprawls out along where the river reaches the ocean. It’s spring, early enough that nights are chilly, warm enough in the days that people and their souls savor the weather, and sometimes shelter together from the rain. Greysol was designed from the bottom up to accommodate the human-dæmon bond. Go out and see!

► THE SHAPE OF YOUR SOUL: The dæmon-forming spell kicks in at about four in the morning. Most characters will wake up with their souls in some small form, curled against them. Even if they were awake, they became dazed and unfocused while their souls were being drawn out of their bodies and have little memory of how it happened.

Until that evening every character's dæmon is able to change shapes, and children and some teens will continue to do so. Most will settle on their permanent forms by evening. Characters without dæmons will just look on, and the few who are thousand-pound bears have to handle being really big.

► IT’S GOOD TO SETTLE: Elaine Tavis Aracari, sixteen-year-old daughter of two actors and a moving pictures sensation herself, just ‘settled’ - her dæmon Tavis stopped changing shape - as a stunning blue peacock. Settling is a major coming of age milestone and celebrated as such in different ways all over the world. She and her family are throwing a massive party in the central park and inviting the public to join in! Enjoy easy access to free catering, live music and showings of moving pictures, and displays of mostly trivial magic. There are also form readers from across the country setting up booths, happy to accept a small fee to inspect your dæmon’s settled or most favored forms and tell you what they mean. Is there anything to these analyses? Eh, maybe, but they’re flattering and fun.

► WITCHING HOURS: Characters who are clearly witches for this event will often be assumed to be in town for a lover, and people, witches and not, may want to know who that is. Humans usually regard them with wary respect and interest. Real witches living with their human families or on business quickly suspect that something’s up, but without clear and present danger take a relaxed wait-and-see attitude. Wait for long enough and any possible decision will come around again, they believe.

There isn’t time to learn much witch magic, but witches, real and carnival-made, have an inherent power: the ability to fly using branches of “cloudpine”, an attractive soft-needled tree common in the park. Witches usually ride large branches as if they’re steeds but can use even short sprays, and you’ll probably see the few witches in the city coming to the park to do so. Why not try?

► BEAR PUN: Human-panserbjørn relations have historically been troubled, but have warmed in the past century. It’s the 65th anniversary of the breaking of the Siege of Bertin, a much-mythologized time when Spectres flooded Greysol and a company of panserbjørn arrived and directed efforts to get the survivors out of the city. A statue is being erected and many florid accounts of the story are being told. If you’re in a panserbjørn shape for the duration of the visit you will probably get thanked and celebrated by people trying to hide their nervousness of you. Expect someone to ask if your dæmon would be a human - it’s a common supposition.

► KERNER ISLAND: From the harbor you can see a wooded island. Although there are no rocks to speak of it sports a tall lighthouse, and nearly all boat traffic avoids it carefully. On a clear day someone with binoculars or a particularly sharp-eyed soul can see loads of trash, birds and various other animals that don’t seem local, and… children? Adults and settled teenagers will see tall vague shapes moving about too.

When asked about it the most important thing adults will tell other adults is don’t go there. They’ll hold their dæmons close and tell you that on that island are things that eat souls. They may also admit with mixed pride and shame that it’s been a source of wealth and innovation for the city. There’s a facility there that can open windows into other worlds, and the children who can reach it can cross through and bring things back. Many of the children are recruited by research and development teams on the lookout for items they can use, but there are also kids out to have adventures or who’ve run away. More on this later.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Great! They're selling linguine in these paper cones up the street, they let you choose a sauce and everything. How's that sound?

[Julien offers her a hand. Julie cocks her pretty head at the other dæmon's latest change and puffs up.]

...What's linguine? [Is about all she can say to that.]

Flat spaghetti noodles. They're really tasty! Great with seafood or pesto but hey, you still can't go wrong with tomato.

....I guess I can try...

[...As he can probably guess by now, this is Reira low-key saying she Still has no idea what some of those are. Foods?? Sure.]

[He suspects. Julie, not comfortably able to keep up on foot, rockets up in a flurry of white wings and lands on his head to begin preening her gold-and-white feathers and his hidden blue feather-hair indiscriminately.]

I think you'll like 'em. There's also an option for putting on cheese. Man, I really wonder how pasta ended up a street food here, but it smells amazing.

Is it fast? [She asks. Street food should probably be fast right?]

Uh, it looks like the time between ordering and getting to eat it is pretty fast, if that's what you mean!

[Here's the noodle cart, which is apparently pulled by it's owner's llama dæmon, who's currently unhitched and gripping a handle in her mouth so she can pull a colander full of pasta out of a boiler. You'd expect the scene to smell like damp llama, her wooly neck certainly gets water on it, but there isn't, really.]

You want some? I want some!

Yeah, that, [she agrees, blinking a bit at the llama while her daemon takes a moment to consider a younger form of it.

It quickly decides against, moving to camel, and then giraffe for a spell.]

....how do I know what to put on it though...

[Julie hesitates, then glides over to land on the back of the knobbly-kneed giraffe dæmon, keeping her wings half outstretched so once it changes into something smaller she can kite away instead of dropping to the floor. She's got her little head cast back and is sniffing deeply. Pigeons have a pretty good sense of smell.]

You know what? We can get two kinds and you can try both, and the one you like more is yours. I guarantee I'm gonna like any of these, so don't worry about that. [Now that he smells it he's really hungry! The llama's body is tonging steaming pasta into waterproofed paper cones and ladling sauces and hanging them over to customers. Julien gets into the line as it forms.]

So, the pesto sauce will be rich and fresh, probably the mildest of any of these. The seafood one'll be salty and full of butter and garlic, so, also rich with a lingering taste. Tomato'll have this very weak bitterness that really brings out the tart and sweet in it. Any of those sound good?

Yeah? [OH BOY! Well, she's on board then. She looks over the sauces in question, staring questioningly.]

...If we can only get two kinds to try, can I try the third sauce..?

Uh- I don't think so, but-

[He didn't think this through, they're at the head of the line now and there are enough people behind that if he forfeits this batch will probably be gone by the time they're at the front of the line.

Well, he can wrap one up for later.]

One of each, sir?

[One of each it is! She waits and watches as the sauces are ladled in, eyes relatively wide.] ....it smells good...

[She says it with the tone of someone who is quietly observing that there's one good thing about this, 'at least'.]

[He shoots her an amused glance as he pays and Julie flutters back to his shoulder.]

Here, hold this one, I only have two hands.

[Yeah he could cradle them awkwardly together or hold one against his chest but that would risk sauce getting on his shirt! Not worth it.

The cone of pesto pasta is warm and lightly damp, still steaming.]

Let's go sit down, I'll show you how to eat this.

Um! [Got it! She holds it with both hands, looking to the cone and sniffing at it a bit. It takes a moment before she realize that Julien has spoken to her actually, and with a slight jump she nods and follows him.] Okay!!

...Do we just eat it from the cone..?

Here, I think... let's see...

[He rests the seafood cone point-down on a table and tries to tug and pull at it while still keeping it upright and holding the second cone. There's tongue-at-the-corner-of-the-mouth going on.

Julie lands on the table and helps, gripping a fold of the tough paper in her beak and tugging. With her help the expertly twisted cone fans open like a ketchup cup, and is... well, sort of half a plate, half a bowl. It doesn't open perfectly.]

Hah! I thought so. And the other one, and I'll open up that one if you like.

...Woah........ [Okay, now that was rather cool. She was a little confused for a moment-they both seemed so focused-but there it was, the pasta all in a....plate?

She quickly hands it over, but frowns.] If it's going to be a plate, what about forks though...

Well, you can buy them back at the stand but they're a little pricey actually, you're expected to give them back for a partial refund.

[He reaches out of sight of Reira, Julie hopping onto the bench besides him and so-casually stretching out her wings to screen it from anyone else, and opens a small portal into his inventory on his leg to pull out a couple pieces of silverware. They're wet with saltwater.]

That's not necessary in this case, though!

Ohhh.... [Well there goes that idea for spoons or forks...but here come the other ones, and Reira gasps as they appear.] You hid them there..!?

I thought they'd be useful, so I carried some with me! I've got a lot of stuff like that.

Here, there's a lot of ways to eat long pasta like this, but the traditional way is to do this and twirl so it gets wound around the fork.

Is there a lot of things in there..? [She asks, watching how Julien twirls the fork and mimicking it as best she can.

Which is...Pretty exact, actually.]

Tons of stuff! It's one of my powers - I can carry so much junk without showing it. It's pretty useful.

[Well, that's a little weird.]

You've had pasta before?

Mnn-mm. I haven't had lots of foods before, [she adds, trying the noodles. She's doing pretty well all things considered.]

Hmm. Well, you're handling it like a pro. Long noodles are tricky.

[He just pops his entire forkful into his mouth, where it's more than is comfortable. It's going to take a minute before he's got it chewed enough to swallow. This is too much to talk through.

Julie looks at him.]

Smooth. Reira, just... eat it however. Have some fun. Get sauce on yourself, it's fine.

[She certainly will be eating it, though she definitely doesn't bore into it like Julien just did. Actually it's oddly clean considering her age....probably because she's actually conscious of the mess it'll make. She doesn't want to make a mess! She wants to eat.

Even so, she does nod. It's good to acknowledge she has permission.]

[Julien is very careful about not getting sauce on his shirt - leaning forwards, rolling neat forkfuls, blocking with his other hand when he has to.

The noodles are a little overdone, he thinks. They kind of come apart too easily. Still, it's hot and fresh. Julie taps her foot on a different unfurled plate.]

Try this one too. Try all of them, they're pretty good!

[She doesn't eat any. Dæmons rarely do, and usually it's just to taste. From her perspective she is eating right now, that's what Julien's doing.]

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