⇨ GREYSOL

[ringleaders]

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.

Comments

lmk if this works for you l m f a o

[whattaprick]

Climbing, ultimately, doesn't appear to be the goal -- or at least, not Lambert's. He's shimmying out on the larger branch to one of the needle-covered limbs, the whole thing dipping dangerously under his weight.

"You always have to do things the hard way, don't you? It doesn't matter if it's pretty, they'll carry you just the same."

"Shut up," Lambert says, automatically, evenly. And then he reaches out to grasp that thinner branch firmly, and swings his weight right off the tree again. It tears off with a crack, pine needles shedding everywhere (and quite possibly showering his erstwhile audience in more) while Lambert plummets down ...

Until he doesn't. He comes to a stop about five feet above the ground, hovering awkwardly, limbs still tucked like he's bracing for a fall. Once he realizes that's not happening, he uncurls slightly, and only then does it register he isn't exactly alone.

"What?" He scowls at the bear. That it's a carnival resident he can guess, but which of them it is, Lambert hasn't exactly been paying attention to who's been turned into what. His daemon is a little more observant, silent as she floats in the air beside Lambert, eyes narrowed ... and sniffing the air.

"Ew. It's Foster."

[criticallyfucked]

Foster understands that Lambert's been trying to avoid him--in a way, that speaks volumes on its own. But he likes that Lambert is unafraid to treat him exactly the way he should--and smiles very un-bearishly back at him and the daemon beside... beneath? Him.

"Oh... I was wondering what you were doing," he says, with a noticeable brightness over his usual deadpan. Though he... actually still has no idea what Lambert is doing, he ducks his head, shedding pine needles from his crown. He glances from Lambert to his daemon and back, but does not break from some eye contact.

"I, uh... hahaha. I overheard something about a suicide pact--"

His dark eyes shine with undisguised anticipation.

[whattaprick]

Foster, huh? Lambert hadn't even recognized him, under all that ... fur. He's seen him as a bear before, but of course, he hadn't recognized him then. Other things had occupied his mind.

"What? That was a joke, you weirdo." Lambert's daemon wrinkles her nose, disdain evident in her voice. She floats away back to her human instead plopping firmly on his chest. The surprise breaks Lambert's concentration, and he automatically reaches a hand up to catch her weight, dropping about another foot before he resumes awkwardly hovering.

Which leaves Lambert holding the conversational ball, glancing between Foster-bear and daemon before he shrugs.

"It's pretty self-explanatory, isn't it?" He waves his hand to the ground, and at himself.

[criticallyfucked]

"No. That wasn't obvious at all." He responds to both at once, eyes lidded--his bearish mien coldly detached. He doesn't bother to distinguish between them--conversationally or otherwise. If a daemon is the soul, then there's no point.

It's probably not that shocking that Foster's ability to absorb things in a new setting is... limited, but either way, anything he was supposed to have picked up on about witches or whatever.... he didn't.

Calling a suicide pact a joke, though...

"...haha." It hits him all at once.

"No, of course it's a joke to someone like you. Of course it is! To someone capable and honest and purposeful--the exultation of mutual destruction is only a pathetic waste." He grows more animated as he forges the idea--taking a step forward, dark polar bear eyes glittering with excitement.

"A worthless way to go... tying the sublime ascension of your mortal soul to morbid failure. For it to catch the ear of a craven and desperate creature is only natural! No, the real joke is garbage like me, thinking it could ever be anything but a petty joke to you!"

And what a... magnificently disgusting feeling.

[whattaprick]

To Lambert, quarrelsome with himself as he is with everything else, the man and his daemon aren't the same person, and it doesn't occur to them that Foster might not perceive a distinction at all -- or that he might not have realized they were responding to different questions. But in one thing, at least, they share a similar outlook: Foster's difficult enough for the witcher to understand at the best of times, but as a bear, he's even harder to comprehend.

"Uh." Lambert and his daemon share a look as Foster gets himself worked up, but unsurprisingly, externalizing one's soul doesn't make one capable of reading each others' minds. It's hard to know what to say to that rant -- Lambert feels like he's somehow being praised and insulted at the same time -- but his subconscious clearly has no such compunctions.

Because when Foster steps back, Lambert floats back up another few feet, his tail lashing in the air behind him as he keeps his grip on the cloudpine branch. It's impossible for him to miss, since it requires him to crane his neck to keep an eye on Foster -- and his daemon is even quicker to catch on, 'swimming' up in the air to float beside Lambert.

"See, you can do it!" she chitters, elation and triumph at a goal achieved overriding paying attention to anything else. "I told you so!"

[criticallyfucked]

"My point exactly," Foster says with vehement satisfaction--as though Lambert's accomplishment has driven the final nail in his ideological coffin.

Although frankly, he has absolutely no idea what this accomplishment is, or why it should possibly matter. He takes a step backwards to make room for it, though, having ducked his head already--as though to accentuate the difference in angle between them.

"Whatever it is you put your mind to, you just do."

Never before has something so banal been said with such a heady mixture of disgust and awe.

[whattaprick]

It leaves Lambert nonplussed, because while yeah, that's obvious enough, it's really hard to enjoy being looked up to by Foster. Like it's a mark of somehow moving down in life, rather than up. It's lucky that Foster isn't looking at him, because Lambert doesn't have to worry about hiding the scowl of confusion on his face, before he shrugs it off.

No point in letter Foster know just how damn hard doing what he's been trying to accomplish all afternoon has been. He adjusts his grip on the branch so he doesn't have to cling to it so tightly, silently experimenting on what he can safely accomplish without losing elevation. It holds steady, and he exhales, glancing at Foster. Once again, however, his daemon will beat him to the punch.

"What are you even doing?" she asks, squinting down at Foster.

[criticallyfucked]

It's a shame Lambert isn't feeling charitable enough to share that, because Foster would have been elated to learn that Lambert found him so base a creature that even his esteem is unwelcome--an insult.

It's not even that he holds Lambert in such high regard. It's just... he's been having a very hard time with feeling his place, and Lambert is one of the few who don't try to undermine what he's meant to be.

Foster blinks back at Lambert's daemon innocuously.

"I don't understand the question." If he sounds annoyed, it's a false flag--he really has no idea what she's asking about. He's not doing anything, to his knowledge. Certainly nothing worth wasting comment on.

[whattaprick]

"Of course you don't." That seems to irritate the polecat -- whose fur is puffing up -- but the respite from the conversation has given Lambert the chance to remember something else.

"Maybe you can answer this one instead," Lambert drawls. "Did you really give some kid a bird?"

[criticallyfucked]

Foster takes that remark from Lambert's soul easily; this is a much more comfortable engagement than actual conversation, for him. Lambert's topic change actually catches him briefly flat-footed (well, bears are plantigrade anyway), and at first he just stares at the man like he's lost his entire mind.

Then he figures out what 'bird' might mean, and from there reassembles the sentence until--

"Oh. Well, it's still mine, but I guess."

If Lambert was expecting Foster to be remotely open to admitting he gave someone what they interpreted to be a present, then the detached way he admits to it should be answer enough.

Foster's making eye contact with a much less innocuous intensity now, but he's still smiling. It's either disarming or unsettling, depending on how generous you are.

"Why?"

[whattaprick]

In turn, Lambert smirks, resettling his weight on the branch. He'd dipped a little when they started talking, but a bit of focus coaxes it to rise again.

"I was wondering where you got one in the first place," he shrugs, idly. "Was she even talking about a real one?"

Like, he doesn't know what's up with you, Foster, but based on previous experience, Lambert has little faith in things like your ability to take care of other living things.

[criticallyfucked]

Foster isn't stupid enough to--well, okay, he's plenty stupid enough, but paranoia is a great force of its own. Regardless, he doesn't believe Lambert doesn't have an ulterior motive. But he's incapable of not engaging with it. Foster is, with the right bait, incredibly< easy to hook.

"Oh, it's real." Foster's smile spreads a little, grows a little sharper.

"Birds are common. You can trap them with basically no effort. I animated a lot of them in the... what was it called, the summer place? With the other fae. Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with it... and she can't hurt it." He barely even pauses before dropping the last detail like a conversational time bomb.

"It's dead."