⇨ 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

[diamondsare]

"Life is not limited by the expectations of human beings," Blue says gently, sounding amused. "Or by their experiences. The universe is vast, and full of wonders."

Most of which gems have long since unraveled, of course, but that didn't make those things any less wondrous. How terribly limiting it must be, to be meat and presume all things must exist as meat does. "Yes. It's one of the many traits of my kind. It must be a little strange to consider a gem to be as alive as any human, it took us a while to come to similar terms with organic life."

[hippocarnival]

Yuya looks up at Blue, considering that. It's true, and joining the carnival has meant seeing and meeting so many inhuman things. Like the fae, actually.

"It's not strange in a bad way," he relents. It just definitely is different than his expectations. "What are gems like?" Besides, of course, the being colorful and not eating thing.

[diamondsare]

This place was far stranger, as far as she was concerned. Look at the menangeries, walking about as if they didn't belong in zoos. This animal, that beast. Perhaps they were all on some level intelligent, the way humans were, but it was still.. peculiar.

"You may need to be more specific with such a question," the tiger rumbles, sounding and looking amused in a catlike way.

"That is a very broad question to ask," Blue adds, eyebrows rising a touch. That's like asking what humans are like, but far more complicated! Where would one even start??

[hippocarnival]

"It's because I don't know anything about gems!" He doesn't know where he's supposed to start either, because literally anything will be new information. "There's only humans where I'm from, so I don't know what it's like being anything else or if they have things like--" he gestures to the gathering. "Parties, or families, or cities."

[diamondsare]

"That's a beginning." And far less broad than 'everything at once'. Blue shifts enough to bury the fingers of one hand in the tiger's fur, thinking. It was oddly comforting to be able to do.

"Cities and celebrations, yes. In some ways aside from the materials used our cities are not ... too much different." No food shops, no clothing shops. No shops of any kind really, but plenty of the rest. "As we do not ... breed, families as you know them do not exist."

[hippocarnival]

"You don't?" He almost asks where gems come from, then, but... actually, that's not necessarily the topic he feels like going down right now. He doesn't want to have to explain anything human about that in return if she asks.

"If you don't have families, does everyone just live alone?" He can't imagine living without being surrounded by family, and the family as his friends.

[diamondsare]

"Not having families doesn't mean we don't have friends and loved ones," the tiger says abruptly, tone just a touch sharp, ears twitching back in annoyance. "Do humans only care for those they are related to, and dwell solely with them? What a terrible-"

He's silenced by one hand against the side of his striped head. "I'm certain it's not like that." Blue's almost completely certain that humans were capable of caring about things other than their own genetic heritage.

[hippocarnival]

Yuya ducks his head and raises his shoulders, frowning deep as he flusters. Koemi bristles as well, leaning over Yuya's arm to tell the tiger off, but Yuya talks right over her.

"I didn't mean it like that! Of course my friends are just as important, but I don't live with them. I live with my Mom! Most p--most humans live with their families."

[diamondsare]

"We simply build our social groups around those we love and are friends with." Her counter-explanation is pitched deliberately gently, though she keeps her hand on the tiger to possibly prevent future outbursts. What one thinks and what one says must always be controlled. "Gems do not have a ... biological requirement to remain tethered to those we share origins with."

The tiger's ear twitches again but he remains silent. Blue waits a moment to make sure of it before continuing. "Thus we simply choose to spend our time with who we wish to. If a living arrangement isn't agreeable there is no shame in finding another place to stay, with different friends or loved ones, or in solitude if one wishes it."

She emphatically did not, but there was a certain dearth of Diamonds in this carnival..

[hippocarnival]

Those are social groups Yuya is familiar with, and realistically plenty of humans live that way as well. Adults had freedom to live whatever way they want. But when your species has a long period of maturing, parental attachment gets pretty important.

He absently strokes Koemi, pushing her back down into his lap.

Still, that makes another point of gems suddenly obvious for him. "People get divorced and separate too... but does that mean gems are never kids? You don't have to grow up?"

[diamondsare]

The troubles of biology. She's glad she didn't have to deal with ANY of them. It seemed more problematic than it was worth. It seemed to work well enough for Earth but ... surely there were more efficient ways!

"When we emerge, we are exactly the size we will be all our lives." How to keep this simple. "We are .. 'born' you could say, with knowledge of who we are and what we are, and have no need for being 'kids' or growing up."

That's the very, very simple version. "Of course when you are new, knowing what you're intended to do and being good at it is a little different and takes some time.." Blue supposed that might be a little like childhood, from what very little she understood of it.

[hippocarnival]

"What you're intended to do?" He sits up a little with curiosity. He falls silent as he tries to wrap his head around just waking up and knowing everything you have to learn through childhood. Her emphasis that they still need to practice and learn is a little easier to grasp and relate to.

"Like your job? We choose what we want to be while we're growing up." Or at least try to, but Yuya was very certain on his path. "Usually we go to school to learn how to do it."

Needless to say all of this is extremely whitewashed

[diamondsare]

It took her a few hundred years to even grasp that humans grew up at all. Or most organic life for that matter. How she saw it at that moment was surely how it had always been..

"Rule." It's a simple answer, and one said with a touch of amusement. "All Diamonds.. though there are only three of us, now, are expected to lead." She was.. bad at it lately. Neglecting her duties. Yellow had been right about that much. "As I understand it, humans are sometimes given innate skills and abilities that make them better at some tasks than others? It is sensible that if one's nature is inclined to a certain role, that one fulfills that role."

[hippocarnival]

"Oh, yeah. There's still a choice, but you'd like something more if you were good at it, right?"

And there's the complexities of familial approval or dedication to one's heritage, but Yuya is not confident in his ability to describe that to someone who doesn't even have parental figures in their lives.

"... You mean you rule, like, a country? You rule over people?"

[diamondsare]

"We think so. Those best suited to a task are the ones who have it, and it feels nice, I think, to know a job is being done well." That there is no choice at all, and saying 'no' and doing something else utterly unheard of is pretty much irrelevant!

Not even a diamond can say no and go do something else. But it worked well enough for gem society.

There's a pause as she considers Yuya's wording, before nodding. "Yes, ordinarily. My stay at the Carnival is a brief but important interlude."

[hippocarnival]

Yuya nods. He can understand wanting things to be done well, and that must be very important for gems if they focus on what they know they're good at. Humans have to discover it on their own.

He is, however, a little awed her is talking to a ruler. He assumes she's closer to a Queen or Empress with the 'designated from the beginning to rule ' deal. "Because of your contract, right?"

[diamondsare]

There's a nod ... and her smile briefly is surprisingly warm, though it's clear she's thinking about something other than here and now. "Indeed. But a mere year is a worthy price to set right a great wrong, don't you think?"

Especially for an immortal gem!

The tiger settles a little more comfortably where he is, tucking his paws under him like a gigantic housecat. "If you are here by choice, surely you understand. There are many worthy causes to spend a year of one's life for."

[hippocarnival]

"Yeah..." Yuya and Koemi look at each other at that. Being mortal it's almost a greater sacrifice, a year's time, but Yuya would do it again and again for the same reason, if he had to. That's how important his contract was to him.

"Yeah, we get it," he says with a faint smile.

[diamondsare]

It was possible he was asking for nothing on the level that Blue was, but the important part was... it was important. It was likely not a mere frivolous thing, but something meaningful.

Something worth the price. "Just so. There are things worth that time and effort, and perhaps the pain and grief along the way."

Pain and grief. Those had been her close neighbors since arriving, but that too was part of the price, she suspected. "Though I dare say those who arrive here due to thievery or causing trouble may not find it so worth the time.."