lostcarnival | ⇨ THE LUNAR SOLSTICE

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⇨ THE LUNAR SOLSTICE

Who: Everyone!
When: Winter Breaks: Day 6 - Day 25
Where: THE MOON
What: The carnival journeys to one of its moons to celebrate the Lunar Solstice. More information here.
Warnings: Winter fun.

MOON WALKING↴

The journey to the moon only takes a blink of an eye, but it leaves the carnival far away beneath you. The second moon can be seen on the peripheral, massive compared to its usual view. At least when the holidays start out, there will be no notable wildlife on the moon, though this is something you can talk to the Ringmaster about if you think it needs a change. It sounds like this is the first time she's used it in quite a while - it probably needs some dusting off!

Claim your cabins, and proceed to... well, do whatever you want! There is no rush and little obligation, besides to enjoy yourself. For real, this time. She promises there will be no vampires. Or, at least, none that don't already work for the carnival.

► CABINS: Living arrangements are character choice for this event, and there are a variety of cabins of various sizes, mostly built to house 2-6 people, though you can fit more in if you squish. They are all made of wood and of a rustic design - no fancy modern furniture, here! Each building is housed with a fireplace and the needed amenities. You can pick up materials to cook with the private kitchens if you like. Theoretically, you could spend the whole holiday sequestered away, watching the snow fall. Some of them also have outdoor hot tubs available!

► ACTIVITIES: Activities are mostly going to be character driven, though there will be some large group games like bingo and maybe a poker tournament happening at some point in one of the festival halls. Otherwise, there is a lot to offer: skiing, snowboarding, hiking, ice sculpting, snowball fights - it goes on! If you'd like to run a winter activity, just let the mods know, and we will get the word out there for you.

► FEASTING: Every day isn't a full-out feast because that would get a bit unhealthy, but there will be a number of specific feast events over the holidays where everyone is encouraged to let out their inner hedonist and stuff themselves. There will be one big feast per week, with smaller but also delicious meals offered in between. The feast dates will be B12, B18, and B24. There's also plenty of alcohol available for anyone who wants it.

► SHOPPING: As mentioned in the planning post, there is a massive market being run by the World Walker Caravan! The Ringmaster has given everyone 1250 credits to spend on items, but there is a caveat - must spend at least 500 of those credits on gifts for other people. And it better be a good one, if you only buy one! (She will ask that you do not buy her presents, however. She appreciates the sentiment, but it seems sort of silly buying her things with her own money! If you'd like to gift her, please have it be something more personal or handmade, but you are not obligated to get her anything at all.)

► TREATMENTS: The beginning of the holidays will also be about the time that the emergency Medical Team will have finalized their treatments for the Prince's poisoning. Watch out for further information on that - and make sure to get treated if you are suffering from petrification or poison induced illness! The holidays will be a lot more fun that way.

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"Yeah." Except, the sound of it comes out more like "yeh". So, you know. Drunk words. It's fine. "Dun got any better words, y'know?"

Ideas. He meant ideas. Oh, that alcohol is something.

At least Ginko can basically decipher what Joker is trying to say. Probably helps that he's had some practice in that regard.

"...Alright. But honestly, I think this will work better if I hold onto your actual head and not just your hair."

It also seems less likely to end up hurting Joker's scalp.

"Wait..." A couple of blinks, and he's squinting over at Ginko. "....Are ya comin' in here with us?"

Or, well. With him. Sure, Ginko's arms could maybe be long enough to do it from over the rim of the tub, but getting in seems a lot easier.

"Definitely not." That comes with absolutely no hesitation. He's not petrified, he doesn't need it, there is not enough money in the world to convince him to step into that. Or to choose between getting his clothes soaked with ~~slime~~ water in this weather, or stripping down to his underwear in front of four people.

He does pull off his gloves and coat, but then just rolls up the sleeves of his turtleneck up to his elbows. "If I lie down by the side of the tub, I should be able to reach well enough."

Oh. Is he disappointed or not? Joker isn't entirely sure, although, if he had to guess, he'd blame the booze for making this as confusing as it is. Instead, a bit distracted, he watches as the coat slides away from Ginko's shoulders and those sleeves get rolled up.

Ginko has always been incredibly attractive, but it feels really noticeable here for some reason. That's also probably the booze.

"Should I twist my wings outta the way?" This would seem like a difficult thing to do, for anyone with normal wings, but Joker, well. That flexibility counts for every part of him, even if it looks incredibly worrying and strange when applied to wings.

Ginko, unsurprisingly, seems entirely unaware of Joker's dilemma. He folds up his coat and sets it down in front of him, so the front of his shirt won't end up getting soaked through, and shifts from sitting to kneeling.

"Hm. If you turn to the side some, that should get them out of the way... which would be more comfortable for you?"

"Whatever keeps 'em out of the goop." Shifting a bit, he does his best to raise his wings straight up. Sure would be a shame if Foster got hit with one of those on the way. Tyki is.... probably fine. This is fine.

"Can ya think about cleanin' it out of the feathers...? I'd rather break 'em."

"I'm sure there'd be a way to wash it out. But, yeah, keeping them out entirely would probably be best."

Ginko gets situated, lying down next to the tub so that he can hold onto Joker's head. "Ready? Just start lowering your head down when you are, and I'll make sure you don't go under."

Surprisingly for someone who is atrociously drunk, Joker is patient and still as Ginko slides his fingers and palms around his head. A part of it is helped by the fact that Joker isn't a rambunctious sort of drunk. The other is that-

"Yer hands are so nice," he mutters, eyes drooping shut slowly and his lashes brushing against his cheeks. "What the bleedin' hell, Ginko. Why're ya so nice everywhere..."

Aaaaaaaaand then he starts to slump into the goo.

Ginko definitely appreciates the lack of unnecessary movement. Neither of them needs this to get MORE difficult than it's already doing to be.

...Okay, well, that's. He's still not moving around at least, but that's... how does he respond to that?

It's actually almost worse than when Joker was trying to "prove" Ginko's attractiveness to him before, pulling out one carefully-polished comparison after another as easily as breathing. This time is just kind of... spontaneous. Blunt, simple, but there's no doubts to be had about his sincerity.

It still seems kind of ridiculous that someone who looks like Joker would ever think something like that about him. He's makeup-less, drunk, and sitting in a tub of slime, and he still looks better than Ginko ever has in his life.

...Who even let him have eyelashes that long, honestly.

Then Ginko notices Joker slipping. He makes a startled noise and shifts his hold so he can push Joker up some without hurting him. "--Alright, there we go. Just, uh... just try and stay up."

He'll just... not comment on what Joker said. It's fine.

Fortunately for Ginko, the same intoxication which caused those words to slip right on out is what keeps Joker from really focusing on the lack of reaction he's getting. Instead, he just grunts as he's rearranged, and fumbles a little as he braces his arm against the outside of the tub. Or, well, tries to. It's a bit of a struggle.

"Shi- sorry. S'difficult. God..." His eyes open up just a sliver again. "What was in that swill?"

"You don't want to know. Rest assured, though, it was very alcoholic." Thanks for that, Lambert.

He sets a hand on Joker's arm to keep it steadied against the tub, and... dammit now he's. Weirdly hyperaware of his own hands. THANKS, JOKER. At least he, once again, has him arranged with his cheek in the water and the rest of his face out. "There we go. Comfortable?"

That's at least halfway a joke.

Thanks a whole bunch, Lambert. That's exactly what they all needed.

Unaware of Ginko's problems, Joker allows himself to be manhandled with no fuss. Instead, there's just a dry snort. "As much as ever. We know I've been in worse." His mouth tries to stretch into one of his usual smiles but it doesn't quite reach it. Not with the way his brow crumples together, or his eyes shine with a lot of things best left unsaid.

His whole life has been 'worse'.

Ginko's ears droop slightly at that. He can't do much to comfort Joker, not when he's focusing on holding him up, so he just squeezes his arm a little.

"It's been, what, two minutes? Just six more, then you'll be done."

"Oh, Christ." There's a certain level of exasperation to Joker's voice that takes the edge off of the melodramatic despair there.

"Ginko, it's only been- just put me in the ground, good lord."

That does get an amused snort out of him. "Hey, you're a quarter of the way done. If we keep talking, you'll be ready to go before you know it."

"I don't want ta talk." His head turns a little, face pressing into Ginko's hands. "That's.... S'the opposite of what I want ta do, Ginko."

"Careful. Don't get water up your nose." He might as well be talking to a toddler, but he doesn't seem at all bothered. He just shifts his hold to gently turn Joker's head back to the right angle.

"But... hm. I guess that makes sense." A pause, then: "What if I just kept talking? That way you've got something to focus on, and you don't have to talk."

Edited 2017-12-11 23:47 (UTC)

"I'll drown if I want ta," is what's probably muttered, but Joker doesn't fight Ginko any. His hands are exactly like he always figured from when they first started working in the carnival together, watching him tend to the animals. It can't just be the steam that's making them so warm, right?

Still, at the suggestion, Joker blinks and his gaze drifts back up to Ginko's face. Oh. "That'd be alright..." Nice, maybe. But then he's not really in a picky state.

Wow Joker don’t give him that. Ginko frowns at him, but doesn’t comment. Instead, he needs to think about what he could say to kill six minutes.

“Let’s see… oh, you know what. A while back, maybe… eight years before I got here, I’d say? One winter, I got caught traveling through a mountain pass in the snow. As you can probably guess, that wasn’t exactly an ideal situation, so, when I saw lights from a house, I went to ask permission to stay the night.

“When I was leaving the next morning, though, I came across a young boy who was trying to climb up a tree - and grab a dangerous mushi that had gotten knotted up in its branches. I managed to stop him, just before Suzu, the young woman who had let me stay the previous night, caught up. It turned out that the boy, Miharu, was her little brother. He had been seeing mushi for a couple years, at that point - ever since he had encountered a phenomenon called a harumagari.

“See, a harumagari is created by a mushi called usobuki; usobuki are known among mushi masters to take the form of blossoms, and attach themselves to trees. In the dead of winter, something happens that we’d been collecting evidence of for years, but which very few people had seen firsthand: The usobuki give off a scent that wakes up everything hibernating in the area, plant or animal. They create a patch of thriving life, a ‘false spring’ in the middle of winter. But the usobuki don’t create the harumagari out of benevolence. Once the harumagari is in full bloom, the mushi’s effects change. They feed off the body heat and energy of the things they bring out of hibernation, sapping away at their life force. It won’t kill them, but everything that the usobuki wakes up, after that brief period of liveliness, will find itself falling asleep again until spring.

“Of course, Suzu had no way of knowing any of that. There was nobody around who knew much of anything about mushi, even in the village at the base of the mountain, and she couldn’t even see them herself. All she knew was that, one winter, Miharu had disappeared into the mountains, for months; by the time he wandered back home in spring, she had given up on ever seeing him again.

“The thing was, the next winter, just as their stores of food started to run low, he’d disappeared again. This time, though, he was found unconscious outside the village. When he was brought home, she found he had filled a pack with edible mountain greens that shouldn’t have been growing that time of year.

“When I told her about the harumagari, Suzu was relieved to have some idea of what was happening to her brother, but, understandably, she was still pretty worried about him - especially given his tendency to just pick things up that he found interesting. Traveling in the snow would have been difficult, anyway, and the area’s mushi population wasn’t too dense, so I stayed to teach him about the local mushi until the mountain paths cleared some.”

Even as he talks about it, he can’t help the small, fond smile that tugs at his lips. “The next couple weeks were… interesting. Miharu generally meant well, but… he was kind of a handful. I still don’t know how Suzu managed to look after him on her own. He was pretty smart, and picked up on what I taught him quickly, but sometimes it felt like I was spending more time pulling him away from one infectious mushi or another than I was teaching him about them. On top of it all, he refused to tell me where he had found the harumagari, convinced that I would tell Suzu.

“All the same, we basically managed to avoid any serious incidents - until it got to be time for me to leave. That same day, Miharu disappeared into the mountains again; when I finally found him that evening, he was unconscious. Sure enough, he had a pack on him full of greens - and, though I wasn’t sure why at the time, a single butterfly that flew away when I opened the wrap.

“I brought Miharu back home, but I ended up having to leave the next morning; staying any longer would have put all of us in danger. Since I couldn’t stay until he woke up, I agreed to return in a year and check in on the two.

“When I got back the next winter, though, it turned out that things hadn’t gone quite as they had before. Though he’d always woken up in spring before, this time, Miharu had stayed asleep for a whole year. Suzu couldn’t begin to understand what could have gone wrong, and I had no idea either. All we knew was that, one way or another, something must have been different this time. The only way we had to find out was to go back to the source. I knew where the harumagari must have been last time, and it was safe to assume it would be there again. Suzu thought it was too risky to go check, but we didn’t have any other options. I told Suzu where I was going to be searching, and set out.

“After a few hours, I found the harumagari; it was hard to miss, once I ran into it. In the middle of the mountains, with everything around me covered in snow, this one area was absolutely flourishing; plants had sprung from the ground, flowers bloomed, animals that would normally be deep in hibernation clambered among the trees. Among it all, beautiful white and purple butterflies flew threw the falling snow. Everything seemed entirely unbothered by the cold, filled with warmth by the harumagari’s effects, with its sweet smell filling the air.

“I could feel that it was effecting me, too - and that was exactly why I needed to move quickly. I knew usobuki were supposed to look like tree blossoms, but all the flowers I saw looked entirely ordinary. After a few minutes, I hadn’t found anything… and then, the scent in the air changed. It was almost cloying, and the longer I was breathing it in, the colder I felt myself get, until I could barely move my hands. Animals were falling back into hibernation all around me - except for the butterflies.

“I finally remembered the butterfly I had seen fly from Miharu’s pack, and managed to put the pieces together. The butterflies were simply another form of usobuki, which would rest in the trees after they fed and wake their prey in the spring.

"By then, I was succumbing to their effects. Before I collapsed, I barely managed to catch one in a canister.

“From there, it was really Suzu who saved us both. I was found, and brought back to her house. There, she found the canister in my pocket - and she opened it out of curiosity, unknowingly releasing the usobuki inside into the house.

“When we both woke up in spring, Miharu had no idea he had been asleep any longer than usual - but Suzu was overjoyed to see him awake. As it turned out, he had figured out that the butterflies were the key to waking back up in the spring; that was why he had taken one with him, expecting Suzu to release it in the house.”

Ginko gives a quiet snort, exasperated and amused all at once. “He said… the butterflies had been his favorite part of those patches of spring, so he wanted to keep them secret. That was why he wouldn’t tell me about them. But, after all that had happened… Miharu finally understood that mushi weren’t really something to treat as friends; they were simply living their lives, and he would need to be careful getting involved with them. Knowing that, though, wasn’t enough to keep him from liking them… which was likely for the best.”

Edited 2017-12-12 02:47 (UTC)

Ginko has sure killed more than six minutes.

Joker listens the entire time through, although not without some difficulty. Before, the poison would have been to blame for that. It's hard to concentrate on long stories when everything down to your very soul is bogged down. This time, it's a poison of an entirely different sort, although the booze is certainly doing what it needs to do. Unfortunately, it's all he can do is to remember to even keep track of the fact that Ginko is speaking. The lazy warmth of the spa probably isn't helping, quite frankly. Or maybe that's just the feel of Ginko's hands...

Still. He manages to keep himself awake (probably unlike Tyki) all the way to the end. It takes a few moments for him to gather up the wits required for speaking, but he manages in the end. "S'a.... good big sister. Very good." Sorry, Ginko, he's trying to nuzzle your hand again. Is that steam or tears on his face? Hard to tell.

He might feel kind of bad about taking so long if it weren't for the fact that soaking a little longer than necessary could probably benefit Joker. Better to be totally sure he's cured.

Ginko can't help but smile at Joker's mumbled response, unnecessary nuzzling or not. Honestly, that would be sort of cute if it weren't so embarrassing.

...Who is he kidding, it's still cute.

"She was. I'll never know how she kept going through all that." And he kind of wishes he had managed to help out without giving her a goddamn heart attack.

Ginko's brow furrows slightly as he feels the moisture on Joker's cheek, but... no need to make a scene, one way or the other. Instead, under the water, he runs his thumb gently over the spot where Joker's face had been partially petrified. "Seems like your face is about done. How's your leg feeling?"

"Ah..." As if he'd forgotten entirely, Joker kicks his leg through the water a couple of times before groping half-blind with his good hand. It's a little hard to tell, when one's fingers are made out of living wood, but...

"Good, I think. Oh, wait, yeah. That's skin. I think it's skin." A snort into the water. "Three sheets, who knows..."

Ginko snorts, and gently pushes Joker back upright. "C'mon. Sit on the edge of the tub, then we can check it out."

"Yeah, yeah..." Wobbling only a little, he gets upright and takes a breath. Getting onto the edge as he is right now seems like it'll be a mess if he uses his hand, so...

Sorry, Ginko, he's trying to do the flying thing again. Sorry about that water splashing. At... least he's only trying to flap up a little bit?

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LONG TAG INCOMING

wraps up in it like a blanket

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