lostcarnival | You Can Lead A Horse To... Oh God

Who: Foster von Horsebody and YOU
When: D16-D18
Where: Anywhere!
What: Thanks, I hate it!!
Warnings: You'll hate it too!

There you are, minding your own business.

Maybe you've just been shopping (again), or finished a particularly pitched snowball battle (again), or maybe you just wanted to go for a short, bracing walk after a long, luxurious soak in one of the available hot tubs (again.)

And everything is peaceful: the moon is calm and quiet, the wind is cold, the snow is the perfect blend of powdery and fresh.

Until you see him.

See it.

It looks like a horse, at first--striding long-legged through the snow, its neck arched, mane and tail billowing. But only at first. There's something wrong with its face. With its head.

But no, it can't be...

...Can it?

Yes.

Yes. It can.

This horse. Has a human face.

And not just any human face.

This face.... this horse...

..... is Foster van Denend.

He's wearing a look of unmistakeable intensity, an expression that's no longer a smile, but it might have been one just seconds ago. His blue eyes are brightened by the reflection of light on virgin snow. A little bit of saliva glistens on his lower lip.

It is, undoubtedly, the worst thing you've ever laid eyes on.

You're welcome.

BONUS A: ON THE JOB

This isn't what he asked for. He asked to become a beast of burden, describing the horses at the manor and the idea of a body that would perform such labours unassisted.

No. That's blatantly untrue. It's not what he intended, of course. But what he intended or not, what he wanted or not, it is--word for word--what he asked to be. And thus certain that the fault lay with him (what had he said? he couldn't even remember, whatwords exactly he had used to convey his meaning), he didn't complain. And having accepted (or resigned to, or resolved to) his new form, his initial alarm, regret, confusion, and excitement... are all in the past.

Once he got his footing (literally), he realised that he had to learn to live with it--because that's when it occurred to him that he was going to have to work with it.

Or there would be consequences.

Which is his motivation for attempting to do just that--a sponge pressed under one hoof, another gripped in his teeth. There's look of fierce ~~desperation~~ determination on his face.

If anyone returns to the Carnival, for any reason--

Well. He's just knocked over a mop. He's... doing his best to corral it (har har), pawing at it with one hoof, then scooting it with that same hoof, going the other way. He bends, trying to seize the wooden handle in his teeth, but his human face is too short, and he has to drop to his knees--

"Fuck. Fuck--no. Fuck. Fuck."

If nothing else, he's hard to miss.

BONUS B: FEAST DAY

Foster is hard to miss, but he's equally hard to watch.

Without thumbs--without hands, or paws, or really any appendage even remotely designed for anything but standing on--he can only add servings to his plate by asking for them. Which isn't too terrible.

The problem is that he has also no way to put that food in his mouth. Not without bending that majestic, horrible equine neck gracefully over the table and putting his awful, uncanny human face directly into his plate of food.

Which is what he's doing right now to a slice of cake, and the cake has icing, and he might be doing his best, but--

Honestly, it's a crime scene. The act of forcing other people to see him eat is a criminal act. This is disgusting. I'm so sorry.

Maybe it's time for someone to complain to the Ringmaster.

Maybe several someones.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Everyone's officially been given the task of going to the moon and having fun. Their jobs are being temporarily covered by others. With so clear an instruction, how could Papyrus refuse?

But when he makes a mess in the trailer, putting some of the paints away now that he's nearly done making gifts, it's his responsibility to clean it up. After all, the private living spaces are for people to deal with themselves. See: Amethyst and Sans' trailer. Freedom from the underground for everyone might not be enough pay for Papyrus to clean that mess. Especially when he knows neither of them wants him to.

So he went in search of one of the mops, only to find it was missing.

And searching for that led him to... this.

"Ummm," he offers.

Why is he a horse with his own old face. Why is he nearly a horse, changed like people at the manor were instead of the patchwork way most carnival people are.

Why is he cleaning the floor in this room??

"Are... Foster, what are you doing?"

It was precisely because of those instructions that Foster believed himself in the clear to secretly practise the basics of his job; he knew he would be even more of a disaster than he already was, so better not to inconvenience others with his gross incompetence, right?

No.

Clearly not.

Because of course it was Papyrus who proved incapable of leaving the supply closet alone, even on vacation. Of course it was Papyrus, who Foster had somewhat hoped he'd seen the last of for a while--

He stares at Papyrus for a long moment, visibly struggling with his conflicting instincts, before arching his neck to put his face back down by the ground, his nose literally pressed into the floor as he bites down on the mop with those savage prehistoric teeth.

This time, they sink into the wood and he raises his head as if in triumph--or just spit(e)ful defiance, his chin slick with saliva, a wet spot left on the floor where his... uh, spit made contact with it.

His eyes are bright with determination.

And so brandishing his tool, he plants one hooved foot on the floor and pushes himself up, using the momentum from his rise to keep him upright until he can get his other foreleg underneath himself.

Now his mouth is full of mop, which means Papyrus can't get an explanation after all. Unless he wants to take that drool-soaked tool out of Foster's awful mouth...

Ew.

One of the things with Papyrus and facing Foster, as opposed to any of the humans of the carnival, is that he's a monster. The underground is full of all kinds of people, with an enormous range of shapes; from skeletons to dogs, gelatin molds to sharp-edged polygons, giant hands to planes.

Foster's drooling, scary intense smiles, and fungi... none of these cause Papyrus the visceral unsettled disgust that others very likely feel.

But the deliberation of this staring, the way Foster slowly fills his mouth with something so that he can't answer...

Well, Papyrus stares back.

Unblinking, of course, because he's a skeleton and doesn't ever need to blink. Or, his agitatedly swishing tail demonstrates, because he's part skeleton cat and this is how staring goes.

At least he can resolve one of the worries clanging around in his skull; that's definitely Foster in there. Almost nobody else has this sort of stubborn determination to do their... thing.

"So... This is a new look," he tries next, with a trying-too-hard conversational sort of tone. "Did you... meet somebody, like the Prince, who did this?"

Please don't tell him that moon vacation is ruined the same way that the Celebration was, Foster. But if that's what's happening, please do tell him. So he can warn people. With words. From his mouth.

"......."

Foster regards him ambivalently over the top of the mop, a bubble of his own spit beading at the bottom of his chin. Had he still been equipped with at least paws, he might have wiped it away in his fur; then again, had he been equipped with paws, he wouldn't be holding the mop in his frighteningly human face, perched atop that long and supple neck and an all-too-inhuman body. His bovine ears hang at a horizontal, the only non-equine feature in his entire nonhuman form.

How exactly Papyrus expected Foster to answer around the mop is kind of a mystery, and Foster doesn't really make too much of an effort to work out a solution. He just stares Papyrus down for a few seconds, then turns, wheeling with both front hooves off the ground to take his reclaimed cleaning tool back to its closet.

He'll just... have to deal with the problem of mopping later.

"Okay," Papyrus says, with a voice that's not as okay as he intends it to be. Off-the-clock like this, Foster really doesn't have to listen to anything. But surely that's not the only reason they've managed to get along in any way before?

He hesitates a second or two as Foster departs, and stubbornness wins out. The refusal to let that be the end of this monologue... The refusal even to leave it as a monologue, but to follow and persist in making the mono into a dia... It's strong.

"I realize it must be hard to talk, with something in your mouth."

His voice drops to a tone that could be called a mutter, relatively speaking.

"And that is... probably why you picked it up. But! There are other ways! Like... nodding ones head! Tapping a meaningful pattern of sounds! I am sure there are others, I could call and ask for ideas."

Foster's unshod hooves are pretty loud on the cement floor, punctuating both the act of his egress and the way he slows before coming to a halt. His tail is more expressive than either his face or his ears--if Papyrus could even see his face, which he can't. But his tail switches restlessly, and one back hoof lifts and then returns to the floor.

Then, turning all the way around with his neck and his neck alone--because of course horse necks are flexible enough to allow for that--he spits the mop out onto the floor, and makes eye contact (eye-to-socket contact?) with Papyrus again.

"Someone like the Prince," he echoes. "Like the Prince?"

This might be less uncanny if he were actually smiling.

"She is, but she didn't like the Prince herself!"

But hey, at least it's not morse code.

You Can Lead A Horse To... Oh God

BONUS A

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