lostcarnival | ⇨ WISMUTH

Entry tags:

⇨ WISMUTH

Who: Everyone!
When: S2:D6-D11
Where: Wismuth and the Carnival Grounds
What: The carnival enjoys a few days in Wismuth, a coastal city on this planet's version of the American east. However, there are a few things very unique about this version of the planet...
Warnings: The usual, wholesome fun.

PILLAR OF CREATION↴

Upon arriving, things in Wismuth will seem pretty peaceful. It's a massive city, with no shortage of things going on, but things like violent crime and homelessness are at an all time low. You can wander the streets without much scrutiny, presumed to just be tourists, and most people here come across as helpful and friendly.

► VIBRANCY: The main thing that sets this planet apart is its vibrancy - AKA, the raw creative energy its filled with, flowing from its status as a Pillar of Creation. There is no literal pillar, but Wismuth and its planet is a place where Creation's energy comes through strongest. As a result, everything here feels somehow more real, more intense in a way that's hard to put a finger on. Life is abundant, and its bleeds through in every sensation.

► ATTRACTIONS: There are plenty of things to see while going around the city. First and foremost, there is a lovely beach area bordering the ocean, and a number of tourist aimed attractions built around it. There are giant malls, movie theaters, live stage performances, museums and all kinds of other points of cultural interest. Anything you can do in a big city you can do here, but better.

► ALLOWANCES: The Ringmaster will be giving everyone a reasonable amount of local currency for a few days on the town. You can't make any massive acquisitions with it, but it's more than enough to eat out, see some shows, go to the beach, and whatever you like. You can feel free to pick up some casual supplies, like mundane clothing and souvenirs. There will be more given out later, after the performance week.

► PERFORMANCE: Performance week is starting early this time, after only a couple days of exploration. When the carnival has already been on vacation for a month, the Ringmaster figures they may as well get right to it, and then do more touring afterwards. Members of the local populace will find themselves in the carnival once performances begin, dazzled by the other worldly sights. Magic doesn't seem to exist here, despite the fact that it will flow easier for people bringing it from other worlds.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Things the carnival might also benefit from: water by the game booths. Charge a dollar if you have to.

Yuya jerks a thumb up the food courts, over. "I can go get some water? That'll feeling sick, right?"

He sounds uncertain, because he is, because he doesn't know enough about alcohol to know any good cure. But yours supposed to hydrate when you're ill, right?

Water's always a good idea. And salty food to encourage more drink-buying.

Julien flashes a smile up at Yuya, his pedipalps spreading to make the expression more visible. "Good idea! With lemon especially, something to cut the taste. Works out to be lighter than ginger ale, too, ginger's just what I have on me. It does have like some anti-nausea properties." Julien doesn't appear to have a drink on him, but that's the thing with having an inventory power, you don't put as much in your pockets or carry bags as often.

He rubs the teenager's back as the kid groans. Through his prior experience with drunk people he doesn't think this kid is in too dangerous of a place. It shouldn't take too much for him to be able to leave on his own power, without Julien worrying about him aspirating on more vomit or something.

"I'll get some!" Yuya nods before turning to bounce off to find some water. He doesn't know where he's going to get a lemon, though. The cookhouse is kind of out of the way and he doesn't want to take too long.

He'll circle back around after a few minutes, water bottle in hand. He's already opening it as he approaches the teenager from the front, leaning over and offering the bottle. "Here, you can have this. Drink slowly, okay?"

Yuya still isn't any authority on how to cope with drunkness, but he at least sounds reassuring.

By the time Yuya returns cinder sprites have scattered sawdust over any mess, drowning out the sour odor with the smell of wood dust, and are in the process of getting it all gathered up. Julien's gotten the kid to sit hunched over on a bench, got his face cleaned off, and is sitting nearby chatting, keeping a couple of floating spectral eyes on the cinder sprites as they work. They've never bothered him, but there are times when Julien gets a sense of resentment from the creatures, somehow.

"Oh, hey, thanks," he says brightly as Yuya approaches. The teenager takes the bottle without meeting his eyes. The plastic crackles as he drinks about half of it, waving irritably at the two carnies looking at him.

Yuya presses his hands to his knees as he leans over. He smiles despite the irritable response, wearing an expression of passive kindness as he gives the teenager the space to recover.

"You can stay here until you feel better, but I think you should stop drinking," he says it softly, looking them over. They don't look bad enough to need someone called over, but...

"Did you come to the carnival with anyone? We can help them find you."

From the look on his face the teenager, two or three years Yuya's elder, is feeling unwell and humiliated and is dwelling on the former to avoid thinking about the latter. He mumbles something sullenly - it may be I came with the cool kids, it's a bit hard to tell - and looks at the ground.

"Oh, those guys? Yeah, they went back to that beach party." Julien suspects they weren't this kid's friends, or not close anyway, though he's not from Wismuth and doesn't know all the subtleties of clothing and hairstyle setting people apart from each other. Part of it is that none of them collected him, of course, but they were all tipsy at best anyway. Maybe they just didn't think to, or didn't see him on the ground. "If you want to leave you can just follow the path. The gate's... you can't see it from here, but you don't have to go far to get it in sight."

It's only hard to find your way out if you show up on your own, Julien thinks. And even then it's easy enough to find your way out past the tents and stalls and back the way you came, just not all the way. He's pretty sure it's all right to leave this kid be, now.

Yuya, having never hung out with the cool kids, isn't sure how to take that at first. Were those his friends? Are they somewhere else, and does he want to find them? Or is he basically here alone because everyone's wandered off?

"That's right," Yuya confirms Julien's statement, pointing the direction as straight as he can to the exist. "You just have to go that way, and it'll take you out of the carnival. Do you need any help getting there?"

Yuya has a feeling he's going to get rejected, but it doesn't hurt to offer anyway.

Face flushed to the ears, the teenager shoves himself up to his feet, where he makes a concerted effort not to sway. He's very tall and very thin and lanky, dwarfing the two carnies in height at least. "I'm fine," he says, and then more loudly, with greater emphasis, "I'm fine! I can do it!"

With that he sets off, walking the slow and deliberate walk of someone who doesn't want to look like they're too intoxicated to move steadily, not bothering to look back or give them any thanks. Too inebriated and or embarrassed to think to do it, Julien would guess.

"Kids," he says with a sigh, stretching out his legs in front of him. "Hopefully he'll learn. Ugh, my poor tail though! There was a cocktail umbrella in it!" He's been in the helpfully large enough walk-in shower in his trailer ever since he escaped this lot of guests. "I... thank you. People find me interesting a lot but I didn't really think I'd ever be just cornered like that."

Ah, well. Yuya watches the teenager until he disappears out of sight, putting his hands on his hips with an amused expression.

Once he's gone, he turns to Julien with a sympathetic expression. "Apparently some of the guests in Alola were giving the carnival problems like that, too. It's really rude!"

Yuya's not exactly the pinnacle of politeness himself, but he can't believe someone really behaving that way--especially to something that's talking back. Alcohol is the worst.

"Are you okay?"

"It is! Super, amazingly rude. And they were so careful and a little nervous in Greysol, too. That's culture for you I guess." Of course the Greysol guests had both been aware of talking polar bears that needed to be respected, and of other worlds with strange inhabitants. They were also pseudo-Victorian and usually inclined to a degree of restraint. And that's the only performance stop he's been to before this. "I guess this always depends."

Immediately after being asked the question he says, "I'm fine, thanks for asking!" like it's a route response. "How about you, they kinda turned on you after I split. Did any of them go and touch you?"

Julien's kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop here. Yuya had been very unhappy with him back at the ball - for understandable reasons, absolutely, but Julien doesn't like confrontation very much.

Yuya was unhappy--but he saved Reira like he said he would, and honestly assumes Julien's been reprimanded by people who are supposed to by now, and not his teenage co-worker. And he still doesn't deserve getting harassed.

He does however, scrunch up his face in distaste when he remembers the drunks. "Just the one that was crying on you. The rest of them were complaining that I wasn't fun!"

He says it like it's some personal affront, crossing his arms. Whatever, he's all about having fun! "But they didn't hurt me. I hope there aren't a bunch of people coming in like that..."

Julien snorts gently. "Their fun wasn't any fun for me. I appreciate it. ...You know, I wouldn't mind so much if they asked. And if I felt confident that if I said no they'd back off, I mean, that's pretty important."

Well, all right, he'd still find it offputting to be asked by a group of strangers who'd clearly been hitting the bottle, and getting touched gently is very different from being climbed on and all that. Even so.

"If there are more like them... well, guess it depends on if there's any more wild parties happening near our entrance while we're accepting visitors," he says, suspecting that there will be and he'll get cornered like that several more times. There had been a club only a few blocks away, and the beach isn't much further from that. The kinds of distances that probably won't get too many people just stumbling into the Carnival on their way out, but seem like a fun group excursion when proposed.

Yuya tilts his head back and frowns at the sky. He's all about people having fun, but not at the expense of others. That's definitely not fun.

He glances aside to Julien. "Yeah, it's no problem," he waves his hand with a smile. "Were you trying to do something before they, uh, surrounded you?"

"Not much, honestly. Taking a stroll. Letting people see me."

He snorts and confesses, "I kinda like watching people do the double-take. You know, glance at you, realize you're not normal, whip their heads back around, try to figure out if you're real... It's part of the attraction of coming here when we visit, I bet, just how many of us look bizarre. But I'd like to think I still stand out."

"When I first turned into a bird, I couldn't do this," he continues, gesturing to his his chest with a hand, to his cheek with the palp on the other side. "And most people didn't know it was possible to end up like me, so I got so much attention. When that happens, you kinda have to learn to like it. Otherwise, you're miserable."

Yuya hasn't considered that before, that some people might come for the express purpose of ogling them. He's one of the least visually changed, compared to everyone else, but the idea of being stared at like a freak makes him feel a little queasy, and he shifts awkwardly in his feet.

"I don't think I'd like that." It's not the same kind of attention as someone enjoying his performance, or finding him charming. But Julien seems to make it work for him, or at least claims he does.

"You couldn't always switch between being a human and a bird?"

He... thinks that's how Julien described it when he first arrived. Like a selkie, whatever those are.

"That's legit. I didn't like it too much either, at first. It's rough! You don't really want to go down that road." The road that leads to being something that hardly anyone looks at and thinks oh that's a person, of being something that they respond to like a friendly dog, with interest but not respect. Rough is an understatement. "But you can get used to anything, you know? And my friends knew I was still me."

Portland feels like it took a lot longer than a month, and Julien doesn't remember his selkie story off the top of his head. He shrugs. "I consider myself human no matter what's going on, I'm just... also a bird. But yeah, after I turned I was like that for a year, until just before I ended up here. Where I'm from, you don't turn back, after you turn into something."

He doesn't really want to go down that road either, even if the carnival changes are temporary. He's already dreading the day he ends up with an extra extremity.

"Why did you, uh, turn into a bird?" He guesses 'don't turn back' is why he can't be not a bird entirely, but slip out of his skin?

Julien's not all that happy about accumulating carnival changes himself, for all that each individual one is something he can live with. He just got this human body and having it diverge further and further from that is kind of sad. While he thinks he could probably form a new, totally human one, he's also afraid to try it and find out it's also altered, or changes as soon as he brings it out into the air.

Considering, he taps his palps together in front of his chin, and rubs one over the other.

"It's a long story if it's told well, but uh... there was a giant monster and I felt helpless, and I thought if I could fly and carry people it would be worth it. And it was," he adds hastily. "It was worth it. It is worth it. Things were bad and I helped turn things around."

That sounds like a long story even when told not well. Yuya just looks plain confused for a moment, trying to imagine it.

"So you... there was danger and you turned into a bird to help? Does that happen to everyone?" He did say they don't turn back--maybe people in Julien's world are all a mix of human-like and gigantic animals. "What about when you lose your hands?"

Because he witnessed the disaster that was Nightmare Horse Foster, and he's pretty sure Julien's bird body does not have fully functional hands.

He crosses his feet at the ankles, trying to decide how much detail to go into.

"It hardly happens to anyone. You have to want it. You have to... you need to have a better connection to the collective unconscious, first of all. Then you have to reach and make it as clear as you can what you need, and mean it. Then you see what that's going to do to you, and you can back off or accept it. I backed off a few times when the stakes were lower - I'd always wanted to fly, but where I'm from being any good at it means actually being a giant bird."

He smiles lopsidedly. "I have a few fingers left on my wings, even if they're rarely useful. My feet can work as hands - though that also means I don't perch as well as real birds, my grip doesn't lock. Mostly I use them and my beak. It took a lot of adjusting, but you know, people who lost their hands in injuries or never had any learn to compensate too. There are things we can do well, and poorly, and things we need devices or friends for."

"The 'collective unconcsious'?" He says it in a way that makes it clear that is an idea way beyond his current understanding.

He's got a point about disabilities, though. Yuya understands it, but in a distant way where he doesn't imagine it happening to him because, frankly, that's too distressing. "That's true... if it's what you wanted, then it's not a bad thing, right? Or something you just have to tolerate."

Julien taps a palp over the corner of his mouth. "Oh, uh... you know, the reason why people share dreams, or sometimes have true dreams? There's something we all have in common, this connection. I'm just part of a group where it's much more open." It does not occur to him that people don't usually have these kinds of dreams. They're utterly unremarkable where he's from.

Also he's not going to go into how that connection is sentient and how complicated all of that gets. Yuya's curious, not here for an hour of exposition about something not related to the here and now.

He nods. "It was bad! Haha, I'll admit, it was bad! I upended my whole life so I could do something in a situation that took less than a day and there were absolutely times when I regretted it later. But when that happens you don't have a choice except to get used to it, and stewing in what you've lost just makes it worse." He's definitely one to try to put a positive spin on his own experiences, to gloss over the trouble.

"Uh... I don't know anything about that stuff." Definitely not familiar with shared dreams in the actual sense! This brief explanation is just getting longer and longer, but Yuya won't specifically press Julien to explain all of it.

Still, if it really is that permanent then being optimistic about it isn't a bad thing. And it looks like the situation has... since improved? He nods affirmatively. "It's fun to fly like that, right?"

He shrugs. "Mm, well, the research on it's mostly pretty dry and academic. For most people they just don't feel all that important. Anyway, it doesn't seem all that relevant here, I don't think people from different worlds share that connection." It'd be a good reason why he hasn't had any of those dreams since coming here. It's certainly why he can't talk to anyone silently... but of course, no one could do that with any of the invaders, either, so that hasn't surprised him.

"Oh, totally! I mean it's a lot of work, but it's this thrill, too, even when I go and tire myself out. I actually get antsy these days if I go too long without being up in the air." Julien has to grin. "It's kinda like when you go running long distance and you hit that high. ...Actually it's probably exactly that."

He's a junkie for flight.

Yuya perks up immediately at the explanation, grinning wide. "Yeah, I get it! I get like that too, but I guess more about my gym skills than flying?"

Seeing as he obviously can't fly. He knows what it's like riding on things that do fly, though. "But since I'm an acrobat, I do a lot of tricks really high in the air. It's a lot of fun!"

⇨ WISMUTH

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