lostcarnival | ⇨ CAMPING GROUNDS

Who: Everybody!
When: Day 64
Where: The Camping Grounds
What: While the Ringmaster attempts to purge the carnival of magical tracing spells and deal with the angry fire fae in her belly, everyone else is getting sent on an emergency camping trip with some unusual local fauna.
Warnings: Camping.

CRYPTIC CAMPGROUNDS↴

You're given about three hours to prepare, after the Ringmaster tells you her plans for the coming week. There is a vast selection of camping equipment at your disposal, and the means to take along enough food for the length of the stay. The wilderness of the planet you're left on is nearly idyllic, but some people just don't like the great outdoors.

► CRYPTOZOOLOGY: As it turns out, the carnival won't be alone here. There is a varied ecosystem of cryptids to be found as well, living in relative peace and mostly reacting to the newcomers with curiousity. More details can be found on the plotting post. You are free to NPC the cryptids as much as you need to, as long as you stick to the behaviours described.

► DREAMSHARING: There is a player plot going on which will allow characters to share dreams! These are specifically more dreams than nightmares, and the mushi-adept characters will be here to help.

► CHILLAX: There isn't any plot twist for this setting, so this is mostly an opportunity to decompress from the last plot and get ready for the future. The Ringmaster will show up occasionally to help with needed medical treatments and check on things, but won't stick around for long.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's ok, Tanyuu! He's always in the tent anyway, so it's not crowding so much as....the norm. Herbert grunts, teeth gritted, when she inevitably jostles the feather by holding it, but that's fine. He...needs to stop doing this.

This time, he wasn't even impulsive enough to attempt scratching his itchy wings on a tree: he'd just leaned against it, resting a moment on his way back from the lake. Which was apparently enough pressure and the exact wrong angle to snap yet another pinfeather! He's sick of this! He can't afford to keep losing this much blood, and to add to his irritation, he's not even wearing his labcoat this time for convenient pressure and temporary bandaging.

"I'm moulting," he complains, when he feels ready to talk. "New feathers are very brittle and supplied with blood and I keep damaging them." Taking care to keep very still, he glances over his shoulder to make 20% of eye contact with Tanyuu. She's not a troll anymore, but she is a giant snake, so, possibly she can help? "I need to pull it out--it's only funnelling my blood out at the moment, I can't do anything about that."

While it's hard to tell for sure given her eye coloration (and the...number of them), she does at least give the impression of returning that partial eye contact. Nodding with a slight frown, Tanyuu carefully reaches up to the feather's base to find where the shaft emerges from his skin.

"I think I can do that...alright, I have it." Her antennae flick, and she grips the base tightly. "When you're ready."

Herbert hisses out a tight breath in response to the pain of Tanyuu's hand moving. This sucks and he hates it. He's not going to leave the tent again: as far as he's concerned, he is also a patient and other people are required to fetch things for him in this time of healing and moult. Closing his eyes briefly, he opens them again and nods slightly, lifting his other arm towards his face.

"Ready," he says, sounding strained, and shoves his sleeve in his mouth, breathing through his nose as evenly as he can manage.

Her brow creases in sympathy, and she makes a mental note to check later if she has any herbal teas that might be helpful--or at least calming. But for now--

"One, two...three!"

She pulls the feather out with a swift, sharp tug, pulling her hands away from his wing once she does.

Trying to keep his wing as still as he can, Herbert still ends up hunching both his wings and shoulders up as Tanyuu yanks out the injured feather, making a muffled and cut-off shriek into his arm. Wings are awful. If he thought there'd be a point in doing so, he'd ask the Ringmaster to undo these inconveniences. It could be worse, though. He's seen what happened to Foster when he asked specifically for changes. Better to just deal with them than potentially lose his hands.

"Mm," he hums eventually after removing his arm from his face to try and reach over and around his wing to feel for the damaged spot. Out of reach, still, even for just an investigative poke. "Does it still seem to be bleeding?" he asks eventually, still sounding slightly strained. His left wing is a throb on his back. There's blood matting his dark feathers so it's difficult to tell but it's not.

"Let me see..."

Given permission, Tanyuu investigates the site once more, very carefully feeling around beneath the fragile feathers. Given all this trouble, the last thing she wants to do is carelessly cause even more pain.

"...it seems to have stopped, or at least slowed considerably. Difficult to tell with the old blood still there, though." She looks up at Herbert, eyebrows raising slightly. "I assume any further treatment should happen at your tent?"

"Yes..." he sighs. "This is very inconvenient--it's lucky I'm not prone to infection--" for. reasons. "--because I'm going to have to use water from the lake to clean the area. Or--hm. You? Are? Iiii still can't reach my wing, if you...have the time I could use your reach." Pulling his wing in a bit without fully folding it to avoid damaging it or whacking her with it, he turns around to face Tanyuu, hesitating before adding, "Please?"

Tanyuu would point out that purifying the lake water wouldn't be too much of an issue (it's fairly clean anyway), but he's from a time that has much more widespread convenience. He's probably used to artificially filtered water being the norm.

Instead she nods with a faint smile to his awkward request. "Of course, it's no problem at all. I'm not particularly busy at the moment."

He is, not to mention he hasn't been to war yet, so alternatives to magical plumbing don't occur to him.

"Good," he says, and heads off back towards the campsite without further preamble. "It shouldn't take too long."

Tanyuu nods and follows along, her eyes lingering on the injured wing for a few moments.

"Are the new feathers themselves painful at all?"

"They're mostly...itchy," says Herbert, rolling his shoulders and his wings in the process. "I believe this isn't generally an issue when it comes to moulting--I was only unlucky enough to lose all my feathers at once." He's walking as quickly as he can over forest ground. He wants to get this over with.

"Do you also see mushi?" An abrupt segue because he talked with Ginko about it fairly recently.

Her eyebrows raise slightly at the segue (or lack thereof), but she doesn't let it fluster her.

"I can, yes, though Ginko's sight as much more...acute, I suppose. He can see strains of mushi that I cannot, but those are mostly incredibly rare varieties, or the product of extraordinary circumstance." She smiles slightly. "I do, however, know about far more varieties than Ginko. I was the caretaker of a very old archive at home, and part of my duties required the memorization of everything kept there."

⇨ CAMPING GROUNDS

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