lostcarnival | ⇨ THE SUMMERLANDS

Who: Everyone!
When: Day 119 - Day 126
Where: The Summerlands
What: Ignatius and Gild portal everyone to the Summerlands, with hopes of appealing to the Summer Maiden for help. Meanwhile, the carnival gets the chance to relax in luxury as only tentatively welcome guests. Here is the location write up from the last time the carnival visited. Since then, of course, some things have changed.
Warnings: Nothing in particular.

THE SUN RISES↴

After taking the time to rest, Ignatius and Gild will be able to pool together their energy to portal the carnival (and the airship) to the Summerlands. Those still in Polaris will be left to their own devices for the moment as Gild intends to ask for the Summerlands aid in relocating them, hopefully as soon as possible. With the effort the carnival put into sorting things out in there, however, they should be fine on their own for a little while, at least.

They will arrive in the flowery fields at the base of the mountains, and soon the Summer Fae will notice their presence. Since the last time they visited, however, the atmosphere has changed.

► YOUR ARRIVAL: As the Summer Fae discover the group's arrival, it will quickly become apparent that there is a tension present that wasn't there any of the other times the carnival has visited. The Summer Maiden comes to greet the group personally, with an entourage of armed Summer Fae. They are not at all aggressive unless provoked, but there is clearly a wariness that is new. They seem uncertain about Ignatius being here, and while Gild will be able to do a lot of the talking and smooth things over, the Summer Maiden will deflect having a serious conversation about affairs until the carnival has taken time to 'rest.' It's more likely that the Maiden needs a moment to think over this new information before dealing with it.

► SUMMER CITY: After the Summer Fae become aware of everyone's presence, and the initial uncertainties are accommodated, they will invite you into their city. There are stairs that lead up the sides of the mountains, but thankfully there are also magical means of getting up there as well. The Summer Fae will be willing to help workers with the injured as needed, offering herbal remedies and healing magic to those that want it. You'll also be invited to join them for dinner, but it feels like more of a formality, and no one is obligated to take them up on it.

► SUMMER PEOPLE: The fae here will do their best to entertain these new visitors - but it doesn't seem that much happens here besides day after day of peaceful meditation and relaxation. It is not uncommon to see Summer Fae spent days doing exactly the same thing, whether that be enjoying the weather, listening to music, or dancing - the day and night periods may be similar to earth, but when you don't need rest it can all blur together just the same. Some of the fae work on feats of agriculture or craftsmanship, and while there is no particularly need to work in this place, they take pride in the fact that they do.

► FAMILIAR FACES: One very different thing about the Summerlands this go around is that there appears to be a small settlement built at the base of the mountains, filled entirely with the former residents of the Manor. Alyss and Reyna will explain that they set up a place to live down there with the Summer Fae's help, and that the fae seems to be trying to remain hands off except when they are needed. The Manor folk overall seem to be doing well, though there is some tension regarding their place in the Summerlands - they are clearly seen as refugees, and while the Summer Fae do their best to help them, the arrival of the carnival and the request for even more help with refugee aid seems to be making things awkward.

► OF THINGS TO COME: The Summer Maiden will remain distant for the first few days, but according to Gild and based on personal observation, it will seem that the news that the Ringmaster has been taken and the idea that even more desperate mortals are requesting to come here are putting her at significant ill ease. She's not rude or dismissive, but she seems reluctant to address the situation head on, though she has said that she will hold a meeting with the carnival later in the week to discuss everything in more detail. None of them seem particularly angry or resentful, but they seem to regard the carnival as an ill portent of things to come.

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That's... a fair enough point, and he lets it be at that, while Reira runs through a bunch of connected questions.

"I don't think my original 'dad' is made up," he says with a little bit of a laugh. It's complicated, but he and his brother had to come from somewhere, somehow, right? Even though he'd managed to go years without really thinking about it.

"And I don't remember very much... But, I do remember he was a scientist, Sans even confirmed it!" Reira might have heard their brief exchange about 'handwriting' back before visiting the Atheneum, but it had been a very brief exchange of puns, solemn purpose, and quiet.

"So I made up... something like him, but not exactly him. Thinking and talking sciencey things."

"Oh. ...I guess that makes sense." She did, in fact, briefly get involved in the handwriting thing. "...I don't know anything about the mom and dad I had before nii-sama's mom and dad...so I guess you have to make up a lot of things, if you only know a little bit."

Science though. Cool. "Mnh...if you know they're only 'something like' him...then, are they like anything else too?" Maybe Papyrus filled the gaps with people he knows? Or maybe just things? She's a little curious about the science of making imaginary friends here.

"That's right, they are! A little bit like multiple people. And it's because, well, family are always alike. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lottle... Like me and Sans. We seem very different... and we are, very different! Undeniably! But, well, we might have more bad habits in common, if I didn't make a lot of different choices from him. You, uh, met both our shadowy selves..."

There's things about Papyrus that he normally tries not to express, though they're there in the undercurrents. Cynical cruelties he avoids voicing, apathetic resignation he fights back with constant activity... But the avoidance of emotional honesty, the way of playing a part so people don't pry too deeply...

"Your parents would be like you, in some ways. Even if you've never met. So, I think of my brother, when guessing what our father was like. He's sciencey too, which fits better than thinking about me! And, uh..."

This part's even harder to explain; he didn't spend that much time talking with her, and even when he did it wasn't her her but Sans' face. It's not clear why she made such a big impact on him. "Since I'm thinking about... scientists... I think about the Mother of Invention, too."

"...Is lottle a word?" Reira asks despite herself, even while considering what Papyrus says. She supposes it makes sense to think a parent would be like the other. It's a bit uncomfortable to see how her brother would be like Himika or Leo, but she supposes she can do it. At the very least she could say both her brother and 'father' were not very bright sometimes.

But then Papyrus mentions the Mother, and Reira blinks to attention. "The Mother?" She repeats, tilting her head as she ponders this as well. She wouldn't know of course, how much or how little Papyrus knew about her. Frankly, she herself didn't have a lot of opinions as it were. But...

"She seemed 'okay'," she admits after a moment.

"....She wasn't mean at least. I think she forgot how to have fun though, if she knew ever. All of my science books talked about how cool things were because of how they worked, but part of what made it that way was everyone being happy while they learned about things. Like making big fountains with pop and candies," she explains. "...It would have been fun to be there if we ever learned things. But I don't even know if the 'Technicians' got to learn."

This is of course a guess, but honestly, Papyrus seems to be one of the few she can talk about guesses with without being told she's being ridiculous or something.

If there was anyone that Papyrus expected to have a lot of opinions about the Mother of Invention, Reira wasn't among his first choices. But maybe he should have; the young human likes asking questions and testing things. And children are, in their own way, forces of nature of whom one must weather the storms. Or something like that.

"For your first question... I'm sure it's a word! Paired with 'little', except the opposite," Papyrus helpfully explains, stalling for time as he thinks about the rest.

Lottle is... not a word. At least not to a dictionary, and probably not to anyone besides Papyrus.

"For the rest..." He scratches at his chin, angling his fingers a few different ways until he finds one where the metal doesn't scrape too screechingly. "You don't think she was mean? With... everything she pushed people to do?"

Reira has a lot of thoughts, about a lot of things. A lot aren't likely the best thoughts, as is standard for children, but the thoughts are certainly there.

Reira pauses though, and eventually shakes her head. "...Mnnn...I guess she was...mean by accident?" She admits. "...It wasn't a mean where she wanted to be. Just the kind of mean where things happened. Like if you take the last sausage at dinner....But worse. I guess... ....it's the kind of mean you can learn is wrong, and stop doing. So it's not 'mean', just 'wrong'."

She isn't sure how much this made sense, even to her. But it seems mean is about the feeling behind it at least.

"'Just happening', like bad weather... I would like to believe all of that," Papyrus says, regrettably not believing all that. "I wanted to believe that, when I talked to her... That she didn't know any better, and just needed to learn."

He isn't sure when Reira formed her impression of her, but there were options. MoI possessed the people with chips in their heads, and Reira probably would have gotten her empath powers back by then... But his chat with MoI-in-Sans dashed a lot of his hopes.

"And, she was all about learning! I think she knew, but, she didn't want to learn that. She said... that she was like a storm, a force of nature, just doing what she was. I asked her if she couldn't be smaller, and kinder, and she said... she didn't want to be."

Then she died while he watched, and he felt so helpless about it all. Like he could have done something more, should have done something more, than save his brother and let her leave and die. The feeling hasn't gone away, either.

Papyrus sighs. "She didn't think she was a person, really, but more than that... what she was doing, was more interesting. That part's really hard. When people really don't believe they can change, and don't want to... they don't try at all."

"Mnhh...." Oh, well that's a little upsetting. She certainly didn't get an impression of her, what with not talking to anyone possessed. Reira tries rather hard to think seriously about what Papyrus is saying- it's very easy after all, to just take what she hears and say 'well then she's dumb'. It doesn't take being small to be kind. It takes a lot of hard work to be kind, sometimes. And...

"...She wasn't very smart then." She says it anyway. "...I think it's harder to be nice to people than it is to be like that. And probably more 'interesting', since then you can get surprised by how people are nice back. If you just do things that people hate, they're definitely going to do something back. Umnhh..."

But someone who doesn't want to change...well. "I guess it's because she was more adult than you and the other adults."

She'll explain, trust her. "...If I say, 'maybe that's stupid and you should do something else', most of the adults don't listen. Because they think they know everything already, or they just don't want to do something different. So...she probably thought that too. ...She was the biggest and oldest one there, and did things for a really long time. ...It would probably feel silly if someone else said 'that's wrong', and they were right about it when she wasn't.

"Even something that thinks they're a god, or something else really big, is still a person. But it's definitely better to be small and nice sometimes."

⇨ THE SUMMERLANDS

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