logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: TURN THE LIGHTS OFF

EVENT LOG: TURN THE LIGHTS OFF

characters: everyone.
location: around town.
date/time: january 20-29.
content: the lanterns begin to malfunction.
warnings: body horror and psychological horror. please cw tags appropriately.

you'll become one

January 20th arrives the same as all the days before it. There's no great pulse of warning that throbs through the air, no ominous wind that causes the bonfire to shudder. The spirits are neither agitated nor do they hide. You could almost miss the change, if the lanterns weren't always by your side. There's no explanation that comes with the way that it's changed, but it's impossible not to worry when it's happened so suddenly.

Maybe it takes a few days, or maybe it only takes a few hours, but suddenly it isn't just the lanterns that have changed. You, yourself, have become somehow different. It's possible that you won't even have the right state of mind to wonder how long it will last. At the very least, it appears you aren't alone. All across Beacon, lanterns are changing, and changing the people with them.

Out in the distance, the lighthouse's beam has turned green.

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"I'm pretty sure not, since other people have not come back, and nothing like this happened to them." Stone looks Quentin up and down again. "It made Rosinante angry. It's making you laugh at everything," he guesses.

"Rosinante? That's the huge, scary guy."

Who Quentin had laughed at and who threw the table at him. He can't help laughing a little about that, his face twisting up in a huge smile.

"And what did it do to you? Make you like this?"

He tilts his head. "It's not so bad, is it? I mean, you can fly. You're still you."

"So are you, you're just a very... happy, easily amused you," Stone points out. "And I suppose it's not all bad. Just irritating. This thing I look like belongs to a species I've spent the vast majority of my life killing."

"Right. I know that feeling, of looking like something you hate. Something you've spent years trying to get rid of."

Quentin shakes his head, the memories of the depression-key and the mirror-image of himself grinding him down on the ship, "I'm not me. I-- I don't know who I am, but I'm not me. I'm never this happy." It's a giggle more than a laugh, but it's completely at odds with the tone of his voice. "Maybe we're stuck like this until the world ends."

"Just because you aren't usually this happy doesn't mean you're not you," Stone says with a huff. "And I doubt it'll stay that way forever, calm down. Rosinante's already changed once. He started off being angry, and now he's just a rude idiot who thinks we're all beneath him. For being happy, you're awfully dire."

Quentin makes some kind of humming noise, not really agreeing but also giggling too much to reply properly.

"Maybe being happy makes it easier to see just how fucked we all are."

That name, though-- "Rosinante. Big guy, makeup and really scary?"

It's a guess more than anything, because that guy had been the angriest guy Quentin had seen in a while.

"Not that scary, but I suppose if you can't turn into a big winged predator, he might be more scary," Stone allows. "But yeah, that's him."

"I still have magic," Quentin tries to twist his fingers together, but the tut fails. The cold and the wine are both working against him, stiffing his joints and blunting the sharp flicks of his wrist.

"Okay, so I had magic, but. You know. Since magic is born from pain and I'm not really feeling any pain right now? Maybe I can't do magic anymore..."

Scary, no. Soul-deep terror and Quentin giggles, smothering them against his arm. "You're cool, though."

"Magic doesn't come from pain, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Stone says with an incredulous look. "That's terrible. Mentors and groundlings on my world do magic without pain all the time. What kind of shitty magic does your world have?"

"My magic does. The dean at magical school had a whole speech about it. About how pain makes us all stronger. Makes out magic stronger, that's why we're all a little broken."

Quentin smiles softly, the laugh threatening to spill out at any second. "But yeah, it's kind of shitty. Why can't it run on love or cocaine or something."

"And you're sure this dean person was telling you the truth?" Stone asks, skeptically. "It's not like people in authority don't lie all the time to get what they want out of people under them."

"Maybe? I don't think so, though. Since--" and he giggles, "Since I've never met a magician that wasn't hurting over something. Man, we are all so messed up."

All of them, but together it had been a little better.

"Everyone hurts over something," Stone says. "Doesn't mean that has to be where your power comes from. Or even that you have to hurt all the time." He huffs, wings rustling. "When you're feeling better, you should definitely try some tests. When your lantern isn't cracked and we're not in the middle of one of these damn event things, anyway."

"When I'm feeling good, you mean?" And even with the giggles twisting his face, there's a shadow of doubt there.

"Yeah, good luck to me on that." It's not a bad suggestion, though. It might even be something to look in to, when thoughts don't run through his mind like sand through your fingers. "Can you fly?"

"Of course I can fly," Stone says. "That's what the wings are for. Why, want a ride?" It's not like he hasn't carried people before, and maybe it'll help Quentin somehow to have some wind in his face.

"Yes?" And the smile might look less strained, less horrifying as he says it, one hand sneaking out to touch the nearest wing. "Oh yeah, I want to fly. I was a goose once, but only for a little while. But I really loved flying."

And also, bugs had tasted good but Quentin slams his mouth shut before that thought can fly out of it.

Bugs are okay. Not the greatest, but Stone's eaten worse. His wing twitches back, mostly from surprise, then he huffs out something between a sigh and a laugh. "Okay. Wait a second, let me shift into something bigger." Technically, maybe, he could carry Quentin in this form... but maybe not, he's pretty old, and even though the Fell ruler shape has its black scales still, it's still got the same age-related limitations.

So Stone steps back, shimmers into a cloud of dark mist, and reappears much, much bigger-- it's not his usual form, being not nearly as spiney, and not nearly as graceful, but it's still plenty big, still easily mistaken for a dragon.

He offers Quentin a big, clawed hand, cupped to stand or even sit on.

Quentin's eyes go big and round, almost rolling out of his skull as Stone changes-- shape-shifts and this is so cool. The smile on his face more genuine and less like something forcing his mouth to stretch wide.

He climbs in to the huge (huge!) hand, and sits down like an idiot. One leg curled underneath him and the other just kind of outstretched across the palm of Stone's hand.

"Okay? If this is okay with you, we can fly now."

Stone makes an affirmative-sounding-- or, well, amused-sounding-- little rumble, then cups the other hand around him and leans back into a crouch, spreading his wings. He springs up with a powerful downbeat, and then they're in the air. He can't fly very high, the air is so strangely thin around here, but he can get over the roofs of most of the buildings and fly a little over the lake, before it starts getting dangerous.

So he makes a short circuit around the village and Bonfire Square, then out over the docks before wheeling back again, slow and easy, paying close attention to Quentin's reactions in case he needs to bank and land sooner than later.

Quentin, still laughing like a loon only louder now, is leaning out across the cupped hand and watching it all fly by underneath them. The freezing wind whipping his hair in to his face and there's nothing- nothing holding them down or pushing him all too crushingly in to the dirt.

There's just the hands holding him carefully and the bright stars flickering in the open sky above them.

He whoops and grins, gripping Stone's large hand with both of his own and yelling to be heard over the wind.

"This is amazing!"

The torch lights lighting up the town and the bonfire, all of it making the whole village look friendly and alive from up here. A soft golden light shining to brightly in the dark.

Stone can't speak in this form anymore, but he does make a chuckling sort of sound, half in agreement and half because he does love when people enjoy a good flight. He glides out over the ice briefly, knowing exactly how far is safe to go, before banking and turning back to circle the village one more time.

He backwings and settles into a soft landing near the bonfire, and lowers his hands to let Quentin climb off.

Climbing off on legs that feel like jelly, Quentin steadies himself against one large finger as he steps off and takes a few tottering steps forward.

"That was just-- fucking amazing."

It really was, and it beat being a goose, even if Quentin had loved the feeling of wind beneath his wings. This had been-- breathtaking and he giggles, shaking his head.

"I rode a dragon and I can't even tell Julia about it," the giggles turn in to a roaring laugh. Fillory didn't have dragons, and the only dragons he'd seen before coming here, were grumpy and unfriendly. Just thinking about Julia makes his stomach clench and fall and the laughter just bubbles out of him harder. "Thank you."

Stone's eyeroll is even more visible in this form, when his eyes are the size of someone's head. But he does shift back down into the form capable of speaking. "You didn't ride a dragon, idiot, you were carried by one. But I'm glad you enjoyed yourself."

"That's not how I'm going to tell it," Quentin assures him between giggles and he reaches out to give Stone a pat on the-- it might be a shoulder? Somewhere with fewer spikes, at least. "But thank you."

"You're welcome. Any time you want another go, just ask. I have a flight just about every day." Stone pats him, back, then ruffles his hair. "Go take a nap, or something. Maybe you'll be more normal when you wake up."

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moderatelymaladjusted - 2020-03-10 20:02 (UTC) - Expand

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