logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

characters: everyone.
location: the path from downtown beacon to the harbor; all over town.
date/time: february 16-21.
content: the forest spirits send off their friends to join the aurora. memory opals drop from the eerie green lights above.
warnings: n/a.

i had all and then most of you, some and now none of you.

For most of the day on February 16, all of the town's forest spirits can be found along the stretch of road between downtown and the harbor, clearly setting up for, uh, something. They're piling snow onto the pathway, creating a miles long sled trail that starts outside the Landmark Inn and ends at the very end of the harbor's dock. Not only that, but the forest spirits are also not super willing to explain what they're up to! They're busy, you lantern-havers.

By the time evening rolls around, the spirits have set up wooden railings alongside the snowy path, as well as a warming tent, hot chocolate booth, and announcer stand outside of the Landmark. Oh, and a starting banner for the race! It's dogsled time!

Throughout the event, Beacon's downtown and harbor areas will be completely overrun with forest spirits, all there to bear witness to this holiday celebration—this holiday is for them, though, not you weirdos with your naked faces. Point is, none of the spirits will be hostile at this time! They're more interested in interacting with each other than with Beacon's residents, though if pressed, a kind spirit might be willing to explain what's going on:

The aurora arrives in Beacon for about a week each year, and the forest spirits believe it to be "friends in the sky". The lights are old friends of theirs, it seems! And each night while the aurora shines above the town, the forest spirits send off a handful of friends to join the aurora! The spirits ready to join the aurora build sleds of their own and assemble mighty sled teams, sometimes comprised of dog spirits and sometimes... other stuff. Then, when the aurora is at its peak in the wee hours of the night, the sled teams will ride off one by one, racing down the snow-covered path all the way down to the harbor, where they'll finally rocket off the dock and out over the lake, picking up more and more speed as each team gallops wildly over the water before arcing up into the sky. Once the spirits are barely a speck, they'll hit the aurora and burst into a shower of light. Beautiful stuff!

See, since the aurora is made of light, forest spirits launched into it are killed on impact! Isn't that wonderful! The forest spirits seem to think so! What is death to a dead thing!

All of this information can be learned through handwaved/played-led interactions with the forest spirits during the event. They'll all be focused on saying goodbye to their friends and cheering them on as they stream through the sky, but they're happy to welcome lantern-havers to join in the celebrations. The hot chocolate is free and only tastes a little bit like mud, so. Enjoy!

•••
For the entire duration of the event, the aurora will dance in beautiful silence overhead, lighting up the whole town with its eerie green glow. Every so often, handfuls of opals will rain down like meteorites from the lights above, and these opals each contain the memory of someone currently in Beacon! They can be found all over town, landing on paths and atop buildings and maybe even rocketing straight through your ceiling to crash into your living room. Perhaps a forest spirit decided to hide some shiny rocks in your cereal box or under your pillow... Better hope the Postmaster General doesn't find your opals before you do, though. That spirits sure does love their rocks. Point is, who knows where the opals might turn up?

On that note, if you signed up for a random event, we'll be RNGing characters to receive these random events throughout the event! The event may happen in response to a toplevel on this event log, or we might turn up in your IC inbox... 👀 These events will be entirely random, meaning we could dole out any number of them at any time, so it'll be a fun surprise for all of us.

If you missed signups and would still like to toss your name in the ring, go right ahead! Signups will remain open throughout the event, though we can't promise everyone who signs up will get something.

And finally... Each day, we'll post a list of the forest spirits joining the aurora! What, did you want to know in advance? The forest spirits have never been a particularly organized bunch, so they're winging this—which means more surprises for you. :)

Enjoy the races and the lights and the opals, residents of Beacon, and remember: WHAT IS DEATH TO A DEAD THING!

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Well, I can't really argue with that. If I were them, I might do something similar. Get my entertainment while also testing reactions.

( two birds with one stone and all that. )

Though Riku gave his assurance and Daylight did ask in the first place and he knows how nice and patient Riku is towards him- Day finds himself looking down, shuffling his pedes as he gathers up the courage to suggest/ask:

"Do you wanna talk about stuff? I mean- Stuff from before?" He takes a deep vent, collecting himself, and explains himself (a bit) better: "If you ever wanna, um, swap stories about... you know... things before, I would be up for that." He smiles at Riku while his winglets flutter in hopefulness. "Things like adventures and friends like Mickey and... whatever comes to the mind. Shooting the wind, you know? I would love to know more about you before we came here. Like maybe, um, your birthday and stuff!"

He adds, "Only if you want to, of course! I get it if you don't wanna but... the offer is there."

Okay, that's just a load of crap. All I ever wanted was magic. It was that secret door or that special letter, and I wanted to

I got my letter and I found the secret door, to magic and to Fillory and you know what? That wasn't just what I THOUGHT I wanted. I wanted it, more than anything. But more than that, I wanted friends. Real friends, and I got those too and it just

You're wrong, at least in the general sense. Maybe that's just how it works for you. Who even knows.

Good thinking on the wrapping, see you soon.

We wouldn't even have to watch them, you know.

[What if his memory about dying is out there? Or what happened when Julia learned magic and trapped him in his worst nightmare. Or about the Midtown Mental Health Clinic.]

Or, we drink until I forget why I even want to throw them all away in the first place.

You only get a year?

[Quentin smiles, because-- wow, unfair.]

I remember growing old. The aches and pains, how everything just seemed to take forever. How time went faster. How a year seemed to just go by in the blink of an eye, that kind of thing. Just-- sleeping outside on the daybed? It was hell after, oh, I think after we turned fifty? Somewhere around that time, and sleeping outside would just murder my back.

[He stretches, for no other reason than because he can and it's still painless.]

That's one thing I don't miss.

[ YIKES, QUENTIN.

he doesn't touch that reply because — where to start? it's not that peter doesn't have a habit of putting his foot in his mouth (he does), nor is it that he doesn't have a habit of digging peter parker shaped holes (he does that a lot, too), but that doesn't mean he necessarily thinks he's wrong in his assessment.

which means that whilst he doesn't reply, that doesn't mean he doesn't think about it. doesn't mean he doesn't take five-to-ten minutes to sit and think about how to respond before ultimately deciding that no, it's fine, he's going to the library to see quentin anyway.

what it does mean, as well, is that peter takes longer than his originally estimated twenty minutes. it means he wanders into the library, bag slung across one shoulder, opal wrapped in cloth somewhere at the bottom.

he pauses, just for a second, when he spots quentin, then— ] Hey, uh, sorry. [ is the greeting and the introduction, all in one, as one hand dives into the bag to fish out the stone.

(sex having books. and to think he thought he'd seen everything.) ]

[She was headed this direction when she found the stone, honestly, but she won't mention that. It's not that important.]

Hey. [Jo gives him a smile, staying quiet as the spirits around them cheer loudly.]

I wanted you to have it. Our memories should be our own. [She digs out the precious parcel and holds it out to him. While it feels a little less invasive than experiencing someone else's death without warning, she still feels a little bad about it.]

[Ah, damnit, Kuai. Bringing them back around to him and his own opal. Fair's fair, except for when it comes to himself.

His expression shifts subtly - an intentional, careful neutral that might be hard to distinguish from an actual disinterest in the topic.]

Haven't been on good terms since we were kids. What you saw in that memory wasn't us on good terms.

So they can manipulate us later? So far our reactions to almost everything hasn't been favorable.

But if that's really what they're trying then they're showing remarkable dedication.

"You're not supposed to tell anyone about that. No one needs to know how many times I failed in training, it's the results that matter." Not that he fails. Ever.

Moving on.

"The one you've been talking to this whole time? They've been very helpful so far, have you shown them this?"

Hm.

[Well that sure doesn't seem like what he saw. Very suspicious.]

And you were reuniting?

[Kuai remembers the content, it seems, without the context. His own thoughts and emotions must not have sunk in memorably for him. That's good - that's actually an immense relief. He's just not comfortable with sharing so much.]

Well... Yes, but any good will he ever felt toward me was simply because he thought he could use me and my presumed support to his benefit.

[Maybe a far more cynical take than necessary. Doflamingo had genuinely been glad to see him return, and he knows it. He just can't help but be bitter about everything now.]

"Molly's fuckin' dexterous," he says dryly. "By that point we'd been together for, uh." He blows out a puff of air as he thinks. "Shit, maybe two months? Two an' a half or something."

[ Listening has always been Ellever's preference where other people are concerned, once she'd gotten old enough to focus. Her head tilts slightly to the side. ]

Talking to people? Did you do a lot of that?

[ So much of her own life is secret that she's always lacked the proper stepping stones of conversation. Eventually, the other person would ask something she awkwardly couldn't answer or would have to lie about. But Sora seems to enjoy asking questions and listening, and he asks good and helpful questions. She isn't surprised to hear that a hobby of his lines up with that. ]

Sora looks at her, surprised. Then into the middle distance, thinking. "You ask me just enough. I tell you everything I want to tell you. Me holding stuff back isn't your fault. So don't say that, okay? You're doing fine."

... But. "I already tell you about everything important. Like Valentine's Day and Times Square. And lots and lots of people." Everything else... he shakes his head. "Everything else is just more of that. Anger and fear and hurt. You've had enough of that." It's not like it's ever done anything but hurt people. And Sora's always been fine with carrying some hurt around. All it's ever done is hurt.

[ It seems that memories of the past can be fractured or downright faulty for someone who's been reincarnated. That's what Somnus assumes in passing when Sora struggles to recall it. The very concept of rebirth is a bit strange to him. ]

Ariel.

There's room for both. There's gotta be.

[ There has to be room for being grateful for what you have and wanting something better, more perfect. That's a part of having a heart, after all. Hoping for something that may not be real.

He'll eventually start swaying them back and forth, mostly for both of them to have something to focus on. He finds that soothing, at least. ]

I know how that feels. I really, really do.

[ Meeting Riku again, whole and unmerged with another person (whom he liked in his own way, really he did, but Dante wasn't him), was an impossible dream. Impossible dreams don't hurt. They're never supposed to. They just never happen.

He knows how that feels. To know that the best he can do is to only sort of have what he wants when the thing he actually wants is just out of reach. ]

It's fine to be sad. [ And he'll keep going on this sort of rhythm until he starts saying sort of wordless nothings that he isn't sure is actually addressing the hurt anymore. He just wants to give her the time to cry it out and know that's okay. ]

Yeah? Did you have a favorite?

[ Not at aaall suspecting that he might get stonewalled on this answer. After all, people usually like talking about wonderful things they've seen or experienced on their journeys, right? Sora has a whole ton, and probably would toss out three favorites if prompted. He assumes most people are the same way. ]

[Will ducks his head and covers his ears, a full-body flinch. What the hell was that? He's about to ask, but Daylight manages to correct himself.

Of course, it's not like the actual questions are a whole lot better.

How does he handle it when it gets to be too much? If he's being honest, it's never been too much. Not the fact that his parents didn't give a shit, that is. Where he came from, that was just the norm. You had children because someone had to continue paying off the multi-generational debt that got your many-great-grandparents off the Earth when it was still dying. (And no, the irony of that was not lost on anyone.)

So really, he doesn't have an answer to that. The lack of any sort of parent-child bond was mutual. He's never really felt its loss because it never existed in the first place.

But he knows he can't give Daylight nothing. The desperation that's being pointed entirely in his direction tells him that much. The kid needs something, anything, to hold on to, because some fundamental fact of his life has just been shaken loose. So what would Will do in that situation? Probably what he's done in the past.]

If you want the real answer, I alter my thoughts until I can't remember for a while. With assistance, of course.

[From drugs. He means drugs.]

[Will snorts.]

Apologies for what? You're not the one who threw it down here in the first place, and from what I gather, you weren't exactly in control of... [He makes a vague gesture.] All of that.

[You know the uhhhhh mass murder?]

"Space is big. Incredible." Captain Obvious isn't much of a thing in his time, but if it were, he'd probably be pulling it out right about now.

"A rock? You must be very confused about what a ship looks like. And yes, I did live in space, as I've said a thousand times. I'll assume you've got a stone for me. Unless you intend to keep it. Because of how big space is."

Like a magical word? A spell? A sacred place to put it and all of magic will flow through it and that will open the memories of your people?

[Okay, so maybe? Quentin has read too many fantasy novels.]

How did you get it?

Piper: The chick Jason literally swept off her feet!

[Masaomi cackles. He is clearly having too much fun with this.]

Damn, you really were just born a hero, weren't you? Popped outta the womb holding Excalibur in your gums.

[And, because it's Very Important, he leans in to add:]

So? Didja get a thank you kiss?

"Oh no, nothing like it."

And Quentin manages, barely, to keep the smile to normal volume until he steps down off the porch and reaches Riku. But once he gets down, he reaches out, almost putting his hand on Riku's shoulder before he lets it fall and the smile just turns up to eleven.

"You know Mickey Mouse! You! I saw it, in-- so, I found this rock and inside of it, when I touch it, it's Mickey Mouse."

Mickey Mouse!

"Wait, let me show you-"

And he's about to pull it out, when his fingers brushes against the folded up note and the hard shape of the rock inside of it. The one Riku pushed under the door. Frowning and puzzled, Quentin brushes a finger over it and he's right there, in the clearing in front of the cottage, falling apart all over again.

Quentin's head snaps up and he nods slowly, pulling out the other one. The one with Mickey in it, heat flushing his checks.

"I think this is yours."

At first, the last part of that doesn't really register. Will's still out of it, and only the first bit catches.

"Right, better you than anyone else, at least." He pauses. Hesitates. "It didn't go so well the last time someone else found out. Before, you know. Back home." So before death, he means.

"I don't know who, and I don't know how, but at some point, the people I was with, they knew. Probably why they started blaming everything on me." He rubs his face. "Ignore that. Probably none of it means anything to you anyway."

There's a moment of silence before everything finally registers. God, this is just like being asked if he's okay. No one does that. No one gives a shit and that doesn't bother him because neither does he.

"I'll be fine." He doesn't like to lie, but it's not a lie if you've convinced yourself, now is it?

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EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

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