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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You should be left guessing sometimes too.

[Because yes, this is totally about Vanitas being a tease, not anything else.]

Sora smiles, and it's big and splits his face in half and it's sad. "I did. My squad leader was taking care of me, she covered my tracks. She saved my life."

His smile fades, just by a bit. He never saw her again.

"Now I'm here to be your friend. It made a difference." He tilts his head. "Well, it makes a difference to me. How about you?"

That's a stupid reason.

Now that he's not quite so manic, Masaomi can't bring himself to smile with Sora, but he does nod. It's a hesitant, short-lived gesture, but it's visible. It's there.

"You're a pretty amazing guy too."

A silent sigh, and he shuts his eyes.

"Guess I just wish I'd had some of that luck for myself. Sorry."

Well, yeah.

I don't like you enough to give you a good one.

[ He frowns, shutting his eyes so, so tight... but opens his eyes, shaking his head. ] Thanks. [ It really is a relief. He doesn't remember what importance the secrecy had at all. ]

I... wanna say it was a while. We ended up going back, um. At least a couple of times? [ He frowns. ] I can't say for sure we ended up staying for more than a week at a time, but the Caribbean was bigger than most worlds. There - there was a map, I had a ship. Lots of little islands, we weren't allowed to fly to them. We had to have spent at least a month over the course of, um... a year? Exploring them all. [ He doesn't know for sure, but context clues seem to fit that into the timeline pretty well. ]

[ it's a while before she's able to stop trembling. having something (someone) solid to cling to helps, and while she can't answer his questions right away hearing his voice helps ground her, too, even as she can still remember how acutely she'd felt everything as him, how his voice had come out of her mouth when she'd tried to speak, but could only say his words. ]

You. [ that's not enough of an answer and she knows it, and she pulls back a little to look at his face - he can't see her, but she can see him and that helps her to realize she's in control again, that her mind and body are back to being her own. ] I saw - I think it was you. I was you.

Sora pauses. Masaomi keeps saying that. Luck. He doesn't have a death wish, but he doesn't see the appeal of living as long as he has. Not in the way he has. Is it luck if it grinds you down? Slowly? Over years?

That doesn't seem. Fair though. "If I could, I'd share my luck with you." He smiles weakly at the nod. "Like, thanks, I try for amazing, but I'm not. Really. Anyone." Hasn't been for a long time. "I bet you could do better. You saved your friend Mikado's life. That's amazing."

Oh, well, that's lucky.

[ Really, what are the chances that he'd find the guy he was looking for right off the bat? And it definitely takes a weight off Eliot's shoulders. He doesn't want to be walking around this stone more than he has to be. ]

Yeah. Eliot, that's me. Look - I feel bad that I had to see … Whatever it is I saw. I'm sorry.

[ Because what do you say, honestly? Having witnessed something that heavy? Eliot can't even really make jokes about the spider get-up.

He takes the carefully wrapped opal from his pocket. ]

Here -

Masaomi really does have no idea what kind of life Sora has lived. He doesn't know how it feels. He only knows his own life, a short-lived mess of building up his friends and lovers, protecting and cherishing them the way no one had him, only to watch them fall by his hand anyway. It's not enough. He has so many people he wants to meet again, so many wrongs he wants to make right.

And now he'll never be able to achieve any of it.

"I was the reason he needed saving in the first place. I was an idiot who didn't even know who my friend was until after I declared war on him." He has to stop, force back the lump rising treacherously in his throat. "Until I took a fucking bullet because I was too blind to realize my own team was against me."

Several deep breaths later, as soon as he's certain he's not going to cry (Sora doesn't deserve that on top of everything else), he takes another shot at comprehensible speech.

"Saving Mikado? I owed him that much, after dragging him down with me. I'm just glad I didn't manage to screw that up too."

"Really?"

He can't help a small, amused laugh.

"Y'know I've heard people talk about being raised by wolves but you're the first person I've met who actually was."

Sora's going to scoot a little closer, looking into Masaomi's face. Watchful. Not curious or pitying. Just careful. A little sad. Making sure to give him room to not cry, as one does. You're not getting away, Kida. Sora's been chasing people his entire life.

Five months, and he's lived with this. Sora still isn't sure what happened, but there was betrayal. There's friendship, definitely. Guilt. (There's always guilt. Never makes it less painful to watch.) It's heavy. It's all heavy.

"You really care about him," Sora says, soft. It's not a statement looking for an answer. It's something Sora's reflecting back. It's what he sees.

"He was my courage."

Masaomi does laugh then, though it's hollow. Was. Not because Mikado is gone but because Masaomi is. From where does a corpse find courage? Certainly not from the living.

"Not a single fighting bone in his body, but he'd stand up for me anyway, shivering the whole time." His fondness readily bleeds into his otherwise desolate tone. "I just wanted him to be happy."

Maybe, just maybe, he can be now.

[ "whatever it is I saw", eliot says, and peter cringes: his eyebrows pull together and his nose scrunches up, and he looks away from eliot, just for a moment. his first thought isn't that eliot saw something relating to gwen, or even to ben. his first thought isn't that eliot saw one of the worst moments in his life — although when he does realise it, the irony of what eliot saw versus what quentin saw won't escape him.

what peter assumes, then, is that eliot saw something relating to spider-man — maybe doc ock, maybe mysterio, maybe stilt-man (oh, man, that'd almost be hilarious, and peter's not sure he could entirely come up with a valid explanation for someone like stilt-man existing, because he's still not sure why stilt-man isn't embarrassed by his own existence.

—ooh, maybe it was paste-pot pete—.) ]

—Uh, thanks. [ he says as he takes the opal, a mixture of bemusement and trepidation entering his tone. he eyes it for one second, then two, then—

peter opens his mouth, exhales and says— ] Hey, look, whatever it is you saw, I can explain.

Edited 2020-03-21 10:32 (UTC)

[ A grim smirk appears on Catra's face. ]

Thanks for the tip.

Boy, does Sora have a few thoughts about that. Hey, Masaomi. As far as Sora's concerned, they're alive. (They can go over that later, though. The topic now is courage and happiness and friendship.)

Hoping for someone else's happiness. Sora wishes he remembers where he's heard that before. It feels like he should know what happened that him made that so important to him. It's like looking for a light already shining in a room with no bulbs, no lantern. Uneasy, mysterious, impossible. Comforting yet frightening. Which memory was it? Where is it? Why won't it come back?

He thinks he can guess what happened. If Mikado was the type to stand up like that in spite of his nature, of course that means he'd be the type to try to make something bigger. His heart was strong.

"But you don't know. And there's no way to find out. He isn't here." Sora closes his eyes, thinks for a moment, snapping pieces into place. "That's scary, not knowing. And it's embarrassing to be scared." To know that people know that you're not as strong as you want them to think you are. Sora understands that. He's always been uncertain. He doesn't know anything.

I think sometimes there are memories we can't make ourselves think of that are still there. [It's probably not the technical way to talk about it, but she'd stand behind her feeling on this. It's gotta be part of what causes deja vu.]

So. You were really raised by a giant wolf? That's some founding of Rome shit. [What? She knows some of her myths. That stuff helps on a hunt.]

"Werewolf." It's a quick correction, but the distinction feels important to her.

"I don't think it was a pureblood. They don't learn, it just happens after they get bit." If it's the werewolf she's thinking of, they never found another in town. Never found out where he had been turned.

She clears her throat after a moment.

"You're surprisingly calm about it."

Sora nods, leaning back in his chair. Gone, then. Good. No one else gets hurt by it again. (He'd be sad to hear what Roy had done to avenge Maes, but when it comes down to it, he probably would have done the same thing. Hero syndrome.) Which means the only person left hurting here is right in front of him.

He looks down at the table. "It'd make me worry too. Memories hurt, even if they're just... lies. Like..." You can tell yourself all you want that a memory didn't happen the way you think it did, that there was something else going on, that someone else was trying to hurt you... but at the end of the day, the memory's still there. Waiting to pull you back down to its level.

Sora would say all that, but he's in front of Mr. Hughes, and he's not sure if it's his place. This was an exchange, after all, not a therapy session. But he does want to say something. He wants to help. "I'm sorry. It can't be easy. Going day by day, wanting to remember the people in the ways they supported you, only to remember them like that too. It... really can't be easy."

Remembering Riku at this point is like crushing his heart. That is something Sora can understand, at least.

Always the bleeding heart, aren't you?

Of course. If you're able to find anything, it would be nice to have a project to work on while I have free time. It's not something I'm really used to.

[Building small droids were one thing but he needed to do something that actually was challenging.

It was frustrating not to have the technology he was used to working with but that just made things more challenging.]

I didn't get your name....?

[Jo shakes her head. She's been picking up interesting looking stones, but she hasn't experienced any of her own memories.

She wonders what it's like because living through someone else's memory is weird. Does it feel that weird when it's your own?

Since he's brought up his own memories, she reaches into her pocket to pull out the rock she had carefully wrapped in a strip of fabric.]

This is one of yours, I think.

[It really kinda does, at least for the guy to whom these are all brand new memories anyway. But maybe there's a feeling of something sliding into its proper place, rather than something alien-- even if many of the memories feel like a wholly different person.

They perk up a little at the offering, holds out the metal hand for it in a way that might be eager on someone more expressive.]

Was it the metal arm that gave it away?

[That's how most people recognize Asset memories, anyway.]

[He shrugs. A month isn't long, especially in and out like that, suggesting he was right in not judging too hard. Sora just visited, it wasn't like he was joyously pillaging with them over a span of months or something like that.]

Guess I'll have to keep looking for opals, then. Maybe I'll find one like that. Would be nice to see the ocean again.

Oh, sorry. Rosinante.

[He holds out a hand to shake, angling it low so it's in easy enough reach.]

If you think of anything else you could use, feel free to message me any time. I'm "silent" on the network.

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EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

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