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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[Mary looks up at the statement, her expression strangely hollow for a moment. She doesn't know what Catra saw, but she knows that there's only one "her" that's ever really meant anything.]

I don't need anybody.

[Which isn't what she should have said, she knows. Mary smiles a bit oddly, looking back down at her coloring again.]

But I don't really like being alone, either.

Soldat's isn't the first opal Alisaie finds, but it's still jarring to fall back into herself when the memory ends, and not for the first time she finds herself wondering if the Echo is even half this disorienting. If it is, then she's full glad she doesn't have that blessing, regardless of the other benefits that come along with it.

Unfortunately, the opals don't seem to require proximity to their subjects to function. She'd recognized the face she'd seen when the man whose memory she was sharing looked in the mirror - she's always been good at faces, and the exhaustion and stubble had done little to obscure the striking eyes and distinctive jawline - she isn't entirely certain where to find him.

It takes her the better part of the afternoon, and even then, she only manages to catch him because she'd troubled herself to take note of the organized patrol routes, having planned to sign on herself before her battering against the river walls had put paid to that notion until her hand and her ribs heal.

And so it is that as he passes through downtown on his evening patrol, Alisaie angles across his path, ghostly in the pale green light of the aurora and moving with a caution that suggests an attempt to avoid jarring an injury more than an attempt at stealth. "I found something of yours," she says, holding out a small leather pouch on the palm of one hand.

(Her other hand is tucked against her chest, and there's something odd about the shape of it within the mittens she's taken to wearing.)

[And, naturally, it isn't the violation so much as the contents that terrify her. Rosalind's breathing comes too quick; she swallows dryly, though her face is impassive. He looks so disappointed, unable to meet her eye, and surely that's because of what he saw.]

Tell me what you saw.

[It's almost a plea. She's kept the secret of Robert for nearly twenty years; it's terrifying to have someone else know.]

[It's an observation that doesn't set off any kind of alarm, so Mary beams as she looks up at the one who approached her, nodding.]

Uh-huh! My father was a famous artist, so I want to be just like him.

[She hesitates for just a moment before brushing her fingers over it. It's a swift memory, but not an altogether unfamiliar one. Robert had never had the same cheer as Valjean, but he'd juggle sometimes, just to amuse a passing child.

She blinks when she emerges from it, and glances over at him.]

You disapproved.

[It's as much a statement as a question.]

Giving blessings to the spirits that want to rejoin their friends.

It's sort of... like making a wish that they are to be reunited.

...Sort of! More like the opal is whipped at him by the barkeep spirits at the Invincible, but the end result is the same.

Inside the memory, Peter will find himself fixing up some kind of small spaceship, a shuttle only meant to carry handfuls of people over short distances. He's passing tools to his wife, who's working the real magic underneath the shuttle. She's wearing coveralls and is splattered with grease, her long hair tied back into a haphazard bun, and this is Peter's favorite look of hers. She's the only reason he's in the shop at all, truly—she'd have no trouble fetching her own tools.

She and Peter spend the memory chatting about inconsequential things—have you heard from the kids? what do you think of the new engineer? tell Mal I said hello next time you see him, oh, and I heard the Alliance presence has increased around Persephone, so be careful—

It's a nice way to spend an afternoon. As the memory begins to fade, Peter looks up from watching his wife work to take stock of the little craft they've put together. She's old and they've had to replace more than a few parts, but she's a tough little thing, built with love. On her side, ALBATROSS FLEET is written out in stylized lettering, though Peter won't actually be able to read the words, somehow... He's just memorized what they say.

His wife slides out from under the shuttle and looks up at him with a smile. "Ben?" she says, and the memory ends.

[Compared to Ignis, and some of the very tall, gangly spirits around here, he was.]

Do they? The spirits at the inn make really bad coffee. I'm glad they are not ruining chocolate.

[He stands next to him in silence for few moments, watching spirits explode in the skies.]

The stones fall from these collisions. [Ignis pulls out the one from his pocket, wrapped carefully in his handkerchief and offers it to Minato.] They seem to contain our memories from when we were alive. This one belongs to you.

[ Meanwhile, Aziraphale goes about trying very hard not to pry and touch people's opals, but one of them has fallen into his hands and he stands, watching it, knowing he's stuck until the memory finishes. He doesn't want to intrude on anyone, but he eventually takes it with him and starts going around to find Stone and return it. ]

--Hello there, I believe this one's yours. I don't think you'll want to revisit it, it's not a good memory, I-- I'm sorry, it just fell from the sky. I mean, you know.

"Hey, thanks." That's super helpful, and he spends a moment scraping away pebbles with his boot to try and provide a semi-flat surface well away from the lantern that the rock can't get lost in. "Here, dump it out there."

Since he surely doesn't even want to reach in and grab it. Ice cold lake water? It probably wouldn't be that harmful, it's just a single bucketful and not the lake itself, but why bother when this ought to be simpler.

Assuming that's done, though, he stoops to pick up the stone and see what it is. To his surprise, the memory unfolds into one distinctly non-human. His own senses are different, he feels differently when at one point he shifts his weight, leaning against the person beside him who is certainly more like Daylight than any human. actually, even more like Minimus, isn't he? In fact, when the Ambus library is brought up, the owner of this memory is confirmed, for that can't be coincidence.

The view out over the desert shows a vast, shocking amount of land. It's almost the opposite of the view he would have seen once as a very small child had he ever been allowed near the cliffside, for below that would have been an endless sea rather than all this sand.

He doesn't have the context for what's going on in their discussion, but it resonates. Ideas of lost nobility and respect are certainly ones he's familiar with. When he comes out of it, he blinks slowly, focuses on retaining the information as he stares out blankly at the water, and then turns toward Minimus.

"I think... this must be yours," he says, offering it. "I don't know much about your world or your people, but there aren't many like you here."

"Yeah..." He was sorry for looking, even if there was no stopping it. But he was also sorry for what he saw. He knew more than anyone that pity was neither wanted nor needed at this point. So, instead, he said, "This is a nice greenhouse. What are you planning on planting here?"

He looked around. The aurora lit up enough for him to see it was likely recently discovered.

Matt has been keeping a pretty stern vigil at the side of the track, but on occasion he has to take a walk. The tree spirit he looks after doesn't need food or warmth like he does, and the little mandrake is utterly lost in the races. Truthfully, just based on the fact it hurts to think too long about what might happen if the spirit decides it is ready for a final race is occasionally enough for him to take a walk, just to try and take his mind off it.

In this instance, he doesn't intend to be gone long. He's wandered in the Invincible to warm up a little. He's armed with a cup of cocoa, probably more to warm his hands than anything else. His walking cane is tucked in his elbow, and without it plotting the path in front of him he might seem a little less obviously blind than usual, though he definitely still has his sunglasses on.

It surely doesn't help that he asks a question that plenty might assume a blind person couldn't notice on their own. "Drawing something?" He's guessing she is. It doesn't sound like writing, at any rate.

Nothing really compares to Chagall, so I believe it.

[ Minato blinked up at him and then at the stone. Oh... those. He carefully took it, although he didn't unwrap it yet. Instead, he sighed. After what Sora saw, he wondered what else people will see. ]

What did you see?

Heh. No, not quite.

[She could have stayed on the roof, he thinks. But instead he crouches down to come closer to her own height so that he can hand her the stone, wrapped carefully in a scrap of fabric from the general store's supplies.]

I can't remember if you've said his name before. But I'm sure you must miss him here. I hope this helps.

[He smiles, though it's one laced with sadness. Leaving someone you love and knowing you won't see them again can't be easy.]

[First of all. Sora. How do you NOT mention your companions? Jason spends half the time sitting with this opal staring at it and just processing the fact that he for real just saw Donald Duck and Goofy flying in a weirdly colored space ship with you.

Why are you in space? HOW ARE YOU IN SPACE?!

There's also a lot of names in this memory that confuse him. Ansem. Even. Roxas. Ventus. The Organization?

It's a lot to process.

Though perhaps not as much to process as the number of heart-boxes you kept. Jason thought it was getting confusing enough having pieces of other people's memories inside his head now...but that...how did you even cope with that?

A moment later Jason just shakes his head and starts chuckling to himself. Who knew the afterlife could still be so surprising.]

"They were afraid and they let their fear take over instead of using their heads. The disease couldn't be passed from person to person except from parents to children. Despite that, his people were murdered. Border unrest turned into genocide."

He had done as much reading up on it as Doflamingo had; though at night, to keep from showing his obvious interest in the story of the kid he supposedly hated. Some authors argued it was a complicated political issue that had no correct solution. That removing Flevance and its people was the only way to maintain stability in that corner of the sea. From Rosinante's point of view, it was purely driven by fear and greed. Shame he won't ever get to find out who in the Marines authorized their so-called peacekeeping force to go in and massacre women, children, doctors, and all the rest. He would have loved to give them a piece of his mind.

"I wouldn't say those doctors ruined his life, but they didn't make it any better. All they had to do was turn us away if they couldn't treat us. Instead, there were times like that one, where they called to have him put down like he was an animal." The sentence comes out with a growl of anger as he seethes over how they treated the kid. He was just thirteen! Just a boy, not a plagued rat.

Everyone has a persona, but not everyone has the potential. That was the difference. Minato was patient, however, because he knew what he said likely was hard to grasp. Even he wasn't sure he explained it all concisely, and he left out quite a bit.

"Our senpais - ah, upperclassmen - had been a part of this from the beginning. One of them is the granddaughter of the CEO of the company who was heading the experiment. So she'd been involved since the beginning and it was she and her father who tried to undo what the grandfather has started. I never asked how the others before me joined, to be honest, but I joined because I transferred to the school in town right at midnight, when the Dark Hour began. They noticed I hadn't been transmogrified into a coffin, so I think they were waiting to see if I had the potential and... ah, well, I did. That's kind of how the rest of us got roped in... it's a pretty long and varied story, I'm sorry."

He gave an apologetic smile. "We had a whole year of an adventure, but we managed to get rid of the Dark Hour." A whole year of fighting, revelations, death, and more. But he had gained a lot and more out of it. Even if it meant he was here because of it.

Yeah.

[...There's not much he can say. He offers her a smile and watchers that opal shimmer in her hand. Xayah must have learned well from her father.]

He seems like he was a nice guy.

[The stones do give Minimus another activity he enjoys: organization challenges. A set of stones he can sort by color, size, and person, setting an ID to each and describing each in a spreadsheet. Assigning tags to those sent to the proper owner. All is well when he can control little things like this.

At last, with the spirits distracted, he can keep the town clean, even if just for a few days.

Lucius walks past his grid-like layout on the grass. White hair, short, male. Minimus' hand hover over the left column and lifts an opal with the tips of his large fingers.]

Excuse me! You, with the jacket. I believe this is yours.

[A stern nod. This is Minimus attempting to be friendly, and a combination of his natural displeased look and relative height isn't as helpful as he would like.]

A reasonable motivation. [Following the footsteps one admires is not an unfamiliar desire.] Will you be keeping those drawings or gifting them?

[He's on his way to the Landmark, going about his usual daily routine, when the light from his lantern glints off of something in the middle of the path. It's another opal and, as he's done countless times now, he picks it up. Jason doesn't think much any more about picking up memories. He tells himself that surely nothing can beat picking up one about King Mickey or another about Donald and Goofy, but boy is he wrong.

The memory immediately feels different than others, though Jason would have a difficult time explaining why because the sheer contents of the memory throw him for a loop. Sora's voice is recognizable at first, but why is he so small? And why does he feel so stiff?

Oh...OH!

He barely has time to process that he's a toy (an action figure?) when he, Donald, and Goofy are attacked (because Donald and Goofy are in this memory as well). A keyblade (seriously?) appears at his/Sora's summoning and they rush forward to fight among Legos, giant skateboards, and toy chests.

And that's just the beginning of the memory. It all becomes a bit of a blur. There's other toys to work with, a giant toy store to navigate, more Heartless to fight. Probably Jason's favorite part (once he gets used to the whole 'I'm/Sora's a toy now' thing) is fighting in the mechs. It's intense and there are times where it feels less like a memory and more like he's living it.

Which is probably why it's a good thing that when the mech takes a particularly nasty hit, Jason finds himself not only expelled from its cockpit, but also knocked back into his own body in the present. He stumbles a bit from the force of the memory, landing on his butt just off the path in the snow.

The opal is flung from his hand into the darkness. Jason's eyes go wide.]

Oh crap!

Doing some organizing?

[It isn't like he comes by often, though he should. It's just hard to summon up a desire to socialize sometimes, and Daylight does a good job of finding him on his own anyway.]

I'm fine, thanks. Actually, if you have something hot to drink around, that would be better. We could sit outside, besides. The aurora is nice.

[A little weird with the spirits shooting off into the sky and dying periodically but they seem happy about it.]

((ooc: Just to keep my head straight, let's say this takes place at least before Jason finds Toy Story. Though maybe he's got the Donald & Goofy memory? We'll see what happens.))

Despite the festivities, Jason finds it hard to deviate from his usual routine. It's partly because this is usually how he runs into people and now he has a chance of finding more of those opals that seem to be scattered all over Beacon. There are probably plenty of places he hasn't looked yet that they have fallen -- but might as well cover the places he KNOWS to find them first. Plus, by now, he has a few to return. He's more likely to encounter people if he's out and about.

Besides, the aurora is still in full bloom in the sky and he finds it difficult to not stop and watch it on occasion. It's why he's probably later than normal making his way to the beach. That and keeping an eye out for any opals in the sand, so far all he's found are some sea shells and normal rocks. He tosses a few out across the lake -- no memories in these -- and spies Sora.

"Hey!"

Having a metal arm is sure convenient on top of looking completely badass. Shame it came with such an emotional cost given the circumstances. Almost makes him feel bad for thinking about how cool it is - which he does often. Look, he can't help it sometimes. Who wouldn't want a cool robot arm?

He shakes his head. "Don't need to apologize. I've seen all kinds of things. It's just how life is for some people. We get the worst of it so others don't have to," he says as he slides the toolbox back together and tucks it away in the bag again - but for now he stays seated on the ground otherwise.

"In the early one, there's a guy who must have been your friend once. Steve. Don't think I've heard you talk about him before."

Smirks are not a sign to good things to some. It's the expression that says "Aha, I've found the upper hand." Used properly, you could doubt yourself even if the other party was losing the fight due to their acting skill. Some Decepticons were in the entertainment industry before the war. Some were naturally charismatic. Either way, smirks were not to be used lightly.

"What do you find so amusing?"

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Page 21 of 125

EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

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Re: aurora

PETER FINDS AN OPAL

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taking 7!!

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[reaction only]

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let's play this out -- i had an idea i wanted to try!

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