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!

QUICKNAV
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Quentin's not stupid, he can guess why these questions are being ask now. Like the ones that crowded around inside his own head, after watching any of the memories that he touched-- accidentally or otherwise.

About the worlds and the people and the things. To learn more about distant worlds, and even the bad ones. Even the ones with pain and anguish, he's still curious.

But Vanitas stays quiet, his profile just a dark smudge against the newly brighter sky. Like a shadow, except for his pale face and his eyes, and Quentin sits, lost in his own train of thought.

About Alice, about what memory Vanitas might have seen- Quentin hopes it's one of the good ones, with Alice smiling. Or laughing, that helpless laugh she did sometimes, like she's trying to stifle it behind her hand so people won't hear, but it always made her eyes shine and Quentin always fell a little bit more in love with her when she did it.

And he thinks about love in broad terms, about the love he'd managed to find. Across timelines, through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered and how he still found it. Heart shattering in to a million pieces every time he lost it and how full and whole he felt when he found it again, over and over, and giving it all up in a second to save them.

About coming here and being lost, how something seemingly small and insignificant had helped. And he reaches out, slowly, and places one hand on Vanitas's shoulder, just above the joint. There's no weight behind it, just a small touch of warmth and a slight squeeze and he's pulling his hand back again.

"I've been lucky."

His name's Ardyn and he's an imperial higher up. Besides that, not really. He's kinda creepy and tends to just...show up places.

[Mostly imperial compounds. He's like a weird, obnoxious ghost. Or ten thousand daemons dressed as a hobo, but that's neither here nor there.]

Why?

Edited 2020-02-26 07:02 (UTC)

He is possibly the worst person to ask about friendmaking, if only because he doesn't see himself as a particularly special person when it comes to friendship? Even the question of why people like him has his ears red as he laughs, trying not to deflect or anything. He wants to help! But that's such a good question. How does he make friends?

"You know Donald and Goofy? The two friends I was always traveling around with?" Sora's mentioned at least Donald by name before. If they don't remember him from the memory, they may remember him from the time he told them and Misty about the person who taught him magic.

"When we first met, uh. Well, Goofy was always really nice and chill, he always wanted everyone to get along. But Donald and I drove each other up the wall. I didn't take him seriously and he never wanted to let me go looking for Riku and Kairi - the mission was always more important." In a way, Donald had scammed Sora into coming on the mission in the same way he scammed the Gullwings: by lying to him about being able to find his friends.

Sora's mouth pulls into a half smile. "Would you believe me if I told you that I didn't see the point of being friends with him? Or, um, anyone, actually?"

This is interesting, one one level, because such a question would only matter to a person, aware in some fashion they are a person, or at least one doubting it - and doubt is still an admission of something. On all others, it's a little heartbreaking in a way she would loathe calling familiar.

"The kind that does whatever they're told to do, that had that beat into them so hard they died and didn't think they were who they are. Clearly someone different. You wanna sit?"

Sora closes his eyes, thinks back to the echo he just got. It... only makes sense in context with the other spare bits of memory he has, but he thinks he grasps what's going on, especially with what he understands about Roxas. Roxas, the other boy stuck in his heart long ago.

You're me, so you can feel what I felt.

"Not much, to be honest." He hands the handkerchief back - the moment's already passed, the ache just a faint pang. "He's not like the Sergeant or the Asset. I mean, he - well, I - used to be? But there isn't enough of him left to talk." There isn't enough of Skyler to make Sora say things he doesn't mean, green lantern aside. Or to trade in the same way Soldat does with the Sergeant and the Asset. He doesn't even dream.

"If something that I see or hear hurts him enough... He doesn't really understand what's happening, there's not enough of him left for that, but he knows how certain things feel. Like home, and family. He can't feel for himself, so the pain can't go anywhere, and if it can't go anywhere, then he has to be incomplete and hurting all the time. But I can feel things for him? So I do." He's still trapped in there, but Sora doesn't want it to be a horrific experience of pain and loneliness. Better to let him borrow his feelings for a while, even if Sora has to get the butt end of the catharsis process.

See, that's the whole problem. They can't be a person, because that means a person did all those terrible things and had all those terrible things done to them. Surely an actual person would never, could never, do that to their best friend. Surely.

The wall of that reasoning is flimsy and full of holes now, though, after all the memories of Before. Because weapons don't have little sisters, fathers who tell bedtime stories, or best friends. They don't try to protect little girls from fear or play songs for their friends.

Some part of Misty's words filters through the haze of guilt and grief and low-level panic, maybe, but it just translates to Soldat sliding down the cabinet to land with a heavy thump on the kitchen floor. That makes a handy spot to curl in on themselves and sob, the first time they've done so that they can even remember.

Oh, no, no. This is inevitable, probably. She's by no means a psychologist, but any real ground gained would lead to a push like this - and an outburst like this. It is no easier to watch. It's a tense moment. Literally, as she feels the movement like a phantom pain, and for the rapid spike of ten different feelings, most in some fashion impossible to express. To be unable to do anything remains its own hell. The closest she can come to the hug she can't give comes in the form of a throw from the couch being carefully draped over his shoulders, weight and warmth with hopefully none of the discomfort real contact provokes. Because Christ, he needs something.

After that, she drops to a crouch beside him, hands uselessly gripping her knees.

She does not hush him. This deserves to be felt. Vocalized.

"It's alright. Can't possibly feel like it, but I promise it's gonna be alright. You've been through so much and you're still right here. That's not changing, okay? This is more than anyone should have to deal with, but you're so strong, and I'm right here. Fall apart for awhile if you've got to, that's fine - I've got you."

Her voice is a soothing background to the misery, like rain on a window. The blanket is ignored for the first minute or two, until finally Soldat's hand comes up to blindly grope at it and pull it closer around them while they rock and sob on the floor. Only once or twice do they even try to talk: abortive fits and starts of "so many people" and "what is wrong with me" and "how could I" and "oh god Steve". Even when they run out of room between great gasping breaths, it keeps going around and around in their head. Not even the Sergeant or the Asset try to get a word in around Soldat's fractured thought processes.

Finally they run out. Of tears, of energy, of air. Something. They subside into hitched breathing and little shudders, the plates of the metal arm continually rippling along their arm under their (currently singular) sleeve, face pressed into the flesh arm, resting atop their knees.

And she's been at it on her end, all the while. It's impossible to gauge any effectiveness from her end, the way he's at it, but she needs to do something and those cries cannot be the only sound, so there's not any other option. No grand promises, nothing by way of specificity, but reassurances, persistent comforting, an insistence that he is still good. It would be a lie to say his finally hitting a dead end wasn't a little relieving. One wave down. The first, the brunt. Passing.

She touches his wrist, briefly. It doesn't linger, it doesn't clasp, but a pronounced brush. What little physical means she has of reminding him she's still there. That there is indeed a physical world around him, beyond whatever mess he feels stuck with in his head.

"You're alright." Latest of many of this assertion. "Deep breaths now, okay? Deep, hold it for a second, and exhale slow. One at a time. You can get better, and you're going to - you already have, so, so much. None of that can touch you now. You're safe, with people who know your worth, and we have time to get through this. Is there anything I can do, right now?"

[He probably could if he combed around the forest. If he asks her to help him, she'll come with him. Two sets of eyes are better than one (especially if one set also has wings and can get opals from unapproachable places).]

A blessing and a curse. [Reminders of what they left behind, loved ones they miss, in her case- the reasons why she fought as hard as she did.]

I'll keep this one with me all the time. Thank you.

Perhaps it is, [she agrees with a small nod, as she carefully pockets the stone he gave her.]

But to me... it's a nice reminder that I wasn't just a mindless murderer. That I fought and died for something important.

But, if there are ulterior motives to this, we'll find them and dismantle them.

Ionia welcomes all, [for better or for worse,] I'm sure you would've enjoyed the mountains.

[There's pink dust of color on her cheeks as she gets complimented for something that's not fighting skills, and she can't help but giggle a bit.]

Thank you but I am not as good. You should've heard my father or Rakan sing. That's real music for the ears and balm for the soul.

[There was just something in their voices that made you feel as if everything's going to be alright, even if the entire world is against you.]

Wayne.

The guy who told him once, that information was always power and this guy-- this guy who is ready to dress up like serial killer and break in to houses now knew. More than just Quentin's breakdown in the Invincible could say, and more than he'd even shared in his grief-stricken outbursts in the church with Vanitas--just how far his feelings went.

There's no way to see that and not know just how deep and how far Quentin's love went, how deep the roots of it, even with Eliot dying only to come back on the ferry and live with someone else.

Memories of Teddy are fluttering just under the surface of his thoughts, like butterfly-wings and there are so many of them. How small he'd looked, fragile and new to the world and Quentin remembers, vividly, the scent of his hair and the warm, soft skin of his face against Quentin's own. And he misses him, misses all of it all over again so fiercely that his heart feels raw and bleeding for a minute.

A minute trying to wrap his mind around what Wayne just said, around the timber of fear in his voice and--

"Holy sh-- I'm sorry. I can't even imagine...jesus"

Prompto's initial answer and the gesture that goes with it makes Riku smile, even if it's just a suggestion at the corners of his mouth, it makes his whole expression a little bit softer. Yeah, he thinks he knows what he means. A journey that might be fraught with danger, training to be strong enough to protect those who matter the most. Sounds familiar.

It fades as he talks about war, because mentioning a wedding in almost the same breath seems like a non sequitur. It doesn't seem like the name Noctis rings any bells. Which isn't surprising; Noctis tended to keep to his own, and Riku isn't nearly as public a presence as he used to be.

"So there was a war going on, and one of your friends was going to get married so you... went on a trip together for one last time and everything went wrong after that?"

Then, yeah. I have something that belongs to you.

[Quentin gets the rock out without touching it again, because jesus fuck he doesn't need to see that again and he holds it out with his sleeve pulled down over his hand.]

I'm not sure you want it back...?

[ Holding to a strict schedule is a liability. Once predicted, Riku can be intercepted or followed, and he's already exposed one friend to potential danger due to association. There's value in a schedule, however, when there's no sunshine to delineate the days, when everything instead has to be dictated by a clock app on a tablet. Riku comes and goes as he pleases, his mornings leave the kitchen smelling of fresh coffee grinds and toasted bread.

There are things he does everyday like train, though as long as the aurora shimmers in the sky he's been out to search for stones in between his various errands, to collect them or return them to who he thinks they belong. Others he stuffs into his jacket pocket and eventually into a small pouch he keeps on the shelf integrated into his bed back home.

He comes and goes when he wants and that's not very different from his actual home on Destiny Islands. The main difference is he wants to spend time with the people in it, he treasures the meals they spend sitting shoulder to shoulder. The soft warmth in his chest when he goes to bed and can hear someone moving around downstairs or down the hall.

Until he finds one stone in particular, picked up by accident, as he pried it from the tread of his boot. He's typically quick to return these memories to their owners so he doesn't have an excuse for why he hangs onto this one for days. It never joins the pouch with the others, it stays with him, in his pocket or in his hand.

The memory within that humble stone felt not that dissimilar from the moment they all decided to build that raft and leave the islands. Perhaps, Bruce was even about the same age as they had been. There are other details that don't escape his notice. The car is nice - no, really nice - and he knows quality clothing when he sees them. It isn't that Riku pays any attention to fashion, he recognizes wealth.

That's interesting, but not half as interesting as what happens in that memory. He set out by himself in a dangerous city, madmen on the loose, he'd said, and seemed to trust a girl around his own age. It wasn't just a friend, this was someone he was willing to protect, to defend against something she feared.

So it's days before he convinces himself he should return it, of course it's at home, at the Museum, it's one of the only places in which he feels safe. Ironic, considering it's so wide open a space.

Coincidentally, he catches Bruce in the kitchen. Riku deposits his satchel on the counter, full from another visit to the general store. He's been going there more frequently, grabbing cans and basic supplies, maybe he's overly cautious, but months of plenty have left him paranoid that they'll be experiencing a lean time sooner or later.

Riku, as much to do about the abundance of spectral light and the consequential lifting of his spirits as it does with his inclination to tease the ones he likes, chooses humor. ]

So, Master Bruce, huh?

[ He leans back against the counter, pulling from his pocket a humble-looking stone, which he offers in his hand. ]

That means something else where I'm from.

I have something that belongs to you.
Where can we meet?
I also have questions about something unrelated to this.
- Riku

Dr Ingram had devised an application on the device to track time. It is, indeed, evening, but I understand that it is hard to track it.

[Ignis himself loses track of it more times than he'll admit- especially since he's foregoing sleep and going around only on food and drinks. He's spending time he'd use for sleep in a more useful manner.

Briefly, he looks uncomfortable and apologetic, and then pulls out the little stone he found from his pocket.]

I do not know if you noticed, but the spirits have been colliding with aurora these past few days. It ends with them bursting into small stones that contain memories. [He takes a step closer.] Memories of the residents.

[He offers the wrapped stone to him-] This one belongs to you. [He looks seriously guilty,] My... sincerest apologies. I wished not to intrude on the memory but... it presented to me as soon as I picked up the stone from the ground.

Edited 2020-02-26 14:54 (UTC)

The Dark Hour?

[Would Ignis get this 'persona' if he were ever to use an evoker? He had very willingly walked into his own end- probably the only one that had arrived here with a calm mind and without panic. That is until he realized that this afterlife isn't what it is supposed to be.]

Did everyone from the place you're from have this ability?

[Ignis listens intently to the events that followed after Altissia. Being kicked out is not unexpected; the damages were extensive and they were overstaying their welcome. But everything else...

Cartanica. Train. Ardyn. Attack. More Ardyn. Noct-

That can't be true! Noct would never willingly push Prompto off the train. Ignis looks extremely pale as his mind tries to connect all the dots and make sense of things. Yet it doesn't make sense. Noctis would never attack Prompto, there's a bigger chance he'd cut off his own hand rather than raise it against him.]

Are... are you sure it was Noct that pushed you off?

[ Lucius opens his mouth, then closes it. He's wringing his hands a little again, a sure sign that he feels difficulty in finding words for what to say. ]

... before I became like this... before I was a real person, that was what I was. In that small room. Using the sun's light to control the weather.

[ This is a very simplified version of what he did, to not confuse Stone too much. ]

[ For the briefest of moments, he wonders if he could do that too.

... not in this body, though. ]

Must be nice to be so unburdened.

No these seem to be simply random memories. Some good but the majority have been bad. I've been trying to avoid picking them up.

[It seems invasive and also he doesn't want to see something he shouldn't.]

This is you and some others, setting up explosives? You do not have to explain, I shouldn't know about it to begin with.

Someone who died. I was supposed to be his reincarnation, so they tried giving me his memories.

[ It didn't work, whether from his own failure or the failure of humanity to procure a desirable vessel. ]

They don't feel like mine. I try not to think about them.

You saw that?

( of all things. ambrose just...he has to shake his head. god, that seems like such a long time ago and yet, it's still affecting his life today. he laughs but it's humorless. )

Wow. That's something. I was young then.

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EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

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oops we broke him...

OH NO BUCKY

it's okay he really needs this

but does my HEART

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A turning point.

@riku; text

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