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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[ Sora has to do a double take. Ah... huh? This is... a new side to Rosinante. He'd sort of assumed he was the type to pursue his interests in sort of the same collected manner he'd always conducted himself in. It's nice, actually. Sora likes excitement, people being unironically enthusiastic about things. But.

Sora shakes his head, eyebrows knit in apology. ]

I wish I could tell you. That's one of the things I don't really remember. [ He closes his eyes. ] There was... a cockpit. I was piloting. My two friends were right behind me. It wasn't big enough for a bridge. Everything was really bright - like, lots of color? There was a lot of color on the outside, too.

[ He opens his eyes and shakes his head. ]

I'm sorry. Ask me next week, I'll probably remember more by then.

Yeah, there must be hundreds of them. [ And Sora's perfectly chill with waiting until Aziraphale's done! He'll plop down on his butt next to him, watching him work. ]

Have you gotten any of yours back? Any good ones?

She nods, once, silently, and slips back into the hall.

As promised, she busies herself - his jazz playing at a low volume. Sandwich to eat, dishes to do, a round of sweeping. It isn't enough to tire her at this hour, so she'll be curled in an armchair trying to work out solitaire.

It feels nobler to imagine it a vigil.

Tool, Somnus. Weapon. Not animal. Soldat has discipline and tactical flexibility, not to mention intense love of music and cooking. What they lack is initiative and confidence more than anything else-- there's a lifetime or two's worth of following orders in there to get over.

Vaguely baffled by the intensity of Somnus's reaction, they offer, "If I come up with any more ideas, I'll share with you." Why not, right? Sharing ideas means they're more likely to get done, if they're good ones.

As someone who participated in the other World War, Gregor can sympathize with the habit. Obviously. Not that that's where he picked it up; he'd already been smoking for years. Things were, uh, different back then.

And sure, he could've offered to let Soldat use his lantern as a light, but he doesn't know him that well, and the only memory he's seen wasn't exactly the most gentle. Speaking of which.

With the cigarettes put away, he finally pulls out the stone, this one neatly wrapped in a spare piece of cloth from the general store. It's not the only one he had in his pockets, but it's the only one he bothered covering up. Not something you want to activate on accident, and he hasn't quite figured out which forms of contact trigger the memories. He holds it out in his free hand.

"For me, no, it wasn't too bad. But I suspect you won't feel the same way." In other words, open at your own risk, Soldat.

After a brief pause, he continues. "I don't exactly have any room to judge what I saw, but if I may, I'd like to know why you did it."

Soldat does turn in shortly after she heads downstairs, after locking the door and putting a chair against the knob. It's nothing against Misty, she's safe, but they feel like 200% safer with each barrier between them and the outside world when sleeping. Even objectively when there's an angel and demon in the house, or a powerful witch who's said she loves you, it still helps.

They get a solid three hours before exhausted sleep morphs into dreaming which, after the tension of the day (week?) shortly morphs into darker dreaming. They don't wake up screaming-- small mercy, that-- but they do roll out of bed with a thump, knife in one hand, gun in another, breathing hard and momentarily confused as to where they are, dream of punching through dozens of familiar faces still clinging to their brain.

"I'm going to guess no matter what the memory is, the answer is going to be 'orders'," Soldat says wearily, but holds out the metal hand for the stone, letting Gregor tip it in. They hold the cigarette in their mouth while they unwrap it, give it a wary look for a beat, then touch it with the flesh fingers.

Familiar with the sensation now, Soldat shudders all over once, metal arm buzzing noisily under their coat, and shuts their eyes. That's. God. Howard. They know that name. They-- knew him. From the war. And they killed him.

It's like with Steve all over again.

Finally actually getting a drag from the cigarette, taking it out of their mouth with only slightly-trembling fingers, they say, "Yeah. That was. Definitely orders."

... Oh. well. [ it's still awkward and uncomfortable for day, still, since it feels as if they rushed through a couple of heavy topics with the grace and efficiency of a really mean bulldozer.

but! he wants to respect mr. ambus, considering this is his family. so he nods along, and smiles, happy to follow the topic. ] That's what you call married partners in your universe then, Mr. Ambus? That's really touching!

[ hmm... he wants to add something to the information but it wouldn't hurt to ask permission first: ] Is it alright if I made a comment on the term? Because it's sounds pretty close to Latin from my world.

By then, she'd been dozing in her chair herself. Far from spent, but keeping still and quietly focused for that long will do one in. The thump startles her, and she's on her feet and on the third stair before she remembers - gun. There's an obvious accident that can be sidestepped. Not one step further. He'll hear.

"You alright in there? Soldat?"

[ Sora will stare at Somnus for one more beat... then puff out his cheeks. ]

See? Here's where it's useful to say that you aren't the person who you were back at home. [ Sora reaches up and scratches at the back of his head with both hands, ruffling his spikes even spikier. ] I get that you weren't happy, like. You were a leader and stuff, right? There were things you had to decide and they were hard. [ Sora frowns. ] But there's no army here. It's just us. Sure, it's good to have leaders and all, but that can't mean that we have to make sure that people like you don't get to, like, have fun and be a little happy, too.

The steps were-- ominous and distorted, didn't fit the setting of the dream, and Soldat has themselves wedged into a corner before the voice registers.

This is the room in Misty's cabin. This is. Not the base in Russia. That's Misty. Misty, whose face is probably not punched in, if she's speaking and asking if they're okay.

But they have to make sure. There's no sound to show they're moving until the chair is pulled from the door and it opens, and they're frantically looking down and around for her face. Whole and unpunched and alive and well. The gun is still in one hand, though it's pointed at the floor, and they've still got most of their clothes on-- shirt, jeans, socks. Just missing their shoes. Also, messy bedhair, half out of the tie they'd absently pulled it back with sometime yesterday.

[ DM if u want something specific I guess F

JejuneN ]

[ A young girl, sitting and swinging her legs at a small rickety table in a small, messy apartment. An older woman is standing over the stove. She looks tired. ]

“Hey mom, what does this say?” Coraline asks as she squints at the characters written on the takeout menu, turning her head from side to side as if that would make a difference. Still, her mom has to know, right? After all, her mom’s Chinese, her mom knows everything ever… Yeah!

“… Mom?”

A loud sigh seems to echo through the room, and footsteps approach her.

“What… oh.” A small, sad laugh. “… no. I can’t… read Chinese. At all.” She takes the glossy piece of paper, looking down at Coraline with a sad smile. Coraline smiles back, slightly confused. “My mom tried to teach me you know… and I just never bothered to learn. It’s kind of funny.”

“What is?” She asks, tilting her head.

“… Nothing. Just an old lady remembering things.”

“You’re not old!!! You’re the youngest most beautiful person in the world!!” She yells in protest, pouting. Her mother laughs, ruffling Coraline’s hair to her displeasure.

“Don’t you have homework to do? Go work on that. Dinner will be ready soon.”

“Fine, like. Whatever.” She says jokingly, jumping out of the chair and running towards her room. Grinning at the laughter that follows her. She can’t be a real superhero, but she can at least save her mom from being super sad all the time. Another day’s work for the Great Coraline Li!!!

[ Two figures are on the moon, sitting within a nearly invisible bubble. One sits on a picnic blanket, book in hand as sheets of paper with spell diagrams are spread around them. The other figure is taking full advantage of the low gravity, somersaulting and flying through the air as she fights imaginary enemies. ]

“Hi yah!” She yells, kicking and releasing a wave of shadow in the direction of a large boulder. It cuts through the air, only to dissolve before it can make contact.

“Damn it!” With a small huff, she forms a small, straight shadow path under her, using it to slide towards her friend. Ignore her stumble upon dismount. Also ignore her falling on her face.

“… Yes?” Leon asks, not even looking up at their friend’s antics.

“I can’t believe you like, literally just study while we’re up here! Like, we’re on the moon!!!!” She rolls onto the sheets of paper, which finally makes her friend look up with a glare that truly embodies ‘if looks could kill’.

“I’d think the novelty would have worn off by now, and don’t you have your own studying to do?” They ask, raising an eyebrow before pointedly looking at the backpack laying in the distance.

“Superheroes don’t have to do homework.” She says with a pout, glaring up at the sky.

“Right…”

“Dude, I can like, hear your raised eyebrow which is like, super wild. Also yeah yeah I know.” She pitches her voice down in a mockery of her friend’s voice. “Blah blah blah secret identities, blah blah blah critical thinking, blah blah bl—“

“Your mother’s going to be pissed?”

Silence falls.

“… Ok fineeee.” She says with a whine, sitting up and taking her own work out of the bag, making a big show out of it because Leon is going to know her displeasure thankyouverymuch.

Another moment of silence, both concentrating on their own tasks, one more than the other.

“I’ll help you practice after.”

A triumphant laugh.

“Hell yeah!”

[ An older Coraline, ducking into an open window with a grin. As she turns to close it though, the lights turn on, blinding her and revealing her mother. Older and pissed as hell. ]

“Where were you?”

Coraline winces, sensing the deep anger barely contained within the woman that raised her. At the same time, she couldn’t help but be relieved that she had decided to change back to civilian clothes. Sometimes, you just want a soda after patrolling after all.

“Well?”

“I… I just went out cause I was… thirsty…” She lifts the orange Fanta she was holding, doing her best to smile. Not technically a lie. Okay, mostly a lie. And from the looks of it, her mom can tell, her face darkening even further (somehow) with anger.

“Don’t lie to me. Do you think I haven’t noticed your grades slipping? That you aren’t sleeping? I am your mother. I know you think I’m stupi—“

“No! I don’t! I swear I’m not doing anything it’s jus—“ She cuts herself off, watching as her mother just… cries. Something she hasn’t seen since… well. Since he got kicked out. “Mom…”

“I’ve sacrificed so much for you, do you know that? I left all my friends, work 12 hours a day. How could you do this to me!? Do you know how worried I was!? Seeing you gone like that!? I thought… I thought…” She sighs, staring at the ground. “I even left the man I loved.”

At that, Coraline flinches, her breath stuck in her throat. God. She really is a piece of shit huh. If only she’d been stronger, smarter, just… better. Then…

“Coraline? I didn’t mean that. Coraline?”

She doesn’t notice, so consumed by her spiraling thoughts. Seriously. What is she doing, playing superhero? She can barely do anything with her powers, everyone else’s abilities have been improving in leaps and bounds even as she just fucking stagnates since everything feels like she’s fighting through 50 layers of lag and god he’s right isn’t he? She’s fucking useless. So stupid. Letting some useless fucking abilities get to her head as if it makes any fucking difference to what she is. Someone that ruins everything she touches. Someone who ruined her own mother’s life and continues to do so.

Her mother shakes her, even as her thoughts continue to spiral deeper, and deeper, and deeper, and deeper, and.

A year ago, Masaomi would have punched the bastard right then. There are no other viable responses to a statement like that; to acknowledge it is to accept it, but to ignore it is impossible. He wants to punch Vanitas, to send that smug expression flying out of his face. He wants to not have to think, and he wants to not have to feel anything but the adrenaline boosting him the hell out of here. Now that he's learned the hard way how useless lashing out is too, however, he's trapped, neutered. All he can do is clench his fists uselessly at his sides.

He swallows, breathes, does his damnedest to convert fear into something a little more useful. He doesn't manage anything more than wetting his dry throat. "I'm the one who's here, not her," he affirms through clenched teeth. Though his voice is choppy with suppressed emotion, he speaks right to Vanitas' face. "That's what matters."

"As long as we're clear on that," he rolls smoothly along until an envelope is shoved in his face. He scrunches his nose when he catches sight of that label, but he accepts the delivery anyway, oblivious to Sora's sweatshirt concerns. He doesn't touch the opal itself just yet. Instead, he fishes. "What, did someone throw a vending machine at you while you were watching?"

Please, please tell him it was something innocuous like that.

"What? No." He looks at Masaomi, bemused. "You know someone who can do that?" Technically, Sora also knew someone who could do that, but that's something he'd never know unless Joshua Kiryuu somehow arrives in Beacon.

"I guess that'd be, uh. Not great." Sora studies the sweatshirt... then starts stuffing himself into it. His shoulders are wider than Masaomi's by a bit, but they're around the same size, so it'll end up drowning him in the same way. "You got a phone call," Sora says finally, popping his head out the collar and shaking out his hair. "From your crew. It was about your friend, um. Mikado?"

That's fair, intrigue only entered Riku's awareness because of the mark his possession by Ansem and the machinations of people like Maleficent, they're all very much a product of their experiences and influences.

"Which made him king," Riku says, "It's okay," he adds a reassuring gesture, by miming turning a key near his mouth and tossing it. He'll find Riku is very discrete about stuff told to him in confidence. Only times he's broken that rule was when he needed to accomplish a goal that was much greater in priority than a kept secret.

Unfortunately, those reasons are pretty much all dead and in the ground.

"I imagine that put the brakes on your trip."

Information is power.

Duster mentions a time traveler, and Riku's expression immediately gets a little pinched. Why is it always time travelers?

"Ruining the lives of others out of boredom?" He shakes his head, not dumbfounded so much as disgusted. He's well aware of the darkness in people's hearts, the kinds of things they justify doing, and how they justify doing them. "It's interesting that the egg came with you on the ferry... what it means if it's really the memories of humanity."

Oof, that's grim. Did humanity completely get wiped out because of that guy?

Sometimes they're hoots, whistles and hums. Depends on the spirit, in his experience.

"Another one," Riku breathes, starting to reach out to accept the opal. There's been another conversation or two about Mickey, considering what a big role he played during some of his most formative experiences, that doesn't surprise him.

As for the spirits, he glances sideways at some of them with an embarrassed laugh, "Nope, they're just messing around. Thanks for returning this to me, Naminé."

His gloves will prevent him from seeing a memory once he has the opal in hand, and he just pockets it without looking. There's time enough to revisit it later. "How have you been doing? Everything alright?" She does seem to be doing okay, but he has the feeling she's the type to put on a brave face, maybe thinking she has no right to complain about anything in case it inconveniences someone.

"Sort of. Memories can be fragmented and separated. What I do is link and chain them back together. So I will put this back in it's place. I will see the memories on either side of them but it isn't like the opals. it's like seeing something at the corner of your eyes. The beginning and end, with the memory that I am chaining at its focus or center." It was difficult for her to explain what she did. It was one of the few things that was natural to her and she only had a few things that she could equate it too.

"Can I ask... what are you scared of me seeing?" She paused and nervously bit her lower lip. "That is. I have seen horrible things." She'd been through so much. Naminé couldn't imagine anything in his past that she hasn't seen or experienced before. "I won't experience your memories. I only see them and I won't tell anyone, if that's what you are worried about."

And there her unpunched self is perched on the stairway, lit up by her lantern, looking concerned but deliberately calm. Not moving. Caught wise to that much.

"Hey, easy, 's me. I'm real, and we're both alright. Nothing amiss."

[The opal lightly drops into her palm and as it does the memory flashes to the forefront of her mind. She nearly drops the opal but manages to fumble it into her pocket. This isn't one that she wants anyone seeing, least of all Sora.

She glances up at him, her expression suddenly uncertain.]

You saw this? What I... what I did...

No.

[ If Minato were a true troll, he would leave it at that, but after giving it a few minutes, he decided to throw Masaomi a bone. Sort of. ]

The monster is me. I am the monster. Also, its name is Orpheus.

[ Hence his username. ]

In all seriousness, Orpheus came from me, the gun is an Evoker and is what allows me to summon him.

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EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

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Coraline Li | OTA

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