EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

[inthenightmods]

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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Comments

[sunborne]

[ the mention of his family has daylight getting visibly excited, especially when he learns who it is exactly. his mom? does this memory opal thing really have a memory involving him and his mom? oh wow- he barely has any memories of her! she died when he was pretty young, before he got his first proper frame, and it had been so long in the past too. the most he ever had of her while growing up were stories and pictures and, if he was really lucky during his searching about, archival footage of her interviews or speeches. being able to see her in the flesh is amazing.

with a breathless 'thanks, jason!' and an excited flutter of his winglets, day is quick to take the stone, eager to see what was in store for him and-

to what? so he could die? is that it? so he could be sacrificed?

yes.

-when day pulls out of his memory, his optics are wide, the glow from his optics harsh and shocked. his winglets are hitched up and his vents can be heard stuttering, almost redlining from the sudden rush of heat and stress coursing through his internal systems. ]

I- I- [ he looks around him, bewildered and searching. as if trying to make sure this wasn't some weird and mean prank that jason was involved in. he almost wants it to be a prank, for someone to jump out and yell 'gotcha!' or something because of the alternative. day tries to speak but the words, the emotions are stuck in his vocoder, causing static and half-fragments of sentences to stumble out: ] I- I- That can't be- No- They wouldn't- Not them-

I don't- I don't-

[ don't want? don't want to believe? don't want to know?

he feels the opal shift in his touch and daylight drops it, acting like it had burned him. he takes a step back from it and looks at jason like he'd have the answers or the explanations or anything to explain what they had both seen. ]

[notthatjason]

[Jason looks pained as Daylight accepts the opal, but it's already too late to do anything to stop this. He really hates this. What makes it worse is that Daylight is clearly so excited and Jason has no way of really preparing for him what's about to go do? But, maybe he already knows. Jason wouldn't want to be reminded of his own mother or especially her mania -- but it was a possible memory floating out there.

He can hope, but at the same time he just has a gut feeling. He would not be this excited if someone approached him with a memory and said it involved his mother.

Gods he wishes he'd thrown the opal in the lake, but that wasn't really his call either. What if Daylight had found out he'd done that?

When Daylight comes out of the memory it becomes clear rather quickly that this is so much worse than even he had prepared for. But what is he supposed to say? Jason's expression is one of regret and sadness. He moves to reach out for Daylight, but the opal falling to the snow distracts him. Jason stops, looking down instead and then back up at Daylight.

His eyes meet with his optics and Jason looks away. He's pretty sure he's never felt worse than right now.]

I am so sorry, Day. [There's a beat, he clenches his fists. This isn't even his fault, right? Gods he really shouldn't have brought that to Daylight. He looks back up at him, forcing himself to face what he'd just done to someone he was starting to consider a good friend.] I can't say or do anything to make this better or easier or anything like that. But...on some level I understand...your life, this memory, I've had similar things happen to me.

[A mother that conceives of him for her own selfish purposes. A mother that later abandons him for the same reasons. A prophecy that changes the entire course of his life and a different one that leads to his death. His memories stolen in service of that greater prophecy. It's all chillingly familiar, but at least he didn't have to learn of it like this.]

[sunborne]

You don’t need to say sorry, Jason. [ daylight smiles at him, trying to show there are no hard feelings for these turn of events. (well— towards jason, at the very least. the last thing he’s going to do is shoot the messenger who, in quick hindsight, had been really, really reluctant to deliver the message in the first place. (way to miss all the obvious signals, day.) if jason had it his way, he probably would have kept this from him but jason did the right thing.

it hurt like hell but day knows this was the right thing to do so day is grateful for it.)

day is about to remember a saying his mom had about this sort of situation but finds himself abruptly stopping those thoughts with an almost angry swiftness. he takes a deep and needs more than a second to compose himself. ] It’s not your fault that… that this happened. Any of this. I… I guess better later than never, huh?

[ and, in a way, it’s a comfort that jason is the one who got this. who understood what it’s like to be in this situation. who probably had a better grasp of what to expect or do.

(in a way, it made his earlier statements about how he didn’t understand what jason was going through ironic. or darkly humorous foreshadowing. he isn’t sure which.) ]

Thank you for giving this to me. [ he smiles again but the smile is accompanied with a hiccup to the vents, his breath hitching as he tries to keep something down. ] If anyone had to find this, I’m glad it was you.

[ day looks down at the opal that he had dropped in the snow. carefully, he kneels down and pulls out a cloth from the messenger bag-turned-belt of his to use while he picks up the fallen jewel. then he looks at jason once again. his expression twists into something mournful as he asks something: ]

… But, I'm not gonna lie, it hurts. [ day hopes jason understands what he means: the sting of betrayal. the sharp stab of anger towards his family. the weird sense of guilt for not living up to these expectations he had no idea he had to face. ] It hurts and— Does it ever stop hurting? Does it?

[notthatjason]

I don't know really. Sometimes I think people don't give enough credit to never.

[Like, would he had lived if he never went searching for that information in the labyrinth and heard the prophecy that literally spelled out his death? How different would things have been, had Apollo and Juno not laid the ground work for the prophecy of seven to begin unfolding? He knew as a demigod that prophecies came with the territory, but he also knew that they tended to spell out more harm for the individuals involved than good.

He wishes he knew what to say in this sort of scenario, but probably the only thing that is going to ease this is some time. The memory was old, but these feelings and what he was dealing with were now very new. He's not sure he's glad, but he'll do his damnedest to make sure he can get Daylight to smile again in a more genuine manner.

He hesitates. Thinking of the story Thalia had told him and his own encounter with his mother as a mania. He thinks about Juno's words and the various prophecies...the manipulation to fulfill them. He sighs, feeling so much older.]

I'm not going to lie to you. It doesn't. It gets easier to bear. It scabs over like any wound. But it's there now and you kinda have to learn to keep moving forward despite it.

[There's a pause and he adds as if quoting someone.]

We cannot control our parentage, but we can choose our legacy...

[sunborne]

[ out of habit more than anything, daylight presses the heel of his palm against his optics. though he has no need to wipe away tears or sparks that aren't even there, something about the motion is comforting to him.

and it helps that he doesn’t feel exposed for showing this sort of vulnerability to jason. but something about jason — so grounded and sure, confident and calm — also helps dissipate the panicky, tight feeling spinning in his chassis. allows him to catch his breath, to regulate his venting cycle so it didn’t feel like his processors were heating up. ]

They— Um... They— They sound really smart, whoever said that. [ he smiles at jason, having picked up that someone had said it before. and a good saying too. something about it both acknowledges the circumstances but still shows what could be done in the face of it.

it helps him. it helps him a lot.

and, in return, he tries to summarize what jason said to him in his own terms. trying to see if he could come to a real understanding of what jason was trying to tell him. ]

We… We don’t get to choose our parents. We don’t get to choose what we get from them, too, but… we get to make the most of it, no matter what? [ he laughs a bit but it doesn't sound as hurt like one would have expected. ] I can get behind that a lot, I think.

[notthatjason]

I don't know about smart...[He felt weird praising the god of the southern winds. But he had a feeling it was the kind of thing Daylight needed to hear, just like Jason had needed to hear it at the time as well.]...but they helped me when I was having a crisis of my own.

[He thinks about Daylight's interpretation of it and nods. All that matters, as far as Jason is concerned, is that it helps him.]

Right. We get to decide what we do with our lives...not our parents.

[sunborne]

And we'll do it together.

[ he finishes wiping at his optics and manages to flash a big smile, needing a second or five to wipe at his servo to make sure it was dry. (then he realise he doesn't need to do that because he can't cry and whoops.

let's pretend that didn't happen.) day then presents his servo out to jason, offering it up for... a handshake, it seems? why else would he be doing this? but, thankfully, it isn't long before day reveals the reason why: ]

Because we're not alone in this! Not anymore while we're here. [ if there's anything good to come out of this, day thinks, it's the knowledge that he and jason can support one another. more than ever since it seems they have a lot in common now. more than ever. ] While we're here, we have each other's back! We'll... do what we can! Yeah!