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 a few opals himself, his tucked away stash of yarnbomb gloves coming in clutch to keep them separated and organized, when he hears Rosinante calling to him. His head... basically whips around, his entire body galvanized as he all but throws himself to his feet in his eagerness to get over there. ]

Really? Really? It - oh, ah, I gotta stop asking what it is. [ Sora shakes his head, but he doesn't look concerned about his tied tongue. No, he looks just straight up desperate. ] Where is it? Do you have it with you? [ Big sad puppy eyes? Big sad puppy eyes. Have mercy, Rosinante, this kid is beside himself. ]

[Good gods hold yourself together, dude. Is this another situation like Soldat where some of his memories are just outright missing? What are the chances of that happening twice?]

Yeah, right here.

[He squats down to pull out the toolbox and retrieves the opal carefully with a spoon, then passes it over.]

Strangest one I've seen so far. I felt like I was wandering for ages. Some guy was really obsessed with a steamboat. Never seen one of those before.

[Which is cool, but. Why was it all black and white?]

[ Wow, Rosi got it in one! Too bad he didn't ask that one out loud, Sora would be much more forthcoming about it than Soldat would be.

Anyway, he will thrust his current glove of memory opals in his pocket and yank off his own glove, letting Rosinante drop it inside, tying off the finger it falls into. ]

A steamboat... [ Sora thinks about it... then a slow smile appears on his face. ] Don't tell me more about it - seriously, don't tell me more about it, just give me a yes or a no - was the world all in black and white? Did everything like... sound funny?

Yeah. Yeah, that's it exactly.

[He's entirely puzzled by why Sora seems to be excited about this, but he'll let the guy explain. Must have been somewhere, or sometime, very specific - otherwise he wouldn't have pointed out those features as being unique, he figures.]

Oh, man, time travel. You were by the river! [ Sora grins, holding the glove in his hand and looking at it with one part curiosity and one part delight before stowing it away in the front pocket of his backpack. ] Man, I've been wondering about that one for ages. I don't even have its name.

[ Sora turns to Rosinante next, a big smile on his face. ] I don't wanna keep saying I owe you, but I really do this time. This means everything to me, seriously. Thank you. [ ... Hm. ] How long did you say you were in there? A while, right?

Felt like a long time, but -

[He can check his tablet. It's not like he looked at it right before he picked up the opal, but he can guess.]

No more than a couple minutes? But if you'd ask me while I was in it I would've thought it was hours. I guess memories are like dreams. A lot happens in seconds.

Dreams can be like that. [ He's been very literally trapped in dreams long enough for that to become obvious, but like, regular dreams are equally chronologically tricky, of course. ]

Maybe that's why some of mine are like that. [ Like dreams. After all, if he isn't real, why would his memories be anything more than dreams. ] Although, uh, I don't think I'm gonna find out for a while. I've been taking peoples' word for it. A lot of the ones I've seen out of the ones I've picked up have gone on for a few hours, but that's it. Sorry if mine was way weird. [ Well, for the length of time, certainly, but also for the ink and paint aesthetic. ]

Why was it like that? Your world isn't normally black and white, is it?

[Again, it shouldn't be, if that was somehow a defining feature of this particular memory. Why the completely bizarre setting?]

Nuh-uh. I remember lots of color. [ Tons. Too much color, sometimes! ]

It was kind of weird? My friends were there before - actually, it was way back in the past for them - but... I don't really remember why they didn't remember that things were like that? Maybe it was normal for them? [ He stares at the pocket he put the opal into and shakes his head. ] I'm sorry, I don't remember a lot about this one. Like, I'd actually ask you? You'd probably know way more than I do now.[ He shakes his head. ]

I think it's better if we just talked about something else. If you start talking about the river, I'll start getting echoes in a train, and then you'd be talking to yourself. That's not cool.

You're... not making much sense. I just want to make sure you realize that.

[Seriously, if he wasn't so used to people from other worlds by now having wildly different experiences he'd be convinced Sora is unwell. But point taken, he decides, as he studies Sora and then shakes his head. No river, no steamboats, none of that.]

Your friends, then. Are they minks? The animal-like people?

Yeah, I get that a lot. [ Less because he's been around the block and talks about things people aren't familiar with and more because he is godawful at explaining things in a way that makes sense. (He looks appropriately sheepish about this. Hey, it's not like he wants to be difficult.) He'll just explain in a different way if it becomes important later. ]

Minks? [ He closes his eyes. No echoes, no memories. He shakes his head and opens his eyes. ] I don't think so? Either that or, uh, the word's not specific enough for me to get it back. I don't think I'd ever met anyone like them before, but on the world they're from, everyone's a talking animal. [ Well, except Pluto, but Sora is going to pointedly ignore that bit of the conversation. Very Much Not Worth It. ] What's a mink? An animal who's a person in your world?

Something like that. I don't know much about them. They're people, just like we are, but they have fur and tails and all that.

[They rarely turn up in his usual corners of the sea, preferring to avoid humans, but they're real enough. He's heard the stories of Zunesha, the great elephant the size of an island who carries them on its back. Shame he'll never get to see that now.]

But - "the world they're from", you said. So they're not from your world either?

[ Makes perfect sense to him. There were also straight up animals who gained human sentience and speech back in Locke City too, so none of this strikes Sora as completely bizarre. It's the same phenomenon in interesting new clothing. (Still, that is most certainly interesting new clothing, and Sora does love him some new clothes.) ]

Right. They came from a kingdom with Disney Castle at the center, and I came, um. From the Destiny Islands. [ He says this cautiously. He's still not sure if that's right, technically, but he's tried to tell the truth about himself and it's gotten too cumbersome and fake to keep up. Better to just go with what feels right. ]

Different worlds. I had a spaceship, we traveled between the stars to connect to each other. Took me about a year or so to get around to visiting their world, but it was worth meeting the queen and Donald's, um. His lady, I guess? [ He pauses. Now that he thinks about it, he isn't sure if he and Daisy were married or just dating. He'd ask if he could. He wishes he could. ]

A year! That's a long journey. So you have spaceships, and you've been in one? What was it like?

[Yes, the very idea still excites him every time he runs across it here. By now he's met a handful of people who've traveled through space. It hasn't gotten old yet. Something about the idea of a ship that sails through the stars instead of on water is just so incredible to him, and his eyes light up as he asks about it, voice taking on more energy than usual.]

[ 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.

You were... [He has to pause, search his head for that word. It sounds strange, archaic, even though he knows the meaning thanks to its roots in an old North Blue language, rarely-used in other seas. It's a bit like calling a musician a "minstrel", but he gets it.]

You were the helmsman? You learned how to steer a star ship?

[This is even MORE EXCITING except it's dampened slightly by restraint and the apparent missing memories. Check next week, got it.]

I. Yeah! I guess I was. It wasn't always me, Donald drove for the first few months, but after we started to get to know each other, I... maybe he started teaching me how? [ This is just something he's assumed through context clues, though. ] I don't remember any of that, though, I just remember sitting in the pilot's chair.

[ Sora's pretty sure he told Rosinante that he's not the person he remembers, and it only now strikes him that he's been talking about all of this in the first person, like he personally experienced it, and it feels... good. And Rosinante hasn't said a thing. Huh. Maybe he's just really caught up in the excitement? Sora doesn't blame him, he remembers being pretty excited about space too. ]

Not a lot of space stuff where you're from, right? [ Sora smiles. He can relate. ] I don't think we did, either. We were trying to go to another world with a raft.

[Right. More of that Sora-Skyler confusion again is behind this - he's aware, it's just hard to know where one begins and the other ends. Both people come from places so unlike his own that he doesn't really know how to separate the experiences of one from the other. Shame he doesn't remember it well.]

No, not really. Stories, but nothing concrete. I can't just go sail around in space on a whim. There are old legends that talk about people coming to our world from the moon, but I figure that's probably about as realistic as dragons, or magic.

[But Sora has magic. And space stuff. So he chuckles, shaking his head.] You probably have dragons too, don't you?

[ Sora's not confused about the boundary himself, but he assumes that Rosinante has better things to do than to sit through an actual two hour long conversation (with diagrams) outlining exactly what his deal is, so treating both sets of memories as equally truthful versions of his past is what Sora's happy to do here. Maybe they'll get to that after they save this world or something.

Anyway, clearly Rosinante came from a perfectly normal world, if a bit waterlogged, so Sora's happy to share what he can remember. ]

People from the moon, huh. [ Sora laughs. Oddly enough, that's one thing he hasn't encountered in either of his realities yet. ] Couple of dragons, yeah. One was a fairy who wanted to control the darkness. [ Riku, possessed by Ansem, had unlocked her heart, releasing the darkness inside. ]

The other was... [ And here Sora frowns, reaches up to scratch his head. ] It had engines. I don't know whether it was alive or not. We were, um, fighting it. [ He was with Riku, of course. Can't get away from the guy. ] And a man in white armor was sitting on a throne on its head. I guess the first one was more fairytales than the second one, but the second one was... [ Unimaginably huge, and the fight itself was unnerving. He shakes his head. ] Can't describe it too well. The guy on the throne - Xemnas - kept trying to get into my head. Talking trash the entire time. [ Shrug. ] Didn't work, but he tried it.

Engines? So it was a robot dragon?

[Holy. Shit!! Man, the rest of that sounds like it was a bad time or he'd be jealous.

Well, no, he's kind of jealous anyway. And the fairy dragon sounds, hm. Concerning, but also pretty great. It's incredible how some of the childhood stories he'd heard so long ago have real-world equivalents for people here.]

Doesn't sound like it was a fun fight for you guys. But I've never even heard of something like that. I'd love to see it, just once. At a distance.

Robot dragon. [ Sora slowly nods in confirmation, although it still seems like he's puzzling that one out for himself. ] Seems like it.

Well, I guess we could see if Stone wants to put on a play or something. [ But Riku would catch wind of that, surely. Sora can't imagine that going down well. He's no actor either, nor is he much of a writer. He doesn't even know the whole story. He guesses he could just make something up, but that needs way more imagination than he's got going on up there. Really, that was just such a terrible idea that he's shaking his head like an Etch-a-Sketch, trying to see if he can't erase the thought from ever existing in the first place.. ] Dumb. Never mind.

... You really like stories like that, don't you? I got more, if you want. Once I get them all in my head next week, I'll probably have tons. [ It's nice, being able to make someone excited about his memories. It kind of makes it feel like they mean something. ]

I guess so. But I always liked adventure stories. Used to read a lot of pretty cheesy ones when I was a kid. "Detective Percival" and the "Dogs of the Sea" series and all that kinda stuff.

[Which, hm. Sora probably has never heard of those, but oh well.]

And the ones you and some of the others tell are real, so that's even better. Your worlds are so strange.

[Says the ten foot tall guy who gained powers from eating a fruit.]

[ Sora has never heard of those indeed, but his first life was filled with those kinds of stories. He'd never really read them for himself! It was always Riku or Kairi calling him a dummy for not reading the same books they did, then filling him in, acting them out. He liked the stories better like that. They always seemed so excited to tell him what happened. ]

Soldat keeps calling my world "weird". They're right.

[ Sora smiles. Keys and princesses and dragons and space ships and pirates and monsters and stars. He wouldn't believe any of it if they weren't what made him real. ]

Then again, isn't that, like... what's the word? [ The word is "relative". He's not going to find it. ] Something that means, like. If you live one place all your life, everything else is always gonna seem weird. And there's always something weirder whenever you go someplace else.

Sure. I've seen it plenty of times in my own world anyway. In a way, each island is like its own world. Especially in the Grand Line, where you can go from spring on one island to winter on another and only a couple days of sailing in between.

[Which is still weird, he knows it, but also he's known it for so long that he just accepts it. So yeah, complete agreement.]

Right! Yeah, traveling and seeing other worlds was like that. I guess the only things would be different would be, like, biology.

[ As long as he finds someone to befriend, a world is a world is a world. Still fascinating, still exciting, but what's the difference between traveling the seas and the stars besides the novelty of the journey? ]

There's that feeling of like, you know, you're probably the first visitor from that far away they've had ever, and everything's new, and they have their own celebrations and problems and stuff. [ Was it like that on the Grand Line? Where did Rosinante go? Big Sora Questions here. ]

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