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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The touch draws him out of himself, maybe partly because it's so unusual. Vanitas isn't accustomed to that kind of casual contact, and it's only recently that he's come to realize that not every time it happens with Riku or even Bruce designates he's under attack.

He raises his head, looking at Quentin but not making an attempt to bat his hand away. Even after he's taken it back, Vanitas can feel the score of warmth on his shoulder, where his palm had been, in his fingerprints leaving an invisible mark.

"Lucky how?" It seems like a nonsequitor to Vanitas. What was he lucky for? He may have had those feelings, but he's lost them all. Even Eliot isn't the same one that he'd known.

"Because I got to have it at all. Even if I lost it. There's a-- there's this saying, where I'm from and too many people put it on t-shirts or in songs, but--"

Quentin licks his lips, it's not as trivial as the quote will make it seem and he doesn't want to diminish the importance and impact of love. After all, where in the hell would he be without it?

Without loving Alice, he never would have saved her from her Niffin Brother in the first place. She would have done the spell and blasted herself and her soul in to pieces trying to reach him. She was determined and strong, and she found the magically hidden Brakebills even without an invitation. That never happens. But Alice Quinn did it.

Without love, he never would have found Fillory. Never would have been a King and he never would have killed Ember to save Julia, his best friend since forever and childhood crush. Without love, he never would have had fifty years and a family with Eliot. He never would have killed himself to save them all, if it hadn't been for love.

The world would have ended, several times over, if Quentin hadn't fallen in love and lost it all over and over again.

"It goes - it's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all. I love Alice, and even if I never see her again? Because I'm dead. I can still feel it, in here-"

And he holds a fist to his chest, just above his heart.

"And I guess-- so I guess it makes me feel alive? In a way. To love. To be in love."

His eyes drop to the gesture, and maybe more than anything else, it resonates with Vanitas. Like a focal point to all the words, pulling them in to the a middle place and cementing it where it belongs. In his heart. What would it have been like, to have that for himself? Is this what Ventus felt, on the other side? Is this the feeling that drives Sora to such outrageous ends, throwing himself with reckless abandon after his friends? Is this what makes Riku so dedicated to his cause?

It makes me feel alive. Remembering what it felt like inside that memory, the way Alice made his heart pound...

The only things Vanitas ever felt were rage, and despair, and loneliness. A hatred that consumed him from the inside out. But if he didn't have those things, he wouldn't have felt anything at all. At the time it was better than nothing— until the pain was unending, until all Vanitas really wanted was peace. Having a good feeling to replace the bad was no longer important in the end.

Bitterness is tangy on the back of his tongue. Riku had said something similar, that it was worth it to try. But Vanitas can't shake the fear of losing the things he's gained.

"I'd rather feel nothing at all." Vanitas finally says, and pulls Quentin's opal out of his pocket, opening his palm to offer it back to him.

There it is. Alice, in some form or another, because she's the one Vanitas has been asking about and maybe, just maybe, it's not that same as the one Riku saw. Jesus Christ. Quentin is not exactly secretive by nature, and he's been pretty open about a lot of himself in this place. But knowing that other people knew these kinds of things about him? Not great.

They're all trapped here, they're all dead and his own experiences with weird things are not secret. He wears his heart on his sleeve and Quentin knows this about himself, knows it and hates it. But Vanitas helped, and Alice is...

He reaches out, fingers brushing against the palm of Vanitas' hand before he touches the opal and the memory of Brakebills South and Alice floods through him. Eyes rolling back and his hand twitches minutely before he comes back, blinking back tears.

They'd all been so fucking young and it was only a few years ago, and he forgot. Somehow, Quentin forgot just how good it felt, to be with Alice. To watch her face and her hands without betrayal and heartache between them. To be simply in love without anything else clouding the issue and she had been so beautiful. How she'd made him feel about himself, like he could do anything. The heavy pounding of his heart whenever he looked at her and the giddy feeling of just-- being happy.

The fox sex, though. Jesus.

"If you... thank you. For giving it back."

Vanitas' own opal, with a dark and painful memory inside of it, sits heavily in Quentin's pocket.

"You could have just kept it, but--" and he wants to say it gets better except for how it might not. They're all dead here, they just haven't stopped walking around yet and he doesn't want to lie. Not now and not about this.

I'd rather feel nothing at all

And there had been times where Quentin would have agreed with that, that feeling nothing is better than feeling all these overwhelming things. All the crap and the guilt and the crushing bleak outlook on life. When it felt like every choice had been made for him, and there was no way out that wasn't just more pain.

"I know. But I hope you know that you can chose something different for yourself. It's not easy and it's not... nice. It's really fucking hard some days, but. You can."

He could have kept it. He even considered it, weighed his options of coveting that stolen feeling for himself. It wasn't like Quentin had forgotten it, after all. None of these memories raining from the sky were stolen ones— they were just playback, like those moving pictures Peter talked about. Quentin wouldn't have even missed it, if Vanitas hadn't said anything at all.

Giving it back isn't some altruistic attempt at doing something good. It's only because Vanitas doesn't want the pain that follows after he watches it, the bitter resentment of thinking he'll never be able to feel so full as that on his own. Why he didn't just throw it into the lake or discard it otherwise... well, maybe in some way, he didn't want to share what he'd discovered.

It's kind of like a secret, that way. There's something alluring about that. Friends kept secrets. Even if he and Quentin aren't that.

Vanitas looks at him, his yellow eyes luminescent under the dancing green light up above. People have said that before. That he has a choice, that he can choose something different. He doesn't know how to explain that he can't choose anything different from the Darkness. But he is learning that Darkness isn't as one dimensional as he thought it was.

He stands up wordlessly, then, with Quentin's words rattling around in his head, percolating into the shattered remnants of his heart, and walks back out into the commotion of the celebration.

Well, shit.

Quentin is silent through most of this, just watching Vanitas' face, the way he doesn't move and they way his eyes glow in the strange light in the sky. The green clashing with the yellow, making them seem even more otherworldly than ever before and when Vanitas gets up, when he leaves without a word, Quentin wants to kick himself.

"Vanitas, wait."

How many times had he had to sit through a lecture on just about the same thing? About have you tried not being depressed as if that was even remotely helpful, when the world felt too big and too hostile to live in. When it felt like everything was just pressing down on him, pushing him flat to the proverbial ground. When even breathing seemed like too much of en effort, and it would always be there, hovering in the background of the people talking at him - why don't you try not to be this sad sack of shit, Quentin?

Him mom usually just said it outright, but there were ways to phrase it that came off as less aggressive and Quentin had just used the exact some words to Vanitas.

To this boy who had admitted to feeling nothing but darkness, nothing but pain and the memory of him in the desert, beaten down and bleeding is too real and too vivid in the back of Quentin's mind.

"Wait? Please?"

Vanitas does stop, a small distance away. He isn't angry at Quentin, which maybe has a great deal to do with why he pauses at all. When Vanitas sets his mind to something it can be difficult, if not impossible, to try and change it. Had Quentin's words pressed the right number of buttons, he would have continued marching his way across the square, resolutely ignoring the other guy.

Instead, he pauses and turns halfway to look across the short distance.

"If you're going to tell me I have a choice again, you can save your breath," He says in a careless drawl. There's a heavy set to his eyes, something in his expression that isn't so much resigned as a sort of acceptance. Sora and Ventus tried to tell him he had a choice, too. He didn't have the time or the willpower to try and explain why they were wrong.

"No, I--"

And Quentin takes a deep breath, standing up with his hands held out a little helplessly because what can you even say to that? Vanitas is right, Quentin had told him to just ovary up and deal, like it was that simple. Like that was even the issue.

"That's not what I wanted to say. I'm sorry. I was wrong and I don't even know why I said it."

Conditioning, and the fact that being depressed doesn't mean he isn't just as susceptible to societal pressure as everyone else is. Quentin shakes his head, letting his arms drop.

"I'm sorry, and I was wrong. I get the feeling of... not really having a choice. And also, I'm a little weirded out about you having seen this memory."

Vanitas cocks his head, his brow pinching quizzically. He has no frame of reference for this sort of thing, so can't understand why Quentin would be apologizing to begin with. Beyond the fact he is wrong, but it's still confusing. Nobody else has ever tried to apologize for fitting him into a box he just wasn't made for.

He watches Quentin for a long moment, and that curious expression remains on his face the entire time.

"You're really weird," He finally settles on, after failing to come up with any other response. Even stranger is that he feels almost settled by the apology, like some invisible wall he'd started to erect has eroded, just a little.

Okay, so. This is weird, being studied without anyone saying anything and after a few seconds, Quentin's shoulder haunch forward and he shifts on his feet a little.

You're really weird like that's not something Vanitas already knew, since well-- everything. The arguments on the tablets, the fight at the church, Quentin's hands wrist-deep inside Vanitas' leg, the memory of alice...

But this is what makes him weird?

Quentin smiles with a shrug. "You have no idea."

There's a beat of silence, of just Quentin watching Vanitas back before he opens and closes his mouth a few times. What had helped, when everyone had expected him to just get over it? Well... Fillory. And Deep Space 9. Middle Earth. Books about other worlds, and other people's lives.

"But I can show you. I mean, the books aren't... completely accurate? But I have the books about me. My world and my life, or. One of the them, because I think maybe it's from one of the other timelines."

Can Vanitas even read? And the thought doesn't hit him until he's stopped talking.

"Anyway, you don't have to. It's just... reading helped me. When I was younger."

Vanitas can, in fact, read, though it's never something he's thought to dwell on. While his emotional understanding of the world is horribly altered, he was a full person, once upon a time. That person had never been the best at anything, always just short of recognition and always alone, but within Vanitas are the building blocks of a whole individual.

But he's never really stopped to sit and read before. It was never something that he was encouraged to do. His life was training, and sleeping, and training some more. Everything was listlessly staring into the blue sky, the night sky, the long smudge of a horizon. Even here, he's never gone out of his way to seek it out. It just never occurred to him.

He arches up an eyebrow, canting his head. "You want to give me more information about your life." It's a question, phrased as an incredulous statement. They both know that Vanitas will routinely use this information to his cruel advantage. He's done it to Quentin before. Vanitas is a little surprised he's offering it up so freely.

"It's not exactly my life. Like I said, I think it's about one of the other thirty-nine Quentin's, because not all of my friends are in them. Like Kady? She isn't even in the books at all and she was... pretty damn important in my timeline. And Margo isn't there either, unless she's somehow called Janet and still..."

Quentin clears his throat and shrugs again. The offer is out there, because books were what saved his life. When nothing was working, when the world came crashing down around him and all he felt was - empty. Darkness, Vanitas called it, but it might be similar. When there was nothing but that at the Midtown Mental Health Clinic and when hurting himself seemed like the only time even a little color bled back in to the world and he wanted to keep trying to kill himself just to make it stop -- that's when the books had saved him.

When the medications and the therapy didn't work. Fillory and Further did.

So.

"The parts about me in there? Are buried under a lot of shit that isn't, so. Maybe I'm counting on you not knowing which parts? Or, maybe it doesn't matter. There's nothing you can say that I don't know already. But, she's in there. Alice? That part is still comes pretty close to what happened for me."

Vanitas stares at him for a long moment, then smirks and shakes his head. He's not sure if Quentin is purposefully obtuse or if he just doesn't get it, but there's something about it that Vanitas would interpret is naively endearing if he had the capacity to know what that feeling is like. It's like a duckling swimming around on a pond, oblivious to the monster circling underneath it.

Of course Quentin probably already knows what Vanitas would tell him. It doesn't need to be new information for it to hurt. In fact, those are the wounds that often go the deepest.

Really, he might be more curious about it if he wasn't sitting on a kind of messy turmoil that was taking up most of his attention right now. If he had it in him to wan to pursue curiousity, and his tendency to exact suffering in the people around him. Right now, he's just tired and wants to be alone.

"Goodbye, Quentin."

Maybe later, he thinks without conviction as he resumes his walk away.

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EVENT LOG: THE NIGHT WE MET

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cw - mentions self-harm and suicide

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