logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: AULD LANG SYNE

Entry tags:

EVENT LOG: AULD LANG SYNE

characters: everyone.
location: Everywhere
date/time: December 31-January 1
content: Another year gone by, and a sunny future ahead
warnings: n/a

Most of a year has passed since the World Eater was defeated and light began to trickle its way back in to the world. Spring brought new green growth, summer brought the first few pale flowers, and fall saw ever-longer days even as the crispness of frost returned to the air. Now, the longest nights of winter have passed (which still were shorter than those in that first spring), and as the sun rises on the new year, it does so with reassuring warmth that cuts through the ice and snow.

we've wandered far beneath the stars

Many left in those early days, lured by the chances to take the portal home, or to new worlds - and hopefully they made it successfully. The few who stayed behind in Beacon have worked hard on making the place into a home, or at least a solid base of operations for future work, whatever that might entail. Exploring has become easier thanks to the longer, brighter days, revealing a seemingly endless expanse of forest pockmarked by ruined, overgrown cities. Beacon stands at the center of it all, somehow harbors the brightest light, and so out at the edges of the explored areas, forest spirits still linger. They're generally friendly and curious, encouraged by stories spread by the spirits who fled Beacon and its sunlight in order to carry news of the lantern-folk and their success at bringing the aurora to the ground.

All right, so the story may not always be accurate, but it has been told.

And given the spirits still understand the emotional meaning to the start of a new year, counted not on a calendar they follow but on one they barely remember, they begin a strange sort of pilgrimage in those long winter nights. On the night of December 31 they swarm the darkened town of Beacon with whoops and hollers and gifts of ancient decayed (but possibly still viable) seed packets looted from broken cities, crude jewelry made of bones and shards of pottery, and something that looks a bit like it was probably modeled after bread, but are actually buns of baked clay. Before the sun rises, they depart again, leaving Beacon quiet in the snow except for the strange, eerie noises of ice breaking around the edges of the lake.

Should anyone, intentionally or by mistake, break one of these clay buns, they'll find there was something inside. Is your luck good or bad, or will their token object be too obscure to decipher?

and we ran into the night

You probably have your own way of celebrating, too. The portal works, and experimenting with it and the old lighthouse keeper's notes have provided a means to bring in gifts, food and drinks, and even sometimes living creatures, plants, or fungi, though things don't always go intended (an order for goats one day instead brought in a pair of these).

Those who live in Beacon have generally agreed not to bring in new people, but accidents sometimes happen. If you're new on the new year, this must all be awfully confusing, but if you've been here a month or so, maybe you've had time to settle in. It's certainly been made easier by those studying lantern repair over the last many months, as small dents and cracks can often be patched back up, usually with good success (but sometimes with temporary side effects).

Enjoy the new year from the shore of the lake, the warmth of The Invincible, or wherever you like - you've chosen to stay, at least for now, and Beacon isn't a bad place to call home.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Want to know what's inside the gift the spirits left for you? Feel free to invent your own, but if you prefer, comment here and let the spirits pick for you.

Gimme something for Soldat and Stone :D

Soldat's clay bun is about the size of an average bowl of soup, and the spirit delivering it seems intent on balancing it on Soldat's head, only scampering off once they've succeeded.

Inside is a peach. Perfect, unscathed, soft and ripe as if just plucked from the market, and slightly warm to the touch. This itself is strange enough, but if it's cut open (or eaten), the pit is marked with carved lines of swirls and waves. They look old and weathered, as if they've been there for decades.

By the next day, the peach flesh has regrown around the pit, and continues to do so daily if eaten or removed.

Stone has a larger clay loaf that could be mistaken for a sourdough boule if it was actually bread. Inside, he finds... Another clay bun, a bit smaller, painted with sunflowers. When broken, a third slightly smaller bun is found inside, marked with white geometric lines.

Should he continue to break them, at some point the buns inside are larger than the buns they were broken out of, and they grow until the original size is again reached, before shrinking again. Perpetual matryoshka buns, each with their own unique artwork, for no matter how many times they're broken, each one looks unlike the previous ones.

December 31.
Rosinante's eagerness to explore has only grown in the last year. With the help of any who would offer a hand, and tools from the Helix Station and Dr. Solis' former lab, he managed to get the boat he and Soldat had worked on out of the scrapyard and into the lake eventually.

Before the ice could lock it back up, he hauled it onto the shore into a makeshift dry dock with a ramp up to the deck, and it's there he ends up hosting his own little New Year's Eve party. Yes, it's absolutely frigid out here, and it probably won't last long before he flees for the warmth of The Invincible, but should any wish to come join him, he's got alcohol, scraps of paper and a pen, and a lighter that these days produces the tiniest little functional spark.

"Saw a thing on an island once where they'd write their regrets, or wishes, or whatever onto a scrap of paper, set it on fire, then toss it into the sea," he explains, should you ask. "And I thought, I dunno. Might feel good to try it."

January 1
Yeah, it's the dawn of a new year and yeah, he'll take a break, but first he's going to finish shoveling snow that fell overnight away from The Invincible's walkway and a few other paths worth maintaining around the old Bonfire Square. Nobody wants to slip and fall on ice, after all, and these days the weak sunlight is just enough to melt what powder remains and leave dry paths, which makes it feel worth the work.

His lantern rattles a little as it swings from where it's attached to a belt loop, but it looks in good condition these days, with only the smallest dents and scratches marring its surface. He'll take that. His own skin is covered in similar imperfections, but at least his bones are back inside where they belong.

"Yeah, I'll be in in a bit," if anyone tells him to quit working on account of it being some sort of holiday. "If you want to do me a favor, get some coffee started."

--

But afterward, he's inside where it's warm, seated at a table with some newspaper scoured from another world via the portal. Who knows what any of it means, but it's mostly readable, and kind of interesting for the novelty. "They've got volcano-bows," he says, laughing. "See this? Volcanoes erupt, somehow light hits the ash and makes colors. Never heard of anything like that."

Of course, if you choose not to interrupt his reading, he'll ask the required question on a day like this.

"So. Any resolutions for the new year?"

The hobby of reading otherworldly material is a bit strange, not to mention quaint and archaic, but it keeps Will's curious mind occupied. Occupied enough not to try and portal in things he highly suspects will go sideways, like a computer from home. Who knows what would happen if particles entangled on one plane of existence got transported to another? Let alone to what might be another timeline. Would the whole system collapse, rendering it useless? Would they suddenly discover inter-universal communication? It would be a disaster, most likely, and a very destructive one.

So instead he busies himself with other worlds' research, at least when he's not tinkering with lanterns. He's working through what he thinks is a journal of biology, an exercise that is as much translation as it is alien anatomy, while Rosinante reads his newspaper. He doesn't quite glance up at the mention of the volcano-bows.

"Mm, I suppose it's possible anywhere you have a fine enough particulate mist, though it usually needs to be transparent. Are their mountains made of crystal?" He stops, realizing he might be making too much out of something that was just a one-off fun fact. That's a newer thought-pattern for him: not wanting to ruin things for someone else. He moves on to the question instead.

"Resolutions? You mean like a sort of 'to do' list? Because I'd really like to work out the specificity issues with living matter through the portal." The goat creatures are... they're nice, sure, but they're also distinctly incorrect.

Are their mountains made of crystal? He thinks on that for a moment and then squints at the article again to see if it's mentioned anywhere, but between the imperfect translation of the text and the casual mention of the event as if it's just another day's weather, there's plenty of information missing.

And maybe it doesn't really matter anyway, since Will is content to move on, and so is he. Though mountains made of crystal sound pretty damn cool, he thinks.

"Sure, could be like that. I mean, that's important stuff," he says with a nod. He was thinking something a little more conceptual, maybe more self-reflective, but Will's mind is clearly on full concrete science tangible reality mode.

"Get that worked out and we don't have to worry as much about what we might accidentally bring in," he adds as he draws a cigarette from a pack, then slides the pack toward Will in case he'd care for one too. There's no need to specifically call out what kind of things could go wrong eventually if they don't figure it out - they all know why they're here, after all. Dr. Solis might not have been fishing for giant, horrifying, world-consuming space cattle, but apparently those are out there, so what else is?

Hm. That wording says he's clearly doing it wrong. He finally looks up, marking his place with the nearest pen.

"We don't really do this sort of thing back home." He reaches for the pack and takes one. "A year is relatively meaningless in space, especially when every planet's year is a different length." They only really use the Terran calendar because they have to use something, and then they don't use it for everything.

"So what am I supposed to be resolving?"

Right, different worlds and different calendars, makes sense. Even back home some islands use different systems - though they still celebrate their new year wherever it falls. Maybe some things about Will's world will always seem strange to him.

But he nods as he considers it, because it's just different, not wrong, and then passes his lighter over too.

"I think most people use it as more of a... self-improvement goal. Or a personal challenge," he explains, then rests an elbow on the table, cigarette in hand. "But what you said still counts. Figuring that out probably won't be easy."

"Self-improvement?" Will flicks the lighter and takes a draw off the cigarette. "Why tamper with perfection?" He exhales with a grin and passes the lighter back.

But it is bothering him that he can't actually think of anything, so he stalls a bit. "What about you? What's yours?" Surely he's got one if he's asking.

He laughs in return as he pockets the lighter. Yeah, yeah. It's a good thing he finds Will's confidence endearing.

"Haven't decided," he admits. "Been thinking about it, though. Law says I should quit smoking," he offers as an option, though the smile on his lips is a pretty solid hint that he's not going to. And also he's sure Law meant it as a very deadpan joke, anyway, or at least a throwaway comment not meant to be taken seriously. Smoking can't possibly hurt him worse than anything he's gone through here.

"Thinking I might try to learn something. How to use my devil fruit better," he then says with a shrug. "Always thought it had more potential that I'm just not using well."

"The day you stop smoking is the day I stop being a smart-ass." So in other words, it's never going to happen.

"If learning something counts as self-improvement, then I hardly need a resolution for that." He glances pointedly at the book he's working through. "And I'm certainly not going to quit doing anything that I actually enjoy." What's the point of life otherwise?

"Maybe I'll try to remember to eat more often." As it is, he gets busy. Or at least he gets so far into what he's doing that he loses track of not just time, but his basic human needs. It's an old habit that's made its way back, now that he's able to throw himself into projects at his leisure. "Would that count?"

CLAY BUNS

Re: CLAY BUNS

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Rosinante | OTA

January 1!

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I always talked about bringing him back so! Dec. 31!

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