lifeaftr | June Aftermath: Magic Lantern Strange

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June Aftermath: Magic Lantern Strange

JUNE AFTERMATH: MAGIC LANTERN STRANGE

Who: Everyone!
What: A celebration!
When: Evening of June 21st, and well into morning
Where: Ensō, E3 and E4
Warnings: Mark as needed!

Slide the Light Off You
As promised, the evening of the 21st finds the Jormun hosting a party on Ensō's largest beachfront. Near immediately, it should be clear that they've spared absolutely no expense when it comes to showing their story-walker brethren a good time.

Of course, they may also be...showing off a little.

The stalls and comfortable seating supplied around multiple firepits appears to be a mishmash of Jormun built contraptions and items requested from the Storyteller- many may be delighted to see the variety of beach cushions and blankets, items the Jormun will be happy to let their story-walker friends take home at the end of the festivities. A veritable smorgasbord of food and drink is also readily available, from the kid-friendly options of brrshavak (a spicy drink with a taste akin to liquified chili pepper) and molkavarr (a rich chocolaty broth) to the alcoholic rakvrhak (a rich wine that tastes oddly plumlike). Do be warned, however, that the last is incredibly potent.

Large slabs of driftwood have been laid out to form impromptu tables, bristling with the Jormun's culinary expertise: fried squid, seaweed wraps, spicy pickled kelp, kebabs of roasted eel, hard-boiled snapling eggs, and so on. The vegetables and meats of the sea have been laid out for all to enjoy, so tuck in!

Throughout the evening the air will be filled with the sound of music, with multiple Jormun eager to show off their skill in instrumentation. Conch-shell horns, carved driftwood flutes, urchin-needle harps, and countless more contraptions engineered by a deep sea-dwelling people fill the air with the most peculiar but nonetheless not unpleasant sound. Most of the bands will be set up in the shallow waters, however, as their instruments are not made to be used in open air - try playing them above the surface of the water at your own risk.

Of course, there's plenty more to entertain even the most difficult of people.

You're Living the Strobe Light
Those interested in proving their strength and skill will be encouraged to enter one of the many tournaments across the shoreline. The tournaments vary, featuring such challenges as play fights with the schlacknorkcvic to prove who is the greatest warrior, timed events to see who can stay on a bucking tigershark for the longest, and even a tourney of brovonkosshk, a board game somewhat similar to chess. Don't see anything you're interested in? Make your own. If you can think it, the Jormun will happily accommodate it - impromptu challenges are the highlight of such evenings, after all, though the Jormun won't be taking any responsibility for the first poor soul that decides to usher in a drinking contest.

A small variety of walker games are also available. Jormun children are more than eager to play such games as hide-and-seek or red light, green light, while Connor Murphy will be bringing his Cards Against Humanity deck, for those ready to completely screw with the idea of a fourth wall. There's even a game of Spin the Bottle... except the bottle is being spun overhead like a mace. Being hit by said bottle requires you to do a stupidly ridiculous task, so perhaps it's best to avoid that particular adaptation...

And of course, there's the lightshow.

As mentioned previously, the main show of the evening is the show of brssticca: bursts of magical light beneath the water that will put any fireworks show to shame. The lights are safe to wade and swim through, do keep in mind that the phosphorescent algae tends to cling to the skin. And should you reach into those spiraling, fluorescent nebulae of patterns beneath the surface, some of the configurations of light may abruptly shatter like broken glass.

Additionally, skilled Jormun will be happy to assist those who care to dress up for the event with intricate applications of shellivthiss - a style of waterproof body paint that is not only bright, but luminescent. Something the Jormun may forget to mention, however, is how similar shellivthiss is to henna; should you decide to get all dolled up, except to shine bright light a diamond for weeks to come.

Lastly, those who wanted to bring their own adventures are welcome to as well! Supplying some dope roast? Bringing those sweet, sweet greens? Have some alcohol to supply? All is welcomed by the Jormun - and undoubtedly, your fellow adventurers as well.

You May Find Some Peace
Feeling a tad adrift? Make sure to check the OOC Event Post, which has details regarding the event timeline!

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[Okay. Good. He breathes out, slightly, and tucks the bottle away again, as quickly as it appeared.]

Other people have. [That's all he has to say about it, because if he thinks about it any further, he'll have to think about Brian, the dark mask drawn over his face and the color his hoodie and the way he hadn't spoken and his familiar smile buried in too many years of running and hiding and - ]

[And he doesn't want to think about Brian.]

But you can't know if something else is just as important. If someone else didn't know what these were and decided to take them, just like that, I'd - it'd be real bad for me.

[And real bad for everyone else.]

[That quick display is enough to connect the dots. Some treasures could be medicine and it's going to be necessary to make that distinction before she shoves something into her bag. This is the quickest she's ever learned a lesson and while it won't stop her from hunting down items-she'll take care in what gets shoved in, especially if it looks consumable.

So thanks for ruining her life and making her a worse thief. Now she's gotta think before she takes. Horrible.]

You won't wake up.

[Real bad?? An understatement. She's tempted to shake her own bottle, to let him know there's a backup if something goes wrong. That she can divvy out some of her medicine to offset his ailment, but-]

Do you have enough? Did you take it today? Does anything hurt?

I'm good right now.

[He...he fucking scared her, didn't he? God. What a stand-up guy he is, huh? Real fucking good with kids. Why was he living some delusional idyllic life where he adopted one, as if he's not fucking terrible at this?]

[It's hard to meet her eyes.]

No one's taken it in a while.

[Of course she's scared. Nervous. Some bizarre combination of everything, now that she has confirmation of what she already knew about him. Of course he would take medicine. He's strong. His heart is good and he's lasted far longer than most lab kids do, but he's still one of them at the end of the day.

She should've been keeping a closer eye on him, but he's good right now and that's enough for her.]

If someone-if you lose it-

[This might be the first time she's opting to choose her words carefully, trying not to spew the first thing that comes to mind. She doesn't want him to know she's sick, but she needs him to know there's a backup until he can speak to the Storyteller. Even if it's only for a day, that fear and sense of dread of knowing what's about to happen, is-

It's a sliver of a line she's toeing, but she's trying.]

You can use your rock and say 'Come find me, Ren' and I'll help you. You have to remember that.

You good at hunting down medication?

[Perhaps he shouldn't...try to inject levity, even that of the wry variant, into a conversation that's abruptly taken the turn for the less than lighthearted.]

...I'm okay, kiddo. I'm sorry. I shouldn't've... [Shouldn't have scared her to try and prove a moral point. No one here would or could steal his meds, now that Brian's gone. Not that Brian would, either; he had a bottle of his own.]

[Useless, now.]

[She's good at sharing, is the answer she wants to give, because hunting down her medicine is something she quickly gave up on. Seto's persistence and a talking cat managed to save her from her own defeatist attitude.]

No, I'm not good at things like that.

[His apology isn't really needed-she already knew and it definitely drove home the meaning of something she couldn't understand only minutes ago. She strums the instrument again. This definitely isn't someone's medicine at least.]

But it's okay. Now you can say 'I need help, Ren' and I'll look for you until I feel your heart. I can do that for you.

[She will p e r s i s t. Agree to her horrible terms!! Sign this verbal contract!!]

[She won't just let it lie. It's not much of a shocker, but...]

[Well. Now he feels like a jerk. More than the norm, anyway. Even pretending to smile feels like a cop-out, a mockery.]

Sure. Sure thing. [He agrees to it, because there's no easy or kind way to dismiss the offer, and he probably owes her after the scare he gave her, and besides - ]

[Besides.]

[He is a liar.]

[He may not be smiling, but she is. It's comforting to know that he'll come to her, that she might be able to help him, should push come to shove. She can watch him, check his pulse if he starts getting too lethargic, make sure he doesn't pass out while he works on all the island tasks he's set out to do.

But she won't check yet. He's good right now and that means he can enjoy the party with no worries.]

You should keep playing that thing. It'll make your heart feel better.

[It's...not much in the way of consolation, he suspects, for either of them. He went and flashed a reminder of her past up in her face and just expected that to go down well.]

[Why does she even still bother? Why does anyone - ]

[He's getting distracted.]

Any requests?

[It's probably not a good time to bring up that he could still take this harp to practice and play with-it's not medicine and no one's watching it. She hads a feeling he'd protest again, so it's up to her to keep an eye out for spare treasures like this. Maybe nab him one on the way out, if someone leaves it.

Right now, he's agreed to play, and she quickly goes through the few songs she knows, trying to think of descriptions and-

The name is long forgotten and she doesn't remember the lyrics, but he probably recognizes the tune she hums as the one played by his "band" in that wild dream world. ]

That one.

[His hands freeze, momentarily, and he swallows, hard. What starts at a slow trickle runs deeper and quicker the longer he lets the memories linger; a false life, with a man who smiled far more often and had a kid and had friends and went out in the evenings, who had - a band of all things. Living the shitty hipster life and the wholesome parenting ideal, wrapped up in some dichotomous, bizarre, un-fucking-natural amalgamation of a fantasy.]

[She references it like it's nothing.]

[He stares at his hands, trying to remember what it is to look at them without feeling like everything's drifted two inches to the right.]

You still remember how those things go?

I tried to remember. They made you smile, so I wanted to see that again.

[And even if it was a fake version of her that supported his thug band life, it doesn't mean she can't appreciate it in reality. It made her happy, seemed to make him happy, even if it's not having the same reaction now.]

I only remember that one.

[But they weren't real. They were false draperies over a world where he wasn't a liar, wasn't a murderer, wasn't a freak who choked down fistfuls of pills in the room of his childhood. Some ideal fucking fantasy that wasn't even real, and hadn't made sense when anyone stopped to think about it - ]

[The memories are still there. Stirring beneath his fingertips. Twitching, ready to chase the circuits of an imitation life.]

They weren't real.

[It may have been manufactured happiness, but parts of it felt real. Her family was still there. Seto's hand was warm. ESP purred and purred all day long. Their joy stemmed from somewhere and while she wouldn't go back-doesn't want to exchange her life for that temporary happiness, it was nice, for awhile.]

Some of it was. I think the smiles were real and I could feel everyone's kind heart-

[And some not so kind ones, that helped dig her out of that ideal hiding place and saved her life.]

I liked your song. That was "real".

[There are too many things he can, he should, say to that. Things like how most of the people there weren't real, that their hearts couldn't have been real in the midst of some abstract fantasy. That the song, even, hadn't been real, because it wasn't really his - it was some product of a dream-world where he had some normal fucking life, where he was allowed friends.]

[Something too absurd to have een allowed to persist for as long as it did.]

I'm not sure if I remember it, kid. I wasn't really...y'know. I didn't write it.

[He's already scared her, and now he can't even play along?]

[Why's she even bother.]

That's okay.

[It's nothing more than a fading melody in her own mind, though she hums a few notes as she remembers them. It made him happy, in the dream, and it's doing the opposite now. For all his reservations about it, that moment had been-maybe something nice for her. A chance to be normal, to leave school and see a band. To see someone she cared about, doing something that made him smile that much.

She wishes she could've kept the little triangle he threw at her and she pats her pocket once to see if it's there, knowing full well it won't be. There's some frosting though. That's a good snack for later. She should let Tim have some of his, once upon a time, piece of cake once he's done messing around with the harp he refuses to loot.]

You can play something that makes you happy. I want to listen to that song.

Edited 2018-07-01 03:31 (UTC)

[He barely knows how to play this instrument, let alone an actual song from it, but he's done enough to crush her little dreams thus far, hasn't he? He stares at the instrument that he doesn't so much as know a name to, laying slack in his lap, and...]

[It takes him a few moments of careful picking, sorting the chords out by ear, but eventually he manages a simple progression.]

[The song probably isn't familiar to her, but he remembers hearing it on the radio now and then.]

[For a second, she wonders if he'll do it.

But then he starts to pick at it, play a few notes and she starts to hear the base of some kind of melody. It's catchy and within a few seconds, she's humming along to a song. Tim might pick up her own quiet lyrics at various points while playing, like dope treasure water and cool sideburns and prophecy cats.

Hell yeah.]

[He hasn’t figured out much besides the refrain, so he loops it a couple times until the music peters out and loses its momentum.]

You could look into becoming a lyricist. [Maybe he’s joking. Maybe not.]

[Don't encourage her!! Only the most underground of indie bands would hire her for lyrics and they'd never make it to the big leagues. She's holding this imaginary band down.

Not that she knows what that word means, but she can decipher lyrics and lyricist go hand in hand. That works.]

Can I be a 'lyricist' when you play? Can we do that together?

Sure, if you want. It means I write the music, and you write the words that go to it.

[Why is he talking like they're starting a band. They are not starting a band. He will not, under any circumstances, be performing on the islands in the way he did in that dreamworld. That is not him, and it is not happening.]

[They already have music class together, so why not add this new level of excitement? It's another way she can spend time with him and singing-

Well, she loves to sing.]

I can't write all the words I know, but I'll sing them. It'll be like that.

Get someone to write them down for you, maybe. Have a brainstorm session.

[He won't pretend he's any good at that kind of thing - off-the-cuff composition, putting words to paper. He's not that guy. Jay was that guy, in the false memory he doesn't belong to and doesn't dwell on. Maybe that's what script supervisor translated into, in his mind: a lyricist.]

[Spelling isn't exactly her forte, but there are smart people all over the place to rely on. Someone's bound to know the words she can't figure out on her own, even if most people write differently than her to begin with. ]

I can ask-

[Someone at camp? They all know spells. Makes sense spelling would be up their ally too.]

Taako's very smart. I think he can spell too. He might 'brainstorm' with me.

That's the spirit.

[First he gives her a flute, then he teaches her that writing words to songs is an actual occupation. The elves probably hate his guts pretty fucking thoroughly by now. Or they should.]

[He clears his throat slightly, dropping his stare back to the instrument in his lap.]

You been...okay? Since...uh, since that whole thing with the dreams?

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