August Aftermath: Plants Solidify Sunshine

[lifeaftr_mods]

AUGUST AFTERMATH: OVERGROWTH

Who: Everyone
What: You're back, for better or worse
When: August 19th and onward
Where: The Storyteller's Temple on Ensō, and anywhere else
Warnings: Please mark as you go!

Optimism Doesn't Change the Facts

By the end of the 17th, the last of those suffering from the Overgrowth have either pulled through or succumbed entirely. For the next two days, their bodies will decompose and the flowers will feed on their remains, flourishing into bright patches of color.

If you perished and choked on your flowery words, never fear. Come the 19th, you will be stirring awake in the Storyteller's Temple. You will be experiencing a few...side effects, as it happens, while your body readjusts. It will take something like a week for those symptoms to disperse, though the Storyteller isn't around to inform you of this.

What is around? Aside from your own freshly revived selves, there are a great deal of flowers, and all of them are sickeningly familiar. Scarlet gladiolus. Blushing dog rose. Soft yellow buttercups. Garnet-colored geraniums. Dark nodules of fly orchids. Rich violets. Periwinkle hydrangeas. Peppered yellow speckles of goldenrod. Jade green zinnias. Red spears of snapdragons. Pale begonias. Pink spangles of mountain laurel. The very flowers that killed you are now growing all over the Temple, inside and out, in rich abundance, cloying the air with their perfumed fragrance.

Don't be concerned. These ones certainly aren't going to be spreading to your flesh anytime soon.

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If your character died during this event, please let us know if you have not already. Death penalties have been reduced for this event, but we still need to account for them!

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( CODED BY BOOTYCALL )

Comments

[hyperlit]

done it before?

[They...would have to assume he has, seeing as he sounds quite confident about it.]

[vagabone]

[What was that? You wanted more confidence? He thumbs his suspender strap, look how cool he is.]

I was here for the last one. Came in on the day the elevator was swallowing people up.

[hyperlit]

ok

[Don't be unnerved by their bluntness. That's just...how they are.]

stories give them power
might help

[vagabone]

[He's reading text off the screen of some futuristic gadget. It was always going to be an odd conversation.]

Stories are powerful for everyone. Don't worry, I can always find something to talk about.

[hyperlit]

good

[Another muffled cough. At least they are no longer leaking blood and flowers at such concentrated rates. Now, they merely leak blood, at more typical rates for one such as them.]

[There is a good reason their clothing is red. The pink blends in very well.]

[vagabone]

[That sounds painful. Maybe they need some honey and tea... neither of which he actually has.]

You want to sit down and tell some stories of your own?

[hyperlit]

[Their only immediate response to that is a small, slow blink of their eyes.]

don't have stories

[That is a lie. But they are no longer being physiologically penalized for it, so you can't stop them.]

[vagabone]

Oh, not to me. To them.

[He jerks a thumb at the Storyteller's altar. Yeah, not buying the lie one bit. Just take it easy, whoever you are.]

[hyperlit]

soon

[There are nights for this sort of thing, after all. And the Drifter...has people they need to ensure haven't perished. Or have since been revived.]

flowers
picking them?

[vagabone]

[Stupid idea, isn't it? He eyes all the flowers that outnumber him hundreds to one. And shrugs.]

Just to be rid of them. Especially if they're poison.

[hyperlit]

[The Drifter cocks their head to one side. There is no other visual cue as to their puzzlement, but puzzle them the instinct does.]

growing back?

[vagabone]

[He... slouches a little more. Y e p.] ...They are. Which means I'm wasting my time, huh.

[What else would he do while he waits, though? Sit down and probably fall asleep?]

[hyperlit]

yes

[They are inclined to agree that, yes, he is indeed wasting his time. And what's more:]

they are not the sickness [...which inclines them to think that, assuming no one attempts to pick them, they are largely harmless.]

[vagabone]

I know. But they shouldn't have to be the first thing people see when they come back.

[hyperlit]

burn them off

[They're JUST SAYING, if you want to get as many of these flowers out of here as possible, there are much more efficient (if dangerous) ways to go about doing that.]

[vagabone]

What? No!

[Also, how about no. No no no.]

Not with all these living people in here. Especially not around you, with that cough.

[hyperlit]

[Their response to that is, perhaps, worrisome in its dismissiveness:]

dying anyway
use fluro?

[vagabone]

...You're that sick?

[Nooo, not concerning at all. He knows medicine has come a long way since his day, and that thingy on their shoulder must mean they come from a more modern place. Maybe if they were able to rest in a hospital with electricity, good doctors, and drugs, they wouldn't be 'already dying'.

Nice work, islands.]

What's your name?

[hyperlit]

just a drifter

[They seem as nonplussed as ever. They are, after all, already dead where they come from. Judgment may not be lingering over their shoulder, hastening their inevitable demise, but there is no curing them. There is no lifting that illness away from their lungs, caught as it is like flypaper.]

[vagabone]

[Stop being difficult!!]

What does everyone here call you? 'Drifter'?

[hyperlit]

[A nod. That is what everyone calls them. They have required no other title. But they recognize this as a gesture intended as to be reciprocal, and so:]

yours?

[vagabone]

[...Good enough. It's either Drifter or 'hey, you with that cough'.]

Héctor.

[Sr. Héctor Noapellido.]

[hyperlit]

hector

[Their written language does not account for accented letters. Sorry, bud.]

it is good to meet you

[vagabone]

[Oh, well, he'll live. Sort of. There's no capitalization either.

They might not really mean that. He's grinning anyway.]

Nice to meet you too.

[hyperlit]

[The Drifter inclines their head once. They are a creature of a few words. They return to appraising the flowers sprouting from various points throughout the temple, pausing here and there to brush at the petals with tips of gloved fingertips.]

[Their hands are protected; they need not worry about poison.]