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Mingle - Emergency Potluck

Pumpkin Hollow Community Bulletin

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WELCOME POTLUCK

Greetings, residents! Those more observant sorts among you may have noticed a large influx of very crowded ferries. In order to welcome our new residents en masse, Town Hall is holding a potluck in Town Square. Please bring a dish if you are able and make a new friend!

All of our newest arrivals need only bring themselves. We look forward to welcoming you all into our community, and may your lanterns always be lit.

This event is open to all! In light of our new influx of prospective players following the Great Sail Migration, we've decided to offer a small public event to tide everyone over until the TDM this weekend.

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At first glance it's almost possible to mistake the claws on the hand Daisy offers in turn for something more human than they are—like artificial nails styled to a curved point. At second glance, the mistake becomes much harder to make. When they brush against skin, it becomes impossible.

Daisy's handshake is firm, and controlled. Under the clothes provided to new arrivals, you can't see most of her scars; they're all hidden under the material, except for the slash across her nose and cheek, the nicks on her jaw.

"Daisy Tonner," she says, with a polite, even smile she rarely uses, these days. It's been a long time since she bothered with the pretty little flower act, on any level. But here she is. Leaning harder into her already obvious accent and the facade of a well-raised, small town girl. "It's a lovely event you've put on. Almost feels rude of me. Not being able to really take part."

She hasn't eaten a thing, so far, and that won't change. It's not the kind of sustenance she needs.

Interesting. Two can play at this delicate flower game.

"Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that." Her sympathy almost sounds genuine. Perhaps in some ways, it is. "I assume you have a dietary restriction? Perhaps I can be of assistance."

One of Daisy's earliest memories as Daisy is standing beside her father at a meeting with the local council, dressed in her nicest summer clothes, floral headband in her hair, playing the part of daddy's little princess who was grievously injured by the council's incompetence. She just had to stand there looking pretty and sweet and innocent, let them see the scar that marred that perfect image, and even though in private her family believed it to be her own fault, the lie got the old building site torn down within a year.

She never forgot the lesson it taught her. Even when people see through the mask, you learn something.

Daisy sighs a controlled, quiet sigh. "Doubt you could. The kind of thing I need isn't something you can put on a plate. Very inconvenient, really."

It's funny, how much that mirrors Dahlia's own childhood, standing in Fall's Promise in perfectly-cut black dresses as the line of siblings beside her grew shorter and shorter until it was just her father, or at least the man who pretended to be her father, keeping up appearances.

Dahlia smiles politely. "I think I may have an idea. Take a walk with me?"

Even the way Daisy tilts her head is a little different, a little less like you're being watched from the tall grass by a predator. "Alright. Let's walk."

Hard to know if this is genuine, or just a reason to get her away from everyone else and take a chunk out of her, but she's confident in her ability to hold her own regardless. So she stands, and gestures for Dahlia to lead.

And so she does, guiding her out of earshot of the party before looking to Daisy with a wry smile. "Can you keep a secret?"

Now the way she looks back at Dahlia takes on that uncanny air, a keen curiosity in the subtle raise of a brow. "Yeah. I can keep a secret. Wouldn't of made it this far if I couldn't."

"Good." Dahlia heads toward the woods. "You and I are cut from the same cloth, I gather. And I'm guessing we have similar dietary needs. How about you and I play a little hide and seek? Scratch both our itches. Maybe even make it fun."

There it is. Daisy doesn't say 'I knew it', but her expression probably says enough. An amused, dangerous smirk graces her features, with just a flash of teeth. "Similar. Probably. If hide and seek's what you think of."

One day her surety in her own ability to survive even if something turns out to be a trap may actually come back to bite her, but for now... "Yeah. Alright. Stakes?"

Dahlia's eyes light up with a certain predatory glee. "If I catch you, I'm going to eat you. If you're the one who wins, I leave it up to you."

Just like that, Daisy feels like she owes Siffleur ten quid if she ever sees him again. Maybe there is a certain appeal to being caught and eaten when the person threatening it attractive enough. Or maybe she's just developing new and exciting issues, but if she is, she can't find it in herself to complain.

"Alright. You eat me." Her head tilts, arms folded loosely. "Mm. On my end... not sure yet. Might have to see what I'm feeling when I catch you."

It's a playful, almost flirtatious sort of cockiness.

Blood rushes in Dahlia’s ears. She's caught and killed and eaten hundreds of people at this point, but this is the most fun it's ever sounded. She wouldn't even be too terribly remiss to lose this game.

"Sounds like a good time. I look forward to seeing what you decide... if you can beat me." They enter the treeline, obscuring the both of them. In a grotesque transformation--- hair blackening and spreading over her skin, teeth lengthening, horns and wings errupting from her--- she turns into a wicked creature with bat-like wings, cloven hooves, and a face like a cow skull. The smell of blood begins to reek from her fanged mouth, and she speaks in a distorted voice.

"Rrreadyyyy. Or. Notttt."

And with that, she launches into the trees on leather wings, vanishing.

Talk about a dramatic transformation. Whatever it is that's been keeping that pretty face in place over the monster beneath like a shroud, it's impressive.

(Idly, a part of Daisy wonders, not for the first time, what she'd morphed into, by the end. What twisted form could make her voice sound the way it did on those tapes. But then—)

—the scent of blood ignites the fire in her own, and all thoughts outside the chase to come fade into the background. She considers, and then discards, the thought of shifting into her wolf shape—not yet, not right away, use the advantages of your smaller size first.

For now, everything about Daisy just gets that little bit sharper, little bit more animal-like, little bit more dangerous. And with the scent on the air at the forefront of her mind, she pursues.

Dahlia keeps herself well-hidden, having the home court advantage despite her size. She knows these towering pines, knows the right angles to crouch behind their boughs, to wait and to watch. She can smell Daisy's sharpness through her cavernous nostrils. But she waits. It's no fun to chase right away. Better to wait, and let her opponent settle in.

Night creeps in slowly. Blue pinpricks glow in the dark. It's been long enough. Where are you, little flower?

Unfamiliar territory. New scents and sounds and sights. Fuck it's been so long since she was in a real forest to Hunt. Even excursions with plant life were so... artificial. They looked the part, but they never felt right.

Impatient. The experience in her tells her to bide her time, stay back in the shadows where she can hide, but the part of her that was cooped up in that cell, the part of her that felt powerless, the part of her that itches so intensely to taste blood...

It wins out. Subtlety goes out the window. Daisy rounds up behind the strongest taste of Dahlia's scent, noise of her approached reduced only by the raw reality of her size until in an instant there's something larger.

And what comes lunging from the darkness is a wolf.

Dahlia could sense Daisy nearby for several minutes before the pounce, but her smallness and experience did play to her favor. However, it's the abrupt transformation that throws Dahlia off her guard. A wolf strikes the side of the Devil's body, provoking a roar. She lashes out with claws before trying to put some distance between the two, but not without a nasty gouge in her shoulder area.

That's not something a change of form can hide.

But right now, she doesn't care. She places her hand-like paws on the ground and leans forward, teeth-first, preparing to lunge using her limbs and powerful wings. She snaps threateningly.

Violence in this form still doesn't come naturally, to her. The Hunt made her an animal but it didn't make her an animal. This has always been something else. Something new. Something she shies away from until suddenly she doesn't.

The way she rears back from Dahlia's claws is clumsy and unpractised, someone moving in a body that's mostly-but-not-quite-right. And so the strike catches her. More than distance, it's blood that spread between them as the flesh of Daisy's flank tears.

She lands spread-pawed and braced. The pain only invigorates her. And though the blood stains her pale fur, mats it together in dark red clumps, the gored skin beneath starts to knit back together.

The wolf bares her teeth. Snarls. And lunges first.

They clash in the middle as Dahlia pounces just after. Daisy is well-trained--- Dahlia's not getting out of this without taking some more damage. Scratches from claws and teeth bloom across her arms and chest and face. But in the end, Dahlia's size gives her grapple an advantage, and she slams the wolf to the ground, catching Daisy by her throat. "You're it."

The wounds don't heal as readily, when the source of the injury is still there. Blood beads and flows where clawed digits dig into her throat and the snarling that ripples past her bared teeth is wet and strained, and yet somehow exhilarated. It's almost a laugh, except in all the ways it can't be, coming from a body not made for it.

Until suddenly it is. One moment, the wolf. The next, the small woman. The grip on her throat doesn't even have to shift—there's a dream logic, to how her form shifts; you never see it, you never feel it, it just is. And so there is Daisy, bleeding and grinning, almost manic.

There was a time where being caught would've aggravated her. This doesn't seem to be that time.

And so through bloodied teeth, all she says is: "A-Apparently."

It takes Dahlia a long moment to decide if she wants to shift back or stay like this, before she decides to split the difference.

The form she takes next has the same angular face and large, wide-set eyes as the human form that Daisy knows from earlier. Everything about the structure of her is the same. However, she now has pointed ears, black buck's antlers, blue eyes with black sclera, and a deep blue complexion. She straddles Daisy, hand still at her throat, sitting on her hips.

"I don't usually play with my food. But you seem like you'd make a fun exception."

Oh there are layers of surprises to this one, aren't there? Three faces, one woman, the same mouth with a taste for blood. There's so many questions she should have and not a one of them makes it past the thrum of adrenaline and anticipation of something much more interesting than whys and whats and whens.

Daisy's throat bobs beneath Dahlia's hand. Her tongue flicks out to swipe the blood from her own teeth.

"Y-You won. Play all— all you like."

It has been a long, long week and there's a gorgeous woman with all the sharpness of a shark straddling her hips ready to eat her alive. Being so close to Prey has never been so appealing.

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Mingle - Emergency Potluck

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cw: violence, gore, all the fun stuff

cw: gore & violence continues

cw: gore & violence continues

cw: gore & violence gets sexier

cw: gore & violence & anticipated cannibalism still getting sexier