April Showers Bring Strange Flowers [OTA and one closed]

[blindwatchersees]

Who: "Theodor Gorlash," the butterflies, and you!
What: Getting to know the island and its inhabitants, finding oneself in the more literal sense
When: April general
Where: Downtown general/Paradesium
Warnings: To be listed in individual threads, likely to contain heavy discussions of various mental health topics


Strange Signals For a Small Desert Town [Closed, for Cecil]

In the middle of the night, that strange voice makes its way into Cecil's head yet again. That's quite rude of it, considering that at this time, more people are trying to sleep than not. There's an appropriate hour and an inappropriate hour for psychic communications!

Find... her. Find... her. The scion-to-be carries the spores. Find... me. Find... me. The worm waits alone. Dark. Strange.



A Fiddle of Sinews, a Flute of Bone [OTA, Empty Pockets]

He hasn't an instrument of his own, but Theodor wonders if perhaps he might find one on loan in the lovely little place where music wafts out like the alluring smell of freshly-baked bread. In the manner of a hungry stray cat, he makes his way though the door and settles in a corner (not in a chair, just a corner, sitting in a manner that is oddly feline and rather ill-befitting the frame of an old man). He scans the place with yellow, lamplike eyes, taking everything in.



A List of Things, Strings, Wings [OTA, Northwest Hollow]

After managing to scrounge up a bit of paper and charcoal, Theodor has settled in the quieter parts of Northwest Hollow, and is attempting to sketch the flowers and butterflies of the area. He's quite good at capturing their likenesses, however, the edges of his drawings seem to have a tendency to melt into faces, bearing exaggerated expressions of laughter, terror, and sorrow. It's probably intentional.

If anyone walks by, he's going to look up and acknowledge them, while his hand will keep scratching out designs independently. One of the aforementioned butterflies will keep its eyes on the page, as it perches on his shoulder.

Hum Dum Dee Dum, Hum Dum Dee Dum, Time For Something Sweet [OTA, Oak and Iron]


Speaking of the smell of baking bread, he's gotten quite hungry, and it suddenly occurs to him that he can't remember the last time he had a nice cup of tea or a strawberry tart. He makes his way to the Oak and Iron, and sits down at the first open spot that's just a little too close to someone else's seat to make ignoring conversation entirely feasible.

"So tell me... what's a good blend of tea around here, in your opinion? I imagine it's hard to find Greenmote Gunpowder around here."


Wildcard: PM me on Discord (redheadednimbus) if you have other ideas!

Comments

[blindwatchersees]

Fake. All fake. Doesn’t matter. Real, fake, waking, dream, doesn’t matter. Loved until he was worn down to ragged scraps. Took the pieces and made them new. Pieces. Pieces. Boyyyyyyyfriends~ 💛 💜

Yes, those emojis are somehow audible.

[lasthumanvoice]

"No, 🖤. He's a goth." Cecil tuts, then spins around in a circle and starts walking in a quasi-random direction, trying to find whoever's woken him up for late night gossip.

[blindwatchersees]

Pieces is ❤️ 🖤. The Worm feels 💜 💛.

Okay, the voice has momentarily completely forgotten about giving directions but also seems a little more coherent. For what it’s worth, the signal seems to get stronger in the direction of the entrance to Paradesium.

[lasthumanvoice]

"Are you really asking me, unarmed and unprepared, to make a night hike all the way out there?"

Through the woods and all, toward the cave...he's not certain of his odds of making it out there alive.

[blindwatchersees]

Unarmed? Noooo. Bring arms. Bring lots of arms. We have not grown enough of them.

But we need to speak. We need to speak, where the air does not thin us. We can wait, but we are impatient.

She is patient. The scion-to-be is patient.

[lasthumanvoice]

"Damn you to a desert hell, whoever you are. I'll try to come tomorrow night. But give me time to make my preparations."

[blindwatchersees]

...

We will wait.

The rumble fizzles out, with an odd lingering aftertaste of poutiness.

[lasthumanvoice]

The next night. Sundown. Cecil has a few small chaos magic trinkets he's prepared, and he's awake enough for whatever comes.

He enters the woods warily, heading toward the entrance to Paradesium.

[blindwatchersees]

Yep. The voice, which is mostly distorted and incoherent mumbling right now, is definitely somewhere down there. Inconvenient!

[lasthumanvoice]

Cecil is not the transmitter, he is the personality. But he still attempts to hone in on that mumbling, to ride the noise and tune it to signal, humming grey tunes in an attempt to sense an echo.

As he does so, he moves closer, wending his way through the sameness of the woods.

[blindwatchersees]

As he heads deeper, towards the voice, it seems to take notice.

Purple hues of desert shade reaching. It will hide us from the smiling sun. We can speak, we can speak, and she will know we are here. Closer. Closer. Let us make a face.

[lasthumanvoice]

Eventually, he reaches the entrance of the cave, looking within.

"Hello-ello-ello-ello?"

No, that's not the cave walls, the massive cavern is too large for the echo to work in such a manner, especially with the lush plantlife also there to absorb sound. That's just Cecil.

[blindwatchersees]

Despite the fact that that's not how the echo works, the sound is still somehow enough to cause a number of creatures deep in the cavern to start... chirping? Beeping? It's not the sort of sound one hear in a small desert town, until they're being visited by certain plagues of the natural world.

Deeper the caverns wide, and the first signs of something new and unfamiliar appear in puddles. They're little tadpoles, dull and muddy-colored, but with pretty golden flecking along their backs.

Deeper still, the caterpillars become more numerous, munching on the plants and fungi of the area. They come in a variety of iridescent colors, reds and blues and green, none of them seem to have a care in the world. Every so often, Cecil might see gemstone-hued chrysalises hanging down from roots and branches, like a rainbow of crystalline droplets.

Just when it seems like the errand is going to get either pointlessly tedious or pointlessly dangerous, something large moves in the shadows, with a squeak and a creak and a groan. Slowly, it extracts itself from the earth- a shambling hulk of mycelium, dozens of fungal stalk "eyes" blinking asynchronously, and with every move it makes, it dislodges caterpillars and puffs of luminous spores from its body.

It watches.

[lasthumanvoice]

"Well? What do you have to say for yourself?" Hands on his hips, staring down at the vestigial shroomlike godhood like his older sister staring at him when he made a mess as a child, in the years after their mother left them.

[blindwatchersees]

Its entire form shivers, as threads of mycelium shift and retract, rubbing against one another, causing squeaks and groans and cracks that together make a sound reminiscent of a parrot imitating speech. The words even sound like they're being spoken in different voices.

"Voice! Voice! Purple shade! You have found us, you have found the Worm!"

It rises up to more of a fullness of its height, and Cecil can see just how big this thing is- easily large enough to engulf at least a dozen men. A grand beard of moss and roots drapes off its half-formed face, and something glimmers like distant water in the depths of false eye sockets. It moves closer to him, a cacophony of chaotic signals emitting more frequently and intensely from it as it grows more excited.

[lasthumanvoice]

Cecil, a fool until the end, commits to the bit.

“Oh, worm?”

And then he reaches out as if to pet the godling.

[blindwatchersees]

As if its voice weren't enough like a bird's mimicry, now it's crooning, clearly quite pleased to have the attention. In the process of giving the fungal godling some scritches, Cecil has been repaid with the attention of a few caterpillars on his arm.

"Lonely. Lonely. Lonely worm. Above is too bright. Too bright! Too bright! Want to go chase the fleas, but the sun is a deadly laser makes our teeth itch. And she is ^up there. Her! Her! The she! *Sigh* ^on two bees! She must know a friend  w a i t s . Farther. We are farther, she says! We cannot go, but you can. You "here." Words! You carry them."

[lasthumanvoice]

“I don’t know who it is you’re talking about, squishy. I’m not against carrying the message, but unless you want me to tell a Story About You on the radio, I need to know who I’m looking for.”

Pet-pet-pet.

[blindwatchersees]

The "Worm" repeats the word "squishy" several times with a tone of immense satisfaction, playing with the phonics a little differently with each iteration. It's distracted for about two minutes doing that, before it realizes it's supposed to be discussing someone important, though when it does come back to the conversation, it's a little more scatterbrained and a little less comprehensible.

"Yes! Stories! Stories on air! We are made of stories, and the body heat will know us! Mercury ^rises! The one in the mirror says we're farther. We like stories."

Cecil's hand is slowly being engulfed by the fungal mass, which is clearly trying to maximize the surface area that is getting physical contact.

[lasthumanvoice]

“If you eat me, I won’t be able to do what you ask. Worse, I won’t want to help you.”

This feels like fair warning, but he doesn’t really pull away as he says it, trusting the mass of mycellium to not bring him harm. This is a friend, or he is a friend to it. One of the two.

[blindwatchersees]

"No. No eating. _Little *spark*, amber-trapped, no good to us. You have good sssssskin."

The mycelium sort of... nuzzles Cecil's arm.

"Lonely. Lonely worm. Warm touch  f a r  away. Pieces, Pieces,  f a r  away. Not like yours. Yours is close. He is a goth."

[lasthumanvoice]

"That tickles." Which isn't in the least a complaint. Oh, spore-filled friend is warm and good. Cecil relaxes a bit.

"Mine is a goth, yes. A goth who was a book. And before that a goth again. And before that, he was a little boy whose mother served the Beholding."

[blindwatchersees]

The tangle bristles in concern.

"Was a book... asked to be? The Grey made books. A place for each of them. One place, certainty. Abomination. Itchy."

[lasthumanvoice]

"No, I don't think being a book at that point in time was Gerry's choice." His world was a fuckery in many senses.

[blindwatchersees]

It relaxes again, making a sort of fibrous purr.

"Your goth is !!!free!!! now?"