ph_logs | i heard the thunder [open]

i heard the thunder [open]

Who: Phil and you!
What: May/June open
When: Late April and through May, probably June too
Where: Around town, the skies over the island, the Library, the hot springs
Warning(s): nudity in the hot springs prompt

but i find i got the question wrong [exploring]

A whole town. A whole island. Imagine that.

It's almost overwhelming, honestly, but Phil figures he may as well start big and wide before getting into the real nitty-gritty of it. So once things are slightly settled, once he has the time, he takes off. It won't be so unusual for people to see his silhouette soaring in the sky. If something fascinating catches his attention on the ground, perhaps he'll come down to check it out; his eyes are fit to see detail miles away, so distance is hardly a problem. Perhaps he'll land near you, or you can find him freshly landed someplace else. This is a lot more flying than he's done in years.

i was trying to run away [around town]

And of course, there's the glory of having more than a couple dozen other people to talk to. Phil makes himself a real neighbor's neighbor; he introduces himself to as many people as he can, he chats up anyone who seems free enough, he wanders place to place in the town, invites people to lunch or a drink or what have you. Sometimes he'll just be sitting around, pleased to be people-watching.

but a voice told me to stay [library]

Ah, weather. His old friend.

He's got to brush up. Get back into the swing of it, you know? And he's got to figure out what sort of currents and forces are acting on the meteorology of the island. Phil schleps down to the Library then, and spends long days tracking down research material for the case: he cross-references reports in the newspaper archives, digs up a scientific textbook on the global climate and its impact on the island, and even fishes up a few academic papers of... uh, dubious helpfulness, but it's fine.

Exhaustion catches him more easily these days than it used to. He's not terribly proud of it, but more than once he dozes off him his chair. Then shakes himself awake, then... dozes off again. At least he's not drooling on the books.

put the feeling in a song [hot springs] (cw: nudity, artistic nudity painting the link)

One of the things he'd spotted from above was, of course, the hot springs. There's even some signage nearby, so this is definitely both a public space and safe to take a dip in. Not saltwater, not chlorinated... jeez, it feels like it's been ages since he's been able to take a proper soak without having to take on some shape that got rid of his feathers. It's a relief. A good place to keep in mind if he has a particularly awful flare, too. (Although getting here would be tricky if he's gotten that bad.)

One day or another, Phil stops up there by himself. Undresses. Sighs a long sigh as he rests in the water. Lounging below the water or up on the grass, anyone is free to encounter him (and his shockingly sculpted figure), although he'll certainly hear you coming.

(And of course, do mind the wedding band he's wearing as a necklace.)

wildcard

[ hit me! ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Seems like it, yeah. I guess it makes sense that Mortanne couldn't scoop us all up in one go. It's a lot of people to fish up. I'm pretty glad we didn't end up alone."

Which is a vast understatement, although he tries not to think too hard about what he'll do if Skulduggery appears. If more than him appears.

"Speaking of company. You know that doctor? The one that helped me with this?" He holds up his bandaged wrist. The skin's scabbed and healed over, but it's tender, sore, and itchy enough that he still wants a barrier between it and the rest of the world.

"Same," Darcy agrees, taking a small sip. Still not the biggest fan of tea, but he likes how Phil makes it.

A moment, as Darcy thinks back prior to getting to slice sails with a knife and stab a bunch of people.

"Oh- yeah, the dude with the bad jokes. Mulcahy's friend. You want to invite him?"

He shakes his head. "Oh, no. We're not friends like that yet. I was just gonna talk about him. We had a really nice conversation up there, about home and stuff. You know he's from Maine? That's the northeast tip of the States. Not far from Pennsylvania. He's a few decades behind, but it was really nice to talk to someone who's familiar with the same stomping grounds. He'd been out to both Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Already knew about Groundhog Day and everything. It's a kind of a shame I've never been up to Maine myself."

He sips out of his cup again.

"I think... he made some kind of... joke-flirt? Pass? Sort of thing, at me. And then saw my ring. He got so embarrassed he immediately put his clothes back on and ran off on me."

"Oh, that's cool," Darcy settles in to just listen then, kinda glad he doesn't have to suggest that Hawkeye goes to the dinner for Phil's friends.

"Must be nice talking to someone who's actually been to where you're from, ehn?" less than an hour in a car park in Cleveland doesn't count and Darcy doesn't suggest that it does.

"He actually ran off?" Darcy asks, choosing not to address the flirting thing for now. He was there for his attempts on the ship and that alone was agonising, "like physically ran away?"

"Really really nice. Felt like I was talking to someone from home. I mean--well, I guess I was." It's nice. Really nice.

"Maybe not sprinting, but more or less, yeah. And I think something in the woods stole his boxers."

"What a weird dude," Darcy remarks, "I feel less bad about how I started off with Helena now."

...

"Oh- yeah, there's tree things in the woods that steal shit if you're not looking. Seems especially bad around the hot springs."

Kinda visibly pauses. That would explain why he was naked. Just gonna bury their face in the tea and practice the same technique that he honed on the ship of emptying his mind entirely of that train of thought.

"Anyway. Weird. Do you want me to kick his ass or are you good."

Phil snorts at that first remark. Sorry, Hawkeye, Phil’s first impression of you is entirely without game.

“It’s fine, it was mostly just something really weird that happened. We made plans to go and get coffee some time. He’s kind of intriguing.”

Weird, he means, but in a good way. (As if they aren’t all weirdos at this point.)

Darcy makes a small noise in answer, more an affirmation he's heard than anything.

To someone fluent in Darcy, it means he is trying not to view this as the start to a new different slippery slope where interesting precedes God knows what that directly causes their world to upend a number of times. Phil only just got here and already Darcy's going to be shunted out of the nest by someone 'intriguing'.

Not that any of it is Phil's problem. He's not going to make it his problem. At least this one is fair game if he fucks up.

"Cool," he offers after that moment of thoughtfulness, but can't work out what to say that isn't just asking more about him.

He lets that stand for a while, blowing over the top of his tea.

“I'm making new friends. We’re not cramped up with the same stale crowd anymore, ehn? I want to meet new people. Get to know our neighbors. I’ve been talking to people all around town, not just the doctor. I’ve met a jeweler, woodworkers, definitely a few tailors, farmers, and one guy who makes ink. Pierce’s just the one I have the weirdest story about so far.”

A beat. “Well, Cecil did try to teach me words like ‘blorbo’ and ‘skrungly,’ but I’m not sure I get it.”

He does, he’s just trying to fuck with Darcy.

Edited 2024-06-06 19:55 (UTC)

"I'm not- you can do whatever you want," Darcy starts, but then.

Those are words from pretty much immediately before he got taken. He kinda blue screens for a moment.

"He... why? Was he teaching you those?"

“Not sure. Something about me being a wet cat to one of the goddesses? The sky one.”

Very, very tiredly;

"Don't... pick up literally any slang from Cecil, he sounds like one of those weird basement people who are on Tumblr making up words that don't mean anything."

Huffs. Anyway.

"Why did he think you were a wet cat to her anyway."

“I don’t even know what Tumblr is.”

Darcy knows for a fact that he does.

“It was something about the fact that I’m a meteorologist. Celestine’s the local sky goddess, among other things, so he thought she would take interest in me. Which is kind of intimidating, to be honest.”

You know. Especially since it was a goddess that made him a weird bird guy in the first place.

“I should… probably look at what’s going on at the Temple, if I’m going to be dealing with her. Might make my job easier.”

"You make it very hard to be related to you sometimes," Darcy deadpans.

Still, he listens, and his gut twists a little. God help him if Phil gets a second pair of wings stapled to him. Or a tail. Or a beak.

"Would probably feel like cheating, ehn. Having a sky goddess feeding you the answers for how the weather is going to be."

If Phil wants to associate with them, it's his choice. Not like he's the Catholic one.

A lighthearted scoff. "If I know weather, I doubt it'll be that easy. But hey, maybe she can give me an extra heads up if we're gonna get drowned in snow for the next four months. Or help keep our radio connections steady. I'll at least throw an offering at the Temple or something to make sure I don't get another deluxe upgrade on the bird package."

Mortanne, too, now that he's thinking about it. For bringing them to safe harbor. For keeping him and Darcy together. And maybe Serranai, for that visit. May as well throw in something for the fourth sister at that point, why leave her out.

A small acknowledging noise. Darcy scoots over a little bit, not close enough to curl up against him or anything but certainly flagging that intention.

"You're really just... cool with picking up these new goddesses now we're here?"

He glances at him, drumming his fingers on the table.

"... I mean. Well. First of all, I stopped going to church when I was 9, and I only went because my mom made me. So I don't have any allegiances. Second... the way I see it, they're also like, locals, ehn? The moon goddesses from Lunatia haven't really followed me except for the physical changes to me that one of them left. Otherwise they're just the big magic beings that oversee a different planet in a different dimension. I may as well work with the ones here while I'm here. And if I don't say anything, they're not gonna know that I don't want more feathers."

Probably. How do goddesses work again? He assumes they aren't just reading his brain, or at least that they haven't gotten around to it yet.

Another small noise of acknowledging. Maybe he'll come to not immediately associate the top of the food chain with terror and see this as different to how Darcy ended up under Him. But for the moment, all he sees is something he can't protect Phil from. If they decide to curse him into a pigeon in a room full of pigeons, all he can do is try to pick Phil out again. He hates feeling like he's staring down something big enough to be out of myth.

Darcy sets the tea on the table and curls up into Phil, like he's wanted to do since he got here.

"I ehn... can't. But you know I'm here if you need otherwise, ehn."

"I never would've asked you to."

He takes in Darcy at his side, both an arm and a wing coming around to rest at his back. Magic still scares him. The people capable of the most of it most of all. But still--in all his years, he's still found all the beings capable of talking to him to just be beings, wanting similar things, and Serranai decided to speed date with him.

It's a start.

"I've already met two of them, anyway. We all met the local death goddess coming here, but at the speed dating charity thing, the Spring sister just... sort of showed up and said hi? She was really kind."

Darcy settles noticeably with his wing around him. If it wasn't so inconvenient in a real world, he'd probably just sleep right here like he often did back on the ship.

Still, Darcy gets an Expression at the one-two revelations. Hard to tell if it's the concept of his dad speed dating or the idea of a goddess showing up in person which is worse.

"That's..." it's a little like trying to get molasses through a sieve, "cool."

Phil's quiet for a little bit, sipping at his tea.

"You don't have to be okay with me associating with the local goddesses while we're here. I'm not committed to anything."

"I didn't say anything about it not being cool. I remember saying it was cool actually."

“Sure, but you said it weird. You took a big pause and everything. Something there was bothering you.”

Looks up at the ceiling.

"It sounds cool. I'm glad you're making friends with her or whatever. Better?"

“C’mon, Darts.”

…

“I had a sign put out saying I was just there to socialize, if that’s what you were wondering.”

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