[open] i see you softly smile through the glass

[yesdoubt]

Who: Momo and you!
When: First half of Iuneril.
Where: Berry farms, the red light district, the partially-healed area of Wilde, and at the under-construction new outposts near Dorchacht.
What: Berry Picking, Sew N Sews, Silent Forest and Outpost Progress quest stuff (but also open to Bond Counselling if anyone wants to plot for that!)
Warnings: Potential for some rather nasty self-hate related stuff in Berry Picking depending on how honest Momo gets. Also obviously questionable themes for the Sew N Sews quest.

[a: such sweet sorrow (berry picking)]

[Momo has done a whole host of odd jobs in his life, so when he finds out there's berries to be picked while their very short season is here, he figures it can't hurt. He's curious about what makes them so sought-after in the first place, but also, having solid and regular work here doesn't mean he's not still prepared to pick up a little extra money here and there. It's nowhere near as bad as all the jobs he was running when he and Yuki started out and were flat broke.

On one hand, he's resistant enough to drunkenness that that aspect of the berries pretty much rolls off him. On the other...he's not very honest at all, and the lack of obvious side-effects from the berries to start with means he's not about to notice that until he talks to someone.

And what do you know, there's other people in the berry patch, and Momo's generally the type to take company where he can get it. So he sidles around his bush to whoever's picking nearby, offering a cheery grin.]

How's it going? If you're getting tired, Momo-chan can always take over for you. [A cheeky wink. Clearly the great motivator here is making sure someone else doesn't make berry bank before them.]

--

[b: dress-up dolls (sew n sews, 18+ characters only)]

[As an idol, Momo has worn some ridiculous things in his life. And has also worn very little for sexy photoshoots. Putting those two skillsets together, he feels like he can be at least somewhat helpful when the red light district calls for costume help.

For anyone doing the sewing, he's quite cooperative and polite, waiting for word from them or the staff before he strips down enough for measurements and they can figure out what's closest to his fit. Outside of being buried in his usual loose clothes, he's very toned, and there's the very faint tint of a flower-shaped spell tattoo on his spine just below the nape of the neck. The colours are shifted only slightly from his skin tone, as if someone had pressed some kind of translucent pink material to it, and the lines trail up towards his head before disappearing. He seems fairly comfortable with the situation, standing with his weight mostly on one leg and grinning cheerfully at whoever's doing the measuring.]

You can start whenever, I don't mind how long you take. [It is, actually, a professional point - he's used to drawn-out photoshoots where he's half-naked.

Anyone trying on costumes as well might be approached by him, too - second opinions are always helpful, and he practically bounces over to tug on sleeves and get people to face him so he can take a look. For his part, at the moment he's wearing...basically a harness with straps crossing over his chest and up to his neck, and down a little onto his legs like a garter. It at least has enough solid-colour fabric to cover his privates, because that part needs paying for, but besides that the rest of the fabric is just a lot of fancy pink arm drapes and a long, narrow panel from the front and back of the belt that trail very prettily but are extremely sheer and cover approximately nothing.]

Come on, show Momo-chan your look! I promise I won't judge you if you're new to this stuff. [Probably.

Also, there's a non-zero chance he might just swipe in the occasional adult passer-by who looks like they're wondering what's going on inside. Prepare to get walked into the brothel like this is business as usual.]

So, how do you feel about playing dress up for a little while? It pays well! [For the very small amount of work it is, at least.]

--

[c: hello darkness my old friend (silent forest)]

[Momo definitely wants to check back in on the forest healing, since that was the first mission he actually went out on after arriving here, but he ends up going with a larger part-Wilder part-Mirrorbound group rather than forming a smaller group of his own. His Bonding was pretty recent, and he does at least want to try and not do anything too dangerous this month considering what he was asked in the process. But that isn't going to stop him taking the safety-in-numbers route and going out with a sizeable enough group to hopefully reduce the risk.

He has vastly better control over his magic now considering he's been here months rather than the whole two weeks he'd been here last time, and his magical stamina has certainly improved too. But that just means he's putting all the more into it, trying to make his effort proportional to how much he's improved since then.

For much of his time infusing magic, he can be found very close to a thriving patch of flowers that look an awful lot like peach blossoms, except not on a tree as they should be. He's keeping his own eye on what's going on around him, but if any other Witches or Monsters approach, he'll free up a hand to wave them over.]

Can I keep you for a minute? I keep hearing something coming from that way and I could at least use some backup to go take care of it. [He points across into the trees with one painted nail, sounding almost apologetic that he can't just get up and deal with whatever it is himself despite the outpouring of magic he's visibly pushing into the leyline right now. Hell, it sounds like he kind of is planning to get up and deal with it now that there's someone else here and clearly nobody can roast him for being reckless now.]

--

[d: "what's that in your hand" "a knife!!" (outpost progress)]

[Momo likes Dorchacht and he likes the outposts for providing safe places to observe the Wilde, so of course he's up for helping Dorchacht's Wilders start to set up their own outposts. That, and he helped with the recent Aefenglom ones too, and sometimes it's good to just take a long day of manual work and wear yourself out for a good cause.

When he needs to break from the manual labour part, he switches onto the protection and scouting team, wearing a pair of gloves and covering clothing to help limit bare skin exposure to Shades. His clothing is also quite loose, and while he doesn't have a weapon out yet, when he moves the right way there's an odd outline visible for brief moments at a time that looks an awful lot like a weapon holster against his upper arm.

For now, he has one hand casually in a pocket and the other out, held in a very particular position like he's about to finalise a spell as he walks with whoever he's scouting with.]

So what've you got up your sleeve? Besides weapons, I like to have some idea of what people are gonna be throwing around when a Shade turns up. [His tone is cheerful enough, but he's still keeping a close eye out around them. He'll dampen the mood again when something comes at them.]
--

[e: wildcard]

[[Feel free to hit me up at reviseleviathan or on the CR meme for potential other stuff! I'm pretty interested in Bond Counselling but feel like that would work better with a tiny bit of advance plotting, and for any CR who visit or have a chance of catching him asleep, I'd be open to plotting Silent Forest aftermath wherein someone didn't learn his lesson from last time and gives himself magic backlash induced nightmares again.]]

Comments

[yesdoubt]

[Momo feels like there's some lack of detail here too, but in this case at least what he gets is enough to understand more why taking off the head ribbon would be so shocking. That said...in all honesty, he can't agree with the other man's angle on this, for a reason he's definitely not going to conceal considering the mood right now.]

When he asked me for advice a while ago I told him that if he was going to experiment and live differently for a little while, now was the time to do it. It's been a few months, but if he's made a decision to do that, then I'm not really seeing the problem other than the conflict that prompted it.

[Momo's generally nice about this sort of thing, so the tone with which he puts it is gentle enough, but it's clear that he is absolutely not seeing the outcome here as a problem, just the lead-up.] I know he has responsibilities in your world, but here we only have as much responsibility as we would coming fresh into any new place. Can it hurt that much to let him expand his horizons a bit and see how he wants to do things?

[turmoiling]

[Well, it was true they were... living differently, now. Horizons expanded, indeed.]

There is still no need to go that far. He was happy enough, before this disruption, but now I worry... what was he asking for advice on?

[It takes a moment to percolate through his own thoughts, to wonder just what Xichen had been speaking to other about.]

[yesdoubt]

Like I said, it was a couple months back, before you arrived. He was kinda unsure about bonding stuff and we ended up talking about general uncertainty with balancing home and here. [It had been a public radio show, so Momo doesn't feel bad about divulging the general gist of the conversation, even though they'd be here for a while if he got into the details.

There's something about the remark that brushes him up the wrong way a touch, though, and he takes a moment to decide how to word it.]

But that aside...whether there's "no need", whether he was "happy enough", isn't that his decision, not yours?

[Momo knows the feeling to some degree, because he can be very controlling over certain people in his life when he comes right down to it. But one thing he can't imagine doing is begrudging them making a decision for their own happiness and fulfilment, because that's all he ever wants for them.]

[turmoiling]

[Before he arrived. Well, naturally he was unsure about connections after everything that had happened, then. The voice is pleasant enough, but Jin Guangyao attempts to 'sit up' a little more then, snake body shifting.]

And if he chooses to be unhappy, am I not to call that foolish?

[He wobbles a little and folds back in on himself again, that momentary hint of something on approach to an objection fading wistfully. There was only one person who he could really talk to, even if they were still in disagreement on a few points.]

You're not so good a listener as he is, Momo.

[yesdoubt]

Obviously you're welcome to an opinion, but it's still his decision. I don't have enough information to take a side myself. [Again, gently put, but it's fairly clear Momo's not here to pass judgement based on only one side of the story. He's encountered too many people back home who know how to twist that sort of thing to suit them, and he's also had to be the voice of reason in too many situations.

He can't help but laugh a little, almost nostalgic, at the notion that he's not a good listener.] In the sense that I don't only listen, no, I guess I'm not. A lot of people look for advice from me back home, so I find it hard to just listen and not try to offer another angle, since I'm used to my juniors relying on me.

[Read: He's not the kind of "good listener" that doesn't ask questions and take what he's told without picking it apart a bit to offer his own thoughts and suggestions.]

[turmoiling]

[Jin Guangyao sighs, lazy coils of snake body shifting underneath him, trying to find a comfortable position again. He's sill getting accustomed to this.]

There's nothing wrong with advice. Only that things are often too, too complicated for easy words.

Pay no heed to my troubles, then. How is your Bond? How did you find one another?

[He's slowly coming out of the berry-leaf-drunk, being separated from the patch a bit, but a little light gossip is always of interest. He'll just take a good long break before finishing the job.]

[yesdoubt]

[Momo draws a slight breath like he's about to say something to that first remark - So why aren't you giving enough information to actually work with, then - but ends up just letting it out. He doesn't like this feeling of having to basically dig the claws of his self-control in to stop himself from saying things he knows would likely be a very bad decision, but the distance from the berries is relieving it a bit for him now.

His Bonding story with Lio is relatively uneventful, if curious, so he doesn't mind spinning onto that topic for a little bit.] It's been good so far, though we've only been in it for a few weeks. Technically we met during that underground dream, and I faked a bond with him there because we were both sick of getting shoved into people by the locals trying to bond-matchmake. A while after he arrived, he was really struggling against the monster changes and I think it brought on the ferality part a bit quicker than normal, so he asked if I'd bond with him and I agreed. So I guess the matchmaking worked, just a few months late.

[A one-sided shrug, as if it's not that captivating a tale. There's more to it than he's mentioned there, but his desire to protect Lio's privacy means it doesn't take much to stop himself from meandering on that particular subject.]

[turmoiling]

[Perhaps not an exciting tale, but having personal experience of just how much the Bond opens one up to another person, Jin Guangyao smiles at the simple explanation.]

Oh, I see. That's very kind of you, Momo, to help him so. At least 'Witches' have the option of familiars, should their energies build up too much. There are no other choices for those of us chosen to become monsters, other than to act as beasts, should we not be so fortunate as to have someone we are already close with.

It is... not an easy thing to deal with, to be sure.

[yesdoubt]

[Momo lets the compliment pass him by, because he tends not to take those in general and particularly not about helping people, though he does give a thoughtful hum when he mentions familiars.]

Witches definitely have more options, but I'd call familiars...more of a stopgap, they'll give you a couple of extra months but you're still gonna have to bond eventually. [Unless someone cycled through several familiars to compensate for that, but that seems unnecessarily callous to him. Using them as a balance for a Witch-Witch bond seems more viable in the long-term, but that still requires bonding in the end.] Monsters really have a hard time, though, because it sounds like it's way harder to predict ferality than it is magic overload. Putting the trust issue on top of that where a lot of people don't wanna bond for at least a few months unless there's someone they already know here, it's pretty much a recipe for disaster.

[A sufficiently determined Witch could likely get outside the city so they only take themselves out in an overload. Monsters probably aren't going to have that kind of time to prepare.]

[turmoiling]

[Thanks for telling him things he already knew -- and had been personally afraid of. Even with the Bond, it was still not an ideal situation, had been particularly troubled at first as well.

Still he nods as though this is all very new and well-considered on Momo's part.]

Knowing each others' minds now, it sounds as though it is going well enough, then? Even a few months is not such a long time to be acquainted before taking that step.

[yesdoubt]

Yeah, we seem to be a pretty good match where that's concerned. [In that neither of them are all that inclined to pry into the other one's head because they're busy trying to keep their own business private. It's not a perk Momo was expecting given how sudden the Bond was, but he's glad for it, since the emotional aspect was largely why he initially avoided Bonding for so long.

His mouth curls into an amused sort of smile at the mention of not being acquainted very long, though, like he's pausing on whether to say what he finds funny about it.] We actually met in a dream and a memory initially, so if you want to get technical the time we Bonded was the first time we met in "real life". But he needed it, so there was nothing for the sudden part of it. I wasn't gonna turn him down just because we'd met recently.

[It sounds naive when Momo says it like that, but his ability to read people means misjudging who he decides to put that kind of confidence in is vanishingly rare. Lio, despite his claim to infamy back home, was ultimately a protector, and becoming something unpalatable to the rest of the world for the sake of protecting loved ones is something Momo can very much relate to, even if Momo hides the unpalatable parts.]