middaeg | [open] i see you softly smile through the glass

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[open] i see you softly smile through the glass

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.]]

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( sadly, lio knows very little about how to be well organized and neat in a conventional sense. he has, however, learned that if his nest is just a little out of sorts, he will almost compulsively look for the one thing out of place and fix it. it's not yet a compulsion, but it is something where... he just needs to feel absolutely comfortable and safe. part of it might also be the fact that, before all of this, he was never truly settled down to begin with. )

Banned? ( he frowns, crouching down by the leyline. it lets him roll his shoulders, and he can let his wings flutter gently with the bottom tips touching the earth. ) But why?

( his eyes finally settle on those peach blossoms from before, a smile faint on his lips. )

They're beautiful, by the way.

[Momo draws in a breath and lets it out before letting the magic flow again. It dances around his hands, sinking into the leyline, but it's considerably less of a spectacle than earlier, both smaller and less dazzling in its presence.

Despite the visual evidence that he's fairly close to running on empty, Momo doesn't address it, instead maintaining his usual upbeat manner. Even if it falters rather quickly on the topic of why theatre magic is banned.] Theatre itself was banned until last month, apparently a long time ago some actor thought it was a good idea to enchant his audience a little for success points and then accidentally burned down a packed theatre during a performance. I can understand why they don't want to risk it just yet.

[They don't need another catastrophe like that on their hands. Momo will take the nicer topic as an out, though, and he glances over to the flowers with a slight smile.]

Peach blossoms are pretty cute. Maybe the peach influence on me is why I turned out cute too, they're like my peachy brethren.

[He pokes his tongue out a bit to indicate that he's kidding, though the joke is a touch obtuse considering half the people he's made peach jokes in front of don't know Japanese and thus the pun involved.]

( it's offensive hearing that someone would do that, and lio's blood turns cold at the thought of an 'accident' causing tons of death like that. burning especially, being something that he could never do. he would never use the fire to kill someone innocent.

but it still hurts to hear.

he lets out a sharp huff as momo pushes them into a more pleasant subject matter. the joke is a little lost on him, though if maybe he spent more time with galo when he had it, he would've understood it as some kind of joke from a far off, foreign land. )

You? A peach? ( lio snickers. ) I guess you look pretty soft, but I don't know about the pit inside. I'd like to think of you as being pleasant and fuzzy. Maybe not juicy, but...

( because that's a very odd kind of compliment. )

[Momo frees up one hand - because he only really needs one to do the purging, especially with this little magic - to cup his face cutely, because clearly that's necessary when Lio calls him soft. His pit is probably the part of him people encounter when they try to do anything nasty to his loved ones, come to think of it.]

Momo-chan will take being warm and fuzzy and soft! Juicy sounds like kind of a weird compliment, doesn't it... [It'd have to be in a very specific context to not be kind of disturbing, honestly.] You still sound kinda unconvinced I'm in the peach family, though, so I guess I should mention that "momo" means peach where I come from. I have the name and everything!

[His name is essentially written as hundred and spoken as peach, but he hasn't actually written his name in kanji since he got here, so hundred puns would be the even more obtuse option.]

( how can lio not blush when faced with such supreme peachy-ness? his wings flutter, and he turns his head to look in another direction until the burning stops. it's not even the fact that momo is indeed pretty attractive, but that he flaunts it? he knows he is? it's not being uncomfortable that lio feels, but a reluctance to admit that... well, it's.

he doesn't know how to put it, even in his thoughts. being treated nicely in general is still A Thing, so this is almost overwhelming.

keyword: almost. )

Does it? ( momo = peach. he'll remember that. ) Then it fits you perfectly.

( lio finally looks back once his face doesn't feel like it'll explode. )

I don't think my name has any meaning, but I want it to. Someday.

[Momo's smile when Lio turns his head away is best described as a cat smile, because why take meticulous care of your looks if you can't also use that to troll people gently. Still, he knows there's a good number of people here who are less equipped to deal with that kind of teasing than most of his friends back home, so he gives him the moment he needs to recover, bringing his hand back down to hold above the leyline.

Also, his smile is considerably less cheeky by the time Lio turns his head back.] I'm glad you think so!

[That said, Momo did choose to go by that specific part of his name, so he did kind of choose the meaning in that sense too. So he can relate to Lio's want, and he grins.] I think it's fine to give something like that your own meaning. It does make me think a bit of lions because of "leo", though you'd need to grow your hair out a bit more for that.

[Hand up again so he can mime the shape of a big fluffy mane around his own chin. Lio's hair is the right colour, he'd just need a bit more of it to pull off the mane aesthetic.]

( another laugh. yeah, it did kind of make a little sense... one letter away from the great animal. but momo's opinion would be interesting to have, especially as he brings it up: )

... do you think it would look okay? Long, I mean. Normally I kept it short because it's easier to travel, easier to keep clean and untangled when I've had to go from forest to desert to city to...

( he even has an idea of how long he'd want it to be. something like this, actually. it might take time to grow. )

It wouldn't make sense though. The lion part. ( his wings flap once. ) I'm a bird, after all.

( and it goes without saying that lio laughs again as momo does the impression. it's endearing. it helps him think about other things that he wouldn't have before. and he's thankful for that, having momo be here. )

I'd like to have some of those blossoms in my nest. Maybe decorate it with more than just bed stuffs.

[Momo has kind of a bias where hair length is concerned, so Lio's wondering about longer hair immediately makes him nod.]

I think it'd look cute if it was a bit longer! I can understand having it short for practical reasons, but longer hair suits some guys better, so you might as well try it out, right? If you decide you don't like it, it's easy to get it cut again.

[Hell, Momo could probably cut it for him, considering he used to handle his own and sometimes Yuki's hair when they were so broke an actual hairdresser wasn't an option.

His hand returns to the leyline, and he glances towards the peach blossoms. It's not a huge cluster of them, but it seems as if there's a few plants there.] Maybe we can find a way to take a plant with the roots, and then we could replant it in the roof garden? Then you'd be able to get them for your nest easily.

[It'd have to be a fairly quick transport, but he's also reasonably sure the Wilders have stuff for taking plant specimens.]

( cute? huh. he'd look cute??? that does not compute, not in lio's brain. are harpies cute? is lio cute already? these are a lot of questions, but he can sum them up all with a noise: a snort that is accompanied with another turn of his head, before he slowly turns his head back to look at momo with one open eye. )

Guess it wouldn't hurt.

( he'll have to work toward it. or maybe there's some magic to just make his hair grow? still, that seems like an incredibly selfish thing to do when nature can take its course. )

... I could fly it there. I'm sure a plant isn't heavier than a person though I think I might be comfortable enough to do that soon, too. If they have something I can carry it in, then it'd be easy to start working on that.

( and then lio brightens even more. )

It should be safe for me to use my wings.

[Momo grins a little at the readiness with which Lio suggests his wings - considering how he'd been fighting the transformation when they Bonded, it's nice to see him coming to terms with it more. Becoming a Monster might not be a situation anyone wants to end up in prior to arriving, but he feels as if some parts of it might be easier to reconcile with than others.]

I think the Wilders take specimens sometimes, they should have something you can carry a plant in...even if it's just a bottle or something. Maybe take a bit of the soil with it as well, if it's safe.

[He assumes it would be if there's plants growing out of it that aren't infected, since he's pretty sure the taint in the ground would've moved to the plants if there was any left around here.] If you want a challenge when you get to lifting people, you can try taking me for a ride, though I'm heavier than I look...

[He makes an exaggerated sort of pout at that like it's a bad thing, except it's courtesy of his muscle so it's more just that he spends plenty of time lifting himself.]

( he'll make a note to go visit the wilders before going back home. it'll be easier for him to make that the last thing he does, after ensuring the safety of all the witches in the area. but even then, he'd make sure to start again with momo and then end with momo. surely others would understand; his bonded is important. very important. not just that, but they're friends. )

Come on. ( he sees through that pout! you can't win every time with that strategy, momo. ) You're stronger than you make yourself look at times.

( he likes that. )

So don't test me! You can't possibly be that much of a challenge, right?

( lio can think of a dragon that is probably a bit more of one, tbh. )

Oh, did you notice? I'm super happy! [And there goes Momo into the theatrics again, freeing up one hand to clutch his cheek like he's gotten a great compliment. There are a lot of compliments he subtly knocks back, but he does tend to be pretty happy with his body, even if he doesn't typically brag about it.]

I could be a challenge, you never know-- [He breaks off as there's a small burst from the one hand he has over the leyline, not dissimilar to the sputter of a dying engine. He pushed a whole hell of a lot of magic into this last time, but he just about forgot the fatigue that follows, leaving him moving that hand into supporting himself on the ground as he sinks forward for a moment.]

Ah, was I that short? I didn't even realise. [Tired, but still upbeat, because it takes considerably worse than fatigue and magic drain to make him not put on a smile.]

( the theatrics can be grating and to a monster like lio who can become aggressive in a moment's notice, momo's way of exaggerating things can be like gas to a flame. but... perhaps it's the bond that smooths out those moments where a simple huff and shake of his head wouldn't suffice? it's still cute, after all. lio won't forget that.

instinctively, he curls a wing as much as he can around momo, surprise and concern making him scrunch up his face. it lives shortly, because: )

No. ( a pause before lio cracks a grin. ) You're taller than I am, but not that much to be that difficult to lift.

( the harpy sighs, leaning into momo. body heat is still a good thing, no matter how warm or humid it may get. )

... I'm going to help you. Please don't refuse.

[There's that faint moment of surprise again when Lio curls the wing around him, the feeling like Momo isn't used to getting help. Or taking it, at least, because either he rebuffs it before anyone gets that close or if it's someone like Yuki who might make more of a point of it, he generally argues it down.

In this case, he doesn't quite argue, but there's a bit of a rueful smile at the request not to refuse help.] I'm fine, really, I'll just need a good sleep later. But I won't stop you.

[Which is, really, about as much of a concession as it's possible to get from Momo on the front of helping - claiming he's fine but not actively rejecting the help. He knows from last time that he's probably going to have some colourful nightmares tonight, but he neglects to mention that since it'll probably just worry Lio more.]

( Good. the fact momo isn't trying to brush him off is... surprising, but also an indicator of how serious this is. sleep or not, nightmares or not, lio's going to feel them both equally. does he think that not saying anything won't affect the harpy as he tosses and turns in his nest? maybe it won't be as viewing them himself, but lio feels for momo whether he likes it or not. )

I may not be able to lift you now, but you can lean on me. Save your energy just in case we need it on the way back.

( so that they can leave with other monsters and witches, safe in a group rather than apart. )

[Nightmares aren't unusual for Momo, honestly, so it's something he doesn't entirely think about in terms of Bond feedback. He figures if it happens somewhat often, it's probably not going to stand out all that much more than usual.]

I'll be able to walk. I don't know how to explain it, but magical fatigue is...kind of different from physical fatigue. I've worn out my magic, but it's more like being exhausted because you thought about something too hard than being physically worn out.

[In other words, it's more of a mental tiredness than a physical. Still sucks, he just needs a minute to adjust to the initial dragging feeling of running through his magic store.]

I'd say that's almost a worse state to be in than being achy or sore, or feeling weak.

( because not being able to make accurate decisions is worse than not being able to act upon them. he can't imagine going anywhere alone anymore either. having someone to back you up... it's important. )

Still, being fatigued in any way is not a good thing. No matter how you're feeling it.

[It does not exactly bode well for his strategising abilities, but hopefully that's not something that comes up on the way home. He won't argue over fatigue not being a good thing, he's just very used to keeping a lot to himself.]

I'm just glad it didn't happen earlier. [Now that he's had a moment for his head to unfog itself from that initial drop of lacking magic, he straightens up, stretching his arms over his head.] I guess some of the others are probably finishing up by now, so how about we go join up with them?

[Safety in numbers and all.]

Sounds good to me.

( it'll give lio a chance to rest as well. being on alert means focusing on every little thing, from movement to sound. it's difficult for him to not do that unconsciously, having to worry about ambushes and attacks. even the most innocuous thing could lead to potential disaster. )

And hopefully they'll be able to deliver those flowers safely. I can't wait to start taking care of them.

( to be surrounded by peach blossoms...! )

Right, we should come back this way anyway, so we can pick them up on the way back. [Most of the Wilders are scattered along the easiest path through this section of forest, so it's pretty much a given they'll have to come back this way after the group comes back together. Momo gives them a quick look over before he turns to head further down the path and find the rest of the group.]

Let's see who we can pinch a vial off before then.

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[open] i see you softly smile through the glass

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