middaeg | THYME FOR A NEW WORLD (open)

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THYME FOR A NEW WORLD (open)

Who: Papyrus and you!
When: through Iuneril
Where: Primarily around Haven, at Runetchers, and the various brothels (during class time), but he can be found throughout the city
What: Catch-all for June quests (a job and the flirting classes) and miscellaneous wildcard prompts
Warnings: None likely, will update as needed

💀 PROFESSIONAL ARTISTE
Artistically customizing his world has been as easy for Papyrus as breathing, but it's never been his bread and butter before. Everything from convincingly painting that one stone overhang to look like a wooden bridge, to customizing some of his clothing to be even cooler, he's done it.

And now, against all expectations, there's a high-demand job that requires something so simple as the ability to draw clean, consistent lines.

"I can't believe they're paying us to come in and do this every day... Won't they have enough scrolls, someday??"

💀 FLIRTING: BECAUSE... THAT'S HOW ADULT HUMANS INTERACT?
Now, Papyrus knows what a brothel is. He's read a classical novel or three, and seen some innuendo in human movies. But! Like so many things, the skills they offer can be used in other avenues of life.

It only takes days in this surface world for the sheer number of humans in this world to overwhelm him, a little bit. There's so many, and while they aren't killing anyone, there are a lot of tensions between monsters and humans... And some give him personally a wide berth, probably due to his resemblance to an ambulatory cadaver.

He can't blame them, he expects he'd feel uncomfortable talking to a dust cloud.

But thankfully a new friend (!) pointed that out and gave him an idea: the key to getting along with all these strangers, monster to human, is in reassuring them with a friendly demeanor. He's tried his own C00L DUDE energy, and that's worked for some, but not all. The comforting guidance of acting like a mom, likewise, worked with some - but left others even more eager to walk away.

So now it's time to learn a new approach. An... adultier approach, full of 'subtle' winks, welcoming tones of voice, and maybe even... lascivious words. After all, his original human friend - child though they were - had gone about the underground flirting with people, clearly in imitation of the adults they knew. Best of all, the coaching also goes into reading things about others' expressions, which will surely help him in figuring out what demeanor to bring to the table with strangers.

"Hi," says the skeleton, sitting nearby in the class. He leans in a little, like the instructor demonstrated earlier. "I love your hair, I wish I had hair like that."

💀 ECHOES FROM THE CAVE
After the spelunking adventure went... not exactly as advertised, slightly more danger than the anticipated none, Papyrus finds himself back in Aefenglom a changed skeleton. Not physically, aside from the still-healing spider punctures... but emotionally.

It's easy to chalk down as lingering nerves from a near-death experience, but he can't seem to tolerate being alone as easily. Long hours when Sans is asleep or out , and not available for chattering with, pass even more slowly and uncomfortably... and skimming back through the entire archive of these watches only passes so much time.

More than loneliness, it feels so much more comfortable being around people. Like, Papyrus carefully doesn't think to himself, being part of a group - a pack - is reassuring some new instinct.

"Hi! What are you doing?"

All time of day or night, he goes up to random strangers, greeting them in search for friendly sorts to (unofficially) hang out with.

💀 WILDCARD
((There's plenty of other possible reasons for characters to interact; if you've got one in mind, send me a quick PM here or on plurk for me to confirm, or just toss it up here - I'll respond if I'm down for it))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Toby wasn't too upset by the cave adventure. It had turned out to be far more dangerous than expected and there was little tangible benefit, but the casualty count was low and it seems to be over without great incident. For someone from Animorphs, that's almost a win.

Just now, in the darkening evening, she's activated the spell on her blades that has them all glowing with a warm light. In most it's an ambient glow that gently illuminates the space immediately around her, but the ones on her head cast cones of light out ahead of her. Ink has gotten trapped between the scales of her hands and under her claws, resisting the casual rinse she gave them earlier.

She stops.

"Hello, Papyrus. I'm walking back to the outer city." She considers for a moment. "Would you like to accompany me?"

"Sure, I'm happy to provide company!" Papyrus agrees as he approaches, with a little extra enthusiasm, and ends up a few feet away. "You're going to the... 'outer city', huh? Out by the barracks?"

He doesn't quite believe his own words, since he doesn't remember seeing her around there before - and he and Sans have been living there since first being offered a place to stay.

But it makes more sense than the other options, like going outside the wall. Sure, there's buildings out there, people living some daredevilish life style he's not sure he'd want after the Cave Not So Safe After All... But it's not the controlled kind of danger, where someone set it up in anticipation of them. It's just warped wilds, where the trees bleed oil and spiders are really aggressive.

Toby dips her head on her long neck and starts walking again. It'll be good to get away from people, to be able to move without having to watch for people and their clutter. She's enchanted her blades to not cut living tissue without her meaning them to, but they'll still go right through cloth and the dead outer layers of skin, and she's pretty strong.

"Outside of the wall," she says implacably, unaware of the tenor of his thoughts. "I need to find something to eat and choose a roosting tree."

She says it so calmly that it almost dislodges his own thoughts, and he stares baffled at her for a moment. The creepy tar, and the cave with the nightmares and the venomous, unfriendly spiders, and a whole lot more horrors he hasn't heard about, they're all outside that wall. And she's living out there?

"Uhh... Oh, you said you haven't lived in a house before, right?" Papyrus remembers with a start. "So you're not used to walls or puzzles keeping you safe..." He hesitates on saying more, not sure whether to advise her on where best or how to live.

If he stops to stare, she doesn't. At a walk her tail moves slowly back and forth, sometimes brushing the ground or pushing off it. Toby's just not quite as stable on two legs as most people in this setting.

She shakes her head. "What's a wall but part of a cage? I don't like trading safety for freedom, and I can't survive if I stay in here anyway, so it's a negligible safety at that."

He does fall behind briefly while he stares, but he bounces back to following soon after. Even without his magic, skeletons weigh very little compared to other similarly sized creatures, and he can bound with the best of them.

"A... decorative cage?" Papyrus suggests at first, then shakes his own head. "Wait, no. The difference is simple! You can leave a wall or a house, if there's an open door. It's only a cage... if you can't leave."

He knows the difference from experience, now that he's living on the surface. The room in the barracks isn't much to look at, it's barely a home, but it is a place to stash his things and occasionally nap. The freedom with which he takes to the outdoors, directly under the sky... He wouldn't trade it for his house in Snowdin any time soon, that's for sure.

"Who opens the door? Never mind." This is starting to get into the metaphor weeds, and Toby does not care for that sort of nonsense. She tries changing tactics.

"This city is made for humans and monsters and their needs. I am neither."

That IS the question, and apparently the answer is 'mystery mirror magic', which is satisfyingly alliterative but unsatisfying in any other particular. Words like these lurk behind Papyrus' teeth, though he doesn't begin to offer them. Her straightforward comment is pretty straightforward, with no room to argue directly.

"Well... I guess that's true." He hums uncertainly for a moment, then adds, "but that doesn't mean you're not welcome! Mirrors might be cold, sideways welcome mats, but something invited you here."

Truth be told, they haven't even entered the tall grass of the metaphor weeds Papyrus has to offer. Toby may someday find herself discouraged or even frustrated in conversation with him.

That's a thing about Toby, really. She's not subtle, and inclined to mistrust too much bush-beating when she encounters it, and is ready to contemplate some very worst case scenarios.

"Something coerced me here for reasons unknown. All of us." She slows for a moment; the buildings here are covered in climbing ivy that turns the walls green, and for her that's an agreeable change. There is so little growing in this city. "Our bodies may be useful commodities in some sense or other. Since I'm designated a 'witch', my blood is valuable to those designated 'monsters', and since I'm a Hork-Bajir, I heal from injuries that would kill humans - that could be useful to someone."

Toby will absolutely find herself annoyed by how elaborate metaphor weeds can become. She is low-nonsense.

Fortunately for them both - and their chances of friendship- a blunt temper can be an effective lawnmower.

"So... you suspect our kidnapper(s) kidnapped you... for your blood?? How would they use your blood? Why?" Papyrus asks, sincerely confused and a little grossed out.

He absolutely did not pay enough attention to some of the informational meetings. The witch one, he was distracted half the time with attempting to conjure bones, or lights, or whatever else Sans managed... and the monster one, he spent half the time remembering and worrying about his transformations during that first dream.

Indeed.

"A witch's bodily fluids can be used to stabilize a monster going feral, and so blood and so on are sometimes given out for that purpose." And then monsters gain a taste for it. Gross. Toby really doesn't understand the appeal of carnivory. "It probably applies to flesh as well."

She's not afraid of monsters, she's confident of her ability to defend herself from those things that could kill her and recover from anything less, but the idea of being made available is unpleasant and unsettling.

Papyrus doesn't have a nose, so he has no nose to wrinkle at the notion. But he draws back, the remnants of his smile vanishing and eyesockets creasing in a frown.

"People eat... people?? To help keep calm?" That's alarming and gross on many levels, and bad enough he can understand her concern a little more.

She's not human, and doesn't have their soft prehensile lips; still, she can put enough tension into the corners of her mouth to bare crushing teeth that sap has lent a yellowish tint. "That's my understanding. It seems some of the potions sold by less qualified vendors to stabilize monsters are primarily treated witch blood, and monsters consuming this can become addicted. We were warned of this, in any event."

They may well have been warned, but, well. Between how distant and unreal the concerns seemed, how disoriented he was by so many humans around, and his distraction during the meetings... Hopefully there aren't too many bombshells like this that he missed.

"Oh my god," Papyrus intones slowly. Between their approximations of human expressions, they make a bridge of shared disgust both can recognize. "They're not even eating people for food, just to calm down? Is it really that bad?? Why doesn't everyone just get potions from the Coven..."

She's slowed down, distracted from her goal.

"I think it is capitalism. Qualified potions are expensive and take time and effort to make, while bodily fluids are simpler." She huffs out a breath. "At least when they involve someone like me, with a circulatory system."

It's hard to see how someone would get a renewable resource out of a skeleton. Toby imagines that he has some kind of self-repair function that at least handles day to day wear and tear. Good thing he isn't a witch.

With Toby slowing for the conversation, Papyrus comes up beside her and slows to match her pace.

"Wow, capitalism is terrible. I wish I was a witch, I could learn to make the qualified potions and be a hero..." He squints, thinking her comment through, and looks sidelong at her. "Everybody sweats, right? Except robots."

Skeleton physiology is a bit strange, but most monsters have some capacity for all that sort of thing. And he does heal, if somewhat slowed without healing magic to bolster it. Witch or no witch, though, in a month or so he'll have people pestering him for his bones anyway.

"Not me. I don't have anything like sweat glands, nor do I drool unless ill." She's just altogether much less drippy than humans are. And the Monsters, those native to this world anyway, are closer to human than not in her eyes. "If I want to keep cool I do it in other ways. My people were made for a setting where we could always move out from the sun in warmer seasons."

That could get unpleasant. Bones are probably not a renewable resource, even the tiniest phalanges.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

THYME FOR A NEW WORLD (open)

echoes, I meant to do this earlier

o/\o I'm down to backtag the catch-all threads

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i had to pause and figure out what his position on eating people might be, considering spider cider

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