Myrobalan Shivana (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
faithlikeaseed) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
middaeg2020-10-31 01:33 pm
faithlikeaseed) wrote in middaeg2020-10-31 01:33 pm
Entry tags:
Out of the mid-wood's twilight into the meadow's dawn | OTA
Who: fauns fauns FAUNS (and their enablers) (and anyone else)
When: Octeuril 31st
Where: The Haven
What: Somebody set up a trap specifically designed for Fauns. Or tried, anyway.
Warnings: F for Faunery; warnings per thread as needed!
It's a lovely day in Aefenglom and you are ahorrible beautiful Faun.
Somewhere between the evening of the 30th and the midnight advent of the 31st, a disused corner of the Haven has turned into a patch of cultivated wilderness. Somewhere a little after midnight on the 31st, and the beginning of the full moons, several Fauns (and one or two others, Monsters and Witches alike) received an enthusiastic if slightly garbled written invitation to come see what awaits.
Gourd vines of all descriptions drape an abandoned cottage, its floating terraces, and half of a nearby house. Flowers in a riot of colors decorate them, some glowing softly and others exuding a fragrant perfume. The fruits hanging pendant or nestled on the ground defy description and beg to be tasted: There are tiny pumpkins no larger than grapes, thin-skinned and sweet, while massive savory marrows lurk in the underbrush to trip the unwary. A rare fist-sized specimen glimmers with enchantment and grants a rush of energy when eaten--along with fleeting, unpredictable changes (horns, fur, hooves) that make one a little more faunish for an hour or two.
Cheap furniture, clotheslines, and hanging sheets have been used to roughly shape the vines into an impromptu maze. The design's irregular, wandering, like whoever planned the corridors couldn't see what he was doing. It wanders in and out of the cottage, pouching into dead-ends and cozy little clearings that might fit two comfortably and three if they're familiar. Some of them have benches in them; others, piles of pillows; and still others are carpeted in thick and flowering moss. Heavy quilts in a riot of colors and patterns can be found neatly folded in the buildings, waiting for chilled revelers to find them. There are also covered braziers for the truly cold, though they seem powered by magic and not by flame.
Food and drink are lavishly if haphazardly provided, spread out through the bowers like a treasure hunt. Casks of mead with cups attendant, bowls of honey candy and glazed nuts, fruit both fresh and dried, and a variety of different sorts of cheese provide an ample repast (so long as one's not hungry for blood or meat). Entertainment's on the guests to provide, with simple musical instruments (mostly pipes, an occasional lap-harp) gracing many of the grottos; others have toys and games, of varieties both innocent...and not...strewn about them.
There are also oddities here and there in the maze, like the bower where someone took painstaking care to tie a half-hundred feathers to the low vine ceiling. Another nook teams with stingless bees of all varieties during the day. What else might await someone who's looking?
When: Octeuril 31st
Where: The Haven
What: Somebody set up a trap specifically designed for Fauns. Or tried, anyway.
Warnings: F for Faunery; warnings per thread as needed!
It's a lovely day in Aefenglom and you are a
Somewhere between the evening of the 30th and the midnight advent of the 31st, a disused corner of the Haven has turned into a patch of cultivated wilderness. Somewhere a little after midnight on the 31st, and the beginning of the full moons, several Fauns (and one or two others, Monsters and Witches alike) received an enthusiastic if slightly garbled written invitation to come see what awaits.
Gourd vines of all descriptions drape an abandoned cottage, its floating terraces, and half of a nearby house. Flowers in a riot of colors decorate them, some glowing softly and others exuding a fragrant perfume. The fruits hanging pendant or nestled on the ground defy description and beg to be tasted: There are tiny pumpkins no larger than grapes, thin-skinned and sweet, while massive savory marrows lurk in the underbrush to trip the unwary. A rare fist-sized specimen glimmers with enchantment and grants a rush of energy when eaten--along with fleeting, unpredictable changes (horns, fur, hooves) that make one a little more faunish for an hour or two.
Cheap furniture, clotheslines, and hanging sheets have been used to roughly shape the vines into an impromptu maze. The design's irregular, wandering, like whoever planned the corridors couldn't see what he was doing. It wanders in and out of the cottage, pouching into dead-ends and cozy little clearings that might fit two comfortably and three if they're familiar. Some of them have benches in them; others, piles of pillows; and still others are carpeted in thick and flowering moss. Heavy quilts in a riot of colors and patterns can be found neatly folded in the buildings, waiting for chilled revelers to find them. There are also covered braziers for the truly cold, though they seem powered by magic and not by flame.
Food and drink are lavishly if haphazardly provided, spread out through the bowers like a treasure hunt. Casks of mead with cups attendant, bowls of honey candy and glazed nuts, fruit both fresh and dried, and a variety of different sorts of cheese provide an ample repast (so long as one's not hungry for blood or meat). Entertainment's on the guests to provide, with simple musical instruments (mostly pipes, an occasional lap-harp) gracing many of the grottos; others have toys and games, of varieties both innocent...and not...strewn about them.
There are also oddities here and there in the maze, like the bower where someone took painstaking care to tie a half-hundred feathers to the low vine ceiling. Another nook teams with stingless bees of all varieties during the day. What else might await someone who's looking?
no subject
(A dimly grasped thought troubles the back of his mind, an image like he'd conceive in the Fade: L returning to him from the depths of some primeval forest, shadow cast before him by the sun at his back. It isn't until that razor-edged silhouette becomes distinct from the massy dark around it that the detective's himself again.)]
Then let's! [he says, laughingly, turning his head brush his nose against his Bonded's hair.] Let's not stand here any longer!
[Though departing for his labyrinth means breaking this sweet contact, even if only a little while, because neither of them could really walk like this. And there's a little dismay to that, a little sorrow, enough that the faun lingers just a little longer despite his own words...
Until an idea occurs to him.]
Wait. Wait--here, [he says, sidling just enough away from L he can sink to the cobbles of the street, folding his long legs up beneath him. He's still almost too tall to mount like that, until he thinks to extend a leg as a step up.]
I'll carry you back. Be my eyes?
[He knows the way back, but obstacles could always change.]
no subject
Maybe there can be more moments. He laughs, suddenly and startled, when Myr declares that it's time to go. His apology is just a solitary moment of hesitation as he slips out of his boots, the one item of clothing he wears that isn't brand new, holding them in one hand as he carefully steps up on Myr's offered leg with a bare foot. His bones are sharp (hence, the preliminary unspoken apology), but at the very least, there's not much weight pressing into his heels when he steps up as lightly as he can.]
Of course... I won't let you run into anything.
[Once astride the deer, made enormous by merit of full moon exposure, he shifts and fidgets a bit, trying to determine the most secure way to sit. He's ridden Myr before, in a dream, but it's a bit different without that convenient gloss over practicality and logic. Dimensions matter, also, and he reaches up to uncertainly grasp at his Bonded's antlers. If nothing else, he can cling to these; the strength has returned to his fingers to the point where it's possible.]
no subject
For all the Faun's exuberance to be up and going, though, he is perfectly content to hold still until L's settled. Or, at least, feels something like settled; Myr's got as little experience at being ridden (
this way) as L has at riding. Still, the basic principles of not jarring someone off his back can't be all that dissimilar from balancing a book on his head--easier than, really, given a book couldn't warn him through the Bond that it's slipping.That heartening thought in mind and confidence firmly in-hand, Myr clambers to his hooves with odd delicacy for something so big...and only just manages to repress the urge to toss his antlers as L grabs on to them.
A flicker of embarrassment crosses the Bond. That could've gone badly.]
Ready? [he asks, to cover his own near-chagrin, and takes a step before there's even an answer--testing out how walking feels with L balanced on his shoulders.]
no subject
Straight on, for about ten meters, then a slight left.
[His voice sounds, to his own ears, strange without the ease of Light's answers and questions. He'll get used to it again, though, because he'd gotten along without Light, before and after the Kira case. People like Myr hadn't known him in connection with Light at all, or even initially in connection to his identity-defining career or the handler he was never seen without, before. Being a lone voice is possible; Myr went so far as to like it.
So all the way back, he talks, sometimes through their Bond, sometimes aloud. Always practical, because its his wont to defer to pragmatism, but the directions are detailed and helpful and near-constant on the way back.]
no subject
Objectively, given his philosophy on adversity and what mankind is to make of it, Myr would aver that his bond and Bond with his Witch is the stronger for what they'd been through together--strong enough to take primacy if it ever came to a real contest (pray the Maker it never does) between him and Light.
Objectively, given the report of his senses and the Bond, Myr knows that isn't true.
But he's working damned hard not to worry about it or let it become a self-fulfilling prophecy--at least, when he's man-shaped.
Right now, he's only happy they have fallen into that fluid rhythm, and happy that L serves so wonderfully as his eyes. He is confident enough in his Witch's skill to move at a ground-eating trot, and it... It would not be long at all to return at this rate, except that Myr takes it in his head to do a lap around the Haven for the sheer pleasure of it. (The sheer pleasure of having his Witch to himself, in the quiet fogbound evening, and of having only that one voice in his ears.)
L will surely notice they've gone in a great circle by the time they arrive back at the garden maze. Knowing his Witch knows puts a tinge of bashfulness in the Faun's demeanor as he kneels among the outlying vines to let L off his back.]
Here. [Here is his shimmering moon-touched playground, glowing with faerie lights and populated by Monsters and Witches alike. Here there are late-season--very late-season--fireflies, and night-singing birds, and moths and voles and at least one wormipede among the flowers and fruits. Here is his maze, aimless and rambling, with ample places to hide from prying eyes and gorge on all the honey-sweet food and drink one could want.] You're welcome, here. Whatever you want to do in it.
[Here is a sort of love-nest, a thing that might have been better made for Myr's amatus alone--but the Faun's heart is very large and sense of scale very grand, when the moon's riding his reason.
He hopes it's enough.
Shyly, then,]
What would you like first?
no subject
They're strong, together, because after everything, they have to be. In spite of constant discouragement, from L's mouth and the very universe's dismayed signals, their Bond shouldn't survive... but persists, somehow, in spite of it all. It's so improbable and absurd that L had begun to cautiously admire it some time ago, bet on it though its odds seem discouraging. Myr deserves better, and he will always think so, but Myr also chose him; reconciling the two, and growing better, is L's task.
The pace picks up, and L must abandon his direction when Myr blatantly goes against the way back. He clings breathlessly, grip white-knuckled on Myr's antlers as he risks choking the deer with his knees. He knows this sensation, abstractly; he's flown, after all, in the body of a crow, but the flaw is that he has the mind of a crow, as well, in such cases. Memory is different, so is perception, and obviously he does not feel the wind in shaggy hair replaced by sleek black feathers. Flying is also near-constant work, and the process of changing his body is a drawn-out and painful one that using the spell casually doesn't justify, even for one as willing to punish himself for art as L is.
In short... so long as he can hold on, riding Myr is probably the nicer choice, the closest relatively comfortable thing.
He says nothing about their detour once they arrive at the maze; it registers, of course, but so does the joy of Myr's body in motion. L will not begrudge his Bonded of it, even if it takes him a moment or two to loose his death-grip on those antlers and dismount.
L's world has always been a cold and sterile thing. Back home, the plants were fake; if they were real, they were potted in some hotel lobby. Tile, glass, and steel quickly overwhelmed those anemic glimmers of organic life, and the fruit that found its way to his plate scarcely counted; it was already dying, after all.
Confronted with the Faun's loving efforts, L is moved in a way he finds difficult to articulate initially. He is human, after all, born of some woman, and some man, in a world where every human's destiny was invariably to someday die and go back to soil. He belongs here, inherently, even if a disconnect has always existed. He craves communion with what Myr has created, even if he struggles to understand it.]
It's...
[He knows what he'd like, slotting so naturally in his chest that he doesn't have to think about it. Time with his Bonded, grounding, gentle reassurance and memory and safety.]
I can't believe you did this without your sight.
[The faun's heart is very large.]
I'd like to just look, for a bit. If that's alright.