middaeg | STEVEN'S MANDATORY BIRTHDAY PARTY (OPEN)

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STEVEN'S MANDATORY BIRTHDAY PARTY (OPEN)

Who: Open to abductees and also hopefully an intervention.
When: Aguril 15th, night of the full moon.
Where: Around the Haven, and in Steven's house.
What: The combination of intense homesickness, his 15th birthday, and also Full Moon faerie mania, has resulted in Steven trying to use illusions to kidnap and trap people in his house that remind him of his family and friends from back home. Theoretically this is for a "birthday party" but it's entirely possible Steven will lose the plot as the night goes on. Threads can either be your character ending up stuck in his house somehow or Steven making an attempt to whisk them away and failing.
Warnings: Probably some fucked up illusion shit. Someone stop him.

With the distraction of the Speed Dating event over, and his initial attempts at experiencing the wild mostly successful, Steven finds himself experiencing a gnawing emptiness towards the middle of the month. He doesn't know how exactly the times line up, but it's close enough to feel true - the 15th is his birthday, or close enough to count. He's fifteen years old, and he's still not home.

He's never had a birthday without his Dad, or without the other Gems. The idea that he's having one here, so far away, without any of them is painful. Part of him wants to try to put together a gathering, to do something to celebrate, but the rest of him feels like doing so will just make the absence of the others more obvious. In the days leading up to it, he resigns himself to maybe doing something small, and to otherwise let it pass by uneventfully.

Unfortunately, on the morning of the Full Moon, those reservations gradually start to peel away in favour of the wild energy of the Sisters. He molts in the afternoon, as has become typical, and upon opening fresh eyes to the evening moons, his fae side starts to take over. He will have a birthday party, and it'll be like his family was never gone! How did he not think of it before?

Steven is going to try to - and possibly succeed in - abducting various people with illusion magic. He could probably end up with anyone, but he'll be specifically focusing on those that fit these archetypes:

1) Anyone with strong dad energy.
2) Mysterious, reserved, self-confident, and will kick your ass.
3) Mother-hen, fastidious, protective, graceful.
4) Scrappy, playful, punk-ass, chaotic, sibling type.
5) People around his age that are big nerds.

We can approach this one of two major ways: either we can thread Steven attempting to kidnap your character, or we can start with them realizing they've already been bamboozled by any kind of appropriate illusions into entering his house, and now can't seem to figure out how to exit. If he's going to try to kidnap them you can have your character be anywhere in the Haven, and if you want to start out in the house, just summarize the initial trickery and have them realize they seem to be in one of the fairly nice houses in the Haven but can't find the door or any exits.

Unless they can see through illusions, in which case Steven's antics probably won't work on them from square one. Feel free to get on his case about it!

He's going to be at this all night, but his roommates and other people may be sabotaging him, so your character may arrive and escape at random times throughout the evening. Other people may or may not be around at the same time. We can play it loose!

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Steven spies her around the time that she enters the Haven. His reaction is twofold - on one hand, it's Toby! His Bonded! His friend! She's great on her own accord.

Yet, even better... he thinks she might slot into exactly what he needs right now. He didn't even realize it before. She's perfect.

"Toby!" Steven yells, flying in her direction. His wings are noticeable larger, her other fae traits having gotten even more intense since the last time he saw her. It looks likely that he molted again. "You gotta come with me, okay? I really want to show you... !"

He's practically glittering with magic.

"Steven." He's flying faster and more strongly and is in the manic phase, and she actually turns her head to one side, looking a little awkwardly out of just one eye, out of a sudden concern that he's not going to be able to stop in time and might encounter her horns.

"You've shed your skin again! It seems like your Cywld infection has healed completely, then. I am glad." Toby was a little worried at the time, even after treatment, that his wings would bear the marks. She's a little guilty thinking that some Bonded live together and can track the progress of these things, day by day. But she wouldn't be happy confined in a house, and he wouldn't like to be away from all of his other friends.

"All right. Where are we going, and do you want to lead, or perhaps sit on my shoulder?" It slopes, he'd need to put a hand on or around her snakelike neck, but also has the benefit of being broad and blade-free.

He doesn't quite stop in time, but instead of running into her, he overshoots and doesn't a flourishing spin around her, before ultimately swinging back around to the front with a small explosion of celebratory glitter. The glitter isn't real, of course, so it disappears after a few moments.

He'd almost forgotten about the Cywld completely until this moment. A tiny bit of uneasiness flashes across his face, but it's quick to disappear.

"Yeah - no need to keep that dirty old skin, right! This one's way less infected!" The Witches had taken it all very seriously, and he's spent a good few days in the infirmary, making sure nothing spread. Fae have a problem with that, apparently, but it's nothing he wants to think about right now.

He grins, and flutters over to rest on her shoulder, happily slinging an arm around her neck.

"To my house!" he declares.

The city on full moons is always louder, brighter, more lively as Monsters and native Witches alike are brought to fuller power and excitement. Toby, her magic diminished at this time as with other mirrorbound Witches, finds it a bit much, and for once is looking forwards to being in a building and closed off from all this. Maybe Steven will calm in the surroundings which he lives in.

Contact is supposed to be good for both Bonded. With Toby being depleted she doesn't have enough magic to clear his mind, not when he's already in a state, but while they're touching he might pick up on her restraint and care. She is glad to see him, and lonely much of the time, for all that she doesn't like it to show.

"Then that's where we're going. This is for you, but I don't want you to see it until we are inside." She hefts the covered stool in her free hand. This is how the presentation of gifts goes, isn't it?

There is something soothing about that touch, and something steadying about leaning against her neck. For a moment, things almost feel normal. His antennae lull forward, relaxed - only to pop up again excitedly as she points out her gift.

"Really? For me??" This is normally where he would say 'thank you', but something in his nature refuses to say it, as if the very words are uncomfortable. "Oh, I can't wait to see it!"

Embracing as humans do doesn't come naturally to Hork-Bajir, with all their blades, but they do like to touch. No infants have clung to Toby's belly or climbed her, hardly anyone has held her hands or leaned on her, she hadn't been kissed. Not that many here have the anatomy to kiss her, though maybe someone could improvise with a knife or two. She misses contact, and this is nice.

"Please do wait, it won't be long," she says, deliberately pretending to see his exclamation as literal. From her, that's basically a joke. "I made it from a piece of a yew tree that must be at least three hundred years old. Part of it was felled in a storm, and the rest lives on. A wonderful tree! I would live in it if it were taller, and undamaged."

Toby doesn't praise much of anything like this. Usually if she talks for a long time about much of anything it's depressing on some level.

Edited 2019-08-15 03:43 (UTC)

"You made it? That's so cool!" Steven doesn't know much about types of wood or the specific names of unfamiliar trees, but he knows a few things just from spending time with Toby. It's something she is enthusiastic about, and given what he knows of her species's culture, it's no surprise.

Despite all of the static rattling around in his brain right now, he can think coherently enough to ask an important question:

"Hey... when is your birthday?"

"I think I did well enough. Hopefully you will like it." She thinks he will. Outside of full moons Steven is an agreeable child, and won't mind if she gets some aspect of a birth celebration ceremony wrong.

Toby hums consideringly, a deep rumble.

"We don't keep track of them as precisely as you do." For one thing, there wasn't a single united calendar on the homeworld. Her people had tracked the seasons and the moons, and didn't monitor days so closely. She has a general impression that years were longer there than on Earth, or this planet. "But... I have been here five months. That means that after the next full moon, I will consider myself two years old."

"Wow," he says, blown away all over again. He knows that gems can be born knowing all kinds of stuff, but Toby has so many experience for her age. "You've done so many things already. Even gems aren't born knowing the kind of stuff you know."

"It's almost like... being a gem and a human at the same time."

He might have noticed, or might not, that she's grown about half a foot since the dream, shooting up towards her adult height.

Amused, she says, "I suppose so. It's also like being a Hork-Bajir, and especially like being a Seer. My people have to fit a lot of life into the time we have, and a Seer has to learn and understand as much about the world as we can. Some people just don't need to spend very long growing up." And a good thing, too, considering the situation she was born into.

Toby wishes she was back there. For now though, she is here, and can't spend every moment worrying and yearning. "I was about your size when I was six months old. That was when I was old enough to climb and leap around in trees without my parents present - something I wanted very badly to be able to do, you can imagine."

'Have to fit a lot of life into the time we have.'

He pauses, his expression distant and uncertain as Toby explains. Then, he looks at her, with an amount of directly unique to his full moon moods.

"How long do you live?" he asks.

This gives her pause. Toby knows this is one of those things that won't bring him joy to know, and although she's not experienced with prevaricating or dodging questions, she considers giving it a try.

She doesn't.

"Not long by most standards. We were designed to be large and strong and fast-growing, and fast-healing, and also to die before we could truly become old. If I've converted the Yeerkish year to the Earth one correctly, a few of the most fortunate of us survive to be thirty, give or take two years."

So... if his dad was like her, he'd be dead already.

He tries not to think about this kind of thing too much. It's the innate problem of being half immortal in a family with a mixture of lifespans. Either the gems will lose him early, or he'll lose his human family early. There's no full way to win.

That's short by even human standards, though. Maybe its how gems feel when they hear about the way humans live.

"...That's no good..." he says, with a weird kind of tone in his voice, as if he thinks that's something he needs to do something about. What he could do is unclear, though.

It's usually less. Usually a lot less. The Yeerk Empire doesn't leave many people fortunate, and people in their mid twenties, who should have been seen as Elders who could help their community, were just seen as healing more slowly and losing their edge in combat.

She shrugs her other shoulder. "It's how we were made. Our creators were strange and selfish and jealous of their power, so of course it isn't fair. We don't live in a fair universe."

This is what she's used to. If she's bitter, it's only faintly. Other species seem to live too long, and yet they don't seem much better at long-term planning and tending to the future than the average Hork-Bajir.

Steven sighs, leaning back with his arm still looped around her shoulders, fluttering his wings tiredly. Her explanation of it leaves a bit to be desired, at the moment.

"I knooow, but that's why we have to make it fair," he says. "There's always someone big out there, stepping on the little guys." Sometimes more literally than others.

Maybe the Arn and their technology could do... something to the Hork-Bajir, to change lifespans and make more people into Seers. This would dramatically change them as a people, maybe to unrecognizability, but it might mean more control over their fates. It's all too hypothetical to consider seriously. Even if her people were free and willing and available for such an alteration, she's pretty sure the Arn have died out. The Yeerks have little use for people they can't infest.

She might have explained any of that, but Toby's still feeling her way around interacting with this small alien and is inclined to caution, especially during the full moons.

Besides, in general he's not wrong. "I know. It's hard, but we have to believe that we can change things. Up this way, correct?"

"Exactly!" Steven says, both to the idea that they have to change things and also to the question of if they are going in the right direction. The full moon certainly seems to take away a lot of his uncertainty. While Steven may normally question himself and society, under the light of the moons it all seems very simple.

If things don't work how he want then he'll just make it work. Simple as that.

They arrive at his house and the door is actually hanging open. From the outside there is some sort of appealing smell wafting about, seemingly tailored to Toby's sensibilities. Inside of the house, she will see the illusion of setting that appeals to her.

"We should go inside fast so nothing falls out!" Steven says, sliding off of her shoulder and fluttering into the buildingl

Toby smells roasting, unscorched fir cones, a difficult feat. It seems to her like the sterile lines of the inside of the house have given way to textures like climbing vines, softening all the corners and making the planes of the structure less strict.

"Did you redecorate?" she asks faintly. It has been some days since she came here. She kind of misses Steven when he slips off, and follows, ducking her head so her horns don't catch the doorframe.

"Kind of, yeah," he says, smiling as he waits for her in the changed foyer. "It's just for tonight!" He can see the effects of her ideal room, and decided to more solidly weave them into the illusion. He's a pretty big fan of plants, too.

He comes close again, putting his palms to his face. He's obviously excited.

"Can I see what you brought me?" he asks.

Is it possible to redecorate this much in a week or so, for the short term? Toby has no idea. Maybe it's an illusion. She sees a spray of ferns on a wall, with a little frog clinging flat to the leaves, and smiles.

"Of course. I don't know how humans do this and if you have a ritual." She puts the cloth-wrapped stool on the floor and looks at it, and at Steven, expectantly.

Given how she's done it, it may be difficult to unwrap without cutting into the cloth. Toby forgot that not everyone has easy access to blades and the confidence in them of cutting just far enough without causing interior damage.

It being an illusion is plausible. After all, she probably would have seen him use them a lot more than average during the last Full Moon. It comes very easily then.

Steven doesn't seem to mind how she presents it, and lands on the ground to check it out. He flips it over a few times, trying to figure out how to get into it. This is harder to rip than paper.

"Um... can I borrow one of your blades?" he asks.

The conjured cloth is smooth but not soft, more like some kind of tarp than anything else. Low level conjuring is usually some degree of a crapshoot. At least this looks nice and held its shape on the trek up through the city.

She blinks. "Ah. Of course, just a moment."

With one of her wrist blades, Toby scores a cut through the wrapping, between the stool's legs, and makes a few other cuts. She's not actually sure how strong Steven is and if he can tear things up, so she sits back after a moment, leaning some of her weight on her tail. "Tell me where else to cut, if you need it."

He could have torn this up back home, but... well. His strength being gone is a little bit of a sore spot, but he makes due. He spent most of his life without powers, so going back to square one is at least familiar.

"No, this is good!" he says, finding a good way to pull the fabric off of the item within. It already felt heavy and solid enough to be wood from the outside, but looking in the specifics draw his attention.

"A stool!" he says, immediately fascinated with the design. He looks at it closely, noting the wood color. Toby has a lot of opinions about wood, and she had mentioned it was yew. "Wow, Toby, you're a really great whittler!"

She eyes it and him and is satisfied that she did make it the right size. "Thank you. I have often thought that it must be a trial to be steady without a tail. Perhaps you can rest on it when out singing."

Toby's also got to make a warning, of course.

"Don't lick or chew on it, and don't let your Lion do so either. Yew is poisonous to you if you eat it or inhale the sawdust." She'd had some unpleasant tingles in her lungs while carving until she'd thought to sit upwind. The bark had had a weaker effect, just an odd sensation in her mouth, and no further issues. It was good bark, and the poison meant there were fewer issues with parasites in the wood.

"Ohh, cool, it's poison!" he says, that obviously just being an all around bonus. "I don't think Lion likes to eat wood but I'll tell him not to, anyway."

He seems pretty pleased, all around. He looks the stool over studiously for a few more moments, before something seems to almost violently strike him. He bounces into the air, floating on wing.

"Wait here one minute!" he says. "I have to get something for you."

STEVEN'S MANDATORY BIRTHDAY PARTY (OPEN)

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