SO LATE THAT IT'S EARLY

[peckishmods]

a frigidly cold night

what's up?

The unrelenting icy cold sends most everyone inside early tonight. Even with magical heating, it’s hard to keep the chill away, almost like the holler, itself, wants you to stay snug under the covers, safe in your bed.

Sleep comes quickly and heavily tonight, and students dream of singing bugs and dancing birds…

Not a collaborative routine but two performances at odds, each vying tonight for your attention, dear child. The dancing of the birds beckons — follow and find truth and memory — but the buzzing insect song vibrates in your very bones, too: they are home, they are warmth, they are safety. Stay, stay, stay.

You are pulled in two directions in a forest of old maples. Beneath your feet the ground grows warm as vines creep up from strange dark cracks in the ground, climbing over each maple until they are overgrown with ivy leaves that look like fire — that are fire — and the maple seeds that fall from the dying trees as they burn are the singing bugs, their music fading until only one insect’s song remains.

Tonight, four pairs of feet climb from their beds and follow the birds.

Tonight, four different pairs of eyes open at the sight of the burning forest. Merlin Pletcher, Howdy Stoppelbein, Presley Mondragon, and Cicero Cook each wake with a start, each with a feeling of terrible dread.

And from there as more students wake it quickly becomes clear that something is very wrong:

It is late, so late as to almost be early, and Gertrude McGilliguddy, Xenia de Bourgh, Patrice Tang and Atlas Quigley are gone from their beds, nowhere to be found…

how this works!

⬥ Welcome to Peckenpaugh’s second major petition event! The primary winners of this event were Trudy, Xenia, Patrice and Atlas!

⬥ Petition winners please check your email again. we've sent a message to you all with more information. You can then refer to the “SOMEWHERE CLUTTERED” header for post-dreaming details!

⬥ Xenia de Bourgh has lost her journal and can’t find it! As soon as she realizes, Mr. Stirling provides her with a new one. It’ll take about 48 hours to get her properly added to the journal network, so for the next two days any of her journal posts or comments will be signed “UNREGISTERED USER”, rather than with her own name.

⬥ Merlin, Howdy, Presley and Cicero all woke with a start ahead of everyone else in the school. We assume y’all got the word out to staff that students were missing, eventually! Feel free to play these portions out in threads or journals, just put a descriptive timestamp in the subject of your posts.

⬥ There is no magic at work obscuring the location of the four missing students. They should be easy enough to find with the right tracking magic.

⬥ Classes are canceled for Thursday, January 30th, but will resume again on Friday. The scheduled party at Mothgarden is still on — if asked, the staff just doesn’t want the kids to worry too much. Also they have all this cheese and chocolate to deal with.

⬥ For the next few weeks, each House will have a faculty member staying in the chaperone’s room on the first floor over night. This’ll make shenanigans a bit harder, but (hopefully) disappearing kids less likely. The schedule is rotating, though usually it is your Head of House.

⬥ Mr. Purcell and Mr. Stirling can be seen around campus for the next week or so double checking magical locks and wards on all the dorms.

⬥ There is a sense that Peckenpaugh staff is taking this very seriously. Even the most immature faculty members aren’t making jokes about it, and it’s clear that most staffers have been given additional work investigating what’s happened. The four disappeared students can expect regular check-ins from their heads of house, and TAs may find their workloads increased as teachers hand off paper grading and other small tasks to them for the next few weeks...

locations!

⬦ AWAKE ON CAMPUS: After the first four students wake, it doesn’t take long for the rest of campus to start stirring. From there, word quickly spreads that four students are missing. This is a space to thread any on campus scenes before the students are located.

⬦ SOMEWHERE CLUTTERED: Dark and cold and musty. There’s so much junk in here, you can probably guess where you are without too much brain power…

⬦ SO LATE THAT IT'S EARLY: Returned to campus, the four missing students are held in the infirmary overnight, checked for any injuries, any signs of strange enchantment or forbidden curses. Aside from some reddened skin on their backs, there’s nothing. Their parents are informed via owl immediately. You may have slept like the dead earlier in the night, but for the rest of the night sleep proves fleeting for everyone...

⬦ OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!

Comments

Wildgulch Juniors Wake Up

[zadielovelace]

Zadie looks between her waking friends, though Presley's urgency and action quickly become the focus of her attention. Did something happen? Is something going on? She doesn't know, but she has an increasingly uneasy feeling and so latches hopefully onto the explanation that Desmond offers. She turns to him and nods in agreement, "...Most likely. Right?"

Still, she slips out of bed after Presley.

Wildgulch Juniors Wake Up

[quodpotted]

There's enough movement and discussion now that Wyatt gets up in earnest, bearish and bleary eyed but at least awake. "Did Pres leave again?" he mumbles. Okay, mostly awake. "Hey, where's Patrice?"

Wildgulch Juniors Wake Up

[infamously]

Presley exhales loudly, meaning to sound frustrated with his friends, but it comes out more—out of breath. Almost panicked. He closes his eyes for a moment and counts off in his head (one two three), before standing to face everyone, with Yuka in his arms.

"I'm going to check the bathroom." He holds Yuka out to Zadie. The skunk is squirming a little with anxiety, but she'll settle down with a little comforting. He doesn't want Yuka running outside while in this kind of mood. "All of you, stay here."

Wildgulch Juniors Wake Up

[crowhop]

Mary Grace snorts. Mostly at the idea that anyone can tell her what to do, but also because she likes to really cement her standing as Presley's least favorite friend.

"Fuck you, you ain't dying alone out there." She's already reaching for her wand, so stopping her is at least going to be a mild inconvenience.

Wildgulch Juniors Wake Up

[zadielovelace]

"...I don't think you can go with him into the boys' restroom," Zadie points out quietly, though she's taking in the unfolding scene with increasingly large, uncertain eyes and hugging Yuka close in an effort to calm both herself and the unhappy skunk. She isn't certain if she'll follow Presley when he goes...but she probably will.

Wildgulch Juniors Wake Up

[negligently]

"Who's gonna stop 'er?" Uriah mumbles, mostly awake and mostly up to speed. Jimmy, crawls up onto Uriah's shoulder with some effort, and Uriah spares one hand to hold him up there. The old possum's tongue is semi-permanently sticking out.

"Anyhow, I ain't stayin' here while Pres goes and plays hero," he complains, standing up (while carefully balancing Jimmy). "Fuck, man, let some of us get in on it."

Wildgulch Juniors Wake Up

[opsia]

"Fingers crossed that he needed to pee and nobody needs to play hero."

This would probably qualify as an optimistic statement if it wasn't being made while Desmond fishes his boots from where they'd landed at the side of the bed, already tugging them on in preparation to head somewhere that definitely isn't the bathroom.

Wildgulch Juniors Wake Up

[bratsquatch]

Felicity stands on the (big) bed, surveying the scene. "Yo wait up!" she calls after her friends. The whole idea of Big Bed is that they do everything together. Honestly, if Patrice did just get up to go pee, it's kind of fucked that he didn't invite the rest of them. What gives?

She bounces once on the mattress, transforms into a raccoon mid-air, and lands on the floor. She scurries toward the bathroom, nose barely an inch off the ground. A moment later, Felicity the Girl is back, her fingers still twitching a little bit -- a lingering tick from her brief stint as a rodent. "Tang isn't in the bathroom," she announces confidently without offering any further explanation.

Wildgulch Juniors Wake Up

[infamously]

Presley is so occupied with trying to stop his idiotic friends from stampeding out at who-knows-what hour that he's powerless to stop Raccoon Felicity from scurrying through the door. Really, she probably saved them some time, but Presley's expression shows little gratefulness at this moment.

"If you all insist on coming along, then no one wander off," he snaps. If Patrice isn't here, then where? What could he be possibly doing? How much of an overreaction would it be to tell Dr. Ranui right now? "Someone... someone check the journals. Maybe he's having a midnight rendezvous or whatever. I'm going to search the common room and cavern."

Wildgulch Juniors Wake Up

[crowhop]

"Baa ram ewe, good buddy," Mary Grace salutes with her wand in hand, cramming her feet into shoes she's only 80% sure belong to her. "Just give me a nod when it's time to start kickin' in freshmen doors."

Wildgulch Juniors Wake Up

[bratsquatch]

"Be serious," Felicity elbows Mary Grace, which has never once happened before. "Sorry," she quickly adds, "I'm just... worried, I guess. Patrice is so needy he would never just leave us."

Substitute basically any of the other Wildgulch juniors for 'Patrice' and the statement would still hold true. Felicity grabs a sweatshirt and a thought occurs to her... either he's dead -- which would be bad -- or he's gonna survive and they'll never hear the end of it. Both sound miserable, she thinks.

"Stick together?" she whispers.