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

Mothgarden Seniors Assemble

[merlinpletcher]

Merlin is so done with mysteries and symbolism and ominous feelings that he can't explain or easily shake off. Since snapping out of that dream of a burning forest, he's been sitting up in bed, focusing on his anger in an attempt to push down the sense of dread that he can feel down to his bones. But it isn't working. Something isn't right and he knows it. Exhaling a hiss of breath, he abruptly jumps down from his bed and hurries out of the room, determined to rouse the nearest of his fellow-investigators from sleep.

Will they like being woken up in the middle of the night? No. But they'll get over it.

When he reaches the Mothgarden senior girls' door, he first tries the handle and only knocks once he finds it locked. "...Hey. Hey. Open up, already." While he's making some attempt to keep his voice low, the knocks are firm and his tone is demanding and sharp. And maybe tinged with panic.

Mothgarden Seniors Assemble

[andpoke]

Audrey wants to follow the birds, but she can't. Not quite. She's standing in the forest, and the maple seeds are on fire around her, and that buzzing is in her ear...and there it is, again. A knock. A knock. But before she can look in one of the dead trees for a source, it's apparent. Her eyes are open. It's night-time. It's her dorm.

She slides, almost unthinking, off her bed and over to the door, still half-sleeping. The frigid air blasts from the outdoors on her bare legs and arms in her big sleep tshirt (Magic Garfield). And now she knows she's awake. And now..."Merlin?"

Mothgarden Seniors Assemble

[merlinpletcher]

This is an invitation as far as Merlin's concerned and he passes by Audrey without missing a beat, only turning to face her once he's well into the room. He folds his arms and responds adamantly, "I had a weird dream. And I've got a bad feeling. And we need to..." The further he gets into the explanation, though, the more absurd it sounds and by the time he finished much of the wind has gone out of his sails, "...discuss it."

Embarrassment starts to creep in and he glares down at his socks, but doesn't budge. There is something wrong. He's sure of it. "The four of us."

Mothgarden Seniors Assemble

[sugarnspite]

Valkyrie appears behind Audrey. She glows in the moonlight, perfectly bed-rumpled. It might have been quite a sight if it weren't very ordinary and common for Val to look perfect at any given time with minimal effort. Her sleep shirt is pink with a cartoon rabbit snoozing on it, and she's not wearing any pants. It's just Merlie, so she's not super worried if he can see her just-as-pink panties.

"I'm not, like, great at dream symbolism but I know a little bit," she says 'modestly', fully prepared to dissect Merlin's dream.

Mothgarden Seniors Assemble

[andpoke]

"Harrison was just talking to me about dreams. Yesterday."

Audrey's been exploring dream interpretation a lot this year, so nothing seems too far-fetched. Though she's hardly as ethereal as Val, her eyes glow in the moonlight, awake and suddenly energized. "I just woke up from a dream...what was yours?"

Mothgarden Seniors Assemble

[merlinpletcher]

If Merlin notices or cares that his friends are currently pants-less and varying degrees of ethereal, he doesn't show it. Instead, he crosses his arms over his chest and shakes his head, not knowing where to start. But they're not ready to start yet anyway.

"The four of us," he repeats, glancing toward the other beds. He doesn't actually know which bed is Trudy's, but he does notice that three of the beds are empty instead of just two and his features tense with uneasy irritation. "...Where's Trudy?"