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

Winter Watches, Laszlo Interrupts

[notpoison]

A shadowy figure settles next to Winter. Laszlo stares out into the darkness as Winter works, and can tell by her sigh that the little fairy stone didn't work. Is that what they're called? He reads enough that he's heard them mentioned, but they never pulled him away from his primary interests. Laszlo remains single-minded, as always.

"Have you ever seen something through one of those," he asks, almost a whisper.

Winter Watches, Laszlo Interrupts

[damnnearkilledem]

"Nah," Winter says, letting her hands and her stone fall into her lap. She shrugs and when she speaks she sounds a little like a child finding loopholes to still believe in something they are increasingly convinced isn't real. "But it's not a real one. I made this. The real ones, that's just stone and water working for a real long time."

Silence follows, again, a short stretch of it, before she tips her attention toward Laszlo in earnest. "Thought I might see the rest of the maples." By now, at least at Mothgarden, word had gotten around that the strange dream she'd had was a shared one with everyone else in her House. It occurs to her that that may not be the case more broadly across campus. "Did you dream about bugs and stuff?"

Winter Watches, Laszlo Interrupts

[notpoison]

Laszlo nods, and then whispers: "Yes. And fire."

He's quiet for a second or so too long. Enough to make things strange. He has to force himself to speak again, or Winter might give up on him. That's what he thinks anyway. "Are you scared of this place? I'm not quite scared. Not exactly. But it's different from where I lived before. More alive. Maybe."

Winter Watches, Laszlo Interrupts

[damnnearkilledem]

Winter nods with growing vigor as Laszlo speaks, agreeing wholeheartedly. She doesn't mind the quiet, but two separate feelings that turn out to be part of the same thread is nice to find, too. Maybe it's that little zing of connection that keeps her talking, stops her from keeping her thoughts to herself. Her gaze moves back to the tree, as though it might help her with words."Not a bad fear. Awe, maybe? Like, in the old sense." She pulls in a breath and adds, "Numinous."

"Not to get all twee with the mystical woo," says the literal witch who used to be the Druidic Arts TA, grinning now like she knows it, "But when I'm walking, sometimes I feel like the valley itself is...like...asking me to stay? Like it's lonely or empty. I don't know. You ever get that?"