The Lepidopterite seer-prince Rex is not quite outgoing. He's friendly enough, curious and eager to meet you, but awkward and a little shy, prone to moments of what seem like confusion which he'll explain away to anyone curious as his still-developing ability to See.
He's looking for help, and perhaps you can assist.
Despite her very best efforts of cunning, Bijou failed to get Rex to stand up on Halloween. It seems Fate has offered her a second chance to check out that booty.
"Oooh, you brought your collectibles!" she squeals when she sees the cicada shells.
She is not actually interested in his collectibles.
Felicity receives a completely locked cicada, glossy obsidian. With Rex, she walks through each step. Perhaps it's a little difficult to name who this shell belongs to, after all, she only just met him in person at that morning assembly. It becomes clearer with each ritual completed, though, a name she's seen in textbooks, in thick tomes her father uses for work, and when she digs up the shell at Thorntrail in the morning, there's just no doubting who it is:
Crinkled and liver-spotted, Al Falco's hands shake as he lifts the cover of an old book, KNOWING the UNKNOWABLE embossed on the cover. The pages are yellow, thin, almost as translucent as his skin, with smudged marginalia littering any and all white space.
"It's—it's knowledge, I believe, my dear," Falco croaks, his voice like dust, and he looks up at the young girl across the table. Except she's not quite a girl, but a creature. A being with iridescent wings and a pair of nicked Ray-Bans, her hair swept up in a side ponytail. Falco continues to turn the pages.
"Some beings—mm, no, not a being. Some, ah... just some grow stronger when their name is spoken, when they're believed in. We used to call them, ha, gods?"
He flips to a page several chapters in, bookmarked by a faded receipt, and pushes it across to Pocket. It takes some effort. Al Falco hasn't been a young man in a very long time.
"We stop him by... knowing him?" Pocket says, and her voice seems so quiet here, not the chipper party bug who writes in rainbow.
"No, no, no, my dear, by not knowing him." Falco turns the page for her, points to a note scribbled by the footnotes. "We have to look away."
Pocket looks, not at the page, but at Falco. The expression on her face is a mixture of hope and regret, joy and despair. "But that can't—didn't they—didn't we—" she starts, then pulls up short, her breath like a hiccup. Pocket nods. "They have to forget."
Falco nods. "If they can, they must."
The memory ends abruptly and Felicity wakes in her own body. The ache of old bones hangs in her joints, ill-fitting on her still youthful form, but arrogant confidence, too, persists even as she settles into wakefulness. This memory is not hers, she knows. It belongs to someone else. But, perhaps, this memory is more than something woefully forgotten. Perhaps it is evidence.
Tony receives a cicada that has been partially opened. There’s also a seam down the back, like someone attempted with some success to peel it open, but eventually gave up. It takes some doing to figure out what steps are still necessary, but eventually he works through opening the memory, diving into it in full at Mothgarden’s fountain.
"Oh my God, Tristan, do you boys really live like this?" The exasperated voice of Ms. Dorkins is unmistakable to Tony, even if the surroundings aren't so familiar. A dorm room, the floor piled high with clothes and lost homework and—ugh, old food containers?
"I am not cleaning this up for you," she continues, but her wand is already out and she's flicking trash toward an overflowing garbage can.
"It's fine, Ma, you don't have to." A teenage boy, Tristan Dorkins himself, shoves aside a privacy curtain in Wildgulch blue, but makes no move to leave his bed. The level of concern he shows over his mother's opinions on cleanliness is, clearly, quite minimal. "I'll just grab what I can find and replace the rest later."
"With what, your allowance? Or from the Bank of Mom and Dad?" There's a clump of socks concentrated under Tristan's desk, mismatched and unwashed. Ms. Dorkins wrinkles her nose and leaves it alone. Those she'll just replace.
"What, are you gonna let me come to school naked next year?"
"Don't call my bluff, mister, I just might." Still, using her wand (and only her wand, this room is beyond help), Ms. Dorkins pokes through the mess for Tristan's belongings. There's a history book one of his roommates never opened (she knows exactly which one, too, and she's more offended than surprised), crushed cans of WizaRed Bull, and... some pages, handwritten and stapled together.
"Tris?" Ms. Dorkins asks, bringing it closer without actually touching it. BUG CLUB it says at the top in feminine handwriting. Feb 5, 1989. Much of the writing underneath is smudged, but Sarah-Jane Dorkins, one-time history major, is no stranger to deciphering poorly preserved old documents.
'G+G research; support Tink's idea [...] KNOWLEDGE = P[...] = DEFEAT BoNE INVOLVEMENT?? Earthquakes connected?? El says library portkey on fritz M+Z Paw Paw Patrol [...] Bland se [...] nd campus, handing out cards. Wy[...] kept one.'
She flips the page to find a business card, spotted with water damage, for Burton Bland. There's a phone number, illegible to either Ms. Dorkins or Tony-as-Ms. Dorkins, but just below his name: Embrace Infinity. Ask Me How!
"What's up, Ma?" Tristan comes up behind his mother, giving Tony a rare reminder of what it feels like to be the short one in the room. Ms. Dorkins jerks in surprise.
"What is this?" She holds up the pages, business card sticking out.
"I'ono, found it in a Lit book." Tristan shrugs.
"And why do you still have it?" Another shrug, followed by a vague gesture at the whole room. Ms. Dorkins sighs and flicks the pages at the trash. "I swear to God, Tristan Ashley, what is going to happen when you grow up and move out?"
Stirring from Ms. Dorkin’s memory is a bit like waking from an anxiety dream. Tony’s heart is pumping fast and it’s a few seconds before it eases. Even once that feeling’s left, though, he still knows this memory he has isn’t his. That it should be returned to its rightful owner.
Armani gets a completely locked cicada, and must walk through each step from Mothgarden to Deeplurk. By Wildgulch he realizes that what he holds must belong to Mr. Zahidi, the school librarian.
There's an eyeball in the library.
SHRIEK.
Everything goes black.
"Mr. Zahidi? Mr. Zahidi. There's an eyeball in the library," says a voice that starts to break up the dark.
Armani’s head hurts. His vision comes back into focus slowly. He’s still in the library. Standing over him is a stranger, though here he recognizes the girl as a junior who owes no less than two dragots in late fees — well, a junior several years ago.
"I'm aware of that," Armani says in Mr. Zahidi's sharply dismissive voice, pushing himself up off the floor and staring up at that unblinking eye. There’s something strange about it. Something aside from the fact that a stationary eyeball is floating four feet off the ground on the second floor of the library. Mr. Zahidi can’t seem to put his finger on it, though.
The girl takes a step away to give him room. "Did it attack you?"
"No, of course not," he replies, wiping the dust from his hands. All the library’s details blur as Mr. Zahidi focuses down on the silent watcher. “W—wait here, Danielle. I’m going to go investigate.”
“Sure,” Danielle says, as Armani and Mr. Zahidi make their way up the wrought iron spiral stairs.
Closer, closer, closer Mr. Zahidi creeps toward the library’s new denizen as he tops the stairs. Timotheye is as he always is to Armani’s eye, except Mr. Zahidi seems to notice something else. That black pupil seems to grow and contract. Big, small, big, small, big, small, smaller, big.
Morse code.
“Danielle?” Mr. Zahidi calls. “Can you grab a book on Morse code?”
“Ummm, I don’t know how to use the dilbert decimal system,” Danielle replies from the ground floor.
Armani-as-Zahidi exhales a sharp little sigh. Things start to blur and time goes strange. It’s hard to hang onto everything that happens, but Armani gets the impression that Mr. Zahidi has gone to fetch the book he needs himself, searching for it in the card catalog, locating it on the shelf, and then bringing it back up to the second floor of the library. When things finally settle back into focus, Mr. Zahidi is seated on the floor, the morse code book beside him and an open notebook.
“I—I’m sorry, eyeball, do you think you could go a little more sl—no? You’re just—Can you even hear me? Oh. Okay,” Mr. Zahidi shakes his head, looking up at the eye and then down at his notebook, trying to transcribe the eye’s pupil fluctuations.
Slowly but surely, the notebook starts to fill in: T H E S E A M P U L L S. H E I S C O M I N G. H E B U R N S. S E E H I M T O S
Why had the memory ended so abruptly? Just like a dream, Armani wakes. The timid curiosity he still feels surely belongs to Mr. Zahidi. That feeling of knowing this memory belongs to someone else is absolutely his own, though.
Aristotle receives a cicada shell with just one step already completed, so he runs it through Wildgulch, Mothgarden and Thorntrail. Getting a familiar feeling, then hearing voices, and then, the next day, with Rex in tow, experiencing the memory in full:
Rain falls in frigid cold sheets, buffeting Aristotle's face as he sprints through the storm. Impenetrably dark, it's a wonder he knows where he's going...but, no, this place is familiar, isn't it? After what seems like an age of running in the rain, he throws open a heavy oak door and steps into...the old victorian: Peckenpaugh's library lobby.
With a swish and a flick, he dries his clothes, but the cold still hangs on him. Unseasonable this late in May. Unnatural, of course, because he knows the witch who'd conjured the storm. Or, well, the person who owns this memory does.
He — Aristotle, and the eyes he's seeing through — set a large squirming shoulder bag on a side table to more easily remove his coat. A squished gray-and-brown face pokes up out of the bag's opening, a pug puppy, hardly a year old by the looks of it. Aristotle reaches a large hand to gently wipe water from the pug's nose.
And with that, Aristotle's moving again, from the old Victorian's atrium into a side room where the computer lab should be. A few computers do sit on two long tables on one side of the room, but they're so old as to be hardly recognizable as the desktops that fill the computer lab today. No, the room is instead filled by tables and chairs, and plenty of open space for students to move around. At the front of the room sits Caleb Qualls, looking tired, looking despondent, but still very much alive.
"Mr. Qualls, I've gone over those glyphs you designed. I made a few—" Finally, a voice. One Aristotle will recognize. A little younger, a little less confident, but unmistakable.
"Lancelot," Mr. Qualls looks up from whatever it was he was examining and, with effort, fixes a smile on his face. "I haven't been your teacher in, what, twelve years? You've certainly surpassed me by now. So, call me Caleb. I insist."
Aristotle is looking through the eyes of Lancelot Purcell, and if Aris is not mistaken, those eyes mist slightly at Mr. Qualls's words. "Caleb, I made a few changes to your glyphs. For security, longevity, mostly." He walks as he talks, as he often does between classes and during Duelling & Fencing meetings. It seems little has changed. When he reaches Mr. Qualls's desk, he unfurls a large piece of parchment with an incredibly complex glyph drafted out. "Here, and here, you see? And...every ten years, it'll need to be recharged, but provided it gets the blood it needs...it's foolproof."
Mr. Qualls picks up a pair of thick plastic-frame glasses and slides them onto the bridge of his nose, examining the young Mr. Purcell's adjustments with a discerning eye. "I knew we brought on the right consultant," Mr. Qualls murmurs his approval, then tips his chin up to stare Aristotle — no, Mr. Purcell — in the eye. "No opinions on the blood component?"
"Plenty of opinions on the blood component, sir, but considering the circumstances..."
"Exactly, Lancelot, thank you."
Something fizzles up, burning, like a hundred sparklers lit in Aris's chest. There's something Lancelot wants to say, but he's afraid. Aris can feel it, that hot burning anxiety, worry, fear. "Why does it have to be you, sir?"
Mr. Qualls pulls his glasses back off and laughs, but the sound is mirthless, airy. Pain has darkened the skin beneath Mr. Qualls's eyes, cut deeper lines in his face than the ones that were there already. "They took my son from me, Lancelot. Only makes sense that the same blood that opened it locks it all away, again."
There is so much guilt and worry tied up in this memory that the feeling of wanting it gone is almost overpowering. Aris doesn’t want it, but perhaps neither does the man who gave it up? Maybe, though, it’s important that he remember.
NAME: Fred Adler ORDER: Which order would you like to complete your cicada shell in, given the chance? Just list Houses. FAVORITE NPC?: Her DAD.
Fred is a LOCAL HOMETOWN DARLING, so any townie she grew up around would beeeeee interesting. Kyle. Doc Potts. T-Bone. Lir Liu. Zippy. (Mama Liu.) (Mama Kyle.)
Edited (the very lowest priority!!) 2020-05-19 12:01 (UTC)
Fred receives a shell that’s totally unopened and must take it from House to House to complete. It may be a bit hard for Fred to place who the stone reminds her of, but it’s certainly vaguely familiar.
Fred's heart leaps into her chest as she bursts through the library's front door. It's dark inside, but it's dark out as well, and her eyes are already adjusted. As another teenager trips their way in behind, a wolf shoves past both Fred and her companion, leaping its way up the wooden spiral staircase to that door that shouldn't open.
Tonight, though, it will open. Here, in this memory, it's opened every time someone's tried to use it. Here, now, it's just a portkey door.
"Monty!" shouts a voice belonging unmistakably to a Crockett. The teen boy who owns it trips up the stairs as he chases after the wolf.
"Zed! Shit! Wait up!" Fred hisses, reaching for Zed’s collar as he runs off. The voice is not hers. It's familiar, but not. She knows it from town somehow, but does that narrow down the pool when you're a local hometown darling? At the moment, it doesn’t matter. She just knows she needs to run.
“Monty said Tink called to him,” Zed says as they climb. “Tink thinks they turned on El.” Up, up, up the narrow stairwell, to the top and that door that doesn't open, but will. Tonight, it will, and every night before this one it did, as well.
This door is not the one Fred is familiar with. No wrought iron inlay, no ivy pattern. Just a plain wooden door with a brassy knob. The wolf is up on its hind legs, scraping deep gouges into the door, desperate to open it but unable. Just beyond, something knocks, over and over, rhythmic.
"Damn, Monty, hold up—" Zed Crockett reaches for the brassy doorknob, then immediately hisses in pain as he snaps his hand away. "Holy!"
"What?" Fred-but-not-Fred pushes herself up to the door. That knock, knock, knock just goes right on, ceasless.
Zed grimaces, clutching his hurt hand at the wrist. "It's, like, it's on fire!"
Fred withdraws her wand and casts Glacius with impressive ease, casting a thin layer of frost over the doorknob and twisting it open. Smoke billows through immediately, but it clears after a moment. Beyond is another library, but one unfamiliar to Fred, and not just because it's burning. The source of that steady knock also becomes evident: a tapestry poster advertising Paw Paw's Summer Reading Program, half burnt to ash, swings back and forth from one smoldering thread, smacking against the doorway. It fills the hall with the smell of burning plastic.
The wolf snarls, ducking into the flame-engulfed room and leaving the two other teenagers behind.
Zed jumps in after him, heedless of danger, and almost takes a falling beam to the head. Fred nabs him by the collar this time, yanking him back.
"Gil, we have to save them!" Zed protests.
"Ain't gonna save anyone if you're brained, shithead." Fred-but-definitely-not-Fred informs him. She grasps at Zed's pocket, retrieves his wand and shoves it into his hand. "Shielding charm. Now. Let's go."
Fred awakes from the memory with a cough, sweat breaking on her brow from the imagined heat. It’d felt so real a few seconds before, and now it fades like details from a dream. This memory is hers for now, but it shouldn’t belong to her for long.
NAME: Trudy ORDER: Mothgarden, Deeplurk, Wildgulch, Thorntrail FAVORITE NPC?: TIMOTHEYE! TIMOTHEYE! TIMOTHEYE! Anything else?: I already have a memory with Wyatt so you don't have to give me another, but I could not miss this opportunity to protest for Timotheye
Trudy receives a cicada shell that has had three steps completed, already golden-winged and red-eyed, though it seems someone has tried to paint it black, again. She need only complete the final step, though figuring out which one that is takes some trial and error.
Trudy is still. Perfectly still. Her back is pressed up against the wall, head bowed, hands gripping something cylindrical—not a wand, but a weapon? Hm. Feels a little squishy to be a weapon.
It's hot here. Wherever she is. A bead of sweat runs down her forehead and her hands are too damp to properly grip whatever this is in her hands.
One. She inhales deeply, finding her center. Two. Exhale. Three!
She leaps out, swinging a tube of wrapping paper in front of her like a sword. "Whaaaaaawm," she hums out, sounding not unlike a lightsaber, but definitely unlike Trudy Judy McGilliguddy. "Whaaaaa—chzzzzzzt."
Trudy-who-isn't-Trudy twirls her festive weapon around in front of her, spouting sound effects to the best of her ability. She jabs at an invisible villain, kicks at another, swings her tube around to slice at whoever's coming up behind her—
There's a crash. That was no villain. That was a shelf in a bowling alley basement, cluttered with old shoes and blinking pins that are now spilling out across the floor.
"Nononononono," she shouts in that voice that's still wrong and she scrambles for her wand. "Noooo stay up, stay up, stay up!"
"LIR!" a voice shouts upstairs from behind a closed door. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"
"CLEANING, DAD!!" The young Lir Liu grimaces when he tells this lie. Ohhh, now he's gonna have to do that, and this is so much lamer than what his friends are doing. Trudy can't quite tell what Lir is missing out on, but the feeling of FOMO is universal.
He heaves a sigh and slouches over to the mess, dragging the tube of wrapping paper along with him. One petulant foot kicks at a paint can and it rolls to a stop just by the old wooden hatch leading down into that long, concrete tunnel.
"Uuuuuugh," he moans and drags himself to pick up the paint can with all the enthusiasm of a toddler eating vegetablese.
And he's sent right back on his ass when the hatch door flies open. Zelda Gunzenhauser stands on the other side, wand out, breathless, and dragging a barely conscious Wybie Youngblood.
"Lir," she chokes out. Her face is smeared with dirt and blood, and Wybie—there's just—Lir feels faint. There's so much blood.
But Zelda is looking right at him, and the last thing Lir Liu is about to do is disappoint Zelda Gunzenhauser. He nods. "What—what do you need?"
"You need to get everyone out of here. Now."
Trudy wakes with a wave of nausea that makes it hard for her to stand at first. It fades quickly, though, the details of the memory with it. What she’s left with is the sense that this memory is not hers, and that the person it belongs to needs it back.
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peckenpaugh2020-05-18 02:45 pm
HELP REX OUT
He's looking for help, and perhaps you can assist.
HELP REX OUT: Bijou (no form, just dumb)
"Oooh, you brought your collectibles!" she squeals when she sees the cicada shells.
She is not actually interested in his collectibles.
HELP REX OUT: Felicity
ORDER: Wilgulch, Mothgarden, Deeplurk, Thorntrail.
FAVORITE NPC?: Doug Bobson, Zippy, Zed, and Oliver Goodliffe :)
Felicity gets a cicada shell...
The memory ends abruptly and Felicity wakes in her own body. The ache of old bones hangs in her joints, ill-fitting on her still youthful form, but arrogant confidence, too, persists even as she settles into wakefulness. This memory is not hers, she knows. It belongs to someone else. But, perhaps, this memory is more than something woefully forgotten. Perhaps it is evidence.
HELP REX OUT: Tony
ORDER: Thorntrail, Deeplurk, Wildgulch, Mothgarden
FAVORITE NPC?: YOU ALREADY KNOW. (Ms. Dorkins)
Also, a big fan of Dr. Quirke.
Tony gets a cicada shell...
Stirring from Ms. Dorkin’s memory is a bit like waking from an anxiety dream. Tony’s heart is pumping fast and it’s a few seconds before it eases. Even once that feeling’s left, though, he still knows this memory he has isn’t his. That it should be returned to its rightful owner.
HELP REX OUT: Armani
ORDER: mothgarden, wildgulch, thorntrail, deeplurk
FAVORITE NPC?: timotheye, bub, mayor t-bone, mr. zahidi, liquor store zed.
armani will sheepishly admit that he gave his cicada stone to the muscheron at the surly stump way back when.
Armani gets a cicada shell...
Why had the memory ended so abruptly? Just like a dream, Armani wakes. The timid curiosity he still feels surely belongs to Mr. Zahidi. That feeling of knowing this memory belongs to someone else is absolutely his own, though.
HELP REX OUT: Aristotle
ORDER: Deeplurk, Wilgulch, Mothgarden, Thorntrail!
FAVORITE NPC?: Lancelot Purcell. Althea Greatheart. Bearigold.
Aris gets a cicada shell...
There is so much guilt and worry tied up in this memory that the feeling of wanting it gone is almost overpowering. Aris doesn’t want it, but perhaps neither does the man who gave it up? Maybe, though, it’s important that he remember.
HELP REX OUT: Fred
ORDER: Which order would you like to complete your cicada shell in, given the chance? Just list Houses.
FAVORITE NPC?: Her DAD.
Fred is a LOCAL HOMETOWN DARLING, so any townie she grew up around would beeeeee interesting. Kyle. Doc Potts. T-Bone. Lir Liu. Zippy. (Mama Liu.) (Mama Kyle.)
Fred gets a cicada shell...
Fred awakes from the memory with a cough, sweat breaking on her brow from the imagined heat. It’d felt so real a few seconds before, and now it fades like details from a dream. This memory is hers for now, but it shouldn’t belong to her for long.
HELP REX OUT: Trudy
ORDER: Mothgarden, Deeplurk, Wildgulch, Thorntrail
FAVORITE NPC?: TIMOTHEYE! TIMOTHEYE! TIMOTHEYE!
Anything else?: I already have a memory with Wyatt so you don't have to give me another, but I could not miss this opportunity to protest for Timotheye
Trudy gets a cicada shell...
Trudy wakes with a wave of nausea that makes it hard for her to stand at first. It fades quickly, though, the details of the memory with it. What she’s left with is the sense that this memory is not hers, and that the person it belongs to needs it back.