HE IS HERE

[peckishmods]

the vines have run wild

it's over

Everything is in shambles. Walls and floors torn and broken from roots and branches sprouting through. They block doors and crowd passages and pulse with sick life. The Thing sits in the center of it all, angry and starving, its trunk both still and moving in ways you catch only when it is in the corner of your vision. Branches that look less like bark and more like skin stretch in every direction, lush with shadowy leaves and dotted with bits of glowing blue. The ruined floor is littered with those little twinkling dots. Seeds. Everywhere, seeds. They hang on boughs, and rest on banisters in the upper levels. The one thing in this nightmare that doesn't radiate that awful, pervasive hunger.

The roof is gone, replaced with a writhing canopy of shadow and muck. Some parts of it are complex spiderwebs of tendrilly shapes, others solid formless movement. The only consistent thing about it is that it is terrible to behold, faintly nauseating to look at for too long. Ash rains down between gaps in its branches, and what glimpses of sky are visible are nothing but swirling gray clouds. What stars still shine are magic, man-made, floated between balconies by prom committee before the dance.

Those remaining begin to stir. Each one of you has heard Pocket's words, "Find the roots." And if you want to save your friends, your family, the holler — hell, maybe even the world — that's exactly what you're going to do.

You climb from protective cocoons of dying moss, push your way past walls of solid ice, emerging into utter destruction. Things move and make noise at the edge of your vision, but for now, at least, all is calm. What to do? Where to start?

it's ruined

Among the twinkling maple seeds are the dropped possessions of students and staff, lost when they were pulled away. A compact mirror, a cell phone, a pair of glasses, cups of punch spilling across the floor. A single red heel sits at the edge of the jagged pit that peers down into the Sorting Path. The air here is hot. Too hot. If you jump, you'll surely be boiled alive.

Though locked when everyone tried to flee, vines and roots have torn the doors to the auditorium off their hinges. The splintered remains of heavy oak doors litter the entrance halls and stairwell alcoves, leaving an open path outside. Not that you'd want to flee, by the looks of it.

A cool night breeze is the only relief from the growing heat of the auditorium, yes, but even that is tainted by the heavy scent of flowers. Outside, vines and purple flowers have exploded over every surface. They climb up lamp posts, engulf buildings whole, hang from trees. It would be beautiful if it weren't horrifying. Campus is unrecognizable.

there is no hope

Roots and vines clog the way to the Sorting Path, and most stairwells are completely obstructed by the growths of that horrible tree. Up above, something buzzes and wails, a mockery of a cicada's cry, and beyond that the twittering of birds nesting in the tree's highest branches.

Pouch coalesces in the middle of it all, a one-winged magimagicicada, weak and weary but undaunted. Resolute, if not reinvigorated. He bends down to touch a seed, and the moment his obsidian fingers light on it, a blue-white portal to somewhere else rips right through reality. A memory begins to play. Somehow, the bug seems to know what he's seeing.

She gave us what we need, the one who ran says to the gathered students, his voice in their heads as much as the air. Let's all not let her down, huh?

Find your friends. Find my siblings. It's time to fight.

but you'll keep going, won't you?

TO ELSEWHERE
| TO OUTSIDE | TO THE UPPER LEVELS | TO THE SORTING PATH |

IN THIS HUB
| ARE YOU THERE? |
| AT THE BASE OF THE TREE | A POCKET OF SAFETY |
| BACKSTAGE | THE DANCE STUDIO |

OOC POSTS
| OOC ACTION HUB | OOC CHATTER - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS |

Comments

BACKSTAGE

[peckishmods]

Backstage is a mess of toppled shelves, broken props and performing arts club supplies. It is dark, and few seeds have grown here to illuminate the area. Vines rip up through the floor here, flowers mere buds. A bass drum hangs off a branch like a head on a pike, both its sides pierced by the jagged living wood. Despite the ruin, it seems like you may be able to scavenge items from here.

MEMORY: Snacktime

[peckishmods]

[UNMODERATED]
[CRITERIA: 12 replies]

It's cool here. It's always cool over here by the big old metal tube in the forest, though. That's partly why it's nice. Overhead, through a large gap in the fresh canopy, stars twinkle and shine. The other reason it's nice is that it's safe. A dense wall of shrubs and trees makes entry for anything that doesn't know the way difficult if you don't like briars and thistles and ticks in your fur. Humans have been here before, and that's the third reason it's nice. All sorts of cool human stuff litters this little clearing. One of those plastic things that goes bright when you hit it just right, a blanket with not too many holes in it, metal cans that are fun to bat around sometimes, a bucket that makes your voice sound funny if you yell into it a whole bunch of other neat stuff. But that's not all.

Two brown furry feet bounce happily in a cluster of clovers as Bearigold hunches over a mutilated cardboard box. Inside, four dozen individually sealed packages of pudding are nestled, just waiting to be snacked upon. Bearigold doesn't know that this stuff is pudding. In her head she's trying to decide what she should name it. It's sort of like honey? But browner. So, bruney? Nice.

She swipes her one good paw into a pudding cup, breaking the seal and scooping out its entire contents before licking the sugary sweet goop from her nubby clawed fingers. She sits back, heavily, on a massive old fallen log and enjoys her pudding cup. Ah, this is the life.

Here, Bearigold freezes, mid-snack.

MEMORY: Snacktime

[quidditched]

The last time Eddy ventured out here during the daytime would have been sometime during freshmen year. Back when all the odd rumors were wild new adventures that had to be explored. He'd brought along some leftover Halloween M&Ms as an offering since that was all he could afford.

The chill didn't mean anything back then. Maybe someone had complained about forgetting a jacket. Someone else had thrown some skittles at them and called them an idiot. But it's instantly recognizable now. The one who ran hadn't gotten very far.

But that's not who this memory belongs to. Pouch is fine. Or, well. Safe, at least. Relatively. Fuck.

No, this memory almost certainly belongs to the 400-pound bearret sitting in the small clearing, and—

Oh shit is that more goop? "Fuck," is all the warning Eddy gives as he reaches for one of the metal cans (his weapon of choice, apparently) and hurls it at the innocent cup of sweet delicious bruney clutched in Bearigold's good paw.

Blessedly, Eddy has good aim thanks to years of ball sports, but it's maybe also a blessing that this isn't actually the bearret in question.

MEMORY: Sleigh Bells Ring

[peckishmods]

[UNMODERATED]
[CRITERIA: Minimum 14 Replies]

This is just a sea of clacking heels and stomping boots. Swishing skirts and hems of pants. It's impossible to see where to go, and the scene dodges in and out, a breathless race away from certain death. Music thumps out from up above, and it's headache inducing, terrifying, but identifiable as Garth Squonks after a few moments. The objective here is clear. Whoever this memory belongs to has to get to safety. It's the last remaining member of its race and it has to survive the night. Urgency pulses through the creature, (because it's clear that this is a creature, a very small one, with a jingle bell on its little green hat.) It just wants to get to the other side of the gym. It doesn't know if it can. "Naughty."
It whispers to itself, and the time to spread that message will come soon, but that time is not just yet. It will come. In time. But first, it needs to survive. "Naughty, Naughty, Naughty." Onward.

Projectiles start falling from the sky. Or, well, from careless teens' hands and pockets, but it doesn't know that. Glimpses upward reveal exactly when this is, but feet stomp down too quickly to ever let anyone gain their bearings. To make it more complicated, still, projectiles begin to fall down, careless, from the giant teens above. Roses the size of boulders threaten to sweep the elf over, but it dodges. A lily of the valley sprig knocks it down for a moment, but it springs back up, and (creative), holds it over its head instead. The flowers are like bells.

Bells. Yes. It knows bells. It can deal with bells.

Its foot becomes stuck in something, and so will anyone else's if they don't watch out. Sticky. Sugar. A loud sigh of dismay from the elf, raising to a soft scream when three candy hearts roll by, Indiana-Jones-boulder style. The first bears the message TXT YR MOM. The second, blue, seems to proclaim LUV IS BLIND The third, which the elf leaps behind states only LIE 2 ME. But it doesn't have to lie to anyone. Because it's survived. Only then does the elf's back strike up against stone, and there's a wall of safety.

MEMORY: Sleigh Bells Ring

[filigreed]

Look, this really isn't where Lydia saw this evening going. Mostly she saw it going right over to the snack table and remaining there for most of the evening. Nowhere in this forecast did anyone predict everything being gigantic and/or trying to kill them. So, y'know. It's going swimmingly.

"When I get my wand back," she says, fingers curling into fists in front of her and eyes squeezing shut. "I'm breaking it over my knee and moving to a small fishing village where no one speaks English."

Then she blows out a long breath and opens her eyes, unclenching her hands and shaking them out. "You okay?"

MEMORY: Practice

[peckishmods]

[MODERATED - Player Memory]
[CRITERIA: Complete Puzzle]
[RESERVE: Wildgulch Juniors]

Single-wide trailers stacked like drunken Jenga blocks sway gently in the breeze, a feat of magical engineering born of necessity and poverty, but the boy leaning over the railing on the rickety porch doesn't look impressed or even aware. In the trailer above him, he can hear their neighbor listening to the radio beneath the buzz of a magically enhanced window AC unit. In the tin box one level below, some stinky green smoke is wafting out of open windows, and it makes Wyatt wrinkle his nose and back away towards the door to his home. As he turns, the screen door squeaks on rusty hinges, and before he can pass through, his mother is exiting. Wyatt, always stout for his age but still small enough that he looks to be around ten, greets his mom with a broad smile. Cassandra Webberley is sad sometimes and worried all the time, so he does his best to make sure that she's happy. Today, though, even though she still has dark circles under her eyes from too little sleep, his mom smiles back as she holds up a tattered old tarot deck whose box is made mostly of tape by now. "Practice with me?" she asks.

MEMORY: Practice

[bratsquatch]

Felicity was already glad to be adventuring with the rest of her roommates, but she's extra pleased once she realizes whose memory they're in. "Wy Guy!" she cheers at the sight of her prom date. Or, perhaps more like, Wy Little Guy.

She puffs her bottom lip out big. "Awww, he's so cuuuute."

MEMORY: Blackmail

[peckishmods]

[UNMODERATED]
[CRITERIA: Minimum 14 posts]

Alva Berzelius is a ludicrously handsome man. It's a shame his personality is so utterly obnoxious. Montgomery Crockett wonders what Nes Altizer even sees in him, all the while knowing exactly what it is about him that's so charming, deep down. Effortless genius, indefatigable energy, and an inability to look anywhere but up — archetypally Mothgardener. And Monty Crockett has always had a hard time with Mothgardeners.

The fact that Mr. Berzelius simply does not seem to age makes it hard to date this memory. He stands at the front of the Potions lab, over a small cauldron of something powerfully fragrant. Earthy herbal and bright citrus scents mingle in the air as he works. The Peckenpaugh Potions lab looks pretty much like it always does. The shelves are in different places, and the bottles and containers aren't quite the same, but a Potions lab is a Potions lab, really, and Alva has always run his the same.

"So, Monty Crockett, huh? Of The Crocketts," asks Alva as he whips up a potion that should be handled with deadly seriousness as though it's the third cocktail of the night. He grins as he pours a bit of this, a bunch of that, and a dash of something else into a cauldron.

It makes Monty anxious. He wrings his hands together. "It's—hm. It's been a long time since I last heard someone...make a big deal about The Crockett name..."

Alva Berzelius goes right on grinning as he stirs his potion three times counter-clockwise. "Studied your mom's works a bit before I dropped out of healer school—hey! Didn't you go to Peckenpaugh with Zelda and George?"

Monty nods, watching Alva stop and stir three times in the other direction. "George, Youngblood and I were roommates, actually."

"Damnedest thing," Alva says with a fond shake of his head. He shuts off the flame to the cauldron and lets what he's brewing sit, glancing back up at his guest. "Guess that's how it is in small towns, right? Do you all hang out much?"

"I don't, uh...get out much," Monty admits.

Alva waves his hand dismissively, then grabs a bottle of shimmering liquid from beside him. For some reason, that particular glowing white-gold concoction spikes Monty's nerves to sizzling. Alva doesn't seem to notice, too busy dumping the whole thing into the cauldron and discarding the empty bottle in a nearby sink.

The color in the pot changes abruptly, green to gold to black and iridescent.

"You should consider it," Alva says, his eyes fixed on the cauldron, watching the contents intently. He waits for exactly three bubbles to surface on the thickened liquid, and then begins to ladle it into bottles. "We play poker once a week, a bunch of us," he adds, one bottle full, then moving onto the next. And a third.

And suddenly everything freezes.

MEMORY: Blackmail

[necrodanseuse]

Chanel falls uncharacteristically silent, watching the scene unfold with all the intrigue of someone who has recently stress-created a binder/dossier full of information on everything they know about school staff. Conveniently, this scene involves both one of the people she’s been researching most heavily, and a member of the Crockett family, her most recent point of intrigue.

When everything freezes, she immediately crosses to inspect the cauldron, grinning up at the only other person who arrived here with her.“Oh, that’s got to be the world’s most annoying poker game.” She wants in.

MEMORY: Moonlit Swim

[peckishmods]

[?MAYBE MODERATED? - we may slip into this memory]
[CRITERIA: must be able to swim, minimum group size 3, minimum replies 10]

The thrum of music blaring from Bluetooth speakers sound distorted underwater, but it's better than hearing it above the water. Poking the top of their head out of the warm waters of the Greentooth, the river monster cringes at the sound of this so-called "music". But they remain, keeping a close eye on the magical teenagers on the shore.

A bonfire crackles on the pebble beach and large, color-changing orbs floating lazily over the partygoers' heads. Teenagers trip along through an area cordoned off with old rope fishing nets (how thematic), scooping drinks from wheelbarrows and dropping onto logs, or chatting with some unfamiliar bartender.

Nearby, an inflatable pink coffin floats past the river monster and it's with a sense of resignation that they swing their arm to push it back toward the shore. This is not a favor, but a job, which means they don't have to do this happily. They cross their arms under the water, keeping sentry as another boat readies to launch in hunt of those little glowing floats. These ones they need to watch, and—

There’s a sound. On the other shore, in the bushes, a sound that doesn’t fit with what should be here. All other noises drop out, one by one, as the river monster focuses in on the source of that rustling. There’s too many limbs, it moves too quickly. And it’s breathing—it sounds like a thunderstorm from under the water.

"—rollerskates!" Some kid on a boat is shouting and the monster whips around. Everything freezes in that moment, the river monster watching in annoyance as two irresponsible boaters stand on a vessel mere milliseconds from capsizing. The golden float they're supposed to be retrieving lies just a few feet beyond their boat, but apparently they'll be needing a ride back to the shore tonight.

MEMORY: Moonlit Swim

[dareyouto]

Maisy has the unpleasant experience of being dumped into this memory directly into the water, but this is followed up by the slightly pleasant realization that her gigantic prom dress seems to be neutrally buoyant. After getting her bearings about her, she catches the tail end of the memory before it freezes. Beyond her initial yelp of surprise at hitting the water, she doesn't even scream. She thinks she's growing as a person.

"There BETTER not be any vines in this water," she announces loudly as she flops around, trying to find one of her companions. There's no nearby wood to knock on, though, so she smacks herself in the head instead. Don't bring it up!

MEMORY: It Works!

[peckishmods]

[UNMODERATED - player memory]
[CRITERIA: 12 replies minimum]

Suddenly, a field. The soft grass, dotted with white flowers and shimmering strands of magical confetti, stretches into the lavender and orange horizon of an Angeltread sundown. Cozy houses line the periphery, lights on, air full of chatter and laughter and streamers.

Nearby, a gaggle of half-grown youths are setting off charmed firecrackers. Someone yells something unintelligible but joyous, and a handful go off at once in a cacophony of screams and whistles. All the kids cheer.

One of them turns to a small, familiar-looking girl and says, "You do the next one."

She blushes, gazing upward, and in that instant is recognizable as Xenia de Bourgh: much younger than she is in current life by a handful of years, but her heart in her eyes as always. The expression around them, however, is bashful and uncertain.

"Don't you want to, Xen?" the kid asks, smirking. "You gotta use your words."

She nods in fumbling earnest, adjusts herself in preparation: a shyer know-it-all who already took her time to speak and now has to work even harder at it. It's just a second, but it feels like a thousand years, the circle of faces leering down.

"I. I." Meaningless little starts. Xenia swallows and breathes out through her nose. "I." Then, giving up a little, her right hand reaches up and gingerly taps at the skin of her throat. Now everything crystallizes into a frozen tableau: kids, lingering smoke, and the glint of a golden band on her ring finger.

MEMORY: It Works!

[nublada]

"Awwwww!" Claudia coos, rushing up to pinch the cheeks of the even more precious Xenia de Bourgh. "I miss our Xen, I was beginning to forget her sweet face."

MEMORY: Ballpit

[peckishmods]

[MODERATED]
[CRITERIA: find the linchpin]

It's a Chuck-E-Cheese. Or, the wizard version of that. Chuck-E-Cheez-Wiz. Whatever. The memory owner can't recall the name. What's important is, you've walked into a childhood wonderland that, through the eyes of an adult, could really use some disinfectant. The smell of bad pizza hangs in the air. Arcade machines both muggle and magical in design fill the space, for the most part they're all just generic light and noise, though every pinball machine comes through very clearly: The Weird Sisters, The Mummy (brenden frasier edition), alien invasion-themed, a Mummy-themed magical pinball machine, The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

In the center of it all is a massive ball pit where a dozen or so children bounce around and play, diving in, jumping out, tossing the balls around.

"Oh, I do not love this, you know?" muses a familiar, prim London accent as the memory owner regards the scene before her.

Ordinarily, Melody Kwan is all about a bit of fun, but her four year old daughter looks like she's drowning in that ball pit. The other children are so much larger. Is that a six-year-old, or a sixteen-year-old pelting the other kids with grimy plastic balls. And, yes, also bad: those plastic balls are sort of disgusting. The little hollow spheres scuffed, smudged and dented, their bright colors a little dingy.

"It's fine," says a man standing on Ms. Kwan's right.

"Mm," says Ms. Kwan. The sort of sound a woman makes when she's just waiting on the lawyer to call her back and let her know that the divorce papers are in order.

She turns to her husband — soon to be ex-husband — and he's smiling at her. He is tall and handsome and charming in a divorced (no pun intended) academic sort of way, but through Ms. Kwan's eyes all of his worst traits are magnified. Leering eyes, shave job just ever so slightly uneven, and a bit of spinach in his teeth.

And then there's a shriek, and a heart-clutching sob.

Ms. Kwan whips her head around just in time to see the six-going-on-sixteen-year-old pluck the doll from her daughter's hands and yeet that thing into the disgusting ball swamp. "Hey!"

Everything freezes.

MEMORY: Ballpit

[princeofcat]

Oh, a Chuck-E-Cheez-Wiz.See, this is more his speed. This isn't the Boston one where he's spent so many birthday parties as a small child, but it's familiar territory. Tybalt immediately punches Lydia in the shoulder in his excitement. "Bet the high score in Brendan Fraser Mummy pinball isn't good as mine." Is his immediate boast. But the memory plays out, and he wrinkles his nose in distaste when it's through. "Asshole." He declares in a mumble, and strides over to the pit. If no one stops him, he'll jump in to fetch the doll himself, and hopefully die in process.

MEMORY: Reclined

[peckishmods]

[UNMODERATED - player memory]
[CRITERIA: Minimum 9 Replies]
[RESERVED: Tony, Felicity, Merlin, if available]

A hill covered in browned grass, atop which sits an old gnarled tree, lush with leaves. It's clearly summer, in the middle of the day - the sun is high and the dry heat isn't quite oppressive, but it is strong. Humming drifts down the hill. Draped across a root, likely uncomfortably and definitely precariously, is Pax, wearing a daisy-chain crown as she tries to coax a shining beetle, crawling up the tree trunk onto her finger. A small bag sits next to her, an empty container that had her lunch in it inside, as well as a few uneaten apples, polished shiny, a strange purplish red that almost looks unnatural. A few bottles of water are also in the bag, along with some grapes. A broom lies an arm's length away from Pax, old and well-loved, along with a beater bat and a few baseballs. A bird in the tree whistles out notes occasionally, flitting from branch to branch.

A warm breeze blows, rustling the dry grass, and Pax manages to get the bug to climb onto her finger. She smiles triumphantly as everything goes still. The soft, dreamy quality remains though, and everything seems pliable and easy to move even once it's frozen.

MEMORY: Reclined

[bratsquatch]

Ahhh!! Pax!!!

Felicity watches the whole memory with a open, delighted mouth. How cute!! Everything Pax likes is here, Felicity thinks. Including me! She bounces up and down in excitement, but when her heels sink into the dirt, she jumps out of them. This adventure was always meant to be a barefoot one.

She gives a look to Merlin and Tony and privately decides that whoever rescues Pax is probably her best friend. "I'm coming!!" she yells and starts prancing up the hill, attempting to recreate the bird's melody with her newly acquired accordion.

RESCUED: Viola

[arisahn]

It hadn't taken Aris, Tybalt, and Winter too long to find Viola after facing down her memory (their memory) and the sense of relief had been immeasurable. Aris had hugged her so hard it might've hurt, but she hadn't seemed to hold that against him. After all the reassurances and explanations were done, though, their friends had departed and left the two of them to...talk. Not for long, because there was still a lot to do, but for just a little while.

Now sitting side by side on one of the downed shelves, he looks over at Viola and says again, "...I'm really glad you're back." There's a lot more that he wants to say too, but he doesn't know if it's fair to do that here. And her being back with them, safe with them, is the most important part, isn't it? Still. He turns the glowing doppelganger thimble over and over in his pocket with one restless hand. It's hers, so she should have it. And the truth, probably.

"...How're you feeling?" he asks instead of deciding. He doesn't know what it feels like after. Tybalt had been pretty Tybalt about the whole thing.

RESCUED: Viola & Aris

[tristfully]

That's a good question. Viola hasn't really paused to decide how she's feeling yet. She does now, her eyebrows lowering a touch in contemplation. "I feel ... awash," she decides. Swept up by activity and explanation only to be set back down on this shelf to rest and reflect. She has the feeling that she'll be swept back up in the tide again soon.

"How are you?" she asks and lights her fingertips over Aris' knee, "How is your leg?"

MEMORY: Not The Shoes!

[peckishmods]

[?MODERATED? - we may pop into this memory]
[CRITERIA: 4 Replies Per Character Minimum]

It's a little insulting how much Elflock Falls celebrates Peckenpaugh of all places. They're just some stupid public school, and they're not even that good at, like, anything. Except maybe throwing up, apparently—which they can have.

But surrounded by fair rides and the smell of food both fried and covered in sugar, the disgruntled Miss Celestial Bread begrudgingly looks for something to enjoy. Arms crossed, frowning deeply, Celestial wanders through the midway, eventually stopping in front of a funnel cake booth. Fuck it, she decides, a resigned mental sigh as she joins the line. This'll do.

Then she hears the sharp pop of a balloon bursting and her head snaps to attention. There's two blonde girls across the way throwing darts at balloons. One smiles at her and throws a dainty wave her way, and, despite her very best efforts to be annoyed, Celestial smiles back. Hmm. Must be the sugar's fault.

"What're you smiling at?" some guy behind her asks and Celestial groans and rolls her eyes.

"I'm enjoying myself, Iago," she huffs, dropping her arms to her sides. "It's a festival." Iago Goodliffe swings around to her front, sugar-dusted funnel cake in hand, an obnoxious smirk plastered on his face that does not inspire that same warmth from Celestial. If he looks a little green around the gills, she doesn't notice, because she doesn't care.

"You ride the Gravitron yet?" There's something shitty about the way he asks the question, but Celestial is too irritated right now to figure out what.

"No I didn't ride the Gravitron, why are you as—"

And then, immediately and very unfortunately, she finds out exactly why Iago was asking. His shoulders hunch, his eyes go wide, and Celestial yelps, jumping back and knocking the funnel cake up and out of his hands.

She's not fast enough, and everything freezes as Iago vomits right on her shoes.

MEMORY: Not The Shoes!

[merlinpletcher]

"...Do we actually have to save her?" Merlin asks dryly and exchanges a glance with Armani, clearly disgusted by the scene that's playing out in front of them. Not to mention this girl's shit attitude. Despite this complaining, however, he gets to work almost immediately, drawing his wand and proceeding forward. His eyes linger on the foul mess between the two Malstrom students and he steps pointedly around it and them.

If the shoes are the linchpin, he's out. He's not touching those. Celestial can figure this out by herself.

MEMORY: Goal

[peckishmods]

[MODERATED - player memory]
[CRITERIA: defeat the NPCs]

It's a typical soccer field somewhere on the outskirts of Toronto, bordered on three sides by a forest of gnarly trees Small Muggle children, clad in red or blue uniforms, dart across the neatly trimmed grass, shouting, tripping and bashing into each other in a quest to get that soccer ball. The bleachers are crammed with parents, shouting encouragement at their little darlings to crush the competition, or staring at their phones wishing the game would end soon.

In front of the red team’s goal stands a six-year-old Gemma Zhao, unusually quiet and still. Her face is scrunched up with determination, her hands clenched by her sides. The score is tied. They must not lose.

The ball soars toward Gemma, kicked by an unusually long-legged seven-year-old. She jumps and lunges toward it, but it’s too high, too far to the right. She can’t get it. “Aargh!” she yells, mentally willing the ball away from the goal.

Suddenly the ball shoots out of her hands at lightning speed, and she loses track of where it is. The game stops and the Muggles look around, blinking in confusion. Finally, Gemma spots the ball nestled high in the branches of a tree several metres to her left. Her heart races. Mommy and Daddy had told her this might happen, but preferably not in front of Muggles. Something about a secret statue or something. What if she gets in trouble? She runs toward the tree, hoping to retrieve the ball before people can speculate too much about what happened.

MEMORY: Goal

[peckishmods]

Gemma half-jumps, half-falls from the lowest branch of the tree, cradling the soccer ball. There are sticks in her hair, her jersey and shorts are streaked with mud, and her face is red with exertion.

Wen Zhao, Gemma’s mother, stands at the foot of the tree, cursing and muttering to herself. “All the effort it’ll take to Obliviate all these people. What is the Ministry going to think of us now?” Wen takes Gemma aside, face pinched. “You need to be more careful in the future.”

“Yes, Mommy,” Gemma says. “Now can we get back to the game?”

Wen glances back at the field, where players and parents have started to disperse in the confusion. “I don’t know.” She sighs, lifts a hand to her temple, and leans back against a tree. The bark of the tree collapses, revealing a hole big enough for people to step through.

MEMORY: The Big Cheese

[peckishmods]

[MODERATED]
[CRITERIA: suffer through an RNG game until you find the linchpin]

This is Mothgarden's atrium, a Victorian-style solarium garden, glass walls reinforced by white painted metal and everything touched with springy pink and green accents. Though outside a light snow falls, it's warm in here, and every plant is lush and blooming. Overhead, magical moths and butterflies flutter, watching students mill about. It's all very lovely, one of the best places on campus in Mr. Berzelius's estimation. He wouldn't voice that fact out loud.

Today, there are two long tables of food flanking the front doors to Mothgarden's common room. And in the center of the main patio where potted plants usually sit, the space has been cleared to make room for a massive bubbling cauldron of cheese. It's the fondue party from February of this year, and just as before, the offerings are impressive, enticing, and presented in a very aesthetically pleasing sort of way.

Mr. Berzelius steps away from the mocktail bar when he sees the foggy figure of someone approaching from outside. The front glass doors part, and there she is, the love of his life. Oh, he has to do something to ruin her day.

"Hey watch this!" Berzelius shouts, and then he trips on a gap between mosaic tiles, stumbles forward and drops his eye in the pot.

Ms. Altizer stares at him. He stares down at the pot, watches his magic eye disappear in the hot cheese.

Everything freezes.

MEMORY: Shittalk

[peckishmods]

[MODERATED - player run memory]
[CRITERIA: Minimum 12 Replies]
[RESERVE: Wildgulch Juniors]

Coriander and Bear sit together in Patrice's bed. He showers often and he wears nice cologne and his familiar doesn't stink, so they choose his bed most often. "You don't think they're going to sleep in the other room the whole year, do you?" Bear asks.

Cori picks up a bottle of blue nail polish and rolls it between her palms with a heavy sigh, almost dreamy. "You don't think we could be that lucky, do you?"