Even the illusion of June is enough to send a stabbing pain through my chest

[butnotyet]

Who: Augustine the First and ____________ (This could be you!)
What: A little bit of everything, including Event threads, and who knows what else
When: Throughout June
Where: All around Trench; specific locations listed in TLs as necessary.

Content warnings for this character: Necromancer with visibility issues (still running a little bit Invisible Man) seeking CR for explicit gore/body horror as a matter-of-fact daily occurrence / being jaded AF about life in Trench and otherwise (look, man, he's older than dirt) / needs more people to be slutty at-or-with (bearing in mind he is, again, currently at-least-mostly Invisible, you/your character's kinks/mileage May Vary, player more interested in vague/FTB/finessing a scene than anything explicit). Also, his omen is his brother, and also a venomous snake, and also really chatty.

Specific warnings for this post: Nightmares featuring a lot of violence, including self-inflicted/suicide; various types of religious imagery/discussions, definitely including "taking the Lord's Name in vain"; invisible nude spying on God (might get spicy).

Comments

4. Who Is That Masked Man? [OTA, at least early/mid June, anywhere in Trench]

[butnotyet]

How many Sleepers really worry about following along with the Practical aesthetic, rather than the Pleasure-focused? For that matter, how often do they do it when they're actually someone who should be blatantly displaying how much of a hedonist they are?

How often are they inclined to walk around looking visible, so that people interact with them, rather than ... well, not (if they aren't trying to figure out how to rob marketplace shops when anything they pick up will still remain visible)?

When it's been nearly a month that this guy has been wandering around through town on a fairly-predictable daily path, well, by this point there are probably a number of people he's passingly familiar with in a local-smalltalk-chat way who have never once seen his face, and will probably be quite surprised to discover that somewhere, underneath the mask and the invisibility, he's actually quite a standard-looking human. ("Attractive, but grave.")

In fact, at whatever point in the future he can shed the mask and go back to feeling the air on his face, there are probably any number of people who will only recognize him because of how frequently he's wearing a quite large brown snake like the season's most fashionable accessory.

Where are you running into him?

[justoscar]

Where is Oscar running into the semi-visible man with a snake? In Gaze, obviously. While they had initially met in suitably strange circumstances for the both of them, Oscar had made a point to at least try to keep tabs on some of the people involved after the pocket dimension of the world that never was spat them back out. Dressed in a linen button up and work pants, with his thick curls tied back into an aggressively fluffy ponytail, he knew he was hardly recognizable as the Shrike known as Sweetroll.

Perhaps the only similarity was in the unassuming way they carried themselves, and their shared willingness to get dirty. Oscar displayed both that morning on his trek through town, on his way back to the vividly green and vine entangled mansion he had come to call his home with a bag slung over his shoulders.

Someone had spent the evening chilling in the library, and with his more nocturnal sleep schedule he hardly seemed too bothered by it.

Spotting the stranger in a forbidding mask that had been making regular rounds around town, Oscar couldn't help but smile and wave shyly in greeting. Although the stranger had chosen a theatrical get up, it was clear that the two of them were at least united in being a little practical. Still.... they were in Gaze still, and 'practical' tended to take on a different definition in this part of town. He had his own questions-- and this person seemed to travel throughout town on a regular basis.

Oscar had a question, and maybe this man would know the answer.

"Um. Hey. You wouldn't have seen a place that's selling normal fruit, would you? Everything I'm finding right now makes people.... uh, act kinda weird? It's not good, and I don't want that going into the stuff I'm making for the supply caches.

[butnotyet]

It's still very strange, every time someone just starts talking to him. Ten thousand sanctified years, more or less, when all it took was a filmy white robe slung across his shoulders to ensure that any interaction with him was undertaken with the utmost of respect; it might not be surprising, after such a time, that a mere month or two here in Trench isn't enough to alter his, ah, entrenched expectations.

This is not to say that the fellow in the owl-and-leather suit points at himself, or looks behind him to see if there's someone else this kid might mean — no "who, me?" moment here.

He does stare with no obvious reaction for a few seconds before shaking his head and sighing, though.

"If you want apples, quite frankly I believe you're fucked. Otherwise — there's a lot of fruit being sold in a lot of places — I don't know if any of them are uniformly free of effects, the sellers, I mean. Some of the fruits seem unaffected, or safe if you cook them — have a care with the blueberries, though."

The shudder is visible, despite the leather suit.

"What else have you run into?" he asks Oscar, mindful of the way that shutting down a conversation at high speed — here, even more than other places and times in his history — risks throwing away the connections that might make a life more bearable, or even just keep it functional a little longer.

(That, and there's something... familiar, if not terribly familiar, about this kid.)

[justoscar]

"I'm almost afraid to ask after the blueberries,"

Oscar commented wryly, looking up at the owl-costumed stranger with interest and curiosity. At first he had gravitated for the stranger because of the familiar looking presentation on the street, as well as his own bias for owls. Now that they were talking, however, he couldn't help but wonder if there wasn't something familiar about that voice.

"After the problems with people shedding memories or becoming aggressive, I kinda stopped trying to get fresh produce. Which, is a shame. This is a good time of year for fruit, and I was looking forward to doing some canning before we lost the season."

[butnotyet]

"I don't know if you've noticed, but fresh blueberries are providing the eater with a remarkable gift for healing — but only if they're fresh; any means of cooking them is giving people the, ah, opposite effect," he answers tactfully. "In the sort of way where one would very much want a healer nearby, if one were to make the mistake of consuming them cooked."

Tick, tick, tick, go the gloved fingers: apples, raspberries, blueberries. "Grapes... well, from what I've heard, they're safe to make into wine; it'll only have the same effect as any other wine, when it comes to altering someone's behavior. Have you encountered any, ah, citrus fruits, yet? How old are you, anyway?"

In another time — in another place — that would surely have been a non sequitur... right?

"Let's see — I don't think I've heard of any issues with stone fruits, at least. Have we met, before? I find it a bit hard to keep track, sometimes."

[justoscar]

Ick-- that's scary!

[Really, it was. Blueberries were the absolute last thing he wanted to add into long term storage for emergencies this season! Oscar would continue his hunt... And just avoid all berries, to be safe.

Oscar nodded along with the listing, glad to have found someone who had done more legwork than he had. With the ongoing drama of his life, he was keeping close to his home.]

...I just turned sixteen, Sir.

[He added. It had been two years since he had left Remnant... And at this point, he knew he had changed so much that he couldn't go back to his old life. ]

What does it...

[And the man continued talking. It wasn't the unlike his dealings with Ozpin-- and he couldn't help but laugh a little with the question.]

Old guys really like to talk, don't they? I'm not sure if we've met, Sir. Your voice is familiar? But I sometimes go dream walking, so that's not a good thing to go by.

[frogfear]

If it was October, when everyone in town seemed to either don a mask or hide their identities with face paint, Willow probably wouldn't have taken much note of the stranger, even with his unusual appearance. Even over the last several weeks as she's noticed him on her way to the magic shop she has been helping Luna with, it's less the mask and the leather she notices and more the big snake.

It's probably an Omen, and it's probably fine, but she is not a fan of snakes, so she keeps her distance beyond the occasional polite nod or smile and brief greeting.

Until she runs into him after he's shed the costume and she recognizes him as the guy she met at the carnival a couple months ago. The one with the unusual cigarette case and the flair for skeeball. She still keeps her distance from the snake, but the smile is friendly rather than simply polite as she greets him.

"Oh, hey, it's you. Um, Augustine, right?"