deercountry | (Open) This is Halloween

Entry tags:

(Open) This is Halloween

Who: Luca Paguro and Open
What: Catch all for the month
When: Throughout October
Where: The Black Parade, the Devil's Dive, the Disaster House, the beach

Content Warnings: A child drinking paint thinner (with no ill effects)

Black Parade (Open)
Luca knows by now, thanks to a certain network post, that if he wants to eat something without feeling that weird floaty feeling he'll have to eat poison. And he would, really he would, but who could possibly sit there eating whatever toxic thing they come across when there's so much delicious food here that he's never had before?

A lot of the food here seems to be seasonal, and Luca doesn't want to lose his chance to try them while they're still around. Besides, the loopy feeling wasn't that bad.

And that is why Luca is currently eating a candy apple, staggering around a bit because he definitely should not be eating said candy apple, while marveling at the puppetry and various festivities. At least it seems he's taking some precautions in this place. While he's made absolutely no effort to stay sober, Luca seems to have taken the local's advice to wear a costume to heart, as he's currently wearing a mask and costume. Or he might not have cared about the warnings of ghosts at all and just thought dressing up was fun. With how he's acting right now, it's really hard to tell how much Luca actually took in.

Devil's Dive (Open)
And once again it seems that Luca completely ignored the advice to not eat non-poisoned food. It's not really his fault, though. He'd never had nachos before, and ever since he came to this place, he'd discovered nachos were amazing. Is it his fault that nachos aren't poisonous?

That's how he justifies sitting there, getting progressively more impaired as he chows down on nachos.

"These are delicious! I don't know what the orange stuff is, but I love it!"

He might be seen in the same outfit he wore to the black parade, though he sometimes switches out the costume for the sailor suit he got when he first arrived, though he keeps the same mask on.

He continues to enjoy the nachos until eventually he leans back too far and ends up tumbling to the ground along with his chair.

"...ow. I'm all right."

And then staggers and stumbles as he both tries to get back up and tries to set his chair upright again. He's definitely fine, though. He'll insist on that fact if anyone asks.

Decorating the Disaster House (Open to anyone who has a reason to be outside the Disaster House)
Luca wants to do a good job, so he decides he's going to actually do what he's supposed to do. He won't eat or drink any real food or drink until he gets this done.

At first he just waits a few hours until the effects of his last meal wear off, then he gathers some supplies for a fairly easy Halloween decoration he wanted to try. A mirror, an old black and white picture, glue and some paint thinner.

He sets to work, disassembling the mirror and removing it from the frame, sitting down and working out where he wants to place the picture, and generally trying to carefully craft his 'haunted mirror' for the house. Then he notices he's starting to get thirsty. Again. And if he gets a drink of water, he'll just end up all weird again, and have to wait it out until his head's sorted out, and if he does that, it'll take forever before he can make anything.

He stares at the paint thinner. The guy on the Omni said vilebloods can only drink poison, right? He's a little nervous, picking up the bottle and staring at it for a moment. If he's wrong...this could be very, very bad, but...what reason would that guy have to lie? And he does need to figure out a way to eat and drink without going all loopy.

Unscrewing the lid, Luca brings it up to his face. Cod, that smells terrible. Well, here goes nothing.

Luca chugs the paint thinner.

It tastes...strangely tolerable, and as he downs it, he realizes he does feel refreshed. For the first time since the month began, he can drink without any ill effects. So he keeps drinking.

Fishing (Closed to Fern)]
Luca had been feeling lonely lately. Sure, he loves all the new friends he's making, but he misses his family, misses being in a world with others of his kind, but most of all, he misses Alberto. It had been so hard to leave him, but at the time he'd told himself that he'd write letters and call and that it would only be nine months. Now...he's totally cut off from Alberto, and he has no way of knowing if he, or anyone else from Luca's world, will ever wash up on shore.

Well, maybe this fishing trip with Fern will help distract him a bit from his thoughts. Even though fishing still reminds him of Alberto, and how good Alberto was at helping Massimo out with the nets. Still...it'll be nice having some help catching some fish. Fish that will apparently get him drunk all month when he actually eats it, but still...

He trudges over to the dock, not even noticing the rotting corpse of Alberto as he goes to find Fern, hoping Fern's fun personality will help distract him from his train of thought.

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Mebh has also been enjoying the festivities. Even if she's not fond of being in a town, she's fascinated by the various spectacles, and of course there's plenty of food...which she's determined to swipe as much of as possible. She's only ever gotten by through hunting or stealing, and she doesn't yet realize that you have to offer some form of payment even if they don't use money here.

Which is why, at some point, a small red-headed girl in a wolf mask will likely bump into Luca as she's running while carrying some food she just stole. This causes her to drop one of the candy apples she was holding, which she's quick to notice.

"Hey! My tasty!"

Luca, who isn't exactly steady on his feet this month anyway, is sent toppling to the ground, his own candy apple tumbling out of his hand.

"My tasty."

Sure, he was told what they were called, but his mind was too fuzzy from all the eating he'd been doing. At the moment, 'tasty' seemed like a good enough name for a candy apple as any. If it wasn't for his vileblood making him drunk whenever he ate food, Luca would probably have just given the candy apple up as lost. This month...however...

He crawls over to his candy apple, picking it up and flicking off the bits of grass and pebbles, and takes another bite.

"It's still fine."

If Mebh is willing to trust the opinion of strange boys with a fish-like scent who eat candy apples off the ground.

Mebh has lived in the woods for much of her life and doesn't have the best manners, so she isn't really bothered by Luca eating the candy apple off the ground. Food is food, and you can't let it go to waste.

"It better be fine." She picks up the candy apple she drops, dusts it off, sniffs at it, and then takes a bite.

"Never had tasties like these before. How'd they make these apples taste sweeter?"

"I've never had apples before." But apparently his first time having them, he got the super sweet ones. "I think they just covered the sweet stuff in more sweet stuff."

He takes another bite, enjoying the sweet stuff on top of sweet stuff. What was it called again?

"Caramel. They called the sweet stuff on top of the apple caramel. And then there's tiny..." He points at the nuts. "I don't know what those are."

"You haven't? Apples are good. You can only get them in autumn, though."

It was also autumn back home before she found herself here, Mebh remembers. At least this place has apples, even if they're unusual ones.

"Hmm..." Mebh sniffs at the nuts and then tastes one. "Some kind of nut. I dunno which kind."

"Oh, well, that makes sense, then. I wasn't on the sur--I wasn't anywhere apples would grow until now. This is my first fall on l--somewhere like this."

He's managing to string coherent sentences, but the drunken feeling from eating food and being a vileblood this month is making Luca slip up more than usual.

"Oh! I've never had nuts before. I like them."

"They don't have apples or nuts where you're from? Where do you live, then?"

Mebh knows very little about life beyond the woods, so she can't imagine living in a place where plants that are familiar to her don't grow at all. Of course, her disbelieving curiosity doesn't help Luca's efforts to keep where he's from a secret.

"Uh..."

How does he answer this without saying 'the ocean'? He's pretty sure by her reaction that apples and nuts probably grow most places on land, but he's never been on land in the fall before. What could he say that was believable when he doesn't know if any given place would be filled with nuts and apples in the right season?

Simple. He doesn't. He just stares. Then he takes a huge bite of his candy apple. See? He can't talk. His mouth is full.

Mebh has a tendency to wear her emotions on her sleeve herself, but even she can sense that Luca is withholding information from her. Maybe she can have a bit of fun trying to get it out of him, since she's already growing curious and this older boy seems like he'd be fun to mess with.

"You're hidin' somethin'~" She says this in a sing-song tone while grinning widely, showing pointier teeth than a typical human would have. "I can smell it on ya!"

She can't, actually, but she doesn't pass up an opportunity to scare someone a little just for her own amusement.

"Oh, is it the fish smel--"

Wait, no. No, he's not going to give anything away (even if he has had a human comment on the fish smell, and judging by his history of being harassed by cats, he doesn't think that human was the only one who could smell it).

"I mean, I don't know what you're talking about."

He takes another bite of the candy apple to shut himself up.

"Fish smell?"

Sorry, Luca, but Mebh caught that. Come to think of it, she can smell traces of fish from him, though she already has a strong sense of smell so she didn't think much of it.

"You a selkie or somethin'?" Judging from what Luca has given away, that's the best conclusion she can come to. After all, it's not like she's human all the time herself.

"I'm something."

Well, she's already figured out that he's not human, he might as well come out with it. It's not like it's been an issue with anyone else so far, after all.

"I'm a sea monster. When I dry out, I turn human, but I'm a sea monster when I'm wet."

"A sea monster?"

Well, that's certainly new...and intriguing. Mebh hasn't met many people similar to her, since she's spent most of her life with her mother as the only other Wolfwalker she's ever known. That changed after she accidentally bit Robyn, and she's met some other people here who aren't quite human, but Luca's confession still interests her.

"I'm sort of like that. I'm a wolf when I sleep, and human when I'm awake."

"Oh, wow! So we both only look human part time!"

Which is kind of nice to meet someone else...kind of similar to him. Especially when he's in a place with no other sea monsters.

"You know, I met another wolf that's sometimes human here. I fished him out of the ocean when he first showed up."

"Oh, that wolf who goes around lookin' like a man...Tsume?"

Mebh has already met him, and naturally they started forming a friendship once they figured out they had something in common, even if Tsume isn't quite the same being as Mebh is and she doesn't quite share his attitude about blending in with society.

"He's got some kind of magic that makes him look human all the time, though. I have to fall asleep to be a wolf."

"Yeah, that's him! So I guess he's not quite the same...but still, it's probably nice having a sort of wolf person around here!"

At least, Luca assumes, because he'd be incredibly happy to meet any sort of sea monster people in this place. He'd even been happy to find out there was a pointy eared guy with gills here, because then he could swim with someone without worrying about possible drowning.

"I guess. Me and me Mammy were the last Wolfwalkers for a while."

At least until she met Robyn and accidentally bit her. Even though Mebh's mother had always told her never to bite anyone, since a Wolfwalker's bite will turn someone else into a Wolfwalker, she's still happy that she and her mother aren't the only ones left anymore.

"The last ones? That's really sad. What happened to all the others?"

Because 'last' implies there used to be more.

Then, in a hushed tone, he asked, "Did humans hunt them?"

"...yeah. The townies keep cuttin' down the forests, and they don't like wolves, either."

That's all Mebh is willing to say about it, but the implications are still there.

"Yeah, where I'm from they didn't like sea monsters, either. But I don't think they'll ever...I mean, the ocean's really deep, and you can't take away the ocean, right?"

"I dunno. I guess not. Unless somebody drank it all up, or somethin'. But that's a lot of drinkin'."

Truthfully, Mebh doesn't know much about the ocean aside from that it's a lot of water and you can't see what's on the other side of it.

"I don't think anyone could drink that much water. I think we're safe."

Luca knows plenty about the ocean, but he doesn't know much about humans, so he has no idea that humans can't drink salt water since he can. Still, he knows how vast the ocean is, so humans drinking all the water isn't much of a concern to him.

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(Open) This is Halloween

Black Parade

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