deercountry | Promises Promises/Insomnia

Who: Luz and you!

What: Accepting loss and dealing with NEW problems (yay)?

When: The first week of September

Where: Check prompts for locations!

A- Cellar Door

Luz would have said she was being needless emo. After all, there was rainfall here and she was depressed, so she figured being here would match her mood. How more dramatic did you have to be? But Luz wasn't in laughing mood, and it was everything she felt like right now.

Margot wasn't coming. She knew that now, she accepted it, and accepting that meant everything else that came with it. Margot was back in her world, robbed of her ability to think and reason as a person, back to her basic instincts as a wolf. No more playing and late night talks. No more huddles with her adopted sister. No more gardening. She wouldn't even remember Luz when she was there. It would be like she was never with Luz at all.

But Luz would remember. She'd remember and know that Margot wasn't just some person who wandered and left the dream. She was the sister she never had, the girl who'd share a room with her and helped her paint it and watched Eda cook as they eagerly awaited being fed and what the next day would bring.

She'd remember, and now, in the rain, she could at least cry with her hood up, and she'd be as much a passerby as anyone. Just some shadow person passing, weeping about something or other.

Or so she thought anyway.
thinky-Copy

B- Cassandra (The Disaster House)

Luz has had some time to think, and it was finally time for her to head to the place that would be her home. It's be nice, honestly, to have a place where there were more people her age, she reasoned. Obviously living with Eda and Margot had been ideal, and after that it had been the Doctors and Vira Lorr. Now she was at a new place, and a new place required a completely new way of living and, most obvious of all, would be redecorating her new place, which was the attic upstairs.

If you were visiting or a resident yourself, you'd see Luz busy at work already trying to make this place her own. There were already several stuffed animals, although Trenchwood seemed to have it's own ideas of what was cute, so the various creatures might be a bit off putting. There were several easels in the corner, one notably a wolf friend she was missing as well as one with various witches: Azura, Miss Hardbroom and of course her beloved Eda. The curtains were pulled back and there was air rushing in, so Luz was having a bit of trouble keeping all the papers from flying away.

"Darn it! This is the fifth time!"

C- Disaster House- I don't need sleep, I need clean!
needs-sleep

Was Luz getting a little unhinged because of her recent depression? Was she just overcompensating somehow? It was hard to tell. What one could SEE, however, was that it was the dead of night and Luz was not at all sleeping, but was instead intent on cleaning the disaster house, half mumbling to herself as she did so.

"I could tackle the living quarters, got to arrange the skulls. I don't want to get to the garden because I'll be crying again, or the greenhouse because I could probably die, or get poisoned. No good. Not going into Fern's room yet, I'll definitely die. The kitchen, YEAH! That sounds perfect!"

She had to go to the bathroom first.

"ARGH! WHY IS THERE A HOLE HERE?! VARIAN! THEY'RE JUST BATHROOMS!"

hunched-over

D - Drifting into Dreamspace

So after finally "convinced" to try and get some sleep, Luz finally had settled down, her omen (that was new) giving her a reproachful stare.

"I promise, I'll try!" Luz insisted, though Tempest did not look convinced. Luz blew a raspberry at the wolf and added, "thanks, you're the best" and closed her eyes, attempting to drift off. She'd been trying to do this the past few days, and doubted anything was going to happen, but figured if she couldn't sleep, she'd maybe go to the tower and get some reading done.

However, she DID drift off, just not in the way she though. For a moment, she felt a wave of color pass over her, and she figured that she was finally nodding off, but instead of that she felt light. She exhaled and felt herself leave, and for a moment, she was assuming she was unconscious.

But it was a strange feeling. She opened her eyes, and realized she was very much not awake, not quite. She was instead floating, drifting quietly down the attic steps and then out the door. She should have been freaking out, but her body felt so tired, and whatever was happening now felt NOTHING like that.

A passing though occurred to her. Maybe I should try these lamp location thingies out.

But where would she wind up?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Even Luz had to admit, as tranquil as the place felt to her, there was still the way it was presented that would give anyone pause, and for Fern, that doubly made sense. He was a plant guy after all, and this place was plants. Why wouldn't he be a bit put off? Besides that, Luz could also feel that there was something to this place that wasn't all just good intentions.

"It is, and it's also kind of important in a way that you can't just vacation here? It's hard to describe. Like, there are stories about this creepy monster named Cuthulu that if you were to try and see him, it'll drive you insane. That's what I feel like this place is. In a way, it's its own entity that you shouldn't stay around too long, or its bigness will swallow you up. Does that make sense?"

Luz's description sounds absolutely horrible and, unfortunately, he understands exactly what she's trying to get at. This isn't the first time he's come across eldritch Lovecraftian nightmare terrors, even before Deerington he was dealing with that stuff on occasion back in Ooo. That this tree is one of those things makes perfect sense to him, and he nods.

"Actually... yeah, I know exactly what that feels like," he replies, running a hand through his hair. "At least we got a better idea of what we're dealing with here, even if it isn't good."

"That's the crux, isn't it? As big and staggering as it is, it's also kind of good, at least for the people it can help. We're starting to get a scope of how much bigger the pthumerian stuff is now, and what that means for us. Blood use to be just a thing that helped you live and if it came out of your body, it was bad. Now, it's stuff that can be used to enhance things and depending on what you have it has an effect on us."

She looked up at the tree and put her hand to the wall. There was a look of a dawning quiet in Luz, something between puzzlement and starting to see the scope of the picture.

"But I do think it can help. You have to be clear about your intention, and not take too much, but you have to steer it to you. In some ways, its what magic is all about: taking the things that already exist in the world and steering it to your aid, while still respecting the circle it plays in nature."

She could scarcely believe the words coming out of her mouth, but it was the weird thing that maybe being in Deerington had done, and having this blood in her had made her think about.

The lack of sleep had certainly made her have some strange epiphanies.

This is all way, way more than Fern could have ever hoped to come up with on his own. In fact, he's feeling a little overwhelmed as he listens to Luz's explanation. From what little he knows of this world and their whole new blood powers she sounds like she's on the right track. He isn't totally sure whether any of it is actually good... but he's suspicious of all this Pthumerian business in general.

Still, she must have something, especially when it comes to how magic works. It sounds a little like wizard magic in Ooo, though Fern isn't totally sure many wizards actually respected the role it played in nature. He knows the Grassy Wizard wasn't being respectful when he made the Grass Sword, he did it for the pun factor. Man, what does that say about him? If Luz is right does that mean he's got even more of an uphill battle, since he was made out a jerk messing around with magic?

"So we gotta find a good balance, is what you're saying." He hopes that's what she's saying, this feels like it's all going over his head. "And if we can't then... it might be like you said, we get swallowed up?"

Luz very much realizes what she's saying is her groping around in the dark, but she doesn't feel wrong saying it. She came to those conclusions watching magic at work, and the people who taught them to her certainly did know magic wasn't something you toyed around with: you had to be serious.

"That's what I mean, yes. You have to be able to balance all of it out, and you can't stay so spellbound that you forget yourself. The stuff in this world is running on its own rules, and beyond magic and all the cool stuff with it, I think the real name of the game seems to be blood."

Which definitely tends to make this weird, even for her. She was not used to blood playing as much of a role in magic and she couldn't imagine it was any more comfortable for Fern.

Downsides to never having paid a ton of attention to the intricacies of magic and instead just rolling with it when it happens: you don't develop the critical thinking skills required to approach it like Luz is doing. Fern is glad he's on the same page as her, and he's glad that she's able to make these connections, since he certainly never would.

He doesn't feel particularly confident about all of this, of course. If there's one thing he isn't good at it's balance, though he's been trying his best to improve in that area. Not only that, but the importance of blood still throws him off.

"Greaaaat," he says, not at all pleased. "Man, I still think the blood thing is weird. I don't know if I'm ever gonna get used to it. I'm a plant, plants don't have blood."

"Yeah, I know. It's pretty much as hard as Varian's got it, since he's never been too hot on magic. For you guys its going to be rough. But that's why I'm here! This might be a little unfamiliar to me too, but I at least get magic to a degree, and I'll be able to help a little bit."

There was, of course, still a lot she was going to have to figure out too, much of this was some new stuff for her, but she was going to make sure that she'd help give the blueprints of what she knew to her family here.

"We'll get through this together, one step at a time! It'll just mean readjusting what we know and supporting each other when it gets bad. Just like old times."

Except now they lived together, which were going to make things very interesting.

She's got a really good point. Luz was always eager to learn magic from Eda, and there's no reason why she couldn't continue exploring that here in Trench. In turn, she can help him and Varian and anyone else who needs it.

"Right. One step at a time. We don't got many other choices here, do we?" No, no they do not.

He glances around, frowning a little. They've learned quite a bit, so hey, coming into the scary blood tree was pretty useful. "You got everything you need here?"

That was ultimately Luz's goal, among a million other things: she was hoping to gain a broader understanding about what she could do, which way worked best, and based on that try and give support to people who were still trying to figure it out. She knew she'd sort of been dropped into Deerington when there had been lots of things already going down years before. This time, at least, she could be here for the Sleepers' new beginning.

"You could try and hurry it if you wanted to, but that doesn't seem like a very good idea. So yeah, a step at a time seems like the best fit!"

Luz lingered a moment, putting her hand to the tree, then slowly drawing it back.

"Yes. I think we're good!"

One step at a time isn't ideal for him, but it looks like their best option right now, so it is what it is. At least this place isn't Deerington, that's one small miracle.

"Okay," he says, taking a step back towards the stairway. "Let's get outta here, then." He'd like to put some distance between himself and the creepy tree, in hopes of that letting his head calm down.

Yep, it was a lot to take in. Luz hadn't even been sure what the two of them had witnessed yet, that this tree was something she couldn't quite place and might have to visit again.

"Right, ok," Luz agreed, and matched his pace. Fern definitely felt uneasy around it, a sure sign that there was more to it than either of them thought, but Luz wasn't scared of it, strangely. She wanted to know more about it and what it's purpose was.

Looks like I better grab Dipper for this one, she said to herself. They were both palebloods too, so maybe there was some correlation to why she felt one way and Fern another.

Promises Promises/Insomnia

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