The Clock Froze Around Midnight, I Can Feel It In The Room [October Catchall, OTA]

[hearthebell]

Who: L Lawliet (Lazarus Sauveterre) and CR old and new
What: Catchall for October; includes event prompts and slice of life wildcards.
When: Throughout the month, dates are ambiguous unless otherwise noted
Where: Various places in Trench (flexible unless specifically noted)




[October is a season of change and loss, and in Trench, it’s not really any different. L nevertheless feels a sense of restlessness that manifests in snappishness and irritability; exceeding what usually visits him in the ambivalent season of his birth.

He goes about his business anyway, keeping to his own odd schedules and doings in a mostly solitary routine. He avoids contact with others this month, not least because the typically stoic detective is struggling to discern when his mood will shift and his tears might start flowing and refuse to stop.

It’s better, perhaps, to guard what he’s always known to be raw in a month where he can feel it so keenly and plaintively.]

Comments

[hearthebell]

[Wrapped in his blanket, L has left the firelit comfort of his room to fetch some tea and honey as well as a few sweet cakes. His choices seem sickly sweet and indulgent, but considering it's not uncommon for him to go a day or more at a time before remembering to eat at all, it all balances out in its strange and extreme way.

He goes to the door when he hears the knock, cracking it open and startling backward when he sees an unfamiliar, dinosaurian omen. Lycka rounds and masses above him in preparation for a conflict, but seems to relax once her sleeper recognizes the visitor.]

Moonsight? Or...

[The door still mostly closed, a single dark eye blinks twice rapidly. In some ways, he feels like this is information unfairly won, acquired when there was nothing its owner could truly do to prevent a nosy detective from going through the spoils of library books in Nephele-that-wasn't.]

...or Illarion. I'll call you what you'd prefer, so you know.

[He says so, wondering if it's a relief to be known and not need to hide, leaving room for the opposite possibility.]

[unsheathedfromreality]

[A truly remarkable thing happens when Lazarus utters that second name: Illarion flinches, visibly, exactly as one of the living would. The Omen at his side drops the package in her jaws to gape in mute threat, the feathers on her neck and shoulders rising.]

≪Easy,≫ [her Sleeper says, a heartbeat later--once he's recovered his psychic footing. He lays a hand on her back to emphasize the reassurance, and never mind the lapse into Shriketongue.] ≪There's no harm in it.≫

[Especially as--so far as he's able to ascertain--no one else was in earshot of them.

He stoops to retrieve the dropped package then turns his attention back toward Lazarus, with a rueful smile; his Omen follows the motion, staring at the young man with piercing crimson eyes.] Moonsight, if you will. I suppose it should not be surprising that you have learned this name on your own--if not, perhaps, the full reason my people do not use ours openly?

[They'd spoken of how shrikes used names before, nearly a year ago, but there were reasons embedded within reasons why they did not easily give up their mother-names and he'd never shared the most private of them. Perhaps Lazarus had turned that up as well, perhaps not; it might be easier, now, to simply explain it.]

[hearthebell]

[L wonders, and doubts, that there actually is no harm in it. His own limbs have stiffened and seized instinctively, reacting to the tandem flinch of the undead elf and his omen. Is she still Iskierka, he wonders? Shoyo's Picanha had still been Picanha, even if she'd gone from Crow to Australian Shepherd.]

Moonsight, then.

[An easy, slightly apologetic concession. He slowly opens the door, widening the crack so that both of his eyes are visible again.]

Parts of the full reason. I'm a fast reader, but I didn't have the luxury of loitering even a little bit.

[It had been a sort of scholarly ransacking, greedily devouring what he could on the spot before the next crisis might strike. Such instincts come naturally to L, stark deprivation or wild excess timed to take advantage of opportunities. When they arise, he often just has time to act, or not, rather than to consider whether it's rude to dredge up an elf's most secret name just to prove that he can.]