deercountry | and my heart went 'boom!'

and my heart went 'boom!'

FEBRUARY 2023 EVENT

Due to the cyclical nature of Trench, prompts from the PREVIOUS FEBRUARY are available for use again. Please note when you are using this years prompts vs last years prompts when plotting or writing top-levels to avoid confusion.

IMAGE DESCRIPTORS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
Prompt One
[Image One: A broken mirror with a woman looking into it, pressing her fingers against the glass. ]
[Image Two: A rose lit up like embers. ]

Prompt Two
[Image One: Neon hearts glowing on a wall. ]
[Image Two: A pocket watch on top of a book page. ]

Prompt Three
[Image One: A young woman with dark hair standing in the snow with red flowers. ]
[Image Two: Footprints in the snow. ]

[NAVIGATION]

Prompt 1 • Prompt 2 • Prompt 3 • Plotting • Newsletter

[JUMP TO COMMENTS]

BAD LUCK OF THE EARLY WORM

WHEN: February
WHERE: All around the city
CONTENT WARNINGS: Curses, violence, danger, misfortune

Everyone has their own streak of bad times. There are some days or weeks whre it feels like nothing is going right. Most people would try and tell say that it's just the tendency to focus on the negative. That it can be relieved by writing down all the good things that happen in our lives, because we have a tendency to only ever focus on the bad. And maybe most of the time, people are right! Maybe the idea of luck really is just perspective.

But not in Trench. Not this month.

No matter what way it's looked at, bad luck seems to be clinging to some people. It might start out small, with simple things like knocking over a favorite drink or snack, or ruining a project that had hours invested into it. Then it might become bigger. A person might start to trip over things and injuring themselves, they might get lost in a blizzard and nearly freeze before finding their way home or to someone they know. Eventually, it could even become undeniably dangerous. The person impacted by bad luck could start to notice corruption levels rising quickly, they could start to turn into a beast at random, they could start to attract violent beasts to them and put themselves or others at risk with heavy battles. The possibilities seem to be endless and none of them are good. Did someone break a mirror? Or twenty?

It will be easy to see that this isn't just impacting one person. Sleepers and Trenchies alike seem to be being plagued by streaks of bad luck across the board. Luckily, the locals seem to know what to do about it. Bad luck pops up from time to time, and of course there would be a ritual to help cleanse it.

Small vendors will start to pop up through the city selling wooden carvings that they promise will absorb all the bad luck that's been going around and dispell it with a simple ritual. A drop of blood from the person impacted and a drop of blood from someone they are close should be placed upon the carving. The blood types of the persons involved should not match (i.e. Coldblood/Coldblood would not work, but Coldblood/Warmblood would). It must be left to soak into the wood overnight, leaving behind deep red stains. The carving must then be placed with a fully bloomed rose and burned in the entrance doorway to the home of the inflicted. The ashes should then be placed into a container and kept somewhere in the home for the duration of February, to make sure that the bad luck stays away.

It seems like it really works! The tricky part is making sure that the bad luck following doesn't get in the way of the ritual while the blood is soaking over night. It may be best for both parties involved to hunker down together until morning, just in case. Time to break out the small talk. Or the deep, meaningful conversations that can sometimes happen in the middle of the night.

[JUMP TO TOP] • [JUMP TO COMMENTS]

GETTING TO KNOW ALL ABOUT YOU

WHEN: February
WHERE: A magic room in the city.
CONTENT WARNINGS: Reference to mild shocks. Forced honesty. Embarrassment. Lots and lots of embarrassment.

Honestly, after being in Trench for so long, people should be used to not ending up in the destination they initially intended for. This month, it seems like the city is trying to encourage people to social, to form new bonds, whether they're romantic, platonic, familial, or any other option one could think of. The bright idea this month for that sort of thing?

Speed dating.

It's not traditional speed dating, necessarily. No one is here to exclusively seek romantic partners, although there are certainly options for it. And it's not something people are signing up for out of their own free will. Instead, people seem to simply show up at the event, with no real recollection of how they got there. Maybe they just woke up on one of the comfy couches and found a "Hi, my name is..." sticker slapped on them. Or maybe they were wandering in the snow and got lost, ending up finding shelter in this strange place, and are now forced to participate until the blizzard passes. All in all, it's harmless fun, isn't it? Who doesn't need a few new friends.

Each person will have a small information blurb given about them that can't be seen by the naked eye, but will appear as soon as someone looks at the other party through their omni. What the blurb says is unique to each person, but it might become clear pretty quickly that they didn't write it themselves... Deerington survivors may find themselves having flashbacks to the days of DeerlyBeloved.

Pairings are completely random. People will be given a series of random questions they can ask one another or they can always feel free to make up their own. Anyone who tries to lie or avoid answering a question might feel a small shock from the chair they're sitting in, one that gets stronger with every lie they tell. The after effects of the shock seem to encourage the need to answer the question with full transparency. It's important to tell the truth when getting to know someone, after all.

After five minutes, both parties can either press a button beside their chair to continue talking to the person they're paired with, or they can move on to the next pairing. Both parties have to press the button in order to stay where they are.

Have fun and remember to always be honest!

[JUMP TO TOP] • [JUMP TO COMMENTS]

LONELY HEARTS CLUB

WHEN: February
WHERE: Trenchwood and throughout the city.
CONTENT WARNINGS: Violence, abuse of power, jealousy, possession, supernatural events, possible death from elemental exposure

There's a tale that comes up around this time of year, one that seems to be an old favorite in Trench. Long ago, in the heart of a blizzard, a young woman was found wandering in Trenchwood. She wore only thin fabrics to keep herself warm and had no shoes. Her skin felt cold as ice. The Hunters who found her quickly brought her into town, giving her shelter in a local in to try and get her warm. She stayed for many nights and it didn't take long for the inn keeper to fall in love with her. But she did not seem to return to his feelings and so he was heartbroken and jealous of all the other men who gave her attention. He demanded she offer him something in trade for her stay and when she could offer nothing, he threw her back out into the snow. The woman went back to the woods and some could hear her howling in anguish, carried through on the strong winds of the blizzard. The Hunters tried to find her, following her cries, but they were unable to, and had to return home before they too might freeze to death. The innkeeper was shunned from the town and forced to leave the city for his cruelty, but nothing stopped the howls of the snow woman.

Throughout the month of February, people will start to hear that the sound of the wind blowing strongly through the streets is starting to sound a little more human-like. The woman's cries will be heard in empty alleys, will be loudest near the edge of the woods, and can even penetrate into dreams. The cries might sometimes sound like cries for help, begging for someone to help save her from the cold. There will be a compulsion that sets deep into the bones of some and many will find it hard to resist her call. Eventually, they may even go looking for her in the woods, trying to brave the winter storms to help the lost snow woman.

Those who give in to that temptation will eventually find the snow woman, but she will not be friendly when found. Her skin has turned a pale white, her lips blue, her eyes glowing a bright red, her long hair blowing every which way in the wind. She will rush at whoever she sees, but instead of giving a physical blow to guard against, she will go through any solid objects and latch on to the soul of her target, possessing their bodies. Male or female, it doesn't seem to matter, she simply wants a chance at life again.

Those who are possessed by the snow woman will not realize they are possessed. They will forget why it was they came out into the woods looking for and will return to the city in a daze. As time passes, they will find that they become irritated by any signs of affection, will become physically aggressive towards couples they see around them, and will attack those who care about them most. The spirit does not necessarily hate love: instead, they see affection as a possible risk for all those who love others. Jealousy kills and she wants to save everyone around her from it, as well as keeping herself safe from losing this new chance at life.

Signs of possession outside of the aggression can be noticed by others. The possessed person will have: ice cold skin, blue-tinged lips, they might shiver even when inside where it's warm, and an aversion to fire or warm/hot water.

Information on how to banish the snow woman from another's body can be found in a book of local legends. This book is sold in stores or can be found in the Archives. To save someone from the snow woman, people must tell the possessed person the things they love most about them. It will cause the possessed person to react violently, so it is suggested that they be restrained during the process. The longer they are forced to hear the positive messages about love, the feelings that they can stir up in another (whether platonic or romantic), and the safety that can be found in that love, the more weakened the hold from the snow woman will be. When the possessed person eventually stops struggling, a cut must be made on the back of their neck, before a cloth soaked in warm rose water must be placed on top of the wound. Their skin will begin to steam before a large gust of snow will pour from their mouth, swirling around the room, and smash through the window. It's suggested to leave it open if you'd like to save the glass.

[JUMP TO TOP]

CODING

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Friend.

It isn't a word that something like him is meant to know. Not the thing that functions through hierarchy, through give and take, through grant and offering. Not the thing that has existed before mankind ever did, the thing that holds truths and secrets of the universe itself. "Demon" is only one word for what Paimon truly is.

And "friend" is a concept that something like him transcends. "Friend" is a human's term, of a human's understanding. Hearing the person say it makes his spirit flinch uncomfortably, like a pair of claws have raked over skin, shredding its top layer. He wants to scream again. He wants to rip through his human host, be freed of it. Trapped, trapped.

.....There's something else to him. Something he was never meant to be, but was forced into — the existence of another human, but this one he lived within ever since her birth, a small lost bird whose wings were clipped before she could ever learn to fly. The person (Duty? Or someone else? Or one in the same?) calls to that lost bird now, with their energy that forms something that feels like a child's melody, dewdrop-sweet. Something a mother or father's voice may hum.

That little human knew the word "friend", in her way. Never fully, never comfortably, but she knew loneliness and ache and how much the soft touch of a hand could mean. It was rare that she received it.

The voice that speaks isn't the multiple tongues and wails of the demon, and it isn't Peter's. Something else's identity, confused and small and peering out from itself, as though unsure who to call out for. No longer straining against its holds, just sitting there, hushed.

"Mom...? Dad..?"

The voice that comes out pulls on Pyrrha's heartstrings in a different way. Lost. Confused. Unsure. That changes the conversation again. She's been a lot of things and cares deeply for Peter. It isn't Peter.

She leaves the blood mark open, vulnerable to anyone sensing how she feels via magic. A small measure of comfort to someone young and scared and tied up.

"You're safe. You're safe," she murmurs to the child. Pyrrha steps up, crouches before the person that is Peter and Paimon (Knowledge) and also this little girl, and takes her hand. Paimon could flay the skin from it or any other nasty thing. Pyrrha flatly doesn't care. Not when there's a kid that needs her.

"Something scary happened, but you're okay."

It would be difficult to say if this is truly a person. Perhaps the being now sitting in the chair is more a piece of some part, a concept, an identity created and lived and destroyed at such a young age. "Charlie" was never meant to exist for long.

And yet here she is, or some echo of her, some imprint — a part of the demon's spirit, and a ghost that haunts Peter's. And whatever else she is, that lost little bird, she peers out from the boy's dark wet eyes with her own gaze.

With her own fear. Not Peter's debilitating panic, and not Paimon's swell of fury. "Charlie" is quiet in her fear, unmoving. She stares. She barely breathes. 'You're safe' someone says. Someone she doesn't recognise, but unlike Peter, the sight of a stranger doesn't immediately upset her in quite the same way. As the person approaches her, Charlie isn't flinching back, just stares up as the person takes her hand.

And she can... feel something. She's no stranger to that, to feeling things that other people can't feel. It's like a second pulse, an invisible thing that moves through the air. She isn't afraid of it; it feels.. comforting. A melodic whisper just for her.

Charlie stares at the person, fingers gently holding on to theirs, a child's grasp. The question that comes is maybe strange to ask someone she doesn't know, and so intentional, as though it's the first thing she always thinks to say. It is — she seeks safety, being taken care of, always. Fears losing it the most of all.

"You won't let anything happen to me?"

Pyrrha holds the child's gaze, comfortable and familiar with the setting and experience. An upset child. An upset child whose identity no one really knows, not even the child themselves. Experiences that cannot perhaps be fully understood. They certainly cannot be fully explained. That's scary. That can be so so scary, but everything will be all right because Pyrrha is there.

It's the first days on New Rho. It's the first days of Canaan House. It's a lot of days. It's today.

"I won't let anything happen to you," Pyrrha repeats the same language back. Her intentions match her words.

It's exactly what Charlie needs to hear, and how. The words, the feel of them, the intention. Her eyes open up wider, staring at the person. She still doesn't know them, this stranger with their spirit that hums gently to her, but there isn't a piece of her that's afraid of them.

They see her, and they understand, and it feels like being held. She believes the person. Trusts them.

The little ghost doesn't last long, now that it's been told what it needs to hear. It's only a moment, a blip of something else that came through. A pair of blue eyes barely flickering through the browns of Peter's. There's the gentlest squeeze of Pyrrha's hand, and then Charlie is gone again.

The demon is back, eyes still held saucer-wide, hand still in Pyrrha's. Stunned and stiff, slowly tensing again. But no snarl or heat comes, only a long stare. Confusion, ache, clarity: many things flutter across his inky wet eyes, the universes of them filling. He can't understand what just transpired, but he can feel it, that some odd part of his spirit has been soothed.

The body, at its limits: physically affected even if neither the demon nor Charlie know what it is to weep (Charlie never cried, not even as a baby, that's what Mom said). But Peter's body is overwhelmed, tears spilling up, one trickling down a cheek.

"You are not Duty. Not only."

Soft, quiet. Not accusatory, simply knowing. The person who holds his hand isn't entirely who he knows, and now Paimon can see that.

Pyrrha stays with Charlie. She meets Peter's eyes. She squeezes Charlie's hand. She's there through it all. Though it's not the same, the feel is similar enough. No more words. Only her. Her. Open to them, all of them, including Paimon—Knowledge, as he introduced himself to Duty.

When he comes back, Pyrrha doesn't let go of his hand. Knowledge is a being who doesn't know his own emotional needs. He doesn't know all forms of knowledge. She's one of the best at those he needs the most.

"No. Not only. I'm Pyrrha," she says, "I'm the one whose soul was put inside another's body. The one to be eaten."

She tilts her head. "I'm like both of you. I'm like neither. It's all in how you choose to look at it."

"Of course to make a judgment off that would ignore what my experience is like."

There is no judgment, only searching, yearning, a curiosity that can't be numbed even when he's in such an odd state. Paimon's aware of it, uncomfortably, how odd and wild and torn he's been. (Traumatised, someone here called him once.) He doesn't understand — oh, he knows what the word is. It's what was done to Peter in order to make him vulnerable. It is not difficult to traumatise a human, to break them. Paimon has done it, again, and again.

....But he doesn't understand what it means to feel the word itself, the concept of it. What he is should transcend such things, the way he transcends joy, happiness, sorrow, pain. He should not be torn, and broken. Unraveling in the face of something else's exorcism. The demon wilts a little as he stares at the person who is not only one person, his hands going limp, his tense body deflating. He is very tired and very upset and he wants it to end.

"Are you..... stable? You, Duty. Are you one? Or are you..... shards?"

Broken, he means. Is it an existence of stability, or one of chaos, such as his existence with and within Peter?

Pyrrha decides to share what happened with her again. It's such a hard part of existence. Duty told the story a soft way, an easy way, something Paimon might rage against as a lie in the end. It's not. It's simply another way of looking at things. Sharing it always feels like tearing herself apart to pull back together again. Shards.

"Are you familiar with the parable of the blind men and the elephant? One version I've read here goes:

A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: "We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable". So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, "This being is like a thick snake". For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant, "is a wall". Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.

"We are stable. We're one. It's the way Duty said. It's also not the way Duty told you earlier. We're like the elephant in the parable. There's too much too us for it to be simple and easy. We're like you and Peter, but we're not, over and over and over and over again."

She looks over at him. "Are you ready to hear another way we are and we aren't? It's the same story. It's a different story."

To know of his own wrongness is a horror, but then isn't knowledge always? Beautiful and terrible, and he has been the keeper of its beauty and terror since before mankind — never burdened by those knowledges, yearning to share and spread them. But now..... the awareness of the ways in which he has been mutilated feels like skin shred and hanging, flaps of self torn but not fully removed. He is constantly, consistently, out of his own alignment.

He wants to scream, again.

He doesn't. He listens, gripped by the tale, swollen eyes locked on the person (people, he and she and they), unmoving and unbreathing, consumed and absorbed by the words.

He understands what they mean, at the core. Something that is not any one thing. Something that is multiple, but even more complex than that. Something that is different depending on whom is viewing, perceiving it. A thing comprised of many things. Two things, and more than two things, spliced into one. Co-existence, and something that is not co-existence but rather a thing that replaces what was there before, but only sometimes. None of it can be defined, not really. It's an existence that should be impossible, transcends "possibility." He understands, but there is more to understand.

He stares, and he is calm.

"I wish to hear."

Edited 2023-04-21 03:07 (UTC)

"This is going to hurt," Pyrrha warns.

"Ten thousand years ago, my husband and I completed a ritual, both like and not like yours and Peter's," Pyrrha begins, "Ours was done right. It was our choice, both of us. We agreed. He was supposed to eat my soul entirely. One entity remaining. Him with the power of two souls.

"Oh, but my husband, he loved me. He loved me too much to do that. He loved me more than we realized. For there I was too. The process gone wrong, done sideways by love. Only we weren't like you and Peter are now. No conversations. No negotiations. He set up a psychic wall between us, so strong he did not know either it or I existed. There I sat in a prison made by and of the one I loved and gave myself to. I could only watch and watch.

"That prison drained him too. Sometimes, my husband, the Saint of Duty, fell unconscious, and when he did so, I was free. I had his body, but I was like Peter. I had none of his powers. What I could do, to protect him, this man, this saint, that I loved, was to act as him. To be him. I was him. I was him again and again and again until it seemed sometimes I was more him than I was myself.

"Shortly before I came here, so often it feels like mere breaths, mere moments, and in ten thousand years it's a blink of an eye, the Saint of Duty, my beloved husband, died. He died, his spirit far from his body, our body, and I could do nothing.

"He's gone, but I am still Duty. He's gone, but I am still Pyrrha. I'm both, and we're one. Neither of us is him. We're a thing that shouldn't exist in our universe, but we exist.

"I understand you, Paimon, because I am the only one of us who had to negotiate that relationship. Gideon, the Saint of Duty, was the one with the powers, but he never knew. He never negotiated. He never coped with the existence of two conscious within one. It has always only been me."

Pyrrha watches Paimon carefully. It's a lot to hear.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

and my heart went 'boom!'

cw: so much identity confusion / soul fuckery!

sob. feelings

I love how Pyrrha/Duty adopts one weird kid and gets like 7 weird kids in one fkgfk

this baby can fit so many traumatized kids.... car salesman meme

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject