No tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering.

[reddosmod]

NOVEMBER 2021 EVENT

IMAGE DESCRIPTORS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
Prompt One
[Image One: Red mushrooms with white spots growing rapidly.]
[Image Two: Mushrooms on log with morning mist. ] Within Prompt: Orange mushrooms walking on small, greenfeet. Jellyfish-like mushroom with mini-mushrooms growing on top. Vine-like mushrooms with clear heads. Blue mushrooms.

Prompt Two
[Image One: Corpse pinned to chainlink fence with man standing in front.]
[Image Two: Limbless, headless, semi-naked bloody bodies wiggling in walls.]

Prompt Three
[Image One: Disfigured humanoid with skin stretched over eyes and chattering, exposed teeth.]
[Image Two: Large organ-like structure pulsating with a human head attached on top via metal contraption.]

[NAVIGATION]

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

[JUMP TO COMMENTS]

MUSHABOOMING

WHEN: Month of November
WHERE: Everywhere
CONTENT WARNINGS: Poisonous mushrooms that induce paralysis and suffocation and violent hallucinations.

---

Come November, Trench is flourishing with a wide variety of mushrooms. Mushrooms can be found growing in the woods, around your house, and maybe even on your house if you're especially lucky...Or unlucky, depending on the type of mushroom.

The mushroom is considered to be arguably the most important food source in Trench. It's the easiest to find and grow, and one of the easiest to harvest. It's a dependable source of protein and can fill people up. They are filled with vitamins that directly help your blood and heart health and can help keep your digestive system on track. But not everyone is a mushroom farmer and most Trenchies wind up foraging for their own mushrooms. Woven baskets are sold just about everywhere to help forage. Omens are extremely good at scenting out edible mushrooms.

The following edible mushrooms can be found/grown throughout Trench: button, portobello, cremini, oyster, chanterelle, porcini, black trumpets, morels, enoki, shimeji, shiitake, and giant puffballs. If you are extremely lucky, you might even find rare truffles. Truffles can be exchanged for highly valuable goods such as magnificent jewels and specialized weapons. Or you can keep the truffles to yourself and use them in a nice dish.

It is said there are hundreds of unique species of mushrooms to Trench. The following mushrooms are permanent features in Trench and can be found most commonly during Bone Season:

WALKING TERRORS

These parasitic mushrooms seem to "walk" around the forest floor. Arcane scholars have determined that their motion is actually just a natural response to stimuli in the environment and helps the fungi to spread its spores onto living hosts. Once you have been exposed to a cloud of these spores, you will immediately begin to hallucinate the world around you warping into a terrifying hellscape. Some say that Walking Terrors have driven people to beasthood in a matter of minutes. But there is a huge benefit to finding Walking Terrors: their caps, once dried and crushed down, are an ample treatment option for corruption. The tricky part is actually getting them. Covering your entire body, head to toe, completely is one way of avoiding the spores and probably the easiest way. Does anyone have a hazmat suit? Another option is knowing a darkblood or someone with similar abilities who can manipulate the direction of the spores in the air by pushing them away. Once the caps have been removed from the rest of the mushroom, the spores seem to lose their nightmarish quality and, at most, will just make you sneeze.


FLOATERS

These mushrooms come out exclusively at night and float lazily through the air. They bob and bump around, their tentacles searching for something to cling to and settle on. They mostly search for tree branches but have been known to accidentally cling to animals and people. The tentacles paralyze any sentient being it lands on. The good thing is that the cap and the little mushrooms on top are completely harmless to touch so if you have a buddy around, they can pull them off with no problem. You'll regain the ability to move your body a few seconds after the tentacles have been removed. The paralytic quality of these tentacles do not impact vilebloods. These mushrooms dried out and cooked are said to amplify electric abilities in coldbloods for a short moment of time. They can also be used to enchant an item with paralytic properties.


WEEPERS

These rare mushrooms can pop up just about anywhere. Only one grows every hundred feet or so and they don't get any bigger than a penny. Weepers are highly sought after since they have been known to greatly reduce corruption. Consuming a Weeper raw will immediately calm someone down, get rid of any current anxiety, wash away depression and paranoia, and clear the mind of hallucinations. Weepers can sharpen the mind and help increase focus. The effect lasts for days and sometimes even weeks. It isn't a permanent cure but it sure beats having a panic attack. Weepers can be collected and saved indefinitely. There are no other uses for them than mental relief, and they must be consumed raw. Cooking a Weeper will get rid of its healing properties - but it does add great flavor to a dish! If a mentally stable person eats them, there will be no effect.


BLUE CHEEKS

These radiant mushrooms grow in clusters on healthy trees and seem to thrive among vegetation. You might find Blue Cheeks in your own garden. They are certainly pretty, but you don't want to eat these. They will cause you to slowly suffocate - even if you don't typically need to "breathe" in the traditional way. It's an agonizing way to go. Your body will start to experience micro-seizures as it locks up, your throat slowly closing up, lungs squeezing inward. It will begin to feel like someone is sitting on your chest and there will be no relief. Your cheeks start to turn blue. Most who eat Blue Cheeks wind up dead, but if someone forcibly makes you vomit shortly after consuming a Blue Cheek, you may be able to survive. Some harvest Blue Cheeks and smash them up to coat their weapons in the jelly-like substance. This substance causes the same effect but must be used while the Blue Cheek jam is still wet. It will stay wet for an hour.

THE SLEEPER FARM

WHEN: Month of November
WHERE: Everywhere + The Sleeper Farm
CONTENT WARNINGS: Kidnapping, claustrophobia, harvesting blood/organs, imprisonment, temporary nerf of powers, blood sacrifice, brief amnesia, confusion, loss of time, breathing in blood, treatment of humanoids(?) like livestock, themes of meat markets, themes of torture, mutilated corpses, mutilating injuries.

---

The blood pollution is thick this month and the more a Sleeper is exposed, the more a Sleeper will find themselves falling into a strange stupor. You seem to forget what you were doing, where you are, what time it is. You will find it increasingly difficult to use your blood powers. Some may lose their new abilities entirely. It's like trying to wake up from a deep dream, everything's sluggish and hazy.

Then you blink. That's all. Maybe you went to sleep or wash your face. When you open your eyes again, you're somewhere else entirely and have no recollection of how you got there. Your body has a deep ache, you're filthy, hungry, and feel like it's somehow been days. You have nothing on you except a drab red jumpsuit. No shoes. No Omni. No weapons.

THE STALLS: 1st FLOOR

If you're lucky, you wake up in a stall with another Sleeper (or more). You can hear and feel the dull vibration of heavy machinery chugging around you; you can smell oil and something thick and musty fermenting.

You are in some way restrained upon waking, whether through shackles to the wall, one another, or some other means. Whatever put you here doesn't want you to escape. You can barely access your powers (for now), but maybe you can find help in nearby Sleepers.

Once you escape, you almost wish you had stayed in your stall. The stalls are the only thing that's farmlike about the Sleeper Farm. It's an architectural masterpiece of steel pistons gyrating, metal staircases heading in every direction, steam-powered doors that exhale open upon an approach. Oil drips continually from above, like filthy rainfall, but every now and then, so does blood of all kind. Never enough to detect the source immediately though.

Your only real option left is to...explore. And this metal palace is huge. You will find various tools for construction around: wrenches, hammers, saws, nails, anything you'd find at a hardware store. You could come across workboots, protective gloves, helmets with lights. The metal around you is boiling hot, and if you're not careful, getting burns is all too easy. You can hear something banging around above. You may even see movement through metal slots of humanoids rushing away. Then you start to find the source of the blood...

STORAGE: 2-9th Floors

Sleepers have been strung up in various locations. Maybe they are ones you recognize, maybe they are you (if you're unlucky enough to wake up like that), or maybe they are completely foreign to you, maimed beyond recognition. Many have been pinned up and mutilated in some way, whether fully skinned and bled dry, or body parts removed, skin carved into. Some have buckets beneath them to collect blood while others seem to have been decoratively destroyed. There is no saving some, but there is saving many. Some might have only just been strung up, still alive, still fully intact, and without any harm done just yet...But no matter what, most won't remember how they got there.

The further you go, the more bodies you come across. Some bodies have been rolled up into bags and tossed into empty rooms in piles. The floor is slick with blood, and the metal maze becomes increasingly complex with tighter turns and thicker blood pollution. It becomes difficult to breathe without ingesting in some kind of blood - but on the other hand...Your powers begin to work because of it. You can start to feel it coming back to you. You can feel yourself slowly start to regain your strength. Which is probably for the best, since you're not out of this hell just yet.

BLOOD HARVEST: 10th Floor

You enter a perfect, circular room built out of pure bloodstone from the different blood types, neatly flushed together in a mesmerizing display of artistry and architecture. At the center of a room is an enormous golden statue of The Tower, hands held out with palms open.

Filling the palms of the statue and surrounding the base of the Tower are hundreds of organs, perfectly intact, given to the statue in sacrifice. The miraculous thing, however, is the fact that most of the organs still seem to be functioning - or at the very least, they aren't rotting the way they should be. It isn't something one wishes to look at for too long.

More importantly, are the five doors that represent the five different blood types. Each door is made from the same gray wood, but with a single bloodstone in the center. Beyond the door is where you come to discover the true horror of where you are.

You're in a Sleeper Farm. Sleepers have been organized by blood types into a vast room. Some cannot be saved, opened up on tables, their organs already carved out and given over to the sacrifice. Others are still alive, but hooked up to tubes, their blood being pumped into vats kept in the ceiling. More disturbingly are the bodies of Sleepers that barely look like Sleepers at all anymore - they have been stripped so thoroughly of everything, left like hunks of meat on hooks. There are fires stoked towards the back, with shelves of jars with blood vials and bloodstones.

It's probably time to wonder who did this to you. Who brought you to this place?

And probably how the hell you get out.

QUICK FACTS

1. To avoid this prompt, you can simply handwave your character getting lucky or Wearing a gas mask and full facial/bodily coverage to help keep the likelihood of blood pollution impact lower.

2. If characters don't have eyes, any variation of vulnerability will count (ie; turning away from something, putting on headphones, etc).

3. Characters cannot have their Omni or any other item in this prompt except items they find along the way. They can still summon their Omens. Omens can help guide Sleepers, and provide communication. One can use Omens to transmit messages to the Network. However, characters cannot find their way to this location from outside. This is a by-chance location.

4. You can choose your character's level of restraint (muzzles/handcuffs/etc) and how easily they can escape them (maybe the shackles can be broken apart with enough strength or you need a nearby key).

5. Those whose Patron is the Tower will be able to more easily navigate the Sleeper Farm and figure out its continually moving parts. They may get a "telepathic" swaying by the Tower to go in the right direction. They will also instinctively know that they are inside the Tower's body in some way.

6. Characters can wake up in any part of the Tower and experience this prompt multiple times.

7. To get out, one must sacrifice some sort of blood or an organ directly to the Tower whether their own or someone else's. This will transport a Sleeper back into town in a random location. Alternatively: Moon Presence will be saving Sleepers by "pulling" them out of this place at random. It will feel a lot like traveling through the lamps, but Sleepers will realize it's the Moon Presence instead. She will place them back in their homes. This can be done at any time.

8. This prompt is meant to go hand-in-hand with the third prompt, but it is not required to engage with both.

BLOOD CRAZED ZEALOTS

WHEN: Month of November
WHERE: ???? Everywhere and the Sleeper Farm
CONTENT WARNINGS: Severe disorientation, psychological horror, paradoxical horror, feelings of being trapped/lost, Cenobites/beings with extreme bodily modifications, themes of mental and physical torture.

---

You are not alone in the Sleeper Farm, and someone powerful has brought you here. It wasn't the Tower though. It was someone obsessed with the Tower. Or...obsessed with blood.

They lurk throughout Trench, never letting themselves be known until they want to be known. They abduct Sleepers in the blink of an eye, masters of reality-bending and experts of blood abilities.

Meet the Blood-Crazed Zealots.

Or, as you will come to learn through various interactions, ancient Sleepers who have been exposed to blood pollution for far too long and who have been completely corrupt by it. These are masters of their blood magic, darkblood magicians who can snap their fingers and rip a Sleeper off the streets. Palebloods who can make you forget who you are, where you are. Vilebloods who have mastered the exact skill of extracting blood and harvesting it for bloodstones and sacrifices. Warmbloods who have gladly given their bodies up to power the Tower. Coldbloods who keep the metal machinery of the Sleeper Farm running perfectly.

These are the Sleepers who learned to survive in a different way, Sleepers who learned to cohesively blend their skills together to not only survive but excel. Most have completely disfigured themselves, claiming it to be an act of religious commitment to the "Patron Pthumerians that guide us."

The Blood Crazed Zealots believe that they must continually sacrifice Sleepers to the Tower primarily in order to keep the city of Trench strong against corruption. And the thing is...They technically aren't wrong. The Bone Season is when Trench becomes the weakest, so the Blood Crazed Zealots work overtime to get the blood pumping into the streets.

These beings are naturally sadistic, uninterested in compassion. Yet they show the potential for what Sleepers could learn, and if you're clever enough, you may even be able to get a Blood Crazed Zealot to pause and teach you a thing about your own blood type. They are ruthless and powerful, but far from irrational or stupid. Corrupt they may be, senseless they are not.

Some of you may wake up to one of these creatures torturing you or torturing a friend. You may catch them in the streets of Trench, turning a corner, and that may be your chance to follow them into the Sleeper Farm by stepping into the black holes they leave in their wake when teleporting.

The Blood Crazed Zealots can summon hooks from nowhere and snare you in their traps. They can get extremely creative and oftentimes will enjoy dragging out the agony. They know how to drain Sleepers of their blood and their powers...So how is one to even combat one of these?

Use their own game against them, of course. Blood is power and you might as well use yours. Blood Crazed Zealots are tied to their word and obey the law of the blood. If you create a blood oath with one of these Blood Crazed Zealots that's just clever enough, you may be able to protect yourself and a few others. But be careful. Blood oaths with Blood Crazed Zealots can have loopholes. Ask to be set free and they might let your body go, but keep your mind to drive you insane.

Despite their power, they are still limited in what they can do. They can't be everywhere at once, and one can hide from them. They can even be killed if a Sleeper properly regains their strength.

QUICK FACTS

1. You can create your own variation of a Blood Crazed Zealot. Their general concept is inspired by cenobites, but the general concept is a humanoid-being who looks like they have sacrificed a good deal of their body.

2. They will communicate this information openly to Sleepers who ask about it as well as tell Sleepers about other lore and facts about blood types/the Pthumerians.

3. Their powers are based on regular blood type powers (ie; a coldblood BCZ could torture people with electricity.) Some are much weaker than others.

4. They would not accept a new Sleeper who wanted to become "one of them" since they are created after decades of exposure to blood pollution.

5. People can run into these both in the Sleeper Farm and in Trench. One could convince a Blood Crazed Zealot to bring them to the Sleeper Farm in order to save others.

CODING

Comments

[kyley_b]

"We could, we're not gonna." Who's the leader again?

Kyle cackles, his mask not muffling it much. "Yeah, they do," he agrees. "November is Dick Month from now on, I've decided. Just dicks growing everywhere." This man was going to be a lawyer.

Kyle looks over from another little group of porcini. "Generally you shouldn't. I think porcini in particular are okay to, but I'm not a hundred percent so I wouldn't recommend it."

[klawful]

"If we do come across one, I'm going to be the one to approach it." He was definitely the leader. In his heart.

"If it's Dick Month, we have a lot of celebrations to make up for," Karkat says, peering over at Kyle with a certain glint in his eyes. "Then this place really would be a hentai paradise."

He nods, moving to put a handful of mushrooms into the basket. "Don't humans eat shrooms to get high sometimes?"

[kyley_b]

"Alright, fine." Unless Kyle spots it first, then he's absolutely going towards it without asking.

The very little skin of Kyle's face that is showing turns pink. "You're MY hentai paradise," he mutters.

He nods. "Yeah, a particular kind. I'm not really a fan." He pauses as he thinks he spots movement on the forest floor, but it looks like it's just a mouse.

"I'm not really a drug guy."

Is it a mouse? He peers again. "Hey, can you see over by that bigass tree? The one with the lump."

[klawful]

"...Kyle!" Oh my god. Karkat whips a mushroom at Kyle's head. "Don't just say shit like that. That's so vile. You're nasty." He loves it, but he can't just act like he did.

"Yeah, me neither. Intoxicants and trolls aren't a safe mix," he says. They just became wildly homicidal or stupid as all hell which usually wound up with some accidental deaths.

He stands up and moves towards the bigass tree with the lump, peering more closely.

"Oh, shit. I think that's one of them. Or it's a really genetically fucked up hopping beast."

[kyley_b]

Kyle cackles as the mushroom bounces off of him. "What? There's nobody here! Don't worry, I wouldn't say that shit in public."

Kyle perks up and starts sneaking forwars, which is pretty stupid since the Walking Terrors aren't like animals. "Okay," he says as he gets close enough to see better. "That's definitely one. So here's the plan: one of us starts fanning like crazy. The other goes in from the side and snaps the cap off, quick as we can. Yeah?"

[klawful]

"You probably will, you goddamn lecherous dog." He whips another mushroom at him because Karkat was the definition of maturity.

Karkat walks gingerly himself, but mostly because he figures motion could fuck with the spores from what Kyle was explaining.

"Great idea. You direct the fan, I'll go get it. I'll be way quicker." He really did think that, but he also was going to be a bit more protective over Kyle for the unforeseeable future given the recent circumstances.

"So what do these things do exactly if you get fucked by the spores?"

[kyley_b]

"I will not! Stop wasting mushrooms, dickbag!"

Kyle pauses, clearly ready to argue, but then he sighs. Karkat IS quicker.

"Okay. But we have to be super careful, okay? The spores make you trip balls." Which is a bit of an understatement, really, but Kyle's not aware of how bad it could really be.

[klawful]

"They're not wasted, nooksniffer, just pick them back up!"

Karkat looks triumphant, standing upright and moving closer towards the Walking Terror, assessing the situation and the best approach. He was also trying to see if he could actually see the spores.

"What." He stares over at Kyle flatly. "That's it? I'll be fine." And because trolls barely had a sense of danger, he just...starts to walk over. "I thought it was poisonous or something."

[kyley_b]

"I can't see where they went!"

Kyle has his fan out, ready to start whipping it like a sweaty drag queen.

"Didn't we JUST establish hallucinations are something we want to avoid?! Just be careful!" He hurries a little closer, fanning like crazy. So long as Karkat doesn't take his mask off, surely he'll be fine.

Surely.

[klawful]

"Oh my fucking god. I'll get them later, you giant drama queen." Says the universe's loudest drama queen to have ever existed probably.

"I mean, yeah, but that's way different than something that's life-threatening. I'll be careful. Cool your milkers." Karkat steps towards the mushroom, frowning down at it as it wobbled towards him.

"It's kinda cute," Karkat admits, squatting down. Despite his bitching, he does try to actually move to the opposite of how Kyle was fanning to lessen the number of spores he's exposed to. He can see them just barely in the air, fine as dust, golden.

It's more awkward than the other mushrooms. He grabs the tip of the cap so that it wouldn't walk away from him and moves to cut through the cap - but then something starts irritating his eye. It twitches and he raises a hand to rub at it, keeping his other hand on the mushroom.

"...I think I just got some in my eye."

[kyley_b]

"I don't have milkers," Kyle mutters huffily.

Kyle's fanning with one hand, and offering the basket with the other when he hears what Karkat has said. His head whips up and his own eyes widen behind his goggles.

"Oh fuck, get the cap! Get the cap and get the fuck over here!"

cw: hallucinations w blood and warlike imagery

[klawful]

"You have nipples which are specifically intended for the biological purpose of milk, Kyle."

Karkat was not wearing goggles and probably should have been wearing goggles. There are a few red tears dripping down towards his mask now, but he's not really focused on the stinging. There weren't many things that actually scared trolls given they were subjected to horrific nightmares naturally.

But there are some things for every troll. When Karkat looks down, his palms look like they're covered in his natural, freaky bright red blood. It dripped down to what now looked like grass covered in his blood.

"No," he mutters quietly, "No, no..." There was something else though. There were streaks of other colored blood, but not the blood of Sleepers - but the blood of trolls. He was supposed to be doing something but the fear was crawling up his spine.

That's when he hallucinates a massive boom and startles, looking over at Kyle, at a burning forest with the Imperial Drones coasting through the skies towards them, alarms ringing through the air.

"Oh, shit, we have to get the fuck out of here now. They're coming and we're...Oh fuck. Kyle, get over here right now."

cw: hallucinations w blood and warlike imagery

[kyley_b]

Kyle feels both foolish and terrified. He KNEW he should have picked the stupid mushroom, but no, he had to let his boyfriend without protective eyewear do it. Didn't he learn anything from high school chem class?! Stupid!

He can't see what Karkat sees, but he hears the fear in his voice. Kyle hurries over, stopping to kneel and yank the cap off the offending mushroom and stuff it into a pocket. Then he gets up and puts his hands on Karkat's shoulders.

"It's okay, whatever you're seeing is not real. We just need to get you back to my place, okay?"

[klawful]

Karkat's already drawing his sickle, crouching into a defensive stance, preparing to take on a fleet of the impossible. Then it's gone. Karkat blinks a dozen times, slowly straightening back out and staring around. No blood. No imperial drones.

Just the dense woods. He listens closely for anything at all, the hum of the drones or the noise of trolls panicking in Alternian, but nothing comes. He realizes Kyle is touching him and where they are, what's going on.

"Goddamn it." He bows his head, rubbing the heel of his palm against his eye. "I'm fine." He shrugs off Kyle's hand and shakes himself, pushing a hand through his hair. He just needed to come back down from that incredibly stupid move he just made. And the humiliation that was gradually rising.

"We don't need to go. I'm fine. Just give me a second."

[kyley_b]

Kyle looks, for a split second, a little hurt to be shaken off. But then he's just back to frowning, studying Karkat very carefully.

"Are you sure? Because I have special mushrooms at home that are supposed to stop hallucinations. I never thought, I should have brought them... you sure you're okay?" He LOOKS okay. Still, this is exactly why Kyle wants the rare fungii, to be able to help if this sort of thing happens again.

"What did you see?"

[klawful]

Karkat doesn't think about it right away. He just felt tense and on the verge of fighting for his and Kyle's life at the same time. A defensive instinct that left little room for weakness or needing to rely on comfort.

He peers warily around them. It had been so realistic. He hadn't been on his planet in years, sweeps, and yet he recognized it immediately.

"...Home." He keeps glancing up at the sky as if expecting to see them again. The edges of the trees seem mildly haunting to him, but it might be the fading effects. "The Imperial Drones were coming."

He finally forces himself to turn around to look at Kyle. Then he seems to finally belatedly realize what Kyle had done earlier and he grimaces. "Shit, sorry. I was in..." He waves a hand before reaching out to grab Kyle into a hug. "Fight mode. Sorry. I'm okay. I was expecting hallucinations like...I don't know what I was expecting."

[kyley_b]

Home.

No matter how brutal or strange, there's a connection to the place you came from even when you wish there wasn't. It's deep down in a pattern of speech, a particular quality of light, a scent. No matter how far away you go, these things can snap you right back.

Kyle looks up at the trees but of course only sees an alien sky.

He hugs back, careful of bis basket. "It's okay. You were trying to protect me, I think. Uhm. What happens when the drones come?"

[klawful]

"We die," he states plainly, "Since we weren't ready. And it's the kind of death you don't come back from. Or, I guess, they could do worse."

He withdraws from Kyle, looking up at him. The yellows of his eyes were a bit red from the spores, but he did mostly seem better.

"Sorry for the dramatic blunder. We really can keep going."

[kyley_b]

"Fuck. Like with the bucket?" It would be laughable if Karkat wasn't so obviously shaken.

Kyle studies him, then nods. "Okay. But if we see more, I'm going in. Or giving you my goggles. But hey! We got one. I can dry it out and have it on hand in the future." He gives him another hug before carefully resuming his hunt.

"What I also really want is the ones that look like waterdrops. Weepers. They help with all sorts of bad brain stuff. I feel like it'll be good to have them." Whether for others or himself he's not specifying.

[klawful]

"Yes," he admits begrudgingly, some embarrassment creeping into his voice. "And also..." He hesitates, frowning, "I never knew what they would do when they finally found me."

He may as well admit it. It's not as if Kyle's oblivious to who he was or what he was. He stares back at Kyle, gradually feeling steadier just by being near him and hearing his voice. Reality was settling back in and Karkat fully begins to relax.

"You can give me your goggles. I still am quicker," he insists, because he'd rather have a million horror hallucinations than subject Kyle to that. He eagerly hugs him back, squeezing hard before letting go. "Worth it then."

He walks with Kyle, reaching out to slip his fingers through Kyle's. Might not be the most productive way to walk during mushroom foraging, but Karkat didn't really care right now.

"Probably difficult to properly find. I feel like if they look like waterdrops..." He hums, thinking, staring around the vast forest. He lets go of Kyle's hand, but mostly so he could drop back down low, rooting near the base of a tree. "Makes sense for them to gather where the most moisture goes, right?"

[kyley_b]

Kyle's eyes widen behind his goggles. "Oh, fuck," he says. "Because of your blood. And what happened to your ancestor, they might do the same thing to you?" He pulls his goggles off and hands them over without an argument.

Holding hands. GOD he loves holding hands. He tightens his fingers once, a happy squeeze.

"Yeah. I lucked out and found one outside, almost right by this flower I grew back in September when I was really upset." He lights up and nods. "Dude, good thinking. I know they don't really grow in clusters, but that makes sense, you'd think that they'd do best to blend in. Karkat, you really are fucking smart." He says that with such adoration. He loves intelligence in a person.

[klawful]

"Exactly that. I never knew what was going to happen when..." He gestures to his eyes, their telling red color, taking the goggles from Kyle with a murmur of appreciation. "I just figured I'd live in recluse on some hellhole planet." He tugs the goggles carefully around his horns and lets them settle over his eyes.

Karkat had started to pick up on that. He liked holding hands too, but if it made Kyle this happy? Yeah, he was going to make sure to do it more often.

"What kind of flower?" Not that he would really know what it is, but it piques some wonder. The compliment makes him flush into his ears. He whipped between strutting around with a massive god-complex and crippling self-esteem issues.

"I mean, I also just rubbed my eyes with a bunch of spores on my hand, so I think I might fall under conditionally smart," he murmurs shyly.

[kyley_b]

"Yeah, shit, because they didn't look like that when you were little, that's right. Jesus, dude, I dunno how the fuck you handled the stress of that, that's honestly like my worst nightmare come to life."

Kyle hesitates for a second, looking a little embarrassed. "It's a rose," he says. "A white one. It. Uhm." He steps carefully over a tangle of roots. "There's this really important set of holidays back home. And when I got here, it was like, right when they would have happened. It fucked me up, not being home, or even in the last place I was. Anyway, I saw a bunch of the locals, they were burying stuff like notes and hair and blood, and then flowers would grow. It was a way to let go of the past. So. I did it, on what we consider a day of atonement back home." He shrugs, as if he expects to be made fun of. "It's still in the backyard."

He laughs. "Yeah, well... you're half dumbass, half brilliant. Which I like, I can't have you smarter than me."

[klawful]

"Yeah. Our eyes start out as gray when we're younger. We destroyed our world when we were only 6 - er...Thirteen. They only recently turned red," he admits. Only in the past few months kind of recent. "I'm still not used to it. You're probably the only person here who's really seen me."

Granted, there were a few people in the streets, but he has been doing his best to keep himself relatively hidden one way or another. He listens about the rose with rapt attention, both for Kyle's sake and also a genuine curiosity of other customs. He reaches out and gently grabs Kyle's hand again and gives a squeeze. "Next year you won't be alone with it. You'll have to teach me all about it. You have another special set of holidays coming up soon, right?" Mocking Kyle didn't even cross his mind.

He laughs too, giving Kyle a shove. "Asshole. Who said you're smarter than me? Don't get cocky. I could wipe the floor with you in a lab."

[kyley_b]

"I like em," Kyle says softly. He's smiling again behind his mask. "And I'm not gonna push you to like, force yourself to be uncomfortable, but I will say people here aren't like they are where you're from. You're not totally scary looking or anything."

He beams, delighted. "Thanks. Yeah, uhm, Hanukkah is real soon. It's more of a fun one than anything, so that could be cool." Because it will be strange to celebrate without his family.

Kyle snickers. "Actually, yeah. You could. I didn't pursue the hard sciences, and sometimes I think I should have. Oh well." He elbows Karkat. "I like that you're smart, it's hot." He moves away to hunker down and look carefully amongst the moss.