deercountry | [Session 3] "They're putting up reindeer and singing songs of joy and peace"

Luz had hoped to find Wesker. She'd heard from Darth Maul he had to mercy kill him as the Zealots had done too much damage.

She'd seen some of the bodies and knew firsthand what a mercy Maul had done. It was unsettling, but not as much as everything she'd seen in the Farm.

But apart from that, she wanted to make sure that Albert was OK. So when she happened to see him in town, she was upon him pretty quickly.

"Wesker! You're back!"

Sorry, you get a hug because anytime one of her friends were killed, it was a needle in her chest, and seeing him back at least eased some of that pain a little.

We imagine hugging Wesker is a bit like hugging a tree trunk, albeit a somewhat surprised tree trunk. He was dragging home the top of a pine tree blown over in a recent storm, intending to use the top as a Christmas tree and deck the halls with the rest of the branches, when Luz ran up to him. He stops in his tracks, almost bracing to fend off this being, but he looks down to spy Luz. Instead, he relaxes and smiles on her.

"Greetings, Luz," he says, his voice still a bit gruff from the after effects of his recent demise. "I'm a hard man for anyone, much less the Zealots, to keep down for long.

"I'm glad to hear it! I'm sorry I didn't go rushing over as soon as I could when I heard you died. I was dealing with stuff that the Zealots did to me too. Actually, you sorta sound like you have a cold now. Is that an effect from, well, dying?"

She did note the tree and backed away so he could recover and continue dragging his treasure home.

"How long did it take, for you to come back?"

Vira-Lorr sent brief notes to Wesker to verify his well being on and around the tenth. She definitely hadn't held this one against Maul. That act of kindness was one she understood a little too well. But, for the moment, she both wanted to catch up with 'Doctor Winters' and also to get a little help.

She came to his offices in the Lumenarium and knocked at the door, rubbing one of her arms with a bit of irritation. She still had salts but this wasn't so bad it needed them, and she wanted to save that last dose, just in case.

(OOC: If you are fine with it, we can do lockjoint blood letting as they have a conversation about current circumstances?)

"Apology accepted: it might have been a little too close for your senses at the time. But it might have amused you: when I returned, I resembled a teenaged version of myself - all arms and legs and thin as a rail," he says, a little embarrassed, but mostly amused. More serious, he adds, "I was mute as well. Maul had strangled me till he snapped my neck. Some residual damage must have remained even after my rebirth.

He reshoulders the tree, beckoning her to accompany him. "It took me the better part of a week to return, then another five days to recover my voice. There's still a bit of a rasp in my throat." He might instinctively clear his throat.

"Maybe it would have? It's hard to say. I've been feeling a lot of things lately, and I still haven't been around anyone who died except for one person, and he tends to keep his feelings secret anyway. I didn't know it would take you back though!"

Ok, definitely not trying to think of Darth Maul strangling the life out of her friend. Margot and Varian were bad enough.

"I'm sorry that all happened to you. I still don't know what dying is like, though that month I definitely felt like it was bound to happen anytime soon."

"I imagine the powers in this place hide the signatures of those who've returned to the sea to be reborn, whether they return here or to their world of origin. But I suspect this world is far from finished with me. I'm relieved the tide brought me back. Ahiru came to the shore to await my return, keeping Cypher company. She accompanied the Waker who brought me inland," he relates as he hauls the tree through the street, shortening his steps to make it easier for her to keep up.

He glances in her direction. "I pray that you never experience it, though... the process is more gentle with us here than in Deerington. I'll trade being a teenaged version of myself for a day and then mute for five days over the death-flu." He winces, gritting his teeth in a rictus grin before relaxing.

"So... preparations for the December festivities under way?" he asks.

"Aw, she did? That's so sweet of her! I'm really sorry I wasn't there myself, I might have been going through the farm then, or maybe just recovering. That's no excuse though. If that happens to you again, I'll try to show up if I can."

Granted, it was a perfectly legitimate excuse to not show up because you were being drained of blood or felt psychologically taxed enough that you didn't want to come out for a bit, but Luz was not one for bathing her wounds when she thought other people needed it.

Luz nodded. "I never experienced it myself because I've been lucky, but I never heard good things about it from Dipper or Varian, so I assumed the worst. As far as I knew though, you were a squid and then you were all silent, so maybe I'll be a toddler for a little bit?"

She had no idea, really.

"Oh, well, yes! I'm putting up lights and decorations as we speak! I even have a reindeer costume I'll be parading around in the last week of December with lights!"

"You had your own burden to shift, so there's no need to worry. However, I appreciate the kind words," he says, shifting the tree slightly.

"Every rebirth runs differently, and it would not surprise me if something in each Sleeper affects the process." A pause and his gaze drops slightly. "I grew up more quickly than most people do: I was in medical school when most people are starting high school. Perhaps this place took compassion on me and let me have a taste of that." He grins at her, trying not to look sinister. "But you would be an adorable toddler.

"A small deer bringing cheer to a strange town? That's you all over.

"I'm celebrating my first Christmas on my own. It probably sounds tragic, but... I never celebrated the end of the year until I came to this world. Christmas felt like rather a waste of resources: it's too commercialized, when ironically, it started as the celebration of a God made human who'd encouraged His followers to live simply and help the less fortunate," he muses. "However, I'm observing it as something broader, as a celebration of light in the darkness, and as I've hinted, I've lived a dark life."

At an open space among the buildings, he'll stop in his tracks, holding out his arm, hand lifted in a quiet warning. Then he points toward a gap between the buildings, where something large and dark with antlers steps out, treading softly through the snow.

The latch might rattle and the door opens before he looks out, lab coat open over the shirt and vest combination that have become his signature look. "May I be of assistance -- Ahh, Vira-Lorr, welcome!" he says, stepping back and pulling the door open wider. "Come to make a donation, or have you an ailment to be examined? Or... is this a social call in the deep midwinter?"

The office has started to look somewhat lived in: Anatomy and blood type charts on the walls, along with a chart of the Trench calender and the corresponding Pthumerian patrons, orderly folders of papers on the desktop, next to a manual typewriter from which a typed page protrudes, books stacked neatly on an extra chair. Cards from an oracle deck spread on another corner of the desk, his leather duster hung on a coat rack behind the door. Cypher's currently currently snoozing on a padded examination table against the opposite wall.

"This will be a very scary Christmas/ - Quiet, now, I think he's here" -

Deep in the night, someone might hear strange sounds on the rooftops, footsteps clacking, muffled by the snow, but unmistakable, as if something with long legs and hard feet is trotting overhead or sneaking along. Perhaps soot and snow falls down a chimney. Or if one looks out a window or door, one spies a tall figure clad in a long robe, perched atop a nearby roof, clouds of warm mist billowing from the nostrils of a goat-like face, swirling about its horns. It may gaze toward the viewer before suddenly springing upward before landing on the ridgepole of a nearby roof before sprinting away.

Or it may land on the roof overhead, its snow-muffled footsteps thumping along the ridgepole. It pauses and if the building has a chimney, bits of soot may start to fall down onto the hearth. If one possesses Coldblood or Darkblood, this may not go well...

Edited 2022-01-03 06:21 (UTC)

"Sure, I'm glad you think so. Gives me the opportunity to concentrate on something that isn't wholly depressing though."

Luz had not even thought of that. But it certainly explained why Wesker's rebirth was different from Reapers, and maybe other Sleepers would have their own sort of coming into themselves. Luz would have to ask some of the others that had already experienced their first death.

Too bad Luz was going to get that in spades very soon.

"I always just thought of Christmas as a celebration of family and friends, and based on the whole thing of gathering harvest from fall so you'd have provisions once it was colder and you were safe and warm. I think you're definitely on the money with the celebration of light in the dark though."

After all, there had been plenty of "darkness" in Luz's last few months, she could certainly use a bit of light.

She did stop dead with the large animal that seemed to be approaching though.

"Whoa. Is that...?"

"Let us go with the latter two," she said as she slipped in and offered him a wan smile, having a look around the chamber. It looked increasingly like an office that he was going to be occupying. Someone was starting to set his mark on this place, bit by bit. There would be a host of beakers and more advanced equipment in time.

"Nothing says that havin an ailment examined cannot also be a social call with the two of us," she admitted, winking once and sighing. "though I am here at least in part for some stiffness in the joints."

Stiles jerks awake from where he'd fallen asleep in the driver's seat of his jeep when he hears the thud of something shake the building he's parked by. It was daytime when he'd got in to sit and read some books he'd found at the archives. He hadn't meant to pass out in such a vulnerable place, but at least he keeps incense in the glove compartment.

He reaches over to grab an incense stick and light it before stepping out of his car to look around for the source of what woke him. As a darkblood, he's in particular danger, though he does not realize it.

"Whoever's out here thumping around like a T-Rex… uh," he tilts his head thoughtfully and finishes flat and blunt: "Stop."

"I shall take the latter two, then." He nudges Cypher, who awakens, yawning. 'Ooh, big sis come t' call,' the Omen notes and hops down to clamber onto the desk.

"Ahh, sounds like a case of Lockjoint, a fairly common ailment in this locality at this time of the year. I've been treating a few cases in recent days," he says, gesturing her to sit down on the examination table. "I had a little trouble with it in my back, though soaking in a hot spring helped ease it. But I have a sense you have a more persistent case?"

She grunted and took the seat across from him, nodding to his omen. "That she has," she said, smirking. It still amused her how his was so talkative, where hers remained stonily silent as a rule. Perhaps it said something about what the omen felt they needed.

"Yes, I believe it is one of those cases. I've attempted some home remedies, but I had given my salts away earlier this month, so the more normal bath salts haven't quite been working as well as I wanted." And she was holding onto those green salts. Those were problematic at times. "I'd been told that the ministers could help with the crystallizing blood, yes?"

Snow sifts down from the corner of the roof, pouring over the Jeep. Something drops from the parapet of the roof, vaulting slightly to land on a low roof nearby, causing more snow to drop.

If Stiles looks up, he'll spy a figure in black, stooped and wearing a goat mask that completely conceals their head, peering down at him.

Edited 2022-01-08 06:41 (UTC)

Truth be told, Cypher seems Wesker's externalized conscience which he lacks, as well as a voice of cheerful reason to his stoical madness.

"The bath salts from the Titanic wreck? Hmm. I had no personal experience of those, but I've heard of a few people having some success with those, though not all," he says, leaning one hip against the edge of his desk. "There's a treatment for it, though it will involve some blood-letting and some careful work on the affected joint. Would you allow me to perform this procedure on you?"

It was a good reason for him to be like that, certainly. And her? She just needed someone to stonily and quietly keep her from getting too much in trouble. "Well, from what I've gathered, salted water is useful, though if you wait too long it's probably not as effective." She hadn't reached that point, but she was fine with blood letting as long as he was the one doing it.

"Yes. Actually you're one of the only ones I'd probably trust to do that," she could freely admit. "It's why I came specifically here."

Stiles looks up and raises both brows as he takes a slow careful step backwards, "Riiight, uh…"

A pause and then he turns to run at full speed because fuck that. He doesn't know what's up with that and he doesn't want to know.

Whoever the thing is snorts, steam billowing from the nostrils of the mask and drops off the roof, feet first, its leather robe flaring open around a robust form with what look like hairy legs, landing with a thud on its hoof-like feet. It pauses for but a split second, then it darts after Stiles For its size, it moves swiftly, and he may feel it snatching at his shoulder.

"Hmmm! That fits as well, though I'm still learning to open up to a family of friends. Ironic, since I lived in a family of twelve other siblings, and all of us adopted from all over the world," he muses.

"A Deer... and it resembles the Deer form I'd had..." he says, his voice lowered, almost reverently.

The Deer comes closer, revealing themself as a black deer, vaguely resembling a white tailed deer the size of an elk, a string of small lunar lights snagged in its antlers. They walk up to Luz, tilting their head, their red eyes calm and sniffing at her.

"No way? That is a lot of siblings! I'm an only child, so you can imagine it was a fair bit different, but Mami definitely loved Christmas! I loved helping her put up the tree, arranging the lights, pulling out the old Christmas movies! It was pretty special!"

And she missed it. Luz exhaled and seemed to look away. If there was one thing that hit her hard, it was thinking of her mother. The prospect of ever seeing her again started to seem farther and farther away, and that just made her heart sink.

Luz was silent and watched as the Deer approached her. Luz held her hands for the deer to sniff if it felt like doing so and found that the apprehension she was feeling about her mother slowly dissipating. She couldn't help but stare in appreciative awe.

Stiles dares to look over his shoulder and see the creepy guy gaining on him and lets out a very undignified yell. It's under stress that he's able to access more of his powers, but he's not that great at controlling them. On instinct, he swipes a hand behind himself like he's trying to tell it to just go away.

And with that gesture, he slightly slows time in a dark glow of power around the thing, long enough for him to gain some ground and turn a corner. He starts climbing over a fence… man he really needs to learn parkour or something.

"I suppose 'family' is putting a rosy tint on the arrangement I grew up in: we were more like a school where the students all shared the last name since we were adopted, at least on paper, by the scientist who managed it. Some of us were acquired by trickery, with a promise to provide these children with a top-notch education in a comfortable environment, some by coercion and in my case, via force." He falls silent, letting those words sink in.

The Deer nuzzles Luz's face gently, booping her nose with its own, then lowering its head, careful to keep from grazing her with the prongs of its antlers. "I have a feeling our deer friend is offering you those lights," Wesker muses. "A little gift from the spirit of the season, perhaps."

[Session 3] "They're putting up reindeer and singing songs of joy and peace"

Around Town

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Sometime in the Mid-Month

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Run Rabbit, Run/Krampuslaufen - December 12th onward

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[CW: Kidnapping, child endangerment mentioned]