deercountry | o5 . bone house mingle!

There is a stranger outside of the Bone House.

While this itself might not seem unusual, the nature of the stranger was. A young lad with a mop of disheveled hair tied back into a little tail, wearing an orange flannel button-up and sunglasses in the afternoon light looked around for a moment--as if bemused by the number of intact skeletons rather than the bones themselves, before shrugging and knocking at the door.

Whomever answered would meet one (1) Oscar Pine, waving awkwardly with a nervous smile.

"Uh... Hi. I'm Oscar, and... Paul invited me over for dinner?"

Feeling awkward, he held up the package he brought, the rainbow icing on an 18 pack of cupcakes obvious though the window in the packaging.

"I brought cupcakes?"

... And himself, a not quite sixteen year old boy with the souls of hundreds attached to his in a conglomeration that was hard to define the individuals within.

"Well, if you've brought cupcakes," says God.

The kid he's looking at is a marvel. The kid is a bastardized nightmare of a soul melange. He can't even count the threads, but he can see the off-kilter way they fit together, as though this boy has left half his soul somewhere else and borrowed half of another's—

It isn't lyctorhood. It can't be. The dead-star burn of thanergy generation isn't here; this is something thalergy-bright, all life and soul and— incomprehensibly— more life. This is, in short, deeply fucking weird.

All that shows on his face is a furrowing of brows, an expression of half-unsettled, all-startled interest, and then the man in the doorway steps back to let Oscar inside. He doesn't look like much, really. Simple black clothing, no weapons to be seen... but his eyes are wrong: a burning white light on black sclera, monstrously dark.

"Come on in."

'He looks like Salem.'

It was Oscar's first thought when he looked into the man's eyes, with irises that gleamed like suns on a black sea. Suddenly struck with an uncertainty that froze in his gut and made him feel like he was standing on sand, he couldn't resist the call of those horrid moments in the belly of the whale. He swallowed nervously, and tried to push away the memory of her silken gaze-- soft as blood and vile as the black ichor that subsumed everything that she was.

--it was panic, born of his own torture and the pain of thousands of years that burned in the pit of his chest. Oscar recognized it, and impulsively wanted to flee.

But--

Paul had invited him, and there was no obvious danger... At least to Oscar personally. The man seemed mild enough of a host, and likely had earned everyone's high regard.

...Like Ironwood had earned their trust by instating everyone's licenses, and offering them both shelter and cake.

He shouldn't have ~~trusted~~ lied to James. Perhaps, he wouldn't be haunted by this fear of being ~~endlessly~~ hurt.

~~He could never forget that look in her eyes. The despair that was older that his civilization and the promise the she would destroy him for eternity.~~

Oscar's nervousness was obvious in the way he stalled, staring down at the sparkling cupcakes with eyes that were clearly looking at something else. It was only the sound of the man's voice that brought him back to the moment with a start.

"Oh. Um, sure!"

He chirped, with nervous cheer. This would be okay, this would be totally okay--

~~She was gone from the Dream, but she would always claw her way back to the remnants of what she had tried to destroy.~~

Edited 2022-03-24 19:48 (UTC)

The kid freezes, flusters, tries to act like he isn't panicking. It's not a very convincing effort, but it's a noble one all the same. John lets him have it. He knows what he looks like, with the skeletons and the eyes; he knows that, to these storybook hero kids, they must see VILLAIN stamped on his forehead.

This is going to be an interesting dinner.

"Paul's upstairs, I think," he says, just as mildly, as he shuts the door behind Oscar with a heavy click. "He'll be down in a bit. Let's get these to the kitchen."

Their walk through the mansion is blessedly free of skeleton servants, but the decor is no less eerie. In places where the marble flooring has cracked or broken, it has been patched with whorls of organic off-white. The home is grand and dark and oppressively silent.

In the universally pleasant-but-stilted tone of parents making small talk with their children's friends, he says: "So, how long have you been in town, Oscar?"

[Oh. He was being treated like a kid.

This was new, and Oscar momentarily had no idea what to do with this. Few had bothered treating him like a kid since he left his Aunt's farm-- and the normalcy of it was almost enough to distract from the eyes that seemed darker than eternity.

Almost.]

I've been here since the dream collapsed, sir.

[He said-- with 'Sir' being used as a coldly neutral honorific until he could get a proper read on this man.]

In total, I've been away from the world I called 'home' for almost two years.

[ He takes the 'sir' with a nod of acknowledgment, apparently content with it. ]

You're one of our veterans of the dream, then. Do you think it's given you a leg up here in Trench?

[ (He sees the prosthetic beneath the clothes, and doesn't mean it as an unkind joke. Maybe as the set-up for one, if Oscar wants to take it. Regardless, he adds:) ]

I've heard it said the dream was even more chaotic than this.

[The comment had him making more note of his gait and pacing. Although it had been just about a year and he had adapted enough to compensate for general matters, he still found the extra work tiresome after a while and the effects of it tended to show in a certain unsteadiness in his movements. Straightening his posture and tugging at his shirt compulsively, Oscar tried to school himself into a state of apparent confidence before replying.]

I arrived there when it was just starting to fall apart. Toward the end, it was constant chaos.

[He sighed, glancing briefly towards the window. The fractures in the sky that hinted at places beyond their ken was hard to forget, even after so many months had passed.]

Saying it gave me an advantage is kinda stupid. Does living in a warzone give you an advantage for a quieter life in squid land?

[ Kinda stupid, says the boy, which would be taken as grave insult by anyone within earshot. Good news they're alone, then: God just quirks an eyebrow at Oscar over his shoulder. ]

Well, consider me impressed anyone can take Trench as a quieter life. It's been an adjustment. Two years must be a long time, under these conditions.

[ Two years is the span of a breath. But he can respect two weird years. ]

[Even if they were insulted, somehow Oscar probably wouldn't care. Unfortunately, being shot and left for dead by someone whose opinions you were trying to ~~manipulate~~ change for the better tended to make it harder to care about the opinions of complete and utter strangers.

He was a teenager, and Trench was his last chance to enjoy that time.]

Well. It's not like we've gotta look over our shoulders for monsters everytime someone gets upset. Sure, the squid thing is weird and the mushrooms get a little boring, but we're next to the ocean.

I didn't grow up near the ocean. It's pretty cool for me.

[ To this he tips a head in agreement, good-natured. ]

It's been a long time since I lived by the sea. [ There is something there beneath his tone, some deeper meaning to a long time. ] I even have the luck to keep a ship in harbor. From what I hear, you may have met her under the good Captain Amarande.

[ Always a good topic, the boat. He's glad to chat about the boat. That can carry them to the kitchen, where he can trade the boy off to Paul. The skeletons make themselves visible, now, as they attend to dinner: the table, the cooking, the arrangement. Insofar as Paul, having issued the invitation, permits assistance in his solemnly-undertaken task of providing social niceties.

God sits down to dinner with them, of course. It's nice to have one without Kaworu heaving up saltwater and Paul still miserably aglow with radiation. Nice to make small talk and hand plates around with comparably little tension as before.

Comparably. ]

Ah. So you're the guy who owns the spooky ship we rammed.

[He grinned-- a youthful, wholesome, even cheesy expression that didn't wholly hide his unease. The ship had indeed been spooky, in mild terms. A simple farm lad, he had always believed that the dead should stay dead...

They got to the table and started with the meal, the unspoken tension distracting enough for Oscar that it felt strange to try to crack jokes. Even with Paul and Gideon there... Something just didn't feel right.]

So. Uh. Why skeletons, anyway?

[He asked, hoping to start conversation. Anything to get people talking-- and distract him from the buzzing he had to actively block from overwhelming his Paleblood senses. ]

[ He returns the grin with his own little smile. It doesn't quite reach his black eyes; those remain somehow faintly tired, faintly distant. ]

It's the magic of home. I take it some folks here are accustomed to power of all kinds... where we come from is a little simpler. Everything boils down to life, death, and soul. Necromancy isn't a school of magic, it's the umbrella category for schools of magic.

A little spooky if you're not used to it, maybe. But it grows on you.

[Cold, black eyes that were the same sheen as the ichor that flowed through the veins of all of the Grimm of Remnant; Darkness incarnate.

Oscar swallowed and looked away, playing with the food on his plate.]

I... see. That's interesting.

[A shrug.]

Magic isn't a thing where I'm from-- [That was a bold-faced lie, but it was also the common belief throughout Remnant.] So, I'm still learning about it. We've got powers connected to our souls, though? With training, anyone can shield or support healing themselves. Some people even unlock their own special powers.

Shielding and healing. [ He echoes this softly to himself, and it's hard to say whether he sounds wistful in the sense of a man amazed, or in the sense of a man wryly amused. ] I'll guess the special powers don't usually wind up bone-themed.

[ So many worlds with magic, and so few worlds with necromancy. ]

That depends on the person. Everyone's got a different personality, and no one really gets the same version of any kind of power.

[He shrugged. Auras and Semblances were ordinary concepts in Remnant, but they were just one part of the equation.]

One of the most famous warriors still alive back home calls herself the Grimm Reaper, and when she was active in the field she wore a mask that looked like a skull.

[ He nods in open appreciation. ]

Fantastic choice. Great style. With us it's about the same, but with more real skulls.

[hm. Oscar frowned over his dinner, nervous about what to ask but knowing he needed to keep the conversation going. It was only polite...]

Um. Sure, animal skulls are fine. I've heard of people deep in the woods who like to collect them-- and that they actually bury the parts that they want cleaned for months and months before digging it up. All that's left by that point is dirt and bone, so they polish it from there for their shelves.

o5 . bone house mingle!

Late March | OTA

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