o1 . clockhouse move-in!

[clocktowers]

Who: clocktowers and housemates, plus any curious passersby.
What: A move-in log! Go ahead and make your own toplevels.
When: Early September.
Where: Gaze

Content Warnings: Tagged in subject lines as needed.

In Gaze, not far from the grand spire of Never Mind's clocktower, Ozpin has found his Deerington home. The manor looks as though it has not seen life in decades or more: the once-vibrant paint has peeled to a mucky grey, the dented gate has turned a decaying green, and the whole property is a jungle of thorny weeds. The front of the mansion has been swallowed by the tangled vines of morning glories, flowers dotting the house blue and red in clusters like wounds.

The windows are boarded, just as they'd been in the mists of May. The third-floor tower is a burned wreck from a battle that feels, by now, a full lifetime ago. Every window is shattered; every space is thick with cobwebs and filmy sea salt.

Ozpin stands at the gate and gazes up the drive. He looks a mess: his hair still stuck up with sea salt, his glasses missing, wearing only the simple dark robe Ruby slung over his shoulders on the beach. He doesn't even have his cane; he doesn't even have his Aura.

But there is something beautifully simple in that. It feels like reincarnation without the dread of taking a host; it feels new.

Comments

[swornto]

[Oz can’t imagine how the scent of flowers made him so lightheaded. He’s suspicious that it’s connected, but really? Flowers?

… Well. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing to happen in his life.]

Yes, sorry. That was weird. [As he gets to his feet, Oz brushes his jacket green and looks around.]

Huh… I didn’t see any flowers, but I definitely smelled them too. Is that normal?

[clocktowers]

[ An instinctive leaning towards secrecy kicks in; he closes his hand around the smear of green. ]

Difficult to say. [ He tips his head to the town at large. ] If this place at all resembles our former home, 'normal' will be a very loosely-held term indeed.

[ Which is not actually an answer! ]

I take it you are new to town, as well?

[ 'New' is a very gentle term. ]

[swornto]

New is a word for it, yeah.

[Oz still feels like a stranger to this place. Moreso because he realizes he missed part of the journey that so many others have made.]

Are you talking about the nightmare town some people were in before? I'm not from there, but I've only heard horrible things.

[clocktowers]

[ Ah. That would do it, then. ]

Deerington. For much of my time there, it was not so terrible a place. Simply a bit... unpredictable.

[ He was violently murdered twice. But that's par for Remnant, too, really. ]

It's a bit soon to predict whether this land will prove the same. But I'm afraid that sudden fainting spells and cursed flowers sound precisely as I'd expect.

[swornto]

'Unpredictable' can mean many things, good and bad.

[And Oz has yet to hear anyone call that place a dream. From his understanding, it was all awful.]

Yes those do seem like ominous warnings, don't they? Is that as bad as it gets?

[clocktowers]

[ Ozpin chuckles, which is probably not reassuring. ]

I'm afraid it could be very good, and very bad.

[ He drops his cut hand to his side, to ignore it while it heals over. That is: it should heal over. It would have, were his powers wholly intact and as he expected them.

Instead the green blood begins threatening to drip. He doesn't immediately notice. ]

It was a place of grand celebrations and of terribly deadly trials. Everything else was, on the whole, a matter of minor inconvenience.

[swornto]

[Oz doesn't notice the blood right that moment, but he likely will soon. He is a much more observant child than he lets on and has been looking for any subtle hints of a lie or half-truth in Ozpin's mannerisms. That will mean looking at his hands for any twitch of hesitance.]

So about the same as any life, hm?

[Just... from Oz's understanding, the scale is much more extreme in both directions.]

Then this may as well be a warning. I suppose we'll need to stay on our guard.

[clocktowers]

[ He will not have to wait long for Ozpin to tell a half-truth. The drip of green blood creeps through the lines of his palm, beads at the edge of his hand, and something flickers in Ozpin's expression as he realizes that he is still bleeding. He tries, internally, to nudge his Aura into doing its work. ]

Wise advice. With any luck, this would will not be quite so unpredictable... but even if it not a dream itself, it is very much influenced by a dream, and thus I would be unsurprised to find some of that same uncanny logic following us here. Deerington was always very concerned with such concepts as corruption and monstrousness, and it seems some of that nightmarish potential has followed us here.

[ He falls into teacher-voice, to say this, pleased to be relaying information as an apparent authority. In the meantime, a drop of green blood falls to the dirt, and his knuckles tighten ever so slightly at his side.