deercountry | o1 . clockhouse move-in!

Entry tags:

o1 . clockhouse move-in!

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.

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I think you may be right.

[ He considers this levelly, frowning as she offers out her palm to him. Ozpin tips his head in a nod, and gently rests her hand palm-up in his. He flips the Long Memory so that it is a clean cutting edge, not that marked green by Vileblood, which rests upon her palm.

He has a surprising degree of dexterity with such a long blade; it has been in his hand for thousands of years. The cut is neat, short, and shallow as he tugs the blade across. ]

Well, it has been known to happen from time to time.

[She gives him a brief grin, and stills as he rests the blade against her upturned hand.

She flinches just slightly at the sting of the cut, and blinks as the blood wells up, red and completely ordinary looking. There's no strange smells, no evidence at all of any sort of change, and she raises her eyebrows as she looks up at Ozpin.]

That was kind of anti-climatic.

[ He frowns down at her utterly usual blood, and at the lack of any resulting dizzy spell. Then he raises his gaze to meet her own, and gently releases her hand. ]

No effect that I've noticed.

[ This raises rather a lot of questions. He opens his palm again to inspect the green smear, which... is still gently stinging. It has not closed. Whatever is keeping his Aura absent does not seem inclined to resolve itself.

Ozpin's frown goes a little more pinched and intent, but he offers: ] We can go inside to clean up. Perhaps some other element of the difference will make itself clear.

Huh. Yeah, you're right. We should go get cleaned up.

[She holds up her hand to take a closer look after he releases her, but she still can't pick up on any discernable differences between what her blood was and what it is now.]

Everyone's blood did change, right? Not just some of us?

[She pauses as she notices the change in his expression.]

Hey. Are you okay?

That is what we've been told. Perhaps yours will hold some properties not yet unlocked.

[ Which doesn't explain how he unlocked his, nor what they are, exactly. Still, he leads her along back into the overgrown home. The kitchen is a ruin, but at least the taps still run.

He dismisses the question with a quirk of a smile. ]

Perfectly fine, Willow. Just adapting to the changes. [ His tone is gentle and a little wry. ] Change has always been an unfortunate constant, but even for me, this is all rather new.

Yeah, maybe. It's still a little strange, though.

[She follows him back inside and takes a look around the mess of the kitchen. It feels like it's going to take a lot of time and effort to get the mansion back in order, but there's enough extra hands around that it shouldn't be too bad, and it still feels remarkably like home.

She returns the smile.]

Yeah. It really is all kind of a lot to take in all at once. It's just gonna take some getting used to, that's all.

[ He picks his way through the riot of plant life to wash his hands at the sink, then goes to scrounge a clean hand towel. A few rare cupboards in the home are perplexingly untouched, linens and cocoa mixes no worse than a bit dusty. He could swear it's the red desert dirt of that wild-west Deerington. ]

Have you noticed anything else amiss? [ He tips his head to her and casts another look to that green cut, which stands out stubborn and stark at the heel of his hand. ] Changes to your magic, your powers?

[Willow likes plants well enough, but the way the morning glories in particular have overrun the mansion is a bit much.]

God, you'd think we were living in a jungle.

[She starts to pull down some of the tangle of plants as Ozpin washes his hands.]

I haven't really done any magic since I got here - I tried, but it wasn't long after I stopped being a squid, and I couldn't remember the words.

[She pauses.]

I probably should, I guess - if something's weird like it was in Deerington, again, it's probably better to find that out now, huh?

[ He turns back to her to pass over the hand towel, and to eye the vines wearily. ]

Better now than in the heat of our next crisis, I should think. Perhaps start with something... small.

[She takes the towel and nods her thanks, and moves to the sink to clean the cut.]

Yeah, good idea. Give me a second here, and I'll see if I can do a little pruning. That should be simple enough.

[She pats her hands dry, carefully avoiding the cut on her palm, and sets the towel aside. She studies the vines for a moment to pick what she thinks is going to be the most effective spot to start with, and reaches out a hand to cast a spell to yank them towards her.

The leaves on the vine don't even twitch.

Willow, however, recoils with a gasp as a sharp pain shoots through her temples. Her vision fogs over and she puts a hand to her forehead as she squeezes her eyes shut, and grabs for the counter with the other one to steady herself. She thinks she hears the sound of something cracking, but the moment passes and the vision is gone as suddenly as it hit.

Wincing, she carefully opens her eyes, and rubs at her throbbing temples.]

That's... not what was supposed to happen...

Willow?

[ He has already started towards her, openly concerned. He has seen her face down hordes of zombies and, vastly worse, Salem herself. He has seen Willow do things with magic he cannot fully comprehend by his own world's rules; her versatility is beyond any Maiden. He has never seen her so sharply fail. ]

Are you alright?

[At home, she had become one of the most powerful witches in the world, all in the span of about four years. For a time, she was confident there wasn't a spell she couldn't try that she couldn't make work, even if later she learned that there were some that would turn out to be too costly to her own soul.

In Deerington, she had initially gone back to feeling like a beginner, with spells backfiring with startling regularity, but the Summoning Stones helped, and as the dream started to fade, it got even easier.

She was not expecting one of the simplest spells she knows - one that doesn't even need words - to backfire like this. Maybe it was just a fluke.]

I'm okay - I'm okay.

[The hand drops away from her head, and she looks around until her eyes land on the hand towel. Floating that should be no harder than floating a pencil, and she learned to do that in under a day. She redoubles her efforts and her focus, and tries again.

Like the vines, the towel does not stir, and the pain returns, and her vision clouds over enough that she feels like she's been plunged back into the mist in May back in Deerington. She hears a burst of radio static, and what sounds like a voice, but she can't make it out properly in the few moments before she has to abandon the attempt.

She's unaware that in the last few seconds, she's had to catch herself against the counter again with both elbows to keep from hitting the floor and that, again, the vision had her gasping with pain.]

Yeah, okay. There's definitely something wrong with my magic.

[ From his perspective, she reached out a hand to the plants on the wall and then promptly, painfully fainted. She stared at a hand towel and then crumpled further, her shoulders tensing as though with electric shock. Whatever is happening to her is plainly painful, disorienting, and uncomfortably new.

When she comes back to herself, Ozpin's hand is at her elbow; he has startled forward and now hovers worriedly over her shoulder, frowning down past his spectacles into her face. ]

What happened, exactly?

I - I'm not really sure. Both spells were really simple ones - things I could've done in Deerington even when I was really having trouble with my magic not working right after I first got there. I was trying to pull down the plants, then float the towel.

[She stops and takes a breath.]

Everything kind of went foggy - like outside in May, can't see the hand six inches in front of your face foggy. The first time, I thought I heard something like a - like a cracking sound? The second time it was more like radio static - I think there was a voice too, but I couldn't make out what it was trying to say.

[Magic has been her first line of defense for years; the idea that she may no longer being able to rely on it is a terrifying one, especially in a place like this. She's not sure how many times she would have died in Deerington if it hadn't been for being able to pull off the right spell at the right time. The worry on Ozpin's face is mirrored clearly in her own as well.]

Something is preventing you?

[ He steps back from her, to let her regain her own space, but continues to watch her with wary concern. ]

It sounds like a sort of interference. Can you make out anything of the voice?

Yeah, that sounds pretty accurate. Like interference, or, um, feedback? It's hard to describe, exactly.

[She runs a hand through her hair as she straightens up, rubbing at her head to try to discourage the lingering headache. She shakes her head in frustration. Some difficulty wouldn't have been so much of a surprise, especially given magic is still present although different in this world, but she wasn't expecting it to be completely unusable.]

I couldn't make much out of the voice, no - it sounded pretty garbled, but also kind of familiar somehow? I don't know, this probably isn't much help, sorry.

It's alright.

[ He tips his head in thought, still frowning faintly. ]

Some of your skills may return to you in time. In Deerington, our powers certainly were not static nor unaffected by the world. Perhaps we shall need to relearn their use, here.

Yeah, that's true...

[She lets out a deep breath. She wants to believe that this is just temporary, but it's hard not to worry that it's not all the same.]

What about your abilities? Are you still able to do everything you could before we got here?

[ He hesitates. There is a long beat of silence, then Ozpin bows his head. ]

No. Even the simplest of abilities I once possessed seems to be... changed, in this place. Or perhaps removed entirely.

We'd thought Deerington's restrictions upon our powers onerous enough, but it seems Trench intends us to play a wholly new game.

[The hesitation in itself is answer enough, and Willow winces sympathetically. This is hard on her, and she's only been practicing for not even half a decade, it must be far worse for him.]

I guess we're in the same boat then. We'll just have to figure it out together.

[ It's a particularly hopeful thing to say, and he gives her a faint smile in return.

He may be powerless, here. More vulnerable than he has ever been accustomed to. But there is something freeing in that, too: it is one more way this world regards him as just a man, freed of responsibility or significance. To rely upon together does not sound so bad a fate. ]

At least there is that.

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o1 . clockhouse move-in!

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