asgardchrysalis | AUGUST INTRO LOG: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

AUGUST INTRO LOG: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

Who: EVERYONE
What: the August intro log and first god house competition, More Than Meets the Eye
When: August 8
Where: Gladsheim Palace for breakfast, around Asgard for the game/curse
Rating: PG-13; please take anything higher than this to a private log!

morning: a warm invitation

Everyone wakes up to a friendly invitation to breakfast at the castle with the gods. For most of you, this comes as a message on your bracelet, reading:

Join us at the castle today to welcome some new Wanderers into our midst. Breakfast will be served and a lively game will be available to all of our guests, both new and old.

New Wanderers are curious on their own, and this is the first there's ever been mention of a game. Perhaps it's enough for you to make the trek to the castle, to see what all the fuss is about, or maybe even to see if there's someone you know. Perhaps you want to learn more about the game, or maybe you just want the food.

For our new guests, this comes as a bit more of a surprise. Wherever you were before in your world, without even realizing it, you wake up in a strange new place. No time or space inbetween, just an awareness of There and then Here. A matronly figure tries to explain your circumstances with a sympathetic smile, but ultimately invites you meet them all for yourselves: the Gods of Asgard, and the Wanderers that arrived before you.

The sight that greets you on the castle grounds is a rather festive one, regardless of where you're coming from. Colorful streamers and flags are draped above large tables with room for several guests. Natives bustle about, cheerfully offering food and drinks to anyone that wants some. Everyone is welcomed to mingle and greet the new Wanderers on this bright summer morning.

the game: a friendly competition

Among the brightly decorated tables are ones highlighted in a specific color for a specific god house, and most of the gods themselves can be found sitting behind it with a few of their district's natives. They are here to welcome the new Wanderers into Asgard - but they're also here to explain the rules of today's game. There are coins hidden throughout the city and disguised as mundane items, and the god house that returns the most of their coins will win an upgrade to their god housing! No hints will be given, but the natives are excited to help facilitate the activity and happily invite you to wander through their districts to find what you can.

But you don't have to know about the rules to be playing the game! The coins are already hidden throughout the city, and no one knows what they are until they've been picked up. Whether you're banding together with friends to find as many coins as you can or blindly stumbling over an unpleasant surprise, the game and the curse are in full swing!

evening: a fair prize

At sundown, all of the coins in the city disappear at once, whether they're in your pocket or still disguised as a bowl. Points will be tallied and a winner will be announced (OOCly, on August 17) - but Asgardians are keen to celebrate regardless of who wins a rather inconsequential game. The same colorful display of tables and chairs is still spread across the castle grounds, although now they twinkle with fairy lights haphazardly blinking throughout the air. Snacks and drinks are made available, as well as more dinner-shaped meals for those that request it. Mostly the natives simply want to bask in the strangeness of these Wanderers from other worlds for a moment longer - but they're also eagerly listening to any stories from the day's mischievous game. Relax, enjoy yourself, or again, just stock up on some freely served food. Whatever suits your needs today. Welcome to Asgard, dear Wanderers.

[ OOC NOTE: This is the intro log for August, as well as our first god house competition/curse: More Than Meets the Eye. You are free to play with the curse prompts and searching the city in any way you want! If you would like to submit a map to earn points for your god house, please check out the rules to learn what to do. We will accept maps until August 17, at which point a winner will be announced and members of that god house will be allowed to vote for an upgrade to their god housing. As always, please let us know if you have any questions or need any help on the mod contact page. Enjoy, friends! ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

❰ ooc | gonna be dropping some closed top-levels in here and getting my cross-canon fix by hitting up y'all's open starters. if you want something with lalli and i haven't hit up your starter yet, feel free to ping me on plurk (~watchtower) or disco (trace#8911)! ❱

❰ the day has been... interesting. not fun necessarily, but something adjacent to it, even with the odd and involuntary 'curses' (he hates to call them such, but there it is) taking over his body and will at the occasional misstep.

but then came the text, and all of that screeched to a standstill. emil, always close at hand, noticed the change at once. maybe it was the storm raging behind his tight expression, maybe the sudden tension in his body. he asked what happened, and all lalli said was 'tuuri knows' before storming off down the a side-street in search of the object of his ire with no regard for whether or not his friend comes along for the ride.

it's not long before he finds them, his cousins and the stupid icelandic idiot who ruined everything - and if there was any chance of this going any other way, that chance is utterly destroyed with a single glance at tuuri and her red-rimmed eyes.

so his eyes fall on reynir, glaring absolute daggers as he storms right up to the boy and seethes, ❱ You idiot! ❰ he's very much in reynir's face now, maybe even shoving him backward a little with a sharp jab to his chest. then, low and furious, ❱ Tulet tänne typerällä hiuksellasi ja tyhmällä kasvollasi ja pilata kaiken!

[ reynir's been in a low level panic ever since he discovered that tuuri hadn't even known that she was dead. it sends him reeling back to the day she was first bitten and the terror of the unknown future that coursed through him when he looked at her, back to the moment he chose to lie to onni about it and felt physically sick with the guilt of it, back to the day she died.

tuuri is crying and reynir can't speak, can barely even breathe because she's always been so strong, so cheerful, had even tried to smile and reassure him after she'd been bitten. and now this.

lalli is in his space and jabbing sharply at his chest in an instant, and reynir allows himself one brief, startled moment to wonder how he knew as he stumbles back out of his reach gracelessly, before realizing that onni must have told him. reynir can't even begrudge the older man for doing it, even if he's genuinely scared of the small scout for the first time in his life.

they're family, and lalli deserved to know. just like onni had deserved to know. just like tuuri had deserved to hear it from her family instead of him.

reynir holds up his hands in front of him as a makeshift and entirely pointless barrier between himself and lalli, barely managing to keep to his feet as he retreats away, eyes wide and freckles stark against ashen skin. ] I thought she knew! [ he offers up as a thin defense against whatever accusation lalli has just thrown his way in finnish. ]

Nobody told me that it was a secret!

❰ reynir's all but stumbling backward now, which just gives lalli that much more momentum. another step forward and he's in reynir's face again, hissing - ❱ You ruined it! You ruin everything, you should've stayed in your stupid box! Sen olisi pitänyt puremaan sinua sen sijaan -

❰ he's a bit too angry to consider the coins, or the possibility that reynir might just push back. ❱

[ and just like that, between one stumbling step and the next, something ignites in reynir's chest like a hot coal, roughly the size of one of the coins that they've been searching for throughout the day.

in that moment, a fury to match lalli's own enters reynir's eyes and he stops retreating, starts pushing back, gets right into lalli's face to yell back. ] Fine! Blame me for everything! Like you always do!

[ he's angry, angry like he can't ever remember feeling before, but even as he's yelling at lalli, tears are filling his eyes and threatening to spill over. ] At least now you finally have a good excuse to hate me!

❰ and all at once, reynir's not backing up anymore. he's pushing, and there's a shocked sort of moment in which lalli's stumbling back with the force of it, then a renewed anger flares up in his chest.

spitting out what is very clearly a finnish curse, lalli shoves back and follows right up with a sharp, quick closed-fist punch aimed for the side of reynir's stupid face. ❱

[ reynir grew up eternally the youngest in a large family so of course he's experienced with well-natured tussling, but there's nothing well-natured about his fight with lalli now, and lalli knows how to actually fight. none of his siblings have ever gone so far as to throw a fist at him, and reynir is wholly unprepared to dodge or block it.

he is, however, surprisingly sturdy given his generally whispy frame and nature, so he leans into his strengths and his experience and throws himself into the fist instead, throws himself into lalli with his full, 6'2" frame. ] All I've ever done is try to help>!

❰ lalli's not entirely sure where he's going. he could be - he's not scouted these woods nearly as much as he'd like, but certainly enough to navigate easily enough - if navigation were actually something he's trying to do here. he isn't. he's just running, deeper into the woods until he's secure in the fact that he won't be followed. onni's the only one with the tracking skills to attempt it, and one step into these woods and their raw crackle of magic will almost certainly make him rethink the necessity of it. how many times has he waited at home for lalli to get over something or another and come back like they'd never fought?

lalli doesn't think that he's coming back this time.

why would he? he's ruined everything, a fact that bubbles and swells in his chest in a desperate, acrid way that feels very much like he imagines the infection must feel as it breaks your bones and changes your form. he feels like the voices sound, fragmented and lost, all jagged edges and tattered thoughts. ͍̱̑ͬͧ͛ ̳̭͇̮̞̺̝ ̦̗̪̗̠̙ͣAͤ͗R̟͔̝͑E̪̮̗̪̲̦̞͌ ̯̣̎́̄Y̼͔̲̭̻O̜̭͙ͭͧ͒͊̈́U̦̦͓̗͙̪͆̑ͅ ͍̖̪̯̹ͬ̎ͪͧL͎͌̋E̫͇͑S̒͊ͪͤ̆ͥ̚S̮͚͕͖̣͎̉ͫ́̍ ̜̦̙͒͋ͅW͔͍͍͛Ê̟̱̘͙̻̮Aͣ̓ͩK͓̹̱̰͎̻̤̔̂ ͔͍͎͕͐̑̄T͕̮̏̅͐ͯͭH͇̤̺͇̃ͫ̅I̩̅ͧ̑͆̀͑S̳̲͌̈ ͎̤͔̦͚̋̂̓ͦ̒ͅT̮̠͖͔͚̱Ȋ̭̼͌͆Mͩ̆̇́ͬE̖̓?̩ͦ̒ͯ̐ ͔̜͓̼̳ ̠̞̜̮͈ͬͧ̇̔̚ he thought that he was.

he was an idiot.

at some point, he stops running. dropping into a crouch, he pulls out his dagger and with shaking hands he carves a rough rune into the forest floor, snatching up nearby stones to set them as ammo at each of the corners. he doesn't think he'll be found (by human or creature alike), but he also can't justify leaving himself unprotected when he can't quite trust his own ability to keep an eye out.

and then, finally, he scoots himself back against a tree to press his forehead into his bent knees, link his hands tight across the back of his head, and breathe. ❱

[Onni doesn't know where he's going either, but he's much less impressed with the concept than Lalli is. For one, Lalli's scouted the area and can find his way back, and for another, Lalli has been going into dangerous forests as a scout for his whole life and Onni is less than used to it, the feeling of wild, raw magic that he can sense around him sets the hairs on the back of his neck standing up.

This isn't home, though, and there is wild, raw magic here but no Rash, and in that case Onni is just as qualified to be out here as Lalli is, and the last thing he's going to do is allow a stupid fight to break up his family, the only family he has left. So he stands at the edge of the forest with his fists clenched at his sides, taking slow even breaths to try to keep his composure, and then he exhales in a harsh rush, opens his eyes, and heads in.

Onni has tracked Lalli before, though under much safer circumstances than this, and it's easy to tell that his cousin was in a lot of distress when he was running away, judging by how blatant his trail is. He's hiding his tracks, but not as well as usual, with nowhere near as much care, and that just makes Onni speed up, hoping to catch up to him before he does yet another stupid thing.

It's another forty-five minutes before Onni exits the edge of a clearing and makes his way up a small embankment only to see Lalli huddled under a tree with his head pressed into his knees and his hands behind his neck. Self-protective, injured, absolutely stressed. Onni approaches, only to trip the rune that Lalli had set up to defend him - he dodges the first rock by a millimeter and the second one hits him in the shoulder with a solid 'thunk' that he suspects is going to leave a bruise.]

Ouch.

[It sounds more annoyed than anything, and he waits to see if he's done being the target of magic rock-throwing before moving forward. He approaches with caution, his head tilted, and crouches down in front of his cousin, sitting on his heels, elbows on his knees, the fingers of his right hand pressed against his mouth.]

Lallinen.

❰ he knows onni's footsteps from the opposite side of the clearing, knows his cousin is here even before the rune is tripped and one of the rocks hits home with a muffled thud. he doesn't feel bad for it. he made it perfectly obvious that he didn't want to be followed. onni's lucky he didn't arm it with five stones like he could have.

but the footsteps get closer and closer, infuriatingly undeterred. lalli doesn't react. from onni's perspective, it might almost seem like he hasn't yet been noticed - but he certainly knows better than to believe it.

it's only when onni says 'lallinen', the fond diminutive wielded like a weapon whether or not that's how it's intended, that lalli's fingers curl tighter into his own hair. in finnish he hisses, ❱ Leave.

[Of course Onni knows better than to think Lalli hasn't noticed him. He's not trying to be stealthy, and Lalli knows his footsteps, he would've been aware of him long before he got close enough to trip the rune. He also isn't surprised by the fact that Lalli isn't responding to him, isn't lifting his head to look at him or otherwise acknowledging.

So, yes, Onni feels snubbed, ignored rather than unnoticed. He supposes, from Lalli's perspective, he probably deserves it, though he doesn't personally think he does.]

No.

[Instead, he plops down on the forest floor in front of his cousin, crossing his legs and arms, eyes locked on his cousin. Two can play this game.]

❰ no.

he'd known it would be 'no', but nonetheless it sparks still more furious desperation. he wants onni to leave. he needs for him to leave. leave and go back to his stupid icelander or just go and be anywhere else, anywhere but right here with lalli. ❱

Leave! ❰ a raw shout this time, into the hollow between his thighs and his chest. ❱

No.

[This time it comes out tense and a little rough with emotion, because there's something about Lalli's raw shouting that makes everything inside him ache. He hasn't seen Lalli this upset in a long time, and he lifts a hand to push it back through his hair, sighing softly, eyes sinking shut just for a moment with exhaustion.

He's so tired. And he still has more difficult conversations to come tonight.]

Just why do you want me to go?

❰ and the question comes, and lalli's absolutely ready to yell at him again - but as desperate as he is to shove and shove until onni finally listens, he doesn't actually have an answer to this one. at least not an answer that he can put into words, finnish or otherwise.

the hands in his hair are shaking again, nails digging slightly into his scalp. ❱

What do you want from me? ❰ neither a hiss nor a shout - this one's barely more than a miserable whisper. ❱ What did I ever do to you?

[Onni can tell that Lalli is at the verge of hurting himself with his fingers in his hair. He's done it before, when he was overwhelmed, too stressed. He's shaking everywhere, and Onni lifts a hand to rub at his face for a moment.

It hurts when Lalli asks what Onni wants from him, asks him what he ever did to him, enough that Onni flinches a little, physically.]

I don't want anything. You're my cousin, my family. You haven't done anything to me.

❰ he feels onni flinch just inches away, and as hard as he's trying to push the man away, he can't find it in him to feel even the slightest bit better because of it. it feels worse somehow, and he shudders out his next exhale, eyes prickling with desperate frustration.

in common this time, ❱ Then why won't you go? ❰ if onni doesn't want something from him, he has no reason to have followed him all the way out here. ❱

[Onni clenches his jaw, presses blunt fingernails into his own palms trying to keep himself composed after that flinch. When Lalli is like this, overwhelmed and hurt and angry, he's like an injured, cornered animal, and the last thing he needs is to add more stress and tension to that kind of situation. He has no intention of leaving, but he's not going to add fuel to the flames by being overtly emotional, or showing signs of weakness.

But he has to answer Lalli. So he keeps his eyes averted from the boy and keeps himself still and his face calm.]

I love you.

[It's simple, and for most people would probably be the only answer needed, but he knows that it will only make Lalli uncomfortable to hear. Onni keeps speaking in Finnish, stubbornly, even when Lalli changes languages.]

You don't have to talk to me yet. But I'm not leaving you here.

❰ damn it. damn onni and his patience and his stubbornness and the fact that he still isn't leaving, even after all of this. lalli's just so, so ready to be done with all of this. with everyone, and everything but being left alone in this forest to collect whichever of his pieces that he can find and pull them back together.

and then comes those three words, and lalli stills. he's no less tense, but the shaking stops. his breathing halts, for entirely too many seconds. not until after 'but i'm not leaving you here' does he exhale again, hitching but carefully slow. an inhale. an exhale. so it goes for the entirety of a minute, then another.

finally, in quiet broken finnish again, ❱ I did this. ❰ he broke - everything, all of the things he had in his life, he all but flung them against the wall and watched them shatter. ❱

[Lalli was raised from a very young age to be resilient, to keep his feelings to himself and focus on survival and protecting those around him, Onni remembers all of their grandmother's rebukes. Remembers hearing the way she talked to Lalli, remembers the way she'd talked to Onni himself when she was in the village and training him when Lalli was too young to take away from his mother yet. And Ensi had taken him, the moment he was old enough, like a kitten who'd just finished being weaned, ready to be turned into a tool.

So sometimes it's too easy to forget that Lalli is a person who feels things, because he so rarely shows them. Because he treats himself like a tool, and because Onni knows he treats him that way sometimes too, both because he doesn't know any other way of interacting with his cousin and because he's been too overwhelmed for the past 12 years with keeping them all alive, let alone happy and well-adjusted. In that last instance, he'd be less than a good example anyway.

Thankfully, being quiet and patient and waiting is something Onni excels at. So when Lalli finally gathers together his composure and his wits, and says that he did this, Onni is ready to listen, hasn't interrupted or jumped on him with any demands.]

You were angry. They'll understand.

❰ they won't. he saw the look on emil's face. this is far, far worse than what happened after the caves. ❱

I don't make mistakes.

❰ both 'it's unprecedented for me to make mistakes' and 'i don't have room to make mistakes' - the latter of which, onni taught him as intensely as ensi ever had. ❱

[When he sees the look on Lalli's face, and then hears what he says and the way he says it, Onni feels his stomach drop. Exhaling a noise that's half irritation and half exhaustion, he shakes his head. He remembers the day he'd said it, and why he'd said it, and all the dozens of tiny stresses - the anxiety, the guilt, the apologies he'd had to make on Lalli's behalf after that incident, to their superiors, to people who'd lost someone - only to be given that low-effort excuse. It had been just a bit more than he could take, and so he'd taught Lalli his lesson, and driven the point home a little harder than he'd needed to.

It isn't an excuse, and he'd meant what he'd said, but he'd assumed too much about Lalli's ability to interpret it properly. It's a mistake he'd made a lot with Lalli...sometimes he doesn't even realize the mistake he'd made until Lalli repeats it back to him, sometimes years later.]

We don't make mistakes, Lallinen. We don't. Out in the field, when we're doing our jobs, when we are responsible for other people's lives. When we can't afford to make mistakes. With each other, that's different.

Edited 2019-08-11 11:40 (UTC)

How? ❰ the question fires back at once, sharp eyes all but glaring at onni over his folded arms, though most of the anger at this point is directed inward. implosion rather than explosion, for what little explosion there was to start with. ❱

[Lalli's response is sharp and immediate and full of a barely repressed anger that make's Onni's throat go tight. Lifting a hand, he rubs at his forehead as if he could soothe away the blooming headache forming between his temples.

This is his fault. It's only fair he's the one who has to deal with it.]

Because making a mistake on the field that gets someone killed is different than hurting someone's feelings. Hurt feelings can be forgiven if the relationship is important. You can't take back killed, there's no mending that. Understand?

[For a moment, he's quiet, catches his breath because that last word came out a little sharper than he intended. No one can get under his skin quite like Lalli can sometimes.]

How many times have I hurt you? But here we are, still. It's the same with them.

❰ no he doesn't understand. he barely even had a thought to spare for hurt feelings for over a decade, let alone understanding how they work or what do to to mitigate them.

he figured that once you broke something like this, it stayed broke.

now onni's talking about how they've hurt each other and they're fine, and lalli's brow knits. ❱ It's different, ❰ he says. ❱ We're family. ❰ you stick with your family, no matter what, and that family sticks with you. it's one of the two things he has unyielding faith in: his gods, and the fact that onni and tuuri would stick by him until the infection tears them apart. it's already gotten one of them, but that doesn't change the fact that she would've stuck with him if she could've. ❱

[It's as he'd suspected, and Lalli doesn't understand. A twenty-year-old boy who doesn't understand how hurt feelings are different than letting someone die by negligence, or at least treats one the same as the other. For a moment, Onni feels exhausted and frustrated and out of his depth; he's not certain who's failed Lalli more, their grandmother for putting these thoughts into Lalli's head as a child or himself for being unable to uproot them. It reminds him of how overwhelmed he'd felt when he'd first faced down the reality of having to take care of Lalli after their parents had died - whenever this sort of thing comes up with Lalli, it takes him back to that moment.

Scrubbing his hand over his face, Onni makes a soft noise in his throat, tries to ground himself in the moment, and then drops his hand, looking over at Lalli.]

You're right. But how do you suppose your mother became family? She wasn't related to any of us before she married your father, but they loved each other and became family. It's the same when children are adopted into families. If you care about Klaus and Emil, and you want to keep them in your life, then treat them like you would treat family. Any easier to understand?

Edited 2019-08-12 03:42 (UTC)

AUGUST INTRO LOG: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

lalli hotaiainen (honir), top-level dump

❰ end of the day ❱ for reynir + eventually onni and whoever else.

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❰ after the fight ❱ for onni.

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