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! ]

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❰ 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)

❰ he does understand that letting someone die is much different than hurting their feelings. he just doesn't understand the latter enough to recognize that it's reversible.

and here onni is, talking about his mother and marriage and he gets that, he gets how two people marry and sometimes (usually) have kids, but this isn't like that. he doesn't have anything nearly so binding to keep people like emil and klaus from deciding he just isn't worth the effort. which is fine, he was already forcing himself to begin to adjust to it, except stupid onni had to chase him - and now? now he's lost.

there's a long pause, one that onni might even attribute to lalli actually thinking about what's been said. then, finally, he peers up at onni where he crouches before him. ❱

What if they don't want to be?

[Of course he knows that Lalli understands the concepts he's explaining. Understands marriages and adoptions and how unrelated people can become close enough to feel like family, to be people you would stick with no matter what. But he's starting to realize that the connections between that and his occupation as a mage and how he behaves in the field and making friends aren't quite there for Lalli the way they are for most other people. And so he's starting simple, trying to make sure Lalli knows each concept along the way.

Onni wants Lalli to have friends and people he cares about. He always had. Now he seems to have found some, and Onni isn't inclined to leave Lalli to ruin things out of simple ignorance.

The way Lalli asks that - 'what if they don't want to be?' - breaks Onni's heart a little, and he shifts his stance so his legs don't fall asleep, glancing downward for a moment before he looks up.]

That's the risk you take. It's your decision whether you want to reach out to them and make it up. It's their decision if they want to let you.

[He takes a little breath, meets Lalli's eyes if his cousin will let him, and then speaks carefully.]

I know I haven't set a very good example with this sort of thing, we've always stuck together, just the three of us. We had our reasons. But none of those reasons are here. So maybe give it a try now?

❰ that wasn't the answer that he expected. it wasn't the answer he wanted. he can't stand the notion that something that might make him hurt like this is anything but black and white, that he could go back right now and do his best to mend this and there's nothing he could do to guarantee that they'll even want him around.

onni asks him to give it a try, and all at once he wants to say 'no'. he wants to sprint off into the woods, much more quickly and carefully this time, to a place where he'll never be found. but if he does, that seals all of this, doesn't it? if he flees, it's entirely possible that he won't feel anything ever again, and sometime in the last half-year of his life that stopped being the way he wanted to be. so despite nearly every primitive part of him dragging him deeper into the woods, he finds himself asking: ❱

How do I fix it?

[Knowing his cousin as he does (knowing himself as he does, too) Onni can sense how close Lalli is to simply turning tail and running away into the woods. If it hadn't been for Tuuri and Lalli, he thinks, how many times would he have wanted to do the same?

Something in him relaxes when Lalli asks how he fixes it, and Onni keeps holding his eyes, if he can, and if not, studying Lalli's face.]

Make a case for yourself. Remind them why they like you.

[A short pause.]

Did you mean it, when you said you don't have friends?

❰ and as avoidant as he may have been, lalli holds eye contact now like it's some sort of lifeline. like he used to fresh out of saimaa when it came too close to finding them in the landscape of their dreams. he needed onni then, more than he ever would have admitted. it's possible he needs him just as much here and now.

he shakes his head to the question, just barely, but it's followed by: ❱

I don't know.

❰ an inhale, an exhale. a moment to think. ❱

It's different.

❰ more like family than friends, if he has to describe it - but that's one more thing he's loath to admit, knowing how stupid it sounds. ❱

Edited (editing a word pardon me) 2019-08-12 08:20 (UTC)

[Onni is watching his cousin, his body language and expressions. It's almost palpable in the air between them, how vulnerable Lalli is right now, no matter how good he is at hiding it. Also how fragile, ready to fall apart at the slightest touch.

He keeps holding eye contact, reaches out and carefully squeezes Lalli's shoulder, a tenative touch, when he says that he doesn't know, that it's different.]

But you know that you want to be around them, right?

❰ and rather than run, lalli allows himself to be touched. squeezed, or at least a part of him is. he can't tell if it's an attempt to make sure he doesn't run off or just a point of connection.

it doesn't change his answer, regardless. ❱

Yes. ❰ spoken without a moment's hesitation. ❱

[The complete lack of hesitation before Lalli says that yes, he wants to be around them, is enough to make Onni nod and say 'mhm' very quietly. He understands, and his hand gently squeezes at Lalli's shoulder again, an attempt at comfort and contact. Reassurance.]

If you want to be around them, then it's worth trying, isn't it? I think they want to be around you too.

[A pause, but he keeps holding Lalli's eyes, then offers him the slightest smile.]

What do you think makes it different than friendship? Is it more than that?

❰ and still lalli doesn't reject the contact, this may be a new record. nor does he break eye contact, at least not until a good second or two after the last question is asked.

he shrugs a little with the shoulder onni's not gripping, dropping his gaze off to the side. honestly, lalli doesn't even know if he can think about that when he still doesn't know if they even want him around.

what he says instead is, ❱ You should go. ❰ but it's not angry, not a verbal shove like when onni first arrived. now it's just... tired. ❱ I need to think.

[It isn't surprising when Lalli doesn't answer his questions directly, just keeps holding eye contact for a few moments before shrugging. Lalli has always been easy to overwhelm with anything that dwells in the shades of grey, things that don't have a clear-cut correct answer. He'd already been pushing it just by asking that question.

So when Lalli tells him he should go and that he needs to think, without aggression, Onni nods, exhales a heavy sigh. His hands are shaking a little, so he curls them into fists for a moment, getting himself under control. It helps to do something practical, something with a concrete result, so he digs in his bag and pulls out several pieces of fruit, putting them down on the ground in front of Lalli, and then putting his bag away.]

Alright. Check in with me when you can? I want to know you're safe.

[And with that having been said, he moves forward and wraps his arms around Lalli's shoulders, pulling him in for a hug. Lalli is so small and narrow it's hard to believe he's already twenty, and Onni experiences a surge of protective affection that he expresses by squeezing Lalli a little tighter and then letting him go.]

Edited 2019-08-13 19:27 (UTC)

❰ in exchange for the fruit, lalli reaches into a tunic pocket to draw out a compass. he hands it to onni, insistently if onni seems to hesitate. ❱

Always points to Honir, ❰ he says, leaving off the common sense 'this is in case you get lost in these strange, magical woods'. then, incrementally more stern, ❱ I want it back.

❰ then comes the request to check in - but before lalli has time to respond, onni's leaning in to wrap him up in an embrace. lalli doesn't hug back, but he does let his forehead drop down onto onni's shoulder for the duration of the hug and that'll have to be good enough for now.

and then onni lets go, and lalli sinks back into his spot against the tree. ❱

[It is enough. Onni knows his cousin, knows that his head on Onni's shoulder is about as much as he has the capacity for right now. And so he squeezes one last time, and lets go. Glances down at the compass, and nods.]

I could follow our tracks back, but this will make it easier. I'll give it back tomorrow.

[With that, Onni gets back to his feet, wincing a bit because his legs are asleep, and looks down at the compass. One more nod, and then he turns to go, but glances over his shoulder and raises a brow.]

Don't forget to check in!

[And with that, he disappears into the forest.]

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AUGUST INTRO LOG: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

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