hello (heart)gamers. im here w some special guest stars

[finalbows]

WHO: all who dare enter angie's literal mind palace. it's OPEN HOUSE! no invites needed!
WHERE: in front of miku's salad (and yours)
WHEN: evening 73.

[ in the middle of running a perfectly innocuous miniquest, Angel Devil falls down.
His clothes have twisted away into bone-white rags, leaving a body covered over with only thick swathes of red fur, and downy feathers. His long tail is curled into a tense arc, banded fur standing on end.

The air wavers like he’s a heat mirage, not a man. He’s boiling away with absolutely stupid amounts of arcane power… and, most frighteningly, he does not seem in control of the fact that it is there and being brought to bear. It’s impossible to get any closer to him.


When he speaks, it’s quite timid. ]

Oh.
Oops.
...Thought I had... a little more time.

[ (and in a blinding flash of light, there is the sound of something breaking.) ]

~KRRSHHK~

[any observers will see, strangely see-through and superimposed on the scene, some kind of vast tree, illusionary roots twisting over and around to frame a door.  the door itself is wrought of opaque stained glass in blacks and whites and greys; a stylized rendition of Angie in that strangely ragged, feathered form, curled in on himself, eyes closed.  Angie himself is nowhere to be seen. ]

instead, a shadow . . . steps into view from behind the door.  for a moment it looks like nothing so much as a second genome – then it turns, gaining features and definition with the movement.  The monkey tail separates into three plumes; a ponytail unfurls into wings that lift up from the sides of the head.  

Teleute(?) is here, dressed in her customary black, but there is colour in her skin, and her hair and eyes are blue.  she’s frowning.]

. . . well.  This is the least I can do before I go, in exchange for the safe harbor.

[she lifts her head, nodding to any observers, and gestures at the door.]

You’ll want to head in there now if you don’t wish to lose your flockmate, I think.  Even the false-death of this place won’t be much help to him, if his soul is left to finish pulling itself apart.

My sisters and I can maintain the way into and out of it for you, but we were not made to knit such wounds by ourselves.  Have a care.

Comments

[electricflock]

[stoops his wings in greeting]

Hi, Shadow Fiend!

[finalbows]

"Hi, Muffin! Want a baked apple? Leviathan brought back more cinnamon yesterday, so they're gonna be pretty good this time."

[electricflock]

[flutters and hops to a landing]

Sure! Can’t say no to cinnamon apples.

[finalbows]

[ apple! dispensed! ]


"Enjoy your hot cuisine!"

[electricflock]

[cheeps! eep!]

Thank you!

[HOW IS IT]

[finalbows]

[ i could just tell you it was nice.
but this is about a lot more than just an apple shared by a fireside.

the scent is definitely nice. the skin of the apple has gotten wrinkled and juicy, and the color's turned into a marriage of caramel and blush-red.

biting in... well, watch out, because it's piping hot. but, ooh, soft! and not too grainy. there's even a mixed filling of butter, sugar, cinnamon, and oat in the hollow where the core was removed.

though, it does seem like angel devil's memory of this recipe is a little overpowered by the presence of the pure granulated sugar; getting too much of a taste of the filling at once is like a unexpected, heavy knock on the door of your taste buds. but sometimes... you get the most well-proportioned mouthful, where the sweet perfectly rests alongside what remains of the apple's natural tartness after cooking, and...

if you close your eyes and pretend, the feeling it gives you could trick you. that you're in a place you could call "home," except...

it isn't a feeling of home tinged by nostalgia.

it's a feeling of home like it's something fresh, mysterious -- trying to allow yourself to get comfortable in an oasis, while still gunshy over whether it's real, or a myth. home, and you in it, self conscious out to the end of every limb, like it's something breakable and tenuous and you want to keep it.

don't worry. you acclimate more the more bites you take. ]


"Well? It's good, right?"

[electricflock]

[torn between dainty pecks to make this apple last or chomping it down as fast as possible]

Am ruined for all other baked apples.

[finalbows]

"Whoops! Well, you can always come back over for more!"

[electricflock]

Will!

[finalbows]

[ back over to Angie's very soul, or back over Rose... it seems there's room for him in both.

While Muffin eats, Shadow Fiend fusses with the fire more, sending up little bursts of ember, now and then - adds more logs, to create a stronger structure for it to keep powering on without further input. Something she'd put on there must have been too green, though-- it smoulders something fierce, carried by the wind to cover her side, rather than than Muffin's.

He can hear her coughing. See her silhouette, in the smoke; the lashing tail that's not really there, anymore, when the smoke happens to clear, turning away from them both. ]


"Yikes, that one's spicy!"

[ she holds out her hand to summon the shepherd's spear crook to it, meaning to nudge the offending wood to a better spot where it can be doused and not choke them out, but... it doesn't answer.

She's not Rose's shepherd anymore, after all.

There's a too-long look on confusion on her face. The hangtime on a missed stair.

Then the smoke's covering her up again. ]

[electricflock]

[YIKES?? flaps his wings hard to blow the smoke away from her]

[finalbows]

[ MUFFIN used GUST!!!

...

the smoke clears.
Shadow Fiend's gone. though... her Mask of the Rose,
and the memory of her crook-turned-spear, remains. ]

[electricflock]

[wah

...shifts forms again and steps around the fire to pick up her mask and the crook. the mask gets stowed with the others. he uses the crook to poke the fire back into order.]

[finalbows]

[ soon, it's back to merrily crackling away, WITHOUT choking out everyone around it. ]

[electricflock]

[leans the staff back against the wall. it'd feel weird taking the Rose staff.]

Bye, Shadow Fiend.

[finalbows]

[ sources say she's doing just fine, with plenty of friends and adventures at home.
but for a while, she was here, and to a certain someone, it very much mattered.


anyway. with the mask of the rose in hand, you should be able to get in the front door just fine...

but do you want to try another way in? ]

[electricflock]

[it does start for the front door, about to knock...

but he's going to be going straight to angie's room ANYWAYS. turns and scampers up the wall to the window.]

[finalbows]

[ there's a gap that's been left open in the window, just high enough for you to swoop in as full gryphon form.

you've been here before, of course. but it doesn't hurt to copy and paste DESCRIBE IT ALL AGAIN,

IN LAVISH DETAIL!
firstly, good ol' ludicrously ornate bed, featuring a pile of only the very COMFIEST of rose's gaudy angel pillows.

there's the window by his bed, curtains parted. pushed open just enough for you and you alone.

covering most of the portion of floor he spends time standing on is a high-pile red rug with a pattern of one big rose.

there are stacks, stacks of notebooks. books from the library, fiction, librettos, guide books to... your home, actually. trinkets sequestered in pretty boxes, more hidden down in the drawers of a bureau. two pieces of a certain dragon's horn laying out on a doily, one keratin, one stone.

perfumes, cosmetics, tokens from others and tokens, taken from random places out and about just because. a green memory coin. his own memory coins, carefully tabulated in a handmade wooden container, all in their own lil slots with room for more.

surprisingly for the months he's been here, there's still a haybale in his room, set on its side to use as a seat. it's got some strands of quetzal's fur left on it. maybe he just got accustomed to it when there wasn't any better option...

also his closet full of every cutely gaudy rose outfit he's ever seen him wear and more, his lovingly maintained slutty canon outfit, and a few other special event clothes i'm too lazy to track down rn. boy he has a lot of high heeled boots.

oh,
and.
if muffin wants to take today, of any day, as a chance to snoop.
under the bed,
there is a very weathered box that's shoved into the corner, hidden where he can ignore its existence as much as he wants. ]

[electricflock]

[coos to announce himself when he shimmies over the windowsill, calling like a bird returning to its nest. slips through the curtains opened just for him.]

Anyone home?

[he makes a quick glance around, noting changes and curiosities, but he's got a plan. he's not just going to mark his territory here— there's something he's always kinda wanted to do in Quetzal's room, and the masks have given him a further idea. muffin beelines for the cosmetics. he sniffs out his favorite perfume and picks out some colors.

he never wears make-up, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know how. there's no time to paint his claws today, but eyeliner? certainly!]

1/2

[finalbows]

[ PLAY WITH ANGIE'S MIND MAKE-UP GO GO GO

angie loves accenting with red and purple, but that doesn't mean there aren't stashes of more for special occasions. ]

2/2

[finalbows]

[ and everyone has BLACK eyeliner in their repertoire, surely.

(if muffin checks where he keeps his spares, angie's wistful inner wishes have populated it with whole palettes across the rainbow. pretty little containers of powders made of shells, minerals, herbs _{and beetles but don't tell him} that only Gaia knew.)

And there's his special, homemade perfume he'd sacrificed a ritual reward to make. A carrier of champagne, mixed with rose water, some little nudges of other herbs to add complexity... tiny hit of vanilla. ]

[electricflock]

[purple won’t do, not with all the yellow muffin has to wear. but he’ll take the red, finds some gold to go with it. it takes him a couple tries to get the eyeliner sharp enough, he’s used to doing other people’s faces, not his own backwards in a mirror, but he gets there!

the precious perfume is dabbed on last. neck and wrists.

chirps to the empty room and the invisible piano,]

How do I look?

[finalbows]

[ the soul-piano seems to feel rather positively about it.

everything looks soft and warm and bloom in here, all of a sudden-- no, you didn't get some in your eye.

That's just the light getting brighter, before a brief white-out that leaves the other matching half of a particular MASK OF TENDERNESS laying next to the perfume. Not broken, just. Meant to be united.

Now he's got both~. ]

[electricflock]

[WAH]

Thank you~!

[sticking the pieces together!! he’s going to wear this AND the mask of love, one on his face and the other on top of his head]

[finalbows]

[ DUAL-WIELDING ACHIEVED

the bloom filter doesn't go away. this is just part of how your run looks now. ]

[ anything else you want to get done in quetzal's soul bedroom before we move along? ]