wilderlogs | THE LAST HOMELY HOUSE ※ RIVENDELL ※ LOG 2

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THE LAST HOMELY HOUSE ※ RIVENDELL ※ LOG 2

THE LAST HOMELY HOUSE
OOC POST
The group is told to take a week of rest in the Last Homely House as the injured and sick among them heal. The Elves promise them that at the end of that week, there will be a great Council, with representatives of several peoples in attendance.

Until then, they can wander the peaceful halls of Rivendell, which are filled with travelers from all over the Wilderlands who are making a rest stop while they travel through the lands of Middle-Earth.

The most notable part of Rivendell is the Hall of Fire, a great feast hall where people can eat, drink, and be merry. This is the great social hall of Rivendell, where the Elves and their visitors share news of lands far beyond, tell stories, or perform music. The music here almost sounds divine, especially when the Elves sing and play, but they're just as eager to hear songs from other lands, so if any of the squad decide to share, they'll be glad to listen.

Some of the hall's guests are a touch more lively than the others, like a party of dwarves staying at Rivendell. Their stories are a mite more adventurous and if you get in their good graces, they might be willing to share some of the beer they brought with them. Listening to their stories or their talk about their craftmanship is a way to get into their good graces.

The Elves love learning, so there are libraries the group is allowed to browse, though they mostly only contain tales of Middle-Earth (for now), though the Elves seem to be collecting what books about other lands they can. These libraries often have viewing stations with telescopes pointing at the sky. The Elves have been almost delighted by the changing skies, enjoying the challenge of trying to understand how the sky has been knitting itself together with the addition of new worlds.

There are also beautiful balconies here, overlooking the gorge and the waters below, and terraced gardens filled with flowers, bushes, and flowering trees. Their rooms are open to the outdoors and have beds that seem grown into the shape of bed-frames instead of carved. The bathrooms actually have running water. The Elves have figured out how to direct the clean running waters of the gorge in primitive indoor plumbing. Water for hot baths has to be heated first in brass cauldrons over coal braziers before getting dumped into the bath.

It's time for the squad to rest, eat, and regroup. If a great Council is going to be called involving them, it might be a good idea to make sure they go into it as a united front, lest decisions about their fate be made for them.

NOTES
✦ Joint log: Since this camp period won't be particularly long, everything will take place in a joint log. Players can post starters with prompts for others and tag into other players' prompts.

✦ Post in actionspam format. Plots and mod-run events in the game are meant to be in actionspam format to keep a brisk pace.

✦ Cursed Weapons/Powers: So they know about how they'll be treated: those with cursed weapons and dark powers will be tolerated by the Elves after entry. While they'll get the same general treatment, the Elves around them may at times seem uncomfortable. Those with cursed weapons will only be distrusted a little, as the weapons themselves will seem more suspicious than their bearers. Those with dark powers or some kind of dark nature (such as being a vampire, Necromancer mage, werewolf, etc.) will be treated with the greatest distrust.

✦ Fairy Swaps: The Elves may be slightly alarmed by the Brugh fairy swaps but get over it easily. However, if the character swapped in is one of the "dark" characters, the swap might be extra cause for alarm. (A potential prompt idea).

✦ Npcing: There will be two npc threads. The "Random Encounters" thread is for characters to have a totally random encounter with an npc. These npcs will be fellow travelers from lands beyond. While they can't give much information about the group's status as Chosen Ones (that will happen during the Council) they can provide info about events in the Wilderlands beyond that may come to affect the squad in their travels. The "Specific Requests" thread will be for more specific issues your character might want to discuss with the Elves. While they'll push any Chosen Ones discussion off to the Council, they're willing to discuss issues with the characters, like if they have questions about having received magic, about being bound to their weapons, etc. The Rivendell Elves have heard a lot of gossip from all over and can potentially provide info based on things they've heard.

✦ Clothes: The group will not yet be fully equipped for their travels (that will happen upon leaving) but everyone will at least be given new clothes since theirs are dirty and sometimes torn. Characters without appropriate travel footwear will also be given light and sturdy boots that will somehow be in their size without their size being asked. They'll also be given basic toiletries like scissors that can be used to cut hair and beards. There are no razors, however, because the Elves don't need to shave so they don't keep them on hand.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Owing someone an apology and being upset with them are hardly mutually exclusive. She totally agrees apologies are owed, although maybe not all on his end. She's still a little upset, herself, honestly, but most of that is protectiveness over Harper. She's found herself a lot more protective over Harper since everything with the Magog, even if she won't tell him that. His ego might never go down.

Except that's not fair, but sometimes even Trance doesn't feel like being very fair.

As for Dixon... well, she doesn't know him quite well enough yet to be properly unfair, and he doesn't know her well enough to know she'd have stepped in no matter who Harper was arguing with, so. So yes, maybe it still hurts a little, but she'd rather move on than dwell on it.]

Maybe. If you want to. Apologies don't mean much unless you want to.

[She looks at the pictures more closely. As long as her tail is there, that's really the most important thing. Who doesn't wear multiple faces when it suits them? Although... maybe not so literally.]

I don't think it's that bad.

I wouldn't offer it if I didn't mean it. [He chews his tongue a little, trying to tease through a few different strains of thought about how to explain things without flailing around for justification. He knows that's a losing battle. Aside from the initial snap at Harper, it's a losing battle with himself, because going off at the whole squad isn't something he's proud of or feels he can excuse.] It wasn't about you, for the record. I just...I had a temper since I was a kid and you were in the way.

[It still feels like an excuse. I have a temper like it's an immutable fact, but the truth is he feels like it is: a defect he can feel ashamed and responsible for but completely at the whim of.]

It's pretty bad. [He doesn't sound upset about it; this is one of those things he's very aware of. His art is shitty. It's not for anyone but him, so he doesn't really care. Trance does have a tail, though, so at least he got that. He gestures to another sheet of paper with various 'not quite stick figures but that's not necessarily an improvement' sketches.] I did one over there and it's a little better, but still not good.

[It is an excuse, but an understandable one. For Trance, at least. When you've seen boredom be used as a reason for everything from genocide to fighting the inevitable destruction of the universe, you find yourself being a bit more willing to listen to more mortal reasons, too. Other people might not agree, but she's not other people.

She lets him talk, because sometimes just making an apology is as important to the person saying it as to the person receiving it. Then she glances up at him.]

I know. I knew it wasn't then, too. Harper's good at getting to people like that. I'm still a little disappointed in both of you, but it's okay. We're still friends.

[She picks up the other sheet of 'not quite stick figures,' turning it a bit until she's almost sure she has it right-side up. 85% sure at least. She thinks it's cute, less for the art and more for the fact that he wants to draw everyone, but she won't say that because she's pretty sure 'cute' isn't the response he's looking for. Maybe eventually.] Well, I like them even if they're not good. If pretty things all looked the same, they'd be boring. Would you draw one for me to keep?

[He doesn't have words for how he feels about that, so he just gives her a tight nod and a fleeting hint of a smile. It's important to him; he also doesn't feel like it sits right. The alienation from the rest of the group makes him low-key suspicious of these gestures of acceptance, as if they're chocolate boxes that have the scarcest chance of containing explosives.

Perhaps he's been on the failure train for so many stops lately that he's starting to feel like it's his usual commute.

He shrugs.] If you wanted. I wouldn't go around framing it or nothing. I'm not fixing to showcase or anything. [He doesn't sound terribly enthused about the prospects, both because he's fairly certain she's trying to humor him and because he's aware that his art is fairly garbage, and he doesn't particularly want certain other members of the team to start commenting on it.

If you put anything at all into the world, be it art or speech or action, people assume you stand a hundred percent behind it, and there isn't really much of a way to disparage that opinion. He doesn't want the story to become that, like with other things, he's too damn clueless to realize how bad he is at something.]

[To be fair, friendship with Trance will probably mean a lot more (read: any) Harper in his life than he would like, so the explosives analogy isn't exactly wrong. And then there's that whole thing where Trance expects her friends (read: everybody she's ever met who hasn't called her a purple monkey or actively tried to kill her and even then there are exceptions) to be better people than they think they can be.

Honestly, Dixon might want to run now, while he still can.

She puts the sheet she's been looking at back down with the others.] A frame would probably be a bad idea anyway to carry around. It'd probably just get broken next time we have to run for our lives or something. [She sounds very calm about that 'running for our lives' part.] You don't have to. Just if you want to sometime.

If I do anything good enough worth keeping, then sure, you can take it. I mostly just crumple them when I'm done. [His momma kept quite a few of his art projects, some of which are framed in the house. She used to keep some of his old school notebooks for the sketches in the margins, but when he ran into them while cleaning out a closet he trashed them, eager to purge whatever memories he could of those years.]

I kind of trudge for my life, honestly. [He's out-of-shape enough that two minutes of running leaves him totally spent. The fact that he managed to carry an injured kid across about two hundred yards of battlefield last week was a miraculous combination of spurts of magic and complete adrenalin.] How've you been settling in with everyone?

[He can't imagine badly; she came in with a friend and she's a positive, friendly person. He couldn't scrounge up a bad word about her if he tried.]

[The trudging comment gets an amused smile, like she thinks he's kidding. Or maybe like she's going to pretend she thinks he's kidding until he is kidding. It's all the same in the end.]

Oh, pretty well. Everyone's been kind of busy, what with not dying and trying to figure out that whole magic thing and everything. The ones I've met have all been really nice. The elves are nice, too, even if they look at my tail kind of weirdly.

[The fact that so few people in the group did was really the strange part. Most people thought her tail was weird. A lot of people could probably think up a bad word or two, too, but if Dixon wanted to believe the best of her, who was she to tell him no?]

What about you? You're looking... better? [At least not actively dying?]

Don't let them give you shit about it. Their ears are jacked, they got no room to go judging your tail.

[Dixon makes an embarrassed face when Trance says everyone's been busy. He's mostly been idling around, refusing to do anything particularly productive since they got to Rivendell. As the cache of ugly drawings attests.]

I'm feeling better, too. [On all levels; being at Rivendell has mostly healed the physical ailment, but has also applied a sort of balm to Dixon's soul. He was in a tailspin before the Green brought him here, plunging towards the ground, toed up to the line of shooting himself; he pulled out of the dive while the quest began but still struggled to stay up; this is the first time he feels like he's gaining altitude again, clawing his way back up to a baseline.] I'd be okay staying here for a while.

[Forever. He feels a dark cloud pass over him at the idea of picking the quest back up, a cold desire to continue ignoring and running from problems.]

[His attempt at defending her tail's honor makes her laugh, but it's the 'with him not at him' sort. Having someone care about her tail is even better than people just not hate it.]

I don't know if I can say anything about their ears. But thank you anyway. [She gestures at her ears which aren't quite as long as the elves' but are definitely just as pointed. She's a very good hypocrite about some things, but this particular thing seems unkind seeing as they're guests of the elves and all.]

It's very quiet. I don't know if I could get used to that after everything, but if I could, I wouldn't mind doing it here. I hope we get to stay a while, too. [Her 'a while' means maybe a week or two, of course, not forever. She'd hardly judge him for it, though. Some people are meant to find a place and make it their own. It doesn't make them bad or wrong, just different. And then there are people like her who... aren't.

Of course 'forever' for her means something a great deal different than it would mean for him, too.] The elves might not like us moving in permanently.

Well, I can say something about their ears. [He won't, because he's a good guest, and the elves have gained countless points in his esteem by removing the morgul splinters from his back. Towards the end of the trip there, he was pretty sure he would die, shivering and pale-lipped and in a stupor. He doesn't remember most of the last leg of the journey here.

But, esteem or not, Dixon wouldn't hesitate to turn on the elves for Trance. It's not that he's known her a long time; it's that his bonds of loyalty fix fast and tight, and she found him in a moment of ripe neediness.]

Probably not. I could make myself useful, though. I could work in the kitchen or haul stuff around or... [There's a wistfulness to how Dixon says that, and a sadness. A sort of bone-deep sadness that doesn't reflect the relatively minor inconvenience of having to leave here at all. He doesn't know what he could offer the elves or offer anyone here.] I guess people couldn't leave me here even if they want to.

Fine, but only if you say it where their ears can't hear you. [Never let it be said that Trance is above petty gossip. When you've lived long enough, what's left that isn't petty?

There have been times in her history that Trance may have taken advantage of that loyalty. Luckily, those times are long past. She never did find the pleasure in it that some of her people do, but that doesn't mean she can't see why they do it. Or find it useful from time to time. She's just come to realize that even beings whose lives are here and gone in a blink of an eye deserve to, well, live.

It was something of a shocking realization when she first made it.

Dixon didn't seem to want to stop her from looking before, so she idly glances over the rest of his discarded drawings as they talk. She won't comment on them being cute again, but she still thinks they are. Childish, maybe, but that's not necessarily bad. Just. Cute. And it gives her something to look at that isn't him. People usually feel more comfortable talking about things like this when she doesn't look like she's listening as closely as she is.]

Do you really want to stay that badly?

I wouldn’t. I’ve got manners. [Ones he’s happy to abandon generally, but the difference between rough and rude tends to fall along the lines of if someone knows better and chooses to break mores anyway, and Dixon falls more along the latter. And he is appreciative to the elves, just protective of the others. The welcome has been warm
and vital, just the culture shock a little discouraging to navigate.

He takes a moment to think about that, to try and work out his answer. He’s glad she looks at something else, because he always assumes people are looking at the burns and doesn’t like to think things out in front of others. Like them watching will make words harder. ]

There’s just nowhere else that I’d particularly want to be. [A part of him will always yearn for home, for the one bedroom house with the yard and the porch looking out onto a quiet street, but he knows he can’t go back there. All that’s left for him is his momma and his unemployment and the forty thousand in medical bills he left her with, the damage he’s done to her life. And he doesn’t have the imagination to dream of anywhere else.]

It’s just that questing - I don’t know, maybe you’re used to it. Did you start out used to it or do you eventually get over a learning curve?

[The look she gives Dixon is the same one she gives Harper when he claims something like that. It's fond and amused and completely disbelieving. Manners only really count when you're using them with people you don't want to be using them with. Otherwise, you're just being nice to nice people and that's not hard at all.

She doesn't press, though, sitting back against the wall and wrapping her arms around her knees. It's a more loaded question than Dixon could ever realize, but as long as he doesn't know there's no harm in giving the easy answer.]

I remember you said your home is really pretty. I think it's probably normal to want to stay in pretty places if that's what you're used to. My home isn't very pretty all the time. I mean, some of it is, but there are a lot of things to fix and a lot of people that need help. I guess I started out just wanting to help, and going around fixing things was the best way to do that.

[He gives her a bit of an eyeroll back. He wants credit for trying. It's hard enough just to try.

Then he gives her a bit of a perplexed look; it gives way to concern. She doesn't look comfortable anymore, and he gets the sense that by prying into her past, he's stuck his fingers into a barely-healed wound. He wants to ask more, but backs off.]

I think I started out wanting to help too. [Maybe. It's hard to remember when it stopped being about the duties but about the badge. Definitely before he actually started his career, maybe as far back as Academy. Maybe further back then that.

All he really knows is that once upon a time he was a kid and he thought being a cop was about curtailing evil and rescuing people from bad situations. At some point he stopped thinking that and more upsettingly, he didn't even notice he stopped. It's the kind of shift that should provoke some kind of moral riot, some horror, some questioning who someone even is anymore, and he didn't even notice it.]

Well, seems like you can help a lot here. Especially with that healing thing you do.

Edited 2018-06-18 20:56 (UTC)

[It takes a second, but a little smile twitches at the edge of her lips. Fine. Credit for trying this time. She won't be such a softy next time, though.

She stretches one hand out in front of her when he mentions her new magic, wiggling her fingers until they start glowing softly. It's a fun trick, even beyond what she's really supposed to do with it, and it feels safe. Everyone here is different in some way. Everyone has magic or a magic weapon or something about them that makes them unique and special and able to make a difference. It's okay to admit she has it, this ability to change something. Nobody will think differently of her or be afraid of her for being able to heal things.]

I hope so. It's different helping than I'm used to, but I'm getting better at it. [She turns enough to give him a lopsided smile.] A lot of people never want to help at all, or even want to make things worse to make themselves better, so if you want to help, then that's a good start.

[or even want to make things worse to make themselves better

Dixon flinches and doesn't quite understand why. He just knows she articulated something he hasn't been able to arrange the words for himself, put the bulbs into a spotlight he's been trying to hide from. He wants to crawl out of that glare and into that "good start". But he doesn't say any of that.]

What kind are you used to? [To continue giving her her space he returns his attention to the drawings, starting to sketch out a person. Or the vague shape of one.]

[To be fair, she's got more years behind her than Dixon could ever imagine. That means lots more time to think about things like that and how to put words to feelings and thoughts most people might ignore. Just think of it as 'older and wiser' except 'older' here is on a galactic scale.

Her smile just goes a little bit softer before she, too, looks away, studying the architecture or the walls or something that isn't him.]

Lots of things. Sometimes I help people find things that make them happy or find how to be happy with what they have. I talk to Dylan, he's our captain, and help him find ways to help the most people. I grow pretty flowers and they make the universe more beautiful and less sad. [Her tail twitches in what might almost be a wave.] I'm a pretty good listener, too.

[He's of two minds about that; part of it seems so simple, to just be happy with what you have. To just look hard enough to find it. And then it also seems so complicated, like if he hasn't figured it out yet he doesn't stand a chance going forward.]

That's true, you're damn good at that. [He adds a tail to the figure. Might as well do that drawing for her now.] Plus you keep Harper on a leash, and that definitely makes the world a happier place.

[He can't resist the sideswipe.]

[It is both simple and complicated, yes. Again, millions of years in the making. There's no end date, though. You just keep going until you find what you need or you find something you didn't know you needed or both or sometimes neither. There aren't a lot of guarantees in the universe.

Trance's turn to roll her eyes.] I don't keep my friends on leashes. That would be weird. He just knows I won't tell him something that's not true, so sometimes he listens.

[It's like 70/30, but then her truths tend to be true about the same amount of time, so she'll take what she can get.]

Not a real leash. It's a phrase. [Get your bitch on a leash is the full saying, although Dixon is keeping it a little less aggressive than that. At least here in polite, friendly conversation.

He breathes deep through his nose.]

I get that I was wrong flying off the handle at people back there. I just don't understand why he went after me like that, when I went out of my way to keep him safe out there on the hill.

Right. I knew that. [She did not know that, and her expression clearly says as much.

This is not a turn in the conversation she was expecting, and yet again, she's hit by the combined novelty and discomfort of not knowing what was coming. It's terrifying, but it's almost starting to be terrifying in a fun sort of way, like a fast thrill ride. It will probably cycle back around to just plain terrifying again once it's something that matters a little more than a conversation, but for now, she's going to enjoy it.

In a manner of speaking, at least. She's not enjoying this particular conversation very much at all.]

I don't know what happened in the fight, but Harper's from a not very nice place, and sometimes he's not very good at remembering he's a good person, so when he gets angry or scared or sad, sometimes he wants other people to hurt like he's hurting. It's not a very good answer, I guess, but if you want a better one, you'd probably have to ask him. He's my friend, but not all his stories are ones I can tell.

[It's a familiar expression to one he wears pretty frequently, and so he doesn't comment on it.

If Dixon had any self-awareness at all - he doesn't - he'd be able to see how Trance's description of Harper's behavior tracks somewhat of Dixon's own impulses. He isn't totally in the dark about how lashing out distracts him from his own problems, but he doesn't have a strong enough hold on it to see it reflecting from others.]

The way I see it, if someone saves your life, you keep your acting out to yourself instead of taking it out on them. It's not my fault the place he comes from is jacked.

[She appreciates it. Really.

She almost wishes she could tell Dixon that he's hardly the only one Harper has lashed out at, but she's pretty sure that would be counterproductive right now. Or ever.]

It's a lot more complicated than that. Not just Harper. People in general are complicated. Not that it wouldn't be really nice if things always worked like that, because people just being nice to each other would make so many things in the universe easier, but it's really hard. Not everyone is good at doing hard things.

No shit. [Take it from Dixon, reigning prince of "being bad at hard things". Like grammar, or sobriety, or kindness, or grieving. He's pretty bad at all these things.]

Unless he up and apologizes, I'm not making peace with him. We can be in the same room but that's all I'll tolerate.

[She won't even comment on the language. Honestly, it's more of a concession than she was expecting, and possibly even more of one than she can wring out of Harper, so... she'll take it. With only a tiny sigh.

She follows it up with a small smile, though. She really does appreciate the... attempt? Sure, she'll call it an attempt.]

I understand. That's a good step. Thank you.

THE LAST HOMELY HOUSE ※ RIVENDELL ※ LOG 2

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