also celeair and margim body swap, perhaps, for funsies ✨
And now for something totally different! we've seen the Mournshaws be scary spooky, but she can do silly too 😌 get yourself a cursed forest who can do both.
I might do a continuation of this at some point bc this was mostly setup, but my brain isn't letting me write anything long rn soo *shrug* (I also had an idea for a dumb drawing but I can't promise anything)
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“This isn’t funny, Elain.” Margim growls, her annoyed tone sounding most out of place in Celeair’s voice, and her scowl looking even more out of place on his face.
“It’s a little funny.” Elain insists between poorly stifled snickering. It wasn’t exactly her fault that Margim’s glaring now looked about as intimidating as a disgruntled kitten.
“I think I would be more inclined to see the humor in this if I knew it wasn’t permanent…” Celeair chimes in, looking most uncomfortable with his newfound stature. It seemed it felt very unnatural for him to be towering over his companions like this, and he appeared to be moments away from trying to curl up into a ball and hide. “This… isn’t permanent, right?”
“Oh, certainly not! I would not have laughed so if I thought you might be stuck like this forever!” she gives Margim a pointed look, mistakenly directed to Celeair at first. “Please, I may be tactless, but I am not cruel.”
“Of course. Sorry to have doubted you.” Margim sounds a little sarcastic, but she was being genuine. She has enough trouble clearly conveying her intended tone in her own voice, much less someone else’s. Luckily Elain knows this, and does not take offense.
“So, you say the last thing both of you saw before you passed out was a white lynx with shining eyes, correct?” they both nod.
“Which was strange on multiple counts,” Celeair muses “There are no lynx in this area in the first place, right?”
“Indeed, there are not. As I’m sure you might have guessed, it was no real lynx you encountered. Sounds to me like you came across Cogwyr. He’s a trickster spirit, but not one of the dangerous ones. Usually.” That last part did not reassure them as much as the rest. “At least we have a name for him, people have encountered him and lived to tell about it! That’s far better than I can say for most denizens of that forest.”
“So, this is his sick idea of a joke?” Margim mutters
“Indeed it is!”
“Unfortunate that you share in his sense of humor.”
“Do you want my help or not?”
“Yes. Please.” Celeair interjects, seeming a little panicked.
Elain holds up her hands “Of course of course, I’m merely teasing, I would not withhold such important information over something so petty.” Margim glares at her for frightening Celeair, looking far less intimidating than she’s used to, but says nothing.
“Well anyway, they say Cogwyr plays these tricks as part of a game of his. He’ll use his magic to work some unpleasant change on you, and if you manage to track him down and catch him, he’ll change it back.”
“It would have been helpful for him to tell us this beforehand...” Margim grumbles
“Well, no one ever said he plays fair.” she shrugs.
“On the bright side, if this is a game of tracking then we are fortunate to have the most skilled Elain with us!” Celeair nudges Margim’s shoulder, attempting to mask his palpable discomfort with optimism.
“About that…” Elain’s smile falls, and Celeair’s follows suit.
“What do you mean?”
“I do want to help you, genuinely, but if you’re to win at his game you must play it. If I track down Cogwyr for you or assist in any other direct way, he would likely see that as cheating and then he might never change you back, or do something worse to all three of us!” She gives them a sympathetic look, her jovial attitude vanished. “The risk is too great, for all of us. I’m afraid the most I can do is provide you with this guidance, you’ll have to be on your own for the hunt.”
“But,” she continues with an optimistic smile, “it’s not a terribly difficult game. As Mar- I mean Celeair already pointed out, there are no other lynx dwelling here, so any cat-tracks you find will most definitely belong to him. You shouldn’t have to be an expert hunter to find him.”
“I guess the hard part will be facing the forest itself then. I’m not in a position to effectively defend either of us now.” She hated to admit it, but she felt very helpless like this, and it was probably a factor in why she was so short with Elain. She knew that Celeair, being a scholar for most of his life, was not a particularly strong man, but nothing could have prepared her for how jarring this change would be. She’s not even sure she would be able to lift her mace, let alone wield it.
“I’m sure you’ll figure something out. I think between the two of you there’s a whole brain somewhere!”
“I’m going to pretend that was a compliment.” Celeair smiles
“Hey, you’re the ones who wandered into the cursed forest unprepared, I think you deserved that at least.”
“Alright, fair.” Margim begrudgingly admits, earning another chuckle from Elain.
“I think I’ve done all I can for you now. I should return to Lhan Tarren and tell the Elder what happened, but after that I’ll come back to this spot and wait for you.”
With that, she bid them farewell and good luck “Not that you’re going to need it,” she adds “Probably.”
The two of them once again stand at the entrance to the Mournshaws, somehow feeling far less prepared than the first time they entered. The trees are deceptively beautiful, inviting, almost.
“Well, we’d best get going.” Margim sighs “The sooner I can give that damn cat a piece of my mind the sooner we’ll be back in our own bodies.”
“I have thought of one silver lining to our situation, at least.”
“And what’s that?”
“I finally get to do this!” In one swoop Celeair scoops up Margim in a tight hug, lifting her a ways off the ground. Turns out being absurdly tall with the strength to match does have some perks, even if he did feel much like a ‘bull in a glass house’ as the saying goes.
Margim makes a small undignified “A” sound in her surprise, but quickly collects herself.
For what it's worth, she found she rather enjoyed being held like this, and it’s not something she would normally get to experience. She returns the hug with a weary smile.
“Alright… I guess it’s not all bad.”
If she had to be in such an uncomfortable situation, at least she was in it with Celeair. That helped. A lot, actually.
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got inspired by a fic i read the other day, but didn't quite hit the right spots for me so. time to write out a new wip idea
The concept of that fic really grabbed me - Jason and Tim having a bodyswap the same day Jason wakes up in his coffin, at a point after Tim had already visited Bruce and Alfred with his insistence that Batman needed a Robin - but for what I was thinking, by the time Jason convinces Bruce and Alfred of who he is, Tim's already started to dig himself out of the coffin. And when the three of them show up at the cemetery, the grave's empty.
Tim would be catatonic and go through much of the same stuff canon Jason went through before being found and dunked in the Pit. He'd end up enduring the whole League of Assassins shtick that canon Jason went through while at the same time Jason is dealing with Tim's regular person life. Both of them struggled a bit trying to imitate the other, but they managed- Tim with not much issue considering no one in the LoA was close to Jason, and Jason trying to manage Janet Drake's clearly growing concern every time he slips up.
Like, imagine Tim, desperately trying to imitate what he knows of Jason from watching Robin on the streets and seeing Jay in a few galas here and there. And one day, Talia tries to tell him he'd been quickly replaced to get him to finally listen and Kill Somebody/accept he was staying with the League until they deemed him fit to leave.
And Tim looks at a picture of himself, hanging around the front yard of Wayne Manor with Bruce, Alfred, and Dick. Another picture showing himself in an ill-fitting Robin uniform on a rooftop and seemingly getting lectured by Batman, who looms in front of him.
And he says "I'm not buyin' it."
Somehow convinces Talia that he's not convinced that the Tim in the photo (who is probably Jason and thank god, Tim was really worried about what happened to Jason's mind- or rather, his own body; he didn't actually consider Jason coming back to life until now) and she arranges a short trip for him to Gotham to see for himself.
Tim really struggles the next two days to keep up the Jason act, but he's pretty sure Talia and the others were just chalking it up to nerves at seeing his family again and the "newest addition".
When he finally gets to Gotham, he doesn't bother being stealthy. He doesn't have the skills- no matter how much Ra's and Talia's goons have been trying to beat it into him- and even if he did, he doubted he'd be able to sneak away from his own teachers that were stalking him from the shadows.
So he does his best to be casual. Walks straight towards Wayne Manor, and when he can actually start to hear his assassin stalkers the tiniest bit as he approaches the gate- a sign they're getting really restless- he decides now or never and bolts the rest of the way.
He thinks, if he had come sooner to Gotham, he would've tried fitting through the gaps in the bars- as if he was still 13 and small enough to fit- but as it is, Tim's spent 6 months in this body and he's not going to make that mistake.
Instead he slams a hand on the buzzer and says as fast as he can, "it's Tim! Tim Drake! There's assassins, open the gate!"
He has a heartstopping moment when nothing happens- when there's no answer and the ninjas are getting closer and closer and-
And then it opens and Tim doesn't stop with his relief, he runs.
The door is opened not by Mr. Pennyworth, but by Bruce himself, a belt clipped around his waist, but entirely in sleepwear. He has something in his other hand and as he yells, "duck!" Tim can only think it's some kind of bomb and dives for the ground.
He was sort of right. It was a smoke bomb. He heard and smelled it hissing away behind him, and saw the cloud of smoke in his peripheral vision.
Bruce wasted no time running past him and barking, "Follow Alfred to the cave!" Tim took a moment to just breathe, feeling much more safe with Batman fighting to protect him. When Bruce looked back at him through a spot in the smoke, he yelled, "Go!"
Tim scrambled to obey, trying to run and stand and awkwardly doing both to get in the home. Mr. Pennyworth was just inside the foyer, out of sight of the windows, now that Tim noticed, and holding a shotgun.
He was also wearing a fluffy blue bathrobe and fuzzy pink bunny slippers.
Tim blinked. "Uhhh,"
"Come along, Master Tim. We must be quick."
He didn't protest and followed him down to the Cave, where Jason in Tim's body sat waiting at the Batcomputer.
Man, I'm not completely sure on the timing, but imagine Tim finally getting back into his body and it's- he's taller than he used to be, bulkier too. And there are reflexes and muscle memory stuff he doesn't remember at all, but now just has.
He- he was Robin. Or, his body at least, and he felt like it. But he never was Robin. Not really. He never got a proper outing, never even received Bruce's official approval for it.
It was strange. And not totally a good strange.
He thought about the body he had. He didn't have a lot of love for it- puberty would do that to anyone- but it was his. And that saying about not knowing what you have until you lose it? Yeah.
Tim felt like crying.
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anonymous &&. said... Oh the human body is a nightmare. Our spines still aren't great for walking upright, we have an organ that serves little purpose except to explode in some people and cause deadly reactions, the feeling of being thirsty only kicks in when you're already dehydrated, immune systems are so hit and miss to the point they can get confused and attack itself, I could go on and on. It's a damn miracle we even exist.
it's nothing he doesn't already know — in a sense. he's well aware humans are ( frustratingly ) delicate; knows a myriad of ways in which their already fleeting lives can be cut impossibly SHORTER. ren finds himself wont to compare them to the cups he prefers to use with his tea — prone to cracking, chipping, shattering at the slightest provocation. yet even the most fragile ceramics hold an inherent advantage in that they won't just crumble to pieces once some inbuilt timer reaches its inevitable conclusion.
that being said, the deluge of grotesque human trivia certainly brings its share of new information.
❝ what do you mean. ❞ it's technically a question, yet ren's tone is flat enough to render it a STATEMENT instead. ❝ what do you mean you have an organ that EXPLODES — ? ❞ is this a joke? surely they can't be serious. there is no way the human body is that eager to destroy itself. ❝ can you make it detonate at will, or do i actually have to worry about you spontaneously combusting on top of everything else? ❞
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