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jisungsgirl · 2 years

Text

cake and kisses

pjs x reader

just a lil bday fluff for my favorite boy :)

wc: 1426

warnings: none!

(*˘︶˘*).｡.:*♡

“Dude, it’s gonna be so good,” you smiled proudly, hands on your hips as you watched the cake finally slide into the oven.

Wiping the flour off his forehead, Jaemin looked up at you in mild disbelief. “Whatever you say, y/n. This better be worth it. I’m never going to use an,” he paused to inspect the object in his right hand, “...adjustable rolling pin again.”

“See, that’s what you say now! But once everyone realizes we are master bakers they’ll be asking us to do the cakes for everyone else, and for some reason you decided to work in a group of 23 men, so choose your words wisely.”

“Why are you so confident in your cake? Didn’t you tell me just yesterday that you basically never stepped foot in your kitchen at home?” He eyed you suspiciously. Mildly flustered by his question, you racked your brains for something quickly.

“Baking can’t be that hard,” you turned around, hiding your pink cheeks, “I’m smart enough, this shouldn’t be hard for me. I can follow a recipe! I think. Anyways, don’t jinx it!” you paused to chastise him, your head snapping back up to glare in his direction. Dusting yourself off, the two of you continued bickering as you slowly helped the objects around the kitchen find their way back to their respective cupboards. The sound of a door opening caused both of your heads to snap up, but tilt in mild relief as you realized it was just Renjun coming back.

“Hey guys, oh, what are you making?”

“Jisung’s birthday cake! For tonight!”

“Oh?” Renjun looked between the two of you, a glint in his eyes. Minutely, you tried to shake your head from side to side, warning your best friend that your baking partner was utterly oblivious to your, uh, ulterior motives.

“That is so caring and loving of you two. Wow. Jisung will be so happy that you put in all this effort for him. You must really care for him!”

Oh he was so dead.

Meanwhile, Jaemin just shrugged. “Of course I’d help make a cake for my bro. And y/n was so insistent I help her, since I’m the only one with any hope in the kitchen, that there was no way I could turn her down. But of course I love Jisung! You wanna help frost later, man?”

“No, he does not.” you tried immediately, but Renjun was already beaming and nodding his head. Some best friend.

_ As far as you were concerned, seven o’clock rolled around all too fast. Staring at yourself in the mirror, you questioned why you’d even bothered to get ready. You knew they were filming Jisung’s birthday surprise for a YouTube video to be posted later, and you and the boys wouldn’t get to hang out without cameras until much later in the night. Feeling your phone buzz, you accepted the call.

“Hello?”

“Just because I know your stupid love-stricken self is probably pacing right now, I wanted to ask if you wanted me to film his cake reaction on my phone and send it to you? I know you won’t get to actually see him until later.”

“Thanks Renjun! I’m not in love with him, though! I’m just. I just like him, okay?” you could feel your cheeks heating up again and suppressed a groan. He never failed to make you so nervous, even just by being brought up in conversation.

“Whatever you say, y/n,” and you could practically hear the eye roll through the phone. You didn’t have long to wait, not even twenty minutes later and your phone pinged with a video message from Renjun. You hurried to open the text, internally cursing yourself for being so eager. Pressing play, you sat on your bed and bit back a smile.

“Happy birthday Jisung!” Lights were flicked on to reveal a tall boy standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by the other six members of Dream. At one end, Jaemin stood, beaming, holding a cake. Your cake. You had frosted it in a light green, (of course you knew his favorite color), with white piping and trim. In the middle, you had written a simple ‘Happy Birthday Jisung’ but included a little drawing of a cat on the side.

The two of you had begun texting a lot more frequently over the past month, as the boy was seemingly showing a genuine interest in getting to know you. The other week he had asked you about any pets you had, which had of course launched you into telling him all about your cats back home and sending him many, many iMessage doodles of both of them.

In the video, as Jisung slowly pulled out the candles, preparing to cut it and share with his friends, he suddenly looked closer at the cake. Squinting, and then opening his eyes in surprise, he stood up straight and turned around.

“Um, who made this cake again?”

“Me!” Jaemin smiled and waved at a camera, before putting his head on Jisung’s shoulder and adding “with y/n’s help.”

Your stomach flipped as you watched Jisung cough twice, eyes still wide, before throwing on a smile for the cameras and now- you rewound the video. Was he blushing? After watching the clip of Jaemin tell Jisung you had made the cake five more times, you decided that you were not making it up and he was, in fact, blushing. As you closed out of the video, you read Renjun’s text underneath.

“Definitely don’t think this is going to make the final cut. Take care of him!”

You didn’t think it was possible for your heart to squeeze even more.

“Happy birthday Jisung!” you smiled as soon as the door was opened. Jisung stood before you, smiling down at you. Flustered, he was staring resolutely right below you, not making eye contact. Watching the pink crawl up his cheeks, you leaned forwards and wrapped your arms around him in a hug. Breathing in his scent, you tried your best to ignore the way your heart squirmed as his hands rested around your waist. You could feel him smiling into your hair, and you grinned at him as you tilted your head back.

“So, what’s it like being twenty?”

“Ah, stop it, stop it. That sounds way too old for me.” He waved your words away as he stepped back, allowing you entry. Slipping out of your shoes, you giggled as he continued talking, telling you about how his friends surprised him today with a cake. Catching himself, he paused for a moment and looked down at you.

“Actually, can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” you shrugged, smiling, doing your best to hide the fact that your heart was currently trying to break its way out of your chest.

“Did you… make that cake for me? Jaemin said that he made it, for the cameras, but then told me that really, you were the one who got all the stuff and baked it. It was, um, really good. Just so you know,” he was looking down again, his cheeks undoubtedly pink.

“Oh, yeah, I did! I’m glad you liked it, Jisung. I just wanted to do my part for your birthday, you know. Celebrate you.” And now it was your turn to feel your face turn pink. You were mortified at your sudden inability to even talk to your friend without heating up. Doing your best to look up at him, you fought to calm your face.

“So! Did you, ah, wish for anything?” you tilted your head. Finally, Jisung brought his eyes up to meet you. Without breaking his gaze, you finally realized how close you two were. Jisung was less than a step away from you, looking down at you in the empty room. Suddenly, you felt a soft hand on your jaw, tilting your face further up.

“Um, can I…” his voice came out shakily. Nodding, you lifted yourself up and watched as his eyelids fluttered closed. Finally, your lips pressed against his as his arms surrounded you. You stood there, his arms cradling you as you softly kissed, over and over again. You weren’t able to stop yourself from smiling, however, and he pulled back gently to look at you.

“Wow, look at that, my wish came true.”

Hiding your face, you gave him a soft shove. “Park Jisung, that was so lame,” but you couldn’t stop a few laughs from escaping.

“Hey! I was being serious!”

#nct jisung fluff #nct jisung imagines #jisung x reader #park jisung x reader #nct jisung x reader #jisungsgirl_jisung #nct dream fluff #jisung fluff #jisung imagines #happy birthday jisung

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cursewoodrecap · 3 years

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Session 22: Five-Dimensional Man-Go

This is a session I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time. I get to introduce three of my favorite characters in the entire campaign.

In the real world it’s been a while, but this was the session we officially welcomed a new chaos goblin player to the table. And damn, am I glad we did.

Valeria goes to Hoeska’s armor smiths for some upgrades, and accidentally kicks off a goth fashion montage. Her new armor has gorgeous black detailing with purple rose accents, accessorized with a brand-new Shusva-skin bag with matching claw clasp. Gral picks up a fancy Shusva-leather cloak and belt. Shoshana, realizing that a vampire’s castle is basically a Hot Topic, gets some fishnet arm warmers to accompany her fang necklace. We also get some healing potions and hope they aren’t made from lost souls or anything.

Valeria resummons Aethis, who pops back into existence in a burst of glitter that’s entirely incongruous with the local grim aesthetic. Apparently celestial gators are only mildly inconvenienced by fatalities.

As we hitch up the horses to get back on the road, we find out Ser Boris is also preparing to head out. “Woods full of many nasty creatures. Must keep hunting! Maybe I find way down to Barroch, I have heard monsters are attacking workers there.”

Gral perks up at the name of his people’s capitol. “I’m sure the orcs will treat you well. What kind of monsters are they dealing with?”

“Wolves, bears, maybe werewolf? I will find out when I get there! Cursebreakers do not have much of working relationship with orcs, so info is scattered. That is why I must investigate!”

While he heads south into orc territory, we’re gonna go north toward Sturmhearst to look into all the Key nonsense Professor Bjork told us is goin’ down. It’ll be a long trip; it’s on the coast, and we’re well into the heartland of the wood. As we get closer, we’re gonna have to look for new maps, too – the patchwork of safe zones and Curse disasters changes rapidly, and the roads that were passable a month ago might be deathtraps today.

We trek for several blessedly uneventful days. One night, in a region where a sizable number of halflings have settled, we have the fortune of seeing an inn on the horizon as night starts to fall. A sign proclaims the Fusilier’s Rest, a combination winery and inn located on a lush vineyard. Valeria’s kind of suspicious of anything too plant-based right now, but the rest of us totally want a winery tour.

We hitch up our wagon next to a post labeled Valet Parking. Aethis parks themself in the stables. Looking at the place, with its rather low doorframe and quaintly painted décor, we suspect Demish wine snootery instead of weird plant cults.

We duck through the door and take in the scene. It’s on the upscale end of totally normal, with locals sitting around eating and a huge pot of Demish onion soup bubbling on the hearth. The old halfling bartender is wearing pieces of a worn but well-cared-for blue-and-gold uniform. Two polished old pistols hang within reach on the wall, along with a pristine old Fusille musket in a place of honor behind the bar. Shiny medals in a handmade case are proudly displayed atop the bar.

As is D&D protocol, we look around for any notably wacky characters. We find them in the corner: an old man with unkempt white hair and multi-lensed, colorful glasses, engrossed in a game of Man-go against a young human doctor. We know he’s a doctor, because he’s got a stubby-beaked Sturmhearst mask pushed up to expose a tired but friendly face. His coat might once have been a lab coat, but it’s since been patched and sutured together so many times that it’s probably done a full ship-of-Theseus. His right arm is in a makeshift sling, and he’s nursing a small glass of Kevan vodka; probably the closest thing they have to rotgut moonshine in a wine-snob place like this.

We’re like, neat. Let’s eat soup.

Valeria orders a local vineyard wine and chats with the bartender about it. “The man who runs it is a madman; he thinks he can grow good wine grapes in Valdia. But he pays my sister well, she does her best.”

“Oh, don’t listen to René, his sister does marvelous work! No halfling will admit that wine grown outside Demionde will be more than spoiled grape juice,” teases one of the local barflies.

Gral asks Valeria who’s winning the Man-go game. The old man is rambling pleasantly, barely paying attention, and he is absolutely crushing the young doctor. The doctor looks like he’s totally aware he’s being taken to the cleaners, but he’s gonna let the old guy have his fun. As the game draws to a close, the younger man smiles ruefully and hands over a few coins. Meanwhile, the old fella, his eyes magnified to mismatched sizes by his funky glasses, spots our most conspicuous party member.

“Kyr! How’s the wine?” he calls, beckoning her over.

“Quite good actually!” Valeria chirps. “Was that the Kiloni maneuver?”

“Yes, or a variant I picked up somewhere! The Killam maneuver…kilometer…kilowatt? Something of the sort.”

Valeria very much wants to play him, and the old guy’s defeated opponent is happy to trade her his spot. The young man’s propped up leg hits the ground with a suspiciously loud clunk as he vacates his chair for her.

The old man peers up at her, bright-eyed even behind multiple layers of glass. “So what brings a Knight of the Rose here?”

“We’re headed to Sturmhearst, actually!”

“I see! I’ve heard the roads between here and there are pretty tricky to travel, you know.”

“No kidding. Do you have an updated map?”

He snaps his fingers. “No, but I just came from there! I’ve got an old map and I can easily update it for you kids. René is on night watch, I’ll leave it with him so you don’t have to stay up waiting for me to finish it. I know a route that’ll get you there lickety-split and safe as trousers! Now let me guess, you played at the clubs in Aurentium? You have the look about you.”

“Not the clubs, precisely…”

“Ah! Street rules, then!”

Valeria, who played Man-go against literally everyone who would have her, shrugs. “Maybe?”

“René, we’ll need some cups and a dumb hat!” the old man calls.

The young doctor wanders over to the bar and gets a refill, settling down next to Shoshana. “Hey, wanna bet on their game? The old guy’s pretty sharp.”

Shoshana laughs. “Oh, my friend is definitely gonna lose. I’ll put a silver on her, though, out of loyalty.”

It’s an odd game to spectate. Valeria falls behind early on; an insight check shows he’s not cheating, he’s just VERY good. Oh, and also Valeria’s assuming an entirely different set of house rules than this guy, and it’s tripping her up. Wait, are we doing street style, or dock style? Anyway, Valeria’s wearing the dumb hat now. At one point they both spit on the board.

“Y’know, I’ve never seen anyone from Sturmhearst take the mask off,” Shoshana says to her new drinking buddy, watching the game with confusion.

“On the clock, it’d be a safety hazard! But off the clock, eh, it’s fine. Some people get more elitist than me about it, I’m a hometown Valdian through and through.”

(You’re from Joisey, I’m from Joisey! What exit?)

“I haven’t actually been to the university since the Curse started, but I’m heading back to research some stuff I found out up in the Grammelsmarsh swamps. Some real disconcerting stuff regarding undead, and the like. The locals refer to it as the Wailing Wight.”

Shoshana gives him a once-over, rolling a decent Perception. He’s scruffy, though that could mostly be from hard travel, and definitely looks like he’s had a rough time of it. His arm’s in a sling and the little exposed skin Shoshana can see has more than its share of nicks and scars. His gait when he walked over was slightly uneven, one leg making a suspiciously heavy thunk against the wooden floor. Over his shoulder, he’s carrying a long, heavy case sealed with tar for waterproofing.

Hold up. She points to the case. “Do you have an alive guy in there?”

“…Uh.”

“You hesitated, and that’s not great.”

“Uh…no. No, I do not have an alive guy in here,” he says awkwardly.

“Okay, because the last time there was a weird bag, there was a whole-ass dude in there, and it turned into a whole thing.”

“N-no, no no no, there’s no person in the case,” he protests, not quite meeting Shoshana’s judgy cat eyes. He definitely doesn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea, even though the case has started gently twitching.

Meanwhile, old Man-Go man has proved himself quite fluent in Draco-Aquilian, though with an unmistakable mammalian accent. Gral butts into the lively conversation when it winds back to Valdian. “It seems like you’re rather well traveled. What is your profession?”

“Oh, y’know, I go here and there. I’ve been around. There’s so much to see out there!”

Valeria smiles. “I can’t fault you there. Anything in particular you’re looking for?

“I go wherever the winds take me, mostly,” he says, as if Cursewood travel isn’t the most dangerous hobby since they invented pyromancer cookoffs.

Valeria, impressively, only loses the game by a little. The old man jovially shakes her hand and promises to go get started on that map to Sturmhearst for us, springing to his feet with surprising deftness for his age and bustling up toward his room.

Gral and Shoshana, meanwhile, are busy makin’ friends with the doctor guy. “What swamp were you fighting undead in?”

“The Grammelsmarsh? It’s downriver of Mornheim.”

“Ohhh! We heard some, uh, adventurers did a purifying ritual on the river. It might help your situation?”

“That’s great, but…I dunno. Once you mix in swamp gas, things get a lot more interesting.”

“The explosions kind of interesting?”

“…Sometimes.”

The players have noticed that our doctor friend here is, like…not an NPC, there’s another guy at the table (the same player as Isadora! :D), so we start sizing each other up as travel companions.

“You seem like a pretty decent guy,” Gral says, immediately insight checking.

“I mean, you guys seem on the up-and-up too?”

Shoshana winks at him. “Well, I’m not that up-and-up but these two are very diplomatic and important.”

“If you’re also headed up to Sturmhearst, it might make sense for us to travel together? I’m not very quiet,” he admits, knocking on his knee with a clang, “but if you-“

“Hello!” Valeria, hearing clanking, has clanked over loudly to join. “Kyr Valeria Argent, at your service!”

“Uh, hi! I’m Vigdor. I’m a doctor! I mean, you knew that, with the, uh-“ He points to his bird mask. “If you need any balms or salves – I mean, I’m mostly a surgeon, but I know some herbology.”

Is that so! We chat about Dr. Ulmus and Dr. Kjeller. Everyone loves Dr Kjeller!

“I’ve heard of Dr. Kjeller! I haven’t met the guy, but he’s the leading expert on troll physiology. Getting him to come lecture hasn’t worked out so far.”

We ask René the innkeeper about any local threats. Apparently this town’s gotten lucky; the biggest threats recently have just been bandits and one overaggressive badger.

“Oh yeah, one of my cats fought one of those, it went badly,” Shoshana remembers. “For the badger, I mean. I have weird cats.”

(The inn also has cat. His name is Jean Clawed.)

Eventually we all head upstairs. As the night bears on, the girls fall asleep, presumably after painting each other’s toe claws and gossiping. Gral’s still awake, practicing his lute in the rare luxury of a single room, when he pauses. Something doesn’t sound right.

Putting his lute aside, he listens cautiously at the window and feels a deep dread grow in his stomach. The faint scent of ozone drifts in the air. The crickets and night birds have gone dead silent, and in the unsettling quiet he can hear the terrible growling, piping sound he’s heard twice before: once in a house in a hole, and once as Bullbreaker’s expedition faced its destruction.

With great urgency and no volume control, Gral sends a Message to a sleeping Shoshana: “RED ALERT, KEY SHIT’S HERE.” Shoshana wakes up and kicks Valeria.

Gral then sends a Message to our new friend Vigdor, more calmly. “If you have weapons, get them now. Something is happening, it’s going to be dangerous.”

The early warning lets Vigdor and Valeria armor up, Shoshana helping Valeria buckle on the heavy pieces in a hurry. Meanwhile, Gral sprints downstairs, casting Mirror Image as he goes.

René the innkeeper is cleaning his fusille with practiced precision, humming an old marching song. Gral can hear something moving in the kitchen behind the old halfling, so he pops another stealthy Message cantrip. “This is the orc from earlier. I think something bad is in the kitchen – I’ve heard that noise before. Hold on tight to that musket, I’m going in.”

“The back door is locked, I would have heard someone come in,” the old soldier whispers back.

“These things don’t use doors,” Gral hisses.

A 17 Persuasion convinces René, who loads a bullet into his musket. “Where are those friends of yours?”

A heavy clank from upstairs answers that question, as Vigdor and Valeria thud toward the stairs. Gral scopes out the room and sees, on the bar, a big leather map case. The map from the Man-Go guy! Then he peers into the kitchen and, yup, that’s a fleshhound, all right.

Everyone else upstairs bursts into the hall just as a second fleshhound emerges into existence next to them. Shoshana, without hesitation, hits it with a gout of flame. Its strange ethereal flesh solidifies for a moment, but then it shakes itself and charges forward, its displacement energy restored.

Meanwhile, the one downstairs doesn’t aim for Gral or René, trying to run past them. Gral plays a discordant note on his lute, using his Minor Key at the opposite frequency to its vibration and preventing it from displacing, before he strikes. A spectral, scarred orc swings a warhammer down on the creature, Thrice-Burned’s ghost getting some payback as Gral’s blade strikes true.

René takes a shot with his musket and crit-fails, understandably freaked out by the writhing mass of teleporting tentacles, the wild shot careening directly into Gral. Luckily, it only pops a Mirror Image, but everyone upstairs hears a frustrated yell of “NO. FRIEND! ME FRIEND!”

Vigdor dashes past Valeria to the stairs, his previously-motionless arm reaching out of its sling to slap her on the armor with a resounding clash of metal. A silver Jotunn rune glows through the cloth of his sleeve, and she feels Protection from Good and Evil snap into place over her. She takes the cue and stabs the hound, rose vines bursting from her trident and stabbing their long thorns into its oddly flickering flesh.

The pupils on the Eyegis snap to the space behind the beast. Our normal eyes see nothing, but the Key-aligned shield’s eyes see a magical gate, faintly connected to the hound.

As a member of the Order of the Rose, Valeria’s trained to deal with fiendish incursions. This isn’t a portal to the Hells, but she thinks it might get closed similarly. As she charges forward to deal with it, everything seems to move twice as fast as it should: the Key’s spatial distortion has made certain areas the opposite of difficult terrain, where you can move double your speed. Nyoom!

Shoshana zaps it with lightning and heads downstairs to help Gral, who’s being slapped by tentacles. The zapped one flees toward the portal, but Valeria Sentinels and stabs it to death. The downstairs hound gets its tentacles into the real Gral.

Vigdor moves to Gral’s aid, ripping away the last of his sling and clamping a large circular blade to his forearm. With the pull of a ripcord, it loudly whirs into motion. As the Buzzing Butcher slams into the displacer hound with a gory squelch, he asks about sneak attack, like a rogue!

A very, very loud rogue.

Gral breaks away from the hound’s tentacles and looks around. Through the windows, more fleshhounds have appeared outside. The space outside is warped – leaving this inn is going to be very difficult while all this nonsense is going on. The lights of the vineyard seem miles away.

However, Gral realizes, the hound responded to the sound of his lute. And when he used his Minor Key he caught a glimpse of the portal it came through. He begins to play again, using the Minor Key to try to take control of it. The GM allows him to burn a 3rd level spell slot for a colossal roll of 33. He moves the portal inside a wall, to temporarily block anything coming through.

René takes a shot at the remaining hound and misses.

Valeria, upstairs, draws her chained sword and spends a 1st level slot to try to close the portal, the same way paladins close Infernal gateways. The chains of Rack extend from the sword and stitch the portal shut.

(Gral and Valeria each gain inspiration for using Portal Trixx!)

A Thing Occurs at initiative 0, and we hear strange piping coming from the stables. We’re kind of occupied, so we trust Aethis to bite anything that bothers the horses.

Shoshana sprints down the stairs and to the bar. Aw, there’s another flesh hound coming in from the kitchen. Her Chill Touch misses, and the new monster slaps Gral.

Vigdor nyooms through a Zoom, which makes some Really Weird doppler effects happen with his clanky leg and his buzzy arm. He slides across the bar like an action hero and slams his saw down, missing the hound and showering the room in a hail of splinters.

Valeria is still upstairs, and it is LOUD downstairs. She’s gonna dash to get the heck down there and rejoin the festivities.

Gral Phantasmal Forces the new fleshhound, and in its mind, horrible liquid tendrils emerge from the soup pot and constrict around it. The soup rises to the defense of the Fusilier’s Rest!

René gets his wits about him and takes a pistol shot at the nearer fleshhound, tagging it with a bullet and keeping it in place. “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE. OUR POLICY IS NO PETS! I will not make an exception for you, you do NOT seem particularly polite!”

The fleshhound grabs the map case off the bar and starts to run for it. René hits it with the butt of his rifle. The second hound can’t attack Vigdor since it’s too busy convincing itself soup isn’t dangerous, so Vigdor’s free to draw his pistol and unload a Sneak Attack bullet into the fleeing hound’s back.

René reloads his musket. It’s been a long time since he’s done it under fire, but the Royal Fusilier Corps of Demionde does not half-ass their training.

The portal the hound’s heading for bisects a wall now, so it might be hard for the hound to get through. Before it can worry about that, though, it comes face to face with Valeria, who’s ready to rumble. She kills it, dropping the map to the ground, and skitters through the Zoomy Zone to try to trident the second hound. It displaces out of the way.

Gral seizes control of another portal, and this time decides to use it to see what’s going on. He tries to hop out to the stables, where that weird noise is coming from. He enters a weird nether space full of the flickering bodies of fleshhounds, writhing and blinking, which the DM calls the Threshold. Gral accepts psychic damage to see what’s going on, and the patterns become clearer as the Key takes hold temporarily in his brain. These portals all connect to each other and the Threshold at the same time. Whatever’s out in the stables, making that eerie piping noise, is tied to the portals – it can’t fully exist in our realm. So if you close all the portals, it’ll force that thing to leave; if you drive it away, the portals will close. Either way, the Key’s influence on this place will fade.

Oh, and that thing out in the stables? It’s the Lurke r again.

Gral’s old enemy wrests control of the portal back from Gral, who stumbles back out into the inn, reeling from the sudden whammy of Key taint.

Shosha shoots lightning at the nearest hound, which retaliates by leaping through her, disrupting her matter with its own. It’s a highly unpleasant experience. A new hound jumps out of the portal next to Valeria. As Vigdor, Shoshana, and René all attack, Gral shuts another portal with his lute’s magic. “Guys, there’s something horrible in the stables!” he shouts. “If we bust enough portals it’ll go away!”

The Lurker continues to make mysterious dice rolls, but apparently it’s rolling poorly, so we don’t quite find out what it’s up to. It peers through one of the last few portals, only visible to Gral and the Eyegis. It’s hard to get a good look at, fifth-dimensional as it is, but it’s weirdly humanoid, actually? It’s surrounded by floating lanterns and holding some sort of pipe or flute.

(The DM notes that Jean Clawed is awake and doesn’t see why any of this is his business. He’s capable of using the portals; he’s not Key tainted, that’s just how cats are.)

We exchange blows with the remaining hounds, Chromatic Orbs flying and chainsaws buzzing. René bayonets a hound to death, for the honor of all NPCs.

Gral powerslides on his knees across the Zoomy Zone, playing a complicated riff, woobling himself right through the fireplace into the kitchen. He spends another level 3 spell slot to get the portal to dance itself shut. “And that was Through the Fire and Flames!”

René reloads his gun. Shoshana blasts the hound with fire, so Vigdor’s action goes off and he chainsaws it to death, the body and spine getting caught in the spinning chain. FATALITY.

The searing light of Shoshana’s fire casts sharp shadows on the walls of the inn, which begin to writhe and re-form, swirling together into a lithe, snarling feline shape that springs toward the Lurker. It pounces with an odd, broken yowl that’s incredibly familiar – although Valeria and Gral have only ever heard it once, from underneath an overturned laundry basket.

Vigdor, who’s never met a flesh-hound OR a cursecat before, makes an arcana check to figure out what in the seven hells is going on. It seems some sort of entity is thinning the barriers between realities? Its very essence seems to be intermingled with portal; it cannot fully leave the portal or exist in this realm. Like a malevolent, sentient pair of curtains.

He’s like okay, curtains sound like something I can chainsaw. It’s curtains for you, see? (Fun fact: if he rolls 21 or higher on attack roll with chainsaw, he gets sneak attack regardless of other circumstances. Because it’s a goddamn CHAINSAW.)

The Lurker turns its attention directly on us, or at least to the enormous hissing cat hellbent on ruining its day. Gral, still strumming furiously, realizes the Lurker’s only got a couple of portals left. He’s closed a portal already; he’s gonna try to close all of them for good. The DM imposes disadvantage and a brutal pile of psychic damage, but Gral is unphased, hitting a power chord that shakes the entire inn.

The Lurker screeches and reaches for him, the space around Gral beginning to warp, but it’s too late, the portal slamming shut against it. The Zoomy Zones vanish; the portals close, the strange atmosphere fades. The road looks to be the size it was before instead of an endless stretch of packed earth; the vineyard is once again an easy ten-minute walk away.

His big solo complete, Gral sways and collapses unconscious. Valeria runs over and Lays On Hands so he doesn’t die, while Vigdor starts casting Mending on the destroyed bar furniture. Shoshana, meanwhile, just stares dumbstruck at the place where a huge spectral cat is dissipating into shadowy smoke.

“…Schmendrick?”

René is holding himself together, but he’s an old man and it’s been a while since he fought this much. He took a bit of damage; Valeria pat pats him some HP. “Thank you, Kyr. I…I need to check on my other guests. The old man with the Man-Go game, we must find out if he lives.”

Valeria accompanies him upstairs. Rack’s glowing rose vines are still visible, stitching the portal shut; it’s healing more quickly than Valeria’s used to seeing. The door to the old man’s room swings open under Valeria’s cautious knock. The bed is unmade but empty, and the old man’s luggage is gone. The only things left are a generous tip on the counter and his odd multicolored glasses.

As Vigdor steps outside to clean viscera off his chainsaw, Gral scopes out the stables. There’s evidence of disturbed earth around the grounds, but nothing conclusive. Aethis seems to be unbothered.

We reconvene without much to show for our investigation. But we have one last clue: Why were the hounds so interested in the old man’s map? We spread it out on one of the bar tables and crowd around. It’s a map of Valdia, but the path it shows us to take to Sturmhearst makes No Sense. It’s not even contiguous! It tells us to start here and wander north, and then the line cuts off next to some scribbled equations, the route picking up again elsewhere, where he’s drawn a symbol we don’t recognize – and so on, in strange and nonsensical disconnected paths.

Shoshana, on a hunch, puts on the multicolored glasses the old man left behind. Like 3D glasses, they reveal the hidden image. Through the kaleidoscopic lenses, she can see remnants of the Key’s influence all around the inn; the fading Zoomy Zones and closing portals light up in ultraviolet. The map, meanwhile, has gained an entirely new dimension, like a layer of holographs. NOW the shortcuts make sense – they route through other dimensions along the z-axis, with additional symbols and labels giving helpful hints.

To be honest, it does look like a much faster route. And one of the notes says it leads to the “Drowned City” – hey, isn’t that where Bullbreaker ended up? But we’re all rightfully wary of hopping right back into another flesh-hound portal disaster.

We now have the Extradimensional Map and the Stranger’s Glasses.

Oh! The map has a note for us: “Happy Journeys to a fellow master of the game. Your friend, T.T.”

We immediately rifle through our notes and realize he may have been Professor Trevor Twombly, Headmaster of Sturmhearst. Vigdor, did you know that guy?!

Vigdor didn’t recognize him. Maybe the guy looked like Twombly, if you squint? There were a lot of old men at Sturmhearst, and they wear masks most of the time? Also he had distracting glasses? So, like…maybe?

As we bicker, Vigdor snags the glasses off the table and heads to his room, opening up his case and taking a look. The lenses don’t reveal anything new about the object inside.

Unfortunately, the poor rogue didn’t bother to stealth. “Whatcha doin’ in here?” says Valeria, who followed shortly behind.

“Um, just looking at my leg, seeing if anything is weird-“

Valeria immediately checks Vigdor’s lower limbs for wounds. “I can help! An extra pair of hands can always-”

“No, no! I think I’m okay! Really!” he protests. He glances into the case again, clearly torn, and sighs. “Let me explain.”

He lifts a whole human leg out of the case, kicking and twitching.

“This is my leg, and I’m taking it to Sturmhearst. I’m not sure if it’s wholly mine anymore.”

Through his torn pants, Valeria can see a clunky clockwork leg to match his buzz-saw arm.

One player immediately yells “FULL METAL ALCHEMIST.” Another player says it again, in a slightly different voice.

Dr. Vigdor Gavril has joined the party!

#the cursewood #session recap #the key #valeria argent #gral omokk'duu #shoshana bat chaya #vigdor gavril #schmendrick #trevor twombly

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miss-tc-nova · 4 years

Text

A SOLDIER’s Memories - Cloud Strife x Fem!Reader Pt 7

Not gonna lie, I struggled a lot around this section of the story, but I think I finally got everything lined out.

Part 7: Dispelling Suspicions

The Gold Saucer. Fuck.

I barely want to be around Cloud. I really don’t want to be at the Gold Saucer. And I sure as hell don’t want to be at the Gold Saucer with Cloud. This is bad. Not that I’ve been doing myself any favors.

Honestly, my brain is kind of giving me whiplash. Up until the event that flipped my world, I was a bit of a joker who could take her job serious when she needed. But then shit happened. I became unapproachable. Only the Shinra executives and the Turks seemed alright interacting with me while everyone else seemed on edge, which was fine by me; I was an empty husk taking orders. Now, I’m kind of in an unknown state of who I am. I’ve already displayed that I still have access to that wrath that keeps people at bay, but I’m slipping back into that joker I used to be. I’d only meant it to aggravate my captors, but it came much more naturally than I expected.

That’s no excuse to let my guard down though.

This is our second pass through the Gold Saucer. The first was so chaotic that I couldn’t dwell on the past. Plus, we picked up a suspicious cat. We’ve been going on as if we’ve never met before, but I’m sure he’s up to something. It becomes far more obvious when we start running into Shinra grunts everywhere we go and whispers spread that there’s a spy among us. Since I’ve healed from my injury, courtesy of Saint Aerith, they decided that I needed constant babysitting and now it’s doubled since Cait Sith came along. I know it’s him, but I haven’t figured out what exactly he’s after yet. I’ve been biding my time, waiting for proof because I’m the obvious suspect.

I lounge across the bed of the Ghost Square inn, trying to block out the memories attempting to bubble to the surface. Not wanting to be here any longer and needing a distraction, I start for the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Cloud says sternly.

I give him a toothy grin. “We’re at an amusement park. I’d like to be amused.”

He scowls. “I don’t think so.”

“C’mon. I’ll be back before midnight.”

“No.”

“If you’re that worried, come with me.”

That wipes the strictness from his face. “What?”

“Well you can’t keep me here. So you can either waste your energy trying to keep me in this room or you can keep an eye on me and come with me.” I slip my hand from the glove he’s had a hold of and wave my fingers at him. “So what’ll it be?”

The blonde heaves a sigh. “Fine. Let’s go.”

We let the others know we’re heading out and go, to the objection of some. And out we go into the amusement park where I try to lose my tail; sucks for me that he’s got a good eye. Since I can’t lose him, I steer far away from Chocobo, Wonder, and Round Squares; who knows what’ll happen if I go there with him.

“Oh! Wonder Square!” and I jump into the entrance of Battle Square. Once I make it out, I look back and see that he’s still following me. Dammit. “Oops. Wrong entrance.”

“Stop that,” he huffs. “I know what you’re doing.”

I shrug and wander further up the stairs of the square. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Seriously. I know you’re trying to shake me which convinces me even more that you’re the spy.”

“Pfft. I’m not the spy.”

“Then why are you being so suspicious?”

I turn to him, still climbing. “Let me start following you around and see if you don’t try to escape. You’re killin’ my fun. Remember that things I said about morale?”

“That doesn’t apply to hostages.”

I actually pause to laugh, purposely annoying him. “I am not a hostage, despite what you and your random gang of miscreants might think.”

“Pretty big words for someone reluctant to fight unless she can get in a cheap shot.”

Oh, he’s pushing it. “Fine.” I wave to the help desk. “Let’s play.”

A glint of true interest flashes in his eyes. I know he’s been dying to take me on since I did get in that cheap shot at Shinra HQ. “You’re on.”

So Cloud and I register for the upcoming tournament, but drawing odds place us at opposite ends of the battle tree, meaning we’ll have to win every round to make it to the finals to take each other on. I have my fun with the warm up rounds, but Cloud’s attempting to make it obvious these rounds are worthless to him—he wants that final match.

“I hope you’re more fun than the gigas,” I call out over the roaring of the crowd. Cloud simply readies his sword. “Then again, you’re never any fun,” I sigh.

The round starts and Cloud is after me in a heartbeat. He’s definitely gotten better, become a challenge to actually take on compared to being susceptible to black-out sucker punches. I’m actually very impressed with the progress he’s made in such a short time. He’ll quickly overtake me at this rate. But not today.

I swing a khopesh at the man which he swats away and he barely has time to recover and stop the one in my hand from striking him. I take a few swipes to push him around before lunging. He steps back and I slam my sword into the ground where he’d just been standing. As I stand back up, I’ve got both blades in my hands and give him a smile. Cloud’s eyes widen and I very quickly jerk back, successfully pulling his legs from under him. I prevent him standing with a blade pointed at his chest.

“Face it, if I wanted you dead, I would’ve killed you myself. Shinra grunts just aren’t that reliable as you’ve noticed,” I say gloatingly. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be and there’s nothing you and your misfit band of hooligans could’ve done to stop me.” Cloud’s glare fades somewhat. “I’m not your enemy.” I don’t know why the next words come from my mouth, but they’re true. “I never was.”

Suddenly, Cloud’s sword comes up between us, knocking my blade from my hand. The man recovers his feet and, just before I can separate from him, he swings. The sword slams into my stomach, sending me flying back, crashing heavily into wall of the arena. I’ve lost.

I lie in the crevasse created for me, listening to the audience cheer on the chocobo. A crooked grin pulls at my lips even though I’m still struggling to regain my breath. I’d be dead had he chosen to use the sharp edge to do me in. His boots stop in front of me.

“A smart enemy wouldn’t let their guard down until they’ve won.” I let my gaze trail upwards, finding the victor offering his hand to me. “Guess that makes you ally.”

My smile widens and I take his hand. “’Bout time you figured it out, you cheater.”

“I didn’t cheat.”

“Liar.” I spot a bouncing crown making its way through the crowd and point it out. “And you guys thought I was the spy.”

He huffs and we chase down Cait Sith. Long story short, he gives away the Keystone to the Turks and I dangle him over a ledge until he spits out he’s got Marlene held prisoner. Annoyed, we follow him back to the inn where he explains to everyone that he was the spy and that it’s best to keep him around. Meanwhile, I curse myself for letting him get this far, though I suppose there was nothing I could’ve done with Barret’s little girl in his grasp.

I head for the stairs up to the rooms when the feline calls out to me. Pausing, I look back at him.

“What do you want?”

The moogle hops closer and Cait Sith plays in his cape. “I managed to sneak in before they cleared out your room at the military complex.” My brows pull together and he holds his hand out. “I know you don’t trust me, but this seemed important to you, so I brought it.”

Unsure of what he’s going on about, I open my hand to receive his gift. He drops in my hand a pendent strung on a silver chain. My heart implodes. Before I can even think about it, my other fist snaps forward, sending Cait Sith nearly halfway across the room. Immediately, Cloud and Tifa are on me to prevent me further mauling that feline. I shake the two off and climb the stairs without a single word, fist tightly clenched around the jewelry. The cool metal burns against my skin, dredging up memories of past visits to this place.

In the room I shared with the other girls, I rip the window open and wind my arm back to hurl the locket out of my life. That innocent face flashes behind my eyes. I clamp them shut and will myself to throw the necklace. But I don’t; I can’t. I’m still far too infatuated with the dead. Gnashing teeth and cursing myself, I look down at the simple, round trinket. Of course I had to be reminded of the things I’ve lost, of the life I’ll never have.

I give into my lapse of judgment and loop the chain around my neck, stuffing it down my shirt and out of sight. It feels like it weighs a ton but that’s just emotional baggage. Tifa, Aerith, and Yuffie all return to the room.

“Heeey,” Tifa says awkwardly.

Hands behind her back in an attempt to be non-threatening, Aerith steps closer. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Talk about what?” I say innocently.

“Talk about what?!” Yuffie exclaims. “You nearly busted in Cait Sith’s face!”

A giggle escapes me. “Oh that. That was for accusing me of spying on everyone.”

The girls all stare with blank, maybe-mildly-concerned expressions while I just smile at them.

#cloud strife #cloud x reader #cloud strife x reader #ffvii cloud #ff7 cloud #fem!reader

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hermannsthumb · 4 years

Note

Please do 6 , bed sharing is my only (well one of them) weakness :)

6. we always carpool home for the holidays from college but a storm hit and now we’re taking the last room at the local b&b (bonus: bedsharing! we’re adults!)

from winter writing prompts here

bedsharing…..the trope of the gods…i could write this same scenario over and over again and never get tired of it. heres some vague professors au

--------------------------------------------------

“Unbelievable,” Hermann says. “Bloody unbelievable. This is your fault, you realize.”

“How the fuck is this my fault?” Newt says. He slams the car door hard enough it shakes snow off from the other side of the hood and onto Hermann, which he derives a petty joy from. Not that it fucking makes a difference--they’re both already ankle-deep in it, both already shielding their eyes against it and squinting through it just to argue. “I didn’t will a storm into existence.”

“You made us late,” Hermann says.

“Bullshit!”

“I was all set to go—”

“Until you made us stop for coffee,” Newt says.

“I was tired—”

The rest of his words are drowned out in a howling gust of wind, which sweeps even more snow into their faces. Hermann slams his car door, too, and curses. Newt hears that without a problem. “Let’s just get inside,” he shouts over. “I don’t want to die of hypothermia because you decided to be a bitch.”

They trudge up to the front door of the Bed and Breakfast (Newt lunging away from Hermann’s sharp jabs at his ankles with the end of his cane all the while), the first one they could find on the literal shortest notice possible. Judging by the packed parking lot they’re not the only ones with that idea. Newt wonders how many of them are coming from the college, too, students or—like them—otherwise. “I hope there’s room for us,” he says.

“For your sake, I hope so too,” Hermann says, ominously.

The inside of the lobby isn’t very encouraging. There’s at least half a dozen other people shivering in line at the front desk, most of whom are toting suitcases, some of them even wrapped Christmas presents. A lot of exhausted college students, like Newt expected. One older couple in matching Christmas sweaters. “Yeesh,” Newt says.

Scowling all the while, Hermann muscles himself into line just as the door opens and more people come bustling in. “Unbelievable,” he mutters again.

Newt squeezes in behind him. He wishes he’d thought to bring their luggage in, too; if they manage to get a room, and that’s a big if, he’ll either have to go without pajamas and a toothbrush or brave the blizzard again. Neither option sounds appealing. Staying at the B&B doesn’t exactly sound appealing, either, especially not with the promise of Geiszler homecooked dinners and his actual (well, childhood) bed just out of reach on the horizon. He told his dad he’d be home tonight, too, damn it. “At least it’s warmer in here,” he finally sighs.

“Only just,” Hermann says, casting his scowl towards the door, which has opened again. He draws his coat tighter around himself and hmphs.

The good news, they discover when they finally reach the front of the line, is that the B&B has space for them. The bad news… “I’m afraid we’ve only got one room left open,” the receptionist says apologetically, “and it’s a queen, not twins. Would you guys mind sharing?”

“Sharing?” Newt and Hermann say.

“We’d be happy to give it to you at a reduced rate, considering the circumstances,” the receptionist continues, just as apologetic.

“Sharing,” Hermann repeats. He sniffs. “Are you certain you’ve got no other rooms?”

The receptionist nods. Someone behind them in line coughs; they’re not the only ones vying for that last queen bed, Newt realizes. And unless they want to keep trying to navigate the snowstorm, unless Hermann’s stubborn, stubborn ass wants to stay up in the B&B lobby all night long, they better fucking claim it now. “We’ll take the queen,” Newt says.

Hermann bitches at him all the way up the stairs to their room, and he continues to bitch at him while he strips out of his winter coat and hat, and he doesn’t even stop when Newt shuts himself in the bathroom to brush his teeth with the (complementary) toothbrush he got from the front desk. It has built in toothpaste. It’s kind of weird, to be honest. “We didn’t have to resort to this,” Hermann insists through the crack in the door. “We could’ve—”

“Camped out in the car?” Newt says. He spits out his toothpaste foam and wipes his mouth on the back of his wrist. “Turned around and driven all the way back to campus, which is also shut down because of the snow?”

“Taken a plane,” Hermann sniffs.

“Airport’s closed too, buddy,” Newt says. “This is literally our only option.” No lobbies for him, thank you.

He pushes open the door; Hermann turns a bright red and drops his eyes to the carpet quickly, like Newt’s done something terrifically scandalous. “Where on Earth is your clothing?”

Maybe Newt has done something scandalous. It’s just makeshift pjs, is all: the old t-shirt he’d already been wearing under his fifty layers of sweater and jacket, and his boxers. His wet jeans are spread out across the small radiator in the bathroom. “My suitcase is in the car, man, and I just wanna be comfy,” he says. “No way in hell I’m going back out there to get my pajamas.” When Hermann still looks disgruntled, Newt starts to tug at the waistband of his boxers. “I can go full commando, if you want.”

“No,” Hermann says. “No. That’s quite enough.”

Newt drops his hand, grinning. “Take off your stupid coat already. You’re sweating. Here—” He drags it off of a ragdoll-limp Hermann himself, then (after a second of consideration) does similarly with his blazer and sweater. He looks almost naked in just the button-up—it’s weird. Newt rarely sees him in anything that bare. “Take off your pants.”

“No,” Hermann repeats. “Absolutely not.”

“They’re not gonna dry otherwise,” Newt says. “Come on, just—”

Hermann swats him away twice, then raises his cane threateningly. Newt holds up his hands and takes a deliberate step back. “Fine, fine.”

Hermann lowers his cane.

Neither of them fall asleep very fast. Or at all. Newt, because Hermann is a blanket hog, and as a result he can’t stop shivering; Hermann, because Newt can’t as much so breathe without apparently annoying the everloving shit out of him and keeping him up. Finally (after Newt yawns, and Hermann hisses like an angry cat), Newt just rolls over and prods Hermann’s shoulder. “I’m gonna get a snack from the vending machine,” he says. “Do you want anything?”

He half expects Hermann to ignore him and pretend to be asleep or something, so he’s surprised when he’s answered with a quiet, terse “Pretzels.”

Newt smiles. “Got it.”

Hermann’s sitting up and wrapped in the comforter when he gets back. He shakes his head when Newt tucks his snacks under one arm and makes to turn on the light. “Don’t,” he says. “I’d rather it dark. Is it still snowing?”

“Yeah.” Pretty badly, in fact: the vending machine was in a small alcove across from a window, and Newt peeked through the curtains before he came back here. It’s a white wasteland out there. He can barely see the cars in the parking lot. “I don’t think we’re gonna be out of here any time soon.”

He nudges Hermann’s side until Hermann finally relents his grip on the comforter, scoots in next to him, and passes him his pretzels. Hermann wrinkles his nose at the package. “Peanut butter?”

“It was either that or the cheese kind,” Newt says. “Be grateful I got you anything.”

Hermann glares, but opens the package and begins munching away with more venom than Newt thinks pretzels strictly require. Newt, meanwhile, eats his M&Ms and drafts a quick text to his dad, just to keep him from having a heart attack when he wakes up tomorrow and Newt’s still MIA. not sure when i’ll be getting in. storm is rly bad. me and herm are stuck at hotel

Four years of carpooling up the east coast for the university’s winter break (Newt back to his dad’s place in Boston, Hermann just a short bus ride north of that, where he stays in his sister’s guest room), and this is the first year he and Hermann have ever been incapacitated by a storm like this. “Did you text you sister yet?” he says.

“Mm?” Hermann says. “Ah. No, I haven’t. I left my mobile in the car.”

“You left it in the car?”

“Well, it’s not as if I bloody well need it,” Hermann snaps. “The only person who texts me is in my bed.” He fidgets. “Besides. I never told my sister we left in the first place, so there’s no point..”

“Oh,” Newt says.

Hermann fidgets again. “Truthfully, Newton—if we never made it up at all, I don’t imagine I’d be too heartbroken. My sister will be hosting our entire family this year, and many of us...don’t get along.”

“With each other, or with you?” Newt jokes.

“With me,” Hermann sighs.

Okay. Newt made that five times more awkward than it needed to be. He supposes he should’ve guessed that there was a reason Hermann only ever seems to talk about his sister out of his immediate family of six, and even then he does like she’s his business partner. “Do you want to. Uh. Talk about it?” he says.

“Not particularly,” Hermann says.

They sit in mildly uncomfortable silence. Newt kicks his heel back against the bed. He’s about to say something very, very dumb, but if he’s lucky, Hermann might not mind. (Though, if he doesn’t, Newt can’t say the same for his dad when Newt breaks the news.) “We don’t have to go up at all,” he blurts out. “We can just stay right here.”

Hermann looks up at him sharply. “Here?”

Newt likes Hermann. He’s...weird. Crazy smart, and funny, with big brown eyes to die for, but most importantly, he’s bitchy, and he’s weird. He likes Hermann as a colleague, and he likes Hermann as a frenemy, and he likes Hermann in the sense that he daydreams about holding his hand and brushing his stupid hair out of his face more than is probably healthy. He would, frankly, love nothing more than to blow off all of his holiday plans to eat Chinese food and watch movies or something with the guy instead. “Okay, maybe not here-here, but if the storm clears we could just go back home. And. Y’know. Do something fun together.” He grins, mostly just to diffuse the tension. “And if it doesn’t clear and we’re stuck here, I did pack your Hanukkah present with me, so it’s not a total bust.”

“Ha,” Hermann says. Newt watches him worry at his lower lip. “I wouldn’t...mind that,” he continues. “Going back home. Or just staying here together.”

“Good,” Newt says. His mouth feels dry; his heart is racing, just a bit. “That’s...good.”

Hermann smiles at him, and ducks a little closer under the comforter.

#newmann #maria's fanfiction tag #Anonymous

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dreamweaversofficial · 3 years

Text

Year Two, Chapter One

“I am so glad you’re back,” Lyric says fervently, throwing her arms around Garen’s shoulders. He laughs and pats her back. From the doorway of their room, she can see the other year two students engaging in joyful reunions, linking arms and calling gleefully to roommates. They’ve all got new rooms and new classes, but this is familiar.

Devon strides down the hall, bag dragging behind them, and comes to a stop in front of the room they share with Reema. She stands in the doorway and smirks. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

“Out of the way, Salten.” Devon rolls their eyes, grinning, and brushes past her. She looks up, catching Lyric’s gaze. They sneer at each other.

“She’s not one for showing emotion in public,” Garen notes, following her gaze.

Lyric sighs. “She’s not one for showing emotion besides disgust.”

Unbidden, the memory of Reema in the corridor returns to her. The girl’s face, pinched and miserable, as Lyric tried to comfort her. But soon the memory is replaced by the feel of the cold floor under her hands, pain spreading through her wrists.

A boy in a wheelchair steers past them. “‘Scuse me.”

“Sorry!” Garen chirps back, scooting out of the way with his entire body. He ushers her into their room, towing his backpack and suitcase behind him. Lowering his voice, he eases the door shut. “I brought so much contraband food.”

“You’re dream sent,” Lyric groans, making grabby hands at the bag. “I’ve had nothing but school food for ages.”

It’s not like it’s bad food - it’s just that Mentality’s still a school, at the end of the day. A school on a health kick, apparently. There aren’t exactly vending machines filled with the sugary stuff care didn’t, well, care enough to ban. He pulls a baggie of Scandanavian Swimmers out of his bag and tosses them to her.

“I still don’t know how you think that’s the height of flavor,” Garen complains.

She shrugs. “More for me.”

They settle on the couch to throw candy into their mouths at rapid speed.

“Tell me about your summer,” Lyric implores, shaking her hair out of her face. Candy and spit almost follow.

Garen tilts his head from side to side, scrunching his face. “It was pretty normal, honestly. I mean -” (a dreamy smile) “I had this great shared dream with my family. We were all at a beach, I think, and I think the umbrellas were - floating? It was really warm.”

“That sounds sweet,” Lyric says truthfully. It sounds maybe a tad boring, but mellow.

“Uh,” he mumbles, abruptly coming out of his reverie. “Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t that great. I mean.”

“Oh,” Lyric realizes. “It’s fine. I like hearing about your family.”

Garen exhales, relieved, and smiles sheepishly. “My little sister would have smacked me. Lizzie.”

“Lizzie,” she repeats, satisfied. “A good name.”

“Is this awkward?” he asks, lurching forward. “I might be projecting.”

“You wanna do an awkward hug?” Lyric offers, spreading her arms. He shrugs, wraps his arms around her, and suffers through two back pats. “Now we’re good.”

“Thank you,” Garen replies solemnly.

There’s a click at the door, and they look at each other in unbridled panic. As if of one mind, they shove their respective snacks back into his backpack, settling back onto the couch naturally. ‘Naturally’, in this case, means Garen has one leg draped over the side of the couch, the other propped up on the table. Lyric has one leg in lotus position and the other jabbing into Garen’s side.

“Lyric.”

“Headmaster,” Lyric perks up.

The woman smiles. “Settling into having a roommate again?”

“It won’t be a hard adjustment,” she rushes to assure her. “I won’t be a bother.”

“You talking to me isn’t a bother,” Headmaster admonishes. “I was just checking up on the students. Good to see you two are doing well.”

Lyric beams at her, and the headmaster ducks back out the door with a final nod to Garen. He settles back into a normal position. “You totally worship the headmaster.”

“I don’t worship her,” Lyric denies stiffly. She doesn’t remove her foot from Garen’s ribs, instead giving him a jab. He curses and swats her away. “I just give her due deference, as someone who pulled me out of mundanity.”

“What thirteen year old uses words like due deference and mundanity,” he mutters, shaking his head. It’s not mean spirited, but something in Lyric prickles. She shoves it down.

“Let’s get you unpacked,” she suggests instead, tossing a candy at his head. Garen heaves himself off the couch with a sigh, cracks his back like an old man, and offers her a hand up. She takes it.

“What I painted my room orange this year?”

“What if you didn’t?”

“This year,” their professor informs them, “will be harder than the last. You’re second years, so it’s hardly going to be a mission every day, but it’s your last year in which to decide what track you’re entering.”

Lyric and Garen throw each other glances, pen from mouths to paper and back again. Daydreams??? is written at the head of her own notebook. Garen’s sheet is covered in doodles of sports plays and one terrible drawing of Salza. She smirks.

“We’ll get you on the team this year, buddy,” she whispers, patting him on the shoulder. Throwing a significant look at the sketch, she continues: “I can’t promise anything more than that.”

“Shut up,” he mutters back, covering the drawing with his hand, and underlines Daydreams??? on her sheet twice.

Professor Ozik finishes drawing a venn diagram on the board, then motions towards the oval where weavers and eaters intersect. His students furrow their brows at him.

“I know we don’t like to discuss anything beyond the whole ‘our opponents are heartless monsters’ gig, but I figured I’d throw it out there. I tend to get a bit philosophical -” - here, some of the kids groan - “- but think about it. Why do dreamweavers and dreameaters have the same fundamental magic?”

“If you’re suggesting we have the same common ancestor, I’m going to be extremely concerned,” a boy pipes from the back. His seatmate snickers, thinks about it, and contorts her face into a look of dismay. Another starts fake-retching.

“That’s scientifically disproven,” Salza points out mildly, and the boy snaps to attention. He rubs the back of his neck.

“Not ancestors, per se…” the professor halts. “Anyway. We can start with the differences.”

“Dreamweavers are creatures of destruction,” another student recites - Mary? Mercy? - “They consume the dreams of normal people, so dreamweavers have to stop them.”

Ozik writes fight on the board, then halts. “I want you all to remember you’re normal too, alright?”

There’s a lull in conversation, a lapse in the faintly uneasy but engaged atmosphere. Discomfort. Ozik turns to face them. “Seriously. You’re no worse than people without magic, but you’re no better. Just because your eyes are purple -”

He catches sight of Lyric and hastily backtracks. “Magic doesn’t make you an inherently better person. People can’t help the way they’re born.”

Cirro throws a look at Lyric over his shoulder, long and disdainful. She bristles. A few of the surrounding students follow his gaze, eyes trailing to Lyric’s, and seem to remember she’s visibly different from them - her one mistake. She supposes being asked to look inward only makes them more predisposed to look out.

Rolling his shoulders, their professor blows chalk into the front row. Lyric’s not sure why the instructors here are either hideously informal or insanely uptight, but she’s not exactly complaining. These aren’t usual situations.

I thought we were getting along, she thinks at Cirro, but he’s back to being the same jerk he was at the start of first year. A reset of sorts. Reema makes a clucking noise in the back of her throat. The way she’s looking at their professor is almost - impressed, for once, admiration leaking through as his words.

“Would you consider magic users to see things in black and white rather than shades of gray, when it comes to the dreameaters?”

Professor Ozik twists his mouth to the side. “An excellent question! From a more philosophical standpoint, we have to assume every living thing is playing into their baser nature. However, those same creatures presumably also have free will and emotions.”

It’s an uncomfortable thought, one most of the born-and-bred magic students surely wish Reema hadn’t planted. She herself looks almost inclined to take notes. Shifting in her seat, Lyric sets down the pen, picks it back up, presses her fingers into it tight enough to hurt.

Reema talks like there’s always more to her sentence: a pause, the internal debate, and conclusive refraining sigh. No word escapes her lips that she hasn’t already considered a thousand times. Lyric has to bite words back half-formed, damaging combinations of letters to wound and cauterize.

The fact that she thinks before her actions hurts. She knows how cruel she’s going to be, and she does it anyway.

Salza’s eyes are alight with cautious interest. “It hasn’t been proved that dreamweavers are capable of conscious thought beyond ‘eat dreams’ and ‘fight anything in my way’.”

“She talks like she’s in a scientific study, and plays like she’s on a national team,” Garen mumbles dreamily. Lyric stifles a laugh, dipping her head.

“Do you think we could try to talk to them?” Reema asks. This is the most interested she’s looked during any lecture, leaning slightly forward with her eyes trained on Professor Ozik. He’s engaged in response, flourishing under the weight of his students’ eyes, and opens his mouth to answer.

There’s a knock on the door, and he flashes an apologetic look as he goes to answer it. Ozik blinks. “Headmaster. What a pleasantly unexpected surprise.”

The usually kindly looking woman’s eyes are downturned, face sober, lips pressed slightly inwards. The headmaster whispers something to Professor Ozik, then ducks back out into the hall. He looks at Reema.

“The headmaster would like to see you after class.” Ozik says, then waves a hand. “You aren’t in trouble for anything.”

“That’s a first,” Lyric rolls her eyes, but her mind is stuck on Headmaster’s face as she left - guilt.

The sheet of paper in Reema’s hand, ripped out of a notebook in anticipation of answers, crumples loudly.

The girl jolts slightly, as if she hadn’t meant to do that. She smooths her fingers over the page as if she wants to unwrinkle it, but the tightness in her eyes implies she’d rather clench her fist instead. Lyric winces at the unmeasured movement. The blankness of her face covering concern.

“So,” Professor Ozik announces loudly, “Where were we?”

“Dreameaters,” Marcus suggests from the back row, and Ozik nods.

But the room has a different kind of charged tension now, vague interest in whatever their resident troublemaker has done this time mixed with the shift of an interrupted lesson. Lyric scribbles down what appears on the board in between glances towards Reema. Devon catches her, clearly interpreting it as a scornful look, and scowls back. She averts her eyes.

After class, Lyric hastily packs up her stuff, lingering by the door. Reema slowly and methodically puts her notebook and pen into her bag. Needling her, Devon mutters hushed questions that Lyric has to crane her neck to hear.

“- do something without me?” Devon asks, their own bag ready to go. “I’d rather have warning. I hate getting busted for stuff I didn’t do.”

“Quit pestering me, alright?” Reema says calmly. She stands. “I haven’t pulled anything by myself. It’s probably something about my grades - I’ve been tanking assignments on purpose to see if they’ll kick me out.”

Lyric pretends to fiddle with something on her backpack. She’s told Garen to head to their next class without her, so it looks less suspicious, but she’s not so sure it’s working.

Reema glances over at her, then lowers her voice. “Maybe they’re finally sending me home.”

“Right,” Devon replies, face frozen, and laughs stiffly. “I’d forgotten about that for a minute.”

“I haven’t,” Reema replies, her voice dropping to a low whisper. Lyric catches herself trying to lean in and hear what follows, pulling back with a silent noise of regret. She wheels out of the classroom ahead of them and slinks towards the headmaster’s office.

Look natural, she tells herself. It’s a good thing I head here so often - nobody thinks anything out of the ordinary.

The other girl darts into the office, and Lyric feels a pang of anxiety in her stomach. Listening into other people’s conversations isn’t exactly polite, and listening into the headmaster’s conversation with a student is hardly any better. Still, she edges closer to the door and tries to pretend she’s leaning against a wall, no ulterior motives here.

“You asked to see me?” Reema’s voice floats out of the room, anticipatory.

“I’m afraid it’s about your parents,” Headmaster responds. Her tone is heavy. Forbidding. “They’ve been involved in some - less than savory activity.”

“Please just say you think they’re criminals and move on,” Reema snarks. “This has happened a hundred times before.”

The headmaster exhales. “I’m afraid it hasn’t. At least not something of this magnitude.”

Reema is silent. As if answering Lyric’s unspoken plea, the headmaster continues. “They were using spells on those without magic. Serious spells, Reema. Those that you can’t use without consequence.”

“So, what, they’re getting arrested by the magic police?” the girl sneers. “I can’t believe -”

“Can you really look me in the eyes and tell me you can’t believe this would happen?” Headmaster asks, quiet and understanding. Lyric’s head slowly tips back, her gaze fixed on the ceiling, and she tries not to breathe.

Again, the only response is silence. Then: “I want to see them.”

“I’m afraid I can’t permit second years to leave school grounds once the school year has started,” Headmaster begins.

“Not even for ‘family emergencies?’”

She sighs. “Not even then.”

Lyric can picture it: Reema, furiously indignant, Headmaster, unflappable and unmoving. Teenage passion burning out against hard stone.

“I’m afraid I called you in here to give you other news, as well.” the headmaster admits, and the sound of shuffling papers fills the hallway. “Since your legal guardians are going to be unable to care for you this summer, you’re going to have to stay in the Mentality dorms.”

“Are you serious,” Reema demands, enraged. The fight seems to drain out of her in the next moment, a defeated quality entering her voice. Lyric risks a peek into the room. The other girl’s shoulders are slumped, her head bowed, and her eyes closed. The picture of ingracious defeat.

Then it hits her.

Reema is going to be staying at Mentality over the summer.

Lyric is going to have to deal with her, without even the buffer of other people her own age, for two and a half months.

#dreamweavers #dreamweavers official #original story #originalstory #lgbtq+#lgbtq #fantasy

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