auroraexpress | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who: Everyone
When: Day 20, evening
Where: The train and surrounding terrain

[So after all the earlier excitement.... dramatic organ music starts to play through the cars. There's no obvious source. It's just... There? All around you for a while, before fading.

Of course before the music fades there's more things going on. A mist seeps up from the earth outside the train and within the train simply seems to form like it's produced by invisible fog machines. As the mist grows into a thick fog, you can hear eerie noises. Distant wolf howls, the screech of a fox that sounds like human screaming, owls hooting hauntingly, the leathery flap of bat wings, and other, less identifiable noises of the night, strange and otherworldly.

If you go out in it, breathe it in, the mist will chill you. Make you desire... Touch.

The need to hold another person is an almost growing compulsion, but it can be fought.

However things that are harder to avoid are the flowers, night blooming wisteria in white and purple seems to have grown from nowhere in the train cars, hanging down to brush the heads of passengers with sweet scented blossoms, and the floors of the train and ground around it have become endless beds of gently glowing moonflowers.

The only places the fog and flowers don't reach are team cabins.

Effects:

Mist:

Cold that cannot be dispelled without touch, a desire to touch others.

Wisteria:

Purple blossoms cause an empathetic bond with the next person you touch.

White blossoms cause arousal and a mild to powerful aphrodisiac effect.

Moonflowers:

Share memories or thoughts with the next person you touch.

By morning the mist and flowers will vanish.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[On her end, there's confusion, and concern, and a sort of awkward sense of displacement, the rules are different and she doesn't know how to cope.]

You seemed cold? The temperature cannot concern me, so...

[Oh jeez these aren't his feelings. He's kind of alarmed, pulling back but awkwardly unsure what to do with her coat.]

Cannot..?

The cold doesn't really effect me.

[Because she's, y'know, dead.]

[He doesn't know??]

...I see.

[Not really but whatever the jacket is a nice gesture at least. It seems like a peace offering even if it doesn't do much against the supernatural chill.]

Don't worry too much about it.

[She is fighting an overwhelming urge to pat him on the head. She doesn't think he'd appreciate it.]

[Hard to say with him. He's just going to pull the coat tighter in a vain hope it'll work. He's definitely discombobulated but he's got his resting bitch face back.]

I wasn't.

...You really aren't used to dealing with human people, are you?

[Would it help if she was a horse, Jusis? She doesn't have that form back yet.]

I interact with people fine.

[He's just abrupt and rude but some people don't mind it for various reasons.]

But I'll admit small talk has never been my forte.

You just seem like you'd be more comfortable if I was a horse.

[She's not really judging. Horses are great.]

....I do prefer horses to most people but I'm not sure how I'd feel about you as a horse.

...That sounded better in my head, I promise.

[She. She can't resist it anymore.

Head....pat....

At least the memory this time is short and just adorable. She's flopped out in a spooky-ass meadow somewhere, clearly much younger, and just...surrounded by forest creatures. Dark, demonic-looking horses (she thinks they're cute), spooky-ass stag and deer, wolves, bears, foxes and--is that a fucking chimera?--all manner of predatory creatures, serpents coiled up on top of the mammals to stay warm. Bunnies, which...well they're bunnies they never really look spooky. Boars. All of them are coming over to talk to her, give her news of the goings on in the forest...it's not speech, but he'll get a definite clear impression of what fox gossip is like. ]

[What the heck. He looks, and feels, kind of stunned by the headpat. Not sure if he should be offended? But also kind of wistful because he really has always been affection starved. So he feels half patronized and half embarrassed and another half weirdly flipfloppy. Don't mind that that's three halves.]

...You're good with animals. I suppose that makes sense.

I'm closer to them than I am to human, anyway.

[...Ruffling his hair a little bit, then! Playful. Affectionate.

That loneliness,that starvation, she's familiar with it. He reminds her of her best friend, so she can't help but feel a little more warmly to him.]

[The embarrassment overcomes the rest finally, and though his heart is now weirdly achey and lonely, he ducks away from the head pats. It's too much, he feels treated like a child which is both nice and awful, makes him feel patronized but paid attention to. And the whole empathy bond makes him very freaked out, feeling far too vulnerable even as he tries to distance himself from all emotions while at the same time wanting more warmth.]

What are you, anyway?

[A far too blunt question.]

Mmm, that's complicated to explain. My brother calls us dhampir. Deathwalkers, only half-living. But by birth, we're Nightkin.

[There's. A lot to unpack there.]

Most of that went past me.

The Nightkin are a species of people who are natural shapeshifters, most of whom can only take the form of a carnivore from their enviroment of birth.

My twin brother and I died when we were still babies, and were resurrected with some...side effects, turning us into things he termed dhampir.

...That's a lot.

[SHRUG.]

[If it doesn't bother her should it bother him??]

I suppose this place is chock full of strange people anyway.

[She's used to people freaking out tbh.]

So you've met Crow, then.

[HE'S WEIRD AND A JERK AND THEY'RE NOT FRIENDS.]

...Crow is your definition of strange?

Yes.

[WHO IS EVEN THAT EMOTIONALLY DISTANT WHILE STILL AN AMNESIAC? WHO?]

Compared to everyone else here?

[Look he thinks Naan is an amnesiac and Naan is just as distant while still being his teammate. Also he's just used to Crow.]

...I haven't really met anyone very strange?

[???]