Is the Owl Casting Spells that We’re Under? [Open to Thorne!]

[northerndragon]

WHO: Jon Snow, Hennessy, Rey, anyone else in Thorne who feels like popping in: including you!
WHEN: May 22-28 equivalent.
WHERE: Castle Thorne, esp the food stores, but elsewhere around Thorne is fine.
WHAT: The moth-hares invade, and some Thorne residents are tasked with fending them off. Feel free to use this for your own related threads in Thorne.
WARNINGS: Cuteness? Deep inventory jargon? The potential for long explanations of food in various canons? I’ll update this if something comes up.

Prompt(s) in comments. I wrote in prose, but I have no format preference and will be happy to match you.

Comments

[northerndragon]

Her proposal, not quite a proposal, clearly made in jest and exasperation, causes him to let out a small, surprised snort of a laugh. Their situation is ridiculous. He feels half a fool. But there is something to laugh about, in how small a problem it is.

“No, maybe not that. Nor roasting them. They seem to like the powder… do you know what it is?”

The orb had been full of it, and meant to keep them away. Might be that it works both ways, depending how it’s handled.

He nearly laughs again at the way the creature bats at the jewelry in her ears, until one of them gets a piece of his hair in its mouth and proceeds to try to groom him. Then, his put-upon look returns.

[impressionism]

"Nope. I got carried away trying to repair some broken ones, and the result --"

She plucks the offending creature off her shoulder and holds onto it firmly, despite its shrieking and attempts at wriggling free. It's earned a mild glare, though even Hennessy has to admit it's ridiculously cute. Too cute. Deceptively cute.

"Well. We've got a fuckton of them. Should we just lead them back and try to contain them once we're sure they're all indoors?"

[northerndragon]

He shrugs.

“It’s not a bad idea. Not our task, but not a bad idea. If they’re going to follow us like bees to honey, we might as well take advantage of it if we can.

“But where should we lure them? Somewhere away from the food stores. I don’t know the castle as well as some of you others do.”

Those who have been here, gilded prisoners, for longer than he has.

[impressionism]

She's placed her still-functioning orb outside the stores already, so really the only thing they need to do is go somewhere reasonably contained until they can get cleaned up. Leaving a trail of dust all throughout the castle seems like a bad idea, though.

Hennessy had been intending to head upstairs and do some more studying after placing her orbs, but since it's clear that's not happening, she glances out the way she'd come in.

"I really would love to make these things someone else's problem, so I can't believe I'm saying this -- but we could lead them further away from town, maybe find a place to scrub this stuff off while we're out there?"

[northerndragon]

He gives her a long look, considering the idea, then smiles. Before he even replies, he’s turned a way that he knows will lead outdoors, with all his train of moth-hares following him. He speaks on the move.

“Aye, that would do it. How far have they ever let you go from town?”

With care, he raises his hand and removes one of his curls from one of the creatures’ mouths. It’s an insistent little beast. He doesn’t break his stride, but after a brief struggle, he tucks the moth-hare under his arm.

[impressionism]

"... Let me? We're not prisoners. There's not much out there, but I don't think they arrest you for wandering off unless you're planning to hike all the way to one of the other towns."

Hennessy realizes belatedly that she actually has no idea how far one would even have to go to get to the Free Cities, for example. They'd always gone via portal in the past. For all she knows, it's more or less impossible to leave by anything other than magic.

"We'll get them out past the food stores and into a nice open space on the outskirts of town. They'll figure it out from there."

[northerndragon]

He gives her a brief, passing skeptical look, but lets the comment about whether or not they’re really prisoners go. Much of Thorne feels like his time at Castle Black, in that there are places he can go, places he can’t, and he can’t go too far.

But the Horizon tastes like freedom.

As they walk along, making their way out of the castle proper, more moth hares join their little train.

“The town outside the castle, that reminds me of home. Well, enough. Less snowy than home, and less chance to hunt. Do you ever miss it, the place you came from?”

[OOC: yooo, at any point feel free to have them walk in silence for a while!]

[impressionism]

Considering that she was thrown into actual prison upon her arrival here, the warnings not to go too far aren't so bad, though they do occasionally make her want to go too far just to see what happens. Unfortunately for her, what happens is as likely to be starting to literally melt as not, depending on the magic status of the other places.

She snorts in response to his question.

"The place where people were constantly trying to murder me and my family and where I was slowly dying anyway? Even if I missed it, it sucked. The internet was nice and all, and I miss cars, but it's not so bad here."

She's gathering that Jon must've come from one of those medieval places, or at least somewhere terrifyingly rural. She almost envies him the simplicity of it all.

the very worst tag you will receive in this thread

[northerndragon]

“Ah, I’m sorry,” he replies. Not everyone has the fortune that he had in his upbringing. And dying… he understands the pain and the trouble of that better than most.

But there’s something he doesn’t understand.

“What’s the Internet?”

literally lol, u know nothing jon snow!

[impressionism]

Hennessy should've known better, but she very nearly facepalms anyway. Now she's got to explain the internet to medieval times over here. This is her life now.

"Have you figured out how to access the weird network thing here? It's like that, except of in your head people scream at each other on devices that let them write grammatically awful screeds at one another until someone gets bored.

And there's a fuckton of pictures of cats."

At least she decided not to tell him it was for porn?

[northerndragon]

He walks a few steps further along, looking puzzled, but keeping up a good pace. As the creature under his arm begins to wriggle, he brings it out in front of his chest and gently sets his forefinger against its nose, the way he had Ghost when Ghost was a pup. Might be it will stop wriggling.

“Why cats?” he asks.

He understands why people would scream at each other if they could.

“We send ravens where I come from, with scrolls tied to them, but only when the castle is important enough to have a rookery.”

[impressionism]

Hennessy shrugs.

"No idea. I'm a dog person."

Technically true; one of her had liked cats as well, but that version was dead now. Cats were too like Hennessy herself; she required a more trustworthy animal companion if she ever thought she could care for anything at all.

She shoos one of the small creatures back into the general line they've been following, as she is not going to chase stragglers down after this, and snorts faintly at the mention of ravens.

"My friend's got a raven. He calls her Chainsaw; I don't think you could get her to send a message, but I'm pretty sure she frequently curses in corvid."

There's a nice open space up ahead that looks far enough away from any food stores that the moths will likely rejoin their migration. Hennessy quickens her step in anticipation of being done with this and getting to scrub the rest of the dust off before one of them decides to adopt her as its person. She is not a moth hare person.

[northerndragon]

“Some of them seem like they’re cursing in Common, now and then. Been years since I was a steward who had the feeding of them from time to time, but I remember… the squawking could be deafening.”

He sees the open area and the water nearby, and lets out a little sigh of relief. As they’ve walked, more and more of the creatures have joined the train to follow them.

“I am sorry you can’t meet Ghost. He is a direwolf, not a dog, but — well, maybe in the Horizon. As much like him as I can muster.”

[impressionism]

She decides not to tell him that should he run into a raven cursing in actual English around here, it's just Ronan being a dick. Let him find that one out on his own.

"Direwolf, huh. Sounds badass. I wouldn't mind meeting one, even if he's not quite the same."

The difference between real things and dreamt ones isn't that visible to most people, anyway.

She glances back at the small train of moth-hares, down at her extremely dusted clothes, and at the small body of water ahead.

"Race you to it?"

She's got on shoes that aren't the most amazing for running, but she definitely is just going to fling herself straight into the water once she gets there. She is not repeating this whole process because she left a speck of dust on her clothing.

[northerndragon]

He means to say something, then means to take her challenge, but he’s still holding one of the moth-hares, so the first thing he takes is a moment to set it down gently. It immediately tries to climb his leg, and he mutters again, Seven hells.

“Aye, you’re on,” he says then.

He’s making for the water too, and not taking any trouble to undress himself. It isn’t only the company — although it’s also the company. More to the point, the clothes need washing as much as his hair and face do. If he was to leave them by the water, the creatures would probably swarm them, and probably continue to swarm him once he put his clothing on again.

Gods be good, they will not try to drown themselves once he and Hennessy are in the water.

Until then, it’s good to have grass and dirt under his feet, and it’s good to plunge into the water, too. Once he’s there, he wades in all up to the waist.

A cadre of disappointed moth-hares stares at him from the water’s edge, before beginning to disperse.

[impressionism]

Hennessy's fast, but she stops to take her shoes off and toss them on the bank before she rushes in after him, shrieking a bit at the cold shock of the water.

A few of the moth-hares sniff idly at her shoes, but seeing no more prize forthcoming, scatter themselves in several directions, none of which appear to be back toward the food stores.

"Eat shit you little menaces!" she calls after them, laughing. It's not the first time she's jumped into a pool with all her clothes on, but it is the first time she's done so for a better reason than YOLO.

She turns to Jon, still looking amused in spite of the water's chill.

"Well, that was an adventure I did not plan upon when I left the castle this morning."

cw implied violence to rabbits! (An interaction for flavor, but not that flavor.)

[northerndragon]

Her cry makes him laugh out loud, ringing through the clearing.

“Don’t think anyone expects to become irresistible to rabbits. Where I’m from, they’re shy creatures.” He shrugs. “Tasty, too.” But it hasn’t seemed like these were for hunting, and he’s had no need of the meat.

“When I came to this place, I thought the food must be magic. I should have known better. Maybe there’s a touch of magic in it, but it’s like everywhere else. A cook’s hard work, or the hard work of dozens.”

[impressionism]

Hennessy grins and scrubs a bit of lingering dust off her arm.

"There's a guy who makes magic pizza. You should try it if you haven't; it's possibly the perfect food, and it's portable. It will also make you many friends if you show up to a gathering with it."

She can also dream food, but one ought to be careful eating something that's made of dreams. She doesn't do it because it's a bit like eating a piece of herself, and Bryde had made her skittish about it. So far no one's been held to any sort of faerie bargain by eating something she's brought back, but better safe than sorry.