saveourearth | There are bluebirds over- Wait, those don't go here! [Mingle]

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There are bluebirds over- Wait, those don't go here! [Mingle]

Date: 11.11.2018
Characters: Open!
Note: This is intended to be a very relaxed mingle to give people a bit of a breather. It is plot-related, but a lot less dramatic than prior mingles.

On the 11th, something about Mossgate Council has changed yet again - but this time, it isn't nearly as disturbing and dangerous as back on Halloween.

Instead of cobwebs and skeletons, there are poppies. Red poppies and white poppies have flowered over night. They cover fields and lawns, the Greens and the forest ground, troop exercise areas over at the airfields, the gardens of the manor house, and even parts of the beach.

And up over the white cliffs of Mossgate, bluebirds flap their wings, flying around and sitting on the castle ruins, and if one stands still for a while and offers breadcrumbs, they'll come over and sit on that person's hand to have a snack, too.

They seem a bit confused, but not nearly as confused as the ornithology department at Mossgate University that can't save itself from interviews - no, they have no idea how that American species suddenly showed up in such numbers and why they're sticking to the cliffs specifically. Jane Astbury finally suggests with some exasperation that maybe they're just doing a music-themed tour of Europe, and could they please let her staff and students teach and study in peace?

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Waking in the morning with the expectation of a quiet day, Nel is tending her overgrown terrarium when she looks beyond and out the window. Her vantage point is limited until she moves to lean over from beside her nightstand, but as soon as she gets a good view of the lawn outside, the girl doesn’t wait a second longer.

Almost flying down the stairs, she’ll head straight out into the yard barefoot in her jammies and into the fresh spread of flowers with a squeal of delight. The first touch of the white and red petals brushing against her skin tingles as she becomes better acquainted with them.

Maybe she can try to grow a poppy!

OTA
After a measure of pleading with older family members, Nel is out at the castle ruins to see all the birds everyone is talking about after finding the flowers. With a pouch of seeds, her camera, and her sketchbook all in her bag, it doesn’t take long for the young artist to go to work to capture the unusual gathering. Beginning with taking shots with her camera, she’ll settle down to sit on a low part of the ruins and lay out a small pile of seed to tempt the birds in for a close-up shot. Then later, she moves out to sit in the flowers and sketch at a distance.

Time continues to pass, and his psyche has proved as resilient as ever.

Today's calming activities consist of sitting outside and, as Ben and Sadie might find appropriate, drawing still life.

Of course, this entails being very still himself, and Walter's trying to keep himself to himself even as the birds have taken an interest in him.

He doesn't even have any food - but at least they're being photogenic? If any of them make a mess of his hair, however, he will die a little inside.

Coming around a corner of the ruins, Nel is met with the sight of a man she met recently quite surrounded by the new arrivals at the cliffs. Smothering an outright laugh with one hand into a titter of giggles, she calls softly to him rather than moving close enough to scare his portion of the feathered flock, “They really like you!”

Camera already in hand, she’ll take advantage of the gathering to snap some photos with most carefully aimed to keep Walter out of the frame, and a few with him as a focal piece. It’s better to take the shots before the birds fly off and have to delete them than miss the opportunity all together. Walter’s preference being the deciding factor of course.

Not long after Nel went outside, Mary Ann follows with her coat and a pair of socks and boots. She doubts that she can pry her daughter away from this for long enough to get her dressed, but she can at least try to make her slightly more dressed for the weather.

"Coat," she comments first, before looking around herself. Poppies, huh? And so many of them... Well. If this is the same person as the one with the spiders, at least this time it seems to be less dangerous...

Walter waits until his head is cleared from the potential for droppings before replying.

"I think I'm just a convenient post for them, really," he says. The camera doesn't set him off or anything - it's public interviews he wants to stay away from, not cute pictures to share with a small group of friends - but there's some evident tension in his posture.

Sensing an opportunity for a meta moment, however, Walter starts trying to draw Nel among the poppies; he can similarly dispose of it if she's not okay with that.

Walter's always felt a bit distant from Remembrance Day - his education on the matter came somewhat late, for obvious reasons given he'd spent a decade out of reception from most popular culture to begin with.

But he hasn't missed the symbolism of the poppies, or the birds... or how very, very bizarre it is that they're appearing like this.

It's very much an opportunity to put his ever-growing drawing skills to work, though, so his schedule has tentatively been cleared for some therapeutic measures.

As long as no droppings land on him! That would be terrible.

Practically burrowed into a patch of the tall flowers by the time her mother comes out after her, Nel extracts herself reluctantly at the instruction with a couple of the flowers catching in her hair to come along with her. It is rather chilly, and she would like to keep playing, so the addition of a coat seems prudent even with her blanket of hair to help keep her warm. Skipping through the flowers to return to the front of the house, and bouncing excitedly even when she stops in front of her Mum, she grins up to her, "Mum! It's so pretty!"

Taking her coat, she slips it on as she keeps talking excitedly with arms put in one at a time before trying to extract her caught locks, spilling a little more than she intended straight off during the process, "They're all over and so tall! I didn't know poppies grew that high. I don't know how far they're growing but I can't make this many!"

"Of course you can't make this many, we don't even have enough paper in the house for half a basket." She gently nudges Nel to sit and then hands her the socks. "But you're right, they are really pretty.

I wonder how they all suddenly came to grow." At least, she thinks, they are much nicer than what they got less than half a month ago...

A bird makes for quite a charming accessory, especially on the head. Maybe her first shot of Walter was more candid and relaxed, but she will find out once she checks the photos over.

With another giggle, she disagrees, "I don't think that's all. They aren't perching all over everyone!" For example, none of the blue birds are using her as a place to rest.

Unaware of Walter adding her to his sketchbook, she takes her time snapping shots of the birds in this section of the ruins and makes her way over slowly to her new friend. Once she reaches him, she looks to make certain the ground next to him is clean before she sits and calls up the photos of Walter on the menu screen. Holding the camera over to him, she offers for him to examine the shots, "What do you think? Are they keepers?"

A flicker of confusion crosses her expression before she recognizes her mistake as she makes sense of the mention of the paper stock available. Right, she does make paper and tissue flowers from time to time. Obeying the nudge to sit down, she accepts the socks as she goes quiet to consider the option of leaving the assumption in place, but she makes a decision by the time she has her first sock on with a proud smirk rising to the surface.

She was going to tell her Mum soon anyways.

"I mean making real flowers, Mum. I wanted to show you after I got better at it."

"...making real flowers?" Once the socks are on, the boots are held out. She might be curious, but she's not curious enough to forget why she called Nel back to the house in the first place. "An echo?"

Because that's the only thing that makes really sense.

"Okay, the tallest available post, then," Walter clarifies - because he is the taller of the two right now.

Fortunately, the ground is clean enough for sitting (but for how long, one wonders), and Walter handles the camera with utmost care.

"... Thanks." Because she could easily have kept the camera away from him - so to make things even, he frees up one hand to give her the sketchbook with his (fairly rough, but almost complete anyway) drawing of her and the poppies.

He goes through the pictures, stopping on only two of them, before nodding and holding the camera back out to Nel.

"How do you prefer to select pictures for safekeeping? Bookmarking, just straightforwardly deleting all except your favorites, or...?"

While he's glad that he can provide input, it's still her camera.

Tugging on the other sock on, she accepts the boots to work on over her feet next. The socks will keep the inside of her boots clean after initially coming out barefoot, and much warmer. Nel leans her head back to smile to her mother while pulling at her boots, “It must be! I found it at the bonfire and fell right asleep. I wasn’t sure I didn’t dream it so I tried again when I was by myself in my terrarium. It made me tired, but I stayed awake. I tried it again yesterday and I think it was a little better then too.”

Practically bursting with energy after a good night’s sleep and the excitement of the poppies, Nel stands back up better dressed to face her Mum and asks, “Do you wanna see?”

"Strange, isn't it."

The day being off, she and her wife have brought their younger children up here, and later they'll go into town and do some shopping. For now, though, she has a moment to say hi to people as the kids run wild and Janice already found someone to talk to.

So when she spots Walter, she wanders over towards him for a chat.

Walter looks up when he hears someone walking - and that motion sets off several of the birds, the sudden sound of dozens of bluebirds taking off simultaneously making him flinch in turn.

"I'll say," he replies, once he recovers.

"I heard Astbury's statement, but... would you say this is like the spiders, then?"

Taller when they are in the same position, and the one that has been immobile longest.

Handing off the camera to get his opinion, she's surprised when he passes her the sketchbook. The girl takes it carefully with both hands, not wanting to bend any corners of paper, and looks at the image with a warm, shyer smile as she feels flattered to be included with the poppies, "Aww, you drew me! That's brilliant!" She looks from the page up to where she had been standing previously to check the perspective, aware his is slightly different from their heights and the spots where they are sitting next to one another.

By the time Walter is done scanning her pictures, she has fully examined the rough sketch. Nel accepts her camera back to set in her lap, and passes the sketchbook back using two hands, "I choose them on the computer. I can see lots more detail there then I save the best and delete everything else."

"I'm glad you like it," Walter says; there's a note of quiet pleasure in his voice.

Also embarrassment, but he's much better about taking complements now than he once was.

Art mediums now back in their proper owners' hands, Walter shifts how he's sitting, wincing as several bones pop.

"Decreasing your risks of losing something on accident, that way," he notes.

"And I prefer the second and sixth pictures, out of the set."

Though Nel might have other ideas - neither of them are ones anyone could see his smile in!

"It almost feels like it, doesn't it?" She can see absolutely no other reason why something as strange as this would suddenly have happened. ...Well, not that they know the reason, strictly, but the point is that she can't imagine that there are two sources that are entirely independent of each other.

"It's a lot nicer, though."

"Helps that these birds have a very different rep from spiders."

Though that didn't mean they couldn't do damage, if provoked...

"I'm almost afraid to ask what could come next, though."

"Sure, I'd love to." Both because she likes to see her children's achievements and because... well, it's always better to know when something potentially dangerous is going on in your child's life, right?

She really doesn't like the part where it apparently takes that much energy away from her daughter...

At the affirmative answer, Nel beams to her Mum and immediately turns to look for an open spot in the yard where she can grow a flower for demonstration. “Okay! I’ll make a really pretty one for you!” Finding a place next to the walk, she reaches to take her mother’s hand and tug her the short distance from the house to the open patch unoccupied by the mature poppies. “I can’t make many yet, but when I touch one, I feel like I know exactly how it should look!”

Once she makes it to the spot, she’ll let her Mum’s hand go and squat down to lay her bare hands flat on the ground. Then, she looks up to her mother to make sure she is watching.

Edited (Sorry, indecisive on wording) 2018-11-23 04:50 (UTC)

He has been sitting a spell if he’s popping that much!

Nodding her head in agreement, she can easily recall a couple instances of pushing the wrong button on a variety of devices. Then, with some of the pictures recognized as superior, Nel looks through them herself if more slowly than Walter, “...I like those too. But they don’t have you. Can I keep the best one with you in the picture?” Asking for one photo seems reasonable.

Walter wishes he didn't think quite so fast anymore; the time it takes for him to come to a decision is much less than what he thinks it 'should' feel like.

"All right," he says softly - and nods.

"Just don't post it anywhere public, okay? Personal favor," he adds, by way of explanation.

"They're just as much of an invasive species as half the spiders, if I understood the news correctly.

Not that I wouldn't rather have birds than spiders." She looks out over the cliffs, her eyes finding a bird and losing it again, rinse and repeat. "I guess if it continues like this, at least it isn't getting creepier?"

"Depends what they're chasing out, or if they manage to get back home safely." Awful lot of trouble to upset one region's ecosystem...

"Yes, though it's still only two datapoints."

Not that he didn't want the trend to hold, either.

"Or it might just stop." Though he sounds dubious - and he winces when his voice doesn't sound all that low for a second.

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There are bluebirds over- Wait, those don't go here! [Mingle]

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OTA!

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Okay, PROPER OTA.

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-on (d’oh)

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