saveourearth | Don't pet them, grab them! [Mingle]

Entry tags:

Don't pet them, grab them! [Mingle]

Date: 25th of July
Characters: Open!

I.

In the afternoon on the 25th, a network message alerts the Numbered to the fact that the petting zoo in Moss Manor's Menagerie is facing a major break-out: Someone has torn down the fences, and all the bunnies, sheep, and all the other animals typically found in petting zoos have decided to book it. They are now swarming the manor's grounds.

Due to the staff being nowhere near enough to catch them all, and due to the generally low threat level of the animals that escaped, visitors are asked to help catch them instead of being sent away.

And anyone who just happens to show up and help will be happily welcomed and included in the fort, without any question of who told them that help is needed.

II.

Afterwards, Lady Margaret Camilla Brassant invites everyone onto her patio and offers refreshments - tea, water, little sandwiches, cake and scones with clotted cream and jam. She retires quickly herself, but not before giving a brief speech thanking everyone who helped save the gardens from hungry mouths.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I think even the peahen could do a better job styling hair than my worse haircut. My brother James decided to experiment with his first pair of clippers...on me. Waxed his eyebrow off in revenge though so we looked like wankers together."

She nods, "Potentially be seen or property damage? Not a great choice either way."

The staff see them with the peacocks and meet them halfway across the lawn, thanking them for their help and taking the birds off of their hands, although Sadie giggles when the peahen has to be unattached from Walter's hair.

"Well, that was fun..." Sadie looks about, checking to see how close anyone is to them. "So...The thing that happened to me because of the Aurora..."

That makes Walter laugh outright.

"Don't suppose one or both of you insisted on photos, then?"

Not that he wants to see them - there are far too many examples he could name of the shenanigans he managed to get in with his own sister for him to insist on that - but it sounds like the sort of thing Sadie would try to hide evidence of.

"Exactly."

He heaves a very relieved sigh as the peahen is untangled (and apologizes for any potentially swallowed hair, just in case).

"You... don't have to share, if you don't want to."

But there's no crowd of people around them, so if she's going to tell, now's a good time.

She laughs with a light blush. "Well considering this was two days before GCSE results day about a year ago...my Mum has plenty of photos and James and I have a selfie or two. But if I showed you I'd have to kill you."

Sadie bites her lip but is otherwise determined. "No, I want show you. You showed me your speed thing...and-and the more of us I show it to, maybe the easier it will be to figure out what is happening."

She taps the side of her sunglasses, "It changed my eyes." And with another glance about for people, she removes the sunglasses to reveal slitted, amber cat eyes.

"Ouch. Still," Walter says, shrugging.

"No hard feelings."

He holds his breath, but if Sadie's expecting a panicked reaction, or an immediate storm of questions, there isn't one.

'And it's all working correctly? It's got to be; she's had them for a month, she'd know...'

Instead, there's an offer of a hug.

Sadie will gratefully accept that hug even if she no longer finds the eyes as upsetting as she did.

"I spent a couple of weeks freaking out and didn't really talk to anyone." She admits, a little embarrassed before she blushes slightly. "Ben helped me thought."

"It-well it started with just my pupils reflecting light and the over a fortnight the pupil changed shape and the amber colour crept in. I took photos." She had in fact taken a close-up of her eyes each morning as the changes happened.

"The most recent change was going from being short-sighted to quite long-sighted."

"Good on Ben, then," is his first out-loud thought after that. He feels the need to keep his voice down.

"So, these physical changes... they occur gradually," Walter murmurs, before pulling back from the hug a little to look at Sadie properly.

It certainly makes sense from his experience.

Then he smiles.

"So you'd make a good hunter with them...?"

Sadie nods, the traitor blush still in place. "I'm very lucky to have such a good friend here."

"It did for this at least, I don't know if anyone else has changed like me or if it'll be the same if I change further." She reasons, the sample size is too small to draw any decent conclusions yet.

"Maybe, they seem basically the same as cats eyes, down to the sensitivity to movement." Her nose scrunches up. "Funny you should say that though...When I felt that empty feeling, I saw something."

Walter may be smiling because of the blush as well... not that he'll ever let it on, for Sadie's peace of mind.

"I don't think anyone else's yet mentioned their eyes changing, but both are good things to watch out for."

Once Sadie brings up the other thing, Walter stands up straighter.

"Something? Would describing it out loud help, or writing it down?"

Really, they should probably continue this discussion elsewhere.

"Describing it out loud would help...I'll write it down later..."

Sadie looks around again because they are essentially standing in the middle of one of the manor's large lawns and ridiculously easy to spot by anyone from a distance.

"Maybe we should go and sit down somewhere?" She suggests, unknowingly on the same wavelength as Walter.

"As long as you do get to write it down," Walter says.

He spots a shaded bench a little ways off in the distance - not so far that if a staff member needs them to wrangle another animal they can't be found, but private enough.

"How about down there?" he suggests, half-turning away from Sadie and gesturing in the bench's direction with one hand.

"I will, I have a notebook at home." She assures Walter before looking at the bench he suggested.

"Seems like a good a place as any." She follows him over and sits down.

"So after the emptiness, I saw something. I wasn't next to you, I was hiding in a bush with a man following this sheep. The man then started telling me how to sneak up on the sheep and kill it."

Wait, that's-

More hallucinations? Memories? Walter's feelings about reincarnation, along with other religion-associated matters, are ambivalent at best, but the thoughts and any sense of disbelief are processed too quickly to show on his face.

Instead, more notably, he blinks hard.

"A... flashback?" And to something you've never lived before, at that.

This Numbers business was just going to keep getting weirder, wasn't it?

"You didn't happen to see why it was a sheep did you? And not a bird?"

Sadie pauses at that and frowns. "I...don't know? But...it was like I was living and feeling it but I had no control over how I reacted to what I saw or how I felt. Like...the man that was there. Instead of being scared by him all I could feel was comfortable and happy that he was there."

Her fingers start tapping against her knee. Not really, there was a lot of sheep about. It was more the situation I think. We were hunting the peacocks and in what I saw...also hunting."

"Living a life as someone else," Walter says softly, thinking out loud for Sadie's benefit this time.

"I- there is a history of such things, but it's all very... personalized, subjective even."

General situation to provide a reflection, or perhaps the mirror itself?

"That makes sense. Hunting peacocks doesn't exactly sound common," and his lips quirk into a smile at that.

The finger tapping increases as Walter muses out-loud as she frowns. "I've never believed in any of that. Thought it was nonsense, to be honest...But nothing is really normal or makes sense at the moment..."

She shrugs, "I don't think so but who knows...the man had a lion's tail.." She scrunches up her nose in distaste. "Considering my eyes I think a tail might be on the horizon."

Walter sighs.

"That makes two of us, then. But if there's a history of this happening somewhere else, a precedent... then maybe we'll feel less like we're just stranded in the ocean somewhere."

He snorts at the mention of a lion's tail.

"Yeeaaah, might want that change to occur later rather than sooner."

"That is true, maybe those accounts were caused by the same thing as this?" It's probably unlikely.

She groans, "Oh god I hope so, it'll make wearing trousers so uncomfortable!"

"Well, they'd have to have their own Network, or we'd be in contact with them as well..."

It's an assumption, and the expression on Walter's face makes it clear he knows it.

Sadie's complaint wrangles something like a smile from him again, though.

"Long skirts do have their uses."

Not that he's paid them much mind in a long while.

Sadie hums thoughtfully, it was fun to hypothesise but really didn't seem like a plausible scenario.

Sadie's face scrunches up in distaste at Walter's suggestion of long skirts. "I hate skirts." She proclaims with another groan.

"I didn't say they were good, just useful," Walter adds.

"It's not like trousers are cut out for every job, after all."

There's a micro-fraction pause... and then he facepalms. Oh gods, that was a pun, wasn't it?

"Forget I said that."

Sadie's still scrunched face tells Walter all he needs to know about what she thinks of him saying skirts are useful. "Useful for chafing sure. And what trousers can't do shorts can."

Sadie regards Walter for a moment before solemnly shaking her head. "I shall never forget you said that."

"That's all assuming you get a tail. It's a bridge best crossed when we get there, I'll wager."

Walter groans, though he's still smiling through it.

A staff member starts coming their way, waving frantically... and then another, from a different direction.

"I guess..." Sadie is fairly certain this tail thing is going to happen, she's got the eyes already, what's a tail at this point? Although she has turned to tapping her fingers against her knees.

Sadie looks at the approaching harried staff members. "It looks like we're going to be put back to work." She swivels where she's sat and goes in to hug Walter. "Thank you, Walter."

Could be worse; could be fur.

Walter returns the hug with no small amount of warmth.

"Anytime," he says, before turning to get up and greet one of the staff.

Time to split up and go back to work, at that!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Don't pet them, grab them! [Mingle]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject