saveourearth | A very merry Halloween! [Mingle]

Date: 31st of October
Characters: Open!
Warning: Non-sexual desecration of formerly buried corpses

On the morning of Halloween, when people first step out of their houses, they will almost step into something.

A bucket of water. Every flat and every house in the Mossgate Boundary has a bucket placed in front of its entrance door (and sometimes, especially in Folkton and Moss Manor, the back door too), in which scary apples are floating. A little sign taped to the bucket reads: Have fun bobbing!.

But that's not the only thing that happened. The second thing that people will notice is that there are billions of spiders of all sizes crawling all over the town and villages, the military base, the Manor House... everywhere. And they certainly did their job - trees, lanterns, the higher attractions on the pier, and everything else that is high all over Mossgate Council is covered in thick layers of cobweb.

And lastly... those who pass by a church will notice something about the graveyards around them. Namely, that someone placed skeletons on top of most of the graves... Awfully real looking ones. Really, really awfully real looking ones. To some of them, the soil of the graveyard still clings, and the graves underneath them are in a state that betrays that they were dug up during the night. DNA tests would show that, indeed, the skeletons belong to the individuals buried in the graves.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He's not going to shy away from the hand and instead whine pitifully. What is going ON?

As the dog seems alright with the contact, Nel brings her knees together and shifts forward to kneel on her shoes to sit. Hand staying in one spot until the dog stops swaying so much, she then slowly starts to pet the dog with her hand, smoothing down his fur in longer and longer strokes that work over his shoulders then up towards his head between his ears. Each pass of her hand ends a good centimeter away from the base of his tail.

"Maybe you need to lie down? Oh um... Down?" Right. Dogs don't talk, but maybe this one is trained to that command to lie down.

He whines again. He doesn't need to lie down, he needs an explanation. For... all of this.

He's seen all the discussions on the network, of course, but this is definitely not normal. He shouldn't feel this terribly. Right?

After a moment, he turns to nudge her knee with his snout. It was mean to be no more than a nudge, because that's what friendly little dog strength does, but for some reason the force that will hit Nel is much more akin to an adult trying to shove her over.

Nel gets no change at the attempt to tell the dog to lie down, so she assumes he does not want to or does not know the command.

Knees on the ground when that nudge is applied, the force of it brings one knee up fast towards her chest with the child letting out a shocked yelp! Toes caught as a fulcrum, she goes backwards and sideways off balance to land on her far shoulder from the dog without any delays despite her effort to reach hands forward in counter. Managing to keep her head up with her hair spread out over the dirt, she lifts her leg to free her foot before pushing up on her hands to look at the dog with a mixture of surprise and wariness. A dog that small should not be that strong. She may be small herself, but she's still far bigger than him.

"That was...weird. And uncalled for."

Don't worry, Nel, there is at least one person who is much more freaked out by this than you.

Hint: This person is small and white and fluffy.

Chad feels her fall away from his snout and then be tossed to the ground with first simple surprise, and then confusion, and then shock as it dawns on him that somehow, he must have shoved her hard enough to cause this.

What.

How.

WHY.

There is only one possible response to this.

He runs forward and back and forward again towards Nel, barking and trying to figure out what is going on, is she okay, does she need help, WHAT HAPPENED, what is going on-

Initially when the dog runs closer, she tenses in guard only for the dog to change course. Nel stares as he runs closer and further from her repeatedly, barking along the way. As it becomes clear to her that no harm was meant, she pushes through her arms to sit herself back up with legs criss crossing instead.

Reaching one hand forward, she tries to talk to him and coax him over for petting with as soothing of a tone as a child can manage, “It’s okay! You’re a good doggie, aren’t you? It’s alright. Come on, you’re okay.”

He calms down when the shock wears off and she doesn't seem to be hurt, and eventually stops with the running around and barking.

Now he just stands there, breathing hard and staring at her.

She. Seems okay? But what. WHAT. HAPPENED.

He comes closed very slowly, trying to figure this out, but... nothing seems out of the ordinary? Neither about the place nor this girl nor anything?

Patiently she waits for the dog to come into her reach with her hand held still in the air until he makes that first contact. Once he does, she starts to brush her hand over his back and scratch lightly into his scruff, voice kept the same, “You didn’t even mean to knock me over, did you? You’re much stronger than you look. I wonder how you got so strong.”

Nel has been bowled over plenty of times in her life with so many siblings.

“I hope I didn’t do anything to you...” she murmurs with a twinge of concern. She has had two Echoes aside from the one that gave her so much hair, yet she has yet to find anything that has changed about her.

He is stronger than he looks? ...He wants to say of course he is, but he knows that he isn't. He has exactly appropriate dog strength.

...But now he knocked this girl over.

Does that mean that he'll keep accidentally hurting people?

And now she's blaming herself. No. No. He can't let this happen. He...

barks at her and then runs away.

He can't stay close to her. He needs to figure this out somehow.

Nel flinches at the barks out of surprise, and her hand is left hanging in the air when the dog pulls away and simply runs off.

As much as she wants to chase after him, she does have friends that will be missing her soon, and so she gathers up her candy bag. Recalling the dog had been half carrying something before, she goes to look at the bone left behind. One curiosity leads to another...

And well, Chad isn't the only one to run out of the graveyard.

A very merry Halloween! [Mingle]

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