♥ March (Ainir) Event Log

[hugtopiamods]

March (Ainir) Event Log

The weather is growing quite lovely, punctuated by a sweet scent in the air as local flowers begin to grow and bloom, signifying the start of what many argue is the brightest and most comforting of seasons. While not all bend the knee for Ainea, she is beloved and well known as the kindest of the local deities, so even denizens of other chapters appreciate the good will she presents when her season comes to play. Brace yourselves, residents of Havenwell: spring has officially sprung, and the mouse is in your house. (Theologically speaking, anyway.)

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❥ PROMPT I: Skits and Giggles

As the month of Ainir wears on, things in Havenwell begin to turn towards the strange and chaotic…more so than usual. Circumstances align in unpredictable and convoluted ways, as though space and time themselves are making small tweaks here and there to rope the city's offworlders into a heretofore unseen range of odd situations. Out of nowhere, impulses will materialize into their mind(s), and while it is not forced, it might be hard to resist depending on the nature of the impulse or the people around them. Two people might find themselves on a simple shopping trip together searching for a strange item despite never having met before, or perhaps one will suddenly discover the urge to try making a multi-tiered cake and drag their friends along for the ride. It's very… unusual. One could even say such situations and desires almost feel randomly generated.

For the latter half of the month, Havenwell will be undergoing a more open-ended kind of chaos than usual; we encourage you to have fun and make your own range of situations from the ordinary to the improbably odd. (Like if Who's Line had no host but just inserted prompts into one's head.) Here are some random scenario generators, to get you started, though you are more than welcome to find your own, mix and match, or come up with something yourself:

A Very Helpful Master List

For One Character/General:
One Two

For Two Characters:
One Two

Something a Little Sillier

Curiously enough, these skits can be both contagious and magical to the point where objects useful to the scenarios themselves may manifest inexplicably to make it easier to play out. These objects don't tend to last long - they'll vanish before the end of the day if you take your eyes off of them at some point after their use has ended - but hey, maybe you'll find a use for that Turbo Doll you just fought some fella in the market for, before it's gone.

❥ PROMPT II: Festival of Flowers

With the influx of plantlife both natural and left over from the previous month's occurrences, Havenwell's residents are well supplied for the annual Festival of Flowers (MARCH PROMPT: Hold My Flower) celebrated every Ainir. Natives of the city will be happily working to weave crowns in all sorts pf colors and shapes; made with flowers real, synthetic, or a mixture of both. They will even be glad to instruct the offworlders in the art of flower crowns, or even insistently looking to weave flowers into the hair of those who might wear theirs a bit longer. If given the chance, they will even speak at length about their choices in both colors and the flowers' meanings, so long as the end result is made to suit its wearer both aesthetically and symbolically. The local greenhouses will be handing out the blossoms harvested for the festival, so feel free to participate guilt-free; remember, flowers are too impermanent to not enjoy! Offworlders will find plenty of species throughout the city, including some that might be familiar. It seems the world is still indulgently borrowing from home as it heals itself.

If anyone has leftover crystalline flowers, vines, and plants that grew from their hands last month, these items are more delicate than normal plants but can still be worked into the flower crowns with a gentle touch and a bit of effort.

❥ PROMPT III: Starlight, Starbright

Over the course of the festival, for some reason the night sky above Havenwell appears to be taking subtly different forms; it never looks quite the same twice, and often differs from person to person. The stars overhead arrange themselves into different configurations: that of Havenwell's distant past, perhaps, or even into constellations the city's offworlders might find familiar. If by chance one can see a sky that another can't, joining hands for an evening of stargazing might just sync them up to be underneath the same distant stars. Enjoy an evening of stargazing, sharing familiar or fresh constellations with someone special.

For those who are participating in the Festival of Flowers, you might notice a curious added effect: if you happen to go stargazing while wearing certain flowers, the starscape that appears may coincide with the location, season, or biome that flower is native to, as if the two are calling to one another. Since Havenwell has acquired a bountiful number of species from varying worlds over the last few seasons that this festival occurred, feel free to get creative with this concept. Does your world have a reverse sunflower that follows the moon during winter? Enjoy your winter sky and a very happy flower crown. Maybe you found a ghost orchid that only blooms in the hottest part of the summer. Sounds perfectly suited for a summer sky that just happens to appear above you now…

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This event will run from March 15-31. Click on each prompt's title to see the text. If you have any questions, feel free to direct them to the FAQ or to the Mod Question thread. You can also use the Havenwell Status page or the General Plotting Comment to give you other ideas for original prompts!

Comments

[hedgehogsdilemma]

Very chill, perhaps even the sort of thing they would have done together even before they started dating. A very relaxed, ideal way to spend an evening of stargazing.

Shinji accepts the help up with a small, "Thank you," and finds his bearings on the roof fairly easily. All of their trips up here have been good for getting a solid feel of how to maneuver easily, if nothing else, but tonight should be a very nice night for getting cozy with no mishaps.

"Anything else we need?"

Blankets all secured?

[whenyouneedme]

"Mm, think we're good."

Blankets were secure and ready to go. The sky was brilliant. As Kai carefully led Shinji over to cozetown, the final pieces were falling into place.

"The most important part's just arrived."

[hedgehogsdilemma]

"Ah, right, can't have a night of stargazing without something tasty to enjoy."

That, or the tunes he's got stowed away. One or the other. Clearly. Regardless, he lets himself be taken to the incredibly comfy and welcoming looking pile of blankets.

[whenyouneedme]

Kai huffed as he plopped himself down among the soft things, carefully tugging Shinji down with him.

"I meant you, dingus."

[hedgehogsdilemma]

You would bully your boyfriend? Call him a dingus??

Wow!!

"Don't be ridiculous," he teases back gently, sidling up nice and close to Kai as he unloads the mugs and thermos somewhere easy for them to reach. "Besides, the actual most important part are all of those stars, right?"

[whenyouneedme]

Yes. Absolutely.

"Who's being ridiculous," Kai scoffed quietly, easily curling his arm around him. Tilting his head to gaze up at the blanket of lights above them, he hummed a little. "They do make a really close second."

Steadfast and lovely as they were, they weren't the ones sitting warm and cozy with him.

[hedgehogsdilemma]

"Really? They're a rare sight, I'd figure the stars would be the guest of honor today without question."

Either way, he's more than happy to lean into that hold, settling comfortably at Kai's side and tilting his head up to drink in the sight of that starry sky.

[whenyouneedme]

"Mm, well they're the ones throwing the party. We're the real guests."

Cuz it was true, it was rare for the sky to be lit up this impressively even here in the city. Imagine what it was like in that little park they had been to before... Kai gently set that thought aside to come back to when they weren't already so settled in. He'd drag him out there later. This was already good.

"Any of 'em looking familiar?"

[hedgehogsdilemma]

"Ohh, is that what's going on?"

Well, as long as he can slip out of his role of importance easily, he'll leave it at that. The importance can be given to the stars above them instead, and Shinji 'hmm's idly as he scans the sky for anything that looks familiar.

"I only ever really got good looks at the brightest stars before, so there are a lot more here than I'm used to, but..." he raises his hand, pointing a circle around a smaller grouping of stars, "That cluster seems familiar."

Kind of Pleiades-like.

[whenyouneedme]

'Scuse you, buster. Just because you both happened to be guests at this party did not diminish his importance here. He still remained the most important part of the enjoyment tonight.

Kai leaned against him a bit as he scanned the sky, following the trail Shinji was leading him towards. The cluster he pointed out twinkled brightly, shining just like some old friends Kai hadn't seen for a while. "Oh," Kai breathed out softly, "it does."

Very Pleiades-like indeed. "If they're there..." Searching the night, Kai didn't actually expect to see anything else. Yet there it was, his gaze settling on another familiar sight. "Ahh, they followed them all the way here." He guided Shinji's hand down to an orange-ish star a bit farther away. How very Aldebaran.

[hedgehogsdilemma]

Allowing Kai to move his point easily, Shinji lets out a soft, sincerely surprised, "Oh!" when his eyes fall on the familiar point of light.

"You're right," that was actually pretty unexpected. He scans the sky a little more, and while there aren't a whole lot of stars he could necessarily point out confidently, there do seem to be some that are in what he remembers to be the correct places. "Could they... really be the stars from Earth?"

[whenyouneedme]

Kai hummed in quiet thought as his fingers trailed through the sky. A lot of the constellations that would have made a home around here were some of the ones that he'd always had trouble imagining as a kid. A bunch of V-shapes the west said were bulls and fish. What parts were bulls? There were fish? Unlikely. He still followed their paths though, learned their shapes.

"Maybe," Kai said softly, even though the answer was becoming 'Yes' more clearly by the second. It just felt a little unreal. "I don't think they were last night."

[hedgehogsdilemma]

Shinji knows he's not really an expert on star charts, constellation names, or anything quite like that, but it does seem much easier to figure out where to be looking for specific points of light right now than it was last night. These shapes, the imaginary lines one would use to make them... he holds his breath for a moment, as though an exhale too strong is going to blow the stars into disarray, but...

"Huh..."

That's... wild. Kind of unbelievable? Is this even rarer than he anticipated, a fleeting little Havenwell gift for the people who may be familiar with it? He can't imagine that, if they've changed at all, they won't simply change back later.

"I wonder... how long they'll be like this for."

[whenyouneedme]

“Who knows,” Kai murmured. In such a transient place as Havenwell, it probably wouldn’t be for long. With so many people that shared this sky though, maybe it’d stick around a little longer. Maybe they’d get a few nights of sharing a familiar corner of home– something they still shared despite coming from two different flavors of the same place. Did Kyoko share them too?

Kai hugged Shinji a little tighter. “We’ll just have to savor it now,” he went on as he dipped his head to his. “Drinks were a smart move.”

They were probably gonna be out here a bit longer than they'd planned.

[hedgehogsdilemma]

Havenwell sure was prone to some strange things, but where would it even get the information about Earth's stars? Was there an aspiring astronomer among the ranks here that the knowledge could have come from? Ah. Well. It probably won't do any good to try and overthink it right now, when he could just be admiring the sight with his boyfriend.

"Yeah..." drink that sight in, for however long they get to. "Let me know when you want some soup to warm you up."

Take as much time to just look up as you want, first.

[whenyouneedme]

"Will do," Kai said with a content sigh. For now this was all he needed. A blanket full of stars and a sweet boy in the crook of his arm. Perfect. Time to bask in this.

Which he did for a while. It was really nice to see all those old, familiar friends. He just couldn't quite help turning his head to admire the boy next to him for a while too. That awe and wonder was a special sight all its own, Kai wasn't about to pass that up.

[hedgehogsdilemma]

It's a cozy spot they've got up here, and Shinji is more than content to let his eyes wander from star to star, picking out shapes that might be familiar. The last time he'd seen a night sky so bright, it had been a nice rare moment, and this one, despite the familiarity in the cozy company, feels just as special. The warmth surrounding him, the solid body beside him to lean against, the pinpoints of light arranged so nicely for the two of them...

Well, there's plenty of awe and wonder for Kai to catch when he steals those looks, perhaps even a fond smile.

And, to be fair to him, Shinji's focus does wander occasionally off of the stars and to Kai as well, and when he catches him staring back... ah!

"Were you ready for the soup?"

[whenyouneedme]

Ah, when that smile was in the mix there was no way Kai could keep his gaze away for long. They'd had lots of good times, and Kai was certain they were pretty happy, so it wasn't like those smiles were the rarest things in the world anymore but... it hadn't been that long ago that they were. He still wanted to treasure each one.

The blonde offered one back as Shinji caught him. No shame here.

"Could be." There wasn't that much of a hankering yet, but he'd be down. "Was just admirin' you."

[hedgehogsdilemma]

H-hey! Hey!!

"Jeez," he exhales softly, color hitting his cheeks in a small moment of fluster. Let's just go for those mugs and thermos to try and cover up that embarrassment, though even after he busies himself dividing up that soup for the two of them, he still turns back to Kai with a blush to accompany that mug.

"Here."

[whenyouneedme]

What! This should have been entirely expected with how cute Shinji was being. Of course he was being admired. Even more so now that he had that satisfying splash of color across his cheeks.

Kai just kept grinning as he leaned over, brushing his fingers warmly over Shinji's as he gladly took that mug from him. "Thanks."

[hedgehogsdilemma]

He's not doing anything special! How is he being cute? Gosh.

Well, the important thing is that the soup is delivered, and he can let himself cuddle back up against Kai's side, where he can be less acutely aware that he's being admired for ?? some reason. "Don't let the stars feel left out, make sure you spend enough time admiring them."

[whenyouneedme]

Spoilers: He was always cute. It was just that simple.

Settling back in, Kai hummed as he took a sip of soup. He might not have been particularly hungry, but that was still very satisfying with the cool evening around them. "Mm, I will. Nothin' says I can't admire all of you though."

[hedgehogsdilemma]

You may not have your facts straight here buddy, but sure.

"I guess I can't stop you," he answers, a soft huff on mock-indignation following on its heels before he takes a sip of his own soup to mask his bashfulness. "You look pretty good against the stars yourself, though."

[whenyouneedme]

He double checked the figures. It was all correct.

Kai gave him a side-long look. "That so," he mused softly. The more the thought lingered, the warmer his face felt. How smooth, Shinji. "Guess we're both getting extra treats tonight then."