hadriel | Video

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[The video opens on a pile of wood, sticks, shrubbery, and chunks of what might have been siding, all piled into a very obvious pyramid surrounded by rocks.]

So everything has sucked recently. Back home in Montana, when shit got rough we'd always get together and have a big bonfire. Get drunk, make s'mores, all that stuff. It didn't make things better but at least you forgot about it for a little while.

Worth a try right?

[He sounds like he's honestly asking. He's trying really hard to be positive for once.]

I've got some graham crackers, chocolate, and other things for roasting. No marshmallows though so if anyone wants to come through in the clutch it would be appreciated.

I'm lighting this up tonight at dusk, so if you want in, be there. I've only got so much to burn and it might not last more than an hour or two.

((OOC: Feel free to use this like a log and make top levels and do action things. Go forth and get some bonfire mingling on!))

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Sorta.

[He's involved in the very laborious process of skewering some mushrooms onto a stick to roast.]

More thought it would be nice to unwind, you know? Relax for a bit?

[The calm before the storm if the Null attack.]

( Mushrooms > s'mores, in Kate's opinion anyway. Savoury is less cloying, lingers less than sweet does. )

Sounds dangerous.

( She's never much been a fan of relaxing in Hadriel, if only because history tells her that it usually precedes something going horribly wrong. But the city's changed in the years since. Calmed down, despite the robots chasing them and trying to kill all the gods.

And, in all honesty, the city has also taught her that relaxing in ways that don't end in a hangover is actually a good idea once in a while, and so she sits as she drawls that out and steals a skewer to begin popping assorted vegetables onto it. )

Got any spices?

( Problems with dating someone who is actually a hella good cook: you begin to crave these additions to your food, instead of simply going with whatever's most convenient. )

Let's not get carried away here. I have salt and pepper. This is all shit I scrounged from MRE's and the stores. They don't exactly carry oregano.

[Which is the only spice he knows of anyway. His culinary skills include frozen fish sticks, stuff on the grill, and he once microwaved a potato that didn't explode.]

( Remind her to introduce you to the classics of beans on toast, miscellaneous stir fry and undercooked pasta. Ignis is the whiz at this shit. She just... got used to things having spices added to them, flavours. )

Maybe noregano. ( She says it without the slightest twitch to her expression, reaching for the salt and pepper as she holds the skewer out over the flame. After all, everything in Hadriel is just slightly off. Apples aren't apples and bananas aren't bananas.

... What did that kid call them, back in the day? Napples?

He was a good kid. But it's probably for the best he went home. )

And it'll probably taste like ass and turn us into bright pink kittens. I don't trust much of anything here.

Makes me really miss the orchard though. Sure they weren't really apples and pears, but at least they tasted like fruit. And obviously came from a tree.

( What's wrong with pink? ) Too easy. ( Kittens? That would be annoying but manageable. ) Plant monsters.

( Giant, writhing mandrakes, if she knew what a mandrake was. )

Gods didn't spike 'em, either.

( At least, not that Kate remembers. The wendigo chaos happened just before she arrived, but gods know she heard about it plenty, and then there was that time Delight turned everything into candy. Which was probably nice for people who like sweet things, but a pain in the ass when you wanted to shower. )

[He would have been ecstatic during an everything is candy event and eaten himself into a diabetic coma.]

Being a plant monster might not be so bad. Just hang out and photosynthesize all day. Maybe have some cool vines to use as weapons.

That we know of anyway. They might have done something to them we didn't notice. Like it changed the PH balance of our brains.

[How that would effect something that feeds of emotions is anyone's guess.]

( While being followed by a cute wolf pack, probably. )

What would that do?

( That is not any branch of science or the human body she is familiar with. She just looks at powers, not at brains, or pH levels, or anything else. )

Absolutely no idea. My point is just that we don't know what they're doing.

[Maybe it made their emotions more juicy and tender. Or made sadness strawberry flavored. Who knows.]

( I mean, fair point. )

They're not capable of it. ( Delight deceiving them may have shaken her confidence in their general trustworthiness, but years of watching the gods interact with the people dragged here has her pretty certain they're not about to be pulling anything like that. ) You ever tried to explain things to them?

( They're far better at understanding humans than they were before, but, you know, that's like saying being punched in the face is better than being stabbed repeatedly. )

I tried to explain what a Starbucks was to Love. I don't think they got it. Or understood why I wanted one. But I haven't tried to really talk to them too much.

Fear a little bit but he's not too responsive.

( Starbucks... Kate's lips purse automatically. Not exactly her favourite place for coffee, but what was that about beggars and choosing again? )

Hate talking to Love. ( In part because it still, after all this time, makes her wary to think how a cloud could manipulate her fondness for others, but mostly because— ) They're too loud.

( How? How does a cloud talk in all caps? )

[Look, coffee options are limited in the middle of nowhere Montana. Even the Starbucks is a 45 minute drive.]

Very loud. I think maybe it's supposed to be enthusiasm?

( Come back with her, she'll introduce you to civilisation and things. And better coffee shops. )

Needs to stop. ( Whatever it is. It gives her a headache.

But, for now, Kate is going to enjoy some flame grilled veg, tearing something that vaguely resembles a pepper off the skewer with her teeth. )

You do this a lot?

( Sitting out with a bonfire, back home? )

Used to. Not so much anymore.

The past year or so has been fucking hell back home. And now I'm dying so this is probably my last one ever. I guess I should make it count.

( ... Wait what. Pause. Rewind. )

Dying?

Back home. I'm a few hours from being dead so when this is all over.. I guess I go right back to that.

Something to look forward to right?

[he gives a half smile, at least once he's dead he doesn't have to deal with any of this shit anymore.]

( ... Welp.

That's a thing. Kate's brows raise sceptically, but the silence reigns regardless. Maybe. She doesn't know. If Hadriel has thrown anything into stark focus, it's how simple her life is now, back in her world, where she has a job she cares about and a life which is no longer dictated by power trips and violence.

She misses it dearly. )

Going to stick with the hangover.

( Oh boy, she almost forgot about that. If she's dropped right back in where she left off... It'll be odd to return from a war to the aftermath of celebrations. )

I'm not really conscious anymore, so I don't even think I'll notice when I die. Probably for the best.

[If only the problems he had to deal with were hangovers.]

Unless time is passing back home and then all bets are off. I might show back up somewhere randomly. I don't know how the fuck any of this works.

Turned up where I left. ( Even before they found the extra pieces to stabilise it. Now, she imagines, that's even more likely.

Reaching for a drink, Kate mulls it over a bit more; ) Could be different now Sorrow controls it.

Who controlled it before Sorrow?

( Hm, Hadriel history time? Hadriel history time. )

Fear switched it on to bring us here in the first place. He hadn't got all the pieces of it, so it weren't under full control. When we picked them up, it let Sorrow 'ave proper control of it.

( Well. As much control as anyone can have of a massive, interdimensional ancient god. )

[He feels like he should have known this, Charles had made a whole series of TEDTalks about this very subject. But he listened to them while doing other shit so not all of it stuck.]

So if he has control of it, maybe he can do whatever he wants with it. Maybe he can rig it so we go back as millionaires in Tahiti.

( There was a lot in those talks. She knows because she was there, giving Charles the notes to make them. And god only knows what she forgot.

But, for now, that? That she'd like to see. )

Ask him.

I've never talked to Sorrow, only Fear and Love and Confusion and Tranquility. Think they'd agree?

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