The full seasonal event can be read here! Below are the main seasonal items for quick reference:
1. A thread reacting to the season's weather in some ways.
2. A thread in the part of the city your character doesn't live in!
3. A thread relating to your vocation.
Of The Season
Quote
"Tell Dr. Nate that Gale sent you, and he still owes me for the mushrooms. Except that it takes you a while to reach the clinic, and by the time you do your fever is spiking, and so instead of the requisite message you instead tell the poor soul who greets you that 'A gale'a m'shrooms sent me cus'a my hands.'" - Zephyr in Oh help me, please doctor, I'm damaged
You don't need sympathy
They got a pill for everything
The smoke curled up from the cigarette in Adam's lips and into the still air, the only motion visible as he sat still on an old iron balcony that watched over the highway. His eyes scanned over the cars and trucks, the same as had been there the week before, in the same position; poor bastards, he thought, as he took the cigarette and pushed it against the metal beneath him to put it out.
With the lockdown on and enforcers busy elsewhere, it was quiet here in the buildings overlooking the exit of the city. Normally it was somewhere for Drench dreamers to gather, to look out at the road and imagine where they might go if they had the means to leave. Adam had been coming here to think and watch over the situation, wanting to catch the moment the restrictions lifted, though he was beginning to believe that might be a matter of years more than the weeks Shaju was promising. He could see it now: every month, a new reason to postpone the opening. On and on, until the cars before him were little more than heaps of rust and he was just a dissatisfied skeleton.
He stood up. The iron beneath his feet creaked but didn't bend. For a moment he was tempted to shout something out into the road, something like: THEY CAN'T STOP ALL OF YOU IF YOU JUST DRIVE, but he bit his tongue and instead simply sighed, standing there with his hands balled into fists at either side, looking out into the distance.
Just take that dark cloud
Ring it out to wash it down
I've left out a lot of things, hung like trophies stolen in defeat.
Escaping the crowds, Willow quickly winds her way to the outskirts of the city.
She hates the clamor of bodies, throngs of people, and sharp, confusing corners of the Drench more than the smell of standing water. Her destination was the Tangles. Because a whole lot of fucking nothing grows under the Plates without sunlight, it's one of the few places Willow can visit to see the color green.
Her path brings her the roundabout way near the highways, which sat silent and dead since the lockdown. Still, there is something wrong about walking across a highway - dead or not. She grasps the old iron handrail to the stairs and quickly climbs. Her boots, while light, still sound heavy and clunky on the iron grates as she walks up and begins to cross.
That is when she notices a man, looking out over the cars. A cloud of cigarette smoke floats away above him, forgotten. He stands, as if in desperation, toward the road, his hands clasped into useless fists at his sides. Fighting the air is never a productive activity.
In her mind, Willow thinks he looks like a jumper. Instead of panicking in response to this realization, she takes a deep breath and makes her way steadily toward him. She stops a few feet from him on the bridge and walks toward the edge. She looks over down at the road and looks at him with a flat expression.
In a matter-of-fact tone, she offers some advice. "I don't think you'll die if you jump. Probably just some broken legs." She smiles, a warm expression out of place next to her statement. "That would probably just make things worse."
You don't need sympathy
They got a pill for everything
Adam didn't notice that he had company until Willow started speaking, the surprise voice drawing a 'hum?' and a blank face for the moment it took for his brain to connect her words together and realise what she was saying. A scoff, then he shook his head and held his hands out. "Oh jeez, no. I'm not about to top myself. I just wanted to look at the stop for a bit, have my cig." He motioned to his mouth, mimicking smoking, as if she might not know what he meant.
He looked back at the horizon, the stopped cars and the drop (she was right, it wasn't really far enough to kill oneself, unless you were very deliberate about the way you fell), then back to the newcomer with sudden alarm on his face, eyes darting between her and the nearest edge.
"Wait, you're not here to uh, do that, are you?" Adam wasn't sure if he would save her or just leave before he had to see anything grisly, but either way he would have liked to know.
Just take that dark cloud
Ring it out to wash it down
I've left out a lot of things, hung like trophies stolen in defeat.
"Sure, sure," she says, trying her best to sound skeptical just to mess with the man. He was clearly surprised being mistaken for a jumper, and now that the expression on his face is less grim, Willow can tell he's not the type. His animated gestures about smoking make her laugh, a small twinkle of a sound for a moment. "That'll kill you just the same anyway." The girl makes a disapproving clucking tsk, tsk sound after, only missing a finger waggle to really put on a show.
He asks if she is here to off herself, instead. Willow pauses, as if to really consider. She makes an exaggerated frown and looks down at the concrete below. Slowly, she tilts her head back and forth. "Hmm," she pauses and looks at him. Dramatically continuing her show of weighing her options. "No, I think not. I am just trying to avoid the crowds."
She turns back toward the outstretched highway to look at the blockade in the distance. "Why come here to look at the stop?" she asks, genuinely curious. Willow can't imagine any good reason to want to look at the most obvious physical manifestation of the lockdown, unless he had some means to make it disappear.
"It's not going anywhere any time soon," her voice has a tinge of resignation in it. Not sad, not angry - just tired.
You don't need sympathy
They got a pill for everything
Adam was not used to being lectured on smoking; in the Drench pretty much everyone had a vice and his cigarettes were probably the least destructive of his. Still, he had to scoff and shrug, unable to say she was wrong.
Following her eyeline down to the cars and back up again, he was midway through trying to calculate if he could grab her before she made a run for the edge when she thankfully confirmed she would not be jumping either. This was a good place to avoid the usual busy hum of the Drench, the quiet now that even the road was still almost overwhelming to one used to the noise and bustle of Neon Alley. "Sick of the city? Don't blame you. Since this lockdown shit has come in it's been tense as fuck."
Snorting as she stated the obvious - no, it was not going to go away - he shrugged as he took a few steps closer. "Thinking about it. Trying to see if anything changes here day to day. How many guards they're putting on there and shit. If anyone's gonna try bolt and get shot." It was the kind of thing where Adam felt if he watched enough, paid enough attention, eventually something interesting was bound to happen. "Or...like you said, avoiding crowds. Where're the crowds you're avoiding?"
Just take that dark cloud
Ring it out to wash it down
I've left out a lot of things, hung like trophies stolen in defeat.
Tense was one way to describe the mood of the Drench nowadays.
Thinking back, she cannot really recall a time when the Drench was a relaxed place to be. People were constantly on edge about the floods, and if not the floods the Enforcers, and if not the Enforcers rent, and if not rent... The list goes on. Stress coated the city like a wool blanket; just as suffocating and just as uncomfortable.
"You could say that."
Truth be told, she still has not gotten used to the amount of people in the city. With the floods having poured through and destroyed the drowners again, more people than usual were also living on the streets - adding more bodies to an already crowded place.
Her eyes glance up at his face, noticing for the first time how tall he is. Standing next to the edge of the bridge, even the supports do not look as large next to this man. Was it something in the water here? she silently wonders, remembering how boys were either her height or slightly taller back home. She would not be surprised if there was some growth hormone poured into the drinking water to make Drenchers better workers. But then, that is under the assumption this guy is a native.
Willow listens to him but ends up with more questions than answers. She steps closer to the edge and leans against the railing. Her eyes stretch out toward the stop as he speaks. "What's the point?" she asks, mostly borne out of her own growing sense of apathy and acceptance with the lockdown. Why observe if it won't change the reality?
"Anywhere, really. Too many damn people in the streets these days," a sigh acts as punctuation to her statement. "Just need to get away from it and clear my head."
You don't need sympathy
They got a pill for everything
Had Adam known his height was being noticed he would have drawn himself up taller, but as it was he kept to his usual slight slouch, going to lean against the railings himself when Willow did, looking out over the horizon again. What was the point? Well, when she asked so directly, it was hard to come up with a decent answer, but keeping his eye on the skyline he frowned, trying to put words to it.
"I mean...I work in uh...knowing stuff. So I wanna know when and how this goes down. But more than that...I dunno, I guess I just feel like something's gonna happen. I don't know what, or when, but...it all feels like it's gonna burst, at some point." Everyone either sat in their cars or in pubs in the Drench having long abandoned their vehicles, the bored expressions on enforcers told to watch over nothing but a still road...he scratched the back of his neck and shrugged; it was hard to explain.
Another man might have worried he was getting in the way of Willow's head-clearing, but not Adam, who immediately wanted to know more. "Clear it of what? You got enforcer problems too? One of my friends fell out of a fucking window at one recently...guess that was more his fault, though."
Just take that dark cloud
Ring it out to wash it down
I've left out a lot of things, hung like trophies stolen in defeat.
"Knowing stuff"?
An eyebrow raises at the statement, as Willow considers what this could mean. She is aware of the spies and class traitors among the Drenchers. They get paid by the blue bottoms to sell out their neighbors. Willow thought they were scummy, but at the same time, she could not really judge someone for doing what they need to in order to survive.
Alternatively, he could be some sort of news anchor or journalist. She's not sure which is worse.
"I don't know anyone stupid enough to try to run," she says almost absently, thinking about his words. "And the forcies don't seem to be in a hurry to do much of anything." She breathes in slowly. It's true, though, that pressures would rise soon enough. Right now, the Drench was like a pot of water with a lid. Sooner or later, it would boil over.
He asks about her problems, and she begins to think if her current situation with Sunny the Rogue Enforcer counts as a "problem". Before her train of thought can go much further, though, he mentions his friend falling out of a window at one. Willow cranes her head around to look at him with wide, doe-like eyes. "Excuse me, what?" she asks, as if she misheard him.
Then, she laughs, a golden sound amid the dull, dreary landscape. It seems very out of place, but what else can you do in the face of something so ridiculous?
"No, I can't say I've fallen out of any windows recently," she manages to get out between a giggle. "Much less onto an Enforcer."
You don't need sympathy
They got a pill for everything
"Oh, they are. People're stupid all the time." If there was one thing he'd learnt in his years investigating the Plates and their various branches, it was that. Many Drenchers got into fights they couldn't win, let their pride take over when they were faced with enforcers and bad odds. It would absolutely be a terrible idea, but Adam would not be surprised if he saw someone make a break for it from their car.
It was true though that for the time being people seemed to have slowed into a kind of apathetic stupor. Adam had been trying to keep busy, work on his reports and show and whatever else, but the days went on and the tension kept rising. "I think most enforcers are just happy to get their pay and wag their dicks around getting people in at night." The railing creaked, just a little, and Adam looked down with a nervous expression before standing back up a little away from it.
Laughing at her reaction to Nate's misfortune, he shrugged. "I didn't get much more of the story either. My mate, he's uh..a doctor, and I guess he got into an argument with one of 'em and got a bit too into it. That's what I mean about people being stupid, I guess." Nate's cockiness certainly was a risk when dealing with the powers that be. "I've had my own weird times with 'em too lately. Ended up finding Arbiter Jr in a random gang of enforcers. The Arbiter's son! Turns out he's kinda a wimp."
Just take that dark cloud
Ring it out to wash it down
I've left out a lot of things, hung like trophies stolen in defeat.
Willow bites her tongue and swallows the comment about the company this stranger keeps. Who he decides to spend time with - stupid or otherwise - really is none of her business. Personally, she has not found anyone so fired up and delusion to think running toward a firing squad was the correct way to escape this hell. She herself has already accepted that they are caged here with no pathway out.
At least no immediate pathway out.
"Why would they bother to do much else?" she says, smiling at his comment about the enforcers. Most of them were still working class traitors, who were just in it for the paycheck and comfortable living. There of course were the showponies - blue bottoms doing their "time" to earn their seat in daddy's mansion after retirement. Either way, most of them were happy to do the bare minimum. The only ones who were truly problematic were the sadistic assholes who looked at Drenchers like some sort of lab rats. Willow did her best to avoid those. "They get paid the same regardless."
The man's laugh sounds full and rich, and by the brightness she can tell that his thoughts have honed in on the friend he elaborates a bit more on. She smiles as he characterizes the man, almost chiding him like a toddler getting into something they ought not. "He can't be that stupid if he's a doctor," her statement is more of a musing. It's true that people can surprise you sometimes. The only doctor she had really interacted much with was back in Stitsun. He was an elderly gentlemen with a long white beard and even longer medical advice. She has difficulty imagining anyone in that field being brash and reckless.
The girl's attention is drawn back when Arbiter Jr is mentioned. Her most recent run-in with an enforcer was, after all, with Sunny. A laugh peels through the air when he is characterized as a wimp. "Being different sometimes can be brave," she says, eyeing the tall man without turning her head. "Especially if it means flouting the Arbiter." She continues her smile, almost knowingly, but does not wish to spill information to someone who works in the business of collecting gossip.
She doesn't know him from Adam - much less that he is, in fact, Adam.
