itscurtains | Week Five

[Last week, you had your very first minor body pileup! Granted, the Balladeer's death was entirely unrelated to anything, but at least he died as he lived - getting completely fucked up in some kind of carnival-themed hellscape. Only two days later, another terrible accident took Rina and Varian both from you. It's just been one of those weeks, huh? At least you got to add both of their corpses to your weird growing collection!

Again, you'll wake up this morning with another new snippet of memory. You'll also find that the stairs in the lobby are no longer blocked. You can only access one part of the second floor, but it seems like there's some neat stuff up there!

Outside, a few things seem to have changed. For one, the weather has turned - it'll be overcast this week, with periodic rain and even scattered thunderstorms. For another, the bushes around that rock out by the football field have bloomed. That's nice.

Get to it, friends! I'm sure everything will be fine this week!]

Sunday | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday

(( Be sure to submit your memory regain and your AC for this week! As always, Hester's office hours and the merch booth remain available. ))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh! Like the Oracle at Delphi. Except she's a human, and I don't know her name that isn't "at Delphi". Do groundhogs usually live in cities, though? I'd think they'd need more... ground.

[ He shakes his head. ]

It's okay. I mean, it's not? It's a really big problem, and it's only getting worse. But I'm going to fix it? I hope.

Yeah! The Groundhog at Puxiltr - Puxiltaw - the city where he lives. They have some ground for him, though.

[ She smiles, and lightly punches his arm. ]

Good for you! Saving the world. Or at least the seasons.

[ Orpheus beams at her. ]

Yeah! I'm writing a song for the goddess of the seasons and her husband, about how their marriage used to be before it started falling apart, and if I get right then they'll remember what it was like before they started fighting all the time and he'll give me my wife back.

[ His wife who may or may not be somewhere within earshot during this conversation. Hi, Eurydice. ]

[ Looks over. Points. ]

Wait, that wife?

He's only got one!

[ she waves, sounding a little proud of herself ]

Yes! She's my wife and I love her, and when we go home I'm going to get her back.

[ Waves! ]

Your wife is cool. I'm sorry I made her think Will Graham could talk.

[ She thinks, forgetting for a moment who this man is. ]

Maybe you already got her back? You know, the weekly amnesia hour.

Maybe! Wouldn't that be funny? I've been working so hard on finishing the song here, but maybe it's already done, and I'm just writing the same thing all over again. Except Antonio and Mumble and the Balladeer helped me with it here, so maybe this version is better?

[ Huh. ]

Well either way, I hope it's good enough to convince Lord Hades to let her go. I hope it was good enough? If it's already happened. Who's Will Graham?

I believe in you! And your song. Hades ain't shit.

[ She laughs. ]

He's my deer. I love him.

Thanks! I believe in me too, mostly. It's really scary, but I don't want to think about what'll happen if I don't do it.

[ So he's just been trying as hard as possible not to! It's fine. ]

Oh, you mean the blue one you brought with you to the campfire? He seems nice. Did you get him out of the vending machine?

You got this, buddy.

[ She nods. ]

Yeah! I got him from the machine and made him blue so he can stand out.

Right, otherwise it'd be really easy to confuse him with the rest of the herd of fake deer. Do you think it's still called a herd if they're all fake? Maybe it's an unherd.

I think this many fake deer is simply........ unherd of.

[ This is the kind of joke Orpheus would laugh at even if he weren't extremely high, so as it is he loses it hard enough that he has to sit down for a bit, leaning against the wall. It takes him a pretty solid moment to calm down enough to talk again, and even as he does he's still kind of giggling a bit. ]

Why do you think there are so many of them in there? Peregrine thinks they're there to make fun of her, but they have to belong to someone, right? Even if it's not one of us.

[ Listen. She is also very satisfied with this joke. ]

There's no deer in the Wizard of Oz.... maybe the Wizard just likes deer? For all we know he could be a deer.

The Wizard of Oz? [ Orpheus echoes, looking up at her from his new spot on the floor. ] Is that who the Wizard is? I've heard the rest of you mention Oz a couple of times now, but I never really asked about it.

[ Everything that's been going on has been kind of distracting, in his defense. ]

It's like... a story that already exists. He seems like he likes it a lot. Don't think he's the real Wizard of Oz, though.

Oh. I like stories? Collecting and telling and inspiring stories is my mom's, um. [ wait what's the word ] It's her calling.

[ He sits up a little straighter, clearly interested. ]

What's it about?

[ is it storytime ]

Oh shit, uh... okay.

[ Janis collects herself. ]

So once upon a time, in Kansas during like... the thirties, there was a girl named Dorothy. I think it's supposed to be dust bowl times? I don't know, anyway. Her house gets sucked up in a tornado, and she goes to this magical place called Oz! Suddenly everything is colorful and fun and there's a bunch of Munchkins, a magical race of short people who super didn't age well!

And this witch, Glinda - she's a good witch, you can tell because she's, like, pink and pretty - tells her that her house killed a bad witch, which is fine because bad witches suck, and says to go follow this road to meet the Wizard of Oz so she can go home! And on the way she meets uh... a scarecrow, a tin man, and a lion, but they're all like. Dudes. They can talk. And sing, too! They get laid out in a poppy field for like a hot second - or maybe that happens later?

So they meet the Wizard and he's this big head on the wall and he says "go... kill the other bad witch while you're here" because I guess just killing one isn't enough? Ungrateful jerk. Stupid...... green. Green man.

[ And, swinging back onto track: ]

Anyway, they go there and Dorothy stone cold kills her, except it's on accident again - she's like so evil and ugly or whatever that water kills her. She melts, Dorothy learns that the Wizard is a hack, and the good witch lets her know that she could have gone home the whole time with the shoes she inherited from the first evil witch she accidentally killed! Then she wakes up and it was all a dream, which is stupid so we ignore it. The end.

[ a beat. ]

Oh shit and she had a dog, too. Fuck. Like it doesn't matter to the story, but he's cute and I feel bad ignoring him.

[ Orpheus does his level best to listen to all of that. Really, he does. But between being much higher than expected and his own problems with focus, his main takeaway winds up being; ]

That Wizard seems terrible, too. Making someone kill two people to go home, when there was nothing stopping her from doing that. [ He scowls, looking supremely unimpressed. ] I guess it makes sense that the Wizard would name himself after the Wizard and be a big head.

[ He sits back, leaning against the wall and frowining. ]

I'm from the Dustbowl, though. I guess Peregrine was right about that being the thirties, by how you count the year. Do you think that means anything?

Week Five

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