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thecrossinglogs2025-04-01 07:55 am
solitarynote) wrote in thecrossinglogs2025-04-01 07:55 am
Wind In the Desert Just Sounds Like Music
WHO: Sunny and You! (This happens right after the therapy meet, but it’s OTA. If you weren’t attending the meeting, you can still see Sunny running off ^^)
WHAT: Sunny got upset and ran off. Now he’s lost in the Desert. Help?
WHERE: The Desert (and Dunes. Really he might end up at one of the inserted locations too, TBD)
WHEN: Post-Therapy Meet, Pre-Second Crossing
WARNINGS Most likely signs of PTSD and anxiety. Will update in Subject as needed :)
Sunny didn’t know where he was. He remembered getting upset, running off… but he didn’t recognize any of the surroundings nearby. He wasn’t in the Oasis… and, because he had spent all of his time in said safe haven before now, that fact filled him with dread…
He needed to find his way back. But… that meant finding everyone else, which would probably lead to more questions. Questions that he didn’t want to answer. Questions that caused his stomach to cramp and his breath to come short all over again.
Maybe it was better to stay here…
[OOC: OK! Here’s the search log for Sunny! I’ll be making several prompts below, and whoever ends up finding Sunny will be left to random draw to keep it fair ^^ But feel free to mingle, join the search with someone else, etc. Any of the locations added by us are fair game to explore too!]
WHAT: Sunny got upset and ran off. Now he’s lost in the Desert. Help?
WHERE: The Desert (and Dunes. Really he might end up at one of the inserted locations too, TBD)
WHEN: Post-Therapy Meet, Pre-Second Crossing
WARNINGS Most likely signs of PTSD and anxiety. Will update in Subject as needed :)
Sunny didn’t know where he was. He remembered getting upset, running off… but he didn’t recognize any of the surroundings nearby. He wasn’t in the Oasis… and, because he had spent all of his time in said safe haven before now, that fact filled him with dread…
He needed to find his way back. But… that meant finding everyone else, which would probably lead to more questions. Questions that he didn’t want to answer. Questions that caused his stomach to cramp and his breath to come short all over again.
Maybe it was better to stay here…
[OOC: OK! Here’s the search log for Sunny! I’ll be making several prompts below, and whoever ends up finding Sunny will be left to random draw to keep it fair ^^ But feel free to mingle, join the search with someone else, etc. Any of the locations added by us are fair game to explore too!]
Here’s a Nickname for You XD
Everything was clicking in Sunny’s head. The nod he gave to the skeleton’s question was almost automatic, so in awe he was in the moment to have met…]
Spicy Bones.
[He says the words like they are some great revelation. Truly, they had talked in length about spice and puns and dreams. Any fear that Sunny may have felt had now dissipated completely.
Why was he out here again? What had he come here for? That wasn’t important right now.]]I… like drawing… [As a way of explanation, but also… Sunny did feel much more comfortable talking using the notepad. It was less exhausting on his windpipe (not that certain things were needed here), and it gave him more time to formulate a response.]
hehehe
He starts to move his hand, intending to pull out his list of suggestions and rules for the suggesting of names, so as to complain and explain and ask for a new one. But that tone, like a realization and relief have struck at once. That clearly diminishing tension in body and face and voice...
..But he can't do it. He can't bring himself to rain on the parade of this naming notion.
...At least Spicy as an adjective adds a whole new spin and some, nyeh heh heh, spice to it. Maybe it'll even get shortened to 'Spicy' most of the time! With that encouraging thought, he's able to smile more sincerely.]
Well, it warmed my day to see your art! And my night, though I'm afraid to say... I didn't go hunting down any peppers for an enhanced nap attempt.
no subject
Is it… ok…? [His question is hesitant, full of the potential rejection and the idea that maybe the skeleton wouldn’t want to talk anymore if he was given an unknowingly bad moniker.
If there was one thing Sunny was good at noticing, it was body language - and that slight twitch of a bony hand spoke volumes. Of what, he wasn’t sure, but it was still movement, like something begun and halted.
But then they’ve moved on to Sunny’s drawing, and the teen’s eye lights up a bit. Oh, he liked it! And he remembered!] Is ok. No peppers here… [It was true. Not that Sunny had searched outside of the Oasis till… today… and that realization brought him back to exactly why he was here and…
The teen wilted a bit, growing quiet. What… was he supposed to do now?]
no subject
No, there don't seem to be any peppers around here. I suppose in the shadows of a gigantic skeleton isn't the best place for gardening.
[He telegraphs looking around the area, still not looking particularly long at Sunny, and nods as if to himself.]
Maybe there isn't enough water. Seems our pepper odds are better by the River! Or the Oasis. Such a shame, we'd have to go all the way back there to grow any...
[A subtle and cunning hint, he thinks to himself. Or maybe the very overtly obvious kind, but framed in a device that makes it easy to avoid talking directly about the matter at hand. Truly he's flexing his conversational expertise as honed in the underground, and mastered in his mutually evasive conversations with his brother.]
Papyrus, so considerate <3
Not just because of his fear of water - he’d faced it back home, but here was a different story - but also…
There had been too many people accidentally smacking him when they arrived. He had sworn off visiting.]
Too… violent… [Those peppers would grow up to be hooligans stealing candy or something if they were planted there!]
Deflective! But the best kind of deflective is the kind where it's also considerate
...The... River?
[He hates to put the teen on the spot for needing to answer. But, as great as he is at holding a conversation pretty much by himself if needed, that comment seems completely tangential. Maybe even cosinal.
The River was unpleasant, with the mud that seemed to fill every cranny of his bones, the way floating in it had frozen him in that last living moment. But the salted mud itself was salty mud, and seemed pretty content to sit or slowly flow in place. Had there been some explosive eruption before his arrival? Bodiless souls forming bodies out of mud to properly flail at people with? Something else??
...At least the question is ultimately a yes-or-no sort. Elaboration would be helpful, but he can shoulder the talking again with as little as a nod or shake of the head.]
Sunny surely is painting the worst mental image of this XD
People… arrive there… but… it’s scary… [Sunny had been the object of sudden jump scares in the form of arrivals, accidentally be smacked or (in one case) ordered around by a very pompous yet large bird. OK, that last one was more along the lines of what he had expected, but when a hand had risen through the mud like something out of a horror film, Sunny almost felt his (non-existent) heart stop.]
A bird… and people… and flailing limbs…
having met the bird, he can imagine the initial reaction
[Personal murders, political assassinations, illness, disasters... All sorts of circumstances leading to their respective demises. And while he was relatively calm, if shocked and betrayed, anyone who went down swinging?]
And you've been attacked by a few who hadn't... exactly realized they were somewhere else, now. I hope they realized their mistakes quickly! But I guess that doesn't make the riverbank an enjoyable relaxation spot. Exciting, but maybe not enjoyable.
[And that's a person, a fairly quiet and subdued one. How would peppers fare in that bank, if people go scrabbling up out of it...?]
Maybe the oasis would be better.
Is a big bird XD
Do I… have to go… back…?
[His question takes time, voice smaller than previously. Everyone… was looking for him, but they would probably be really, really mad, right? In a way, Sunny is glad that this skeleton found him first.]
no subject
[He isn't in a state of recently-murdered flailing panic, after all. It takes him a minute to realize that the question, as quiet and slow as it was even for this teen's apparent norm, probably didn't mean that. If that meant back to the therapy session, or whatever, no. But if the idea of going back is distressful...]
If you mean back to the oasis... I think that's for you to decide. Sometimes teenagers just have to run away from home!
[Somehow, unlikely as it might seem - he isn't joking. He's thinking back to days underground, of one of the drake's infamous rebellion - and the frequent loitering out by the sentry stations. Even when the pack of teenagers gathered together, they tended to go no closer to town than his painted bridge, which... The reminder helps him continue.]
I think it's traditional for other teenagers to bring them packed lunches, but... we haven't really been eating... So I hope you'd let the people out searching know where you are eventually, even if they don't bring you sandwiches or whatever.
CW: brief hint of parental abandonment
And despite the joking tone that the skeleton took…] Run from… home…? [In all of the times that Sunny had felt overwhelmed, his father’s words (now forgotten) echoing in his head, the specter of Something floating behind him, all of his fears… he had never thought to run away.
Not physically, at least.
In fact, it’s the almost stunned silence that follows which has Sunny realizing… this was a first. Running like this.
Running from his problems was something he did often. He didn’t like confrontation, especially when it concerned the darker parts of reality (and his mind, though there it was easier to reset). He didn’t want to have the bitter and uncomfortable guilt that swirled inside of him to come out on accident… so it was easier to just not.]
Won’t… that make them… angrier?
[It seemed, for all the talk of the people back in the Oasis being worried, that the stronger (and more volatile) emotion was what he was afraid of. The longer you put something off, the larger the explosion when everything did come out, and…]