Trashbender

Hey all, I've been humhawing on this for a bit but I just started some therapy for stuff this week and ngl it's a bit of a Pandora's Box and it's already rough. Social stuff is hard, including writing, but I'm going to do my best to answer to threads and stuff because y'all are great and I am genuinely enjoying myself here. So not completely AFV, but just.... am going to be a sad, slow tortoise for a while. Wifi hugs <3

Am gonna go ahead and keep this thread going since it's been a bit since Honest has been around! Will post within the next couple of days.

The ambience, as it were, had indeed struck her as she moved silently through the house, finding her vantage point. It felt not too unlike those homes she heard about in stories -- the kind that restless teenagers stumble into on a dare, the kind that is furnished, well lit, and warm, with food still left on the table half-eaten.... and no one to be seen. It was not what she had expected, and left her with an uncommonly eerie feeling. Frowning inwardly, she decided to wait it out a little longer, but eventually the silence became oppressive, if only because there were no sounds of anyone coming in; no sounds of a struggle; no sounds of sickness; no sounds of distress. Oh, silence was golden, even the silence of death, but not when Lala herself did not cause it. Something was amiss. With a barely audible rustle, she slipped out of her hiding spot in the shadows of the sitting room and, careful to avoid the windows, crept around to the opening of the hallway and leaned in to listen. Hearing nothing, her inner frown turned to a scowl, and she was beginning to feel impatient: that rat-bastard should have been home and dipping into his stores by now, but if he had come home, he wasn't dipping into anything. One of her shrouded hands moved to her non-existent stomach and reached beneath the layers of black cloth which wrapped her bones; it slowly snaked its way up into her ribcage, and with a quiet scraping sound, withdrew a simple, but sharp and well-kept hand-sickle. If he wouldn't drink, she'd do it the old-fashioned way. On padded feet she crept through the hallway, a looming specter without a face, like the shadow of the monster which haunted Lisette into her own kitchen. Only this time, the shadow found its way to the doorframe of the dining room. Lala's teeth cracked together in spent patience when she saw them just sitting there, but the moment vanished in an instant when she saw the masks. Her skull twitched into a baffled tilt. Her gaze flipped back and forth between them, taking in the unsettling scene with the grace of a serial killer who finds a ghost in place of his mark. Thankfully she didn't have any blood, or it'd be awful cold at the moment. It felt like cold stone and a slowly smoldering ice-fire before her; their energy was palpable to her virtually naked spirit and she curled her spine in slightly, expecting retaliation for her presence and a not-so-graceful exit as she had planned. What she got instead, was a greeting. “Hello,” said the man without intonation. He seemed ever so lost in the woman’s eyes across from him, so much so that he did not move but for his lips when she entered. “Would you sit with us?” Her skull tipped the other way, half-incredulous and half-intrigued. There were filled glasses on the table -- and between them was the bottle she herself had tainted a while ago. "A toast?" Proposed the woman seated across from the ram. Lala froze where she was, sickle held at her side in a rigor-mortis grip, looming, head tipped, wanting to leap forward and make these people dead like she planned. She found her vitriol rising, shamed at having been caught out and trumped, and outraged at what she perceived as mockery of her failure on their part. An inhuman, barely-audible growl rattled in her cold dead windpipe. "To hospitality," the woman said after an unceasingly long moment, making her first movement as she cupped the crystal wine glass in the palm of her hand and hoisted it to the flickering firelight, waiting for him to join her raised glass before she finished, "And new friends." Yes, yes, drink away, Lala hissed inwardly, Let me see it. The two of them then drank, drank away a multitude of sins by a multitude of individuals. Lala leaned forward, her abnormally long neck craning to its maximum length to take in every moment of their reactions, every shiver of their auras, every deterioration as it happened. Rarely did she get to watch her work so closely; maybe she'd have the last laugh after all. The moments stretched away, stretched into an awkward thinness as half a minute became a full one. One became two. And absolutely nothing happened. Their energy remained stable -- they didn't appear to flinch or wince, and they said nothing. The silence in the room was oppressive, and heavy enough that they could hear her grinding her teeth in newly found frustration. But something else accompanied her frustration -- as infuriating as it was to see her most reliable weapon fail, the sin-eater couldn't help but begin asking questions. The chief of which was, of course..... ".....how?" Her voice was hollow and sharp, muffled only very slightly by her wrappings. The hand holding the sickle lowered as though defeated, and she looked back and forth between them once again. Now it was they who waited. After the minute or two it took her to realize they were not going to fall ill or go mad, she registered the display as a show of power, and the fact that no normal person could possibly resist the spirit-poison she had spat into that wine. They weren't attacking her, and they weren't outing her to any authorities. Straightening, Lala stepped peaceably forward and pulled out another chair, sitting down as the man in the bone ram mask had originally requested. Still uncertain and alert to any possible aggression, she finally spoke, addressing them both at once in a low tone of intrigue and caution: "What are you?"

I'm gonna use good old-fashioned human capability and go air-swimming, myself.

"Bad news, the captain wants to cloud-ski."

2020 -- A Comprehensive Review: This has been a comprehensive review.

Omgsh bless you, that worked, I was literally having a moodstorm about this LOL

@amenities Thanks so much! c: @supernal Omgsh you're right LOL Sorry these are so huge, I'm running into an issue where no matter how small I resize them or where I upload them, they keep reverting back to being 5000000 pixels wide and tall, and it frankly drives me effing insane. I also apologize because I don't have a scanner anymore and my phone camera refuses to focus 98% of the time. So I'm really, really unhappy with the quality of these ones. Regardless, here's some of Lala's mask's expressions I suppose. Neutral: Vexed and Delighted Manic: Also I know I suck at drawing hands please don't come after me lol I did my best

Blue, black, and purple -- very suitable colors for the woman who presented herself as hostess. Mizu noted the tone of her skin, the honest presentation of clothes, and felt delighted: this would be a fun one. Aveline seemed to represent an aspect of freedom, and as one who once was tightly bound by metaphysical convention, Mizu appreciated this greatly. The two stepped inside and indeed the warmth washed over them, along with the enticing aromas of cooking. Before they proceeded, Mizu extended a hand to Aveline with a smile. "You must be Miss Singlance," She said, "I'm Mizu, and this is--" Taras cut her off as naturally as possible with a smile of his own. "Yuri." Realizing his need for secrecy suddenly, Mizu did her best to roll with it and make no indication that she hadn't been expecting the name, simply proceeding to shake Aveline's hand. "It's lovely to meet you! Good choice on the colors, too, those ones are very watery and always full of stories." She didn't give away that she intended to make a painting for their hosts with those very colors by the end of the night, after she was done stuffing her face, of course: it was always nice to give a thank you gift when possible, and she had all her things with her.

Sweet, thanks, will detail things more appropriately in me next post <3 @notmuch_23 EDIT: having read the most recent post I have to say that I actually didn't think of the Japanese word yuri when I did Taras' cover name, just picked a random male Slavic name, but now I am laughing my ass off both at his expense and my own linguistic gaffe