Fandom Island and Town

Well, the island was... far too quiet for Fjord's tastes. He was used to bustle, damn it, between growing up in a port town and working on a ship for so long. Even the island, small as it was, tended to have something going on. And so he was thankful to be making his way in to the forge today, if only so that he could keep himself company with the sound of a hammer's swing, occasionally referring to the notes Amaya had made while she was in a masculine body just to double-check his own form.

It was about as close as he could manage to working alongside Amaya today. Even the lack of the regular morning coffee delivery had thrown him a little. He didn't like being a creature of habit these days. Too much was up in the air and falling into a habit here seemed like the first step to complacency about being stuck, but a lack of coffee strong enough to bite you meant that, somewhere around noon, he was contemplating taking a break and hitting up the Perk before he went on with his afternoon.

Yeah, Fjord hated a quiet island. It was official.

[OOC: Open!]

Fjord had made his way in to the Forge today.

Wasn't... wasn't really certain what he was doing here, but he'd made his way in. His shape was all wrong. Even just swinging a hammer needed to be approached differently, accounting for certain... obstacles... that just weren't there ever before.

But still, he'd made his way in to the Forge.

He took a look around the place. And then sighed, settled in, and started cleaning and sharpening blades.

Had to keep busy somehow, anyway.

[OOC: Open!]

What was green, wiggly, large, and cranky?

Fjord trying to shake the jello off on the foundry's front stoop, not wanting to set foot inside today while he was sticky all over. He'd been around for December's strange precipitation, of course, but even the falling sugar was relatively innocuous compared to the slime that was slowly oozing its way down the back of Fjord's shirt, prompting another horrified shudder out of him.

He'd actually get to work eventually. Probably. But for the time being, he was mostly just wondering why it couldn't be raining something easy to deal with, like... he didn't know, maybe water.

Hell, as more jello squidged its way down his back, Fjord was reasonably certain he'd even take falling turnips.

[OOC: Open!]

Fjord's only real regret about working at Caritas was that generally he was expected to be on his best behavior. Fortunately, he'd gotten a lot of his anxiety about this weekend out of his system yesterday while swinging a hammer, which meant today he was just sort of flat about this whole visitors from off the island thing. Not that he was dreading meeting anybody's guests (although, yes, he sort of was that too), but the knowledge that he wouldn't have anybody here to visit him rubbed at him strangely.

It had been a while since the days he had nobody he could at least hope for a check-in from. Sure, he had friends on the island, but coming to the bar for a drink on a Friday night hardly counted as going out of their way for his sake. And he wasn't going to let himself even flirt with the thought that Vandran might come strolling through that door to clap him on the shoulder and tell him that he better be reaching to pour him a drink or something. Hell, at this point he'd even take Jester, and he'd only known Jester for a week or so before the island had grabbed him.

Ah well. Potentially serving drinks to other people's guests would have to do.

... Not yours, Tino.

[OOC: Open!]

Fjord walked into Caritas for his Friday shift and kind of stopped short three steps in.

"Tino, what the hell are you doing?"

Tino paused mid-juggling act, and three disembodied zombie arms went thumping to the floor. The zombies didn't seem to mind any, one of them applauding as best as he was able given that he only had one arm, and another not applauding at all, but looking like he kind of wished he could.

Fjord wrinkled his nose and shoved a roll of tape into Tino's hands. "You're fixin' this," he muttered. "And you better be sure to put them on right, too. Last time you stuck the drummer's arm on backwards he kept havin' to hit the cymbals with his elbow."

A little sheepishly, Tino got back to work.

[OOC: NEW DEFAULT ICON BEHOLD THE TUSKS. Ahem. Open!]

You know, sometimes Fjord came in to the bar, looked at Tino for a whole half a second, and decided that he really didn't want to know.

Tonight, coming in to see Tino sporting a pair of slim flippers, a snorkel, and wearing an inner tube shaped a bit like a duck over his usual Friday night bar clothes, was one of those nights.

He even left the specials board as it was, because really.

Really.

Last Chance To Party Before The Fall!
Two-for-one shots! Mixed drinks half off! Tiny umbrellas for every drink!

You do you, Tino. You do you.

[OOC: Open!]

Fjord came into Caritas, expecting... something. Anything. Drinks that turned into pizza when he picked them up or taps that ran only grape soda or plates of spaghetti that appeared on chairs just as someone was about to sit in them. But what he was met with was a completely normal bar.

Really, the weirdest part was that even Tino was acting normal, and Fjord didn't trust it.

"What, you're not even going to try to come up with some terrible new mixed drink tonight?"

Tino shrugged.

Fjord squinted at him.

[OOC: Open!]

Amaya hadn't come back to the forge yesterday during Fjord's shift. Which... hadn't really surprised him. She'd acted a little bit off, and he had learned the reason why this morning when he'd listened to the radio broadcast.

Amaya had been taken. Amaya was a 'bad toy.'

Amaya. And here he was, in his proper damn mind, skulking about and pretending to be a good toy still, speaking in that damn accent of his and keeping his head down and smiling for anybody who passed him by, and it was enough to cause a nasty twist of something in his little resin chest. He needed to...

Needed to...

He had no damn clue. Go for a walk. Clear his head. Find some familiar ground. And so it was past the port today and up to the lighthouse where, if nothing else, he'd be able to look out over water that seemed to go on forever and step out of his damn head to be back out on the sea. The stairs up were... an adventure, really, given the base under his feet, but it was all the more reason to take a seat next to the light at the top and catch his breath. Settle in for a few minutes. Familiarize himself with the inside of the place, because if nothing else, at least this would be somewhere good to lay low while things were going to hell out there. Figure out if there was anything he could do to help turn the tide.

His brow creased slightly and he frowned as he sat. Wedged under a small ledge under the light, there was a... a something. A nesting doll? He reached for it, turned it over in his hands. Hollow, there was room in it for more, but the painting on it was of a familiar port, the Port of Fandom, a beautiful illustration of the shoreline and water there.

"Now," he murmured, considering it for a moment longer, "what are you all about?"

It seemed important.

It seemed as though, perhaps, he had something to contribute to this rebellion after all.

[OOC: Establishy! Unless you've got a burning need to poke the green boy!]

It had been Sorry, yesterday, that had snapped Fjord out of it.

It had been the constant humiliation of being bumped right back to where he'd started, of feeling so, so useless compared to everybody else. Of speaking in his actual accent with a tuskless mouth because good toys didn't hide who they were from anybody, especially not their nearest and dearest. But good toys also made concessions about who they were, hid away the monster they had always been, so that everybody could be happy.

It had taken feeling small. And it hadn't happened right away. Had festered yesterday after the game for the longest while, screaming inside his head about why that had hurt so much, all with a little, half-painted resin smile.

And then, once he was home, once he had been out of the sight of anybody else, once it was safe again to lie, even if only to himself, one word had escaped his lips in a low, pained drawl:

"Fuck."

Today he was at the forge, though. Bright and early. Smiling that resin smile. Prepared to swallow that little bit of strength and dignity that using Vandran's accent had been giving to him this past year so that nobody would mistake him for a bad toy.

Setting to work. Swinging a hammer. Keeping his head down. Feeling small. Being small.

He was a miniature, after all.

[OOC: Oooopen.]

Fjord had woken up from an amazing sleep, unexpectedly, to the sound of a sword clattering to the floor.

Just that. The falchion. On the floor. He'd frowned and tried to call it back to him, but nothing had happened. No magic splash of water, no anything, really. Even the usual array of barnacles and starfish and tiny snails had vanished entirely from the hilt and the base of the blade.

With his heart somewhere in the pit of his guts, he grabbed the sword, slung it into its old sheath across his back, and slipped outside, making his way to the beach.

Tried to cast disguise self. Nothing.

Tried to throw an eldritch blast out over the water.

Nothing.

... Just... nothing. A strangling feeling of dread rising up in his chest, drowning out a smaller, more subtle wave of relief. On the one hand, freedom. But on the other...?

"No," he murmured. "No, no, no, no, no. I need this."

What the hell was he if he didn't have that magic? Cut off from the ocean, no way to get home, no idea if Vandran was even alive.

Just Fjord.

Just that.

[OOC: No sea life, eh? Mehehehehehe. Open!]

Where the hell the mushrooms had come from overnight was beyond Fjord. He'd woken up today, realized it was a Thursday (beyond all probability lately, it seemed), and had set out to work, only to almost plummet to his goddamn doom one step out of the hotel.

...

So, mushrooms. And platforms suspended on nothing that dropped if they reached the end of their... chains? Ropes? It was hard to tell with this much in pixel.

When he finally made it to work, he was holding a turtle shell under one arm and his armor was red and white, but the fireballs were kind of redundant when he could already throw eldritch blasts around like they were nothing.

So, to work?

At least the fireballs were good for heating up the forge, he supposed, setting the turtle shell down gently on a counter so it didn't go sliding around the room.

[OOC: I am conscious what. Not likely to last but openish!]

You know who else had no idea where the hell his Thursday had gone? Fjord. Fjord had no idea where the hell his Thursday had gone. He remembered the movie last night, but the bulk of his entire day before it? Nada. Which you'd think, you'd think he'd remember, what with Thursdays being his days at the forge. But... nothin'.


This really had to stop happening, Thursdays. Thursdays were supposed to be far more noteworthy days for him than that. Not that he was sure why.

Anyway, he was at the bar, which was a normal bar, pouring drinks, which were normal drinks, in the company of Tino, who... was never normal, but who was no more absurd than usual today, either.

Happy Friday.

[OOC: Aaaand open! LOOK I DID IT I POSTED MY POSTS im so proud.]

So, the thing about the whole 'nighttime hellscape' place was that Fjord might have been throwing himself into the shit a lot this week. Testing what his limits were. Throwing a lot of eldritch blasts around, and then sleeping during the day, when it was actually safe to do so.

And so he might've lost track of the week a bit, somewhere between Wednesday (he still had his little blinky ring, now on a piece of string around his neck) and today. He'd... make that up again next week, he supposed. Yesterday had been spent fast asleep, resting off the injuries he'd gotten the night before.

He'd arrived at the bar early tonight, at least, figuring people might want to get their day drink on to avoid whatever the after-dark brought today. And because he'd just sort of fallen out of bed at noon and figured he had nothing better to do, anyway.

So, bar. The safe one. With a half-orc behind the counter, throwing thoughtful looks toward the door once the airhorns started. So help him, getting out there and ruining the days of things that wanted to skitter around killing people was kind of addictive.

[OOC: open! art imitates life, what is time]

Fjord came into Caritas to see Tino... mixing drinks.

Not necessarily a bad thing, but it looked like he was going the, 'if you can't beat it, join it' route with the island today. And so everything that was being mixed was a clear beverage of some sort. Vodkas, seltzers, sodas, syrups... Nothing was going into a glass that might have had a color at some point, before.

Fjord squinted at the array of drinks laid out on the counter.

And then at Tino.

"Sure."

[OOC: Ooopen. Possible SP if I faceplant at my desk.]

Fjord really, really needed to stop waking up washed ashore on beaches after horrifying dreams. Last night's dream had been like the one before in reverse, had involved the coils with many eyes wrapping around him and pulling him away from the...

... From the what, he wasn't sure, but there in his dream he'd been crushed halfway to oblivion, the cold, booming voice in his head speaking single words again, that guttural growl snarling possessively right into his mind's eye.

WATCHING. RETURN. PROVOKE. CONSUME.

Again he'd woken up coughing seawater, and then he'd just sat there overlooking the waves, getting his bearings. Re-playing what he remembered of the last few days over and over in his head again. Holding out his hand and calling the falchion into it in a familiar splash of seawater. It was whole again, only the barest seam where the two halves had been split apart, and even that seemed to melt away as he watched it. He dismissed it again and then looked around, trying to puzzle out where he was. It was night - everything was in shades of gray - except then a cloud drifted a little more and he had to squint and look away, the sun too suddenly bright and hurting his eyes.

Okay. So not his usual grayscale night vision at work, just gray. He looked down at his hands, breathed out a sigh of relief. His claws had gone, receded back into his usual black, hooked nails. He had no tail, no spikes, no gills. A hand wandered up to his mouth and his eyes narrowed a little.

... Okay, his tusks were slightly longer than usual. Those hadn't completely gone back down to the size they'd been before, still peeking out a good inch from behind his bottom lip when he closed his mouth. But that wasn't cause for concern, so much. They would have gotten there eventually, had he left them long enough to grow. Still, they were... going to take some getting used to. He made a face, wrinkled his nose, and spat, trying to clear his mouth of the last traces of saltwateer still lingering there.

"Fuckin' hate this place," he muttered, and then settled back in among the stones and sand, staring out at the strangely gray morning sea.

[OOC: Open seashore, discombobulated wjarlock!]

Fjord had hoped that no longer being trapped in some kind of nightmare of an underwater city would at the very least make the dreams ease off, but if anything, waking up on an island that looked nominally back to normal had made them worse; the writhing, serpentine form that sometimes came to him as he slept seeming more agitated, more insistent.

Last night, the eyes had come to him again, had wrapped their coils around him so hard that even the water that he could sometimes inexplicably breathe in those dreams seemed to be crushed out of him, and it had snarled in that wordless, voiceless, all-encompassing tone:

MINE.

Which... so far as dreams featuring giant glowing yellow eyes went, was maybe not the greatest that Fjord had ever had. As a plus(?) side, at least having all the water crushed out of him meant there was far less to choke up when he woke up that morning, sitting bolt upright and gasping desperately for breath.

So he'd gone for a walk. Clear his head. Get some distance between himself and the bed that was starting to take on the unmistakable odor of ocean brine, which might have even been comforting, dammit, if not for the circumstances. But the walk was... wrong. Felt like he was being tripped here, dragged about for just a fraction of an inch there. And the glow of the water in the park, faint, but visible still in the early morning dark, was far too near an echo of the crushing coldness of the glowing eyes of his dreams for Fjord's comfort.

Not that it stopped him from getting closer to take a better look, satisfy that gnawing curious streak of his. Close enough to frown as he noticed the dying foliage around the edge of the pond.

Close enough to need to step forward to brace himself with one foot when that strange, shifting, dragging feeling hit him again.

Close enough that he gave a sigh once he had regained his bearings, and then retreated to a bench so that he could pull off his boot and dump the water from it.

Somewhere far away, not of this world at all, a long line of golden eyes opened far, far underwater, and an endless length of serpentine coils shook in impotent rage, bound as it was.

MINE.

It was not in any mood for sharing.

[OOC: Open park!]

Fjord was apparently having A Day, today. The sort that came after a night of dreams about increasingly agitated serpent coils staring at him with countless glowing eyes under a roiling torrent of unfathomable darkness.

So, you know, the usual, but apparently bolstered more than a little bit by the current locale, so that the waking up drowning thing had happened... actually a few times last night, until he'd just given up on sleep completely and decided, instead, to go outside, take his chances with the raving maniacs, let adrenaline wake him up instead of a booming voice in an unending abyss.

By the time he made it in to the forge, Amaya had already headed off for class, which was a good thing. Gave him a chance to clean some of the blood off, bandage a few of his uglier wounds, and set up a particularly shiny sheet of metal on the wall opposite the doorway so that if anything peered in while his back was turned, he could be ready with a falchion in one hand and an eldritch blast in the other by the time they crossed the threshold.

He still loved the sea. Even after everything, here and back home, he still loved the sea.

But this had been a... trying week.

[OOC: Open!]

Talking animals.

The whole damn island was full of talking animals. And you know, Fjord could probably accept that talking animals might be useful somehow, that being able to just walk up to something and say, 'Hello, bees!' might come in handy down the road.

But it also meant that every damn stray cat on the island had apparently singled him out to beg for scraps this week, and he had a small parade of them behind him by the time he made it to the Forge, gasping for breath and with watering eyes and thoroughly. Loathing. Being stuck. On this damn. Island.

Hell, Fandom. He'd take the radioactive wasteland again, just make the damn cats leave him the hell alone.

At least once he was at work, he could grab a broom and chase the damn things out again, being complained at the entire while.

[OOC: Open!]

Well, Fjord had made it in to work today just fine, at least. Didn't have to swim or get his ass stuck in a window in order to do it, either. He'd consider that a win.

What he wasn't considering a win, of course, was the fact that every bottle he picked up turned into some variation of Nuka-Cola. Hell, if he picked up a Nuka-Cola, it turned into a different Nuka-Cola. Seemingly at random, too, so if anybody wanted, say, cherry, he'd have to just keep trying until he got it right.

At least whatever was on tap was... more or less right.

Well. As right as it got in this place they'd wound up in, anyway.

... He maintained that this was okay entirely because of the window thing, though.

[OOC: Open!]

So... smallish for a half-orc? Still meant fairly broad, especially in the shoulder these days, what with all the swinging hammers around that Fjord tended to do over at the forge.

So when he showed up at Caritas and realized that the only way in was up a ladder and through a bathroom window?

...

Well. Fjord wasn't afraid of a little climbing. It was the tight squeeze that was doing its damnedest to thwart him tonight, and he might have gotten himself wedged in that window pretty damn good for a little longer than he cared to admit before popping through it and going for a tumble into the men's room.

He was pointedly not thinking about how the hell he was going to get back out of here again, if there was a chance he was going to go for a plunge out a window in the dark hours of the night.

Maybe he'd take a swing at Tino. Where the hell was Tino, anyway?

Ah well. Caritas was open. Bathroom entry only tonight.

[OOC: Open!]

Well. Not so much with the foundry or the forge bits today, was the place? Didn't stop Fjord from showing up, though, following along with Amaya's lesson and making a few arrowheads in the process.

It was different work. New work. Something maybe he'd have some use for someday. Not... that he knew how the hell to fire an arrow. But hell, maybe Fenris would have an interest in these or something?

If anyone wanted any metalwork done, Fjord would write down their order happily, but otherwise, they were gonna be S.O.L.

Sorry about that, Fandom. How about some arrows?

[OOC: Open!]