[ he'll just approach her wherever she is. He's practicing talking to people and not being offputting, which is hard when your charisma score is an 8. ]
Is it more or less odd to pretend that we all haven't read about each other on this ... device yet?
[ i'm sorry but this is the worst person to practice talking to
she startles at first with a yelp when he approaches because a giant sentient frog (who isn't a ghost) is weird, but she composes herself pretty quickly ]
No. What's 'odd' is just admitting to me that you did. Planning to stalk me, Frogger?
Alright-- Look. I've had this conversation before with some of you, I understand my appearance is unsettling! I do! Shocking, even! But it's not worthy to scream about it! There are much worse things in the world, deserving of screaming!
[ yeahhhhh, when she made that offer, she wasn't thinking about what the next day would be like. oops. ]
Okay. Then...
[ she picks a truck at random--it's a taco truck! Congrats. A few minutes later, Valerie is returning with two of those lil like cardboard fry containers, each with some tacos loaded up in them. ]
[ does mcdonald's do tea. she's here getting whatever passes for tea at the mcd's and just kind of. holding the cup in her hands and staring down into it, trying to calm the trembling in her fingers ]
[ idk they just happen to be nearby each other HAVE A MEMORY ]
There was a long time before Elody found you. You got turned into a frog when you were a little boy. A regular night in a cold pond, not knowing how to get back to your family, not knowing if you'd ever get home, living amongst the lily pads out here in the woods at night.
A frog leaps onto a lily pad next to you.
“Hey. Do you… Are you a-Yeah, yeah. You know, you'd think that with a fairy godmother running around turning kids into frogs, that there'd be more kids who were turned into frogs, you know?”
Croak.
“Yep. Yep, yep, yep. Well, I'm going to call you Fred.”
A beautiful figure emerges from the wood line, and you see with beautiful white feathers and a long beak a heron emerges from the wood line and takes a stately couple of steps, a tall, long-legged, very stork-like bird, and walks into the shallows of the water's edge.
Croak.
“ ... Hello?”
You say hello. It sort of comes in this small, little froggy voice. Like the other frogs around. The heron doesn't seem to respond to spoken words.
The heron steps over, and you see that Fred hasn't really made eye contact with you because Fred can't make eye contact, because he is a frog. Croak. The heron goes down and kills Fred.
It grabs the frog and it crushes his spine. It breaks, and it swallows him and eats him, and Fred dies with only you knowing that his name was ever Fred, and the heron eats him, and neither of them experience any emotion or sense of self as that happens.
You panic.
The heron steps over in your direction, looks around regarding everything, and you suddenly hear… an whoosh. And an arrow pierces the thing's side, and one of the royal hunters comes out and just grabs it and snaps its neck. Ah. Got it. There’s supper. And starts to walks away from the lake.
“Wait! Hold! There's been a terrible misunderstanding. I'm actually a prince, and I would like to go back to-“
The hunter barely pauses - he lifts up his boot and is going to try to squish you. All you see is the bottom of shoe as you dart off back into the safety of the darkness. But you’re running - hopping, really - going to run in the direction that he was coming from.
“You have more… I'm going to be… You're going to be in trouble, because I'm a prince, and once I start being a prince again, you're fired!”
But as you’re yelling, a dog - one of the castle hunting hounds hears the sound and runs up and grabs you in its jaws - teeth immediately sinking into your flesh (you are so, so small) in a blinding shock of pain and blood.
You wiggle helplessly in its mouth. You're a frog. This is how you’re going to die— But then you hear a whistle in the distance and the dog drops you out of its mouth as it's called back.
When you come to, you're covered in blood. There are huge punctures in your frog body from a dog biting you.
Do you go back towards the castle where the dogs are, or do you go back to your frog pond?
It’s a pretty loaded question. There’s not really a decision to make.
You go back to the pond.
It’s years of this.
Years of that go on before a young Princess Elody first comes by. Much younger, in this memory - the same age you were at the time. Around 14, maybe 15. But the young maiden who will one day fall in love with Prince Gerard. This is the first thing that's not one of the royal hunters or their dogs or a heron. You see she's out playing, and this wonderful golden ball rolls away. You know, after years of that you still have a human intellect.
The golden ball rolls into the pool, and the maiden gasps - on the edge of tears.
”That's very important. That's an expensive toy.”
You’re little afraid of humans, now. You don’t say anything.
It's sunken into the water, so you'll have to swim down to go get it. Swimming down. Eating is hard. It's hard to get enough food to not be hungry. It's hard to keep yourself safe in this place. Do you want to really burn the energy it's going to take to shove this incredibly heavy golden ball up out of the muck and the weeds at the bottom of the pond?
You swim back up, and as you do, you look up and see this young woman who appears really forlorn. She sort of reaches in to see if it's closer to the shore, looks. You see that she's clearly maybe not supposed to have been playing this recklessly or this far out in the grounds away from the castle with this.
“Okay, please don't, like—“
She shrieks.
“I’m sorry! I thought it was-“
“Ah! Who is that? Is it a ghost?!”
“I’m a frog! I'm a frog, I'm a frog.”
“Who's a frog? … You can talk!”
“Yes, listen, you probably shouldn't be out here. There's, fairies and stuff who turn people into frogs, and whenever I ask for help, people just think that a talking frog is kind of weird, and then they try to step on me, and then they sic their-“
“That's awful! … I don't want to step on you.”
“Really?”
“No. I don't, frankly, I hope it's not weird to say, I don't really want to touch you either.”
“No, that's fine. No, I'm a fucking frog.”
She gasps. But also seems sort of impressed. “You said a full curse word.”
“I mean, I'm a frog. I can say whatever the fuck I want.”
“Wow, cool.”
“So you're, okay. So you're cool to talk to me? Because I've been talking to other frogs for a really long time.”
“What do the other frogs say?”
“They just croak. It's insane, it's maddening. I'm going crazy here. Why are you cool with this?”
“I don't know, it wouldn't occur… I don't even know what would make me not cool with it, so I can't really answer the question. Why did the… You said a fairy or someone?”
“Yes, yes. I was admittedly… I was admittedly a little bit of a prick when I was younger.”
“How old were you?”
“ … like 10?”
“I don't think you can be that- I don't think you can be a prick when you're 10. I think you're just 10. I mean, you can be bad when you're 10, but that's not- … What'd you do?”
“I was just kind of being a jerk. Just kind of, I don't know. I would just, like, run around, and honestly, I would … I was just, like, yelling a lot and stuff. I'd be like, look at me, Mom and Dad! Mom and Dad, look at me! Running around.”
“Sounds like you were starved for attention from your parents.”
“Yeah, no, and they haven't looked for me that hard. They really haven't, because I've been missing.”
“I’m so sorry. What's your name? I'm Elody.”
“It's been so long since anyone's asked me that. My name is Gerard. I'm from Greenleigh. Im the prince, the prince of Greenleigh. I don't know if there's been missing posters or anything like that?”
She doesn’t seem like she believes you at all. She gets up, starting to dust off the dirt on her dress. “Okay. Nice talking with you, Gerard. That's very nice.”
“Okay, see, this is what I was afraid of. Okay, I'll prove to you that I'm a prince by showing some royal chivalry. I will fetch your ball for you and prove to you that I am indeed a royal prince. I saw it. I think I could get down there. What is it?”
She stops. “Would you fetch it? Do you know where it is? … It's an heirloom. It's not really a toy, but I just love the feel of it and I like to play with it. It belonged to my mother.”
“You said that in the past tense. Is your mother no longer with us?”
“Neither my mother nor my father. I'm steward of this place, and when I'm old enough, will be tasked with ruling. But it would be nice to have some company, I suppose. Would you fetch it? It would mean a lot to me.”
You dive down. You roll the ball back up, and she admires it and looks and says,
“That's a very noble thing. Even if you are just a frog that learned to talk, it is very princely of you to do something that noble. Do you like living in the pond?”
“No, I hate it.”
And you see she takes a handkerchief and puts it on the ground and says, “Do you want to hop in that and I'll take you to the castle?”
As you’re walking back, she asks: “What ends your curse? Do you know?”
[ hmm. it's one thing to know the story. it's another thing to actually see it and feel it as though it's happening in the moment.
it's also another thing to experience a fairy tale she's known for as long as she can remember as something happening to real people, and not just a parable of cardboard cutouts trying to teach you morals.
she feels kind of bad for making light of gerard's whole situation weeks ago, now. ]
... I actually don't think they did anything particularly wrong, you know. The living have no way of determining how far apart in points the teams are. We were encouraging them to do this.
Well, I wasn't. And definitely not our team specifically. Why would anyone tell them to do it at all, at this point? It's not like it made a difference.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
WEEKEND ZERO - SATURDAY
[ he'll just approach her wherever she is. He's practicing talking to people and not being offputting, which is hard when your charisma score is an 8. ]
Is it more or less odd to pretend that we all haven't read about each other on this ... device yet?
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she startles at first with a yelp when he approaches because a giant sentient frog (who isn't a ghost) is weird, but she composes herself pretty quickly ]
No. What's 'odd' is just admitting to me that you did. Planning to stalk me, Frogger?
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Alright-- Look. I've had this conversation before with some of you, I understand my appearance is unsettling! I do! Shocking, even! But it's not worthy to scream about it! There are much worse things in the world, deserving of screaming!
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[ VALERIE YOU CAN'T JUST ASK PPL WHY THEY'RE FROGS ]
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[ she wouldn't be the first. ]
Well, it all started when I was a child ...
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w1, friday
Alright. Well. I said I'd buy you lunch, so. Take your pick.
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strongly disassociating so. this is fine with him. his little teen friend died and now he's being bought a sandwich! such is life. ]
I. Um.
Hm.
Whatever you think looks best?
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Okay. Then...
[ she picks a truck at random--it's a taco truck! Congrats. A few minutes later, Valerie is returning with two of those lil like cardboard fry containers, each with some tacos loaded up in them. ]
Here.
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Thank you.
[ ... ]
Did you know Rin?
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w1, sunday
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so maybe that will help. ]
You are, uh. Doing alright?
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she looks up at him ]
I have to be, so sure.
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W4 - MONDAY
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it's also another thing to experience a fairy tale she's known for as long as she can remember as something happening to real people, and not just a parable of cardboard cutouts trying to teach you morals.
she feels kind of bad for making light of gerard's whole situation weeks ago, now. ]
I didn't realize you were that...small.
...was that your wife?
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[ he doesn't say this meanly or anything. just. factual. frogs! they aren't big. men who are turning back into frogs? sometimes large. ]
But, uh, yeah. Yes. That was her. Elody.
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W6 - MONDAY
You know we have real ice cream here?
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This is what you wanted to talk to me about?
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No.
[ I just don’t know how to start conversations. ]
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she sighs a little and decides to have mercy on him. ]
Yeah, I've heard about the ice cream. Had some last night.
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W6 - SUNDAY
So, Monika and Mizuki?
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... I actually don't think they did anything particularly wrong, you know. The living have no way of determining how far apart in points the teams are. We were encouraging them to do this.
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[ All it did was make everyone upset. ]
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