[open] apples and quinces, lemons and oranges

[nedofpies]

Who: Ned, open to all
What: Here be species-swap logs involving Ned the unlikely fertility god.
Where: Anywhere (preferably outdoors).
When: Duration of the event (58 - 61); put date in header, please.
Warnings: Blood, kidnapping, creepiness and general Ned-terrorizing? [will add more as necessary]

Ned wanders the town barefoot, leaving a path of fruit and flowers and vegetation behind him. There are daffodils and bluebells, hyacinths and crocuses, irises of all colors, primroses and poppies and periwinkle in profusion. When he stops to sit quietly under a tree, by the edge of the woods, the vines spread out from his body like paint creeping through water. They slowly wind their way up the trees, or else sprawl across the ground, swelling with strawberries and blackberries, grapes and kiwis, passionfuit and cherries.

He doesn't understand why it is happening, but from the sound of the messages over the communicator, everyone has been going through some strange changes. As far as Ned's concerned, being some kind of plant conjurer is better than some options.

Since he can't think of much else to do with his time, Ned lounges in the dappled shade and makes bouquets. All he needs to do is rake his hands through the soil and a few minutes later, up come the snapdragons, up come the cala lilies. He finds that, if he focuses on a particular kind of flower as he does it, sometimes it is mixed amongst the others. As he sits the hydrangeas are bubbling up around him, shielding him from view.

Ned isn't worried about resting in the woods, despite all the dire warnings he's heard in his short time here. He is at the very edge, just in the shade of the first few trees; the lions and tigers and bears can't possibly have any objections. So he lounges in his cozy bower, hazy, half-awake (he hadn't exactly slept well, the previous night), weaving crowns of camellias and garlands of gladiolus.

Comments

Day 61

[shesamarshmallow]

Day one, she'd been okay. Day two, she'd managed. Day three, hard as hell. And she'd lost track of days. It didn't help that she tended to sleep through them. She hadn't wandered around at night so much in months. But here she was, following a trail of plants that she suspected would lead to food. Or somewhere.

She couldn't break into a house, though. Not if she was a vampire. She couldn't do it that someone else. But she had to do something, go somewhere. She was starving, but she wasn't hungry for food. She had to get out of there, away from the heartbeats and the scent of people.

She's followed the trail into the woods before she realizes what a mistake this might be. She can hear a heartbeat. And before she can stop herself, she's at the man's side, watching him sleep, and the sound of his blood coursing through his veins would make her mouth water if she weren't so parched.

"Um. Hi." She sets a hand on his chest. How is she supposed to do this? She's never bitten someone before.

But hey, she just felt her incisors growing, so however she does it, she'll be doing it with a lisp. That's good to know.

"I'm Veronica. I'll be vamping on you today."

That sounded as good as anything. And holy Count Chocula, did a jugular ever look so good?

[nedofpies]

Ned has not been sleeping very soundly, these past few days. He wakes up instantly at Veronica's touch. It's probably a sign of just how much Ned has been through in the past few days that, when he opens his eyes to see a young girl with fangs looming over him, saying she is going to feed on him, his reaction is surprise rather than complete terror.

Before Veronica can move in any closer he holds a hand up between them, talking very rapidly, "Hi Veronica I'm Ned it's nice to meet you do you mind holding on a minute before you do that?" Hey, it's worth a shot, at least this one introduced herself and give him some warning before chomping down. He doesn't pause for a response, though, wanting to get all this out now in case she's not really in a patient mood, "Just- just two things. I'm okay with you vamping on me because I've got weird healing powers right now anyway but don't take too much okay? And also you should probably know there's a significant likelihood my blood is going to make you wasted because it kind of already did exactly that to the last vampire that came by."

Yeah, she heard him right, the last vampire. Because apparently this is a thing he does, now.

[shesamarshmallow]

Words. Words words words. She's usually better with words than this.

Wait.

Last vampire?

Her eyes unable to look away from his neck, she half reaches out, half holds up a finger. It results in a pointing wave toward the general vicinity of his neck.

"So wait. If I drink from you, you're totally cool with it and I'll get flat off my ass drunk?"

There were things to both like and dislike about this news. Mostly dislike.

[nedofpies]

Totally cool with it might be taking it a little bit far, Ned thinks, but he's starting to get how this works. Starting to realize that he's a one-man buffet and the monsters are going to keep coming, so it's better to bargain and set what terms he can than to succumb to the tendrils of fear working their way into him and try to resist, only to fail.

"...As long as you don't kill me," Ned forces a small, rather tight smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "And it's a possibility. Something funny in my blood I guess. Sorry."

[shesamarshmallow]

"Yeah, I don't want to kill you." She finally regains control of her hand and gently presses it against his neck. Her skin is cool, but not cold. More lukewarm than anything. "I don't want to kill anybody."

She hesitates. "I've never done this before. Did it hurt last time?"

When did it become such an impossibility that she look elsewhere for something someone to snack on?

[nedofpies]

Ned feels a pang of pity for this girl. She does seem quite nice, and he doesn't envy the position she's been landed in by this rather sick experiment that's being done on all of them. He shivers just a little when she touches his neck, but he can't really help that, can he? He turn his face away to allow her better access and thinks about how strange his life has become, these last few days.

"Not much," he reassures, and for once, it's a lie that he tells well. He focuses on the poppies unfurling beneath his fingers, tries not to tense up in anticipation of the pain.

[shesamarshmallow]

She sees what he's doing out of the corner of her eye, but she has interest in little else right now but that pulsing vein. When he turns his head away, she takes it, on some level, as permission, and she leans forward, grateful for the instinct that guides her to puncture his skin, unnerved by how much it's like sucking at the hole of a Capri Sun when the straw breaks.

She can't help but think that it tastes good, though. Not necessarily the taste of his blood - that part is disgusting. But not being so thirsty anymore, not feeling so parched. Even the dizziness is preferable. It's more than just dizziness, though. She's feeling tipsy.

It doesn't take her much longer to slake her thirst, and then she licks the wound clean and stands back, swaying and blinking as plants swim in her vision. "I might need a lie-down."

[nedofpies]

Ned does his best to conceal his wince when she bites into him, chewing on the inside of his lip and staying as still as possible. It doesn't hurt too badly - not nearly as badly as the first time, with Meyer - though he thinks perhaps that is because he knew it was coming. He waits, feeling himself get more and more light-headed, until she pulls away. Ned them presses a hand over the wound, using the cuff of his cardigan to deal with the bleeding until his healing powers decide to kick in.

In the meantime, he rests his head against the ground, dizzy from the blood loss and the sense of complete unreality that this is something actually happening to him.

"Go ahead," he tells Veronica. From the sound of her voice, his blood has had the same, intoxicating effect on her as he'd predicted. "Shouldn't last too long. Maybe an hour? I don't know. I wasn't keeping track last time." Some other stuff had been happening, shall we say. Distracting stuff involving kidnap.

It feels bizarre, making small talk when a minute ago Veronica was licking blood off his neck, but Ned isn't sure what else to do, apart from lay there in silence. "So what's your story, Veronica? I'm guessing you're not usually a vampire."

[shesamarshmallow]

"Okay." Without further ado, she sinks to the ground and curls onto her side. "Don't let anything happen to me, 'kay?"

She closes her eyes, but she can't fall asleep. She rolls onto her other side, but that doesn't help, either. It's still nighttime, and she has too much energy to go back to sleep.

"So... Sorry about that being how we meet and all. Did we actually- Um. My name is Veronica. Hi." She holds her hand up in the air, where it waves lightly like a flag in the breeze. To say his blood is intoxicating might be an understatement.

[nedofpies]

Ned is surprised by Veronica's request, but immediately reassures her, "I won't let anything happen to you."

It strikes him as strange, offering protection to a vampire. If a dire wolf or other monster comes by, he's not going to be able to fight it off. Then again, he's a decent enough runner and she is so small: he could easily carry her, if it came to that. The fact that she is worried enough to ask strikes a chord with him. He recognizes that paranoid reflex; it takes one to know one.

"You shouldn't be. Sorry, I mean, about the biting." He feels the anemones blooming beneath his neck, realizes he must be bleeding onto the ground, and adjusts his hold so he can press down harder on the wound. There seems to be a sort of waiting period, between being injured and when his healing powers take effect. "You were very polite. Everyone else just kind of lunged at me."

And then, because Veronica seems pretty out of it and perhaps not in the ideal state to introduce herself, Ned decides to fill the silence on his own.

"Ned," he repeats, "I'm a pie-maker. Or at least I was, before I ended up here." He's still providing sustenance in his way, but he thinks he prefers baking. "Now I'm apparently a guy who makes plants grow with with his hands. Though I suppose everyone who makes plants grow does it with their hands, to some extent. I meant magically. Makes plants grow magically with his hands." He plucks one of the anemones with his free hand holds it up in evidence, twirling it between thumb and forefinger. "Which is kind of nice, if weird. I've been working on an orchard. Help with the food shortage."

He's been helping a bit with the vampire feeding, too, but that's been unofficial and, up until this point, not really his choice.

[shesamarshmallow]

"Oh, that's nice." To say she feels zoned out is an understatement. She has never met grass that felt so good. Sure, there's plant life pressing into all of her body everywhere, and under normal circumstances would find it impossible to be comfortable, but she's sooooooooooooooo comfortable and moving would just be a crime.

"I'm a normal person and not a junior PI at all 'cause I promised I wasn't gonna be. Course, that was before I came here. Wherever here is. My dad is gonna be sooooo so soooooooooo upset."

She's quiet for a couple seconds and then chuckles to herself. "I could lunge at you if you wanted. I have my lunging license."

[nedofpies]

A junior PI? Well, that sounds frightfully exciting. Having an upset, worrying father back home, who has no idea where his little girl has gone or what's happened to her - that's less exciting. In fact, it's horrible. Ned wonders what the scientists were thinking, kidnapping someone her age. Kidnapping anyone is bad enough, but at least in Ned's case, he's an adult, with no one to leave behind except his dog (and much as he loves Digby, it's not the same).

"I think I've had more than enough lunging these last few days, but thanks."

Ned slips into a friendly sort of silence after that, sitting up once his neck has healed and his head isn't spinning so badly any longer. He lets Veronica rest there undisturbed, keeping watchful for anything else coming from the woods, but they are undisturbed.