kore_logs | [open] apples and quinces, lemons and oranges

Entry tags:

[open] apples and quinces, lemons and oranges

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

To say that he's not thinking clearly would be an understatement. The second he tastes the blood in his mouth, there's nothing else in the world, nothing else he could even begin to focus on. He doesn't want to let go of Ned's neck, doesn't want to break away for even a second. It's like a very strong alcoholic drink consumed too fast -- one moment he's feeling almost normal, the next moment he feels like his mind is reeling, like everything is upside down.

When Ned elbows him, though, when he shoves him away, reality begins to seep back in. To say he snaps back into awareness would be implying that it happens quickly. It doesn't. There's a moment spent blinking in confusion, a moment where his tongue darts out to taste the blood on his lips, and the words Ned is speaking sounds like they're coming from far away, or maybe underwater.

After a few seconds, though, he understands the meaning of the words, the blood dripping onto the ground, and he stares in horror, even as the sight of the dripping blood makes his stomach jump with anticipation and hunger. Meyer is many things -- a drug dealer, a gambler, a gangster, and generally amoral -- but the one thing he's always prided himself on is the fact that he doesn't lose control. This, though, this couldn't be defined as anything but a loss of control, and it's that realization that makes him reel back, putting a safe distance between himself and Ned.

"I'm... I didn't..." He wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, disgusted by the blood because of what it represents, not how it tastes. "I didn't mean to." It's a weak protest, but it's true, and it sickens him.

Ned can see that comprehension, that awareness creeping back into Meyer's eyes, and the self-disgust that follows, and it is a huge relief. He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and clamps it to the side of his neck, trying to staunch the bleeding. The wound is really starting to hurt, now, and Ned hisses gently as he puts pressure on it.

His heart goes out to Meyer, it really does. He knows what it is like to hurt people without meaning to, and he will be nothing but sympathy and forgiveness - once he's sure he's safe.

"I know you didn't," he gasps, nodding once and then feeling faint and dizzy. Right, the blood loss. No nodding for now. "It's just what vampires do. B-but please don't do it again." There is still hunger there: Ned can see it in the twitch of interest in Meyer's expression as the handkerchief begins to turn red with blood. "And if you can't c-control it, then you'd probably b-better go. For both our sakes."

Faint and dizzy is something he can relate to; he feels a little drunk, like he's not quite in his body, like he's floating somewhere else. He doesn't know whether it's the blood or whether it's the shock of what he just did. He wrenches his gaze away from the handkerchief with no small amount of effort. He doesn't want to see the blood, he doesn't want to think about the blood, he doesn't want to focus on the fact that he could bite Ned again, and he could bite him longer this time, and he could probably kill him, if he really wanted to.

"I won't do it again."

The blood he was able to get before Ned shoved him away will tide him over for now. Unfortunately, it's also given him a taste for blood, something he'd only been able to speculate about before. "I can control it." That's partially true; he's not ravenous enough to be out of control, and he feels pleasantly drunk, almost too lethargic to put any effort into attacking the other man again.

"Is there anything I can do? Or should I just go?"

"I'll be alright. I don't think it's too deep, I-"

Ned had been about to say that he'll just go to the clinic for some bandages when he sees that Meyer is swaying slightly in place. His pupils are dilated, his face flushed. Perhaps that is normal, for a vampire who has fed? Or perhaps (Ned feels a sudden sinking in his gut) it's some side-effect of his blood. Does he have toxic blood? Has he poisoned Meyer without even meaning to?

"You okay?"

Edited 2013-04-07 18:06 (UTC)

"I'm fine. I'm fine. I feel..."

What he feels is drunk, not poisoned. Then again, he's never been poisoned, so maybe they feel the same. And he's never drunk blood before, so how would he know if this is normal?

"I feel drunk."

And a lot warmer than he'd felt before, too, although that wasn't particularly difficult, given that his skin had been icy cold only moments before.

"Drunk?"

That was definitely not the response that Ned had been expecting, but it's certainly preferable. Of course it wouldn't have been his fault, if his blood were poisonous and Meyer came to harm by it. He hadn't asked to be bitten. But Ned has some bad and complicated history with thinking of his body as toxic, as deadly. He'd much prefer to merely be intoxicating.

"How on earth-"

But Ned breaks off once again, eyes widening. This time it is in surprise, rather than fear. He moves the bloody handkerchief away from his neck, runs his fingertips over the bite inquiringly. Or, he would be running them over the bite, were it still there. The skin is sealed up, smooth, whole, though sticky with leftover blood.

"It's gone," he says, utterly baffled. He feels the area again, searching for any kind of indentation, any tear, but it is gone. The area is still sensitive, still painful, but it is unmistakably... "Healed. I must've... gotten healing powers, with the flower powers."

Edited 2013-04-07 19:05 (UTC)

"Drunk," he affirms, closing his eyes for a moment to attempt to quell the feeling of being slightly off balance. He doesn't drink to excess much, and being drunk isn't necessarily one of his favorite feelings -- again, it's far too close to losing control for his tastes -- but he can't deny that there's something slightly pleasant about this. More pleasant, though, is the fact that he doesn't want to bite Ned again. Not yet, at least.

When he opens his eyes, he's even able to glance at Ned's neck without that surge of hunger, despite the leftover blood that still remains. The fact that there's no broken skin, no visible wound, is confusing, but then, this whole day has been confusing.

"You're... it kind of makes sense, doesn't it?" His words are ponderous as he tries to get them out without stumbling over them like the drunken idiot he now fears he sounds like. "You can make things grow. You can heal things. Or at least heal yourself. Like growing the skin back."

Ned can tell how deliberately Meyer is speaking, how carefully he is trying to avoid slurring or mixing up the order of his words. It is the same peculiar kind of slow, deliberate dignity he sees sometimes in people who are intoxicated and trying to hide it, and he feels bad for wanting to laugh. He keeps the smile that is twitching at the corner of his mouth from spreading too much. Now that the pain is fading, now that he knows he can heal, his apprehensiveness of Meyer is falling by the wayside again.

"Well no harm done then," he says, wanting to make it clear that he's holding no kind of grudge, even if Meyer hadn't known he would heal before he bit. "Well, a little harm done, to both of us, and nothing we can't handle."

He sees Meyer shutting his eyes and says, "You can lay down if you'd like. Or... do you want water?" Can vampires drink water? What is he going to do if he gets a vampire hangover? "Or I could walk you back to your house, if you need." That's Ned: ever-helpful.

From what he's found, vampires can drink water. They can do just about everything a normal person can do, except they have this unfortunate tendency to want to drink blood. Frankly, if Ned were to laugh at him at this point, he's not sure he'd noticed. He's found staring at the flowers Ned has made extremely fascinating, the way things are fascinating when someone's intoxicated.

"I can't go back to my house. Charlie's in a bad mood."

He still hasn't figured out that his roommate got turned into a dragon, but he knows that whatever he is, it's angry. "I'll just lie here for a minute. I won't bite you."

He hates that he even has to say that.

"Okay, I trust you," Ned says. He's willing to be accommodating, within reason. He trusts Meyer less because he's willing to take his word and more because, well, he doesn't look up to biting much of anything at the moment.

Ned wipes some of the blood off his hands onto the grass and, once again, there is a rather alarming outburst of deep-red anemones. What is even up with that?

"Who's Charlie?" he asks distractedly, glancing between his blood-smeared hand, and the ground, and back again.

He looks at the flowers that suddenly spring up from the blood on the ground and smiles slightly, finding them awfully pretty in his altered state. After a few seconds, though, he lays back on the grass -- or rather flops over, really, in a not particularly dignified manner. Good thing he's too intoxicated to feel particularly self-conscious.

"Charlie's my roommate. My business partner."

His best friend. He pokes at the anemones that came from the blood Ned wiped on the grass, and frowns. "Did you mean to make those flowers grow there, or did it just happen?"

"I think the blood is doing it," Ned says. He takes the bloody handkerchief, wrings three drops off blood out of it. The second they hit the ground, the anemones follow. Their petals are the exact same shade as his blood. It's beautiful and more than a little... "Creepy."

It reminds Ned of a story, something in the back of his mind, but he can't quite remember.

"Your business partner? That means you knew him before you came here? You're from the same time and place?"

That seems to be common enough, apparently. Galen and Jesse had known one another, before being brought here. Erik and Charles.

He continues to stare at the anemones -- it's better than staring at the blood droplets, anyway. If they turn into flowers, they're far less likely to arouse his hunger. He doesn't feel like getting up, doesn't feel like moving, but he knows he'll have to eventually. He can't stay out here all night, and he's heard there are things in these woods that would be dangerous even to a vampire.

"Yeah. We've known each other since we were kids."

Someday he'll try to wrap his mind around how this place works, how it decides who to bring here and where to bring them from. For now, though, he knows those thoughts are far beyond his comprehension. Even the abundance of flowers that Ned has created strikes him as almost incomprehensible.

Childhood friends to business partners? That's a little bit adorable, at least to Ned, who had never had any business partner's, and who hasn't seen his best childhood friend in 20 years. There's something to that continuity, that stability and length of association, that he envies intensely.

"So why's he mad now?" Ned asks. There's probably something unethical about prying into Meyer's social life when he's so clearly wasted, but Ned can't help but be curious. Besides, it gives him something to do, other than sit here while Meyer stares at the flowers with a dopey kind of wonder.

"Because of whatever this..."

He waves a hand lazily in the direction of the flowers, unable to think of the word for several seconds. "Whatever he turned into. I don't know what he is, but he's angry. He keeps breaking things. I'm cold to the touch, but his skin is so hot it could burn someone. And he's probably a little mad because I'm a vampire."

He's never been up on mythology, and thus has no idea what most of them are. It took someone telling him he was a vampire for him to realize it himself. As far as he's concerned, Ned is some kind of flower conjurer with healing powers -- he doesn't know what kind of mythological creature that's similar to, but he has to say, he'd have preferred that to what he'd been stuck with.

He wouldn't have said half of what he'd just said if he hadn't been wasted -- and it's very obvious now that he is, indeed, extremely wasted. More wasted than he's been in quite some time.

Breaking things and burning hot skin doesn't sound like a good combination to Ned. He doesn't know what Charlie might be like in normal life (he doesn't always keep up with what's going on on the network), but from the sounds of it, the transformation as turned him into something rather nasty.

The hour of the night, Meyer's unguardedness, and his lingering feeling of light-headedness all combine to make Ned feel rather conspiratorial, rather talkative.

"Why would he be mad that you're a vampire?" That is the bit that Ned doesn't understand, "Especially if he turned into some kind of... anger spirit or heat monster or whatever. He has to know it's not your fault, right?"

"I probably made him uncomfortably by staring at his neck and being more irritated than usual. On the other hand, he stole my watch. Or... very vehemently demanded my watch. And then disappeared with it. He's been stealing shiny things."

Charlie's always had a hot temper, but the only time smoke usually came out of his nose was when he was smoking cigarettes. This morning, he'd had steam coming out of his nose for no reason whatsoever. That had been worrisome.

"Makes sense, though. Vampires aren't very nice. As you just found out."

And he still feels bad about that. He should have had more control, shouldn't have been so drawn to Ned like that. He barely knows him -- it's embarrassing.

Shiny things? A magpie? Ned can't think of any kind of supernatural or science-fiction or mythological creature that loves shiny things, off the top of his head.

Ned doesn't contradict Meyer's assertion that vampires aren't very nice. He's not going to try to placate him with platitudes. Attacking people isn't nice, but he understands that Meyer's control over himself has been compromised. He might take a harsher view, if he'd been more injured, if he hadn't healed, but as it is...

"Doesn't sound like whatever he's turned into is very nice, either."

And then Ned, in a fit of hospitality, offers, "If you don't mind camping out, you're welcome to stay here for the night. I was intending to. Had a... bit of a run-in with a housemate myself."

"You mean that?"

He's confused by this hospitality. Politeness is one thing, and he generally strives for it, but if someone had recently attacked him, he's not sure he'd have the ability to offer them a place to stay for the night. And then, because he may be drunk, but he's still perceptive, despite his altered state, he has to ask the obvious question: "What happened with your housemate? Someone take offense at your flowers?"

He can't imagine what kind of problem someone could have with Ned. Thus far, he's been nothing but accommodating -- and the flowers are really very nice.

"Yes."

As for the danger of having Meyer stay there, Ned isn't too concerned. He isn't actually planning on going to sleep, himself, though he was careful enough not to say that part out loud. If he did, Meyer would probably ask more questions, and he isn't intending to go into specifics.

That is why, when he asks what happened with Ned's housemate, Ned shrugs as if it weren't a big matter; he also crosses his arms over his chest, an unconscious self-comforting gesture. His voice has a quality of bitter understatement when he answers:

"Let's just say he's turned into something even scarier than a vampire."

Edited 2013-04-07 21:45 (UTC)

Meyer isn't even sure if vampires can sleep, so there may be two of them lying there awake, pretending to sleep. He feels tired, yes, but he has to wonder whether that's the blood he's consumed contributing just as much as any natural tiredness is. He hasn't figured out exactly what being a vampire means yet.

Of course he notices that Ned crosses his arms over his chest -- he knows that gesture well, knows it to be a self-protective one; he's perceptive, even when he's drunk. "Sounds like you've been having a... hmm..."

There's a word he's looking for, just on the tip of his tongue, that he can't quite express for a few seconds. It takes staring at the flowers for awhile to get his brain back on track. "An extremely eventful day. Did he hurt you, too?"

"Haven't we all?" Not all of today had been bad eventful, by any means. It had just gotten off to an extremely rocky start. One that Ned doesn't feel like dwelling on too much, and certainly not talking about. Still, he can see why Meyer would want to know. It's not just curiosity, he imagines. It may perhaps give him a sense that he's not the only one who has lost the ability to control himself, because of these changes.

Which is why Ned makes eye contact with Meyer and nods, once. Of course, what he'd done hadn't been a physical attack. It was going to take significantly longer for that wound to knit back up.

But now he's let his thoughts get too close to it, and he doesn't feel like talking for a little while. So instead, he goes back to what he'd been doing before Meyer showed up, running his hands across the ground and leaving springy moss everywhere he touches. It might not be as good as a bed, but it will do. At least it's warm out, now.

"Yeah, we all have."

He gets that Ned doesn't want to talk about it, as curious as he is to know just what had happened. He doesn't want to make Ned's day any worse, though -- after having attacked him, it's probably not considered polite to make him dwell on his unpleasant day.

Not talking for a little while suits him just fine. He's comfortable leaning back into the grass, staring at the flowers with a unfocused gaze, wondering how many different types of flowers Ned could make appear. And somewhere in the back of his mind, he's wondering what Charlie's doing, and whether or not he'll feel like heading home anytime tonight.

Charlie isn't Meyer's keeper. He is very much aware of this. They both live their own lives and go their own places and generally he doesn't have a problem with this. But today... well the fact that Meyer isn't here is just bugging him. Maybe it's because of all the things people are turning into, he knows there's a chance Meyer could be more at risk than usual. Or maybe he knows deep down people are at risk from Meyer himself.

Either way, he gives up pacing around the house waiting for him to come home, and goes out after him.

He's not hard to find, not in a place this size. Besides, there's something drawing him to the park, a smell or a feeling that makes him feel like it's a good place to go.

He spots Meyer's fairly quickly, and strides over, getting a firm hand around his bicep to hoist him up before he can protest too much. "Come on, we're going home," he says and that should be the end of that. Except.

Except. That smell and that feeling. It's coming off Meyer, slightly. But even stronger from the man there with him. It's almost intoxicating, and Charlie just has to stop. And stare.

Ned springs to his feet, hands raised in a calming gesture at the man who had just barged over and hauled Meyer off the ground. He doesn't want to get involved in whatever kind of squabble they have going on, but he can't just sit there and do nothing. What this situation needs is someone calm, reasonable, level-headed. Too bad Ned has never been so good at the calm part

"I'm guessing you're Charlie?" he blurts. "Meyer was just telling me about you. It's n-nice to meet you, I'm Ned."

He holds out a hand for Charlie to shake, his nervous smile not reaching his eyes. What the hell is he hoping to accomplish? It's unlikely that some niceties would calm the man down, discourage him from taking out what is clearly a very bad temper on his friend. But he doesn't know what else to do or say.

Their little housemate tiff doesn't explain why Charlie is giving Ned that actually quite unsettling look, though. He half-laughs, anxiously, starts to draw back his hand.

Edited 2013-04-07 23:06 (UTC)

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